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.
America's public schools have warehoused three million people in jobs that do little to improve student achievement—people who would be working productively in the private sector if that extra $210 billion were not taxed out of the economy each year.
The press will remain loyal because he's a Lefty and because he's a black dude, but he's been shooting foul shots for over three years and missing the basket. Had his chance for two years until he pissed off the nation and lost the House, and since then he's been blaming other people. Blaming others is not attractive in an adult.
I mentioned The 48 Laws of Power a couple of weeks ago, labeling it "A Sociopath's Handbook." I now have my hands on a copy. It is, indeed, instructive in understanding what some of the people around us are doing. Here are some of the "48 Laws" that the book discusses:
- Never outshine the master - Never put too much trust in friends; use your enemies - Conceal your intentions - Always say less than necessary - So much depends on reputation - guard it with your life - Court attention at all cost - Get others to do the work - but always take the credit - Make other people come to you - use bait if necessary - Win through your actions, never through argument - Infection: Avoid the unhappy and unlucky - Keep people dependent on you - Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim - When asking for help, appeal to their self-interest - Pose as a friend; work as a spy - Crush your enemy totally - Use absence to increase respect - Keep others in suspended terror; cultivate unpredictability - Isolation is dangerous: Do not build a fortress to protect yourself - Know who you're dealing with: do not offend the wrong person - Do not commit to anyone - Play a sucker to catch a sucker: Seem dumber than your mark - The surrender tactic: Transform weakness into power - Concentrate your forces - Play the perfect courtier - Re-create yourself - Keep your hands clean - Play on peoples' need to believe to create a cult-like following - Enter action with boldness - Plan all the way to the end - Make your accomplishments seem effortless - Get others to play with the cards you deal - Play to peoples' fantasies
How did it happen? We know how many of our public schools teach no serious American history or civics, that our toniest colleges preach left-liberalism, that 40% of American babies are illegitimate and the rate keeps rising, that too many thriving young Americans worship money and casual hedonism and are too ignorant of religion even to be proper atheists, that President Obama rejects outright the heart of America’s Creed: American uniqueness, the American Zion, the city on a hill striving to be a beacon to mankind. How did this happen? When did we decide to swap America for America Lite? We can’t undo these changes unless we know how they came about.
During a time when in high school and college the greats of Western literature were still a major part of the curriculum, I often skated by with Classics Illustrated comics. Thus, when great contemporary minds who didn’t skate write books that delve deeply into the thoughts of the paragons of Western literature, I am both fascinated by new understandings and humbled, even ashamed, that I feel inadequate by comparison.
I’m about halfway through such a book now, for a review I’ll write. Yesterday, I emailed the author, a professor emeritus of English, with some questions to clarify my thoughts. He replied that he had faith in my ability to figure out the answers myself. I’m not so sure of that.
This morning, I felt more inadequate when reading a review of Roger Kimball’s new book and interview with him. I was supposed to receive a copy for review but either haven’t or someone stole it from the mailbox in front of my house. After reading this review and interview, I’m almost thankful, as this review and interview is so simple, direct, and first-rate that I couldn’t hope to have done near as well.
I know two places on Cape Cod where you can see these big snakes in numbers on a sandy bank on a warm day in early Spring, trying to warm up from their hibernation by lounging lazily in the sun and looking for mating partners.
When it's still cool, they don't move much and do not display their lightning speed: they just glare at you and maybe twitch their tail.
It is indeed startling to encounter ten of these guys together, some 5-6' long, as you are walking along a sandy trail in early Springtime. They like edges, with some cover nearby, like water nearby whether salt or fresh, and they will climb trees if they feel like it. Entirely harmless (unless you are a small animal or a small snake: like Kronos, they will eat their young), but big - and always a wonder to see a big one and the average wife will jump to you for protection. That's always a good thing.
Subspecies of these handsome snakes are found across America, mainly east of the Rockies. You can read more about the Black Racer here.
We could use some more of them around here to eat the damn Norway Rats, but they'd eat our cute Chipmunks too. I noticed that you can buy them on the internets in case you want some around your place. With a little luck, they will eat the kittens too.
Seen a Black Snake lately? They are daytime hunters and no rat can outrun them. Wonderful critters which usually startle you when you encounter them. Most of the time, you don't see them because they stay out of your way.
Great Whites inhabit all of the oceans of the world, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Despite the really, really scary crisis of climate change, New England has seen a huge increase in the seal population over the past couple of decades. The last time I swam in the ocean beach in Wellfleet, there were large Gray Seals all around us, gamboling in the surf. Quite amusing.
Seals attract the Great White Sharks which like to feed on them. They are shark bait. Can a shark distinguish a person from a seal - and why should it care anyway? Food is food. Great white sharks send Cape swimmers running.
My theory: get out there and have fun in the chilly water. The odds are strongly on your side.
Are America's components too large, too diverse in culture, religion, geography, population, prosperity, politics, way of life and point of view, for one-size-fits-all directives from Washington?
I believe so. That's why I don't care that Vermont is socialist, or that Massachusetts has Romneycare, or that Texas is Texas, or that Stockton is Stockton.
Or that California - by itself the 8th largest economy in the world - is wacky California. I'm in favor of letting them be what they want to be, but not on my nickel. Do your own thing, dude, take responsibility for it, but don't ask me to pay for it. I have my hands full caring for my own.
On this Independence Day week, with the Sousa bands and the marching Vets and the martial rockets' red glare, I think about this: the primary job of the Feds is to protect us from external threats so we, the people, are free to figger out life in our own ways. Not in the ways determined by our supposed "betters."
In America, we acknowledge no "betters." "Betters" are for Europeans and Asians.
We are not children, nor are we stupid: after all, many of us were educated in government schools. We are in life, not cloistered in Washington and we are all as smart - if not as articulate BSers - as they are. We know there is no life on earth without problems, difficulties, challenges, and death at the end of it. That's plain reality. What we do not need is our governments making it all more difficult. We can handle it, most of it.
In America today, the greatest threat to individual and local freedom is our own Federal government. Our external threats are relatively trivial, given our power.
Maine has nothing in common with DC, Hollywood, or Chicago. Nothing, well, except for harvesting the Maine lobsters that the limo Liberals feed on.
When governments accomplish the basic, simple tasks to which they are assigned, they tend to grandiosely meddle in other things to feel important, to keep themselves busy, to invent problems, or to buy votes with the voters' money (A Nation of Takers?). It's an insidious use of power even if it sometimes satirizes itself and makes us laugh at its foolishness: An Open Letter to Mayor Bloomberg. Please do not "help" us, jerks. Most of us are far from helpless.
In their book The Size of Nations, Alberto Alesina and Enrico Spolaore argue that, if America were as centrally governed as France, it would have broken up long ago. But hey, that’s no reason not to try it! In a land where everything else is supersized, why not government? Obituaries for the late Andy Griffith generally glossed over his career finale as a pitchman for Obamacare. But he was a canny choice to sell the unsellable, for is not “health” “care” “reform” the communitarian virtues of beloved small-town Mayberry writ large? The problem is you can’t write Mayberry large. And, if you attempt it, it leads not to Mayberry but to Stockton, Calif., and to a corrupt, dysfunctional swamp. A large Sweden is a contradiction in terms. It cannot be done, and the more determinedly you try to do it, the more you will preside over a ruined wasteland. The road to hell isn’t paved at all, and the street lamps went out long ago.
Is leaving people alone a full-time job? Naw, it couldn't be. Corny as it may be to post, this is one of our historic American flags, and some days I wish we had kept it for its ornery assertion to governmental power:
12:2 I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven--whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows.
12:3 And I know that such a person--whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows--
12:4 was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat.
12:5 On behalf of such a one I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses.
12:6 But if I wish to boast, I will not be a fool, for I will be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think better of me than what is seen in me or heard from me,
12:7 even considering the exceptional character of the revelations. Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated.
12:8 Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me,
12:9 but he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
12:10 Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.
When I was in my teens, my scout troop did quite a bit of hiking and camping. Spam was part of our menu for longer trips, usually longer than a weekend. It's easy to carry and prepare. It's understandable that during WWII it was a food of choice for the troops. I also understand why my step-father, a WWII vet, never touched the stuff even as I scarfed it down.
I doubt I'd ever touch it today, unless I visited Hawaii where it's seen on menus regularly.
... newcomers to the city, including Twain—straight from the Nevada desert with its pickled oysters and an appalling coffee substitute he dubbed “Slumgullion”—developed a taste for the tiny, coppery Olympias. The Oly, as it was called, was the classic gold rush oyster, a staple of celebrations and everyday meals in San Francisco restaurants and oyster saloons. Olys appeared in oyster soup and stew, stuffed into wild poultry and, of course, raw. Perhaps the most distinctive local dish was a “Hangtown fry” of oysters, bacon and eggs.
Mark Twain loved good food. I've had the Olympia oysters, but prefer the Northeast mollusc. I once ate 72 of them in a contest with a friend somewhere where they had an all-you-can-eat raw bar. I lost, but I still love to eat them.
Now this is a perfect example of poetic justice! A corrupt democrat politician uses corrupt means to win an election by a tactic that our Attorney General claims doesn't exist.
"...don’t let others who are no better than you are, convince you that there is something wrong with you because you don’t want to use the power of the state to try to improve the lives of others. Their strategy has a very mixed track record."
View from the rooftop garden at NYC's Metropolitan Museum last Sunday afternoon. Took a pic of the cool new stainless steel scupture up there, but somehow deleted it by mistake.
I have no clue about the Physics of this, but it's quite a remarkable phenomenon: Pendulum Waves:
"Fifteen uncoupled simple pendulums of monotonically increasing lengths dance together to produce visual traveling waves, standing waves, beating, and random motion. One might call this kinetic art and the choreography of the dance of the pendulums is stunning! Aliasing and quantum revival can also be shown."
Some of my friends sit around every evening And they worry about the times ahead But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference And the promise of an early bed You either shut up or get cut up -Elvis Costello "Radio, Radio"
I've had to deal with a number of issues lately, some good, others not so much. Last August, I was introduced to a phrase, when Irene knocked out our electricity for 4 days. Dealing with no electricity, or the limited capacity provided by a small generator, was annoying. Eventually, though, things went back to normal. My son, during the blackout, kept repeating "First World Problems" every time one of us complained of inconvenience.
The phrase refers to things which are meaningless to most people and occur only in industrialized nations. The ennui of life leading to kids not bothering to change a channel even though they have the ability to click a button. The disappointment of a latte, after realizing you really wanted a cappuccino. It's a phrase usually used in a snarky fashion, but it can have meaning in a larger sense. After the Derecho that passed through Ohio and some Mid-Atlantic states, I once again uttered the line as we cleared my father's property of fallen trees and branches in stifling heat. First World Problems are things which never occur to a Papuan jungle tribe member or even a denizen of Rio's "City of God". In fact, trying to explain these things could yield quizzical looks and questions about what we view to be important in our lives.
The neoconservative approach posits that universal peace is achievable by engineering a world of democratic institutions and that, if history does not move quickly enough, we can move it along by military force. My concern is that this ultimate goal is in practice so remote, and the method of reaching it so uncertain, that it leads to an interventionism exhausting our society and ultimately to abdication, as in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The difference is less one of destination than of pacing. The point is not that what exists is unalterable, but that the effort required to implement change will be more sustainable, if we temper the visionary aspect of policy with a recognition of the variety and complexity of circumstance.
The current situation in the Middle East is instructive...
The US, unlike Canada and (mostly) in the UK, will never criminalize private medicine because who could imagine the Lefty Hollywooders and the Lefty Wall Streeters waiting in lines in grungy government clinics or waiting six months for an MRI?
Not to mention the little-noticed detail that federal employees are exempt from Obamacare. I wonder why.
Just a quick reminder that a whole bunch of computers are going to lose their Internet connection this Sunday night at midnight, Eastern time.
Despite repeated alerts, the number of computers that probably are infected is more than 277,000 worldwide, down from about 360,000 in April. Of those still infected, the FBI believes that about 64,000 are in the United States.
As the last wave of fireworks die out, the shooting stars sinking to earth and vanishing into the darkness, the light of Independence Day fades and the crowds slowly trudge away from the brief spectacle, past the lines of police barricades, through narrow streets, past government buildings, back to their co-dependent lives in a co-dependent nation where the will of the people and the rights of the individual matter less than the latest proposal to solve the problems of their independence by making the country a more dependent place.
A few hundred years ago in these streets, men and women celebrated the end of tyranny, and in its darkest hour, lines of grim men marched along the waterfront up to the highest point on the island to mount a final defense. Sometimes the older buildings still wear their shadows on their brick walls and by the golden light of the fireworks you can almost see them, shadows moving in the darkness, their footsteps taking them north, a faint song on their lips, muskets in their hands, their lives lost and gained in defense of their freedom.
An interesting dilemma has presented itself to the world's bankers. For years they have been misguided in believing that forcing money through the system is the only way to keep economies running. Ignoring the nature of economic cycles, and trying to centrally manipulate positive outcomes, typically called 'soft landings', has led to a number of unintended consequences.
A slowing economy is one which needs savings, because in a heated economy, too many people are spending. At some point, the investment cycle can only be completed by having more people save.
We are, and have been for some time, at this stage. But the Federal Reserve (and other central banks) have all tried to manipulate consumption and spur borrowing by lowering interest rates. At some point, we've borrowed too much. At what point is that? At the point where we begin to charge for the 'privilege' of saving money. This is a Keynesian solution to a problem, but a problem that is misunderstood. During the Depression, rates were raised. This was the correct approach to handling the issue. But they were raised too far. Keynes did not deal with the issue of scale, just the issue he felt was problematic, which was a lack of consumption. Lack of Consumption is a very real problem, but lack of savings is an even worse problem.
The truth is, with interest rates as close to zero as they can be, and bank fees reaching levels that rival extortion, the US has been in a Negative Interest Rate situation for almost 3 years. We just haven't made it official the way Denmark has. It's not a good thing, either (though Denmark claims it is).
Interest rates have been negative once before - for reserves by banks at the central bank in Sweden in 2009. Even the US is considering this approach to get banks to lend more.
At some point, the massive credit expansion the Fed has employed the last 4 years will create inflation. We've been lucky so far, as a reserve currency, that most of this inflation has been exported to smaller nations. But that time is coming to an end, as is our reserve status. This, combined with negative interest rates, will no doubt spark the inflationary fires as consumption takes place and dollars are repatriated when interest rates go up.
It's worth noting, as well, that the US has been in a Negative Real Interest Rate situation for quite some time (inflation is greater than interest rate payments = negative real interest rates). Negative Real Interest is not rare, and is usually what leads to increased consumption (and has no doubt kept our economy struggling along rather than forcing us to do what we need to do). Which explains why Jim Rogers has been deeply invested in commodities.
Women 
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I know two places on Cape Cod where you can see these big snakes in numbers on a sandy bank on a warm day in early Spring, trying to warm up from their hibernation by lounging lazily in the sun and looking for mating partners. 
Are America's components too large, too diverse in culture, religion, geography, population, prosperity, politics, way of life and point of view, for one-size-fits-all directives from Washington? 
Via 
The Little-Known History of How the Modern Olympics Got Their Start
