Some Weds. evening links

Polar Bears and junk science

Over the top. Barack Obama, Fairy Tale King. Are we a nation of toddlers?

Botswana and Zimbabwe: A tale of two countries

Exercise may help prevent breast cancer. Exercise is good for mind, body, and spirit. But we are all going to die.

Karma, Grace, and Bono. Dr. Bob

Jailed witches in the UK get magic twigs. I guess they don't burn them anymore?

The new translations of the Aeneid

Assuming you do not live on arugula from Whole Foods like Obama does, US food spending as % of disposable income over the years

Mr. Sammler's City: City Journal

Repubs suffering from dry heaves. Commenter Buddy expounds on why losing the White House could be very bad news:

Give 'em three house and 60 senators, and we'll never be able to vote 'em out again. We'll slog thru gun control, "industrial policy" (semi-nationalizations), wealth taxation (a new form -- search the term), "fairness doctrine" attacks on conservative media, further destruction of students in favor of teacher's union control, politicization of government agencies (use of IRS, FBI against political enemies, an element of the Clinton's governance which the Dems approved via silence), criminalization of political differences (think Libby, think Waxman), and worst of all, union-directed attack on the global trade system (toward a captive domestic market), causing a 70's style financial collapse, and leading inexorably toward depression and world war. Oh, and say farewll to Israel utterly, and Europe as we know it, and hello to radical Islam, radical anti-west takeover of OPEC, the mideast, Africa, central Asia, Latin America, a takeover of Chinese foreign policy by the chi-com military faction ("hey, here's our big chance!") and an irreversable transfer of capital from west to east. Hyperbole? I fricken wish.

OK, Buddy - but you left out the worst consequence in this bit - the Supreme Court.

Posted by The News Junkie in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 20:25 | Comments (16) | Trackback (1)

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An era of "outrageous credulity"?
Readers know that we tend to maintain an attitude of wholesome skepticism towards almost everything, including ourselves and our own thoughts.Driscoll really nails the credulity with which some invest government and politics. In that post, he quotes Betsy

Weblog: Maggie's Farm
Tracked: May 15, 09:05

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The Dems won't get 60 in the senate. When those pissed off Conservatives, and middle-of-the-roaders pull the handle for Obaamaa they'll vote for the Conservative Republican to balance it out.

In 2010 the Pubs might even get the house back.

#1 rufus on 2008-05-14 21:19 (Reply)

I wish Buddy was overstating the case. I can see most of this litany of horrors actually happening. Maybe from the ashes will rise a political majority that believes in liberty.

#2 Monkeydarts (Link) on 2008-05-14 21:38 (Reply)

That would be too late. The Court is the key.

#2.1 BD on 2008-05-14 21:54 (Reply)

What a beautiful, warm, cozy, fuzzy bear, nation we'll have with the Dems in power. I can hardly wait, what a beautiful day in the neighborhood, won't you be my neighbor?

#3 jappy on 2008-05-14 22:18 (Reply)

LOL -- now we know your first name, jappy -- "Fred"

#3.1 buddy larsen on 2008-05-14 23:53 (Reply)

Slowly but surely I am reveling my self. Buddy you know the name of my tribe, and my first name. I am going to tell you the name of the street I live on because sooner or later you'll figure it out to. Seseme, right now I am at the local Police station arrested for assault and battery I gaught got chokeing Big Bird. That dumb, bastard bird is voteing for Barrick insane O' Blamema. Please send some bail money immediately. Comrade Jappy. : )

#3.1.1 jappy on 2008-05-15 07:31 (Reply)

my electrician just got charged with battery. i was shocked. i know, it's not as if i myself ampere fect either

#3.1.1.1 buddy larsen on 2008-05-15 10:18 (Reply)

I believe I wrote about this three months ago.

If the Democrats win the Presidency and control both Houses of Congress, with the Senate in super majority position then it is doubtful given their current political philosophy (socialism and redistribution of wealth) that we will see the Republic remain as the Founding Fathers intended.

The remaining branch of government, the Supreme Court will come under the Democrats full control, which means the Appellate Courts will also. Here is the key:

With a super majority in the Senate the Democrats will enlarge the Supreme Court from it's current number of nine judges to fifteen, perhaps even twenty one. The newly appointed judges will all be young socialists willing to toss the concept of Stare Decisis out the window and begin rulings anew.
By so doing the Democrats can assure that if they lose the super majority or the White House in 2012 they will have set up a system that they have used for the past sixty years, legislating through SCOTUS, except this time the outcomes will be assured.

Socialism in full bloom will replace the last vestiges of a republican form of government. This means an entirely new interpretation of the Bill of Rights. There will be no way to stop this from happening and SCOTUS with young socialist in the chairs will rule for many, many decades.

What it means to business is more regulation, taxation, and the state taking over industries they deem most "vital", which will be defense,energy,agriculture, you name it.

This country in four years, under those circumstances would be changed forever. That is what the Democrats will do for it assures them perpetual control of the government no matter who is elected in the future until the stars align the opposition in a position to undo the changes. That is highly unlikely to happen.

#4 Habu on 2008-05-14 22:42 (Reply)

two facts:

FDR's now-comical-sounding attempt to "pack the supreme court" -- please take a look at it (search fdr pack supreme court) and you'll see how deadly serious an attempt on the federal system the whole affair actually was. And remember, with today's Dems as well as FDR's brain trust containing the same Ickes clan members in their deepest secret central planning, you can bet they are these days chewing over very carefully the lessons learned from FDR's over-reach.

Second fact, the Dem congress has as much as said they'll never hear Bush's list of nominees for open federal bench seats. The Dems plan to leave the nominees hanging and the seats open, to hell with tradition and custom and the backed-up system's inability to deliver speedy resolutions to us hapless citizens. The plan is to wait out the Bush administration, in order that the expected Dem avalanche will fill the courts with their own type of judges. Of course, the bigger the avalanche, the farther left will be the new judges.

Of course they must know that such crappy politics will call for payback in kind, should the shoe ever be on the other foot. Apparently this concerns them not at all. Maybe they don't think the shoe will be on the other foot anytime soon.

#4.1 buddy larsen on 2008-05-14 23:38 (Reply)

to go with the food-spending index:

http://www.miseryindex.us/

#5 buddy larsen on 2008-05-14 23:58 (Reply)

Great post by Dr Bob. Inspiring. Got me out of the political doldrums. Gave me hope and not like Obama's hope

#6 sean on 2008-05-15 00:15 (Reply)

Re Mr. Sammler's City, Saul Bellow is to me a transcendant great. i read Herzog when going thru my own divorce -- just picked it up by accident -- and the way it enveloped the layers upon layers of divorce's descending comic pathos was likely the only thing only the planet that could've kept me laughing throughout at the whole preposterous ordeal.

Then, in the mid 80s, just when the Cold War was peaking, I read The Dean's December -- still the best i've ever read on the bureaucratic methodology of state totalitarianism's drip-drip-drip corrosion of an individual's personal interest in life & living -- a subject that of all the arts maybe only the novel can really describe. Bellow was a helluva an iconoclast and a savage writer.

#7 buddy larsen on 2008-05-15 00:49 (Reply)

Interesting article re: Botswana and Zimbabwe, but I think it is too optimistic on Botswana as an example for Africa. The place is very thinly populated ... mostly desert, and is a one-note economy based on diamond export. Making it sort of the Qatar or UAE of Africa. There is 40 percent unemployment and 1/3 of the population has HIV. The diamond trade has inflated the per capita GDP hugely since the population is so tiny, but still wealth is not spread out among the population. That's my 2 cents anyways.

#8 The Dylanologist on 2008-05-15 07:28 (Reply)

Maggie's should start a monthly What Are You Reading post. It would be interesting to see what the Maggie's staff is reading and their critiques of the books. In the comments section everyone else could tell us what their reading. This way we can all learn of new authors and books that might interest us.

#9 sean on 2008-05-15 11:16 (Reply)

But.

With a Democratic supermajority comes all the problems we have discussed here many times - and against which many voters will finally rebel - plus another problem that until now has gotten little attention.

And that problem is that within the activist base of the Democratic party are engines of ethnic supremacist ideology, first developed among blacks, and now among Hispanics. And the Democrats can't switch those engines off. They can't for two reasons. One is tactical, because they draw in the votes needed to win any national election. The second is because their elites in the media and the academy lack the cultural self-confidence to tell any of these guys to take a hike. The words simply stick in their throats. And that second reason is of course more dangerous than the first.

And because the vocabulary in what passes for political analysis in our MSM is so impoverished - by design - we rely on the Wretchards and the Gates of Viennas and the others often outside the US to initiate conversations about these things. These guys have an advantage, in that they are dealing firsthand with the realities of ethnic conflict and of the relationship between that conflict and the development of successful democracies. And they have often wondered as many of us have, about the long-term future of a major US party that contains such elements that ultimately may spin out of control.

I don't think that the long term future for some sort of conservative government in North America is necessarily bleak. It is just that things may have to get much worse before they get better.

#10 Skookumchuk (Link) on 2008-05-15 13:02 (Reply)

"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."
"

#11 bboot on 2008-05-15 19:20 (Reply)

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Wednesday, May 14. 2008

Some Weds. evening links