Friday, July 23. 2010
Saw many of these in bloom on Cape Cod, growing in sandy dry soil. Seems to be a succulent variant of some wildflower. (I do not know what they are, but I know they are not Joe Pye Weed.)
Thursday, July 22. 2010
I do not know what they are saying or who these people are, but I kinda like the simple folky tune.
Oh. I see. They are a Filipino reggae group. What a world. We love the Filipino people, for several good reasons.
Ah, the Florida Keys.
A tropical island paradise.
I honestly don't know if I could describe it any better than I did in Gift Ideas, in the section on Verizon Wireless:
Even out here in the boonies of the Florida Keys I've had superb results. As the freezing winter temperatures plummet into the low upper-mid 70's, I find myself taking my laptop over to the tiki hut, draping the obligatory floral leis around my neck, grabbing my ukulele, greeting the wahinis with hugs and kisses, then firing up the Verizon Wireless so we tropical islanders can tune in to Weather.com and marvel with wonderment and awe at the winter hell our fellow Americans will endure.
Willingly, I might add.
Yep, this is heaven on earth. Make no mistake about it.
Well, at least until you click on a link and see one of these barreling ass over teakettle your way:
So there's that.
It's hot. Wellfleet would be a good place to be today. In the cool water, floating like flotsam. Plymouth Rock is across the bay, below the horizon. It's a good-sized bay.
For a random beach reading fact via Carpe:
Books sold on the Kindle are now outpacing the hardcover books Amazon sells. In the past month, for every 100 hardcover books sold, there have been 180 Kindle books sold through Amazon.
At NRO:
What’s so remarkable — people of supposedly that high level, opinion-makers and teachers, speaking with unbelievable venom, never crediting the opposition with ideas, sincerity, evidence or principle, talking about them as Nazis.
I was also impressed by the low level of the discussion ... If this is the best liberal journalism can do, that is probably why our side is winning the argument
 From the article:
Some recent surveys have calculated there could be as many as 100 million Chinese Protestants. That would mean that China has more Christians than Communist Party members, which now number 75 million.
Perhaps governments cannot really replace God - as much as they might like to.
Story at many sites, but this via Volokh
 Ever hear of Bikini Ideology? Sounds like envy to me.
What's next in space?
Chesterton on the Three Stages of Conversion (h/t Anchoress)
Oakland allows industrial-scale marijuana farms. Groovy, dude. As if CA didn't have enough stoners.
Poll: Faith in Social Security system tanking
Jobless Giving Up on Obama Economy
Rasmussen: Paul up 8 in Kentucky
Limbaugh responds to JournoList death wish report
AL GORE SEX SCANDAL SHOCKER, POLICE INVESTIGATE TWO MORE! Me so horney.
It’s come to this: Some California civil servants making close to $1 million per year. Also, Oakland’s well-paid police. It's simple plunder of the hapless taxpayers.
Harsanyi: Obama's Faith in Government Force:
...progressives regard government as a moral enterprise. And in church, you gotta have faith.
Rick Moran has no friends, wants no friends. One blogger's personal profile:
...looking at this solitary lifestyle in a different light, it personifies Thoreau’s observation of a life lived in “quiet desperation.” The lack of real friendships in my life - save my lovely Zsu-Zsu who doubles as lover and nursemaid - leaves a hole in the soul that is the largest price one pays for shunning the kind of superficial relationships that pass as friendships. For by shunning all it shuts off the possibility that you will find that diamond in the rough - that “true” friend that brings intimacy without sex and closeness without the kind of cloying stickiness many sexual relationships embody. I stopped looking for that mythical beast long ago and have settled for meeting the greatest minds who ever lived in books, while playing with the ignorant savages who inhabit the more fascinating parts of the internet.
And Washington Reb talks about his view of the world:
I grew up in a time and place where a man had to prove himself. Pretty? No one cared. 'Can you roof a house?' was the relevant question. Rich? Fuck you. 'Are you a man of your word?' is what persons asked about you. Smart? That's nice. 'What have you done for the town lately?' 'Are you pulling your weight?' 'Are you a proud man, or a peacock?' 'A coward, or brave?' Being 70s boys, we were smack dab in the middle between the World War II generation, and what came after. We understood what we were witnessing, though of course we've had nearly 40 years to digest it some. The basic pieces were in play then.
I have a sister who loves to remind me that I was a "hippie" then. What she failed to see then -- what she fails to see now -- is that the Left is composed of folks who are mentally ill. I don't think there's any one cause of it, but if I had to put my finger on it, I'd say they're crybaby washrags. They needed to be spanked more.
Inconvenient satellite data disappears
Also, I like this one via Powerline:
ERIC ALTERMAN, AUTHOR, WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA?: Fucking Nascar retards...
Wednesday, July 21. 2010
As an antidote, I assume, to political insanity (like my shirt and duck hunting posts were today) Buddy emails this timely post:
Oscar Greeley Hammerstein's birthday was a few days ago. The New Yorker wrote nearly 1000 songs in his career. In the "Rogers & Hammerstein" partnership enterprise, he wrote the lyrics while Richard Rogers wrote the melody.
OH's parents were immigrants - father a German Jew, mother a - Scots-English (the son was raised Episcopalian). The father is credited with inventing the 'pie in the face' vaudeville routine.
Oscar pronounced his name not as 'hammer-styne' but in the German 'ohmer-schteen'. He spanned the time of America's great rise, born in Belle-Epoch 1895, and left this earth in in the JFK era, as we began to go the moon, in 1960.
Only in America.
And this clip from the eponymous 1955 film of the wartime Broadway hit (it opened in bloody and depressing 1943, when the Axis was yet rampant, and won a Special Pulitzer in the dark year 1944) depicts a time from the turn of the 19th to 20th century.
So we get a layered helping of entertainment here - the great talent and performance, but also three looks at America, all roughly a half-century apart per each.
Wiki doesn't (but should) mention that the familiar hollywood supporting actors are by-and-large not professional singers. The effect of the common (AKA "not all that technically good") voice seems to "break the fourth wall" and charm the audience plumb silly.
Of course the leads, Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, are sher-nuff professional singers (Jones makes her debut here, but still you have to call that voice 'professional').
 For generations (since 1818), those who need to look well put-together but not Wall Street glam have relied on Brooks Brothers for their basics.
I kinda like the feel of a rumpled normal cotton Brooks shirt, but Mrs. BD and Mrs. Gwynnie recently chatted about how much they can save in dry cleaner bills with the Brooks Non-Iron shirts, which can be washed in the washer and refuse to reach that rumpled look.
The slim-fits and traditional fits (many of them) are half-off right now.
I ask "Why do we always have to spend money to save money?"
"Now it is only tactical."
Maybe Leftism really is a mental illness. I have always regarded that claim as hyperbole, while acknowledging the totalitarian impulses implicit in "Progressivism."
"Who are these people?", as a snobby pal often says in his obnoxious way. But really, who do these people think they are? And why do they think they are better or smarter than me? I do not want to control them, so why do they want to control what I do or read or think? It is strange.
He says:
Sean Hannity says that journalism died in 2008, when the mainstream media discarded even the pretense of professionalism and objectivity for the sake of installing an unqualified, ultra-radical community organizer in the White House.
It's time to plan hunting trips. I know of two guide services that host Cape Cod duck hunting - mostly, but not only, sea ducks. November-January:
Cape Cod Sportsmen and East Coast Guide Service.
The latter even offers an Eider recipe: Eider Cape Cod. If you aren't planning to eat 'em, you shouldn't shoot 'em.
Here's one of Capt. Perez' Eider hunts in Cape Cod. These guys are good shots, and make it look far easier than it is even though Eiders decoy readily:
Character is what we do in the dark when no one is looking. It is defining.
Today, there's less darkness and more lights.
That may be a hindrance to some, sometimes justifiably and sometimes not, but that's the way it is, and it is preferable to have more character than less, even if forced by fear of exposure. Character is innate as well as a developed habit.
This is particularly so if one ventures into the public arena, as recognized in both our libel laws and common sense. (See here.)
Many of the NAACP meeting attendees openly expressed racism. Many of the Journolist members openly expressed collusion to suppress news via their positions.
That's free speech, and it carries accountability. Furthermore, those among both conclaves, and others, who don't speak up and out are complicit by their silence or non-exit, red-herrings thrown on the path aside and further condemning. And, Journolist founder Ezra Klein similarly misses the point when he says, "If I had thought there was some deep and dark conspiracy to protect, I can guarantee you I would've been a bit more selective." The point is that he founded and ran a selected "progressive" group of many influentials, and their views - although at times differing - were secretly shared to advance their causes. Klein says they should "assume privacy." Nonsense and sophistry, as usual, from Klein's immaturity of age and character.
Conspiracies of silence are as damning as conspiracies of silencing or nefarious abuses.
Insty's link says it has some, but I very much doubt it. Internet legs maybe, but does anybody expect the MSM itself to take on an expose of itself?
This is like Climategate - just some silly emails. Isn't it?
Add: What a fine "conversation about race" the country is having. I want people to shut up about race. It's a dumb topic. I see no improvement in the level of political discourse.
 From Classical:
I saw a study once that in the US in the 1700s about 1/3 of the brides were already knocked up...
You want to do something about Western morality? Forget gays. The bigger hole is adultery and divorce. If we could bring back stoning for adultery and 40 lashes for fornication we might get somewhere. It all started going bad long before women got the vote. But it didn't help.
Grim has a good site but he appears to lack permalinks. Scroll down for Let's Make Sex a Lot More Heartless
Breitbart's dirty trick? Maybe dirtier than he realized. Says Lowry:
... her full speech is heartfelt and moving. It's the tale of someone overcoming hatred and rancor when she had every reason not to.
Sowell: Race Card Fraud
ADHD and marriage
What is being sold here?
Tenure is dying
Afghanistan 113 years ago
Pethokoukis: Just how high would taxes need to go?
Rabbi Shmuley: No Holds Barred: What's up with Tom Friedman?
Tiger: Health care "reform": What if the individual mandate is unconstitutional?
Are unemployment checks turning into welfare? Next step, permanent unemployment checks.
Political snobbery
Hungary's IMF revolt augurs ill for Greece (h/t EU Ref)
JournoList Members Discussed Whether the Government Should Shut Down Fox News. It's an ugly story. At Powerline, The Vast Left-Wing Journalists' Conspiracy
MAYBE we should hire the guys who run Wal-Mart to fix the economy.
Tuesday, July 20. 2010
 Medicine has always abounded with quackery, and placebo effect is real. Hope springs eternal...
However, when tax dollars are expected to pay for it, it's another matter: Europeans Cast Critical Eye on Homeopathy.
In a free country, folks are welcome to buy their own quackery if they want, on their own nickel. Most docs privately think of Chiropractic as quackery, but the Chiropractors have a lobby in DC, and I believe there is a legal injunction against MDs terming chiropractors "quacks" in public. They sometimes do help people with sore backs. I am just imagining the debates about whether federal guidelines will include crystal therapy and massage therapy.
American medicine itself has little intentional quackery, but many treatments which are of dubious value. For examples, futile treatments for terminal cancer, or those $15,000 treatments for "Chronic Lyme". Thus far, in America you can pretty much get whatever medical treatment you want regardless of its usefulness for you. Problem is, others are usually paying for it.
My prediction is that government-controlled medical care will be determined by politics and, to some extent, politically- or bureaucratically-oriented docs. That is not good medicine.
Good medicine is individualized, not based on statistics.
Congressional intent and judicial interpretation of the first amendment may conflict. Two recent examples:
The US Senate just passed by unanimous consent the Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Act, HR 2765 (SPEECH Act). It is expected to pass the House. There’s little reason that the president shouldn’t sign off.
My good friend Rachel Ehrenfeld, doughty immigrant that she is, took our Constitution to heart and waged an at first solitary campaign to restrict “libel tourism” when she was its victim for a book she’d written exposing the enemy-funding financial dealings of a wealthy Arab. She acquired powerful allies, across the political spectrum, until New York State passed a law that required judgments in foreign courts where our level of free speech protections do not rule to meet US standards in order to be enforced in the US.
Below the fold is Rachel’s press release. Here are the AP and here the AFP news reports.
In past conversations with Rachel I’ve had some concerns about how US standards of free speech may be interpreted by the courts. Those in positions to know, she says, feel US standards of libel are well-enough defined so there’s confidence in prevailing without undue blockage of the Congressional intent. So be it to see.
Continue reading "Free Speech Limits?: Libel Tourism And Stolen Valor"
From Applebaum's A government of the people's every wish? which we linked this morning:
Americans -- with their lawsuit culture, their safety obsession and, above all, their addiction to government spending programs -- demand more from their government than just about anybody else in the world. They don't simply want the government to keep the peace and create a level playing field. They want the government to ensure that every accident and every piece of bad luck is prevented, or that they are fully compensated in the event something goes wrong. And if the price of their house drops, they will hold the government responsible for that, too.
The story is being posted all over. This bit at Surber's post:
Nixon had his White House Plumbers.
Obama has his JournoList.
And yes, Obama’s campaign coordinated this. Three-quarters of a billion dollars buys a lot of people, although not all of these schleps had to be bribed.
Hey remember Michael Corleone’s line to Tom Hagen: “Don’t we have some reporters on our payroll?”
Wish I had time to discuss today, but I don't.
This reminds me of a Winston Churchill story that Stephen Fry likes to tell. During Churchill's last stint as Prime Minister, in the fifties, he was regretfully informed that one of his backbench MPs had been arrested the previous night for exposing himself on Hampstead Heath. After a pause, Churchill asked about the weather. Was it not very cold last night? Indeed sir, one of the coldest nights on record. Said Churchill after another thoughtful pause: "It makes you proud to be British."
via Samizdata
 All the docs are passing around this article from the CSM. "In a landmark Idaho case, the Justice Department forced a group of doctors to accept government price controls."
Is it illegal collusion for docs to pass it around?
Mad Men vs. Breaking Bad
Bad news: Racist USDA Hack Speaks With NAACP
Going after the rich again. Jules
Unions hire nonunion pickets to protest nonunion jobs
Insty: HOW WE GOT A FINANCIAL CRISIS
Kaus interviewed at Reason on unions and immigration
Gateway: Racist Latino Group Harasses Tea Party: “You’re Too White. Go Back to Europe.”
Applebaum: Americans want big government
Laser used to shoot down planes
WSJ: Lost in Taxation - The IRS's vast new ObamaCare powers.
A new luxury mall in Gaza
Government-funded jobs training does no good
Haiti's real problem
Samuelson: As Massachusetts health 'reform' goes, so could go Obamacare
Via Scott at Powerline:
It is extraordinary, and I think unprecedented, that a free press has voluntarily transformed itself into something not very different from the controlled press in an undemocratic country. But that is what has happened. There are, to be sure, alternative sources of information and commentary in the US for anyone who seeks them out. (There are often such sources in undemocratic countries as well: foreign broadcasts, "underground" or samizdat circulation, and so on.) But the mainline, and still collectively very powerful, media are overwhelmingly a One-Party media. It needs to be said plainly.
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