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.
Brooks' naivete is usually depressing for me. He needs to spend a month on the streets of Waterville, Maine (no, not in the pot smoke-infused glades of the Colby campus) if he wants to get it. Academics cannot inform him. He needs to chat with the single 22 year-old chickie with a nose ring and tats, on disability for ADD and substance abuse, with three out-of-control kids, with an entrepreneur brother who has a meth lab, a Dad in jail, and an obese 42 year-old mother on "disability" with a "bad back." This is a choice of "life-style" that even Murray cannot comprehend. "Free To Be You and Me." People "find themselves" in different ways...and these folks have "social capital" - just not the sort Murray and Brooks have. They know how to survive, how to have fun, and how to work the system to their advantage.
Barack’s Smug Assault on Freedom of Religion Isn’t Just Anti-American—It’s Unforgivable
MacDonald: California’s Demographic Revolution - If the upward mobility of the impending Hispanic majority doesn’t improve, the state’s economic future is in peril.
Progressives, would assent, that is, to one side of the equation, the side that deployed all those nice-sounding words: Life! Liberty! Happiness! Even the Acquisition of Property (so long as it wasn’t too much). What’s not to like?
What guaranteed all those lovely things was the other side of the equation, limited government, i.e., government that did some few things but expressly did not do other things, not because they weren’t worth doing but because 1) they were outside the scope of a government that was limited by design to foster freedom and 2) to unchain government would be to undermine freedom. It was just this, Mr. Rahe points out, that “the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church forgot.
That's an argument for government control of churches? Christianity 101, Mrs. S: We are all sinners, and we all disappoint God (and ourselves) with our choices and our thoughts. Otherwise, no need for salvation. I think she is an idiot.
I've lived in the New York City metropolitan area for 26 years. I take many things about New York for granted. I still haven't been up to the top of the Empire State Building, and I haven't been to the Statue of Liberty. I did (back in 1982, when I was in college) get to the World Trade Center, and I've been to Windows on World for dinner. I've also been to the Top of the Rock and the Rainbow Room (which I preferred to Windows on the World).
None of these really compare to Central Park, though. It's just a great place to hang out, and thankfully is very close to my office.
We mentioned that theme here yesterday. Compassion without discernment is generally moral vanity or spiritual-ish pride; often foolish, often counterproductive or destructive, and often humiliating to the recipient. It reminded me of this well-known speech by Ivan Illich (not Ivan Ilyich, who died) on the topic of paternalistic "help." The intro:
An address by Monsignor Ivan Illich to the Conference on InterAmerican Student Projects (CIASP) in Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 20, 1968. In his usual biting and sometimes sarcastic style, Illich goes to the heart of the deep dangers of paternalism inherent in any voluntary service activity, but especially in any international service "mission." Parts of the speech are outdated and must be viewed in the historical context of 1968 when it was delivered, but the entire speech is retained for the full impact of his point and at Ivan Illich's request.
I am here to suggest that you voluntarily renounce exercising the power which being an American gives you. I am here to entreat you to freely, consciously and humbly give up the legal right you have to impose your benevolence on Mexico. I am here to challenge you to recognize your inability, your powerlessness and your incapacity to do the "good" which you intended to do.
I am here to entreat you to use your money, your status and your education to travel in Latin America. Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help.
The Fed has kept interest rates at an historic low in an attempt to help 'heal' the economy. Fed Governors have no fear of dead weight in assets, in the form of declining values and poor potential returns. The assumption is that with economic expectations so low, inflation is not a risk, and that rates can be used to 'fix' things by keeping rates low indefinitely.
This artificial approach to soothing our economic woes is a dangerous game. The economy has, in many respects, become unlinked from the stock market. In pursuing the current path, the Fed has gambled on some concepts which have been tried before, though in different conditions and with varying results.
Does this sound familiar? Because if it doesn't, remember that the current situation was caused, in part, by the creation of bundled mortgages, an existing tool which was utilized to try something new, with the assumption of safety baked in. In theory, the level of risk was limited. The problem with them was related to the nature of the individual loans themselves. Each bundled group offered had varying degrees of risk involved. Despite the levels of risk, many high risk assets were given very good ratings. In the end some failed, which put all at risk.
...taking on a billion Catholics for no reason, as opposed to taking on a measly 16 million Jews, in order to favor a billion Muslims…lacks pragmatism as well as morality.
I wrote earlier that this fall's campaign would be a showdown between Marx and Mill. The administration seems to have pivoted from Marx to Rawls.
Memo to Mitt and Newt: Read Rawls, also Kloppenberg for clues to Obama's potential misuse of A Theory of Justice in the months ahead. For support, read Nozick.
Penicillin, and its deadly poisonous antibiotic cousins, kill billions of life forms yearly. Some near-extinct critters hardly exist, these days, outside the zoos of biologists' labs. The little Anthrax critter, for example, and variola.
These little bugs are just as much a part of the ecosystem as any other living thing.
Photo is of the Pneumococcus, a species which humans attack and kill by the billions every year. Even good old treponema pallidum and yersinia pestis are near extinction.
Where is PETA? This is a serious biodiversity issue. The vast majority of earthly life forms require microscopes to see, but is that any reason to excuse man-made extinction of these critters?
Is it just because they don't look cuddly? Dr. William Osler famously termed pneumoccal pneumonia "the old man's friend" because it provided a peaceful ending.
ObamaCare is designed to become a government-controlled Welfare program for all, with insurance companies as back offices, check-paying services for a one-size-fits-all government program. Leviathan is always hungry. Freedom and free choice is the cost.
Are there really tons of folks out there who want the federal government in charge of their own medical care? Who really wanted this, except for government? And government employees are exempt from it, which just goes to show...
The politicization of medical help has only just begun. It's a feature, not a bug.
As an aside, recall that the Church supported Obamacare. Compassion, of course. Compassion without discernment is just vanity and foolishness.
The bigger the Big Government, the smaller everything else: First, other pillars of civil society are crowded out of the public space; then, the individual gets crowded out, even in his most private, tooth-level space. President Obama, Commissar Sebelius and many others believe in one-size-fits all national government – uniformity, conformity, supremacy from Maine to Hawaii, for all but favored cronies. It is a doomed experiment – and on the morning after it will take a lot more than a morning-after pill to make it all go away.
No president has behaved in anything close to this manner since FDR in the mid-1930s.\
This president is not Bill Clinton, or even Jimmy Carter; he is not Lyndon Johnson or JFK. He and his administration have broken with America’s trademark political mindset of gradualism and respect – however grudging at times – for the people. So why is the narrative by which his administration’s actions are explained the same one the MSM has used for decades? Why is this administration being interpreted on the same terms as its predecessors, when its actions and perspectives, in both domestic and foreign policy, are so very different?
I’m not sure I have an answer for that. But the outcome is consistent. The longer we go in this presidency, the less relation MSM headlines have to reality. If you asked a random sample of journalists at WSJ what the practical effect of Obama’s “retreat” on the contraception mandate would be, I’m betting more than 50% of them would get it right. The Catholics are still stuck with paying for contraception services. But the misleading headlines march on of their own accord, even at WSJ.
5:1 Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy.
5:2 Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman's wife.
5:3 She said to her mistress, "If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy."
5:4 So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said.
5:5 And the king of Aram said, "Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel." He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments.
5:6 He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, "When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy."
5:7 When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, "Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me."
5:8 But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, "Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel."
5:9 So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha's house.
5:10 Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean."
5:11 But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!
5:12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?" He turned and went away in a rage.
5:13 But his servants approached and said to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean'?"
5:14 So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
If you are of the Muslim religion, you don't have to give all the new Obamacare healthcare reform regulations and penalties another thought. Because the concept of being compelled to participate in such a healthcare program offends Islamic sensibilities, Muslims are specifically exempt.
As a matter of fact if you are Amish, American Indian or a Christian Scientist you do not need to participate or pay the taxes associated with healthcare reform. That means not having to be forced to buy healthcare insurance, not paying the taxes or the penalties if you don't get it.
Groupon released their first earnings report, and to say the least, they underwhelmed. I had shared some of my thoughts about Groupon several months ago. But something new is afoot.
In the last week, we've seen Facebook file for an IPO. It's been talked about incessantly, and there are many interesting things within the filing which have caused people to begin sharing opinions about it. Since Facebook is in my industry, I find this discussion intriguing and certainly have my own point of view, particularly since I use Facebook.
Originally, I didn't want to join Facebook. Several friends emailed me invitations to join in 2007. I wouldn't accept. Finally, I joined just to stop the invitations. At first, what I found fascinated me. It's actually a terrific picture sharing facility. On the other hand, as Betty White famously said on Saturday Night Live about when she was younger, "We hadPHONEBOOK...seeing pictures of people's vacations was a punishment."
Clearest explanation I've seen about Obamacare:The Real Trouble With the Birth-Control Mandate -Critics are missing the main point. There are good reasons that your car-insurance company doesn't add $100 to your premium and then cover oil changes.
One quote:
Notice the doublespeak confusion of "access" and "cost." I have "access" to toothpaste because I have two bucks in my pocket and a competitive supplier. Anyone who can afford a cell phone can afford pills or condoms.
Poor women who can't afford birth control are a red herring in this debate. HHS isn't limiting this mandate to the poor anyway. We all have to pay. The very poor typically don't have employer-provided health insurance in the first place. "Allowing women to space their pregnancies"? Was there some sort of federal ban on birth control before this?
It's not about "access" and it's not about "insurance." It's because Americans, when paying even modest copayments, choose to spend their money on other things. They prefer a new iPod to a "wellness visit" to the doctor.
As the HHS unwittingly admits: "Often because of cost, Americans used preventive services at about half the recommended rate." Remember, we're supposed to be worrying about skyrocketing health-care expenses. Doubling the number of wellness visits and free pills sounds great, but who's going to pay for it? There is a liberal dream that by mandating coverage the government can make something free.
Sorry. Every increase in coverage means an increase in premiums.
That doublespeak about access and cost is what I have been writing about. If it's a plan to pay for every medical cost, it isn't insurance in any ordinary sense.
When I was a lad, a tiny wee lad, my mother said to me, "Come see the Northern Lights my boy, they're bright as they can be." She called them the heavenly dancers, merry dancers in the sky, I'll never forget that wonderful sight, they made the heavens bright. The Northern Lights of Aberdeen are what I long to see I've been a wand'rer all of my life and many a sight I've seen. God speed the day when I'm on my way to my home in Aberdeen.
I've wandered in many far-off lands, and travelled many a mile, I've missed the folk I've cherished most, the joy of a friendly smile. It warms up the heart of the wand'rer the clasp of a welcoming hand. To greet me when I return, home to my native land.
Many Republicans are falling into a false dichotomy, between social and other issues, instead of focusing on the common thread that unites these issues, the gross overstepping and inadequacies of the Obama administration.
Astute commentators are pointing out that President Obama is strategically steering the national conversation toward social issues – inequality or contraception, as examples -- in order to neutralize his weaknesses in other areas. Republicans, it is said, are either playing into Obama’s re-election playbook or allowing themselves to be neutralized in stressing Obama’s failed economic and foreign policies, which are part and parcel with his social policies in undermining American and global freedoms.
The serial rallying of many conservatives to the non-Romney contender of the month is central to proving this point. Deep anger at the Obama administration fuels the desire for a more “red meat” candidate. This is largely unfair to Romney and fails to stress the commonality among Republicans on the core issues. Instead, it falls into the Obama trap of a false dichotomy between social and other issues.
Romney's campaign had tried to calmly sound the theme of competence in facing the common thread of the Obama administration’s failures: incompetence and ideology. Romney tried to remain the gentleman he is but, defensively, instead has had to fiercely attack his opponents who fiercely attack him. This has consumed resources and credibility, and detracted from the attractiveness of the core Republican issues: the gross overstepping of the Obama administration into personal lives, crony mismanagement of the economy, and alienation of allies left adrift by Obama fecklessness in facing anti-Western foes. The social policies of the Obama administration should not be faced in isolation, allowing Democrats to draw in social liberals, but be placed in their proper context of more indicators of class warfare that undermines the freedoms of all to succeed or to have private moralities untrammeled by Washington.
Democrats are smiling, as well they should. The Republican primaries are shielding them from the main thrust of the Republican message while Republican contenders for the nomination savage each other, weakening unity, and fall into the Obama traps on stressing social issues.
Newt Gingritch was a false vessel for conservative hopes. Rick Santorum, a more consistent and saner conservative, lacks the attractiveness to a wider audience of those on the cusp. Mitt Romney, however, while not a red-meat orator has the unique ability to present the Republican theme in a manner, with conviction and deep understanding of the intricacies, that doesn’t antagonize moderates. Romney is not charismatic but he is competent, and has the abilities to deracinate Obama’s pretensions and unify a majority around stopping the Obama administrations’ transgressions that weaken us in all ways. Romney may not be red-meat but he is meaty. It’s about electability, and that with adequate confidence that together with a Republican Congress a new administration in Washington will accomplish more Republican and American priorities.
Moreso than his opponents, Romney is what Republicans need to win, and what America needs to unseat Obama. I’ll vote for whoever gets the Republican nomination. But, I’m not happy at being part of many of my compatriots playing out a self-destructive temper tantrum that could lose the election.
Get over it: there is no Reagan available, nor was Reagan all that fond memories say he was.
The issue is not whether birth control and abortion are available. They are. The issue is whether the government should have the power to force your neighbor to pay for these things, and/or to require all insurance policies to cover them. Also, neither of these things are particularly expensive.
The insidious premise of the discussion is this: If it isn't covered, it's not available. But don't people buy their own Nyquil, Tylenol, heat pads, Viagra, divorce counseling, cosmetic surgery, toe fungus medicine, toothpaste, Botox, morning-after pills and Dr. Scholl's foot products?
Have people become so trained to expect somebody else to buy what they want that the premise has become distorted? I am a happy product of an unexpected pregnancy, and refuse to regard pregnancy as a disease. Pregnancy is health. If an unexpected pregnancy is a disease, then I am a disease. A tumor, or something.
In fact, I cannot understand why some medical insurances cover pregnancy at all, much less abortions. In my view, we all ought to be free to buy, or not buy, medical insurance of any sort with any sorts of coverage, depending on what makes sense for us. We ought to be able to bring a check list of what we want to the table, and see some nation-wide competition for our business. Get bids, like anything else.
Here at Maggie's, we tend to prefer high-deductible Major Medical coverages with our own choices of docs. Cheap protection from financial catastrophe.
Don’t Be Dissin’ the Bohr Model!
Writing about Attraction to Professors 
Constitutional Right to Moderately Corporally Punish One’s Child
Penicillin, and its deadly poisonous antibiotic cousins, kill billions of life forms yearly. Some near-extinct critters hardly exist, these days, outside the zoos of biologists' labs. The little Anthrax critter, for example, and variola. 
After College, What?
Many Republicans are falling into a false dichotomy, between social and other issues, instead of focusing on the common thread that unites these issues, the gross overstepping and inadequacies of the Obama administration.