Howard in Dublin Blog

IN A JAM?

howardf99 — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:19:08 +0000

LAURIE PLAYED HOMEMAKER TODAY AND PRODUCED 3 LARGE JARS OF DELICIOUS ORANGE MARMALADE….SEE PIC

A BITTERSWEET BREAKFAST - MARMALADE BY LAURIE

howardf99 — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:07:29 +0000

Reblogged from Howard in Dublin Blog:

Orange marmalade ala casa

howardf99 — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 15:03:24 +0000

Reblogged from Venice Art Tours Blog:

stupidity…

howardf99 — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:54:19 +0000

Reblogged from Venice Art Tours Blog:

THIS IS THE JUNK THAT PASSES FOR MUSIC TODAY. IT’S OFFENSIVE IN EVERY WAY.

THEY ARE STILL OUT THERE…

howardf99 — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:17:50 +0000

from www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15487647″; Tunisia, confirm that, given a free choice, a majority of Middle Easterners vote for Islamists. Dynamic, culturally authentic, and ostensibly democratic, Islamists advance a body of uniquely vibrant political ideas and constitute the only Muslim political movement of consequence. But Islamism is the third totalitarian ideology (following fascism and Communism). Preposterously, it proposes a medieval code to deal with the challenges of modern life. Retrograde and aggressive, it denigrates non-Muslims, oppresses women, and justifies force to spread Muslim rule. Middle Eastern democracy threatens not just the West’s security but also its civilization.

That explains why Western leaders (with the brief of George W. Bush) shy away from promoting democracy in the Muslim Middle East.

In contrast, the region’s unelected presidents, kings, and emirs pose a lesser threat to the West. With Moammar Qaddafi long ago chastened by American power and Saddam Hussein removed by American-led forces, the egomaniacs were gone by 2003 and surviving strongmen largely accepted the status quo. They asked for little more than to be allowed quietly to repress their populations and noisily to enjoy their privileges.

A year ago, Western policymakers could survey the region and note with satisfaction that they enjoyed reasonable working relations with all the governments of Arabic-speaking countries, excepting Syria. The picture was not pretty but functional: Cold War dangers had been thwarted, Islamist ones mostly held off.

Greedy and cruel tyrants, however, present two problems to the West. By focusing on personal priorities to the detriment of national interests, they lay the groundwork for further problems, from terrorism to separatism to revolution, and by repressing their subjects, they offend the sensibilities of Westerners. How can those who promote freedom, individualism, and the rule of law condone oppression?

oops!

howardf99 — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 11:16:54 +0000

I am not sure how many friends (if any) read my blogs; but I admit to being remiss of late and starting tomorrow there will be a new blog each day….promise.

Here in Dublin all is calm and autumnal. Laurie working on a new book – the nature of which I am forbidden to reveal.

Venetian World traveller, Frank O’Halloran of Venezia, visited us – I guess to get a good look at the home of his forebears. He travels an awful lot for his job, and friends of ours in Venice would frequently pull me aside and ask me if Frank was in the CIA. I would reply “I don’t know”. (He isn’t – I don’t think.)

We showed him some of the sights, took him to our fav pub (Davy Byrnes (davybyrnes.com) and had a good time.

put the blame where it belongs…

howardf99 — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:03:26 +0000

Why Abbas went to the U.N.

While diplomatically inconvenient for the Western powers, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas’s attempt to get the U.N. to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state has elicited widespread sympathy. After all, what choice did he have? According to the accepted narrative, Middle East peace is made impossible by a hard-line Likud-led Israel that refuses to accept a Palestinian state and continues to build settlements.

It is remarkable how this gross inversion of the truth has become conventional wisdom. In fact, Benjamin Netanyahu brought his Likud-led coalition to open recognition of a Palestinian state, thereby creating Israel’s first national consensus for a two-state solution. He is also the only prime minister to agree to a settlement freeze — ten months — something no Labor or Kadima government has ever done.

chas krauthammer

obama, oh mama!

howardf99 — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:38:30 +0000

nro reports:

Imagine you’re in the Obama White House, and this is what you face. Democrats lose a special election in a congressional district they have controlled since the 1920s and which was framed as a referendum on the president. There’s a possible scandal brewing over the White House’s effort to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion dollar loan to a solar-panel manufacturer, Solyndra. The most recent Census Report shows median household earnings fell for the third consecutive year, back to 1996 levels. A record number of Americans are in poverty. In Afghanistan, the Taliban mounted a fierce assault on the U.S. embassy and NATO military headquarters in Kabul. A new CNN/ORC poll shows Obama’s disapproval rating has reached a new high while the number of Americans who think he is a strong leader has dropped to a new low. And that’s just today.

On a human level, one can sympathize with what the president, his advisers, and his supporters are going through right now. But there is a cautionary tale in this as well. When Obama was running for president, he was dismissive of those who came before him. The problems we faced, at home and abroad, would be fixed by signing this executive order and passing that piece of legislation. Hope and change were on the way. “I’m LeBron, baby. I can play on this level. I got some game,” Obama is reported to have said back in 2004.

Being president seemed so easy before he actually was president. At the point he took the oath of office, the problems became harder to manage, more difficult, more intractable. “When I said, ‘Change we can believe in,’ I didn’t say, ‘Change we can believe in tomorrow,’ ” Obama told an audience last month. “Not, ‘Change we can believe in next week.’ We knew this was going to take time, because we’ve got this big, messy, tough democracy.”

Every person who runs for president, it’s fair to say, has a healthy ego. But Obama was different; the self-assurance, the arrogance, the sense that he viewed himself as a world-historical figure was almost palpable. “I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions,” Obama told congressional Democrats during the 2008 campaign. A convention speech wasn’t enough; Greek columns needed to be added. “Generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment,” Obama said – a moment when, among other achievements, “the rise of the oceans began to slow.” And during the campaign, while still a one-term senator, Obama decided he wanted to give a speech in Germany– and he wanted to deliver it at the Brandenburg Gate.

Yet now we see the Obama presidency coming apart, piece by piece, day by day. Democratic lawmakers are attacking the president on the record. The unhappiness in Obama’s own party toward the president might soon evolve into an open revolt. Those who supported Hillary Clinton in 2008 are saying, with some degree of self-satisfaction, “I told you so.” And the words of Solomon will be proven right again. “Pride goes before destruction,” he wrote in Proverbs, “a haughty spirit before a fall.”

If you dig beneath the rationalizations and the excuses, the field of strawmen, and the barrage of attacks on the motives of his opponents, one can only wonder: In his quiet moments, during times of self-reflection, has Obama –an educated and literate man — learned much of anything from all this?

SORRY TO HAVE TO DO THIS, BUT HOW CRAZY IS THIS??

howardf99 — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:24:18 +0000

Fourth-Trimester Abortion
September 13, 2011 10:43 A.M.
By Mark Steyn
From the Court of Queen’s Bench (the appellate court) in Alberta:

The Wetaskiwin, Alta., woman convicted of infanticide for killing her newborn son, was given a three-year suspended sentence Friday by an Edmonton Court of Queen’s Bench judge.

Katrina Effert was 19 on April 13, 2005, when she secretly gave birth in her parents’ home, strangled the baby boy with her underwear and threw the body over a fence into a neighbour’s yard…

Effert will have to abide by conditions for the next three years but she won’t spend time behind bars for strangling her newborn son.

Indeed. As Judge Joanne Veit puts it:

“While many Canadians undoubtedly view abortion as a less than ideal solution to unprotected sex and unwanted pregnancy, they generally understand, accept and sympathize with the onerous demands pregnancy and childbirth exact from mothers, especially mothers without support,” she writes… “Naturally, Canadians are grieved by an infant’s death, especially at the hands of the infant’s mother, but Canadians also grieve for the mother.”

Gotcha. So a superior court judge in a relatively civilized jurisdiction is happy to extend the principles underlying legalized abortion in order to mitigate the killing of a legal person — that’s to say, someone who has managed to make it to the post-fetus stage. How long do those mitigating factors apply? I mean, “onerous demands”-wise, the first month of a newborn’s life is no picnic for the mother. How about six months in? The terrible twos?

Speaking of “onerous demands,” suppose you’re a “mother without support” who’s also got an elderly relative around with an “onerous” chronic condition also making inroads into your time?

And in what sense was Miss Effert a “mother without support”? She lived at home with her parents, who provided her with food and shelter. How smoothly the slick euphemisms — “accept and sympathize . . . onerous demands” — lubricate the slippery slope.

INFANTICIDE? ANYONE? VISIT CANADA…

howardf99 — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:15:39 +0000

Fourth-Trimester Abortion
September 13, 2011 10:43 A.M.
By Mark Steyn
From the Court of Queen’s Bench (the appellate court) in Alberta:

The Wetaskiwin, Alta., woman convicted of infanticide for killing her newborn son, was given a three-year suspended sentence Friday by an Edmonton Court of Queen’s Bench judge.

Katrina Effert was 19 on April 13, 2005, when she secretly gave birth in her parents’ home, strangled the baby boy with her underwear and threw the body over a fence into a neighbour’s yard…

Effert will have to abide by conditions for the next three years but she won’t spend time behind bars for strangling her newborn son.

Indeed. As Judge Joanne Veit puts it: