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.
May your Lent be as self-revealing (if painfully so) and confessional, and yet as grace-filled, as I hope mine will be.
The Lord has already served me up a dose of tough love these recent years through true but unwelcome messages to my soul, and I think I know what I have to address.
Public housing today, even in the post-welfare-reform era, continues to give priority to those of lowest income, which, as a practical matter, means female-headed, single-parent families, who still dominate the projects and the Section 8 housing-voucher program. Census data from the 1950s makes it possible to compare marriage rates in white and black St. Louis neighborhoods. The numbers show that black marriage rates have long lagged behind white rates. In nine predominantly black census tracts, married persons (husbands and wives, not including children) constituted 16.4 percent of the population. In predominantly white census tracts, the number was 24.5 percent—half again higher, before the advent of public housing. Without question, the perverse incentives of public housing and public assistance worsened this situation. In contrast, the incentives created by the private housing market—to maintain two-parent households so as to pool incomes in order to get ahead—would have worked in just the opposite direction.
It's really all about help that wasn't helpful - or even wanted - and perverse incentives.
Related: The Left Is Still Ignoring the Costs of Family Breakdown. In my opinion, the Left ignores it because it creates more household poverty, and thus more government dependency. When has the Left ever championed family values?
The sports news in New York has been dominated the past week and a half by Jeremy Lin. A city overwhelmed by Super Bowl mania has quickly moved on to basketball and a great story in an overlooked point guard who has raised his game and put his team back in the race for the playoffs.
One of the difficulties, however, has been the racism which has been glaringly evident in the coverage. Saturday Night Live did a wonderful send up of this last night, showing the double standard which exists in media today.
Lin is the NBA's Tim Tebow. He has brought a wonderful story to the pros, an inspiring, unlikely, and unexpected story.
..."taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrial animals of which the government is the shepherd."
Alexis de Toqueville, 1830, quoted here yesterday. Soft tyranny is always for your own good, of course, because you are an idiot and they are smart. Either that, or "for the children."
Good news! The Advantages of the Middle-Aged Brain - Despite news reports about cognitive decline starting at 45, the middle-aged brain actually performs better in other ways
Mr. Weston spoke of how Tony Blair and his British Labor Party set out to destroy traditional Britain by encouraging mass immigration to ensure a majority that would vote for the Welfare State in perpetuity. Millions of people from around the world were invited to move to Britain. Pamphlets were distributed in Pakistan, for example, urging locals to move to England and go on welfare. And both of these actions were facilitated and were, fed, in part, by post-colonial British guilt. Today, although a native British citizen cannot marry more than one spouse, the United Kingdom pays welfare costs for immigrants with up to four wives and their children.
Many commentators have shuddered at the way in which Republican candidates are stupidly making this election about women’s sexual rights. What they miss is that the whole abortion/contraception issue is a tar baby* that Democrats placed squarely in the Republicans’ path, so that it was impossible for Republicans to avoid.
In our times, the advantages of unplanned capitalist innovation and competition are even more valuable than usual. We need an era of social and business experimentation. Many of the bright young people who a generation ago would have gone to work for large corporations or law firms, or moved into tenure track academic positions, need to find new ways of making a living. The young people who would have gone into factory jobs or routine but secure clerical positions must also find new ways of using their skills and talents. The terrain is uncharted; the old systems don’t work.
Government needs to clear unnecessary obstacles out of the paths of the pioneers of the new economy. The single most effective way the government can support the necessary change is to adapt its regulatory and employment policies to the needs of the start ups from whose ranks the leaders of the future will emerge. That is not the only type of change that would help, but it is the most important one.
Was the Bill of Rights an error? It is debatable. If you recall, the NY delegation insisted on it.
Every time I find myself slipping into the modern statist mindset, the assumptions of which dominate so much political discourse, I try to step back and remind myself that the American experiment was not so much about instituting specific rights for individuals as it was about limiting the power and rights of the Federal state, leaving all the rest of the power to individual people (or the individual states and localities).
The problem with the Bill of Rights is that it makes it appear that those are the peoples' delimited rights. They even decided to stick in the #10, redundantly I think:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
America is not about rights. America is about the locus of power and self-determination. In other words, the government has (or had) strictly limited rights and powers. That sort of freedom from government was the whole point. Rights are for peasants and serfs, grasping for crumbs of freedom and autonomy or, in the "positive rights" lingo, grasping for freebies. American government was meant to be in handcuffs while we, the people, led our lives freely, and as we thought best.
Over time, political freedom has expanded in some ways: emancipation of slaves, women's suffrage. In other ways, the growth of the would-be leviathan state has usurped much individual freedom - albeit with the consent of the people who seek benefit from its growing power and wealth.
The Libertarian side of me would love to see "a new birth of freedom." Who is the greatest enemy of freedom from state power? Us - the voters, who have consistently for 100 years been willing to trade a birthright for a bowl of lentils.
The left believes strongly in social solutions. It believes that all our ills are social in nature and that social justice can only be practiced by a healthy society. Their idea of a healthy society is totalitarian but they have that in common with most ideologues who want a perfect state, rather than a free state.
Our idea of perfection is good old messy individual freedom and responsibility.
Barone today quoted the stunningly perspicacious de Toqueville:
"Thus, taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrial animals of which the government is the shepherd."
That is what House Republicans are fighting to reverse.
One of the most annoying situations you can run into at the office is inertia. The belief that something is done, or happens, just because "that's the way it happens." I've lived my corporate life (for better or worse - usually worse, for me) in a relatively idiosyncratic fashion. I have never enjoyed being a 'Yes Man', and if I sensed groupthink, I'd usually ask a question designed to break the logjam, even if I agreed with the emerging groupthink pattern:
don’t be intimidated by high-level obstructionistswho temporarily impede progress. If it is an idea whose time has come, obstructionists can be overcome by engaging high-level sponsors or they can be circumvented. Bureaucratic inertia yields to an aggressive parallel approach— quick, precise and simultaneous action.
Sometimes these approaches don't work, and you don't win friends this way.
Belmont: For years the European Social Model — and Europe itself — was such an act of faith that to express skepticism would have been blasphemy. It still is.
A lot of Venezuelans worry that one way or another, the country is headed for an implosion. A Capriles win could be contested by pro-Chavez generals; if Chavez wins and dies, a vacuum will open. Either way the economy will likely crash, once the pre-election spending binge ends.
That’s why the very orderliness and moderation of Capriles and the opposition coalition are so striking. Theirs is not so much an ideological or partisan crusade as a desperate effort to restore a semblance of political and social order to a country that is unraveling — a grasp at the modernity they glimpse in Brazil and Chile. Are they too late? The next seven months will tell.
...slow-moving trends don’t account for the dramatic spike in political polarization over the last decade, with Bush and Obama. What else is happening?
and
For decades, Democrats have preferred greater social welfare to low taxes, so they are pleased with his policies. Republicans have preferred the opposite, so they are horrified. And the GOP nominee for 2012, whoever that may be, will undoubtedly promise to undo the Obama innovations, cutting back on the welfare state to keep taxes in line with their historical averages. Accordingly, he will have strong support from Republican voters, while Democrats will view him as the devil incarnate. Without economic growth, there is no middle ground for the two sides to occupy together, so polarization is probably the new normal.
...a solicitude for your welfare, which cannot end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger, natural to that solicitude, urge me on an occasion like the present, to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments; which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all important to the permanency of your felicity as a People. These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel. Nor can I forget, as an encouragement to it, your endulgent reception of my sentiments on a former and not dissimilar occasion.
Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment...
In the summer of 1755, 23-year-old George Washington galloped back and forth across a blood-soaked battlefield near present-day Pittsburgh, trying heroically but unsuccessfully to rally the panicked British force in which he served to withstand a withering attack by Britain’s French and Indian enemies in a war his own hotheadedness had ignited two years earlier. An Indian chief ordered his braves to shoot down the seemingly fearless six-footer, conspicuous not only for his height and daring but also for being, as Thomas Jefferson later marveled, “the best horseman of his age and the most graceful figure that could ever be seen on horseback.” The Indians fired volley after volley, putting four bullets through his coat and killing two horses out from under him, but he fought on unscathed. Fifteen years later, the same chief told him how vividly he remembered that day, which convinced him that the Great Spirit must have a brilliant future in store for the young officer whom his braves miraculously couldn’t kill no matter how hard they tried.
We docs see this all the time, and some docs seem to almost encourage it: "There is always hope," etc.
Aggressive treatment of terminal cancer can be the worst. Refusal to give in to nature's natural processes. Death as the great enemy. Guilt. There is always a time to let go of relationships, and a time to let go of life.
It is often said that "old age is not for sissies," but I have seen terminal torture treatment which the Geneva Convention would hold illegitimate. A friend lost her 52 year-old sister to pancreatic cancer yesterday. Due to heroic efforts, her last three months on earth were made hell when she could have had a peaceful, morphinized passage.
John Fairfax, dead at 74. A pirate? Makes the average fellow feel like a metrosexual fraidy-cat wimp.
Are we in an era of many emasculated, fearful men? What's your testosterone level, on the timidity-to-adventure axis? No offense to our lady readers, but these days I know plenty of women with bigger cojones than some guys. The ladies are not turned on by fearful fellows.
Sometimes, you feel like the world has gone mad. Here's #8:
Neanderthals need nerds. The cool gang banger who is knifed on Saturday night suddenly in extremis worships the surgeon who stiches up his liver and kidneys — a target whom he would otherwise have robbed earlier that Saturday afternoon. The thug who strips the copper wire from our streetlights nonetheless assumes a nerdish engineer will keep designing the wiring scheme that runs his car’s CD. For the good life to go on, each illiterate punk demands one corresponding graduate student at MIT to take care of him. When the former outnumber the latter, then civilization usually winds down.
The trick is to unleash market forces. Let curriculum reform dictate marketability. Let online courses serve as a credible alternative to classroom study. Let some universities fail--some certainly should. And let parents and students make choices based on the trade-off between taxes and tuition.
The President could make a difference if he said it is time for the federal government to get out of the way so that market forces can flourish. There was a time when tuition rates were affordable for even working class people, but that was before federal intervention. It may be time to turn the clock back to that period.
You go to a small town in Umbria and find your way to some modest trattoria, or maybe a market with a few tables. Then lunch arrives, and the top of your head comes off. Meanwhile everybody around you has their elbows on the table and is acting like food this good is no big thing. And you say, why not? Why couldn’t we have a place just like this back home?
How anyone can build a good family and a charming life without a partner's help and companionship is beyond me, but certainly many are better at life than I am.
I demand HHS do something, somewhere, somehow that makes it a law that I receive free Chic-fil-A classic chicken sandwiches and waffle fries.
Because so help me, if my wife makes me eat another goddamn “heart-healthy” Paprika cod fillet and endive salad dinner, I’ma shoot up a fucking Whole Foods, then use my Cold Steel San Mai to start cutting heads off of any dudes wearing sandals.
And yes, Mr Issa. I’d be willing to come before Congress and testify.
9:2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them,
9:3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.
9:4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
9:5 Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."
9:6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.
9:7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!"
9:8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
9:9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
The Transfiguration, Raphael's last painting (1516)
What's the difference between wholesome obsessions, distractions, avoidances and diversions - and unhealthy ones? (I am not speaking clinically about obsessions and compulsions here, but just in the layman's sense of the words.)
The difference is in the purpose, not so much in the thing itself. The most common ones we all see in daily life are:
- TV, radio, and listening to music - Shopping - Reading - Surfing the net - Sports, exercise - Sleeping and napping - Socializing - Hobbies - Sex and erotic activities - Computer games - Drinking and drugs - Work, chores, and projects of all sorts - Mental preoccupations of all sorts
That covers most of life, doesn't it? Trust me - I am all in favor of fun and productivity. Not one of these things is necessarily unwholesome - except when they are used as avoidance of something or things. That usually - but not always - means when they are not done in moderation and in proportion.
Why do so many of us have our best thoughts and insights in the shower? Because we aren't doing any of those things in the shower...generally speaking.
Only the mentally strongest people - and I do not include myself in that category - routinely face their anxieties, worries and fears; routinely deal with every responsibility or burden immediately, or routinely face their relationships or the realities of themselves: their weaknesses, their guilts, their unsettling thoughts and feelings, their disappointments and sadnesses, regrets and remorse, boredom, loneliness, or empty feelings - or just "being with oneself."
There is an expression in AA: "Move a muscle, change a thought." It's good advice if one is avoiding a dangerous thought but it's bad life advice if one is avoiding thoughts that need to be considered and faced and maybe even acted upon.
If I decide on a Saturday nap after two hours of tennis in 90 degrees, fine. But if I decide on a nap (maybe without realizing it) because I am worried about paying the bills, not so fine.
Having kids is a great diversion and distraction. For years, it will fill your life with preoccupations and duties which have the advantage of being truly responsible and loving. But when they get older, you face yourself again.
Therefore, whenever I find myself immersing myself in something, I try to remember to ask myself why. That's not obsessive navel-gazing, it's just common sensical self-monitoring. "Metacognitive," as they say.
And when I drive, I try to leave the radio off - so I can listen to the real news about what is going on with me, my soul, and my life.
America is swiftly becoming a granny state. Less frail and more involved, today's grandparents are shunning retirement homes and stepping in more than ever to raise grandchildren while young adults struggle in the poor economy.
The newer grandparents are mainly baby boomers who are still working, with greater disposable income. Now making up 1 in 4 adults, grandparents are growing at twice the rate of the overall population and sticking close to family — if their grandkids aren't already living with them.
The modern invention of the nuclear family never really worked out that well, did it? Too isolated, too little support and help, etc. Farm families consisted of extended families.
You have a bunch of trust-funded limousine liberals railing against the rich — the one-percenters, as they’re being called this year — until a coveted elective office opens up. Then a one-percenter steps up, and all the plebeians in the 99 percent are supposed to automatically step aside and genuflect.
Why Multiculturalism Is Racism - “The worm inside the doctrine of multiculturalism is the lie that all cultures are worthy of equal respect and equally embracing of individual freedom and democracy.” - Dr. Salim Mansur
The War on Wyden - For daring to work on Medicare reform with Republican Paul Ryan, the Democratic senator from Oregon is lambasted by keepers of the liberal flame.
Unbearably self-revealing
Was the Bill of Rights an error? It is debatable. If you recall, the NY delegation insisted on it. 
Human 
George Washington was born on Feb. 22, but his birthday is noted today (mainly for commercial reasons, I think).
VDH: 
Image via 
Mark 9:2-9
What's the difference between wholesome obsessions, distractions, avoidances and diversions - and unhealthy ones? (I am not speaking clinically about obsessions and compulsions here, but just in the layman's sense of the words.)
One in four Americans are grandparents, soon to be 1 in 3. From 
Image via 