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.
Special interest avarice has no natural limits. A generation ago, economist Mancur Olson made the point that a special interest’s appetite has no limit because it gets the benefits while the costs are borne by society at large. This incentive structure means that the interest will keep grabbing even when the costs imposed on society at large far exceed the benefits to the interest. And its Washington representatives have an incentive to be even less reasonable, as they have to juice the troops to keep the stream of dues coming.
Some commentators are under the illusion that the current national crisis will sober up the special interests. But that is not how it works, because a crisis makes special interests less, not more, responsible. The situation becomes, in the language of game theorists, a “last-period problem.” As a game approaches an end, the players have no need to cooperate for the sake of protecting long-term relationships. Their incentive is to grab as much as possible before the game ends, or, to translate to the real world, before the society collapses. Do not look for crisis to bring out a sense of responsibility in the advocates for the interests.
Politics is all about such cases, but here's one for today: Big Sugar Wins in the Senate. Same old Plunder Politics, spreading the sugar around to buy votes and allies.
...as Eddie Palmieri told him, “You used Jewish musicians or you didn’t have a band!” And Tito Puente played bar mitzvahs....A bandleader and multi-instrumentalist, Harlow was referred to by the New York Times as “one of the most important figures in the history of salsa.”...
While in college, I bartendered at Brooklyn's St. George Hotel during huge Puerto Rican dance concerts (sweet smoke billowing from the bathrooms), listened to Puerto Rican music on the radio while cramming, and was fluent enough in Spanish to work in a store in a neighborhood with a large Puerto Rican population (rapid fire Spanish). Funny, they didn't look Jewish! -- BTW, Puerto Rican stew is the best, with tropical ingredients. Try it, you'll like it. Ess up.
[L]ocal dissident leaders picked the former engineer to go abroad for even-more-sophisticated training in computer encryption, circumvention of government firewalls and secure use of mobile phones—courtesy of the U.S. State Department. The training has helped give the rebels the upper hand in one front in the battle against Syria’s President. Even as the Assad regime’s army crushes the opposition on the ground, the dictator has been losing the war online.
In the process, the Obama Administration has tiptoed across an invisible line. Washington has said it will not actively support the Syrian opposition in its bid to oust Assad. Officially, the U.S. says it abides by the U.N. process led by Kofi Annan and does not condone arms sales to opposition groups as long as there are U.N. observers in Syria. Nevertheless, as U.S. officials have revealed to Time, [emphasis added] the Obama Administration has been providing media-technology training and support to Syrian dissidents by way of small nonprofits like the Institute for War & Peace Reporting and Freedom House.
Note, as in so many of the credits that the Obama administration takes unto itself, the program started under President Bush, although Bush is not named in the Time article: “The program actually began four years ago with a different target: China.”
CNN: What is the biggest challenge here as part of this program?
NEWTON-SMALL: I think the biggest challenge is certainly when I was talking to people, they were incredibly leery about [details] being kept secret, where the trainings are done being kept secret. And we had to change the names of all the dissidents we spoke with because obviously we don't want to put them at risk back at home.
And it's also getting over a stigma and people saying, "Well, because you're trained by the Americans, you're an American pawn." When, in fact, this training just enables them to show what they want to show. We're not coming to them with any kind of agenda. And America isn't saying, "We want you to promote American values here." They're just saying, "Here are the tools. You guys go and do whatever you want to do with it."
Some of those “tools” are revealed. The rebel users of those “tools” can now be labeled as American tools by the Syrian government, which undermines the rebel cyberwarriors.
Another screw security, screw those on the front-lines, leak from the Obama re-election administration.
Below is the post from two years ago. I haven't seen any recognition of today, Flag Day, in the media. Indeed, the provenance of Flag Day is under dispute. Is Flag Day a forgotten holiday? -- BTW, June 14, 2012 is the 237th birthday of the US Army. Go doggies!
Hollywood gripped by pressure system from China - To appease China and gain access to moviegoers and financing, movies include positive references to the nation (no Chinese villains!) and face censorship.
As Larry Summers put it during one of our interviews, 50 years from now people will remember that Obama gave us health care, not how long the recession lasted. The problem is that, in 2012, voters are still a lot more concerned about the recovery.
Obama is on the wrong side of the union debate - The president wants to send more federal money to states that just funnel it into bloated pension obligations. And Americans are tired of it
Probably for confidentiality reasons, Dr X took a fictional character as a sample rather than trying to camouflage a real patient. This is my idea of a real diagnostic impression of a patient without a major illness (eg dementia, schizophrenia, narcotic addiction, melancholia and major depression, bipolar disorder, etc.).
He briefly covers the defensive structure, the character structure, the basic conflicts as they relate to the person's life. Outside the major ailments, the DSM is useless in depicting a patient - a person with his flaws and weaknesses. In these times of the the low-rent superficial, check-list, cook-book Psychiatry, I find internists often more interested in the whole person than some Psychiatrists who just want to give you the right pill without delving into your psyche beyond the surface complaint. In my view, that is not serious medical practice. I do not approve of it, nor do I think it is cost-effective in the end. Some people are attempting to hyper-medicalize and simplify my field of work, but the human soul is too complex for that to work most of the time.
My field is deeply divided these days. It makes things interesting, controversial, and sort-of fun.
Unlike Dr. X, I never write these things down anymore. It takes too much time, can be subpoenaed and distorted in divorce court (some bad experiences with that before I quit writing things down), and otherwise nobody will ever read it before it is shredded. However, I store them in my brain. My brain has plenty of storage capacity.
I will re-post, for those who might be interested, my series on serious diagnosis over the next few days.
Character is destiny. Mostly, except for bad luck.
Well, first for your cigarettes, then salt, then your french fries, then your cokes. Now your cigars.
What next? What next?
The biggest problem with America is a too big, too power-mad, overweening government which refuses to leave the people the heck alone to make their own choices in life.
It's a sickness, the desire to control one's fellow adults. What neurosis motivates such things? A normal American detests such jerks, by homeland instinct.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
These videos are from my hunting club in Manitoba. Location is secret. We know that little blind on the point well, but usually hunt from the boats, driving them into the reeds. Big water, big lake. Lots of naive first-year birds, Red Heads, Canvasbacks, Bluebills.
The best hunting is in the worst weather: snowy sleet, with wind.
The message: A cadre of retired U.S. special operations personnel is fed up with leaks that compromise covert U.S. operations and imprison pro-American sympathizers. Their mission: stop the leaks by firing the leaker-in-chief. A former SEAL and commandant of the SEAL training center, retired U.S. Navy Capt. Larry Bailey, organized the group. I asked him, over the phone, why he formed it. He replied: "I'm pissed." Bailey knows the leaks put U.S. security and the lives of American spies and SEALS at risk, so he's fighting a political fight, seeded with his own money. He'll take donations, you bet. Yes, he expects dirty personal attacks impugning his motives.
Bailey and his shoestring SOS are Obama's worst election year nightmare — special ops guys who publicly question his leadership and judgment. Obama's most potent campaign tout is "I got bin Laden." With SOS in the mix, the potent tout suddenly sounds just a tad pathetic.
This morning, Bay emailed: "Your critics attack you because your very presence --enhanced by stellar military service records and demonstrated courage-- threatens their politically self-serving narrative." Welcome to 2004 redux.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 73% of Likely U.S. Voters are at least somewhat concerned that the security leaks will compromise national security, with 40% who are Very Concerned. Twenty-five percent (25%) don’t have that concern, but that includes just three percent (3%) who are Not At All Concerned.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: “Finally, my proposal would bring down the cost of health care for millions -- families, businesses, and the federal government.” (President Obama, Remarks, 3/3/10)
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Office of the Actuary, 6/12/12:
We have mentioned many times here that actively-managed investment funds and accounts, after fees, perform worse than index funds.
Fund managers naturally hate that fact, as do investors for whom hope often conquers experience. You cannot dispute the facts: Active Fund Management Is A Loser's Game.
Despite the data, I often think that people want to know that there is a sober person behind the wheel, somebody you can phone when you want to. Somebody who cares. Somebody who is smarter than the markets. They pay for that fantasy.
How to protect your nest egg in the Land of ZIRP? Don't ask me. I bank 10% of my pre-tax income each year, religiously. My nest egg, paltry as it is, is 1/4 equity index funds, 1/4 bond index funds, 1/4 cash, and 1/4 in one really good hedge fund. It may all blow up someday, but I intend to never need the money anyway. The men in my family never quit working and I will keep that wholesome, old-fashioned tradition going unless or until disease or the grim reaper get me.
Retirement ages people, or most people. It ages them, mentally.
I think it is an old New Englander ethic: be stingy, save, resist temptations to buy stuff, and work forever. Use money for overpriced education, books, booze, theater, adventure, and travel.
The idea behind this and all liberal logic is that if certain people behave badly toward others, there must be a deep-seated reason which is somebody else’s fault. The solution, then, is not to punish the perpetrators, or even demand they take responsibility for their actions, but rather to understand the source of the personal, financial, social, racial, sexual problems or other factor that elicited those actions — and then to try and force the powers-that-be to “fix” the factor. Is it any wonder this never works?
From DeLong in
Via 
115-year-old turtles divorce after 36 years of ‘marriage’
Well, first for your cigarettes, then salt, then your french fries, then your cokes. Now 
Recivilizing the Alley
We have mentioned many times here that actively-managed investment funds and accounts, after fees, perform worse than index funds.