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.
The case for why they will: Individual mandate is constitutional - Supreme Court should find that key aspect of Obama's signature law is a legitimate exercise of Commerce Clause power
I keep seeing this “failed administration” and “failed presidency” meme. I think this is inaccurate and we conservatives need to move away from it. Failure effectively means not achieving ones goals and objectives for a particular endeavor. Unfortunately this is not what he is doing. He has been quite effective in achieving his stated and unstated goals much too American’s dismay. Socialized medicine, failed wars, nationalized companies, subsidized industries, defanged military, shackled financial industry, crony capitalism, political patronage, stifling energy industry regulations, reducing religious liberty, funding unproven green technologies, NASA’s change of mission, increasing abortion access, the list goes on and on. The problem is not that he is a failure; the problem is that he is succeeding at the wrong things. This is the point that needs to be made and driven home.
As for Solyndra, this too was an Obama win. His goals were to promote Green energy, reward political allies and finance his next campaign. Once these goals were accomplished the company was shutdown. It is only us silly conservatives with our quaint belief in commerce as a noble pursuit that are appalled. The Left understands that all good things flow from the government.
Goldberg: The Federalist Solution - Making political decisions at the lowest democratic level is the best Left-Right compromise.
I completely agree. People can pee in their own lemonade if they want, just not in mine.
The Geography of Government Benefits - The share of Americans’ income that comes from government benefit programs, like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, more than doubled over the last four decades, rising from 8 percent in 1969 to 18 percent in 2009.
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
The most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) defines PTSD as the presence of three symptom clusters — reexperiencing via nightmares or flashbacks; numbing or withdrawal; and hyperarousal, evident in irritability, insomnia, aggression, or poor concentration — that arise in response to a life-threatening event.
Both halves of this definition are suspect. To start with, the link to a traumatic event, which makes PTSD almost unique among complex psychiatric diagnoses in being defined by an external cause, also makes it uniquely problematic, for the tie is really to the memory of an event. When PTSD was first added to the DSM-III in 1980, traumatic memories were considered reasonably faithful recordings of actual events. But as research since then has repeatedly shown, memory is spectacularly unreliable and extraordinarily malleable. We routinely add or subtract people, details, settings, and actions to our memories. We conflate, invent, and edit.
I am skeptical about the existence of the diagnosis as a disease entity, because it sounds like a normal, or at least unremarkable, reaction to me. Intense reactions to intense things in life is not pathological. It's how life shapes us, twists us, and eventually wears us down and ultimately kills us. Who said "Reality is for people who can't handle drugs"?
Show me one adult who does not harbor some deep pain which affects his life in mostly negative ways. I'd like to meet them. There's a CS Lewis quote which I cannot remember but which goes something like "Be kind, because everyone you meet is enduring some deep struggle and pain." It's not called "a vale of tears" for nothing. People - and kids - are commonly permanently wounded by divorce, for example. Some joy and delight in life too, thank God.
However, I do understand that nowadays people want their struggle called a disease so they can get insurance and/or disability checks.
A gorgeous couple of days in New York City give me the opportunity to wander around and see how people are enjoying themselves. Central Park is a great place to take it all in. I started on the southwestern portion of the park, at its Columbus Circle entrance. Plenty of people just resting, looking at the flowers blooming in the Circle, or eating lunch.
...the Church of England has taken a decidedly leftward turn in the last century, prompting the Earl of Onslow’s immortal observation that “one hundred years ago, the Church was in favor of fox hunting and against buggery. Now it is in favor of buggery and against fox hunting.”
You want to redistribute wealth? Spend your endowment to provide free tuition. You want to fight inequality? Start admitting applicants at random, without regard to SAT scores or grades.
Apparently, the record high temperatures and wonderful weather we're having in most of the United States is just a 'good to have' moment. That is, if you're tired of winter and enjoy spring, a state of mind I'm currently in. The issue isn't 'Global Warming', though I'm sure this is something we'll hear about (because the Huffington Post and Daily Kos won't let us forget). The issue is simply the Jet Stream, which is following an odd path at the moment.
The freak October snowstorm, which caused many problems in the Northeast, didn't mean a long, difficult winter was approaching, so there is no reason to believe we are in for a hot summer.
Apparently, even though Al Gore and many others have assured us there is a guarantee of warming, there are none on offer:
"There's a tilt in the odds toward a warmer summer for the southern two-thirds of the country, but it's not a guarantee," Halpert told OurAmazingPlanet. "We don't give guarantees in the climate business."
There are more-or-less three sorts of non-major-mental-illness-related anxieties.
One is anxiety about worrisome real situations, one is anxiety related to real guilt, one is neurotic anxiety. Some would place the anxieties of minor emotional problems, eg phobias, OCD, GAD, etc., among the neurotic category, and some would place them in another (non-major) Mental Disorder category.
Thus anxiety (fearfulness) is mainly a symptom of something, and usually not a "disease" in and of itself. Frequently, we find that what people think they are anxious about is not what they think it is.
Regardless of category, we indeed do have pills to put a band-aid on all of these sorts of anxieties.
In his “Works of Love,” Kierkegaard remarks that all talk about the spirit has to be metaphorical. Sometimes anxiety is cast as a teacher, and at others, a form of surgery. The prescription in “The Concept of Anxiety” and other texts is that if we can, as the Buddhists say, “stay with the feeling” of anxiety, it will spirit away our finite concerns and educate us as to who we really are, “Then the assaults of anxiety, even though they be terrifying, will not be such that he flees from them.” According to Kierkegaard’s analysis, anxiety like nothing else brings home the lesson that I cannot look to others, to the crowd, when I want to measure my progress in becoming a full human being.
But this, of course, is not the counsel you are likely to hear these days at the mental health clinic.
Curing the uneasy soul is not so easy. When it's coming from real guilt, it's not even desirable to cure it. The guilty must suffer to learn, just like school. Good shrinks are not about feel-good, we are about dealing with reality. Reality often does not feel good.
Revolutionary, indeed. As I have written earlier in this space, the ground has moved beneath the feet of higher education, much of which will look very different in but a few short years.
It will be fascinating to see what good competition will do to the higher-ed government-industrial complex. In time, I think it will blow it wide open for better or worse. Not just in STEM, but in everything.
“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”
Not quite from Cicero, c. 55 BC, but apparently a modern riff on him
Though agreement is not uniform, and our government not nearly as oppressive as the one in The Hunger Games, many Americans simply want to be left alone, to get their lives back. The Hunger Games seems to channel this natural, and very American, urge to be free.
Is My Union's Pension Fund Hypocritical? It's not uncommon for a pension plan's sponsoring organization to give the trustees general guidance on unacceptable investments
The main brief says: “The individual mandate rests on a claim of federal power that is both unprecedented and unbounded: the power to compel individuals to engage in commerce in order more effectively to regulate commerce. This asserted power does not exist.” If regulating inactivity were a “necessary and proper” means of regulating commerce, they argue, we would expect to see more of it, but in 220 years, Congress has never required individuals to purchase particular goods or services as a condition of being alive. The government, of course, denies that it is trying to regulate inactivity; rather, they repeat the argument they sold to several lower courts, that the mandate regulates “economic decisions.”
The states also argue against the mandate on the basis of federalism...
The American population, as a whole, is a bit adolescent, isn't it? Welcomes freebies, but doesn't want to be controlled. "Dad, can I borrow your car tonight?" "OK honey, just be back by 11:30." "Dad, stop trying to control me."
That darn commerce clause has already been abused to death. It's time somebody finally closed the door.
Will the left side of the Supremes decide that the Feds are all-powerful over every aspect of our lives, including the most personal? The voters are overwhelmingly opposed to such power.
Were zoning abolished, rent control repealed, and developers given free rein in New York, could growth rates remotely comparable to sunbelt cities possibly be matched? Not likely. Even equaling Houston's growth rate – a city with abundant vacant land in and around its downtown – would probably be a challenge. Affordability is an even more distant goal using supply-based strategies alone. Relaxing development restrictions that worsen affordability and hinder supply is a crucial goal, but not one which is likely to lead to rapid population increases, or housing cost relief, in built-out and geographically-constrained cities.
Corrupt methods end up corrupting everything they touch. The institutions, the ideas and the people. And the more corrupt those methods are, the more swiftly they corrupt. Alinsky dedicated his book to the devil, but failed to draw the appropriate lessons from the futility of satanic ambition for accomplishing anything except putting the devil in charge.
Milton's devil chose to rule in hell, rather than serve in heaven. Alinskyism turns viable nations into hells where the majority of people are on the bottom and a small number of devils rule over them at the top
ObamaCare's Flawed Economic Foundations - The insurance mandate has almost nothing to do with remedying costs imposed on the system by those without coverage.
A wonderful tune about disrespecting the power of the State, a traditional Irish tune, here as sung by Bob on Good As I Been To You(1992). Various lyrics here. I love this old song. Pleasant, folky, simple guitar by Bob, too.
Dylan has been partial to the old Irish and Scottish tunes since the beginning.
“Each of these people running for president have all given their various ideas and reforms that perfectly jive with and are consistent with what we’re proposing,” Ryan said.
Reaction from the White House was immediate and sharp.
How many of us were good Liberals in youth, only to have our naive illusions shattered by the way the big world really works? For example, we have all learned to see through government's ginning up crises, with the collusion of media, which "only federal government can solve." We have also learned that these are power grabs, and that our federal government is no font of wisdom. It's just a font of unprincipled political calculation.
Readers know that, in Southern tradition, "birds" means Bob White quail. I am not talking about four-and-twenty blackbirds.
Even if you don't have any around, you can get semi-boned (Hey, Bird Dog -have you ever boned a quail?) quail through D'Artagnan. Semi-boned means they leave the bones in the legs and thighs. Great first course.
One of the best first course recipes in the world: Boned Quail Stuffed with Foie Gras. Instead of pate de foie gras, you can use seared chunks of foie gras.
You can do a similar recipe with pheasant, adding some bread crumbs, onion, and apple chunks to the stuffing along with the chunks of seared foie gras. A semi-boned pheasant is good, too.
Your dinner guests will return for dining like this, even if they don't like you.
Or are you totally retarded, and still need elected dingbats to tell you how to live? Efforts to intrude into our lives and choices are becoming absurd. Nannie Bloomberg is one of the worst.
Now he's worried that food donated to the homeless might have too much salt. Kosher food, no less. This guy has some weird obsession with what other people eat. It's not a normal concern, especially for a male. Does he think he's my mother?
"How kind of the Lord to wait until I could afford to lose a million dollars. Imagine what a blow it would have been to lose such a sum when I was poor!"
Somebody needs to inform hot teacher than every straight young fellow in her classes is mentally undressing her during class. She's the one who needs sensitivity training.
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"I want to work in an office full of unicorns.”
There are more-or-less three sorts of non-major-mental-illness-related anxieties.
Da Vinci’s Ghost: 
Image stolen from 
Readers know that, in Southern tradition, "birds" means Bob White quail. I am not talking about four-and-twenty blackbirds. 