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Barry

City Journal Heather Mac Donald Restoring the Social Order Twenty momentous years of conservative policy success in cities 6 January 2011 Conservative ideas are responsible for the two great urban-policy successes of the last quarter-century: the breathtaking drops in crime and in welfare dependency...

Barry

From reading this piece, one would think that anti-war conservatives have an unbroken record of being right. Yet the writer ignores the 1930s and early 40s, when anti-war conservatives were called isolationists, and they opposed doing anything to stop the Nazis from overrunning Europe. When you pla...

Barry

As the definition Steve posted points out, it's not accurate to say that pacifism and being anti-war are synonymous, but in this country, a lot of knee-jerk anti-war people (usually on the left) are certainly pacifists when it comes to the use of military force. Anti-war conservatives are probably l...

Barry

From reading this piece, one would think that anti-war conservatives have an unbroken record of being right. Yet the writer ignores the 1930s and early 40s, when anti-war conservatives were called isolationists, and they opposed doing anything to stop the Nazis from overrunning Europe. When you play...

Barry

By and large the casualties of the two current Asian wars are from the same socioeconomic stratum as those of Vietnam, and contrary to what is implied in that article, very many communities have felt losses that have hit close to home. Surely the difference is one of numbers. Though it implies an u...

Barry

The disconnect between the military and most of the civillian population is an important topic. Thanks for raising it. Here is a portion of a longer piece by Robert Kaplan that touches on the same topic: Never-say-die faith, accompanied by old-fashioned nationalism, is alive in America. It is a matc...

Barry

“Reagan nearly tripled the deficit in his eight years, and never made a realistic proposal for cutting it. As the biographer Lou Cannon noted, it was unfair for critics to say that Reagan was trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, since ‘he never seriously attempted to balance the b...

Barry

The major provisions of the health care bill will come into play one at a time over the next several years. If Obama is re-elected, irrespective of what happens in Congress, flat-out repeal will not happen before every provision has kicked in. At that point, the Republicans will have as much luck a...

Barry

It’s like they’re making revenge their first order of legislative business, instead of progress. Wouldn't the accuracy of Grier's statement depend on your definition of "progress?" And is it actually "revenge" to attempt to repeal a law that all polling indicates a solid majority of the country opp...

Barry

JackC wrote: I think it is already out:

http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/6775

Thanks. I suppose I'll have to buy it now.

Barry

I haven't heard the Mehta, although this isn't the first time I've read a rave about it. Of those I have heard, Bernstein's first New York recording on Sony remains my favorite. The one that so many people seem to like, but which has never done anything for me is the Klemperer (I also used to have h...

Barry

.... The thing that strikes me most about von Karajan is how "stringy" he makes the music sound .... That is the best description so far of why I ultimately turned away from HvK. One either likes that sound on a continued basis or one does not. I started looking for a more varied orchestral sound a...

Barry

so what if some of the musicians are unhappy with the conductor's technique. the listeners aren't directly concerned with conductor/musician communication - only as it affects the result - they might be unhappy with the musical result, which of course, is the product of the conductor's rapport with...

Barry

... what matters to most of us is the artistic result, not the techniques by which it has been achieved. That's what it all boils down to IMO. Also, it should be perfectly clear that what matters most about a conductor to orchestra musicians will likely be different than what matters most to the li...

Barry

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2001/dec01/Beethoven57_Toscanini_Naxos.jpg This Naxos CD is one of my favourite CMG recommendations of 2010. The Seventh was recorded in 1936 and has been beautifully restored, it's a must for all lovers of Beethoven's Seventh. Does it differ significa...

Barry

I agree with the decision to postpone the game, and disagree with Rendell on this issue. However, I wish the Eagles had shown up at last night's game. :( Really. The offense picked a bad time to have their worst game since early in the season. It's going to be tough to get to the Super Bowl now tha...

Barry

>So I have no doubt that he has a decent knowledge of traffic in the area.< Barry, thanks--as you say that makes his comments even worse--shame on him! Wonder what his chauffeur thinks? Regards, Len :) I actually agree with him with regard to the U.S. having become a nation of wusses, but I don't t...

Barry

I agree with you Cosima. The storm actually turned out to be not quite as bad as it was predicted it might be in Philadelphia, but we still got a foot of snow and very high winds. The driving was very bad in some spots and a lot of fans would have been heading east, into New Jersey, where the storm ...

Barry

I always thought that "Kna" looked like Charlie Chaplin in the photo above... :wink: At first I thought that you were hallucinating due to your illness but I see where you are coming from :lol: I would be interested to hear that disc :idea: That 9th with the BPO has been out on many labels. But the...

Barry

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51kgYPDILYL._SL500_AA300_.jpg I ordered this mainly for the 1961 VPO 8th, which I've read a lot of good things about over the years. http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51G5K554WRL._SL500_AA300_.jpg http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41T7sLRR4dL._SL500_AA3...

Barry

His Germanic take on any work he chose to perform, whatever the cultural origin of that work. Karajan is a formidable expression of ethnocentrism. Everything must be understood through his cultural prism, his alone. In a nutshell, this Germany lover could not love any other country. I think he did ...

Barry

His Germanic take on any work he chose to perform, whatever the cultural origin of that work. Karajan is a formidable expression of ethnocentrism. Everything must be understood through his cultural prism, his alone. In a nutshell, this Germany lover could not love any other country. I think he did ...

Barry

Foreign Policy The Guns of December It's about time South Korea started shooting back. BY EDWARD LUTTWAK | DECEMBER 21, 2010 It is hard to recall a better example of successful deterrence than what failed to happen on Monday, Dec. 20, on the Korean peninsula. That was the planned date of a South Kor...

Barry

Chalkperson wrote:... and, as Barry says, Bruckner and Strauss on DG...

The Bruckner on EMI is outstanding too (at least 4 and 7; I haven't heard the EMI 8th).

Barry

And Barry, I don't think Obama has more to contend with in Putin than Nixon did in Brezhnev. I know Reagan opposed SALT 2. I'm not sure about the deal/deals Nixon negotiated with Brezhnev. But I know that in general, he opposed detente as long as the Soviet leadership was composed mainly of hard-li...

Barry

Mark Harwood wrote:Fascinating stuff. Can we reduce the list of suspects to two?

You'd think so. My best guess is the Israelis. But they'll never admit it.

Barry

Whether Reagan would support this treaty is an interesting topic. He had a Gorbachev to work with during his second term. But would he have considered someone like Putin to be a negotiating partner he could trust? And of course, the fact that we're not in a Cold War with the Russians any longer has ...

Barry

Weekly Standard How the Worm Turned Stuxnet versus the Iranian nuclear program. Jonathan V. Last December 13, 2010, Vol. 16, No. 13 Last week Mahmoud Ahmadinejad acknowledged that Iran’s uranium enrichment program had suffered a setback: “They were able to disable on a limited basis some of our cent...

Barry

Even if I had any qualms about the missile defense issue (and I'm not sure about it; I've heard or read good arguments from people on both sides), I would hate to see our President look so weak on the international stage with so much time left in his first term; which is what failing to get this thr...

Barry

I love that big wall-of-sound BPO sound profile for a lot of the music Karajan was good in. It was great for Bruckner and Strauss. In fact, I'd rate him as being as good as anyone in those two composers' music. As far as things like the Brahms and Beethoven symphonies, as with Ormandy and the major ...

Barry

I am also a member in exile. Since my name wasn't mentioned, I feel slighted but maybe the memory of my former presence has faded into obscurity. :wink: Maybe you just haven't made yourself anywhere near so notorious as you suppose, mon vieux? ; ) That's one interpretation. Then, too, it isn't as i...

Barry

While the part you put in bold is certainly terrifying in a sense, when you think about the conext surrounding that period, it's not really that shocking. Everyone knows the premise of M.A.D. was that if the other side nukes us, we hit them back with everything we've got. And "them" at that time pro...

Barry

karlhenning wrote:
Cliftwood wrote:I am also a member in exile.

Since my name wasn't mentioned, I feel slighted but maybe the memory of my former presence has faded into obscurity.
Maybe you just haven't made yourself anywhere near so notorious as you suppose, mon vieux? ; )

Cheers,
~Karl

That's one interpretation.

Barry

I certainly miss Brendan and would enjoy having him back. His contributions were unique and often very informative.

I'd also have no problem with Saul coming back.

But I appear to be in the minority on this.

Barry

I think a more telling example is the Cubam missile crisis. After the missiles were in, Kenndedy acted wonderfully and we all owe a lot to the wisdom he displayed. This ended up being his "finest hour". Still when one looks at the facts that led up to the crisis, a more complex analysis is needed. ...

Barry

I can think of no example of a situation where we were threatened in a way we would not have been under more macho leadership. Check your memory banks. No way Iran holds onto those hostages, holding us up as a paper tiger for all of the other regimes in the world (like the Russians, who had no qual...

Barry

... Not to dismiss a military response, but also not to expect immediate, unswerving, and wholehearted unity behind whatever president thinks it's a good idea to send us off to war yet one more time. I have no problem with that statement. And it's fine for people in our position to take whatever po...

Barry

Brahms
Mahler
Sibelius

In that order (unless the Symphonie Fantastique is considered to be a first symphony, in which case I'd put that behind the Mahler and bump Sibelius down).

Barry

But I seem to see one contrast between the present and WWII. It was our side against the enemy. The nation was united, the draft included representatives of the entire population instead of the small portion represented by the current volunteeers - with all the credit and thanks due them, however. ...

Barry

Washington Post The new comeback kid By Charles Krauthammer Friday, December 17, 2010 If Barack Obama wins reelection in 2012, as is now more likely than not, historians will mark his comeback as beginning on Dec. 6, the day of the Great Tax Cut Deal of 2010. Obama had a bad November. Self-confessed...

Barry

And in case you didn't notice, the main difference between the Great Recession and the Great Depression was that prompt and appropriate government action kept the latter from turning into another one of the former. There is government action and there is government action. I believe an ever increas...

Barry

From the inception of the income tax through the mid 80s, the top rate was usually over 50 percent, and in fact, over 70 percent most of the time. Yet I doubt we'll see it top 50 again in my lifetime (I'm in my mid 40s). It hasn't been there since the mid 80s. I understand your reasoning for not li...

Barry

Though Jack and others nobly protest that they are willing to pay higher taxes under the right conditions, taxes, as Benjamin Franklin once observed, are in the same general category as death when it comes to what people don't want to do but must. As Rob (RebLem) used to imply in his signature (a q...

Barry

JackC wrote:
Barry wrote:
I'm sure Jack didn't literally mean he is going to refuse to pay his taxes if they're raised.

Hey, wait a minute. I ain't payin! Don't tread on me.

Sorry. Didn't realize how radical you are.

Barry

I, for one, have never viewed the tax issue as about people being greedy. No one wants their taxes rasied. Still, I would be willing to pay a LOT more in taxes if I truly believed that the money would be spent to restore the nation to fiscal health. But I, like many others who have seen how governm...

Barry

How come we trust dumb law and order officers with guns but object to advanced degree people acquiring a gun? Ain't that a contradiction! I assume that's directed at the pro-gun control crowd on here. I don't know anyone who is generally supportive of the right of private citizens to own guns who h...

Barry

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear enough. I wasn't talking about the fairness or otherwise of this policy or that act, but the nature of fairness itself. There are many areas of life in which unfairness is so obvious that everyone (well, nearly everyone) can agree on it and there's no need to defi...

Barry

Then you've got the people who worked their butts off because they had certain goals in mind in terms of things like having nice second homes in a resort area or another part of the country that appeals to them and they need a nice income coming in to maintain that lifestyle. Why shouldn't people l...

Barry

Then you've got the people who worked their butts off because they had certain goals in mind in terms of things like having nice second homes in a resort area or another part of the country that appeals to them and they need a nice income coming in to maintain that lifestyle. Why shouldn't people l...

Barry

He was one of the greats, at least in Chopin. I recall the first time I heard his recording of the opus 64/2 waltz. It was not unlike the first time I heard Furtwangler conduct Beethoven. A new world of musical possibility had been opened to me. I had never heard such expressive playing.

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