Sometime Around Midnight

So long 2010. May 2011 be kinder.



"Sometime Around Midnight", Airborne Toxic Event

A Christmas Together

John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together

Merry Chrismas, Everyone!

We Wish You A Merry Christmas

Stille Nacht

A Baby Just Like You

Twelve Days of Christmas

Christmas Is Coming

Where The River Meets The Sea

The First of The Few

Proudly presenting "The First of the Few," the 1942 story of the design of the Supermarine Spitfire and its designer, R.J. Mitchell.

Thanks to CDR. Salamander for finding this!

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

Panzers in the Mist

Dec. 16th, 1944, started out bad and got worse, as the the Germans launched their operation "Wacht Am Rhein" ("Watch on the Rhine").

German panzer in advance, from captured German film. (US National Archives.)
Picture (and title of post) shamelessly stolen from John at Castle Argghhh!!!

The cream of the surviving Wehrmacht erupted out of the hills and forests of the Ardennes, objective Antwerp and a complete rupture of the Allied lines. It was a move born of desperation; in Field Marshall Model's terms, it was their "last chance to conclude the war favorably."

And it almost worked.

Throwing a massive weight of excellent German armor against an unaware and unready American line, the ensuing weeks of battle decided the fate of Germany.

We know now how it ended, but Christmas 1944 the fate of the war in Europe was still in question, and the certainty of the Allied successes in the summer of 1944 were suddenly very far away.

Instead, all they had was chaos and confusion - and the American soldier showed a tenacity that few knew they had. Hugh M. Cole tells what little of the story is known in his operational history, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge:

On the morning of 16 December General Middleton's VIII Corps had a formal corps reserve consisting of one armored combat command and four engineer combat battalions. In dire circumstances Middleton might count on three additional engineer combat battalions which, under First Army command, were engaged as the 1128th Engineer Group in direct support of the normal engineer operations on foot in the VIII Corps area. In exceptionally adverse circumstances, that is under conditions then so remote as to be hardly worth a thought, the VIII Corps would have a last combat residue-poorly armed and ill-trained for combat-made up of rear echelon headquarters, supply, and technical service troops, plus the increment of stragglers who might, in the course of battle, stray back from the front lines. General Middleton would be called upon to use all of these "reserves." Their total effect in the fight to delay the German forces hammering through the VIII Corps center would be extremely important but at the same time generally incalculable, nor would many of these troops enter the pages of history.

A handful of ordnance mechanics manning a Sherman tank fresh from the repair shop are seen at a bridge. By their mere presence they check an enemy column long enough for the bridge to be demolished. The tank and its crew disappear. They have affected the course of the Ardennes battle, even though minutely, but history does not record from whence they came or whither they went. A signal officer checking his wire along a byroad encounters a German column; he wheels his jeep and races back to alert a section of tank destroyers standing at a crossroad. Both he and the gunners are and remain anonymous. Yet the tank destroyers with a few shots rob the enemy of precious minutes, even hours. A platoon of engineers appears in one terse sentence of a German commander's report. They have fought bravely, says the foe, and forced him to waste a couple of hours in deployment and maneuver. In this brief emergence from the fog of war the engineer platoon makes its bid for recognition in history. That is all.

These unknown men would decide the fate of Europe. All of the blood, sweat, and tears that had been expended since June 6, 1944, depended on whether or not these unknowns held. Whether or not these few could buy enough time for Allied reserves to be brought up, divisions rallied, and the weather to clear so Allied air support could enter the fray.

We know now how this story ends; of the heroic struggle of the green US 99th Division; of the stand of the 7th Armored at St. Vith; of the siege at Bastogne the made a legend of the 101st Airborne; and the ultimate counteroffensive that transformed a German victory into the Wehrmacht's undoing.

But for a few days in December 1944, history hinged on the actions of a few cold, tired, and scared G.I.'s, men whose names we would never even know.

A small group of stragglers suddenly become tired of what seems to be eternally retreating. Miles back they ceased to be part of an organized combat formation, and recorded history, at that point, lost them. The sound of firing is heard for fifteen minutes, an hour, coming from a patch of woods, a tiny village, the opposite side of a hill. The enemy has been delayed; the enemy resumes the march westward. Weeks later a graves registration team uncovers mute evidence of a last-ditch stand at woods, village, or hill.

Two Californias

Now, the other interesting thing I wanted to share: Victor Davis Hanson's depressing "Two Californias" piece.

The last three weeks I have traveled about, taking the pulse of the more forgotten areas of central California. I wanted to witness, even if superficially, what is happening to a state that has the highest sales and income taxes, the most lavish entitlements, the near-worst public schools (based on federal test scores), and the largest number of illegal aliens in the nation, along with an overregulated private sector, a stagnant and shrinking manufacturing base, and an elite environmental ethos that restricts commerce and productivity without curbing consumption.

VDH knows whereof he speaks; the California he is surveying is his own backyard, the California he has spent his life in. Not the pampered coast, but the rural valley that once boomed with agriculture. But not any more.

The entire piece is an essential read, but one thread that runs through it stands out to me more than anything - a lack of equality before the law.

We hear about the tough small-business regulations that have driven residents out of the state, at the rate of 2,000 to 3,000 a week. But from my unscientific observations these past weeks, it seems rather easy to open a small business in California without any oversight at all, or at least what I might call a “counter business.” I counted eleven mobile hot-kitchen trucks that simply park by the side of the road, spread about some plastic chairs, pull down a tarp canopy, and, presto, become mini-restaurants. There are no “facilities” such as toilets or washrooms. But I do frequently see lard trails on the isolated roads I bike on, where trucks apparently have simply opened their draining tanks and sped on, leaving a slick of cooking fats and oils. Crows and ground squirrels love them; they can be seen from a distance mysteriously occupied in the middle of the road.

At crossroads, peddlers in a counter-California economy sell almost anything. Here is what I noticed at an intersection on the west side last week: shovels, rakes, hoes, gas pumps, lawnmowers, edgers, blowers, jackets, gloves, and caps. The merchandise was all new. I doubt whether in high-tax California sales taxes or income taxes were paid on any of these stop-and-go transactions.

This is far different than the usual legal iniquities spoon-fed us by popular culture, where poor minorities are preyed upon by the rich & powerful.

Rather, today's California is the opposite, where the shadow world is ignored - if not abetted - by the government of California. This is a tyranny of apathy, of ignorance, of sloth. Where political correctness and obeisance to trendy pieties matters more than truth.

Many of the rural trailer-house compounds I saw appear to the naked eye no different from what I have seen in the Third World. There is a Caribbean look to the junked cars, electric wires crisscrossing between various outbuildings, plastic tarps substituting for replacement shingles, lean-tos cobbled together as auxiliary housing, pit bulls unleashed, and geese, goats, and chickens roaming around the yards. The public hears about all sorts of tough California regulations that stymie business — rigid zoning laws, strict building codes, constant inspections — but apparently none of that applies out here.

It is almost as if the more California regulates, the more it does not regulate. Its public employees prefer to go after misdemeanors in the upscale areas to justify our expensive oversight industry, while ignoring the felonies in the downtrodden areas, which are becoming feral and beyond the ability of any inspector to do anything but feel irrelevant. But in the regulators’ defense, where would one get the money to redo an ad hoc trailer park with a spider web of illegal bare wires?

As California seeks to provide more and more with less and less, one has to wonder - how much longer can it continue?

At some point, the money has to run out.

"Communism Kills." Yet We Still Need Reminding.

Marxism is intellectualism for stupid people; it tends to attract the sort who can’t understand that an economic system that cannot feed its own population reliably has failed at the game of Life. Literally.

Moe Lane

I've been lax in my blogging lately, and I'm paying for it, as there has been a flood of fascinating things to discuss the last couple of days.

For now, let me share the discussions ongoing at Instapundit and Moe Lane. (I mention both, as each is worth reading, and each references the other.)

Prompting this discussion is new evidence of deliberate Communist Chinese policy to starve its peasants into obedience during Mao's Great Leap Forward. (Tom Friedman, please call your office. Paging Dr. Friedman...)

But this is not mere policy, of harsh measures to reel in rebels. Rather, this is a product of the unique totalitarian ability to mass produce death, to the scale of almost 6.5% of China's 1960 population - 45 million people. All in the name of progress.

How progressive.

And it was not unique to China. Rather, such carnage is inherent in the communist system. (So successful in the Soviet Union, Ukraine, Cambodia...)

And yet, people still defend it.

I'll let Moe Lane have the last words:

Ah, Glenn got a irate email from somebody throwing out the ‘But their motivations are noble!’ apology. Yes, of course: when I get a bullet in the back of the head from somebody for the ‘crime’ of believing in property rights I so totally will feel better about it because the shooter and I ‘merely’ disagree on the best route to Utopia.

On Parties and Politics

I meant to get this out here last week, but better late than never. Yuval Levin, in writing on a new sorta-centrist movement, expanded a little more broadly into political philosophy in The Corner last week, and his discussion is worth pointing out:

Our best guide here is Edmund Burke, who was not only the father of a great deal of what we now think of as conservatism, but also quite possibly the foremost theorist of partisanship in the Anglo-American tradition. In a series of pamphlets in the late 1760s and early 70s (and especially Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents, in 1770), Burke makes a positive case for partisanship as essential to the politics of any free society. Parties, Burke argues, are often mistaken for factions pursuing private interests (or we might say “special interests”) at the expense of the broader national interest. But in fact, he says, parties represent different views of the national interest—they stand not for what is best for different parts of the nation, but for different beliefs about what is best for the whole.

Politics is not a scientific exercise in which there is a single correct answer out there and the proper application of the proper method will get us to that answer in a demonstrable way. Rather, politics is our means of governing ourselves in an effort to best serve the interests, needs, and desires of the nation amidst great and permanent uncertainty. That uncertainty cannot be overcome entirely by human reason, and so our exercise of reason in politics has to be accompanied by an exercise of prudence, wisdom, and a sense of proportion. Such things are inherently controversial. Every individual’s knowledge is partial (and even the sum of all of our knowledge is partial), and every individual’s reason is limited. That is why individuals have to work together in politics, and parties exist to facilitate that working together.

The whole thing is worth reading.

Preparing For The Worst?

In From The Cold has this interesting story:

There's been a flurry of activity in recent months surrounding a new drug called CBLB502 and a company called Cleveland BioLabs. Less than two weeks ago, the Food and Drug Administration took the unusual step of labeling CBLB502 as an "orphan drug," reserved for medications used to treat rare diseases and conditions. The orphan drug designation came only four months after the FDA granted "fast track" status for CBLB502, accelerating its development and potential introduction.

Why those designations for Cleveland BioLab's new product? Because CBLB502 is the only drug available to reduce the risk of death due to total body irradiation. The most likely cause of that condition: a radiological or nuclear disaster.

ince Congress passed the Orphan Drug Act 27 years ago, less that 250 new medications and treatments have reached the market, so that means CBLB502 is in very select company. It is the first designed to combat the effects of a massive radiation dose.

The rush to get the drug on the market raises a rather obvious question. The threat of a nuclear or radiological attack by terrorists has existed for more than a decade. If their capabilities in those areas have remained rather crude, why expedite production and introduction of CBLB502?

The short answer? Something in the strategic calculus has changed.

Fairytale of New York

"Fairytale of New York," by The Pogues and Kristy MacColl.

More Wikileaks Reverberations

From Legal Insurrection:

Throughout the day WikiLeaks supporters have been mounting denial of service attacks against Mastercard, PayPal, Visa, and others deemed to have impeded WikiLeaks. Reportedly, these supporters have disclosed large files containing Mastercard account numbers and expiration dates.

But don't call it Cyberwar, you might offend some people.

And of course, the government of the United States is standing idly by, twiddling its thumbs and dawdling.

And Eric Holder? He's still reading the Instruction Manual for Attorney General.

Interesting Wikileaks Take

From Theodore Dalrymple, in City Journal:

The idea behind WikiLeaks is that life should be an open book, that everything that is said and done should be immediately revealed to everybody, that there should be no secret agreements, deeds, or conversations. In the fanatically puritanical view of WikiLeaks, no one and no organization should have anything to hide. It is scarcely worth arguing against such a childish view of life.

The actual effect of WikiLeaks is likely to be profound and precisely the opposite of what it supposedly sets out to achieve. Far from making for a more open world, it could make for a much more closed one. Secrecy, or rather the possibility of secrecy, is not the enemy but the precondition of frankness. WikiLeaks will sow distrust and fear, indeed paranoia; people will be increasingly unwilling to express themselves openly in case what they say is taken down by their interlocutor and used in evidence against them, not necessarily by the interlocutor himself. This could happen not in the official sphere alone, but also in the private sphere, which it works to destroy. An Iron Curtain could descend, not just on Eastern Europe, but over the whole world. A reign of assumed virtue would be imposed, in which people would say only what they do not think and think only what they do not say.

The dissolution of the distinction between the private and public spheres was one of the great aims of totalitarianism. Opening and reading other people’s e-mails is not different in principle from opening and reading other people’s letters. In effect, WikiLeaks has assumed the role of censor to the world, a role that requires an astonishing moral grandiosity and arrogance to have assumed. Even if some evils are exposed by it, or some necessary truths aired, the end does not justify the means.

"Air Raid, Pearl Harbor. This is no drill!"

  

On a bright Hawaiian morning, war came to the United States. In a matter of hours, the core of the American Pacific Fleet was destroyed, American air power in the Pacific crippled, and American forces were under attack not only in Hawaii, but on Wake Island, Guam, Midway, and the Phillipines.

The men that survived those battles and served as constant reminders are fading quickly away, as time exacts its price. The lessons still hold, even if we forget them.

The cost of relearning those lessons is so very high.

God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen

It's December, people. Time to break out the Christmas tunes.

Today's Selection: "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen/We Three Kings," by the BareNaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan.

Long Road To Ruin

"Long Road To Ruin," by the Foo Fighters.

In Defense of Defense

Victor Davis Hanson, today at NRO:

Of course it is salutary to review carefully all Pentagon expenditures, and to make sure we are not purchasing assets or fielding forces that we do not need, or that are not in line with our strategic goals and responsibilities. But we should also remember that near the end of the Cold War, in 1988, income taxes were lower (28 percent on top brackets), budget deficits were smaller (3 percent of GDP), and defense expenditures were proportionally greater (5.8 percent of GDP) than they are now — reminding us that the present budget meltdown reflects particular policies and priorities that transcend both tax rates and defense spending.

In the end, the problem of national security in a time of budget restraint is not so much about defense spending per se; instead, it lies in two other areas. First, we must establish our global responsibilities in the context of our fiscal limitations, and fund our military to fulfill the ensuing obligations. At present, defense spending is increasingly not synchronized with a clear and understandable strategic mission. Second, we must grow the economy. Our defense capability improved radically in the last 30 years without a great leap in expenditures as a percentage of GDP, simply because GDP grew at such a rapid clip. But unless we continue to expand the pie, there will be fights over the size of the slices. A healthy economy is the best national-security measure of all.

Nutty NorKs with Nukes?

An artillery barrage is not the way to win friends. Shelling a fishing village isn't either.

I have no idea what is going on over there, and the North Koreans aren't talking.

But things are starting to get real tense, real quick.

Twisted Virginians

For those with twisted senses of humor - like me - check these license plates out.

A Few Brief - And Timeless - Words

On November 19, 1863, a portion of the five month-old battlefield at Gettysburg was formally dedicated as the Soldiers National Cemetery.

President Abraham Lincoln delivered a brief speech, which had been written during his trip up from Washington. His remarks were quickly derided by political critics as a national embarrassment.

History has proven kinder.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate…we cannot consecrate…we cannot hallow…this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us… that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

One

Every so often, you need a little Bono.

Sundown

"Sundown" by Gordon Lightfoot, in keeping with the Lightfoot theme...

The Eleventh Day

Originally conceived as a commemoration of the end of the Great War, Armistice Day became Veterans' Day in America and Remembrance Day in the UK, Canada, and elsewhere after the Second World War. Since then, more Americans and members of the Commonwealth have answered the call, many to the sacrifice of their own lives.

For the freedoms that I am able to enjoy, thank you. All I can do is thank you, and remember.


In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The Mighty Fitz In Happier Days

The Wreck of The Edmund Fitgerald

"Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," video by Joseph Fulton, song by Gordon Lightfoot.

1989 Was A Good Year

A very good year.

More info here and here.

Not Taking The Little Changes

Back from the Inland Empire - Spokane, not SoCal - and rather wishing I hadn't. Rain turning to snow here; of course, that's happening up there too.

***

James Lileks has a interesting Bleat today; one of pushing back against the annoying little changes in life, changes that aren't always for the better. So you make your own changes.

The washes always end the same: the crew chief looks over the work, gives a thumbs-up. I give a two-finger salute. Which I did. Hail and farewell. Won’t be back, because your sticker will be right below my field of vision and I have no idea if it will come off without leaving residue and there are other places whose locales don’t carry nineteen tons of personal luggage that make me feel old and sad and astonished at the things that come and go, and seem inestimably precious in recollection.

Also, your typefaces suck.

White Hurricane

Starting November 7th, 1913, two weather systems converged over the Great Lakes to produce a horrendous storm.

Five days later, the storm would have moved on, but only after claiming over 250 lives, sinking or stranding 38 ships, and sending millions of tons of cargo to the bottom of the Lakes.

The book White Hurricane tells of the storm and the ordeal out on the Great Lakes during the storm. I highly recommend it; special attention should be paid to the appendices in back.

Genevieve

"Genevieve," by Sugarland.

Schadenfreude. Just A Little.

[Awesome graphic stolen from Instapundit.]

Yeah, the mid-terms were a little ugly for the Prez and the Dems. And Pelosi's going to be mad; she lost her rights to her own Big Jet. (Heh heh heh. Bwahah hah hah!) [REDACTED: Additional ten minutes of gleeful laughter.]

But $200 million a day? That can't be right, can it?

It's be cheaper to send a carrier battle group...

[From Instapundit.]

Hey, The Polls Are Open!

What are you waiting for? Get out there and vote!

The Phantom of The Opera

(overture)


For our Halloween revels this dark night, The Pacific Slope proudly presents one of the most frightening depictions of The Phantom committed to film: The Phantom of the Opera, starring Lon Cheney Sr. as The Phantom.



Good night... sleep well, if you can.

Grim Grinning Ghosts

Seeing as Halloween is upon us, here are the Barenaked Ladies performing "Grim Grinning Ghosts."




Be safe and have fun this Halloween, and, as ever, beware...

Beware of hitch-hiking ghosts!


From Doombuggies.com
Recommended:

Ghostpix.com

Ghost Village

Doom Buggies

Our Zombie Preparedness Has A Long Ways To Go

Jim Geraghty adds this coda to this morning's Morning Jolt:

On Tuesday, AMC tried a publicity stunt to promote their new horror series about life after zombies take over the world, The Walking Dead. The stunt was to hire actors, have the makeup crew turn them into bloody, ugly zombies, and have them start slouching around major landmarks like the Lincoln Memorial and the Brooklyn Bridge and 24 others around the world.

Of course, zombie movies are now so ubiquitous that I half-figured that a well-conditioned and educated populace would simply roll into action with double-tap headshots and creative use of chainsaws to ensure the continued existence of humanity.

More preparation and public education is obviously needed.

Can't Stop Making Snow Angels

Today's quote is part of Jim Treacher's post on the continuing fallout from National Public Radio's purging of Juan Williams.

Steve Lindbeck, president and general manager of Alaska station KSKA, expressed similar sentiments. “It struck me as an overreaction,” he told Fox News from Anchorage. “And then I listened online to his comment in context [on the October 18 edition of "The O'Reilly Factor"]…And it didn’t strike me as [being as] difficult as it originally appeared….That’s a problem, where people occasionally don’t look at the context.” Lindbeck said KSKA exceeded its fundraising goals last week, which saw the Williams controversy coinciding with pledge drives at most NPR stations, but added: “I doubt that it was good [for fundraising]….I don’t think it was the most deft handling of the situation.”

No, “deft” is not the first word that springs to mind. [NPR's] Vivian Schiller has thrown herself face-first into an identity politics minefield and can’t stop making snow angels.

Highway 20 Ride

"Highway 20 Ride," Zac Brown Band.

Scratch Hard Enough

Walter Russell Mead, "Blogging Through Georgia,":

The huge dachas of the leadership on the Black Sea coast contrasted with the miserable hovels of the peasants on the road to Tiblisi. The facade of ethnic friendship among the fraternal peoples of the Soviet Union contrasted with feverish, paranoid hatreds festering just under the surface. As in Yugoslavia, I got to know people who were nerving themselves up to massacre their neighbors and drive innocent people out of their homes. I saw how the worst nationalistic paranoias and chauvinisms raged unchecked under Soviet rule — while in the capitalist west most Europeans had left that murderous claptrap behind long ago. Communism, it seemed to me then and still seems to me now, is not the opposite of fascism: it is fascism’s blood-brother, its complementary twin. The two live together in a vicious symbiotic relationship; scratch a Red and you’ll find a Brown. Better yet, scratch either one deeply enough and you will find a Black: someone so caught up in the will to power that crimes and atrocities don’t even count anymore.

Remember When We Built Things, Fast?

Overheard:

"It took 410 days to build the Empire State Building; four years to erect the Golden Gate Bridge. The Pentagon took two years; the Alaska Highway just nine months. These days it takes longer to build an overpass."

Jonah Goldberg

Because The Night

"Because The Night," 10,000 Maniacs. (Do you think they counted them all?)

Repost: The Beginning of a Reckoning for the Khmer Rouge

Tyler's Note: I originally posted this two weeks ago, but I wanted to call your attention to its contents again. So here it is.

Claire Berlinski over at Ricochet.com pointed out this article by Guy Sorman at City Journal. Mr. Sorman explains that Cambodia is finally bringing to justice - in a civil, lawful manner - some of those who perpetrated the horrors of the killing fields.

But Cambodians and foreigners alike still struggle to understand why so many were put to death. Mr. Sorman explains that the answer why is chillingly simple - such carnage is an essential part of Communism, a natural reflex:

But who or what was behind what the tribunal has called the genocide of Khmers by other Khmers? Might this be the fault of the United States? Was it not the Americans who, by setting up a regime in Cambodia to their liking, brought about a nationalist reaction? Or, might this genocide not be a cultural legacy, distinctive of Khmer civilization? Archeologists are digging through the past in vain to find a historical precedent. The true explanation, the meaning of the crime, can be found in the declarations of the Khmer Rouge themselves: just as Hitler described his crimes in advance, Pol Pot (who died in 1998) had explained early on that he would destroy his people, so as to create a new one. Pol Pot called himself a Communist; he became one in the 1960s as a student in Paris, then a cradle of Marxism. Since Pol Pot and leaders of the regime that he forced on his people referred to themselves as Communists—and in no way claimed to be heirs of some Cambodian dynasty—we must acknowledge that they were, in fact, Communists.

What the Khmer Rouge brought to Cambodia was in fact real Communism. There was no radical distinction, either conceptually or concretely, between the rule of the Khmer Rouge and that of Stalinism, Maoism, Castroism, or the North Korean regime. All Communist regimes follow strangely similar trajectories, barely colored by local traditions. In every case, these regimes seek to make a blank slate of the past and to forge a new humanity. In every case, the “rich,” intellectuals, and skeptics wind up exterminated. The Khmer Rouge rounded up urban and rural populations in agricultural communities based on precedents both Russian (the Kolkhozy) and Chinese (the popular communes), and they acted for the same ideological reasons and with the same result: famine. There is no such thing as real Communism without massacre, torture, concentration camps, gulags, or laogai. And if there has never been any such thing, then we must conclude that there could be no other outcome: Communist ideology leads necessarily to mass violence, because the masses do not want real Communism. This is as true in the rice fields of Cambodia as in the plains of Ukraine or under Cuban palms.

And still, far too many refuse to see. It simply hasn't been done properly yet; it just wasn't done right. Give us a chance. We'll make it work.

But killing is Communism's nature. It is essential to how it works, how it survives.

Communism survives - no, thrives - on blood and horror and human misery.


***

By the way, if all this seems like cold numbers to you, read this. It is an account by Pin Yathay, a man who welcomed the arrival of the Khmer Rouge into the capital - and spent the next two years trying to survive them. He escaped with only his life, watching his entire family die at their hands or by their neglect.

When everything - and everyone - is property of The State on behalf of The People, it is truly horrible what crimes will be committed in their name.


***

P.S. Ricochet and City Journal should be weekly visits, at minimum. There are some fascinating conversations at Ricochet, and absolutely fantastic writing at City Journal.

Little White Church

Margaret Thatcher's Legacy, and More

Desert Empire

Presenting "Desert Empire," an old Universal Pictures travelogue touring Utah just before World War Two.







Sponsored by the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad.

Yes, really.

Blogging Advisory Is Now In Effect

I'm going to be doing quite a bit of travelling the next couple of weeks, so posting will be lighter than usual. (Yes, even lighter than usual.)

Back to normal operations by October 20th.

Real

Real, by James Wesley

What About Armistice Day, Then?

Good news: on Sunday, the First World War will finally be over. From the Telegraph:

The First World War will officially end on Sunday, 92 years after the guns fell silent, when Germany pays off the last chunk of reparations imposed on it by the Allies.

The final payment of £59.5 million, writes off the crippling debt that was the price for one world war and laid the foundations for another.

Germany was forced to pay the reparations at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 as compensation to the war-ravaged nations of Belgium and France and to pay the Allies some of the costs of waging what was then the bloodiest conflict in history, leaving nearly ten million soldiers dead.

Events from nearly a hundred years ago, still haunting us today. Given that my generation can't even be bothered to remember the significance of November 11, 1918, I imagine this will go by with little more than a smirk and raised eyebrow, if that.

The Beginning of a Reckoning for the Khmer Rouge

Claire Berlinski over at Ricochet.com pointed out this article by Guy Sorman at City Journal. Mr. Sorman explains that Cambodia is finally bringing to justice - in a civil, lawful manner - some of those who perpetrated the horrors of the killing fields.

But Cambodians and foreigners alike still struggle to understand why so many were put to death. Mr. Sorman explains that the answer why is chillingly simple - such carnage is an essential part of Communism, a natural reflex:

But who or what was behind what the tribunal has called the genocide of Khmers by other Khmers? Might this be the fault of the United States? Was it not the Americans who, by setting up a regime in Cambodia to their liking, brought about a nationalist reaction? Or, might this genocide not be a cultural legacy, distinctive of Khmer civilization? Archeologists are digging through the past in vain to find a historical precedent. The true explanation, the meaning of the crime, can be found in the declarations of the Khmer Rouge themselves: just as Hitler described his crimes in advance, Pol Pot (who died in 1998) had explained early on that he would destroy his people, so as to create a new one. Pol Pot called himself a Communist; he became one in the 1960s as a student in Paris, then a cradle of Marxism. Since Pol Pot and leaders of the regime that he forced on his people referred to themselves as Communists—and in no way claimed to be heirs of some Cambodian dynasty—we must acknowledge that they were, in fact, Communists.

What the Khmer Rouge brought to Cambodia was in fact real Communism. There was no radical distinction, either conceptually or concretely, between the rule of the Khmer Rouge and that of Stalinism, Maoism, Castroism, or the North Korean regime. All Communist regimes follow strangely similar trajectories, barely colored by local traditions. In every case, these regimes seek to make a blank slate of the past and to forge a new humanity. In every case, the “rich,” intellectuals, and skeptics wind up exterminated. The Khmer Rouge rounded up urban and rural populations in agricultural communities based on precedents both Russian (the Kolkhozy) and Chinese (the popular communes), and they acted for the same ideological reasons and with the same result: famine. There is no such thing as real Communism without massacre, torture, concentration camps, gulags, or laogai. And if there has never been any such thing, then we must conclude that there could be no other outcome: Communist ideology leads necessarily to mass violence, because the masses do not want real Communism. This is as true in the rice fields of Cambodia as in the plains of Ukraine or under Cuban palms.

And still, far too many refuse to see. It simply hasn't been done properly yet; it just wasn't done right. Give us a chance. We'll make it work.

But killing is Communism's nature. It is essential to how it works, how it survives.

Communism survives - no, thrives - on blood and horror and human misery.

***

By the way, if all this seems like cold numbers to you, read this. It is an account by Pin Yathay, a man who welcomed the arrival of the Khmer Rouge into the capital - and spent the next two years trying to survive them. He escaped with only his life, watching his entire family die at their hands or by their neglect.

When everything - and everyone - is property of The State on behalf of The People, it is truly horrible what crimes will be committed in their name.

***

P.S. Ricochet and City Journal should be weekly visits, at minimum. There are some fascinating conversations at Ricochet, and absolutely fantastic writing at City Journal.

By The Way, That Terror Thingy's Still Going On

Interesting news out of Europe this morning; a major terror plot is in the works, but has been seriously disrupted by allied intelligence efforts and military strikes against terror bases in Pakistan.

From ABC:

US and European officials said Tuesday they have detected a plot to carry out a major, coordinated series of new terror attacks in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and possibly the United States.

Intelligence and law enforcement authorities in the US and Europe said the threat information is based on the interrogation of a suspected German terrorist allegedly captured on his way to Europe in late summer and now being held at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan.

US law enforcement officials say they have been told the terrorists were planning a series of “Mumbai-style” commando raids on what were termed “economic or soft” targets in the countries…

The captured German reportedly said several teams of attackers, all with European passports, had been trained and dispatched from training camps in Waziristan and Pakistan. Officials say the German claimed the attack plan had been approved by Osama Bin Laden.

The good news is that the attacks have been (hopefully) disrupted. From Fox News:

A commando-style terror plot that allegedly called for simultaneous attacks in multiple European cities has been disrupted, a senior U.S. intelligence official told Fox News late Tuesday, after the CIA launched a barrage of drone strikes in Pakistan to help thwart the plot.

The plan allegedly included attacks on hotels frequented by Western tourists in London, as well as cities in France and Germany, and was in an "advanced but not imminent stage," Sky News reported. The plotters were purportedly of Pakistani or Algerian origin and have been trained in Pakistan's tribal areas.

While officials are still working to understand the plot, a leading concern is that the plotters were modeling their European assault on the 2008 attack in Mumbai, India, in which armed gunmen killed more than 200 people in coordinated attacks at hotels and other easily accessed venues, current and former officials said.

Several U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal they haven't seen a terror threat as serious as the European plot for many years. "This isn't just your typical Washington talk about how the threats have evolved. People are very concerned about what they're seeing," the counterterrorism official said.

This is a story you may wish to keep an eye on over the next few days.

More info at Hot Air, too.

To refresh the memory - the Mumbai terror attacks occurred in late November 2008, when ten terrorists infiltrated by sea into the city of Mumbai and proceeded to shoot up and/or bomb several public places, including hotels, a hospital, and a train station. The objective was simple: cause as much chaos as possible, and they succeeded; 173 were killed and 308 were wounded by them by the time it was over. It took very little to do it: just AK-47s and grenades, and ten men willing to use them.

The attacks were little-noticed in the U.S., as they occurred over Thanksgiving weekend that year.

This is an attack to which we are vulnerable, and there is little defensively that can be done about it. The targets are deliberately chosen to be dispersed and public, with the objective of stoking fear. The only real defense here is a good offense: an intelligence apparatus that detects and disrupts the terrorists before they can launch their attack. So far, so good.

Not an Age of Reason; Rather, an Age of Credulity

Ed Driscoll mentioned this on his blog yesterday, and I couldn't help but share it.

Quoting Umberto Eco:

It is the role of religion to provide that justification. Religions are systems of belief that enable human beings to justify their existence and which reconcile us to death. We in Europe have faced a fading of organised religion in recent years. Faith in the Christian churches has been declining.

The ideologies such as communism that promised to supplant religion have failed in spectacular and very public fashion. So we're all still looking for something that will reconcile each of us to the inevitability of our own death.

G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.

The "death of God", or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church -- from strange pagan cults and sects to the silly, sub-Christian superstitions of The Da Vinci Code.

These Groups Don't Represent Me

The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.


- Tom Clancy

Some things you just can't make up. A month ago, Glenn Beck organized a rally that attracted some 500,000 people, where they proceeded to talk about God and honor, which are apparently radical concepts considering the hostile response it attracted.

Now, the latest outraged response is a counter-rally, occurring this coming weekend, and organized by Democratic campaign organizations. So who is answering the alarm? National Review's Dan Foster:

Confederacy to Descend on Washington
September 27, 2010 1:52 A.M.
By Daniel Foster

A confederacy of liberal groups, that is. They plan to host on Saturday a sort of ‘counter-demonstration’ to Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally and, according to the New York Times “make the case that they, and not the ascendant right, speak for America’s embattled middle class.”

Who’s going to be at the march, representing the embattled middle class?

Why, the NAACP, the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the National Council of La Raza.

And that’s just the organizations that the Times sees fit to mention in the article. More telling still is the ranks of those left out. Among them:

–Chicago Democratic Socialists of America

–Code Pink

–Committee of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism

–Communist Party USA

–Democratic Socialists of America

–International Socialist Organization

–Planned Parenthood

A veritable tapestry of America’s embattled middle class.

The sarcasm is Foster's, but I don't think it misplaced.

If you planned such a set-up in a novel, you would be laughed out of the editors' office. My high school English teacher would demand better plotting in a short story.

But here we are.

Mingulay Boat Song

Love this tune; had to share it again.

All The World's A Stage

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav'd, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

— Jaques (As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)

Israeli Ambassador Oren on Statescraft

As reported in The Weekly Standard:

On Yom Kippur we read the Book of Jonah, one of the Bible’s most enigmatic texts. It is also one of the Bible's shortest texts, weighing in at a page and a half, which is quite an accomplishment for this holiday. And it features one of our scripture's least distinguished individuals. Jonah—a man whose name, in Hebrew, means dove—not dov, as in Hebrew for bear, but dove as, in English, pigeon.

Yet this same everyman, this Jonah, is tasked by God with a most daunting mission. He is charged with going to the great city of Nineveh and persuading its pernicious people to repent for their sins or else.

Not such an unusual task, you might think. Twenty-first century life is rife with people who warn of the catastrophes awaiting us if we fail to modify our behavior one way or the other. Today we call them pundits, commentators who, if proven correct, claim all the credit but who, if proven wrong, bear none of the responsibility.

Jonah, though, cannot escape the responsibility. Nor can he dodge his divinely ordained dilemma. If he succeeds in convincing the Ninevehians to atone and no harm befalls them, many will soon question whether that penitence was ever really necessary. Jonah will be labeled an alarmist. But, what if the people of Nineveh ignore the warning and the city meets the same fiery fate as Sodom and Gomorrah? Then Jonah, as a prophet, has failed.

Such is the paradox of prophecy for Jonah, a lose-lose situation. No wonder he runs away. He flees to the sea, only to be swallowed by a gigantic fish, and then to the desert, cowering under a gourd. But, in the end, the fish coughs him up and the gourd withers. The moral is: there is no avoiding Jonah’s paradox. Once elected by God, whatever the risks, he must act.

As such, the Book of Jonah can be read as more than morality play, but also a cautionary tale about the hazards of decision-making. It is a type of political primer, if you will, what the medieval thinkers called a Mirror for Princes. The Talmud teaches us that, in the post-Biblical era, the gift of prophecy is reserved for children and fools. In modern times, we don’t have prophets—pundits, yes, but no prophets. Instead we have statesmen who, like Jonah, often have to make fateful decisions for which they will bear personal responsibility. If not a paradox of prophecy, these leaders face what we might call the quandary of statecraft.

Read the whole thing.

When Everybody Was Finally Equal

The latest offering from the National Review archives is this chilling tale from Kurt Vonnegut. Not a pairing one expects to see, as Vonnegut was visciously liberal; but even a stopped clock is right once or twice a day.

So read on, dear reader, and join me in a world where not only is equality the ideal, it is fact.

Harrison Bergeron

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr

This article first appeared in the Nov. 16, 1965, issue of NATIONAL REVIEW.

What happened when Harrison Bergeron escaped from the Handicapper General and decided that he, at least, was not going to be equal every which way.

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law, they were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else; nobody was better looking than anybody else; nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April, for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.

It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear — he was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter, and every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.

George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel’s cheeks, but she’d forgotten for the moment what they were about, as the ballerinas came to the end of a dance.

A buzzer sounded in George’s head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm.

“That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did,” said Hazel.

“Huh?” said George.

“That dance — it was nice,” said Hazel.

“Yup,” said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren’t really very good — no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat dragged in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thought.

George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas.

Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George what the latest sound had been. “Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a hammer,” said George.

“I’d think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,” said Hazel, a little envious. “The things they think up.”

“Um,” said George. “Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?” said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. “If I was Diana Moon Glampers,” said Hazel, “I’d have chimes on Sunday — just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion.”

“I could think, if it was just chimes,” said George.

“Well — maybe make ’em real loud,” said Hazel. “I think I’d make a good Handicapper General.”

“Good as anybody else,” said George.

“Who knows better’n I do what normal is?” said Hazel.

“Right,” said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one gun salute in his head stopped that.

“Boy!” said Hazel, “that was a doozy, wasn’t it?”

It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples.

“All of a sudden you look so tired,” said Hazel. “Why don’t you stretch out on the sofa, so’s you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch.” She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag, which was padlocked around George’s neck. “Go on and rest the bag for a while.” she said. “I don’t care if you’re not equal to me for a while.”

George weighed the bag with his hands. “I don’t mind it,” he said. “I don’t notice it any more. It’s just a part of me.”

“You been so tired lately — kind of wore out,” said Hazel. “If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few.”

“Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out,” said George. “I don’t call that a bargain.”

“If you would just take a few out when you came home from work,” said Hazel. “I mean — you don’t compete with anybody around here. You just set around.”

“If I tried to get away with it,” said George, “then other people’d get away with it — and pretty soon we’d be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”

“I’d hate it,” said Hazel.

“There you are,” said George. “The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?

If Hazel hadn’t been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn’t have supplied one: a siren was going off in his head.

“Reckon it’d fall all apart,” said Hazel.

“What would?” said George blankly.

“Society,” said Hazel uncertainly. “Wasn’t that what you just said?”

“Who knows?” said George.

The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn’t clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, “Ladies and gentlemen —”

He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read.

“That’s all right,” Hazel said of the announcer, “he tried. That’s the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard.”

“Ladies and gentlemen —” said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred-pound men.

And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. “Excuse me —” she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive.

“Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen,” she said in a grackle squawk, “has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is underhandicapped, and is extremely dangerous.”

A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen — upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right-side-up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall.

The rest of Harrison’s appearance was Hallowe’en and hardware. Nobody had ever borne heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick, wavy lenses besides. The spectacles were intended not only to make him half-blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides.

Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junk yard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds.

And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random.

“If you see this boy,” said the ballerina, “do not — I repeat, do not — try to reason with him.”

There was a shriek of a door being torn from its hinges.

Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake.

George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have — for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing tune. “My God!” said George. “That must be Harrison!”

The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head.

When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen.

Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die.

“I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!”

He stamped his foot and the studio shook.

“Even as I stand here,” he bellowed, “crippled, hobbled, sickened — I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!”

Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.

Harrison’s scrap iron handicaps crashed to the floor.

Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.

He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.

“I shall now select my Empress!” he said, looking down on the cowering people. “Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!”

A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow.

Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all, he removed her mask.

She was blindingly beautiful. “Now —” said Harrison, taking her hand. “Shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!” he commanded.

The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. “Play your best,” he told them, “and I’ll make you barons and dukes and earls.”

The music began. It was normal at first — cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs.

The music began again, and was much improved.

Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while — listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it.

They shifted their weight to their toes.

Harrison placed his big hands on the girl’s tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers.

And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang!

Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well.

They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled and spun.

They leaped like deer on the moon.

The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it.

It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling.

They kissed it. And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time.

It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor.

Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on.

It was then that the Bergerons’ television tube burned out.

Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer.

George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. “You been crying?” he said to Hazel, watching her wipe her tears.

“Yup,” she said.

“What about?” he said.

“I forgot,” she said. “Something real sad on television.”

“What was it?” he said.

“It’s all kind of mixed up in my mind,” said Hazel.

“Forget sad things,” said George.

“I always do,” said Hazel.

“That’s my girl,” said George. He winced. There was the sound of a riveting gun in his head.

“Gee — I could tell that one was a doozy,” said Hazel.

“You can say that again,” said George.

“Gee —” said Hazel — “I could tell that one was a doozy.”