Saturday, January 17. 2009
"Don't Bite the Hand That's Feeding You," from 1915. Unfortunately, it is human nature to resent one's benefactors. Thank God dogs aren't like that.
It always seemed to me that new immigrants have a better chance of appreciating the uniqueness of America than do those of us who have been here for many generations and tend to be spoiled and to take it for granted. However, my family has been here since the 1600s, and I take this blessing not at all for granted. Freedom from the State (and my genes) are my most precious heritage.
The invention of "deep England." From a review of a new Shakespeare bio by Jonathan Bates:
 Of the many influences on Shakespeare, his Warwickshire origins were most important. As the grandson of a yeoman farmer and the son of a failing Stratford-upon-Avon shopkeeper, he belonged to the country, not the city. He did not accumulate property in London, and may even have felt uncomfortable there. Unlike his theatrical contemporaries, he set scenes in Warwickshire and Gloucestershire. He had a wide and detailed knowledge of country lore and the medicinal uses of plants, using names which baffled the London compositors who set his plays into print. Bate believes that Shakespeare invented “deep England”, a rustic idyll centred on the Midlands that delights in mingling morris men and royal spectacle.
Reposted from May 6, 2005:
Save the World on Your Own Time
That's the title of Stanley Fish's oft-quoted 2003 piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
It is not paranoid to state that the Left, since the 60's, has targeted non-profits of all kinds, including churches and universities, as easy take-over opportunities, and the "nice" but well-intentioned, naive, denizens of these worlds frequently rolled out a red carpet for them.
Where else would they go besides into politics and non-profits?
Some of the most innocent organizations in the US succumbed, especially the national headquarters. The dues go from Dubuque and Atlanta to DC and NYC, where they are used as their HQ staff see fit, ie often promoting, advocating, and lobbying for left-wing causes. (Check to see what some of your favorite charities are doing with the dollars that go to their HQ, but you need to dig deeper than just checking their happy websites. Follow the money!)
Same thing with the universities, which are similarly naive and well-intentioned non-profits. But I digress.
Fish's central statement:
"My concern, however, is not with academic time management but with academic morality, and my assertion is that it is immoral for academics or for academic institutions to proclaim moral views.
The reason was given long ago by a faculty committee report submitted to the president of the University of Chicago. The 1967 report declares that the university exists "only for the limited ... purposes of teaching and research," and it reasons that "since the university is a community only for those limited and distinctive purposes, it is a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness."
Read entire piece.
Bruce Kesler's excellent health care post yesterday has this PS from him:
This survey also suggests that as in the past early support for a number of reform proposals could fade in the face of arguments that opponents might raise in a public debate. For example, seven in ten Americans (71%) say they favor the idea of employer mandates. But when given the argument often made by critics that this may cause some employers to lay off some workers support falls dramatically, to just under three in ten (29%). The same pattern holds on the topic of individual mandates. Roughly two in three (67%) favor requiring all Americans to have health insurance with help for those who could not afford it. When given the criticism that some people may be required to buy health insurance they find too expensive or do not want, support falls to two in ten (19%).
Americans seem most concerned that any health care plan not raise their costs or involve government limiting or dictating their choices. According to the survey, nearly two-thirds (65%) say they would be less likely to support a plan that would get the government get too involved in personal health care decisions, more than six in ten (61%) would be less likely to support a plan that increases people’s insurance premiums or out-of-pocket costs, and more than half (56%) would be less supportive of a plan that limits an individual’s choice in doctors.
“As we have learned from past debates, public support looms for health reform largest at the beginning of the debate, but it's relatively easy to chip away at that support with arguments about tradeoffs,” said Mollyann Brodie, Kaiser vice president and director for Public Opinion and Survey Research.
Got an email from the NJ in Maine. He had -19 degrees F last night, with snow flurries. Lowest thermometer he'd ever seen in person. Possibly too cold for downhill skiing, even for tough guys. Sounds like pub weather to me. I have heard a number of people say that this cold is due to global warming. Of course - everything is. It's 3 here right now, and our Dr. Bliss is skiing in New Hampshire. Maggie's Farm people like cold weather. It makes us feel alive - and we get to use our gear.
 Two links about coffee: 7 cups of coffee cause you to hallucinate. Also, drinking coffee reduces risk of Alzheimer's/ Photo from the latter article.
A little research on commercial airplane ditchings. Related: Somebody who studies bird-plane collisions
A very good Snow Goose recipe. On a serious note, I think I might make this hors d'oevres tonight, with Canada Goose breast. But I'm afraid the goose will end up overcooked.
Historian offered a choice. Sort of a Hobson's Choice.
The deliberate dumbing down of America. Video
Ace on asexuality:
I'm not being misogynist when I say that men and women are basically alien species living together on the same planet, united only by our matching genitals.
OK, but is matching the best word?
A mere $217,000 per job. That's my money. I earned it.
Road to Serfdom. A condensed version.
Everybody has reported that Bush's wiretapping was legal. It will remain in force, I think.
A gay sex orgy for the inauguration. Dare I ask what rimming has to do with the inauguration? Maybe Chris Matthews might know.
Rick Moran:
Geithner is lying when he says he “forgot” to pay his taxes. This is a given. It also insults our intelligence when he claims that his failure to pay the IRS what he owes is an “honest mistake.” We will now see if the rest of the Washington Democratic establishment plays along with Geithner and pretends they believe his lies, thus perpetrating a “business as usual” climate in the Obama government rather than the promised reform that so many believed so passionately he could bring about.
It is a little lie, a white lie, but telling nevertheless. And like Republican lawmakers preaching “family values” who get caught with their pants down around their ankles, anyone who preaches reform and changing the way Washington does business and then tolerates the bald faced lying of Geithner can and will be rightly accused of rank hypocrisy if they don’t do the right thing and yank this tax dodge from consideration for any high office in the Obama Administration.
Or are Democrats to be allowed a different standard of hypocrisy because of bad economic times?
I appreciate the dilemma. Geithner is a good choice, but I think I tend to worry more about the accuracy of my taxes, and general law obedience, than he does. And I have less to lose. He's a smart and clever Wall Street/DC yuppie.
Friday, January 16. 2009
In the snow and cold (13 degrees F yesterday morning, 9 this morning), we had hungry Gray Squirrels but not much of a variety of birds: Cardinal, Chickadee, Blue Jay, Mourning Dove, Song Sparrow, English Sparrow, Red-bellied Woodpecker, White Throated Sparrow, SC Junco. Boring.
The problem is the rats at night, picking up the cherries fallen off the plate, as it were. It gives some fun for the pup, though. But you hate to get licked on the face by a pup who just ate a rat. Our Great Horned Owls need to get busier. I hear them at night. They like it here in the winter. Lots of rats. I think they ate most of the bunnies already.
“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show... ”
- Andrew Wyeth. Andrew Wyeth dead at 91. Illustrator? Artist? What's the diff? They called his Dad, NC Wyeth, an "illustrator." Image above is Andrew Wyeth's Long Limbs, 1999.
Who voted for Obama? Patriot Post (scroll to Patriot Perspective)
How to deal with a home invasion (h/t, Alphecca). Related: Gun Salesman of the Year
More details of the plane crash
Look on the bright side: Consumer prices fall again. It's a good time to buy stuff.
Citigroup Citibank Whatever update. Thanks for nuthin, Sandy Weill.
What if Israel had lost the Six-Day War?
The mess that is Putin's Russia
Scathing about Bush's Presidency: View from the Right. OK, Lawrence, but drop it now. Just look at these people.
From guest poster Bruce Kesler:
Only when voters speak out loudly, and only occasionally even then, do our legislators take heed. Newly elected president Barack Obama and his choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services former Senator Tom Daschle, who is also tasked as “health reform” czar by Obama, say they intend major changes in how Americans receive health care, with government taking vastly increased control.
The latest Rasmussen poll reports that most Americans are highly skeptical and unwilling to pay higher taxes for it: Forty-three percent (43%) of U.S. voters say the quality of health care in America will get worse if a government-run health insurance plan is created to compete with private plans. Thirty-three percent (33%) say quality will get better, and 10% say it will stay the same… Forty-seven percent (47%) of voters say it is better to expand coverage through private health insurance plans than through government-run programs like Medicaid. Thirty-five percent (35%) believe the opposite to be true, with 17% not sure. In a survey last April, just 29% of American adults supported a national health insurance program overseen by the Federal Government…. just 36% favor a government-controlled health plan for the uninsured if it means an increase in their income taxes. Fifty percent (50%) are opposed to such a plan for those who cannot get insurance if it means a tax increase, and 14% are undecided….
A majority of U.S. voters (58%), however, oppose any kind of government-controlled health plan if it means they have to change their own insurance coverage.
Wednesday’s overwhelming vote in the US House to pass the huge expansion of the SCHIP program, formerly passed by the last Congress and twice vetoed by President Bush, is touted as a “down payment” on Obama-Daschle getting their way on their bigger healthcare goals. Republican efforts to amend the SCHIP bill – for example, requiring that sponsors who pledged to support legal immigrants do so -- were not allowed by the Democrats in the House. The recent empirical evidence in Hawaii was ignored that allowing those with high incomes -- those with incomes up to $80,000 may enter SCHIP -- results in many abandoning existing insurance and greatly increased government deficits. Hawaii abandoned the unaffordable program:
State health officials argued that most of the children enrolled in the universal child care program previously had private health insurance, indicating that it was helping those who didn't need it.
As with many of Obama’s choices for top spots, Tom Daschle’s nomination is running into some turbulence over his dealings with his own “charitable” tax deductions and associations with a “charity” that may have abused its status for political ends – as too many do. He’ll likely be confirmed anyway, especially with Democrat control of Congress.
Yet, as opposition has mounted in Congress – reacting to heavy public opposition – over the lack of transparency and use of hundreds of billions of dollars of “bailout” funds and Obama’s intents for over a trillion dollars more, the portent for Obama-Daschle “charities” getting their way to control over the 15% of the US’s economy in healthcare diminishes.
Thus the key question: Will data dash Daschle?
Over the transom:
What if a Republican president submitted for cabinet confirmation ...
1. A Treasury Secretary with supervisory powers over the IRS who failed to report and pay taxes on over $100,000 in personal income?
2. A Commerce Secretary who had to withdraw because of an investigation into "pay to play" allegations in the state where he sits as governor?
3. A Secretary of Transportation revealed to be the king of earmarks while in Congress?
4. A Secretary of State whose husband is an international free-booter collecting millions from many of the very countries and leaders with whom his wife must deal in representing vital U.S. interests?
5. An Attorney General who failed to blow the whistle upon one the most infamous pardons ever granted by a sitting President?
6. A Solicitor General who has never argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court?
7. A Secretary of Labor who refuses to reveal her positions on issues vital to the American business community?
9. A television personality with no public experience whatsoever for Surgeon General?
10. A long-time Congressman and former White House Chief of Staff to head the Central Intelligence Agency?
Thursday, January 15. 2009
 Hot women cheat on their husbands. Dog bites man.
Chavez changes his tune, begs for US oil bids.
The Inaugu-palooza
Thank you, President Bush. Anchoress
The Islamic way of war. Middle East Forum
Joe Who?
Reason #1343 to screw the UN
Moral inversion: Che = Batman
Who can improve schools - parents or bureaucrats? Bureaucrats will only protect their own interests. That's their primary job.
In favor of de-skilling. From Stumbling:
Rather than raises people’s skills to fill demanding jobs, why don’t we cut the demands of those jobs? Deskilling is cheaper than education.
Makes sense to me. I ain't overly eddicated, but I does OK wit my wits and from the School of Hard Knocks which taught me to always come back stronger and smarter when the mean old world knocks me down.
Here's what the "smart" stimulus will include. I earned that money. Related: The ethics of taxation.
Boortz:
Since when does the IRS acknowledge the concept of an "innocent mistake?"
From Nyquist:
According to President Bush, “We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”
The president’s statement is logically correct, but strategically nonsensical. While the “expansion of freedom” is desirable for America, it is prohibitively costly and beyond our capabilities. It antagonizes every despot on the planet, and causes them to join with our enemies.
From AVI:
...Jesus must be made into the Original Gandhi. Rubbish. Christian pacifism is a high calling, and it might be asked of any of us. But it is not the only calling, and not the highest.
From Luskin:
Conservatives may rightly object to all this government meddling in private markets on general principle. But the more salient objection is that government has botched it. The attempts to deal with failures at Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Washington Mutual, and Wachovia were not rescues or bailouts at all—they were wipeouts, seemingly intended more to punish than to rescue. They were government takings of private property for public use—seizures of shareholder wealth in troubled firms in the name of saving the system—without the just compensation promised in the Fifth Amendment and often beyond the legal authority of the government agencies involved.
Editor: As always, I (and our other contribs) added to this NJ post. I just got an email from a BD pup that she could see the airplane in the Hudson from her window on the West Side of Manhattan. That pilot is a hero. You have to admire those nerves of steel and the quick thinking. That was a 3-4 minute flight. I want that pilot Sully on my next flight.
What are these?
It would be infra our dig to award a prize to the low-class and monotonous YouPorn.com, but, for Our Favorite Gun P*rn: Mr. Free Market (It would have been a tie with Kim Du Toit, but he wisely retired from blogging.)
Favorite Gun P*rn Site (where you can buy them): Gunbroker.com. It is even fun just to look.
Best Skank Soft Porn Female Art Photos Lovely Women: Theo
Most Frustrating Site Because When You Think You Discovered Some Cool Obscure Article You Find Out That He's Already Linked It: Insty
Our Most-Linked Pro Columnists of 2008: A three-way tie between Krauthammer, Kimball, and Steyn.
Columnist Who Most Often Articulates Clearly What We're Thinking But Cannot Articulate: Sowell
Met some darn nice all-American folks today, delivering an eBay furniture purchase to us. They drove up here from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. He does intel-related stuff for the gummint. She does eBay. We almost never use eBay, but this worked out very well indeed.
Not only were they good folks, but the item was far better than described and the price entirely reasonable. I steered them to a delicious lunch up here before their trip home.
Thanks, friends!
 Since it's going to be as cold as heck everywhere this week and weekend, our group decided that we'd rather freeze skiing at Sugarloaf than freeze with the annoying NYC and Fairfield County crowds in the annoying and tedious Vermont lift lines.
There are excellent last-minute MLK weekend deals, thanks to the lousy economy.
Looks like the weather will be invigorating - around or below 0 (F) all weekend. But I've skiied at -10. The trick is to keep moving, and to try to resist the temptation to lick anything metal.
And to not overdress for the temp. If you do, you'll sweat too much coming down, and the sweat will freeze to you on the lifts. Best to stay cold. After all, it is winter - and the earth is cooling fast.
This is an 8-hour drive for me from NYC. Sugarloaf is up in the Rangely area where I have happily hunted and fished in the past. I'm leaving now, back Sunday night. Will leave some pre-posts for our Editor's kind consideration.
Everybody at Maggie's has seemed too busy to do much writing of his own this past month or so, so we have been throwing up link posts without adding much to them. I am in the same boat at the moment.
 Ars Psychiatrica on The Impossible Profession
Eric Kandel on the biology of psychotherapy
Neoneo on long-term psychotherapy.
Photo of Freud demonstrating his tobacco-inspired analytic technique via Neoneo.
Readers know how much I like outdoor gear, and how I need to remind myself that when I wear a few layers, I need to get trousers a full size larger in the waist or I will be miserable in the woods and fields.
It was a balmy 13 degrees F this morning here, with snow. Beautiful.
Well, I need to remind myself of the same thing with boots. I tried out some new snow/winter boots early this morning to plow and sand and shovel the driveway and walks before going to work in Hartford, and I had not figured for liner socks and heavy socks. It just hurt.
Remind me, readers. I have trouble remembering this: Except for base layers, winter gear needs to be bigger than one's usual.
With the global cooling crisis, even those in the southern reaches will need to learn these details. Here's Dr. Merc's boat this morning in the Florida Keys (cannot find our friend's site right now, and I doubt he can find his snow shovel either):
Never use a wine for cooking or marinating that you would not be very happy to drink in a glass.
Dr. Joy Bliss
"Making Room for Miss Manners is a Parenting Basic." NYT
Insty linked this quote via an interesting (Greenwich) CT blog we hadn't known about, For What It's Worth:
CALIFORNIA NIGHTMARES. “There’s already plenty of documentation about the collapse of California and how its citizens legislated it from a land of opportunity to a hell hole that punishes anyone with ambition and a dream. In the annals of its decline, this small item will surely pass unnoticed but it’s emblematic of what happened. In fact, I think it sums up the whole sorry saga quite neatly.”
There's a good summary via his link. The author of that blog says he is an ex-lawyer who is much happier in the real estate biz. Also through his site, this news article about some suckers in Fairfield, CT.
 An anti-love drug? Brilliant concept. It would eliminate a lot of human misery, frustration, and despair. But it would destroy the music industry.
Raccoon for dinner? Why not? Times are tough, right? Personally, I prefer possum. Possum tastes like chicken, coon tastes like bear.
Dems who hate US taxes. Funny, we now have the new head of the Treasury and the Chairman of Ways and Means, each of whom have been refusing to pay their income taxes. Things must be looking up.
TED spread says TARP is working.
Q&O: End the war on drugs
Why spending stimulus is needed. Becker-Posner. Tiger agrees.
A meaningful tax favor for the semi-rich: A patch for the AMT. I'd guess that the AMT has been hitting Congressmen. It hit me last year because I rent and have no mortgage deduction. In fact, I have zero debt.
About a really big electric motor
How to evaluate gummint health proposals. Coyote
Wednesday, January 14. 2009
Some reheated links at Thompson highlighted Vanessa Eagle's documentary series Lefties, which is about the effort to create a Leninist Sunday tabloid in London, and their quixotic effort to topple the great Maggie Thatcher.
If you have a few spare minutes, give the video a look. It's about newspapers, sort of.
Nothing will surprise you about their failure to recognize the realities of life and the demands of high functioning and accomplishment, but it's still a fascinating record. It's sort of like "We're All Bozos On This Bus," or a Monty Python skit. The bits about "caring about the environment" are especially poignant from folks who have probably never hoed a garden, mucked out a stall, or gotten lost in the Maine woods or spent a week camping in the Montana wilderness.
These bozos should have started a blog. That might have worked, but this was the pre-blog era.
It's Climate Change!
We're all gonna die! Global warming causes global cooling, dummy. All sophisticated, bien pensant folks understand that.
Meanwhile, the supposedly Kyoto-friendly Euros beg for more fossil fuel. We thought they gave it up for Lent forever. Yeah, I know: "That was then, this is now."
And more: I guess it's still too hot in Madison, WI. Isn't it nice that those sanctimonious moonbats are trying to save the world by bossing people around?
In the mailbox today, on one of those long sticky-notes:
 "Irish woman looking for a housekeeping job or helping out on weekends. Please call: (phone #)."
How can one not give her a call? "Helping out" sounds darn good, and so does "Irish." But can she split logs, remove spiderwebs and dustballs the size of raccoons, and do the laundry without bleaching everything to smithereens? And can she make mashed potatoes?
Surely the latter. But I already know the Irish Secret: A whole stick of butter, a thing of sour cream, a cup of heavy cream, and a mountain of salt and pepper. Almost forgot one minor detail - a bunch of boiled potatoes in there too, mashed to a lumpless mush by strong Irish arms.
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