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.
I agree with Buddy about this tune. Let's do one more Irish post. You do not need to know Gaelic to understand the song. That's how it works with good songs.
There is great risk in that life plan. I often remind people that being put out to pasture is a quite modern invention. Originally an ideal of European Socialists, in the US it did not become a plausible plan until the Depression when it seemed politically useful to take "mature" adults - "seasoned citizens" - out of the labor force to reduce unemployment.
I have never understood what is so ideal about being unproductive and useless with a life of recreation, errand-running, and lawn-mowing. In my experience, people thrive on productivity and responsbility (while bitching about it of course) and frequently decay without it. If Heaven entails floating around blissfully on clouds all day, I have no interest in it. Anybody who wants that can have it today. It's called heroin.
Still, people pursue a degree of economic security, because constant worry is no fun. Except for the most ambitious and talent-driven, it seems to me that most people will be as resourceful as they need to be to try to construct whatever life they desire. I just hate to see people seduced by phoney pop-cultural dreams of lying in the hammock or farting into the sofa for 25 years.
I don't know who Palin's speechwriter is — and, for all I know, she writes them herself — but whoever it is, he or she is just terrific. Practically every third line in her CPAC speech was like something out of a book of Great Conservative Quotes.
Here Ted Cruz, like a good Texan; he comes to town, he chews barbed wire and spits our rust.
No, it's not about the bad guys, it's all about the lead, like solely that chunk of metal did the crime. That's like saying, solely that fork made me fat.
And background checks? Yeah, I guess, to learn more about a person's thinking and associations and intentions? More background checks? Dandy idea, Mr. President. Shoulda started with yours.
Remember 'No Drama Obama'? If only. Now it's All-Drama Obama. We don't have leadership coming out of Washington. We have reality television.
Whether it's green energy or free Obama phones — or prophylactics — if you don't have a team of lobbyists in D.C. or a cancelled campaign contribution check, well, you're not at the table. You're on the menu.
It was about then that she took a sip from a Big Gulp and brought down the house.
I suppose a lot of politicians use the phrase "we, the people" in their speeches, but the only two politicos who I ever believed actually meant it were Teddy Roosevelt and Sarah Palin.
Man, that article is interesting. Look at the room that thing's in. Linenfold wainscot. Looks like oak. You might already know this, but wainscot means the side of a wagon -- a wain. Pitsawn lumber was hard to come by, so joiners would split green oak to make lumber for everything. Eventually the split wagon sides started getting nailed on the lower half of the walls indoors. They'd carve the panels inside the frames to look like an open book, or a piece of linen, folded up. It was considered barbarous after a while, (gothic) so only the oldest houses in England had it, until it was revived three hundred years later or so. Neato.
My freedom in practice is to see people anytime I want or can, to work whatever hours I want to, to follow no imposed treatment protocols, to set my own fees and to provide as much charity as I wish, and to help anybody I chose to.
Nobody tells me what to do or how to do it. Maybe I'm a dinosaur. I'll see patients on a Saturday or Sunday if need be.
A quote from the article:
Once they work for hospitals, physicians change their behavior in two principal ways. Often they see fewer patients and perform fewer timely procedures. Continuity of care also declines, since a physician's responsibilities end when his shift is over. This means reduced incentives for doctors to cover weekend calls, see patients in the ER, squeeze in an office visit, or take phone calls rather than turfing them to nurses. It also means physicians no longer take the time to give detailed sign-offs as they pass care of patients to other doctors who cover for them on nights, weekends and days off.
Most hospitals exacerbate these strains by measuring the productivity of the physician practices they purchase in "Relative Value Units." This is a formula that Medicare already uses to set doctor-payment rates. RVUs are supposed to measure how much time and physical effort a doctor requires to perform different clinical endeavors.
Her: "Honey, I know you want snuggles but I don't feel close to you. You never talk to me or share your feelings."
Him: "But I am talking to you right now, and I am sharing my strongest, most personal feelings: Please take off your clothes and let's hop into bed and have some fun."
Similar:
Her: "Honey, let's take another marriage class at church so we can open up with eachother and communicate better."
Him: "I learned at the last one we did that I communicate best non-verbally."
12:1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.
12:2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.
12:3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.
12:4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said,
12:5 "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?"
12:6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)
12:7 Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.
12:8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."
FOR every hour that thou wilt spare me now, I will allow, Usurious god of love, twenty to thee, When with my brown my gray hairs equal be. Till then, Love, let my body range, and let Me travel, sojourn, snatch, plot, have, forget, Resume my last year's relict; think that yet We'd never met.
Let me think any rival's letter mine, And at next nine Keep midnight's promise; mistake by the way The maid, and tell the lady of that delay; Only let me love none; no, not the sport From country grass to confitures of court, Or city's quelque-choses; let not report My mind transport.
This bargain's good; if when I'm old, I be Inflamed by thee, If thine own honour, or my shame and pain, Thou covet most, at that age thou shalt gain. Do thy will then; then subject and degree And fruit of love, Love, I submit to thee. Spare me till then; I'll bear it, though she be One that love me.
Opening day in these parts will be March 30, the day before Easter. Here is Gwynnie last season wearing as little as she can so as not to scare the fish. Get those reels lubed and those old lines straightened!
Along with Washington and Jefferson, Calvin Coolidge is in our presidential pantheon.
At Maggie's Farm, we reject the notion that the "greats" are those who expanded central power in Washington. What's so great about that? America was designed in opposition to centralized power. Is "freedom" a dirty word?
Unlike today, if tech companies were generally run by conservatives, the liberal MSM would treat this like the Scandal Of The Decade.
As it stands, I can almost guarantee you this will be the only time you'll hear of it.
Enjoy the moment.
So to speak.
The other day, a commenter in one of my global warming articles (I wouldn't want to mention any names, but his initials are Z.A.C.H.R.I.E.L.) and I were discussing the issue and I asked him if some of the stuff coming out of the AGW debate wasn't just a little bit embarrassing for his side.
Me: How about the EPA declaring your breath is a toxic gas?
Z.A.C.H.R.I.E.L.: Animal respiration is carbon neutral.
Now, I will admit that he's half-right:
The intake part of your breath is carbon neutral.
But the exhalation? As every good-thinking, earth-hugging person knows, your exhalation is a deadly planet-killing toxic gas, verified by the greatest and most impartial collection of scientists on the planet, the respected (some might even say revered) Environmental Protection Agency.
So, wishing to fortify my point with a link, I cruised over to Google and did a search for "your breath is a toxic gas epa".
I came up with zip.
In the first 20 hits, I didn't come up with one article mocking how the EPA had just turned breath into a toxic gas. It was nothing but how bad, bad, bad that evil CO2 is for all living creatures and how the EPA is the only thing standing between you and being boiled alive by an angry rising sea.
Thinking this a tad strange, I went over to Bing and tried the exact same search. In the first 10 hits:
The next 10 hits yielded another three articles along the same lines, which is about what I had originally expected. Given the formidable opposition, getting 3 out of 10 links is probably doing pretty good.
Okay, so what about Google? Would you like to guess how many articles Google displayed before linking to an article that even remotely criticized the EPA's ruling?
When I cook this, I do it in my largest stovepot, 10 or 15-quart. Usually 2 hunks of corned beef and 2 cabbages, plus the rest. I've never included rutabaga. Parsnips are always a good idea but you have to remember that they cook fast. Parsnips are delicious with their menthol tang.
I like to overcook the meat a bit until fork-tender. Serve with abundant Dijon mustard and Horseradish mustard on the side. And beer.Mrs. BD got us some Wasabi Mustard this year.
But not so much beer than you cannot go out and plant your peas. It's the day to plant peas in Yankeeland, regardless of the weather. Snow Peas.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would 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.”
First, I think she is mainly talking about Manhattan real estate. There is a lot of NYC outside of Manhattan, and the prime fashionable neighborhoods of Manhattan (and Brooklyn) will never be "affordable" to the middle class because, given the barriers to new construction, demand will always outstrip supply. Even so, there are reasonable neighborhoods in places like Inwood, Harlem, Washington Heights, Spanish Harlem, Little Italy.
Second, there are few free markets in housing in NYC except at the higher end (ie condos in the 2+ million range). Even there, it's not really a free market because the barriers to entry for builders are so high (legal, regulatory, community review, architectural boards, time, political dealings, etc). Donald Trump, with his huge legal teams and political connections, can get that sort of thing done, but there are few of him and, even so, supply will never catch up to demand.
Third, NYC's approach to "affordable" housing since WW2 has been housing projects for the poor and rent control and/or entire rent-controlled developments (eg Stuyvesant Town or Tudor City) for the middle class. The former destroyed neighborhoods and was a catastrophe, and the latter (ST as an example) is bankrupt. Furthermore, rent control, instituted temporarily as a post-war adjustment, now has a huge and vociferous constituency (of course). The more recent efforts are to require some time-limited below-market rentals in new construction.
Altogether, many things conspire to keep rental and condo prices high, even out in the boroughs. Since massive deregulation will never happen in NYC, supply will never catch up with demand because NYC is a world-wide magnet for the energetic, the prosperous, the young, and for those who just want a toe-hold in the greatest and most interesting city in the world. (And if supply ever did catch up with demand, a lot of people would lose a lot of money.)
Government helped create the problem - if it is a problem. The Dems want to fix their problem with even more controls and takings. Typical.
My final thought is this: High prices mean high demand. That's a problem few city centers have these days. It's a good kind of problem to have. It's like when I hear people complain about parking in my village, and feel I need to remind them that there are tons of towns where you can park anywhere downtown - but would you want to live where nobody wants to go?
Unlike, it seems, some or many of the young women in Medicine today (50%), I never had any interest in being anybody's employee.
Burning fossil fuels is
Love's Usury
Unlike today, if tech companies were generally run by conservatives, the liberal MSM would treat this like the Scandal Of The Decade.
When I cook this, I do it in my largest stovepot, 10 or 15-quart. Usually 2 hunks of corned beef and 2 cabbages, plus the rest. I've never included rutabaga. Parsnips are always a good idea but you have to remember that they cook fast. Parsnips are delicious with their menthol tang.
Fatal Distraction: Teen Drivers And Passengers Are A Deadly Mix
Photo is from