Saturday, February 21. 2009
- An annual re-post for sugarin' season.
Our Vermont friends have been busy getting ready for sugarin.' We tend to think of Vermont maple syrup, but Canada is the major producer. We consume it abundantly in New England and do not approve of the cheap substitute goop in the supermarkets. We buy Maple syrup by the gallon.
Grading - lots of us like the intensity and gnarliness of Grade B and C, but you won't find it in supermarkets: Maple Syrup Grades. Photo below:
$ - We pay retail in the $20s/gallon, but the farmers get between $2-$3/gallon, usually. More in a "bad" year.
Other uses besides pancakes and waffles:
Put it on oatmeal like the Pilgrims did.
Pour some into winter squash halves and bake, like my Indian ancestors probably did.
Drizzle some over fresh-fallen snow. Instant Maple popsicles with the power to pull out your fillings.
Photo on top: The Sugar Maple, in its autumn splendor. Below: Currier and Ives' "Maple Sugaring":
The correct position is the one held by self-loathing intellectuals, like Isaiah Berlin, Edmund Burke, James Madison, Michael Oakeshott and others. These were pointy heads who understood the limits of what pointy heads can know. The phrase for this outlook is epistemological modesty, which would make a fine vanity license plate.
The idea is that the world is too complex for us to know, and therefore policies should be designed that take account of our ignorance.
David Brooks
 Thus far, most corrupt White House ever. Nobody cares.
The Dow under Obama. Related, at Pajamas: Turn Back, Mr. President
Chicago wants surveillance cameras everywhere. Except in their pols' offices, no doubt.
Disagreement with stimulus is racist, claims Congressman
Can we stop talking about race? Mod. Voice
A "kick me" foreign policy. Krauthammer
No correct answers: A solution to the math and science gender gap
Jamie Dimon likes the Admin's mortgage relief plan (video). So does Baseline Scenario
"Let housing find its clearing price." Saft at Reuters. Don't worry - it will.
Friday, February 20. 2009
If you watch the movie `Jaws’ backwards, it’s a movie about a shark that keeps throwing up people until they have to open a beach.
h/t, Bits and Pieces
with the Grateful Dead. I don't know the year or place. It begins like this:
Sometimes I feel so low-down and disgusted
Can't help but wonder what's happening to my companions
Are they lost or are they found, have they counted the cost it'll take to bring down
All their earthly principles they're gonna have to abandon ?
There's slow, slow train coming up around the bend.
I had a woman down in Alabama
She was a backwoods girl, but she sure was realistic
She said, Boy, without a doubt, have to quit your mess and straighten out
You could die down here, be just another accident statistic
There's slow, slow train coming up around the bend.
Full lyrics here.
Thanks, I'll pass.
Next Monday there is to be an Obama administration sponsored Fiscal Responsibility summit in Washington. Obama’s new Director of the Office of Management and Budget, formerly Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, will chair the summit.
Orszag is not an extremist, and his prior work at the CBO demonstrates care and understanding of varying views and political forces in shaping government economic and tax policies.
Still, when it comes down to it, he along with his boss -- President Obama -- and other Democrats favors more government command-and-control over Americans and their economic sectors, compared to Republicans favoring more competitive forces to steer our courses. (See P.S. below the fold)
Credited by Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as “"a hero in all of this” structuring the $1-trillion+ “stimulus”/porkulus legislation rushed through Congress, Orszag told Politico: “What has already been accomplished is a huge start toward a more efficient [health care] system, and I think you’re going to see more in the budget next week.” Orszag is primarily referring to the new federal comparitive effectiveness board to determine which treatments are better. There’s already much such research, much of which is useful and much of which is inconclusive, and its application to specific patients may differ widely. Applied to all, even if statistically conclusive, will cause some to be denied treatment. In the hands of government, it will be used as a tool to ration care to save costs. As this December 2008 report from the then Orszag- run CBO points out: “In considering such changes, policymakers face difficult trade-offs between the objectives of expanding insurance coverage and controlling both federal and total costs for health care.” (The whole CBO report is invaluable reading, especially if you want to get involved in the coming debates over your health care instead of just being on the receiving end.)
Orszag makes his course clearer when he says the next health care measures will be “changes to Medicare and Medicaid to make them more efficient, and to start using those programs more intelligently to lead the whole health care system.” Currently, Medicare is prohibited from considering the cost of a treatment in determining whether it is approved for payment. That will change. Currently, private insurance plans are similarly prohibited. That will change.
Peter Orszag is a 40-year old academic, and an avid runner. His views might be more tempered if he were in lesser health or older, not to mention having more practical experience in medicine.
Continue reading "Fiscal Responsibility Summit Targets Your Health Care"
When the Dylanologist took his Geology 101 back in college he was taught, just as everyone else has been since the mid-1960s, that the process of plate tectonics (or "continental drift") explains the arrangement of the continents and the obvious matching coasts of Africa and South America. The continents were at one point all stuck together as Pangaea, and then, for some reason, they split right down the middle and were pulled/pushed apart from each other, riding right over ocean crust.
Yet, what we were never shown was this map, which shows that nowhere on earth are there seafloors older than 180 million years (blue is oldest, red youngest; by contrast continental rocks date back nearly 4.3 billion years). Not only that, but the fastest rate of spreading is in the Pacific, which is presumed to be shrinking from both sides.
Geologists explain this conundrum by saying that all of the older seafloor has been "subducted" under to continents, and has vanished without a trace. Yet what is driving this activity? Are the ridges pushing the continents apart, or are the subducting seafloors pulling the ridges apart? If the push force is the driver, why is there so much spreading in the Pacific? If the pull force is stronger, how did spreading start in the first place between two connected continents? Geologists themselves don't have a good answer, admitting that they have no clear explanation, and physics suggests that neither force is anywhere near strong enough to cause entire continents to slide across the planet, or to build up huge mountain chains.
What if the answer is much simpler? What if there is no seafloor older than 180 million years because, 180 million years ago, there was no seafloor? We know that sea levels were far higher than today 100 million years ago, covering much of North America (hundreds of feet higher than they would be even if all today's ice caps were to melt). There are fossils of extinct sea creatures which lived 200 million years ago high up in the Himalayas. In the Cambrian, it is widely accepted that virtually all of North America was submerged. Before 450 million years ago, we have no evidence for any life on land, despite the fact that life had existed for over 3 billion years at that time. Did life take 3 billion years to move to land?
All of this implies that the earth may have grown in size, and that the linked lines of seafloor expansion on the map above, rather than being pressure points pushing out, are simply the places where a growing earth has cracked the outer crust and is filling it in with new material.
Ed note: In science, the truth is always a moving target. Science is all about theory du jour, not Truth. Religion is about Truth, but science is about theory-making, theory-testing, and theory-changing. Every theory is supplanted, eventually. Scientists know that. Theory-imagining is what makes science creative and fun - an art, in many ways. There never will be any such thing as "settled science."
 David Brooks tries to make the case for showering money on "frauds and greedy idiots" (his words). He does a lot of "we should...for the good of all" talk.
But what he never says is "I, David Brooks, want to shower my own money on frauds and greedy idiots." Of course, he could do that today if he wanted to. All he'd have to do would be to phone a Merced, CA bank and offer to cover somebody's defaulted mortgage. One phone call. He can afford to do that, and so can multi-millionaires Obama, Hillary, Rahm Emanuel, John Kerry, Charlie Rangel, Ted Kennedy, etc. - and zillionaire Dems like Bill Gates, Bob Rubin, George Soros, etc.
Hence our proposal: If every caring Liberal in the USA would do that to the extent of their ability, problem solved. Plus they would get to feel good about themselves, and to prove that they care.
We just want to see some proof. Readers may have seen Jammie Wearing, who noted in our link this morning how MA taxpayers refuse to "help the children" with voluntary tax dollars when given an easy opportunity to do so: "the left wants to have at it with your money, not their own." (All you need to do is to look at all of the Dem tax cheats unearthed this winter. Now we have Al Sharpton too to add to the lengthening list of prominent Dem tax dodgers.)
But to get back to mortgages, it seems clear to me that government mortgage deals, while buying votes, will accomplish little to (artificially) support the prices of housing. After all, the government already does tons of things to distort and to artificially support and inflate housing prices: mortgage interest deductions*, the passing forward of cap gains from a sold house to a new one, the one-time 1/2 million free throw when you sell, etc.
And speaking of enabling dysfunctional behavior, here's a good use of stimulus $: Free housing for drunken bums. Save me a room, just in case.
* The mortage interest deduction raises the price of housing just as the availablility of student loans and scholarships raise the price of college tuition. These things are not favors to us: they are favors for the greedy housing and greedy academic industries, disguised as favors for us.
Photo via Tiger's amusing series of photos from the Denver protest. Me? Unlike The NJ, I don't want a pony. Already have enough equines. I just want a free one-week trip to Siena. Make that 10 days, so I can cover a little more ground.
Off to ski this weekend at Mad River. I gotta go where there is lots of snow, I gotta go where it's cold! Warm weather makes my brain and body lazy. Leaving y'all with these:
 Gimme, gimme gimme. Michelle.
It's not fascism now. Change!
Sen. Coleman's quagmire. P'line. What a mess. Good entertainment, though.
The admin plans a war against coal. Not smart.
Rove: Is the ADmin winging it?
Jules: Katrina who?
In 2016, paying for Social Security becomes a big problem. Viking
Cancel your trip to Guadeloupe
George McGovern ages well. Tiger
MA taxpayers fail to take opportunity to pay their fair share
Mankiw: How will we know if the stimulus stimulates?
Admin mortgage rescue rewards fraud and default. More at Marginal Rev. Also, Rick Santelli's Chicago Tea Party (video)
Iowahawk: The Archbishop of Canterbury Tales (h/t, NYM)
Thursday, February 19. 2009
This could be from a movie. Fantastic Americana: an American soldier offers subtle motivation to Iraqi policemen:
I have grown cynical since 1979 when I found myself in Washington as a 24 year old sprite, agog at the majesty and towering historical figures with whom I was rubbing shoulders. But the reverence I had for politicians and our system of government back then was misplaced. I see now that the stately buildings, the stirring rhetoric, the passion, the belief in ideas was a mirage, a beautiful facade behind which was the crumbling, rotten ruins of 200 years of hopes, aspirations and bloody sacrifce made irrelevant by hard-eyed, cynical men who exploited people like me and what I believed for their own gain. By the time I left Washington 6 years later, I had been disabused of my boyish naivete, having seen the grubby underside of politics and governing as well as the grasping, conniving nature of so many who wield power, ideally to benefit the people but instead, to protect and enrich a wealthy elite. The education of Rick Moran was complete.
Rick Moran
h/t, Theo:
Sowell: How government legal threats created the sub-prime mortgage market. Naturally, they didn't want to hold on to that junk, so they packaged it up, and sold it to willing buyers. Totally logical. If you think there aren't people out there who want to buy junk, just check out eBay some time. They once had a booming market in Beanie Babies. Caveat emptor.
Ed. notes:
Related from neoneo: Bubbles and the Tragedy of The Commons
Related from Dino: Grifters get a second chance
I tried hard. Give me an A. It used to be sarcastic to refer to "A for effort."
The plight of the (delusional) Left-wing talkers
Carpentry joke du jour: What's the difference between Jesus and Obama?
Who will qualify for mortgage help? Not speculators. I'm glad about that. This via Insty:
MEGAN MCARDLE ON OBAMA’S HOUSING PLAN: “Well, the obvious point is that it represents a massive transfer to borrowers from lenders and the rest of us. As far as I can tell, there is no penalty for having borrowed more than you could realistically afford to repay–not so much as a speck of dirt on the credit report. The administration’s release talks a lot about ‘responsible homeowners’, but very few responsible homeowners have payments that amount to 43% of their monthly income.”
My take — let’s see what they’ve done with the first trillion before we give them any more money to play with . . . .
Dem culture of corruption: Rahm Emanuel's tricks. And remind me again - how do people with these political jobs become multi-millionaires?
Getting politics involved with the bailout was a big mistake
EPA expected to regulate carbon dioxide. Good grief. The world has gone mad. If they try to regulate fireplaces and wood-burning stoves, we will consider civil disobedience.
How much "authenticity" can a marriage handle?
The ten most famous UFO hoaxes
Redefining "hate speech." Volokh. With rules like those, how can anybody say anything about anybody?
Just name the "disaster":
Let me guess: this disaster can only be forestalled through yet higher taxes and still more suffocating regulations, which coincidentally benefit no one but authoritarian bureauweenies like Michael Bloomberg.
But here's some sanity from Mayor Bloomberg:
"One percent of the households that file in this city pay something like 50% of the taxes," explained the Mayor. "In the city, that's something like 40,000 people. If a handful left, any raise would make it revenue neutral. The question is what's fair. If 1% are paying 50% of the taxes, you want to make it even more?"
Economic warfare? Jules:
We could dicker all day about whether George Bush’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks was appropriate, proportionate, all that. We could argue all day about the same on Obama’s plan. No one sane thinks either man should not have responded in some way. It’s a question of how, how much, and what it gets you. At the current rate, Obama’s economic war will make Bush’s shooting wars look like an exercise in fiscal restraint and a bargain. If Obama’s plan works, fine. War’s over, we all go home. But at what point does Obama’s econ war get a downloadable counter, and when does Congress and the national media start squawking and declare a quagmire?
Wednesday, February 18. 2009
While understanding that Putin is a tricksy Russian who, like all national leaders does not always say what he means and who always - correctly - has his own nation's interests at heart, we do agree with almost everything he said at his Davos opening speech on January 28. One quote:
...the state's increased role in times of crisis is a natural reaction to market setbacks. Instead of streamlining market mechanisms, some are tempted to expand state economic intervention to the greatest possible extent.
The concentration of surplus assets in the hands of the state is a negative aspect of anti-crisis measures in virtually every nation.
In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state's role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.
Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.
And one more point: anti-crisis measures should not escalate into financial populism and a refusal to implement responsible macroeconomic policies. The unjustified swelling of the budgetary deficit and the accumulation of public debts are just as destructive as adventurous stock-jobbing.
As Mark Levin noted tonight, he sounds more free-market than Obama. The notion that the State knows best is insane. Our admin's instincts now appear to be to the left of both Russia and China. Read the whole thing.
The perfect girlfriend isn't the possessive type, and just wants you to be happy (h/t, S,C&A):
Black AG working for black President says Americans need to make "racial progress" and to deal with race better by somehow becoming more race conscious. I always thought the goal was color-blindness - to deal with individuals, not skin colors. It's not hard to do that, because there seem to be about a thousand different skin tones in the US.
I think we ought to speak - and think - less about race. It's a stupid subject.
The giant private equity fund Cerberus, which owns Chrysler, wants another 5 billion from the taxpayers to stay in business.
But Cerberus itself refuses to invest further funds into Chrysler. Chrysler, sad to say, is dead. Bury it.
Bloomberg on Merced, CA. I don't know what the big deal is about one's house being underwater. Heck, when you take out a car loan on a new car you are immediately underwater too, paying off a now-used car at a new car price. Nobody promised that housing prices can only go up. The extent of subprime lending still amazes me though, and the willingness of supposedly prudent fiduciary institutions to buy that crap amazes me too. One quote:
U.S. homeowners lost an estimated $3.3 trillion in house value last year, real estate valuation service Zillow said. In California, the state with the most foreclosure filings, the share of underwater owners will rise to a third of all mortgage holders by the end of the year, according to data provider First American LoanPerformance of Santa Ana, California.
Merced, located about 110 miles southeast of San Francisco in California’s agricultural Central Valley, became a housing boom town in the early part of the decade as buyers with subprime loans sought affordable property within commuting distance of Bay Area job centers, said Jeff Michael of the University of the Pacific’s Eberhardt School of Business in Stockton.
Median home prices in Merced rose from $150,000 in January 2002 to a peak $382,750 in December 2005, according to MDA DataQuick, a San Diego-based property research firm. In December 2008, the median stood at $120,500, down 52 percent from a year earlier, as four out of five resales involved properties that had been foreclosed on in the prior 12 months.
3800 acres, with 6 miles of the Teton River, 50 miles west of Great Falls. $12 million, but probably negotiable. Nice views? Can any reader name that mountain?
Downtown Choteau, 3 BR, $69,000:
VDH, via Anchoress:
Barack Obama immediately upon entering office demanded the largest government expansion in the history of the nation. The staggering debt program will require nearly a trillion dollars in borrowing to fund all sorts of entitlements and redistributive efforts, and in revolutionary fashion redefine the role of government itself. Obama pronounced the current economic crisis the moral equivalent of war, and he wanted a national mobilization to meet it — pronto.
But unlike the Bush administration, which took 15 months to prepare the country for a real war in Iraq, the Obama administration gave the public only a few hours to read the final draft of the legislation before it was made into law. Where the polarizing partisan George Bush managed to obtain the vote of majorities in both parties to remove Saddam Hussein, the healing bipartisan Barack Obama lacked the support of even a single Republican in the House and won over a mere three Republicans in the Senate.
 Wooly Mammoths used to live in LA. Not very long ago, either.
But you already knew that (h/t, Jungle Man). They are findling lots more interesting bones, though.
 The moral preening of celeb hypocrites. Paltrow in this case (photo)
Putin warns American Dems against Socialism
Surprise. Chrysler and GM want more $. The populist in me is getting tired of rewarding failure and imprudence.
Waiting for the backlash. P'line
How severe is the economic situation? Dino. Related, the explanation of why Geithner seemed so lame
Deconstructing Krugman. RCP
All of them are British citizens
Style over substance on the economy. Villainous
You mean it's not a quagmire? Surge in Afghanistan begins
Stanford Financial Group and the ongoing Dem culture of corruption. h/t, Insty
What will become of the "Freetown of Christiania"? Sounds like a den of thieves to me.
Something else to panic about. Eastern European debt. Big mess. Another result of cheap money.
Kill The Rich! Am Thinker. But aren't there tons of rich Dems? I'd wager that there are far more filty rich Dems than there are Conservatives. Certainly true in public life, beginning with the Clintons and the Obamas. And heck, Wall Street has been a huge Dem donor source for years.
Hey Will! We're part of the anti-intellectual knuckle-dragging, nose-breathing Right, and we are offended by that. Truth is, 97.4% of the Conservative political brains are in Newt's head.
Bank nationalization gains ground among Repubs
New t-shirts, via Theo:
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