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.
Congress’ pathetic inability to manage the Postal Service won’t sink the republic, but the ineptitude and selfishness on display in the process just might. If Congress approaches the “fiscal cliff” it has set up for the end of this year with no more statesmanship and wisdom than it has exhibited in the USPS matter, the United States will be headed for the biggest man-made financial disaster in its history.
Now Tomlinson gave up the ghost at his house in Berkeley Square, And a Spirit came to his bedside and gripped him by the hair— A Spirit gripped him by the hair and carried him far away, Till he heard as the roar of a rain-fed ford the roar of the Milky Way: Till he heard the roar of the Milky Way die down and drone and cease, And they came to the Gate within the Wall where Peter holds the keys. "Stand up, stand up now, Tomlinson, and answer loud and high "The good that ye did for the sake of men or ever ye came to die— "The good that ye did for the sake of men on the little Earth so lone!" And the naked soul of Tomlinson grew white as the rain-washed bone. "O I have a friend on Earth," he said, "that was my priest and guide, "And well would he answer all for me if he were at my side." —"For that ye strove in neighbour-love it shall be written fair, "But now ye wait at Heaven's Gate and not in Berkeley Square: "Though we called your friend from his bed this night, he could not speak for you, "For the race is run by one and one and never by two and two."
Then Tomlinson looked up and down, and little gain was there, For the naked stars grinned overhead, and he saw that his soul was bare. The Wind that blows between the Worlds, it cut him like a knife, And Tomlinson took up the tale and spoke of his good in life. "O this I have read in a book," he said, "and that was told to me, "And this I have thought that another man thought of a Prince in Muscovy." The good souls flocked like homing doves and bade him clear the path, And Peter twirled the jangling Keys in weariness and wrath. "Ye have read, ye have heard, ye have thought," he said, "and the tale is yet to run: "By the worth of the body that once ye had, give answer—what ha' ye done?"
Then Tomlinson looked back and forth, and little good it bore, For the darkness stayed at his shoulder-blade and Heaven's Gate before:— "O this I have felt, and this I have guessed, and this I heard men say, "And this they wrote that another man wrote of a carl in Norroway." "Ye have read, ye have felt, ye have guessed, good lack! Ye have hampered Heaven's Gate; "There's little room between the stars in idleness to prate! "For none may reach by hired speech of neighbour, priest, and kin "Through borrowed deed to God's good meed that lies so fair within; "Get hence, get hence to the Lord of Wrong, for thy doom has yet to run, "And . . . the faith that ye share with Berkeley Square uphold you, Tomlinson!"
Thanks to Mr. Vanderleun for finding this, the only extant recording of Dr. Freud speaking. Despite the current zeitgeist, his legacy and his students have provided powerful tools to help suffering people and to understand human nature.
I started my professional activity as a neurologist trying to bring relief to my neurotic patients. Under the influence of an older friend and by my own efforts, I discovered some important new facts about the unconscious in psychic life, the role of instinctual urges, and so on. Out of these findings grew a new science, psychoanalysis, a part of psychology, and a new method of treatment of the neuroses. I had to pay heavily for this bit of good luck. People did not believe in my facts and thought my theories unsavory. Resistance was strong and unrelenting. In the end I succeeded in acquiring pupils and building up an International Psychoanalytic Association. But the struggle is not yet over. -- Sigmund Freud.
What divides liberals and conservatives is not roads and bridges but Julia’s world, an Obama campaign creation that may be the most self-revealing parody of liberalism ever conceived. It’s a series of cartoon illustrations in which a fictional Julia is swaddled and subsidized throughout her life by an all- giving government of bottomless pockets and “Queen for a Day” magnanimity. At every stage, the state is there to provide — preschool classes and cut-rate college loans, birth control and maternity care, business loans and retirement. The only time she’s on her own is at her grave site.
The very good Whittle video we posted this morning revealed that government in the US provides an average of $65,000 annually in funds, "benefits," and entitlements to poor families in the US. (Little or none of this is counted as income in calculating US poverty stats, as far as I know, nor, of course, does it take into account off-the-books cash income which seems pretty common these days.)
That's roughly the yield of a $2 million trust fund invested at a safe 1-3%, if my assumptions are correct. It's not a hard sale to convince people to vote for their own $2 million trust fund delivered by magic unicorns.
(The current fad for easy Disability and food stamps - anybody can get these things right now and I receive calls daily asking me whether I do Disability forms - is a whole new arena for free stuff, but a different topic. No, I do not do Disability forms on principle because I believe everybody is capable of dignity and self-respect. Speaking of cash, I have been offered good hard cash to fill them out for people in the last couple of years. On the phone "Doc, I'll pay you $1000 cash to complete my form for me.")
I have had plenty of experience with trust fund people, and am even fortunate enough to be the recipient of a very modest one myself, far less than $2 million in capital due to generational dilution. While some use their trust fund luck for productive purposes, many, it seems to me, lead relatively unproductive if not decadent, purposeless, and unstructured lives. People with meaningfully-sized trust funds, and families on the dole, have more in common with eachother than either has with the middle class.
As we often say here, real life is scary and challenging for almost everybody else. I am not convinced that that is a bad thing. It's the nature of real life and helps bring out the best in us. People spend money for lottery tickets just to enjoy the momentary fantasy of security and ease. Security and ease are infantile fantasies in this world which presents one problem after another.
Progressivism, in the Marxist and post-Marxist forms that have been swallowing the world for a century, is, in its methodology, nothing but the moral infantilization of mankind. It seeks the establishment of a population dominated by the childish fear of facing the world alone. Its pretty slogans are all variations on this theme. From "Workers of the world unite" to "It takes a village," the message is always the same: you can't face this "dog-eat-dog" world without the safety of the herd, which means without material security provided by political force. An all-powerful mother government must always be there to protect you from the ever-present monster, which is just life itself. And such security is not "charity"; it is your right. You are entitled to it, as any child is entitled to his parents' protection.
Today's ever-expanding "entitlement mentality" is literally shamelessness elevated to the status of a moral code. Progressivism has created an entire euphemistic vocabulary to justify the unabashed demand that others sacrifice their liberty to save me from my childish fear of facing life as an adult. "Positive rights," "social justice," "redistributive justice," "creative individuality," and so on, are all part of the leftist lexicon of cowardice.
Read it all. My view is that every American kid is born with a trust fund: their body, mind, soul, opportunities, and the remarkable free culture at hand. Amazing gifts which are rare on this planet. With all of that, nobody needs to lead a life which wastes his talents and capacities, or neglects his spiritual development.
I should add that I have no problem with trust funds per se (and have doubts about the whole idea of inheritance taxes too, which hit small family farms and businesses but never the very wealthy. America should welcome and ecourage family wealth-building, which reduces dependency). Similarly, I have no problem with the safety net for the very poor and/or dysfunctional. I do find it remarkable that American poverty benefits net out higher than the average American worker's income, which, like a good-sized trust fund, can be a perverse incentive for the weak in spirit. That's a shame, but people make their choices and not all Americans, unfortunately, have absorbed the American "Can Do" attitude.
Governments are marketing the "You Can't Do" attitude. It sells.
Bill Whittle explains why Progressive policies exist regardless of whether they achieve their purported purposes. In case you haven't seen this excellent summary elsewhere:
More of these fun satirical pics here. (h/t Insty)
If Obama believes that anybody who achieves their dreams (very few of us ever do) did it by cheating or luck, does that apply to him too?
By hook or by crook, I achieved one of my dreams by constructing a website that Marianne reads.
Perhaps the implied message is that, if you are disappointed in life (and who is not, in some ways?), it's not your fault. And, of course, it often is not because Reality is a bitch and we are not perfect either.
There is something rather strange going on here, Mr. Jones, but it seems about half the country is OK with it.
Catboats remain common in New England. I wonder about other parts of the country, and the world. They were designed for comfort, seaworthiness, and ease of sail-handling - not for speed. It's never a terrible idea to have an ugly outboard on the stern of one, just in case.
In this blogger's case, not zero-carb but close to it. He did it without exercise. He helpfully reviews the nonsense about low-fat diets too. There is no evidence, it seems, that a low-fat diet does any good at all for heart disease or anything else.
That's basically the Maggie's weight-loss diet. Fruit, bread, cereal, pasta, beans, corn, juice, sugar - all are instant poison if you desire weight loss, energy, good vigor, and a springy step. Bacon is good for you!
People on no-carb diets feel better, feel less lazy.
I remember when I got upset years ago when my doc advised me to avoid fats and red meats to lower my cholesterol. My doc now (that older good fellow retired) is up-to-date. He says that, if you want to stay in shape, quit the carbs and eat all the eggs and meat you want. He says fruit is the killer, because people have the idea that fruit is healthy.
The French Revolution proved a dry-run for the twentieth century. Fanatics systematically liquidated internal enemies. They exported revolution to those unlucky enough to share their borders. They ignored all of history and believed all of posterity would see them as the starting point. Words, such as “Committee of Public Safety,” conveyed the very opposite of their meanings. The inability to attain the glorious ends that rationalized their terrible means left just the terror.
Somewhat similar to Charter Schools, the academies get a flat rate per student, and run themselves. Britain modeled these after the Swedish system which offers an abundance of choices free from the governmental and union system.
Free choice is always a good idea. Here's another good idea: Schools That Work, Literally. Jobs in the real world.
When I was in boarding school, all students were assigned to work crews all year long. That was good, but the above is even better.
What work crews were we assigned to at school? Leaf raking and landscape clean-up, kitchen duty (dishwashing mostly), prep and maintenance of the outdoor hockey rinks, preparing and serving faculty teas and faculty meetings, working in the printing shop and the mail room, cleaning the chapel after Sunday service (we had daily chapel) and waxing the chapel floor, working in the gym's laundry room (gross), shelving books in the library, snow-shoveling, early morning newspaper delivery to faculty, preparing the skeet and rifle ranges, raising and feeding the pheasants for the shooting club, and so forth. Work crew averaged out to around 7 hrs/week. Most of the work was under the supervision of rough-edged townies who didn't mind calling us spoiled brats and sissies who didn't want to get our hands dirty. They did not give a damn about how you felt, and rightly so. That attitude was motivational and, I believe, endorsed by the administration.
Looking back, the work crews did us all a lot of good. Bear in mind, we had plenty of rich kids from NYC who had never seen the inside of a kitchen or touched a rake, much less a snow shovel. Education takes many non-formal forms.
Laura at Ace points out that most ventures fail, but the Warren-Obama theme has nothing to say about that. For example, photo below stolen from Gateway. It's the real Obama HQ for Maine:
Edward Alexander’s latest book, The State of the Jews: A Critical Appraisal, would better have been titled The State of the Anti-Jews. Edward Alexander is a professor emeritus of English as well as one of the better informed writers on matters Jewish, who brings this broad knowledge to a series of “critical appraisals” (using Matthew Arnold’s definition of “criticism”: “to see the object as in itself it really is”) that weave the continuity of anti-Jewish ignorance, indecency, inhumanity, cowardice, and illusion from the paragon of liberty John Stuart Mill to today’s Boycott, Divest, Sanction activists.
Within this fabric, Alexander interweaves the similar traits of some with Jewish blood in their veins but infected with additional self-promotional self-importance to be hostile toward what they declare is the Jewish state as their most important barrier to universalist brotherhood. In liberal-leftist illusions of socialist egalitarianism that miraculously creates wealth for all, a people and state that insists on the right to live and to do so in keeping with its traditions – and that does so successfully, no less -- is an affront that challenges these critics’ core beliefs. Many others in their social or professional circles, and reach, engage in noncritical nods of agreement or indifferent onlooking as the cavalcade of invented accusations and meritless analogies are hurled at Jews and Israel.
Judging only from this clip, what religion is Natalie Portman?
Bonus point question:
What nation was she born in?
If you didn't get it and don't mind lowering yourself to the level of dog drool by cheating and thus shredding any last vestige of self-respect, highlight the following line with the mouse for a clue:
Rep. Jesse Jackson's absence lately has been the source of much speculation and rumor. Yesterday, his mother spoke about his disappearance.
I don't know what's wrong with him, and if he is sick, I hope he gets the treatment he needs and is better soon. But his mother's words ring hollow. Is she saying that her son can't get up in the morning because he didn't get what he wanted?
There are plenty of things I wanted. I thought I'd be a senator, too. I thought I'd be a fireman, an astronaut and a pro soccer player. But I still get up in the morning and do my job, despite many disappointments in life.
People need privacy, particularly when ill. But this is an elected official who is suffering through several scandals. Something seems amiss. One has to wonder how Democrats would handle this if it was a Republican representative who was "disappointed"?
I'm not trying to diminish a physical ailment or a (rumored) addiction. These are difficult and can require much assistance. But the idea that he's not "bouncing back" from disappointment sounds a bit like a mother excusing and rationalizing her entitled son's behaviors.
Tomlinson (1891) 
More of these fun satirical pics 
In this blogger's case, 
Higher ed faculty 
Man With World's Largest Penis 