We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Personally, I've been a supporter of switching back to a gold standard, even if only temporarily, in order to impose budgetary discipline and promote economic growth.
Regardless, it was only a matter of time before Emerging Economies started to catch up. In the long run, this will benefit the United States, because at some point their workers will want to live like us, demand wages like us, and spend like us. Outsourcing will shift back to high productivity areas like the US.
In the meantime, the question becomes a relatively simple one. Would you rather see the US grow at 2% a year and the rest of the world at 1% or less, or see the US grow at 3% a year and the rest of the world grow at 5% or more? The first is the situation we've been in, recently. The second is more likely over the long haul, because as other small nations grow, they will demand more from the US.
So I reject the concept that we're "finished financially" and suggest we're at a turning point, and the direction we go is dependent on whether we make intelligent economic decisions, or continue to engage crony capitalism financed by fiat currency.
Where we go is dependent on how we choose to manage our current state. Artificially, as we are now, or by focusing on our strengths, such as creativity, marketing, and education. We are entrepreneurs at heart. The rest of the world benefits from the vision and effort the US exhibits.
1 Boring Old Man has been devoting himself to uncovering the Pharma-Psychiatric research cabal, but nobody is really listening. My rule of thumb is to take everything I read with a a few grains of salt.
Let’s face it, most students want jobs or to get into good professional and graduate schools and therefore care little about useless general education courses and the formative process of education; Corporate America wants skilled workers, not philosophical or reflective employees (who might then question some of its practices); therefore, the marketplace reinforces the economic value of higher education and dictates the nature of the curriculum and the priority of the courses that are taught. To keep up with current trends, many colleges and universities market their product as “a major investment,” as the president of a selective four-year liberal arts college, stated, and then added: “And with returns that will last a lifetime, it’s one of the best investments anyone could make.” But students aren’t buying this highfalutin talk. They are buying degrees so that they can make money because Mass Culture U.—television, music, movies, advertising, celebrities—tells them that that means success. Like religion, the life of the mind can wait until, as one student told me, after she gets a job, gets married, has children, and settles down. Then she’ll have time to think about “art and books and all that stuff.”
I agree about the value of a "useless education." I also agree with his distinction between "liberal arts" and "job training." I think Prof. Anderson is likely an inspiring prof.
However, I think liberal arts education has become insanely and unnecessarily expensive, so that people feel forced to regard it as a financial investment. Ask me whether I think higher ed is a credentialling racket, or expensive babysitting for superannuated adolescents.
Also, I do not think "the life of the mind" is for everybody. Seems to me that we have many people feeling obligated to "attend college," whatever that means, when they would feel more motivated and engaged in "training" to do something practical instead.
#48 is a good one: You beat 50% of the people by just showing up. You beat another 40% by working hard. The last 10% is a dogfight in the free enterprise system.
This is kind of an 'observation test'. Let's see if you can figure out the answer to the question, "Why can't I market this remarkable item?" before the end.
How about a coffee mug that keeps your coffee warm up to ten times longer than a normal coffee mug?
Sounds pretty amazing — and sellable — doesn't it? I mean, lots of people prefer their coffee hot, and probably subconsciously drink it faster than they normally would, just to get it while it's still warm. Me, I use a coffee mug warmer plate which keeps it hot and allows me to drink it at a leisurely pace.
And think what an ad would look like for The Magic Coffee Mug. You'd have a bar graph showing how long various popular mugs keep the coffee warm, and while the other bars on the graph would be a quarter-inch high, The Magic Coffee Mug's would be four inches high. Very impressive, and sure to ignite a million sales.
Alas, I can't market this amazing product, even though I could probably get them for dirt cheap.
The Supreme Court has ruled that there cannot be a Nativity Scene in the United States' Capital this Christmas season. This isn't for any religious reason. They simply have not been able to find Three Wise Men in the Nation's Capitol.
A search for a virgin continues.
There was no problem, however, finding enough asses to fill the stable.
Readers know that we seasonally, and sometimes plain impulsively, change the image on our header. Some find those old images a little too cutesy and sentimental, but I think they are part of what we are. I love the details of 19th C life.
Of course, when Currier and Ives produced their images they were making contemporary illos and would never have dreamed of their ongoing appeal.
I'm not a big fan of religious exhibitions in public venues. I'm not opposed to them, I'm not critical of seeing a prayer circle after a game, or a player thanking God for divine intervention. That's what the player wants to believe? Fine. My issue is really one that relates to this - if God is helping the winning team, then what's He doing for the losing team? Are they just not strong enough believers? Did they not say the right prayers or did they not make the correct sacrifices? It's not really a strong argument to say "God allowed/helped me to win" because it presumes God didn't allow or help those on the losing side.
God gives each of us abilities, and how we use them is what determines how well we do at sports, work, home life, etc. Beyond that, God doesn't intervene much, in my view. If I start using drugs and begin to play poorly on the field, did "God allow/help me to use drugs"? I don't think so.
It's a sword that cuts both ways, and in the end it's a personal decision relating to how you choose to use your God-given talents that determines whether you're a winner or loser. When you're playing for the championship against another believer, then it comes down to your mental toughness. Another God-given talent, one which can be developed and improved (just as any God-given talent can).
Danny Bloom is an American expatriate enjoying his cyberholic life in Taiwan. He writes:
CHIAYI CITY, Taiwan –As many readers know, the old song called “Amazing Grace” was a religious hymn written by the English clergyman John Newton and first published in 1779. While the song has a soulful, dreamy melody that has touched millions with its words and plaintive notes, the time has come for a 2011 rewrite.
Why tamper with something as beautiful as “Amazing Grace” since it is one of the most recognizable songs in the English-speaking world, and people know the melody in Asia and Africa as well? The original is a good song, a perfect song, with inspiring words, yet here I go with my updated revision. Instead of “amazing grace,” I want to talk about our amazing human race. So my title is “Amazing Race.”
Being myself a lover of Amazing Grace, I was skeptical.........until I listened to this. Wonderful. The lyrics are at the above link.
"We created a group of self-entitled monsters." Hey youths, this is for you. Hey, OWSers, this is for you, too. Adam Carolla tells it like it is (language not entirely SFW, and h/t, SDA):
"Life is difficult." That book did me a lot of good, a few years ago. Got me into a little therapy, changed my life for the better, helped me realize that I was my biggest obstacle in getting on with life. Corny as it sounds, that empowered me. Shrink told me that there was nothing wrong with me except for being a "blaming and excuse-making a-hole" and I had to get my shit together, quit blaming and making self-flattering excuses, and take charge of my life like an adult who was willing to deal with reality instead of fantasies. Mean SOB was spot on. That's why I am, at present, having a very good life in New York City.
It is also why I don't do the morning posts here anymore. I am grandfathered in, to post whatever I want, whenever I want.
Those greedy 1%ers (household AGI $350,000 and up) are Hollywood and Broadway actors, rock and hip-hop stars, sports stars, popular writers, entrepreneurs, TV people, fancy restaurant owners, artists, theater impresarios, prosperous small business owners, some accountants and portfolio managers, opera stars, the CEOs of big businesses, neurosurgeons, plastic surgeons, and some other high-income medical specialists, NYT columnists, college presidents, retired politicians, law partners, real estate magnates, and a few high-level investment bankers.
Not exactly an evil bunch of people. I plan to join that crowd, at least for a while. How many people are permanently in that group? Very few, I suspect. Careers rise and fall, which is why people need to save a little of their money while making sure to fully enjoy and make good use of the rest.
...as (Keith) Richards noted about the band’s early days, “Benedictines had nothing on us. Anybody that strayed from the nest to get laid, or try to get laid, was a traitor. You were supposed to spend all your waking hours studying Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson. That was your gig. Every other moment taken away from it was a sin.”
Read it. HuffPo, working on the envy meme: U.S. Income Inequality: Top 1 Percent Take Home 24 Percent Of U.S. Income. The economic ignorance, or feigned ignorance, is astonishing. There is no set "pie:" the pie is infinitely expandable. It's is called "Growth in GDP." Wealth can be created out of thin air, out of effective, creative, and unique qualities of work and investment. The Rolling Stones, on their next final tour, do not "take" their greedy % of American income. Those old boys earn it.
Why is it, he wondered, that certain intellectuals are “merciless toward the failings of the democracies but ready to tolerate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines”?
Mr Edsall notes that "demographic trends suggest the continued growth of pro- Democratic constituencies and the continued decline of core Republican voters, particularly married white Christians."
Where is OWS hoping things wind up? Given some of the recent pictures in the blogosphere, one calling for a "Cultural Revolution", it's likely that these nitwits have a hankering for the recent past and all the wonderfulness others in Russia and China experienced. In a sense, a very bizarre sense, we could call them 'conservative', because they want to return to the way things were - even if those things were in another severely degraded country. Lord knows they are not progressive.
I was watching a boring football game and began to glance around other channels, and noticed "Dr. Zhivago". I'm a fan of David Lean, and in particular this film. Beautifully shot, well crafted, magnificent characters and storytelling.
As I watched, I couldn't help but think "this is what OWS dreams about - the chance to expropriate the property of others so they can misuse and destroy property."
I see no reason to care about income inequality in America: I hope the very prosperous 1% spend and donate their money wisely and enjoyably. The poorest have more comforts and conveniences than middle-class Americans had in the 1960s, and, in fact, live in larger quarters than members of the European middle classes do today.
The poorest, most dysfunctional or unfortunate have abundant governmental and charitable supports, but, unfortunately, these supports are not counted in their income status thus exaggerating disparities. Just Medicaid alone is equivalent to around $10,000 of income.
And, of course, income varies over the course of life; down, up and down and maybe up again for many, so statistics do not tell you who is newly poor and who is newly but perhaps only temporarily prosperous.
Of course, one way (if you want to address the statistics alone and ignore the people behind the numbers) to reduce income disparities is just to tax the hell out of the upper 10%. They'll quit working, of course, if they can afford to. Seen many big entrepreneurs in Europe lately?
Barone makes a few good points. Here's one:
...surprising, federal transfer payments have done much more to increase income inequality than federal taxes. That's because, in Ryan's words, "the distribution of government transfers has moved away from households in the lower part of the income scale. For instance, in 1979, households in the lowest income quintile received 54 percent of all transfer payments. In 2007, those households received just 36 percent of transfers."
In effect, Social Security and Medicare have been transferring money from low-earning young people (who don't pay income but are hit by the payroll tax) to increasingly affluent old people.
I am highlighting a weekend link about Fred Siegel that might have gone overlooked in the shuffle: 'The New Tammany Hall' - The historian of the American city on what Wall Street and the 'Occupy' movement have in common, and how government unions came to dominate state and local politics. One quote:
The future of his city worries Mr. Siegel. Forty years ago, New York had the most manufacturing jobs in America. But as the finance sector's share of the national economy grew to 23% in 2007 from 7% in 1980, New York turned almost into a one-company town. Meantime, the growing claims on the public purse by those who make little to no contribution to the economy have driven up taxes and the costs of doing business. The city creates jobs in tourism, hotels and restaurants at the lower end of the scale. "What we don't create are private-sector middle-class jobs," says Mr. Siegel. "We have a ladder with the middle rungs missing."
Government workers make up a growing share of the middle class. And perversely, says Mr. Siegel, unions can justifiably claim to defend the interests of the middle-class worker. "That's because the costs that they've imposed have driven out the private-sector middle class. They are the disease of which they proclaim themselves the cure."
“I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth."
Our national fascination with holiday shopping is once again at 'all in' mode. Black Friday has passed, Cyber Monday is upon us. Cyber Monday was originally a fictional concept, with online retailers suggesting for years that the Monday after Black Friday was the heaviest online shopping day of the year. It wasn't. When it was first suggested, it was twelfth largest holiday shopping day. However, Cyber Monday is now a cultural meme and last year became the largest online shopping day for Amazon simply because that's how it was marketed.
Regardless of which day is largest online, Black Friday remains the shopping holiday that resonates. Every year, we hear it used as a bellwether on the health of our animal spirits toward spending. This year, we've heard that it's indicative of great things to come! Then again, it was used that way last year, too. 2011 has proven to be substantially larger than 2010, in terms of Black Friday spending (6.6% growth versus 0.3% growth year over year). Ultimately, Black Friday of 2010 indicated nothing of importance economically, because most of the holiday spending increases were from high income folk. The large initial growth on Black Friday this year may not say much more than people are looking for bargains, and retailers are seeking to burn off inventory.
We can but repeat that this is a scare that has run its course. The ersatz scientists will never again hold the global community in its thrall to the same extent, on this subject.
Here at Maggie's, we don't understand why people do not pray for some global warming. The Medieval Warming, and the Roman-era warming - both now reversed by historic cooling - were excellent for civilization. Mostly, we worry about the effects of the next Ice Age on our property values. A mile-deep glacier on top of my house would have a negative effect, and another Ice Age is a certainty.
Politicians love it, because they can pay for votes today, and the next generation can worry about it after they have retired. I can buy a boat today, and hope I keep my job so I can pay it off over the next five years. Or I could buy a tiny 1 BR condo in NY, and pay if off over 15 years while taking an interest deduction from my crippling federal, state, and city income taxes. Businesses need it, in fact, require it, for investment purposes, in the hopes that they can grow. Banks love it, because they can lend the money and profit from the interest. Students love it: they can go to school now, and hope to pay off their loans in the future. Christmas shoppers love it, of course, because Santa is credit.
In the end, using credit makes people, and governments, debt slaves, slaves to bond markets and slaves to banks who offered the loans. This is annoying to debtors, who have already enjoyed spending the money and are peeved, if not in trouble, because they owe it. The bond market now controls the global economy, not because "it" wants to, but because of governments and people willingly, freely, democratically, taking on debt to pay the bills instead of taxing the heck out of the people who work. Borrowing is all voluntary, the loans are from one's neighbors, - and it is a big house of cards.
I was raised by parents who refused to ever go into debt. They viewed it as a temptation for the weak. They never even had a credit card. They saved for 15 years to buy a modest house, and never viewed it as an investment. They made it home, and live there now while the trees they had planted become enormous, dwarfing their home. They have hardly ever gone anywhere, or had much fun or adventure as I think of it, but they love their church and their little town where everybody knows them. A simple life. In my adult life, I have learned to take out loans for no reason, and to pay them back after a few months, just to have a good credit rating. A good credit rating, today, is like a grade in reality living. Someday, I might want to use some credit, but today I do not. I use credit cards as if cash, to keep my rating perfect.
I might need a loan, someday.
Easy money is dangerous. Living within your means, whether as a family or as a government, is just no darn fun. There's always a good excuse or rationale for taking on more debt. I fear that the world will soon see the economic consequences of excessive debt in which everybody has borrowed from his neighbor, and his neighbor from him. A bank, after all, contains nothing but one's neighbor's money, leveraged.
"I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today":
I’ve been hiring twenty-somethings for about twenty years now, and though they are getting more tech-savvy, their productivity keeps plummeting. I believe this is due to their snowballing sense of entitlement.
'The New Tammany Hall' - The historian of the American city on what Wall Street and the 'Occupy' movement have in common, and how government unions came to dominate state and local politics:
One can appreciate why the "we are the 99%" militants might resist Mr. Siegel's logic. He links the liberalism of the 1960s, not any excess of the free market, to today's crisis. The Great Society put the state on growth hormones. Less widely appreciated, the era gave birth to a powerful new political force, the public-sector union. For the first time in American history there was an interest dedicated wholly to lobbying for a larger government and the taxes and debt to pay for it.
Must be human nature to desire some sort of supernatural political salvation, but that is far from an American notion: it's the fantasy of a having a perfect Master or a child's fantasy of a perfect parent.
64:1 O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence--
64:2 as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil-- to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
64:3 When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.
64:4 From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.
64:5 You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.
64:6 We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.
64:7 There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.
64:8 Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.
64:9 Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.
I am grateful that Mrs. BD dragged me to see Einstein on the Beach on its world tour in 1992, at the BAM (for those of you in Yorba Linda, that's the Brooklyn Academy of Music).
Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, with dancer/choreographer Lucinda Childs, decided to call it an opera, but it really was a spectacle, and, with all of the repetition, choruses, and dancing, something like Greek theater with technology. I have grown to sort-of enjoy the Glass music in this, but it just drives some people crazy. It's a sound track, really.
The whole thing is hypnotically slow-moving (and it was over 5 hrs, no intermission, and people were welcome to come and go. We stayed, except for bathroom breaks - and they sold wine in the lobby.). There exist audio recordings, but, I believe, no video recordings of the whole thing. Video does not do justice to theatrical productions. You had to be there to be in the dream.
One snippet of video - you can search on YouTube it to hear more of Glass' music for the show:
Addendum, by complete coincidence I see that the Met is celebrating Glass' 75th birthday with “Satyagraha.” Wierd coincidences: I posted a Tagore poem this morning, mentioned Robert Wilson in a photo post yesterday, and stumbled on the news of that Philip Glass/Tagore opera today after preparing the above post.
The more you get out and about, the more fascinating life gets. Everybody needs to get out more, I guess. Possessions are expensive: cool life experiences are cheap by comparison.
Americans are so wasteful. For example, take our roller coasters. You look down and what do you see?
Two tracks.
Waste, waste, waste.
Trust those ingenious Austrians who, not content with enriching the world with Mozart, Hitler and apple strudel, have provided a perfect example of just how wasteful we Americans are. Why use two tracks when one will do?
In the following clip, I snipped out a quick piece from another clip to show you what the sleds are like, then the show begins.
It isn't that this coaster is particularly unique, in that there are a number of single-track coasters in Europe. It's the length that's so impressive. Well, and the speed. While the coasters have a hand brake you can yank on just as you round a bend and see an Austrian mountain lion in your path, the following is done hands-free.
Sucker moves out!
Fun, huh? A bit more info here. They don't appear to have a home page.
...colleges are in many ways outdated. At one stage in history a college education required a physical plant where scholars could interact among themselves and with their students and where students could find the necessary resources for their studies such as libraries and labs. Now, however, libraries are largely obsolete and classes, even graduate seminars, can be conducted online. In many disciplines scholarship can be conducted in complete independence of the physical resources of a university.
Sometimes I think about things during my morning work-out. I try not to think and to go into a mindless, timeless state, but sometimes my brain wins. Often, I use my aerobic time to pray, and I hope God laughs about my multitasking.
Many things in life test our will-power and, in a sick kind of Yankee way, I tend to enjoy such tests of mental strength. Few things present conflicts with one's will-power like facing another ten minutes on the Elliptical, or one more set of squats.
Well, maybe paying bills and doing other paperwork almost compares. My personal attitude towards paperwork is infantile, defiant, and not admirable. I often fail these tests.
Does persisting with the things we find difficult, and seek excuses to avoid, build character? We say Yes. The Maggie's heart says "Easy stuff first, hard stuff later." The Maggie's conscience and the Maggie's tradition says "Hard stuff first, easier stuff after."
Spandex? All the women in my gym wear Spandex (or Yoga pants), and I'd say it's 50% women there early in the morning. Guys on the machines alternate their gaze from CNBC or FOX to the bouncing youthful Spandexed behind in front of them with the bouncing blond pony-tail, then back to CNBC.
Being pure of heart and mind, I stay glued to the FOX. Don't you?
The bad news is that she wasn't referring to Obama, dagnabbit. She thought she was just doing a voice-over and was flipping off some guys in the studio who were trying to distract her. There's a nice summation of it here.
That's interesting, because I recently read a piece about tax policy which referred to taxpayers as "tax units." I guess that's how bureaucrats think. Are you an income unit, an expense unit, or neither?
On the Seashore, by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.
They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl- fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.
The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea- beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby's cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.
Britain's Financial Times does its usual fine reporting on today's Vietnam. Some excerpts:
Just five years ago, Vietnam was the darling of foreign investors in search of the next hot emerging market after China, where Soviet-style stagnation had been transformed into an economic boom by a reforming Communist party....
Deep-seated problems, such as corruption, poor education and infrastructure bottlenecks – all often overlooked by investors in the boom years – have moved into sharp focus....
To many analysts, Vietnam serves as a warning of the pitfalls facing the region, even as Europe and the US struggle with their own economic crises. The Asian Development Bank has warned that Asia’s rise is not preordained – and that nations such as Vietnam, as well as China, will need to take tough political choices....
A bigger question is whether authoritarian regimes can develop high-income economies while sustaining a political system that curtails public debate and fails to promote the establishment of the strong, independent institutions needed to combat corruption and wasteful state spending.
Difficulties are in evidence across the country. A series of interest rate hikes, started this year as the government belatedly moved to get a grip on monetary policy, has delivered a hard blow to the economy. The key refinancing rate stands today at 15 per cent. Thousands of businesses have been forced to close, record numbers of strikes have broken out and bad debts have soared. Enquiries from new foreign investors have slowed dramatically, according to lawyers and consultants....
This has all appeared to overwhelm the government of Nguyen Tan Dung, prime minister, and the country’s ruling cadre – most of whom are alumni of Soviet-era institutions. Rather than pursuing further reforms, they have resorted to knee-jerk, backward-looking measures, including a crackdown on free speech, curbs on the import of luxury goods and restrictions on visas for foreign workers....
Social discontent appears to be on the rise, with land protests becoming common in Hanoi, as hard-up farmers complain that they have been short-changed by officials selling their land to well connected businesses on the cheap.
Some Vietnamese officials have conceded to foreign diplomats that they are worried about an Arab spring-type rising breaking out. Diplomats say this is likely to be little more than an attempt to justify a continuing crackdown on human rights.
Corruption is a serious problem, though the benefits are shared more equally than in Arab dictatorships toppled this year. Graft and weak governance remain significant obstacles for investors, particularly since the American and British governments began strict enforcement of laws against bribing overseas officials....
Authoritarianism seeds its own demise. Rather face the US or Europe's problems, wouldn't you?
Gee whiz, the banks won't lend them any more money to maintain a fake, debt-based life style. Why would they, if they know it cannot be repaid?
Some of these countries have been, in effect, ripping off gullible lenders just as much as people taking mortgages or student loans who know they can never really pay them unless they get very lucky. It's close to theft, or fraud, or something.
One is tempted to conclude, at this point, that the political theory of the EU today is being written by financiers and financial analysts in their credit reports. They are anxious, after all, only secondarily about markets. They are primarily anxious about governance and structures of governance — because the markets are trying to figure out whether the institutions of the EU and its members are serious about their legal and political commitments, and in what ways and to what
The original progressives of the early 20th century, just like today’s seemingly incoherent liberals, were populist and technocratic — they argued both for direct democracy and for expert rule. Even as they called for enlarging the scope of the federal government and putting a class of educated specialists in charge of it, they also called for radical democratic reforms of our constitutional system. In the 1912 election, the Progressive-party platform proposed not only the direct election of senators but also the enactment of federal laws by public initiative, and even advocated allowing the public to overturn some court decisions by referendum.
And the progressives generally did not see a contradiction between their technocracy and their populism. They expected their technocratic ideas to be popular, and so they expected populism to lead to more expert government.
Progesssives hope citizens will sell their independence to the expert technocrats, without their realizing how venal and power-hungry those pols and technocrats are. Cannot fool all of the people all of the time, and there is no fool like an educated fool.
My always-fragile trust in self-anointed experts and elites diminishes daily - see the EU, or Washington, DC, for plentiful current examples.
“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.”
Think about what this means. All of the money and power would be focused in the state, but then the state would not do anything with that concentration of power. The state was innocent. There would be no cronyism, no corruption, no bureaucracy, and no concentration of stupidity so as to make mistakes much bigger.
This is precisely — without the proletarian aspects — the Obama worldview. Good citizens with high levels of education will be the philosopher kings, telling everyone what to eat, drive, and do for their own good. Naturally, these people would have no interests of their own. Naturally, their learning from books and theories rather than from real life would not lead them into really big mistakes.
Then, there is Marx’s view of what later became known as the withering away of the state:
“When…all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. … If the proletariat…makes itself the ruling class…then it will…thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.”
What we have here today is not the triumph of the proletariat but the triumph of the managerial-bureaucratic-intellectual-cultural elite. The best describer of this is not Marx but James Burnham, a former Marxist whose writings in the 1940s were the basis for George Orwell in writing 1984. Then there is Karl Popper, who pointed out that the greatest threat to freedom (the “open society”) were those who thought they knew everything.
Our rule of thumb at Maggie's: Never trust any human who wants any form of power, especially over you. No matter what they say, they do not mean well. If they claim they are doing it for your own good, run the other way as fast as possible. I am with George Washington:
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
All that we call human history - money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery - [is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.
C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity. Fair enough, CS, but being in requited love with a young lady comes close, given our human limits.
Bustling downtown Gambier. I like the way my camera captured the Robert Wilson-like light which he used to amazingly enchanting effect in Einstein On The Beach at the BAM:
I actually remember this, because for weeks afterward every time someone dropped something, they'd say something like, "As God is my witness, I thought ball point pens could fly."
Happy Thanksgiving, all. Watch out for any low-flying helicopters.
Come, ye thankful people, come, raise the song of harvest home; All is safely gathered in, ere the winter storms begin. God our Maker doth provide for our wants to be supplied; Come to God's own temple, come, raise the song of harvest home.
All the world is God's own field, fruit unto His praise to yield; Wheat and tares together sown unto joy or sorrow grown. First the blade and then the ear, then the full corn shall appear; Lord of harvest, grant that we wholesome grain and pure may be.
For the Lord our God shall come, and shall take His harvest home; From His field shall in that day all offenses purge away, Giving angels charge at last in the fire the tares to cast; But the fruitful ears to store in His garner evermore.
Even so, Lord, quickly come, bring Thy final harvest home; Gather Thou Thy people in, free from sorrow, free from sin, There, forever purified, in Thy garner to abide; Come, with all Thine angels come, raise the glorious harvest home.
The Pilgrims sustained so many deaths in their first year, it's a wonder they did not give up and return to Holland. They maintained their faith, and endured, and were relentlessly grateful for the Lord's will, whatever it might be. Some of the BD's ancestors were there, and survived. We connect.
Besides the wonderful tune, what I especially like about this one is that it makes it clear that the true harvest to be celebrated is not pumpkins and corn and big birds harvested by man, but people harvested by God for His kingdom. Also, it's the first tune I learned to play, on an old foot-pedal pump organ at the farm. You had to brush the mouse shit off the keys first. They lived inside that old organ in the fall and winter.
It would be more fun if it were giving thanks for sex, or the intertunnels, or freedom from government "help" and control, or something. However, survival comes first, and God has provided us all with his fruits.
Did the Pilgrims get the idea from Sukkot? Who knows. People have given thanks to God or gods since the beginning of time. What did the Pilgrims have for their Thanksgiving feast? Clams, Cod, corn meal, eels, turkey, vension, ducks. All organic! It went on for a few days, with plenty of Indians visiting with game meat in hand (the sturdy few who had not died off due to European diseases introduced by earlier explorers).
Being now passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before them in expectations, they had now no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses, or much less towns, to repair unto to seek for succour; and for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of the country know them to be sharp and violent, subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search unknown coasts.
Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men? and what multitudes of them there were, they then knew not: for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in respect of any outward object; for summer being ended, all things stand in appearance with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew.
If they looked behind them, there was a mighty ocean which they had passed, and was now as a main bar or gulph to separate them from all the civil parts of the world.
Bad luck. They were headed for the cozy Dutch village of New Amsterdam, and ended up in rugged Cape Cod due to bad weather and imperfect navigation. Decided to stay anyway, trusting God. "Occupy Plymouth!" They tried out a Christian commune, but it didn't work so they switched to free markets and private property. The investors got a successful colony, the Pilgrims got religious freedom and real estate, and the rest is history.
My pics from a BD family TG groaning board a few years ago. The oven turkey was on another table. We always have Indian Pudding too, but I guess it didn't make this photo op (we always use fresh Indians from Costco).
Note pup banished outdoors, drooling at the door. Two pups, this year. Maybe three. Thanks to God for all the dogs!
Unlike we modern whining Americans among whom none go hungry or cold, the Pilgrims saw reason for thanks despite their hardships - half their number dead.
"In everything, give thanks..."
Yes, that's a Pumpkin Cheesecake. Our friend always makes one.
Whether the "research" is about medicines, climate, sociology, or whatever, greedy human nature always finds a place for itself. This is why we, at Maggie's, always assume a skeptical posture towards "studies."
Most "studies" show that researchers want to get money and jobs for doing studies.
In the past year, we have been overwhelmed with the sleaziness of the warmist crowd and the social psychology crowd, but today we find pay to play in university education research.
Almost everybody has an agenda, even scientists. It's human. That's why we remain skeptics about everything. Call it cynical if you want, but we think it's being realistic.
Who cares whether it's hacked? It's government-paid science, isn't it? We paid for this crap. What their emails show is that these guys argue amongst themselves about how to twist and spin to present the data they want people to get. It is disgusting, a major scandal. Somewhat happily, some amongst the cabal actually want to be honest.
I have known science majors and scientists, and they never talked like this about things they were curious about. This is money politics, not science. Sounds more like a Wall Street bond sales meeting than science, to me. "How to we unload this crap to the suckers without totally and permanently compromising our reputations?"
Revkin wants to focus on the hacking, not the content. Well, Watergate was basically a pre-internet hacking, was it not? And Teapot Dome? Our thanks to the mystery hacker who cares more about the truth than these scientists do. I think there will be a third email dump in the future.
There's nothing quite like being chewed out by the boss to act as a motivational factor. For those of you who saw my morning post, I pretty-much kissed off any further debate posts because of the lack of responses the recent posts have been getting. Worse, of the five comments left in my last debate wrap-up, all five were deprecating and derogatory of the candidates, that same ol' whiny "Can't we have somebody ELSE?" attitude I see in the comments over at Hot Air and PJ Media. As I said to Bird Dog in email, I can abide 0 comments, but I can't abide -5.
Anyways, after a couple of verbal lashings from the boss and some emails drifting in from (now-former) friends calling me 'Dr. Bitchy' and 'jma' (a real long-time Farmer) piping up in the comments to another post, I figure I'm cursed with the job. Blogging isn't an easy life, let me tell you.
Maybe it's just a simple matter of imposing a new comments rule:
Happy thoughts only.
As far as the CNN debate goes, I don't have the time to write a full wrap-up, but I do think one interesting aspect of it should be mentioned.
In the previous two debates, not a barb or bomb was hurled. As I noted at the time, the candidates were all in complete agreement that Social Security needed a major overhaul and abortion-on-demand wasn't the way to go, and they only differed on exactly how they'd approach the problem.
But when it comes to things like national security, with such gems as a nuclear-armed, Islamic-driven nation like Pakistan on the table, the rules change. The question now isn't 'how to fix the problem', but where does the problem exist?
Do we threaten to cut off aid to them? Do we offer them even more money? Do we handle them with kid gloves? Do we talk tough to them, threatening them with sanctions? Do we seek their permission for every drone we lob at some bad guy or do we just tell them hey, if you aren't going to handle it, then we will, and lob away to our heart's content? Is there a 'problem' with Pakistan at all, and, if so, is it with the government or the fundamentalists?
So, while no bombs were hurled, there was a lot of electrically-charged "I highly disagree with..." going on as each chose to stake out their claim. I'm not sure two candidates agreed completely with one another the entire evening, in vast contrast to the amity they've shared in the last two debates. It wasn't quite cantankerous, but heading that direction quickly.
I'd also note that we had a debate on national security just a few weeks ago and there was nowhere near the distance between the candidates as was displayed last night. Credit the good folk at CNN and famed game show host Wolf "Blitz" Blitzer for coming up with just the right questions to create the most division and animosity between them. As they say, professionalism always shows.
The 'mood' in the US, if we are to believe the MSM, is that nasty Republicans have undermined the political process with their adherence to outdated dogma. Nevermind that Democrats adhere to outlandish (and outdated) dogma, the discussion will revolve around how to demonize one side or the other. The MSM claim "compromise" is what's important. They also hint the Republicans cause all the problems.
There is a history of compromise in Congress, but there is also a history of sticking to your guns. How you view things usually depends on what you want to believe. Personally, I think sometimes compromise is good, but at other times sticking to your beliefs is better. In the case of the deficit, I'm more dogmatic. There have to be more spending cuts before we can even discuss, let alone implement, more taxes. If we do implement more taxes, I believe having the 'rich' pay more isn't a bad idea, but a better idea is to combine that with a broader income tax base that includes the 49% who don't pay anything.
The nature of the spending cuts are as fair as we could hope for, given the current political environment. Particularly if you believe, as I do, that the Supercommittee idea is an unconstitutional solution. I believe this because cuts are 'automatic' whether the committee agrees to a deal or there is no agreement at all. If they make a deal, Congress agrees to support it. If they fail, the current outcome, nobody votes for anything except to possibly stop the cuts. There is limited representation, there is limited discussion. The cuts just happen. Clearly there is an undemocratic theme here, but at least everything gets cut. Nothing is spared. It may be unconstitutional, but we're being unconstitutional together to achieve a goal. I can't believe that's good, but some think it is.
From J.M. Anderson's 
This is kind of an 'observation test'. Let's see if you can figure out the answer to the question, "Why can't I market this remarkable item?" before the end.
Old-timey 
Those greedy 1%ers (household AGI $350,000 and up) are Hollywood and Broadway actors, rock and hip-hop stars, sports stars, popular writers, entrepreneurs, TV people, fancy restaurant owners, artists, theater impresarios, prosperous small business owners, some accountants and portfolio managers, opera stars, the CEOs of big businesses, neurosurgeons, plastic surgeons, and some other high-income medical specialists, NYT columnists, college presidents, retired politicians, law partners, real estate magnates, and a few high-level investment bankers.
Things 
Anchoress is 
Global Warming Bubble is Popping
A 
Sometimes I think about things during my morning work-out. I try not to think and to go into a mindless, timeless state, but sometimes my brain wins. Often, I use my aerobic time to pray, and I hope God laughs about my multitasking.
So soon? Advent begins tomorrow.
From Yuval's 
It's here! It's here!
Whether the "research" is about medicines, climate, sociology, or whatever, greedy human nature always finds a place for itself. This is why we, at Maggie's, always assume a skeptical posture towards "studies." 