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.
"Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!--Look at me! I'm the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother's side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing!'"
The megawealthy urge tiny cubes for the proles. If NYC got rid of rent control, and let builders build, nobody would need 300 square foot apartments. Free markets would make NYC affordable for the tons of people who want to live there but cannot afford to.
“Self-esteem comes from doing esteemable things. Sitting at home and getting a check from the government is not going to help your self-esteem. What it will do is make you an economic slave to people living in a far, far, distant place,” West said on Sunday.
“He does not want you to have the self-esteem of getting up and earning and having that title of ‘American,’” the congressman said of the president. “He’d rather you be his slave and be economically dependent upon him.”
This year, meanwhile, the great resolution we are working toward isn’t so much Democrat or Republican, Obama or Romney; this year, it’s America – liberty, self-government, responsibility – and us.
I have told you several times in the past about my local master gunsmith, Italy-trained in some of the finest hand-made gun shops in the world, who put up ads in our high school for seven years inviting applicants to apprentice with him. He never got a single reply, and gave up the effort.
When he died a few years ago, alas (when he was charging $175/hr for labor and had more work than he could handle), all of his skills in wood and in machining gun parts died with him. A damn shame. An expert shot with rifle and shotgun, too.
Mike Rowe claims that people look down on people who know how to do real things. Do they really? Most people seem to admire or envy people who can do real things. Nobody admires people because they can use Powerpoint. Anyway, this via Eratosthenes:
The mayor of Scranton, PA recently lowered all city workers' salaries to the minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. This in an attempt to cover a budget gap but still keep people working. It's a fine attempt to try and balance financial hopes with reality. Scranton doesn't want to follow in Stockton's footsteps.
But what is the reward for doing something intelligent? You get sued, of course. The logic of this is obvious, because another lawsuit burdening the system helps you get what you can't create. It's the most productive solution in the modern economy.
I grew up not too far from Scranton. The region has been depressed for as long as I can remember. But when people get used to a certain quality of life, they begin to believe they deserve it. What's the solution? Taking out a loan is only a good idea if the money is put to work building productive capacity somehow. But that's not what the city would borrow money to accomplish.
The 'solution', such as it is, is exactly what the mayor is doing. Trying to live within his means and find a way to make it work. Eventually, if Scranton isn't a viable productive center which attracts or starts new businesses, it's going to fail. Just like many cities or small towns before it. This is nothing new. It's sad, but reality isn't always happy and fun.
Unfortunately for the mayor, the people want what they perceive to be theirs so they can preserve the life they've become used to.
With the federal government handing money out to all and sundry, is it any surprise people want what they can't have?
An old(er) man reminisces about real and imaginary times. Lyrics here. One line:
They got outta here any way they could Cold rain can give you the shivers they went down the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee, all the rest of them rebel rivers...
America's public schools have warehoused three million people in jobs that do little to improve student achievement—people who would be working productively in the private sector if that extra $210 billion were not taxed out of the economy each year.
The press will remain loyal because he's a Lefty and because he's a black dude, but he's been shooting foul shots for over three years and missing the basket. Had his chance for two years until he pissed off the nation and lost the House, and since then he's been blaming other people. Blaming others is not attractive in an adult.
I mentioned The 48 Laws of Power a couple of weeks ago, labeling it "A Sociopath's Handbook." I now have my hands on a copy. It is, indeed, instructive in understanding what some of the people around us are doing. Here are some of the "48 Laws" that the book discusses:
- Never outshine the master - Never put too much trust in friends; use your enemies - Conceal your intentions - Always say less than necessary - So much depends on reputation - guard it with your life - Court attention at all cost - Get others to do the work - but always take the credit - Make other people come to you - use bait if necessary - Win through your actions, never through argument - Infection: Avoid the unhappy and unlucky - Keep people dependent on you - Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim - When asking for help, appeal to their self-interest - Pose as a friend; work as a spy - Crush your enemy totally - Use absence to increase respect - Keep others in suspended terror; cultivate unpredictability - Isolation is dangerous: Do not build a fortress to protect yourself - Know who you're dealing with: do not offend the wrong person - Do not commit to anyone - Play a sucker to catch a sucker: Seem dumber than your mark - The surrender tactic: Transform weakness into power - Concentrate your forces - Play the perfect courtier - Re-create yourself - Keep your hands clean - Play on peoples' need to believe to create a cult-like following - Enter action with boldness - Plan all the way to the end - Make your accomplishments seem effortless - Get others to play with the cards you deal - Play to peoples' fantasies
How did it happen? We know how many of our public schools teach no serious American history or civics, that our toniest colleges preach left-liberalism, that 40% of American babies are illegitimate and the rate keeps rising, that too many thriving young Americans worship money and casual hedonism and are too ignorant of religion even to be proper atheists, that President Obama rejects outright the heart of America’s Creed: American uniqueness, the American Zion, the city on a hill striving to be a beacon to mankind. How did this happen? When did we decide to swap America for America Lite? We can’t undo these changes unless we know how they came about.
During a time when in high school and college the greats of Western literature were still a major part of the curriculum, I often skated by with Classics Illustrated comics. Thus, when great contemporary minds who didn’t skate write books that delve deeply into the thoughts of the paragons of Western literature, I am both fascinated by new understandings and humbled, even ashamed, that I feel inadequate by comparison.
I’m about halfway through such a book now, for a review I’ll write. Yesterday, I emailed the author, a professor emeritus of English, with some questions to clarify my thoughts. He replied that he had faith in my ability to figure out the answers myself. I’m not so sure of that.
This morning, I felt more inadequate when reading a review of Roger Kimball’s new book and interview with him. I was supposed to receive a copy for review but either haven’t or someone stole it from the mailbox in front of my house. After reading this review and interview, I’m almost thankful, as this review and interview is so simple, direct, and first-rate that I couldn’t hope to have done near as well.
I know two places on Cape Cod where you can see these big snakes in numbers on a sandy bank on a warm day in early Spring, trying to warm up from their hibernation by lounging lazily in the sun and looking for mating partners.
When it's still cool, they don't move much and do not display their lightning speed: they just glare at you and maybe twitch their tail.
It is indeed startling to encounter ten of these guys together, some 5-6' long, as you are walking along a sandy trail in early Springtime. They like edges, with some cover nearby, like water nearby whether salt or fresh, and they will climb trees if they feel like it. Entirely harmless (unless you are a small animal or a small snake: like Kronos, they will eat their young), but big - and always a wonder to see a big one and the average wife will jump to you for protection. That's always a good thing.
Subspecies of these handsome snakes are found across America, mainly east of the Rockies. You can read more about the Black Racer here.
We could use some more of them around here to eat the damn Norway Rats, but they'd eat our cute Chipmunks too. I noticed that you can buy them on the internets in case you want some around your place. With a little luck, they will eat the kittens too.
Seen a Black Snake lately? They are daytime hunters and no rat can outrun them. Wonderful critters which usually startle you when you encounter them. Most of the time, you don't see them because they stay out of your way.
Great Whites inhabit all of the oceans of the world, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Despite the really, really scary crisis of climate change, New England has seen a huge increase in the seal population over the past couple of decades. The last time I swam in the ocean beach in Wellfleet, there were large Gray Seals all around us, gamboling in the surf. Quite amusing.
Seals attract the Great White Sharks which like to feed on them. They are shark bait. Can a shark distinguish a person from a seal - and why should it care anyway? Food is food. Great white sharks send Cape swimmers running.
My theory: get out there and have fun in the chilly water. The odds are strongly on your side.
Are America's components too large, too diverse in culture, religion, geography, population, prosperity, politics, way of life and point of view, for one-size-fits-all directives from Washington?
I believe so. That's why I don't care that Vermont is socialist, or that Massachusetts has Romneycare, or that Texas is Texas, or that Stockton is Stockton.
Or that California - by itself the 8th largest economy in the world - is wacky California. I'm in favor of letting them be what they want to be, but not on my nickel. Do your own thing, dude, take responsibility for it, but don't ask me to pay for it. I have my hands full caring for my own.
On this Independence Day week, with the Sousa bands and the marching Vets and the martial rockets' red glare, I think about this: the primary job of the Feds is to protect us from external threats so we, the people, are free to figger out life in our own ways. Not in the ways determined by our supposed "betters."
In America, we acknowledge no "betters." "Betters" are for Europeans and Asians.
We are not children, nor are we stupid: after all, many of us were educated in government schools. We are in life, not cloistered in Washington and we are all as smart - if not as articulate BSers - as they are. We know there is no life on earth without problems, difficulties, challenges, and death at the end of it. That's plain reality. What we do not need is our governments making it all more difficult. We can handle it, most of it.
In America today, the greatest threat to individual and local freedom is our own Federal government. Our external threats are relatively trivial, given our power.
Maine has nothing in common with DC, Hollywood, or Chicago. Nothing, well, except for harvesting the Maine lobsters that the limo Liberals feed on.
When governments accomplish the basic, simple tasks to which they are assigned, they tend to grandiosely meddle in other things to feel important, to keep themselves busy, to invent problems, or to buy votes with the voters' money (A Nation of Takers?). It's an insidious use of power even if it sometimes satirizes itself and makes us laugh at its foolishness: An Open Letter to Mayor Bloomberg. Please do not "help" us, jerks. Most of us are far from helpless.
In their book The Size of Nations, Alberto Alesina and Enrico Spolaore argue that, if America were as centrally governed as France, it would have broken up long ago. But hey, that’s no reason not to try it! In a land where everything else is supersized, why not government? Obituaries for the late Andy Griffith generally glossed over his career finale as a pitchman for Obamacare. But he was a canny choice to sell the unsellable, for is not “health” “care” “reform” the communitarian virtues of beloved small-town Mayberry writ large? The problem is you can’t write Mayberry large. And, if you attempt it, it leads not to Mayberry but to Stockton, Calif., and to a corrupt, dysfunctional swamp. A large Sweden is a contradiction in terms. It cannot be done, and the more determinedly you try to do it, the more you will preside over a ruined wasteland. The road to hell isn’t paved at all, and the street lamps went out long ago.
Is leaving people alone a full-time job? Naw, it couldn't be. Corny as it may be to post, this is one of our historic American flags, and some days I wish we had kept it for its ornery assertion to governmental power:
12:2 I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven--whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows.
12:3 And I know that such a person--whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows--
12:4 was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.
12:5 On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses.
12:6 But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me,
12:7 even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated.
12:8 Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me,
12:9 but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
12:10 Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.
When I was in my teens, my scout troop did quite a bit of hiking and camping. Spam was part of our menu for longer trips, usually longer than a weekend. It's easy to carry and prepare. It's understandable that during WWII it was a food of choice for the troops. I also understand why my step-father, a WWII vet, never touched the stuff even as I scarfed it down.
I doubt I'd ever touch it today, unless I visited Hawaii where it's seen on menus regularly.
... newcomers to the city, including Twain—straight from the Nevada desert with its pickled oysters and an appalling coffee substitute he dubbed “Slumgullion”—developed a taste for the tiny, coppery Olympias. The Oly, as it was called, was the classic gold rush oyster, a staple of celebrations and everyday meals in San Francisco restaurants and oyster saloons. Olys appeared in oyster soup and stew, stuffed into wild poultry and, of course, raw. Perhaps the most distinctive local dish was a “Hangtown fry” of oysters, bacon and eggs.
Mark Twain loved good food. I've had the Olympia oysters, but prefer the Northeast mollusc. I once ate 72 of them in a contest with a friend somewhere where they had an all-you-can-eat raw bar. I lost, but I still love to eat them.
Now this is a perfect example of poetic justice! A corrupt democrat politician uses corrupt means to win an election by a tactic that our Attorney General claims doesn't exist.
"...don’t let others who are no better than you are, convince you that there is something wrong with you because you don’t want to use the power of the state to try to improve the lives of others. Their strategy has a very mixed track record."
Ken Block 
I grew up not too far from Scranton. The region has been depressed for as long as I can remember. But when people get used to a certain quality of life, they begin to believe they deserve it. What's the solution? Taking out a loan is only a good idea if the money is put to work building productive capacity somehow. But that's not what the city would borrow money to accomplish.
Women 
I know two places on Cape Cod where you can see these big snakes in numbers on a sandy bank on a warm day in early Spring, trying to warm up from their hibernation by lounging lazily in the sun and looking for mating partners. 
Are America's components too large, too diverse in culture, religion, geography, population, prosperity, politics, way of life and point of view, for one-size-fits-all directives from Washington? 
Via 
The Little-Known History of How the Modern Olympics Got Their Start