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 your struggling car company wants a government bailout, you’ll probably have to build the government’s car – even if it’s a car very few people want to buy.
Repeatedly asking for government help undermines the foundations of society by destroying initiative and responsibility. It is also a fatal blow to efficiency and corrupts the political process.
When everyone gets something for nothing, soon no one will have anything, because no one will be producing anything.
It's ironic that 'R&R' usually stands for Rest & Relaxation — when resting on our current policies and relaxing our stance against government proliferation is the very opposite of what our own R&R — Romney & Ryan — intend to do. Such are the whims of fate.
Personally, I'm quite pleased with the pick. I originally thought that Romney & camp would go the low-key route — especially after the VP candidate in the last election outshone the guy running for the P slot — so picking a firebrand like Ryan showed they do, indeed, have a message for America. That they are, indeed, going to give it a choice.
My one regret is that I didn't start saving all of the "Why The Ryan Selection Is Great News For Obama!" links that suddenly popped up. It would have made for a fun post. Seriously, how insane do you have to be to make such a claim? Palin, sure. Newt, Perry, Bachmann, Christie, Pawlenty, Jindal, Portman, sure. I'd agree. All possible good news for Obama.
But not Ryan. Not the one guy even Democrats will tip their hat to for knowing his stuff.
And these loopy articles weren't on some backwater blog sites. Slate, Politico, Daily Beast, Puffington Host, Boston Globe, Washington Post, NY Times; all have spit out the "This is great news for Obama!" meme since the selection.
One wonders, if their immediate reaction to the announcement is gross hyperbole — what's it going to be like from here on out? I'd look for some real zaniness coming out of these sites in the near future. I'll collect some of the better ones for our mutual amusement.
The first official piece of zaniness is below the fold, and I'll also expound on why I think Palin not speaking at the convention is a good thing. Long-time readers know I'm a devout Palinite, so it's not an issue I take lightly.
John C. Goodman: Why the Doctor Can't See You - The demand for health care under ObamaCare will increase dramatically. The supply of physicians won't. Get ready for a two-tier system of medical care.
Doctor Pay and Social Priorities - Med-school grads make less than business-school grads, and take on far more risk. Is this model sustainable?
You don't need to open a restaurant. You can be a seafood farm entrepreneur.
Natural marshes no longer support the markets for Littleneck Clams and Atlantic Oysters - especially the delicious Wellfleets. These tasty mollusks have to be farmed, but it's not very hard work.
You buy the seed from a clam or oyster nursery, protect them from gulls and whelks, and harvest them at low tide in your pick-up truck as the orders come in. You plant them, nature grows them on plankton. Sometimes you have to rake mud off the oyster bins.
The small producer I chatted with out on the flats at low tide has around 1,000,000 clams growing right now, at various stages of development. These are 30 cents each, wholesale.
He has around 500,000 Wellfleet Oysters growing, at around 70 cents each, wholesale. That's a nice little inventory, but a bad hurricane or winter storm can obliterate your investment so it is best to save your profits for hard times. That is intelligent, no matter what you do for a living. I don't think you can buy insurance for clam beds or most other sorts of income.
In his spare time, he was a three-term First Selectman of Wellfleet "until he finished what he wanted to get done," as a local friend said. It's always wonderful to me to see how unskilled Americans without any higher ed can find good ways to make a living.
Cranky, laconic old Cape Codder. I said I was curious about how he did this, and he replied "I don't know. Been doing this for 50 years. I still don't know what I am doing" as he lit up a fresh Marlboro.
Those orange mats on the right are what they protect the baby clams with. Clams live in the mud. Each year, new seed clams to burrow in the mud under a new mat. Usually harvestable in 3 years.
The oysters grow in the wire bins. Those beehive cannisters collect oyster larvae, to reduce his costs of buying seed oysters.
Shellfish guys out on the flats with their trucks at low tide in Wellfleet Harbor. The most difficult barrier to entry in this line of work is obtaining rights to areas of mudflat. Waterfront landowners own the flats out to 200 yards.
Do you ever feel the need to confess your sins? To confess them to somebody else, other than in prayer or ritually in church (as in "Forgive us our trespasses")?
It is difficult in life to live without accumulating one's share of sins of commission, omission, sins of character, sins of unkindness, sins of arrogance, sins of self-centeredness, sins of cruelty, sins of self-indulgence, lies, thefts, personal flaws and weaknesses, and sins of passion or stupidity. These things burden our souls.
Pastor says "Lay it all at the foot of the Cross," and quotes Christ: “Go, and sin no more.”
People with serious religious aspirations often engage Spiritual Directors as guides. That's a serious and daunting business but I have heard that it can be a life-changing journey.
Do our readers sometimes feel the need to confess and, if so, to whom?
"This is an election in which we should be talking about the path ahead, but you don't hear any answers coming from President Obama’s reelection campaign. That’s because he's intellectually exhausted, out of ideas and out of energy. And so his campaign has resorted to diversions and distractions, to demagoguing and defaming others. This is an old game in politics; what’s different this year is that the president is taking things to a new low."
In 2008, Candidate Obama said, “if you don’t have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare voters.” He said, “if you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.” And that, he told us, is how, “You make a big election about small things.”
That was Candidate Obama describing the strategy that is the now the heart of his campaign.
If the Obama labeling campaign is successful, voting for Romney will mean becoming socially unacceptable; it will be tantamount to embracing a Neanderthal sort of mindset that opposes Obama not on his disastrous economic policies but simply because of his race.
By constantly moving to the left, the left is exerting control of the political space, defining the Overton Window in terms of its own political leanings. Moderates become slow leftists and conservatives become slower leftists. The entire spectrum comes to be defined by the positions of the left. Everyone in the spectrum becomes a leftist of radical, moderate or conservative temperament.
Leftist Planet - Why do so many travel guides make excuses for dictators?
Almost completely cut off from the maw of McDonald's, Madonna and other global corporate-cultural influences, Cuba retains a refreshing preserved quality. It's a space and place that serves as a beacon for the future -- universal education, health care and housing are rights people the world over want, need and deserve.
I'll say it again: government is a special interest group, and one of the few growth industries left in the US right now. Washington DC is a boom town: people go where the money is.
Democrats have never tried, much less managed, to convince voters that the Democratic domestic agenda is so beneficial that ordinary Americans — not just the CEOs of the companies they work for, or the stars of the TV shows they watch, but their own friends, neighbors, and co-workers — should pay significantly higher taxes for government endeavors.
Democrats hate Paul Ryan because he has taken the measure of their cowardice and made public the logical, humiliating conclusions of their disingenuousness.
Taxes are going to rise much further on the middle class. My simple theory is that the Left wants to take the money we all earn in the private sector, take their cut, decide what we need because we are too foolish and feckless to run our own lives, and then expect us to thank them with our votes for the service. They imagine we need care, like sheep, but we just want freedom from them. The Welfare State Industry underestimates the human spirit, and then shackles or cripples people to make their idea come true.
Try saving the money to open a corner pizza joint when you're paying a 50% tax rate. Then, try getting a license to sell beer there. Then, consider your employee cost of Obamacare. At some point, people say The Heck With It and you have an empty storefront. That's the way to end up like Euroland, where nobody tries to do anything except to hold on to their safe crappy job, and everybody just waits to retire on the dole to complete their entire safe, spiritless, crappy life while their government betters live it up. Serfdom.
It is a mistake for people to ignore the political appeal of the security of serfdom or slavery to the State or the Lord of the Manor, or dependency on the State, as long as those words are not used.
Re the photo, I find the entire US Capitol revolting in its grandiosity. What are we - the Roman Empire? Possibly many disagree about that, but, as a New England Yankee with a long pre-revolutionary heritage here, I strongly object to the notion of an imperial city. Those idiots should be meeting in a church basement where they might acquire a little humilty.
We have a President in charge right now, who writes to me several times a week begging for three dollars.
But He cannot explain why He should win His re-election. He cannot form a list of bullet points, or even a single bullet point, to explain how that helps anyone but Him, and, I suppose, the people who directly benefit from His victory. He’s in charge of America but He cannot explain why He is good for America.
The truth is that no one can preserve Medicare as we know it. There isn’t a prayer that your father’s Medicare will be around in 10 years. There is a legitimate policy debate going on about the direction we will have to go with it.
There is just plain going to be less money to spend on senior health care than there would have been if we let the program continue on its present unsustainable track. Health care providers and patients are going to have less money.
In the LA Review of Books, Andrew Scull on All We Have to Fear: Psychiatry's Transformation of Natural Anxieties into Mental Disorders.
It's a good summary of what has been going on in my field these days. One quote:
This reliance on symptoms, and on the simplistic approach of counting symptoms to make a diagnosis, creates a bogus confidence in psychiatric science. Such categories have an element of the arbitrary about them. When Robert Spitzer and his associates created DSM III, they liked to call themselves DOPs (data-oriented persons). In fact, DSM’s categories were assembled through political horse-trading and internal votes and compromise. The document they produced paid little heed to the question of validity, or to whether the new system of categorizing mental disorders corresponded to real diseases out there.
Over 50-years ago, my Bar Mitzvah was in a small, poor Orthodox synagogue in Brooklyn. The training was by rote and the surroundings were typical of the Diaspora, what my Grandparents built in the freedoms of the US but, still, seemingly far removed from the deepest meaning for a young boy.
Since my eldest son was born, I’ve been determined that he experience and understand much more that he could carry through life. His Jewish education has been far more enriched. I’ve saved my airline miles since then, and next April, right after Passover, our family is going to Israel for Jason’s Bar Mitzvah. It will be on the Haas Promenade overlooking Jerusalem, where one can see its history and present. We’ll be traveling all over Israel for the next two-weeks, its wondrous and even miraculous diversity and beauties, several thousand years of history side-by-side with one of the world’s most advanced countries built with blood, sweat, tears, courage, and brains.
I made such a trip in my 40s and it changed and enriched my life. That’s my prayer and gift to Jason for his Bar Mitzvah.
This video captures some of that, in English, Jerusalem Of Gold, the third verse:
But as I sing to you, my city, And you with crowns adorn, I am the least of all your children, Of all the poets born. Your name will scorch my lips for ever, Like a seraph's kiss, I'm told, If I forget thee, golden city Jerusalem of gold.
Chorus
Oh, Jerusalem of gold, and of light and of bronze, I am the lute for all your songs.
As a small aside, I want to draw your attention to an important post I made last Saturday, A new age in viruses dawns, because when a computer virus can actually lock up your machine — which means you can't download and run some handy fix-it program — the rules change. There remains an easy solution, but you'll have to be ready beforehand.
So, here's how last Thursday went:
I hated selling my stocks for the tumor operation, because they're one of the few things my dad left me, but they obviously had to go. The last time I talked to the broker, a few years ago, I was told they were worth around five grand.
Or $3,284 on today's market. That's all I got for them, after the fees were paid and the dust settled. Welcome to the New Economy, Doc.
I talk to the broker on the phone, he delivers the bad news, I hop into my car to do some errands and the battery's flat as a pancake. $523 worth of diagnostic fees, labor, and a new alternator later, I'm back on the road.
I got the battery jumped that morning from a neighbor and drove it to the local fix-it shop. One of the guys was making a parts run and gave me a lift home. There's an email waiting for me from the guy I do my bread-and-butter work for (Web site maintenance), informing me that the Powers That Be at corporate headquarters have nixed this season's event and there goes my steady income for the next few months.
I've had better days!
As for my operation, I'm penciled in for Sept 4th. The good news is that I went up to a hospital in Miami a few weeks ago and the tumor hasn't gotten any worse.
The bad news is that I'll have to push back the operation if I don't have the funds. I still have a month and a half to go, but it'll be close. Losing the Web job really hurts. The good news there is that they'll have to do their next event in October, so I'll be able to make some money while I'm healing.
My original post on this worrisome subject is here. I could sure use some help with my donation fund. As I've noted before, if I can repay you by helping you with something online, like setting up a blog or web site, just tell me in the comments to email you and we'll take it from there.
"“INSERT NAME OF REPUBLICAN TO BE DEMONIZED HERE is the worst, vilest, sexist, homophobic, God-worshiping, Second Amendment-supporting, budget cutting, evilest human being I’ve ever known in my life.”
Obama was a silver-tongued orator in the campaign, but he lacked a silver bullet in the presidency. He was a darling on the stump, a dud in office. This is not a remarkable view. It is held in the White House itself.
Re-posted from Springtime, but late-summer/early fall is the best time for lawn repair in most of the USA. We are refreshing one of our raggedy lawns, next week, with power-seeding with a tough sports turf seed (tough enough for the dogs and kids and occasionally the horses), and doing the aerating at the same time. Then Milorganite. By Spring, it will be perfect and crowd out the weeds. You can rent a power-seeder and an aerator for a few hours very cheaply, anywhere.
I will spare our readers my usual springtime lawn-restoring post, and bring a new topic to your attention: Power Lawn Seeding. This machine injects grass seed to a proper depth in an existing lawn or a new lawn. It's overseeding, but with far more effectiveness than surface scattering.
It will quickly give you a new or refurbished lawn, and sort-of aerates it in the process but best to arerate at the same time. We happen to need about 1/2 acre done this way due to stream flooding in a storm last fall. Services like Lawn Doctor can do it, or you can rent the machine for cheap and do it yourself.
Naturally, you have to either pray for rain or water it regularly for a few weeks.
Re lawn fertilizing (which must be done 2-3X/year), I enjoyed the credentials of the person who wrote up this piece:Dawn West holds a B.A. in English from Harvard University and teaches writing at Oregon State University.
Taking a little break from some heavy-duty, sweaty yard work to offer a kudo to the youngest pupette who has just completed an eight-week spell of 14-hour days since her return from Czecho, with the last two weeks 5 pm to 8 am in NYC - Harlem. Her second Indie film job, third major film job (she worked on The Avengers). A few other commercial film jobs too. Now wants to move to LA after graduation in the Spring. California is much cheaper than NYC.
I want my kids near, but they have to do what they have to do.
She got home from work in the city today at 10 am while we were at church. She is in bed right now. We admire hard work here and do not respect leisure too much - well, unless it is energetic. Which side of the camera does she like to be on? Either. Writing, camera, acting. All good. We will all hear from her one of these days. She is beautiful, tall, smart, deeply planful about life (as I have preached), and ambitious. Kids surprise you. Mystery seeds.
Later...Typical. She just woke up. 5 pm. Driving way down now to Brooklyn to film a live music performance of a friend's band for a late-nite ad and for Youtube. Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where the cool kids hang out these days. (In my time, Williamburg was all Hasidic Jews. Not now. How does she know how to get to Williamburg? Beats me. I do know how to get to Peter Lugar's, Junior's, and the BAM, but who doesn't?) Just had time to feed her some fancy Mexican take-out. Lobster chimichangas or something. She liked it. You just can't keep up with the kids today... The youth today are go-getters, Ayn Rand readers who like Ron Paul, think Obama is a twit for losers.
Maybe she will have time to rest when she gets back to school. But I doubt it. They are very demanding there, just like real life.
One cool thing about life: You get to set the speed of your own treadmill. I admire those who set it high, feel kinda sad about those who set it low.
Many of the finest and most honest minds – conservative and liberal -- in and out of academia have argued, and sometimes succeeded, that campus speech codes often cross the line to suppression of First Amendment freedom of speech. The excesses in the wording of such codes, their arbitrary and often biased application, and the fear of usurping a constitutional right, together send chills up the spine.
Nonetheless, in court cases, private colleges have more leeway to enact speech codes than do public colleges, as they are not as subject to the First Amendment prohibition on government interfering with free speech. In the face of opposition to speech codes per se colleges, both public and private, have turned to anti-harassment policies. These seemingly turn the offense from the speech to the impact on those sensitive, and in effect make judging the offense even more subjective.Alongside, many campuses have instituted judgment procedures that deny those charged from confronting their accuser or, in some cases, even appearing to defend themselves. In many cases, those supporting such near star-chamber exercises in speech or behavioral prejudice are those judging for the kangaroo procedures. And, alongside these, liberal and leftist faculty have denied tenure or opposed research by those who have empirically challenged cherished thoughts or prejudices.
So, understandably so, any further enlargement of speech codes or definition of hate speech raises hackles among almost all those who have battled the present excesses. Further, most opponents have cause for little faith that in the prevailing leftist or hypocritical atmosphere on campuses that an enlargement to anti-Israel speech and actions that are anti-semitic would be enforced or fairly.
The occasion for the current discussion is the report by members of the University of California Advisory Council on Campus Climate, Culture, and Inclusion task force on Jewish students (which I reported here). It recommends that a definition of anti-Semitism like that of the European Union be adopted to provide guidelines and current anti-harassment policies be enlarged to contain such guidelines.
Libertarian law professor Eugene Volokh, in opposition to the recommendation by the task force – from leaders of ADL and NAACP, still points out the elephant in the room. “[T]his is speech which does happen, which doesn’t generally lead to wide condemnation and counterprotests. The call for suppression by university, it seems to me, stems precisely from the fact that this speech isn’t suppressed by social pressure…” In other words, unlike speech and actions purportedly hostile to Blacks or Hispanics or gays, such equivalent or worse speech and actions against Jews or pro-Israeli students and faculty are not treated as seriously in the dominant left-leaning environment on campuses. Professor Volokh fears that such an enlarged anti-harassment policy, given the campus atmospherics, may lead to its use to further abuse free speech regarding other groups or causes.
These are, indeed, worthy arguments, paralleling many others. However, they still leave the elephant in the room, campus leadership ignoring or even encouraging vile anti-Israel speech and actions that are anti-semitic, and failing to enforce college rules that already exist to prohibit faculty use of college websites to promote such vileness.
Free speech advocates correctly assert that more free speech by those opposed to the anti-Israel forces is the best medicine. Many individuals and groups have used their free speech to expose such excesses. But, the offense persists, and as the task force report makes clear has created fear among pro-Israeli students and faculty and denial of academic and social opportunities.
The task force report just calls for exploration of reasonable guidelines, to “clearly define hate speech in its guidelines, and seek opportunities to prohibit hate speech on campus. The President should request that General Counsel examine opportunities to develop policies that give campus administrators authority to prohibit such activities on campus. The Team recognizes that changes to UC hate speech policies may result in legal challenge, but offer that UC accept the challenge.” U of C President Mark Yudoff summarily rejected the challenge: “I believe our current policies may go as far as they can, given constitutional limitations.”
This brings us back to the root cause, the runaway leftist environment on many campuses. No one expects that to change in any foreseeable future. Pro-Israeli students and faculty, and such taxpayers and tuition-payers, are on their own. Let’s, at least, hope that more see this challenge for what it is and step up their support for individuals and organizations that speak out against anti-semitism on campuses.
It's the best stone- and brick-cleaner, but it has to be handled carefully. I am cleaning a hearth with it.
When you buy it, buy goggles and gloves. It's actually a solution of hydrochoric acid - same thing your stomach is full of.
You can't let it near bleach - the combo produces chlorine gas which will kill you. So it is fun to use. You really do not want it on your skin either.
It's ironic that 'R&R' usually stands for Rest & Relaxation — when resting on our current policies and relaxing our stance against government proliferation is the very opposite of what our own R&R — Romney & Ryan — intend to do. Such are the whims of fate.
Althouse 
Middle-class taxpayers will pay a
A day late: 
RNC Chair: 
So, here's how last Thursday went:
The State Gambling Addiction
I will spare our readers my usual springtime lawn-restoring post, and bring a new topic to your attention: