A Kiss To Build A Dream On

This week's Cotillion Ball is being held in four ballrooms at the very top of the Hotel Blogosphere. Besides this room, where i am your humble M.C., we have RightGirl, Merri Musings and Stacy, each of whom have wonderful festivities planned for today. As you stroll around the dance floor, i'd like you to imagine listening to the music of some great musicians from the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana. Foremost is of course Sachmo, whose version of "A Kiss To Build A Dream On" is one of the great classics of all time.

Crystal Clear deserves congratulations for having landed a dream job in Hawaii, not an easy state to make a living in. And she'll be doing good work, too.

[A]fter a great deal of soul-searching it really seemed to me that the consistent pattern and passion in my life has always been children and likely always will be serving the underserved children and watching out for the kids many people consider "throw aways".

Yay Crystal!

Darleen has a provocatively titled post, "Jesus Was Not A Socialist."

No where in [Jesus'] teachings does one find a call that GOVERNMENT must use its power to redistribute property from the earners to the needers. Indeed, Jesus preached about the difference between the Government and individuals.

. . .

Socialism is not about individuals giving of their own earned property. It's about self-selected people of power deciding to fulfill their own desires with someone else's property taken by force.

Morality assumes choice. Socialism is a matter of, at best, amorality, because it robs people of choice.

Well said, Darleen.

Dr. Sanity discusses a common phenomenon many of us observe when trying to understand the leftist mind at work. It's called "denial."

When belief in any idea become a matter of faith--and one's own identity is defined by that faith--then the psyche will do anything necessary to distort or deny any truth that contradicts that belief.

. . .

I fear that is the choice that those on the Left are making right now, although they like to imagine that those of us who are fighting against the new threats to human freedom and dignity are the ones suffering from delusion.

Claire has compiled a number of, let me say it, evil statements made by those on the left who like to trumpet their "compassion" so loudly. As i said in an earlier post of mine, tragedies like Katrina reveal character. In the aftermath of the hurricane, Claire addresses Jesse Jackson Jr's question, "Who are we to say what law and order should be in this unspeakable environment?"

When all hell breaks loose, for some the niceties of self-disciplined social interaction disappear in a wash of mind-numbing fear and desperation. Others, realize that desperate times call for even more rigorous commitment to the principles of civilized behavior—that set of Values which makes a hellish situation infinitely more manageable.

At Fistful of Fortnights, Sadie interviews über-blogger Dan Riehl, who has been covering the Natalee Holloway story extensively.

Sadie: You believe that Joran Van der Sloot emailed you hours before he was arrested. What made these emails seem authentic?

Dan: Joran or someone close to him - why else would someone go to the trouble? I thought maybe him and his Father together … the emails were written with some awareness of the law, as well as forming public opinion. That isn’t your average seventeen year old on his own.

Florida Cracker and her visitors raised an amazing $3,100 to help the animal victims of Hurricane Katrina. It's yet another example of the generous hearts out there in the blogosphere.

RightGirl has a beautiful post about the friends we make on-line, and the limitations of those friendships.

[E]very once in a while, you come across a person who touches you. You make a friend, and the boundaries of real life vs. internet blur a little at the edges. . . . You get caught up in their dramas: their joys and sorrows. Sometimes you prefer them to those real friends, because you don't know them well enough to know their ugly habits. . . . But when these people that you have come to hold as real suffer something large and devastating, you feel that pain, too. But because they are only 'imaginary,' there often isn't anything you can do. You can pray. You can try to reach out. But miles and boundaries get in the way. Sometimes, you just have to let them drop.

It seems to me like Hurricane Katrina was fresh meat to some lefty bloggers who have become a pack of hungry dogs. Ilyka Damen takes aim at the silliness of some of the barking bloggers and blogtrolls on the left.

For the last time: You have a participatory form of government. PARTICIPATE. Or:

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are."

But then, the woman who wrote that was not a progressive, so we can ignore her.

And finally, KelliPundit, a Louisiana clinical pharmacist, tells of her frustrations dealing with various bureaucracies at the same time as she's trying to help hurricane refugees.

Here's the largest, most profound problem recognized by all medical personnel yesterday: People needed to get prescriptions filled. Many are already in the system for state medicare or had private insurance - but didn't have 3 bucks for the co-pay. I see all of these corporations giving a million bucks in cash which is a good thing-but for at least one corporation out there I know of a great need that has not been met yet. But what we really, really needed was for a drug chain to step forward and volunteer to cover peoples co-pay for refugees. Can you imagine how many prescriptions could be filled with a one million dollar donation for co-pays?? Many, many of our problems would have been solved.

Just as Louisiana is a like a smorgasboard of great musicians, you can see that the Cotillion is a buffet of great blogging. Okay, that was a horribly lame analogy, but it's late and i think you get the picture.

P.S. i almost forgot everyone's favorite Louisiana musician/mom-to-be!