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.
There are simple reasons why (relative) poverty persists in America, but the first is most significant: If poverty is defined as roughly the lowest 15% of income then, obviously, it will persist whether the poor have cars, air conditioners, farms, houses, lots of food, iPhones, TVs, a government dwelling, government medical care, government schools, government cheese, etc.
Is there abuse? Of course there is. Welfare Loophole: Sisters Make $540,000 Babysitting Their Kids. Can't help it because the world is full of people who will work any system to their own advantage. It's their loss of dignity and self-respect. Once given up, those things are difficult to ever recover but some people don't care. Dependency can be a trap whether from government or from a trust fund.
The second major part seems to be life choices. If more money is what you want, then you have to make life plans and choices which might make that goal possible and, if you have any sense of honor at all, you will not take it from your neighbors except in desperation. This via Powerline:
There are limits to the "medical model" of Psychiatry. Psychiatrists like me tend to focus on the "psycho-social" aspect, while others go full-bore with pills and symptom check-lists. There is no single form of Psychiatry today and many shrinks my age have never perused the DSM unless to find a plausible insurance code.
Word to the wise: Some shrinks want to understand you in depth, some want to diagnose you and give you pills, and some try to tailor help to you as an individual with talk therapy and/or medicine if needed. Many patients do not wish to open their hearts and souls - it feels too threatening and often is - and just want a pill if it will help them feel better without having to think too hard. My approach is to try to understand a person first but, if they want to try a pill, fine.
Here's something: The Medication Generation - Many young people today have now spent most of their lives on antidepressants. Have the drugs made them 'emotionally illiterate'?
Through Delta, flew from JFK to Rome via Paris (cheaper that way) on Air France (which I like very much - decent airplane food with cheese and baguettes, etc, champagne when you board, drinks free, charming hostesses). We had the worst seats so you do your best to zone out. I needed some Ambien. The quick 2 hr- flight down to Rome, using Delta, is on Alitalia.
We clever, thrifty Yankees can do a 12-day grand luxe and glitz-free trip around Umbria for the price of a good high-end Mac server. A few travel trips for this first pic dump post:
We got some very good hotel deals via Expedia. We are very particular about where we will stay, as you will see (if you care). Mrs. BD is my planner. We seek out little gems without jacuzzis and absolutely without bellboys with uniforms. We are allergic to that sort of crap, and like to explore places that most people do not. We reserved a fine hatchback Lancia through Costco. Cheap. With the talking GPS - and that came in darn handy because we prefer trying to get lost on back roads unless we are in a rush to the airport. Somehow managed not to get the car in a roadside farm ditch on this trip - but I have done that in the past. Hilarity always ensues! Amusing recriminations also. Good way to meet the local farmer with tractor!
We stayed at one hotel in the Tiber Valley, one in the Valle Umbra, and one in the Valnerina to cover all the of Umbrian geography. View of the olive orchard of our hotel 10 k outside Todi, early morning mist:
As some of you know, there's a country to the north of us. I know it sounds crazy that anyone would lay claim to some vast expanse of frozen wasteland, but as the old expression goes, "One man's trash is another man's treasure", so I suppose it's understandable that someone would come along and claim the parts we didn't want.
The name of this delightful British protectorate is "Canada" (also referred to as "Great Britain Jr."), and the fact that it exists at all is often cited as "The eighth wonder of the world." National Geographic magazine has done a number of specials on it over the years, amazing the readers with photographic evidence that people actually live in this frozen hellhole.
Well, today is their Independence Day, which celebrates the famous day in 1867 when Britain bought a big chunk of it from France for $38 and change (roughly $17.2B accounting for inflation) because they needed to import drinking water to their Caribbean colonies and Canada has lots of snow. Then they filed an Instant Country document with the League of Nations and became "Canada", which is Eskimo for "land of many snow".
In doing my research on this adorable little principality, I quickly discovered that Canadians are very patriotic:
And I'm sure you caught the Biblical reference to covering up the private parts with a Canadian fig leaf (their national symbol), so we have to presume Canadians are also exceptionally moral.
Now, while some people call Canadians and other Nordic tribes "humorless", their money proves this just isn't so. Based on the famous Warner Bros animated cartoon series "Looney Tunes", they named their money "Loonies" and "Toonies".
All in all, that's quite the little accolade for Porky and the gang. Personally, I was always a Yosemite Sam kinda guy. Why, I remember once when he-
Wait... where was I?
Oh, right. Trying to think of nice things to say about Canada.
Well, others have also taken up this mighty challenge, and it was only by combing the very bowels of the Internet that I was able to conjure up what appears at first glance to border upon the miraculous:
New wheels for ye olde wheelbarrow. I done wore out the old tires. These are slick (Home Depot). Shiny and guaranteed never to deflate, and thus good for impressing the chicks.
Rides like a Beemer now. Get a new girlfriend, wheel her all over town in that thing.
Home Depot, unfortunately, had no whitewalls available.
The clam rake? It does double duty for clamming on Cape Cod and getting nasty roots out of gardens.
Alas, more of the latter these days. My honey-do list keeps getting longer, but I ain't askeered of work unless it's lectrical.
Give me a list, and I will do it. That's why I am here.
We sometimes wonder what the US Constitution would look like if it had been written by “qualified” political scientists with Ph.Ds and a solid body of peer reviewed published work behind them. We think it would probably stink in comparison with the current version ..
Our readers know about Rawley's old hot dog joint in Fairfield from Gwynnie, but this is as good - better for seafood fans: Westfair Fish and Chips in Westport. It's right off I-95 for you hungry east-coast travellers.
Modest little clam shack has a fine raw bar too. Worth a trip, or makes a longer trip enjoyable. I will drive a good ways for fresh oysters, fried clam bellies, and fresh fried Cod.
Another Maggie's favorite just off I-95 is Gene's Famous Seafood (also a simple clam shack) in Fair Haven, MA. Sippican likes it too.
All the year the flax-dam festered in the heart Of the townland; green and heavy headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies, But best of all was the warm thick slobber Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring I would fill jampots full of the jellied Specks to range on the window-sills at home, On shalves at school, and wait and watch until The fattening dots burst into nimble- Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how The daddy frog was called a bullfrog And how he croaked and how the mammy frog Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too For they were yellow in the sun and brown In rain.
Then one hot day when fields were rank With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges To a coarse croaking that I had not heard Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus. Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked On sods; their loose necks pulsed like snails. Some hopped: The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting. I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.
I like the way he gets creeped out by his guilty imagination. Heaney's bio here.
It's just one more of the many NYC neighborhoods that I am fond of, meaning 53rd between 1st Ave and Park Ave. A good area to be young, single (and straight). The pubs are hopping on Friday evening, and all the young people look good.
I think it's kinda cool to see people hanging out on stoops, right in Midtown.
Photo shows the "Lipstick building," where Bernie Madoff's offices were. 7th and 8th floors, I am told.
I just dug up a really slick Firefox add-on that takes care of two pesky little problems when it comes to grabbing online videos.
Traditionally, the easiest way to grab a YouTube-type video is to install a Firefox add-on like CacheViewer, play the video, open the cached files, sort them by 'Size', and the video was usually sitting right at the top of the heap.
There are two small problems with this method:
1. It doesn't always work. Sometimes the video simply isn't there.
2. If there's a choice of the same video but different quality, you won't get the one with the best quality.
Enter little DownloadHelper.
It allows us to pick the download with the best quality and format. Installation & tweaks are below the fold.
I just came up this this at my desk. "New services" means new medical services people will use now that they have insurance - along the lines of preventative care etc, which in my option may decrease "S" in the long term but not enough for an overall economic benefit. This model assumes the cost of insurance will be the same for everyone. My colleagues think it is a pretty robust equation.
Seems to me she gets to the heart of it. No, insurance companies cannot afford it without raising rates to a level which is impossible for the middle class and unacceptible to the federal regulators. Like requiring people to buy hybrid Rolls Royces that they don't want and cannot use. Then the companies will be blamed for the prices and few will remember that the government required the whole mess (just like the housing bubble).
Many claim this is the best Italian antipasto. It is properly made with dandelion greens.
This alone is plenty of lunch for me, but I rarely bother with lunch anyway unless it is a fun or social occasion. The simple recipe here.
Tastes fine, or better, if the flattened meat air-dries a little bit. Maybe half an hour or so.
This one was served to me in a cute little restaurant in Todi last June, sitting under the grape vines. Glass of the local Orvieto - not a great vino but just right with this on a warm day.
Despite the ugly subject matter, I suppose you could call this good news.
First off, in case you missed it, you might want to glance over my first post on spy drones.
I then started collecting articles for a future post, and here we are. But what's to note is that these aren't a bunch of whiny, bitchy rantings on some backwater blog site (like, you know, mine), but coming from the major news organizations.
I would also note that I mentioned the 'private sector' in the above post, and the first two links here are what I was referring to. All the rest have to do with our beloved imperialstormtroopers trusted government officials.
After those Street View snoopers, Google and Apple use planes that can film you sunbathing in your back garden. Software giants will use military-grade cameras to take powerful satellite images.
So, as these things go, it's nice to see the major news organizations aren't backing away from the story. I suppose this is figuring that all the while they're planning on building up their own 'eye in the sky' fleets. As soon as one news organization scoops everybody with some really boss footage of some horrendous disaster using a drone, they'll all have to jump on board. Those are the rules.
And all of that just barely scratches the surface.
The bare majority of the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare on grounds that stretch their imagination. The core of their decision allowing the individual mandate to buy insurance is that what is clearly written in the law as a penalty, argued to be allowed as justified under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, they choose to instead treat as a tax within Congress’ authority. Opinion writer Chief Justice Roberts said, “The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a ‘fairly possible’ one.” WTF! As said at National Review,
Chief John Roberts may have flinched from doing what his fellow Republican-appointed justices were willing to do — strike down the individual mandate as a violation of the Commerce Clause — but he did so in a clever way. He resurrected an earlier argument, one the Obama administration had mostly abandoned, that the mandate was really a tax rather than a regulation.... the only way the administration prevailed was to have Obama’s main legislative accomplishment redefined as one of the largest middle-class tax increases in the history of the country.
Why I said 
Image from 
Photo is Taki's sailboat (or "yacht," if you will) Creole. Very nice.
New wheels for ye olde wheelbarrow. I done wore out the old tires. These are slick (Home Depot). Shiny and guaranteed never to deflate, and thus good for impressing the chicks.
We had some internet glitches today but now the Farm is open for business again. 
Our readers know about Rawley's old hot dog joint in Fairfield from Gwynnie, but this is as good - better for seafood fans:
Death of a Naturalist
I just dug up a really slick Firefox add-on that takes care of two pesky little problems when it comes to grabbing online videos.
Photos: Before and after views of 
Despite the ugly subject matter, I suppose you could call this good news.