A Little Sense

As those in the know are aware, Nib Manor is in California. And California is in a deep, deep hole that goes beyond finances. The pit that is the state is the result of monetary, cultural and social decay.
The legislators and the governor of the state, in the constant pursuit of votes so that they don't actually have to work for a living, have ignored the state's problems. In fact, whores that they are, they have pandered to those who are bringing down the state.
Victor Davis Hanson, a much more intelligent and better educated man than this writer, sees the problem with the state, and almost despairs:
Works and Days » The Remains of a California Day
The ever lovely Lady Nib, back in the day, was a Joni Mitchell fan. She says that she liked the way Ms Mitchell "rocked out." Your faithful correspondent, while not a fan of Ms Mitchell, appreciated her singing and wordplay.
Here is an article in which Ms Mitchell states what she thought was the moment was when popular music declined. And this writer cannot help but agree:
Music - News - Joni Mitchell: "Madonna is like Nero" - Digital Spy

Read This

If you have a few minutes, take the time to read the following:
The Old Jarhead: I'm Tired

Consider This

Consider this:
Our American Catharsis - Victor Davis Hanson - National Review Online

When Life Made Sense

As regular readers of this blog are well aware, the ever lovely Lady Nib and I are Christians of what, in Great Britain, used to be known as of the Non-Conformist sort. In other words, Protestants, but not Anglicans.
Recently this writer came across a bit of film on YouTube showing General William Booth's (the founder of the Salvation Army) funeral procession through the streets of London in 1912.
It surprised this writer that the crowd lining the streets was as large as it was. And he compared it to the funeral procession for Princess Diana and found something troubling.
General Booth was a private man who, in a sense, changed the world. Princess Diana was a royal who was the object of gossip and mindless adoration by the same people who look to Madonna for their political and social opinions.
General Booth's funeral was not sponsered by the government. Princess Diana's was sponsered by the state.
The turn out for General Booth's funeral was the result of love and respect by the populace. For Princess Diana the turn out was excited by curiousity and the desire to attend an event.
Our society has become one addicted to celebrity instead of true goodness and greatness.
Here is the link to General Booth's funeral procession. Ask yourself as you watch it if such a turn out would be matched by any contemporary Christian leader:
YouTube - The Salvation Army - William Booth's funeral

The End

Today it appears that the House of Representatives have approved what is commonly called Obamacare.
Beginning today the United States citizen will be required to pay insurance for the very act of breathing.
Today the Congress, through trickery and bribery, have violated the United States Constitution.
Today the American Republic ended and was replaced by the American Diktat.
We find ourselves being ruled by a bunch of mobsters.
Either get used to it or fight against it at election time.

A Long Letter That We Can Learn From

Despite the fact that the United States is a more free society and nation than is the United Kingdom, the Brits seem to have the freedom to publicly make statements that would get a Yank damned by the media.

Here is one that we all should read, ponder and repeat:

Gates of Vienna: Ethnically Cleansing the English

By the way, in England there is an organization called the English Defense League that stands up for traditional English values. The organization is sneered at by the same class of people who embraced Hitler during the 30s, but is not unpopular with the average Brit of whatever race. If an American Defense League were to be created one can be sure that the media would try to paint the organization as a racist militia. Look at how the media regards the Tea Party Movement.

Health Care? Ferggit!

Your faithful correspondent is not a person who files away references to data, so he hope that the reader will forgive him for not providing the sources to the following information. The information may very well be incorrect, so take it with a grain of salt,

A Senator stated this week that 75 people died per day due to the lack of medical insurance. That results in a yearly total of 27,375 deaths per year.

Meanwhile, another study using reports from doctors (in other words, self reported and not by an objective body which would probably result in a higher number) stated that annually there were 35,000 deaths in the United States that resulted from incorrect medical care.

In other words, one has a better chance of taking another breath by not having medical insurance than going to a doctor for treatment.

Understanding the Constitution

Our Great Leader and his minions are bound and determined to saddle the population with some sort of government health care scheme despite the fact that most polls and thinking people are dead-set against the opening of such a jar of snakes. And in their insistence to do "what is best for the American people" they are using every procedural trick in the book to avoid having an honest debate and congressional vote on the matter. The President and the liberal Democrats are basically playing the same "I'll hold my breath until I turn blue" gag that a three year old child plays when he isn't given the ice cream cone that he has been denied.
They want this thing even though they really do not know what is on the bill that is one the table. This writer would like to sell them some real estate, a couple of cars and sign them up for a few investments with the argument of, "Just sign on the dotted line. We'll work out the details later."
But one aspect of the proposed health care bill, indeed, the very idea of a national health care scheme, is the constitutionality of such a thing.
Walter Williams has taken the time and trouble to address the matter:
A MINORITY VIEW
This writer would posit that the essay be required reading for every member of Congress except for the fact that most members of Congress, both in the Senate and the House of Representatives, have less understanding of the Constitution than a seventh grade child has of the Hypostatic Union.

This is Interesting

The following is the text of a speech by Mr. Singh, a Sikh living in England. Please note that Mr. Singh identifies himself as an Englishman -- not an Anglo-Indian. Would it be that our grumbling minorities here in the US would do the same:
Gates of Vienna: “I Stand Before You”

Gentlemen Will Out

This writer, while being a deeply flawed man -- perhaps the most deeply flawed of men -- has always tried to be a gentleman. This has been due to the influence of the late Baron Nib and the still living Baroness Nib.
It was assumed that the actions of those of a lesser moral or legal deign would eventually show themselves to be, by nature, scoundrels or rascals, while those of a higher status (in mein, if not not in finances) would always show themselves to be ladies and gentlemen by their word and action.
The following link shows the difference between the last president and the present:
Bush appears at Fort Worth Christian School fundraiser | Fort Worth | News from Fort Wor...

What the Hell?

This past week the odious Los Angeles Time published a piece by one of its sport writer questioning the wisdom of Lindsey Vonn posing for Sports Illustrated in a bikini and whether such photos would advance the cause of slalom skiing in the US.
In the article the man has shown himself to be an idiot.
Professional athletics personalities go into professional athletics for two reasons -- to receive praise and to make money. It is not about being the best, despite what they say. Otherwise they would have careers as engineers, accountants or janitors who participated in sports as a hobby.
Personalities such as Lindsey Vonn and Danica Patrick are merely making extra money and fame from their physical attributes in fields where men are dominant. Their appealing to their physiques are no more lessening to them as are actresses showing up at the Golden Globe Awards showing their gold globes.
What's the difference between the two? At least the women athletes have put in the work to get their figures instead of paying plastic surgeons.

Golfin'

We here at Nib Manor do not pay much attention to professional athletics, or as they are popularly known, professional sports. We much prefer sports of the amateur variety except for baseball. And truth to tell, we would prefer amateur baseball to the MLB if there were an organized amateur baseball league.
But, life being what it is, we have not been able to avoid the Tiger Woods apology for his moral transgressions. By moral transgressions is meant repeated infidelity to his wife.
Mr. Woods' mea culpa seemed to be a pretty much standard statement of the type written by lawyers and public relations people. Whether or not he was sincere in his statement remains to be seen.
But keep in mind that Mr. Woods, being a pro golfer, will be held up from here on to such examples as Bobby Jones and the British Triumvirate.
Only God knows the sincerity of his statement. And we, here at the Manor, hope that he was being sincere for the sake of his family.
On the other hand, the statement of one of his former mistress (actually, mistress is too nice a word; she was a shack up at the best; no Nell Gwynne here), Jocelyn James (along with her media-whore lawyer Gloria Allred), was surreal for the simple fact that a woman who was a "mistress" would expect her "lover" to be faithful to her instead of his wife or reputation. In other words, she seems to expect a man who cheated with her not to "cheat" on her. And did the reader notice, if the reader saw the video of Ms James' statement on television, that Miss James had shorn her locks to something akin to a bob from long auburn locks? Any man who married a woman while she was wearing long hair can attest that a short hairdo means that the marriage has moved from (in the wife's opinion) from a relationship of companionship and sex to one of only companionship. Miss. James, in her short haircut, is trying to say that her relationship with Woods was more mental than physical. Methinks I see a book coming out by Miss James in about three months.
What the hell has happened to the world?

A Good Gotcha

"The French, they are a funny race,
"They fight with their feet and **** with their face."

The above doggerel was popular when this writer was a young lad, and it was meant to express that the French were different than the rest of us; us meaning members of the Anglosphere.
The French, whether right or wrong, seem to value their self-proclaimed "intellectuals" and "philosophers." Consider the fact that the idiotic natterings of Sartre and DeBouvavier were regarded by the average French opinion maker as Gospel, or the fact that a recent foreign minister was appointed to the office because he was a "philosopher" and "poet."

The French, as a nation, seem to have an aversion toward thinkers who are hard-headed realists, and the result is nightly car burnings in Paris and just plain silliness like Johnny Halliday.
In this writer's opinion, the best public thinker in France over the last twenty years has been Brigitte Bardot, who has been repeatedly found guilty of "insulting Islam" for her stance of standing for traditional French culture and preferring hearing church bells on a Sunday morn instead of the caterwauling from a minaret on a Friday afternoon.

Well, this week a French "philosopher" was shown to be a bit of a poseur and dope:

The Associated Press: French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy duped

Life can be sweet.

We're Trying to Help This Nation?

If the memory of this writer is correct, the country of Afghanistan has always been a basket-case. It have been, and may be, a great place to live if one were an Afghan, but as a real nation deserving the respect of the world it's a loser. It has been less than a nation or country than a geographical area populated by clans of the Hatfield-McCoy type.

Your faithful correspondent seems to remember that before the Russians invaded Afghanistan the president was assassinated in the parliamentary chamber by the member of a rival clan. The result was the crumbling of the country to the point that the USSR saw what they thought was an area of easy pickings. No one can explain what good thing that the Russians saw there, but they invested money and blood to try to get it. And they found that they were not fighting one nation, but a group of tribes.
The result of the Russian adventure in Afghanistan was the Taliban, which was created and supported by the Pakistani intelligence service.

The Taliban proved themselves to be despots worse than the previous regime by instituting the strictest versions of Sharia law, And even then they could barely rule the country.

When the US became involved in Afghanistan it seemed to have made the mistake that Afghanistan was a reasonable and somewhat united country. Instead it found that Afghanistan is divided and that the Afghanis are terribly corrupt. Instead of standing for values or ideas, they can often be bought. And it seems that Afghanis do not see the world the same way that the West does.

Consider the following:

FOXNews.com - Afghan Men Struggle With Sexual Identity, Study Finds

How can one deal with people like this?

So Long, Rocket Man

Our dear leader has apparently decided that that studying the nonsense that is known as Man-Made Global Warming is worth more of an investment than is the pursuit of pure space science. The man is an idiot.

Pamela Geller puts it in words much better than this writer can:
» Obama’s War on Science: Trillions for a Hoax, but Not One Cent for NASA’s Moon Mission - Big Journalism

Yodeling and Drinking Beer

Sometimes a hat is known by name but defies description due to the fact that the said hat is off several slightly different shapes.
An example would be the Tyrolean, or Alpine, hat.
The hats on both the left and right are Tyrolean hats, but the reader can see that there are slightly differences, mostly having to do the shaping of the brim and the dimpling of the crown. A third form of the hat, not shown, has a crease along the top of the crown along with two dimples in the front area.
Tyrolean hats were traditionally worn in the Alpine areas of Germany, Austria, Italy and France. In fact, to this day the dress uniforms of the French and Italian Alpine troops of their respective army include Tyrolean hats complete with feathers instead of the usual chamois brush as shown on the hat to the right.
It is not unusual to see Tyrolean hats covered with decorative pins. Originally each pin represented an Alpine mountain that the wearer had climbed. Nowadays the pins often represent towns visited or events attended. And the traditional Tyrolean hat was worn with a chamois brush ornament. These run from the size of large artist's sable brushes to the size of large shaving brushes.
The Tyrolean hat is a head warming hat. The brim is so small that it is useless for shading one from the sun.
One occasionally sees a form of Tyrolean hat worn by East coast businessmen. These are usually dark green of a finer felt than the traditional hat, have the three or four cord type hat band and usually have a small red feather.
The Tyrolean hat is a good hat for head warming and for style. It is not as heavy or serious in appearance than are the fedora, the bowler or the homburg. It is a somewhat more light-hearted and sporty hat and should appeal to those beginning hat wearers weaning themselves off the baseball hat.

Men In Hats

Here we have two images of the bowler/derby hat.
For those of a younger age the bowler may be identified with Charlie Chaplin, or Laurel and Hardy. Graybeards, while including the comedians in the derby wearing fellowship, primarily associate the bowler with the toff, such as John Steed of the Avengers, or with thugs, such as the turn of the century criminal gang known as the Plug-Uglies.
One rarely sees derbies worn nowadays except in Great Britain among the moneyed or in Bolivia among everyone. The Bolivians picked up the bowler habit from British railway workers back in the 1920s and have never given it up.
The bowler was originally developed as a sort of helmet for horsemen and game-keepers, and is still worn among the horsey set. It is also the hat the leveled the field, hat-wise, among the classes in England. Just a few years after the bowler was invented for the wealthy it was being worn by the poor and working class in London, and the wealthy. Before the bowler the wealthy wore high hats and the poor and working men wore caps or slouch hats. But, of course, it's not always the hat that one wears that defines the man, but the way the man wears the hat.
Who should wear a derby? Why not go with tradition? The toff, the villain, the jester and the horse rider. And the Bolivian.

Ready for a Little Brother?

As we are all aware by now, there was, this past Tuesday, a terrible earthquake in Haiti that resulted in many deaths (no one knows as of this date the total toll despite what the news channels claim) and horrible devastation.
Only the most heartless would not feel pity for the Haitians. And the nations of the world, and the United States, have responded to help Haitians try to recover and rebuild.
But consider this: President Obama, before even consulting with the president or prime minister of Haiti, decided to invest 100 million dollars in aid to Haiti. No other nation has pledge any where near that amount to Haiti. Mr. Obama deigned to send the Marines and the Army to Haiti with no authority from either the Haitian government or, more importantly, the Constitution.
One wonders if Mr. Obama would have pledged such an amount of money to a country affected by an earthquake is that country had been the Philippines, Albania or Mexico. We here at the Manor think not.
Your faithful correspondent is of the belief that Mr. Obama's over-reaction (massive amounts of aid are really the purview, in theory, of the United Nations) is due to two factors. The first is that Haiti is a poor and broken society that appears to be irreparable. Haiti is in the Caribbean, which, for better or worse, is often considered the US' pond.
This writer speculates that Mr. Obama will not only attempt to give aid to Haiti, but also fix Haiti. He will try to make Haiti into an effective and honest nation. And by doing so he will tie the United States to Haiti for at leat twenty years. In other words, he will make Haiti into a pseudo-colony. And do not be surprised if, within the next couple of years, you read in the newspaper that the government of Haiti appeals to the government of the US to be made a de jure territory of the US.
Finally, if you, the reader, decided to send some money to an aid organization to be used in Haiti, this writer would ask you to bypass the Clinton/Bush fund promoted by the President and the Red Cross. This writer asks you to investigate donating to the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities or World Vision simply because from those charities you get more bang for the buck.

Somebody Wakes Up

The ignorance of the slow incrementalism of bad ideas into a society and the average citizen's unthinking acceptance of the reassurances by the intelligentsia are greater corrosive elements to the soundness of a civilization than are attacks, violent or ideological, from without. The thin edger of the wedge, once it gets purchase into a fissure, is almost impossible to prevent from doing its work.

In Great Britain, for many years, the liberals, multi-culturalists, socialists and Islamo-philes, have been reassuring the average British subject that he has nothing to fear from the growing number of immigrants from Islamic nations or the radicalization of British Muslims. The idea was that British culture and society were much stronger than Islamic culture and that the Orcs would assimilate and become good and loyal Geordies and Cockneys and Scouses.

Well, the elites were wrong, and the average Brit has finally twigged that his neighborhood Muslim society may not be raising racing pigeons or arranging jumble sales to help out the needy:

Britons are suspicious towards Muslims, study finds - Telegraph

-The European Model

A few years ago, during the Danish cartoonist Mohammed scrapple, it was not unusual to hear or read someone state that the Danes are a brave people, despite the fact that Denmark folded to the Germans during WW 2 like a piece of cheap rice paper.
Well, some things never change:
Panic room saved artist Kurt Westergaard from Islamist assassin - Times Online
Imagine abandoning a five year old kid to save your own scrawny ass. That's a picture of our European "allies".