Ruh-Roh, Timmy! Even the East Coast MSM Types Are Calling Four Your Scalp!

Some years ago, a joke circulated with the opening line:

You know it's going to be a bad day at the office when...followed by a list of funny scenarios, such as Mike Wallace and his Sixty Minutes crew showing up at your door. (OldSouth is indeed, not young...).

So, Timmy: You know it's going to be a bad day at the office when...the Atlantic Magazine, that bastion of East-Coast-Old-Boy-WeAllWentToHarvardBrownOrYale-Liberal-Thought decides that your scurvy ass is a liability, and you are to be voted off the island!


Turns out that no one, and I mean not one member in this club, is amused by the news that you used the AIG rescue as a means of bailing out your bankster buddies while chair of the New York Fed.

Timmy, your mistake was that you over-reached.  As long as the scams were relatively small, private, and no one in the club got hurt, it was ok. I mean, those poor schlubs in Flyover Country can be fleeced at will with blow-up mortgages and credit card scams. They vote Republican, if they vote at all, so they don't matter. But this mess lowered the net worth of the membership, not to mention the endowments of the Ivy League schools, where they donate heavily to reserve spots for their under-achieving fourth-generation legacy offspring.

You messed with the wrong people's money, and you are definitely off the invitation list, Timmy.

It is now only a matter of time, and the timing of the announcement. Timmy's toast, he just hasn't left the building yet.

Better get that book deal in place while you can, Mr. Secretary, assuming any New York publisher will return your calls.

The Theology Of The Great Bubble

December's Atlantic Magazine features an extensive article tying The Great Bubble to a popular brand of American Christianity: The Prosperity Gospel.  Written by Hannah Rosin, it is thoughtful, and well worth the time invested in the read.

OldSouth has always always believed that culture shapes economy; and that behind culture stands theology, even if it's the anti-theology of atheism.  OldSouth also thinks that heresy is no laughing matter, that it destroys lives and cultures.

Rosin refers to Jackson Lear, author of Something for Nothing.  This paragraph states the problem succinctly:

...Jackson Lears describes two starkly different manifestations of the American dream, each intertwined with religious faith. The traditional Protestant hero is a self-made man. He is disciplined and hardworking, and believes that his “success comes through careful cultivation of (implicitly Protestant) virtues in cooperation with a Providential plan.” The hero of the second American narrative is a kind of gambling man—a “speculative confidence man,” Lears calls him, who prefers “risky ventures in real estate,” and a more “fluid, mobile democracy.” The self-made man imagines a coherent universe where earthly rewards match merits. The confidence man lives in a culture of chance, with “grace as a kind of spiritual luck, a free gift from God.” The Gilded Age launched the myth of the self-made man, as the Rockefellers and other powerful men in the pews connected their wealth to their own virtue. In these boom-and-crash years, the more reckless alter ego dominates.

The 'second American narrative' is soooo seductive, and has become ubiquitous in American church life. Like the original serpent, the message is often subtle:  God loves you better than that pagan down the street. Step out on faith, and He'll be there to catch you! They purposefully ignore the entire Wisdom tradition of the Old Testament, the very tradition that gave birth to Christianity.  Some of the purveyors of the heresy even blatantly connect donations to their ministry to the rewards of earthly wealth for the faithful donor. 


It's a far cry from that crucial moment of history when that certain rabbi from Nazareth sweat blood and prayed, 'Not my will, but thine, be done.'

Culture forms economy. Our view of God and mankind form culture.

Let's be careful out there. That same rabbi also issued warnings about wolves among the flock,  and wheat and tares, and trees that bear good and bad fruit...

The Woman Who Would Succeed Ted Kennedy

Ann Coulter refreshes our memory of one of the worst miscarriages of justice in American history.

And she reminds us that one of its worst actors was Martha Coakley, the Democrat nominee for the seat left vacant by the demise of Ted Kennedy.  The tale is long and chilling, and worth considering.

Gerald Amirault had been imprisoned for fifteen years for crimes that never occurred. Martha Coakley, as a district attorney, had every reason to know this was the case, and yet lobbied against his clemency petition in order to make her feminist prosecutorial 'bones'.

The man languished in prison for three years more.

Imagine this woman in the Senate... 

Frozen Gore: Art As Theatre In Fairbanks

'Frozen Gore' has returned for a second year, thanks to two businessmen in Fairbanks, Alaska.


Yes, the Inventor Of The Internet, who believes the earth's core to be millions of degrees hot; who managed to give the impression that he had graduated both the law and divinity schools of Vanderbilt University(when he has, in reality, not); the Presidential candidate who brought us the 'hanging chad'; who darkly warned us of the disappearance of the polar bear(whose population is actually growing handily, thank-you); Bill Clinton's apologist and lap-dog; the Guru of Copenhagen; the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize; and the inspiration for the tens of thousands of 'Gore-Free Tennessee' signs that blanketed his home state in the fall of 2000--this very Al Gore has once again been memorialized in a large ice sculpture.


This year's sculpture features an avant-garde 'live-theatre' element: When the owners hook the exhaust of their pickup truck to the sculpture, AlGore blows smoke! Sort of a realistic touch, don't-cha-know!


Now, 'scuse me, the snow's about to begin here in Tennessee, in the coldest winter since the late 1970's. Need to put on some more hot cider, and check the pot of chili.


Don't think this is what AlGore exactly predicted for 2010...

The True Unsung Hero

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times reminds us of the true unsung hero of the Christmas Day attempted terror attack:  the terrorist's father, who warned US intelligence in detail that his son had been snared by the jihadists, and represented a threat to the civilized worlds.

Think on that one for a moment!  Think about how we love our kids, advocate for them, wish to see them always prosper and never come to harm.

What if it were my son, for instance, that decided that the KKK and Aryan Nation held the 'secret to life', and that he felt obligated to target blacks, Jews and Catholics for violent elimination from society?  Even after a comfortable, even privileged background and education?  Would I have the cojones to call the FBI and let them know?  I hope so.

I would also hope that the FBI would have the common sense to listen and make certain the word got out before someone was harmed, beginning with my son.  That's where things broke down, on our end, our people, our intelligence service, our law enforcement, our White House living in denial that there really are dangerous followers of The Prophet out there, too busy feeding the banksters to notice.

But, another general breakdown has taken place in the parts of the world where Islam prevails:

Finding people with the courage to confront that breakdown — the one identified by the father, the one that lures young Muslims away from the mainstream into a willingness to commit suicide against innocent civilians as part of some jihadist power fantasy — is what matters most right now.
Yes, we need to fix our intelligence. Yes, we absolutely must live up to our own ideals, as President Obama is trying to do in banning torture and closing Guantánamo Bay. We can’t let this “war on terrorism” consume us. We can’t let our country become just The United States of Fighting Terrorism and nothing more. We are the people of July 4th — not Sept. 11th.

But even if we do all that, no laws or walls we put up will ever be sufficient to protect us unless the Arab and Muslim societies from whence these suicide bombers emerge erect political, religious and moral restraints as well — starting by shaming suicide bombers and naming their actions “murder,” not “martyrdom.”

Finally, finally, someone from MSM/ObamaLand is saying what the rest of us have been saying for a long, long time:  There is a big problem out there in IslamWorld, and until they put their house in order, this thing will not end peacefully.

Finally.

The Not-Ugly American

A charming short essay by British author Geoff Dyer  about the gap between the reputation of Americans as seen by many in the UK, and the reality he encounters.

With so many of us living with one foot in each place via business and family, this is a good read:

The first thing I ever heard about Americans was that they all carried guns. Then, when I came across people who’d had direct contact with this ferocious-sounding tribe, I learned that they were actually rather friendly. At university, friends who had traveled in the United States came back with more detailed stories, not just of the friendliness of Americans but also of their hospitality (which, in our quaint English way, was translated into something close to gullibility). When I finally got to America myself, I found that not only were the natives friendly and hospitable, they were also incredibly polite. No one tells you this about Americans, but once you notice it, it becomes one of their defining characteristics, especially when they’re abroad.


The entire piece here.  Enjoy.

And, ya'll come back and see us, ya heah?