Friday, March 26. 2010
The Jewish holiday of Passover begins this year next Monday night with the first Seder. (Translation = Order or sequence and content of the prayers, symbolic foods, and retelling of the Exodus, with emphasis on educating the children.) Many Christians also celebrate the Passover Seder, which was their Last Supper.
Less known is that the Exodus was central to the minds of the new United States' Founding Fathers. The first committee of the Continental Congress assigned to design our Great Seal, the symbol of our sovereignty, was comprised of three of the five men who drafted the Declaration of Independence: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. Franklin chose a design of "Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his Hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to express that he acts by Command of the Deity." The motto: "Rebellion To Tyrants Is Obedience To God," which was later adopted by Jefferson as his personal motto.
The above is drawn from this website about the US' Great Seal. Click around the site. It is fascinating.
Here's a relevant quote:
"All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reaches us, it must spring up amongst us. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher." – Abraham Lincoln
 Canada opts for nice state-enforced conformity. Be nice, or we'll kill you hateful bastards.
Bully State insanity du jour: EU wants to regulate bread. These people clearly have nothing to do. Let them eat cake.
Change: Personal Income Drops Across the Country
Krauthammer: The bureaucrats will decide your fate. I have a better idea: Save some $ and pay a private doc or private clinic for your care, and avoid the government plantation.
MA rebellion against Obamacare medical device tax. Is that, like, a Boston Tea Party?
Fidel Castro Praises Obama & Dems on Nationalizing Health Care
MSNBC: It's time for socialism. Groovy, dude. It has worked so well everywhere else. Let's begin by making profits for MSNBC illegal. For the Greater Good.
Pajamas: Is Anthropogenic Global Warming the New Intelligent Design?
Related: Add to the list - global warming causes street brawls. Everybody knows that. When it's nice out, everybody wants to go out and start a fight. Who doesn't?
PBS' Jim Lehrer gets it totally wrong. WTH? Wasn't he alive then? Or is he spinning lying? It was the Repubs who made it possible to pass the civil rights legislation in Congress. Also, Lincoln was a Repub, remember?
Health care and the Bully State. h/t Q&O's When Nanny Becomes Bully
Related: Big Baloney fans fear of conservatives
Re-posting: Milton Friedman on Solzhenitsyn on government health care
John takes on the AP's insanity over Jerusalem
Thursday, March 25. 2010
The subject is Real Estate in the New York Times, and the treatment of it in this article is architecture. This short filmette from the article is well done, but (more below)
that was my high school, the largest in the country. The NYT misses the more important backstory.
Winners of the most Westinghouse and National Merit Scholarships were from Erasmus Hall High School. (My favorite alumnus was Moe Howard.) With changing demographics and theories of education, the city has shut it down as unmanageable. The building on the corner was a Yeshiva in my time. The grade school (P.S.6 for public school #6, in NYC parlance) sits on what was a parking lot in my time, for people who flocked to the then excellent shopping, now mostly gone and replaced with Carribbean shops, and three palace like movie theaters on Flatbush Avenue, now shuttered. What's now called the Flatbush Town Hall, built in 1875, was a police station, and we knew all the beat cops who looked out for us. Down the block on Church Avenue was Holy Cross, church and school, now closed. If you look in the upper right corner of the shot above you'll see the steeple of the Dutch Reform Church, built in 1654.
In my time, one out of every seven families in the US traced its family to Brooklyn, a major settling spot from the 1600s to 1900s for immigrants who went on to build America. The bones that made Flatbush, at the heart of Brooklyn, famous are still there. The spirit and lifeblood isn't.
About half of those touted by the Democrats to gain more medical care coverage will be in Medicaid.
In California, per the Los Angeles Times, that's estimated to add $3-billion to its budget spending, already $20-billion in deficit. Former Governor Moonbeam, now Attorney General, Jerry Brown, now running for an encore as governor, has not joined other states' attorney generals in challenging ObamaCare.
In South Carolina, it is estimated to add 10% to its budget spending, reports its capital's newspaper The State.
In my small California town, the PTA is urgently asking parents to kick in an extra $25-thousand to support non-core but valuable instruction slated for state funded cuts. No mention of cutting teachers' rich benefits, or the staff protected by unions from being cut by being slotted into useless holding posts. I wonder how long it'll be before my neighborhood's very involved Moms and Pops, and those elsewhere, will connect the dots.
Well-organized amateur gardeners keep some sort of calendar or journal of annual tasks to be done (eg April: prune forsythias when blooms done), and a record of things planted (with exact names and maintenance needs).
I keep a casual record and to-do list on my computer with links to tips and info that I tend to forget (I do have a lot of plants with Special Needs), but some more serious folks prefer these pre-printed formats.
Quiz here.
At Am Thinker, Downsizing America's Economy. Honestly, I do not think the Left gives a darn.
 Michael Yon's independent dispatches from the war fronts are invaluable, and worth hitting his tip jar to support.
His latest, for example, addresses the political economics of suicide bombing:
Suicide attackers come in different “grades.” Some are illiterate, unsophisticated people, unsuited for complex targeting. A plotter could not expect to select an illiterate village boy from the hinterlands of Zabul Province to move to Florida, obtain a place to live and begin flight training to crash airplanes into buildings.
Young boys and women come cheaper, used for tactical targets. The college-educated are reserved for the more strategic. Some are strapped into locked vests or their families held hostage, but most are part of a cult.
Dogs have been trained to carry bombs to attack enemies for decades. The Soviets and others have used dogs as low-tech smart bombs. Yet canine platoons likely would rebel if they caught scent they were being duped to die.
Today, more sophisticated people employ men (mostly) to deliver bombs in Afghanistan. Gullible souls are selected, conditioned, trained and deployed. Malleable minds are identified then loaded with psychic software that uses their minds to create a vision. Evil persons of superior intellect identify the raw material—that raw material might be an engineer from a stable family—and trains them to fetch myths.
But, even cults have their limits of utility. The Taliban are Jim Jonesing themselves.
The impact of their KoolAid on Americans backfired:
There was a time when Americans seemed to view suicide attacks as a sign of the complete conviction of the enemy, an immutable dedication to their cause that many people found terrifying and cause for soul-searching. “What could we have done to provoke such anger?” Yet with time, American views of suicide attacks have matured and become more grounded....Overuse of suicide attackers does not appear to cause Americans to cower, but to evoke Americans to want to kill the perpetrator.
As it is did on Iraqis and now Afghans:
The Taliban’s efforts at repackaging themselves as kinder, gentler mass-murderers is failing. Their suicide bombing campaign is backfiring. The Taliban are losing their cool. Something is in the air. The enemy remains very deadly, yet the scent of their weakness is growing stronger while our people close in.
McCotter talks just like a Maggie's Farmer. Government is a special interest. h/t, Sissy's Are tea parties like sex?
- Why we dream
- From a piece on psychiatric diagnosis, a quote from Carl Jung:
It is generally assumed in medical circles that the examination of a patient should lead to the diagnosis of his illness, so far as this is possible at all, and that with the establishment of the diagnosis an important decision has been arrived at as regards prognosis and therapy. Psychotherapy forms a startling exception to this rule: the diagnosis is a highly irrelevant affair since, apart from affixing a more or less lucky label to a neurotic condition, nothing is gained by it, least of all as regards prognosis and therapy. - C.G. Jung
- More Mind and Brain links at Dr. X
From Newsmax:
According to (Dick) Armey, the common theme of Democrats' initiatives, from near-universal healthcare to environmental legislation to card check rules limiting a worker's right to a private ballot on unionization, is the establishment of new categories of government-dependent citizens who are more likely to cast ballots for Democrats.
Wednesday, March 24. 2010
Jesse Abbate with Glock 18 on full auto:
This was an ad for a vacuum cleaner. I need one of those Rowenta vacuums:
In Keep Your Stinking Paws Off My Body and Out of My Pocket, You Damn Dirty Apes!, Gagdad Bob comes down from his double-wide cloud and begins thus:
Know what I hate? I hate it when the left drags me and everything else down to the crudest level of raw power politics, so that I can't ignore them even if I want to. The point is, real Americans mostly just want to be left alone by the State, just as they would be pleased if criminals would refrain from breaking into their cars and houses.
But just as we must take precautions against criminals and sociopaths, our well intended liberal fascists force us to take steps against them. Who would want to spend a moment thinking about the likes of Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid unless they were in your face, trying to purloin your slack? What did I ever do to them? Nothing. Indeed, I pay their salary and for their travel, retirement, and healthcare (hair plugs and botox injections included). All I ask in return is that they leave me alone.
But no, they can't do that. They can't keep their hands off my body and out of my pocketbook...
Hate-filled anti-haters. Good old Ann is a born comedienne and a mocker of the status quo - sort of my Lennie Bruce. I can't believe these jerks who have no sense of fun and who cannot take a jab.
She is having good fun with this.
"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic."
John F. Kennedy, via Media Mythbusters
 What I most value in websites and commentary is to be given a new idea to ponder.
It's fine to have your own ideas reinforced and expanded, but a fresh thought or image is a precious thing. I'm sure everybody agrees that, since the Progressive Era of Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the government's solution to any problem or issue is more government. Government is a like a handyman with only one tool - a hammer.
So I liked our link to Mead this morning: Why can't DC think outside the blue box?
Sure, the Repubs have had some good ideas about health care which entailed less government, like permitting interstate insurance purchasing, but, in general, policy ideas from DC entail simply more governance, and stale ideas of government power and control, and government largesse, from the late 1800s and the 1930s (see Rep. Dingell's astonishingly honest statement posted today: It's taken a long time to 'control the people').
We need more new ideas to unleash the powers of the people to make their own way and to make their own choices. Prosperity and opportunity comes from the new/old ideas of freedom.
Government hammers and government cheese are not fresh ideas: they go back at least to the Pharaohs. What our Founders came up with is revolutionary today.
$3-trillion of actual public pension liabilities on top of $trillions of actual ObamaCare costs and $trillions of ObamaCare taxes.
All private and public pension funds took a shellacking over the past few years. Tougher accounting rules are leading private pension funds to decrease risk, and thus the required contributions, by reducing their percentage of funds in stocks. Public pension funds, by contrast, are increasing the risks they are taking, to reduce voting taxpayers’ sticker shock at the unsustainable promises made to government employees.
Greenwich Associates, one of the top investment research firms, calls it a “swing-for-the-fences” attempt to avoid fiscal realities.
Public funds appear to be banking on the fact that the investment strategies they are implementing will help shore up solvency ratios by generating returns that far outpace the market. Municipal pension funds last year said they expect their investment portfolios to beat relevant benchmarks by 160 basis points — up from a 132 bps expectation in 2008. Public funds with assets of $500 million or less increased their stated expected outperformance to a staggering 180 basis points in 2009 from an already aggressive 135 bps in 2008. "These are very aggressive expectations," says Greenwich Associates consultant Chris McNickle. "Most investment managers struggle to generate the levels of outperformance expected by institutional investors; it would be rarer still for an entire portfolio to achieve that level of outperformance for any number of years." [Note: bps = 1/100th of 1%, so 180bps = 1.8%]
The American Enterprise Institute’s study says that, contrary to public pension funds’ official accounting that they are about $½-trillion in actuarial deficit, their actual deficit is closer to $3 trillion.
The problem is fundamental: According to accounting rules adopted by the states, a public sector pension plan may call itself "fully funded" even if there is a better-than-even chance it will be unable to meet its obligations….
Public pension plans are hiding behind unrealistically low deficit figures. This allows policy makers to dodge difficult choices today at the cost of a much heavier burden on taxpayers in the future.
Today’s California Field Poll cooperates in the sham. In the face of a projected $20-billion shortfall, expected to continue in future years, Californians are more likely to support budget cuts than two-years ago, but still only two areas gain even marginal majority support for cuts, prisons and parks. Notably lacking from the poll questions of areas to cut is public employee pensions.
Some states and localities are trying to make adjustments to future pension liabilities to their employees, but the adjustments are relatively minor in comparison to the burden on and cuts to other government services.
Top that off with the new huge budget burdens upon the states mandated by ObamaCare’s expansion of Medicaid eligibility. Fourteen states are already suing to block ObamaCare’s effects on the states. For example, the Christian Science Monitor reports:
The suit says that, under the new law, Medicaid rolls in Florida are expected to increase dramatically. The corresponding soaring costs [already 26 percent of Florida’s annual budget] will fall increasingly on the Florida treasury, but state officials will have less authority to set priorities….
The lawsuit says this amounts to an unconstitutional exercise of federal power that violates principles of federalism protected in the 10th Amendment. It says the healthcare reform bill commandeers the states and their employees as agents of the federal government’s regulatory scheme, and that it does so at the state’s own cost.
Actually, at the cost of schools, roads, policing, and other high-priority government services. The number of government employees, however, keeps increasing while the number of taxpaying workers decreases and their taxes increase.
Wake up and smell the tea.
 Our pal Anchoress is doing a Lenten retreat day today with posting all day long.
As the man says, the beginning of wisdom is the awe of God.
 Science museums tamed by agendas
Re the anti-fat craze:
A world in which in many nations it is normal for the poor to be fat is a utopia by any measure from the perspective of someone who lived in 1900.
So true. That was when they had the term "prosperously plump." Now people spend thousands to try not to be plump, and the stats say the "poor" are the most plump. Why that is, I do not know. What I do know is that body lard is unattractive to me. If people want to be fat, though, it's their choice and I would never hold it against them.
Why Germany would decide to further enable Greece's socialism and corruption is beyond me. The NYT thinks they should.
Althouse: Are tea parties racist? Related: Figures. NY Times Still Pushing Bogus Tea Party N*gger Story Despite Video Proof That It Was Made Up
Conservative vs. Leftist industries in the US. h/t Chicago Boyz
Diversity training doesn't work
Amusing: Coulter to file grievance with Canadian human rights
At the time of the American Revolution
"Americans were the most prosperous people in the world, and also the lowest taxed. In fiscal terms the rebellion was inspired by ambition rather than hardship, by a desire not for financial freedom but for more financial freedom. This push for opportunity spurred people's envy of success, their scorn for failure, and their increasingly dubious view of their compatriots' integrity."
Why isn't this guy in jail?
From the Chicago Trib in As America Trots Down The Same Doomed Path, Chicago Tribune Notices Illinois Is Broke:
State government’s free-fall into insolvency was designed intentionally and executed methodically. Over the years, legislators devoted more to hoarding power and ensuring their re-election than to smart governance. They repeatedly created employee benefits, entitlement coverage and spending obligations that the people of Illinois cannot pay as costs come due.
9th Circuit nominee John Liu says he “envisions the judiciary…as a culturally situated interpreter of social meaning.” Is he a social worker, a forensic Psychiatrist, or a nut?
Image via Protein:
WSJ: Why ObamaCare makes us nostalgic for the Cold War.
Good summary of the reconciliation bill at Hennessey
Related: I am going to let 3 guys go
Mead: Why can't DC think outside the blue box?
“Already Insured? Get Ready to Pay More”
Free Viagra is in the health bill? How about penile enlargement? Every guy wants that.
In Health Bill, Obama Attacks Wealth Inequality. Duh. But not by making it easier for people to create wealth - if wealth is what they want. No, just by taking mine and giving it to somebody else, preferably to a Dem voter.
Tuesday, March 23. 2010
I guess it's a motorcycle. The cowbell is a nice touch. We believe that these jolly good folks in their Sunday Best are the Maggie's demographic.
Your Pennies at Work: UNICEF Funds Hate TV for Palestinian Kids:
"So the next time anyone — even someone short and cute — asks you for pennies for UNICEF, tell them about PYALARA and Palestinian hate TV for kids, and ask them to donate their allowances to another worthier children’s charity."
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