Thursday, June 30. 2011
Two Harvard professors, reports US News & World Report, find that:
Democratic political candidates can skip this weekend's July 4th parades. A new Harvard University study finds that July 4th parades energize only Republicans, turn kids into Republicans, and help to boost the GOP turnout of adults on Election Day. "Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation's political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party," said the report from Harvard. "The political right has been more successful in appropriating American patriotism and its symbols during the 20th century."
The friend who sent this clipping to me comments:
That those subject to celebration of the country's successes and positive points tend to then become more appreciative of the country (this is called patriotism) is shocking only to dyed-in-the-wool academics of the leftist slant....The line that the political right has been more successful in "appropriating American patriotism" can be stated in another way. The policies and publicity of many Democrat leaders has been more effective in showing them to not value the nation and its heritage as others do. But nobody at Harvard would say it that way.
Here. When you train and enable adults to be children, they will act like it. Just like in Wisconsin. Many will revert to childhood if they can get away with it. Those made of sterner stuff will not.
They are marching and berserking for "socialism." They don't realize they already have it, along with the typical Socialist terminal case of the Gimmes.
Euroland people need to grow up and accept the reality that life is difficult and challenging, and that no adult is entitled to anything. You are supposed to man up, in life. Or woman up, as the case may be. Reagan would have fired them all for shirking their duties to the public who hired them and who pays their wages from their own toil, and rightly so.
If you want to be a serf, expect to be treated like one.
 This isn't a particularly exciting post, just a follow-up.
A few years ago I wrote The Sound of Many Faucets Running, a look at the new dollar coins. Coins last much longer than bills, y'see, therefore using much less energy to replace, thereby saving the planet from catastrophic meltdown.
While my post was fairly routine, I have to admit that if we had to switch from dollar bills to coins, I thought my idea bordered on the brilliant.
And here we are today:
Inside the Fed’s Vault: $1 Billion Worth of Unused Coins
In the basement of a Baltimore vault the size of a soccer field, 1 billion dollar coins are just sitting there. Thanks, Congress.
And the planet thanks you!
Actually, there appears to be a bit of gray area as to why they tried to foist these on us in the first place. From the original article:
The U.S. Mint is spending about $12 million on a pilot project to promote the presidential dollar coin by appealing to Americans' duty to protect the environment while saving the government money.
But now it's:
NPR’s Planet Money reporters recently investigated the $1 presidential coin program, which was a Congressional effort to get more $1 coins into circulation while also trying to be educational.
That's right, folks. They're educational. We're doing it for the children!
And, of course, it would be downright criminal not to include the Shoshone woman who help guide Lewis & Clark on their expedition:
At the same time, the legislation mandated that a certain number of Sacagawea coins be made in conjunction with the presidential coins, which has now amounted to one Sacagawea for every four presidents.
Spokespersons for the Mohave, Navaho, Pima, Yuma, Washo, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Cree, Crow, Dakota, Osage, Seminole, Comanche, Wichita and Apache tribes could not be reached for comment.
At the moment, the program is still moving forward, and NPR projects that by the time it’s finished, 2 billion coins could be sitting in the Fed’s vaults. Next up for minting is our 19th president, Rutherford B. Hayes.
Rutherford B. Hayes? Be still, my beating heart!
 Photo from In Maine, ObamaCare's New High Risk Pool Attracts Just 14 Enrollees
Nice that Hussey's sells everything you need for a shotgun wedding
Turtles on JFK runway cause flight delays
Those are female Diamondback Terrapins living in Jamaica Bay in New York City, looking for nesting sites. Good to know that they are still thriving there. Somebody built a cement runway on their historic nesting site.
An oldie from David Horowitz: Columbia a disaster. Kenyon an unexpected surprise
Surber asks The Republican presidential candidates are serious. Why isn’t the press?
Powerline has a new look
Maggie's Farm will stick with our antique look - for now. You can scroll down quite a long ways here, and we only put things on a continuation page when they exceed our ordinary format.
The Religion of Rape… ALL Norwegian Rapists in 2010 Were Muslim
Why is Greece too big to fail?
Greece is already bankrupt, financially, morally, and spiritually. But, as Donald Trump once said, if you owe a bank a half million bucks, they own you - but if you owe them 300 million bucks, you own them. Something like that.
New Obama deficit talking point: The GOP loves corporate jets or something. However, Obama Blasts Private Jet Tax Breaks Created by His Own Stimulus
That is called The Washington Monument Strategy
Children will starve, Granny will die, etc. As Lizards says:
Now it's B.O.'s turn to schrai gevalt, just as sister J. did in the ancient times. But J. had a perfectly legitimate reason to act like that: She was five years old.
McArdle: Breaking: Voters Prefer Free Stuff to Higher Taxes, Lower Spending
From Obama, Listen to Andrew Cuomo:
The American people continue to have little patience for politicians who shamelessly try to siphon off more and more of the public’s hard-earned money to fund grandiose, top-down schemes that inevitably reward powerful interest groups instead of bolstering the economy as a whole.
Ace on the commerce clause:
..this new claim is that really there is only one clause that matters in the Constitution, and that is the Commerce Clause, and this one brief clause renders all 4400 other words in the Constitution null and void, because the Commerce Clause says, it is contended, that the federal government may do anything so long as, in the aggregate, it "affects interstate commerce," which, as is often pointed out, applies to everything.
Wednesday, June 29. 2011
"Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do on a rainy afternoon." Sippican
"If you want to make a problem worse, pass a law to fix it." Economist Art Carden, via Carpe
"One sentence which has never been spoken in the history of the universe is "Stop s***ing my d*** immediately or I will call the police." George Carlin on sexual regulations and morality, via Ace
"The global green treaty movement to outlaw climate change is the most egregious folly to seize the world’s imagination since the Kellog-Briand Pact outlawed war in the late 1920s." Mead's The Failure of Al Gore: Part Deux
"Government should not tell you what to do unless there’s a compelling public purpose." It's difficult to believe that the Nanny Of All Nannys Bloomberg said that. Perhaps he was quoting the US Constitution?
"He did express support for Reagan, which shocked me." An assistant of John Lennon, re Lennon's evolving politics. Imagine there's no Carter, no Mondale too...
"Either the problem is in man, or the problem is in "institutions" and other collectivities." One Cosmos
Everybody makes fun of poor Paul Krugman, who is widely known as having become a real flake, a partisan hack, and a mind-numbed robot for the Left. Has he written a single thing in the past ten years that has not been predictably straight Left-wing Dem party line apologetics?
Foster in FP attempts a sympathetic understanding.
A reader sent us a pic of his first wheels. Nice:
He also sent us this car, but I forget why:
Anyway, what was your first car? (year, make and model please, if you can recall the details)
 Classic silent films, streamable and downloadable
Case Studies vs Quantitative Analyses
Excellent review of the topic
Spatial navigation in the congenitally blind
Just keep reading the translation
Uh oh: White House caught lying about Petraeus’s withdrawal recommendations?
Tunisia's Morning After
The Authentic Palestine Freedom Flotilla
Bookworm: Principles are so inconvenient
Morals and principles create stress!
The hateful Left
If Public Pensions Are a Sinking Ship, Charter Schools Are Smart Rats
The Unions’ Real Enemy: Themselves (h/t Larwin)
Factoid du jour, via Coyote:
Wal-Mart’s profit to shareholders is about 3.6% of sales. This means that for the majority of the country, on the items you buy at Wal-Mart, they are earning less than half of what the government takes in sales tax on the same item.
Is that serfdom?
A comment at Lucianne:
His mother hated the USA, his dad hated the USA, his step-dad hated the USA. His schools in Indonesia hated the USA. His college buddies hated the USA. His pastor of 20 years hates the USA and his associates in Chicago hate the USA.
It's Radical Chic. Loving freedom is not cool. Lenin and Che were cool.
Tuesday, June 28. 2011
The Nikko Blue hydrangea and its variants are classic plants in Yankeeland. Mine are in their full glory today.
Hydrangeas are the sorts of things that make a house a home.
Here are three important tips for those who grow hydrangeas of any type: first, they like moist (but well-drained) soil, hence their name. Second, full-day direct sun is too much for most of them unless you have irrigation. Third, prune them with caution: you have to first determine whether they are macrophylla or paniculata, etc. Prune them wrong and you get no bloom. Better yet, don't prune them at all unless you have to.
(More general shrub pruning info: Except for hedging or shaped shrubs, mature shrubs can or should be pruned at ground level - not from the top - removing 25-30% of the woodiest growth to keep the plant young and vigorous. This is especially important with shrubs like Lilacs. I will try to dig out my old pruning posts. Always study the correct pruning technique for a given plant before attacking anything with a sharp tool. Never prune young shrubs.)
Two weeks ago, my friend Gerald Robbins -- Turkey expert and Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute -- brought us his quick analysis of the results of the election in Turkey. FPRI asked him to enlarge upon it for FPRI's readers. There's much more interesting detail and discussion of prospects and difficulties for Turkey.
A fascinating addition is Robbins' raising the possibility of "a bold, controversial move" to resolve the "long-festering" and violent Kurd rebellion. "If Mr. Erdogan can skillfully manage the process, he’ll be remembered as the person who settled the Kurdish issue, Turkey’s most burdensome problem." That may, also, help him recover from his proven "inane" regional policy of a bridge among the Arab and Iranian Moslems that has come a cropper as evident with his "badly miscalculated" dealings with Syria. Erdogan would be seen more as a venturesome uniter rather than an opportunistic dreamer of semi-Ottoman fantasies.
Read it all.
Among the likely winners of the Republican race (yes, that excludes Sarah Palin and Rand Paul), none have yet come even close to sewing up the nomination for president. That’s a good thing.
I’m a firm believer in the worth of long campaign seasons. Democrat or Republican partisans alone are a minority of the electorate. The crucible requires potential candidates to demonstrate their ability to craft a national coalition of their political party that will reach beyond to enough leaners (otherwise often called Independents).
The long campaign crucible, also, demonstrates the potential candidates’ ability to present themself and to encourage positive feelings with articulate, persuasive, sound proposals, while avoiding seriously alienating leaners or committing major gaffes that raise crippling doubts among the open-minded (not just opponent scalphunters).
At this point, there’s enough good to say about the leading Republican contenders to believe they’d all make fine vice-presidents, but as yet none have earned the higher expectation.
All will be in good stead as a better alternative than President Obama. However, that is not enough, for me anyway.
Continue reading "Looking at the 2012 Republican Presidential Contenders and Beyond"
You know about the warning, but do you know who Miranda was? Or how he died? Or what became of his killer?
Black racism against Asians and whites (h/t Doug Ross). Never reported because it doesn't fit the narrative.
Fraud Up and Down Our Educational System. A quote from London:
Once these high-school graduates hold a diploma in their hands, however questionable their skill level, they are deemed college-ready. Since America has a college for everyone and the society is committed to mass education, students who can read at only a marginal level or who cannot solve quadratic equations are seated in institutions of higher learning.
Surely something has to give. Invariably remediation must take place, but that is insufficient to deal with widespread incompetence. Obviously course content and requirements are modified. A physics instructor at the City University in New York told me recently it is impossible to teach real physics when your students are incapable of engaging eight-grade math.
Gordon Wickstrom writes with sympathy for his seven doctors:
My seven men must yearn to see some fine, strapping, young body-in-its-prime with some specific ailment to which they can apply something quickly sovereign, doctor and patient both ending up refreshed. But no, they face daily the procession of an ever older, more decrepit, more grotesque, unsavory parade of bodies-- of those who have lived too long.
 From Mead's brilliant analysis of the failure of Algore, Part Deux:
Once the political power of the climate movement, aided by an indulgent and largely unquestioning press, had pushed the climate agenda into the realm of serious politics, failure was inevitable. The only question was whether the comprehensive green meltdown would occur before or after the movement achieved its core political goal of a comprehensive and binding global agreement on greenhouse gasses.
and
It is a waste of time to talk science with Al Gore. It is a waste of time to listen to him at all. That, apparently, is what the world at long last is beginning to understand. The policy makers and the heads of state who only two years ago were ready to follow Gore up the mountain have softly and quietly tuned him out.
These days, he can’t even get his picture on the cover of Rolling Stone.
As Mead points out, the entire enterprise was close to insane from the beginning, despite all of the money to be made from it.
Off topic: Mead, Steyn, and VDH are so hot these days that it is difficult not to simply link all of their stuff.
Image above via Moonbattery
Norm on a sense of purpose without a grand plan
Related, at Stumbling: The meaning of life
Our friend Skook: Honesty and Integrity, Up Close and Personal:
He looked me directly in the eye, with a cold blue eyed stare and said, “Young with a bit of life and not too wide in the back. Should be a sure footed mare that can move fast and smooth with rhythm, without being scared of every little thing.”
Whoa now, that was a different request; I started to ask him if he was referring to a woman or a horse, but you can’t count on everyone appreciating my sense of humor.
Why Is It So Hard To Get a Good Bagel Outside of New York City?
Just imagine if this were a charter school
Wisconsin Battle Moves from Collective Bargaining to School Choice
On, Wisconsin!
Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy
Egyptian "Pro-Democracy Activists" At A Loss
My Degree Isn't Worth the Debt!
Herman Cain & Juan Williams Agree: “Liberals Have a Problem With Black Conservatives… You’re Jumping Out of the Pen”
I call it "the plantation,' but it's the same idea
Driscoll: It's not easy being the accidental President
The economic experts are confused.
I'm not
UK update: - Major Strike Looms After Talks With Govt Fail
Sounds like the US
Texas Votes to Defund Planned Parenthood
Atlantic Review: Understanding Germany. Also, "German Soldiers Can't Shoot"
Cutting government red tape produces new jobs
Obama's Drawdown Disaster
Commentary: Real-World Effects of Anti-War Activism
A duel between French thinkers produces a Euroland best-seller
Not from The Onion: Obama Will 'Co-Invest' Tax Dollars in Corporate-Government Partnership
It's called crony capitalism. Brilliant use of our taxes.
Ohio’s Lost Decade, and Its New Hope - Can John Kasich and Tea Party activists save Ohio?
President Quixote's Legacy: Confused, Ill-Educated and Not Too Bright:
Dr. Thomas Sowell wrote about "seductive beliefs" in a two-part article (second part here). He touched on some of the incorrect beliefs guiding President Obama. In short, Obama is an ideologue, narrowly (and poorly) educated. As a result, he is ignorant in the ways of the world.
and
Instead of having a superior intellect, we likely have the most ignorant, ideological, brainwashed dupe this country has ever elected to high office. The man's intellectual development never progressed beyond the stage of all-night freshman bull sessions where all the world's problems were solved (with help from adequate amounts of beer of course).
Beer, or pot and coke. Whatever. True or not, I guess that piece counts as a rant.
Monday, June 27. 2011
Mrs. BD drove to serene central Ohio yesterday. Her iPhone pics (tilted horizons are a BD family specialty):
America's top ten cars are made in the USA
That's the title of a fascinating essay by Aaron at FP. (link fixed). A quote:
... a moral resurrection was essential. This meant not merely an overhaul of the Soviet political and economic systems, not merely an upending of social norms, but a revolution on the individual level: a change in the personal character of the Russian subject. As Mikhail Antonov declared in a seminal 1987 essay, "So What Is Happening to Us?" in the magazine Oktyabr, the people had to be "saved" -- not from external dangers but "most of all from themselves, from the consequences of those demoralizing processes that kill the noblest human qualities." Saved how? By making the nascent liberalization fateful, irreversible -- not Khrushchev's short-lived "thaw," but a climate change. And what would guarantee this irreversibility? Above all, the appearance of a free man who would be "immune to the recurrences of spiritual slavery." The weekly magazine Ogoniok, a key publication of glasnost, wrote in February 1989 that only "man incapable of being a police informer, of betraying, and of lies, no matter in whose or what name, can save us from the re-emergence of a totalitarian state."
A rescue from the "spiritual slavery" of Socialism.
Via Hayward at Powerline (my bold):
Way back in 1988, at the beginning of the climate crusade, Se. Wirth remarked "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing--in terms of economic policy and environmental policy." There, in one sentence, is a succinct display of the serial bad faith and will to power of modern environmentalism. Even if catastrophic global warming turns out to be correct, would you trust control of America's economy to people like Gore and Wirth? Neither would I.
That's it, in a nutshell.
The Swiss army
Television: Irresistible Addiction or Dying Medium?
Commodity ETFs: Extreme Tax Frustration
That Missouri rabbit story goes on and on
Bipedalism and humanness
It also produced the possibility of actually facing the one you are mating with.
Good Jazz site: Crownpropeller's Blog
Adding to blogroll: The History Blog
Existence of 200 ‘uncontacted’ tribal people in Brazilian rainforest confirmed (PHOTOS)
Amazing
Cash-Only Doctors
It has become common.
The facts about fracking
I Am A Democrat. h/t Good News: College Democrats Succeed in Recruiting Stupid Ugly Losers!
A Lefty wants Greece to default
The Left would love the economic chaos - and the theft from the banks
Daniel Hannan: If Greenpeace Can Lie This Easily, Why Should I Believe Them On Any Subject?
A Left view of The Significance of Walmart v. Dukes
Ted Turner: Climate Change ‘Most Serious ... Problem Humanity Has Ever Faced’
Good grief
Operation Fast and Furious — How the Obama Administration Conned the Washington Post
Via Lucianne:
It's been a bad month for the New York Times. The feeding frenzy it tried to stir up over Sarah Palin's e-mails left the sharks unfed. (Snip) But none of that will change the Times' behavior. The Times is preparing itself for a huge push to re-elect President Obama and will leave no story unpublished that could possibly help Obama or hurt his opponent, regardless of who it is.
Insty says:
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MCCAIN, WE’D HAVE ONGOING WARS ALL OVER THE WORLD, AND FAT-CAT DONORS ENTERTAINED RIGHT IN THE WHITE HOUSE. And they were right!
Graph below via Doug Ross' Our Fiscal Nightmare:
Sunday, June 26. 2011
A friend was at the Royal Danish Ballet in NY this week. i-phone pic.
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