Bob Myers, in his comment on the “Dean Jones” post identified my “tedious havoc” quotation as coming from “Paradise Lost.” Milton was criticizing epics that are nothing but battles, ignoring the “better fortitude” of patience and heroic martyrdom; that is, internal battles of character. That applies perfectly to today’s action movies. I am finding mere cinematic havoc–fighting, chase scenes, explosions, special effects–to be increasingly tedious. Seriously. I find myself dozing off during the “action” sequences. There was a time when they were impressive but they have become so conventional, so repetitive, so expected, that they do nothing for me. Am I the only one who finds what is supposed to be exciting in movies to be unexciting?

What’s the matter with Kansas? I mean that not in the liberal Democratic sense, of why are these rubes not voting their economic interests and supporting us, but why did the usually- socially-conservative Kansans make a pro-abortion zealot their governor? And Kathleen Sebelius is considered a front-runner to be Barack Obama’s vice presidential candidate. Read
Robert Novak’s - A Pro-Choicer’s Dream Veep. An excerpt from the article (which also discusses her ban from Communion):

She is allied with the aggressive Kansas branch of Planned Parenthood in a bitter struggle with antiabortion activist District Attorney Phill Kline. There is substantial evidence she has been involved in what pro-life advocates term “laundering” abortion industry money for distribution to Kansas Democrats. Kansas is the fiercest state battleground in the abortion wars, making Kathleen Sebelius the national pro-choice poster girl. . . .

Sebelius sits at the apex of a complicated Kansas financing system involving the famous abortion provider George Tiller of Wichita. She controls Bluestem Fund PAC, which distributed money to Kansas Democratic candidates. Tiller, one of the few U.S. doctors still performing late-term abortions, contributed $120,000 in 2006 to the Democratic Governors Association, which has given $200,000 to Bluestem.

I think Obama can make inroads with Christian voters. But not if he picks Gov. Sebelius. Such a selection could mobilize social conservatives around John McCain. The other issue, though, is how the pro-deathers are throwing their political weight around to give financial aid to Democrats. Obama promises to heal the country on this issue, so I’d like to see how he is going to do that.

Here is a fascinating account of our nation’s first conflict with radical Islam: When the Founding Fathers Faced Islamists. When the Barbary states captured American ships and made slaves of American citizens, both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson negotiated for their release. The pasha demanded a tribute of around $1 million, a tenth of the entire budget of the fledgling nation, but Adams and Jefferson continued to negotiate until the pasha informed them of this fact, described in Adams’ words:

“It was… written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged [the Muslims’] authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon wheoever they could find and to make Slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Mussulman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

When the Americans heard this, it was war–Stephen Decatur, the Marines on the shores of Tripoli, and America’s first splash on the world stage.

You will note that this season baseball players no longer have Popeye arms and thick necks. And now that steroids are no longer taken like candy, the number of homeruns has plummeted down to historically normal proportions. Thomas Boswell explains:

This spring, for the second straight year, home run totals, like the game’s conspicuous muscles, have shrunk dramatically. Last season’s 8 percent drop in home runs was welcomed, but with caution. Would the tater barrage simply resume? But now, in the wake of the Mitchell report, home runs have fallen this spring by another 10.4 percent.

Suddenly, a sport that produced 5,386 home runs in 2006 is on pace for 4,442 this year — a 17.5 percent drop, or a loss of almost 1,000 home runs in just two seasons.

If the current trend continues, baseball might return to the levels at which many students of the game think the sport has been healthiest and most pleasing: an average of a bit more than nine runs and slightly less than two home runs per game.

This season, major league teams have scored 8.98 runs per game. Since 1871, there have been 1,750,230 runs in the majors, an average of 9.11 per game. . . .

In the first 35 seasons after World War II, the average home run champ had 42.4 dingers. That’s “normal.” What constitutes off-the-charts for a great slugger? From 1939 until the steroid eruption, just three players had more than 52 homers in a season: Ralph Kiner (54) in ‘49, and Roger Maris (61) and Mickey Mantle (54) in ‘61. That’s the ceiling.

Then came designer steroids as well as human growth hormone for which baseball still has no test. Over the last dozen seasons, the average total for the home run champion in the American League and National League has been 53. So as cheating flourished, what once was the stuff of legend, a total higher than Mays ever achieved, became the norm for league leaders.

For a sport that established statistical norms over a century, this was a nuclear blast. After generations of patting itself on the back for an almost ideal game in which rules seldom needed more than tinkering to maintain an equilibrium, baseball suddenly bore little resemblance to itself. Brady Anderson hit 50 homers; Ted Williams never had 44.