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.
If the Commerce Clause power had been upheld, not only would the enumerated powers scheme have gone away, but Congress could have changed the law to punish this or any future mandates by very extensive penalties, like high fines and even imprisonment. One last way of explaining the difference: Imagine that all the drug laws were justified under the tax power and not under the commerce power. All the drug laws we have are Commerce Clause power. But imagine they were only justified under the tax power, under the principle that Chief Justice Roberts identified. That would mean the only thing the government could do to you for violating the drug laws would be to charge you a reasonable, modest tax. They couldn’t even charge you a punitive tax, and they certainly couldn’t put you in jail. If we actually achieved that reading of the drug laws, it wouldn’t be a perfectly libertarian solution, but you’d have to open up the jails and let millions of people out under that reading of the Constitution.
It's been 45 days since my last post on spy drones. That's when I started saving links for this post. Want to guess how many links I saved in 45 days?
45.
The good news: People are trying to get the word out.
The bad news: Talk is cheap.
When we last left our exciting spy drone story, the airliner you were flying to Denver in had just run into an off-course traffic drone whose guidance system had just been fried by solar radiation and you ended up in a molten pile of burning aluminum and plastic.
U.N. officials describe several narrowly averted disasters in which drones crashed into a refugee camp, flew dangerously close to a fuel dump and almost collided with a large passenger plane over Mogadishu, the capital.
That'll be the real wake-up call. A 747 hits one just entering New York City air space. 293 dead including the crew, 187 on the ground.
And the nightmare of links below the fold?
Actually, I'd suggest you skip it. Why ruin a perfectly good day?
Childlike credulity about presidents’ abilities to subdue turbulent portions of the world by projecting “strength,” or to “manage” the domestic economy, encourages political infantilism.
The overwhelming political objective of the Democratic Party since the 1930’s has been to get as many people as possible enrolled in one government program or another, at least in part to guarantee their votes in subsequent elections: “Tax and tax, spend and spend, and elect and elect.”
And now it’s somehow a scandal when a Republican notes that they succeeded, to the tune of nearly half the country?
In a state of national and international disaster, the worst possible gaffe is telling the truth about the state of affairs we are in. These gaffes disturb the party-goers signing up to work for non-profits and watching cheerful reports about the Arab Spring and the economic recovery while the ship sinks around them. And the party men and women react to it with the outraged demeanor of spoiled children.
Fees for services vary depending on the area of the country one inhabits.
I've been collecting some from my area of Connecticut:
- Private practice legal services, paperwork: $300-450/hr, with volume discounts and pro-rated for time - Private legal services, court time: $500-600/hr - Home health aide: $20-25/hr - Home health, Registered Nurse: $40-70/hr - Nurse Anesthetist: $200/hr - Prep and insertion of dental implant (not including the crown): $1800. for about 30-40 mins. - Veterinary check-up (dog) plus shots and lots of labs: $1200. - Independent financial/estate advisor (non-legal): $200-500/hr - Auto mechanic: $30-60/hr - Babysitter: $15-20/hr (more if more kids) - Live-in nanny: $300-400/week - Registered Dietician: $125-150/hr - Brief office visit to Internist (10-15 mins, no tests): $125 - Internist, routine "annual" physical, not including labs/tests: $600. - Short visit to Dermatologist, with minor slicing and dicing: $250 - Shrink visits: $300-400/hr (pro-rated for time) - Harpist for parties: $150-175/hr - Piper (Bagpiper): $150-175/hr - Electronics repair: $175/hr (rarely worth it nowadays) - Home computer services: $200/hr - Master carpenter: approx $50/hr, less with bigger job - Painter: approx $25-40/hr, more with bigger job? - Master gunsmith (wood or steel work): $60-80/hr - Per diem bookkeeper: $35/hr - Chimney Sweep: $175/first chimney, $125 each additional - Yard work: $100/man-day
If you wish to share fees of various services in your area, please do so in the comments.
Do you believe that man-made global warming is eventually going to cause dirt to reach the point of spontaneous combustion as the above Fox News headline indicates?
Do you believe that the 11% contribution of man-made CO2 to the .3% of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is going to set off a chain reaction causing the other 99.7% of the atmosphere to turn into a fireball of death?
Do you believe that solar radiation plays no part in our global climate because your neighbor's SUV tailpipe is more powerful than the sun?
If so, then you're a true AGWer and you have my sympathy.
Because there was a headline floating around the other day that proved, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that man-made global warming is finally here and we're all going to die within months unless we immediately donate $100 to Greenpeace.
Thrilling, isn't it? To a devout AGWer like yourself, you must have shivered in delight as you clicked on the link, knowing that the final proof was here.
And that's when you discovered the cruelest link you ever done saw.
I... I really don't have the heart to say any more.
The rest of you will just have to witness the cruelality for yourself.
I disagree with the tone of that post. Fire is nature's way of rejuvenating, not man's. Fire suppression in national forests is no more than a subsidy to logging. Thanks to Bambi and Smokey the Bear, forest fire has gotten a bum rap.
It is time for a new way, a way in which Muslims will no longer have to learn about America and Americans will no longer have to learn about Islam, where we will give up on winning each other's hearts and minds, and stick to watching each other's property lines. That is the argument that needs to be advanced in the face of Obama's catastrophic Arab Spring failures and the alternative to it is four more years of terror and appeasement.
It includes some good, friendly discussion of social equality vs. economic equality, and of economic mobility which I see as one of the wonders of American society.
Here's one bit from Voegli, speaking to Noah:
I close by remarking on your wistfulness about the absence of internal radicals or external Communists who might prod us to equalize incomes. It is in keeping with your hopes, now certainly flagging, that Occupy Wall Street would catalyze a politically irresistible redistributive movement. In your book's final sentence-"The worst thing we could do to the Great Divergence is get used to it" - you are trying to say something to the Americans indifferent to that great crusade. But perhaps they, in their reluctance to enlist, are trying to say something to you about their abiding desire for economic vigor and absolute mobility, and their abiding fears about the power and decency of redistributive government.
The average US income, per person, in 2011 was about $45,000. Make that an income cap, with anything above taxed at 100%. As a start, I suggest that this example of equality begin with Washington politicians and federal employees. It might catch on.
Why stop with income? Let's address assets too, which are much more important for economic equality. The average American's net worth in 2011 was $77,000. Let's bring the pols and bureaucrats down to that too, and take the rest away from them for equality and the Common Good. Bernanke, too, and Obama, Harry Reid, John Kerry, The Clintons, Elizabeth Warren, etc. Maybe throw in Krugman, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates just for giggles, and confiscate all trusts.
I suggest that the same apply to the owners and staff of The New Republic and The NY Times. If it requires force, so be it.
For my plan to work, obviously the government will need to set the prices of everything because otherwise nobody could afford stuff. Hey - it might just work!
A mid-air collision on February 1, 1943, between a B-17 and a German fighter over the Tunis dock area, became the subject of one of the most famous photographs of World War II.
A woman in a supermarket is following a grandfather and his badly behaved 3-year-old grandson. It's obvious to her that he has his hands full with the child screaming for sweets in the sweet aisle, biscuits in the biscuit aisle, and for fruit, cereal and pop in the other aisles. Meanwhile, Granddad is working his way around, saying in a controlled voice, "Easy, William, we won't be long, easy, boy." Another outburst, and she hears the granddad calmly say, "It's okay, William, just a couple more minutes and we'll be out of here. Hang in there, boy." At the checkout, the little terror is throwing items out of the cart, and Granddad says again in a controlled voice, "William, William, relax buddy, don't get upset. We'll be home in five minutes, stay cool, William."
Very impressed, the woman goes outside where the grandfather is loading his groceries and the boy into the car. She says to the elderly gentleman, "It's none of my business, but you were amazing in there. I don't know how you did it. That whole time, you kept your composure, and no matter how loud and disruptive he got, you just calmly kept saying things would be okay. William is very lucky to have you as his grandpa."
"Thanks," says the grandfather, "but I'm William... the little shit's name is Kevin."
That's what Lucianne said re Romney's fund-raiser talk.
Seems non-controversial to me. When he said "I'm not going to worry about those people" he was referring to getting their votes, with the implication that they are already bought. (I think he is wrong about that, BTW.)
Moral of the story? Never say anything that, when taken out of context, sounds bad. Of course, that is impossible to do. And for the MSM, everything Conservatives say is a gaffe.
At Drudge, as of now, 1 in 16 Americans are taking Disability. If 1/16th of America is really disabled to work, we're in big trouble. And what % use EBT cards now?
The Magnitude of the Mess We're In - The next Treasury secretary will confront problems so daunting that even Alexander Hamilton would have trouble preserving the full faith and credit of the United States
Does the State Department not know, for instance, that manufacturing pretexts for religious outrage is Lesson One in the Mideast lexicon of foreign-policy stratagems? The most obscene cartoons of Mohammed that provoked riots throughout the Middle East were actually added by the Muslim clerics who toured the region brandishing them; the Imam who accused a 14-year-old Christian girl of blasphemy has now himself been arrested for disfiguring the Koran and telling co-conspirators that this was the way to drive Christians from Pakistan. This kind of thing has been happening for centuries, but it happens more when both conspirators and rioters are unafraid of any consequences to themselves.
Took this lousy pic of a majestic White Oak on Saturday, growing on the edge of the marsh, on Constitution Island.
White Oaks are happy to grow near wetlands, and their acorns feed all sorts of wildlife. They are said to live 600 years. I have seen some huge ones surviving in woods where there had been pasture 100 years ago.
Quirky, quaint, and comfortably shabby and unpretentious, Cold Spring (pop. 1900) is a 75-minute commute to Grand Central Station on the Metro North Hudson line. A few commute daily, but a good number commute for weekends because if your legs are good, you can walk from the train station to everywhere in Cold Spring.
It's nice to see the downtown of a small town so busy with friendly people, walking people, busy cafes, etc. Seems to be the sort of town in which it is impossible to be anonymous.
The village is about 40 minutes north of White Plains, and a half hour south of Poughkeepsie, Hyde Park, and the great CIA - The Culinary Institute of America with its great restaurants. It's the Juillard of cooking. This view down the Hudson from the lawn of Boscobel, site of the famed Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (their photo, not mine):
This is Lower Main St., with the little gazebo on the Hudson shore. I tried to avoid taking pics of people.
Orwell’s four motives for writing still seem to me the most honest account of why long-form non-fiction writers do what they do, with “sheer egoism” at the top; next, “aesthetic enthusiasm” – the pleasure principle or sheer relish of sonority (“pleasure in the impact of one sound on another”); third, the “historical impulse” (the “desire to see things as they are”), and, finally, “political purpose”: the urge to persuade, a communiqué from our convictions.
To that list I would add that writing has always seemed to me a fight against loss, an instinct for replay; a resistance to the attrition of memory. To translate lived experience into a pattern of words that preserves its vitality without fixing it in literary embalming fluid; that for me has been the main thing.
Iceland was a mess after the 2008 meltdown. By 2012, while GDP per capita is still at depressed levels, unemployment is also down dramatically and growth has returned, making Iceland a 'star' among the embattled European nations.
It helps, somewhat, to be a homogeneous and isolated isle. It also helps to let financial institutions fail so debt can be washed out properly.
I'm not a fan of rap music, but Russ Roberts and Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek have done a good job making economics entertaining for the younger crowd. I sent their Hayek vs. Keynes series of videos to my son at college. There is an appropriate correlation to the events in Iceland and Hayek's views. There is no Keynesian stimulus taking place there.
"[W]hen the boom has collapsed, there exist dislocations and disproportionalities in the world of industry, the wreckage of false expectations, which monetary manipulation is not likely to remove."~Lionel Robbins in 1934, writing on the Great Depression
I hope when little Bryan grows up he never Googles himself or his parents. I can’t imagine the horror when he reads that his parents wish they would have killed him. I wonder how quickly he will grasp that his parents think his life, since he has disabilities, isn’t worth living. I wonder if that jury considered how the disabled community would feel if they knew that a jury awarded these parents millions because they missed the opportunity to abort their disabled son.”
As Cabela's prepares the selection of guns it will sell for the holiday season and winter hunting, the outdoor-gear retailer has two plans: one if President Barack Obama is re-elected, and one if he isn't.
It also has been unclear how much of the violence was spontaneously triggered by the film and how much of it was spurred on by anti-American militants using it as a tool to grow and enrage the crowds.
This is my idea of a pizza. Thin crust so it's almost like a cracker, cooked in a wood-fired oven. Shape doesn't matter, and if it's not a little scorched it doesn't taste right. Toppings? Whatever you can find in the fridge or the pantry. No tomato sauce, please. Never! I think this one is Buffalo mozzarella, asparagus, sliced yellow tomato, and pancetta. Nice.
People with outdoor wood-fired pizza ovens have pizza parties where you assemble your own small ones from a vast assortment of ingredients, then throw it in the oven for 3-5 minutes. I have a pal who does this. That's how they made fast food in ancient Rome.
Someday, I will build an outdoor combination oven and grill out of fieldstone. Indoor cooking is for the birds, and ovens were never meant to be indoors. My Memphis cast iron grill/smoker is excellent - burns wood just as well as charcoal - but it would not work for pizza, bread or calzones where you need a deep oven with a banked wood fire in the back.
Here's how to use a wood-fired oven:
And here's Baking bread in the Wood Oven. Watch that, and you'll understand the luxury of electric or gas ovens - 3 to 6 hours to heat up a wood oven.
It is certainly true that we frequently deceive ourselves about the rationality and the intent of our choices. As easily as we may deceive ourselves, we are easily deceived too. The article explains some of the tricks magicians use to "force" our "free choices."
It's been 45 days since my 
Fees for services vary depending on the area of the country one inhabits.
Video: The Italian Carpool Lane
Are All Teachers 