Friday, July 16. 2010
That's Great Island out there, across from Chequessett Neck. I have done the Great Island long walk several times (8-10 miles). Last time, we saw the resident Great Horned Owl. On this trip, the heat defeated us before we got very far.
I recommend the hike as a way to immerse onself in the salty, piney goodness of the Outer Cape. (Bring hat, sneakers, and backpack with water and things to munch, or you will regret it.)
For me, my annual trek to the Cape is an annual (pagan?) re-baptism. I lived there until I was 5 or 6 (do not remember a thing), but have returned almost every year since then, often with extended family and often not. I believe I converted the now-Mrs. BD to me partly by taking her up there.
Or maybe it was a test to see whether the lovely, spirited young Jersey gal could love something that I loved. She did. Still does.
 VDH nails it, from our link last night to The Psychology of Recession. It is what I am hearing from everybody on Main St. around here. One quote to encourage reading of his post:
Obama, past and present, seems always to talk of how someone else’s money should be spent, dispersed, and redistributed, but never to worry about how it can be made in the first place.
So, fairly or not, when the president talks, business people do not gain confidence that he knows, or cares, much about them or what they do. If he thinks even surgeons are greedy profiteers, who then escapes presidential disdain?
Rainbow ponies do not create jobs or careers. Politicians can create temporary make-work - with our money and our kids' money - but that's all.
A fake tea party video is making the rounds. Totally manufactured. Politics at its most despicable.
Expect it to be widely distributed, since the political meme for July is "Dissidents = Racists." Boob bait for the bubbas is what I call this crap. Call me "offended."
It is one you cannot do drunk, and other fun topics.
My job, like journalism and electricianism and professorism, is famous for being done by daytime drunks, so I guess it's not a real job. It is, in a sense, parasitic on the producers, makers, and builders - the wealth-creators. I do try to help people with their problems, but my main contribution to the important things is my investing (which has not worked out too well for me during the past decade).
Whenever I am invested in a growing biz, the Dems try to tear it down. What's up with that?
Our shrink friend Shrinkwrapped terms this "possibly the best therapy session ever."
Cracked: The 6 Most Misguided Causes Ever Made Famous by Celebrities. Only six?
Dumb and dumber. You've probably seen this already somewhere: When Did John Edwards Become President of Vietnam?
To our friend Sissy: Take a chill pill, or a Cape Cod Marguerita. You will never have a pol in MA who will agree with you all the time about everything. Ideological purism does not work in politics, most places - and especially in the Northeast. If Brown is not re-elected, it will be a loss of all of us. More right than wrong is all one can hope for.
Poll: Obama tied with Palin for 2012. Interesting. She's really something - a celeb pol like the O was - but she is not my candidate. Not yet, anyway, because I have not had the chance to discuss the Federalist Papers with her yet. Our wise but truant poster Roger de Hauteville said that candidates are just figureheads on political ships, and no doubt Sarah makes a good one of those. In a funny kind of way, I think the O knows that he is a figurehead, and not a leader. Which is all for the best.
Thursday, July 15. 2010
 Ancient Buried Ship Found at Ground Zero Site. Not sure I would have used the word "ancient."
Politico: Why President Obama loses by winning
At AVI:
Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball took exception to a Tea Partier's comment "We're not racist, we're anticommunist." He claimed that this is exactly what the John Birch Society used to say, and went on to add "this is the old Dixie crowd."
Hello, Chris. That old Dixie crowd died with Dem Robert Byrd and the rest of the Dixiecrats
Bush's book: Decision Points
VDH: The Psychology of Recession - Obama and his team speak the language of redistribution and entitlements — not the language of opportunity and prosperity. And Main Street is listening.
They sure are. Nobody is hiring.
Berwick the Magnificent. Sheesh. Hypocritical Lefty putz.
NYT: When Did Cheating Become an Epidemic?
Being Traditionalists at Maggie's, we are opposed to cheating in many if not most circumstances.
Slate: Death of a Salesman- A slew of new polls suggest Obama is not a great pitchman for his policies.
Let the cracker cops die. What is this, a new race war?
Politico: On being labeled as 'racist'
Rove: My Biggest Mistake in the White House - Failing to refute charges that Bush lied us into war has hurt our country.
Krauthammer: Al Qaida not using affirmative action
Two terribly immature offerings from our Obama fans:
 Washington is talking about raising the "retirement" age, whatever that means. Since when did the US have a "retirement age"? Most Americans like to work hard: it's part of being an American.
In fact, most (non-unionized) Americans are willing to work harder and longer if their compensation is commensurate with their time, effort, and skills.
Still, re Social Security, that might be a good idea, since people live longer and healthier, and the golf courses around here are getting too crowded with totally functional codgers while other guys their age are still making a useful contribution to society and to themselves.
Plus they are talking about income-adjusting, ie means-testing, Social Security. Should be done. What bugs me about the notion of government income-based entitlements is that they disregard wealth. Why should I be working to pay the Social Security payments for people with a paid-off condo in Vero Beach and a house in Granby, CT - and a state government pension or a hefty IRA or an old-time corporate pension, just because their retirement fixed-income is relatively low in retirement?
Go ahead, argue this with me if you wish (but I can anticipate all of the historical arguments).
In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.
Mother Teresa
 Boxing gloves increased morbidity and mortality in boxing
Stossel: Parasitic Tort Lawyers
New Massachusetts law extends censorship to IM, e-mail, Web
Via Newsreal:
Attorneys for the leftist American Civil Liberties Union are busying themselves with a campaign that would make Saul Alinsky proud. Their target? Catholic hospitals exercising their religious freedom to refuse to perform abortions.
A different kind of Gated Community in China
Subsidize journalism with public funds? The bad idea that won’t go away
Driscoll: NAACP Brilliantly Alerts MSM of Tea Party’s Post-Racial Platform. But the race-mongers are on the job: Al Sharpton on Tea Party: “There Clearly Are Some Racial Leaves In Their Tea Bag”. That is a total malevolent lie. He tries to link States' Rights with racism. Well, Federalism is good. You might just as well try to link Individual Rights with racism too, in which case their logic comes around and bites them in the behind.
(Ed. comment: So what? It's about politics, not a logical exercise.)
Related: How do I prove I am not a racist?
Semi-related: Slavery, Democrat-style
Willie Brown On "Out of Control" Civil Servants
Thanks to ACORN, Felons Put Franken Over the Top
Jonah: Dems' Lament: It Wasn't Supposed to Be Like This
Analysis: Dems show signs of battle fatigue
Carpe: Double-Dippers Are All Wet: Towel Off Already
"Choose Death!" billboard advertises assisted suicide service
Even The Atlantic, Lefty as they are, gets on climategate
Speaking Up for American Capitalism - Business has taken a pounding on Capitol Hill and at the White House and for the most part has remained silent. It's time to make our case.
I am certain that the O will carefully study VDH's Ten-Step Reset Regimen for the President
Praying for Hitchins. He doesn't mind if you do, but it sounds like he's a goner anyway. That is a nasty cancer.
Here's the most crowded beach we found in Cape Cod on the 4th weekend. Hope not to get accused of posting Charles Johnson-like pics.
Wednesday, July 14. 2010
This is sort of brilliant, at Phi Beta Cons. Want to learn Math? Hire a Math teacher.
I posted tons of Wellfleet architecture a couple of years ago, but here are some fresh ones from last week. Such a small town, I will run out of them fast, having already almost fully and unintentionally documented the village for posterity.
I include the antique, the regular, and the ordinary, while excluding the occasional eyesores.
Continue reading "Wellfleet architectural photo dump #1, 2010 Edition"
From this interesting review of a new bio of E.M. Forster:
“Only connect” makes its entrance shortly after Margaret Schlegel, the novel’s liberal intellectual heroine, is first kissed by Henry Wilcox, the conservative businessman whom she has rather surprisingly agreed to marry. Passion has played little part in their relationship, and though they have gotten engaged they have not yet touched. When Wilcox suddenly embraces her, then, Margaret “was startled and nearly screamed,” and though she tries to kiss “with genuine love the lips that were pressed against her own,” she feels afterwards that “on looking back, the incident displeased her. It was so isolated. Nothing in their previous conversation had heralded it, and, worse still, no tenderness had ensued ... he had hurried away as if ashamed.” A few pages later, Margaret’s reflections on this erotic incompetence lead, as often happens in Forster’s fiction, into an authorial homily...
Forster, like CS Lewis and so many splendid writers, was a sexual innocent. Nothing wrong with that, in my view. Fun and diverting and even bonding as it may be, there is more to life than animal instincts. (Not that we disparage those, here at Maggie's Farm, where the animals shamelessly mate, feed, and drink at the drop of a hat.)
For those (most Americans) who don’t follow the annual Eurovision song contest, won by Israel in 1979 for Hallelujah, it is closely watched in our house (on Internet). We enjoy “world music.” It is becoming a smaller world, sometimes not for the better, as this year’s winner, from Germany, sang a number in English! My Germany-born wife was aghast at this loss of diversity.
The music world is also losing other diverse sense.
Some Western musicians are canceling their scheduled performances in Israel, caving to leftist memes and pro-Palestinian veiled threats.
Then there are the attempts to boycott Israeli performers as well. The Eurovision song contest was held in Norway this year. The Norwegian pro-Palestine Committee demonstrated outside the arena holding the event since Israel had reached the finals. A statement from the organisation said: “We want to close Euro Song for Israel. They are not welcome. We will request the European Euro Song TV-consortium to boycott nations that indulge in occupation and apartheid.”
Oppression, despotism, suicidal hatred, terrorism, that’s OK with them? Far from the Summer of Love, huh!
Here’s the Israeli performance at this year’s Eurovision, a lovely love song.
Yeah, we can’t have love where hate triumphs.
Here's Israel's 1979 winner. (This taping has helpful lyrics.)
Some's idea of Praise God (Hallelujah) doesn't include to "hold each other's hands, and sing from one heart."
That includes some Western musicians.
h/t, Theo
The US Chamber of Commerce says (more here) that the term capitalism is misunderstood, as just 57% in its poll support capitalism.
“We need to do a better job of explaining the economic system in the United States and how it is working,” Anderson said in an interview. “We have been looking at anecdotal information that there was a misunderstanding of capitalism.”
Au contraire says the survey’s results of the peasants. Seventy percent support free enterprise and free markets.
Americans know the difference between the two as capitalism has increasingly come to be practiced.
Charles Derber, a sociologist at Boston College, says the results show the public’s unhappiness with the ties between “big business and big government,” exemplified by the multi- billion dollar bailout of banks in 2008.
“When people say they are down on capitalism, they mean they are down on corporate capitalism,” Derber, author of books including, “People Before Profit,” said in an interview. “They see capitalism as it exists here as anything but a free market.”
With bigger and bigger Big Government comes those, pardon the expression, capitalizing on getting their way or piece of the pelf, whether business, union, tax-exempts, state and local governments, etc.
Free enterprise and free markets, in contrast, indeed may we remind freedom itself, work best with a more limited government.
Now, that isn’t to say complete laissez faire, as there is sometimes some need for enforcement of rules of play to encourage competition, not stifle it.
In addition to the findings on capitalism, the Chamber’s poll found that 43 percent of those surveyed said the Obama administration’s policies are making the economy worse compared with 23 percent believing it is making it better.
“There is a major trust deficit,” Lombardo [the pollster] said.
The US Chamber knows the difference between free enterprise and capitalism as it has too often come to be practiced. Increasingly, Americans do. It’s the difference between freedom and fascism.
Perhaps some corporate, union, tax-exempts, state and local governments, etc. HQs need visits from a Tea Party, not just the federal government and its minions of bigger. It takes two to tango.
Homework: Michael Barone, Goldberg.
A review of E.D. Hirsch's new book, The Making of an Educational Conservative, at Claremont. Hirsch is politically liberal, but he believes that people should know things. One quote from the review:
Hirsch holds out too much hope of converting the Left while not welcoming his natural supporters on the Right. He underestimates the education establishment's fear and hostility towards knowledge and rigor, presenting the past "sixty years without a curriculum" as a well-meaning and forgivable misunderstanding. But Progressive education must be understood as an anti-teaching movement as much as an anti-curriculum movement. Anyone who suggests American education should be different from what it is now is subject to merciless attack by those who claim they would teach children even if they didn't get paid, while their unions push one demand: higher salaries for less work.
No Link Between Computers At Home And Academic Achievement. Duh.
Goldman: Fiscal and Monetary stimulus needed
Obama Administration Approves First Taxpayer-Funded Abortions Under Obamacare
Is this what goes on in jail? Lohan Vs Lesbians
Credit scores should be fairly redistributed. Villainous Related: Yes, Apparently Chris Dodd Really Did Say This
Althouse: If you really believe in AGW...
Mort Zuckerman: Obama Is Barely Treading Water
Coyote: Told ya... (that the Toyota acceleration thing was a scam)
Via neo:
Barack Obama has decided that fiery self defense and withering mockery of Republicans are the best modes of attack as he tries to save Democrats from a drubbing in November’s mid-term elections.
Race-baiting lies at the NAACP. That's the way to keep Americans divided and angry.
All Four Texas Cities Have The Lowest Unemployment Rates Among Major Metro Areas, Nationally.
Is Dem Joe Manchin the Dems' worst nightmare?
Re the EU via No Pasaran:
Union fails most vital test of a democracy
There is no overlap between the space in which people believe they have something to say (which, like it or not, is and will remain the space of nation-states) and the space in which more and more decisions are being made, decisions that are increasingly unpopular.
At Dino:
It would seem that things have definitively changed, as Peggy Noonan noted the other day in her piece on the Tea Parties. The new media have matured to the point where Congressmen who rely only on the MSM for their information are going to find themselves embarrassed in front of their constituents, and scorned for their lack of knowledge of significant issues of the day.
Not the legal definition, but close enough. Would you term this jetsam instead?. Some storm washed up this valuable antique on Cape Cod Bay.
Note again the crowded beaches which are better for bird-watching than babe-watching.
Tuesday, July 13. 2010
This humble old farmstead across the bay from Plymouth Colony was established in the 1650s, and is now within the Cape Cod National Seashore, up one of my secret Wellfleet sand road walking routes in the general vicinity of Duck Harbor.
Many regular visitors to Wellfleet do not know that Duck Harbor used to be a harbor, so this old place was a harborside farm. When currents and sand closed the opening to Cape Cod Bay long ago, most people moved to the big harbor in town (often with their whole houses, too. Lumber was in short supply.)
The original cabins from 1650 are long gone, but I cannot date these structures. Maybe some readers can. This is the main farmhouse, the chimney of which ought to provide a dating clue:
More pics of the farm below the fold -
Continue reading "An old Wellfleet farmstead"
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