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.
“One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”
Everybody has known for years that it's just a boondoggle for Iowa corn farmers.
The end of the line is rapidly approaching for unsustainable government spending. The states will be the first to reach that station.
The arrival will be a painful crash. The impact will reshape much of the US government policies of the past half century.The triage of those affected will raise bloody howls of anguish, and none will escape the effects.
Those who survive the fittest will be those most adaptable to a renewed America of more effective use of personal and financial resources. All will face difficult choices. True need will be better defined, to protect those really unable to cope. True merit will be better rewarded.
Most agree that the root cause of the crash, the bulk of most of the deficits, is bloated government policies and the agencies that implement them. Some argue, instead, that the gap be filled by increased taxes, not facing that spending excesses will then require more again, further reducing the incentives to produce and afford taxes.
I’m not one to say that government workers goof off more than private industry workers. It’s not their work ethic that I fault. It is the policies that political leaders set them on that are at fault both for the financial ruin that most states and the federal government face and for the frustration expressed by taxpayers over servicing a better paid civil service than themselves.
A conservative commenter thinks that President Obama will act with his “natural tendencies to ‘rescue’ and ‘control’ things” and that “The nature of his response could determine his tenure at the White House.” A liberal commenter thinks that former US Senator Alan Simpson’s remark, that “the blood bath will be extraordinary” in April when the federal debt limit comes up for a required vote to increase it, when – the commenter fears – “we can only hope that the nation that emerges from that blood bath is still one we recognize.” (Republicans will require spending cuts.)
The public mood is contradictory. Most want someone else’s ox to be gored. Increase someone else’s taxes. Cut someone else’s entitlement. Slash government payrolls. Don’t eliminate the program that benefits me.
This time, however, as in the case of California’s continuing $25+ billion structural deficit, over a quarter of its budget, there are no more cans and the end of the road is before us.
Leaving it to the politicians has meant cost-cutting nibbles and kicking the can down the road with accounting tricks. Court challenges have often resulted in reversals of spending cuts, due to judicial quibbles, activism, or faulty drafting of the cuts.
Federal legislation would be needed to allow states to declare bankruptcy, or to forbid bailouts of the states, or the Congress may simply refuse to bail out the states. More howls, and more judicial meddling.But, it is the necessary next step, if Congressional budget-hawks have the wings to withstand downdraft counter-pressures from many voters at home and, instead, soar to responsibility. State legislators and governors will be forced to make hard choices.
At the state level, civil service unions will have to renegotiate contracts. Program excesses will have to be trimmed. Some taxes may be raised. There will, then, be carry-over to federal programs. There will be increased demands to trim spending mandates imposed on the states and to trim other federal programs that will be seen as excessive in light of the dimmed largesse of the states.
All will enter a new America, in which there is a more direct connection between one’s own views, own comforts, and own efforts.It will be a difficult adjustment for all, painful for many, and would be a welcome improvement. The alternative is greater difficulties and pain for all if we allow complete insolvency and dissolution of assets by avoiding the confrontation with realities.
Political correctness has never been about helping the downtrodden. It has been about turning people’s compassion and courtesy into a weapon against them. Political correctness has always been the bully’s cudgel. At long last, it has been pushed to its breaking point of absurdity.
I have a retired friend who spends around 6 weeks each year at Mepkin Abbey in South Carolina. Quite a few people do this sort of thing. It's a Trappist monastery (Cistercian, with strict rules) with guest houses for retreatants. (They do take in married couples as retreatants and you probably need to be Roman Catholic, but I'm not sure.)
He does whatever labor is assigned to him - from baling hay to cleaning toilets, observes the rules of silence, and makes it to all of the Masses (beginning after the morning bells at 3 AM).
He returns home "cleansed and refreshed by the Spirit." The guy was a drop-out seminarian, USMC in Vietnam, and, as he describes himself, a "kick-ass businessman." He is, indeed, a tough SOB who loves the Lord.
The Abbey is an old plantation on the Cooper River, north of Charleston, donated to the order by the Luce family.
The Wall Street Journal reported this collapse in June 2009. Further photos and analysis show that the pilings were faultily built and that later digging out the ground under one side for an underground garage was not the way to go.
I think I'll pass on the coming Chinese economy cars.
I think I could direct Carmen myself, every tuneful note is so familiar to me. Bizet is the Elton John of opera.
The story is just a vehicle for the tunes. Naive soldier falls in love with hot gypsy babe, deserts the army and joins the gypsy criminal band. Fickle, promiscuous gypsy babe changes her mind and runs off with studly matador. Naive guy is distraught and kills gypsy lady. Too bad - he has now destroyed his life. A cautionary tale about hot gypsy babes.
It's in French but set in Spain for the fun of it, and so Bizet could use that cool Toreador song he had in his drawer.
The opera is too long to tell such a simple tale, but Bizet was full of tunes.
I thought Galanca was excellent, but Cabell as Micaela stole the show. The sets were an amazing blend of neo and traditional, with lighting that Robert Wilson would envy. Dinner in the Grand Tier was excellent, of course. We had the Gateau Opera at intermission. What else would you have?
Been to Chicago several times, mostly for business or meetings but once just for social. Nice little town, but it isn't ready for the big time yet.
After careful consideration, Maggie's Farm has concluded that what Chicago needs most for its future is a black woman Left-wing mayor with a history of pushing the limits. It's time to bring high integrity, union inspiration, and some caring government muscle to Chicago politics. Time for Carol.
I have a pal who is in the hospital, being treated for a serious case of Babesiosis. I visited him at the hospital yesterday, and determined that he would survive because I was able to elicit a few laughs - but it can be a very nasty and life-threatening disease (or a mild and insignificant one). He was on two or three IV antibiotics, and a morphine pump for the headache.
It's a bug like Malaria, and its vector is the tiny Deer Tick, same bugger as Lyme Disease. Dog ticks are annoying, but we woodsy and doggy people get those on us all the time. No big deal. Those Deer Ticks (actually, they are mouse ticks more than deer ticks) are the real problem for people who spend time outdoors.
Not to make light of a serious topic, but I can't resist re-posting "I'd Like to Check You For Ticks." It's a guy song, but the gals seem eager for Brad to check them. It must be lots of fun to be a country star:
The furor over revealing body scans and pat down searches for those who refuse the body scan has several themes, privacy and effectiveness of alternative means. It is part of the revolt against increased government intrusiveness, as well as just another way for scribblers to fill space.
Here’s an idea:Let all those who object to scans and searches (according to a poll, about 1%) to fly on designated planes, after signing that there will be no law suit for being blown up, and that their assets can be tapped to repay the airline for its plane. – That will, also, make the other 99% safer, as bombers fly on these planes instead.
Yea, not practical.
But, either is creating a well-trained workforce of adept profilers, even without bounds. The volume of US air traffic is mega-multiples of Israel’s.Lotsa luck with that one, even if the disagreements with profiling somehow miraculously disappeared. --And, wouldn’t we want layers of security anyway, like scans and searches?
Sure, any method has its downsides, and none can be perfect, but that beats a rapid, explosive downside for flyers.
OK, commenters, have fun ranting. Please add how often you fly commercial airlines, and whether you are willing to scatter your remains to the birds.
Getting Ahead In Today’s Mad Max Real Estate Market - Why the end game of this housing bust is going to be unlike any other in my lifetime. He says:
I've been through quite a few housing booms and busts. I’ve renovated houses so old they still showed visible damage from King Philip’s War, so I’ve been exposed to every housing bust since wigwams, one way or the other. The early nineties were pretty bad, as I recall. The late seventies/early eighties were Armageddon. But they all mostly had discrete causes and effects, and in fairly short order Metacomet or Jimmy Carter or whoever was mucking up the landscape got run out of town, and something like normalcy returned.
Liberalism once embraced the mission of fostering upward mobility and a stronger economy. But liberalism’s appeal has diminished, particularly among middle-class voters, as it has become increasingly control-oriented and economically cumbersome.
Today, according to most recent polling, no more than one in five voters call themselves liberal.
and
Modern-day liberalism... is often ambivalent about expanding the economy — preferring a mix of redistribution with redirection along green lines. Its base of political shock troops, public-employee unions, appears only tangentially interested in the health of the overall economy.
I admit I have been as reluctant to admit this as anyone. My whole career has been based on the proposition that somewhere, under all the insults and lying and general bad behaviour that makes up the bulk of political life, there was some genuine issue at stake: that if you could just strip away the politics, you would eventually get to the policy. It has taken me all these years to understand that, no, it’s just politics all the way down.
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth - Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches' broth - A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall? - If design govern in a thing so small.
I usually let poems stand on their own, but I cannot resist commenting that this little poem is itself design personified, as complex and intricate as a watch or a cobweb. I think he spent a lot of time working this poem. BTW, as the poem discusses, Heal-All, or Self-Heal (Prunella) is blue (as in photo).
If you are around NYC in the next couple of months, you might get a kick out of the Train Show at the NY Botanical Garden. I've seen it. Magical. The whole thing, other than the trains, is organic...or, should I say, "sustainable."
Gwynnie iPhoned me a pic from the preview of the show this afternoon. That is Gracie Mansion - the old farmhouse overlooking the East River which is the official residence of the Mayor of New York. (Bloomberg doesn't live in it, though. He can afford fancier digs.)
I am doing paperwork this afternoon, listening to Mark subbing for Rush.
Is there something wrong with me for preferring Mark to Rush? (Not that I am not amused by Rush, but Mark cracks me up with every sentence. He must have a good case of permanent mania. Or is he a speed freak genius?)
"Sustainability" is the latest greeny-Lefty fad, especially in academia. As with all Lefty fads, a tendency for threat and coercion quickly develops. At the same time, nobody is entirely sure what it means other than that some sort of conspicuous virtue with no meaningful effect seems to be involved.
While using American University’s database for recording faculty publications, one professor noticed something unusual. After filling in information on authors, the title, the journal, the year, the volume, the pages, whether it was refereed, whether it was international, who publishes the journal, etc.—he came to a box asking whether this was sustainability research.
He was baffled. “What is sustainability research, anyway?” he wondered.
Read the whole thing. I think it's the replacement for the discredited Global Warming meme, or the Diversity meme, or whatever.
Whatever "sustainability" may mean to people, the only thing I know of with real sustainability is a perpetual motion machine. Or God. Everything else requires input, and the chemical destruction of something.
Vanden Heuvel's advice is yet more dreary evidence that the left's desire to transform America into some socialist paradise takes precedent over democratic processes. Day by day, thanks to twits like Vanden Heuvel, the left reveals its decidedly undemocratic character.
All of the name-calling of Conservatives as "fascists" and "Nazis" is pure projection. Conservatives want less government control and involvement in life - not more. Conservatives do not want to be controlled - or to control.
The idea that America might inadvertently and incrementally fall into socialism is a great deal closer to the strategies of “actual existing socialists” than textbook definitions of economies nationalized at a single revolutionary blow. The reason Americans don’t understand this is that the universe of post-sixties socialism has remained largely hidden from public view. Yet this is Obama’s world. It’s time we got to know it.
This guy just can't wait to run your medical care. Yeah, more totalitarianism - for your own good. Isn't it comforting to know that some people know what is best for you?
Robert Bernstein, former Chair and president of Random House, and founding Chair of Human Rights Watch, details the many failings of HRW. If you want it summed up in one piece, by someone both knowledgeable and devoted to human rights, this is the one to read.
I won't go into all the ways HRW has gone seriously astray. But, below, is Bernstein's appeal to college students with which he concludes:
In closing, let me make a statement to whichever students choose to listen: When I was in Israel, I talked to 18 year-olds, both boys and girls, who were not going to college but instead were going into the army for three years and then for one month a year until 45 or 50 years old. They’ve been doing this for 60 years. And most of them have faced some kind of danger during that period. They are not involved in the peace process. They are involved in the defense of their country and have to hope that their government will avoid war.I also think of the Palestinian 18 year-olds – particularly those in Gaza who can’t get jobs because their economy is not thriving. I believe it is not thriving specifically because their government is bringing in arms and Israel is trying to stop them. And their government is preaching genocide. Many of these students can’t afford college and that leaves jihad as their only opportunity. If college students can help bring the human rights movement back to trying to make the Universal Declaration of Human Rights truly universal in the Middle East, they will be making a valuable contribution.
If credible human rights watch is to have a future, and a worthwhile impact, it will depend upon the next generation of leaders. The current prominent NGOs, HRW, Amnesty, and most of the lesser known ones involved in the Middle East have surrendered their mission to terrorists and thugs.
Those who are suffering from terrorists and thugs are watching, and waiting, too long.
Does Human Rights Watch care? It just took $100-million from George Soros, "which should offset nicely the income lost from core donors who've walked away in the wake of a host of scandals." Read more
P.S.: As you'll read in Bernstein's speech, Natan Sharansky was one of the inspirations for Bernstein, and many others. Here is Sharansky recently at the San Diego Jewish Federation's event Celebrating Jewish Heroes (yes, that's Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul & Mary introducing him):
When Sipp and I exchanged emails about the charming house on the blog this morning, he decided to find out a bit about Moodus (where that house is). Here's the Moodus Wiki. (Moodus is a village in East Haddam, with a pop c. 1200 - depending on who is in jail or court-required rehab at a given moment).
What he discovered that was interesting to me was that Moodus was the smallest town in the US to receive federal urban renewal money in the 1960s. The old town center (pic below) was demolished.
The quaint village center, dubbed "Downtown Moodus", formerly located at the intersection of routes CT 151 and CT 149, was a popular destination for guests. However most of the village was razed after the citizens of East Haddam controversially voted in 1967 to accept Urban Renewal funding to rebuild Moodus commercial district a quarter mile east along CT 149.
The citizens immediately regretted their decision, but it was too late for the Dem-controlled Feds with their bulldozers and their developer allies.
The genius central planners had something more modern in mind (ie up-to-date strip malls), to be built 1/4 mile up the road. The soul of the village was killed. It's just one example of why we at Maggie's are so distrustful of genius government planners of anything. This ex-farming village, ex-middle-class resort village, is now a frequent hangout of ex-cons and cons-in-training, young gals without cars with too many tatts walking down the road to the minmart for chips, cigs, and beer, scruffy immigrants whose language one cannot identify, people on various dubious disabilities (as in nearby Middletown, CT), and abandoned or tumbling-down once-gracious homes with rooms for rent. Nobody goes to Moodus anymore, except to fill their gas tank.
Well, those "modern" renewal government-subsidized strips malls are now emptying, shabby, and falling down. Like, as I imagine it, "Pearly Nails" - boarded up. "Uncle Tsao's Quickee Chinee Takeout" - boarded up. "PIZZA POUR VOIS" - boarded up. (I'm sure there must be something good about Moodus still, but it's just a place on a map now, and not my sort of Yankee village anymore).
Thanks a lot, Uncle Sam, for modernizing Moodus. And thanks to you expert geniuses in DC who think you know better than us. See Detroit. And shame on the Connecticut Yankees who bought into such government baloney. The Feds rarely get anything right except through their military - thankfully, their main responsibility.
Once the town opted for urban renewal funds, fixing up the town was no longer a viable solution. "With the influx of federal dollars, you had to play their game," explains Jim Gibbons, an urban planner with the UConn Extension Service in Haddam. "In order to accomplish smaller goals, you had to follow federal regulations and guidelines and at the time of the Moodus project urban renewal was oriented to demolition. To many critics of the program at the time, the correct title was ‘urban disruption.’ As an outsider, I think this was part of the problem with the Moodus project: It disrupted the neighborhood."
Here's a pic I took last weekend of an abandoned and boarded up church in (once) central Moodus.
The Englishman's simple 
The Wall Street Journal
Design
