Tuesday, May 5. 2009
Populus Vult Decipi, Decipiatur.
h/t, AVI
Good grief. Imagine if Bush...or Palin.
 The Nazis wanted to bring back wild Aurochs to Europe
As Pete Seeger would sing, "Which side are you on, boys?" Hmmm. NYT vs. the unions.
Colleges discriminate against Asians. Not a PC minority, I guess. As a friend said to me, "People assume that because I'm Chinese I'm smarter than everybody else. But I'm not."
Wise, careful and prudent financial planning - and now broke.
Favorite things at the Smithsonian - like Lewis and Clark's compass. One would hope they brought more than one.
Solipcism and the Apocalypse. Pick your favorite apocalypse. I want it to be a life-erasing storm of juicy red raspberries from the Berry Galaxy. I will die happy.
A President who hates his country?
We always knew it was a joke. Amusing from Roger S re Swine Flu:
SF remains a “Media Flu” fanned by CNN, Drudge, etc. and seems even to have infected otherwise brilliant members of the media with whom I normally agree. [So maybe it's you.-ed. Shut up. I told you I came from a medical family. Read my book. It's on my night table.]
Worth noting is what enhances this media flu: political bile.
What the heck does idealism have to do with working for the government? Claremont: ...and we're here to help you.
Bad news for the US: China decides to back off on buying our debt. I guess that means that they do not want to own us.
Two fat black lesbians?
New charges against ACORN
Not socially appropriate to criticize the O. Since when? In my (small) circles, half the folks think he's a royal jerk and half think he's going to bring us to the Promised Land of money and goodies and no work.
Related: The things you don't read about the O's first 100 days
VDH, via Blue Crab:
...it is adherence to the idea of equality of result rather than an equality of opportunity, the age-old debate that goes back to the Greeks. From Aristotle’s Politics and Plato Laws, we learn of the original dilemma: a stable city-state of roughly similar property owners, who vote as equals, and fight as comrades in the phalanx, tragically, but inevitably, soon becomes tragically unequal.
Divide the land up equally to found the polis; give everyone an similarly-size plot (klęros); and then health, luck, brains, accident, strength, ambition, character, and a myriad of other factors, some understandable, some capricious, conspire to create inequality. I agree with Aristotle; I have seen it with families and communities in which equal inheritances soon led to radically different outcomes, as one sibling on rocky ground thrives, while another in deep loam starves; one town with abundant resources goes broke, while another without natural advantages thrives.
As Aristotle saw, some lose, some expand their original homesteads, and suddenly we have Hoi beltistoi and Hoi polloi-and the rallying cry that someone’s liberty to do as he pleases means that egalitarianism of the lowest common denominator becomes impossible.
So, then, how often is a new deal needed?
Monday, May 4. 2009
"Questions from Oceania." A quote from VDH, re the Dems:
...we are in a race—a race to get the dependent constituents permanently in place and institutionalized before the proverbial (fill in the blanks) hits the fans. If he succeeds, we will end up like a Greece, France, or Belgium— weekly strikes by government workers and unions, rampant cynicism as everyone seeks to land the federal job for base salary and taxes and benefits, and then moonlights to get untaxed cash and barter for necessary goods and services, all coupled with a culture of blame at various foreign and domestic “thems” who make us so unhappy.
Final thought: without the Old US who will be blamed? Who will keep the global sea-lanes open?Who will buy the world’s exports? Who will deal with Milosevic, Saddam, the Taliban, and the other global nuts and psychopaths? Who will attract the world’s more daring and desperate?
So we end with a whimper, after all?
I want to be a toll-collector. Minimal responsibility or hassle. No heavy lifting or heavy thinking or risk, like working for a non-profit. Retire on full salary after 25 years (plus final year overtime factor) and full gummint benefits. Meanwhile, get rich and have fun writing for Maggie's on the side. Maybe a book deal, too: My Sexy Life in a Toll Booth.
Wizbang has a piece on the Osprey today. Can you name that fish?
 Goodbye, Columbus. Death of a holiday at Brown.
Getting those darn pesky Christians off NPR. Related: What's with this Atheism Movement? What are they for? And has nobody told them that atheism has been around forever? Most Episcopalians I have known are atheists, for heaven's sake.
A Google-killer? Will Google need a government take-over?
Good news on the fossil fuel front: 200 trillion cubic feet of gas
Kaus:
If Chrysler fails in the marketplace again two or three years from now, after billions more in government subisidies, won't that reflect badly on Obama and his "economic team"? WIll it then appear to have been better to let Chrysler go into an actual, non-prearranged, non-jawboned bankruptcy, in which it would likely have been liquidated or in which the UAW would have had to make far more substantial concessions, like workers in other bankruptcies?
VDH:
At some point, Obama must answer why waterboarding mass-murderers and beheaders like Khalid Sheik Mohammed is wrong, while executing by missile attack (no writs, habeas corpus, Miranda rights, etc.) suspected terrorists and anyone caught in their general vicinity in Waziristan — or pirates negotiating extortion — is legitimate.
AVI takes a look at the psychology of Socialism. He does not use the word "envy," but he might.
France lowers taxes to spark job growth
Let's get back to spanking. Who ever quit?
Obama is a statist, not a Commie. CATO. Statists are those who think politicians deserve to be philosopher-kings. Same as Commies.
The Jacksonian on the Constitution. One quote:
President Obama, when teaching Constitutional law, couldn't get this idea that all liberty and rights are vested in the people by Natural Law and not given to government. In an interview with WBEZ.FM in 2001 he went through his idea that the Constitution would, somehow, be made better if it took the other view: that government gets to give a few rights to people and retains the rest for itself via the concept of positive rights. Government, under that view, does not become a representative institution, but an authoritarian caretaker of the people. In wanting a Constitution that would say what government 'must do' on your behalf, he relegates that decision to government, not the people. To get something like, say, clothing to people, the government gets to decide what kind, what type and how much clothing goes to which people by its own dictates. That similarly goes for clothing. A good job. Health care for government to decide.
Postcard from the Casino de Paris, 1915, h/t Good Sh-t
 “Capitalism is nothing but a false religion, with Mammon as its god and Adam Smith as its high priest.”
If that is true, how come the Marxists and Socialists all want my money - the fruits of my labor and my saving and investing?
Who is greedier than a Lefty politician? And does anybody love my money more than politicians?
(Disclaimer: I like money. It gives me power over my life, freedom and choices, and personal security. However, I do not want one penny of your money unless I do a job for you.)
A few very thoughtful links about filthy lucre:
Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, discussed at Standpoint.
Bloggingheads TV with Joseph Heath on Filthy Lucre. Economic basics. Well-done.
Your financial planning. Mankiw
 As traditionalist/Centrists here at Maggie's, we tend to prefer Repub candidates because they at least pretend to sound like the word "freedom" matters to them.
Right now, the Repubs are searching the earth, looking for ideas. Wrong. Waste of time. Major national elections are won by appealing, likeable candidates who come across well on TV, have a bit of charisma and energy, and offer some inspiration, celebrity, and excitement to us benighted masses.
The wonkery and the ideology has little to do with it. Very few voted for Obama because he promised to nationalize (ie politicize) our major industries and businesses.
As Riehl rightly says,
The terrific irony here isn't that it's a Bush saying no more Reagan, it's that exit polls showed individual policies actually had little to do with Obama's win. National elections tend to be more thematic, than they are wonkish. All the Democrats really did was demonize Republicans, call for change and voice a lot of platitudes.
GOP turns to Bush aides for advice
Forget Reagan - be like Liberals
My final word on this: It's the candidate, stupid. Any reasonably smart person can make an issue out of anything, but it takes a powerfully convincing talker to reach over the head of the biased MSM and speak directly to people.
As Roger de H says, a party picks a figurehead to decorate their pirate ship.
Never frighten a little man. He'll kill you.
Robert A. Heinlein (h/t, Villainous' The Politics of Fear)
 Pete Seeger, at Powerline. Gotta admit that Pete did a good job with Abiyoyo and Sam the Sailor or the Whaler or whatever it is called. I heard him perform years ago at Tanglewood.
His dangerous innocence has made him good with kids' songs, and a fervent supporter of mass-murdering totalitarian oppressors of the common man - provided they were of the Commie variety. Thus his inscription on his banjo, Woody Guthrie-style, "This machine kills fascists," has an unintended irony which Jonah Goldberg would appreciate.
Thanks, Chris -
Sunday, May 3. 2009
 Go shopping to save your soul.
Why students don't like school. Hmm. I liked school. Maggie's is my school, for now.
Jack Kemp's enduring legacy
How to bake a trencher. I like the idea. No dishes.
Habits and vocation. Anchoress
Is exhaustion only in your head?
Always been interested in how the government subsidized the construction of suburbs with highways. Are highways a public good?
Semi-related: Amtraking the Automakers, which begins:
The odds that the federal government will ever get its hooks out of Chrysler or General Motors are slim to none, regardless what President Obama says. Why? In one word, Amtrak.
The O took a special interest in Chrysler. And, good grief, the O reads Sullivan. He'd be far more popular if he read Maggie's daily. We might remind him about freedom.
Ingraham vs. Feldt. See, this is how it's done
The mob is still after the terrifying Sarah Palin
Demography update: Northern Europeans having more babies, Russia having fewer
People are tiring of the global warming alarmism. What next?
Media bias, charted at Will.
Related, MSM press as lap dog or pit bull? I found this amazing:
One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under the threat that the full force of the White House Press Corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight.
More on cap and trade as nothing but a covert tax
More on capitalism and the culture wars. Dr. Sanity
Another Steyn masterpiece. A quote:
The theater of thoughtfulness is critical to the president's success. He has the knack of appearing moderate while acting radical, which is a lethal skill. The thoughtful look suckered many of my more impressionable conservative comrades last fall, when David Brooks and Christopher Buckley were cranking out gushing paeans to Obama's "first-class temperament" – temperament being to the Obamacons what Nick Jonas' hair is to a Tiger Beat reporter. But the drab reality is that the man they hail – Brooks & Buckley, I mean; not the Tiger Beat crowd – is a fantasy projection. There is no Obama The Sober Centrist, although it might make a good holiday song:
"Obama The Sober Centrist
Had a very thoughtful mien
And if you ever saw it
You would say it's peachy keen …"
Image: How Bouguereau got that picture of me in the woods in 1873 I do not know. Thanks, Berkshire guy. I will add it to the family photo album.
 Sipp is very fond of John Singer Sargent. So are we.
Portrait is his Dr. Pozzi at Home (1881).
Ah, for the days when a gent could don his at-home robe or smoking jacket after work and on weekends. Chair by the fire, glass of Scotch or brandy, nice Habana ceegar, book or the internet, kids in the kitchen or upstairs or wherever being very quiet because "Your Father is at home." No treadmill exercise, no weight-lifting, no driving kids to summer hockey practice, no running to the dry cleaner or to Home Depot.
Diapers? Are you kidding? What is "yard work"?
Today, a gent's work never ends no matter how wealthy. The wives have taken over, and the modern wife ain't got no respect. But she might show some, if you dressed like Dr. P.
Fathers are half-emasculated these days, unlike the diabolical Dr. Pozzi.
From Sen. Jim DeMint's WSJ op-ed on building a big tent party:
No Child Left Behind didn't win us "soccer moms," but it did cost us our credibility on locally controlled education. Medicare prescription drugs didn't win us a "permanent majority," but it cost us our credibility on entitlement reform. Every year, another Republican quality was tainted: managerial competence, fiscal discipline and personal ethics.
To win back the trust of the American people, we must be a "big tent" party. But big tents need strong poles, and the strongest pole of our party -- the organizing principle and the crucial alternative to the Democrats -- must be freedom. The federal government is too big, takes too much of our money, and makes too many of our decisions. If Republicans can't agree on that, elections are the least of our problems.
If the American people want a European-style social democracy, the Democratic Party will give it to them. We can't win a bidding war with Democrats.
Freedom will mean different things to different Republicans, but it can tether a diverse coalition to inalienable principles. Republicans can welcome a vigorous debate about legalized abortion or same-sex marriage; but we should be able to agree that social policies should be set through a democratic process, not by unelected judges. Our party benefits from national-security debates; but Republicans can start from the premise that the U.S. is an exceptional nation and force for good in history. We can argue about how to rein in the federal Leviathan; but we should agree that centralized government infringes on individual liberty and that problems are best solved by the people or the government closest to them.
Moderate and liberal Republicans who think a South Carolina conservative like me has too much influence are right! I don't want to make decisions for them. That's why I'm working to reduce Washington's grip on our lives and devolve power to the states, communities and individuals, so that Northeastern Republicans, Western Republicans, Southern Republicans, and Midwestern Republicans can define their own brands of Republicanism. It's the Democrats who want to impose a rigid, uniform agenda on all Americans. Freedom Republicanism is about choice -- in education, health care, energy and more. It's OK if those choices look different in South Carolina, Maine and California.
People who prefer dependency to freedom need to find another country. Lots of those countries out there, but they are disappearing fast. If you want a strong dose, try Cuba or Venezuela. Maybe Bolivia. Stay away from China, because they are looking for entrepreneurs.
The lowest level of Hell, according to Dante, is reserved for those who betray their benefactors.
The Circles of Hell. h/t, Thompson's Friday Ephemera.
Psalm 23
1 The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3 he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name's sake.
4 Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
6 Surely goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD
forever.
Saturday, May 2. 2009
"You see, there is a terrible coldness inside me." New English Review
A re-post for the beginning of boating season up here -
 Since it's boating season up here, I thought I'd do a little study of the US Yacht Ensign for today. This flag's use originated in 1847 when the Commodore of the New York Yacht Club proposed using it to identify private (ie non-commercial) yachts in US waters.
The law permitting the Yacht Ensign's use as a substitute for the National Ensign (American flag) was repealed in 1980. However, boaters love the Yacht Ensign and, in good American spirit, defy the regulation and continue to fly it. It just looks better on a boat.
A few details gleaned from various places:
- The size of the flag should be based on the length of the boat, feet to inches, so that a 32' boat should fly the closest-sized ensign, which is 36". Otherwise, it looks stupid.
- The 50 star national flag or the yacht ensign should only be flown in two places: either on a flagstaff on the stern or on the leech of the mainsail. It should not be flown from the spreader. Only the yacht club burgee and, most importantly, the courtesy flag of a visited nation are to be flown from the spreader.
- What's the story on the "fouled anchor" naval and nautical logo? After all, a fouled anchor is a nautical abomination - it will cause your anchor to drag. Naval Uniform History says:
The foul anchor as a naval insignia got its start as the seal of the Lord Howard of Effingham. He was the Lord Admiral of England at the time of the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. During this period the personal seal of a great officer of state was adopted as the seal of his office. The fouled anchor still remains the official seal of the Lord High Admiral of Great Britain. When this office became part of the present Board of Admiralty, the seal was retained - on buttons, official seals, and cap badges. The Navy's adoption of this symbol and many other customs can be directly attributed to the influence of British Naval tradition. The fouled anchor is among them.
The pup just ate two baby bunnies (Cottontail rabbits). One baby ran away. He found their nest while we were doing outdoor clean-up. The pup was helping, of course.
It's always been my philosophy that too much outdoor clean-up is bad for the wild critters, and we love our wild critters. The early Mother's Day present to the Mrs. was the work of 4 yard guys for 4 days, plus however-many truckloads of black mulch, plus a couple of dumpsters. Three loads of mulch did the job, barely, but the garden beds look spiffy for the moment. But, sadly, with fewer bunnies.
 Why Andy McCarthy said No to the Justice Dept (h/t, Blue Crab)
The UAW is now in the driver's seat. Kudlow is furious about the debt deal. "A shameful chapter in American history" he said this morning on the radio."It undermines the rule of law and replaces it with Chicago-style politics." A remarkable abuse of power indeed.
The etymology of military ranks
The plot to destroy private medical insurance
The man who fought the tort bar - and won. An ugly story with a happy ending.
I think the best satire is that which cuts close to some reality, but this bit cuts it very close to some peoples' reality.
David Kessler now targets Big Food. What a putz. He should worry about controlling himself, not me.
Is there still a war, or not?
Should Conservatives play hardball like the Left does?
Is there another Warren Buffett? He's the only guy I've heard of who is worth cloning.
The legal duty to rescue: Volokh
Flu: Hysteria du jour. (h/t, Right Wing Prof)
Photo: The Jack Kramer Pro-Staff was my favorite. Wish I still had it. At some point, there was so much junk around here that I threw it away in the Spring Cleaning dumpster.
Love's Secret
Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be;
For the gentle wind doth move
Silently, invisibly.
I told my love, I told my love,
I told her all my heart,
Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.
Ah! she did depart!
Soon after she was gone from me,
A traveller came by,
Silently, invisibly:
He took her with a sigh.
That's your hard-working Editor in the background, fishing in Connecticut in the Spring rain a couple of years ago. It's time to review some of our good trout posts from the past.
Fishing sea-run trout on Long Island, on the Connetquot.
Here's our post on the Eastern trout species.
And here's our post on the Western native trout species.
Here's the latest info on safe catch-and release techniques
Friday, May 1. 2009
MSNBC asked America, “Should the motto ‘In God We Trust’ be removed from U.S. currency?”
1,837,987 people voted “Yes”, but 12,300,371 voted “No”. Wow! If anyone has so much time on their hands that they actually watch MSNBC, I’d love to know how, with what attitude, and at what time of day they announce the result!
If freely-entered private contracts cannot be trusted, what can be trusted? Cram-down legislation defeated.
Rush mischievously but truthfully noted today that racial profiling is an evil if practiced by cops, border agents, or airports - but is considered highly desirable in government as Obama's people seek a Left-wing female Hispanic to replace Souter.
Why not some sort of Asian? How about somebody who reveres our Constitution?
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