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.
I read the headline of this article, and expected to see a discussion on why Wall Street is indispensible. Instead I found a discussion on the election and specifically Romney. It's clear he's going to be the Republican nominee, so it's probably best to start cleaning up his somewhat tarnished image. I agree with much of the commentary. But there are a few comments and insights which should be shared.
First, the economy can function without Wall Street. You don't need a capital market in order to have a functioning economy. It's useful to have a capital market, it makes acquiring capital for progress much easier. In fact, stock corporations were originally performed to raise revenues for large projects which were determined to be 'outside the scope' of government responsibility. What most people are critical of is the very concept that Wall Street considers itself indispensible, and uses that as a lever to charge very large fees and pay outsized salaries. These are not required for a fully functioning economy. I'm not opposed to a person making, or earning, whatever he or she can. But even the corporate titans of the Gilded Age put some of their more public displays on hold during times of economic duress.
Second, as a Libertarian, I'm usually opposed to the government regulating anything. But I admit there are some instances where oversight and enforcement are required. The question is - what KIND of oversight and enforcement? Certainly not the kind we're seeing out of this administration:
Ross refers to the Dodd-Frank Act as "at best a very generalized blueprint" that addresses regulators' concerns, and he worries that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was established as part of Dodd-Frank, will have unforeseen consequences for Wall Street and Main Street.
"I think the regulatory uncertainty and the growing fear that this agency (CFPB) will be witch-hunting are definitely impeding bankers' willingness to make loans," he says.
Sarbanes-Oxley has done nothing to stop the fraud it was supposed to stop. It has added several weeks of work to the audit process in many companies, though. In other words, usually regulations result in nothing but increased costs of doing business.
Finally, I was amused to see Bain Capital misspelled as 'Bane' at one point. I would hate to say this is deliberate, but given my cynicism toward journalists today, I am likely to believe it was. Then again, spelling isn't a strong point with journalists these days. It's a rather unfortunate sign of the times.
Glenn Reynolds, with his finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, captured something yesterday that I had been collecting a few links about, in Faith in science? Why skepticism is rising. A quote:
...while one should trust science as a method — honestly done, science remains the best way at getting to the truth on a wide range of factual matters — there’s no particular reason why one should trust scientists and especially no particular reason why one should trust the people running scientific institutions, who often aren’t scientists themselves.
In fact, the very core of the scientific method is supposed to be skepticism. We accept arguments not because they come from people in authority but because they can be proven correct — in independent experiments by independent experimenters. If you make a claim that can’t be proven false in an independent experiment, you’re not really making a scientific claim at all.
And saying, “trust us,” while denouncing skeptics as — horror of horrors — “skeptics” doesn’t count as science, either, even if it comes from someone with a doctorate and a lab coat.
There are a number of reasons it makes good sense to be always skeptical of scientific claims (as scientists are trained to be). Here are a few:
1. Careerism and greed - there is big money to be made in science these days, especially if you come up with the "right" results 2. The use of computers for data-mining - which is not the scientific method 3. The reluctance of journals to publish negative results in favor of positive results 4. The lack of scientific literacy in journalism 5. The impression that scientists often have an ax to grind and cannot be impartial about their pet ideas
There are others. Those are just for starters.
Without getting into the huge global climate boondoggle, here are just a few examples from my medical profession:
On Tuesday, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences heard testimony that the number of scientific papers that had to be retracted increased more than tenfold over the last decade; the number of journal articles published rose only 44 percent.
Ferric Fang of the University of Washington, speaking to the panel, said he blamed a hypercompetitive academic environment that fosters poor science and even fraud, as too many researchers compete for diminishing funding.
"The surest ticket to getting a grant or job is getting published in a high-profile journal," said Fang. "This is an unhealthy belief that can lead a scientist to engage in sensationalism and sometimes even dishonest behavior."
44% is not very good. More on that story: Can Most Cancer Research Be Trusted? - Addressing the problem of "academic risk" in biomedical research
Well ok. You might expect a Con Law teacher to remember the date of Lochner but, giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, I think he is simply spewing spin and propaganda, hoping most voters won't notice.
How many voters care about Lochner? Or even about the Constitution? Even the President, who did swear to uphold it, admits he doesn't really approve of it.
Perhaps his back-up plan is to run against the Court - and the Constitution. It could work. Politics ain't beanbag.
He speaks as though the problem—our unsustainable entitlement state—were the solution, and as though the solution—a budget that restrains the growth of spending, modernizes and reforms our collapsing entitlement and welfare programs to avert their collapse, and charts a path toward economic growth—were the problem. In this upside-down, inside-out world, Barack Obama accuses Paul Ryan of putting the future of America’s younger generation in danger and inviting American decline.
Sowell "A long-standing legal charade was played out again recently, when Federal Express paid $3 million to settle an employment discrimination case brought by the U.S. Department of Labor."
Is a life without some form of spiritual (I hate that word) communion a half-dead, or dead, life? Many who partake of it would say that it is. Christ offered "life in abundance" (John 10:10) - and he did not mean toys, money, entertainment, comforts, food, or trinkets.
We got on this topic of communion at my men's Bible group on Friday (we were reading Mark 14 - a key chapter in the NT).
I thought I had recalled that the communion had first been a reference to the communal meal at the end of the early house churchs' worships, of which, of course, bread and wine were part. A "love feast." A communion with Christ, or with brethren? Both, I'd suppose. It's all the same.
The Eucharist ("Thanksgiving") as a formal church ceremony and a sacrament to the Catholics emerged hundreds of years later. The communal, celebratory meal became a symbolic meal and then, in the Catholic Church, a miraculous meal as was made official dogma at the Council of Trent in the 1500s.
(In my Protestant church we do both the symbolic meal and a serious, carb-packed breakfast spread afterwards which I term "the cocktail party." No vino, however - because it's too early in the day for most of us.)
Christ's simple instructions, followed by the "Do this in remembrance of me" at the last supper (Passover) were altered versions of the Passover traditions, in which, in claiming His New Covenant of salvation and anticipating his death and resurrection, Christ related it to himself (I will not get into the topic of the Trinity because it's over my head, nor will I get into the symbolic cannibalistic imagery).
So a question we had in mind was whether the remembrance is for every meal, for communal meals, for special times like Passover (which my church celebrates with a traditional Passover meal, in silence), for church ceremonies - or even whether it might apply to our Bible study's coffee - but not to confuse Dunkin' Donuts with the church's Welch's Grape Juice. We also wondered whether the tone is best solemn, or celebratory (our church does the solemn).
As a Protestant, I tend to think Christ was asking to be remembered at every meal with brethren. However, I have been wrong often. I'd welcome any enlightenment on these topics from readers because I am probably wrong about much of this.
Most Protestants use these words, quoting Paul:
"For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,
and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, 'This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'
In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.'
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes again."
"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else. And root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!"
If you think he's on the right track, send him a couple of bucks. He's gonna need it, because he is up against every spare goverment union dollar in the country.
A pal of Mrs. BD was astonished that Mrs. BD was not a Downton Abbey follower, so she obtained the 2010-2011 episodes.
I watched the first episode. It's an Upstairs, Downstairs-like drama, beautiful to look at, but perhaps more of a chick thing. Maggie Smith is great. The BD daughter would say "perfect production values."
Perhaps it's about nostalgia for the Britain of the past, comfortable warts and all.
For 70 years, since the court in 1942 said the government could limit the amount of wheat farmer Roscoe Filburn could grow on his own land to feed his own animals, it has been generally assumed that the federal government's power to regulate the economy had no limits.
That assumption survived in liberal precincts even though the court in 1995 overturned a law banning guns in schools and in 2000 ruled unconstitutional parts of the Violence Against Women Act.
But the arguments, developed by Georgetown Law professor Randy Barnett and others, that it is beyond the powers conferred by the Constitution for Congress to mandate the purchase of a commercial product -- health insurance in Obamacare -- were certainly taken seriously by a majority of Supreme Court justices last week.
And the government's lawyers were unable to answer the questions of both liberal and conservative justices: If Congress can do this, what can't it do?
That question is likely to linger even if the court upholds Obamcare.
Economists say that diet and exercise have a greater effect on taxpayer spending on healthcare than rates of ownership of insurance, so if anything healthy-food and gym-membership mandates have greater constitutional warrant than what we’re dealing with now.
So when will the Feds try to mandate gym membership? For the greater good, of course?
...yes, Wall Street may have a significant percentage of self-serving, ruthless, and manipulative psychopaths and almost psychopaths. And, yes, this fact might be of considerable importance in assessing the "moral fiber" of an investment bank. Whether this is a new phenomenon, though, is a separate question. And, in the current zeal to castigate Wall Street, let us not lose sight of the fact that about one out of every 100 people is a psychopath and 15 out of every 100 people are almost psychopaths. They are husbands, wives, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and store clerks.
And they are a lot closer to you than Wall Street.
Silver views psychopathy (aka Antisocial personality) as a spectrum, from little to lots. That fits my life experience and my professional experience. When I encounter "almost sociopathy", I term it "antisocial traits." The world of finance, indeed, has no monopoly on sociopathic traits. I suspect the world of politics has far more, proportionately.
An interesting feature of antisocial traits, like narcissistic traits, is that their owners tend not to know they have them. People who worry about having them probably don't have much of it.
If a foreign country tried to impose upon Americans what the Democrats have done over the past few decades, Americans would fight a war to stop it, and be proud of it.
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."
As if we conservatives don't have enough to worry about (Obama, Biden, Michael Moore, Pelosi and the list goes on), I have been prepping in case of a zombie attack. Now I know some may think it trite or not possible, but if the Dark Shadows movie with Johnny Depp coming out in May is successful, we may be in for a run of the un-dead, dead.
So, in an effort to be prepared (as we good conservatives try to be), I've put together my zombie protection rig. Most rigs are built around the AR 15 platform, a solid, wise and dependable choice. However, being a conservative, I am also a bit more "old school".
The M1 carbine was produced in 1944. It has seen some use, but is reliable and will hold a pretty good group of 3 inches or so at 100 yards, which is plenty good enough for zombie killing. That is a Colt Commando revolver, manufactured during WWII for use by defense plant guards, OSS, etc. The one in the picture was shipped in 1943 to a government warehouse in Reading, PA. Box of 38 Special loadings and an extra box of Vietnam War era production, .30 Caliber Carbine ammo and I am ready. In case they get too close, the carbine has a bayonet and if that fails, I have my pilot's knife. I think I am well-prepared.
The youth vote still supports Obama, but in a chastened, conditional way. In hindsight, Obama's 2008 campaign looks like an indulgent fantasy in which the major conflicts in life simply don't exist. There may be no white America and no black America, no blue-state America and no red-state America, but one thing is clear: There is a young America and there is an old America, and they don't form a community of interest. One takes from the other.
When the Archbishop Met the President - Cardinal Dolan thought he heard Barack Obama pledge respect for the Catholic Church's rights of conscience. Then came the contraception coverage mandate.
Obama claims that free-market capitalism doesn't work. Some retort that it has not been tried lately. Obama certainly never tried it (except with his ghost-written books), but I tried it. Easy to do. Here's how I joined the 1% and got filthy rich in the intertunnel through the miracle of free-market Capitalism (with good tips for other bloggers and website owners):
- Dunkin Donuts pays me $100 k per year for publicity. That's a good deal for them. Plus I get free coffee and jelly donuts, like the cops do.
- Bob Dylan pays me around $100 k per year for free publicity, plus free concert tix. Don't care much for his musical efforts, but the money's good and my kids appreciate the tix. OK, OK, he does have some decent lyrics
- Best Nest offers $1000 per link up to four per year, but also sends me free stuff. I have bird houses coming out of my ears. Ouch. Splinters. They need better sanders.
- D'Artagnan compensates us with $500 of their wonderful produce per link
- my contract with Amazon pays me a paltry $500 per book or item link.
- Sippican pays me $600 per link, limited to 1/month. I would try to squeeze more out of the guy, but I like him and his family so I don't. Pays me double for each Rumford Meteor link - best little newspaper in Maine.
- Brooks Brothers pays me $10,000 for one annual advt., plus one free three-hour shopping spree during their January sale and a bonus for each additional link. What do I need the clothes for? I live in my Brooks Brothers pajamas...and I never go outdoors. There are bears out there.
- Costco pays me $4000 per mention. Cheap SOBs. Evil big business taking advantage of us toilers.
- Don Surber's paper pays us a lousy $75 per link, which is why I link Surber so often - I have to make it on volume or the invoice is hardly worth the stamp! He's pretty good, though, so it's OK despite his liberal slant. Gateway Pundit pays better, per link. Insty doesn't pay a penny, so I hate to link the darn guy. Vanderleun, TigerHawk, Mead, Theo - too holy and pure, or too cheap - to put up the necessary, but our persuasive VP of Sales will visit them again soon for cocktails and dinner at the truck stop lounge of their choice. As for Zero Hedge - he pays us double what we ask for but in the currency of his choice. Filthy Capitalist. Obama needs to raise his taxes.
- Home Depot pays us $8,000 per linked mention, limited to 3/year. Nice check, but always arrives late. I still have to pay when I get stuff there.
- Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce: $750 per Cape Cod photo posted. I have lots of Cape Cod photos, so they limited me to one per month
- What do I get from Big Oil and Big Gas for pretending to be a climate skeptic? My contract with those good old boys prevents me from making the details public but I can say that it is a satisfactory arrangement for now. Plus they fly me down private to Texas and treat me to bird or pig hunts and barbecue anytime I am free. Sent me a custom cast-iron smoker too. Not as good a deal as Anthony Watts gets, but not bad at all.
- Exploitation of workers: I pay our eager contributors nothing (suckers). I am a tough negotiator. My plan for 2012 is to begin to charge themper wordfor each post. After all, our virtual ink and paper costs are going up, as are duct tape costs to hold our servers together - not to mention Obamacare for our elves and farm hands and the rapidly-increasing cost of paying Google to keep us on the top of "Maggie's" searches.
OK. That makes for a profitable day thus far. Heck, everybody has to make a living somehow, and a little extry comes in handy (the girls all want Loro Piana and Anne Fontaine stuff for their birthdays as I am sure your girls do too - there's two more quick n' easy payola ka-chings for me!). Please patronize our benefactors, and assume that every link we provide is paid for in some manner. I don't have time to list all of the rest of the good payola and kickbacks I benefit from at Maggie's, but it is enough to keep my banker on Grand Cayman busy processing the check and (preferably) Fed-Exed cash payments.
All it takes for website success is a good, sweet-talkin' VP of Sales with an appealing product and who just likes to have fun - and thanks for the check, John Deere:
Image is Duccio's (Sienese, 1255-1319) Christ Entering Jerusalem. The piece below stolen in its entirety from our friend The Anchoress a few years ago:
Days that Shook the World, by Greg Kandra
April 9, 2006: Seven Days that Shook the World
After spending the last few weeks in the desert of Lent, suddenly we find ourselves in an oasis, clutching long leaves of palms.
But like so many things you see after being in the desert, it's a mirage. What we see, or think we see, is about to shift before our eyes.
Soon enough, the palms will be whips. The leaves will be thorns. Jubilation will become jeers. That is the paradox and the mystery of Holy Week.
The liturgies of this week are powerful and primal. In the days to come, there is silence and smoke, fire and water, shadow and light. We are a part of something both ancient and new, and what we do this week reminds us of that. The altar will be stripped. The cross will be venerated. The tabernacle will be emptied. The Blessed Sacrament will be moved. Bells will be stilled.
And yet here we stand, at the gates to Jerusalem, palms in our hands and hosannas on our lips, beginning the arduous trek to Calvary.
It is easy to be distracted by the events of the world, and not really pay attention to what we will do this week. Somewhere, wars are raging, and politicians are squabbling. Somewhere, Easter eggs are being sold, and chocolate is being inventoried, and plastic grass is lining wicker baskets.
But not here. Not now. Not yet.
This week, take the time to wonder about what we are doing, and what we are remembering.
For close to two thousand years, we have gathered like this, in places like this, to light candles and chant prayers and read again the ancient stories of our deliverance and redemption.
But are we aware of what we are doing? Do we understand what it means? Do we realize the price that was paid? A proper accounting is impossible. The ledger His life, for our souls seems woefully unbalanced.
So try this. This week, take a moment in each day that passes to wonder: What was He doing during this time of that one week all those centuries ago? What was crossing His mind on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday? What sort of anguish? What kind of dread?
Has anything we have ever worried about, or lost sleep over, or agonized about, even come close?
He was a man like us in all things but sin. He must have been terrified, His mind buzzing with questions. Long after the others had drifted off to sleep, did He stay awake and worry? Maybe He sat up alone, late at night, whittling a piece of wood, the way His father had taught Him, until a splinter sliced His skin, drawing a rivulet of blood. He might have flinched and thought: Well, this is nothing. And still it stings. How intense would the pain of death become? How long would it last? How much humiliation would He be forced to endure, stripped and bleeding? And: What about His mother? Is there anything He could do to spare her from this?
As you shop for Easter baskets and dye, think of this. Ponder this. Wonder about it. Make it a kind of prayer.
And then, remember what we are doing, and why.
Because, of all the calendars in all of human history, this is the week that changed the world.
The huge investment by students, parents and taxpayers made in colleges to provide a foundation of knowledge and critical thought has already or is in process of sinking into the hole of politicized instruction that is one-sided indoctrination. The California Association of Scholars details this in a just published 87-page report, A Crisis Of Competence:The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California.
The specifics describe the University of California but, also, uses broader principles and statistics that apply nationally. The report to the Regents of the University of California cites its own policies that are being ignored by passive or activist administrators, allowing or furthering a lack of academic standards, yes also of academic freedom, that is digging a deeper hole under our society and prosperity.
In recent years, study after study has found that a college education no longer does what it should do and once did. Whether these studies look directly at the capabilities of graduates, or instead at what employers find their capabilities to be, the result is the same: far too many college graduates have not learned to write effectively, they can not read and comprehend any reasonably complex book, they have not learned to reason, and their basic knowledge of the history and institutions of the society in which they live is lamentably poor….
Is it possible that the University of California is an exception to these national trends? Unfortunately, we can be certain that it is not. First, these national studies all include California, and none of them note any fundamental differences across states. Second, local studies of these issues always confirm the findings of the national studies….
Students are being asked to pay considerably more and get considerably less. We are now seeing much increased concern with student debt and rising tuition costs. As this concern about cost joins with the growing concern about quality, the University must soon face a major crisis of public confidence….
The findings of these studies match all too well the specific complaints that are now commonly heard about the manifestations of a politicized higher education: that requirements for coursework in American history and institutions have been dropped, that writing courses often stress writing far less than tendentious political topics; that prescribed books are frequently no more than journalistic presentations of a simple political message instead of the more complex writings appropriate to an academic context; and that faculty teach what to think rather than how to think: that is, they demand correct attitudes and beliefs of students more than they require independent reading and thought.
This report is concerned with the corruption of the University of California by activist politics, a condition which, as we shall show, sharply lowers the quality of academic teaching, analysis, and research, and results in exactly the troubling deficiencies that are being found in the studies to which we have referred. We shall show that this is an inevitable consequence of any substantial influence of radical politics in academia, because its characteristic interests and modes of thought are the very antithesis of those that should prevail in academic life.
We served only two side dishes at dinner last weekend: Wild Rice with Apple and Cranberry, and simple String Beans.
At our house, we only eat those skinny string beans that come fresh in packages. French String Beans, Haricot verts. No strings in them. We eat them like candy. Costco sells them in big packages, and our supermarket overprices them in smaller bags. We steam them all up and they are good green food for a week in the fridge. I feel that the full-sized string beans that I was raised on are not really fit for human consumption.
We do them the Italian way:
Steamed for a few minutes until tender but still bright green. Drain, then tossed in the best olive oil you have, with sea salt. In Italy, simple is the best when the ingredients are the best.
The government just decided that all insurance must be comprehensive. And that no one any longer had the freedom to choose anything but that -- even its superior competitor, Catastrophic Coverage.
That's not destroying a "stupid" freedom to be self-destructive. That's taking away a very real and sensible choice.
And on what authority, exactly?
This thing that is supposedly done for me, as if I were a moron and incapable of making life decisions, is not what I want and definitely not what I want done for me. I have a better idea. As readers know, I have Major Medical, high-deductible insurance because it works for me. The law will make my policy illegal. I once worked for a firm which self-insured: the firm paid 80% of the employees' medical bills after a $1000 deductible. Doing that would be illegal too.
The Dems passed a law to eliminate our free choice to purchase a personal item. As a favor to us, of course. Because they know what's best for us proles. Or are we serfs now, living for the greater good of the kings?
Obamacare so far is a political flop and shows ominous early signs of being a policy misfire as well. The benefits don’t seem to measure up to the hype, more people are going to lose their existing insurance, premiums are going up and the impact on the deficit is going to be worse.
This is a horrible piece of legislation — as misbegotten and useless to its friends as it is menacing to its enemies. The question is: why? Why did the blues write such a bad law? Why, given a once in a lifetime chance to pass a program that Dems have longed to achieve ever since the New Deal, did they craft a sloppy mess that nobody understands and few admire, and then leave their law so unnecessarily vulnerable to constitutional challenge?
The answers tell us much about why blue progressive thinking is losing its hold on the body politic — and why blue methods generally aren’t working as well as they used to.
I read the headline of 
Who was 
"For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread,
Image on the right 
:
Image is 
We served only two side dishes at dinner last weekend: Wild Rice with Apple and Cranberry, and simple String Beans.