Is the Washington Post the world's most corrupt "news" paper?

You decide. Two examples to consider.

The trash can liner published an article earlier headed, "OP-ED| Dream Act: Best policy for Maryland." Written by -- you won't be surprised -- Curtis Valentine and Gustavo Torres ("Curtis Valentine is executive director of MarylandCAN. Gustavo Torres is executive director of CASA de Maryland") with a photo by Juana Arias, it argues why taxpayers should eat the bill to send children of illegals (who should also be illegal, were it not for our country's insane anchor baby citizenship) to college.

This is an opinion piece, and as outrageous as it may be, the Post has every right to publish it. When I read it earlier, though, the editors apparently had a problem on their hands -- thousands of comments expressing disgust with the paper toadying to illegals. Now, you can hardly read the comments, let alone publish one, since the section (as of this writing) makes you wait endlessly while it loads.

You want to tell me the main paper in the nation's capital, long owned by millionaires (plus a few small-time investors dumb enough to put any of their capital into the money-losing company), can't afford the bandwidth to permit readers to respond or read the responses conveniently? Yeah, right.

Item the second: "In Petersburg, black voters just as focused — if not as vocal — as in ’08."

For the past four years, black voters have talked among themselves about waning optimism amid financial struggles, concern about the need to energize African Americans and the feeling that President Obama has not gotten the credit he deserves.

Here in Petersburg, which sits on the Appomattox River, there also is a steely determination that Obama must be reelected to prove that his 2008 victory was not a historic fluke. ...

Since 2008, optimism among black and Latino voters has fallen as those populations have faced high unemployment, said University of Chicago political science Professor Michael C. Dawson, who studies race and politics.

Let's not dwell on the awful writing ("steely determination" -- no editor on a weekly rag would have allowed that 50 years ago, before the age of affirmative action reporters). But turn the thing around. Imagine any paper in culturally Marxist America running this:

"In Paulsburg, white voters just as focused -- if not as vocal -- as in '08"

For the past four years, white voters have talked among themselves about waning optimism amid financial struggles, concern about the need to energize white Americans and the feeling that Mitt Romney has not gotten the credit he deserves.

Here in Paulsburg, which sits on the Appomattox River, there also is a steely determination that Obama must be defeated to prove that his 2008 victory was a historic fluke. ...

Since 2008, optimism among white voters has fallen as that population has faced high unemployment, said University of Chicago affirmative action political science Professor C. Dawson Michael, who studies race and politics.

Racism! Racism! Racism! But it's only racism if whites do it. When the Post writes obviously slanted "news" like this, it's because the Post exists to promote black (as well as Hispanic) interests.

If there remain any whites who read the Washington Post regularly to get "news," they must be as brainwashed and masochistic as it is possible to be.

RD

Still circling Moose Jaw

... er, Amsterdam. My office has been working to get me on a flight tomorrow instead of the Friday one that United re-booked me on, but it's already 8 pm in AMS so I told the office to call off the hunt. On an earlier flight I'd have had to return via the dreaded Frankfurt airport, with all sorts of possibilities for further delay. I'd rather hang out in AMS another day and take a nonstop flight back to Washington Dulles.

I'll have more to write about Amsterdam, but probably not before this weekend.

I haven't forgotten about the election. Vote for Romney. This isn't the best of all possible worlds and you don't get to choose your ideal. The incumbent, Hussein, is an anti-American, socialist, Muslim-appeasing, teleprompter-reading dimwit affirmative action president who would speed up the disastrous course he has set us on for the past four years. He would find ways around any law limiting his power, as he has done by appointing "czars" to issue bureaucratic regulations with the force of law and giving illegals amnesty in absolute violation of democratic process. Plus, although you won't read about it in the Soviet-like mainstream media (e.g., New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press), there is that little matter of Benghazi.

On any account, Romney will be better and there is a bare chance he'll rise to greatness.

RD

Greetings from sunny Amsterdam

Well, there's no bloody hurricane here, anyway.

Of course my flight is cancelled, and United Airlines isn't answering the phone in its Netherlands, U.S., or India call centers. Everybody must be taking a bathroom break at the same time. And, beyond letting me know about the cancellation, the web site is mute about what to do.

So it looks like my visit will be extended for x days. That's a minor inconvenience compared with being flooded and sans electricity if I were back home. But since airline computerized yield management means every flight these days is full or almost full, it's going to be tough re-booking even if UA does decide I'm worth the trouble of speaking to. I hope I don't have to return via Finland or something.

Speaking of far more serious matters: If you haven't been following the bouncing ball in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack, Lawrence Auster sums up the stunning developments. We can't know all the facts, but I have found him to be reasonable in discussing the "known knowns" concerning even people like Obama whom he loathes.

RD

Worth a detour

Jacob van Ruisdael

Actually, Haarlem is worth more than a detour. It's worth a visit in itself. Oh, sod it, I'm starting to sound like I toil for the Dutch convention and visitors bureau.

All right, let's pause to look at the gray side for a minute. Haarlem is chaarming, but getting there isn't. You take a tram to Amsterdam's Centraal Station, okaay? I mean, okay? Right through the heart of Amsterdam's grotty moron-IQ-tourist district. Cup your ear and I'll whisper a secret: don't ever harbor a moment's thought about staying in this area. Close your cranium to guidebooks telling you how convenient it is. Unless you are so twisted I don't want you reading my blog, stay away. Amsterdam has so many fine districts there is simply no need to kip anywhere near the railroad station.

Right, so Centraal Station is in Holland, which means it's no more than 75 percent as hideous as U.S. or U.K. big city stations. Still, unless you have a Euro-style credit card with a chip on its shoulder -- most machines won't read U.S. plastic without an embedded chip -- you are condemned to queue up to buy your ticket to Haarlem with caash.

Now, after a wait of from 0:00 minutes to 0:30 on a cold windy platform, you get to ride second class (the only class) in a commuter train. If you are very old and decrepit, you might be offered a seat by a kindly soul. I was not that old and decrepit. When I boarded.

I mention these trifling details only in the far-fetched hope that James Howard Kunstler, the apostle of public transportation and population density, happens on these words. James, here is your Nirvana.

You arrive at Haarlem and the world looks brighter. It was described to me by several people as like a smaller Amsterdam, and there's something to that: at least one canal, streets of those picture-book gabled houses, neatly lettered signs for the residents and occupants.

A taxi ride and we're at the Frans Hals Museum, with a detour (again worthwhile) around the corner for some sustenance before tackling the long museum corridors. I'm here to tell you that the Ristorante Napoli makes the best pizza ai quattro formaggio in the universe. As their sign says, Een Klasse Apart.

I love Dutch painting of the 16th and 17th centuries, but Hals least of all. Sure I appreciate from a vanishingly long distance his technique, quasi-impressionist before it was revolutionary and then a bore, but still -- how many pictures of black-robed, Sphinx-faced dignitaries can a body stand to see at one sitting, or sit still for at one standing?

But the halls of Hals aren't the only paintings to greet the eye. There are three Jacob Ruisdaels, not among his best, just better than those of any other Dutch landscapist.  And those great genre artists such as Jan Steen: you don't know whether to be fascinated by the details of life of the gentry and peasantry, astonished by the staggeringly assured technique, or laugh at the sardonic humor. So you do all of that at the same time.

Speaking of humor, there are a couple of delightful satirical paintings (circa 1640) about the famous tulip mania that made and destroyed fortunes, always cited in economic history surveys as an early example of a "bubble," a term we've become all too familiar with. One portrays the whole tulip industry, including richly dressed salesmen, aristocratic customers, tulip stockbrokers, bankrupts, and one figure indicating his contempt for the maniacal bidding war by pissing on a bunch of tulips. The characters are all monkeys.

One more day for me in Amsterdam (my wife will say a few more days), then Schiphol and home.

Further musings on Amsterdam

Herengracht, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

These are of course only mental snapshots; I don't think you really know any place until you have been there for six months or so. Still, one can't help gathering impressions.

I continue to be impressed with this city. It almost overcomes my distaste for cities in general. The famous Dutch fondness for the neat and orderly seems alive and well, and although those are hardly the most important virtues -- maybe not virtues at all if pushed to extremes -- they do cushion some of the sharpness when too many people in an overpopulated planet converge.

In fact Amsterdam would be even more enjoyable without a lot of its visitors. And I don't mean Ugly Americans -- the Yanks (judging their nationality from accents) are by and large well behaved. No, the lager louts from the U.K. and Russia constitute a lot of the undesirables.

But the locals seem easygoing and content. I would think that's hard when your home city is endlessly inundated with dozens of nationalities who can't speak your own language. (I don't know Dutch, but even offering a thank you in the local lingo -- dank u wel -- seems always to draw a smile.)

The streets and, especially, the major intersections belong equally to pedestrians, cars, bicyclists, and lethal-looking trams. You'd think it would be a recipe for anarchy and confrontation. Yet everything flows with balletic grace.

I'm almost tempted to take seriously the idea that a workable society can exist without religious urges, of which Amsterdamers have precious few. The Protestant churches have been refashioned for museums and other secular duties. Amsterdam is where churches are closed on Sunday.

It seems not so much enmity to spiritual life as indifference: not worth weighing. The Western world's modern gods are here in abundance -- sex, consumerism, entertainment. Who could ask for anything more?

But they're sleepwalking into a trap. Like Europeans (and not a few Americans), they assume everyone else shares their values. When they wake up, too late, they will understand that (for instance) the Turks and Africans don't.

Case in point: today we visited the Begijnhof, a cluster of houses around a courtyard that has existed since the Middle Ages as residences for Beguines, women with a religious vocation who are not quite nuns. (Typically for Dutch tolerance, there is a Catholic chapel and a Scottish Presbyterian church.) The oldest house, dating from the 15th century although "much restored," in the guidebooks' usual phrase, is now some kind of library or study hall open to the public.

When we went in, there was a black man seated at the reception desk, who offered us no reception -- didn't look up from his newspaper. Well, no big deal, I've seen surly caretakers of all racial persuasions. But, take my word for this, there were four or five Africans including one with the complete dreadlock get-up and all looking like they were at a reggae concert. Which in a sense they were, one playing reggae music on his MP3.

No doubt the Catholics are reaching out to their African brothers by turning an obsolete sanctuary over to them.

The Dutch, except for Geert Wilders and his party, are doing something similar vis-a-vis Muslims. In so doing they risk their indigenous culture, still admirable in so many ways, still alive a little longer.

RD

I find myself in Amsterdam

Can't recall where I was when I got lost. Never mind, here I am.

Actually, I'm at a conference at a hotel near Schiphol Airport (the Steigenberger, nee Dorint) -- a pleasant, well-run meeting-cum-sleeping factory. After tomorrow I'll be done with work (for the time being) and will move to the old city and really be in Amsterdam.

Airport hotels are said to be the same everywhere, and in my limited experience, that's true. Everything I've seen so far on this visit could be on Long Island. There are no windmills out front (which I am grateful for -- if there were, it would be the most cynical tourist play imaginable).

Yet subtle things already tell me I'm not in the U.S. or U.K. Even in a very 21st century setting, lacking the overtly traditional, there is a feeling of neatness and orderliness. The chaps who drive the hotel vans from the airport either like their work or give a flipping good imitation of it. Same with the people at hotel reception; there's that indefinable air of professionalism that seems hardly to exist anymore in the U.S., where you are greeted with a mechanical smile and a bored intonation, or in the U.K. where you will probably find a student or immigrant desk clerk -- yeah, clerk -- proficient in several languages, none of them English.

I can't discuss the conference, not because it is secret but because I don't mix work and blogging. As usual, most of the interesting stuff comes in one-on-one conversations during the breaks and after the day's presentations are done, down is let hair and loosened are collars.

When I'm in Europe I can at least understand why people have somewhat different attitudes about globalism, the EU, and such than Americans (other than pseudo-Europeans) do. Here everybody lives not far from another nationality; they usually have some language in common (the Dutch almost all speak English, of course -- even other Europeans, except maybe Germans, can make no sense of Dutch). It is tempting to believe they're all one big happy family. But they confuse courtesy with shared values.

That's the story so far, from your blogger whose head is still in mid-Atlantic.

RD