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.
Most Americans do not remember the details of the Watergate charges and facts, if they ever knew them. Instead, the word Watergate has been used to villify President Nixon, most of what he stood for, and almost any scandal since is called a -gate. Fred Thompson was the Republican counsel on the Congressional Watergate Committee. In a look back that is important to read, Thompson reflects on the context, the charges, the findings and what the findings ignored. As the subtitle of the piece says, "Caricatures of the evil Nixon don’t help us learn how to counter abuses of power." Today, we still suffer, not just domestic breakins or coverups but the far worse wholesale usurpation of Congressional power by this President, the betrayal of allies, and the gross undermining of our national security. A taste of Thompson:
Today, the office of the president, along with the entire executive branch of government, grows with each administration, bringing less accountability and more opportunity for improper activity. Today, unelected bureaucrats tell states what they can and cannot do about the enforcement of their own well-established laws. Federal regulations run every aspect of American life,even as the Supreme Court regularly slaps them down. These actions on the part of the executive branch are not criminal, but neither were many of the arrogant and foolish things the Watergate crowd did. At issue here is not just a few bad individuals. At issue is the way power can be used and abused. Watergate was not the first time the darker side of human nature manifested itself, nor was it the last time.
Consider the issue of the inherent powers of the presidency, especially with regard to national security. It was activities in this area — before the crimes of Watergate took place — that are relevant and sometimes overlooked today.
What led to the Watergate cover-up was the fear that an investigation would reveal non-Watergate activities by the “plumbers’ unit” in the White House, which had been set up to “plug leaks,” among other things. Daniel Ellsberg had leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1970, and the plumbers broke into the office of his psychiatrist to root out information about him. They wiretapped reporters, even White House aides. The list of their offenses is long.
Oh, and remember, millions of lives were lost to the communist takeover of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, once the Watergate reaction put a large Democrat majority in Congress.
Of course it is amnesty, in the same way that Obamacare is just a step towards government-owned medical care.
Obama says it's good for Americans. Whether it's the right thing or not for America, I don't know. Definitely good for Mexicans, but Mexicans aren't American yet. Seems like an issue for Congress, however, not the executive branch.
Gays? Check. Greenies? Check. Illegals? Mexicans? Check. What next?
Growing Pell-Mell - The government’s program to help low-income students is out of control:
There are two major problems with the program: Not only has it expanded to cover more than half of all students, but almost anyone—regardless of academic background—can qualify. Recipients must meet only a minimal academic standard: obtaining a high school diploma or the equivalent. There are no minimum SAT scores or GPAs.
Consequently, many grant recipients go to college but flunk out or lose interest, often going deep into debt at the same time.
Like housing, government tried to orient higher education through a social engineering lens and “established Sallie Mae in 1972 to encourage banks to loan more money for college. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 allowed the government to loan money directly to students. The following year the Taxpayer Relief Act extended tax breaks to student loan borrowers. Predictably, the Federal Reserve kept interest rates at historically low levels, making college loans cheaper.”
In the meantime, “the price of a college education soared…[and] by law, lenders cannot even deny Stafford and Perkins loans (types of federal student loans) based on the borrower’s credit or employment status. What other reason is there to deny a loan?
“The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.”
We put a guy in the White House who has no experience running anything. In that sense, the joke’s on us. But again, it’s not a joke. America simply cannot afford another four years of on-the-job training. There may have been times in our country’s history where having an untested leader in the White House would have been fine, but this is certainly not one of those times. Yes, President Obama needs to go because his liberal policies are wrong and bad for America. But it’s worse than that; it’s basic incompetence. He is also the most incompetent president since Jimmy Carter.
A specter is haunting the academy—the specter of “new communism.” A worldview recently the source of immense suffering and misery, and responsible for more deaths than fascism and Nazism, is mounting a comeback; a new form of left-wing totalitarianism that enjoys intellectual celebrity but aspires to political power.
Watch video to see how the Obama Administration treats former allies. House Church Christians are brutally repressed in Vietnam and hundreds of Christian prisoners rot in Vietnam's gulags and the Obama administration doesnt have the decency to mention them in their human rights reports.In fact for the FIRST TIME EVER - in 2012 the US State Department deleted ALL references to religious persecution in its Vietnam human rights reports, downplaying religious freedom and human rights in nothing but a cowardly display of betrayal.
My son Gavin's Cub Scout Pack 774 worked their little butts off in April to collect food for the Community Resource Center's food bank. The Encinitas City Council just honored them last night, the first 6 1/2 minutes of this video. Give the Cubs a Urrragh!
One of our many brilliant readers came up with a theory about the terrifying and unsightly "obesity crisis." People aren't smoking tobacco enough, anymore. That's the real cause. People used to have an enjoyable, relaxing smoke in the office instead of a donut or two.
Where's the graph that demonstrates the correlation between overweight and not smoking?
Tobacco satisfies oral greed, suppresses appetite, produces serenity, conveys an air of edgy sophistication, brings big bucks to greedy governments and tobacco farmers like Al Gore - and we must always remember that "A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke."
Now I'm sure I am in big trouble with the nannies...
Special interest avarice has no natural limits. A generation ago, economist Mancur Olson made the point that a special interest’s appetite has no limit because it gets the benefits while the costs are borne by society at large. This incentive structure means that the interest will keep grabbing even when the costs imposed on society at large far exceed the benefits to the interest. And its Washington representatives have an incentive to be even less reasonable, as they have to juice the troops to keep the stream of dues coming.
Some commentators are under the illusion that the current national crisis will sober up the special interests. But that is not how it works, because a crisis makes special interests less, not more, responsible. The situation becomes, in the language of game theorists, a “last-period problem.” As a game approaches an end, the players have no need to cooperate for the sake of protecting long-term relationships. Their incentive is to grab as much as possible before the game ends, or, to translate to the real world, before the society collapses. Do not look for crisis to bring out a sense of responsibility in the advocates for the interests.
Politics is all about such cases, but here's one for today: Big Sugar Wins in the Senate. Same old Plunder Politics, spreading the sugar around to buy votes and allies.
...as Eddie Palmieri told him, “You used Jewish musicians or you didn’t have a band!” And Tito Puente played bar mitzvahs....A bandleader and multi-instrumentalist, Harlow was referred to by the New York Times as “one of the most important figures in the history of salsa.”...
While in college, I bartendered at Brooklyn's St. George Hotel during huge Puerto Rican dance concerts (sweet smoke billowing from the bathrooms), listened to Puerto Rican music on the radio while cramming, and was fluent enough in Spanish to work in a store in a neighborhood with a large Puerto Rican population (rapid fire Spanish). Funny, they didn't look Jewish! -- BTW, Puerto Rican stew is the best, with tropical ingredients. Try it, you'll like it. Ess up.
[L]ocal dissident leaders picked the former engineer to go abroad for even-more-sophisticated training in computer encryption, circumvention of government firewalls and secure use of mobile phones—courtesy of the U.S. State Department. The training has helped give the rebels the upper hand in one front in the battle against Syria’s President. Even as the Assad regime’s army crushes the opposition on the ground, the dictator has been losing the war online.
In the process, the Obama Administration has tiptoed across an invisible line. Washington has said it will not actively support the Syrian opposition in its bid to oust Assad. Officially, the U.S. says it abides by the U.N. process led by Kofi Annan and does not condone arms sales to opposition groups as long as there are U.N. observers in Syria. Nevertheless, as U.S. officials have revealed to Time, [emphasis added] the Obama Administration has been providing media-technology training and support to Syrian dissidents by way of small nonprofits like the Institute for War & Peace Reporting and Freedom House.
Note, as in so many of the credits that the Obama administration takes unto itself, the program started under President Bush, although Bush is not named in the Time article: “The program actually began four years ago with a different target: China.”
CNN: What is the biggest challenge here as part of this program?
NEWTON-SMALL: I think the biggest challenge is certainly when I was talking to people, they were incredibly leery about [details] being kept secret, where the trainings are done being kept secret. And we had to change the names of all the dissidents we spoke with because obviously we don't want to put them at risk back at home.
And it's also getting over a stigma and people saying, "Well, because you're trained by the Americans, you're an American pawn." When, in fact, this training just enables them to show what they want to show. We're not coming to them with any kind of agenda. And America isn't saying, "We want you to promote American values here." They're just saying, "Here are the tools. You guys go and do whatever you want to do with it."
Some of those “tools” are revealed. The rebel users of those “tools” can now be labeled as American tools by the Syrian government, which undermines the rebel cyberwarriors.
Another screw security, screw those on the front-lines, leak from the Obama re-election administration.
Below is the post from two years ago. I haven't seen any recognition of today, Flag Day, in the media. Indeed, the provenance of Flag Day is under dispute. Is Flag Day a forgotten holiday? -- BTW, June 14, 2012 is the 237th birthday of the US Army. Go doggies!
Hollywood gripped by pressure system from China - To appease China and gain access to moviegoers and financing, movies include positive references to the nation (no Chinese villains!) and face censorship.
As Larry Summers put it during one of our interviews, 50 years from now people will remember that Obama gave us health care, not how long the recession lasted. The problem is that, in 2012, voters are still a lot more concerned about the recovery.
Obama is on the wrong side of the union debate - The president wants to send more federal money to states that just funnel it into bloated pension obligations. And Americans are tired of it
Probably for confidentiality reasons, Dr X took a fictional character as a sample rather than trying to camouflage a real patient. This is my idea of a real diagnostic impression of a patient without a major illness (eg dementia, schizophrenia, narcotic addiction, melancholia and major depression, bipolar disorder, etc.).
He briefly covers the defensive structure, the character structure, the basic conflicts as they relate to the person's life. Outside the major ailments, the DSM is useless in depicting a patient - a person with his flaws and weaknesses. In these times of the the low-rent superficial, check-list, cook-book Psychiatry, I find internists often more interested in the whole person than some Psychiatrists who just want to give you the right pill without delving into your psyche beyond the surface complaint. In my view, that is not serious medical practice. I do not approve of it, nor do I think it is cost-effective in the end. Some people are attempting to hyper-medicalize and simplify my field of work, but the human soul is too complex for that to work most of the time.
My field is deeply divided these days. It makes things interesting, controversial, and sort-of fun.
Unlike Dr. X, I never write these things down anymore. It takes too much time, can be subpoenaed and distorted in divorce court (some bad experiences with that before I quit writing things down), and otherwise nobody will ever read it before it is shredded. However, I store them in my brain. My brain has plenty of storage capacity.
I will re-post, for those who might be interested, my series on serious diagnosis over the next few days.
Character is destiny. Mostly, except for bad luck.
Well, first for your cigarettes, then salt, then your french fries, then your cokes. Now your cigars.
What next? What next?
The biggest problem with America is a too big, too power-mad, overweening government which refuses to leave the people the heck alone to make their own choices in life.
It's a sickness, the desire to control one's fellow adults. What neurosis motivates such things? A normal American detests such jerks, by homeland instinct.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.
Good site: 
From DeLong in
Via 
Well, first for your cigarettes, then salt, then your french fries, then your cokes. Now