Monday, October 18. 2010
A good example of the havoc ambulance-chasers are creating in American medicine: Don't Give Trial Lawyers This Booster Shot.
Philip Brand and his brother visited schools in every state in America. What Johnny Learned. A quote:
The contrast between New Heights (a charter school funded publicly but operated independently from the local school district) and New York City public school C.S. 211, two schools which Brand visited back-to-back, is stunning. At New Heights kids rhapsodize about the safety of their hallways; at C.S. 211 Brand witnesses a student screaming to her teacher that she had just been groped. At New Heights an enthusiastic young teacher is instructing her students in the basics of respectful adult interaction, how to shake hands while looking someone in the eye, how to listen with “eyes and ears”; at C.S. 211 a disengaged teacher assigns busy work to a bored class for an entire period.
Via Coyote, spoken by a WVa congressman:
“Climate change — to deny it exists, to just put your head in the sand and, ‘oh no, it doesn’t exist, what are you talking about,’ is about like standing on the floor of Macy’s during the month of December and claiming Santa Claus doesn’t exist."
Exactly.
Who is Clint Webb? I guarantee that you know him because he is running for something in your state:
 A good line: Fiorina Says Boxer 'Too Extreme' for California
Too bad it isn't true.
Why sex in space is a bad idea
Why don't Asians count as racial or ethnic minorities?
I always wonder whether people from Spain count as Hispanics. Also, do Moslems count as minorities? Also, as 1/16th American Indian, am I a minority? (If so, gimme the $ and the freebies.)
The people are scared, explains Obama: Our psycho-babbler-in-chief
The only thing we have to fear is loss of our job itself. And more Dem job-destroying and economy-stifling insanity.
Top 400 Charities See Billions Less in Donations
Debicella now a dead heat in CT-4.
It's time for New England to elect at least one Repub congresscritter.
Rasmussen: McMahon Closes Gap on Blumenthal
Linda Chavez: Obama has no clue about entrepreneurship
Well, he has done a heck of a job getting government to grow
Surber: No, we are not afraid
The Trouble with Manchin
Screaming "Allah Akbar" before you open fire is the confusing part
Washington Reb: Growing Up Conservative
How Long Will MSM Ignore Assault By NY Congressman Maurice Hinchey On Reporter? / Update: Poughkeepsie Journal Scoops NY Times
Leftoid violence does not exist.
NRO: Some Context on the Wilders Case
Related: Wilders Is Right: Europe Needs a First Amendment
Perino asks Why is Maureen Dowd so angry?
Everybody knows the real reason in her case. However, Leftoids to tend to be angry people in general.
The bay entry to the Wellfleet Audubon's large salt marsh on an incoming tide, in September.
Sunday, October 17. 2010
 As I live and learn, I no longer view Roman civilization as "ancient." Old, but not ancient. Those folks were a lot like us, and lived a lot like us.
Roman floor mosaics and wall paintings were the usual fashionable decor of the time, and typical for the homes of the prosperous. Naturally, the floor mosaics are better preserved than wall mosaics or wall paintings.
In 2009 we were fortunate to make our way to the Bardo Museum in Tunis to see the world's largest collection of Roman mosaics. They have so many, you even walk on them to get from one display room to another. This was decor, mind you - not fine art.
The Lod mosaics are a recent find, very-well preserved. They are now displayed in NYC.
Here's the story of the Lod mosaics.
We are a fickle nation, are we not?
Buyer's remorse. We bought a pig in a poke, and now people are wising up. Well, every generation needs to get conned by a few pols before they understand the game. That's why nobody under 40 should be allowed to vote unless they are in the Armed Services.
Poll: Many Obama 2008 supporters defecting to GOP
Vodkaman: Handicapping the House — Weekend Brief
Obama didn't sell me - or reassure me.
Destroying Schools to Achieve Racial Justice. Weissberg begins:
I've long suspected that the federal government is consciously subverting American education. Deep inside the Department of Education, there must exist a top-secret Bureau of Educational Disasters (BED) whose mission is to concoct alluring but guaranteed-to-fail, academic achievement-killing policies whose sole benefits are more jobs and mindless paperwork. These would be the folks who recently bribed states to retain academically troublesome students whose behavior hindered decent students so as to make America "better educated," i.e., a nation of high school "graduates" barely able to read their diplomas.
San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Gretel Kovach has been reporting for the past six-weeks on her embed with the US Marines in Afghanistan.
Today, she writes her summary of what she has observed and learned, 'Time. It will take some time'. It is straight-forward reporting, and as good a comprehensive insight as you'll find in major media. Very well-worth reading.
 Any Hoyt Axton fans at Maggie's? (He died in 1999.)
He wrote Joy to the World, Greenback Dollar, etc. His Mom wrote Heartbreak Hotel. Bio here.
Merkel says German multicultural society has failed
Desmond Tutu: Obama’s Other Anti-Semitic Guru
Murdoch: The goal is to make Israel a pariah
David Warren: End our 'multiuniversities'
Gelinas wonders whether TARP was good or bad, effective or ineffective
Tides Foundation CEO To Fox News Advertisers: Drop Glenn Beck Or Have Blood On Your Hands
Ilya Somin on The Florida District Court Decision Rejecting the Federal Government’s Motion to Dismiss the Case Against the Individual Mandate
A great example of an elitist viewpoint, with takedown by Dino
Betsy: Teachers putting themselves ahead of their students
Ahmadinejad’s Deadly Triumph in Lebanon
Driscoll: All the Way with LBJ!
Union Bosses Are Funneling Millions to Democrats to Keep Money Flowing To Them
Rasmussen:
Voter nervousness about the economy, Rasmussen noted, is clear in the declining number of people he finds who feel their own finances are “in good order.” Two years ago, he recalled, 43% of Americans felt their finances were in good order, 38% felt this way the day Barack Obama was elected, and 35% felt that way on the day he took office as President.
“At the beginning of the year, that figure dropped to 32%,” he added, “and today, it is down to 30%.” Rasmussen also said that more than half of homeowners are “unsure if their home is worth more than their mortgage.
2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
3:14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it,
3:15 and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
3:16 All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
3:17 so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
4:1 In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I solemnly urge you:
4:2 proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching.
4:3 For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires,
4:4 and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.
4:5 As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.
Saturday, October 16. 2010
 Maybe our most common winter sparrow in the NE, the White Throated spends most of his time on the ground and in low shrubs looking for berries, seeds and hibernating bugs. Likes bird-feeders.
He'll be coming down from the breeding grounds in Canada around now, and will give us a chance to hear his familiar pleasant songs (the link has songs).
Mead explains that all it does is to export pollution and jobs to places like China. From his essay:
The left leaning Guardian newspaper in Britain let the cat out of the bag yesterday, reporting that while the EU’s emission of CO2 declined by 17% between 1990 and 2010, this apparent progress was bogus. If you add up the CO2 released by the goods and services Europeans consumed, as opposed to the CO2 thrown off by the goods and services they produced, the EU was responsible for 40% more CO2 in 2010 than in 1990. The EU, as the Guardian puts it, has been outsourcing pollution — and jobs — rather than cutting back on greenhouse gasses.
EU “progress” on greenhouse gasses in the last twenty years was a mirage. And the only reason that the EU can pretend to look green is that it was outsourcing economic growth to countries like China.
Barone: The Democratic 'D' Now Stands for Demagoguery
If we tried to start The Home Depot today, it's a stone cold certainty that it would never have gotten off the ground.
Peter Wehner on the discontent in the White House
The Texas Model: Texas created half the news jobs in the US last year. How?
Government Regulation of the Economy Is the ‘Silent Killer’
Neither of these seems too swift to me, but Reid lost the debate to Angle
Private Health Insurance Will Be Dead in 3 Years
People aren't spending money
Roger Simon: Is California Insane? A quote:
It is a depressed place made up of terrified people, clinging to the solutions of another era. The idea that the electorate could even consider electing Jerry Brown in 2010 attests to that. At least you can understand the union workers — who are desperate to maintain their unsustainable pensions — supporting him, but the rest of the populace? You are dealing with a form of habituation so deep reality has no place in the equation.
California now is the state of the childishly threatened.
It's difficult for anybody to keep up with the most current correct views on homosexuality
The French really do not like to work. It's much more fun to protest, meet chicks, drink wine, etc.
Nanny Bloomberg and the truth about second-hand smoke. (It is harmless.)
Mankiw: Barney Frank, Then and Now
Iowahawk: Beltway Adventure. Wonderful.
Our wonderful, invigorating cold weather is finally upon us, despite the warming alarums. I got my wood. It's a start, at least. That's about two cords, and I'll need another two to get to Spring.
I am not good for much, but I can split wood pretty good.
Friday, October 15. 2010
From Dick Morris:
The single most amazing thing in this year’s campaigns is that no one is defending President Obama’s legislative accomplishments.
Obama’s impact has been revolutionary: radically changing our health-care system, betting our national solvency on “stimulus,” erasing the line between the public and private sectors. Yet there is an almost total lack of support for his program on the stump.
At American Thinker, America's Food Stamp Culture. One quote:
Nationwide, 6 percent of food stamp benefits are spent on sugary beverages, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, which administers the food stamp program.
and
...despite food stamps and myriad other social programs created by big-spending liberals, poor Americans are more unhealthy than ever -- overweight and even obese, and suffering high levels of diabetes. Contrary to what Harrington argued, poor Americans are unhealthy because of their personal choices and lifestyles. It's likely that many are poor for the same reasons.
True. Furthermore, poverty is by no means the worst thing in life - especially when it is by choice. For one example, the hippie goat farmer down my road. For another, the fourth-generation dairy farmer down our road who still puts his cattle out on grass. Trust me - these skinny folks do not take food stamps even though they could qualify.
Here is a re-posted sample of a few decent places to stay for your New England grouse hunting, ranging from the simple to the quite comfortable (some have fishing too):
 Bosebuck Mountain Camps
Miramichi Inn
King and Bartlett
Partridge Cabins
Lopstick Cabins
and in the Adirondacks, The Hungry Trout
These are just some of the places we've been to or heard about first-hand. Here's a good source for Maine outfitters.
Photo: A cabin at Bosebuck, where the only heat is your wood stove and your dog, the bunks are lumpy, the Canada Jays steal the dog kibbles of a slow eater, and where the locals cruise the dirt roads and shoot the partidges along the road from their pick-ups, while the sports in their expensive attire bust the brush with their dogs. Grouse huntin' ain't shopping. It's a rare occasion when I've limited out at 4 birds in an 8-hour, leg-testing day in the woods and marsh edges (think 8 hours of singles tennis in mud, bogs, raspberry brambles and cage-like alder thickets). It's a work-out. At some point, you start wondering how long it is to cocktail hour. The Woodcock keep it interesting and varied. It's a 20 ga. sport, or even 28 ga.
Hunting grouse is wonderfully difficult, challenging, and frustrating - but you get to spend time in the wild woods with dogs and pals and guns, smoking at will and accumulating precious memories to re-live in your old age.
 From Sipp, or Greg Sullivan, or whatever his current alias is. A quote:
Me, I'm self-employed, so I always have to be on the lookout lest my next meal comes out of that dumpster I mentioned earlier. My resellers went bankrupt with a bucket of my money, my biggest customer went bust and handed me a five figure loss, the forty percent equity I had in my house might as well have been forty dollars, the state of Massachusetts demanded I purchase $13,000 worth of health insurance with an adjusted gross income that was hovering a little above that just then, and the banks that lent me money at 3% would like it paid back at 30%. Or immediately. Immediately would work for them, they said. Time for a change.
It's illegal to vote with your feet using the method I had in mind for many of the people foremost in my mind last year --using a shod foot like that is a felony -- so we decided that we'd move instead.
Read the whole thing. It's America today. Also, if you happen to be a Down-easter, read the Meteor. It's your only reliable source of info...assuming you can get contact with the intertubes up there.
Last night, Professor Barry Rubin, Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center in Israel, and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal, author of over 50 books, was the guest of the San Diego Israel Coalition (SDIC).
The SDIC, with about 600 Jewish and Christian members, near packed the large auditorium in La Jolla, and heard good news from Israel. This may have come as a surprise to many, accustomed to the gloomier commentary in the US from supporters and adversaries of Israel.
According to Barry Rubin’s view from Israel, Israel is in the strongest situation in decades. It is the West and Arab states that are in the weakest.
Continue reading "Some Good News From Israel"
|
