Thursday, December 12. 2013
Story from Sipp, here.
Somebody should give that kid a fiddle.
 Why the Oxford comma is a good thing
Everyone Is a Criminal: On the Over-policing of America - Try to think of an aspect of everyday life that doesn’t somehow include the police.
Harvard Votes To Banish Bottled Water
Why not ban bottled beer too?
Washington’s Battle of the Skyline - The rent is too high; the buildings are too low.
Feds Spend $224,250 to Change How Kids Order Food
Washington Post Falsely Reports 365,000 'Have Purchased' ObamaCare
Sebelius Calls for Probe of Obamacare Website Launch
WSJ: Warren's Way or No Way - Liberal Democrats try to silence two of our op-ed writers.
How Much Redistribution Is Enough?
The Democrats want little kids to die of cancer
Obamacare, where the liberal dream crashes and burns
Oregon spends $300 million to enroll 44 for Obamacare
From an engineer who knows high tech systems:
Imagine writing a 3,000-page law to totally restructure the national 'utilities' infrastructure. The likelihood of success would be zero; chaos and irreversible damage would surely result.
ObamaCare undertakes to completely and indiscriminately redefine the entire health-care segment of the U.S. economy, including laws and regulations, incentives and market forces, the delivery system, the providers, the insurance model, the customer interface, the billing and financing, and every other aspect of the existing system. This magnitude of change is distinctly irrational.
Inside America’s Great Romance With Norman Rockwell - A new biography of the artist reveals the complex inner life of our greatest and most controversial illustrator
I don't know why they bother to wonder whether he was gay or not. Sounds more shy and inhibited to me, but who cares? I didn't know that he was a New Yorker.
This is The Connoisseur (1963)
Wednesday, December 11. 2013
What qualities do people look for in elected (or unelected) leaders? The question applies to all areas of life, not just politics.
What qualities stimulate people to "follow," or choose, a leader? Among others, physical presence, ability to speak, self-confidence, and reliable decision-making play important parts, but some of it is difficult to express. This post stimulates the discussion: What is the "Presidential Presence"?
One component of it, perhaps not a large one, is a person's aptitude for being a target of positive transferences. That, plus the power, is what transforms an employee of the citizens (ie a politician) into something that seems special, probably too special. After Washington, my favorite President was Coolidge.
When it comes to politics in the modern era, one part of it is simply celebrity. "Charisma." TV, video, and film create celebrity, as in "famous for being famous." What qualities support that? Why does anybody listen to, or pay attention to, celebs?
Craig's List has it all. I am told you can search "Diesel," "Dog Food," or "Pain Relief," and if you sort through the listings you can find whatever you want. Heroin, Meth, coke, crack, Ecstasy, pot, Oxycontin, etc.
I do not want this stuff, but lots of people do. Yes, they deliver to your door or workplace in manila envelopes, but they do not take credit cards.
Thus the successful government war on drugs, ongoing since the Nixon administration. Prohibition never works. This is an ordinary Black Market similar to the Black Market for booze during Prohibition (when Joe Kennedy got rich with his Boston mobster buddies).
I am opposed to drug prohibition, and I am opposed to substance abuse as a terrible life plan.
 Re-posted - Photo is a simple cheese board for dessert for about 6 dinner guests
Good cheeses must be treated with respect because plenty of effort, time, and pride goes into making them for you, and the tasty ones are mostly expensive. People always put out cheese and crackers at holidays. Here are The Barrister Family Rules and Tips about serving cheese:
1. The only thing Whole Foods (or whatever it's called now) is good for is the cheese department. That is quite good, and often the Cheese Man is somewhat knowledgeable and will give you a taste.
2. Best grocery cheese dept? Definitely Fairway. Best source of that Irish hard cheese - Dubliner - and of un-aged goat cheese? Costco. We love goat cheese. In Manhattan, Grace's Market has good, unusual, unpasteurized cheeses, and it's a fun shop for foodies. Also, the Grand Central Market in Grand Central Station has tons of tasty stuff including fancy cheeses.
3. Cheese as an appetizer or an hors d'oeuvre? Never. It's not done, not proper except as part of an Italian antipasto and even then only a couple of thin tasting slices. It wrecks the appetite and is too taste-powerful to precede a pleasant dinner.
4. Cheese should always be served at room temp, never cold. If a soft cheese gets a bit melty, so much the better because that's what it is meant to do.
5. Assorted cheeses on a buffet table? Of course. A Cheese Board as an after-dessert savory or, as I prefer, instead of dessert? Definitely.
But served how? Our theories on the topic are below the fold -
Continue reading "More holiday food subjects: Cheese"
Much ado about nothing, I think. McCain Compares Obama Castro Handshake to Chamberlain And Hitler,
But why the President seems to have this compulsion to bow to foreign low-lifes is beyond me. Americans bow only to God. It's not a masculine impulse.
Why do Americans even care about Cuba (except for the Cuban-American vote in Florida) other than to feel pity for them living under the yoke of their socialist masters in a police state? It's just another tiny, impoverished, God-forsaken Latin American paradise-turned-dump with psycho sadistic billionaire dictators. Population close to that of Haiti, and smaller population than the NYC metro area.
What Cubans need is American tourism and American investment. It's difficult to imagine today, but even Haiti used to be a tourist destination.
 Wall Street Mothers, Stay-Home Fathers
Via Insty, Your Wife Is Not, or Shouldn’t Be, Your Boss
No Child Allowed Ahead
Nation of Islam Leader’s Home In Hyde Park Received $100,000 in Farm Subsidies
Drafting Docs - Look for doctors to be conscripted to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients.
Obamacare will end up forcing doctors to take patients
Quote from Andy McCarthy:
Today’s Democrats, however, are less members of a party than of the movement Left. Their objective, like Obama’s, is fundamental transformation of a society rooted in individual liberty and private property to one modeled on top-down, redistributionist statism. Since statism advances by concentrating governmental power, Democrats — regardless of what governmental branch they happen to inhabit — rally to whatever branch holds the greatest transformative potential. Right now, that is the presidency. Thus, congressional Democrats do not insist that the president must comply with congressional statutes. Laws, after all, must be consistent with the Constitution to be valid, and are thus apt to reflect the very constitutional values the Left is trying to supplant. Democrats want the president to use the enormous raw power vested in his office by Article II to achieve statist transformation. If he does so, they will support him. They’ll get back to obsessing over the “rule of law” if, by some misfortune, the Republicans someday win another presidential election.
Why Is Everybody Sitting on Huge Piles of Cash?
Everybody?
Here's why - Stock market corrected for QE
David Stockman Rages Market "Valuation Has Lost Any Anchor To The Real World"
You won't believe these gummint rules: Newseum Settles with DOJ Over Disability Regulation Violations
How to Keep Workers Unemployed - Another 99 weeks of jobless insurance won't create more jobs.
Greenfield: The Mandela Myth
EPA preparing to unleash a deluge of new regulations - on your own ponds, ditches, and creeks
What's the right amount of redistribution of money? The pivot that isn’t
The New York Times’ ‘homeless’ hooey
Obama Flirts and Clowns at Mandela Memorial Service
A friend took this pic 20 or 30 years ago, in Maryland
Tuesday, December 10. 2013
In denial of gravity? From the post at Zero Hedge
Are young college graduates changing the way we value college degrees?
Brianna Flaherty, who graduated in May and lives in New York City before she’ll have “to give up and move home,” is unemployed. She spends hours on Craigslist and writing cover letters. When she interviewed at a bakery recently, there were 250 others competing with her to frost cupcakes at 5:00am.
“I no longer buy into the idea that having a degree will give you your dream job,” she told me. She’s exasperated. “I see on Craigslist that my Creative Writing degree, which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, qualifies me to be a receptionist.”
When asked why that would be disappointing, she echoed Sterling: “My parents raised me to do something I was passionate about.”
This is via American Digest's Mike Rowe post:
Kevyn Orr -In Shepherding Detroit Bankruptcy, Lawyer Tackles a Job He Didn’t Ask For
MSNBC’s Alternative Universe - What passes for journalism on the network is downright silly
U.S. exits GM stake,
taxpayers lose about $10 billion
Political polarization: Obama Is Tearing America Apart
Jeff Goldstein unloads on Peggy Noonan
Obamacare, where the liberal dream crashes and burns
The biggest threat to Obamacare is not Republicans. The biggest threat is Murphy’s Law, along with its corollary, the Law of Unintended Consequences. These are the most powerful laws in the world. They are even more powerful than the Affordable Care Act, and they are the nemesis of all master plans. Evidently, the President and his merry band of wonks had never heard of them.
With QE tapering in sight, how high can long-term interest rates go?
Farm negotiators shift on subsidies
CBO:Top 40% Paid 106.2% of Income Taxes; Bottom 40% Paid -9.1%, Got Average of $18,950 in 'Transfers'
China Meets Its Own Worst Enemy: Itself - Excessive nationalism threatens the country's potential.
The religious group known as the Quakers has sacrificed its founding religious principles at the altar of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.
Tobin: The Real Benghazi Scandal
Gender wage gap in Obama’s White House: Female staffers earn less than 87 cents on the dollar compared to men
Why "climate change"?
...keen observers have noticed that "climate change" began to replace "global warming" as the preferred term among the enviro-lobby when its predictions of heat-related disasters weren't realized and winter refused to retire.
Maybe another name change is in the works since the data show there hasn't been much change for at least 16 years and that the predicted superstorms haven't materialized.
VDH on presidential lying:
Obama is playing a strange game: The more he speaks untruthfully, the more he resorts to emphatic intensifiers that instead confirm that he is speaking untruthfully. In turn, Obama’s audiences play an even stranger game: The more they hear their president speak, the more they are impressed that he can sound so sincere in being so nonchalantly insincere and mellifluously misleading. When I first heard, “You can keep your doctor and your health plan,” I thought, “That can’t be true; he knows it can’t be true; and the American people must know it can’t be true” — and, then, I shrugged: “But he’s hit upon a winning lie.”
CBO:Top
40% Paid 106.2% of Income Taxes; Bottom 40% Paid -9.1%, Got Average of
$18,950 in 'Transfers' - See more at:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/cbotop-40-paid-1062-income-taxes-bottom-40-paid-91-got-average-18950#sthash.JJPpHvBN.dpuf
Monday, December 9. 2013
An urban liberal visits evil, evil Walmart, and likes it.
"There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs."
Booker T. Washington, “My Larger Education, Being Chapters from My Experience“ (1911), Ch. V: The Intellectuals and the Boston Mob (pg. 118 )
I don't think the country (ie the taxpayer) should bail out anything or anybody. Malanga: Bailouts for Cities? Advocates for cash-strapped municipalities want Washington to clean up their mess.
 Image: Coming soon to your doctor's office
Conservationists Outraged After Obama Approves Wind Farm Eagle Slaughter
Coming soon to a doctors office near you: A sign of the times!
- See more at: http://politicsandfinance.blogspot.com/2013/12/coming-soon-to-doctors-office-near-you.html#sthash.NzvTYTKJ.dpuf Read more at http://politicsandfinance.blogspot.com/2013/12/coming-soon-to-doctors-office-near-you.html#vHRlw74FWHtyvzrX.9910-year old Johnny Jones suspended for shooting imaginary arrow
This Week in History: Republican Party Abolishes Slavery
Hooray! More Lousy Jobs Have Been Created
If Pearl Harbor happened now
The Soldiers Who Saved Europe's Art From Hitler
Chris Matthews on his Obama interview: “He came to us. He came amongst us.”
Sheesh. Chris, the guy is our employee.
A Federal Agency That Still Uses Floppy Disks
Why Hillary Will Lose Again
Blumer on Obamacare:
Considering that the people involved are supposedly our best and brightest — as they and their media lapdogs constantly remind us — is it really possible that utter stupidity and incompetence fully explain what has transpired? I think not. Until someone can prove otherwise, the default position has to be that chaos is what they want, and that they will continue to work to deepen it.
Teachers unions face moment of truth
Why Americans aren’t buying into Obama’s economic inequality shtick
Totten: The Once Great City of Havana:
If Cuba had free enterprise, and if Americans could travel there without restrictions, the economy would go supernova.
My Grandpa loved going to Cuba
Gutfeld: The Hate Crime Hoax Business Is Booming
All Aboard! Freight Rail Giant Testing Natural Gas-Powered Locomotives
MSNBC host equates ‘Obamacare’ with N-word
Vladimir Putin has dissolved Russia´s biggest news agency RIA Novosti
Saying Grace goes for $46 million at Sotheby's
Sunday, December 8. 2013
 Mead discusses the new service economy, and well-trained nannies:
...what’s likely to happen in the information age is that services once reserved for a privileged few will increasingly be available for larger numbers of people. There will be more and less expensive personal chefs, for example, but more people than ever will be able to eat high class meals. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing, especially when you consider the appalling dullness and deadening conformity of those industrial jobs and social conditions that people are apparently so nostalgic for.
Steyn discusses income inequality: Inequality far worse than economic:
... the signature achievement of Obama’s “hope and change” combines 1940s British public health theories with 1970s Soviet supermarket delivery systems. But don’t worry: Maybe one day soon, your needle-exchange clinic will be able to deliver by drone. Look out below.
It reminds me of Kudlow discussing moral, spiritual, and cultural inequality.
Income inequality mainly driven by single-adult households: The Income Inequality Problem is Overblown:
Most studies do not take into account changes in the composition of households over the past 25 years. We have more two-earner households at the top, and more one-person households at the bottom.
Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs) on following your passion:
I’m personally tired of stories about people who follow their dream, ignore the naysayers, struggle mightily, eschew every other viable opportunity, suffer for decades, go into debt, and finally achieve some monumental breakthrough that leads people to marvel at their fortitude and perseverance. Tales of inspiration are important, but do they all have to revolve around the same narrative of never giving up on your “true calling.” I think we need more stories about people who do whatever it takes to thrive, and somehow manage to find happiness and passion in whatever they choose to do. Isn’t that more empowering than identifying one specific “passion,” and making every happiness contingent upon attaining it?
The time from the start of Advent to Christmas is like a short spiritual pregnancy.
What's the miracle of Christmas? That Christ can be born in all of us, anywhere, any time, at any season, to make us fully human and complete by linking the divine spark in our pagan, fallen souls to the holy.
Is it a shame, or a blessing, that we have to really need Him before we will put our precious selves aside, just a bit, to let Him into our lives?
While my Puritan ancestors would never celebrate the "Roman" (eg "Anti-Christ") feast of Christmas, I find it to be an emotional reminder of that miracle which exists in the present, not the past. And the totally pagan, Germanic tree is a perfect metaphor for transformation - ordinary baby firs, like all of us (miracle enough right there), with the potential to be transformed by light and truth and beauty and brotherly love.
At Maggie's Farm HQ, this transformation, from ordinary fir tree to Holy Spirit-illuminated tree, is what we pray for. (Hold the tinsel, please.) It's not decor, it's a symbol of our potential.
I highly recommend it. Review here.
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