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. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
We only got 6 inches of a very light, fluffy, snow. As I shook the sleep from my head yesterday and prepared to shovel the walk and driveway (I do not own a snowblower, and don't intend to until my back or heart tell me it's time), there was a knock on my door. Two young men, probably in 7th or 8th grade, as near as I can tell, stood with shovels offering to shovel out the house.
When they lived at home, I'd try to convince my less intrepid boys to do the same thing, to no avail (some of us have that entrepreneurial gene, others don't). As much as I enjoy the effort of digging and spending time outside, I was pleased to see younger folk scrambling for a buck. I paid them $30 and they cleared the walk and driveway in about 40 minutes. I don't even have to listen to people complain that I didn't pay minimum wage. Though if I'm ever up for public office this may haunt me as I didn't pay their taxes.
What really surprised me was they asked for my phone number, in case they get another snow day they can call to ask if I need to be shoveled. After checking with their parents, I agreed to give them the house number. Norman Rockwell is not dead, no matter how much our politicians try to kill his vision of our nation.
We have become a soft people. Kids once might walk great distances to school, men marched a hundred miles to fight bloody battles, and, believe it or not, for most of history, no one had modern medical care. Now a winter storm means we hunker down as if a Viking raid is nigh.
Insty: "Despite their superficial attachment to multiculturalism, our elites don’t really want to think of other cultures as, you know, thinking differently, for fear that it might somehow be racist to take that into account."
The p.c. style of politics has one serious, possibly fatal drawback: It is exhausting. Claims of victimhood that are useful within the left-wing subculture may alienate much of America. The movement’s dour puritanism can move people to outrage, but it may prove ill suited to the hopeful mood required of mass politics. Nor does it bode well for the movement’s longevity that many of its allies are worn out. “It seems to me now that the public face of social liberalism has ceased to seem positive, joyful, human, and freeing,” confessed the progressive writer Freddie deBoer. “There are so many ways to step on a land mine now, so many terms that have become forbidden, so many attitudes that will get you cast out if you even appear to hold them. I’m far from alone in feeling that it’s typically not worth it to engage, given the risks.” Goldberg wrote recently about people “who feel emotionally savaged by their involvement in [online feminism] — not because of sexist trolls, but because of the slashing righteousness of other feminists.” Former Feministing editor Samhita Mukhopadhyay told her, “Everyone is so scared to speak right now.”
That the new political correctness has bludgeoned even many of its own supporters into despondent silence is a triumph, but one of limited use.
David J. Theroux, founder and president of The Independent Institute and the C.S. Lewis Society of California, discusses the writings of C.S. Lewis and Lewis's views on liberty, natural law and statism.
Wasn't even a storm, much less a blizzard - just an ordinary New England winter snow dump. No ferocious winds, no 2-3 feet of snow. No big deal, a nice treat for the ski areas but a bummer for those with flights planned.
Who do you blame for all the stormophobia these days? Drudge? Weather Channel? What?
The pols over-hype these things so they won't be caught being wrong. The news over-hypes them so you will keep your TV and radio turned on. Of course it does make sense to try to keep drivers off the roads for a few hours with big snows so the plows can do their work efficiently.
The driving is fine out there this morning. Everybody without a government job is going to work this morning.
Obama, the Committed Income-Redistributionist (Though the Media Swore He Was No Such Thing!) Now Expressly Going After the Middle Class' Education Savings to Shower Money on His Constituents
Hey - stock up on terlet paper and canned goods! NYC grocery stores cleaned out. Sheesh. Where do these weenies come from? If you run low on caviar, go to a restaurant.
I wasn't angry at all, Dr. Dean, but that comment did annoy me. Saw the movie last night with friends. It was ok, not a great film by any means from a film or drama standpoint, repetitive, I thought, but certainly exciting at times. Cowboys and Indians, on steroids. I have heard from those in the know that it does capture the reality of what Fallujah was like so they did have some good advisers on set. Urban combat in a hostile and sneaky environment in which nobody can be trusted except your buddies.
The film is not about politics at all. It's just about a certain kind of warfare through one man's eyes. Sultan said this: "Hollywood tried to “Vietnamize” Iraq in the popular imagination. American Sniper shows they failed." Well, I dunno. We won in Vietnam, then we gave it away. We sort-of won in Iraq, but they couldn't keep it without us. A lot of these crazy, unstable places in the world are tar babies. Is it worth it? You tell me.
I would have been interested in what Kyle's PTSD was about, but I didn't read the book. It would have been good to include more about sniper rifles, windage, distance shooting, etc. Perhaps what I left thinking about most was that these servicemen in the movie, SEALS, Marines, etc. - the sharp end of the spear - do not so much do heroism as they do a professional risky job for which they are highly-trained in body, mind, heart, and soul. Yes, I think that feeling of professionalism and trust in buddies is accurate, and is what most stuck with me.
Mental-health practitioners whose clients kill themselves can face stigma from their colleagues, lawsuits, and a toll on their own psyches—making them less likely to take on suicidal patients who need their help.
Unlike most other medical specialties, where deaths are routine, suicide is imagined to be preventable. Very often it is not, any more than death from most cancers can be prevented. If all suicides were caused by simple depressions curable by a pill, that would be different. However, it's not like that. Intractable, relentless emotional pain is only one of many paths to suicide.
Like most Psychiatrists, I have had a number of them in my practice. It happens if you take on difficult cases or cover ERs. Despite all I know about suicide, it still does shake one's confidence and excites the ambulance-chasers. Most suicides, of course, never seek any help from physicians, and some who do, lie.
Don't be surprised if Maggie's servers go down tonight or tomorrow. If so, it will be because of the wind, not the snow. It's the wind that breaks things with a Nor'easter.
Doesn't dying suck enough, unless you are in terrible shape?
Tomasky is in favor of death tax. He'd like the government to take most or all of your estate when you croak, and makes a moral case for it.
Leviathan will eat all he can, and it is never enough for him and never will be. There should be no death tax. Family, and free choice in saving and spending, trumps government. I can make moral cases in opposition to Tomasky. For starters:
- That money has already been taxed once. Why a double jeopardy?
- One reason people work and save is to provide for family and future. Isn't less dependency on government a good thing? In my view, more wealthy families are a good thing. The more, the better. They invest, and if they are not financially successful on their own, at least they do not become dependent on everybody else.
- Who is the government to tell me how much is "enough"?
- Despite Tomasky's dismissal of the loss of family farms and family businesses to pay taxes, I have seen it happen, and sadly. A damn shame.
- Very wealthy families (eg Kennedys, Rockefellers, Kerry-Heinzes, Clintons, etc) find ways around it. Middle class people with small businesses, farms, or small collections of real estate or gas stations, cannot.
Add your own arguments, for or against, in the comments.
The global cooling we are experiencing inspired me to consider some truly fine cool-weather all-white breakfast eats which are not easily found in Yankee-land. The good stuff that sticks to your arteries ribs and warms you from the inside.
Creamed chipped beef on toast is the fine old Yankee version of the southland's biscuits 'n gravy. Both have done wonders for warming the hearts and narrowing the arteries of generations of American boys. Add some potatoes and you have the perfect meal for a lumberjack or hunter.
While apple pie is an old-time Yankee breakfast staple, it has been replaced long ago by eggs, toast, and bacon, maybe a chunk of fruit, and preferably home fries with ketchup on them. Not Heinz 57, though - it's not my job to feed John Kerry.
Some people eat cereal for breakfast. Why? Because Dr. John Kellogg, a health-food charlatan in the 1800s, told them to. Zero nutrition. Breakfast cereal is a fraud and a scam, unless it's plain grits or cream of wheat or oatmeal. The crunchy granola stuff? Well, I thought the guy who discovered that you could sell people plain water was a genius, but the people who decided to sell guinea pig food to humans was his creative equal.
(At Maggie's Farm, we are also fond of fish for breakfast, like the Brits. Kippers. Or a lighty sauteed trout someone has caught early, sprinkled with parsley. Or left-over broiled salmon.)
The chipped beef was always a boarding school standard, and half loved it and half barfed to look at it. It does look like vomit, but it's great stuff. It's a gourmet's delight, but nobody makes it anymore.
When I did my time south of the Mason-Dixon, a local favorite was hot dog gravy on biscuits. Grits on the side, of course. Everything white. Not a refined breakfast, just gravy made with supermarket hot dogs instead of sausage. A truly revolting flavor unless you grew up in the hills and hollers, but it will fend off hunger for hours. I prefer my Sabretts on a bun at Yankee Stadium. But other sorts of southern gravy, made with ham or sausage, are just fine. I won't presume to offer a biscuit 'n gravy recipe, because every Southern Mom has her own. Well, here's a Virginia one from someone's Grandma.
Biscuits 'n gravy, and grits. Serious food for the soul.
Image: New Hampshire chipped beef on English muffins - with home fries. They don't do grits up north (except in Italian homes and restaurants, where they like to call grits "polenta") and it's a damn shame. Good stuff.
Now that we have considered difficulties in the idea of progress, it is time to enter the politics of progress. Progress reduces the scope of politics and thus minimizes the relevance of the common good. The common good tends to become the sum of individual benefits, in which the “common good” is that of individuals similarly benefited, and not sharing and cooperating in a common life. Government promises security—in comfort, of course, not bare survival—for individuals as such; it places this goal above promoting a certain democratic way of life. Americans learn to put their security, meaning each one’s own security, first—ahead of public-spirited thoughts and actions for the whole. Consider Social Security, America’s largest entitlement, which actually individualizes society, rendering security less “social,” by giving each retired worker independent means. Social Security is quite different from the idea of “national security,” which brings Americans together in a whole. The democracy of progressives leads toward the society that Tocqueville described as the soft despotism of “individualism,” in which individuals, out of a sense of their own impotence in the face of vast social change, excuse themselves from pleasures and sacrifices prompted by public-spiritedness.
In AARP Magazine (!), the not-retired Bob Dylan Does the American Standards His Way - In his first interview in nearly three years, the legendary singer-songwriter talks about his new disc, ‘Shadows in the Night,’ his love for Frank Sinatra and about life in his 70s
Goldberg: "The “Life of Julia” was nothing more than an argument for the federal government to replace the functions once performed by family and community. "
Gorn is a graduate student at Columbia University... Her "areas of work" are "geography from the perspective of Marxist philosophy, social movements, autonomous labour movements, health, and the environment..."
Whew. She must be really, really smart. Wonder what department she is in. Moonbat Studies?
Dylan's recording on Empire Burlesque is better and deeper than this one with Patti Smith, but this is all I could find.
The remarkable lyrics:
Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riverside They're drinking up and walking and it is time for me to slide I live in another world where life and death are memorized Where the earth is strung with lover's pearls and all I see are dark eyes.
A cock is crowing far away and another soldier's deep in prayer Some mother's child has gone astray, she can't find him anywhere But I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise Whom nature's beast fears as they come and all I see are dark eyes.
They tell me to be discreet for all intended purposes They tell me revenge is sweet and from where they stand, I'm sure it is But I feel nothing for their game, where beauty goes unrecognized All I feel is heat and flame, and all I see are dark eyes.
Oh, the French girl, she's in paradise and a drunken man is at the wheel Hunger pays a heavy prize to the falling gods of speed and steel Oh, time is short and the days are sweet and passion rules the arrow that flies A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes.
As I left for work this morning, I caught Jack Ma (founder of Alibaba) on the news, at Davos, commenting on the responsibility of having over a billion dollars in wealth. I tried to find a video of his quote, but have turned up nothing. Maybe one of our readers might find it.
I may have misinterpreted what Mr. Ma said, but his comment was something to the tune of "If you have a billion dollars, it's not just yours. It became yours because the people who gave it to you felt you would do better things with it than anyone else, like the government. This places a responsibility on the person with a billion dollars, and is why I will seek to do good with this money."
As I said, I may have not heard it precisely or interpreted it correctly. If I did, it is a view I agree with(although people didn't give him anything, they exchanged money for a product or service he provided which made everyone better off).
All told, I'd prefer to not have a billion dollars in wealth. Too much responsibility, too many headaches. People who amass fortunes like this, however, have made the world better and this is why I don't oppose or envy their wealth. As Ma intimated, they can do better with the money. This is one reason I enjoy watching shows like Shark Tank. Not only do I learn insights on how to manage a business, but I see wealth at work producing things people want or need.
People who believe the wealthy sit around pools drinking margaritas all day (I've had people say this to me) have no idea where wealth comes from or how it is made. Those people may exist, I'm certain they do. Their wealth, however, does not last as long as you'd think. Their money must be working at improving lives through exchange or production, somehow, for them to spend the rest of their lives poolside. Real wealth creators, however, are always doing good with their money, even if it's just managing their companies (which provide jobs, goods and services) or coming up with new ideas that people want or need.
I am reminded of two groups of people. One which earned money, and knew how to create it but not how to use it. Another which was given the money, and the headaches it caused.
By and large, I believe if you're smart enough to earn the money through productive or creative capacity, as Jack Ma did, you're likely to know what to do with it. If you lucked into it, you're unlikely to have a good idea of what to do without some professional help.
Then there is a third group I forgot to mention. Politicians. I believe they are more like lottery winners, though they believe they are producers. I see them as popularity contest winners who are handed a blank check and haven't a clue what to do.
Wasn't even a storm, much less a blizzard - just an ordinary New England winter snow dump. No ferocious winds, no 2-3 feet of snow. No big deal, a nice treat for the ski areas but a bummer for those with flights planned.
Don't be surprised if Maggie's servers go down tonight or tomorrow. If so, it will be because of the wind, not the snow. It's the wind that breaks things with a Nor'easter.
The global cooling we are experiencing inspired me to consider some truly fine cool-weather all-white breakfast eats which are not easily found in Yankee-land. The good stuff that sticks to your 
Is your 
