Thursday, February 25. 2010
Few of our readers recall tunneling to the barn during the big New England nor'easter blizzard of March 11, 1888.
Here's the weather story of that snowstorm (which tragically omits the role of AGW - we should never let an ancient weather crisis go to waste).
Some photos:
Longacre Square, NYC (Now Times Square):
Somewhere in Manhattan:
Somewhere in Brooklyn:
Main St., Stamford, CT, from this Stamford history site with more photos:
Train tracks in Norwalk, CT:
 From the New Math of Poetry in Chronicle:
If current trends persist, the sheer amount of poetry "published" is likely to double, quadruple, "ten-tuple" in the decades ahead.
Who is writing all this poetry? In quieter times, the art's only significant promoters were English professors who focused on reading poetry for its own sake. Today colleges across America have hundreds of programs devoted to teaching men and women how to actually write the stuff. Those in charge of undergraduate and M.F.A. programs have cast themselves in the role of poetry-writing cheerleaders who are busy assuring tens of thousands of students that they are talented poets who should expect their work not only to be published but to win awards as well.
The notion that writing and performing "poetry" is the easiest way to satisfy the American itch for 15 minutes of fame has spilled out of our campuses and into the wider culture. You can't pick up a violin or oboe for the first time on Monday morning and expect to play at Lincoln Center that weekend, but you can write your first poem in May and appear at an open mike in June waving a "chapbook" for sale.
There’s nothing like Lent for reflecting on the sins of other people.
A sarcastic Mead, linked here. Oscar Wilde could have said that.
 Now the obnoxious nanny idiots are targeting salt. What next? Ten years ago they told us to eat broccoli. Now they say broccoli contains carcinogens. Ten years ago they said to avoid fat. Now they say eat all the meat and fat you want, but avoid carbs. I say "Ignore them all." Food has little or nothing to do with health.
Charlie Munger on China
The next bubble: Carbon trading. As they say, how can the promise not to produce something which is invisible be a valuable commodity?
Al Gore peeks out his igloo and says nothing but untrue things.
The O's team already planning for 2012
Abortion debated, with civility
Obama's Rules of Engagement: Calling Lawyers for Permission to Kill Terrorists.
From Roger on Obamacare:
The issue of freedom is one that is too obvious too require commentary: if ObamaCare passes, you will be less free in about 87 different ways. You’ll be poorer, you’ll have less choice, and you’ll be subject to vastly more regulation and bureaucracy. It’s a horrible thought. The DMV coming to a doctor’s office near you.
A rant from Prelutsky: Searching for intelligent life on the left
I expect tricks like this from the warmists, but not from the CBO. Computer models?
Warmism at its height, just before the fall
Wednesday, February 24. 2010
Vicenza is an uncrowded, almost unvisited UNESCO World Heritage site with a great number of Palladian buildings. The nearby La Rotonda was shown here recently, but usually Americans visit it as a side trip from over-crowded Venice. A great pity. Our suggestion is to stay in Vicenza or Verona, and if absolutely necessary, take a day-trip to Venice!
Piazza dei Signori, Vicenza. The two columns were built at different times. The lion represents the Venetian republic and was once the only column in the square. It wasn't until over a century later that the second column was built in honor of Vicenza and its citizens.
Street Scene, Vicenza
Below is Villa Valmarana, between La Rotonda and Vincenza. In 1757, Tiepolo and his son Giandomenico were invited to Vicenza to fresco rooms in the Villa Valmarana and in the adjoining guest quarters, the so-called 'foresteria'. Their patron was Count Giustino Valmarana, a scholar and theater enthusiast. Tiepolo frescoed the walls and ceilings of the vestibule and four ground-floor rooms, while his son executed the decoration in the adjacent guest house.
Cuban Doctors Sue Over 'Modern Form of Slavery'. "I ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more..."
Hurricane-Like Snowstorm Aims for Northeast...
Looks like another big dump for New England. This will please the News Junkie, who I believe suffers from a serious case of Skiing Addiction. (He loves the cold fresh powder and the fine wintry weather this global warming is bringing us.)
 I do not know the history of how government unions came to be, but I deplore them. Who are they defending those employees from? Their evil neighbors who pay their salaries and their benefits?
The days of fat-cat evil Capitalists oppressing workers are long gone. Private sector unionization is in the dusk of its history, but government unionization is growing by leaps and bounds. Can anyone imagine a unionized military?
In my view, public employee unionization should be illegal because their opponent, in effect, is the public. But there is the basic right to free assembly. At the very least, public employee unions should be prohibited from politics and political contributions: that seems corrupt by definition but, again, there are logical consistency and freedom issues here.
People have been thinking about the topic lately:
From Declining unions, increasing stranglehold:
As the latest BLS statistics reveal, more union members – 7.9 million – now work for the government than the 7.4 million union members working for companies in the private economy, which has five times more workers. This imbalance has profound consequences for all workers, and for democracy itself.
From Rick Moran's WHAT DO WE OWE PUBLIC EMPLOYEES?
We have allowed public employees to ascend to a privileged place - a pedestal that they were never intended to occupy by the Founders - to the point where their influence over politicians, especially at the state and local level, have made them a force unto themselves in growing the size of government. More public employees means more union members, which means more dues money, which translates into more political contributions to friendly politicians who will gladly repeat the cycle.
This vicious circle must be ended. The biggest reason is that it is bankrupting us.
At Reason, Class War: How public servants became our masters:
People who are supposed to serve the public have become a privileged elite that exploits political power for financial gain and special perks. Because of its political power, this interest group has rigged the game so there are few meaningful checks on its demands. Government employees now receive far higher pay, benefits, and pensions than the vast majority of Americans working in the private sector. Even when they are incompetent or abusive, they can be fired only after a long process and only for the most grievous offenses.
It’s a two-tier system in which the rulers are making steady gains at the expense of the ruled. The predictable results: Higher taxes, eroded public services, unsustainable levels of debt, and massive roadblocks to reforming even the poorest performing agencies and school systems. If this system is left to grow unchecked, we will end up with a pale imitation of the free society envisioned by the Founders.
Nearly 25% of all mortgages are underwater. What's the big deal? Is a home an investment, or a home? What is truly remarkable in life is to buy something - and to have it appreciate in value. That rarely happens.
100% of auto loans are underwater, and so is the vacation you took last year and put on the credit card. That new leather sofa too, the TV and the boat. And probably your life savings, compared to a few years ago.
For those headed for trouble because of job or income loss, however, I have nothing but sympathy... while I blame Washington: We need tax cuts instead of ever-higher taxes.
We wish all you kids a hard life: living hard, studying hard, working hard, playing hard, loving hard, giving hard, praying hard, worshipping hard, and loving God hard so you can have the life in abundance through Christ which he offers us.
 Prager via Lizards:
For the right, the primary moral authority is God (or, for secular conservatives, Judeo-Christian values), followed by parents. Of course, government must also play a role, but it is ultimately accountable to God and it should do nothing to undermine parental authority.
For the left, the state and its government are the supreme authorities, while parental and divine authority are seen as impediments to state authority.
Can the Euro survive?
Cuba is great because...no MacDonalds
How crappy was Haiti before the earthquake?
Driscoll:
...from Walter Duranty to Pinch Sulzberger, Thomas Friedman and Frank Rich, the Times has a long history of being dazzled by the abstractions of totalitarianism, and thus being blinded from the workaday world of actually reporting the news.
How Stupid Do the Elites Think We Are?
How stupid do Swedish elites think the people are?
Climategate Meets the Law: Senator Inhofe To Ask for DOJ Investigation
Krauthammer video: Krauthammer: Obama's Health Plan "Is Really A Travesty Masquerading As An Outreach To The Republicans"
It's my health, it's my choice.
McCotter: The Crisis of Consent: Republicans Must NOT Abet Obama’s ShamWoW! Summit
Like we said: Will the White House demand that every business “justify” its price increases?
FAIL… White House Can’t Find GOP Health Care Bill That’s On Their Website
Brilliant analysis from Vandy:
Obamacare takes a long and detailed look at the current state of American health care and identifies those areas in which it is not yet fucked-up and closes all those unfucked-up loopholes in only 2,000 pages. Given the problem of having to fuck up still functioning elements of the health care system in all 50 states, Obamacare is a masterpiece of concision.
Scuppers and Harley on a grouse hunting trip in Maine 7 or 8 years ago, hanging out by the lake that President Eisenhower liked to fish:
Tuesday, February 23. 2010
 WSJ: The proposed new edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders could place large swaths of the population under the umbrella of pathology. One quote:
...good psychiatrists do not rely too heavily on the DSM when they care for patients. There is simply no substitute for observing the patient, listening to his story, and fine-tuning his treatments—psychological and pharmacological—as needed.
The framers of the DSM III knew this well. They cautioned against manual users taking too literally the sharp boundaries drawn between disorders and between disorder and mental health. "This version," they wrote in the preface, "is only one still frame in the ongoing process of attempting to better understand mental disorders." Thirty years later, despite undeniable progress in brain science, we are saying much the same thing.
Well said, Dr. Satel.
Ed. Addendum: Louis Menand, with wonderful clarity, looks at the tendency to pathologize everything into a "disorder" in The New Yorker. Every human has his own difficulties, weaknesses, pains, sorrows, limitations, fears, heartaches, struggles. No one can catalogue and categorize them all. Simply trying to understand one person is a heck of a challenge.
We linked Mead's Sunday Jeremiad: Petty Prophets of the Blue Beast earlier today, but I feel it needs highlighting. He begins:
 There’s nothing like Lent for reflecting on the sins of other people; I thought I’d start at the top — with the bishops of my own church. As the Episcopal church along with the other mainline Protestant denominations diminishes, we don’t have to look far to see bishops and leaders who are largely failing in their core assignments: to tend to the health and promote the growth of the congregations in their area. Yet even as we have fewer and fewer effective and successful leaders, we have no shortage of political, ‘prophetic’ bishops. When they can, they meet with world leaders and jet off to exotic locales to bring peace and fight for justice. When they can’t do that, they sign statements of concern, issue reports and otherwise tug on the skirts of an indifferent public seeking attention for their political views.
In the mainline churches, which is what I know best, the political views leaders express are generally those of what could be called the ‘foundation left’ — emotionally grounded in concern for the poor and development, historically linked to the ‘new left’ mix of economic and social concerns as developed in the 1960’s, shaped by an atmosphere of privilege and entitlement that reflects the upper middle class background of the educated professionals who run these institutions. The social sins they deplore are those of the right: excessive focus on capitalism, too robust and unheeding a promotion of the American national and security interest abroad, insufficient care for the environment, failure to help the poor through government welfare programs, failure to support affirmative action, failure to celebrate and protect the unrestricted right of women to abort. I am of course speaking very generally here and there are lots of individual exceptions, but many of these folks are generally tolerant of theological differences and rigidly intolerant when it comes to political differences: they care nothing at all about doctrines like predestination but get very angry with people who disagree with them about issues like global warming or immigration reform. Theological heresy is a matter for courtesy and silence, but political heretics fill them with bile.
Read the whole thing.
Re humanitarians,
"They are compassionate to it (humanity) doubtless, as one may be compassionate to the most revolting animal. But their dislike of it appears to be general and fundamental."
G K Chesterton "Humanitarian Hate," 1908, from AVI's Chesterton, Conrad, and HG Wells
 This makes the best cornbread I've ever had - and I have had plenty of cornbread. I'll never bother with another brand. What makes it special is the sort of corn meal they use: coarse-ground with corn hunks so it comes out chewy but with a crunchy crust.
They sell it at Costco. Also, I was surprised to see, at Amazon. Try it.
 "Contemporary mainline churches have confused the Blue social model with the Kingdom of God." Bingo.
One way to drive them out of business: Obama to Urge Oversight of Insurers’ Rate Increases. Hey, why not do the same with the cost of cars, and tuition...and the cost of government?
Are all narratives untrue? Jawa
Senators do not want Obamacare restrictions. Says Legal Insurr:
Obama's plan (and so too the House and Senate versions) is the worst of all worlds. It is a replica of the housing bubble, thrill for the first few years, and then the bill becomes due without any way to pay for it.
The trap. Q&O via Blue Crab:
Obama gets his moment recorded by the TV cameras no less. And mournfully he pronounces the Republicans as obstructionists who refused to negotiate in good faith as the great and wonderful Democrats have offered to do. And because of that, it is with a heavy heart and reluctantly he is forced to agree with the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that reconciliation is the only route left open to them to do “what is right” for the American people.
Insty:
I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE ABOUT MY CARBON FOOTPRINT when U.N. “climate change” commissars are meeting on Bali — again. “Yet again, we are asked to believe the UN deserves special exemptions from its own preachings. Its conferees are jetting to Bali for the greater good of all the little folk, whose job is merely to pay the bills for such pleasures, and live with any resulting rationing and regulation. According to the Jakarta Post, some 1,500 people from 192 countries are expected to attend this shindig — where UNEP claims that envoys of some 140 governments will be present.” Somebody tell these people about Skype.
Getting rich off climate, Via Hot Air:
“According to Mr Schapiro, carbon trading is now the fastest growing commodities market on earth. Since Kyoto signatories bought in to the cap and trade concept in 2005, there have been more than $300bn carbon transactions, prompting several investment banks, including Goldman Sachs and Barclays, to set up their own carbon trading desks. But that’s just the start. If President Obama and his supporters can institute a cap-and-trade system in the United States – and that’s a big if for this increasingly marooned presidency – demand could explode into a $2 to $3 trillion market…
“‘Carbon developers’, many of them employed by large multinationals, travel the world in search of carbon reduction projects to sell, while firms of carbon accountants have been established to verify on the United Nations’ behalf that those reductions are real. The whole thing, though well intentioned, looks wide open to abuse and scams. Mr Schapiro’s account of the carbon trading market is obviously a sceptical one, and no doubt there are others that take a less cynical view. But I wonder what all the wide eyed climate change campaigners are going to say when the first scandals begin to break, still more what they’ll make of it when the whole thing turns out to be another giant asset bubble – if indeed the non production of carbon can be described as an asset.”
Monday, February 22. 2010
Related to our previous post, From Drudge:
Boehner: New Obama Plan Doubles Down on Failure, Puts Summit in Peril...
SWALLOW: White House Warns Republicans: We'll Pass It With 51 VOTES...
PROPOSAL SUMMARY USES WORD 'TAX' 35 TIMES...
'Increase in Fees on Brand Name Pharmaceuticals'...
Broaden 'Tax Base for High-Income Taxpayers'...
Orders 'Comprehensive Database' On Health Claims...
FORCED: 'Raises percent of income assessment that individuals pay if they choose not to become insured'...
BACKDOOR FIX: Healthcare 'Funds will be transferred to the Social Security Trust' if necessary...
White House Endorses Sen. Landrieu's 'Louisiana Purchase'...
President Obama’s proposals for health care legislation fiddles and fizzles, hardens disputes with opponents, excludes bridges to agreements, and ignores the root cause of overwhelming public unease. Rather than “change” he continues and exacerbates failure.
Summaries, inadequate, are available from the New York Times and Washington Post. The Washington Post, also, offers – more usefully -- the White House provided sketch of details. All leave out in-depth analysis.
Essentially, Obama’s proposals are compromises between the entirely Democrat House and Senate legislation. It actually increases some taxpayer and industry garnishments to pay for enlarged entitlements, adjusting or delaying some. Similarly, the imposed mandate on the states to fund enlarged Medicaid eligibility is delayed a few years but remains a fiscal time-bomb impacting all other state services and driving tax increases. The penalty on large employers who do not provide medical insurance is slightly eased, for the first 30 employees, but the penalty increased, and it is still a sub rosa “mandate” and economic and competitive burden. Some additional database measures are added to perhaps and marginally combat Medicare fraud.
In essence, the Obama proposals continue on the path of grossly enlarged federal government intrusion into and control of individual choices and states’ variations that fit their circumstances and resources.
Indeed, it goes further than before in adding wholesale federal control over insurance premiums, imposing rates, exploiting ignorant furor at large increases in individual coverage premiums by Wellpoint (Blue Cross) in California. The Associated Press provides, however, some of the facts: the individuals segment is deep in the red; it is unfair for the employer segment or other states’ insured to subsidize it; overall profits are 35th out of 53 industries in the Fortune 500 list. Obama’s proposal only deepens the cost pit for 90+% of insured, while driving private insurers out of business which impels a default to more government-provided and dictated, taxpayer-paid medical plans.
The Obama proposals are meant to bridge differences among Democrats in control of the House and Senate, so they can turn the small procedural loophole of “reconciliation” into an override of all other procedures and precedents, not to mention public opposition. Further, Obama does not mention elements of the House and Senate legislation like wholesale cuts to Medicare spending (primarily of provider reimbursements, already low, which would drive more to not take Medicare patients) thus leaving the cuts included as a false way to mask the enormous budgetary costs because such drastic cuts are politically unlikely to actually occur. Meanwhile, taxes on high earners are increased even further than in the House and Senate bills.
“Reconciliation”, purportedly, allows the House to accept the Senate’s bill. There’s reasonable vote-count doubt about that, as well as legal challenges. President Obama’s proposals are, in effect, a new bill to be agreed by the House and Senate that fiddles with a “reconciliation” ram-through. If the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provides an estimate of the Obama adjustment proposals together with the remainders of the House and Senate bills, it should be evident that the costs will be much larger, especially if unrealistic ploys are identified and full implementation time periods are included. (See footnote, added)
Obama fails to address the fundamental opposition to vastly increased federal control over 1/6th of the US economy and the lives of 100% of Americans, while deepening the race to national bankruptcy.
Obama fails to address the cost-driver of excess defensive-medicine, by various measures 10-30% of medical spending, that providers use to avoid excessive tort liability. Democrats’ largest contributors and supporters, tort attorneys, are left immunized from impact. Similarly, the impact on rich union benefits – unions being the other largest Democrat contributor base -- is delayed and reduced.
Reductions in the ability to save pretax dollars for health care remain, via health savings accounts and cafeteria plans, reducing individual choice, rather than maintaining or spreading them to more. Taxpayers or insureds who don’t use or support it are still likely to fund abortions. Sponsors of legal immigrants are still able to avoid their promised financial responsibility for legal immigrants’ medical care. Insureds are still unable to choose benefit plans allowed by other states that better fit their needs and budgets.
Obama’s proposals are nothing more than a campaign ploy to appear reasonable but they actually emphasize and enlarge the distance between Democrats’ floundering take-overs and the alternatives or discreet incremental measures that are widely supported.
Obama’s proposals are a transparent and hole-filled veil over what most already recognize as ugly and unacceptable. And, it isn’t closing time, when vision is blurred or judgment desperate. The public isn’t befuddled, and imperiled Congressional Democrats recognize that.
Rather than score, Obama again demonstrates himself as a crassly partisan loser, “arrogant” in the words of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, when it comes to accomplishing anything beyond words, his words no longer masking his ideologic inability to be practical.
House Republican Leader John Boehner sums Obama’s proposals as an “infomercial,” to be tuned out:
The President has crippled the credibility of this week's summit by proposing the same massive government takeover of health care based on a partisan bill the American people have already rejected. This new Democrats-only backroom deal doubles down on the same failed approach that will drive up premiums, destroy jobs, raise taxes, and slash Medicare benefits.
* The CBO just wrote that President Obama's proposals lack sufficient details to "score" (i.e., cost) it, and even if it did that scoring would take longer than this week, past the so-called TV infomercial "summit." How convenient for hollow proposals to have no relaible numbers. More "ramming" with hidden horns.
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