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.
These videos are from my hunting club in Manitoba. Location is secret. We know that little blind on the point well, but usually hunt from the boats, driving them into the reeds. Big water, big lake. Lots of naive first-year birds, Red Heads, Canvasbacks, Bluebills.
The best hunting is in the worst weather: snowy sleet, with wind.
The message: A cadre of retired U.S. special operations personnel is fed up with leaks that compromise covert U.S. operations and imprison pro-American sympathizers. Their mission: stop the leaks by firing the leaker-in-chief. A former SEAL and commandant of the SEAL training center, retired U.S. Navy Capt. Larry Bailey, organized the group. I asked him, over the phone, why he formed it. He replied: "I'm pissed." Bailey knows the leaks put U.S. security and the lives of American spies and SEALS at risk, so he's fighting a political fight, seeded with his own money. He'll take donations, you bet. Yes, he expects dirty personal attacks impugning his motives.
Bailey and his shoestring SOS are Obama's worst election year nightmare — special ops guys who publicly question his leadership and judgment. Obama's most potent campaign tout is "I got bin Laden." With SOS in the mix, the potent tout suddenly sounds just a tad pathetic.
This morning, Bay emailed: "Your critics attack you because your very presence --enhanced by stellar military service records and demonstrated courage-- threatens their politically self-serving narrative." Welcome to 2004 redux.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 73% of Likely U.S. Voters are at least somewhat concerned that the security leaks will compromise national security, with 40% who are Very Concerned. Twenty-five percent (25%) don’t have that concern, but that includes just three percent (3%) who are Not At All Concerned.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: “Finally, my proposal would bring down the cost of health care for millions -- families, businesses, and the federal government.” (President Obama, Remarks, 3/3/10)
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Office of the Actuary, 6/12/12:
We have mentioned many times here that actively-managed investment funds and accounts, after fees, perform worse than index funds.
Fund managers naturally hate that fact, as do investors for whom hope often conquers experience. You cannot dispute the facts: Active Fund Management Is A Loser's Game.
Despite the data, I often think that people want to know that there is a sober person behind the wheel, somebody you can phone when you want to. Somebody who cares. Somebody who is smarter than the markets. They pay for that fantasy.
How to protect your nest egg in the Land of ZIRP? Don't ask me. I bank 10% of my pre-tax income each year, religiously. My nest egg, paltry as it is, is 1/4 equity index funds, 1/4 bond index funds, 1/4 cash, and 1/4 in one really good hedge fund. It may all blow up someday, but I intend to never need the money anyway. The men in my family never quit working and I will keep that wholesome, old-fashioned tradition going unless or until disease or the grim reaper get me.
Retirement ages people, or most people. It ages them, mentally.
I think it is an old New Englander ethic: be stingy, save, resist temptations to buy stuff, and work forever. Use money for overpriced education, books, booze, theater, adventure, and travel.
The idea behind this and all liberal logic is that if certain people behave badly toward others, there must be a deep-seated reason which is somebody else’s fault. The solution, then, is not to punish the perpetrators, or even demand they take responsibility for their actions, but rather to understand the source of the personal, financial, social, racial, sexual problems or other factor that elicited those actions — and then to try and force the powers-that-be to “fix” the factor. Is it any wonder this never works?
Enrique Granados drowned in 1916 while attempting to save his wife after their ship was torpedoed by the Germans. He was returning home from a performance for President Wilson.
This weekend, we heard a performance of his Danzas espanolas, written for piano but, in our case, amazingly arranged for harp and guitar. Wow. You don't get to hear that everyday - harp as the melodic instrument, with guitar as back-up. Especially after a very pleasant church picnic hanging out with the brethren. A fine day indeed in Yankeeland, then later a delicious no-carb Asian dinner out with dear friends and their Ivy League math genius daughter. Les tres riche heures du Bird Dog. Did I mention three hours of yard and farm work before church?
The classical guitarist we heard with the harpist has a sideline as a studio rock musician. Mrs. BD said classical guitar is like ballet. If you can do ballet, you can do any other sort of dance easily.
The rondalla is wonderful if you can find it, but this is the "Oriental" bit, arranged, in this case, for two guitars:
Democratic institutions have strong incentives to flatter the feelings of the ignorant and greedy among us, who are a large voting constituency. For this reason, Congress and the regulatory agencies treat the inevitable parting of fools and their money as a deficiency in the marketplace. When Granny puts all of her money into baht-denominated commodity swaptions and then loses it, the fault cannot possibly be hers: Surely there is something wrong with the market, surely those marginally employed and penniless borrowers were tricked into thinking they could afford half-million-dollar suburban spreads, surely companies with no profits or assets would have been outstanding investments if only we’d had the right regulations, etc., and we have to figure out a way to give people their money back. But when JPMorgan makes a boneheaded sort-of-a-hedge-sort-of-not investment and takes a $5 billion (and counting) lump, obviously JPMorgan is at fault, and it’s a national scandal.
Aren't investments all about risk? Who is too dumb to know that?
"I think the message is that, first of all, voters are seeing the fundamental unfairness of government becoming its own special interest group, sitting on both sides of the table."
... the hard-Left takeover of the Democratic Party has meant that there is no longer a credible balance in our system, as almost all the tenets of contemporary left-wing ideology are blowing up, imploding super nova style — unsustainable ideas that are contrary to human nature and demand coercion for their implementation, given that they are increasingly anti-democratic and have to be implemented from high by an elite technocracy whether in Brussels, Sacramento, or Washington.
Americans hate coercion - especially when "it's for your own good."
It's about scientific integrity and junk science. He insisted that scientists report everything that is wrong with their data and their conclusions - to be their own toughest critics and skeptics and, especially, to report and question their own biases and motivations.
This is an adaption of a 1974 Feynman lecture, via the article at Brain Pickings:
Which Mel Brooks movie was it when the character said their religion was Druid, and he says "That's funny. You don't look Druish"? Spaceballs, I think.
"Negative action," i.e., discrimination, occurs when a rejected Asian-American applicant would have been accepted "if he/she was white." But when that same rejected Asian-American applicant would have been accepted if he or she were black or Hispanic, that's "positive or affirmative action."
As the writer notes, there is nothing fair or rational about affirmative action. It's just a race-based political spoils system, and everybody knows it.
Borders R Us. We are educated amateurs, but we work hard on our borders and, when it comes together, it provides great pleasure and satisfaction to us.
Vegetables? I am getting tired of the effort/production ratio but fresh tomatoes are good if the chipmunks don't gnaw on them first. Trouble is, we don't get tomatoes from the garden until mid-late July.
Recivilizing the Alley
We have mentioned many times here that actively-managed investment funds and accounts, after fees, perform worse than index funds.
Ray Bradbury: Enemy of the State