Cowboy Logic

The Philadelphia Inquirer published a really well written article and book review today, about a little known part of the horse industry and horse history — Black Horsemen.

For a 10-year-old boy, spending a weekend in the company of men – expert horse trainers – working side-by-side, listening to their conversations, and sharing their equine victories can leave a lasting memory.

Lee E. Downing experienced that weekend treat in 1959 with his father, Thomas Downing, a dedicated horse trainer, and his father’s friends, African American men who held similar jobs in the American Saddlebred show-horse business.

In A Forgotten Horseman: A Son’s Weekend Memoir ($26, hardcover), Downing, who lives in North Wales, pays tribute to his father and other black horse trainers who, over months of rehearsing and grooming, prepared the horses for show competition.

As in so many other cases, the horses and the men who worked with them taught young Mr. Downing more about life, than about the horses themselves.

Downing also stresses the strong male relationships – father and son, father-figure and son, friends – a universal theme that transcends time and setting, even that period of racial inequality. In fact, those bonds among black men seem more important in the limiting days of the 1950s.

“It was a small fraternity of men,” Downing said. “They were competitive, they wanted to win, but behind that they supported each other. They were all subjected to the same social injustices.”

A Forgotten Horseman doesn’t dwell on race, but uses it to put the horse trainers’ lives into a historical context. Just as there were racial barriers for trainers, there are ones for baseball players, youth, even for black men who pull up to service stations.

And of course, the virtues of the horse became apparent to all those around them, and left young Downing with powerful memories:

While Downing didn’t become a horseman, his father and the other trainers left him with lessons about humility, patience and good character – the traits they brought to work every day and the traits that compelled them to do outstanding jobs behind the scenes.

A Forgotten Horseman: A Son’s Weekend Memoir

Black Horsemen website.

A stinging new critique from Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post, calls for the Olmert government to go, en masse. Glick correctly notes that the current Israeli leadership squandered the good will of the people, the Israeli military, and even the American government:

THE AMERICANS have lost faith in Israel as an ally. After he gave Israel every opportunity to win this war, even signaling clearly that Israel should feel free to go as far as Beirut if necessary, President Bush was convinced that Olmert simply didn’t want to fight. The Americans were shocked by Israel’s performance. They know that we can win when we set our mind to it and were flummoxed when presented with an Israeli leadership that refused to even try.

Whatever one may feel as to the specific charges leveled against the Olmert government — and Glick enumerates quite a few — the war effort viewed in total, has been largely a failure on military, diplomatic, and policy fronts. In such a situation, the government should be expected to resign. It is the nature of the democracy in Israel, and is the duty of the Knesset to bring about this action, through a vote of “no confidence”.

[H/T: LGF]

More global escapism from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In this case it appears that the study assumed global warming, and ran models to determine how bad it could be at various levels of warmth.

Rising temperatures will increase the risk of forest fires, droughts and flooding over the next two centuries, UK climate scientists have warned.

Even if harmful emissions were cut now, many parts of the world would face a greater risk of natural disasters, a team from Bristol University said.

The Beeb of course, ran a really choice forest fire picture with the article:

In the great tradition of mid-East warfare, both sides have declared victory. All-powerful media manager, Hassan Nasrallah kicked off the festivities by declaring a “strategic, historic victory.”

Lines of cars — some loaded with mattresses and luggage — snaked slowly around huge holes in the roads and ruined bridges. Hezbollah fighters hugged each other and celebratory gunfire and fireworks erupted in Beirut when the Islamic militant group’s leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah claimed a “strategic, historic victory.”

Meanwhile, back in Washington, the fantasies continued where we learn that actually Israel “won”.

President Bush said Monday that Israel defeated Hezbollah’s guerrillas in the monthlong Mideast war and that the Islamic militants were to blame for the deaths of hundreds of Lebanese civilians.

One thing is certain, the Lebanese have been defeated and the country brought to near destruction. And relying on the Lebanese army to maintain the peace, even with nearby Blue Helmets, seems uncertain at best.

The U.N. plan calls for a joint Lebanese-international force to act as a buffer between Israel and Hezbollah militiamen. France and Italy, along with predominantly Muslim Turkey and Malaysia, have signaled willingness to contribute troops to the joint force, but consultations are needed on the force’s makeup and mandate.

Since Hezbollah has already humiliated and turned back the Lebanese army, it is not clear how this fragile, and largely illusory peace will be maintained.

Conservation economic stalwart Larry Kudlow continues as a nearly lone voice in the wilderness of economic nay-sayers. Today he has posted more great news about the robust American economy, including that consumer sales are up.

Retail sales came in at 1.4 percent for July, way above Wall Street expectations, while core sales excluding autos, gas, and building materials — a number that feeds directly into GDP — increased 0.6 percent. Over the past 3 months core sales rose 6.7 percent at annual rate, and in the past year they’re up 7.4 percent. Excluding autos alone, sales have gained 9.2 percent in the last 12 months. That’s big time.

Even better news is that business capital expenditures are likely to explode:

The cult of the bear will also be wrong on business capex spending. American businesses have even more cash on hand than consumers, bolstered by second-quarter profits that came in 4 or 5 percentage points above estimates. Even though business equipment and software investment declined 1 percent at an annual rate in the second quarter, it rose 15.6 percent in the first quarter. Averaging the two gets you 7.3 percent business capex for the first half of the year, and 6.9 percent for the last four quarters. Pretty hefty.

Larry is, of course, correct in noting that our current economic happiness was forged by Ronald Reagan and his revolution in the tax structure.

Exactly twenty-five years ago, Ronald Reagan signed into law the first supply-side tax cuts since the JFK plan of the early 1960s. By reducing high marginal tax rates, Reagan transformed the American economy and opened the door to two-and-half decades of prosperity. Economic behavior responds significantly to the incentive power of low tax rates that raise the after-tax return on work, investment, and risk-taking.

The self-loathing demand-siders have yet to find an adequate response to the Reagan revolution, now 25 years hence.

Now here’s some good news, finally, that we all (most of us anyway) have been looking for.

How’s this for a breath of fresh air? Barbaro is enjoying daily outings outside his intensive care stall to pick his own grass, enjoy the warm weather and stretch his recovering legs.
Barbaro stepped outside his ICU stall and started daily walks on a grassy area near the unit last week for the first time since having catastrophic injuries in the Preakness nearly three months ago. The Kentucky Derby winner, also recovering from a severe case of laminitis on his left hoof, continues to show signs he’s on the road to recovery.

Ponder, if you would, this news. Although the flowers, cards, and get-well wishes have dwindled in recent weeks, a simple horse, Barbaro, continues to captivate world-wide attention. At a simple level, the interpretation is easy — that there is a simple “courage facing adversity” story, which is not political and free of the dreary equivocations which invade all human dynamics. But the story is yet more profound. In horses, humans find the grace and dignity that they seek in themselves and their peers, but which are so often lacking.

Horses willingly serve humanity, not because they are coerced, but because they agree to do so, and receive benefits in return. People — even “non-horse people” — get this, and admire the traits which are so selfless and noble, and which are found but occasionally in people, but often in horses. “In vino, veritas” may have stood the test of time, but we propose a corollary — “in equus, veritas“.

If you wonder what kind of leadership Israel needs right now, take a look at this hypothetical speech. It’s all written and everything, just waiting for a courageous leader to give it.

[H/T: Alexandra at All Things Beautiful]

To the surprise of almost nobody, the Israeli-Hezbollah ceasefire amounts to a great victory for the terrorists. Few can remember Israel acting tepidly in war, but this instance they certainly have. Israel has left the Hezbollah militants feeling good, and acting as the superior armed force, even embarrassing and ridiculing the Lebanese army.

IT was supposed to be the day the maligned Lebanese army took control of the country’s borders and policed the UN ceasefire.

Instead, the military commanders were left humiliated and troops stranded as Hezbollah told them not to disarm its fighters.

The first infantry units were preparing to head south when Hezbollah showed who controls the area by announcing it would not surrender its weapons.

Worse…. Hezbollah (and the world’s media) are proclaiming a great victory…

Given Hezbollah’s military strength, there will be no disarmament without a political agreement at the national level in Lebanon.

For such a deal, Hezbollah might demand further concessions from Israel, such as prisoner releases and a handover of the Shebaa Farms, an area which Lebanon claims, but which Israel (backed by the UN) says is part of the Golan Heights – captured from Syria in 1967 and annexed by Israel.

And Hezbollah still has as bargaining chips the two Israeli soldiers it captured in a cross-border raid on 12 July – and whose release Israel said its bombardment was meant to secure.

Position of strength

The initial signs in Beirut do not indicate a trouble-free course ahead. Hezbollah’s cabinet ministers threatened to boycott a cabinet meeting on Sunday set up to discuss the ceasefire, causing it to be postponed.

They are in a position of strength, because as far as its Islamic Resistance armed wing is concerned, Hezbollah has scored a great victory against the Israeli army.

Read the whole thing…

There are reports that two journalists for Fox News have been kidnapped.

There are reports that two journalists from the U.S. Fox News television channel have been kidnapped by armed men in Gaza.

An American correspondent and an Irish cameraman were reportedly seized after gunmen intercepted their car in Gaza City, witnesses told news agencies.

The Fox TV team’s Palestinian driver and two other journalists were set free. No group has yet claimed responsibility for kidnapping the pair.

A Palestinian witness reportedly told news agencies that two vehicles blocked the journalist’s transmission truck in the centre of Gaza City and a masked man put a gun to the bodyguard’s head, forcing him to the ground.

The kidnappers then sped away with the two journalists.

The Fox News bureau in Jerusalem said it was checking the report.

Reuters reports essentially the same story.

Well, at least one of them anyway. I suspect that a rather large number of British citizens feel this way, but Mr. Gimson has articulated the sentiment most eloquently.

We are inclined, in our snobbish way, to dismiss the Americans as a new and vulgar people, whose civilisation has hardly risen above the level of cowboys and Indians. Yet the United States of America is actually the oldest republic in the world, with a constitution that is one of the noblest works of man. When one strips away the distracting symbols of modernity – motor cars, skyscrapers, space rockets, microchips, junk food – one finds an essentially 18th-century country. While Europe has engaged in the headlong and frankly rather immature pursuit of novelty – how many constitutions have the nations of Europe been through in this time? – the Americans have held to the ideals enunciated more than 200 years ago by their founding fathers.

Thank you sir, we need to hear that from time to time.
[H/T: The Anchoress]