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.
Looks like they had some snow in Iowa. Global cooling is gonna freeze all the baby birds on the planet if we don't change our evil habits.
Man, those chicks do grow fast. At this moment, Dad just brought home a small fish, hung around for a few minutes, and went off hunting again. These are devoted parents, more so than many humans.
Australian Reptile Park macropod expert Tim Faulkner said Irwin's quality of life needed to be the No. 1 priority.
My point being that the macropod expert sees Irwin as a person too. I'd say that Irwin has got it pretty good when you consider the lifestyle of your average paralyzed Kangaroo.
It is not healthy for our democracy to have half the population with its hand out and no skin in the game. Necessary and proper taxes ought to be the patriotic duty of every citizen.
... there is no such thing as a “McJob.” Putting down the workingman because his wages are not as big as yours is a luxury only a liberal can afford.
True, but I think there was a deal there: We get an Obamacare waiver, and we'll hire 50,000. Maggie's Farm wants a waiver, but we don't know who to call.
Government distorts markets. Problems inevitably ensue. Then government steps in to claim to solve the problems they created - while blaming it on markets.
My church holds a Seder on the Thursday before Easter, with the traditional foods (but no Matzoh Balls or Gefilte Fish - I don't think our folks would eat that). A Seder in total silence.
The Last Supper is thought to have been Seder. Maybe the bread was Matzoh?
Alas, we do not serve wine in our church so cannot follow the Jewish tradition of drinking a little too much of it at supper.
The middle class and poor have little access to the choices of K-12 schools that the more prosperous have. Government schools have a de-facto monopoly in this industry - 90% of the business, and the government collects the tuition at gunpoint.
Like GM, this industry is owned by the unions and, as Albert Shanker infamously said, "When the kids vote in the union, we'll be for the kids."
I can think of no principled reason why parents should not be given a voucher for the equivalent of their kid's education cost to be carried to a school of their choice. Not to use Euroland as a good example of anything other than good sightseeing, but they do that in Sweden and people are happy with it.
Furthermore, I believe there should be at least nominal stipends for home schoolers, or reimbursement for the costs.
People want choice. The unions want to keep them on their plantation, and the unions own the Dem Party.
If you have never done so, visit a private school, a religious school, and a charter school sometime. I have seen them all. They are not government McSchools (not that most public schools aren't pretty good for kids and families who have their acts together).
For me, the issue is choice and variety. Home schooling should not be the only alternative.
At The Teaching Company. Got the set of 3 Medieval History courses for $160 (usually $750).
Mrs. BD and I live on their courses. There is no reason in the world to watch the crap on TV (except NCIS). I think The Teaching Company is part of the future of education, unless education is about credentials instead of learning.
Egyptian bondage was not a feel-good time for the Hebrew people, and the Crucifixion is a not a feel-good symbol. These are not Hallmark cutie holidays. They were shaped by people who were not sloppy, sentimental, goofy liberals. And no, Jesus wasn't one of those either, no matter what your neighbor thinks.
Passover and Easter are stories of ultimate hope, but they are also pretty unflinching warning about human evil. They are centuries-old warnings, but they are pretty relevant today, aren't they?
It’s a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. Who are these 50 million Americans? Many are somebody’s grandparents, maybe one of yours, who wouldn’t be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor children. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down’s syndrome. Some are kids with disabilities . . . so severe that they require 24-hour care. These are the Americans we’d be telling to fend for themselves.
—President Barack Obama, April 13, 2011
Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of the government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens. . . .
—Senator Edward Kennedy, July 1, 1987
You can scare half of the people half of the time, but you cannot scare all of the people all of the time.
Off topic, but I also wanted to say something to those pitiful whining gals at Yale: If you have to run to Mommy every time something bothers you, you will go nowhere in life. Maybe you have been a good girl all of your life, played your sport, did your homework, sat attentively in class, pleased your teachers, studied for your SATs, etc. Now it's time to grow a spine. If a guy pisses you off, give it back to them as good as you get. If harmless Yalie nurds "intimidate" you, you will have a real problem with real life.
It's called The War Between the Sexes Genders, and it's all good fun. Running to Mommy is not cool.
Who ya gonna call when you're CEO of GE?
I always got a kick out of the short-skirted long-legged gals in NYC who had snappy repartee ready for the construction workers' whistles. It's fun sport for all, and it's all loaded with sex.
The first seder ("order" of the prayers, recitation of the Exodus, and feast) of Passover begins tonight. Some find the printed "order" and its rituals long, especially when hungry. So, here's what the short version might have looked like, if Moses had the Internet.
For those interested in Passover and the seder, you'll find this cinematic telling and interpretations easy, informative and interesting. "Corresponding to the individual steps of the Haggadah, each short video offers unique, visual, commentary on the Passover story, allowing viewers to engage with this ancient and much revered text in new and compelling ways."
Lord Jesus, come Yourself, and dwell with us, be human as we are, and overcome what overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness. Take my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my brother, Thou Holy God. Be my brother in the kingdom of evil and suffering and death. Come with me in my death, come with me in my suffering, come with me as I struggle with evil. And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death, in Jesus' name.
One annual fee. Doesn't cover consultants, though, or hospital. Free markets for medical care would solve all of the problems. For example (with apologies to our local Opthalmologist), our family uses the Costco doc for eye care. Nice guy there. You just write him a manageable check, and their eyeglasses and contact lenses are very reasonable (if not high fashion).
Just one more reason for polygamy. Why not have 5 or 6 of 'em? Send them all out to work on jobs on Wall St., and the stud stays home, works out, goes to gallery openings, writes on blogs, practices his trap shooting, goes fishin', makes a venison stew for dinner, and generally conserves his strength for nighttime fireworks.
Cute spoiled kids, looking for meaning and purpose in their empty, easy, self-indulgent lives through telling me to turn off my lights, my heat, and my computer. (Not their own, of course, because they have important "organizing" work to do, and organizing people is hard, important work.) Furthermore, they want me to quit eating Whale Sushi. I can't help it: it must be a chemical addiction and not my fault.
Via Tim Blair, a vid on Greenpeace indoctrination and training:
I graduated in the recession of '75, wanted to return to NH, and was willing to take any job I could get. Apparently people who enter the job market during recessions have some tendency to never recover from that, always selling themselves short and never making as much at graduates in other years. That's true in my case, but also a good thing. I was terribly arrogant and needed to be brought down a few - no, several - pegs. I counted myself lucky to get a part-time job at the Goodnight Motel in Hooksett at $3/hr. The owner's name really was Goodnight - first Fred, and then his son Gary - and their main business was selling mobile homes on the other side of the highway. Marlette mobile homes, I'll have you know. The Cadillac of mobile homes. And they were moving into Yankees (very stylish) and doublewides, 24' x 36'.
We always contend that lawns are foolish things to have. Foolish, and unnatural. We prefer meadows and gardens, but everybody needs a place to play croquet or softball, or to lie in the sun with a book, growing your basal cell carcinomas and your liver spots. We reluctantly acknowledge that, in some suburban areas, a sweeping lawn is a social if not an aesthetic requirement.
All the same, we urge folks to consider how much of that lawn they might exchange for some more interesting colorful perennial or shrub borders and ground covers. A nice English garden, whether formal or informal, uses lawn as an accent and for paths - as just one component of design and mentally, I think, as a comforting symbol of safe civilization to contrast with the blooming profusion of the other plantings. Order vs. disorder. Open vs. closed. Safe vs. mysterious. Landscape design is a psycho-spiritual enterprise. This is a garden outside of London:
Here's a brief history of the American lawn. Yes, the lawn is more-or-less designed to imitate the smooth effect of a sheep-grazed pasture on an English country estate.
Today, a bit about lawn aeration, fertilizer, irrigation, earthworms, and "de-thatching." In reverse order:
"De-thatching" is a completely useless and unnecessary activity. No healthy soil needs it, and a healthy soil is the key to a decent sod. "Thatch" - old grass - will rapidly decompose or be eaten by worms in a good lawn, recycling the nutrients and keeping your worms fat and happy.
Earthworms. We said everything we know about the wonderful earthworm in this post. They aerate and enrich the sod. If your sod doesn't contain plenty of them, something is wrong with it.
Irrigation. No natural lawn requires irrigation. If you try to grow lawn grasses in places they don't want to grow, like the Arizona desert, they will need irrigation of course. Around here, people with money to burn irrigate their lawns to trick the grass into staying green all summer, and not enter their natural summer dormancy when they are apt to turn brown. Lawn grasses grow the way they do because our mowing cuts their tops off while they keep trying to grow to their natural height and to bear their seeds. It must be frustrating to the poor things. In natural conditions, grasses grow to their full height, bear their seeds (say, in early July) and then go dormant until cool damp weather brings them back to life. If you keep them strugging at their Sisyphisian effort through the mid-summer with irrigation, they will naturally need more fertilizer to look photogenic.
Fertilizer and top-dressing. Our lawns do need fertilizer because they are deprived of natural sources of nutrients (fallen leaves, animal droppings, clover and other wild legumes with their nitrogen-fixing bacteria, silting from flooding, etc). When you bag or blow the clippings, then even more so - and you starve the worms, too. My top-dressing program not only fertilizes organically, but also improves the soil texture. I also fertilize lawns in June and September/October. I don't use water-soluble nitrogen, because most that will end up in the stream. I use mowing machines that mulch the clippings and fallen leaves. I don't need to use herbicides, because the grass is happy. And I don't use pesticides because there is no good reason to waste the money and to poison Creation.
Aeration. In nature, earthworms, moles, woodchucks, and other digging critters keep the topsoil loose and in motion. Loose soil is need for root growth, water and nutrient penetration, and to provide air for aerobic soil microbes. Our lawns tend to get compacted, and people try to kill their happy moles because they interfere with the "perfect lawn" (which, of course, is meant to be a reflection of our perfect selves, right?). Aeration of lawns and sports fields is essential, and should be done depending on how heavily the grass is tromped on. Some lawns, every two years. Sports fields need twice per year. There are two kinds of aerators. The spike aerators (like this) do nothing useful. What is needed is the plugger type (like this one, in photo above), which pulls out forty-fifty per square yard 2-4"-deep plugs out of the sod and deposits them on the surface. (it makes a temporary mess, but one good heavy rain removes most evidence of the plugs.) Plug aeration is commonly done in the Fall, but I like to do it in the Spring, after the grass gets growing thick and vigorously (May), and combine it with my biennial top-dressing project and with any overseeding that seems needed.
The downside of plugging is having dogs with muddy feet on your bed for a couple of days.
...this vision has never been implemented in full. But it has offered a model, for good and for ill. For the left, it provided long-term goals, criteria for distinguishing progress from retreat in making short-term compromises, and a kind of definition of the just society. For the right, it was a foil to be combated and averted — an archetype of soulless, stifling bureaucratic hubris — and it helped put objections to seemingly modest individual leftward steps into a broader, more coherent context. But both ends of our politics seemed implicitly to agree that, left to its own momentum, this is where our country was headed — where history would take us if no one stood athwart it yelling stop.
It is no longer really possible to think so. All over the developed world, nations are coming to terms with the fact that the social-democratic welfare state is turning out to be untenable. The reason is partly institutional: The administrative state is dismally inefficient and unresponsive, and therefore ill-suited to our age of endless choice and variety. The reason is also partly cultural and moral: The attempt to rescue the citizen from the burdens of responsibility has undermined the family, self-reliance, and self-government. But, in practice, it is above all fiscal: The welfare state has turned out to be unaffordable, dependent as it is upon dubious economics and the demographic model of a bygone era.
...the primacy of local or township government in American society made it possible for a great number of Americans to participate in political institutions on a regular basis. Whether as Fire Chief or head of the St. John’s Mint Festival, whether as Dog Catcher or Mayor, Americans were continually forced to turn away from themselves and to attend to the life and business of their neighbor. The long habit of such participation in public life convinced Americans that, despite their equality, they need not and could not be indifferent to the particulars of social life. This also preserved Americans from the tendency to invest their political beliefs in a few general ideas. Accustomed to the details of daily participation in political life, they did not let what is often called (wrongly, I think) “ideology” substitute for active engagement in the public realm. This was possible chiefly because the actions of political life were largely confined to the local level, even when the legislation directing that life occured far away.
"The number of foreign companies are up 35 percent," to 496 out of the total 1,550, he said.
He said that despite UN sanctions and bilateral punitive measures by the United States and the European Union against Iran, "Germany is present with 64 companies, Italy with 36, Britain with 37, Spain with 14, France with 15 and South Korea with 33 companies."...
"The strong participation of foreign companies is a response to the illusion of (Western) sanctions," quipped the oil official.
While Iran forments trouble throughout the Middle East, and arms and directs Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, Western and Chinese companies supply the cash to do so.
Hollywood propagandist fimmaker Robert Redford has his latest revisionist history film, The Conspirator, torn asunder in the Washington Post review. Excerpt:
Replace “post-Vietnam” with “post-Iraq” and you get a pretty good description of how the U.S. military is portrayed in “The Conspirator.” Rather than a principle worth fighting for, or a fragile democracy still vulnerable to dead-enders who would reignite the war, the Union is painted as the nest that hatched the egg of an overweening state and arrogant abuse of power.
I'm delivering food and doing errands for my old folks this weekend. My Mom fell and cracked her patella while unloading groceries, cannot drive for 6 weeks, and can barely hobble around on her brace - and my Dad is half-blind, has Parkinson's, and is not allowed to drive anymore. His ornery self refuses to take the Parkinson's medicine but, thankfully, he finally agreed to get himself a hearing aid.
A neighbor is driving Mom to her best friend's funeral today at our family church on the hill.
I brought them Chinese take-out last night: Cold hot pepper cabbage, Scallion pancakes, and Scallops with Snow Peas. Then a plate of strawberries. Also left them some black bread and Nova Salmon for breakfast. Tomorrow, I'll bring them some take out Thai soups. They look too skinny, need feeding. They were never much into eating, unless it was especially good.
Somehow, we got on the topic of past family trips. I was laughing to remember the volumes of disposable diapers we travelled with - they were not available in Europe back then. With a family of 5 kids, there was usually at least one in diapers (and at least one in a bad mood). I remember trying to help tie them (the bags of diapers, not the younger brats, unfortunately) to the roof of the rental cars. My Dad always travelled with rope for that purpose, in the pre-bungee-cord era.
My Mom was remembering the large Raspberry plantings at the Roman Camp Hotel, where we all had stayed for a few days. Watching her litter grazing on Scotland's excellent raspberries, ripping them off the rows of canes. A wonderful place. My parents are picky about where they will stay - they can't stand glitz or "fancy," and they don't do tacky. They are the typical old Yankee WASPy breed that is only comfortable with understated refinement and genteel semi-shabby. No "luxury," please. They feel that "luxury" is vulgar (whereas I can learn to appreciate it when I can find it). Mom liked this place:
A few years after that trip, my folks did something unusual and selfishly left the kids behind and took a trip by themselves, and biked the length of Hadrian's Wall. Or, as my Dad corrects me, walls: there are two of them. They were finished with breeding. We had many good trips; lots of stories and tons of colorful memories. I can't remember them all: Somewhere in Europe every August, and Cape Cod too. Ocean liners - I remember each one of them. Two ski weeks each winter. Monhegan Island regularly. Very nice. Like those Bald Eagle parents with their rabbits and fish, I think they wanted to fill us with all of the experiences that they could, and the heck with the expense.
As much as I love my cozy home, going anywhere new, near or far, still ignites the adventurous spark in me, like a kid. I am lucky that I married an adventurous woman who will go anywhere, any time, and try anything. She back-packed down to Greece when she was in college. My kids are like that, too, thank God. They seem to view this world as a wonderful buffet of experiences, opportunities, and challenges.
I think my parents' travelling days are over, but they are fortunate to have 5 kids who want to pitch in, when needed. My favorite Thai place makes damn good noodle soups, and I am gonna fight the traffic and bring them some.
The San Diego Union-Tribune sent a reporter to the northern suburb of Oceanside last night. The headline in the print paper: “Tax Concerns Spur Two Rallies: Tea party, nonpartisan groups stage separate Oceanside events”; online’s headline more honest: “Two political rallies raise their voices in Oceanside.”
The same story in both presentations: “more than 1500” showed up for the Tea Party rally, “more than 100” for the raise taxes rally. The one-hundred, riding on the publicity backs of the work by the 1500, given as much space as the 1500. The tax raisers, calling themselves “Rally for America”: “the nonpartisan group stood behind public service employees and unions and blamed government bailouts of big business, corporate tax breaks and cuts to services for hurting the middle class…”
Yeah, “nonpartisan”! The Associated Press’ April poll says that’s the stance of 29% of Americans. That means the other 71% are partisans. Yes, partisans of reversing the US descent into bankruptcy and destroying the wealth producing citizenry that pays the taxes and benefits all.
He never should have said that semen wards off depression: 
My church holds a Seder on the Thursday before Easter, with the traditional foods (but no Matzoh Balls or Gefilte Fish - I don't think our folks would eat that). A Seder in total silence. 
Business School: Where Education Dies
We always contend that lawns are foolish things to have. Foolish, and unnatural. We prefer meadows and gardens, but everybody needs a place to play croquet or softball, or to lie in the sun with a book, growing your basal cell carcinomas and your liver spots. We reluctantly acknowledge that, in some suburban areas, a sweeping lawn is a social if not an aesthetic requirement. 
"De-thatching" is a completely useless and unnecessary activity. No healthy soil needs it, and a healthy soil is the key to a decent sod. "Thatch" - old grass - will rapidly decompose or be eaten by worms in a good lawn, recycling the nutrients and keeping your worms fat and happy.