We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Article the Eleventh: The enumeration, in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Article the Twelfth: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved by the States respectively, or to the people.
I enjoy reviewing quaint, obsolete documents like the Bill of Rights. The online, handy source for the 100 most important documents of the Republic: Click here: Our Documents - Home
Without question, the most entertaining thing on the Intertubes right now. If Iowahawk ever calls, and says: Road trip!, never say no. You can sit in the back with me, the Techno-Viking, and the Seven Horsemen of the Apocalypso. And Dick Dale, if'n he ain't busy.
A conversation I heard yesterday on Sean Hannity's radio program was a stark reminder to me of what Conservatives and the liberty-loving are up against with the woman voter.
The caller was an obviously bright, cheerful, likeable, married young mom from Long Island. Sean was his usual polite and friendly self, but he did press her on her points. She wanted free medical care for her kids, and for herself. Then it evolved that she also wanted free day care, and then it became clear that she wanted free housing available too, and auto insurance and medicine. Sean asked her if she felt that the government should give her a free car, to which she said no, noting that the government already provides bus service where she lives - but her family has cars. She said twice that in Europe, people are "taken care of." I think Sean also asked her about free food, but I don't recall.
Sean was, appropriately, trying to find the limit of what she thought other people should buy for her. She believed that everyone should be taxed at 50% as a minimum, in exchange for "services." The notion of markets was irrelevant to her, as were such abstract notions as freedom.
I believe that this is a particularly female view of life, and related to my post of neo-neo's 2-part essay on marriage and divorce today. Women with kids want to feel safe and secure. It's the biological priority. In a world full of divorce, without tribe or the tight extended families of the past, it should be no surprise that women look elsewhere for security.
Women's Lib, with its leftist leaders, spoke about independence and autonomy and freedom but acted, politically, as if they wished to exchange dependence on men for dependence on the taxpayer: that has become the family farm, and the "village," and the "tribe" of the present.
Neo-neocon, who is a rara avis - a conservative psychotherapist - has a fine piece on marriage (and divorce), titled Getting Married: What's in it for me?
...the larger point is that her policy approach revealed all the impulses not of the New Centrism but the Old Leftism. Her statements were redolent of the 1990s phrase "command and control." They reflect a bias toward the old tax-raising on people who aren't rich, who aren't protected, the old "my friends and I know best, and we'll fill you dullards in on the details later."
Roberts at Cafe Hayek had an intriguing (at least for us who are only marginally economically literate) piece on the limits of measurement, and the abuse of measurement, in economics. It's titled Fooling Ourselves. One quote:
...how many (other) studies can you think of where someone staked out a controversial position and convinced the skeptics based on empirical analysis? I think it can be done, but it's rare. And in today's world, most of the interesting empirical claims are being made in cases where the data are too incomplete and the issue is so complex that we can't move to a consensus. The empirical work doesn't improve our understanding of what's going on. It masks what's going on. It gives a patina of science when in effect the numbers aren't really informing the debate.
Indeed, the fact that something is measurable does not render it meaningful, and not everything that is meaningful is measurable.
Economics is, of course, a "social science" and not hard science. We recently posted Data Mining and Junk Science in which we discuss some of the limits and misuses of the harder sciences.
Scientists know that all data is provisional and deserves skepticism, that most theories have a finite life span, and that capital "T" Truth is more of a metaphysical or religious concept than it is the subject of math and science.
Photo: Those of us who are my age remember these nifty tools well. To the youngsters: that is a slide rule.
Is this Hillary sex story for real? Her "body person"? Or is it "fake but accurate"? Or is it dirty tricks?
I hope it's not true. I'd like to see primaries and elections on the issues, but I have learned, over time, that politics is warfare. The young lady mentioned is certainly a cutie-pie, and rumors of Hillary's proclivities go back to the Little Rock days. Everybody's heard them.
The rescue of the Florida Everglades, the largest and most expensive environmental restoration project on the planet, is faltering.
Seven years into what was supposed to be a four-decade, $8 billion effort to reverse generations of destruction, federal financing has slowed to a trickle. Projects are already years behind schedule. Thousands of acres of wetlands and wildlife habitat continue to disappear, paved by developers or blasted by rock miners to feed the hungry construction industry.
The idea that the federal government could summon the will and money to restore the subtle, sodden grandeur of the so-called River of Grass is disappearing, too.
Instead of complaining about the federal government's stinginess, why not consider what more Florida can do now, if not to restore the entire ecosystem, to stop the development of a habitat and a hunk of land that most Americans agree is worth protecting as a precious piece of our national inheritance.
Photo: NYT photo of the Everglades in Palm Beach County
I, the Maggie's Farm News Junkie, am heading off to northern NH for a two-day hunt, but I wanted to get these good links on the board before I leave tonight. The team will fill in, as always.
More on the U of Delaware ideological reeducation at FIRE. h/t, Never Yet
The atheist, psychiatrist, and much-admired essayist Ted Dalrymple addresses the surge of books advocating atheism, in City Journal. A quote (my bolds):
Few of us, especially as we grow older, are entirely comfortable with the idea that life is full of sound and fury but signifies nothing. However much philosophers tell us that it is illogical to fear death, and that at worst it is only the process of dying that we should fear, people still fear death as much as ever. In like fashion, however many times philosophers say that it is up to us ourselves, and to no one else, to find the meaning of life, we continue to long for a transcendent purpose immanent in existence itself, independent of our own wills. To tell us that we should not feel this longing is a bit like telling someone in the first flush of love that the object of his affections is not worthy of them. The heart hath its reasons that reason knows not of.
Of course, men—that is to say, some men—have denied this truth ever since the Enlightenment, and have sought to find a way of life based entirely on reason. Far as I am from decrying reason, the attempt leads at best to Gradgrind and at worst to Stalin. Reason can never be the absolute dictator of man’s mental or moral economy.
The search for the pure guiding light of reason, uncontaminated by human passion or metaphysical principles that go beyond all possible evidence, continues, however; and recently, an epidemic rash of books has declared success, at least if success consists of having slain the inveterate enemy of reason, namely religion. The philosophers Daniel Dennett, A. C. Grayling, Michel Onfray, and Sam Harris, biologist Richard Dawkins, and journalist and critic Christopher Hitchens have all written books roundly condemning religion and its works. Evidently, there is a tide in the affairs, if not of men, at least of authors.
The curious thing about these books is that the authors often appear to think that they are saying something new and brave. They imagine themselves to be like the intrepid explorer Sir Richard Burton, who in 1853 disguised himself as a Muslim merchant, went to Mecca, and then wrote a book about his unprecedented feat. The public appears to agree, for the neo-atheist books have sold by the hundred thousand. Yet with the possible exception of Dennett’s, they advance no argument that I, the village atheist, could not have made by the age of 14 (Saint Anselm’s ontological argument for God’s existence gave me the greatest difficulty, but I had taken Hume to heart on the weakness of the argument from design).
Read the whole thing. Having read many reviews of these books (but not the books), it is my impression that they have a rebellious rather than inquiring tone, a lack of interest in metaphysics (which I happen to believe is the highest expression of the human mind and soul), and a religious-like reverence for human "reason" - however that might be defined.
"Seen a shooting star tonight And I thought of you. You were trying to break into another world A world I never knew. I always kind of wondered If you ever made it through. Seen a shooting star tonight And I thought of you.
Seen a shooting star tonight And I thought of me. If I was still the same If I ever became what you wanted me to be Did I miss the mark or Over-step the line That only you could see? Seen a shooting star tonight And I thought of me.
Listen to the engine, listen to the bell As the last fire truck from hell Goes rolling by, all good people are praying, It's the last temptation The last account The last time you might hear the sermon on the mount, The last radio is playing.
Seen a shooting star tonight Slip Away. Tomorrow will be another day. Guess it's too late to say the things to you That you needed to hear me say. Seen a shooting star tonight Slip away."
"Shooting Star," from 1989's Oh Mercy. A 1997 performance is below, though some would argue that Dylan's performance of the song from the MTV Unplugged release is the definitive version.
Hillary Clinton does not say what she means or mean what she says.
There is an Ends Justify the Means mentality and ultimately, I suspect, the Ends are Me Me Me even more than they are Socialism. Sounding virtuous about wanting to hand out other peoples' hard-earned money is just her chosen tool, while she hangs out with, and collects $ from, all of her billionaire friends. But she cannot finesse things the way Slick Willie can.
A big tent Repub party? Definitely. Both parties should be big tent. It's a party's job to win elections, not to be pure. And yes, I like Rudy as a candidate. He is tough, scrappy and quick.
I like Putin's election strategy. It sure beats promising new entitlements.
No sex on Singapore Air, please. But then why the comfy beds?
From "Beware of Conservative speakers on campus - they might actually change a mind or two", at neoneo - a quote from Prager:
….ad hominem labels are the left’s primary rhetorical weapons. So when leftist students are actually confronted with even one articulate conservative, many enter a world of cognitive dissonance. That is one reason why universities rarely invite conservatives to speak: they might change some students’ minds.
A conversation I heard yesterday on Sean Hannity's radio program was a stark reminder to me of what Conservatives and the liberty-loving are up against with the woman voter.
Blacks in the top chairs. 
Roberts at Cafe Hayek had an intriguing (at least for us who are only marginally economically literate) piece on the limits of measurement, and the abuse of measurement, in economics. It's titled Fooling Ourselves. One quote:
The 
More on the U of Delaware ideological reeducation at 
The atheist, psychiatrist, and much-admired essayist Ted Dalrymple addresses the surge of books advocating atheism, in City Journal. A quote (my bolds):
Why we need 527s. 