Wednesday, March 4. 2009
 Nice icicles out my window today. 14 degrees F.
The President wants more college grads. As VDH noted in Triumph of Banality:
President Obama also promises historic new rates of high-school and college graduation. Again, he seems to think the present problem is the absence of money — as if brilliant, gifted, and motivated young people are ending up at McDonald’s rather than doing quantum physics because the bogeymen “they” raised the bar and didn’t give them enough college scholarship support.
Actually, Obama's goal is easily accomplished: just lower the bar. I happen to believe we need fewer college grads, and to make the High School diploma meaningful again. America needs more plumbers, electricians, handymen, mechanics, gunsmiths - and fewer Women's Studies majors.
Ferguson addresses Obama's Diploma Mill in The Weekly Standard. One quote:
The assumption here is that the way to make somebody a competitive worker is to send him to college, an idea that will astonish anyone who's ever been served in a restaurant by a waiter with a master's in art history. This is just the first of the confusions that dog the president's proposal, which for the moment exists only in hypothetical form. Another confusion comes from his hazy definition of what the problem is.
On re-reading my post the other day, and a few of our recent posts on education, I am beginning to think that our American "system" of "higher ed" is obsolete.
A Liberal Arts education was designed for gentlemen-scholars, the few who were driven by curiosity, towards careers in the clergy, or to produce new teaching professionals. Good citizenship, and the practical tools to function in the world were taught in the lower years. The basic furnishings of the mind, as reader MM would term it.
A Liberal Arts degree was never meant to be practical, yet 30% of Americans have Bachelor Degrees: degrees that could mean anything, or nothing at all.
The democratization of higher ed, via things like the GI Bill, turned higher ed into a job credential. These days, I seem many young people who enjoy and are inspired by college in the old-fashioned way - but a very large many who "just need the piece of paper" and who cheat, screw, and drink their way through it while avoiding anything difficult or challenging.
The social consequence is having masses of non-scholars living extended childhoods at a ridiculous cost to their parents. While enjoying the luxury to some extent, many are also frustrated by a yearning for independence and adulthood, and the desire to do something real. Famous college drop-outs like Bill Gates, Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, Noel Coward, Woody Allen, Warren Buffet, Charles Dickens (grammar school drop-out), Albert Einstein (high school drop-out), Robert Frost, J. Paul Getty, Horace Greeley (high school drop out), and Bob Dylan are among them.
This site lists many of the rich or famous who either dropped out of high school or college. In some cases, grammar school - when you used to be allowed to do that.
I'd like to see more of our high school grads out there working, and getting night course education in areas of expertise they might like to pursue. I'd like to see more apprenticeships too.
A relevant post at Phi Beta Cons asks "How does the military manage it?"
We keep hearing about all the jobs that "require" a college degree — as if the work were so hard that a bright high-school kid couldn't possibly learn to do it. But as the writer of this e-mail points out, the military has jobs that call for a great deal of training, intelligence, and responsibility and manages with young people who for the most part have never gone past high school in formal education...
If I had the time and brains, I'd redesign the entire thing with high school as the core, with a core mission. I'd expect each school board to decide what kids need to know to get a HS diploma. I'd also consider reducing high school to 3 years and liberal arts degrees to 3 years. Do our readers have any ideas?
Awesome underwater photography of dolphins and Gannets feeding on sardines. Those Gannets move like fish underwater.
As someone said, after all the Clinton re-treads, we were hoping he wouldn’t do for Hope what he did for Change.
 US companies pay the highest taxes in the world. I have never understood why businesses are taxed at all. All it does is to make prices of things more expensive for consumers because a tax is just another expense to be passed along. In other words, biz taxes are just a covert tax on consumers and investors.
Equity Analyst in Chief. Embarassing
Has anybody read A Canticle for Liebowitz? (h/t, Grow A Brain)
Did you know that To Kill a Mockingbird was a racist book?
Map of the EU economic crisis
Cooler heads at NOAA changing their tune on climate
Dr. Clouthier is fed up with unmanly men and other PC baloney
How Obama ambushed and used the head of Caterpillar
Whites told to "go home" in Detroit.
Centrist Dems feeling uncomfortable. Christopher Buckley has second thoughts. So does David Brooks.
Budget rant by Ace
Isn't the WH getting a bit petty and vindictive? They attack Rush for a week. Now it's Jim Cramer. Must be a deliberate diversionary tactic.
Rick Lowry quoted at Betsy:
Obama exaggerated the downside of the economy two weeks ago so he could get more spending, and now he’s exaggerating its upside so he can get more spending. The fixed goal is more spending. The means — the rhetoric, the arguments, the assumptions — are flexible so long as they serve that ultimate goal.
The past few weeks should have cleared away the debate over Obama’s intentions — is he a pragmatist or an ideologue? Obama is a pragmatist in pursuit of an ideological prize, willing to zig and zag so long as his lodestar of expanded government is ahead of him.
Tuesday, March 3. 2009
 The Obama stock market. Is the Left rejoicing in this loss of wealth?
Obama's war on the middle class
Not gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more. Staying under O's tax limit. Dr. Helen has more. Our Barrister already promised his wife that he would.
Today's economy is a response to Obama policies
4.9 billion for ACORN?
Family farms are the big losers in Obama's budget
Riehl explains why he thinks TigerHawk's video (posted here earlier today) is off base. He says O doesn't give a damn about TigerHawk. O is an orator, but you have to watch what he does, not what he says. He will say almost anything, being a politician.
Obama lied; the economy died
The filibuster, then and now. Powerline
O's plans for medical care rationing. NY Post
From Dick Morris' Obama's War on Prosperity:
President Lyndon Johnson’s administration was known for his War on Poverty. President Obama’s will become notable for his War on Prosperity.
We’re speaking, of course, of Obama’s plans to hike income taxes on the most wealthy 2 or 3 percent of the nation. He’s not just raising the top rate to 39.6 percent; he’s also disallowing about one-third of top earner’s deductions, whether for state and local taxes, charitable contributions or mortgage interest. This is an effective hike in their taxes by an average of about 20 percent.
And soon the next shoe will drop - he’ll announce that he’s keeping yet another of his campaign promises: to apply the full payroll tax to all income over $250,000 a year. (Right now, the 15.3 percent Social Security tax only applies to the first $106,800 of income - you neither pay the tax on income above that, nor accumulate added benefit.) For many taxpayers in this bracket, this hike will raise their total taxes by about half.
Finally, he’s declaring war on investors by raising the capital-gains-tax rate to 20 percent.
These increases are politically insignificant: The top 2 percent of the nation casts only about 4 percent of the votes, barely enough to attract the notice of even the most meticulous pollsters.
But they have enormous economic significance. Those who earn more than $200,000 pay almost 60 percent of America’s income taxes and account for a third of its total disposable income. If these spenders and investors are hunkering down, waiting for the revenuers to beat down their doors, their confidence will be anything but robust. Their spending will drop; they’ll be unlikely to invest (except in new tax shelters).
Photo: Eyeball Soup. I will spare you the recipe for that bummer of a dinner.
A personal testimony at Wizbang. Many, many people in that same category.
Related, Rush vs. Doofus. Am Digest
We are still using some 20,000 year-old words.
Tigerhawk. Good vid by him about the "working affluent".
Related, from Kimball's The President's Shock and Awe:
The crucial thing to understand about that attack on achievement is that it is a histrionic, not an economic, gesture. Raising taxes on (while simultaneously cutting deductions for) top earners will not do much to improve the Treasury’s balance sheet. But it will cause pain among the affluent. It will also cause delight among the more than 43 percent of tax filers who pay no income tax. (Is that fair?) So the President scores two points: he punishes those whom he resents, and he panders to the crowd whose approbation he craves.
Yes, Viginia, there is a Communist Party USA. Randal Hoven at Am Thinker compares their agenda with Obama's. "Bingo!"
Some Afghani weavers are producing "War Rugs." You can find them sometimes on the eBay rug sites.
 It's 13 degrees F in NYC this morning. The Park is a winter wonderland.
Church membership decline
I hope these protesters do not return home tonight to a heated house. Related: The Farce of Global Warming at Am Thinker
Do Congress' kids go to public schools?
Control of the Census and one-party rule
America's worst traffic bottlenecks. h/t, Marginal Rev
Party like it's 1928
Brits fighting Brit jihadists in Afghanistan
For once, I kinda agree with Krugman. Revenge of the Glut
Tax increases for the middle class are inevitable
Obama's Doublespeak. Villainous. Leftist pols rarely say what they mean directly.
The big reward for mortgage fraud. WSJ
And yet another tax cheat for the Administration. What is it about Dems and tax fraud?
Affordable housing. Guess what the median home price is, in Detroit
John Bolton on Iran
Tax hikes "demotivating and demoralizing"
Rahm: Obama agrees to 9000 earmarks
Nobody ever accused blogger Pam Geller of being shy. A revival meeting for Geert Wilders. If he stands for free speech, then I am on board. I am not sure that he isn't a jerk, though.
From Insty:
DEMONIZER-IN-CHIEF?
What is it with this President? Obama has an obsessive need to find enemies against whom to campaign. . . . Attacking lobbyists is not the point of Obama’s latest ploy. Rather, painting anyone who opposes him as a “lobbyist” is the point. In attacking the “lobbyists” Obama is doing what he did on the issue of race during the campaign: Anyone who opposes me doesn’t just have a different opinion, they are evil and dangerous to the rest of you. This tactic simultaneously generates support among the majority and silences the minority. Other presidents have been accused of using “enemies” as a political rallying point. Almost invariably, however, these enemies have been foreign (the “evil empire” and “axis of evil”). Obama is the first president “in my adult life” to set American against American, to create enemies at home as a political rallying point, to create a climate in which law-abiding American citizens are singled out as being worthy of attack.
Yep, Barack has met the enemy, and he is us.
Ouch.
Wilkinson on the Dem-union attack on the DC charter school experiement:
If you believe, as I do, that the returns to further government spending on education, given its present structure, is zero or negative, and that the best hope for increasing the quality of education for the least well-off, and for increasing economic and social mobility generally, is to legalize competitive markets in education, then you will tend to believe, as I do, that this attempt to destroy voucher programs before than can show themselves effective is nothing less than a powerful political interest group screwing over poor people by bending the democratic process to their advantage.
From Steyn on Statezilla:
Is the new all-powerful Statezilla vulnerable to anything? Unfortunately, yes. He loses all his superpowers when he comes into contact with something called Reality. But happily, Reality is nowhere in sight. There are believed to be some small surviving shards somewhere on the planet — maybe on an uninhabited atoll somewhere in the Pacific — but that’s just a rumor, and Barack Obama isn’t planning on running into Reality any time soon.
Monday, March 2. 2009
I never cover my log piles. I like my wood damp, and out in the weather. Dry firewood burns like paper, which is not good. I do maintain a small supply under eaves and porches for starter loads, though. We had a nice, very enjoyable snow today, and my log piles in the foreground are entirely buried.
 Man, did Rush's CPAC speech (which we linked here) kick up a lot of dust in all quarters. He loves that: it gets him listeners, and he loves being provocative. Truth is, I have never heard Rush say a single hateful thing to anybody, although he can be tough on seminar callers. Plenty of humorous mockery, of course. As far as I can tell, the guy loves people, and respects them and their potential enough to not want them to be serfs of the State. Anyway, a few links:
Rush to Chairman Steele: Where are your guts?
Where Rush went astray at CPAC. Hawkins at Pajamas
Rush to the Kultursmog. Driscoll
Rush has been demonized ever since he hit the airwaves. As an interesting and articulate spokesman and evangelist for the Conservative cause, the Left just had to do that. They demonize anyone Conservative who attracts a following, and have done so, with the MSM's assistance, for 40 years. Rush is Everyman's Bill Buckley (except Buckley got a pass because "he was one of us" - a "sophisticated" Yalie - plus he never had a large, populist following and thus was viewed as harmless). Whether I agree with him or not about things, I see him as a national treasure and as a stimulant for debate about important subjects and principles. That is his role.
Samuel Johnson said of poet Thomas Gray, insultingly, "As a poet, his sole virtue is his creativity."
The world is packed with poets these days, including some of a very odd breed of "professional poets" - a crazy idea in itself. Not many people read much poetry though, and even less often outloud as it is meant to be read.
Jeffrey Gray in a Chronicle piece, Poets' Puffery, notes:
In spite of the tenor of book titles like The Marginalization of Poetry and After the Death of Poetry, and in spite of the almost complete removal of the study of poetry from the higher reaches of literary theoretical studies — postcolonialism, poststructuralism, and the New Historicism — the writing of poetry has never been more feverish. There are 300,000 poetry Web sites. Six years ago, an heir to the Lilly fortune — herself an aspiring poet — gave $100-million to Poetry magazine, though her own submissions were all rejected by the editor. Poets continue to graduate in ever-larger numbers from those much-maligned M.F.A. programs.
Writing poetry, it seems to me, is an avocation and a hobby craft. I guess songwriting could be a profession, but one for a tiny few. I used to write poems, but now I specialize in doggerel for special occasions. In his article, Jeffrey Gray discusses evaluation-inflation of poetry, and makes a case for "satisfactory" poetry.
Why should everything have to be "great"?
From VDH, in The Triumph of Banality, one quote:
If we wish to get health-care costs under control, then we should at least be honest with the American people and admit that we are all paying a collective fortune largely for three reasons: (1) to keep functioning into their 60s those who drank, smoked, and ate too much and in a past era would have passed on at 60; (2) to give us all an extra three to five years of mobility and functionality after we reach 75; (3) to fit us up with IVs, feeding tubes, and respirators so that in our last six months of life we can die in a rest home or among machines and specialists in a hospital rather than in our own home with a few morphine tablets for pain and a bowl of soup with a straw on the nightstand.
He is wrong about the medicine: your longevity is in your genes more than in your behavior. However, the only solution to the costs of medical care is rationing and I, for one, do not want the government in charge of that.
Can you identify these wild ducks? Gwynnie cooked these for me and Mrs. BD for dinner last night, on the grill. (Do not say Huey, Dewey and Louie) With Cumberland Sauce. (Answer below the fold)
Continue reading "Huey, Dewey and Louie"
Taxation will reduce inequality (and work), and the Obama stock market will take care of wealth equality. Problem solved! (assuming everybody being poor, ignorant, and dependent on the government is the goal)
Video of Wilbur Wright demonstrating his flying machine in Italy in 1909, including the first footage ever filmed from an airplane. Here.
Gotta love the internal combustion engine.
|
