In Defense of the Heming Way: A Look At Some Viritues Of The Other Side.
 
After complaining about the modern adverbless, strictly action style of writing (aptly dubbed the Heming Way by a reader of my blog at http://arhyalon.livejournal.com/) I feel I should say a few words in its favor.
 
First, in case anyone has missed the previous two posts: What do I mean by the Heming Way? Writing like Hemingway? Only using “he said”? Leaving at every adverb in the dictionary? For a more complete definition, let us look one more time at Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules for Writing: 
 
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . .
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.
 
So…why should a writer consider writing the Heming Way


It sells:  Of bestsellers, apparently a majority are written in the modern stripped-down style. If the majority of books that make money are written in a certain style. An aspiring author should at least investigate that style to see if it works for him. What is better than writing in a style readers love?
 
Easy to read: Heming Way books are books without bumps. You sit down, you start reading, and—so long as what you are reading interests you—you never stop. The scenes lead from one active moment into another in a smooth seamless ride that does not stop until the words run out at the end. There are no flowery speed bumps, where you might consider putting the book down and wandering out to get a cup of coffee. (Starbucks has a new dark cherry flavor. Really tasty. Now that you have put down the book, you might as well head out and get a cup.)
 
Hard to put down: New dark cherry flavor go hang! The hero is about to get his butt kicked and I could not possibly put the book down until I found out…oh, now he is hanging over a cliff! What is going to happen?
 
Books without speed bumps are hard to pull away from. They move. One scene flows into another. Like potato chips, you have got to read just one more page. Man, this is exciting. Get your own dinner!  What do you mean, you are seven years old and cannot cook? D’oh! No…cannot put it down…must find out…have a pop tart.
 
Readers expect more now: In the early days of movies they used to hold the camera still and just film the scene. Then, someone discovered that if you moved the camera (the viewpoint), you could create a much more exhilarating effects. Before long, all movies had moving shots. Basically, it was now impossible to go back to the former method of just plunking your camera down and shooting.
 
Nowadays, books have a lot to compete with: TV, movies, video games, manga—which are kind of like books, but do not require much work to read, etc. Therefore, books have to work harder to get attention. One way of ‘working harder’ is to give more of a rush. Streamlining your writing is like moving the camera. It is a technique that produces a quick, easy to read story that is a lot like a modern thousand thrills a minute movie. 
 
Less fluff, more story: Why does the Heming Way Style lead to more story? Well, it does not necessarily, but it might. Consider just the statistics. Take 100 authors. Put them in a room. Make them write a book. Now, take the same 100 and make them write a whole book—all those words—with virtually no adverbs or description. They have got to fill the space with something. If even a few of them do it by adding more story, more plot, those few books may well be better reads than the book the same author wrote that was not so lean.

So, a given author may write a better, more plot driven book that  is easier to read, harder to put down, and delivers more thrills. No wonder the stuff sells!
 
What have we learned? On the good side, reading more Heming Way books cuts down on your caffeine because you do not pause to drink coffee. On the other hand, your chubby, manumitted children eat nothing but pop tarts.
 
No…wait…that was not it. Let us start again.
 
In his Ten Rules, Mr. Leonard explains he was inspired by John Steinbeck’s prologue from the book “Sweet Thursday.” Steinbeck’s character said:

“I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy’s thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That’s nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.”
 
For people who agree with these sentiments, the Heming Way is the way to go. It delivers. It meets the need.
 
But the reason that it is a school of style and not “The right way to right” is that not all of us feel that way. Some of us want to know what a guy looks like. Some of us want to know how he said the line. Some of us love the hooptedoodle.
 
Even Mr. Leonard, upon occasion. He finishes his 10 Rules by saying:
 
“Sweet Thursday” came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I’ve never forgotten that prologue.
 
Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.

Remember when the Left was all a twitter (and I don’t mean they pontificated in 140 characters or less) about the “chill wind” descending on free speech from the Bush Administration. They let their hatred for Republicans and conservatives to transform their reason into a leather-bound fetish freak.  They should have been more concerned with a hot desert blast coming from the Arabian Peninsula in the form of libel tourism.

The Moving Picture Institute has created The Libel Tourist, a short documentary detailing Rachel Ehrenfeld’s experience with a dust storm, created by the courtroom bloviating of Islamic supremacist Khalid Bin Mafhouz, that threatens to bury the West’s freedom of speech under a mass of lawsuits. From the YouTube summary:

This documentary short film, produced by the Moving Picture Institute, shows how Saudi billionaire Khalid Bin Mafhouz exploits the British legal system and sues for libel whenever he is the subject of a terrorism accusation.

Directed by MPI fellow Jared Lapidus, the film explains how Mahfouz filed a libel suit against Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of Funding Evil; How Terrorism is Financed — and How to Stop It. The suit was not filed in the United States, where the book was published and sold, but instead in London, where Mahfouz associates ordered 23 copies online. The judge ordered all copies of the book pulped, and ordered Ehrenfeld to pay the legal fees and damages, despite the fact that nothing in her book about Saudi funding of terrorism was ever disproved.

A bill is currently before Congress, the Free Speech Protection Act, meant to protect US based authors from libels lawsuits meant to stifle free expression. The American Culture generally eschews commenting on politics per se, except as politics finds expression in the cultural influence professions. This, however, is a matter of some Islamic supremacists using foreign law to stifle free expression.

Share the video with your friends. Contact your Congressional representatives. Let them know you value free expression. When I visited the film’s YouTube page, The Libel Tourist less than 30 views. That should be in the hundreds of thousands of views. This is a very real threat by people for whom liberty and freedom are curse words, if they have any meaning at all.

Libel tourism cannot stand. If the West loses this fight, instead of a vibrant omniculture where numerous voices express a variety of ideas and opinions, we will find ourselves within a dhimmi culture where Islamic supremacists decide what ideas we hear and read. Go to the American Center for Democracy for more information and articles by and about Rachel Ehrenfeld and her fight on behalf of freedom of speech.

Cross-posted at S.T. Karnick's The American Culture.

By Sharon Sebastian
 
LEAN being the times Americans will face, MEAN is the method of implementation of great hardship on America, and GREEN is the radical environmental agenda sold to the world as the shill to implement the aforementioned two. Green also relates to the vast billions that a hierarchy of global elites plans to pocket specifically from Americans. So, why is President Barack Obama so obstinately determined to get his versions of Health Care and Cap-and-Trade into law over the overwhelming objection of Americans?
 
President Obama insists that America must be “transformed.” The President’s educational mentor, Saul Alinsky, writes that in order to gain true power to make those “transformational changes,” you must first “destroy the middle class.” That includes small businesses, farmers, elimination of individual rights and property rights, nationalizing land to protect the environment and nature, abandoning a Constitution that protects the people from tyranny, and retaining power at any cost. There also must be mass redistribution of wealth. Legislation must be enacted to bend the people to the will of government, specifically through “mandates” in Health Care and Cap-and-Trade, all of which will be enforced by fines and penalties of imprisonment. Heavy regulations are to be enforced on corporations and people alike to reduce carbon emissions. This all-too-familiar formula to regulate and control populations, pointedly Americans, appears right out of Barack Obama’s playbook. It summarizes the Progressive ideology that originated with the President -- Obama’s transformation of America by his own design, right?
 
Wrong. It is also the blueprint set out in the “Green Charter” of the United Nations whose goal is to redistribute global wealth in order to control energy, population and power. Is it mere coincidence that Obama appears in lockstep with the U.N.’s agenda to subjugate Americans to international law and global mandates? Congress knows the plan. Members of both parties have signed on to it. A courageous few members of Congress are rising to stand against it. They rise up only because the people of this great nation are themselves rising up. This war began before most Americans knew we were engaged in it. Under attack is the sovereignty of America as a Constitution based, free market society that imbues both personal and property rights to its citizens. Forces against the American Republic have increasingly gained power over the course of the last 80+ years and now stand ready to strike a lethal blow.
 
Clearly, for the U.N.’s Green Charter to work (under U.N. Agenda 21), Americans must come under the jack-boot regulations of Health Care and Cap-and-Trade legislation that, when enacted, will destroy the American economy. The U.N.’s goal is for Americans to use less energy, water, food supply and other natural resources that can be shifted to the third world. That the President’s agenda appears aligned with the U.N. indicates a higher calling for the President beyond America’s best interest. For the most part, the U.N. is supported politically primarily by third world dictators, Arab nations, and international players, such as George Soros, who know if you can control energy and health, you control everything.
 
This socialist-globalist agenda also explains a great deal about the people with whom the President surrounds himself. Obama’s handpicked appointments include his initial “Green Jobs Czar,” Van Jones, a self-described communist who held powerful oversight as “green jobs” advisor to the President. A 9/11 Truther, Jones advocated redistribution of wealth and accused “white polluters” of steering poison into minority communities. Obama’s Manufacturing Czar Ron Bloom states, “We agree with [Communist Dictator] Mao that power comes largely from the barrel of the gun” and  “We know that the free market is nonsense.” Obama chose Diversity/Media Czar Mark Lloyd who openly admired Hugo Chavez’ socialist revolution in Venezuela. Czar Cass Sunstein wrote a radical environmental view that “animals could be plaintiffs and sue humans in court,” Science Czar John Holdren wrote of putting steralents in drinking water to control human population, political strategist Anita Dunne claims irony when she stated Communist Dictator Mao (who killed millions to stay in power) was “one of her favorite political philosophers.” There is globalist Harold Koh, Obama’s Chief Council at the State Department who represents the U.S. in matters of international law. Koh has reportedly stated a preference for the international rule of law over the U.S. Constitution, whereby Americans and the American military would be tried in international court for violations. Koh, meanwhile, entertained the possibility of Shariah (Islamic) Law’s place in America’s legal system. Then, there is the President’s political ally and Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, who has said on-camera that he considers the 1st Amendment to the Constitution that guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of religion “to be highly over rated.” The list goes on. Putting people in power with communist, socialist and globalist backgrounds indicates to Americans that maybe this President’s motives are not pure.
 
From average citizens to news analysts, Americans are puzzled by the inexplicable. Americans are perplexed at how the Obama administration finds unprecedented ways to drain the U.S. treasury, while on-camera the President declares straight-faced, “We have to finds ways to cut spending.” Unable to contain the waste and corruption erupting out of his own current TARP and Stimulus plans, how can Obama be trusted to track down half a trillion dollars in Medicare fraud?  If he turns a blind-eye to reports that TARP money, that was to be returned to tax payers, is reportedly being used as campaign slush funds to elect members of his own party – can he be taken at face value? This president, in reality, is not a chameleon though he seemingly changes at will. He has a goal. Is Obama’s desired legacy to be the President, the consequential historical figure that “changed America,” unhinged it from its founding…no matter the consequences? In the face of this “change,” Americans need to do a lot more than “hope.”

It Is Not Heresy, I Will Not Recant:
 

B. Hussein Obama is inherently evil. He sought out the office of President of the united States of America with a clear purpose, to destroy America as we know it. It is obvious Obama is not acting alone. He is too stupid to be acting alone. One can always tell if a progressive is stupid, the state run media keeps telling the public how smart they are. All the players in this will never be known, but the list obviously includes most of Congress, the United Nations and George “war crimes” Soros. The rogue’s gallery of Anti-American, corrupt, socialist, Marxist, and communist supporters who have surrounded Obama are numerous.   Dear Leader has also managed to tally a plethora of comments against America.
 

What are some of the disparaging remarks? Take a valium; you are going to need it (Italics identify reality):
 

"Whatever we once were, we're no longer a Christian nation." Right…Despite 70% of America saying they are Christian.
 

"As a student of history, I also know civilization's debt to Islam." Dummy or Dhimmi, pick one.
 

"In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world." Why does every progressive moron strive to be like Europe?
 

"So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other." Except Islam conquering the west.
 

"Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism - it is an important part of promoting peace." And, as soon as you submit to Islam, it will be peaceful.
 

"Our country still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans." Great statement, it means nothing and cannot be proven, kind of like saying “We are the world”.
 

"The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person...." I have the racial animosity.
 

"I would like to think that with my election and the early decisions that we've made, that you're starting to see some restoration of America's standing in the world." As I surrender your sovereignty and ruin your economy.
 

"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." I, B. Hussein Obama so say, therefore it must be true.
 

"America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles - principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings." Principles of slavery as Islam rules the world, erasing the west from all memory.
 

"In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." And I have personally ensured those things happened on my watch.
 

"You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin," Obama said. "Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq War, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won't wear that pin on my chest.” Stated as he put the pin on his chest, failed to cover his heart and bowed to other world leaders, showing his ability to disgrace America.
 

America, I submit to you that B. Hussein Obama is like disco, lots of flash, but no staying power. People are already proclaiming that our country has fallen from grace with the other countries in the world and it is due to the man-child president. The narcissistic leader is destroying all aspects of America, our economy, or standing in the world, our military and our national security. His Marxist philosophy is just a small part of it. Barack Hussein Obama is taking America down the path to a statist regime, to not only satisfy his goal of being the boy king, a tin pot dictator like his buddy Hugo Chavez, but to pave the way for Islam. Once Americans are used to answering to a statist regime, Sharia can be implemented without a violent revolution. Some will be killed for not converting or paying the poll tax, but not as many as would be if Sharia were implemented today. 
 

B. Hussein Obama is evil. It Is Not Heresy, I Will Not Recant.
 

Bill Turner

US West Regional Director

www.anystreet.org
 

Special Projects Coordinator

www.resistnet.com
 

Host: http://www.resistnet.com/group/resistnetradioshow
 

Blog: www.americanpatriotscommission.com
 

Co-Founder/Senior Advisor

www.americanpatriotcommission.com
 

Founder: http://americaninfidels.ning.com/
 

Report Political Corruption: press@americanpatriotcommission.com

By Lawrence R. Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D.

If you like the health insurance coverage you have now, and if you believe patients should be allowed to make their own decisions about their medical care and insurance coverage, ObamaCare is not for you.

In addition to the fact that the supreme law of the land, our U.S. constitution, does not authorize the government takeover of medicine, or government intrusion and meddling in the practice of medicine, ObamaCare will make medical care:

· Less affordable

· It will destroy innovation in the insurance market

· Less accountable to patients

· It will discriminate against those who believe in self-reliance and working hard to get ahead

· It will put our budget and economy on a path of unsustainable debt and destruction

ObamaCare incorporates an individual mandate for purchase of health insurance. In Massachusetts, the individual mandate caused an increase in premiums of up to 46% more than the national average. ObamaCare will create a new federal bureaucracy of unelected bureaucrats who will impose rigid price controls on health insurance premiums as a means of dealing with the expected increase in premiums the government takeover of medicine will cause. Price controls, however, always result in rationing and decreased access to whatever service or good is being price-controlled. And, when private insurers have been driven out of business, a so-called public option will be the only option.

ObamaCare will dictate what insurance coverage is acceptable to the government and what coverage is not acceptable. The ability of the insurance market to offer innovative coverage that individuals want at a competitive price will be thwarted.

Under ObamaCare, accountability to government bureaucrats will supersede accountability to individual patients. Unelected federal bureaucrats will decide what you can and cannot have in terms of medical care. We need look no further than the current system of socialized medicine for those 65 and over, known as Medicare, to appreciate what will occur under ObamaCare. Government price-fixing in the Medicare program has led to covert rationing of care for Medicare patients and poorer quality care. As a result of government impeding and obstructing nearly every aspect of the practice of medicine in the Medicare program, physicians and their office staff often spend more time complying with thousands of pages of ever-changing Medicare rules and regulations than they spend treating patients. And, the Medicare bureaucracy which runs the entire muddled “system” is incompetent to a degree which would shock most people. According to the government’s own GAO study, Medicare bureaucrats provide the wrong answer 96% of the time when physician offices call Medicare with questions about proper billing procedures.

ObamaCare will also mount a new assault on the American Dream of self-reliant people working hard and sacrificing to get ahead. ObamaCare will impose new taxes on unearned income which will result in the grubbing hand of the federal government reaching deeper into the pockets of citizens who worked hard and have saved for their future needs. No savings account or pension plan will be left behind, in government’s quest to confiscate and re-distribute wealth under ObamaCare.

ObamaCare will put our budget and economy on a course of unsustainable debt and ultimate destruction. ObamaCare proposes to pay for the government takeover of medicine with “savings” in Medicare and increased taxation. Proposing to help pay for the government takeover of medicine via money “saved” from a fraudulently financed Ponzi scheme, otherwise known as Medicare, which is already facing insolvency, is the height of irresponsible government. And, the limits of oppressive taxation are already apparent to many hard-working Americans.

ObamaCare’s proposed expansion of Medicaid will place a further intolerable burden on state budgets that are already strained to the limit. There simply is no more “state money” to pay for more unfunded federal mandates.

As social democrats trudge forward in utter arrogance to force citizens to accept a government takeover of medicine run by unelected government tyrants, those who cherish freedom and who still believe in upholding the U.S. Constitution as written, deserve better.



Lawrence R. Huntoon, M.D., Ph.D. is editor-in-chief of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons and a board-certified neurologist, who practices in the Buffalo, New York area.

Marin Conservative Forum Presents

Melanie Morgan as Moderator:

KSFO Co Host for 15 years with Lee Rogers
Co Anchor American Morning News in D.C.
Chairman of Move America Forward 

MARCH 9, 2010 @ 7 PM
DEBATE: CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 6: INCUMBENT DEMOCRAT LYNN WOOLSEY

Sheraton Four Points
1010 Northgate Dr.
San Rafael, CA 94903
415-755-6140
 

PRIMARY CANDIDATES: 

Jim Judd: Sonoma County resident, businessman and political
activist.

Michael Halliwell: Marin County resident, educator and political activist.

Brian O'hara: Sonoma County resident, businessman and political activist

MARCH 23, 2010 @ PM 

DEBATE: CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT 8: INCUMBENT DEMOCRAT NANCY PELOSI

PRIMARY CANDIDATES:

John Dennis: San Francisco resident,businessma n and political
activist.

Dana Walsh: San Francisco resident, businesswoman and political activist. 

Sheraton Four Points
1010 Northgate Dr.
San Rafael, CA 94903
415-755-6140

Channeling the great Bobby Subgum, the world's only ninja entertainer, a teasah, a rittle ti'bit of the great Gary Eaton (of Kingsizemaybe fame) somehow making me sound not-too-shabby in the vocals department (and really pushing me -- no baseball bats necessary -- to hit the right word emphases throughout the song), while also supplying the guitars, bass and drums -- Gary's a mooz-i-kul genius!!! The song in its entirety will debut on Wednesday night's Stage Right Show, where I'll be guest-hosting again from 9-11 Pacific, and interviewing the likes of Gary, AlfonZo Rachel, slide guitarist extraordinaire Steve Sampson (another person who helps me sound so much better), and more...

By Burt Prelutsky

During his State of the Union address, with eight of the Supreme Court justices sitting right in front of him like clay pigeons, Barack Obama told the world that he would have to correct their mistake by bringing back McCain-Feingold.  Well, why wouldn’t he say such a stupid thing?  After all, he’s been wrong about everything else.

It’s perfectly reasonable that Obama would oppose corporations donating money to political campaigns.  Where do oil, coal and pharmaceutical companies, get off thinking they should have the same right as the UAW, the SEIU, ACORN and George Soros, to finance elections?  For that matter, while whining about some corporations playing a role in the election process, I haven’t heard Obama say boo about the role that such corporations as NBC, CBS, ABC, the Washington Post or the New York Times, have played in creating and burnishing his image.

But, then, who are regular, run-of-the-mill, tax-paying Americans to question Obama?  He’s brilliant, after all.  It’s not just liberals who say so, either.  I keep hearing people like Bill O’Reilly saying so day after day.  The problem is that I keep looking for signs of his brilliance, and looking and looking.  It doesn’t help that the O’Reillys of the world never point out any examples.

Still, if Obama is so brilliant, why does he parrot the words and thoughts of a bunch of schmucks like Karl Marx, Saul Alinsky, Al Gore and Michael Moore?  Why does he insist that the trouble with the Constitution and the Civil Rights movement is that they didn’t focus on the redistribution of wealth?  Why would he hand over the federal budget to a couple of morons like Pelosi and Reid?  And why on earth would he put Henry Waxman in charge of his energy program?  A brilliant person wouldn’t trust Waxman to bring baked beans to a picnic.

When someone decides to model a health care plan after such dismal failures as England, Canada and Cuba, while exhuming the failed economic policies of FDR, why would anyone suggest he is anything but a left-wing ignoramus?

This is an American president, for heaven’s sake, who has more in common with Noam Chomsky, Hugo Chavez and some Berkeley hippie than he has with Washington, Jefferson and Adams.  Except that he is now 30 years older, Obama seems to think exactly the same way he was thinking back in college, when he was a pot-smoking idiot who sought out students who were self-professed revolutionaries and professors who were communists.

If we have come to a point where the ability to read scripted lines off a teleprompter is considered a sign of brilliance, no matter how fatuous the actual words may be, we are in even worse shape than I imagined.

In a movie I loved, “The Princess Bride,” the villain, Vizzini (Wallace Shawn), keeps saying “Inconceivable!” each time something happens that he failed to anticipate, mainly because, in his arrogance, he underestimated his adversary.  Finally, after he has said “Inconceivable!” once too often, one of his cohorts turns to him and says, “I don’t think that word means what you think it does.”

But I wouldn’t want to leave liberals and some goofy conservatives entirely speechless when it comes to describing the president.  So to fill the void, I’m happy to supply them with some options, such as stubborn, pompous, inflexible, dishonest, officious, partisan, unpatriotic, duplicitous, socialist, untrustworthy and dictatorial.

Any of those words is far more fitting than brilliant, as are self-enamored, egotistical, narcissistic, long-winded and boring.

You want to know who I think is truly brilliant?  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, that’s who.  His demeanor is pleasant and his decisions are invariably sensible and well-considered.  And that includes his most recent decision, which was to skip Obama’s State of the Union harangue.

I once exhibited at a gallery that has, like so many in the art biz, long since gone defunct.  But during the three years its doors were open, artists from a wide range of genres and talents hung their works on its walls.  Although business was not exactly brisk – because of the taciturn nature of the gallery’s owner – all of us artists realized we were part of the only gallery around that promoted both artistic freedom and excellence.  It stood in the art district just a couple blocks down from the trendy galleries, which specialized in half-competent “protest art.” 

One example of the “art” in this latter gallery was a tennis ball-green canvas over which was painted in red-stenciled lettering, “BIGOTRY KILLS.”  What a novel concept!  Some feminist photographer also displayed works there, such as the groundbreaking composition of herself covered in red paint while sprawled across the American flag.  On her stomach (again, with the stenciling), “KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY BODY.”

Most of us at our gallery regarded this waste of paint and film as a bad inside joke  promulgated by second-raters, who could never otherwise gain an audience for their colossal mediocrity. 

We all prided ourselves for having risen above this sophomoric posturing because we all had paid our dues by honing our chops, and never offering the public anything unworthy of our talents.  And, if you’re thinking that our aggregate disapproval was over their brand of politics, think again – that’s the moral to another story.

Of all the artists with whom I exhibited at that gallery, only one could even remotely be considered right-of-center.  You guessed it: I was that one. To this day, I regard these fellow artists as allies in the fight against garbage-as-art and the in-crowd sycophantry that has replaced aesthetic criteria.

Were that gallery to reopen its doors, I would hang my photographs on its walls, and proudly collaborate with its artists and curators.

Then there was a job I had for a few years.  I naively thought everyone there would be honorable, hard working, and creative; everyone in the place was a libertarian, Republican, or conservative independent.

Yet, I had never worked with a bigger lot of backbiting saboteurs, cynical flatterers, couch potatoes, and treacherous social climbers.  The one person in the firm I respected turned out to be the victim of office politicking and maneuvering to dislodge him from his post.  The one person I thought who most had my back turned out to have been the one to drop the ball on promises he made to me to promote my initiatives.  While on vacation in Canada, I got a phone call on my cell phone from clients, demanding to know where the proposals were.  It turned out the guy who was assigned to send them on ahead – I could not myself, due to office hierarchy and protocol – was himself on a month-long vacation, and just dropped everything without notifying anyone.

When my friend who ran the show got set up for failure, he left in disgust.  I was called to pick up some of the slack; it turned out my “protector” was the one to benefit from this change in personnel.  As soon as I declined, out came the four-letter words and accusations of poor performance.  Nice.

I relate these stories because some things are, and ought to be, above political ideologies.  Even in these strange and bewildering times, what is most important to remember is that the personal politics of your fellows is just as important as their political party. 

As an artist working in a field dominated by liberals, it would be easy for me to ignore the benevolence and honorable character shown me by many liberals with whom I have collaborated over the years.  During the past decade, I worked on three projects with Germans who admired and promoted my work.  It didn’t cross my mind to turn down their patronage and collaboration just because they were socialists.  What counted with me was that they comported themselves honestly and with professionalism.

The moral of the story is:  The laws of the marketplace are much kinder than most people think, and as conservative artists, we would be selling ourselves short if we were to demand someone’s party membership card as proof of their worthiness for dealing with us.

Another way to look at it:  I did some portraits a couple months ago for a rich progressive woman who likes my work.  Not only was I recompensed quite dearly, but I also had enough left over to send some of my proceeds as a contribution to Scott Brown’s campaign in Massachusetts.  I got a secret kind of satisfaction that this subscriber of Mother Jones made it possible for the Republican upstart from Wrentham, Mass., to be $100.00 closer to victory. 

The invisible hand moves in mysterious ways.

We’ve all heard the argument that restricting legal access to abortion would lead to “unsafe” or “back-alley” procedures that place women’s lives at risk. 

Well, as CNSNews.com reports, a new study suggests this may not be the case after all.  The study looked at maternal mortality ratios (MMR) and abortion mortality ratios (AMR) in Chile over the past 50 years, examining these against the backdrop of abortion’s legality in that country. (From 1931 to 1988, abortion was legal in Chile; it was outlawed in 1989.) Interestingly, the study found “that maternal mortality peaked in 1961, abortion causing 34% of maternal deaths. From 1960 to 2007, total reduction in maternal mortality rates equaled 97.9% - regardless of whether or not abortion was legal.”

According to Dr. Elard Koch, the University of Chile epidemiologist who conducted the research, “This study provides evidence that the legal status of the therapeutic abortion is not related with maternal mortality reduction. Moreover, after abortion was prohibited, an additional reduction in maternal and abortion mortality was observed in Chile.”

Koch explains, “The present study provides preliminary evidence that indicates that in Chile, the elimination of therapeutic abortion did not translate into increases in maternal mortality."

More specifically, the preliminary data were as follows:

During the study period, MMR decreased from 293.7 to 18.2 per 100,000 live births (-93.8%); AMR decreased form 92.5 to 1.7 per 100,000 live births (-98.1%). No significant effect of legal and illegal abortion periods on these decreasing trends was observed in ARIMA [autoregressive moving average] models. After abortion was fully prohibited, MMR and AMR decreased from 41.3 to 18.2 (-44.1%) and 16.5 to 1.7 (-10.3%) per 100,000 live births respectively. The average of education years, illiteracy rate, GDP per-capita, and the percentage of delivery by skilled attendants were all significant predictors of MMR. The same factors along decreasing fertility rate were significant predictors of AMR trends.

While the study is preliminary, it could potentially poke a huge hole in the claim that the health of many women is actually served and protected by legal access to abortion.

Check out the full article from CNSNews.com:
Abortion Ban Does Not Mean More Maternal Deaths, Chilean Study Finds