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.
In aBangkokTemple: IT IS FORBIDDEN TO ENTER A WOMAN, EVEN A FOREIGNER, IF DRESSED AS A MAN.
Cocktail lounge,Norway: LADIES ARE REQUESTED NOT TO HAVE CHILDREN IN THE BAR.
Doctor's office,Rome: SPECIALIST IN WOMEN AND OTHER DISEASES.
Dry cleaners,Bangkok: DROP YOUR TROUSERS HERE FOR THE BEST RESULTS.
In aNairobirestaurant: CUSTOMERS WHO FIND OUR WAITRESSES RUDE, OUGHT TO SEE THE MANAGER.
On the main road toMombasa, leavingNairobi: TAKE NOTICE: WHEN THIS SIGN IS UNDER WATER, THIS ROAD IS IMPASSABLE.
On a poster at Kencom: ARE YOU AN ADULT THAT CANNOT READ? IF SO WE CAN HELP.
In a City restaurant: OPEN SEVEN DAYS A WEEK AND WEEKENDS. In a Cemetery: PERSONS ARE PROHIBITED FROM PICKING FLOWERS, FROM ANY BUT THEIR OWNGRAVES.
Tokyo hotel's rules and regulations: GUESTS ARE REQUESTED NOT TO SMOKE, OR DO OTHER DISGUSTING BEHAVIOURS IN BED.
On the menu of a Swiss Restaurant: OUR WINES LEAVE YOU NOTHING TO HOPE FOR.
In a Tokyo Bar: SPECIAL COCKTAILS FOR THE LADIES WITH NUTS.
Hotel,Yugoslavia: THE FLATTENING OF UNDERWEAR WITH PLEASURE, IS THE JOB OF THE CHAMBERMAID.
Hotel,Japan: YOU ARE INVITED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE CHAMBERMAID.
In the lobby of a Moscow Hotel, across from a Russian Orthodox Monastery: YOU ARE WELCOME TO VISIT THE CEMETERY, WHERE FAMOUS RUSSIAN AND SOVIET COMPOSERS, ARTISTS AND WRITERS ARE BURIED DAILY, EXCEPT THURSDAY.
A sign posted inGermany'sBlack Forest: IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN ON OURBLACKFORESTCAMPING SITE, THAT PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT SEX, FOR INSTANCE, MEN AND WOMEN, LIVE TOGETHER IN ONE TENT, UNLESS THEY ARE MARRIED WITH EACH OTHER FOR THIS PURPOSE.
Hotel,Zurich: BECAUSE OF THE IMPROPRIETY OF ENTERTAINING GUESTS OF THE OPPOSITE SEX IN THE BEDROOM, IT IS SUGGESTED THAT THE LOBBY BE USED FOR THIS PURPOSE.
Advertisement for donkey rides,Thailand: WOULD YOU LIKE TO RIDE ON YOUR OWN ASS?
Airline ticket office,Copenhagen: WE TAKE YOUR BAGS AND SEND THEM IN ALL DIRECTIONS.
A Laundry inRome: LADIES, LEAVE YOUR CLOTHES HERE AND THEN SPEND THE AFTERNOON HAVING A GOOD TIME.
And finally the all time classic: Seen in anAbu DhabiSouk shop window:
IF THE FRONT IS CLOSED PLEASE ENTER THROUGH MY BACKSIDE…
How ObamaCare Guts Medicare - The president's pledge that 'If you like your health plan, you will be able to keep it' clearly does not apply to America's seniors.
I was alive then, and I'm not that old. I remember life without an Education Department, for example. We somehow learned the times-table and how to diagram sentences without the "help" of the federal government, and also without mandatory teacher certification. The guys who put men on the moon all went to grade school before even the first New Math, much less the Education Department.
Go, sit upon the lofty hill, And turn your eyes around, Where waving woods and waters wild Do hymn an autumn sound. The summer sun is faint on them -- The summer flowers depart -- Sit still -- as all transform'd to stone, Except your musing heart.
How there you sat in summer-time, May yet be in your mind; And how you heard the green woods sing Beneath the freshening wind. Though the same wind now blows around, You would its blast recall; For every breath that stirs the trees, Doth cause a leaf to fall.
Oh! like that wind, is all the mirth That flesh and dust impart: We cannot bear its visitings, When change is on the heart. Gay words and jests may make us smile, When Sorrow is asleep; But other things must make us smile, When Sorrow bids us weep!
The dearest hands that clasp our hands, -- Their presence may be o'er; The dearest voice that meets our ear, That tone may come no more! Youth fades; and then, the joys of youth, Which once refresh'd our mind, Shall come -- as, on those sighing woods, The chilling autumn wind.
Hear not the wind -- view not the woods; Look out o'er vale and hill- In spring, the sky encircled them -- The sky is round them still. Come autumn's scathe -- come winter's cold -- Come change -- and human fate! Whatever prospect Heaven doth bound, Can ne'er be desolate.
It's that classic Victorian tone. You can read about her interesting life here.
There's a good reason old Ohio architecture resembles that of New England and upstate NY - that's where the people came from. The central Ohio highlands have a similar geographic feel to that of New England, too.
The extension on the left is clearly modern (wrong - readers suggest that it is a renovated old barn or carriage house), but attempts to reflect the older building.
Normally I'd leave this link for the morning compendium, but this is too important to be mixed in with others.
After 9-years of US sacrifices, President Obama's rush for the exits in Iraq and the incompetence of his administration is seen again, with very probable bad consequences for Iraq's ability to withstand internal discord and external influence from Iran. The US is left with little but a likely buffer protecting Iranian interests and a sanctions evasion route that allows Iran greater freedom from Western pressure. Once again, each time over and over, Obama blows US interests into the crapper.
Morning Postscript: Carl Cannon makes the case that "The Obama Doctrine, Made Plain at Last in Libya, Iraq": The administration "They preferred to frame the events of the week in ways that play into a domestic, election-season narrative: Namely, Barack Obama made promises regarding foreign policy, and kept them....Distilled to its essence, this approach envisioned an American foreign policy that was less militaristic, less confrontational, and less-unilateral than that of his predecessor."
Fred and Kimberly Kagan, however, call it "Retreat With Our Heads Held High", as the Obama administration's veil for failure to meet even newly President Obama's criteria for US goals in Iraq, citing his speech of February 2009. I'll quote them at length to see how Obama or his defenders should hang their heads in shame:
The humiliation of this retreat is compounded by the dishonesty of its presentation....
Have any of these conditions been met? Such sovereignty as Iraq has is gravely marred by the continuous efforts of Iran to direct the course of its internal politics through armed means and otherwise. Iraq is not stable. The Iraqi government has still not been completely formed, and the parties contesting the parliamentary election of early 2010 have not yet come to an agreement on how the state will be run or who will run it. Iraq is not self-reliant. In fact, it will not be able to protect its territory or its airspace. Its government is not “just, representative, and accountable,” but rather heading toward a new authoritarian structure at a time when many Arab states are convulsed by resistance to authoritarianism. The U.S. has not helped Iraq build ties of trade or commerce. Above all, today’s announcement is the definitive renunciation of any attempt to “forge a partnership with the people and government of Iraq.” In other words, the president has failed to achieve any of the objectives that he established as his own policy in February 2009—apart, of course, from withdrawing U.S. military forces.
This failure was not inevitable. When President Obama took office, the U.S. had more than 100,000 troops in Iraq who had just completed, together with the Iraqi Security Forces, driving off Iranian militias and clearing the last bastions of al Qaeda in Iraq and Sunni resistance forces. As he noted in that February 2009 speech, Iraq had just completed provincial elections that were, in fact, “just, representative, and accountable,” and that laid a solid foundation for the transition to a successful Iraqi parliamentary democracy. And, in fact, the parliamentary elections of early 2010 were also in many respects remarkably successful—they were peaceful, heavily-contested, with high participation, and produced the potential for a new political balance in which forces of secularism and cross-sectarianism might well have succeeded. Had the U.S. pursued a determined strategy, using all of the considerable leverage at our disposal, to support the formation of an Iraqi government harnessing that potential, then Iraq’s path could have been very different.
But the Obama administration did not focus on helping Iraq move forward to seize this opportunity, but rather focused on prodding the Iraqis to form a coalition government as rapidly as possible—in order to negotiate a new agreement that would allow American forces to remain in Iraq after the end of this year. In other words, the administration threw away the chance of political progress in Iraq in pursuit of something it has now decided it never wanted to begin with.
Observers of U.S. policy could have been excused for finding all of this rather confusing, but today’s speech resolves any lack of clarity. The president has enunciated the Obama Doctrine: American retreat.
If there's any multilateralism buried in the manure, it is that of widespread burying heads in it to avoid facing the reality of a contra-Western interests Middle East that we will see in Iraq and Libya, as we've seen in Egypt, while Iran and its proxies are encouraged as was al-Quaeda by prior US weaknesses and excuses.
Of course not. I regard the planned proliferation of "disorders" as a bit of a joke, but some people take it all very seriously. Internet Addiction Disorder? Tobacco Use Disorder? Sex Addiction?
In my view, the person is the issue, not the so-called diagnosis. Most of the time, I try to be of help to individual people, not diagnoses. There is a major division in Psychiatry today between those who treat diagnoses and those who treat people. Everybody has neurotic quirks.
This rabble of self-important losers is even a bigger joke than SDS was. Do they know how to do anything useful in this world besides beg for my money? I doubt it.
Sometimes squirrels eat bird food & sometimes birds eat squirrel food!
This guy (gal?) Red Tail spent from 10:30 am to about 3:30 pm on our lawn yesterday, with only occasional departures from munching on its kill. I was about 15 ft away with an 800mm lens and really didn't bother the hawk at all.
One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.
Alinsky, Cloward-Piven, the whole of the Community Organizing movement, in which flak catchers are mau-maued — these are all intellectual blue prints for bringing about the desired social upheaval that is to lead to the fall of the capitalist system as we know it, to be replaced (in theory) by the democratic socialism Obama and his left-wing academic cohert desire. Even as this very same cohort knows that liberal fascism and corporatism — a centralized command and control economy run by government in partnership with those big businesses they hold regulatory control over — is the real end point, one in which a new class system is drawn up, with the masses returned to their place as masses, and the government class taking exclusive control over wealth and power, creating a permanent relationship between citizen and government wherein the citizen is dependent exclusively upon the government for survival.
The guy can't spell his way out of a wet paper bag, but I think he is right
My sweep pal was here yesterday morning for my biennial or triennial chimney cleanings. We have posted here several times about chimney fires and chimney cleaning, such as here.
Attention recent college grads: He gets $150/chimney, and it takes him 20-30 minutes. A discount for multiple chimneys. He runs his own life his own way. Retired USMC.
He is a fireplace buff and keeps a wood stove burning in his kitchen all fall and winter. He has a place on Cape Cod and burns there on those cool damp summer evenings too. He agrees with me that a clean fireplace makes a lousy fire. You need a 5 or 6" pile of ash underneath. A clean chimney is another matter. I keep the Maggie's Farm home fire burning all day, October-May. Generally, he scrapes a bucket of stuff out of my flue each time he comes.
Why don't I invest in the brushes and do it myself?
Perhaps I will. We have protection these days from ye olde Chimney Sweep's Cancer - cancer of the scrotum. Nasty disease.
As the Left leads America deeper and deeper into a welfare state in which we take money from our neighbors to pay for our personal responsibilities and to cover our losing risks (after government takes its hefty cut, of course), I found this proposal amusing: Free Diapers
At the risk of pissing off most of our readers, I would assert that anyone benefiting from unemployment, mortgage interest deductions, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, government pensions, Social Security, welfare checks, disability, SSI, etc etc is in diapers.
I am sick of that old "I paid into it" line. Maybe you were fooled into thinking you did, but you did not. I never hear any gratitude from the recipients, just endless demands for more money to be extracted from the shrinking pool of taxpayers - who I term "neighbors" because that is who they are.
They told you that you did, that you did pay into it and deserve it, and they told you that fiction so you would feel entitled to it and eternally grateful to "government" - not to your neighbor - for supplying it. However, you did not pay into "it." There is no "it" there, to distort Gertrude Stein. There is no money there, waiting to be used. It's just all borrowed from the Chinese, who will soon own the USA as a semi-dysfunctional subsidiary - a "distressed asset."
We Americans should be ashamed of ourselves, or at least own up to our condition in which dependency has become socially and politically acceptable instead of being viewed as charity. It's not the way our tough ancestors lived, and mine led fine, honorable, sacrificial, difficult lives as far as I know, without expecting anything from anybody except spouse, family, and neighborly helping. Good lives, no mooching.
In America, they put you into diapers, sooner or later, whether you want the freebies or not. Most people welcome the freebies, because, however undignified, it's human nature and we want to convince ourselves that we are entitled to it, somehow, to rationalize our sponging off of others and to reduce the shame of dependency in adulthood. I suppose I would accept the money too were I in dire straights, but I would not feel good about it because I would know that it is taken from my neighbor - not voluntarily, but by force. That's the plan - a nation of dependents. It might be the European Way, the Serfdom Way, but I do not think of it as the American Way.
All of this weakens our people, our nation, our spirit, and our backbone. It is designed to do that. It is a political strategy.
It's a shame Ron Paul is such a (partial) nutjob. A shame that Cain doesn't know what he is talking about, compared with your average Maggie's reader.
With temerity I critique one of the clearest foreign policy analysts in America, Angelo Codevilla. We share some friends and common roots in the teachings learned at the knee of Robert Strausz-Hupe of laser focus on core US interests over distractions, especially those wasteful or unproductive. With timidity at facing Codevilla’s sharp pen and keyboard with which he punctures and flattens flabby or fatuous thinking, I face his latest essay, The Lost Decade. Codevilla disembowels the foreign and domestic policies of the US since 9/11, with many telling arguments. Yet, I stride forth to face his iconoclastic critique with iconoclastic critique. I agree in temper and some hindsight but disagree with some of Codevilla’s specifics that go too far or which share some common illusions with those Codevilla criticizes.
There are two core arguments in Codevilla’s almost 8,000 word essay, a self-serving, misfocused and exclusionary US elite that failed to identify or act against domestic and foreign threats. Instead, they enriched themselves and intruded into all Americans' freedoms with the overly expensive and expansive, ill-suited to US liberties, feeble Homeland Security, and got bogged down in self-limited wars of illusory nation-building that distracted funding from the major weapons systems necessary to US strategic superiority and failed to confront real enemies. Combined with irresponsible profligate domestic spending and programs that have led to our deep ongoing recession, our means and will to continue our foreign engagements or rebuild our needed future weaponry and military has deteriorated. No wonder most Americans distrust these elites and the federal government.
Although in 2001 many referred to the United States as "the world's only superpower," ten years later the near-universal perception of America is that of a nation declining, perhaps irreversibly. This decade convinced a majority of Americans that the future would be worse than the past and that there is nothing to be done about it.
The idea that we need more entrepreneurs to help improve the economy (a theme I've been thumping) is not lost on the government. However, their solution is to use taxpayer money to invest in areas they deem worthy. Most venture capitalists look for profitable businesses with a high potential return. Or at least some kind of return. The government has the luxury of being able to borrow as much as it wants from the Fed, or taxing the citizenry to death to pursue its dreams of a greener world...and is not seeking any return.
This is not entrepreneurial behavior. This is not venture capitalist behavior. It is the kind of behavior we should all be wary of - the government picking winners and losers. It's a precarious game, particularly if you choose a market that is so small your money isn't likely to have any kind of decent return. This administration claims the GM and Chrysler bailouts "made money" (though I am sure a careful accounting will prove otherwise). Assuming this is true, and politicians are astute enough to put taxpayer money to a profitable end - why the hell are we investing in this?
At its very core, it's just wealth redistribution. They just slapped a different label on it.
Ed: A quote from that piece:
Politicians write the press releases first and worry about the taxpayer losses later.
"... we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected) he often feels that it would not be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along - illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation - he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us."
"Wait a sec. Did he say 'levitation'?? Oh, come on! What's next, ESP? UFOs? Boy, the crap you see on blog sites these day, huh?"
Yeah, well...
Hat tip Theo. Home site is here, although there didn't appear to be any more vids or info on the above. Pretty amazing, though. You know that fun old literary theme of going back in time and appearing real smart compared to everybody else? If I'm going back in time, I'm bringing along one of these babies.
Exit question: How long would it spin in a vacuum with no air resistance to slow it down?
Think life is not as good as it used to be, at least in terms of your wallet? You'd be right about that. The standard of living for Americans has fallen longer and more steeply over the past three years than at any time since the US government began recording it five decades ago.
Desperately Seeking Talent - Employers worry more about the effects of a bad hire than about the problems of hiring someone who is competent but not exceptional.
Despite frosty relations with the titans of Wall Street, President Obama has still managed to raise far more money this year from the financial and banking sector than Mitt Romney or any other Republican presidential candidate, according to new fundraising data...
Wall St. is overwhelmingly Democratic, esp in the upper echelons
The AFL-CIO is making headlines by running ads promoting “Occupy Wall Street.” One seriously doubts that members of the working class have much in common with the left-wing professional agitators running these protests and the tent cities they are erecting illegally in private and public parks in New York, Washington, D.C. and other cities. The most interesting part of this story, however, is that one of the AFL-CIO affiliates behind the campaign, the Working America group, is headed by a veteran of the Venceremos Brigades to Cuba, a progressive activist by the name of Karen Nussbaum. Equally significant, her husband works for the public relations firm that represented billionaire hedge fund operator George Soros.
There are many small ways of being quietly and undramatically herioc in life, short of going into combat. It's heroic, in a sense, for an agoraphobic to go to the store, for a drunk to go to AA, or for a man to do an unpleasant job his whole life to take care of his family.
Heather MacDonald has fun with the OWS people (who seem to be slowly getting less coverage and interest - and cold rainy Octobers are not fun times to sleep in a park) at City Journal: Get a Job! Working is (usually) more admirable than protesting. She begins:
Why is a month-long slumber party in a public park more heroic or newsworthy than getting up daily and going to work? “I’ve been here a week and I’m lovin’ every minute of it,” a jagged-toothed, self-described vet leaning against a planter in Zuccotti Park told me on Sunday. One of the biggest decisions that he and his fellow occupiers have to make each day is whether to eat vegan or to scarf down some saturated animal fats in the Dunkin’ Donuts that regularly make the rounds, thanks to the bounteous food donations that pour into the park on an hourly basis. (The most critical decision, of course, is which local establishment to invade for your sanitary needs.)
I am deeply concerned about a risk for obesity and constipation among these heroic protesters. Read the whole, amusing thing, and realize that this is a sort of lark for these people, a vacation from real life, party time in the guise of socio-political importance.
After nearly 3,000 years, 
Most American colleges 
As the Left leads America deeper and deeper into a welfare state in which we take money from our neighbors to pay for our personal responsibilities and to cover our losing risks (after government takes its 
Mrs. BD likes 