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.
The pinup girl of Maggie's Farm, Marianne Matthews, who in so many ways epitomized our ideals, educated the uncouth, and lifted our spirits has died. I and you hadn't heard from her in a month or so. I just phoned the police in the city where she lived and they checked her house. She passed about a month ago. Her dear husband (87), who had been failing, is now in a nursing home. (If anyone is in the Houston area and is able to do a bit of traveling nearby, please email me via the Comments and I'll get back to you offline.)
Here's a photo she sent me in 2011, when Marianne was 82, with a, to use Marianne's description, "surrogate daughter." Marianne never had children of her own, unless you count the thousands and thousands who have known and loved her.
Marianne was a highly trained and accomplished musician, as well as a highly educated lady (Columbia). Several years ago she sent me photos of her first guitar that her father bought her as a child. Marianne also was a noted folksinger during the 1940s and 1950s. Several years ago a friend of hers rescued some tapes of her singing in the 1950s. I chose one cut, "The Last Rose Of Summer", and uploaded it and a photo of Marianne (when she was 44, taken in 1972) to Youtube. Here it is. With love to a very lovely lady. They don't make roses like that anymore. We are all saddened and diminished by her passing.
If you care to share your memories of Marianne, please Comment.
Here's the lyric to "The Last Rose Of Summer" and a bit about the poem.
'Tis the last rose of summer, Left blooming alone; All her lovely companions Are faded and gone; No flower of her kindred, No rosebud is nigh, To reflect back her blushes, Or give sigh for sigh.
I'll not leave thee, thou lone one! To pine on the stem; Since the lovely are sleeping, Go, sleep thou with them. Thus kindly I scatter, Thy leaves o'er the bed, Where thy mates of the garden Lie scentless and dead.
So soon may I follow, When friendships decay, And from Love's shining circle The gems drop away. When true hearts lie withered, And fond ones are flown, Oh! who would inhabit This bleak world alone?
The cumulative evidence is now evident to all with even bad eyesight that Benghazi is sad proof of what conservative critics have been saying for the past four years, that President Obama, his appointees and administration lack the dedication, insight and guts to defend the United States honorably or resolutely.
Democrats were known as the Party of national security weakness for a generation after their betrayal of South Vietnam and Jimmy Carter’s callowness in the face of the Iranian radicals. Aging memories, war tiredness, and big lies from the Obama administration managed to recover some national security credibility.
Now, it’ll take another generation for Democrats to, depending upon circumstances, recover some national security credibility. How focused and resolute Republicans behave will be important. Otherwise, abandon all hope for the US.
The latest revelation of betrayal of the men on the ground fighting desperately in Benghazi makes every veteran I know furious, makes every conservative voice howl in anger, but has yet to break the silence at Yahoo News, Washington Post, New York Times. They may be trying to run out the clock to November 6. That finger in the dike will not hold, possibly before November 6 and certainly after. The maggots in the chain of command in the White House, Pentagon, State Dept., and CIA responsible deserve to have their names engraved on a prominent monument to cowardice.
When you are fighting for this country, you run to the sound of the fire and the calls for help. If someone tries to tell you not to go, and you know people are dying, you go anyway. If you don't know all the facts on the ground, as Panetta claimed, you go anyway. You go because the rule has always been that when you are in trouble and call for help, help will get there as quickly and overwhelmingly as humanly possible. You go for them because you know they would come for you. If it ever becomes known that the cavalry will not be coming to your rescue, then you will tell them where to stick it when they ask you to put your butt on the line. When the day comes, and now it may have, when it is known that we are not willing to sacrifice more casualties in an effort, no matter how futile it may be, to respond to pleas for help from the men on the line, we will no longer have men willing to put themselves on that line. Fix it now, before those men, in whom so much confidence is placed, lose confidence in us.
Windows 8 has just been released. For those of you with desktop (aka 'normal') computers, here's all you need to know about Windows 8:
For Microsoft, the existential crisis is the movement away from traditional desktop computing.
I wrote a review on the beta version here. It's morphed into an operating system designed for tablet computers, but as I note in the review:
The one big downside to the 'quickie' areas is that they're too simplistic. The weather just gives a few stats, but no radar map where you can gauge any oncoming rain clouds, which might be the most common reason to suddenly want to check the weather while on the road. So, you end up using your regular browser to access your usual weather site. Ditto the 'Stocks' area, and the 'News' feeds are restricted to just what's listed, and the little synopsis in the small tablet box usually doesn't say enough to explain what the article is about.
So even the things that make it handy and tablet-y are semi-worthless. And while the Desktop is still available for 'normal' computer work, it's missing a few things. Otherwise, it's just Windows 7 right down to the exit sound.
My guess is that the New Wave crowd — those who just gotta have the latest trinket, like a tablet computer — will rave about it, but otherwise I think it'll be something of a flop. Regular (also known as 'normal') computer users will just stare at the opening screen...
...and wonder why the hell they should want to check the weather (when a glance out the window should suffice) or their vast stock portfolio (that's your stock broker's job) when all they want to do is get their damn email and hang out on the web for a while.
If you have, or are thinking of buying, a tablet computer, by all means read some reviews and buy the best tablet software. If you're just a regular ol' slob like me using one of them archaic desktop computers, forget you just wasted two minutes reading this post. Sorry. Blame Microsoft.
...a growing body of research controlling for variables outside of aid supports the hypothesis that aid has an appreciable inflationary effect, though study results vary by type of aid and institution.
Like most individuals, institutions can always find new "needs" to spend money on. About three years ago, my alma mater announced a $600 million bequest. Two months later, their fund plea arrived in the mail, hoping I would increase my annual donation.
Did they lower tuition? No. For greedy government and greedy non-profits, it's never enough and never will be.
THE DETERMINISTIC GUIDANCE (PARTICULARLY THE 00Z ECMWF) SHOW PRESSURE SOLUTIONS WELL BEYOND WHAT HAS EVER BEEN OBSERVED NEAR THE NEW JERSEY/NEW YORK COAST (EVEN EXCEEDING THE 1938 LONG ISLAND EXPRESS HURRICANE) EARLY IN THE MEDIUM RANGE PERIOD.
This is what climate change looks like! The Pilgrims experienced one of these. Stock up on canned goods and batteries cigars, beer, charcoal for the grill, and gas for the chain saw. If Maggie's server is down next week, the storm will be why.
Three states form the base of Democratic political power in the United States: California, New York and Illinois. All three states are locked in an accelerating economic, demographic and social decline; all three hope that they can stave off looming disaster at home by exporting the policies that have ruined them to the rest of the country....
and
Illinois politicians, including the present President of the United States, have wrecked one of the country’s potentially most prosperous and dynamic states, condemned millions of poor children to substandard education, failed to maintain vital infrastructure, choked business development and growth through unsustainable tax and regulatory policies — and still failed to appease the demands of the public sector unions and fee-seeking Wall Street crony capitalists who make billions off the state’s distress.
There are some major races in some states that are so predetermined that the opposing party has a sacrificial candidate. That's the case in California, where longtime US Senator Diane Feinstein (D) is an easy win for re-election. Feinstein is not so in-your-face obnoxious as her fellow California US Senator Barbara Boxer, and occasionally seems moderate. But, get down to the votes in the Senate and Feinstein is a party-line liberal. Her opponent on November 6 is Elizabeth Emken. In another race, Emken's personality and positions would be a winner. Feinstein has not even deigned to debate Emken.
Via a tip from Bookie (whose mother has a decades-old gripe against "lazy" Diane Feinstein), here's Emken's mock-up debate with Feinstein. If for no other reason, watch the 2-minutes so you'll be aware of Emken next time:
As you might have heard, a court in Italy has convicted seven scientists of manslaughter because they failed to predict an earthquake that struck some village and killed a bunch of people.
People living in non-earthquake-reinforced buildings in an area known for having violent earthquakes, I might add.
An Italian court sentenced scientists to jail time for not having a functioning crystal ball ahead of the 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila. The arguments of science and reason fell on deaf ears. Rarely since a Catholic inquisition in Rome condemned Galileo Galilei to spend the remainder of his days under house arrest for the heresy of teaching that the Earth revolves around the sun has an Italian court been so wrong about science.
Today, a court in the central Italian city of L'Aquila, 380 years after that miscarriage of justice, sentenced six scientists and a government bureaucrat to six years in jail [and $10.2 million in fines] on manslaughter charges for their failure to predict a 2009 earthquake that left more than 300 people dead.
More articles on this travesty of justice, sensibility and reason:
Most recent NOAA storm prediction for the Northeastern US here.
Looks like they predict a major Nor'easter fueled by Hurricane Sandy. The dramatic prediction of perfect storm conditions will likely be wrong but heck, it's time to get your boat out of the water now anyway.
Humans aren't Bonobos, but in human connections there is always some sex in the air. The popularity of "friends with benefits" relationships among the youth, and now middle-aged singles - makes that clear. Lots of other things are in the air too, like competitiveness, childish emotional wishes, familial-type feelings, feelings of tribal affiliation. loneliness, delight or amusement in another's company, shared intellectual or recreational fun, exploitative aspirations, etc., etc.
My profound and earth-shaking point here is simply that human interactions and connections partake of all aspects of being ... human.
There's one thing I know for sure: Put a guy and a gal who are pals in a comfy place away from home, add alcohol, stir, and anything can happen. Alcohol numbs the prefrontal cortex.
I have never before endorsed a Republican for President, I call for the election of Mitt Romney to the nation’s highest office.
Don Harrison is the editor of the San Diego Jewish World, widely influential in this area and widely read elsewhere. Don Harrison is what I have often called him, "an open-minded liberal." Indeed, he has often published me! He is thoroughly politically liberal, and can be counted upon to with very rare exception endorse the Democrat candidate for any office. However, in the case of Romney Vs Obama, Harrison tells me that he agonized for a long time. The deciding factors for Harrison are that Obama can't be trusted to be a firm supporter of Israel in its existential danger from the development of Iranian nuclear weapons while Romney can be trusted more, and that domestically Harrison feels that there will be enough constraints on social conservative agendas to avoid the worst fears raised by Democrats during the campaign.
Instead of seeing college as a private investment, we must consider it a public good. If we remember the generation that was educated after World War II, generous public support meant that they could afford -- economically -- to spend four years studying the subject that most interested or spoke to them, and then they took their education and did millions of things with it that helped us develop a richer society, not just in terms of wealth but in terms of knowledge, art, and citizenship. That generation could do so because they did not have to take on thousands of dollars in debt and to worry all the time about how to pay for it. They could do so because public support for their education -- meaning low tuition for students thanks to tax support for America’s colleges -- gave them the freedom -- the leisure -- to study.
While I am somewhat sympathetic to the feeling of the article, I also find it foolish in several ways.
First, it is not only the elites who have access to the liberal arts. With 70% of current job seekers holding higher ed degrees, that no longer applies.
Second, any public high school offers an abundant introduction to the liberal arts, enough to prepare anybody to pursue their intellectual interests for the rest of their lives.
Third, "leisure to study"? That's ridiculous. Full-time college offers leisure to drink, to attend football games, and to pursue the opposite sex. Best students I've known had no leisure.
Fourth, the idea of a "public good." Last I heard, that just means that somebody else ought to pay for it, preferably my neighbor via taxation. Why my neighbor should pay for my kid to "pursue at leisure the things that speak to him" is utterly beyond me.
Needed his sleep before fund-raiser in Las Vegas in the morning. Staff and press covered for him. This goes beyond "scandal" into other more serious categories like abrogation of duty.
...fasten your seat belt, because the Democrats are about to pull out every stop in their desperate greed to hang on to unearned wealth and political power.
Everything that the West has done to appease Muslims has worked as well as a man jumping into a tiger cage and pouring meat sauce all over his body. Each act of appeasement only makes Muslim violence necessary and inevitable.
I think it must have been painful for him to accept that many of the Liberal policies he had stood for during his career were plain destructive and exasperating to the ordinary citizen who just wanted to make an honest living.
I think the Romney people are looking at their inside numbers, and believe that they are winning, or close to it, with momentum on their side. I think the Obama people are watching their lead of the summertime slip through their fingers with little they can do about it other than to sling one more $100 million worth of slime at Romney. Going all-negative and throwing hopey-changey under the bus.
Hence the nature of the "debate" last night, with Romney rising amiably above the fray while Obama irritably yipped and yapped and snapped at him like a sharp-toothed puppy trying to get a rise out of a big dog.
A pleasant ramble through the topic of hurricanes of the past, engineering, beaver dams, and related topics from a guy who enjoys stormy weather: Hurricane Warning; McKibben Alert. A quote:
At age twelve my interest in hurricanes was largely motivated by two things: First, hurricanes made things go crash, smash and boom, and I was the sort of kid who could endure “The Bridge Over The River Kwai,” (including the intermission,) just for the train wreck at the end. (I was not alone. It might not be politically correct, but the entire theater burst into wild cheering and applause, when that train finally, finally wrecked.)
The second reason was that a hurricane might cancel school. I hated school. McKibben apparently loved what I loathed, for he went to Harvard, and there became ignorant where I became wise, for he doesn’t even know what I knew at age twelve: The precedent has already been set. Wicked awesome hurricanes have hit New England in the past.
“I can personally relate to a lot of the things Sue was saying about microaggressions against Asian-Americans,” said Christine Noh, a sophomore journalism student. “Yet I was never one to take offense to it- but I see it in a different light now.”
Woodward became a hero not because of WHAT he did, but WHO he did it to. Liberal Democrat politicians can do REPEATEDLY things any one of which would another’s career. These can range from the criminal to the absurd. Imagine if a Republican Presidential or ANY candidate had a girl get weak — “wait, give her some air….somebody give her a bottle of water” at EIGHT consecutive rallies as if it was an old burlesque routine where a singer pops up in the audience the way Al Jolsen was introduced as a kid. Obama pulled that and it was never mentioned in the press –even on Fox. Clinton was accused of rape by two different women and had another brought to his room by state police, when he proceded to “drop trou”…. result??? He is routinely declared a “political genius”. A republican can — after being misled about a foreign word and its meaning say “makaka” at a rally— career over. Get it?
Obama has run far and fast from his own record. Romney, I’m sorry to say, hasn’t always hit him for that as much or as strongly as I think he should have.
But is Romney credible?
Yes. Romney is credible. Perfect? No. Credible, yes.
And that’s a win tonight.
Obama came in with an impossible task, to act as a spoiler and to appear presidential.
I was talking with some twenty-somethings before the debate. They thought it funny to call tonight's debate as between zombies. From their viewpoint both candidate are bitten and not to be trusted, but Obama is further along in the transformation that is a US apocolypse. I chuckled, and then I saw the opening intro by debate moderator Bob Schieffer. They were correct, it's a zombie debate.
Romney avoided being cornered, by Obama or Schieffer. Projects calmness and desire for peace. Obama comes off angry and offensive. The CNN tracking of "undecideds" in Florida relatively neutral between both. That means Obama failed to paint Romney as dangerous, Romney succeeded in coming across as moderate. That makes this debate a victory for Romney, and a failure for Obama to change the game or impressions of Romney.
So, on with the debate. It shapes up as do you believe what you saw for four-years or what Obama says happened. Only Obamazombies can choose the latter.
On Libya, Romney: "We can't kill our way out of this mess." Need a comprehensive strategy. (Well, duh!)
Obama: We're able to transition out responsibly and rebuild alliances. "We did everything we can" to help the Americans in "harms way" in Benghazi. (BS meter goes off the dial.)
Romney: "Attacking me is not an agenda." Then aims head shots at Obama.
Tsk-tsk, Italy.
George McGovern was hard not to like, but his politics were naive in the extreme. Late in life, he decided to go into business, and wrote about it: 
Pic is a Sugar Maple, on fire yesterday