Monday, August 10. 2009
 Remember when protest was patriotic? Glenn Reynolds
Habla astroturf? Via Doug Ross:
I asked him if he could tell me what the signs said. “¿Quien sabe?” (who knows?) was all he said to me, with a big grin. I’m kicking myself for not asking them how much they were getting paid to support the grassroots...
Do economic stats depend on the eye of the beholder? Powerline
I guess a deal was made. Big Pharma to run ads supporting Dem health plans. The politics of medical care is shaping up in strange ways. However, even the folks in Mass. heap scorn on it.
Dr. Krauthammer has a better plan. Simpler, too.
House doubles size of their private jet buy. Audacity indeed.
The CBO gives a big Thumbs Down to the silly notion of Preventive Care. Duh. Everybody gets sick, and eventually dies. It costs the same whether you die at 50 or 89.
Where the heck is Marianne Matthews?
I hope she's OK. We miss this Texan's wise and temperate comments at Maggie's.
It's tough to visit Woodstock, VT without focusing on the Federal and neo-Colonial architecture. I will post much of that on later posts, when I can get my act together.
Photo below was the view from the Simon Pearce Restaurant in Quechee (yes, most of the group went downstairs to watch the glass-blowing) on Friday night's dinner). This sight felt like symbolism for the wedding:
More random photos below the fold -
Continue reading "A 3-day weekend in Woodstock"
Sunday, August 9. 2009
Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks — drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care, and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high.
Mark Steyn, linked here.
 I cranked up my trusty Stihl Farm Boss last weekend to do some jobs, and my neighbor who has some heart problems brought me a cold Rolling Rock and asked me to cut down an old Pear tree which was productive 20 years ago but which has been in serious decline since it has been in the shade of several big trees.
For a cold one, a year's supply of good fruit wood for meat-smoking, and for the pleasure of helping out a neighbor, I was happy to do it. My stock of wild cherry chunks from last year is running low.
As long-time readers know, I always have mishaps with chain saws. Someday the thing will kill me. So be it. The two nuts of the cover blew off somehow and the chain blew off right after we got the big old tree down. Could only find one of the nuts. So it was a case of "pass me another cold one, let's light up some Cubans, and I will finish this job later."
Don't you hate to leave a job half-done?
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
4:25 So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.
4:26 Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,
4:27 and do not make room for the devil.
4:28 Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy.
4:29 Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.
4:30 And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption.
4:31 Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice,
4:32 and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.
5:1 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children,
5:2 and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Saturday, August 8. 2009
Democrats are complaining loudly that the American people are stupid and should shut up about President Obama’s health care program, cap-and-tax program, spend us into deeper deficits program, tax away our incentives program, apologize to our enemies program, castigate our friends program, and all his other radical remakings of America. Democrats are moving from their virtual pogrom to annihilate us uncooperative American kulaks to the next step of more physical coercion by their SEIU thugs.
Which brings to mind these lines from Shelley’s poem Ozymandias:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".
During the past week, I’ve had conversations with old friends – leftist, centrist, and conservative – with whom I experienced the political battles of the 1960’s. All of us have a similar take on what’s happening now, compared to then. Then, it was a challenge against authority primarily by the privileged young who didn’t want to serve in the war, which dissipated rapidly once the draft ended, while their ideologues took refuge in academia to rise to insulated tenure of attachment to their old slogans and some of their ilk to gerrymandered seniority in Congress. Obama was a tot then, but raised on their radical bromides. Now, it is the broader swath of working and middle class Americans, a far larger and more potent population, who are fed up and angry with being exploited and insulted by those who feel it their right and duty to impose their schemes to rearrange and endanger everyone else’s lives and weaken the America that sustains us. We all feel the potential for violence is high. Enough everyday Americans will defend themselves against thuggish attacks upon their right to speak out.
I wasn’t a proponent of street violence then, nor am I now. I abhor it. And, just let any one of the Democrat thugs try to physically attack me or silence me or anyone nearby and they better stand the f*ck by for a real thumping. At 61, I still fit in my Marine Corps uniform, and know well how to defend myself. I’m just one member of a rapidly expanding, reluctant force of ordinary Americans who will. Those who have spent their lives cloistered in ivy and Congress have never met our resistance before, are shocked, and are in for more rueful surprises if they keep on their vile attacks on our democracy, peace and prosperity.
 Well, it's not all bla bla bla.
As in this case: Most women are not, in my view, angry bitch psychotic academic victimized mini-monsters. The Retriever's Grandma, for instance (image on right from that post).
Here at Maggie's (Maggie is herself a tough old broad with a sense of humor and doesn't mind getting her hands dirty), we hold strong, cheerful, independent, humorous, tender, gutsy, intelligent, loving women in the highest regard.
More re women: our hero Charles puts Palin in perspective. I think he is right. Nothing to do with her charisma or gender. We like her very much, and hate the contempt she receives for having a non-elite life style.
Disney accused of defending heteronormativity. Not a joke. It does sound perverted, doesn't it? Not by accident.
American women have it worse than any women in the world. Just ask any wife: she'll tell ya all about it if you can get her off the computer for a minute. Always shopping for the latest new colors in burkhas to get stoned in, you know?
How do our neopuritanical Sociologist types discuss such things? Bruce found this, about social stratification on the internet. I learned a new word: homophily. It also sounds like a perversion, but it means that people often tend to hang out with people they feel comfortable with.
Well, golly gee! Smack me with a mackeral and call me Edna! Thank God for the science of sociology to inform us of that. Maybe I am an exception, but I very much enjoy people who are different too, if they bring something to the table. Still, family is family, a paisan is a paisan, and a tribe is a tribe.
Hillsdale College. Serious education. It's right up there with George Mason, in my view.
A re-post from 2007 -
 A brief break from my vacation in Dark Harbor on Islesboro on Penobscot Bay (there is no cable out here, and happily no TV either. Primitive dial-up internet, but once a week is plenty for that hassle) to highlight this piece by Jonah Goldberg at NRO called "Isn't that Special?"
I am always pleased to see folks knock the concept of "self esteem." What we humans need to aspire to is Self Respect. Self respect is hard-earned, or never fully-earned, but a worthy goal. A quote from the Goldberg piece:
These investments in self-esteem paid off royally, according to a report, “Egos Inflating Over Time.” Jean Twenge of San Diego State University and a team of psychologists combed through the answers of 16,475 college students nationwide who took the Narcissistic Personality Inventory survey between 1982 and 2006. Their conclusion: Today’s American youth are the most self-absorbed since we’ve studied the subject. “We need to stop endlessly repeating, ‘You’re special,’ and having children repeat that back,” Twenge told the Associated Press. “Kids are self-centered enough already.”
Read the whole thing - link above.
 Meanwhile, we will assemble the routine lobster, corn, potato and steamer clam dinner, but with a giant pot of hand-plucked Maine mussels also, cooked Italian-style in the kitchen, with garlic bread on the side.
We'll do the lobsters, cod, potato and clams on the beach, in a sand hole on hot rocks and coals under a pile of seaweed and sand - a true clambake. We wrap the hunks of cod (salt and pepper first) in rockweed (our main seaweed up here), and it tastes much better than lobster, in my opinion.
Family-picked Blueberry cobbler for dessert. Yes, we did bring a mini wine cellar with us, and plenty of fine champagne too.
The drinks provide that instant and unearned self-esteem; the harvesting of the fine wild foods provides the self respect, Maine-style. Yes, we fished at 4 am this morning, and fetched some fine cod with clam as bait. Saw a whale, too.
Images: Upper photo is of Islesboro. Lower borrowed from our friend neoneo, because I do not do cameras on vacation.
The final solution to the Health Care CRISIS
 Thou and I
Joyful the moment when we sat in the bower, Thou and I;
In two forms and with two faces - with one soul, Thou and I.
The colour of the garden and the song of the birds give the elixir of immortality
The instant we come into the orchard, Thou and I.
The stars of Heaven come out to look upon us -
We shall show the moon herself to them, Thou and I.
Thou and I, with no 'Thou' or 'I', shall become one through our tasting;
Happy, safe from idle talking, Thou and I.
The spirited parrots of heaven will envy us -
When we shall laugh in such a way, Thou and I.
This is stranger, that Thou and I, in this corner here...
Are both in one breath here and there - Thou and I.
Rumi was a poet, scholar and mystic, and the inspiration for the Whirling Dervishes (which we saw in Turkey a few years ago).
Friday, August 7. 2009
Another of Britain’s National Health Service debacles is hard to chew on, as found by Chris Reed, an editor at the San Diego Union-Tribune, who relays to us an essay by a state-run medicine supporting former U of Chicago PoliSci professor and aide to former Dem Senator Bill Bradley. She now lives in Britain.
[Dentists] are now paid a flat rate covering the amount of work they are contracted to do each year, which is measured in UDAs (units of dental activity)…. While these reforms were supposed to increase access to NHS dentists, in practice, they've had the opposite effect. NHS estimates suggest that nearly 1 million fewer people have access to an NHS dentist than they did three years ago. According to a citizen's advice survey carried out in early 2008, approximately 7.4 million people hadn't been to an NHS dentist since April 2006 because of difficulties in finding one…. The incentives set up by the new system also mean that dentists are more likely to "under-treat," i.e., to fail to provide complex (and costly) treatment, even if it's clinically necessary. After all, they are now paid the same to perform a root canal as they are to pull a tooth. Not surprisingly, the number of complex procedures has dropped precipitously in the last few years.
Remember to smile when you say ObamaCare:
Megan McArdle, who has recently been obsessing about what government can do about obesity (A silly obsession, in my view. Why has it become a reflex for people to ask "What can govt do?" about this or that thing, as if government had magical powers to alter reality?), used the Swedish word "lagom" in a piece about Ikea.
The word is not easily translatable into English, because it is such a dispirited, dysthymic Swedish concept.
Want to give it a try?
From the review of physicist John Polkinghorne's new book at First Things:
As he notes in the preface, for fifty years such contextual theologies as feminist theology, liberation theology, or African theology, have been flourishing. Polkinghorne takes the novel step of treating science and religion as an important type of contextual theology in its own right, recognizing that science, no less than other aspects of modern thought and culture, can suggest insights and provide information that are vital for theological reflection. “Theology conducted in the context of science must be prepared to be candid about the evidence for its beliefs,” he says forthrightly, but science does not dominate the conversation: There are clear limits to its authority and competence that both believers and unbelievers need to realize.
The overall message Polkinghorne brings is a crucial one: Science cannot provide its own metaphysical interpretation. As he says with typical precision, “Physics constrains metaphysics, but it no more determines it than the foundations of a house determine the precise form of the building erected on them.”
"I am a taxpayer by trade." Vanderleun. Also,
I have no doubt that as the post-racial, no-reparations-here, President of all Americans, in a full spirit of bipartisanship and concern for the little guy in the Taxpaying Industries of America, you will agree in this one instance to allow me to pay all my taxes next year with a check post-dated to 2013.
Via Driscoll:
“The government that’s big enough to give you free health care is big enough to tell you whether you can have a lemonade stand.”
When somebody collapses and stops breathing, make sure you remember how to do CPR. Just make sure you don't do it to some person who simply fainted, because you can be sued if you break a rib. Legal protection for Good Samaritans in the US is fading fast. Still, every citizen ought to know how to do this.
I have had to do it twice, once in a parking lot and once in church. One lived, one died.
Useful for the front or back porch, or the deck of your Boston Whaler. You can buy these functioning repros here.
India's population is 1.150 billion. It is predicted to surpass China's by 2030.
India has 600 billion farm animals.
Always a pleasant scene when they bus the union guys pawns in from God knows where. It's the Chicago Way. How great a thing is YouTube?
I know how unions work. Those guys are getting paid to show up, from the dues of innocents. It's the union bosses' payback to Obama for the favors he is doing them.
Please, Lord Obama, Bring us together! Kumbaya!
 Toon via theo
How much time do men spend looking at women? Never, never try to tell me that women are not sex objects to men. And if they are more than that too, so much the better for all.
Cries of "Tyranny" in Tampa. Whether Left, Conservative, or Compromising, Americans never take crap from their politicians. A plea to push back when the union thugs show up on their busses.
And, as we predicted yesterday, invited unions fill Town Hall: regular folks locked out in St. Louis
Taking the dissident data base seriously: Powerline. I refuse to take it seriously. Steyn: See you in the database. Maloney: "I'm gonna report myself."
Sibelius to America: Don't sweat the details. Too complicated for the little people.
Bill Clinton had Hollywood arrange the reporting of his N Korea rescue. Why?
AARP has been co-opted by the Left for years. Now they do not want to hear from their members.
You can't make this stuff up: Cash for refrigerators. As for the Cash for Clunkers, read this and weep.
Just like the Russian subs off New York: Russian state security working with Hezbollah. Maybe a beer with Putin might encourage him to give up his nation's pursuit of their own power interests...
Hanson on Congress' new G-5s. 3 of them. God forbid members of Congress fly with the citizens. Citizens might want to talk to them.
Betsy begins:
If you ever doubted that teachers unions were interested mainly in protecting teacher salaries rather than what was best for the students, you should read these two examples of how the unions are trying to block worthy programs just because they are more concerned about their own paychecks.
Nothing wrong with teachers, or anybody else, wanting to make more money. Problem is that it's the peoples' involuntary money. I believe that public employee unions should be illegal (can you imagine the military unionizing?), and that nobody in a unionized job can be regarded as a professional. In fact, I believe that unions are pretty much obsolete today - a relic from the old and truly abusive company town industrial era when there was no effective labor market and minimal mobility.
Robin of Berkeley: How I became Conservative so fast.
Why the uproar? VHD:
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Prairie-Fire Anger. “The approval ratings on nearly every one of the President’s key policy initiatives—cap-and-trade, health care overhaul, government take over of industry and finance, deficit spending, stimulus—are already less than half of polled voters. Obama’s own popularity has fallen dramatically and hovers near fifty percent. A number of well-publicized town meetings have erupted in shouting, as administration and congressional representatives try, often in condescending fashion, to explain the Obama agenda. The Republicans—written off just a few weeks ago as an obsolete party headed for oblivion—are now often polling higher in generic surveys than are Democrats. Why the sudden uproar?”
From No Left Turns:
To the degree that this old post is on the mark, it suggests some of the reasons why things are getting tense just now. What if Americans are frustrated with the modern administrative/ bureacratic state, and the feeling that they can’t control it?
Re the death of John Hughes, an outtake from Ferris Bueller:
FERRIS:
My uncle went to Canada to protest the war, right? On the Fourth of July he was down with my aunt and he got drunk and told my Dad he felt guilty he didn't fight in Viet Nam. So I said, "What's the deal, Uncle Jeff? In wartime you want to be a pacifist and in peacetime you want to be a soldier. It took you twenty years to find out you don't believe in anything?"
(snaps his fingers)
Grounded. Just like that. Two weeks.
(pause)
Be careful when you deal with old hippies. They can be real touchy.
Powerline on energy:
If Russia, Cuba and others can drill off the coast of Florida, why can't we?
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