Wednesday, June 23. 2010
 "Every Other Monday: Twenty Years of Life, Lunch, Faith and Friendship" by John Kasich
There is a climate black list
A little history of "Arbeit macht Frei"
Most millionaires are only millionaires for a year
Ouch: The Law of Supply and Demand Strikes the Law Business
Roger Simon: Does Barack Obama want to be president? We always thought he was running to be VP
 Amsterdam mayor considers using 'decoy Jews' to combat anti-semitism
Missouri: The Next Health Care Battle. These days, feels like the country is falling apart. Unemployment, Afghanistan, health care, a government war against Arizona, higher taxes on the way, etc.
A crucifixion in Saudi.
Brit nannies label cardiovascular disease "largely avoidable." Since when?
Not your grandfather's Connecticut
 Sharron Angle fights back. Lots of Conservative women out there this year. To the minds of Leftist women, Conservative women cannot be Feminists. That is the No True Scotsman Fallacy.
Is Illinois the New California?
Headline if Bush were still Pres: "General McChrystal Speaks Truth to Power"
From VDH's Obama’s Straws And Our Tired Back:
...it might be better anyway for Obama to have a hostile “them” Congress that he can perpetually run against. That can take the place of a now stale “Bush did it.” As it is, the Democrats give Obama what he wants, and what he wants is not what we the people want, at least if polls are any indication.
But with an obdurate opposition in power, Obama can speechify and do what he does best: demagogue, soaring with we should and must do without much worry about the icky details of actual implementation that never will come due to all those right-wing Beck and Hannity types.
View from the little island we stayed on last weekend with friends, looking across to another tiny windswept island.
Tuesday, June 22. 2010
Bob Dylan, The Neighborhood Bully, lyrics below
Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man
His enemies say he's on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He's the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully he just lives to survive
He's criticized and condemned for being alive
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He's the neighborhood bully.
The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He's wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He's always on trial for just being born
He's the neighborhood bully.
Continue reading "Singalong with Bob"
h/t, Theo:
Here’s the CBS report by chief legal expert Jan Crawford:
In an unusually harsh ruling, a federal judge this afternoon blocked the Obama administration's six-month ban on deepwater off shore drilling, slamming the government for relying on "incomprehensible" studies and making "factually incorrect" arguments that abused "reason (and) common sense." The hard-hitting, 22-page opinion by Federal District Court Judge Martin Feldman said the government failed to show that the BP oil spill meant all other rigs were also in danger of failing. As such, he said, the moratorium simply went too far. Feldman also skewered the administration for mischaracterizing the views of engineering experts in order to justify the moratorium.
Read the rest, below the fold:
(I read the entire pdf of the ruling, but haven't found a url to link yet. When I do, I'll add the link to the actual ruling. Here's the ruling's full text. See Obama sliced and diced. -- More, please, before Obama slices and dices any more of America.)
Continue reading "Judge Finds Obama Drilling Moratorium Arbitrary And Capricious"
The old conundrum of how many angels fit on the head of a pin is now surpassed by how many Obama-Pals can be tossed under the bus before the bus falls over.
There’s soon departing White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who has pissed off everybody and is entangled in the former Illinois governor’s corruption trial, and White House Director of the Office of Management and Budgets Peter Orszag, who has run up $trillions of deep debts with the “stimulus” and ObamaCare.
Now, maybe to go is the Commanding General in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal, who voted for Obama, agreed to Obama’s trimmed and late arriving mini-surge, imposed US life-threatening rules-of-engagement, and now exposes the crippling inanity of the Obama national security team meddlers.
As Jackson Diehl writes at the Washington Post:
McChrystal may be at fault for expressing his frustrations to Rolling Stone. He is not at fault for the lack of coherence in the Afghan campaign or the continued feuding over strategy. That is Obama’s responsibility.
As is the other messes that Obama has created.
It is getting crowded under the bus where Obama tries to hide his blunders. How long until the bus falls over?
Senator John McCain says,
“If McChrystal goes, McCain reiterated, "we need to have a look at the functioning of the whole team."
Fish stink from the head. That's for 2012. 2010 is for emptying Obama's smelly fish tank in Congress.
Clearly it depends on who you ask (and on their degree of sobriety). At Phi Beta, Girls, Sex, and Depression, Part 2
 Kimball: Economic reality vs. wishful thinking: the Case of Paul Krugman
City Journal: An Independent Mind - Thomas Sowell’s prodigious intellect has long been at odds with intellectuals.
Justice, Italian-style, and the punishment of the decisive
Why does the American press love Castro?
No more cocktail party in France. It offends the Moslems. Or might.
Barnes: Running on Empty - The wheels come off the liberal juggernaut, but it’s still dangerous.
Examiner: Spending will kill, not save, our recovery
Rubio slipping in polls. Sad
Kristol: Small People Rule! The establishment hasn’t been this discredited since the mid-1960s.
Arizona law puts Democrats' seats in peril
This guy likes Connecticut's Linda McMahon
Fausta's news: Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean
Douthat:
Liberals had hoped that Obama’s election marked the beginning of a long progressive era — a new New Deal, a greater Great Society. Instead, from the West Coast to Western Europe, the welfare state is in crisis everywhere they look. The future suddenly seems to belong to austerity and retrenchment — and even, perhaps, to conservatism.
In this environment, the rage against Obama for not doing more, now, faster, becomes at least somewhat understandable. It’s not that he hasn’t done a great deal for liberals during his 18 months in office. It’s that liberalism itself may be running out of time.
Monday, June 21. 2010
The invite link is here.
Stand for Israel, Stand for the West
The Friends of Israel have joined together in a new international initiative on the basis of the following convictions:
1. Israel is a Western country. With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.
2. Israel´s right to exist should not be questioned. In the face of a uniquely campaign of deligitimation, we remind all people of goodwill of the true historical context in which the State of Israel was re-established following United Nations Resolution 181 in 1947. We state emphatically that that decision to recognize the right of the Jewish people to national self-determination was not merely a gesture of compassion following the horrors that had befallen the Jewish people during the Holocaust. It was, above all, a recognition of the right of the Jewish people to establish a sovereign state on land in which they have had an enduring presence and to which they have had a historical claim for thousands of years.
3. Israel, as a sovereign country, has the right to self-defense. Israel is indeed a normal Western country, but it is one which faces unique threats and challenges. Israel is the only state in the world forced to fight one war after another to secure its very existence. Confronting some of the most violent and well equipped terrorist groups in the world it is also the only country whose right to self-defense is consistently and widely questioned. Today, Israel has been forced to fight on two fronts: one to defend its borders and another to defend its legitimacy. We stand with Israel, and demand that it be accorded the same legitimacy and the same right to defend itself as any other Western country. Human rights statutes designed to defend the dignity of people everywhere, laws on universal jurisdiction intended to be used against criminals and tyrants and international bodies established to secure justice, have been subverted, their guiding principles stood on their head, to wage war against Israeli democracy. The campaign against Israel is corroding the international system from within.
Continue reading "Invitation to join Friends Of Israel"
Life is just a vale of tears, and all you do is damage Gaia. Driscoll: Academia’s Endless Doomsday Cult.
You first, Professor. Unborn yourself. Set an example.
Sociopathy seems to be, to some extent, bred in the bone. As I have discussed here in the past, it's about a cool indifference to others, often while presenting a mask of warm caring and self-sacrifice (the so-called Mask of Sanity). It's about an easy ability to lie to your face, and it's usually not about violence and murder.
High IQ sociopaths fool shrinks all the time and we kick ourselves every time we finally realize it. Often, they confess things as red herrings for us. They tend to have ulterior motives, but do not mention them to us at all. People who repeatedly lie to shrinks generally have sociopathic traits, at the least. They tend to have an assortment of other symptoms and problem behaviors also, such as substance abuse, shame, narcissism, blaming, exploitative relationships, and anxiety. They always have an excuse at the ready, tend to be impulsive, and always have their self-interest in mind.
At Gene Expression's Bad to the Bone:
Could a psychopath mount a legal defense by saying “my brain made me do it”? Or my “genes made me do it”? Is this any different from saying my rotten childhood made me do it? Psychopaths know right from wrong – they just don’t care. That is what society calls “bad”, not “mad”. But if they are constitutionally incapable of caring, can they really be blamed for it? On the other hand, if violent psychopaths are a continuing danger to society and completely refractory to rehabilitation, what is to be done with them?
Don't ask me. Just keep them out of my office. They are Very Bad News for soft-hearted gullible trusting folks like me.
 A guy has devoted his life to re-establishing the Puffin colonies in Maine.
One could do many worse things in life.
That sandwich sign made me wonder whether the Puffins were being attracted to this rock by the idea of a free lunch. Foolish birds.
You can read a bit about the Atlantic Puffin here.
The final lines from a Robert Hayden poem posted by neoneo yesterday. A poet who understood fatherhood:
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Many Moms do not know that, but they know other things. Dads know.
From Howie Carr via Betsy:
Criticizing Bush - the highest form of patriotism. Criticizing Obama - hate speech. Who caused Bush’s problems? - Bush. Who causes Obama’s problems? - Bush.
When Bush mispronounced a word (like nuclear) - more proof he is a complete cowboy moron.
When Obama mispronounces a word (like corpsman) - how dare you even bring this up, racist?!
Unemployment at 4.6 percent under Bush - a jobless recovery.
Unemployment at 9.7 percent under Obama - the new normal, “steady,” a lagging indicator of the happy days that CNBC says are here again.
Economic woes under Bush - portents of a new Depression. Economic woes under Obama - a blip on the radar screen, surprising.
Cindy Sheehan under Bush - a future recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Sheehan under Obama - give it up already, you old bag.
Bush playing a rare round of golf - complete video coverage, showing his utter indifference to the suffering of the American people.
Obama playing one of his endless rounds of golf - only still photos allowed, yet another glowing indication of our dashing president’s youth and physical fitness.
Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it's much more serious than that.
Billy Shankly, quoted in a post about Soccer at American Thinker. My view is that soccer is good fun to play, but watching pros play is like watching paint dry.
Romantic music works
Kaplan: Saving France
Is my testosterone too low?
Reason: Ideas Having Sex - How prosperity and innovation exceeded the expectations of John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith
Review of God's Brain
Powerline:
Since his emergence as a national figure, Obama has fretted about America's lack of popularity in the world. It does not seem to have occurred to him that, though being disliked may be unpleasant, the most serious trouble begins when a nation is viewed with contempt by its enemies and with pity by its friends.
Sen. Kyl Claims Obama Told Him: “If We Secure the Border, Then You Won’t Have Any Reason to Support Comprehensive Immigration Reform”
Mead on modern nationalism:
The tragedy of modern life seems to lie in the fact that we cannot live with nationalism and we cannot live without it. The deep loyalties and affinities we fell towards those who speak our language and share our customs and our historical memories provides much of the social capital that allows modern society to develop and grow. On the other hand, the conflicts between national and ethnic groups must be overcome if we are to have any hope of peace.
Ed Lasky likes Mike Pence. So do I.
EJ Dionne: A guy who definitely would have been on England's side in the Revolution
One guy golfs, one guy sails. What's the diff?
Docs weaning themselves off Medicare patients
Sunday, June 20. 2010
Re-posted today because I had a female Ruby-Throated flirting with me yesterday while I was watering some hanging baskets of flowers. Fearless critter. Seemed to want to frolic in the spray.
Chances are that the first time you saw a hummingbird, you paid it no attention, imagining it to be a passing dragonfly or some other fleeting buzzing bug. In the Eastern half of the US, we have only one species – the Ruby Throated.
This 3-4-inch bird is usually only seen when hovering over flowers, because otherwise he is tiny and darting in flight, and his wings are a humming blur. You have to be very close to hear the hum.
These insect-like birds are probably more abundant in your area than you realize, but if you want to see them often, you need a hummingbird garden. (Those sugar-water hummingbird feeders offer no real nutrition, and the red coloring is thought to be somewhat toxic.) He feeds on nectar and small bugs hidden in the flowers, and prefers flowers which are designed for pollination by hummingbirds – often red in color and vase-shaped for his long beak. Red Trumpet Vine (in photo) is a favorite, as is azalea in the south, but they like monarda too. I find their favorite at my place is Crocosmia – which is in bloom now along with the monarda, and the trumpet vine on my wall. I highly recommend Crocosmia – the bulbs are a bit expensive but, once established, they multiply rapidly and they have attractive foliage. White Flower Farm has a large selection. In the woods, I typically see hummingbirds around patches of Jewelweed, which likes damp areas.
Read more about the Ruby Throated here. How do these fragile creatures make it across the Gulf of Mexico to winter in South America?
The print is Audubon's, the Ruby Throat with Trumpet Vine.
Speaking of hummingbirds, don’t forget the Dixie Hummingbirds.
Clipped from this morning's newspaper:
ObamaCare is the cure?! Big Pharma cut deals with Congressional Dems, to sell more Rxs they think, counting on buying out small drug development companies to keep their pipeline full. But, it's tougher for small biotech companies to find the rewards motivation or funding to be entrepreneurial.
"Abba," the Aramaic word for "father," was sometimes used by Christ as a term for his true Father in heaven.
Jesus spoke Aramaic, almost certainly knew enough Hebrew to study the texts, and may have known some Greek too. Greeks, like the Romans, were all over the place. Must have been like that multicultural bar scene in Star Wars.
His use of "Dad" for God was transformational.
I do not view God as having any gender, but I love the way Christ spoke of God as his Dad. Real Dads, however much they may aspire to be role models and to be strong and reliable supports for their kids, are only human and thus always deeply flawed.
Yes, I greatly enjoyed Bruce's Father's Day post early this morning, especially the music. Jew, Christian, Moslem - whatever. If that song doesn't bring a tear, you have a problem. "Only you created tears, and only you can wipe them away forever."
 The world has 5 times as many polar bears today than it did 50 years ago. I blame climate change.
Samuelson: Why Our Poverty Measure Misleads
Ocean pH alarmism, easily debunked
Via Q&O:
Russia is eliminating the capital gains tax. Sadly, the ex-commies know something we apparently don't. http://bit.ly/cSzTOe
Was it a shakedown? Of course it was.
Is this legal to do? NYC Going After Teen 'Sexting' -- In The Home
Wouldn't an Arizona lawsuit be like suing yourself? All their law does is repeat federal law on a state basis.
Lowry: The O turns out to be mortal
Thompson on Egalitarian Superiority:
In my experience, the more egalitarian a person says he is, the more superior he wishes to be, or assumes he already is. Egalitarian sentiment is, and generally has been, a license for hypocrisy, double standards and exerting power over others. Much as a professed disdain for inequality is a way to signal one’s own moral, intellectual and social superiority.
Some pigs are more equal than others.
From Steyn:
Chris Matthews and the other leg-tinglers invented an Obama that doesn't exist. Unfortunately, they're stuck with the one that does, and it will be interesting to see whether he's capable of plugging the leak in his own support. If not, who knows what the tide might wash up?
Memo to Secretary Rodham Clinton: Do you find yourself of a quiet evening with a strange craving for chicken dinners and county fairs in Iowa and New Hampshire, maybe next summer? Need one of those relaunch books to explain why you're getting back in the game in your country's hour of need?
"It Takes A Spillage."
Father's Day image on top courtesy of Theo
Image below of the O worrying about the oil leak, via Jammie (the point is not that the guy likes golf. Lots of people like golf - most cannot afford to be delivered to the course via helicopter, however. The point is the double standard. What if Bush...):
Saturday, June 19. 2010
 How they produce The Rumford Meteor with a staff of only 72 (Most are Supervisors, Planners and Administrators, but the head count also includes the pimply kid who goes out for coffee, donuts, pizza, cigarettes, and to pick up the police blotter - and the commission-only Head of the Sales Dept. - her photo on right, returning with a bag full of advertising contracts. There is no Editor.) is beyond me.
Tonight, The Meteor is waxing gibbous. One thing Maine needs is one or two knowledgeable Conservative pundits, but I do not know whether such thing exists any more. The Meteor needs to provide one, but what is the right "voice"?
I wonder how many folks in the Great North Woods have broadband and, from my experience with a number of woods-dwelling Down Easters on hunting trips over the years, how many of those Yankee Rednecks give a damn about what is going on outside their cabin or their pick-up. Is alcohol an issue? Um, d'ya think? Meth too, it seems to me. However, most of Maine's population is along the coast (I think. It sounds like something a knowledgeable poster might say, so I made it up). Definitely, in summer.
The Meteor covers the waterfront and, as I have said in the past, sets a standard for local/state news and info that other regional sites may envy - or use as a model. I think local intertube news/info will be the future of the local rags, but I have been wrong once or twice in my life. Sure makes sense to give it a try.
 Mort Zuckerman, Obama supporter: World Sees Obama as Incompetent and Amateur.
A quote:
"There are always two chess games going on. One is on the top of the table, the other is below the table. The latter is the one that counts, but the Americans don't know how to play that game."
Another:
Obama has asserted that America is not at war with the Muslim world. The problem is that parts of the Muslim world are at war with America and the West.
Shucks, who knew? I thought the real world was a college bull session.
Ronald Reagan famously said: “The government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
Reasons the US government should leave the intertunnels alone:
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