Maggie's Farm

A quote from Myron Magnet's piece of the above title at City Journal:

With a 50 percent high school dropout rate and a 70 percent illegitimacy rate, with African-Americans committing half the nation’s murders though only 13 percent of the population, black America—especially the poorer part of it—is in trouble. “We cannot blame white people,” Cosby asserted in his incendiary speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board school desegregation decision. “It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing.” As Jesse Jackson used to say, Cosby recalls, “No one can save us from us but us.”

Sure, racism hasn’t vanished, Cosby acknowledges in his 2007 book Come On People, a follow-up to his speech written with Harvard psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint. “But for all the talk of systemic racism and governmental screw-ups, we must look at ourselves and understand our own responsibility.” Even with lingering discrimination, “there are more doors of opportunity open for black people today than ever before in the history of America,” and “these doors are tall enough and wide enough” for just about all black people “to walk through with their heads held high.” So while “there are forces that make the effort to escape poverty difficult,” African-Americans are by no means merely the playthings of vast forces and helpless victims of racism. “When people tell you, ‘You can’t get up, you’re a victim,’ ” Cosby warns, “that’s when you know it is the devil you’re hearing.”

Read the whole thing. There are few things I would welcome more than for black Americans to abandon unhealthy victimhood and its accompanying sense of entitlement, and to feel and believe that they are fully part of this country - with all of the wonderful and exciting challenges and opportunities that everybody else faces in a free American life. 

Black Americans are not the only Americans to fall victim to sick, hedonistic, irresponsible or sociopathic subcultures. Plenty of whites do that too - and not just the poor. Wealthy people too: I've seen that plenty of times.

Washington is teeing up "the rich" for a big tax hike next year, as a way to make them "pay their fair share." Well, the latest IRS data have arrived on who paid what share of income taxes in 2006, and it's going to be hard for the rich to pay any more than they already do. The data show that the 2003 Bush tax cuts caused what may be the biggest increase in tax payments by the rich in American history.

Whole thing in the WSJ. 

My advice to Dems: No matter how hungry you are, never kill the geese that lay the golden eggs. When peoples' tax rates start hitting 60% (as predicted in NY State under Obama's tax plan), only the ultra-income folks still feel motivated to work hard, to take risks, and to be entrepreneurial and create new jobs. People want disposable income, and they want to save money their own way, for their own personal goals.

Otherwise, they just work less, and some elect to enter the already-huge American "cash economy" - something I hate but which is growing fast. I do hear this more and more often: "$400 for the job for cash, $800 for check or credit card." 

Extreme taxation has already driven the work ethic out of Europe, while Asia relaxes taxes and regulation -and grows like a weed. The goal for America should be that every family can and should be wealthy, remain that way via inheritance, and never be forced to rely on the government (ie, their neighbor's income) for anything they need. Dependency on "government programs" ain't independence. It's forced charity.

Wealth is not a zero-sum game. Wealth is created out of thin air by work, creativity, investment, and risk-taking.

- Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered at the American Physical Society

Finally, a critical mass of scientists are openly doubting the warming alarmists. It's about time. I don't think scientists are fraudulent: I think they develop enthusiasms for their opinions and their intricate computer models like regular humans, and, like regular humans, are reluctant to change their minds.

It's the politicians, bureaucrats, and warmist activists who are fraudulent. They are seeking $ and power out of this deal. I have nothing to gain either way, even though I do believe that some warming would overall be a benefit for humans, as it has been in the past.

Significant cooling would be the real threat to civilization.

Everyone is a libertarian when it comes to his or her own choices.

Coyote, in a piece titled Statists in Libertarian Clothing

Good things interfere with good things, and bad things interfere with good things.

Tonight, we were able to manage to attend a nice cocktail party, and then to get out to dinner with dear friends we haven't spent time with in a while. There are only so many weekends in a year, and only so many years in a lifetime. Keeping up with friends, and doing the things you want to do, fills the calendar.

This summer, for example, I realize that I cannot golf, work in the gardens, work on my tennis game and play a match or two, go fishing or sailing on the coast with friends, help the Mrs. pick out new ceiling lighting for the hallways, go riding with the Mrs. on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, get to church, and sit by the pool and read with a cigar and a scotch which often ends up as a little siesta. Not to mention evening social engagements and the occasional invitations for sporting clays and skeet.

Don't even mention wanting time to spend messing with these internets.

There are fewer conflicts in the fall and winter up here. For one thing, no yard and garden chores other than wood-splitting and cleaning up fallen limbs and trees in the pastures. Still, I like to go for ducks or goose or grouse or pheasants, but I have a Saturday morning men's tennis group, and you cannot hunt in CT on Sunday. Plus we like to ski in New Hampshire and sometimes Vermont, and I usually have some weekend jobs for work that are needed on Monday.

Nothing I do is particularly expensive (other than keeping the horses, maintaining the pool, and keeping a stock of Cuban Dominican smokes). It's all about time - and making choices.

I think I am going to give up the golf this year. If I ever retire - which I do not intend to ever do willingly - maybe I can take it up again. And I am going to hire people to do the mowing even though I enjoy it. I make this promise to myself.

We are always told that accepting limits is the biggest part of maturity but, when it comes to my plan-to-do list, that aspect of maturity still is tough for me. Friends tell me that I have too many interests.

"Apparently the healing is not complete." Clintonistas supporting McCain?

"Guardian Moonbats discover environmentalism's shrieking authoritarianism"

Limousine Liberals: Gore and his gas-guzzlers

Help needed with Obama jokes.

How is this for paid maternity leave? Who would ever hire a woman of child-bearing years with that plan?

And speaking of pregnancy, Mr. Free Market notes:

Men are likely to give in to the temptations of a beautiful woman while women work hard to resist the charms of a handsome man, a new study claims. The research found that even men who say they are committed to their wives and girlfriends are vulnerable to the advances of a flirt.

...and how much did that brilliant study cost?

Photo: One of our Farm Flirts, courtesy of Theo. Call me "vulnerable."

An argument ex silentio claims "You respond with silence, thus I am proven right."

From Wiki: 

"In general, the claim that the absence of something demonstrates the proof of a proposition. An argumentum ex silentio ('argument from silence') is an argument based on the assumption that someone's silence on a matter suggests ('proves' when a logical fallacy) that person's ignorance of the matter or their inability to counterargue validly."

Of course, there are many reasons for silence besides an inability to make a counterpoint, including a simple lack of interest in pursuing a line of discussion or, as I have often found myself doing in debates with Liberals, reverting to silence out of a feeling of futility.

In the blog world, the common expression "crickets chirping" is a cute way of implying an ex silentio argument. Sometimes it's right, sometimes an error.

Augean Stables has a pretty good example of this fallacy in a debate he is engaged in about the al Durah affair.