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.
“I feel utterly powerless to do anything about the fellow in the Oval Office who combines infantile leftism and adolescent grandiosity in roughly equal measures. It seems to me that every day he is responsible for assaults on the freedom and well being of the American people. I can't keep up and I can't stand to pay attention.
“His aim seems to be to reduce us to government dependents. His inattention to rehabilitation of the financial system in lieu of vastly expanding the size and scope of the government is a dead giveaway, as is his lack of concern over the vast destruction of wealth his policies are working (and will continue to work).
“Perhaps most depressing to me is the manifestation of his adolescent grandiosity in his stewardship of foreign policy and national security. He doesn't understand that the government of Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons it can put to evil purposes. He thinks he can sweet-talk them out of achieving this objective.”
“Why are Americans hesitant, bewildered after the arrival of the Messiah?
“Not for the reason our President attests about high unemployment or shaky GDP or the lack of national health care. We simply are ashamed of our profligacy; we don’t trust those who should be trusted; we put up with the crass and honor the mediocre and ugly; and we fight and bicker over the distribution, never over a share in the creation.
Hope and change, indeed.”
Both Johnson and Hanson, in effect, point at frustration at both external events and at our own behaviors.They are correct.And, for me, they are incorrect.Depression comes from frustration with non-attainment of unrealistic objectives and inadequate actions to overcome.
I’m not depressed.Mostly because I’m a glass-half-full type, with the life experience that with difficulty and pain has seen and been shown that it is.
Depression implies a fixation upon the perceived negative forces at work, with a tendency toward paralysis of action to change them or our self.These are unconstructive and self-defeating attitudes and behaviors.
Avoidance of or ending depressed feelings and behavior comes from attitudinal resilience and from engaging in efficacious actions.
No doubt, we’re in a mess, both of our own making and by others, and many in our political and societal elite are making it worse, with potential dire consequences.Still, one must recognize the resilient strengths we have.Forty-eight percent did not vote for Obama, despite a perfect-storm in his favor, and current polling shows him losing support, and even his allied media are having to take some notice of his excesses and lackings.The US is emerging from this economic calamity relatively stronger than other countries.The positive trend-line in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere that was hard-earned under Bush has not been abandoned by Obama, though it may become weakened.Ordinary Americans are buckling down in their personal affairs and continuing to achieve for themselves, society, and our futures.
Scott Johnson, however, seems to recognize the negative feedback felt by being ignored and powerless to be efficacious.Those who’ve argued long and hard for greater sanity do not feel recognized with success or able to measurably change that.Are they heading to a new version of tuning out?I don’t think so. But, what is needed instead is even more diligence and exertion, particularly in new ways – sane ways -- of engaging themselves and others.
Many are working at that.Real change takes a while, in fits and starts, through trial and error, but relies ultimately upon faith in oneself, in one’s beliefs, in the decency and sanity of others, and thus in outcomes.
I’m not Pollyanna, but even prefer that to a depressed hole.So I’m not depressed, but energized. I know it works.
It's ACORN that is running those AIG bus tours in CT - meaning that this is being done on our nickel (ACORN was given $2 billion in the stimulus). Remarkably, Conyers plans probe of ACORN.
The Global Warming Three are on thin ice. This was pure publicity stunt posing as "science." Amusingly, it was too cold for them. Gotta love this quote:
The idea is that the expedition should take regular radar fixes on the ice thickness, to be fed into a computer model in California run by Professor Wieslaw Maslowski, whose team, according to the BBC, “is well known for producing results that show much faster ice-loss than other modelling teams”.
The video to Iran is the latest catastrophe. Mr. Obama simply does not understand how his "olive branch" will be received, not only by the mullahs in Iran itself, but wherever else on the surface of the planet the United States has enemies. It "reads" -- to people who do not share anything like America's aspirations -- as an unambiguous confession of weakness. He has moved the American position towards Iran from offensive to defensive, for no defensible reason.
I have a special needs child. He looks like you’d imagine a special needs child looks when he throws a ball. He looks like you’d imagine a special needs child looks when he catches a ball. He looks like you’d imagine a special needs child looks when he runs. He looks like you’d imagine a special needs child looks when he bowls. He rode the short bus for a while.
Sounds hilarious doesn’t it? You know, running, throwing, bowling awkwardly because of muscle imbalances and fear of falling and fear of being hit by the ball. What’s amazing is that his Little League teammates haven’t laughed or poked fun. Not. Once. They have managed to show more class, patience, empathy and charity than the President of the United States, but that’s turning out to be no big feat.
Some banks took the bailout money as a favor to the Feds to put more capital out there. Luskin:
No one seems to care that the 90% tax will apply to all banks that have accepted federal money, not just to AIG. That includes banks like Wells Fargo, who told Treasury secretary Henry Paulson that they didn't even want the money when the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was enacted last October. Reluctantly, Wells took the money at Paulson's urging, as did other healthy banks such as JPMorgan. Now virtually every employee of every one of them faces a 90% tax on their bonuses.
This administration really is Clown Central. You thought last month’s grotesque budget was bad. It turns out that the projected deficits are now $2.3 trillion worse than the estimate made just last month. Incredible.
3:14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
3:15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
3:17 "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
3:18 Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
3:19 And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.
3:20 For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.
3:21 But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God."
Reform of health care, environmental policy, education, energy, banking, regulation — every nook and cranny of the U.S. economy has been put on alert for major change. Expansion of government spending, plunging the U.S. into unprecedented deficits, is without parallel. In economic policy, through regulation and control of energy output, financial services and monetary expansion, the U.S. government has embarked on a fundamental reshaping of America. It is designed, in short, to bring on the end of America.
Seems to me that many people are more worried about what's going on in the Federal gummint than about the economy.
This week's shameful display by politicians in Washington to beat their breasts and demonize AIG has revealed even more clearly why we shouldn't want those very same politicians to be running our economy, health care industry, education system, and energy policy. Michael Gerson perfectly captures that display of self-satisfied hypocrisy.
In turbulent times, it's good to know some things never change. After a week in which President Obama thanked himself for inviting him to the White House, compared AIG executives to suicide bombers, and did the first Presidential retard joke on national TV, I was impressed to find that Slate is bravely keeping up its Bushism Of The Day feature.
Smith is a member of Montana's Flathead Nation. Like so many artists, as long as she steers clear of politics she makes nifty pictures to look at. Here are some of her works.
(I think I first became aware of her work in Jamake Highwater's The Sweet Grass Lives On; 50 Contemporary North American Indian Artists. Highwater himself has an interesting story. Born Jake Marks, he was a choreographer, critic and writer who worked in San Francisco and NYC and who, like Ward Churchill, wore a ponytail and passed himself off as an Indian. A fraud. In some areas of society, of course, being a member of an "oppressed group" lends mucho cachet and sex appeal. His Indian art book was pretty good, though. Lots of pictures.)
Twenty years ago she was making American Indian/Chagall-type mythic dream stuff. Ghosts and monks and coyotes and firebirds and petroglyphs. Here are two of her pastels:
For those who live in the northern parts of the world, just a reminder: unless you live in an area with remarkably fertile soil, your lawns, perennials and some of your shrubs count on some fertilizer because none of them are truly natural (they are all genetically-engineered and hybridized), nor do they receive what nature would otherwise supply them for free (rotten leaf mold, flooding silt, bear, human, and Wooly Mammoth poop, etc).
My point is that it's easy to forget that the roots wake up and begin growing and seeking nourishment long before any buds appear.
Not only that, but it takes a while for your fertilizer to get down to the roots. Time and rain. March and early April is the time to give your precious plants a good head start up here in the north country.
A sad story. If he had been a candidate for Obama's Cabinet, this would never have happened. Come to think of it, I would have supported him for a Cabinet post, or at least for head of ATF.
That's what Jim Hansen is calling for. Glad we didn't give them a dictatorship when they wanted us to fight global cooling 15 years ago...or every other time in history when the experts have been wrong.
Hansen, like Gore, has obviously not been taking his medicine.
Shep gets it (h/t, Anchoress). It's good to hear the truth from the MSM instead of pure flacking and brown-nosing. Makes me think more highly of Shep Smith:
You can die of hypothermia when the temperature is well above freezing, and you will die of hypothermia after a while in 77 degree water. Many interesting facts at Freezing Persons Recollect (h/t, Cons Grapevine). All outdoorsmen should know this stuff. One example:
...many hypothermia victims die each year in the process of being rescued. In "rewarming shock," the constricted capillaries reopen almost all at once, causing a sudden drop in blood pressure. The slightest movement can send a victim's heart muscle into wild spasms of ventricular fibrillation. In 1980, 16 shipwrecked Danish fishermen were hauled to safety after an hour and a half in the frigid North Sea. They then walked across the deck of the rescue ship, stepped below for a hot drink, and dropped dead, all 16 of them.
I remember, as a lad, passing the Queen Mary in mid-Atlantic on a clear day. Built in 1934, she was an old lady by that time. Yes, she did blow her 1-ton whistles. She sits in Long Beach, CA today.
Or maybe the angle of the sun. It surely isn't the temperature here (below freezing at 5 am) which made every local bird wake up this morning and begin singing or twittering his territorial song for the first time this year.
I heard Robin, Tufted Titmouse, Chickadee, Carolina Wren, Cardinal, and Song Sparrow singing. Most migratory breeders won't be here until the buds pop open, and the tree buds aren't even swollen yet.
Today was really just a warm-up for the welcome Springtime morning chorus to come. It will last the next 6 weeks or so. Once their eggs are laid, they tend to go quiet so as not to attract attention.
Photo is a Tufted Titmouse, a fairly common songbird in New England.
The blackbirds are now up from the South and back at the feeder: voracious Purple Grackles, Cowbirds, and Red-wings. Also visiting today: Song Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, White thoated Sparrow, Mourning Doves in droves, Tree Sparrow, Carolina Wren, Tufted Titmouse, BC Chickadee, Goldfinch, Cardinal, Blue Jay, a few remaining SC Juncoes. Nothing exciting, but all comers are welcome.
With all of the snow and cold, it's been expensive keeping these critters on welfare this year. It's getting about time to cut out their free lunch anyway, although it was 29 degrees F. this morning.
Plus the dang fat squirrels eat half of the bird seed, thus resulting in healthier, more fertile squirrels producing more babies to eat even more of the bird seed next winter.
Photo: A male Cardinal. We have plenty of them here. They nest in the evergreens and brambles.
Roger's post here today captures some of the inanity swirling around the AIG situation over the past few days. In my view, the AIG focus is populist, boob-bait scapegoating - along with a (doubtless welcome) chance to trash Wall St. Everybody loves to trash it until they need a loan, want to make an investment, or want to start a business. It's a distraction from the real issues in the economy which pose hard and complicated questions. Tough finance and tough politics.
The previous owners of AIG (the shareholders and bond holders - me included, I am sorry to say) have already been thoroughly punished. Like it or not, though, AIG is still one stone in the arch that holds up the superstructure of the global economy, same as Citigroup (same as Lehman was, and we saw how that worked out). Unlike Citi, We The People now own AIG, so it behooves us to run it well in a businesslike fashion unless or until it is broken into parts and sold. Thus of course those folks should get their contractual bonuses. That's how these folks get paid: it's not "extra" for doing a good job. Their salaries are token, and generally quite modest. Not getting your bonus is a finance company's gentle way of saying "Start looking for another job. We don't need you here anymore because you are not adding enough value to our enterprise." If they don't get paid they will leave, and our national "investment" in AIG will go down the toilet. We are getting these guys cheap, too.
“
It's 
Battle lines drawn on health care. 
For those who live in the northern parts of the world, just a reminder: unless you live in an area with remarkably fertile soil, your lawns, perennials and some of your shrubs count on some fertilizer because none of them are truly natural (they are all genetically-engineered and hybridized), nor do they receive what nature would otherwise supply them for free (rotten leaf mold, flooding silt, bear, human, and Wooly Mammoth poop, etc). 
Or maybe the angle of the sun. It surely isn't the temperature here (below freezing at 5 am) which made every local bird wake up this morning and begin singing or twittering his territorial song for the first time this year. 
The blackbirds are now up from the South and back at the feeder: voracious Purple Grackles, Cowbirds, and Red-wings. Also visiting today: Song Sparrow, Fox Sparrow, White thoated Sparrow, Mourning Doves in droves, Tree Sparrow, Carolina Wren, Tufted Titmouse, BC Chickadee, Goldfinch, Cardinal, Blue Jay, a few remaining SC Juncoes. Nothing exciting, but all comers are welcome.