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.
Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.
Interesting fellow, Henley. He was a pal of Robert Louis Stevenson, who modeled Long John Silver after him. Henley had amputations for Pott's Disease - TB of the bone.
For those of you unplugged into the right-wing conspiracy that President Obama's AttackWatch.com is supposed to combat by your neighbors, friends, children reporting you for speaking against the new Reich, here's a sample of the reactions:
For those of you who watch Falling Skies: "I, for one, am honored to be recruited as an informer by our new insect overlords."
For you Dos Equis drinkers: ""I don't always report on my neighbors, but when I do, I use #AttackWatch." -- Stay snitchy, my friends..."
For you joiners: "Oooo, can I be a Neighborhood Block Captain? Do we get a uniform? When will you post the new rewards system?"
For those nostalgic for the 1920s or 1930s: "will the coming show trials be streamed? Can we recant our thoughtcrimes via Twitter, or must we appear in person?"
Al's Goreathon: Gaia is speaking loudly. Gaia is crabby. She used to be nice, back in the last Ice Age, but now she is annoyed by humans. Well, who isn't?
For balance, Watt's toons based on the Boreathon Goreathon.
Chesterton’s success would have been hard to predict. He was the opposite of precocious. He didn’t learn to read until his ninth year (but after that he was unstoppable). His performance at lower school was lackluster. One schoolmaster exclaimed in exasperation that “if we could open your head we should not find any brain but only a lump of white fat.” Chesterton began to blossom at St. Paul’s (whose notable alumni include Milton, Pepys, and Judge Jeffries), where he met and befriended E. C. Bentley, the creator of the Clerihew, a form Chesterton would have been proud to invent.
After St. Paul’s, Chesterton first contemplated a career in art. For a couple of years, he dabbled in classes at the Slade while also attending lectures in English, French, and Latin at University College, London. He took no degree. And art turned out to be an entrée, an avocation, not an end. He went on to entertain friends with his drawings. But his main revelation concerned criticism. Years later, Chesterton recalled that, “having failed to learn how to draw or paint, I tossed off easily enough some criticisms of the weaker points of Rubens or the misdirected talents of Tintoretto. I had discovered the easiest of all professions; which I have pursued ever since.”
His wife was phobic about sex. That is probably why he got so fat.
To this day, there are baby boomers who half believe that “sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixty-three,” as Philip Larkin had it, “between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles’ first LP.”
This, from Sleeper, seemed relevant to the article:
...we will be the laughing stock of the world, seen jumping head first off a cliff into a shark infested sea, as we will have no way back, because we were sold a tax that has nothing to do with climate change, instead introduced purely for egotistic governance.
Small businesses — hardware stores, gas stations or restaurants for example — are likewise unable to transfer themselves overseas. So they are far more likely to be unable to escape the higher tax rates that are supposedly being imposed on "millionaires and billionaires," as President Obama puts it. Moreover, small businesses are what create most of the new jobs.
Why then are so many politicians, journalists and others so gung-ho to raise tax rates in the upper brackets?
Obama Administration Gave $17.2 Billion in Stimulus Funds to Green Projects – Only $645 Million to Small Business
Will it be the Jews next? Image below via Moonbattery:
...federal fiscal bailouts put our federal system at risk. In essence, the national government is acting as if states are too big to fail. In the next financial crisis, the federal government may decide that states need to be treated like General Motors or, at least, be given ever bigger handouts of the kind the Obama administration seems committed to making.
But if the federal government is going to tacitly assume responsibility for state debts, then those $3 trillion in sovereign state debt must be added to the $14 trillion national debt that has already caused grave concern, pushing the current U.S. debt into the danger zone. Even if pension liabilities are ignored, the combined federal-state-local debt runs in excess of 120% of GDP.
The costs go beyond dollars and cents. The more often the federal government bails out the states, the more Washington bureaucrats will insist on regulating state and local affairs. At some point the United States will see the end of state fiscal sovereignty and the demise our federal system of government.
Bankrupt vote-buying blue states run to the Feds for free cash, compromising their sovereignty. The Feds run to China for free cash, compromising our national sovereignty. Where does China run to?
Our friend Sipp got me back to studying American architectural styles. I realized that I had been making a rookie error by referring to some houses as "Victorian" which may have been Victorian-era but were, in fact, correctly identified as "Colonial Revival."
In the area where I live, the vast majority of the gracious houses built after 1890 are Colonial Revival. Many of them were built as summer, weekend, or "country" houses. Pre-war and pre-income tax, ordinary comfortable people could do much more than they can today.
What style is this house (my pic in Newport, RI last summer - not a rich guy's house but a pre-income tax middle-class house)?:
Follow-up: Many readers fooled by those rocket ships - and the white paint on the shingles or whatever it is sided with now. My expert tells me it's actually Shingle-Style and not Queen Anne. It would look better with natural cedar shingles, would it not?
Darn pleasant home, regardless, and in a fun town, especially for boaters and barflies. Boat drinks!
A couple of days ago, Rick used the term 'Black Swan Event' in the comments so I asked him to expound on it. Here's his report.
The term 'Black Swan Event' entered our lexicon recently, but the idea has been in existence for many years. It has Latin roots, from a phrase that described 'a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan'. This was common saying, at a time when black swans had not been discovered. Upon its discovery in 1697, the black swan ceased to be a impossible thing, and became one which was improbable yet capable of being rationalized and institutionalized after its discovery, as if it should’ve been expected.
Today, the most commonly cited Black Swan Event is 9/11. It was one which was not easily seen or predicted, and considered impossible or at least improbable. Yet, in happening, history has been re-analyzed. Writers have spent a tremendous amount of time reviewing data prior to 9/11 which point to some big event occurring. In doing so, this work makes the event seem not only highly probable, but so likely that it could have been prevented, thereby institutionalizing many aspects of it in new behaviors. Since 9/11, other events have occurred which have been described as 'Black Swans', but may not meet the criteria. As a result, there is a tendency to overemphasize the impact of smaller events by journalists, as the logic of the improbable is sensationalized.
Lake Murray, South Carolina, last night. In fact, it's a reservoir built for hydro power, and was the largest artificial body of water in the world when built in the 1920s.
That's all he's got, for now - another stimulus. Youngman:
This is the campaign.
For the rest of 2011, at least, Obama and his team will speak of little else. This is the debate they want to have, and they are betting the president’s job on their belief they can win this debate.
This is sports strategy, not serious adult concern about the state of the country. Wehner asks Has Obama Learned Anything?
Cui bono? Re the newest Obama "jobs" program, how does it help create jobs and demand to take half a trillion dollars from the private sector and the job creators, and then, after taking the government's cut, hand it around to Obama's cronies?
Our Editor (yes, we do have an editor) notes what our commenter Rick says:
This is a classic example where the critique of Keynesianism: "Keynesians believe that you can pump water out of one end of the pool and into the other and raise the water level" is accurate.
I'm actually a believer in Keynesianism in certain circumstances. If markets do get backlogged and tentative, public debt is low (or overall debt is low), and investment restrained, it can work. There is a cost to it, and it is remarkably inefficient, but it can work because it will put money to work when others are unwilling to put it to work.
But it requires the willingness and ability to run a mild surplus when times get good and drive the debt back down. Politicians simply won't do that because it's a chance to bribe people with their own money to buy votes.
Obama is the biggest perpetrator of bribery in our history, and he's claiming that the reason he's doing it is because the wealthy are making him do it. Yeah, right.
In the end, there is no value in this jobs bill. Unless he can show how the money is going to circulate 3 times through the system in short order, how can he possibly claim that "every penny of the jobs bill is paid for"?
That LIE is simply too outlandish for anyone to not respond.
Among the people we tend to dine with, nobody ever orders a dessert.
I am one to enjoy good stinky cheeses with a sliced pear after a dinner, or maybe a tiny bowl of fruit with some creme fraiche, but if nobody is ordering anything except coffee, you hate to be the only one still greedily munching.
Dessert seems to have become a special treat in America, only for special occasions. Nobody wants to act like, or look like, a pig at the trough.
Trust is a fascinating topic mingling, as it does, personality tendencies (especially extent of projection of one's own evil impulses and thoughts) with cultural or subcultural norms and rational expectations. There are trust cultures and distrust cultures.
Life has slowly taught me to be less trusting than I am naturally inclined to be, given my cocooned upbringing. I am most trusting, rightly or wrongly, of my own sort of people amongst whom, on the whole, there are strict and agreed-upon codes of behavior.
More cartoonish advice coming: Gore’s 24 Hours of Fantasy About To Begin - An effort to "expose" climate change skeptics will instead show that Gore is a charlatan. My questions for Mr. Gore:
1. Has the earth truly been warming lately? 2. If so, can it be proven that man caused that? 3. And if so, why does it matter? 4. What's the ideal climate for the earth? Isn't climate always in flux? 5. If you are really so worried, why do you have two giganto houses, a giganto power boat, travel in huge black SUVs, eat meat, and fly on private jets? 6. How much money have you made off this thing? 7. What is the upside of climate warming, like in the Medieval period? 8. Why aren't you worried frantic about the next ice age, or the next asteroid, the next nuclear war, or the next plague, instead?
Obama is like a lost man who refuses to ask for directions. That's because he has never worked in the real world with people who create real jobs. He operates on theories and an ideology that is incapable of achieving his goals.
For example, he speaks mostly of redistributing wealth, not creating wealth. He wants us to hate the wealth creators, rather than follow their example. The result has been a growing dependency on government, robbing too many of their liberty and opportunity.
I counted. There were 77 cars at my local gym this morning at 6:10 AM. Clearly, from the visible sweat, many people had been there since opening time, 5:00 AM.
Many Americans devote much energy into obtaining work where one can sit all day with no heavy lifting, and then get up early, renouncing wholesome morning sex or slumber to engage in unprofitable labor and exertion in the high-tech gyms. Do people do this in other countries? Are we insane?
About half the people at this place arrive in the morning with their work clothes or dress clothes in hand, on hangers. I see friends and neighbors every time I go.
What am I doing there? Mrs. BD insists that I remain vigorous. I love manual labor and playing sports, but I hate exercise. I am not overweight at all, so that's not an issue. Well, maybe 5 or 6 pounds. I can do heavy labor and tennis all weekend, happily, although happiest with my butt on a metal tractor seat with a cold one in my paws. On second thought, maybe happiest busting brush with dog and gun in Maine, Canada, or the Adirondacks. I dunno. Lots of things please me. Skiing too.
The sedentary work week is the issue, same as for bus drivers. Use it or lose it. That's my mantra, for now.
I would like it better if they had Teaching Company on the TVs instead of the FOX business channel.
Huge Gladiator School 
Image stolen from 
Among the people we tend to dine with, nobody ever orders a dessert. 