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.
On Columbus Day, Mitt Romney went to the Virginia Military Institute to outline a starkly different foreign policy vision from President Obama’s approach of apologizing for America, ignoring Islamism, mistreating our allies and embracing our enemies.
Is that a temporary bounce? Or is it that people just hadn't seen unfiltered Romney and were happy to see a credible, appealing alternative to the Obama administration? At the least, it tells me that many people are openminded about considering Romney.
Contrary to many or most news reports, I don't think that Obama "lost" the debate. To emphasize that is to minimize Romney's positive accomplishment. I think Romney "won," won by being a more impressive, knowledgeable, and serious figure.
By the way, where are all the Obama bumper stickers this year?
The despairing but amusing and detailed post at Zero Hedge begins with this fine paragraph:
The majority of Americans seem OK with just waddling through life, accepting the lies and misinformation blasted from the boob tube and their various iGadgets by their owners, gorging themselves to death on Twinkies and Cheetos, paying 15% interest on their $10,000 rolling credit card balance, and growing ever more dependent on the welfare/warfare state to provide and protect them from accepting personal responsibility for their lives. A minority of critical thinking people have chosen to question everything they see and hear being spewed at us by the propagandist mainstream media, the corporate fascist government, and the powerful banking cabal that has an iron grip upon our throats as they choke the life out of the global economy in their never ending desire for more riches and more power.
Read it all. He predicts decline, mostly due to American character weakness and degeneracy.
Among many other wonderful details, the book undermines the notions that the Europeans arrived to find a primeval land on which the Indians left hardly a footprint. Quite the opposite is true. For example, the Northeast Indians had 100-acre cornfields, scattered wherever the soil was rich, and did massive burnings of their woodlands every year to rewind forest succession, for game management, and to clear the underbush. They viewed the woods as their gardens and farms, and when they made fields, they cleared them to the point of removing the stumps. No slash-and-burn: permanent farm fields that were hard-won with stone axes and fire. The Pilgrims took advantage of their abandoned fields in Massachusetts.
Similarly, the Amazonian Indians turned the rain forest into their own orchards. At least 20% of the Amazonian forest is believed to be dominated by fruit- and nut-bearing trees planted by Indians for their use. That's not to mention their manioc plantations. And the South American Indians, like the Meso-Americans, developed massive irrigation systems to support their populations.
There was little of the New World that had not been shaped by Indian activities, except for the mountains and deserts - and the Incas populated the Andes quite successfully.
I also liked learning about the Indian prophet Deganawida, the Northeast "Peacemaker" born, it was said, of a virgin birth. Hiawatha, the great Indian orator and politician, was one of his followers. Some of those folks are some of my ancestors.
Finally, the book got me interested in Cahokia, the largest Indian city north of Mexico with a top population of 15-20,000 farmers. The mound-building city in Illinois was abandoned 300 years before Columbus. Image on right is what Cahokia's mounds looked like.
(For a variety of reasons, many mysterious, the New World experienced enormous population declines from their millions before Columbus, making conquest and colonization immigration a much easier task. European illnesses like the common cold and flu viruses which could be fatal to Indians just made it all worse, it seems. )
My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.
North Providence retiree Jamie Reilly left her job as a secretary at age 50, thinking her 30 years of state employment would mean good benefits during her later years. But now she said she may be forced to re-enter the workforce at age 55 because the state has put off pension increases.
"I counted on that money," Reilly said of the increases, which she estimates would have started at $700 to $1,000 a year. "I retired knowing I was going to get a certain amount of money. You work all your life and you plan, and they take it away from you."
No, Christopher Columbus probably wasn't the first European to discover the Americas.
The history we learn in school is, understandably, Central Eurocentric, and the contributions from the Northern Europeans, aka 'Scandinavians', has decidedly been given short shrift over the years.
But in the past decade or so, more attention has been paid to the role the Norsemen played, and it's becoming fairly apparent that not only did Eric The Red or his son discover and colonize Greenland, but made it all the way to Newfoundland, a country he dubbed Vinland.
But wait!
'Vinland' in Norse means Wineland — and how could an ice block like Newfoundland be warm enough to grow grapes?
Of course, you're probably already ahead of me here. When the Vikings made their voyages, the earth was so warm that not only could Greenland be colonized and sustain crops (and be named Greenland in the process), but Newfoundland was warm enough to grow grapes.
And not an SUV in sight. Imagine that.
But wait again! The Vikings had no instruments to guide themselves as they crossed the vast Atlantic. No dipping needle, no compass, no clock, not even a sand glass, and certainly no astrolabe or sextant. All they had were the stars above, and since the stars rotate in a circular pattern overhead, all they could do was measure a star's height against a knot tied in a rigging line (on a bouncing ship, no less) and make their best guess.
Okay, so how did they discover Iceland, Greenland, and later Newfoundland, without any instruments aboard?
The same way Noah discovered land after the Great Flood.
The real criterion, of course, would be propensity to violence. If a group shows a propensity to violence when its icons are criticized, then it would in practice receive special protection under the 21st-century blasphemy prohibitions. Those advocating for such rules either don’t understand the incentive system this would create, or don’t care.
Last Wednesday, Zbigniew Brzezinski–yes, that Zbigniew Brzezinski, the one from the Carter administration–added his voice to the chorus of those calling for restrictions on free speech:
“I would like us to make it more explicit to the Muslim world: we not only condemn (the YouTube video), but if there are evil forces at work trying to provoke violence between us and you, we have the obligation to investigate and crack down.”
Be careful, Zbig. You are making me very angry with that kind of speech. Maybe we need to crack down on that kind of disturbing speech.
Pic: It's Oktoberfest. That's my beer and smokes from the deck of a Danube riverboat a couple of years ago. Just a boatride. Yes, that is the original Czech Budweiser
The Obama of the imagination is the media’s Obama. Out of their fascination with the color of his skin and their mindless awe at his windy teleprompted rhetoric, they constructed a man of stature and accomplishment. Now, with the White House on the line, they’re waging an ongoing battle against the undeniable evidence that he has never been, in fact, that man. The result in these quadrennial autumn days has been media coverage of a fantasy election, an election in the news that may bear no relation whatsoever to the election as it is.
Besides going after the infantile zero-sum narrative on economics, he extols the miracle of growth and productivity - the growing pie. One quote:
It was not until the Agricultural Revolution that men began to break free of the zero-sum existence of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle. For the first time, production allowed men to increase the food supply—to expand the size of the "pie." No longer did one person's gain entail another person's deprivation. With the gradual increase of production under a division of labor, and with free trade among those producing specialized goods, the "pie" of wealth began to grow rapidly. With the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, living standards, which had remained at subsistence levels since the dawn of man's presence on Earth, suddenly began to soar, and so did life expectancy. But while the zero-sum social world was disappearing, the zero-sum Narrative did not vanish from the minds of men.
Bow is the way to do it, the hard way. That's a lot of meat. A reader sent us a link to his pics. Here's one of them (I still think it's best game management to harvest the cows instead of the alpha males, but whatever).
I always wonder how one walks around the woods with a rack like that. I could not do it.
We here at the (insert name of paper here) are a fair, open-minded, tolerant bunch, as you would expect given our elevated social status. So, when an unknown, inexperienced politician named Willard Mitt Romney had the audacity to run for president, we decided to give him a chance and hear what he had to say about his "qualifications."
Here's one heck of an ad. Real, heartbreaking, and far better than LBJ's daisy girl ad. Mom is beautiful, worried. She wants to say something, decides not to. He's depressed, she feels sorry for him and wants to reassure him. He doesn't want pity, wants to be a proud male, can't handle her compassion and concern. And the kids...
If I were on Mitt's team, I'd ask to have this 30-second drama run nationwide.
This is happening out there, all over. Best political ad I've ever seen.
One intriguing thing that happened while I was out of touch with humanity for a week was that three mainstream news sites completely changed their format. Much for the worse, I might add. They essentially stopped being 'news sites' by conventional definition.
First is CBS News, which has gone to what might be called a 'news blog' format. That is, the format small blog sites like Power Line switch to when they want to appear more relevant and 'newsy'.
And check out the 'social media' influence in the right sidebar. Most Popular. Most Shared. Most Discussed. Follow us. Screw the news — we just want to hear what you have to say!
And then ABC News gets into the act, also going with the 'lotsa big pictures' format, but at least they still carry some of that pesky 'news' stuff down at the bottom.
But — speaking of 'social media' having an influence — check out the jaw-dropper that USA Today has become. If you have a tablet, notebook or smartphone, USA Today is the site for you! What do you mean, "web browser"? What's that?
And notice what's missing from the bottom half of the page. Yep, that pesky news stuff. Why bother!
It strikes me that there's a flaw in the logic of dumbing-down news sites to appeal to the "Ooh, lotsa pictures!" crowd. They're thinking they'll tap into this market, but my contention would be that the social media crowd doesn't read standard news sites to begin with, and, when it does, it reads the news off Google or Yahoo or MSN or AOL.
The good news is, while half of those abandoning these three digital train wrecks will end up on the left-leaning CNN or NBC sites, the other half will end up on Fox News. So I'd call it a net plus for our side.
And one thing I personally found interesting with these three particular sites going the social media route is their placement on my page of links. I have the links listed in the order I stop by every morning, first reading Fox to get the right-wing side of things, then CNN for the left side, then (formerly MSNBC) NBC News for the ultra-left. Then I look over the right- and left-wing Washington papers, then skim through the three lesser news sites:
Fox CNN NBC WashTimes WashPost ABC CBS USA
I find it interesting that the three news sites I find least consequential are the three that decided not to be news sites anymore.
... it was the first time in his career that he shared a debate stage with a serious opponent.
Think about it: John McCain was feeble. Alan Keyes, whom Obama beat in his 2004 Senate campaign, was crazy. All the Democrats who ran in 2008 were preposterous except Hillary Clinton, and she, as a beneficiary of nepotism, was highly overrated as a politician. He used Chicago-style dirty tricks to dispatch his original opponent in 2004, as well as the state senator he replaced back in the 1990s. The test he failed last night is one to which he had never been put.
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
(I do not want to ruin this magical piece by getting pedantic, but check those rhymes.)
Two more of the Obama administration’s crony corruption cheats are crumbling. These are but two of the lower profile Obama crony enrichment schemes that will need to be eliminated should we get a Republican administration after next November, and indicative of schemes we must be sure to expose should any Republicans try their version of crony capitalism.
I’ve often written about the scheme to tax tourists to the US to subsidize the highly profitable US tourism industry, companies like Disney. My exposes led to a 7,000 word expose in the Washington Post that scuttled the legislation, that is until President Obama and his heavily Democrat Congress took power after the 2008 elections. Then, the legislation was passed and signed. The leaders of this tourism travesty were heavy contributors to the Obama campaign. I last wrote about this boondoggle here (with links to earlier reporting.) The Washington Free Beacon has been keeping up with the story. Here’s its latest (with links to its earlier reporting).
The federal government’s latest taxpayer-funded effort to promote U.S. tourism is dogged by lavish spending, cronyism, and questionable accounting, according to a report released Thursday by two U.S. Senators.
Thermal windows can often add quiet or temperature moderation. But, exaggerated claims for the economic payback of energy efficiency are getting increased Federal Trade Commission attention. What a surprise! Several of the leading offenders are significant Obama contributors who received significant subsidies from the Obama administration’s so-called stimulus and at least one is now a failing business. McClatchy news service:
The FTC actions shine a spotlight on an industry that benefited from millions of dollars in “green” tax credits offered as part of the 2009 economic stimulus, and they reveal some of the pitfalls of zealous marketing, in business and in politics.
For all the caterwauling by Democrats about Bain, there’s no indication of corruption. That finger, actually, points at the Obama administration. But, it is a fair question to candidate Romney what he will do to end crony capitalism within his administration. And, then, let's hold his administration to transparency.
Movie: Review of 
I have just finished reading 
Finally, the book got me interested in 
It's Cristoforo Colombo Day here in the USA
No, Christopher Columbus probably wasn't the first European to discover the Americas.
Image via 
One intriguing thing that happened while I was out of touch with humanity for a week was that three mainstream news sites completely changed their format. Much for the worse, I might add. They essentially stopped being 'news sites' by conventional definition.
Cover image from 
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven