Monday, October 26. 2009
 Note to self - when fishing in the Alaska bush
More on the polls: New Gallup Poll Finds 40% of America Conservative– 20% Liberal
The O's war on business. Via Driscoll:
Obama has demonized just about every business sector in America. Through the 2008 campaign to the present, he has gone after credit card companies, the coal industry, mortgage companies, real estate companies, steelmakers, utilities, drug companies, doctors, oil companies, Wall Street, defense contractors, and health insurance companies, just to name a few. In each case he has dinged them for greed, taking excessive profits, and failing to put people first. His criticisms have not been over minor matters but over their basic core functions, and their values or lack of them. [His demonization of talk radio and Fox News also constitutes a front in his attack on business -- Ed]
Obama demonstrates almost complete ignorance about the private sector and it’s no wonder: he has so little experience in it.
Noonan: He owns the rubble now
WSJ: Why Government Health Care Keeps Falling in the Polls - The health-care debate is part of a larger moral struggle over the free-enterprise system.
Samuelson on the fake health care debate:
The promise of the public plan is a mirage. Its political brilliance is to use free-market rhetoric (more "choice" and "competition") to expand government power. But why would a plan tied to Medicare control health spending, when Medicare hasn't? From 1970 to 2007, Medicare spending per beneficiary rose 9.2 percent annually compared to the 10.4 percent of private insurers -- and the small difference partly reflects cost shifting. Congress periodically improves Medicare benefits, and there's a limit to how much squeezing reimbursement rates can check costs. Doctors and hospitals already complain that low payments limit services or discourage physicians from taking Medicare patients.
The Dems are the fast road to Socialism and the Republicans are the slow road to Socialism.
Many people say this, but heard most recently from my son and one of my daughters (the Ron Paul one at Kenyon - not the McCain one in NYC). We observed during our drives yesterday, with irony, that the only reason China has been able to slowly, step-wise get rid of Socialism is by having an authoritarian, police-state government. Places like France, England, and Germany will never be able to do that, with so many people sucking on the government teats. They are screwed economically, spiritually, and humanly. Their people with verve and ambition still come to America...for now.
 The revealing photo from Politico
Why do I own pianos? AVI explains, or tries to.
David Horowitz’s “Alinsky, Beck, Satan, and Me” Series
Remembering the fall of Communism, 20 years ago. However, the O does not find it a worthy event: I think the Lefties still mourn the day of the collapse of authoritarian socialism and the burst of freedom behind the old Iron Curtain.
Joblessness, by state
Books to read for people who disagree with me. Insty
"Conservatives continue to outnumber moderates and liberals in the American populace in 2009..."
Jerry Nadler's ethics
Dr. Sanity:
The truth is that most of the drivel that issues from the radical environmentalists' mouths these days is pure, unadulterated neo-Marxist fascism, disguised as compassionate concern for the planet; and steeped in a deep hatred of humanity.
Via Blue Crab: What the fraudulent health care “reform” will actually do to health care costs
Check out the stuff we posted over the weekend. Some fun stuff, I think.
Did a bit of driving around this weekend. Took some lousy photos. We did drive past a doctor's office in Norfolk, CT: Dr. Ralph Emerson. We all agreed we'd be glad to go to him. (In some areas the leaves were wonderful, and in some spots not so good, but we were not looking for leaves.) This is Canaan, CT:
The Housatonic Valley, Route 7 in Western MA:
More random road photos below the fold:
Continue reading "Driving around Southern New England"
Sunday, October 25. 2009
The pup who works in NYC is studying for her GMAT. It sounds like a rightly demanding and discriminating exam.
She says the grammar correction sections are extremely subtle aspects of complex sentences, and that the two-part interactive math problems only give you two minutes each if you want to finish them. If you get one right, the computer gives you a more challenging one. It ramps up fast, she says, to try to find your limits. That's a great idea, like an automated oral exam where they can push each line of questioning until you are totally stumped and crushed with humility. The two-part math questions involve something like Which of the following additional pieces of information do you need to solve this problem? A,B, Both, Neither.
Brain swirls. These sorts of logical challenges quickly separate the men from the boys.
There are two essays also. Sounds like good fun to me, but I like exams. No. I love exams, whether offered by schools, institutions or, most importantly, by real life every darn day.
The pup does too: she is busy re-memorizing her exponent and square root tables to save time on the exam. She has great fun doing it, and says "It will never hurt you in life to have 9 to the 5th on the tip of your tongue." She began with 1-12 to the third and is working her way up.
No calculators allowed for this exam. Good on them for that.
 I am in the middle of Conroy's new book, South of Broad, which is set in Charleston.
Being a Yankee, I had no idea what Benne Wafers were. Here's the recipe.
It's nice to know that there are still places in America where ladies routinely have teatime with homemade tea cookies. It is civilized and civilizing, like so many old Southern habits.
Regarding other low-country foods, She-Crab Soup is fine and dandy, but this summer I discovered how much I enjoy Shrimp 'n Grits (and I don't even love shrimp. I like it with the smaller shrimp).
It's amusing. Sort of. Morally and intellectually appalling, however.
This is a re-post of an NJ piece from a couple of years ago -
There are people living "deviant" lifestyles in the Northeast, and, sadly, they are frequently invisible and marginalized. After much searching to locate the most deviant family your reporter could find in western Massachusetts, we decided to interview Jim and Sarah D. We summarize our interview with this extremely deviant, euphemistically-termed "traditional family," here:
 Social deviant Jim D. 42, leads what we might best term a paleo life, largely out of touch with modern reality and seemingly oblivious to the exciting opportunities of modern lifestyle choices. Married for 21 years, with three kids, Jim drives 25 minutes to work each morning in his 8 year-old Subaru sedan. A college grad, Jim, on his fourth job, is CFO of a medium-sized manufacturing corporation based in Pittsfield, MA, making around $120,000 per year, not including generous benefits.
"I worked my way up the ladder to reach my level of incompetence," he laughs. "The job is a daily challenge, so I try to meet it each day determined to have some fun with it, and to rise to the challenges with a can-do spirit, corny as that sounds. I go to work every morning wondering what sort of pitch will be thrown to me, and hoping at least to hit a single. When I get stuck and confused, I call Sarah to talk it over." Really? "She's my partner, in every way. We joke that by combining the two of us, we add up to one barely competent human."
Jim claims his wife is "great to me and for me" and says "I love my kids to death." They go to their Presbyterian Church together every Sunday, and they tithe. "Budgeting our tithing is a blessing to us," says Sarah. Jim and Sarah have a date night every Thursday night, and family Sunday dinner with his in-laws.
They have lived modestly, and have accumulated over $500,000 in their 401-K savings. Jim says "Business hasn't been loyal to its employees for 20 years, so you have to take care of yourself. That's fine with me. My Dad did it by always living below his means, which were minimal for a long time, and I do the same. Unlike my Dad, though, I doubt anyone will let me continue working as long as I want to."
What did his Dad do? "He quit high school to join the Army. Hated school. They stuck him in the Corps of Engineers. Then worked up to a construction supervisor as a civilian, which he still does. He will never quit work, although he could retire now if he wanted to. He owns three houses; rents two and lives in one. The job gives him something to grouse about, and gets him out of the house and out into the world."
When asked what were the most important things in his life, Jim answers "Knowing God and being a responsible adult male. Working hard, paying my bills, being a good parent and husband, a good citizen and a good friend." For hobbies, Jim and Sarah enjoy gardening, jogging in the Berkshire Hills, and cooking together. When their first child was born, they gave their TV away and have been without one since. "Brain rot," says Sarah. "It interferes with family time, and we didn't want the kids to be passive zombies."
Sarah was a grammar school teacher until the kids came. "I would never have married a woman who wanted to work while we had young kids," Jim says. "That's an experiment with human nature I would not want to subject them to." As the kids enter high school, Sarah is planning to return to teaching high school English this time, having made herself "an amateur expert" in Medieval and Renaissance literature over the past 15 years. "I polished up my French, and learned Italian." What's her dream job? "Teaching Beowulf and Dante."
"Unlike Sarah, I was the first kid in my family to ever go to college," Jim says. "My first day at UMass, my Mom insisted I wear a jacket and tie. That is how traditional - or out to lunch - my parents were then. Mom baked a huge layer cake when I got my admission letter. They were both children of immigrants, my Dad's parents from Romania and my Mom's from Ireland." He says "UMass set me up for a fine career, but I had no big dreams. I just wanted to be able to support my family, and to find a way to have a fairly good time doing it. Math was easy for me, so I majored in it, but I made sure I got myself educated as widely as I had time for, while staying on the Rugby team and without too many drunken nights. I took some accounting classes to be practical about the future, but I met Sarah in a Chaucer class. She was cute as hell, and I said to her after class 'I don't think I belong in this class.' She said 'Let's discuss it.' The rest is history."
Politics? As Sarah says "We go to every Town Meeting, and we speak up when an issue is important to us. We don't obsess too much about national politics. We are local." When pressed on the issue, they confessed "Well, we do listen to Rush when we have the chance, but we are usually too busy."
 This is my idea of a fine dressing for Mr. Turkey: Foie gras, apple and chestnut.
I have baked some quail with foie gras stuffing (damn good), but never turkey. Time to do it.
I may do a side of oyster stuffing and a side of the foie gras stuffing, but fill the bird itself with the expected chestnut, sausage and cornbread stuffing. Or maybe not.
Anyhow, I have to cook two, so I'll do one on the grill, unstuffed of course.
 Hinckley Yachts experiencing the recession. Photo is a classic Hinckley DS 42. Perfection. Only problem: in my (limited) experience, Hinckleys cannot point worth a damn.
Kindle-killer: Barnes & Noble Unveils Kindle-Killing, Dual-Screen ‘Nook’ E-Reader
Nookie-reader?
Laptops for overseas Marines - plus dancing Marines
"Victicrat" - cool video
The O in Stamford, CT on Fri raising Dem money, with Dump Dodd. Ted Kennedy's old skirt-chasing, low-life, pub-hopping partner Dodd is a goner.
Mark Steyn: Obama a tough guy, at least with Fox News. With real tough guys, the O is a pussy.
On the other hand, the WH did pick a fight with the Chamber. That takes nerve, because they are tough. They aren't exactly Conservative though.
Related: Beck on The Chicago Gangsta Way
Camille Paglia, last of the open minded liberals
Let's All Buy a Hybrid! It will pay for itself in 25 years!
The facts about high executive pay. WSJ. I don't care what they make. I do care about what I make. I could never be CEO of Goldman Sachs or GE: I lack the brains, talents, skills, knowledge, decisiveness, interpersonal skills and personality for that. Great biz managers are as rare as great shortstops or sopranos or ballerinas. Got to reward them well for what they do or they will quit, retire - or go to your competitor. That's how free labor markets work, isn't it? It's about scarcity and added value. Like truffles. Supply and demand is a fundamental of freedom.
Destroying all the forests can save the planet!
The bailouts were not meant to really save GM and Chrysler. Duh. It was just a payoff to the union - by us, the lowly taxpayers.
More on your tax dollars at work: Cash for Clunkers fails again
Of great value to single, social-climbing, or designing women: Tax records open in Norway
Medical insurance costs rise for small biz. So can they dump the cost on me? People ought to be able to buy their own insurance on their own, like adults, in a free market.
Saturday, October 24. 2009
As a counterpoint to yesterday's Country-Pop You Belong With Me, here's Dylan's wonderful version of You Belong To Me, with some repetitive video of Bob with Sarah, his first wife, in what appears to be their bedroom in NYC - it doesn't look like their Woodstock, NY house.
Seeing all the Amish in Ohio last week got me to thinking about Rumspringa.
It seems to me that this is nothing unique about the Amish. A fair number of adolescent kids in any culture spend some time taking a vacation from their parents' values and way of life. Fortunately, most return to sanity sooner or later if they don't lose themselves or destroy themselves in the process.
 One of the biggest disappointments with Windows Vista is that they dropped the 'Identities' feature from Outlook Express, now renamed "Windows Mail". The 'Identities' allow you to have completely separate email accounts, each with their own Inbox, Outbox, settings, etc. This way you can have one account using your real name for friends and family, one with an anonymous handle for Internet stuff, maybe one for business and a fourth acting as a 'throwaway' address that you use for online transactions, just in case some unscrupulous dealer sells it to the spam merchants.
It was, in short, an invaluable feature, and there's no reason on God's Green Earth why they should have removed it. The only way it can be done with Windows Mail is to actually log off the entire system and then log back on as a different 'identity'. That's friggin' ridiculous.
So, the hunt was on to find an email program that supported multiple identities. Two days and about a dozen programs later, I found the answer. It costs $35, but if you want true multiple identities, it's the only program I found that does the trick.
More info + setup tips below the fold.
Continue reading "Doc's Computin' Tips: Multiple email identities in Vista"
Just found out Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour has finished its 100-piece series.
It can be found on line, though, and in reruns on Sirius. It's enjoyable, with a great selection of old tunes.
Friday, October 23. 2009
Viking wonders whether country music is the new rock and roll. I stole this Youtube from him because it's touching as hell. Taylor Swift:
 Update on the invasion of the Asian Longhorned Beetle. Please do not term me racist or anti-immigrant for posting this.
Phoenicians in New Hampshire? No doubt. I think I saw one there this summer, rowing a galley full of purple elephants across Squam Lake.
The retired (I think) pastor Dr. Andrew Jackson has announced his Experience Turkey travel biz. Readers know how much I love that country. His email announcement says, in part,
As many of you know God has given me a deep love for the biblical land of Turkey. Once the home of Abraham, Noah, and the Apostles Paul, John, Peter and many more.
After traveling and ministering in Turkey and leading tours for almost 20 years now - as well as writing two books on prayer journey itineraries through Turkey - I have decided it is time for me to go public as a Turkey tour/trip consultant.
I already assist many people (Christian and non-Christian) around the world with their tours/trips to Turkey, so I thought I would make it official, and offer my expertise and first-hand experience.
You can find the details of my Turkey tour consulting group at my new website www.ExperienceTurkeyTours.com.
In Health Care, Nobody Knows Anything. Two new industry studies reignite the debate about what makes health care so expensive.
However, Betsy is spot-on:
The Pelosi Democrats aren't going to give up on trying to leverage in some sort of public option. Their logic is that once they get a program in place, they can start piling on additional mandates and increase the size of the program just as has been done with other government health programs over the years. That is why they're so adamant to get a public option approved. They figure they can hammer out the expansion later. And the result will be to drive private insurers out of the market and throw more and more people into a government-provided insurance plan. That's why they're so excited about describing their plan as "Medicare for Everyone." They just are ignoring the fact that the reimbursement schedule for Medicare won't cover all a doctor or hospital's costs. Someone has to pay the difference. And if we start forcing people out of the private market into the government program, there won't be anyone left to pay the difference. And so the only solution will be to provide less health care. The trajectory of improvements in health care that we've seen in our lifetimes will start flattening out and maybe even trending down. That's the real curve that the Democrats are bending - not the cost curve.
The dirty-minded MSM: Powerline
The O holding up Aghan decision until after the Nov elections. Probably until after health care votes too. What a jerk to operate that way. It's not manly.
It's about jobs. Yes it is, partly. But there are only 2 things government can do to help business growth: easy money and cutting taxes. As the guys says:
The One is far too busy trying to ruin healthcare and jack everyone’s electricy and heating bills to the moon to worry about job creation.
Why the Pay Czar is way off base.
Ditto, Ramesh: I'm against hate crimes; and against hate-crimes laws, too.
$15 million/year dingbat lectures Wall St on salaries
Where did all the Obama Youth go? Yes, probably looking for jobs.
It is a hoax - we were fooled.
From Obama's thesis:
"... the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom."
What???
Ledeen at PJ discusses it all in Obama and the Constitution; He Has His Doubts.
Update: I hear there is some question about whether this is real. Can somebody find out?
The government is still doing this right now:
Denise Tejada bought a house last month at the age of 20, thanks in large part to a loan guaranteed by the Federal Housing Authority. This story offers a dramatic demonstration that, despite the housing bubble causing the worst economic downturn in generations, the ideology of home ownership is alive and well in the United States and still being supported by the government.
Without question, Tejada's loan is toxic--to her and to the taxpayers who are backing the loan. Her house cost $155,000. Tejada's loan was apparently made on a micro-down payment of just 3.5%, the minimum down payment to qualify for an FHA loan. On top of this, however, she got an additional government backed loan to make improvements. Her total loans amount to $183,0000. In short, she was immediately underwater on her new house.
To get a taste of central Ohio, we stayed at the very pleasant Honey Run Inn outside Millersburg in Holmes County, the heart of Ohio Amish country where every other name seems to be Yoder. Excellent dinner menu there, but pricey.
If you don't get lost, it's only a 45-minute beautiful country drive down to Gambier in Knox Co. Gotta watch out for your turns, though, on those nice two-lane county roads or you can end up far from your destination with no gas station anywhere.
When I visit a new area, I like to get a close-up feel for the woodlands and their outdoors, so I took a couple of early morning hikes up there in Holmes Co. I'd say the bird life and the tree life are similar that of southern New England, and the woodlands are similar hardwood forest - except that the density of nut and mast trees is remarkable: Walnut, Beech, various oaks, Hickory, Shagbark Hickory, Butternut, Ash. When you walk through the woods in late Oct. as I did, you hear the startling thunk of walnuts falling constantly. Also different - I saw no pines and no birch. Plenty of majestic Tulip Trees as one sees in southern New England, and Maples all over.
You cannot have familiarity with a woodland without knowing each tree, and I try to do so. Was mann weiss, mann sieht.
4000 years ago much of Ohio was short-grass prairie and full of Bison. A cooler, wetter climate since then has made possible the hillside woodlands of today (everything flat seems to be farmed) - plus there are no more Indians to burn the prairies to suppress woodland growth.
From the size of the trees, this patch of hilly woodland below was pasture 40 or 50 years ago. Why I did not see or hear lots of Wild Turkeys I do not know, but these woods definitely hold plenty of deer.
A few more snaps from my hikes in the morning drizzle below the fold -
Continue reading "Ohio Central Highlands #4: The Woods"
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