Wednesday, April 28. 2010
"You ain't so big, you're just tall that's all."
Probably Reed's best-known song, and it's about work, not love. Everybody can relate. Dylan's "Maggie's Farm" echoes this classic in another way, does it not?
As in many of his recordings, you can hear his wife "Mama" chiming in sometimes.
Many of our readers are impressed by Charles. He has had an interesting life. Here's his Wiki bio.
 City Journal: Preservation Follies - Excessive landmarking threatens to make Manhattan a refuge for the rich.
NASA doubts climate model certainty
BBC: Climate party is winding down
Competition for The Teaching Company: Free Yale intro courses on DVD
Yale bans student-faculty gay sex. (I assume gay sex is included in this.) What about platonic romance?
Why women wear make-up. Villainous
Just what we need: A new mental diagnosis. Computer Stress Syndrome.
Americans, if not Obama, know Israel's strategic value
There is little new in the Arizona law. When I enter a foreign country, I carry a passport. Whether you agree with the law or not, "illegal" means illegal. Americans understand that. Our friend Never Yet Melted sees it differently.
More People Figuring Out that Law School's a Bad Value
Stay away from Mexico
Big biz considering dumping their insurance. Quote:
I’d like to write this off to the law of unintended consequences, but that would be pure nonsense. Not only was this known as a probable outcome, but Democrats lied through their teeth when they denied it. It was and is completely intended. It is the companies, however, that will be demonized for doing precisely what Democrats hoped they’d do (or, one assumes, the penalty for not supplying health care would have been much higher and any tax on Cadillac plans much lower). Single payer, here we come.
From John's Demonizing Goldman Sachs:
I'm not a particular fan of either Goldman Sachs or Congress, but today's hearing confirms that, given a choice, I'd rather have Goldman Sachs regulating Congress than Congress regulating Goldman Sachs. Goldman's employees are much smarter, considerably more honest, and far more likely to have my interests at heart.
Palin:
“I’m sick and tired of Obama and the White House coming out with yet another new crisis that has to be fixed by government sticking it to the people and taking more of what we earn and produce. Instead of allowing our small businesses especially to keep what we earn… But see, to many in the White House including our own president, I don’t know when they’ve run a business. I don’t know when they’ve been a CEO where they had to look out for the bottom line and they had to make payroll and live within their own means with a budget. They’re from government. They’re community organizers. They’ve been spending other people’s money for so long that the free enterprise principles that all of us believe in, it’s all foreign to them.“
The grown-ups of Euroland do not want to further enable the PIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain) in their profligacy, but they are all tied together now, for richer or poorer.
Good summary in The NYT: Greek crisis poised to spread.
Also, good at Mead. He explains why we should care. I don't think Americans do care very much, unless they are in finance.
 Who he?
Dan is running in Southwestern CT against Jim Himes, who washed Chris Shays down the drain in the Obama win.
This November is a chance to remove Himes, a likeable ex-Wall Streeter but a Lefty Pelosi Dem, and to replace him with a new breed of bold Conservative.
Dan has an impressive resume, is an excellent speaker, and a personable fellow. We have met him several times.
He says:
I am running for Congress to restore the values of free enterprise and individual liberty to Washington. Fairfield County families want practical solutions on the economy, healthcare, and transportation. I will use my background as a businessman and a State Senator to implement new ideas to get our economy growing again and create jobs for our families.
All the answers coming out of Washington are for “more government”—whether bailing out banks, taking over auto companies, building record deficits for pork-barrel stimulus, or having government take-over our healthcare system. Our current Congressman, Jim Himes, has been a rubber-stamp for this big government agenda. I believe there is a better way. Through solutions that support small businesses and empower middle class families, I believe that we can get our country back on the right track.
He is trying a 3-day $30,000 money bomb. Send him a few bucks if you can. This could be the year for Blue State Conservatives.
Tuesday, April 27. 2010
Now that ObamaCare restricts the pay of all at health care firms to $500k, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie – struggling with the huge deficits that are causing states to cut basic services -- wants to restrict the pay to executives of non-profits that provide services to the state for aid to 1 million needy families.
Depending on size, pay will be limited to between $105,850 and $141,000.
Further:
Executives are not the only target for contract changes, according to the memo:
• State money shall no longer be used for any employee seeking reimbursement for tuition, textbooks and supplies "unless such courses are required by the contract, licensing certification and Medicaid standards."
• Agency officials must seek state permission before they buy a new vehicle. They must justify its use to fulfill the state contract, demonstrate they have sought three bids, and shall not to exceed $25,000 unless they are buying a passenger van or vehicle for disabled people.
• Agency officials must seek state approval before spending more than $250 per person, per event on travel expenses.
• State money may not be used to defray severance costs unless the employee served more than a year with the company. And that would be capped at two weeks of severance pay and benefits.
Executives can try to make more from private contributions targeted to their salaries, bonuses and benefits. That should be interesting.
As if the US didn’t already have enough lawsuits, and as if excess litigation isn’t one of the prime drivers of medical costs, and as if the Democrats didn’t garner 90% of tort lawyers’ contributions, ObamaCare will create a new boom in lawsuits.
A Qui Tam action is brought by a private citizen against a company for fraudulent claims on a federal agency in violation of the False Claims Act. If triumphant, the claimant gets part of the court award.
To now, it was necessary for the claimant to be the provider or original source of otherwise unknown information. If not, the claim was denied court jurisdiction.
Now, the failure to be the provider or original source will not deny jurisdiction, and should there be such dismissal the government can oppose the dismissal and allow the court case to proceed.
Guitarist and harmonica player Reed was really the first cross-over bluesman. Whether he was marketed as blues, rhythm and blues, or rock and roll, he was really a bluesman all the way. His music feels familiar even to those who have never heard him because so much of his style was borrowed by rockers in the 60s.
He drank too much, died at 51.
Excellent, from Daniel Pipes: In Europe, Remorse Has Turned to Masochism. He nails it. One quote:
... it is Europe’s very readiness to acknowledge its faults that prompts self-hatred, for societies that do not engage in such introspection do not lacerate themselves. Europe’s strength is thus its weakness. Although the continent has “more or less vanquished its monsters,” such as slavery, colonialism, and fascism, it chooses to dwell on the worst of its record. Thus his book’s title, The Tyranny of Guilt. The past, with its violence and aggression, is frozen in time, a burden Europeans expect never to throw off.
Related, Sowell's Misusing History: Inhumanity, like humanity, is universal.
We saw this play in NYC a year or two ago, but now it's back in town at the Westside Theater: The Screwtape Letters.
It is straight from CS Lewis' book. Mrs. BD's lady's Alpha group is going to see it together.
From a piece on dinosaur extinction - my bolds. (h/t, SDA):
''We believe dinosaurs were most likely to be cold-blooded creatures and would have needed the warmth to keep them alive,” he said.
“If they were unable to migrate south they could have been wiped out. Climate change is now very much on the agenda in trying to determine how the dinosaurs became extinct.
“We now believe that they died out gradually and it is very possible that this could have been caused by a series of climatic changes.''
The drop in temperature is thought to have occurred because high levels of CO2 were in the atmosphere which caused global temperatures to rise and polar ice to melt – a phenomenon currently predicted for Earth.
"After a century of épater le bourgeois, why on earth can’t le bourgeois épater l’artiste primitif? And why is the bourgeois and reactionary management of the Museum of Modern Art stifling the artistic creativity of its customers?"
More on the Stanford education prof's failed charter school at Pajamas. A quote:
EPA Academy students are graded on a five-dimensional rubric, based on (1) Personal Responsibility; (2) Social Responsibility; (3) Communication Skills; (4) Application of Knowledge; and (5) Critical and Creative Thinking.
Only 20 percent of the grade is based on knowledge, notes Michele Kerr, who taught an ACT prep course for disadvantaged students at a nonprofit from 2007-09. Compared to district high school students, East Palo Academy tutees had “the lowest skills and the highest grades,” Kerr recalls. Students with high A averages turned out to have very poor reading and math skills, though their writing was relatively strong.
The psychoanalyst Alice Miller has died. She was not an MD. I blame her popular writings - all on the one theme of the evil of parents - for fueling the "victimization" and "trauma" crazes in pop psychology of the late 20th Century.
You can term people who take one idea to explain everything as monomaniacs but, to try to be charitable to the recently dead, I would term it hopelessly if not crazily reductionistic.
In the human soul, easy answers and simple explanations of things never do any good. Her sorts of explanations got their traction by absolving people of their own decisions and choices by blaming others, thus further denigrating the powers and potentials of the human soul.
Blues is not about sadness. Blues is about releasing the energy of true feelings. Blues is about sharing your soul. Nina Simone was one of the best.
Last night's Chuck ending scene melded Nina Simone's Feeling Good with the feelings shared by Chuck and Sarah (IMHO, the hottest, realest woman in any TV series).
You can catch it after the 41st minute:
http://www.nbc.com/chuck/video/chuck-versus-the-honeymooners/1222679/
For the whole Feeling Good, try this YouTube:
The Cigar Bars and Cigar Lounges of NYC.
Plus a reminder: in NYC, despite Nanny Bloomberg, you can still abuse tobacco like an Indian a Native American in the outdoor sections of restaurants and pubs.
Col. Frederick Gustavus Burnaby. What a guy.
A newspaper war: Wall Street Journal revs up New York Times rivalry
Why GM is paying money back
What should be done for these poor souls? There are lots of people out there who want to help them, but they are difficult to help.
Scapegoating Goldman: Best short version at Legal Ins. The bubble was obvious to everybody. If you were long mortgages, it was only rational and responsible to hedge that bet.
Americans seem to prefer legal immigation: 60% of Americans Agree With Arizona Bill… Only 31% Agree With Radicals & Obama
The Dodd Bill is a bailout bill
The real Tea Party agenda isn't particularly radical. Sounds like what ordinary Americans want: Leave us alone and quit doing us "favors." We aren't as dumb as you think.
Name the bird, from this site.
Monday, April 26. 2010
Dr. Merc likes Lady Gaga, and our pal and sometime poster Tom Francis likes Ladytron. Well, Jimmy Reed (1925-1976) is one of my favorites. We'll begin the week with Bright Lights, Big City:
Driscoll: Modern art comes full circle
Green corruption in the White House
What tradition knows: Overcoming Bias
Andy Revkin going after the children
City Journal: The Banality of Race - David Remnick’s life of Obama exemplifies the moral laziness of today’s liberalism.
The normally tepid Douthat on the South Park subject:
This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that bravely trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.
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“We could have an ice age any time.”
I lost all my links, but Bruce sent us this: