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.
The Second Pass is a new American books blog edited by John Williams. In his introductory message to readers John explains that the loss of book reviews from the pages of the print media and the possible disappearance of many newspapers has prompted him to go online to create a space where many voices can come together to talk about books old and new.
There's a section for new publications, and one for books that have been around for some time, and a brilliant feature called The Shelf which asks readers who come to the website to recommend books in 75-125 words. I am already considering what I might recommend there myself, and I have noted down a George Pelecanos novel called The Turnaround to go on my wish list.
We had three pretty good posts here about making money yesterday (scroll down), so it seems timely to post Francesco's "money speech."
The freedom to create wealth - indeed the very notion of the regular energetic person creating wealth if he or she wants to - is as essential an American freedom as all of our others. Ace reminds us of Francisco's famous speech. One bit:
To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money--and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being--the self-made man--the American industrialist.
"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose--because it contains all the others--the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money.' No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity--to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.
"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide-- as, I think, he will.
"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out."
When I was a kid, my babysitter would take me fishing for Blue Crabs off the dock. What it required was a string with a hunk of bacon tied to the end. When you gently pulled it up to just below the surface, you needed a crab net to scoop up the crabs clinging to the bacon. Otherwise, they would let go of the bacon.
My Mom was never disappointed to find a bucket of two dozen crabs when she got home.
We have posted, somewhat disparagingly, about the Blue Crab's natural history and the Blue Crab as dining material, (too much effort, basically) but we never have disparaged good Maryland crab cakes, especially when consumed in volume with volumes of bad beer in low-life Maryland tatoo pubs with dogs walking around, after a day of duck hunting.
The subject comes up because we noticed projects about the aquaculture of Blue Crabs. Very cool. Fresh water? Who would have thought it?
What a clever country we are. Speaking of clever people, Sippican sends this recipe:
CRAB CAKES 1/2 stick (1/4 cup) unsalted butter, melted and cooled 4 large eggs, beaten lightly 6 tablespoons sour cream 1/4 cup minced fresh parsley leaves (preferably flat-leafed) 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 1 teaspoon paprika 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste 1/4 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste 2 pounds lump crab meat, picked over 2 cups fine fresh bread crumbs 1/3 cup cornmeal 1/2 cup vegetable oil
tarragon tartar sauce as an accompaniment lemon wedges as an accompaniment
In a bowl whisk together the butter, the eggs, the sour cream, the pa rsley, the lemon juice, the Worcestershire sauce, the paprika, the salt, and the cayenne and stir in the crab meat and the bread crumbs gently. Form 1/2-cup measures of the mixture into twelve 3/4-inch-thick cakes and transfer the crab cakes as they are formed to a baking sheet sprinkled with half the cornmeal. Sprinkle the crab cakes with the remaining cornmeal and chill them, covered with plastic wrap, for at least 1 hour or overnight.
In a large heavy skillet heat the oil over moderately high heat until it is hot but not smoking and in it sauté the crab cakes in batches, turning them once, for 3 to 4 minutes on each side, or until they are golden, transferring them as they are cooked to paper towels to drain. Keep the crab cakes warm on another baking sheet in a 200°F. oven. Serve the crab cakes with the tarragon tartar sauce and the lemon wedges. Makes about 12 crab cakes, serving 6.
I'd skip the bread crumbs. They dilute the crab meat.
No time to write today, but I just wanted to post a little reminder that, in every recession in my lifetime, the Left screams "Failure of Capitalism!" and does its best to exploit the opportunity for government power grabs.
It's not about economics - it's all about power and control.
If you'll be in NYC this week, there is a big sale of good Beretta stuff at Soiffer-Haskin. Up to 80% off. (No firearms, though.) A sign of the times for luxury goods.
All of the doomsday computer modeling on climate rely on a positive feedback hypothesis, which has often been discussed by Watts Up and Climate Skeptic.
The existence of a positive climate feedback loop, however, is purely theoretical and, as many have noted, nature tends to be more about negative than positive loops. Furthermore, the computer models have yet to show any predictive power.
Watts Up now has evidence for negative feedback loops in climate. It's time to start over with the climate models - and it's time for the modelers to show a little humility. After all, those genius Wall Street quant modelers haven't done too well, have they?
Being green is for the little people. Al Gore is big people. If you want to know what people really believe, watch their behavior and ignore their words.
ARNOLD KLING: “For quite a while, but especially over the last nine months, the best way to predict developments in politics and finance has been to ask: what will do the most to increase the concentration of power? Every headline, from the Geithner regulatory plan to the proposed cap on the charitable deduction, to the resignation of the General Motors CEO, should be viewed in that light.”
A splendid essay: Oh, What a Wonderful Recession. One quote:
These pundits, left-leaning economists, and other designated “experts,” differ on the precise ramifications of the vanished “American Dream,” but the crux is similar: we’re entering a long, long era of reduced expectations and simpler way of life. Considering the sources—and academia is the epicenter—it’s not surprising that “Reaganism” is now a filthy word, Wall Street money-grubbers are and will be considered pariahs on the order of pornographers and ambulance-chasing lawyers, and high taxes are both necessary and desirable. An element of this commentary is the lingering resentment of the Bush years—the “stolen” election of 2000, Kerry’s loss in ’04, and the supposed philistinism of the former president—but the larger theme is, hey, we’re now in charge! Most of the writing expresses hostility to entrepreneurship and the commercial world, the belief that business, large and small, is somehow dirty, anti-intellectual, and brings out the worst in people. The underclass must be protected because it’s too fragile to be trusted to the greedy, corrupt upper class; a huge, benign government needs to steer such unfortunates in their private and professional lives.
Typical of this paternalistic mindset is the cover story of April’s American Prospect, “Less is the New More: Why post-consumer America could be a better place,” written by Cornell University economist Robert H. Frank, an out-and-out exercise in wishful thinking that’s not uncommon among self-styled “progressives,” who, between the lines, believe that the current financial collapse will ultimately be recorded as a positive paradigm shift. In other words, to use the catchphrase from Martha Stewart, one of the discredited icons of the “greedy” culture that purportedly began with Reagan, the continuing economic crisis can be turned into “a good thing.”
Absolutely pathetic. Read the whole thing, and weep for our spineless, pitiful and over-educated, decadent and entitled co-citizens. Our elites just don't get it.
We know that you have been too busy to post much lately. Despite that disappointment, we want to note and celebrate the numerous wonderful career and personal things going on in your life this year.
Everything's coming up daffodils. You are indeed one blessed and fortunate Dylanologist.
While it may be overly simplistic to divide people into the producers (of profits) and the non-producers, there is still something to it. And there is something to it psychologically too, because the non-producers often carry a small secret uncomfortable feeling about being more directly dependent on the effort and profit of others to produce the $ to cover their paychecks.
The creation of wealth is a kind of magic from which everyone benefits. I am sick of the CEO-bashing and business-bashing and bashing of commerce. The Left acts according to the foolish and economically moronic illusion that wealth (and poverty) are static, and operate on a zero-sum basis. That's what "Gimme yours" comes from.
When I think of producers and wealth-producers, I do not think of Ayn Rand's heroic industrialists, nor do I think of Wall Street deal-makers, bond salesmen, or money-managers. Those are a tiny number. No, I think of people like the alligator farmer they had on Dirty Jobs on the Discovery Channel. I think of people like Sippican, who creates value out of a chunk of wood. I think of the high school drop-out who buys a gas station, adds a mini-mart, and ends up owning three of them and employing 40 people. I think of my gunsmith and his two younger apprentices who will probably buy the business from him someday. I think of a guy who buys an old building and fixes it up. I think of the gal who trained my hunting dogs. I think of my carpenter, who keeps my house from falling down. I think of the dairy farmer who uses some of our land for his yearlings. I think of our groom, a legal Mexican immigrant who built a grooming business and now has 12 grooms working for him - and now two blacksmiths too: he says he's too busy running things to do our grooming anymore. I think of Synthstuff with his general store. I think of the NYC bridge-painting contractor I met on a hunting trip who started out as a union apprentice. All independent, proud creators of value and wealth - out of thin air, sweat, hard work, and knowledge.
Those are the folks who pay all of the taxes, create the jobs, and make the donations. That is the beating commercial heart of America where anybody who wants to can still build a business and make money if that is what they want to do. Everything else depends on that and those folks, from government to churches to museums to opera houses to universities and every other non-profit, to bridges and airports and conservation and medical research. We should all be grateful to them for what they do instead of joining the silly few who look down their noses on commerce - while feeding off its magic.
Because of the way the world is made, this means that some people will receive a lot more money than others.
But is there truly any injustice in this? Consider the alternative. If we say that a baseball pitcher, or a top movie star, a great trader, a gifted entrepreneur, or even a well-motivated and hard-working local beer distributor should submit to an arbitrary salary cap, then what happens? The extra value created by that individual will go to other people, who are quite likely to be politically favored. The inevitable outcome is pervasive corruption.
Another:
I’ve said from the beginning of the current bailout mess that government-assisted companies are necessarily to be deemed as failures. This includes everyone from Bear Stearns to General Motors to AIG to Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac to Citigroup. It’s simply not just to expend public dollars to prop up failed enterprises. I’ve said many times that we simply can’t let them fail in an unordered way, because the collateral damage is too great. But neither can we let them continue to operate indefinitely.
Common shareholders of assisted companies need to be wiped out, and the operations should be sold off or liquidated in an orderly fashion. That’s what I had hoped would happen to AIG, Fannie/Freddie, and GM. Instead, our current government acts as if it can run these businesses indefinitely, even as it says with its lips that it can’t and shouldn’t.
That’s a true injustice, and that does amount to rewarding failure with taxpayer dollars. That makes me mad as hell, mad enough to take up a pitchfork and march. But I won’t be marching to the neighborhoods where CEOs reside. I’ll be marching up Capitol Hill and the White House.
The Left has been talking a lot these days about income equality. I have no idea why. Even putting aside the fact that the Left's only plan to reduce inequality is to reduce the incomes of the prosperous, I see no virtue in income equality.
Furthermore, I see many serious problems with the concept, just two of which are disincentivization of risk-taking and of the assumption of responsibilities.
Fred Bauer discusses Yglesias on redistribution of "the wealth" (h/t, Riehl). One quote from Yglesias:
What if we had a 95 percent marginal tax rate on income over $10 million? What dire consequences would flow from this?
Besides the minor details of the loss of freedom and the confiscation of citizens' property (and the fact that people would quit buying those $200 million Powerball tix), what could possibly be wrong with it?
Ed. note: Many of the topics on wealth and poverty are discussed in Cassandra's fine post.
Not a bad essay for (and presumably by) a non-professional. Fact is, the whole subject is so complex that I haven't even tried to write about it: there would be so many "but"s and "if"s and "except"s in it that it would be dull reading. One quote from Yoffe's piece:
This is the cultural moment of the narcissist. In a New Yorker cartoon, Roz Chast suggests a line of narcissist greeting cards ("Wow! Your Birthday's Really Close to Mine!"). John Edwards outed himself as one when forced to confess an adulterous affair. (Given his comical vanity, the deceitful way he used his marriage for his advancement, and his self-elevation as an embodiment of the common man while living in a house the size of an arena, it sounds like a pretty good diagnosis.) New York Times critic Alessandra Stanley wrote of journalists who Twitter, "it's beginning to look more like yet another gateway drug to full-blown media narcissism." And what other malady could explain the simultaneous phenomena of Blago and the Octomom?
These days, "narcissist" gets tossed around as an all-purpose insult, a description of self-aggrandizing, obnoxious behavior.
Our readers know there is a nationwide movement, ala the Boston Tea Party, to demonstrate opposition to the multi trillion dollar deficit plans of Obama/Pelosi/Reid. Please remember to join in by mailing the President a tea bag on April 1st.
Mail to:
The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500
WFB’s dystopic vision of being governed by the Harvard faculty has largely come true in the person of President Obama. He appears to have the political instincts, executive ability and private sector experience of your average liberal arts professor.
Ameerica's #1 growth industry: Government. And it always needs a bailout, from us. In fact, it is pure bailout.
America was never perfect, but it was never conceived to be some abstract utopia showcasing human perfection. The 56 men who came together to usher it forth understood that in order to form a more perfect union they had to pledge their lifes, their fortunes and most of all, their sacred honor. They understood clearly that human freedom only guarantees that mistakes will be made; but that the human soul is only able to thrive when human nature is allowed to be free. Further, they understood that society too, will inevitably progress when the individual human soul is unchained.
The Bald Eagle is technically a fish-hawk - never far from water, especially big water - and his favorite way of hunting is stealing fish from Ospreys. However, he likes to catch ducks too. This photo from a series of photos of two eagles fighting over a diving duck on Lake Tapps, a man-made lake in Washington State.
People are reluctant to say that it is "subcultural," but it is. Wasn't it just one year ago that Al Sharpton was supporting Hillary Clinton against Obama because "Obama wasn't black enough"?
What's the main predictor of income gaps in America? Single parenthood.
Excellent overview of the American working person and his income at Villainous. One quote re the non-static nature of low income in the US:
A University of Michigan study shows that only 5 percent of those in the bottom fifth of the income distribution in 1975 remained there in 1991. What happened to them? They moved up to the top three-fifths of the income distribution -- middle class or higher. Moreover, three out of 10 of the lowest income earners in 1975 moved all the way into the top fifth of income earners by 1991.
Thus there is no "poverty class" in the US. We are mobile, and poverty is temporary. Another quote, re Obama's taxes:
...the most astonishing sentence in the op-ed (in The Economist) is this one: “His plan would not raise any taxes on couples making less than $250,000 a year, nor on any single person with income under $200,000.” It amounts to a declaration of war on two-income families, a marriage penalty of punitive proportions.
If those two single persons with income just under $200,000 get married, Mr. Obama is going to hammer them with a huge tax increase. If the second earner, who in many cases is the woman, is going to have to give 54% of what she earns to the government, she might as well stay home with the children.
And here's a post about Hoagy Carmichael Jr., who is apparently a great fisherman of the Grand Cascapedia, and who is responsible for the renaissance of the split-bamboo fly rod, at Never Yet Melted.
The photo of Amber is to highlight a fine site for fly fishermen, Bamboo Fly Rod. net. Nope, that site is defunct, but we hope Amber isn't. This site has good info on casting with, and the care of, bamboo rods.
12:20 Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks.
12:21 They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus."
12:22 Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.
12:23 Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.
12:24 Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
12:25 Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
12:26 Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.
12:27 "Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say--' Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.
12:28 Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again."
12:29 The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, "An angel has spoken to him."
12:30 Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not for mine.
12:31 Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.
12:32 And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself."
12:33 He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.
How will you celebrate Earth Hour tonight? Had I a Hummer, I'd take it out for ice cream.
Even though there is no warming, everybody seems to want to do the meaningless but conspicuous token virtue thing. Watt's Up. Moonbattery wants to celebrate Tom Edison via Human Achievement Hour.
If anybody really believed this stuff, they would cancel their electric instead of wagging their finger at me.
That's the latest cardiovascular recommendation for brisk aerobic exercise. (It used to be 20 minutes three times a week, but new data has changed that recommendation.)
I have not asked whether 30 minutes of vigorous sex five times/week counts, but we hope it does.
We'll quit putting out bird seed as soon as our diminishing supply runs out: the bugs are coming out despite our sub-30 degree nights (the earth is cooling, you know - climate change), so the birds can go off welfare for a while. What's been around ye olde feeder today?, you ask.
Cowbirds, Redwing Blackbirds, Mourning Doves (tons), White throated Sparrows (lazy ones - should have migrated north by now), Song Sparrow, Chipping Sparrow, Blue Jay, Purple Grackle, Cardinal, Goldfinch, Red Bellied Woodpecker, House Finch, BC Chickadee, Tufted Titmouse, WB Nuthatch. All in their splendid breeding plumage.
Plus some Chipmunks and, of course, Grey Squirrels working the system.
Photo: A male Goldfinch, before fully changing into his Spring plumage.
Buddy and his team of eight SEALs are in harm's way, doing difficult, challenging, and enviably-exciting nighttime work. The SEALs own the night.
Buddy sends this email: "Everyone out here appreciates being remembered at home - that's what gets us through the fights."
Churchill, not Orwell as is commonly thought, said "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." We have known Buddy since he was about 5, and, while I can see his capacity to be a very rough and dangerous man on the job, he has the warm, gentle, generous, and considerate soul with which strong, competent and confident men are often blessed.
In a dispute, you want these guys on your side.
Have no fear, guys: we think of you and pray for your success in your missions and your safety every day, and we soft candy-asses back home with our non-dangerous lives are grateful for the work you are doing for us.
(Put a comment on this for them - they go online when they are able to do so. These intertubes are amazing, aren't they? They reach all the way over to Wherizzitatistan.)
These maids in Canada will do everything except clean toilets.
The UN's climate dreams of power. Since they cannot stop war, I guess they want to find something else impossible to do to justify their existence. Gateway has more.
As President Reagan said, we are a nation that has a government, not the other way round. The nation pays for the government, not the other way round. I pay for Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd, not the other way round. I would appreciate it if they'd take up a less destructive pastime, perhaps joining Senator Kerry in windsurfing off the Irish coast in buttock-hugging yellow Lycra. If you have even a modest asset - a small house, a sluggish savings account or pension provision - these people are making you poorer. Good luck digging yourself out from under.
...we looked up to Davos Man. Who wouldn't be impressed by the gatherings at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos, a Swiss ski resort? Sharply dressed, eloquent, rich, famous, Republican, Democrat, Tory, Labour, Conservative, Socialist, highly connected, powerful and ever so bright.
Then, when the whole managerial economy collapsed, the managers and technocrats lost faith in markets. But they did not lose faith in themselves, and now they want us to entrust even more of the economy to them.
WORK? “More than three decades of research shows that a focus on effort—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life.” Hey, I’ve got an idea — why don’t we organize society so that it rewards hard work! We could even see that people who work harder and do better make more money! And then their efforts would pay off in more general societal prosperity, making life better for everyone! And we could . . . Naaaah.
Assortive mating on the internet, and related topics, at Becker- Posner. One quote:
Match.com says it has more than 15 million members. A study by Harris Interactive conducted for eHarmony finds that over 86,000 eHarmony users married between April 2006 and March 2007, which is three times the number estimated for 2005 in a different study. The Harris study also estimated that over two percent of all persons marrying between April 2006 and March 2007 were introduced through eHarmony. Economic theory and empirical evidence (see my A Treatise on the Family) indicate that men and women who marry tend to have similar backgrounds by religion, race, education, family income, and many other characteristics. This is called positive assortative mating. Since marriages between persons of similar characteristics usually (but not always!) produce more satisfactory relationships, it is not surprising that marriages between unlikes; that is, persons with quite different characteristics, such as by education, religion, or race, are far more likely to end in divorce than are marriages between similar persons.
Two weeks ago, Abe Moscowitz dropped dead of a heart attack and was reincarnated as a lobster. Trapped off the coast of Maine, he was shipped to Manhattan and dumped into a tank at a posh Upper East Side seafood restaurant. In the tank there were several other lobsters, one of whom recognized him. “Abe, is that you?” the creature asked, his antennae perking up.
“Who’s that? Who’s talking to me?” Moscowitz said, still dazed by the mystical slam-bang postmortem that had transmogrified him into a crustacean.
“It’s me, Moe Silverman,” the other lobster said.
“O.M.G.!” Moscowitz piped, recognizing the voice of an old gin-rummy colleague. “What’s going on?”
“We’re reborn,” Moe explained. “As a couple of two-pounders.”
“Lobsters? This is how I wind up after leading a just life? In a tank on Third Avenue?”
“The Lord works in strange ways,” Moe Silverman explained. “Take Phil Pinchuck. The man keeled over with an aneurysm, he’s now a hamster. All day, running at the stupid wheel. For years he was a Yale professor. My point is he’s gotten to like the wheel. He pedals and pedals, running nowhere, but he smiles.”
Moscowitz did not like his new condition at all. Why should a decent citizen like himself, a dentist, a mensch who deserved to relive life as a soaring eagle or ensconced in the lap of some sexy socialite getting his fur stroked, come back ignominiously as an entrée on a menu?
Is it already the concensus that Obama, despite his personal appeal, is off to a weak and flawed start? Whatever happened to "Bring us together"? A quote from No He Can't at Prospect:
A president with historic ambitions was never going to be content with tackling a mere recession. Thus in his televised address before both houses of congress in February he delivered a special history lesson: “Our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank.” The current recession and housing and financial problems have deeper causes, he said. What are these underlying maladies that so badly need the shaman’s touch? The president named four: energy, healthcare, education and debt. The “day of reckoning” for ignoring these issues—and for exacerbating this failure with excessive borrowing—has arrived, he said.
Americans who concentrated on the president’s words rather than on their characteristically sonorous delivery found the diagnosis baffling. Education, energy and healthcare policy in the US, as almost anywhere, all need help. But are America’s flaws in these areas really the causes of the housing bust and the paralysed banking system? What about the cyclical contractions that follow all economic booms? What about a decade and more of absurdly cheap money? How about all that Fannie and Freddie-fuelled lending to inappropriate borrowers? What happened to lax oversight? What about greed, that comforting straw man? No, according to Obama, we are losing our jobs and being kicked out of our excessively mortgaged houses because America lacks universal healthcare, federally sponsored nursery school, university for all, and a progressive emissions-oriented energy policy.
That is a lame and transparent effort to re-design America, using a recession and a banking mess as an excuse. I don't know anybody who buys this baloney. His eye is only on my wallet. Read the whole thing. Link above.
The homelessness BS. Kaus. Those measures would have counted me as homeless last year.
It never ceases to amaze me how Dem pols always get rich. Emanuel's $ from Fannie. As I see it, Dems love money too much, both their own money and other peoples' money that they can get their hands on.
"Comrades, remember when Michelle Obama said, “Barack will never let you go back to the way you used to live…” She meant that." Sheesh. I kinda liked the way I lived, simple, honest, and free. Anchoress
Why would I choose to be a conservative? Why would I choose the persecution? I am constantly ridiculed for my beliefs. I have been compared to Nazis. Liberals call me a sexist, racist, bigoted homophobe. My intentions are mischaracterized, and then I am judged by those mischaracterized intentions. For example, because I favor policies to help get everyone off of welfare to succeed on their own, my intentions are characterized as trying to keep blacks and minorities poor. These liberals then brand me a racist because they perceive my intentions are to keep blacks poor.
You would think I would choose to be a liberal. Liberals worldwide are hailed as compassionate for merely “raising awareness” of the plight of the poor. Forget that the poor don’t see a dime from the “awareness” raised. Despite poverty winning the war we waged on it, liberals get judged by their intentions rather than the results of their policies.
Some readers may remember when that was a bumpersticker. (It's on the same order as Bird Dog's old school football cheer: "Repel them, repel them; make them relinquish the ball.")
It is a theme on this blog to think about the things that people hold most dear and the things they hold to be sacred. I tend to judge such things based on people's behavior, not on what they say. I tend to believe that God should come foremost in my life, but I can be a hypocrite at times.
Karl Reitz at TCS looks at secular religions - systems of belief which can play as strong a role in shaping people's lives as loving God can for the religious. His piece is consistent with several things we have written over the past week or two. A key quote from An atheist's defence of religion:
The fundamental difference between traditional religions and these secular religions is that secular religions promise us that perfection (heaven) is possible here, on earth, in present times. Conservatives, starting with Eric Voegelin, have long warned against buying into these secular religions by warning us not to "immanentize the eschaton." As Jonah Goldberg explained:
"Immanentize means to make part of the here and now. Eschaton, like eschatology, relates to the branch of theology which deals with humanity's destiny. You know, the end times, when all of that wacky, end-timey, Seventh-Seal stuff happens (oceans boil, the righteous ascend to heaven, Carrot Top is funny, etc). Hence 'immanentizing the eschaton' means, in effect, trying to make what is reserved for the next life part of the here and now."
There are two utopias - the womb, and Heaven (if you can get there before they close the door). Life is bracketed by utopias, but in between we must toil and strain and sometimes suffer. It's "the way things are", as the mice say.
Bliss and ease are only momentary during this brief spell on earth, and it has something to do with how reality was built. Specifically, I think it has to do with finiteness, limits, and scarcity - of just about everything, and not just of material things. I know only about four things that do not fit that: air, a dog's love, God's love...and blogs. No scarcity of good blogs.
Breaking the press monopoly is one thing. But the internet has also broken the political monopoly. Ten or even five years ago, when the Minister for Widgets put out a press release, the mere fact of his position guaranteed a measure of coverage. Nowadays, a politician must compel attention by virtue of what he is saying, not his position.
It's all a bit unsettling for professional journalists and politicians. But it's good news for libertarians of every stripe. Lefties have always relied on control, as much of information as of physical resources. Such control is no longer technically feasible.
Norm's wife Adele found this good new book site, 
The freedom to create wealth - indeed the very notion of the regular energetic person creating wealth if he or she wants to - is as essential an American freedom as all of our others. 
When I was a kid, my babysitter would take me fishing for Blue Crabs off the dock. What it required was a string with a hunk of bacon tied to the end. When you gently pulled it up to just below the surface, you needed a crab net to scoop up the crabs clinging to the bacon. Otherwise, they would let go of the bacon.
Slate says that Emily Yoffe is the author of 
Our readers know there is a nationwide movement, a
What 
It's time to think about what fun, expensive, and unnecessary gear we might be wanting to play with this spring.
Sunday is Bath Day (h/t, Theo)
How will you celebrate Earth Hour tonight? Had I a Hummer, I'd take it out for ice cream.
We'll quit putting out bird seed as soon as our diminishing supply runs out: the bugs are coming out despite our sub-30 degree nights (the earth is cooling, you know - climate change), so the birds can go off welfare for a while. What's been around ye olde feeder today?, you ask.
Buddy and his team of eight SEALs are in harm's way, doing difficult, challenging, and enviably-exciting nighttime work. The SEALs own the night. 
Ars Poetica (h/t, Vanderleun for finding the source of my quote)
I'm away tomorrow. Leaving these: