Tuesday, June 16. 2009
Via Drudge, ABC turns programming over to White House. Good grief. So much for the MSM, press ethics, and journalistic healthy skepticism and integrity. But that's not news.
This is a sick, perverted symbiosis.
Kimball discusses a topic on which I am often hammering here: the topic of wealth creation. Liberals and Lefties often talk about money as if it grew on trees, and talk about themselves as if they were being generous by taking it and spending it.
The Boris Johnson piece which prompted Kimball's post is here. One quote from it:
I want to hear politicians talk less about themselves and their priorities and more about the entrepreneurs, the people who get up at 5am to organise their business or cut deals with the other side of the world. Every time you hear politicians swanking about what they are going to do with public funds, remember that wealth was ultimately created by private enterprise; and, if they don't help the wealth creators, they won't have any money to spend.
And from Kimball's piece:
Mr. Johnson has tailored his comments to the situation in London. But they apply equally to the United States. One of the many blighting effects of socialism is the distorted view of economics it disseminates. Economics is not primarily about the distribution of wealth. Rather, it is about the creation of wealth. That is the conditio sine qua non of the whole game. That is why capitalism is superior to every other economic arrangement yet contrived: given its head, it is a far more efficient engine for the creation of wealth than all its competitors. Remember this the next time you hear "politicians swanking about what they are going to do with public funds": the money they are planning to distribute "was ultimately created by private enterprise; and, if they don't help the wealth creators, they won't have any money to spend."
I have never understood why Lefties and Liberals disparage business. Without business, they would be nowhere. Business is the engine that makes everything work, and entrepreneurs, inventors, businessmen, financiers and investors run the engine for us. We should be grateful to them because, without those guys, we'd all be out of work.
h/t, Blue Crab
A quote from a Ward Connerly essay:
About five years ago, shortly before my term ended as a Regent of the University of California (UC), I was having a casual conversation with a very high-ranking UC administrator about a proposal that he was developing to increase "diversity" at UC in a manner that would comply with the dictates of California's Constitution and the prohibition against race, gender and ethnic preferences.
As I listened to his proposal, I asked him why he considered it important to tinker with admissions instead of just letting the chips fall where they may. In an unguarded moment, he told me that unless the university took steps to "guide" admissions decisions, UC would be dominated by Asians. When I asked, "What would be wrong with that?" I got an answer that speaks volumes about the underlying philosophy at many universities with regard to Asian enrollment.
The UC administrator told me that Asians are "too dull - they study, study, study." He then said, "If you ever say I said this, I will have to deny it." I won't betray the individual's anonymity because to do so would put him in a world of trouble - and he would, indeed, deny having said it. Yet, it is time to confront the not-so-subtle hand of discrimination against Asians that masquerades as "building diversity" at many elite college campuses.
Monday, June 15. 2009
 Urban coyotes. h/t, Jungleman
AVI's theory on not hitting squirrels with your car
Walpin gives the inside story. It's an ugly story. Imagine if Bush...aw, why do I keep saying that?
Hayek: Why I am not a Conservative. h/t, Neptunus
Men are now on the wrong side of the degree gap at every stage of education
Immigrants from redistributionist countries vote for redistributionists
The realities of college education: Four years of propaganda, partying, and buying a mostly worthless degree.
Conservatism thrives. All it needs are compelling leaders. Related: The Gallup poll. Related: Is Sarah the threat?
The Boston Globe is on sale.
Minimum wages do cause unemployment.
The public plan would be the only plan. Related: the CBO will have something to say about it. I'm beginning to think that the Admin bit off more than they can chew. Related from Dick Morris: The O's issues are crumbling. Related from Samuelson: Naive, hypocritical, and dishonest, Related from Yuval Levin and Kristol: Defeat Obamacare.
Also related: the Indian Health Service as a model
The $787 billion mistake
Chris Dodd's wife, via Insty
Fancy a cuppa?
Photo quality looks like the Bird Dog pup took these with her cell phone yesterday, in Chelsea (aka Hell's Kitchen):
 The Bird Dog family has a multi-generational attachment to Bermuda. We always stay at Cambridge Beaches: it's our place. No glitz, unostentatious, no jacuzzis, heavy on Brits, lots of little one-room "villas" perched on the hill over the ocean, sort-of mediocre but edible food. I like to feed on Grouper, Bermuda Fish Chowder, Conch fritters and Dark 'n Stormies whenever I am in Grouper-land. (We do not golf, so we do not need the Mid-Ocean Club.)
You can walk to a place that rents little Whalers and snorkeling or scuba gear, and they will give you a map of the good coral reefs. You go offshore and find them yourself. Mopeds always, but you drive on the left so it's a bit of an IQ test in the traffic circles.
It would pain me to see the US take over Cambridge Beaches as a place to put the Gitmo terrorists. It would tick off the Brits too, no doubt.
Remarkable cell phone (?) video from Iran protests, at LGF
Reviewed here. Sounds like good fun.
Roy Spenser presents the hypothesis that the Pacific Decadal Oscillator, a strange oceanic and atmospheric thingy that happens in the North and South Pacific, explains atmospheric temperature changes better than anything else.
“…I found on most of these questions that the desire for change and support for reform was slightly stronger 16 years ago…”
So says Stanley Greenberg, CEO and co-chair with Dem pitbull James Carville of polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. Greenberg served as a polling advisor to President Bill Clinton, was deeply involved in Clinton’s failed 1993 effort to rewrite Americans’ health care, and is today a prominent Democrat pollster.
Greenberg points out that, “the country has maintained the same anxieties about government's ability to improve the system.” Greenberg continues:
…Our inability to talk credibly about how we would reduce health care spending or costs for individuals and the country built a contradiction into all our efforts--the more we talked about the comprehensiveness of our plans, the more voters worried this would yield higher premiums or higher taxes. Very quickly, voters came to conclude that their families would face higher costs.
And those dynamics are still in play. In my recent polling, I found that voters are skeptical about claims that reform will reduce costs and personal health outlays. Claims about simplicity, information-technology modernization, and best practices don't seem to be enough to persuade them otherwise.
For example: “It may surprise you that Obama has already lost seniors, according to our current survey--only one-third approve of his plan. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see there isn't much in it for them.” Similarly for union members: “Yet the members will ultimately judge whether the plan is good for their families--and I'm certain that all the talk about taxing insurance contributions has not gone unnoticed.” Similarly for blue collar Americans: “Ross Perot is a distant memory, but his more libertarian, blue-collar male voters are very much alive. They are pretty certain government will mess this up--and only about 30 percent support Obama's health care plan right now. With Republicans reciting their mantra about no ‘government takeover’ of health care, the plan's opponents have found a common text.”
Greenberg ends with:
He [Obama] must respect the thoughts, feelings and calculations of ordinary citizens who are not easily spun on important issues. People will take out their calculators when he lays out his plan, and he can't avoid speaking candidly about its costs and consequences. And he can't forget that he has a big story to tell about a changed America, one in which health care is but a pile of bricks in the new foundation he is laying.
“Health care is but a pile of bricks in the new foundation” by Obama for America? Pile of bricks or pile of statist BS? Most Americans can tell the difference.
Tiger posted some toon sites. I liked xkcd. A sample:
 How the Uighurs got to Bermuda
Kucinich tells Ken Lewis how to run a bank
The O as the Great Leveler. So why would anybody work hard?
Boarded-up palaces in Detroit
Anarchy in Rotterdam
Imagine if these were Repubs. Also, the Walpin story at Powerline and more at Wash Times
Perhaps it's time to apply even stronger adjectives to N Korea
Moonbat thinking from Monbiot
The road to single-payer begins with public option deception. The goal is to eliminate choice.
Bill Maher to Obama: Get off TV and start socializing the country, darn it. US Chamber of Commerce to O: Stop ruining our country
Ezra Levant, CTV, and the censors
Why do they hate her? Via Protein
Biden on the Stimulus: We guessed wrong. That's a lie. It was pure political payoff.
CBS: Ahmadinejad is George Bush? WTH? Related: Pre-election polls showed Ahmad. with strong majority
Union Jack banned at Heathrow
Sunday, June 14. 2009
 Another quote from the Steyn piece we posted and commented on yesterday:
"Health" is potentially a big-ticket item, but so's a house and a car, and most folks manage to handle those without a Government Accommodation Plan or a Government Motor Vehicles System – or, at any rate, they did in pre-bailout America.
And another:
In Britain, once the crucible of freedom, civic life is all but dead: In Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, some three-quarters of the economy is government spending; a malign alliance between state bureaucrats and state dependents has corroded democracy, perhaps irreparably. In England, the ground ceded to the worst sociopathic pathologies advances every day – and the latest report on "the seven evils" afflicting an ever more unlovely land blames "poverty" and "individualism," failing to understand that if you remove the burdens of individual responsibility while loosening all restraint on individual hedonism the vaporization of the public space is all but inevitable.
By way of contrast with the excellent Steyn essay, economist Robert Frank thinks we'll all be happier if we're taxed more and controlled more, presumably because we are incompetent, dysfunctional morons. A quote from a comment on his book:
Behaviorist economics has become the latest fad among liberals. Classic free-market economists hold that individuals are rational, or at least act rationally: thus free decisions in a free market deliver optimal economic results. The behaviorists, among whom Frank is a pioneer, propose by contrast that government should protect us against the consequences of our passions. Behaviorist economics has supplied a scientific rationale for increasing taxes, imposing additional regulations, and limiting individual choice. It’s all for our own good.
One wonders to what extent the current success of behaviorism on the liberal left might implicitly draw on the American Puritanical tradition. In the name of science (global warming, healthy living, and so on), the liberal academic community seeks to impose limitations on individual free choice, the same way the old-time Puritan pastors did. (When I raised this historical precedent in a conversation with Frank, who sees himself as a God-free libertarian, he was speechless.)
Frank's vision is of citizens as a herd of happy, peaceful, benighted sheep, grazing, screwing and reading comics in a meadow while producing wool for the State's mills - and ruled by wise, altruistic men like him (who of course lack the passions of us peons - other than the passion to run the world their way. And who wants their life to be fully rational anyway? Not me.).
Problem is, as our post on technocrats and policy wonks yesterday discussed, the People have far more accumulated wisdom and life experience than any group of scheming technocrats or condescending academics who wish to create a world in their own image.
I would much prefer Sippican, Vanderleun, Glenn Reynolds, or my neighbor as President than the smartest guy in the Harvard School of Government. They understand why the energetic people of the world want to come to America.
Furthermore, we have seen all over the world in the 20th Century 1. how dispiriting powerful States are to the inventiveness and productivity of the aspiring, imaginative, creative and energetic individual (and how, if you dispirit the producers, there's no money to fund anything), 2. how entire sociopathic populations and cultures can be created (as in the Soviet Union) by energetic and resourceful people working the system and sneaking around it, and 3. how States politicize everything, and how power corrupts.
Frank is thus dangerously naive to idealize the State as some benevolent, altruistic, all-wise entity - almost like a god - and he is ignorant to view his fellow Americans as needing control and direction at gunpoint. It is an infantile and grandiose vision, and one which every proud red-blooded American should find demeaning and insulting. Un-American. Steyn's point about civic life is very well-taken by us Yankees: civic life isn't the Federal Government - it's your neighborhood and town.
I thought this debate was over when the Berlin Wall fell. Who imagined that the fall of Communism across the world would just provide a fresh opportunity for these soul-destroying weeds to sprout up again?
Count me as a Jeffersonian in this respect: "The government which governs least, governs best." We are not idiots, Prof. Frank.
1 Samuel 15:34 - 16:13
34Then Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. 35Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.
16The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” 2Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.” And the Lord said, “Take a heifer with you, and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’ 3Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.” 4Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, “Do you come peaceably?” 5He said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
6When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord’s anointed is now before the Lord.” 7But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 8Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 9Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” 10Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.” 11Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.” 12He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lord said, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” 13Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.
Saturday, June 13. 2009
From Dick Morris:
As it becomes clearer that the deficit caused by spending has landed us in a new economic crisis, entirely of Obama’s own making, his popularity and job performance are likely to drop as well.
The old recession — that the public says was caused by Bush — shows signs of winding down. But the new recession and/or inflation — triggered by Obama’s massive deficits — is just now coming upon us.
If Obama refuses to cut back on his spending/stimulus plans (despite convincing evidence that Americans are not spending the money), he has three options:
a) He can raise taxes, which will trigger a deeper recession;
b) He can print money, which will trigger huge inflation;
c) He can pay more interest to borrow money, which will send the economy diving down again.
The blame for these outcomes will fall squarely on Obama’s deficit and spending policies. The fact that Americans are aware of these issues, and already disapprove of Obama’s performance on them, indicates that they will be increasingly receptive to blaming him for the “new” recession.
Roxy Music in 1976 with Let's Stick Together, plus a cameo appearance by the appealing Jerry Hall. (h/t, the Englishman)
When professionals unionize, they are no longer professionals. I think we posted this last year, but Gates reminded us of this important piece:
Steyn on medical care and the nanny state. Great piece. One quote:
...there is a cost to governmentalizing every responsibility of adulthood – and it is, in Lord Whitelaw's phrase, the stirring up of apathy. If you wander 'round Liverpool or Antwerp, Hamburg or Lyons, the fatalism is palpable. In Britain, once the crucible of freedom, civic life is all but dead: In Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, some three-quarters of the economy is government spending; a malign alliance between state bureaucrats and state dependents has corroded democracy, perhaps irreparably. In England, the ground ceded to the worst sociopathic pathologies advances every day – and the latest report on "the seven evils" afflicting an ever more unlovely land blames "poverty" and "individualism," failing to understand that if you remove the burdens of individual responsibility while loosening all restraint on individual hedonism the vaporization of the public space is all but inevitable. In Ontario, Christine Elliott, a candidate for the leadership of the so-called "Conservative" party, is praised by the media for offering a more emollient conservatism predicated on "the need to take care of vulnerable people."
Look, by historical standards, we're loaded: We have TVs and iPods and machines to wash our clothes and our dishes. We're the first society in which a symptom of poverty is obesity: Every man his own William Howard Taft. Of course we're "vulnerable": By definition, we always are. But to demand a government organized on the principle of preemptively "taking care" of potential "vulnerabilities" is to make all of us, in the long run, far more vulnerable. A society of children cannot survive, no matter how all-embracing the government nanny.
What's my view? I am in favor of providing help with medical costs for the poorest and most helpless, but we already have that. It's called Medicaid. Furthermore, the charity clinic I work in one day a week will see anyone who makes under $50,000/yr and who lacks insurance, on a sliding fee scale. We will see nobody for nothing, though: that would be degrading both to patient and to the docs. (Such clinics are a good example of "civic life.")
I know there seem to be more people around today who long for a parental State than there were 20 or 30 years ago. I worry that they do not know that they are selling their freedom, dignity, and can-do spirit - literally their American birthright - for a bowl of lentils.
 Photo: Pres. Bush jumps from 10,000 feet for his 85th Birthday. His comment: "I don't feel a day over 84"
Have you seen Wolfram Alpha? http://www.wolframalpha.com/
The 2009 Zagat Fast Food Ratings
Somebody is getting pissed off. VDH with Just Make Stuff Up: President Obama’s war on the truth.
What the heck constitutes an actionable hostile work environment?
Ain't Socialism great? Chavez to shut down another critical TV station
The Animal Rescue Site needs your help http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=3
Why Philip Morris backed the tobacco bill. (h/t, Tiger) Regulations always work for somebody. Yes, Obama still smokes.
Yes, it is a political scandal. Americorps. Imagine if Bush had...
Also at Dino: Health care and the youth vote
Why is the gay Bishop worring about this instead of worrying about saving souls?
Urge ya to at least listen to the first part of Prof. Plimer
Afghanistan isn't a nation. It's a place. Neptunus
California: In spite of having the highest taxes in the nation, the state is broke.
Good example of how to lie with graphs
Canada's ObamaCare precedent. It's not for me.
Why bands like to perform on carpets
Frum is not thrilled with Mark Levin's book
Many students should give community college a try. There's a lot more to life than 4-year college.
Bulldozing shrinking cities. Sounds like a good idea to me. Start with the suburbs and the malls.
From Insty:
ELISABETH EAVES: Stop Worrying and Enjoy the Recession! Yeah, a recession can be nice if you’ve got steady income. And, of course, a recession under President Obama is surely a good thing for America and Americans! Under Bush it would have been a disaster of Steinbeckian proportions, but under Obama it’s a “purifying fire!”
Lefties like their spankings. No Pasaran
Why the Supremes should and probably will strike down Chicago's gun ban
Ace: More evidence that President Obama is everything the left accused George W. Bush
of being, but wasn't.
What if the Bush family tried this?
Uighurs to Bermuda. Sheesh.
Dino on the O's self-obsession:
Let’s see. Aloof, charismatic, obsessed with power, “absolutely certain” that he has a special personal destiny. This can’t end well. No, this can’t end well at all.
It's time for a free ad for Sippican's craftsmanship. Readers may recall the stunning and unique humidor he made for me. He seems to be able to make anything, in any historical style, including custom built-ins.
I'm sure he'd love to build something for you, especially if you are friendly to him. Here's his furniture site. Here's a small (Shaker?) Tiger Maple side table he made for us:
Sipp was kind enough to bring over a similar table the other day, in an antiqued (can't appreciate the antiquing in my in photo) finish. It is situated among the pile of other engagement gifts, below:
Continue reading "Sippican Cottage Furniture makes good stuff"
Friday, June 12. 2009
From The Committee of Public Sensitivity, at Pajamas:
Ezra Levant: I think most debates are won or lost before they’ve even begun. That’s because one side manages to define the terms of the debate and even the vocabulary. Take the very name “human rights commission.” How could you possibly argue against something so saintly? And me? I was accused of “hate speech.” Who could possibly support me?
Time to turn that around. I was actually the defender of human rights — freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, property rights. The HRCs were violating my rights. I wasn’t a hater; I was merely publishing the news. But, as it turns out, many staffers of HRCs are so radical, their own politics can reasonably be called hate. Etc. My point is: I decided not to let the other side have all the good words. That’s a story about political correctness. But it’s about something much deeper than that; it goes back to George Orwell’s Newspeak and 1984. I wasn’t about to let some petty fascists tell me I was abnormal. They were. And it was my goal to prove it.
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