Maggie's Farm endorses Joe Lieberman for CT! Lieberman is leading Lamont in the polls. Good. We may not care for left-wing Lieberman too much, but at least he understands the critical challenge of the time. But quit whining, Joe. Speak out!
LaShawn reconsiders the concept of "birthright citizenship."
Counting terrorists. Haha. Who can count them? Somebody must be counting them, if Bush is increasing their numbers. RWNH
How to carefully think through your real estate purchases and investments, esp with respect to financing and mortages. Useful stuff from Maxed Out Mama. Do you want to pay off your mortgage?
How Kling went from a leftie to a libertarian. He is not alone. It had something to do with using his brain.
Part lll of Dr. Bob's path to God. Need I mention that it is honest and moving?
Everything free in America: Pregnant Mexicans border-hopping for the free citizenship and the free delivery.
Rational balance and healthy skepticism on climate. The New American. (h/t, Ace)
The more people that are married in a district, the more Republican it is. Ten Napel considers this fact.
Voter ID. Is there a need for it? Bainbridge opines, and the commenters coomment, many of them interestingly.
Why does Britain distrust the EU? For reasons like this one. (By the way, the EU is a latent totalitarian quasi-oligarchic state on the way to becoming a regional tyranny, requiring eventual revolution to repair.) And more on the EU, which is growing weary of its growth and its internal immigrants and economic competition. Why didn't they just stop with the trade agreements, and not be so grandiose?
Dalrymple on Evil. Dalrymple needs his own blog - quote from the piece at NER:
In his introduction, Professor Hollander speculates as to why Nazi atrocities should, deservedly, be so well known and their lessons so well- absorbed, while those of communism, that are not exactly unknown, and on an even greater scale than Nazism’s (no thanks to Nazism for that, of course, because Nazism was stopped in mid-atrocity), have comparatively so little emotional resonance: an unfortunate fact which it is the purpose of his book to change. Perhaps the difference exists because elements at least of communism still exert an attraction for so many intellectuals, and no one wants to acknowledge that his ideals justified and in part motivated mass murder on an unprecedented scale. Who would not rather deny the meaning of scores of millions of deaths, than abandon his illusions?
From an Amazon review of Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness:
Here are some of the most important points of this book:
1) We often exaggerate in imagining the long- term emotional effects certain events will have on us.
2) Most of us tend to have a basic level of happiness which we revert to eventually.
3) People generally err in imagining what will make them happy.
4) People tend to find ways of rationalizing unhappy outcomes so as to make them more acceptable to themselves.
5) People tend to repeat the same errors in imagining what will make them happy.
6) Events and outcomes which we dread may when they come about turn into new opportunities for happiness.
7) Many of the most productive and creative people are those who are continually unhappy with the world- and thus strive to change it.
8) Happiness is rarely as good as we imagine it to be, and rarely lasts as long as we think it will. The same mistaken expectations apply to unhappiness.
Gilbert makes these points and others with much anecdotal evidence and humor.
A pretty happy read, but not as happy as you think it is going to be.
