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.
After last week’s prosecution witnesses in the court martial of Frank Wuterich finished up, I was ready to write that they sounded more like prosecution witnesses testifying for the defense. It appears that the prosecution seeing its case collapse, as it has against the other Haditha Marines, may be ready to virtually throw in the towel.
In the middle of a Haditha Marine’s testimony today, the proceeding was halted, for the prosecution and defense to possibly negotiate a settlement of the case. A reporter at the court martial who for years has been a prime reliable source throughout the Haditha prosecutions writes,
With government witnesses waiting to testify, the military judge overseeing the proceedings at Camp Pendleton announced Wednesday afternoon that the trial was on hold while prosecutors and Wuterich's attorneys "explore options" and "go ahead with negotiations."
The judge, Lt. Col. David Jones, also informed the two sides that he was available for consultation if needed.
The sudden disruption in the trial is a strong signal that an agreement that would resolve the case was being discussed. A deal would end the last major war crimes trial arising from the Iraq war.
A source close to the case who spoke on the condition their name not be used confirmed discussions were ongoing.
Attorneys for Wuterich, a Murrieta father of three young girls, declined to comment Wednesday. Prosecutors are forbidden by Marine Corps policy from commenting.
A possible resolution could involve a guilty plea to a minor charge in exchange for manslaughter charges being dropped and little or no punishment.
It's been repeated so often that it's become a mantra. Google search. If you walk or run or elliptical or stairmaster or hoeing the fields or whatever over 10,000 steps daily, you have an "active life;" if under, you fall into the "sedentary life" category.
Nobody wants to think of themselves as leading a "sedentary" life because it sounds slothful and decadent, not luxurious. There are roughly 2000 steps per mile, but it's about the steps, not the distance. It is probably not a bad rule of thumb to do it, just to stay fit, energetic, and vigorous.
Urbanites walk far more, in the course of a day, than suburban or rural folks. My theory is that that is why city folk are trim, and country folk tend towards the bulky, but I am sure that fashion plays a role in it too. City people need to look like they have their act together or they won't get any respect.
"What a coinkydinky. I was just about to call you."
Synchronicity, Serendipity, Seriality, and Simulpathity. It's a fun topic, but I can't tell for sure whether Dr. Beitman is writing tongue-in-cheek or in all seriousness. Or perhaps he's a Jungian, in which case all bets are off.
I know people who say "There are no coincidences." Count me an agnostic on the topic.
'Dude, Where’s My Lifeboat?’In the Italian cruise-ship disaster, another death knell for the age of chivalry.
Women have been begging men for thirty years to treat them no differently from men. I never could meet that demand, having inherited a slight gallantry gene from my Dad. I'd be the sucker who drowned, and would receive no post-mortem gratitude.
Nor do I seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand. For this too I believe, that unless I first believe, I shall not understand.
The way I say it is that you can study the chemistry of water for years, but you can't know what water is until you jump in the pond and take a swim in it.
Improving graduation and transfer rates won’t be easy, in part because of the preparation of students who come to City College. More than 90 percent need remediation, and 36 percent are under the poverty line.
Perhaps they should worry about their high schools first...
One interesting aspect of modern life in the Western World is the pathologizing, or "diseaseifying," of moral and character failures. Putting such failures into the disease category is a popular conceit for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the way it seems to let people off the hook. The victim thing.
But while even AA may make use of the disease metaphor, if you go to a meeting you will hear far more about character flaws than about disease. They are not into disease excuses for problem behavior.
Despite the addiction meme, ordinary people still term those who eat more than they need "pigs," people who buy too much stuff "self-indulgent," people who habitually drink too much "drunks," and people with uncontained sexual efforts as "lechers" or as "nymphomaniacs" or "hos". Ordinary language reflects the common sense moral disapprobation of ungoverned behavior.
To say that they "lack a self-governing function" is the disease model, a defect model, but to use it requires turning a verb idea into a noun idea, by reification. The better form is "They do not govern themselves," or, better yet, "They do not exert themselves to govern themselves." The disease/defect model does not do justice to all of the people who must struggle mightily to resist all of the temptations that life offers.
Pajamas has a piece up about sex "addiction," Sex Addiction 101 - PJM's advice columnist on the Chinese food syndrome of loveless sex: no sooner satisfied, than feeling empty again.
While the article makes the obvious point that people seek pleasure and often seek to replace distress with simple pleasures, it entirely overlooks the moral, spiritual, and character dimensions of lechery as if it were a "chemical imbalance" instead of plain old-fashioned rotten, socially-inappropriate behavior. Sinful too, if anybody believes in sin anymore.
While it seems true that habitual pleasures change the brain a little, so does habitual self-control. Self-control offers many rewards, but few rewards of the instant, animal sort. There are good habits and bad habits. I don't know whether it is a sociological fact, but it seems as if the debauchery and bad habits, once the domains of the very rich and powerful and of the poor, have become democratized and, in the process, excused to some extent (eg the Oval Office BJs).
People I talk to with bad or unrestrained behaviors of all sorts tend to despise themselves for it, and view putting their behavior into a disease category as a condescension. Unless they are guilt-free sociopaths, they know that their behavior is self-indulgent and immoral. People can quit these things, with help and sometimes without help, if they want to or need to, but it means giving up a lot of instant gratification in exchange for, one hopes, better life results and less self-contempt.
Both cities' rent control laws began as emergencies to meet temporary housing crunches (you always need a "crisis" to create an opportunity for government control). Then your "emergency" action becomes permanent due to its newly-created constituency. That is how Leviathan grows.
If rent control were eliminated in NYC today, in short time there would be tons of new middle class rental housing built; supply up, prices down. The moral issue, though, is that these controls do constitute a form of government theft from the owners.
As a frequent ship passenger, I can say that that means nothing. On large ships, it's not like the Captain is at a steering wheel. Departing the ship before all customers are off is another matter. Still, it seems odd to me that they cut so close to shore. As they say in the Navy, "We don't want Captains with bad luck."
How Stimulus Spending Ruined Buffalo - Four decades of subsidies and high taxes haven't arrested the city's decline, but here comes New York's governor with another billion dollars.
All the signs of a government-triggered death spiral
...there may be a perception in many key areas of contemporary life—law, business, politics, among others—that expecting honesty on a regular basis is a naïve and foolish attitude, a “loser’s” way of operating. Such a perception is practically a mandate for personal dishonesty and a concession to interpersonal distrust. When we no longer assume that those who communicate with us are at least trying to tell the truth, we give up on them as trustworthy persons and deal with them only in a strictly instrumental manner. The bounds of mutual moral obligation dissolve, and the laws of the jungle reemerge.
Our serious problem today is not simply that many people routinely tell lies. As I have noted, people have departed from the truth for one reason or another all throughout human history. The problem now is that we seem to be reaching a dysfunctional tipping point in which an essential commitment to truthfulness no longer seems to be assumed in our society. If this is indeed the case, the danger is that the bonds of trust important in any society, and essential for a free and democratic one, will dissolve so that the kinds of discourse required to self-govern will become impossible.
I have no way of discerning whether there is anything new here. What I do know is that it is generally a good rule of thumb to let people prove their integrity, rather than assuming that they have any. I have been burned by people enough times to cure me of my optimistic naivete.
Dishonesty and concealment, despite whatever mass culture may do, continues to appall me whether in myself or in others.
Ho-Ho-Kus is one of New Jersey's fine little towns (Pop 4000). We attended an elegant birthday party in one of the private dining rooms at the cozy olde Inn yesterday.
I have always asserted here that "feeling good about oneself" can only come from doing right things and from doing hard things. Even so, we all deserve plenty of criticism and nobody deserves to think that they are wonderful. (We are allowed to think that of others, however, or at least to love others despite their flaws.)
Did the Founding Fathers make an error? As much as anything else, this Robinson interview with Paul Rahe (that's #5 of 5)captured most of the key political issues with which we Maggie's Farmers are concerned today.
Some people desire to run other peoples' lives for their own good. I wish those Rahe interviews were on YouTube. They deserve to be.
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, many are asking questions about how much freedom most people really want. How much freedom will the average person trade for a bowl of lentils? In other words, for security or for free money?
When I was in 6th Grade, our school had a speech contest, the title being "What Freedom means to me." Mine came in second. If I were doing that speech today, I'd probably come in last. Freedom from involuntary servitude - slavery - is of course basic, but freedom from government power is the beseiged freedom of today, just as it has always been.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Captain Pete Hegseth, US Army, has served at Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan, and was Executive Director of Vets For Freedom to support our troops and missions. No weak sister.
During his current deployment in Afghanistan, Hegseth has sent email letters home to those on his mailing list. His most recent arrived today, "Endgame in Afghanistan." It is near 4-thousand words long, so I have put it below the fold. Hegseth is not optimistic, stripping away what he refers to as "wishful thinking."
This isn’t to say that we couldn’t affect a more advantageous outcome for the United States; of course if we got rid of the 2014 withdrawal deadline completely, were willing to truly remove Taliban and Haqqani safe-havens in Pakistan (we know where they are!), and purged the Afghan government of its most corrupt nodes we could “change the game” of this conflict. But for various reasons—be they domestic politics, a nuclear-armed Pakistan (a lesson for Iran, I would suggest), and a trepidation with undermining corrosive “Afghan sovereignty”—it is highly unlikely we will make the hard choices necessary to level the playing field. A bad outcome in Afghanistan isn’t inevitable, but in light of current realities, it is likely.
He believes this battleground is "central to defending the United States."
In the realm of perception and international opinion it is still very important; how we “finish” in Afghanistan will send strong signals to the rest of the world about whether we finish what we start. Recent events in Iraq make this plainly clear. However, the question is whether the cost in Afghanistan is worth the outcome?As my British colleague says, “is the juice worth the squeeze?”I think seeing this through, while gradually drawing down, is worth doing.
According to defense analyst Anthony Cordesman the US will need to spend about $10-billion a year for the next 14-years to stand a chance of stabilizing Afghanistan.
We do not need more good intentions and vague promises from the Obama administration. We do not need a vacuous set of positions from Republican presidential candidates who either do not understand the issues or fear addressing their cost. If the United States is to make this commitment we need to start making it now in every part of our posture and spending in Afghanistan — and be clear that we will do so through 2025. If not, we need to be honest about the consequences for some 30 million Afghans and their country.
There's so much detail and stark facts in Hegseth's email that you would be remiss to not read on.
There are many things the government can't do, many good purposes it must renounce. It must leave them to the enterprise of others. It cannot feed the people. It cannot enrich the people. It cannot teach the people.
Schools warn that 
