Friday, November 12. 2010
My Dad, who has had a few surgeries, feels the same way. The point is, I think, that the US doesn't have a planned system. No PhD planner is smart enough to know, understand, or meet, every person's needs and wants. Plans and models never work out according to plan, in real life.
If people are doing better, increase taxes because they can afford it. If people are doing worse, raise taxes so as to be able to "help" them with more government spending.
Commenter John, here at Maggie's yesterday
Leaving this morning for an out-doorsy weekend. This pic made me notice how filthy my keyboard is. I need to run it through the dishwasher.
We discussed the rise of the black middle class earlier this week. Here's one piece on that. A quote:
Larry Tye helped answer an ages-old question: How did a high percentage of black people, who toiled as slaves and suffered under Jim Crow laws, shed that oppression to live middle-class lives and enjoy the American dream?
Telegraph: When people stop believing in God they start believing in Big Government and Obamaism
TIME: Happy Meal ban doesn't go far enough.
It's a wonder we can ever feed ourselves.
Driscoll: NYT Editor: Our Subscribers are Such Morons!
Not hot dogs for you.
This guy is an American hero
Everybody talks about the housing crash.
It has been no "crash." It's just the return from a bubble to the normal trend line.
Air power in Afghanistan.
Repub health care ideas are genocide
Another view of the deficit commission, from Mother Jones
More on those Russian spies
Map narrows for Obama reelection
VDH: The Obama Fabulists
Thursday, November 11. 2010
New York aristocrat Rosalie Edge was a crank, a Suffragette, and an ardent conservationist. A bio of her came out last year: Rosalie Edge, Hawk of Mercy: The Activist Who Saved Nature from the Conservationists.
Among the many causes she took up, one was protection of raptors from the mass slaughter of her era. She bought Hawk Mountain in Eastern PA and created the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. A high point on the Eastern raptor migration flyway, Hawk Mountain had been a popular site for the slaughter of raptors by gunners who believed they were going some sort of good while having fun.
Hawk Mountain is now a foundation engaged in conservation education programs. It remains an excellent viewing spot in fall migration season. (Photo from the Hawk Mtn website.)
How tasty does this look? These are the $12 lunches at Republic on Union Square, NYC. We love Asian rice-noodle soups and dumpling soups at Maggie's. We like Union Square too. I could tell you stories about what it used to be like, back when I lived for a while on University Place in the Village (just across from Dylan's old hang-out, the Cedar Tavern). It was really bad. The cops would pull dead guys out of the bushes and off the benches when making their morning rounds. ODs, some stabbings too. That was back, before Giuliani, when the pundits said that NYC could not be governed.
You should see it now. A bar and cafe with live music in the small park, a dog park, great restaurants all around. Two off-Broadway theaters. Park guys picking up litter, and even an unobtrusive police presence - on foot. Not in patrol cars. Putting cops back on the neighborhood beat has worked very well in NYC. Patrol cars should be only for back-up and rapid-response, in urban areas.
If not, Powerline linked a good essay by James Ceaser. A quote:
For many Republicans, and especially for the allies in the Tea Party movement, the issues of economic policy were also linked to a deeper concern. The size of government and the extent of the federal debt represented not only a burden on future generation and a threat to American power, but also a violation of the spirit and letter of the Constitution. The Tea Party in particular, with its belief in Jeffersonian ideas, has been responsible for re-introducing the Constitution into the public debate, a place that it has not held in the same way for over a century. This theme is what connects the Tea Party to the American tradition and makes their concerns matters of fundamental patriotism
 Triceratops never existed
CATO: Fixing Transit: The Case for Privatization
Olasky: What's healthcare like for the poor?
NRO: Best Presidential biographies
Deficit panel's Rx: 'Cancer' surgeryBudget scalpel draws blood, howls
Is this bipartisan thing DOA?
Hugh Hewitt: No more time for California dreamin'
Pajamas: Back to the Future with Jerry Brown at the Helm in California
Jeffrey Lord: Mark Levin's book changed America
Is Mark Levin our Tom Paine?
Connecticut Residents Are Tops in Well-Being
Amusing football trick play
Bob Kerrey: Obama is so Incompetent He Needs Someone to Do His Job for Him
From CVS, of course
BAD NEWS: ‘Jaw-Dropping’ Data on Black Male Student Achievement. “According to the report, poverty levels are only part of the equation because poor white boys (defined by eligibility for subsidized school lunches) are doing as well as black boys who do not live in poverty.” It’s about the culture.
France is a dying nation
Irony: AARP blames ObamaCare for increased cost of employee health coverage
...an essential feature of successful presidents is that they find ways to broaden their coalitions. Doing the opposite—pursuing policies which shed support, but keep just enough of it to maintain a majority—is a very difficult needle to thread.
That's civil war.
Calvin Coolidge once said, "The chief business of the American people is business." The Democrats just lost America because they forgot that.
On second thought, you can't forget what you never knew. The Democrats running things the past two years proved they have no clue about the business of business. In their world, the real world of the private economy is an abstraction, a political figment.
From Michael Novak's God Bless the Tea Party:
In his first two years, the president convinced many millions of Americans that he wants to make the U.S. more like European welfare states. The American people hate the very idea, and they simply rebelled.
Hey Bird Dog, don't you wish you went to restaurants like this when in New York?
I came upon this poem while stimulating my thoughts for today, Veterans Day. As a veteran who saw the looks on the faces of my family when I enlisted, and as a father with two young sons, this poem pretty much carries that look on a parent's face of pride, and astonishment, that their child has grown up straight and true.
An American Boy Grows Up Our son was born so long ago, yet it seems like yesterday...
that I stood in awe before his crib and heard that doctor say,
"You've quite a boy there Mr. Jones." I could only answer with a nod,
for in his very being there I saw the miracle of God.
Later in his high chair, in a manner I deplore,
I saw that Miracle of God throw his oatmeal on the floor.
Well, I fixed him something different, for I felt he must be fed,
but when I turned around again, that bowl was on his head!
A few more years rolled along and he didn't spill things anymore.
But his granddad sent a big bass drum, and once more I deplored
The fact that my miracle of God, had a lusty taste for noise!
When he'd boom! boom! boom! on that big bass drum, I questioned, boys must be boys?
I asked his whereabouts one day...his Mom said, "He's got a paper route,"
"said he'd help to earn his way as he became an eagle scout."
When they pinned that medal on him, tears welled in my eyes,
and then I gripped his mother's hand, our boy had earned his prize.
I won't forget that September day, when he entered senior high,
he had an air of great excitement, but he left home with a sigh.
He came back that afternoon, and gave us some puzzled looks,
"Wow!", he said, "this school is tough, look at all these books!"
"The choice is yours," his mother said, "You can pick the easy way."
"What you put into life, you'll get out of it. Each man pays his price one day."
He looked up, and then he smiled, and I saw he'd lost his gloom,
He said, "I'd better look at these," he headed for his room.
My son came home late one day. He seemed all worn out.
I asked a little sharply what this was all about.
He spoke proudly and threw his shoulders back, and in his eyes I caught a gleam.
"I wanted to surprise you Dad, I'm on the football team!"
They won most of their games, lost a few, it was a thrill to watch him play.
And when they didn't win we knew, he'd met the challenge anyway.
He didn't know it at the time, but, it was a stepping stone,
solid footing for the climb, to face life on his own.
How those three years flew past, when graduation came,
we saw our boy grown up at last, our lives will never be the same.
I guess we've known all along what his goal would be,
from that time three years ago, when he chose responsibility.
He stood in the doorway yesterday, put out a strong right hand.
I held back tears at the uniform he wore to protect his land.
I shook his hand, his mother cried, "Son, why couldn't you wait?"
Embracing her, he softly said, "Mom, if we all did, it would be too late."
"I promise I'll go back to school, when I've met my obligation,
to you, my friends, my girl, my school, and most of all this nation."
"I'll do all I can out there, for I know you'll both be trying,
to make everyone you know aware, we've got to keep Old Glory flying."
And then his mother straightened up, with a smile to hide a tear.
She said, "we're both so proud of you, we'll feel lost without you here.
Someday, you'll know what this moment means, when your boy shakes your hand,
And you watch him as he walks away, the day he becomes a man."
John Mitchum
My friend Tim Ziegler, former Marine, is blogging his son's coming of age in Marine Corps boot camp: "our hope is that Zach's friends and family will have a chance to experience Zach's transformation from average (or above-average, depending) teenager to a proud member of the USMC."
So, I guess the old Marine's phrases, "We still make 'em like we used to," "We never promised you a rose garden" are all still true. The reality is that it is hard for me to hear as a Dad. It's comforting for me to hear as a former Marine. Semper Fi Zach.
Tim emailed me this morning, "The difference in maturity and perspective in just a month has been simply amazing."
Wednesday, November 10. 2010
From Dan Gardner's So is the world predictable or not? The environmentalists' contradiction:
I recently wrote a book called Future Babble (to be released Oct. 12), which is about expert predictions, why they fail, and why we believe them anyway. The experience of sifting through heaps and heaps of failed predictions has made me quite sympathetic to Suzuki's first theme of humility. We truly are awful at foreseeing what is to come. And there's little reason to think we'll get much better. Indeed, key properties of complex systems make prediction inherently impractical or even impossible. We really should be humble. And cautious.
But how can a humble and cautious man say we are "past the 59th minute"?
In a review of Gardner's new book, Steven Pinker says:
“It’s rare for a book on public affairs to say something genuinely new, but Future Babble is genuinely arresting, and should be required reading for journalists, politicians, academics, and anyone who listens to them. Mark my words: if Future Babble is widely read, then within 3.7 years the number of overconfident predictions by self-anointed experts talking through their hats will decline by 46.2%, and the world will become no less than 32.1% wiser.”
– Steven Pinker, Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of How the Mind Works and The Stuff of Thought
I had a tough time deciding what to link on this glorious autumn afternoon, but decided on Mona Charen's Is Obama Trapped? The president has lost the means for Clinton-style triangulation. One quote:
Ironically, Republicans might be the president’s lifeline. If they succeed in defunding or otherwise hobbling implementation of Obamacare; if they succeed in maintaining the current tax rates on all earners; and if they are able, through oversight functions, to prevent regulatory agencies from further intimidating businesses, the economy might improve. And to whom would credit for improved conditions flow? Yup, to Gandhi’s most important acolyte.
Via Bloomberg. It begins:
The co-chairmen of President Barack Obama’s debt-reduction commission will propose cuts to Social Security and Medicare, as well as reductions in income tax rates in exchange for curbing tax breaks, according to a Republican aide who attended the meeting.
Expense cuts and tax increases. Yawn.
I forget which rural burg in Ohio had this sign up. Near Rte. 62, obviously. I'd worry that the soup might have some salt in it. Salt is bad for you, right?
 With protection, the Griz populations of Yellowstone and parts of the Front Range have slowly grown, naturally leading to more encounters with humans.
Nobody in the 1800s would go out playing in Griz Country without a firearm.
Grizzlies are not predatory carnivores, but they are mainly opportunistic carnivores, meaning that, if they find a dead, injured, weak or newborn mammal, they will be happy to eat it. Their main foods are grasses, sedges, roots, berries, fish, ants and bugs, etc. They aren't hunters.
Generally, Grizzlies try to stay away from people - unless the people are camping with bacon on the griddle or have other tasty food - bear bait - around the camp.
In Yellowstone, there have been recent incidents of Griz maulings of people. Perhaps many visitors to Yellowstone have a romantic and edenic vision of nature. I have been in Griz Country, and I would never camp in it. I figure that, to a Griz, a human is not much different from a helpless newborn Moose or Elk.
Furthermore, I'd be more comfortable either on a horse or well-armed - preferably both.
Unlike this commenter, I do not think we should kill all the bears. I think we should simply teach people who want to explore wilderness to be prepared for it and to understand the risks. Woodcraft. Same thing with rattlesnake country. Same thing as mountain-climbing. People die.
It's not Disneyland out there.
Although the title of this video says it is the Marine Corps Hymn as you've never heard it before, I think you'll find that you have heard it, as has our nation, for 235 years. Times may change, but Always Faithful doesn't. Today's anniversary means something to me and my brothers who share that bond. It is the tightest fraternity. For today's Marines, who no longer have to suffer "in the Old Corps" stories from their elders in the fraternity, it is recognition they are the best yet.
Tuesday, November 9. 2010
The Mark Twain Prize, according to the official website at the Kennedy Center in D.C., is “named to honor one of America’s – and the world’s – greatest humorists…The Mark Twain Prize recognizes people who have had an impact on American society in ways similar to the distinguished 19th century novelist and essayist best known as Mark Twain.”
Snidely impersonating Sarah Palin, I guess, ranks her as having “an impact on American society” good enough for D.C.’s snidites. PBS, of course, will broadcast the retro-2008 festivities.
For comparison, the previous winners actually earned their creds over long careers.
1998 - Richard Pryor
1999 - Jonathan Winters
2000 - Carl Reiner
2001 - Whoopi Goldberg
2002 - Bob Newhart
2003 - Lily Tomlin
2004 - Lorne Michaels
2005 - Steve Martin
2006 - Neil Simon
2007 - Billy Crystal
2008 - George Carlin
2009 - Bill Cosby
2010 - Tina Fey
Tina Fey! That's the joke.
At the festivities, Fey's brand of humor flopped:
In her acceptance speech, Fey touched on her best-known bit -- her Palin imitation --and offered some mock hands-across-the-political-divide commentary. The rise of conservative women in politics, she said pointedly, is good for all women, "unless you don't want to pay for your own rape kit . . . unless you're a lesbian who wants to get married to your partner of 20 years . . . [or] unless you believe in evolution."
The lines played first to nervous laughter and then to not much laughter at all.
 Yesterday was a good day to pull some favorite field guns - bird and duck guns -�out of ye olde gunne closet for a little pre-season cleaning, check-up, and oiling. That .22? Haven't used it in years so I grabbed it too for a little maintenance. The old single-shot 12 ga. is for the little one to practice with. There was some new rust on the barrel of the beat-up Mossberg pump I use for sleet and mud and salt-water duck hunting, but a little surface rust doesn't bother me.
It's a good thing I checked things over, because I discovered that I have lost the choke tubes for my Beretta semi-auto and for my Browning o/u with the gold engraving that I use mostly for clays. The tubes are nowhere. I think I left them somewhere last year, probably on some hunting club's gun bench when I was changing chokes. This means a costly visit to Briley's website because these guns now all have skeet chokes in them, and I like a little more flexibility. For example, a light-modified choke for ducks (which shoots steel shot like modified - but I am giving up on steel, mostly, except maybe for large flocks of Snow Geese, which, as they say, "go down like a prom dress.").
Not that it really matters - I can't hardly hit anything anyway since I injured my shoulder a couple of years ago.
I store guns in these silicone-impregnated gun socks, always with the barrel down so any loose oil doesn't leak into the wood and weaken it.
Christians are oppressed, persecuted and murdered in many countries. Most of those countries are Muslim. Some are communist, as in North Korea and Vietnam.
There are few who speak out for them. Most Westerners ignore their plight, often in pursuit of trading profits, more often out of the same self-delusions that excuse tyranny but attack minor flaws in allies. Jennifer Rubin, at Commentary's Contentions blog calls it Human Rights Policy Gone Mad. "There is no better example of the cul-de-sac of leftist anti-Americanism — that insatiable need to paint the U.S. as the source of evil in the world — than Obama’s human rights policy, which is, quite simply, obscene."
A new organization, Open Doors USA, is formed to combat the festering ploy by the enemies of free observance of religion to have the United Nations, in effect, endorse their suppression of free observers.
The Defamation of Religions Resolution, introduced in the UN, seeks to criminalize words or actions that are deemed to be against a particular religion, especially against Islam. Although proponents justify the “defamation of religion” concept as protecting religious practice and promoting tolerance, it really promotes intolerance and human rights violations of religious freedom and freedom of speech for religious minorities in these countries.
Why: The Defamation of Religions Resolution has the effect of providing international legitimacy for national laws that punish blasphemy or otherwise ban criticism of a religion.
Here's their introductory video:
Here is the link to the Open Doors USA website. At the site is listed the countries in which the worst persecution of Christians occurs.
My cheerful, voluble friend at our local Cumbie/24-hr gas station has been working the night shift for 8 months. He's about 25, a recent single Jamaican (legal) immigrant who lives with his Mom. He is not a Rastaman. His Mom is a hospital aide who also moonlights as a home helper. She sings in the church choir.
This morning at 6 AM he announced to me "Hey, Boss, good news. They finally agreed to up my hours. Now I'll be able to work a minimum of 55 hrs/wk instead of 45."
"Do they pay you time and a half for OT?" I ask.
"Of course they do, man. Every hour over 40. The good thing is, now I can begin to put some money aside. You watch me man, I'm gonna need an investment advisor soon."
I asked "How about 60 hours minimum? I did that when I was young."
"That's my goal." he replied. "If I keep doing a good job at 55 hours and don't make mistakes, they will let me have 60. I already worked 60 last week with my extra OT."
"Beats selling beads to tourists at the beach?"
"Oh man, I thank God every day that my Mom made me come to America with her. She forced me, man. I had no choice. She is fat and mean. I was a ganja beach bum. Next week, I'll be an investor. I'm thinking of buying some some Apple Computer."
"What's your goal?"
"I'm gonna have my own Cumbie franchise. Be my own boss. Work 100 hours if I want. Hey, do you think I should buy gold or Apple Computer?"
"I think you should buy your own computer first."
"Hey, I already have that. I am online, man. I taught myself. I read everything there. I read Bloomberg news. These old guys come in early, they say 'Are the papers in yet?' Behind the times, man."
A spirited young lad with Jamaican high school and no college, enthusiastically inventing and building a life in America from scratch, with unlimited opportunity in front of him. Ya gotta love it. I want this kid here.
 “America demonstrates invincibly one thing that I had doubted up to now: that the middle classes can govern a state…despite their small passions, their incomplete education, their vulgar habits, they can obviously provide a practical sort of intelligence and that turns out to be enough.”
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, via this new site.
That's a perfect description of us Maggie's Farmers. This French aristocrat understood America better than most of our own elites and pundits do today. de Toqueville came to love the idea of America - and Americans (despite - or because of - our not being French aristocrats).
 How to tell if Al Qaida has sewn a bomb inside your dog.
Is pain "God's megaphone"?
I hope not...
Is Economics a Science?
Economics and finance might be science, if it weren’t for people.
Right and wrong types of Hispanics.
For the Dems, the right sort are those who seek dependency and entitlement.
He hails from where the civil war began, but this black republican tea party favorite doesn’t want to be a leader on race.
This narcissitic absurdity mocks the very serious, necessary, and important work of Gender Studies, Italian-American Studies, and Skinny Studies.
Make my day, Ted Rall. My life needs a little more violence these days.
As demonstrated by the legal battle blocking power lines to wind farms in Kansas, environmental groups are increasingly against all forms of energy production.
Via Betsy (a teacher herself), in Boo hoo! Start the pity party for the teachers unions:
Considering that the traditional system of near-lifetime employment, degree- and salary-based pay scales and seniority privileges have done little to improve the nation's woeful public schools or attract talented people into teaching, the NEA and AFT will have difficulty defending the status quo.
Unionization is an insidious thing. It trades security for spirit and heart, changes opportunity and a sense of service into time-serving drudgery. In a rougher era, they were needed. They are obsolete now, and dying a slow death - except for the government employee unions. I blame the supposedly-sainted JFK for that dumb move.
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