The Bosque Boys

Story from The Times of India.

Must be because of the strong support for Israel by India, all the money and weapons. Oops. That's not it.

Must be the legacy of India's foreign policy in the Middle East, propping up dictatorships and humiliating local populations. Oops. That's not it.

Must be the resentment lingering after India's participation in the Crusades, and their imperialistic Christian missionary activity. Oops. That's not it.

How about that. Muslims hating a country other than the U.S., for reasons having nothing to do with those usually offered to explain Why They Hate Us.

Islam has bloody borders because it is innately aggressive.

Get Your Kicks, On Route 66

For most of our California Trip we were on Interstate 40, which replaced Route 66 from Oklahoma City to Barstow, California. But, I did not want to bypass totally the famous highway. We got off I-40 a couple of exits before Flagstaff and drove into town on Route 66, and against my wife's better judgment, we stayed at an older motel that predated the interstate, dating back to when Route 66 was the highway to California for much of the country. On the way home we ate supper one night in a diner along old 66 in Barstow, and again the next night ate at the El Rancho Hotel in Gallup. The El Rancho was the hotel for movie stars when filming in northwestern New Mexico, including Ronald Reagan in The Bad Man.

Planned in the 1920s and paved from start to finish during the New Deal, Route 66 linked the rural Midwest and Southwest with Chicago and Los Angeles. History. During the Depression it became the road out of the Dust Bowl for over 200,000 "Okies", refugees from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas hoping for work in California. Steinbeck, in The Grapes of Wrath, termed it the Mother Road.

Those Okies had not really wanted to uproot themselves, but necessity forced them on the road. In their westward journey they recapitulated the earlier movement of their ancestors. Most immigrants to the New World came because they saw no real alternative. From starving Irish to persecuted Jews to farmers and agricultural workers displaced by changing technology and economics.

My own people lived in the hills of East Tennessee, some moving to Missouri before the Civil War, some after. Small hill farms up in the hollows can support only a limited population; the reality is move or go hungry.

Route 66 itself is now a metaphor for forced relocation. Interstate 40, and Interstate 44 from St. Louis to Oklahoma City, have left only segments of the older highway in place. The motels, diners, tourist attractions on the old road have been bypassed. Many, many have closed, unable to compete with the Motel 6s, 8s, and others along the interstate exits. Those that remain seem on their last legs, often needing some repair, probably to close when something major fails. The economic life of the nation now flows along another artery.

In my first post in this series, I celebrated rootedness and commitment. But, while we can commit to one another in marriage, and keep our family commitments, we sometimes must uproot from our communities and seek opportunity elsewhere.

I thought about these things during the time we spent on the Zuni Reservation in New Mexico (overnight our first night and part of the next day). Reservations mean continuing attachment to people, place, and some of the traditions for those who live on them. But, opportunities are limited, very limited. If reservations were happy places, then a person could accept being poor in order to live among The People. But, the high rates of suicide, drug use, and alcoholism, especially for young men, tell of despair rather than happiness. Perhaps the road out is necessity.

From the Washington Post:

Federal officials said today that bioweapons researcher Bruce E. Ivins was solely responsible for the 2001 anthrax attacks that terrorized the nation and expressed confidence that he would have been proved guilty in court if he had not committed suicide last week.

Is it just me? Or does this story stink?

For six years we don't hear a peep from the FBI. All this time they are investigating and building a case. Now the guy commits suicide, which may or may not have been the result of the dogged Feds on his heels, and now the G-men are arrogantly assured that they had this guy dead to rights and were moments away from indicting, presenting, and convicting.

Maybe so--but I wonder.

All the Federales say, they could've had him any day
They only let him slip away, out of kindness I suppose

According to the Princeton Review's 2009 survey, these 10 colleges are the most socially conservative.

The single public university (excluding service academies): Texas A&M

The 10 most socially liberal colleges are these.

The one red-state school Warren Wilson in North Carolina.

Story here. From Breitbart.

A jury was seated Wednesday in a lawsuit alleging the wife of nationally known pastor Joel Osteen assaulted a flight attendant.
Opening arguments were set for Thursday in a case Victoria Osteen's lawyer called "silly." But Reginald McKamie, attorney for Continental Airlines flight attendant Sharon Brown, said he hopes the trial will show "that celebrity status doesn't take precedence."

Brown accuses Victoria Osteen of assaulting her before the start of a 2005 flight from Houston to Vail, Colo. Brown alleges Victoria Osteen threw her against a bathroom door and elbowed her in the left breast during an angry outburst over a stain on her first-class seat. The Federal Aviation Administration fined Victoria Osteen $3,000 for interfering with a crew member.

Driving from Apache, Oklahoma, to Concord, California, I saw a lot of billboards. Way too many billboards. (Why don't environmental terrorists start blowing up big, well-lit, billboards?)

Several of these advertised that positions were available in the U.S. Border Patrol, and what a wonderful career it would be.

No thanks. If I am going to put myself into danger, I want to know that the agency hiring me will support me, not leave me dangling out on my own.

This recent story makes my point. From Gateway Pundit.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent was held at gunpoint Sunday night by members of the Mexican military who had crossed the border into Arizona, but the soldiers returned to Mexico without incident when backup agents responded to assist.

Agents assigned to the Border Patrol station at Ajo, Ariz., said the Mexican soldiers crossed the international border in an isolated area about 100 miles southwest of Tucson and pointed rifles at the agent, who was not identified.

It was unclear what the soldiers were doing in the United States, but U.S. law enforcement authorities have long said that current and former Mexican military personnel have been hired to protect drug and migrant smugglers.

"Unfortunately, this sort of behavior by Mexican military personnel has been going on for years," union Local 2544 of the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) said on its Web page. "They are never held accountable, and the United States government will undoubtedly brush this off as another case of 'Oh well, they didn't know they were in the United States.'

And, you remember the conviction of two border agents for what seems like a justified shooting.

I would only consider joining the border patrol if the American government's policy became Threaten a Border Patrol Agent and You Die.

The will to defend its borders is essential to the survival of a nation.

Just returned from a trip to California to the wedding of my older son.

Twice on the trip heard On the Road Again.

Ironically, it became the traveling song playing in my head.

I say ironically, because it is a typical blues theme: I'm headed out again on the road, baby, and you can't come along. The rootless man, always moving on, baby may be gentle on his mind, but he's just gotta keep moving because he was born a rambling man. A free bird, yeah.

Once upon a time in America, the rambling man was an outsider to mainstream culture. Almost all men settled down, married, had children, joined a bowling league, maybe a church, and only occasionally dreamed of the road.

But now, the rambling man is the norm. Not in the stick-out-my-thumb, hop-a-freight, town-to-town fashion. But in the more comfortable form: no ties that bind, one-night-stands, perhaps marry but probably will divorce if married. Everyman's life a blues song, but the sorrow is now supressed far below the surface.

My wife of almost 30 years and I, and our daughter and her husband, were on the road to a wedding. Where my older son pledged as-long-as-we-both-shall-live to a young women. He chose to be a rooted man, keeping his baby in his arms as well as on his mind, to move together if moving on is necessary.

Perhaps my greatest achievement is that I seem to have raised counter-culture children. Praise be to God.

This article from The Layman (requires Adobe Reader) looks at the 2001 vote to repeal the chastity/faithfulness in marriage requirement. Each synod (larger regional body) and its presbyteries (smaller regional bodies within a synod) are examined. No real surprises. Those areas most apt to be called liberal and Democrat voted to repeal; those areas most apt to be called conservative and Republican voted to maintain the standard.

What to make of this information? One could argue that Presbyterians are more influenced by their surrounding society than by Scripture. This thesis may not apply equally to both sides.

Brits At Their Best brings us links and comments to an article on the use made of International Law by despotic regimes.

From Brits:

One problem with international law, as opposed to common law in the countries of the Anglosphere, is that we already have our rights and liberties and we do not want international law mucking things up. A second problem with international law is that despots can control it.

See also my earlier posts on the (ill)legitimacy of the United Nations here , here , and here.

LGF has links to photos (from Zombie) taken on the public streets of San Francisco during the Up Your Alley Fair this summer. Warning: not for the faint of heart or stomach. Public male nudity including masturbation and fellatio.

San Francisco provides us with a view of what the fully-developed, public gay culture is. Not the sanitized version seen on television. Middle America is not homophobic in the sense of fearing homosexual men as such; Middle America is homophobic in not wanting our streets ever to look like San Francisco.