Monday, July 13. 2009
 The Englishman reminds us that yesterday was the anniversary of the Glorious Revolution.
We Americans do not think much about that 1688 event, but his link explains why we should. It was a precursor, of sorts, to the American Revolution.
The Columbia Encyclopedia says:
The Declaration of Rights and the Bill of Rights (1689) redefined the relationship between monarch and subjects and barred any future Catholic succession to the throne. The royal power to suspend and dispense with law was abolished, and the crown was forbidden to levy taxation or maintain a standing army in peacetime without parliamentary consent. The provisions of the Bill of Rights were, in effect, the conditions upon which the throne was offered to and accepted by William and Mary. These events were a milestone in the gradual process by which practical power shifted from the monarch to Parliament. The theoretical ascendancy of Parliament was never thereafter successfully challenged.
Image: William of Orange (William lll)
Booker in The Telegraph begins:
The moves now being made by the world's political establishment to lock us into December's Copenhagen treaty to halt global warming are as alarming as anything that has happened in our lifetimes. Last week in Italy, the various branches of our emerging world government, G8 and G20, agreed in principle that the world must by 2050 cut its CO2 emissions in half. Britain and the US are already committed to cutting their use of fossil fuels by more than 80 per cent. Short of an unimaginable technological revolution, this could only be achieved by closing down virtually all our economic activity: no electricity, no transport, no industry. All this is being egged on by a gigantic publicity machine, by the UN, by serried ranks of government-funded scientists, by cheerleaders such as Al Gore, last week comparing the fight against global warming to that against Hitler's Nazis, and by politicians who have no idea what they are setting in train.
What makes this even odder is that the runaway warming predicted by their computer models simply isn't happening. Last week one of the four official sources of temperature measurement, compiled from satellite data by the University of Huntsville, Alabama, showed that temperatures have now fallen to their average level since satellite data began 30 years ago.
Whole thing here. (h/t, Mr. Free Market)
 "Former Vice President Al Gore declared that the Congressional climate bill will help bring about “global governance.”" Good Lord! Is he taking his medications? Says Tiger:
Anybody who thinks that "global governance" is anything other than a profound evil is a woefully misguided dreamer, a nut, or an authoritarian.
Steyn notes that some believe that fears of Eurabia are greatly exaggerated.
NY to London in 1 hr 54 minutes.
The new new European anti-Americanism. Powerline
Dems going after Frank Ricci
James Schlesinger on why we need nuke weapons
The Massachusetts health care mess.
Betsy: That's your Congress for you: a hearing in search of a problem that doesn't exist.
Kudlow: The road to economic demoralization
Kristol begins:
The air is seeping out of the Great Liberal Hot Air Balloon. American liberals have been hoping, wishing, and praying--okay, maybe not praying--for over a quarter-century for an end to the ghastly interlude of conservative dominance ushered in by Ronald Reagan. Surely it was all a bad dream, a waking nightmare, a bizarre deviation from the preordained path of history.
With the Democratic congressional victories in November 2006, the nightmare seemed to be ending. And in November 2008, with the election of Barack Obama and increased congressional majorities, it seemed to be over. A new era had dawned.
But did it? Maybe we're now experiencing a liberal interlude, not a liberal inflection point. After all, only six months into the new administration, even a talented hot air blower like President Obama, assisted by friendly gusts of wind from the media, is having trouble keeping the liberal blimp afloat.
Taxes. They are going to ask? But will they ask nicely? Related, from Kaus: Tremors of doom for health care. I see no groundswell of support for anything other than "leave us alone."
Liberal Fascism Department: The O's Science Czar considered putting sterilants in the drinking water.
Has the potato blight hit your garden yet? Global cooling causes it. Meanwhile, global warming wreaks havoc on ferris wheels. But maybe that's a good thing: The Prince of Wales says we should stop having a fun easy life like his.
What's with tenure? Why should Profs be in any different position than everybody else? I don't get it. Related: Is the price of higher ed worth it?
Housing prices, going nowhere. I agree. Not a bad thing, either.
Who is responsible for this Age of Foolishness that grips America?
Ugly data on single motherhood. Pajamas
When they laugh at Sarah Palin, we feel them laughing at us.
What the hell is this? Surber
What about Rubio? Dr. Clouthier. Seems like Rubio is a potential star, and Crist the safe bet.
From Viking:
Payroll tax rates by decade:
1940: 2%
1950: 3%
1960: 6%
1970: 9.6%
1980: 12.3%
1990: 15.3%
The geniuses in government think you aren't fit to figure out how to spend your own money.
Jules begins The Nanny State Goes to War:
“War is redneck as hell,” as Sgt. Howison observed one hot morning in Baghdad. Lots of big vehicles, lots of blowing shit up, and with all that lead and high explosive flying around the place, lots of smoking and dipping. Yeah, smoking’s really bad for you, but …
The Big Crisis (h/t, Insty):
Photo on top is something I want but do not really need: A Kobuta with loader and bushhog
Sunday, July 12. 2009
 As a seafood lover, I have had 100s of crabmeat salads. Better than Maine lobster, in my opinion - and I eat plenty of lobsters.
When you go to Cooks.com, you can find tons of recipes. I object to all of them, because the meat of the Blue Crab is too special, precious, and too subtle to dilute with other random flavors like red peppers and mayo.
Here's my theory for the perfect crab salad: Finely chop some sweet red onion, mix with the cooked meat, and toss lightly with a regular or balsamic vinaigrette. Chill, and serve on Buttercrunch lettuce.
Ed. note: Get the crabs. I see Brooks Brothers has their crab chinos on sale.
Above: Lower East Side of Manhattan, 1937, where many waves of immigrants found their first foothold in America. Those 1860s-1890s tenements are still standing, in what is now one of the hippest young neighborhoods of NYC.
Below: Mulberry St., NYC, c. 1900, packed with southern Italian and Sicilian immigrants. The misguided Progressives wanted to tear down these neighborhoods, from the time of Teddy Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson.
What's a "slum"?
The Dylanologist and I have always been interested in the tragedies of urban planning, and fans of the organic, natural growth of urban areas designed by market forces and human desires, not by hubris-infected government experts.
One of his great-grandmothers, 1st generation Irish, raised 5 kids (with great success) in a NYC tenement, using bureau drawers as cribs. The Dyl said to me the other day:
"I lived in tenements for eight years. No elevators: two to three-story walk-ups, no a/c, shared bathrooms down the hall, unreliable heat, no cable, no phone, no wireless, with one tiny room with a dirty window and an old single bed with one thin, lumpy mattress. For the first four years, my parents paid around $30,000 per year for the privilege, and for the second four years, closer to $40,000."
Here's Jane Jacobs:
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, at the Examiner, speaks from his family’s personal experiences:
I exaggerate, but . . . well, maybe I don't. The truth is, despite the great promise of new medical technology out there now, in terms of new cancer treatments, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and more, the potential marvels of the next twenty years will never be developed unless some developer thinks there's a market.
And with bureaucrats in charge of deciding what treatments to pay for, the existence of such markets will be much less certain. Oh, sure, federally-funded medical research will still go on at the NSF, NIH, etc. But turning that research into actual products is a different story.
My family benefited from innovative treatments that probably wouldn't be around if the United States had adopted socialized medicine when that was first proposed over half a century ago. In 20 years from now, a lot more treatments -- and, probably, dramatically better treatments -- won't be around if we adopt a national healthcare program now.
It's ironic that the same Democrats who were pushing the medical prospects for stem-cell research during the last election are now pushing a program that will make such progress far less likely.
Psalm 24
24:1 The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it;
24:2 for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers.
24:3 Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place?
24:4 Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully.
24:5 They will receive blessing from the LORD, and vindication from the God of their salvation.
24:6 Such is the company of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah
24:7 Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in.
24:8 Who is the King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle.
24:9 Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in.
24:10 Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory.
I just caught up on posts over at The Next Right blog, where the future of the Republican Party, or something to replace it that has balls, brains and wider appeal, is discussed. My friend Jon Henke posted this one last week drawing on my other friend Don Luskin’s favorite incompetent NYTs economist (Luskin gave me my start in blogging in 2004 at his blog The Conspiracy To Keep You Poor And Stupid)
A Universal Health Care Economy
Submitted by Jon Henke on Fri, 07/03/2009 - 09:23
Paul Krugman, 2005, saying universal health care would make us more like GM...
"Why should we be a country in which hard working people aren't guaranteed health care if they need it? ... But the problem is that ... our economy is starting to look more like Wal-Mart and less like General Motors in the good days. The share of workers who get benefits at all is declining and the quality of the benefits."
Wal-Mart is very profitable. GM filed for bankruptcy.
Saturday, July 11. 2009
Story at Never Yet Melted.
My familiarity with Ubuntu is limited indeed, but I am familiar enough with Christianity to suspect that the Bishop is proposing to invent a new religion based on communitarian political principles rather than on the search for a sustaining personal relationship with Christ and God.
Most of us can figure out our relationships with other humans relatively well on our own, without the Bishop's instructions. It's God that we need help with.
 Now they're leaning towards a surtax - aka a tax on a tax
Marginal Rev uses the E Word to describe the health care negotiations in DC
What's a bigger deal? Pols with romantic indiscretions or pols with $ corruption?
More good recent mil photos from Afghanistan
Neo on Walpin:
I have little doubt that, had the same allegations been made towards the Bush administration, the story would rate front page headlines every day. But somehow, the following news failed to make the cut at the NY Times, the Boston Globe, as well as the WaPo (although I must say that the WaPo, being among other things a DC paper, has been a great deal better about covering the Walpin case in general). Imagine, if you will, how the following would have been covered by the MSM if the administration in question had been a Republican one; I doubt that Byron York and the Washington Examiner would be the lonely voices letting us know that the Obama administration is stonewalling Congress by refusing to answer pertinent questions and figuring that they can probably get away with it.
And they are getting away with it—at least for now
Via Mankiw:
From Michael Kinsley:
Six hundred billion doesn't sound like all that much to achieve, or come close to achieving, an important and long-standing goal such as universal health care. But keep in mind that health-care reform is supposed to save money. Its premise is that the current path is unaffordable. In that sense, a "mere" $600 billion extra is total defeat.
China vs the US, just a quote from a piece at NRO;
Fortune magazine recently reported that the number of U.S. companies in the world’s top 500 fell to the lowest level ever, while more Chinese firms than ever before made the list. Thirty-seven Chinese companies now rank in the top 500, including nine new entries. Meanwhile, the number of U.S. firms has fallen to 140, the lowest total since Fortune began the list in 1995. This is not good.
China also surpassed the U.S. as the world’s biggest automaker in the first half of 2009, with June sales soaring 36.5 percent from a year earlier. The Chinese registered 6.1 million car sales for the first half of the year. That way outpaced American sales, which were only 4.8 million.
And China has no capital-gains tax. It only has a 15-to-20 percent corporate tax. The U.S., on the other hand, is raising its cap-gains tax rate to 20 percent. It’s also increasing its top personal tax rates.
Seems to me that the Chinese govt has been moving towards an Authoritarian Capitalism, like Singapore. It works. Sucks, but works.
Funny, it's the blue states that are in trouble.
Is it gonna be Romney? And what about Sarah's star appeal?
Did the O misread his mandate?
Is water a human right? Is this a meaningful use of the word "right"?
Why does the US get stuck with these Pali refugees?
Re the O Admin and the economy, The Audacity of Conceit at Am Thinker:
It is a common mistake of intellectuals to confuse IQ with common sense and verbal fluency with leadership qualities. They are simply unable to comprehend that academic success does not necessarily translate into a firm grasp on reality; the knack for endlessly bloviating on an abstruse subject does not automatically imply administrative ability; an academic degree is not a substitute for practical experience; and a professors' lounge is not a corporate boardroom.
Nobody would deny that the members of Obama's circle of economic advisors are indeed academically adept, well-spoken men and women. But have any of them ever run a lemonade stand, much less a bona fide business? Have they ever met a payroll? Do they know what it means to toss and turn in bed, worrying over the coming rise in vendor prices? They may have academic theories and marshal vast amounts of data, but have little practical knowledge of how things work in the real world.
So what do they bring to the administration other than long resumes and fearsome reputations as intellectual polemicists? All these brilliant academics have been brought on board for the sole purpose of lending an intellectual veneer to Obama's political schemes and validate his power grab. Hence the pitiful sight of these noted intellectuals being trotted out to the microphones to bleat pathetically in defense of the administration's agenda.
One Train May Hide Another
In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line--
Then it is safe to go on reading.
In a family one sister may conceal another,
So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view
Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.
One father or one brother may hide the man,
If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.
So always standing in front of something the other
As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.
One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide
The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another
On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe;
One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia Antica one tomb
May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide another,
One small complaint may hide a great one.
One injustice may hide another--one colonial may hide another,
One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath
may hide another bath
As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.
One idea may hide another: Life is simple
Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein
One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory
One invention may hide another invention,
One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.
One dark red, or one blue, or one purple--this is a painting
By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,
These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin
May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician
Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but
One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.
A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides
Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in
A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag
Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it.
In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by the mother's
And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker
May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee
Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love or the same love
As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers
The better love lingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts"
Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that"
And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the Garden of Eden
Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.
Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.
When you come to something, stop to let it pass
So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,
Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory
Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,
The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading
A Sentimental Journey look around
When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see
If it is standing there, it should be, stronger
And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore
May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk
May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and
One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs
Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the foot of a tree
With one and when you get up to leave there is another
Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,
One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man
May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can be important
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.
Friday, July 10. 2009
From a David Brooks interview, via Althouse:
BROOKS: You know, all three of us spend a lot of time covering politicians and I don’t know about you guys, but in my view, they’re all emotional freaks of one sort or another. They’re guaranteed to invade your personal space, touch you. I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time. I was like, ehh, get me out of here.
 There is no convincing evidence that "healthy eating" - whatever that is (eating "organic" vegetables?) - or a "healthy lifestyle," eg exercising daily or whatever - has any beneficial effect on your long-term medical future.
Those things might - or will - make you feel better, happier, and more functional, and nobody likes to carry 30 lbs. of unecessary lard around with them, looking like a muffin-top or worse. Nothing to do with health, though. And that is why "Lifestyle Medicine" is quackery which has been foisted on a credulous public.
One quote:
...it’s little wonder, then, that the results of every major randomized, controlled clinical trial of healthy eating and lifestyles to date have been ignored, downplayed, or explained away... or their benefits greatly overstated. As incredible as it seems, they have failed to demonstrate significant benefit in preventing chronic diseases of old age, like the big three diabetes, heart disease or cancers, or in living longer. Nor has any healthy eating intervention been credibly shown to give everyone a government-approved BMI.
Other than avoiding smoking and substance abuse, and taking our medicines, our fates are sadly not in our hands.
Carpe diem: every day could be your last.
The O was remarkably obsequious to Russia. Why? Powerline.
No reason to be. The O seems to have a relentlessly apologetic, if not masochistic, reflex towards competing or adversarial powers. (Unless they are fellow-American Evil Repubs, of course.)
"Not in my name," please. He is looking for love in all the wrong places, in the wrong way. He does not appear to understand that other nations have the serious and often grim job of advancing their own interests.
That's the tough job we hired him to do for us, too.
Wise up, kid, and work for the wonderful country which pays your wages instead of working out your personal issues on the world stage.
Ed: related, via Right Wing Prof:
Greetings great and mighty culture, I am the Obama leader of New America. I am a cultured, urbane, black man with a Muslim name and I carry no baggage.
Your culture is great and wonderful, your poets brilliant, I will now quote one I have never read. Your food wonderful, I will now mention a dish I have never eaten.
Our countries have had issues in the past and they were all the fault of the old America, run by old white men.
Your country has done no wrong and any history of atrocities or rapaciousness or repression was just a reaction to Western meddling
I apologize on behalf of the old white men who wronged you.
New America will not judge you, we will not pretend our free culture is better than your backward, tyranny.
We just want you to like me us.
 It's John Calvin's 500th Birthday today (1509-1564). He was indeed one of the shapers of the Western world.
Marvin Olasky offers Three Cheers for John Calvin.
Here's a Calvin quote via Marginal Rev:
Whatever be the kind of tribulation with which we are afflicted, we should always consider the end of it to be, that we may be trained to despise the present, and thereby stimulated to aspire to the future life. For since God well knows how strongly we are inclined by nature to a slavish love of this world, in order to prevent us from clinging too strongly to it, he employs the fittest reason for calling us back, and shaking off our lethargy.
 The University of Texas mugs Western Civ. How advanced! How Progressive! How modern! How sophisticated!
Shmuck du jour: Gavin Newsom
Too many lawyers? Too many law schools? Prof B
In China, pols and their extramarital affairs
In the UK, sex-ed doubles teen pregnancy rate. Homework?
Why some people stay poor. Viking. I've seen plenty of folks like that. They just cannot make good decisions.
"It's no Trojan Horse - it's right there." NRO
Tiger:
...few people other than news junkies have noticed how extraordinary Barack Obama's agenda is. Perhaps a number will help: 35%. That is the aggregate percentage of United States GDP produced by the three industries that the Democrats hope to restructure from the top down: Health care (17% of GDP), energy (9.8% of GDP), and financial services (8% of GDP). Think about that. Without even considering the transformational impact of proposed anti-business laws of general application, such as the Orwellian "employee free choice act," the Obama administration wants to redesign 35% of gross domestic product from the center. And he proposes to do it all in a rush this summer, lest the decline in his popularity and that of the Congressional Democrats erodes his power to do so.
Thirty-five percent. Somebody needs to turn that into a bumper sticker.
The Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) is an agglomeration of journalist unions around the world. Like other international journalism organizations it is highly defensive of journalists having the right to go anywhere and say anything, and usually do well at voicing such defenses. But, sometimes they don’t, as in the known threats and mayhem visited upon any native or visiting journalists who veer from the Hamas or PA lines in Gaza and the West Bank, respectively, even though the IFJ says its mission is to be “opposed to discrimination of all kinds and condemns the use of media as propaganda or to promote intolerance and conflict.”
The IFJ just expelled Israel from membership. Israel has been withholding dues, demanding not to pay more than Jordan. Israel is, also, mighty upset with the IFJ’s report on the last Gaza operations that blasted Israel for violating journalists “rights”, although the IFJ team refused to meet with Israelis and just got its info from Hamas supporters.
The co-chair of the IFJ’s “Future Group”, tasked with building a more competitive survival course for its globally declining membership as citizens of the world find better and faster ways to be informed, told an interviewer about its meeting, ““What kind of members do we want — well, anyone breathing,” quipped one unionist at the IFJ “Future Group” meeting. “I’m not even sure they need to be breathing,” added another.”
If international journalists keep kowtowing to Hamas and other thugs in the world, it needn’t worry about finding Israeli members who aren’t breathing.
Israel refused to let journalists enter Gaza from Israel during its operations there, not seeing any advantage in “if it bleeds it leads” sensationalism and anti-Israel bias from journalists to further impede its operations, as it had in its Lebanon offensive, both offensives against missile-terrorists’ safe havens. The world’s press expressed solidarity with reporters at the border, pillorying Israel for denying them access. Israel said, go enter from Egypt. But, Egypt also turned them away. The world’s press, somehow, failed to highlight this turnaway.
Meanwhile, coming forward to the present Obama administration and global press obsession with Israeli settlements, a Palestinian journalist now working from the outside quotes another Palestinian journalist he privately has access to: “A Palestinian journalist in the Gaza Strip remarked: ‘The Americans and Europeans are fighting against Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan while Hamas is building a new fundamentalist entity here. The settlements may be an obstacle to peace, but Hamastan will soon become a major threat to stability in the region.’ "
So are journalists who forget or pervert their mission for facts and truth.
BTW: Here's a prior post of mine about the IFJ defending Hamas propaganda.
Thursday, July 9. 2009
 I hate, hate, hate anybody who would sponsor or support federal criminal legislation with language like this in it:
Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
Just consider what that could entail: in effect, it could make bad internet manners a felony. Atlas has the story.
Mark Steyn quoting De Toqueville in his review of Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect by Paul Anthony Rahe:
I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls.
He didn’t foresee “Dancing with the Stars” or “American Idol” but, details aside, that’s pretty much on the money. He continues:
Over these is elevated an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate. It is absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle. It would resemble the paternal power if, like that power, it had as its object to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks, to the contrary, to keep them irrevocably fixed in childhood … it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairs…
The sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations—complicated, minute, and uniform—through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way… it does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting on one’s own … it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
Welcome to the twenty-first century.
 268 years ago, as of yesterday, Jonathan Edwards preached his most famous sermon in Enfield, CT.
At that time, our readers know, CT was a Congregationalist theocracy, in effect, and the Yale-educated (especially in the sciences) Edwards was a well-known but back-woods preacher.
Scriptorium takes a look at Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
The prissy-mouthed portrait of Edwards does not capture what a fun-loving guy he really was (not kidding).
"They're selling postcards of the hanging..." The recorded version of Desolation Row from Highway 61 Revisited, with good photos:
Appleton at Spiked wants to take a stand against hyper-regulation of life by government. One quote:
It is not so much that the state is remoulding civil society. Instead, the state is demanding that we live our everyday lives through it. We are invited for a walk with the state; we are invited to eat with the state. More and more of social life is now lived through the state as an intermediary. Our everyday actions are supervised – and authorised – by an official bureaucracy.
Glenn Reynolds interviews Joel Kotkin on politics, California, and Gentry Liberals.
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Brief history of European Music,