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.
On the collective scale, choice is nearly irrelevant. Only people with power have choices. The idea that the man waiting in the alley with a knife has a choice is a heresy because he is not a man with a knife, he is a collection of social statistics which assign him an automatic level of responsibility based on his race, gender, socioeconomic status and all the other variables. Whether or not he stabs someone with a knife, is not up to him, it's up to how society treats him.
Similarly financial troubles are not personal, they are social. Whether you can pay your bills has nothing to do with you, but with your race and class. If you succeed when the statistics say that you should fail, then you are an outlier. A rogue exception that only goes to prove the rule. Likewise if you fail when the statistics say that you should succeed. Individual actions can never disprove the collective snapshot of how society is.
If every person is wired into society like a giant bank of servers, then every individual malfunction is actually a social malfunction. If a man kills, then it's because his connection with society was bad. To understand why it was bad, the left examines the nature of the connection. If it was a privileged connection, then he was warped by his excessive access to the innate racism, sexism, classism and all the other bad "isms" of the society. If it was an underprivileged connection, then he was warped by his lack of access to the benefits that society had to offer him and being marginalized, he went off the reservation.
Blame-shifting is always fun, isn't it? Maggie's has been hot on this topic recently. "It's the hippies' fault." It's Bush's fault." It's my genes' fault." "It's my husband's fault." "It's society's fault." "It's my parents' fault." "It's my boss' fault."
But if things go well, it's to my credit, right?
While people make their decisions, plans, and choices for all sorts of reasons, it is a necessary premise in a free society that an individual is responsible for every one of his actions. In some cases, perhaps, a necessary fiction.
The bar mitzvah (a modern innovation, as I just learned) has it: "Today I am a man" and thus responsible for all of my actions.
The delicious pleasures of blame-shifting have never been permitted in the Bliss household.
Obama's 'solution' for what ails us is to utilize two common political treatments for recessions. First, the standard Monetarist 'Easy Money' solution by lowering interest rates. Second, the Keynesian 'Stimulus'. The unfortunate situation we face is really only getting worse because he cannot do the second without the first — there simply isn't enough money interested in supporting more debt. The solution? Print more money, a concept I discussed in an earlier post.
The printing of money allows banks to purchase Treasury Debt, which funds the deficit, which they then sell back to the Fed in order to keep their reserves intact.
Europe has taken a remarkably different approach. The Eurozone wants to emerge from its difficulties in economically healthy fashion, rather than saddled with massive debt. Some European nations have such huge debt that the only sensible track to follow for other Euro nations that are growing modestly is to manage with restraint. They've been backed into a corner, but it's a good corner to be backed into.
Some are not shy about telling Obama why he's wrong.
If Obama was the head of a sports league having economic struggles, BALCO would still be in business. His steroid policy would put individual players at risk in order to keep interest in the league high based on new records. Like Barry Bonds' records, people will soon wonder how things got to this point. Will Congress review Obama's steroid policy and chart a new course?
At Camp Ripley, Minnesota, there was a recent Welcome Home for Vietnam veterans. This video highlights the speeches given. Veterans Day is on November 11. It's worth listening to the speeches, the lasting legacy, and preparing yourself for what you will do on Veterans Day.
...the notion that artists might actually consider earning a living doesn’t register at all. There’s not even the briefest flickering of that possibility. The idea that artists might endeavour to produce work that their customers would pay for voluntarily, without Arts Council coercion and political vetting, appears to be unworthy, and perhaps unthinkable. Artists are much too important to waste their time making beautiful things that people want to buy. According to Laurie, their role is political and much, much grander - to “imagine a culture beyond the control of capital and the nation state.”
The Washington Post is usually a little more careful than the New York Times about blatant bias, but its racism hit-job on Governor Perry sinks to a low, at least so far for this election cycle. Perry is supposed to be responsible for the old slur on a rock at a hunting camp rented by his father, which Perry says his father painted over as soon as they rented the camp.
Porky Pig at his worst would call it “wacism.” That’s the words war crossed with racism, as the last refuge of scoundrels out to wage media war to save President Obama’s re-election.
It takes the Texas Tribune to set matters in perspective, doing the job the big city boys wouldn't:
Wallace Jefferson, the first black chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, said the hunting ranch name controversy is "much ado about nothing" and argued the implication that Rick Perry is insensitive to matters of race is flatly wrong…."To imply that the governor condoned either the use of that word or that sentiment, I find false," Jefferson said….
Even some of Perry's fiercest Texas critics say they do not believe he is racist. They point to his record of appointments as evidence: He appointed the state’s first African-American state supreme court justice, Wallace Jefferson, and later made him chief justice. (Jefferson’s great grandfather was a slave, “sold like a horse,” Perry once said with disgust.) Perry’s former general counsel and former chief of staff, Brian Newby, is black; so is Albert Hawkins, the former Health and Human Services commissioner who Perry handpicked to lead the massive agency in 2002.
“He doesn’t have a racist bone in his body,” said former Democratic state Rep. Ron Wilson, who is black and served with Perry in his early years in the Legislature. “He didn’t then, and he doesn’t now.”
Added Dallas Democratic Sen. Royce West, who is also black: “I don’t agree with him on policy issues, but you can point to many things he has done that were sensitive to ethnic minorities.”
Those on the Left, as expected, trumpeted the WaPo’s Wacism hit-piece. Those on the Right who went along, to bolster their alternative candidate or out of laziness or to kiss a** in their NYC-DC cocoon, have not only hurt their own credibility but also Republican chances of recovering Washington. Way to go, weasily wascals.
We are fortunate to have an independent bookstore in town. And even more blessed because the owner has known me for 20 years so that, when a family member goes in at birthday time or Christmastime, they just ask her what she thinks I would like. She is generally correct but, given how catholic my reading taste is, it might be tough to be wrong.
This is great fun: Genghis: Birth of an Empire by Conn Iggulden. The Amazon review says "brilliantly imagined and addictive historical fiction," and that's right. It's the first of his 4-book series on Genghis Khan.
California's elected Insurance commissioner is one of the most anti-insurer in the country. He was part of the Democrat slate chosen by state voters in 2010, from Governor on down, despite the Republican tide elsewhere throughout the country.
His latest, lauding the new law signed by the Governor, making it unlawful for health and disability insurers to be the determiner of whether the claimant on a policy is disabled. Now, according to the Insurance Commissioner's press release: "SB 621 protects consumers of life, health, and disability insurance from 'discretionary clauses' in their insurance policies which give the insurer the sole discretion to decide is a beneficiary has become disabled, even if the consumer has a doctor certify that they are disabled," said Commissioner Jones."
How's doctor certifications worked out in California?
According to the Los Angeles Times, 11% of California drivers used a doctor's note to get a disabled parking tag, so they can park for free in any spot and use those reserved for handicapped drivers. Some truly are handicapped. Most of us have witnessed most parking in those spots getting around fine. According to the deputy chief of investigations of the California DMV, "With the emphasis on fraudulent use ... when we go out, typically on average it's in the area of a 30 to 40 percent violation rate." This is just those using someone else's handicap parking tag. There is no verification of those who obtained a tag with a doctor's note.
Yeah, doctor's notes to obtain health insurance or disability insurance payouts. That's the ticket..........to further destroy insurers and leave us all to government-run, taxpayer-paid coverage.
In which a veteran of cultural studies seminars in the 1990’s moves into academic administration and finds himself a married suburban father of two. Foucault, plus lawn care.
So, is it OK that so many bloggers and commenters use pseudonyms? Are their opinions godlike? Or, are they just afraid to reveal themselves completely?
Some have jobs or friendships that they feel may be endangered, others do not, and others just want to be rude or snarky or such without responsibility, accountability or consequence.
Do pseudonyms reduce their credibility? If someone has something worthwhile to say, they believe, I think they should stand behind it publicly, not hide behind a pseudonym.
Several nights ago, I watched Catching Hell on ESPN. I enjoy documentaries and was pleased my wife and boys joined me. My boys have little interest in baseball, and I'm certain my wife got sucked in by the Bill Buckner opening, since she is a longtime Mets fan. Each of them found aspects of the documentary to be interesting and meaningful.
The story centers on Steve Bartman, a young fellow who may have cost the Chicago Cubs a shot at the World Series. It was an unlikely error on his part, one in which fault is questionable. As the documentary points out, many other fans were also reaching for that foul ball. He was unlucky enough to touch it. More importantly, an easy double play ball was booted by the shortstop just a few moments later. Certainly, the lost double play did more to cost the Cubs than a fan preventing a single out.
...we know the brain can “change itself”. You could say that is one of its main jobs in fact – altering itself in response to experience to better adapt to the conditions in which it finds itself. For example, as children learn a language, their auditory system specialises to recognise the typical sounds of that language. Their brains become highly expert at distinguishing those sounds and, in the process, lose the ability to distinguish sounds they hear less often. (This is why many Japanese people cannot distinguish between the sounds of the letters “l” and “r”, for example, and why many Westerners have difficulty hearing the crucial tonal variations in languages like Cantonese). Learning motor skills similarly improves performance and induces structural changes in the relevant brain circuits. In fact, most circuits in the brain develop in an experience-dependent fashion, summed up by two adages: “cells that fire together, wire together” and “use it or lose it”.
Given the clear evidence for brain plasticity, the implication would seem to be that even if our brains come pre-wired with some particular tendencies, that experience, especially early experience, should be able to override them.
I would argue that the effect of experience-dependent development is typically exactly the opposite – that while the right kind of experience can, in principle, act to overcome innate tendencies, in practice, the effect is reversed. The reason is that our innate tendencies shape the experiences we have, leading us to select ones that tend instead to reinforce or even amplify these tendencies. Our environment does not just shape us – we shape it.
Indeed, smart people have been saying for many years that we have the power to shape our world, our realities, and our experience. There is a real reality out there somewhere, presumably, and real truth and Real Truth, but these things are elusive to our limited brains.
In daily life, we don't even consider that we live on a little rapidly-moving and spinning ball of rock in some sort of curved Space-Time in a frightening and awe-inspiring cosmos that few of us can comprehend. It's the stuff of college bull-sessions: Did the world make us, or do we make the world?
It's all good fun, but we do have to run our lives while we're here. Or not.
So far, so good, but they still have a ways to go to make everybody poor. Yes We Can! Si se puede! It is not a bug - it's a feature of the Obama economy.
I have no idea what the notion behind Gunwalker was, but I know two things for certain: It assisted the deaths of Mexicans and Americans, and the DOJ and the press are minimizing and blocking the story - to their shame. Imagine Gunwalker in the Bush Admin.
Imagine those kids ignoring you because their parents don't care what they do, the school doesn't allow any disciplinary actions other than calling the parents, the children know that they will pass no matter what and any peep from you about the kids' behavior is interpreted as prejudice. Imagine being required to make a lesson plan for every level of ability, learning style and disability, every day all the while knowing that the kids will probably not even attempt the work because they know they don't have to.
The social contract is "We maintain civilization because we all benefit from it. And we all have a responsibility to pay for it." Ms. Warren’s version of the social contract boils down to, "You have to pay more for maintaining our society because you can, and we outnumber you, and can force you to do so." That’s not a contract. That’s just extortion by majority. The millionaire’s responsibility is not to "pay forward" any more than any of the rest of us, because he doesn’t benefit any more than the rest of us.
Conflating "society" or "civilization" with "government" is sneaky and dishonest - a rhetorical trick. Representative governments are meant to be servants of society.
She is evil. As I recall, my beautiful, peaceful, spiritual, eco-sensitive and carbon-sensitive ancestral American Indians wore their wampum for show, as there were no iPhones to purchase:
I envy the rich too, even though it is a sin to do so (see below). Especially those with access to private air travel or with over $17 million under their mattress. However, I do not hate them at all, or want to take their money. Everybody has different aspirations in life, and plans and constructs his or her life according to their religious, moral, emotional, intellectual, etc. desires and aspirations. As a major source of choice, wampum is often in high demand and thus strenuous to obtain and even harder to keep given all of life's tempting choices.
20:2 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;
20:3 you shall have no other gods before me.
20:4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
20:7 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
20:8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.
20:9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
20:12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.
20:13 You shall not murder.
20:14 You shall not commit adultery.
20:15 You shall not steal.
20:16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
20:17 You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
20:18 When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance,
20:19 and said to Moses, "You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die."
20:20 Moses said to the people, "Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin."
Our editor mentioned not being able to quite grasp the idea of freshwater stripers. Well, here is one I caught yesterday morning on Lake Murray, 26" - 15 lbs. Caught a total of four over a half hour or so - all in this range - 25 to 26", 15/17 lbs.
I was definitely on the wrong side of the bite, so I switched from bait casting to fly rod. Used a Ugly Stick 7' fast action rod (home build), Galvan T-12 large arbor reel, #12 weight forward sinking line, 5 yards of 48 lb lead core line, 6' 20 lb florocarbon tippet and one of my jig "specials" - 1/2 oz, lead core, foam covered jig head/hook with chartreuse/white bucktail with some transparent yellow colored foil for flash. All topped off with a 6" curly tailed grub.
Now I can here you thinking all the way down here - that's not fly fishing - that's bait casting. No it isn't. Its the same technique used to get the lure down to the fish as you would use on a stream, pond or small lake - it's just heavier with more "umph" if you will. The whole idea is to get the lure to present properly to the fish you're targeting. It works the same if its a nymph, dry fly or foam bass bug.
Believe it or not—and I know most people do not—violence has been in decline over long stretches of time, and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence. The decline of violence, to be sure, has not been steady; it has not brought violence down to zero (to put it mildly); and it is not guaranteed to continue. But I hope to convince you that it's a persistent historical development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars and perpetration of genocides to the spanking of children and the treatment of animals.
“Do you believe in sin?” Cathleen Falsani, the religion correspondent for the Chicago Sun-Times, asked then Senator Obama. “Yes,” he replied. “What is sin?” “Being out of alignment with my values.” That’s one convenient religion: Obama worships at his own personal altar at the First Church of Himself.
Jonah: Centrists’ Are Abandoning Ship - The establishment solution to unpopular liberal policies is still more liberalism:
The establishment can’t bring itself to blame liberalism (or themselves). So instead they blame the system. Obama’s own reelection theme of running against “Washington” — a town he had near total control over for two years and in which he is still the most powerful figure — is a variant of the same argument. Obama can’t blame the party he leads, so he blames the “system.”
It is a major essay by Lewis. The corruption in the attitude towards public service, from service to mindless greed. A quote:
Over the past decade the city of San Jose had repeatedly caved to the demands of its public-safety unions. In practice this meant that when the police or fire department of any neighboring city struck a better deal for itself, it became a fresh argument for improving the pay of San Jose police and fire. The effect was to make the sweetest deal cut by public-safety workers with any city in Northern California the starting point for the next round of negotiations for every other city. The departments also used each other to score debating points. For instance, back in 2002, the San Jose police union cut a three-year deal that raised police officers’ pay by 18 percent over the contract. Soon afterward, the San Jose firefighters cut a better deal for themselves, including a pay raise of more than 23 percent. The police felt robbed and complained mightily until the city council crafted a deal that handed them 5 percent more premium pay in exchange for training to fight terrorists. “We got famous for our anti-terrorist-training pay,” explains one city official. Eventually the anti-terrorist-training premium pay stopped; the police just kept the extra pay, with benefits. “Our police and firefighters will earn more in retirement than they did when they were working,” says Reed. “There used to be an argument that you have to give us money or we can’t afford to live in the city. Now the more you pay them the less likely they are to live in the city, because they can afford to leave. It’s staggering. When did we go from giving people sick leave to letting them accumulate it and cash it in for hundreds of thousands of dollars when they are done working? There’s a corruption here. It’s not just a financial corruption. It’s a corruption of the attitude of public service.”
another:
I notice on his shelf a copy of Fortune magazine, with Meredith Whitney on the cover. And as he talked about the bankrupting of Vallejo, I realized that I had heard this story before, or a private-sector version of it. The people who had power in the society, and were charged with saving it from itself, had instead bled the society to death. The problem with police officers and firefighters isn’t a public-sector problem; it isn’t a problem with government; it’s a problem with the entire society. It’s what happened on Wall Street in the run-up to the subprime crisis. It’s a problem of people taking what they can, just because they can, without regard to the larger social consequences. It’s not just a coincidence that the debts of cities and states spun out of control at the same time as the debts of individual Americans. Alone in a dark room with a pile of money, Americans knew exactly what they wanted to do, from the top of the society to the bottom. They’d been conditioned to grab as much as they could, without thinking about the long-term consequences. Afterward, the people on Wall Street would privately bemoan the low morals of the American people who walked away from their subprime loans, and the American people would express outrage at the Wall Street people who paid themselves a fortune to design the bad loans.
Earliest Christian engraving
"In the place where repentant sinners stand, perfect saints cannot stand."