Wednesday, October 13. 2010
Via Reason, this remarkable portrait of a dead American city. It's not easy to kill a city without bombs, but unions, numbskull business managements, and corrupt pols did it there. Their "light rail" will be the tombstone before the whole city is plowed over to grow wheat or corn or trees or something.
Government did not build NYC's subways and trains. Businesses built those things to meet a profitable demand. Someday though, this absurdity in Detroit might be a tourist attraction - to ride a trolley through the vacant lots, wreckage, and abandoned buildings filled with feral dogs and cats.
It's not paranoid on my part. The Dems really do. (h/t, Western Rifle Shooters)
If they own your medical care and own your savings, they own you entirely. But what's in it for them?
I cannot recommend this video interview more highly. It's a real treat and worth your time, via Powerline.
If I were Prez, I'd ask him to be my historical advisor. (Why don't presidents have Historical Advisors?)
Money quote: "Decline is a choice."
 McArdle: Americans like to be lied to.
City Journal on two books about Tea Parties: Two new books show how alienated Americans have become from Washington.
The CBC: Sorry, that's classified information
Bielat responds to Barney Frank's query. h/t, Neoneo
Morris: REPUBLICAN TREND GROWS
The Dem search for bogeymen. The problem is, as Rush says, that their bogeymen are at least half of the population.
Removing turtles from the environment - for the environment. People are insane. Furthermore, I know a bit about tortoises, and they do not transplant well. They just try to get back home, and die on the way.
What Dems must do to avert disaster. Sounds like the answer is to become Repubs
One more example of why the French are not respected.
Barney Frank wants another chance to destroy the housing market
More on Prof. Hal Lewis' resignation letter, at Watts.
Barnes: Four Causes that Will Lead to a Democratic Election Nightmare
Clinton Heckled in Blue New York, Says Half of Republicans Need Psychiatric Help.
Stay dignified, Pres. Clinton
David Horowitz is one of those rare people who change lives. I know, because he changed mine.
Sarah is not the only Palinesque pol in the US
4 of 10 Former Supporters Have Bailed on Obama
Insty:
ON THE UPSIDE, THEY PRODUCED VASTLY MORE INTRUSION INTO FAMILIES: Child Abuse Investigations Didn’t Reduce Risk, a Study Finds. “Child Protective Services investigated more than three million cases of suspected child abuse in 2007, but a new study suggests that the investigations did little or nothing to improve the lives of those children.” Also, this employed lots of people in “helping” professions, who tend to vote Democratic. So you’ve got to score this as a win, even if children weren’t any better off. And the study authors suggest that since what we’re doing doesn’t work, we should redouble our efforts! See above. . . .
Tuesday, October 12. 2010
At Reb. That's America in 2010.
 Ten Secrets to a healthy marriage. Good, basic advice, but with nothing about the importance of daily sexual bonding, regardless of age.
Photo is Helen Mirren at 64. I fully intend to look at least that good for my own self-respect and out of love for my loving hubby.
Among other national races I am keeping track of in my blue area of the country, I have been particularly interested in those of Dan Debicella in Fairfield Co., CT and Sean Bielat's vs. Barney Frank.
Dan: Wharton, Harvard, McKinsey, entrepreneur, State Senate leader.
Sean: Georgetown, Harvard, Wharton, Maj. USMC, McKinsey, entrepreneur.
We are fortunate that such talented and experienced people are willing to serve us. What moves them, when politics is so often a harbor for losers?
I found it interesting how their resumes overlapped. McKinsey is like a finishing school for the shiny resume, the energetic and the bright, isn't it?
These guys grew up in the "working class" with no "privileges," and applied their talents to the fullest. Good for them.
"If the law is against you, bang on the facts. If the facts are against you, bang on the law. If both are against you, bang on the table."
The Chamber of Commerce does seem to be an unlikely demon. Schieffer asks "Is this the best you can do?"
 Peggy Noonan gets it right this time: Revolt of the accountants (behind $ wall). A quote:
There is a real fear that government, with all its layers, its growth, its size, its imperviousness, is changing, or has changed, who we are. And that if we lose who we are, as Americans, we lose everything.
This is part of what’s driving the sense of political urgency this year, especially within precincts of the tea party.
Much of her essay is at Never Yet Melted, who comments:
The liberal elite, when faced with resistance to its agenda, invariably contemptuously labels its opponents as people afraid of change. Peggy Noonan, in one of her better columns... in the Wall Street Journal, explains that the popular revolt which is going to bury the democrat party in the next cycle of elections is fueled by perfectly legitimate fear of, and opposition to, change: change in the nature of the country’s character and culture.
Villainous also has some good commentary in A Nation of Insurors, including this:
Governments do not elect themselves. Politicians make promises and we pick and choose from the menu they present to us. Representative government, unrestricted by some limiting principle, inevitably reflects the human failings of the governed. The problem is not government, nor too many bean counters, but our own desire to insulate ourselves from risk.
Where is this leading us? I think we are in a battle for soul of this nation, with those who understand moral hazard in a pitched battle against those who don't. There is an illusory security to be found in large numbers. Somehow we feel safer in a crowd. Making society more interconnected and interdependent doesn't eliminate risk - it expands it.
From Roff at US News, The Tea Party Movement Is a Middle Class Revolt:
All across America the people derided by the likes of Sinclair Lewis as “Babbitts” are awakening. They are beginning to reassert themselves, pushing back, saying “No” for the first time in a long while. It may not last--the politicians may find a way to mollify them or they may give up and go home. Or they may change the country. Either way they are a more serious, more substantive movement--even in what the smart set patronizingly likes to point out are its inconsistencies and innocence--then what the columnists and commentators who deride them are willing to acknowledge.
The arrogance and condescension of the "smart set" particularly irks me. The "Babbitts" are the people who create the jobs, pay the taxes, raise the families at great sacrifice, build America - and contain in them a picture of what America is about. The smart set consistently underestimates - excuse me - misunderestimates - the common sense, decency, and patriotism of Americans who exist outside the Beltway.
"Babbitts" want to be left alone by the government as much as possible, and to be powerful only within their own lives. That's freedom. Every time government imposes one more law, one more demand, one more impossible-to-meet-or-to-understand regulation, people feel their autonomy slipping away.
See this: Americans' Image of "Federal Government" Mostly Negative
That was September.
Monday, October 11. 2010
What's required to revive America is major structural overhaul. This is a task of historic proportions - not unlike the simplification of law by Justinian in ancient Rome. Our founding fathers never imagined that democracy would become a one-way ratchet - always adding laws but never repealing them. Nor did they intend law to be a form of central planning. The Constitution sets forth our governing goals and principles in only 16 pages.
It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?
These pics came in over the transom, but I guess they originally came via Funpics.
A few more, marginally NSFW, below the fold.
Continue reading "T-shirts"
Does he have a chance? It's time for Barney to retire.
The sinister Chamber of Commerce
NYT: Arizona welcomes immigrants
Kent State: Another listen. What if there was an agent provocateur?
Chilling in Texas: Democrats & Computer Models Claim Texas Is Warming: Real Data Has Texas Cooling Last 15 Years, -2.7°F/Century Trend. h/t, Willisms
Betsy: Gee, has Rory talked to his dad about what's wrong with ObamaCare?
GOP threatens Dem seats thought safe
WH defends Obamacare waivers
US physics professor: 'Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life'. A quote from his letter:
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it.
VDH: On looking bad
Black Republicans offer hope after Barack Obama's failures on race
I'm Mr. Blandings. Me, too.
Drowning in Law: A flood of statutes, rules and regulations is killing the American spirit
Via Lucianne, How Obama is invading your home:
The Obama administration isn't satisfied giving the American public vast things we don't want — from stimu lus packages to bailouts to ObamaCare: It's a small-scale nuisance, too — witness its attempt to redesign home appliances. In the pipeline are dumb regulations for almost everything that plugs in or fires up in your home. Just weeks after taking office, the president ordered the Energy Department to speed up the process of issuing harsh new energy-efficiency standards for appliances. Since then, the agency boasts, it "has issued or codified new efficiency standards for more than 20 different products..."
Powerline on Che: Remembering a Sociopathic Mass Murderer
Sunday, October 10. 2010
Somebody at NRO said they couldn't stop listening to this. A Chopin earwig. Listen to it two or three times, and see if it does the same to your ears. He zooms around his simple theme like a whirling dervish.
How can someone this young have so much heart?
Butternut squash or Acorn Squash, halved lengthwise and a wide shallow groove cut out of the meat, with butter, maple syrup, salt and pepper. Brown sugar would substitute for maple syrup. Good simple Yankee food. I think the Indians ate the same thing - without the butter. I would happily eat all of these.
If one is not being proper, a spoon works well.
From the Redneck Tree-Hugger: "Barack Obama has awakened a sleeping nation."
This is a Maggie's sort of fellow. h/t, reader.
The newest addition to our family just got back from a business trip to Montana. She emailed these pics.
Can anybody identify the area?
More pics below the fold -
Continue reading "Montana"
Luke 17:11-19
17:11 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee.
17:12 As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance,
17:13 they called out, saying, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"
17:14 When he saw them, he said to them, "Go and show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were made clean.
17:15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice.
17:16 He prostrated himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan.
17:17 Then Jesus asked, "Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they?
17:18 Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?"
17:19 Then he said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."
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A big deal: 
