We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
To say that antipoverty programs in the United States are perverted may
be an understatement. When you take into account the loss of
means-tested benefits (e.g., cash assistance, food stamps, housing
subsidies, and health insurance), and the taxes that people pay on
earned income, the return to working is essentially zero for those in
the lower two quintiles of the income distribution.
For many of
the working poor, the implicit marginal tax rate is greater than 100
percent. The long-run consequence of undermining the positive incentive
to work is, of course, the creation of an underclass acclimated to not
working...
One of the best new features in Vista (it's also in Windows 7) is the Snipping Tool. I only started using Vista a month ago, so it took me a while to blunder my way across it. What a great find.
If you just want a grab a picture from the Web for your own use, you right-click on it and save it. The problem arises when you just want part of a picture, or part of a web page (or program) that's not a picture. The traditional method is to hit the 'Print Scrn' key on the keyboard, which puts a snapshot of the entire screen into memory, then paste it into a paint program and do your cropping. The Snipping Tool eliminates the entire process.
In Vista's Start Menu, the entry is in Programs/Accessories. In Win7, it'll either be on the main Start Menu list or buried somewhere. If you don't see the entry, open Control Panel, 'Programs and Features', click on 'Turn Windows features on and off' over to the left, then checkmark the "Tablet PC" entry and let it load. If it's already checked and you swear you can't find the entry on the Start Menu, uncheck 'Tablet', reboot, then put it back in. (Why it's tied in with the tablet's features is anybody's guess.)
Update: A commenter noted that the 'Tablet' feature isn't offered in his 'Home' edition, so if you don't see a 'Tablet PC' entry in the 'Features' box, check out the couple of free snipping tools available here.
To use Snipping Tool, just fire it up. It automatically goes straight into 'capture mode'. Grab the mouse, hold down the left button and d-r-a-g it over the area you want to snip. When you let go, a box pops open with the sniplet. Do a 'Save As' and there ya go.
There are a couple of other features in the sniplet box you might find useful, such as a 'pen' tool where you can manually write words or circle something, and a yellow 'highlight' tool. If you don't like what you circled or highlighted, click on the 'Eraser' tool and then the area you want erased. You can also send the snip directly to someone via email without even bothering to save it, another time-saver.
There are a couple of Options you might want to change:
— You can add it to the Quick Launch tool bar if you use it.
— The 'ink' color is the color of the border it puts around the snip, so you might prefer black or some dark color over the default red.
Kudos to Microsoft for an excellent time-saving tool that works perfectly.
I'm paranoid? Really? I am not fretting here about some remote and
unlikely possibility. We are not speaking here of "slippery slopes" or
in terms of "what comes next?"
We are instead objecting to a black-letter law spelled out for all to see in the very first piece of legislation you're proposing.
Right out of the box. The state here -- Pelosi, Reid, Obama -- are
claiming that they can imprison people for behavior that has never
before even been hinted as being a crime, on the theory that such
behavior constitutes unpatriotic economic behavior which is detrimental to the state's balance sheets.
Think about what a broad, all-encompassing term "economics" is. 80%
of our waking hours are spent in economic activity of one sort or
another. The state here is asserting the right to imprison people
for behavior they consider not actually morally reprehensible or
harmful as other crimes are, but instead merely detrimental to the
Great Push Forward, the state's master plan of economic health and
well-being.
Right out of the box they propose sending people to jail for acting as economic subversives and economic traitors and yet I am, somehow, paranoid if I point out that the first step here is to reduce human freedom and increase state power.
And this is just a down-payment, remember. This is merely the first
of many freedoms you previously believed sacrosanct to be lost.
Prayer is ruining me for blogging. Anchoress. Prayer, as I have come to understand it, is a conversation with God. That is indeed more precious than writing.
Supporters of Obamacare have their next
target for obloquy and shame. It’s the United States Senate, an
institution whose villainy will almost match that of the insurers and
Fox News if the health-care bill sinks there.
The
anti-senatorial campaign is already revving up. Liberal columnist
Harold Meyerson stamped his feet in frustration yesterday in the Washington Post at the cussed balkiness of the Senate: “Dithering Heights.” “Proceeds glacially and produces next to nothing.”
This amounts to raging at the Senate for its very nature and purpose. It’s supposed
to be slow-paced and unproductive. Everyone has their moments of
frustration at the Senate (I’ve had plenty) because it is designed to
be frustrating, especially when a majority in the House is electric
with ideological excitement. Conservatives spent most of 1995 hurling
epithets at the Senate.
So it’s not surprising that the Left
is upset at it at a time when “Iron Nancy” is using her solid majority
to muscle massive pieces of legislation through the House by a handful
of votes. Why can’t the Senate do the same, goes the
cry, entirely missing the point. It’s not just that the Senate is built
differently from the House: It won’t truly be fulfilling its role in
our constitutional scheme if doesn’t deep-six Obamacare.
We have asked our friend Capt. Tom Francis to share some photos and info about his home town of Woodstock, CT. (Maybe in April we'll invite him to write about trout fishing in New England, as he is a fresh and salt-water fishing guide.)
Here's his first offering -
Roseland Cottage.
Built by Henry Chandler Bowen in 1846 - a local resident who made his fortune in New York City - Roseland Cottage, also known as "The Pink House", is located in Woodstock, CT. Designed by Andrew Jackson Dowling whose design concepts stressed the practical as well as the aesthetic. It's exterior design is called Gothic Revival. I wouldn't know Gothic Revival from Greasy Gravy, but that's what I've been told.
Roseland Cottage also has original Lincrusta wall coverings produced by Fredrick Walton of Walton Linoleum fame. The Lincrusta process produces embossed coverings made from linseed oil and wood flour on linen.
Bowen was an ardent abolitionist, Congregationalist, and Republican. He often entertained many of the heavy hitters of the day including Presidents - most notably President U.S. Grant who was enchanted by the in-home bowling alley. Bowen was known for his philanthropy and he had a huge impact on Woodstock and local towns. More on Bowen later in the series.
While lesbian feminista Democrat Camille Paglia admires Pelosi's "grittiness" and "mettle" (but detests what Pelosi has produced. BTW, we like Paglia a lot. She is the kind of person it is pleasant and interesting to disagree with, and we appreciate grit in women), Dr. Laura has another view of the world at home: The Evolution of ‘Feminism' Saddens Me. One quote:
...it’s pretty easy to make men happy.
It is remarkable that each and every one of the women who has
called my show complaining about her husband, and who was then asked
the question, "Would you want to come home to you?" has said,
haltingly, no. There it is. When women disdain masculinity and their
own femininity, all is lost for the family.
These sorts of discussions, however interesting at times, are a bit off the point. Men need to be gentle sometimes, and women need to be tough sometimes. Both obviously have these capacities. However, I think that if a woman wants to have a happy marriage she would do well to at least give Dr. Laura a listen. She understands men pretty well, and likes them for what they are.
This morning I told a friend I often watch idiotic escapist movies.Those who make the better ones need to be creative wonders.A look behind the scenes at one of the more successful reveals that he needs also to be an idiot.
My local newspaper carries a wire service profile of the director of the upcoming $200-million special effects movie “2012.”This director, Roland Emmerich, from Germany, “has earned the unofficial title of ‘Master of Disaster’” for his prior hits, “Independence Day” (1996), “Godzilla” (1998), and “The Day After Tomorrow.” (2004)They were, indeed, fairly good idiotic escapist movies, to me.
His soon to be released topper will have “a collapse of the Earth’s crust, giant floods and hellish rains of fire (yet not enough to kill the main character, played by John Cusak).”
Wow!Can hardly wait.New York destroyed again.Been there, done that, you say.
Emmerich does more, but notice what he doesn’t do: "In fact, the man who rose to fame as a cinematic escapist is an activist in real life.In Germany, he’s a strong supporter of the environmentalist Green Party.He campaigns for gay rights, and he doesn’t hide his contempt for organized religion.”OK, he does fit in with Hollywood.
As the profile continues: “In 2012, the pope is buried under debris when St. Peter’s dome comes tumbling down, and peace-loving Tibetan monks are not spared by the great floods.No Islamic site is seen perishing, though. ‘We didn’t destroy Mecca because we didn’t want to have to deal with a fatwa,’ Emmerich says.”OK, he does fit in with the PCers who made the Ft.Hood massacre possible and the media community apologists for poor, misunderstood, stressed Hasan. Can’t wait for that Hollywood film version, huh?What courage it takes to trash Western civilization, and make the world safe for its destroyers!
Emmerich puts the idiot cherry on his half-baked cake of a mind with this one, why he “couldn’t make a patriotic feel-good movie like ‘Independence Day’ anymore: ‘These days I have a much more pessimistic outlook for our civilization, despite the good America can do for the world under Barack Obama.”OK, we’re waiting for his film about how Obama’s abandonment of oppressed peoples in Tibet, in Iran, in Honduras, in the growing list to include Afghanistan and maybe Iraq, will cheer shmuck Emmerich up. (Couldn’t resist the alliteration.)
BTW, I’d love to give you, dear reader, the url to see this profile in idiocy for yourself.But, due to the past triumphs of idiocy in media my local newspaper’s falling circulation cannot afford to pay extra anymore for the wire service reports in its dead-tree edition to also appear at its website, and the MCT wire service website – unlike AP's, even – doesn’t even steer the reader to a newspaper that does.
A friend of mine was on the set for that 1973 movie, Pat Garret and Billy the Kid. He asked somebody who the weird, silent guy on the set was with his head covered with a sweatshirt hood or a hat, always sitting under a tree with a guitar. He was told "Oh, that's Bob Dylan." My friend, a Dylan fan, decided to leave the guy alone because he did not exactly appear to welcome interaction.
The first live performance of "Billy," March 2009. I like the age in this old voice:
The key aspects of this psychobabble include an overemphasis on "self-esteem" at the expense of self-control and personal responsibility; an attitude that practically worships "feelings" at the expense of reason and truth; a fundamental misunderstanding about stress and the role of stress in life (i.e., that "all stress is bad", for example; and failing to appreciate that stress, when it is acknowledged and dealt with in healthy ways can enhance maturity and psychological health); and finally the glorification of victimhood and the celebration of unhealthy narcissism and the narcissists who exhibit it.
Yesterday 4 Deputy US Marshals were detailed to serve an arrest warrant
on Philip Gordon 63 of Carroll County in west Georgia. Mr Gordon
refused to allow the Marshals entrance to his gated property whereupon
the gate was breached using necessary force. During the process Mr
Gordon’s 2 Labrador retrievers charged the federal agents and were
dispatched. Mr Gordon refused to submit to arrest and brandished an
assault rifle accusing the Marshals of trespassing before retreating
into his home. The Marshals summoned backup from the local Carroll
County Sheriff’s office and two of the 6 responding deputies refused to
cooperate in serving the lawful warrant. They were immediately relieved
of duty. Additional backup of federal agents in the Atlanta field
offices of the FBI and BATFE surrounded the Gordon residence. Repeated
demands for Gordon to surrender went unheeded and chemical agents were
introduced into the structure. An hour later an unconscious Gordon was
taken into custody and booked into the Fulton county jail on the
warrant charging refusal to pay the $15,000.00 penalty for failure to
maintain a government approved medical insurance policy. -- Francis W. Porretto Leonidas - Eternity Road
AP called it a "funk." The Pew Research Center describes the mood of the nation as "glum" in its new survey (2,000 Americans, 10/28-11/8, +/- 3%), which offers a significant warning for incumbents in both parties in the 2010 midterms.
We at Maggie's would very much enjoy having more commenters, but we know that it takes time to do so and most people (including me) just like to read what other people post on their sites without taking the time to participate.
On the other hand, we have been struggling over the past week with off-topic, hostile, intrusive, overly-personal and basically uncivilized comments which have forced me to delete a couple of nice posts because of the obnoxious and immature comment threads. I do not have time to monitor these things. We have Rules for Commenters, but a good rule of thumb is not to say anything you would not say at a nice dinner party.
(We do not mind the occasional off-topic comment if its purpose is to inform us or our readers of something.)
Final warning:
We are a sort-of upscale eclectic site with a Centrist, traditionalist, normal-American orientation, and not a Centrist version of Daily Kos. We welcome civil and informed disagreement and correction. We aren't a political site and are not classified as one, even though we do take our American civic duties and interests seriously.
Be civil, mannerly, respectful, funny, thoughtful, appreciative, or informative. Otherwise, take out your personal issues elsewhere.
Update: Thanks for all of the supportive comments. Good to hear from y'all.
...it REALLY REALLY REALLY grates to hear, again, especially on such an occasion, the following rhetorical trope:
"In an age of selfishness, they embody responsibility. In an era of division, they call upon us to come together. In a time of cynicism, they remind us of who we are as Americans."
What era does Obama live in? The America I know, that we all know, in 2009, is not an America that is suffering from an age of selfishness, an era of division, a time of cynicism. Mr. Obama can speak for himself. This is not a land nor an epoch of selfishness and cynicism, and the divisiveness is not extraordinary or even terribly bad -- and it often comes from Obama himself. But somebody should look the president in the eye and say "WHo are you calling selfish and cynical, Kemosabe?" I look around me and see idealism, love of country, generosity. I see the incredible outpouring of church groups and other citizens in aiding the victims of Katrina. I see people volunteering hither and yon for all sorts of good causes. And yes, I even see TEA partiers who are out there of their own free will, at their own expense, trying to defend the freedoms they love for the sake of their children, for the sake of posterity.
As for the actual content of the House healthcare bill, horrors! Where to begin? That there are serious deficiencies and injustices in the U.S. healthcare system has been obvious for decades. To bring the poor and vulnerable into the fold has been a high ideal and an urgent goal for most Democrats. But this rigid, intrusive and grotesquely expensive bill is a nightmare. Holy Hygeia, why can't my fellow Democrats see that the creation of another huge, inefficient federal bureaucracy would slow and disrupt the delivery of basic healthcare and subject us all to a labyrinthine mass of incompetent, unaccountable petty dictators? Massively expanding the number of healthcare consumers without making due provision for the production of more healthcare providers means that we're hurtling toward a staggering logjam of de facto rationing. Steel yourself for the deafening screams from the careerist professional class of limousine liberals when they get stranded for hours in the jammed, jostling anterooms of doctors' offices. They'll probably try to hire Caribbean nannies as ringers to do the waiting for them.
The legal costs to individuals and businesses are destroying the American economy. America, the most litigious nation and the most-lawyered nation (per capita) in the world is burdened by a broken, and crushingly expensive system of legal care.
Few Americans can afford high-quality legal care at $500-$2000/hour when needed, and end up in legal clinics or representing themselves. Few, if any, have legal coverage. Legal costs sap profits from business in ways that are entirely unproductive. The poor, minorities, and women are, of course, most hard hit by the difficulty finding justice in a money-driven legal system, while the Mafia, politicians, and Wall Streeters skate and the lawyers drive Lexi and Mercedes in their Valentino and Armani suits.
It costs more to contest a speeding ticket or a routine Maggie's Farm disorderly conduct ticket than to pay it. And when you die - forget it: You are forced to pay lawyers all over the place.
There is no affordable justice in America today, and God knows how many bankruptcies, heartaches, and ruined lives result. It's unfair, unjust and un-American. 10% of American African-American youth rot in jail for lack of legal care while rich white guys like Bill Ayers are walking the street and hosting cocktail parties for politicians.
Meanwhile, hordes of tort lawyers are watching for every time you fail to clear your driveway, and checking the lead levels in the toys and books you produce. Hungry divorce lawyers prowl around your home at night, waiting to hear an argument. They are everywhere, looking to either defend you or to prosecute you.
There are more laws up against you than there are diseases in this world.
Furthermore, unlike medical care, the US Constitution does concern itself with justice more than a little bit.
Just think about your annual direct and indirect legal care costs: they are included in your auto liability insurance, your homeowner's insurance, your tax guy, the guy you paid to get your kid reduced from a DWI to a DUI, the guy who managed the refinancing of your house, the indirect costs to your employer and in your town taxes for having to maintain a legal department, and the legal costs built into everything you buy in America - including doctors' malpractice insurance - which is basically legal insurance. Create a pension: you need a lawyer. Even your lawyer has to buy legal insurance, inflating his charges. And even your investments - every mutual fund has a legal team paid for with your fees. The list goes on and on.
Something must be done immediately to correct this drag on the American economy and on the American spirit. Short of killing all the lawyers (I am quite fond of a number of them), I suggest a government take-over of this broken, unjust system by 111 Federal bureaucracies, and with the help of our politicians, to solve this crisis.
A Veteran knows things: He knows life is precious, because he’s seen
life cut short. He knows life is strange, because those that should die
live and those who have the most life sometimes die. He knows life is
not easily wrapped up in a box philosophically. He knows that plans
fail. He knows there’s such a thing as luck. A veteran chooses his hard
lessons and walks toward them.
I am grateful for those who volunteer and serve. Their honor, duty
and defense of the weak means I can sit here and type and ponder my
character while they go fortify theirs through tough choices and
action. Thank you to all who give me this luxury.
Mad or bad? An excerpt from a good piece at Luskin:
When a group of 19 terrorists flew two planes
into the World Trade Center...The New York Times reported that they
were all psychologically unstable and had difficult times in forming
stable relationships with women. “The fact that they were Arabs and
Muslims or their political views had nothing to do with the motives for
this tragic act,” it explained. The newspaper urged that the main
lesson coming out of the attack was the need to fight against
Islamophobia and Arabophobia as well as for the United States to make
more concessions in the Middle East and to impeach President George W.
Bush.
Will government health care provide free therapy for all radical Muslims? Perhaps they all have a "self-esteem" problem? Or PTSD from Western oppression? Perhaps they might like an appointment with Dr. Bliss.
And who has "stable relationships with women," anyway? "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em."
They might use the Commerce Clause (nowadays it seems to cover almost anything the government wants to do), but I think the idea of forcing everybody to buy something is not a government power.
...at the end of the day, we're the ones who reward them. Unless and until we seek out candidates who share Coolidge's modesty, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.
Why the O doesn't focus on the economy, at Pajamas. One quote:
Obama persuaded many small business people to pull in their horns and make plans to keep a low profile (including laying people off) in order to avoid the wealth confiscation of the populist, socialist, economic storm they saw coming with his election.
92% of docs want tort reform. People have no idea what it costs for docs to protect themselves from their few litigious patients and the legal piranhas.
We did a post on Mad or Bad last week, and I am happy to see David Brooks is willing to see evil, in his The Rush to Therapy:
The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality. It ignored the fact that the war narrative of the struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy. It ignored the fact that this narrative can be embraced by a self-radicalizing individual in the U.S. as much as by groups in Tehran, Gaza or Kandahar.
It denied, before the evidence was in, the possibility of evil. It sought to reduce a heinous act to social maladjustment. It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation.
Mr. Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. "The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment," he writes. "Let's not pretend that it isn't a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won't. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind."
Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of "making the United States a more equitable country" and furthering the Democrats' "political calculus." In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run.
This explains why Nancy Pelosi is willing to risk the seats of so many Blue Dog Democrats by forcing such an unpopular bill through Congress on a narrow, partisan vote: You have to break a few eggs to make a permanent welfare state.
If "health care" were about health care, the devil would be in the details. But it's not about health or costs or coverage; it's about getting over the river and burning the bridge. It doesn't matter what form of governmentalized health care gets passed as long as it passes. Once it’s in place, it will be "reformed", endlessly, but it will never be undone.
The history of Social Security and Medicare and damn near every government program follows the same pattern: start small and expand later. When Social Security was started in the mid-1930's, the program collected 1% from your income along with 1% from your employer; these contributions went to fund a program to prevent poverty in old age. Now Social Security collects 6.2% of your income (12.4% for the self-employed) to fund a much healthier and wealthier senior population compared to their Depression-era counterparts.
One of the best new features in Vista (it's also in Windows 7) is the Snipping Tool. I only started using Vista a month ago, so it took me a while to blunder my way across it. What a great find.
Photos from 
We at Maggie's would very much enjoy having more commenters, but we know that it takes time to do so and most people (including me) just like to read what other people post on their sites without taking the time to participate.
From 