Wednesday, October 27. 2010
 It's taken me many years to realize that I can really only take in one piece of art per day. One painting - not a gallery-full. One poem, not a collection of poetry. One dance, not a whole dance concert. One piece of classical music, not a whole concert. One Chippendale highboy, not a room full of Chippendale.
Maybe it's my limitation in what I am able to process. Maybe it's my ADD, or maybe I am slow, but to me a wonderful thing is like a found jewel, or like finding an ancient coin washed up on a beach.
I assume that the people who make these things put a lot into them, and they can demand the same of me.
Thus one very special thing per day is plenty for me. I do not like to linger in museums - I prefer to hit and run.
Correggio, Venus with Mercury and Cupid, c. 1520
How does Garrison Keillor know me this well, without having ever met me? This describes me to a T:
[Republicans have] transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic fratboys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong�s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt�s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we�re deaf, dumb, and dangerous.
Truth is, I am a registered Repub but think of myself as a Conservative, despite my always testing out as "Centrist." Why is Gary so angry? Why are Lefties always angry? I am almost never angry, but often cranky and indignant.
Why does Gary hate me? I have enjoyed his humor very much over the years, but his politics are puerile and hyper-emotional.
I should add that I am a "know-noting flat earther" too. Yep, that's me: an Ivy Chem major and dumb as a post, clinging to my Bible and guns for dear life.
My brother took this snap off his back porch in CT yesterday morning. His attached email suggested "Hope you all will host T'giving again this year."
Yes, we will. It's usually 20 or so people, meaning two turkeys. One in the oven, the other on the grill.
Pic is a Dunkin in LaGuardia Airport
Jacoby begins:
THE HILLS are alive with the sound of liberal Democratic contempt for the electorate.
ObamaCare: What’s Ailing Democrats
Jay Cost looks at the impending damage to the Dems
Dr. Helen is Where the boys are
How to go to college without losing your mind
The New Road to Serfdom, by one of our heroes, the Brit Daniel Hannan
Krauthammer on Obama: "...his self-regard is quite infinite here."
Insty on the O:
"This kind of inflammatory rhetoric is dangerous. I don’t think we’ve ever seen its like from a sitting President."
Prager: This Is a Referendum, Not an Election
Fighting the Tea Party is like fighting the Taliban - asymmetrical warfare
Good analogy
Black guy looks for racism, cannot find any. He's angry anyway,
Maybe he's angry because he couldn't find any...
Biden:
"Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive...”
OK, Joe. Name three.
Tuesday, October 26. 2010
The new Queen Elizabeth. h/t, Theo.
She has the hull of a liner, but the superstructure of a Miami Beach hotel. Everything is quite elegant inside, but on ships like this you can too easily forget that you are on a ship at sea.
I prefer smaller ships, like many of the Holland-American line, that feel like big boats instead of like giant hotel-resorts.
Call me a snob if you want to. I like the Ryndam, below. I was looking at her because we need somewhere new to go to in 2011 - and I love ships 'n boats.
I cannot stand my confusion anymore.
The word is "cannot," not "can not." "Can't" always works informally, of course.
"Anymore" and "any more" are more confusing: "Any more (two words) means "no more"; anymore (one word) means "now," "currently," "at this time.""
 I suppose people would classify me as a member of the American "elite."
Like several of us Maggie's Farmers, WASP New England roots, prep school and double-Ivy-educated, fairly well-bred with a good pedigree, decent table manners when sober, a semi-entertaining but pedantic dinner companion, and in a supposedly-respectable profession. I am a member of blue blood clubs (and clubs that used to be), and I try to watch my grammar. I wear tweed jackets and a bow tie in order to emphasize my existence - and my adherence to tradition. I avoid a flashy life style, and buy my work clothes at good old, fashionless Brooks Brothers like my Dad and Grandpa. I am not wealthy, but relatively comfortable for now, with my kids through with college.
Yes, I am in some elite category, for better or worse. But not an elitist, I think.
In my life, since my arrogant youth, I have dedicated myself to learning new things every day. We isolated and insulated elites can learn a heck of a lot of wisdom, and a lot about life, from getting away from the elites. America has no class system. Wise and savvy people are found everywhere, in equal proportions. Fools, also.
Most people are like me, just another human: Part fool, part smart, part insane, and a teeny bit wise. The latter came from life, not school.
The regular American fellow with his boots on the American ground and struggling on the American soil knows more about life than any elites in Washington. The "problem" is that most regular American folks do not seek power over others - and thus do not seek political careers unless they are personally insecure or failures (there are rare exceptions).
The tea party warns of a New Elite. They're right.
Elites are the people who overestimate themselves and underestimate misunderestimate others.
"What happens in the cornfield stays in the cornfield."
Anon.
Pic is beautiful central Ohio, on Sunday.
 More links later. Server problems...
Pajamas: Time for Heads to Roll Over New Black Panther Dismissal
Falling in Love Only Takes About a Fifth of a Second, Research Reveals
That ain't love. That's called desire.
UNMANNED: Boys, Neuters, Thugs and Other Faux Men
Repressed aggression. Very sad.
Powerline: Independents poised to deal hard blow to Democrats
Cons need to keep an eye on those indies. Don't overreach, Cons.
The Shibboleth of "Fixing" Income Inequality
Russia fixed it. It worked out very well indeed. Everybody pretended to work.
Yes, yet another "deep swimmer" of the Left. They tend towards non-profits, where their productivity cannot be measured.
A quote via Thompson on public spending:
See, whilst many… are psychologically able to ignore, or excuse, or basically discount altogether the taking money from people bit of public spending, there are some of us that just can’t. One day it occurs to ask the question, “What exactly gives them the right to help themselves to whatever they want?” and the answer turns out to be because they can. Then you get a bit angry and frustrated, feel almost entirely helpless, then, just to make things that little bit worse, everyone else in the world comes and slaps you in the face for even daring to consider such heretical notions. The taking from me bit doesn’t count. I don’t matter. It’s the no longer giving bit that counts. Think about how people feel! Think about all the things they could do with that money, or that job, or learn from those people or achieve with the support of those others! Don’t you understand? Have you no feelings? Apparently not. I just keep thinking, “But it’s not your money. How can you live with yourselves taking it?”
Monday, October 25. 2010
The Instyman posts something which might almost be considered a blog post instead of an Instyism. Good stuff, with some Heinlein for dessert. One quote:
The main problem with the “new elite” is that they’re not an elite at all. That is, they aren’t particularly smart, or competent. They are credentialed, but those credentials aren’t so much markers for smartness or competence, or even basic education, as they are admission tickets to the Gentry Class, based on good standardized test scores. That’s fine — ETS was berry, berry good to me — but it doesn’t have much to do with ability to succeed, or lead, in the real world. Worse yet, it seems to have fostered a sense of entitlement.
"Read the whole thing."
Those so-superior French must have crappy lives, so retirement is all they have to look forward to.
From Foreign Policy's The Spectacle of the Society - France's half-century social-spending spree is coming to an end -- and Nicolas Sarkozy is stuck holding the bag.
The drama of rewriting the postwar social contract is taking place across Europe. Over the past generation, globalization has challenged Western economic dominance and forced wages downward throughout the industrialized world; the economic crisis that began in 2008 delivered the coup de grace.
Read the whole excellent cautionary tale.
The moral of the story, I feel, is this: when government becomes too dominant a part of life, people become more childlike and thus, instead of feeling gratitude towards their "leaders," they have entitlement tantrums when they feel deprived.
Is America unique in having many work settings in which managers feel the need to have "forced retirement" by age 70 or 75? And is America unique in having so many people who build second careers after retirement?
Anchoress linked this quick online test from 2008. Yes, I know online quizzes are dumb.
Some folks think we at Maggie's are being facetious when we term ourselves a Centrist website, but that's how I came out on the quiz: Socially Moderate, Economically Conservative - Centrist.
Most of my friends view me as a Conservative, but maybe Conservatives are Centrists nowadays.
That, with other deep wisdom including an irrefutable proof that Tea Partiers are racists, here.
Sometimes a fellow just wants a big bowl of Bob Evans sausage gravy dumped on top of a pile of good biscuits.
Many doctors claim the gravy smooths your arterial linings, thus extending life. The biscuits provide serenity and peace of mind in this troubled world, and many peer-reviewed studies confirm this. It is settled science.
I love to have excuses to travel to places where you can get good biscuits and gravy for breakfast, but I have too few opportunities to do so.
What's your favorite way to dine on this treat? Crumble the biscuit? Split the biscuit? Dump it on top of an intact biscuit? Such details matter in life.
That dramatic � even inflammatory -- title, �Is �Palestinian-killer� the new �Christ-killer�?�, is the first question that occurred to me as I read news reports that a meeting of Catholic Bishops from the Middle East condemned Israel, called for withdrawal to 1967 borders, and that Jews have no Biblical right to Israel.
I just read the actual statement of the gathering. The initial impression I had was wrong, largely due to the poor news reporting and due to the press conference by the archbishop president of the gathering that went beyond the meeting�s report and beyond Catholic Church doctrine. Further, the report itself is not the official position of the Catholic Church. The Pope will consider it before issuing his final statement.
That impression given the world, that the Jews of Israel are, in effect, �Palestinian-killers�, consonant with the catechism of the Left in trying to delegitimize Israel�s very existence, was conveyed by the president of the gathering at a Vatican press conference:
�The Holy Scriptures cannot be used to justify the return of Jews to Israel and the displacement of the Palestinians, to justify the occupation by Israel of Palestinian lands,� Monsignor Cyril Salim Bustros, Greek Melkite archbishop of Our Lady of the Annunciation in Boston, Massachusetts, and president of the �Commission for the Message,� said at Saturday�s Vatican press conference.
�We Christians cannot speak of the �promised land� as an exclusive right for a privileged Jewish people. This promise was nullified by Christ. There is no longer a chosen people � all men and women of all countries have become the chosen people.
�Even if the head of the Israeli state is Jewish, the future is based on democracy.
The Palestinian refugees will eventually come back and this problem will have to be solved,� the Lebanese-born Bustros said.
The Israeli reply was sharp:
Continue reading "Is Palestinian-killer the new Christ-killer?"
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