Wednesday, March 10. 2010
I hear the Redwings and Grackles croaking and gurgling in the morning, on their way to their breeding marshes further north. The White-Throated Sparrows have begun with their spring song, and, at the same time, I see that my Juncos have left for their breeding grounds on the tundra. The White-Throateds will be leaving now too. See ya next winter, God willing, little fellows.
Redwings:
"I suspect that nationalism became unfashionable not because of Germany, but because it interfered with the spread of communism."
AVI. Germany was sort-of racially imperialistic, not nationalistic in the usual sense. Like Jihad, had they a modern army. We here at Maggie's prefer nationalism, federalism, and localism. Whatever is closest to the real people who pay the tax bills. No "New World Order," thank you. We fear centralism because we know those statist folks are crafty but aren't wise, and that they have their own interests in mind. Our Florentine hero Niccolo understood all that very well.
Shamefully stolen from our pal Surber:
See Dick Morris: The Democrats' Pickett's Charge. And there is more: Obama pushes senators for climate bill. My solution? Add Thorazine to the water in the the Capitol.
"There is no reason to fly through a thunderstorm in peacetime."
Sign over Squadron Ops Desk at Davis-Montham AFB, AZ. Lots more here.
America's great export: Rocket science finance, layers of abstractions and computer modeling, and shadow banking. One quote:
What is shadow banking? It is one of a handful of terms — structured finance is a more technical one, ghostly economics a more evocative one — used to describe the infrastructure of debt finance that provided the conduits for capital from around the world to flow into the American housing sector. It is best understood as a technological innovation amalgamating computing power and probabilistic modeling to vastly expand the various world markets in debt securities. The late journalist Mark Pittman, in an authoritative 2008 report for Bloomberg, called it “the biggest U.S. export business of the twenty-first century”...
Related, how our government does rocket science finance - minus the rocket science.
Tuesday, March 9. 2010
 Image: The American air is getting cleaner.
Gun-free zones: Shooting fish in a barrel
Brit governments putting microchips in garbage cans. h/t. How do the people put up with that crap? Well, The Englishman doesn't.
Stimulants increase learning and learning speed. h/t Insty. Every college kid knows that.
Poll: Young Adults Turn Toward GOP. Change!
Diane Ravitch discouraged by education reform. Schools should be entirely run by and for localities, not by the Feds and not by the unions. That's how reform can happen. The famous Albert Shanker quote: "When schoolkids get union cards is when we'll worry about their interests." Something like that.
Effects of CO2 are logarithmic, not linear. That's High School math. Is it part of the computer models?
Feminists: College gals should drink, Yes means No, and campus rape definitions. I thought the feminists said all hetero sex was rape.
Don't hold your breath for The New World Order
Bucknell: You cannot debate the 2009 Dem stimulus package. Too controversial for college?
 Florida, sugar, government and the Everglades: The corporate State
Not predicted by the models: South Pole cooling, ice increasing
Doc:
...if I am ever told I have to see every patient who wants to see me and the government determines both the appropriate treatment and the fee I can charge, I will retire and find another way to make a living. (Maybe I will be so disturbed by the changes in my profession that I would need to go on Disability?)
WHT?
This exciting new project is aimed at increasing public awareness of the links between climate change, poverty and child rights, and engaging ...
Good grief. Those are some crazy links!
The Census: "My race is human"
Doug Hoffman is back! He'll win.
John says the O is an ignoramus about insurance costs. Maybe he is, or maybe it simply does not serve the narrative to mention the reality that if coverages are mandated, costs increase.
Evil, evil Drudge. Do not look at his site!
Are we allowed to have two per day? Previous one was from Lenin, this from Nancy Pelosi on health care:
“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
Vladimir Lenin: “Socialized Medicine is the Keystone to the Arch of the Socialist State.”
Of course it is. With it, they control your very life. For your own good. I mean, for the "Greater Good," or for "Society." Whoever they are. Never met them.
 Joseph Schumpeter ominously speculated that as capitalism succeeded, democracies in time would come to expect its end (wealth) but reject its means (free-market competition). He worried that because of the inequality and creative destruction it brings, capitalism would provoke a kind of adverse reaction. A popular call would arise for government to plan market outcomes according to some utopian view of society's good, and this democratically guided central planning would inevitably slow economic growth. Schumpeter predicted, in turn, that if economic expansion faltered, individual liberty would be directly imperiled or quietly ceded by citizens resigned to having their diminished economic position protected by the state.
We hear more voices these days yearning for a benevolent autocracy, including the creepy Thomas Friedman. The whole terrific essay, Can Democracy Survive Capitalism?, at Claremont Review.
Photo: Kim Jong-il, beloved, benevolent, altruistic autocrat who understands everything and who only cares about what is best for his people
 Alas, the man's name does a disservice to the brilliant Florentine Renaissance political scientist and student of human nature that he was.
However, I did not know that he wrote comedy on the side. Another Renaissance Man, as it were.
I like his face: shrewd and discerning, but ready to laugh.
"Princes and governments are far more dangerous than the other elements within society.”
- Niccolo Machiavelli
The Dems and the O are always about talking and negotiating endlessly with other countries, and never drawing a line. But with their fellow Americans, 'The time for talk is over.'
Thus an accommodating attitude towards enemies, and a warlike attitude towards Americans.
It suppose that is change.
"It's not that some people need more sleep than others, it's that some people sleep faster than others."
Peter DeVries
 Cover image via Jonah
You like him; how can you tell if a guy likes you back? h/t Linkiest
Harvard Law Prof Bill Stuntz Talks of His Impending Death, Faith
No Tweeting: Last year, a San Francisco Superior Court judge dismissed 600 potential jurors after several acknowledged going online to research the criminal case before them
Pinkerton:
Sen. Lautenberg voted for the Senate proposal that would have denied him the free choice that probably saved his life.
Euroland: Coming Soon: Gravity to be Legislated!
3 good reheated ones at Thompson
Twit is legend in his own mind: Friedman Aflame - The Times columnist’s mind melts fact and reason into nonsense. Can we say "narratives"?
Gore: Organized Campaign Behind Climate Skeptics. Yes, and Maggie's Farm is the well-funded HQ of the cabal.
Believes in NBC-driven media: NBC’s Chuck Todd Blasts “Drudge Driven Journalism”
Surber's Good v. Evil
Riehl: The Traveling ObamaCare Salvation Show
You know what America needs now? A brutal political battle over amnesty
Geert Wilders speaks in London
Green jobs scam
Via Q&O:
Mr Obama benefited in his campaign from an idiotic level of idolatry, in which most of the media participated with an astonishing suspension of cynicism.
Indeed.
Rep opposes school choice for his constituents. Does he oppose school choice for the Obama girls?
"He says he opposes an increase in charter schools, even though many of his constituents seem to want more of them, because he believes they have allowed the mayor and the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, to abdicate their responsibility to improve Harlem’s regular elementary schools, which have shrunk as more parents have chosen charters."
Steyn on the Oscars:
It was fun when Marlon Brando had his award picked up by Sachem Littlefeather, Apache Indian and President of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee, protesting about the treatment of Indians by Hollywood. It was even better when she turned out to be Maria Cruz, struggling actress and Miss American Vampire of 1970. It was touching, in 1977, when Debby Boone sang `You Light Up My Life’ backed by a chorus of 11 children from the John Tracy Clinic for the Deaf interpreting the lyric in sign language. It was even more poignant when it subsequently emerged that they were just regular Equity kids pretending to be deaf and that the signing was complete gibberish. Ah, happy days.
Monday, March 8. 2010
A not uncommon, non-migratory yardbird in New England. Info here. This male Cardinal from my place today:
Two posts about Marxism on Maggie's in two days! That's a record. And now for a third:
The Left in the Western World, such as it is, remains Marxist at core. I have read and studied Marx, as has Mead. They have some worthwhile and interesting insights into psychology, sociology, and human nature.
The problem is their reductionism. The rare people in the modern world with fresh new insights - eg Freud, Marx and Engels, Adam Smith, Burke, etc. often find their notions reduced to simplistic, reductionistic equations which they might not have anticipated.
Re Marx and Engels, every human is, in part, Homo economicus. But only in part. Humans are also Homo spirito, Homo ludens, Homo conflictus, Homo everything. That's why freedom is so important, if we accept our Western idea of the uniqueness and, almost, sanctity (not almost, if one has religion) of the individual.
At Chicago Boyz, Seizing the Opportunity to Destroy Western Civilization. A quote:
Narrative reduces personal experience to a linear progression where cause and effect seem to have a purposeful order. These narratives can then be shared with others, leading to the best definition of history ever: history is a fable agreed upon. Most personal narratives will never be the equivalent of the histories of Herodotus, Thucydides, or Gibbon; or even the fables of Aesop, La Fontaine, or Orwell. Most are simply humble habitual ways of thinking. As habits of thought, such narratives largely control how you react to unfolding events, whether it’s pricking your finger or waging a world war.
Photo: Killer Whales killing Sea Lions just for the fun of it.
Euphemisms are about creating an illusion of a nursery school pretty pony and rainbow view of the world in which evil does not exist, in which we can all get along if only we wanted to, and in which we can all be anything we want, if only we would label things properly.
Rabid Jihadists and criminals become "the oppressed," kids who cannot read well become "learning disabled," klutzes become "hand-eye coordination impaired," the socially-awkward become "Asperger's," global warming becomes "climate change," housing developments in swamps become "Riverview Estates" - and Killer Whales become cuddly "Orcas" (so as not to offend their delicate sensibilities, no doubt).
Euphemisms are a form of propaganda (see The Official Politically Correct Dictionary and Handbook: Updated! New Entries!) designed to kill reality.
"Imagine," indeed.
Please post your favorite euphemistic reality-killers in the comments.
 From a commenter on our Communist Manifesto post:
Quite a few years ago I was at a company management training class at which we had a Marxist professor as an invited speaker. He explained to us that our political views were determined merely by our economic self-interest.
I raised my hand and suggested to him that maybe the political views of the academic class are partly determined by their economic and status self-interest.
He had clearly never thought of such a thing, and was a little upset. Some of the other attendees thought I had been rude to a guest by raising the question...
A companion piece, from another brilliant commenter here:
A while back I was chatting with a psychiatrist acquaintance about some topic or event I've since forgotten when he said, "From each according to ability: to each according to need".
My standard and automatic response to that statement (which I hadn't heard anyone actually spout in MANY years) is, "Is there any better way to get people to minimize their abilities and maximize their needs?"
 It's a classic, often misquoted as Wimpy saying "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." However, that may have been from a different Popeye episode.
It's Here. I love it.
(This was clearly before credit cards were widespread.)
 For the guys and gals over there -
Toon via Moonbattery
Mark Steyn: Obamacare worth the price to Democrats. Steyn gets it. It's worth any price.
America puts off the pain to have some jam today. And, CBO: $1T yearly deficits for at least the next 10 years
The Tides Foundation: Bagman for the Left
Feeling a "bit off" today? Who doesn't? Crystal meth is good for that feeling.
No mention that a "minority" made that noose. But exactly in what way is academia "tolerant"? Higher ed strikes me as the most intolerant place in America.
Tiger:
Barack Obama has called an "entrepreneurship summit" with the Muslim world. Naturally, I have a question: What could Barack Obama or anybody in his administration teach about entrepreneurship? Years from now, when the Muslim world has gone another generation without a single useful invention, will they look back at this "summit" and regard it as another evil western deception? Of course, they will have only themselves to blame insofar as the invitation promises advice from "social entrepreneurs," Orwellian slang for "transnational community organizer."
The Golden State's Me Generation - In the midst of the Great Recession California students protest in favor of themselves. Worth reading just for the quote from the Prof.
Reason: Busting the Well-Endowed - It's time to cut federal funding for the arts
Sunday, March 7. 2010
The Washington Post’s editors took Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to task in February 2009 when she downplayed speaking out about human rights abuses during her trip to China. She'd said: "We have to continue to press them. But our pressing on those issues can't interfere with the global economic crisis, the global climate change crisis and the security crisis." The Chinese were delighted. The Washington Post editors pointed out that the US speaking out hasn’t interfered in the past when there are mutual goals, “But Ms. Clinton's statement will have an effect: It will demoralize thousands of democracy advocates in China, and it will cause many others around the world to wonder about the character of the new U.S. administration.”
Last December, Hillary Clinton clarified. In an address at Georgetown University:
Under the first element of the agenda, Clinton said the United States would be working to hold everyone accountable for human rights in their countries. In order to “reinforce our moral authority,” she said, the U.S. will lead by example by way of reporting figures for human trafficking that occur within its borders for the first time.
Clinton said that while holding other accountable could entail public denunciations of a country’s leaders, “other times our negotiations would take place behind closed doors,” such as with China and Russia.
The second element, “principled pragmatism,” also applies to China and Russia especially, she said. The administration can deplore the murders of Russian journalists and violation of minority rights in China, but “the assumption that we must either pursue democratic rights or [national strategy] is wrong.”
The third element involved partnering with and supporting groups like NGOs which share U.S. goals, and the fourth involved highlighting success stories and rejecting the notion that some situations cannot be remedied.
Tomorrow, Monday, Sec. Clinton has the opportunity to effect her third element.
The Wall Street Journal editorial highlights Friend and Faux on Human Rights:
Some of the world’s most courageous champions of human rights will convene today, Monday, March 8, in Geneva, seat of the United Nations’s Human Rights Council [where gross human rights violator Iran is up for possible election to the UN Human Rights Council]. But don’t expect the Council itself to welcome these distinguished visitors.
The Geneva Summit -- organized by groups such as U.N. Watch and Freedom House, and chaired by Poland’s Lech Walesa and the Czech Republic’s Vaclav Havel -- will bring together political dissidents from China, Iran and Burma, rights activists for the Tibetan and Uighur peoples, a survivor of the North Korean gulag, plus a former Sudanese slave named Simon Deng who plans to speak about “the gross human-rights abuses by radical jihadists and the Islamic government in Khartoum.…
In 1975, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote that it was time “that the American spokesman came to be feared in international forums for the truths he might tell.” In Geneva today, the real truth tellers will be meeting down the block from the Council’s chambers. It would be nice to see the U.S. ambassador show up.
The world’s oppressed await.
|
