Sunday, March 8. 2009
 Horse domestication moved back 1000 years. Yet they are just as stupid as they ever were. Moron animals that will get you killed on them.
The Davis Cup, with Moslems. I didn't know that Moslems were big tennis fans.
Still forbidden at the NYT: The T Word
More on CT's attack on the RC Church
Jules uses the A Word. Rightly so.
Bloomberg defends the rich
Even Letterman making fun of Al Gore now. His insanity is not my fault. Blame the Supreme Court.
Bad, good; good, bad; and bad, bad. VDH
A great source of advice: A biz that makes no money. Cool, dude.
What is the CDS market telling us?
It was an insult, but nobody realized it except us.
Chavez to Obama: Wash your ass. Why can't the Socialists just get along?
Brits urged to stop visiting Disney World. That is good advice, but the rest of it is pure BS: Alas, the Brit footprint on the world gets smaller every day.
Book him, Dano
Is Obama lazy? Or is he overwhelmed?
CT goes to war against the RC Church
Our blog friend Prof Bainbridge is always re-working his site, but this is a complete change.
Nyquist: Why not the truth? "The truth will set you free. But freedom signifies responsibility, and who wants to be responsible? Ignorance, after all, is bliss – and bears no responsibility whatsoever. The most common excuse in any language is, “I didn’t know.” ?
Moral bankruptcy. Megan McArdle doesnt want to pay her Home depot bill
Harvard climate scientist Willie Soon: It's the sun, stupid. Related: Alternative Energy is a joke. Reality will rule, eventually.
Dems have doubled Rush Limbaugh's audience. Related: Samples of Rush's hate speech. Speaking about freedom and opportunity and human potential is hateful, right? Of course it is.
The triumph of the Fabians in England, and what we face today
Volker: Bring back Glass-Steagall
Obama keeps looking for enemies
Plenty of opposition to cap and trade
Overtures to Cuba
More on the teleprompter story
It was terrible when Bush wanted to do it, but it's OK for Obama to de-list the Gray wolf
A re-post from 2007 -
 The post about Beantown food yesterday, with the link to Sissy Willis' baked bean recipe, put me to thinking about some of my favorite fall and winter foods. I guess spending yesterday afternoon getting a couple of loads of firewood with a friend's truck helped.
Johnnycakes, or Cornmeal pancakes, or these. You can do them with or without flour in the mix. I like to add a can of canned or frozen corn to the batter: it's one of the very few valid uses of canned corn.
(In fact, corn is a nice addition to regular pancake batter too. Give it a try. Of course, cranberries are great in pancakes. Their tartness adds a lot of zip to a dull pancake.)
Indian Pudding. It's what was called "Hasty Pudding," but made with corn meal, and cooked slowly - never hastily. A little ice cream or drizzled heavy cream on top.
Why is Boston called Beantown? It's because of the triangular trade. Here's a Durgin-Park recipe. Really good with black bread. Heck, I even like baked beans from the can. Our reader reminds us that, in the old days, beans or peas in the pot were termed "Pease Porridge."
I'll do Yankee apple desserts in another post.
 Thanks to Gwynnie, I am entirely absorbed by Empires of the Sea: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World.
The war of Islam against the West must be the longest war in history. During this era, it was the remarkable Sulieman the Magnificent.
 Pruning is a subject of great interest to us, as it is to all gardeners. It is now the last chance to do our winter pruning of those late-blooming shrubs and trees which bloom on new growth.
This site from Texas A&M is an excellent pruning overview, with special attention to the pruning requirements of Crepe Myrtle.
Shrubs which are pruned wrong offend my delicate gardening sensibilities.
Photo: One of my young Crepe Myrtles blooming a couple of Augusts ago. Up here in Yankeeland, north of their growing zone, they have a small chance of thriving if they are a hardy variety, and are well-sheltered and well-mulched for the winter. Mine do just fine. While they are commonplace in the South, up here nobody seems to know what they are.
As with hybrid Rhodadendrons and azaleas, it's an iffy proposition up here - but well-worth when it works.
8:31 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
8:32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
8:33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."
8:34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
8:35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
8:36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?
8:37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?
8:38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."
Saturday, March 7. 2009
From Stuart Taylor (h/t, Insty). He begins:
Having praised President Obama's job performance in two recent columns, it is with regret that I now worry that he may be deepening what looks more and more like a depression and may engineer so much spending, debt, and government control of the economy as to leave most Americans permanently less prosperous and less free.
Other Obama-admiring centrists have expressed similar concerns. Like them, I would like to be proved wrong. After all, if this president fails, who will revive our economy? And when? And what kind of America will our children inherit?
Read the whole thing.
 Roast grouse recipe wars between The Englishman and Mr. Free Market.
My guess is that the Brit grouse, for dining, are unlike our delicately-flavored flavoured Ruffed Grouse and more like our Sharp-Tailed Grouse.
Photo above: A Highlands grouse walk-up hunt. Wonder why there are no trees? There were, once. The Great Caledonian Forest.
Photo below: Red Grouse
We posted this before, but I thought our gentle reader MM might enjoy this fine item:
The media just found out that Sullenberger is a Republican:
A book: What he must be if he wants to marry my daughter
Hopeful about Afghanistan
Imagine what they'd be saying if Bush did this
How did California commit suicide? VDH
Via Animals as Weapons at Ace:
”A couple drove 170 kilometres (100 miles) from South Africa's famous Kruger National Park with a highly venomous spitting cobra in their car, the Beeld newspaper reported on Wednesday.”
“Gordon Parratt, 69, felt the 85-centimetre (33-inch) long snake wind itself around his leg while he was driving.”
Always check your car for snakes.
From Krauthammer's The Big Bang Agenda:
...with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.
What's going on? "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," said Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."
Things. Now we know what they are. The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions -- the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic -- for enacting his "Big Bang" agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.
Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy -- worthy and weighty as they may be -- are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime.
From Examiner:
Has this late winter storm left you scratching your head about global warming? This winter itself has proven to be cold and snowy for most of the US, including many southern locations (Las Vegas, New Orleans, Houston, and Hawaii). The snow finally arrived in the Mid Atlantic, albeit late in the season. The irony of five inches of snow still did not stop the Global Warming protest in DC on Monday, but the onslaught of new research may hinder others.
Michael Reilly posted an article in Discovery News that is getting a lot of internet traffic, as well it should. It brings up the possibility that warming of the planet will not resume.
"A financial crisis is the worst time to change the foundations of American capitalism."
Powerline:
Most people ... have figured out that the Obama administration is making war on the private sector. No wonder the stock market is in the tank and employers continue to lay off workers.
The Obama stock market:
Friday, March 6. 2009
 I heard Doris Kearns Goodwin interviewed on Imus this morning during my 6 AM drive to work, and lost all respect for her. She was flacking hard for Obama.
She claimed that "nobody knows what to do about the economy." She said that Obama must experiment with government's role just as FDR did. She said his personal popularity polls show that people believe that he cares, and that's the important thing. She said he needs time to solve all the problems (What!?!). Oh, I almost forgot. She said that teleprompters are the modern way (although neither she nor Don Imus were using one).
Wrong on all counts. Pure flackery by a partisan Dem delivering Dem talking points propaganda. I would have expected more from her.
I'll just take her first point, because I happen to know what to do: 1) Restore the uptick rule to discourage the highly profitable bear raids against solid companies (rumor is that Russian and Chinese hedge funds are making a mint doing that, probably in collusion). 2) Cut corporate taxes to encourage hiring 3) Cut cap gains taxes to encourage investment in business growth 4) Cut individual tax rates to unleash spending and to remove the crushing threat of higher taxes 5) Get rid of "mark to market": it makes it almost impossible to make a long-term inventment in a tree that needs time to bear fruit. 6) Quit the war against business and the delusion of big government "solutions" (ie my money) to everything from my health to GM's de facto bankruptcy, and 7) Talk up the American economy and its resilience.
In other words, unleash the animal spirits of the economy and the creative power of the people instead of frightening everybody by threatening to put it all on a tighter leash. People yearn to be unleashed to do things and to follow their dreams, and not to be hand-fed or to become serfs to The State. Disincentivization to effort and reward has been tried elsewhere, and it does not work very well. (Plus a prosperous nation is in a good position to take decent care of its feckless, unmotivated, parasitic, and unfortunate.)
But they will do none of those things, because they are not about what works. They are about their ideology and their political goals. They are clever, crafty and tricksy - but deeply unwise, and unwilling to think outside their little old 1930s box.
Why? Same old reason: These people live inside government, and thus play the government game. They love power, and somehow became deluded into thinking that they are smarter than us regular folks. Wrong! Disgusting as it may be, whatever 'system" they give us, people will find a way to "work it" for their own interests. It's called "incentive," and it is quite human: people want to take care of themselves, their families and their loved ones - and they want to be free to do things their own way, whether they screw it up or not.
It's about human dignity. Nobody can give anybody that. All anybody can do is to free people to pursue it.
 One last weekend of skiing for me, but already planning for summer. My group just leased our usual 345 Conquest for July and August, which we keep docked in Rhode Island. Thinking about beaches (that's a Theo beach gal) and fishing and clams, and hoping we get a break from this global cooling.
Strange how many people are reconsidering not joining Obama's administration. The acclaimed Dr. Gupta just changed his mind, and two Treasury folks did too. What's that all about? It's possible that they aren't sure they can get with the program. See Nobody wants to work with Timmy.
Related re Geithner: "we've never seen such incompetence."
Obama never speaks without a Teleprompter. That's not magic; that's kinda lame. Plus, what happens when their energy policy eliminates electricity? Related: Obama The Magician at Am Thinker. Truthfulness is turning out not to be one of his virtues.
Instead of "The O," I think I'll start calling him "The Teleprompter," or "The T" for short. No, I do not have ODS yet, but I do not like where things are headed.
Confederate Yank explains why Lefty Dems don't care about the economy. The worse the mess, the better for them. Powerline asks Are they doing it on purpose?
Related: Dem war on small biz may cause 14% to fail next year
Nunchucks are illegal in New York? Sheesh. And they are neither automatic nor semiautomatic.
This story about Obama and Brown's visit is almost too embarassing to read
And the initial stab at "smart diplomacy" with Russia is equally embarassing. Hello. They are pursuing their own interests. For how long will the MSM give Obama "A"s just for showing up? Or what's the plan, bend over for Russia and smack the Brits? Jules
Do the rich vote Republican? No
Sad: GOP outreach to Hispanics a flop
Quote from Cramer:
We had a banking crisis coming into this regime, but now every area is in crisis. Each day is worse than the previous one for this miserable economy and while Obama's champions cite the stimulus plan, it's really just a hodgepodge of old Democratic pork and will not create nearly as many manufacturing or service jobs as we hoped. China's stimulus plan is the model; ours is the parody.
The UN consider laws against criticism of Islam. Good grief. The UN is the joke heard 'round the world.
Obama's energy proposals and your utility taxes. neoneo
Hates debate. Noted at Driscoll:
Liberal talk radio host Stephanie Miller on CNN’s Larry King Live: “maybe Rush Limbaugh should be executed for treason.”
Liberal Fascism?
Note: We had lots of comment interest in our An obsolete model for education. Check it out if you haven't.
How about that grin on Cupid's face? And Psyche looks happy too.
Psyche and Cupid (1817)
Thursday, March 5. 2009
Comments from Common Room:
Moral vices prosper by dressing themselves as virtues. Niceness presents itself as benevolence, but is often merely an evasion of hard decisions that the realities of human nature require. And it has spread throughout our societies because it is often popular with voters. The road to hell, it is said, is paved with good intentions, and so is a good deal of democratic politics.
and
In our compassion, we have confused egalitarian 'fairness' with justice, and we have created a monstrous sense of entitlement.
Wherever standards are destroyed and merit is redefined, a sense of entitlement necessarily follows. This is true in any aspect of society. In the field of education, it manifests itself in the demand by students for high grades when they are not earned.
And this has resulted thousands of defrauded young people who graduate with diplomas they cannot read, apply for jobs they cannot do, and are forced to remain in minimum wage jobs forever, because they cannot read, write, or perform basic computations.
An honest accountant dies and St. Peter tells him that he must first spend a day in hell to decide where he wants to be. In hell, he finds beautiful golf courses without greens fees, alluring women who promise to fulfill his fantasies, and a mansion without cost to him. The accountant returns to St. Peter and tells him that hell is his choice. Upon arriving back in hell, it’s a desolated wasteland full of poor wretched souls, the women are decrepit and reject him, and his home is a hovel. The accountant asks the Devil about the change. The Devil replies: Before you were a recruit, now you’re staff.
The former Director of the Congressional Budget Office, respected for honest accounting, Peter Orszag, is now Director of President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Now he’s staff.
His fall from grace was on exhibit several times this past week.
Last Friday, Orszag defended the trimming of itemized deductions by asserting that, “the best way to boost charitable giving is to jumpstart the economy and raise incomes – and the purpose of the Recovery Act enacted earlier this month was to do precisely that.”
The conclusion of the current Congressional Budget Office on the stimulus Recovery Act? As Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiew reports:
“they estimate the long-run effect on GDP may be slightly negative due to crowding out.”
In a Congressional hearing on President Obama’s budget forecast, Orszag was questioned how the budget could count savings based on the “surge” in Iraq continuing for 10 more years when President Obama announced all combat troops would be withdrawn by 2010. The YouTube is here. Orszag counts as “savings” not continuing for 10-years the temporary level of “surge” troops in 2008. Peter Wehner, former Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives, now a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, observes: “This is, even by Washington standards, unusually dishonest. And coming from the administration of Barack Obama, who promised us “honest” accounting and made a big show of how much integrity and candor he would bring to his governing, this is astonishing.”
Democrat Senator Max Baucus, a leader in the Obama administration’s effort to enact sweeping, mostly untested or tested and found wanting, changes to Americans’ health care, pressured the current Director of CBO to cook the books. Senator Baucus: “…it’s not too much of an overstatement to say CBO can make or break health care reform, and I mean that because we got to go by your numbers…I do believe that there are several different intellectually honest pathways to get from here to there. It’s not just one automatic, and so it needs - you got to be ever more creative to find intellectually honest pathways to get the savings we have to have - practically and both politically - to get health care reform.”
A crooked employer asks several applicants for an accounting position the answer to 2 + 2. The winning applicant asks the employer what he wants the answer to be.
That’s the kind of accounting the Obama administration is practicing. It’s not a joke.
 When the Deal Goes Down, from Modern Times (2006). I think we posted this one in the past, but it's been on my mind -
"Well, I picked up a rose and it poked through my clothes
I followed the winding stream
I heard the deafening noise, I felt transient joys
I know they're not what they seem
In this earthly domain, full of disappointment and pain
You'll never see me frown
I owe my heart to you, and that's saying it's true
And I'll be with you when the deal goes down."
It's not embeddable, but it's worth listening to. The video isn't bad either.
 Chart on right via Am. Digest
Via Lucianne:
President Obama's newly named Economic Recovery Advisory Board, the real-world Americans being asked to help solve the nation's financial crisis, includes a union executive who took the Fifth in a federal probe, a billionaire whose failed bank pioneered the subprime mortgage market, and deep-pocket donors who gave or gathered nearly $1.2 million for the president's campaign. In all, 11 of the 16 board members donated or raised money for Democrats in the last election.
8 harsh truths that will improve your life
Boys are "an enormous genetic experiment." AVI
Dr. Bob picks up his guitar again
The Left's romance with terror and tyranny. Radosh at Front Page
Which states are open for business? Not many in New England
Chavez update: Sell food at a loss, or else... And to media: Shut up, or else...
Chris Dodd update: A Kudlow run? Why not? And also via Insty, Bernie Loves Dodd
Geithner is a Warmist.
Cramer's response to the White House attack
Why did the WH snub Brown?
People I talk to are beginning to act a bit scared - even those who voted for Obama. I sense a new fear factor emerging which transcends the banking crisis. People have lost a lot of money, and foresee a business-stifling, high-taxing, low profit future which will burden generations with a bigger government we will never be able to get out from under.
The plan to phase out the mortgage, medical and charitable deductions is just one piece of a series of rule changes in the middle of the game which makes folks uneasy. It's especially uncomfortable for those within ten years of retirement, or with tuitions in their future, who made plans based on existing expectations and stability.
How do you plan for your family when the rules are in flux? How do you invest? How do you invest for retirement? How do you plan to start a business? How do you buy a house? Why would you spend a penny on anything?
Several (non-paranoid) people mentioned to me this week that wealth destruction is a deliberate policy in DC. True or not, Hopey-Changey is slowly turning into plain Scary. We predicted this.
Powerline quotes a reader comment:
If I postpone my retirement as a result of losses to my savings caused in substantial part by President Obama's policies, so that I do not leave the workforce when I had planned, does that mean that my job has been "saved" by Obama?
Never Yet Melted, with a quote from Obama's book:
Who could possibly have predicted that a red diaper baby community organizer with a life-long record of radical associations would adopt an ultra-left program of taxing and spending? Messrs. Buckley and Brooks obviously weren’t paying attention when they read Dreams from My Father. Obama explains that he learned as an adolescent that he could get away with doing drugs and raising Cain, simply by mollifying the adults in his life by speaking softly and politely.
DFMF, 94-95:
It was the start of my senior year in high school… and one day she [his mother] marched into my room, wanting to know the details of [his friend’s] arrest. I had given her a reassuring smile and patted her hand and told her not to worry. I wouldn’t do anything stupid. It was usually an effective tactic, one of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied as long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied; they were relieved—such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn’t seem angry all the time.
Dick Morris:
...he is determined to pass his agenda of bigger government, nationalized healthcare and vastly greater spending even at the price of inflation and subsequent recession. He puts ideology first and the economy a distant second.
The stock market has figured out his priorities and is responding accordingly. One can only hope that voters also eventually realize what is going on.
Mankiw:
Rahm Emanuel, the incoming White House chief of staff, has said, “You don’t ever want to let a crisis go to waste: it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.”
What he has in mind is not entirely clear. One possibility is that he wants to use a temporary crisis as a pretense for engineering a permanent increase in the size and scope of the government. Believers in limited government have reason to be wary.
Why so tentative about that, Professor?
From Krauthammer's The Obamaist Manifesto:
In the European Union, government spending has declined slightly, from 48 percent to 47 percent of GDP during the past 10 years. In the United States, it has shot up from 34 percent to 40 percent. Part of this explosive growth in U.S. government spending reflects the emergency private-sector interventions of a Republican administration. But the clear intent was to make the massive intrusion into the private sector temporary and to retreat as quickly as possible. Obama has radically different ambitions.
Ed. note: To top it all off, and to add insult to injury, Congress has now given itself a pay raise, along with an extra gift of $93,000 for petty cash. If $93 grand is "petty," I am in the wrong business. With their pensions (not 401-Ks - real old-fashioned pensions) and remarkable medical plans and perks, they are entirely insulated from the consequences of their own actions. I see no collectivist "sacrifice for the common good" on the part of Congress.
h/t, S,C&A
Wednesday, March 4. 2009
Politico reports that these tricks have been in the works for months. We need to get used to this new ball game. Can anybody imagine the Bush admin. doing stuff like this?
I do not believe that Conservatives, or Repubs, are up for these kinds of games and tactics. We have often observed here that the Left prefers to reserve their live ammo for their fellow Americans rather than for foreign threats or dangerous criminals.
His post begins:
It is on the record -- thanks to Politico.com -- since last fall, the White House, led by Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff to Barack Obama, has been targeting me, your host, your harmless, lovable little fuzzball. Their standard operating procedure: they need a demon to distract and divert from what their agenda is. They need a demon about whom they can lie so as to persuade average Americans that they're the good guys, the benevolent good guys, and the mean SOBs are their enemies trying to stop this great young little president from doing miraculous and wonderful things.
Read the whole thing, because in this Rush not only challenges Obama to a debate on the issues, but cruelly includes a photo of Rahm Emanuel at his ballet class.
Yes, it is all a distracting and undignified sideshow. Here's the important part: I don't understand, however, even tactically, why the WH and the Dems bother going on a daily attack mission when they have Congress and the WH. Wouldn't they rather appear strong, confident, and above it all rather than like pitbull pols? Why the mudslinging?
Maybe their polling is telling them something.
“Deepen, exacerbate existing problems, crises, differences, and if they don’t exist, create them or convincingly claim that they exist, and then deepen, exacerbate them...and profit the most from them in any way you can, and, in the resulting chaos, blame our enemies for the whole thing.” -
Vladimir Ilich Ulianov (Lenin) - Thanks, reader.
One considered opinion, from Moderate Voice:
Let's put all of this in proper perspective: Rush Limbaugh and George Stephanopoulos are private citizens who are media celebrities. They do not run the RNC of the DNC, write any bills or pass any laws. Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama are part of the White House. The President can veto bills and apply political pressure but the Presidency does not appropriate any money or is authorized to spend one dime without the legislative branch. Michael Steele hasn’t figured out his responsibilities at the RNC, and if he did, his role is to win elections not shape fiscal policy.
Barack Obama has got less than a year before the 2010 primary season begins. He has only got that window of opportunity to turn around the economic mess that he has inherited from Republican Administration and a Democratic Congress. If Republicans want to recover their political mojo, it is the Congress that has got to be the focus of any message. Stop playing their game - Obama is not important and you are not going to beat him… plus he not running for re-election for three years - last time I checked, you can’t beat someone who is not even running.
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