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Witrack asks: In all honesty…is Southern hospitality a reality? I hear stories about Southerners sometimes in this day meeting strangers and inviting them to their homes for meals, etc. That kinda stuff. Southern hospitality? Myth? Or fact?

Oh, it’s real, all right. They’re very polite too. Even the surly teenage grocery baggers will look you in the eye and say “thank you, sir”. One night after having dinner at our new pastor’s house in Florida, Space Bunny and I were both taken aback when after dessert had been finished and it was, by Northern standards, time to have coffee and then leave, when the pastor asked: “so, do you like playing games?”

We just looked at each other, both thinking, right, this is some kind of cult and now his wife is going to pop out wearing an S&M harness while he breaks out the whipped cream and mayonnaise. It turned out he meant it literally, and we ended up having a great time playing cribbage and whatnot until midnight. Southern friendliness and the hospitality is genuine, it’s just a little hard to believe at first for those of us raised in quasi-Scandinavian culture. The southerners didn’t believe it when I told them that in Minnesota, if a man is talking with another man he’s known all his life, you stand parallel to each other and look straight ahead when you talk, especially if the subject is serious. Do not touch, do not lock eyes, do not even face each other.

In my opinion, it’s Minnesota Nice that is largely a myth. It’s nice only by coastal standards, not Southern.

So, you can imagine it was a little bit of a shock when I lived in Italy, where your friends greet you with an enthusiastic “ciao bello!” and a kiss on both cheeks. This was not only unexpected, but rather alarming when it first happened.

VD: “Did he just call me beautiful?”

SB: “Oh, just be happy he didn’t grab your butt.”

I never quite reached the point that I could actually address another man that way. But Space Bunny tells me that at least I did stop visibly cringing when subjected to the treatment. Va bene. Quando a Roma, fa cosi come i Romani.

This is a must-read for every conservative Republican. It seals the deal on the notion that national Republicans are about anything but power, power, power. I don’t see how anyone can possibly believe that keeping these unprincipled whores in office is a good idea, much less argue with a straight face that it is vital to the continued health and liberty of the country.

When Congress adjourns this year, Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, R-Ill., will retire after just one term. He’s retiring because his own party has turned on him and promised to run a primary candidate against him. That’s because this particular senator decided that while he was in office he’d be his own man and vote his own conscience. He wouldn’t be a lackey for his party, he wouldn’t vote pork home to his state, and he wouldn’t do what the special interests who run his party told him to do. And that got him into trouble. When Fitzgerald announced his retirement last April, he’d already been the scorn of his home state’s newspaper columnists and editorial boards. The Republican Party — both state and national — was elated to see him go. The Washington Times ran an editorial gloating over his departure….

Six years ago, Fitzgerald ran against troubled incumbent Democrat Carol Moseley Braun. He financed his own campaign, indicating early on that he’d be beholden to no one. The media immediately tapped him as a fringe candidate from the Christian right — an ill-informed and unfair characterization. A better label would be “principled.” Fitzgerald showed more of that rare Washington commodity in one term than most politicians show in a lifetime.

Fitzgerald’s crowning achievement in his brief career was his opposition to the federalization of a planned expansion of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Congress’ seal of approval would have ensured that the $13 billion expansion forge ahead, without any input from Illinois residents, including those who owned the hundreds of homes and dozens of businesses that would have been bulldozed to make way for the new runways. The expansion was pushed by a shady consortium of business developers, who launched a PR campaign just as its major players were making political contributions to prominent and powerful Illinois politicians. Fitzgerald’s opposition to federalizing what should have been a local issue postponed the expansion, which later fizzled when the airlines endured post-Sept. 11 financial problems.

Fitzgerald showed some admirable backbone there, too. He was the only senator in the U.S. Congress to vote against the $15 billion airline bailout, despite the fact that United Airlines is based in Illinois and American Airlines has a major hub at O’Hare. Fitzgerald next earned the wrath of fellow Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, a fellow Republican and probably the most powerful politician in Illinois, if not the country. Fitzgerald and Hastert first tangled over Fitzgerald’s refusal to support Hastert’s efforts to secure a glut of federal funding for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, located in Illinois. Hastert pulled rank to secure the money, and Fitzgerald criticized him publicly for it.

Fitzgerald then refused sign a letter written by the Illinois’ congressional delegation to President Bush, which requested the White House’s help in securing federal dollars (read: pork) for the state. Fitzgerald infuriated his colleagues when he wrote in a reply, “the mere fact that a project is located somewhere in Illinois does not mean that it is inherently meritorious and necessarily worthy of support.”

What is it with politicians and plain women? Monica, okay, we know that Bill was bedazzled by her enormous breasts. But considering that these are some of the most powerful men in the world, I find it hard to believe that they’re constantly getting in trouble over women that no self-respecting lead singer for an eighth-tier barely-out-of-the-garage band without a record deal would be dating.

Of course, the women of the Ivy League will never be confused with the women of the SEC. So, maybe they just don’t know any better. Before Bill Clinton, I would have looked at this picture and said there’s no way. Now, who knows?

I don’t tend to buy it, though. Wesley Clark probably made the whole thing up because he was bitter about America’s failure to reward him for living in a trailer with the highest office in the land.

So I pull into the gas station and a brand new Saab pulls ahead after completing its pit stop, so I slide in and park the car at the pump. I’ve got Linkin Park cranked and no sooner do I turn off the ignition than I see white lights – the Saab is backing up quickly towards me. I hit the horn hard, but to no avail, it doesn’t even hit the brakes – CRUNCH.

The guy was most apologetic and gave me his contact information – I don’t expect any problems on that front and all that needs to be replaced on my car is the front quarter panel. No big deal and he’ll pay for it. Considering that he not only has to foot the bill for my repairs, but his own more extensive ones, I didn’t have the heart to ask what on Earth he was doing backing up in the first place. I’m still puzzled by that as he had a clear path in front of him. But what made me laugh was when I looked at his card. Yep, that explains it, or at least as much of it as can be explained.

He’s an engineer. No idea whatsoever that I was there.

Hans Zeiger writes on the Girl Scouts: A 1997 book entitled On My Honor: Lesbians Reflect on their Scouting Experience estimated that approximately one in three adult Girl Scout professionals are lesbian and that the Girl Scouts are a positive place for lesbian relationships to develop…. One might wonder why the Girl Scouts have been spared the painful attacks that have been launched upon the Boy Scouts by the Left in recent years. The reasons are simple: the Girl Scouts allow homosexuals and atheists to join their ranks, and they have become a pro-abortion, feminist training corps.

I don’t trust girls who go camping and hiking in the wilderness anyhow. Girls who wear little black dresses and ride in sports cars are rather more to my liking.

Representative Ron Paul addresses his inconsistent colleagues. He is the only national politician in the two major parties for whom I have any respect.

And who gives a rat’s ass about what Emerson once said anyhow, especially in the ironic light of another, less famous of his sayings: “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” Random quotes from transcendentalists is no more a rational basis for a system of government than watery tarts lying in ponds distributing scimitars.

Witrack writes: Problems with the novel Atlas Shrugged – John Galt needed some more characterization. The long radio speech part of the book needed to be edited down about 75%, too preachy for a fiction piece. The parts that refer to American Indians as “savages” seemed rather dated. Rand’s views of sex are a little creepy as well. I think the woman had a rape fantasy complex. Same for the sex scene between Rourke and his gal in The Fountainhead, a vastly superior book.

It’s hard to simultaneously educate and entertain. Ayn Rand, like George Orwell, did a very serviceable job, but when push came to shove, her bias was towards the former. Political prose in particular is prone to being rather clunky. As Umberto Eco wrote of Orwell’s 1984, Atlas Shrugged was a masterpiece of vision, not of literature. The Original Cyberpunk and I battled this inherent tendency towards didacticism in Rebel Moon with some success, but we fell into another trap. Actually, two other traps, come to think of it. Live and learn.

I disagree that the notion of the American Indians being savage is dated, however. If anyone today was to experience life without toilets, electricity or the vast panoply of white European male inventions that make life so much more easy and long, I daresay they’d agree that it was a most uncivilized existence. The only reason that view is currently unpopular is because the average American has about the same sense of history as a fruit fly.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Rand had a rape fantasy complex. According to some philosophers of sex, this sort of thing was common among pre-Sexual Revolution era women, as it was a way of allowing themselves to sexually fantasize without having to take responsibility for the inherent immorality of the desire. This could be total hogwash, of course, but at least it sounds reasonable and jibes with the mentality of young women today, who prefer to blame their mindless promiscuity on social pressure or the date rape myth. Not being able to read the minds of dead women, I have no way of knowing if there’s any truth in the notion or not.

A bag of leaves? Luxury! When I was a child, we were forced to get up four hours before we went to bed and our father used to make us lick leaves off the road with our tongues….

Billy Evans writes: My name is Billy Evans. I am a very sick little boy. My mother is typing this for me, because I can’t. She is crying. The reason she is so sad is because I’m so sick. I was born without a body. It doesn’t hurt, except when I try to breathe. The doctors gave me an artificial body. It is a burlap Bag filled with leaves. The doctors said that was the Best they could do ON account of us having No money OR Insurance. I would like to have a body transplant, but we need more money. Mommy doesn’t work because she said nobody Hires crying people. I said, ” Don’t cry, Mommy and ” and She hugged my burlap bag. Mommy always gives me hugs, Even though she’s allergic to burlap and it makes her sneeze and chafes her real bad.

I hope you will help me. You can help me if you Forward this email to everyone you know. Forward it to People you don’t know, the too. Dr. Johansen said that for every person you forward this email to, Bill Gates Will team up with AOL and send a nickel to NASA. With that funding, NASA will collect prayers from school Children all over America and have the astronauts take them up into space so that the angels can hear them Better…. What kind of cruel person are you that you can’t take Five freakin’ minutes to forward this to all your Friends so that they can feel guilt and shame about Ignoring A poor, bodiless nine-year-old boy? Please help me.

This desperate plea for help brought to you by reader and Good Samaritan JN.

From NRO’s Corner: More and more I am reading such letters that begin with something like “I am a life-long Republican” or “I voted for Bush in the last election” that then go on to list the litany of sins perpetrated by the current administration. Letters such as these may well influence the non-blogosphere since their carry the cachet of the daily snoozepaper. I’ve noticed that these letters don’t have the same amount of vitriol that a liberal/leftist writer would use, but they have got me thinking. I don’t agree with everything going on the Bush administration, but I sure wouldn’t write a letter complaining about it to the local news.

This is an interesting development. Let’s break it down.

1) Conservatives voted for Bush, believing he was a conservative.

2) Bush has governed in a profoundly and overtly non-conservative manner.

3) Conservatives are not happy, as reported by numerous conservative commentators.

4) Public complaints have been printed in numerous newspapers by self-styled conservative former Bush supporters.

Therefore, such letters to the editor are obviously fakes produced by liberal Bush-haters. Yeah, I don’t so much follow that logic.

Now, the argument is based on Moby suggesting “it’s possible to seed doubt among Bush’s far-right supporters on the Web. “You target his natural constituencies,” says the Grammy-nominated techno-wizard. “For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you’re an outraged right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion. “Then you go to an anti-immigration Web site chat room and ask, ‘What’s all this about George Bush proposing amnesty for illegal aliens?'”

The problem, of course, is that you don’t have to make anything up to come up with a laundry list of thing that Bush has done that infuriates, even enrages, conservatives. It should be easy enough to tell the fakes. If they’re outraged that Bush cut taxes for the rich, it’s a fake. If they’re angry that he instituted a vast new Federal entitlement, it’s genuine. It seems rather stupid to complain about an enemy hitting you with the baseball bat you just handed them.