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.
An interesting young fellow. In New York Magazine, The Paul Clement Court - Seven cases. One lawyer. The GOP’s great hope for this Supreme Court season is an unassuming attorney who just happens to be lead counsel on the most polarizing arguments in America.
Instead of 2000-page Obamacare, with its vast new omnipotent and costly bureaucracies, they should have simply gone for Medicare for all. Eliminate Medicaid, Chip, etc. and put everybody on Medicare.
While I detest any expansions of government power, I think that, politically, it would have been more popular. Wrong, but more popular.
My preference would be to have the federal government out of medical care, and education, entirely. And out of a few other industries and enterprises too.
You don't have to coerce people to follow sound advice. The government at all levels is all coercion, all the time, about everything, and in their hearts most government functionaries of both parties have a profound contempt for their constituents, and get elected solely on assembling a coalition of voters with a profound contempt of just less than half their fellow citizens.
Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the sombre shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.
I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home. But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly, in this fashion: "This sun means that we are going to have wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling 'boils' show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the 'break' from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night without the friendly old landmark?"
No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a "break" that ripples above some deadly disease? Are not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?
The Democrat Who Took on the Unions - Rhode Island's treasurer Gina Raimondo talks about how she persuaded the voting public, labor rank-and-file and a liberal legislature to pass the most far-reaching pension reform in decades.
The more governments prove themselves incompetent to do something, the more resources they demand to do it. From Hubris heading for a fall:
Until the 1930s, or perhaps the 1960s, there was a "legitimacy barrier" to federal government activism: When new policies were proposed, the first debate was about whether the federal government could properly act at all on the subject. Today, there is no barrier to the promiscuous multiplication of programs, because no program is really new. Rather, it is an extension, modification or enlargement of something government is already doing.
and
James Q. Wilson, America's late, great social scientist, noted that until relatively recently, "politics was about only a few things; today, it is about nearly everything." Until the 1930s, or perhaps the 1960s, there was a "legitimacy barrier" to federal government activism: When new policies were proposed, the first debate was about whether the federal government could properly act at all on the subject. Today, there is no barrier to the promiscuous multiplication of programs, because no program is really new. Rather, it is an extension, modification or enlargement of something government is already doing.
And
"There has been," Wilson writes, "a transformation of public expectations about the scope of federal action, one that has put virtually everything on Washington's agenda and left nothing off." Try, Wilson suggests, to think "of a human want or difficulty that is not now defined as a 'public policy problem.'"
I would say that if you can understand every detail of the Wiki piece on old Mr. Sun, your basic, math-free science is in fairly good shape.
I did not know that the sun, with its Solar System, orbits about the center of the Milky Way galaxy at approximately 251 km/second. We are racing around our galaxy which is, in turn, racing through space at somewhere between 100 and 600 km/second.
The inner-ring suburbs around a major city collectively have a much greater area than the city itself. Hence, even modest reductions in density regulations in these areas--replacing large lots with small ones, single-family homes with townhouses--would have a larger effect on the housing supply than allowing a few more 50-story apartment towers downtown.
Matt points out that housing deregulation would have a number of benefits. High-density living is better for the environment. It promotes a more diverse and efficient service sector. It makes reliable and convenient mass transit feasible. But I think the most important message of Matt's book, and others like Ryan Avent's The Gated City, is that it makes clear that astronomical rents are a result of specific regulatory decisions, not an inevitable malady of urban life.
"From the moment a creature becomes aware of God as God and of itself as self, the terrible alternative of choosing God or self for the centre is opened to it."
"All that we call human history--money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery--[is] the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy."
I don't think he would mind one bit if that happened, but he loves his job too much
Pity the Progressive. Progressive pundits are befuddled, time and again, by the resilience of Americans’ faith in free enterprise. Consider Thomas Frank.
The Great Rumor Mill of China -Something strange is going on in Beijing. Here are the five most virulent conspiracy theories making the rounds -- and a stab at the likelihood of them panning out.
Coincidentally, the ongoing trial of Shawn Tyson for the cold-blooded murder of two British tourists in Sarasota provides plenty of ground for outrage and “soul-searching,” but you probably haven’t heard much about it. The UK’s Daily Mail carried an excellent account earlier this week.
51:1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
51:2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
51:3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
51:4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.
51:5 Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.
51:6 You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
51:7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
51:8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
51:9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
51:11 Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.
51:12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.
The Old Meeting House, Hadley, Massachusetts. Yankee readers know that Meeting Houses, in colonial times, served as Congregational worship centers, as the site for the Town Meetings which made local governmental decisions by direct citizen vote, and generally as all-purpose town centers.
(People with kids in the grammar school contributed in cash or in kind - eg firewood, bags of potatoes, jugs of hard cider to keep teacher happy, putting up the teacher in your attic for a few months, etc).
At the time, the puritan Congregational Church was the established sect in much of New England, supported by local taxes. Their spartan, barn-like buildings for worship did not start to look "churchy" until the 1800s (like the newer replacement of the old-fashioned one, on the right of my photo). The Congos were phobic about anything fancy or ostentatious, or anything reminiscent of the Anglican Church or - God forbid! - Roman Catholicism which was commonly viewed as a near-diabolical cult in New England if not a manifestation of the Anti-Christ itself.
Mark Levin made a good point on the radio recently. While pointing out that government takes 25% of all income in the US - and still cannot come close to paying their bills, he said what I felt was important: We're all at fault.
Well, maybe not individually, but all at fault as a voting mass because, since FDR, we have been demanding and taking more and more goodies from the government - ie from eachother. The candy bowl was emptied, so we started borrowing candy from China.
China is making money from those loans, from our labor. But as our commenter Bob said here this morning:
The reality is that a majority of Americans want socialism. They want Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, unemployment benefits, minimum wages and maximum hours, and regulations on the environment, work, housing, food and drugs, zoning, etc etc etc. All that is modern, parliamentary socialism. The old socialism of worker dictatorship and state ownership of the means of production died in WWI when the workers supported the war instead of revolting.
But Americans have been conditioned to hate the word socialism.
Also, Americans, like people everywhere, don't want to pay for it. They keep trying pass the costs on to someone else. There is no one else. The American middle class and working class will have to pay a lot more in taxes to get what they want. A very lot more. Probably at least double.
If taxes aren't raised dramatically, benefits will have to be cut. That will not happen until economic collapse occurs. Greece is everyone's future. Most of the welfare state benefits go to the elderly. If you cut benefits, you will reduce your own grandparents to poverty and you will deny them medical care. In other words, welcome to 1910.
Many of us have read dozens, hundreds, of books about Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, World War II, the Holocaust. Until now, however, a careful work of sound scholarship has not appeared that pulls it all together as does Bloodlands. I could write thousands of words reviewing the book, but nothing could do justice to reading it yourself. Indeed, if you or someone you know reads nothing else on this era, this is the one book that must be read. Bloodlands, by Yale historian Timothy Snyder, details the – by Snyder’s admission an undercount – 14 million individuals murdered in purposeful killing policies by Stalin and Hitler in the central zone of Eastern Europe, Poland, Belorussia, Ukraine, non-Jews and Jews, between 1930-1945. That doesn't include, and dwarfs, the millions of soldiers who died in combat or the civilians in the path of battles.
In his concluding chapter, “Humanity”, Snyder tells us, “Each record of death suggests, but cannot supply, a unique life. We must be able not only to reckon the number of deaths but to reckon with each victim as an individual.”
Snyder points out: “To dismiss the Nazis or the Soviets as beyond human concern or historical understanding is to fall into their moral trap.” Stalin and Hitler had conscious policies to extract material gain from the people who they thought stood in their way. It was boths’ commonality that had each act so barbarously: “Both the Soviet and Nazi political economies relied upon collectives that controlled social groups and extracted their resources.” Many perpetrators of the horrors, also, had material objectives or just were trying to survive themselves. Snyder says that the millions of deaths tells us as much about the living. “It is not at all obvious that reducing history to morality plays makes anyone moral.” Snyder’s recounting of the murders focuses upon the – to them – practical objectives of Hitler and Stalin: “In colonization, ideology interacts with economics; in administration, it interacts with opportunism and fear.”
The personal vignettes that fill the book, along with the details of the scale of murders, have set every reader back on their heels. No one, no country, is spared the telling of their heroes or devils. Go to Google to see how the learned react to the book. Go to your own soul to see how you react.
In youth, one needs and wants stuff: a roof over one's head, maybe a spouse, transportation, some domestic machines and comforts, recreational toys (guns, tennis raquets, boats, speakers, etc), appropriate clothing, and decent schools for your kids.
In midlife, one begins to hunger for an accumulation of life experiences - or at least I do. I haven't wanted any stuff for years except maybe good cigars, good food at good restaurants, interesting beers, books, and Teaching Company CDs. I buy nothing else anymore - not even an iPad. Well, I did need to replace a couple of computers recently, and it did not go very well. I guess I'd buy more art if I had money to burn, because I look to look at pictures.
My skis are 12 years old, as are my ski boots.
I do not say this from some sort of moral or anti-materialistic standpoint; it's just something I noticed. People tease me about having inexpensive cars and obsolete cameras, but that isn't on my life agenda right now. My father-in-law has always advised "Do it now. Later, you won't be able to enjoy it."
To read things, learn things, go places, see things, do things. That's what I want. What I want is my good work, one cultural outing per weekend day (just one per day, mind you, Mrs. BD), time with my spouse, friends and kids, good energetic manual labor at home and at the farm, interesting and adventurous travel, and a tangible relationship with God.
I sort-of gave up on pursuing the rational goal of financial security long ago: it's a fool's errand, one keeps raising the bar - it can be life-destroying. Furthermore, whenever you think things are going swell, a surprise happens to mess it up. Everybody worries about money, even Warren Buffet. Worry is part of life but it should not be allowed to get in the way of living. Otherwise, what's the point?
Do you feel the same way? Or am I suffering from "Midlife Disorder"? (If so, I sure hope this is only midlife, and that there is a pill or an app for that.)
This music video, shot in cooperation with the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton, takes a few liberties, as pointed out here, but although about "girl power" is also about the power within all of us to rise above "equality" to being special, better, winners. Marines know that. Katy Perry learns that, "It's an affirmation of strength" she said.
This morning I read the many comments on the post below about PTSD. In 2006, I wrote the following piece for Military.com. It contains the "science" about PTSD that is often overlooked by those who treat PTSD as a football, often to deflate us. I think adding this post may help to place PTSD in some better perspective.
Rethinking PTSD
Bruce Kesler | August 21, 2006
A recent New York Times article about a new study on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) remarks that the study is “viewed by experts as authoritative.” This knocks the air out of the Vietnam veteran punching bag that stress disorders among our combatants in the Vietnam War were especially severe, long-lasting, and extraordinary. This canard is currently used to similarly undermine the U.S. war effort in Iraq -- a war often without clear-cut fronts and enemy.
Other qualified analysts have come to this conclusion before. The co-authors of One Nation Under Therapy said in a Washington Post column that the criteria used in earlier studies "has a low threshold for calling a collection of symptoms a 'mental disorder.' " Another critique by an expert on PTSD points out the "official publication of the American Psychological Association, American Psychologist, has now reached a startling conclusion concerning all who undergo severe trauma: An astounding 85 percent of people actually show surprising and significant resilience..."
Another Washington Post headline, “Some Veterans Feel Lives Enlarged by Wartime Suffering,” points to another PTSD expert's observation that “the whole field, in the last four years, has shifted to a certain extent to focus on resilience, on human potential. [Studies of World War II veterans showed] ‘Yes, I've suffered…but I wouldn't have given up this experience for anything in the world….The things I experienced have made me a better man today.'”
Other studies have found similar rates of PTSD in combat troops as compared to civilians experiencing severe stress in their lives, as well as among civilians experiencing terrorism attacks or among firemen.
An August 17 New York Times headline says a “Study Finds Fewer Cases of Post-Traumatic Stress in Vietnam Veterans.” The study, which contains important details not covered the NYT's article, appears in the August 18 journal Science, from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Contrary to the widely reported figure that a third of Vietnam veterans have developed PTSD, this more careful study reports an occurrence -- still serious -- of 18.7% having temporary symptoms and 9.1% having lasting symptoms 10+ years after the end of the war. At the same time, the study points out “the majority of the veterans with high and very high MHM (military historical measure: “probable severity of exposure to war-zone stressors) did not develop war related PTSD.”
According to the New York Times article: “I'd like to think that this study would help settle the debate, and that both sides would see that this was good science,” said the report's lead author, Dr. Bruce Dohrenwend, a psychiatric researcher at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
“It's true we found a significant reduction in the lifetime prevalence of these disorders,” he said, “but on the other hand we also found that more than 9 percent had current pathology, which is a substantial number of people.”
Richard McNally, a psychologist at Harvard who is skeptical of the earlier estimate, agreed, saying that the new study confirmed his and others' suspicions. “It knocks the 30 percent number out of the box,” he said.
But, he added, the findings “should not be used as a justification for short-changing services that are needed to help veterans” of Iraq or Vietnam.
The new report is a reanalysis of a landmark 1988 study in which researchers tracked down 1,200 Vietnam veterans around the country and interviewed them.
The reanalysis of the data, plus additional investigations, are the result. Another finding in the study is a very low rate of compensation-seeking exaggeration.
Another notable result in the study itself is that:
"The trajectory for most veterans with war-related PTSD that causes substantial impairment is toward amelioration or complete remission. This tendency toward improvement is present even for (approximately) 10% of veterans who still had impairing current PTSD at follow-up; the impairment most of them showed by this time (10+ years after the end of the Vietnam war) was not severe. The functioning of the veterans who had developed war-related PTSD but who no longer met criteria for the disorder at follow-up differed little from that of veterans who did not develop war-related PTSD."
TOUR: 
Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the sombre shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.
One of our hors d'oevres for a dinner we hosted on Sat. night was duck foie gras on baguette slices.
How the Left Can Shut Down Rush Limbaug
Mark Levin made a good point on the radio recently. While pointing out that government takes 25% of all income in the US - and still cannot come close to paying their bills, he said what I felt was important: We're all at fault.
In youth, one needs and wants stuff: a roof over one's head, maybe a spouse, transportation, some domestic machines and comforts, recreational toys (guns, tennis raquets, boats, speakers, etc), appropriate clothing, and decent schools for your kids.