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.
It's nor'easter season again. They are predicting a hearty snow dump today and tomorrow, with high winds, so don't be surprised if Maggie's is down for a bit (due to winds, not the lovely snow).
Storms are caused by fossil fuels, claim many experts. Since there have been storms forever, I think that's a crazy theory. Here's a more compelling explanation for wintry weather: Asian astrologers warn of stormy Year of Snake
If Americans would only stop driving cars and begin riding bikes instead, we'd have less snow and less cold in the winter. I think I got that science right, didn't I? But wait a minute - we love snow. It is peaceful, quiet, and beautiful.
h/t, Laughing Squid. We like storms. Our mettle must be tested, and humility taught. The only people who get hysterical about snow are the retarded people on the TV news.
In New England, you can still see some old tumbledown icehouses around. Household refrigerators were not in common use until the late 1920s. It was iceboxes until you could afford an electric refrigerator. A properly-built icehouse could store ice for over a year.
The weapons of political campaigns are images and sound bites
designed to inspire the emotions of fear and hope. Obama won the
presidency in 2008 on a campaign of hope; he won re-election in 2012 on a
campaign of fear.
Hope works, but fear is a much stronger and more compelling emotion.
In a political campaign, it is directed at one’s political opponent.
Democrats exploit this emotion to the hilt; Republicans often seem too
polite to even use it.
The other emotion, hope, is not only weaker, it is at odds with
conservatives’ basic pessimism, and their skepticism about political
solutions. Unlike progressives, conservatives don’t expect cosmic
results from political programs – saving the planet, creating a just
world. Consequently, for Republicans, hope is less effective as a
political appeal.
The Muslim Middle East is indeed changing, but it is changing back to
what it once was, casting off the last remains of modernity imported
from the West, and bringing back the reign of the Burqa, the sword and
the prophet. In the West time moves forward, in the East it only moves
backward. And so the spring will never come for Islam. Instead it will
act out the same bloody rituals of Jihad, the killing of infidels and
the civil wars, the slaves building civilizations, the masters molesting
young girls and then beating them to death out of fear that the
children might not be theirs.
During the years in which the British government incrementally took away
most gun rights, the notion that a citizen had the right to armed
self-defense came to be seen as vigilantism. Authorities refused to
grant gun licenses to people who were threatened, claiming that
self-defense was no longer considered a reason to own a gun. Citizens
who shot burglars or robbers or rapists were charged while the real
criminals were released. Indeed, after the Martin shooting, a police
spokesman was quoted as saying, “We cannot have people take the law into
their own hands.”
It's not in as bad shape as Detroit, but Blue State and Blue (corrupt) local governance have driven most of the jobs away - along with vast numbers of middle- and working-class people. (The prosperous fled in the 50s and 60s.) Therefore, there is no "housing shortage." Housing is cheap, but they will kill you with the property taxes. Thus the old city has no vitality or appeal whatsoever except to urban explorers like us. Death spiral.
What does a pilot do in a death spiral?
The solution is not to bulldoze the city. It's to bulldoze the government. However, at this point the government is basically in the control of government unions and welfare recipients, all feeding on the dry bones of the cadaver. Thus, despite its amenities and opportunities, basically politically hopeless. It's sad.
If they appointed me Dictator of Bridgeport for a few years, I could begin to fix it. Change is good! The first thing I would do is to create a citywide enterprise zone with no corporate or business taxes. Second, I would cut property taxes in half. Might be tough going for a couple of years until markets react, and bankruptcy might have to happen because sometimes you need a fresh start. Third, I would eliminate all government housing. Rents are so low there, anybody can pay them on a welfare or disability check. Fourth, I would make government unions illegal. Fifth, I would prosecute the local Mob with vengeance, no mercy. Everybody knows who they are, and people claim they are in bed with the unions. Sixth, I would eliminate all zoning regulations. Seventh, I would make all schools charter schools - no government-controlled schools. Eighth, a cop or guard on every block, with stop-and-frisk. Well, I could go on and on, but the general idea would be to return such a city to the policies which existed when it became a thriving city, before the socialists, planners, and taxers took over when they realized they could tax and plan the place to death.
It would be an interesting experiment. If it failed (but how could it be worse?), I'd take the fall.
This row of old buildings appeared fully-occupied by Hispanic immigrants, neat, clean, and pleasant but nowhere to go except the abundant old churches, and no street life.
Why are Republicans so reluctant to name the victims of Democrat
policies, particularly the victims among America’s minority communities
and working classes? Why don’t Republicans identify Democrats as a
threat to those communities as Cuomo declared Republicans a threat to
women? How can you win a war when the other side is using bazookas and
your side is using fly swatters?
Defending the victims of job destroyers is morally and emotionally
stronger than defending rich “job creators.” It creates sympathy and
arouses anger. It inspires concerns about justice. It’s how the
Democrats’ recruit and energize their troops. It’s the way — the only
way — Republicans can neutralize the Democrats’ attacks on them as
defenders of the rich, and return their fire: by framing them as the
enemies of working Americans and the middle class.
During Obama’s four years in office, African Americans – middle-class
African Americans – lost half their net worth as a result of the
collapse of the housing market. That’s one hundred billion dollars in
personal assets that disappeared from the pockets of African Americans
because of a 25-year Democratic campaign to remove loan requirements
for homebuyers. Yet in 2012, Republicans were too polite to mention
this!
The fingerprints of Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and
Barney Frank were all over the subprime mortgage crisis. The campaign to
remove loan requirements for African American and other minority
borrowers started with Jimmy Carter’s Community Reinvestment Act. It
snookered thousands of poor black and Hispanic Americans into buying
homes they couldn’t afford, which they then lost. How traumatic is the
loss of one’s home?
By securitizing the failed mortgages, Democratic bundlers on Wall
Street who had poured $100 million into the 2008 Obama campaign made
tens of millions off the misery of those who lost their homes. In other
words, with the help of Clinton, Frank and Obama, Wall Street Democrats
made massive profits off the backs of poor black and Hispanic Americans.
But Republicans were too polite to mention it. Here was a missed
opportunity to neutralize Democrat attacks on Republicans as the party
of the rich and exploiters of the poor. It was an opportunity to drive a
giant wedge through the Democratic base.
The bottom line is this: If Republicans want to persuade minorities
they care about them, they have to stand up for them; they have to
defend them; and they have to show them that Democrats are playing them
for suckers, exploiting them, oppressing them, and profiting from their
suffering.
Sunny takes it to the sanctimonious, phony and manipulative emotional appeals. h/t, reader. Like we need celebs to feel terrible about the slaughter of children by satanic persons.
13:1 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
13:2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
13:3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
13:4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
13:5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
13:6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
13:7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
13:8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
13:9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;
13:10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
13:11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
13:12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13:13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
I have to confess that I'm a person who far prefers playing almost any sport badly to watching other people do it well. When I was in grad school, we had the best "touch" - read "shove very hard so the guy falls in the mud" - football games, weekly. A joy. Being quick and agile then, I was usually a runner (and a ball-dropper). That football is a slippery bugger.
Since every TV sports fan in the US is either hosting or attending a party today (any excuse for a party, or for buying a new big screen), and because I do like to make and eat chicken wings, I offer Alton Brown's very good Buffalo Chicken Wing instructions.
As usual with Alton, the show is a kick - and educational - even if you don't care about the recipe.
For Alton, everything simple is an adventure. Great production.
Mom came through the procedure despite her general frailty. Brand-new stainless steel hip. A little confusion from the morphine: "Where are my dogs?"
Thanks for your good wishes for the gal. Heading back over there this morning, then will make dinner for Dad. Making plans today to get her back into good shape at a joint rehab place in a couple of days.
Told my Dad we should get them twin beds at a rehab. He could definitely use 4 hrs of PT plus exercise and three squares daily, for a couple of weeks.
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. 'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room Even in the eyes of all posterity That wear this world out to the ending doom. So, till the judgment that yourself arise, You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.
A reader emailed me his cell phone pic of a pal, skiing a couple of days ago in Loveland, CO.
Dang, that is such great fun. Happiness is being on top of a big gnarly mountain, on top of the world, in frigid temperatures, with skis and friends and family, and some cold beer at the bottom.
This time, she fractured her right hip. Emergency hip replacement today. I'll be busy joining the family rotation to help out Dad, cook casseroles, and to keep her company.
She requested no flowers to be sent to her hospital room so it would not feel like a funeral. She's the sort of person who, when you visit her in the hospital, feels she has to entertain you regardless of pain. Old Yankees do not do self-pity.
A post today at NYM reminded me of my Mom's champion riding career. (She was also a champ trap and skeet shooter.) When I was young, she still had a show jumper and a hunter at the farm, but by the time there were five of us kids she had no time for it, and her horses were getting old - I've told readers in the past about how old Jimminy Cricket would mosey over to the kitchen door, push open the screen door, and try to get his tall shoulders through the kitchen door. Mom had been coached, for a time, by the great Bill Steinkraus.
Her favorite thing to do was the hunt. I joined her on a couple of them when I was around 9 or 10. I have not been on a hunt since then, but have messed with plenty of horses since then in New England, Ireland, Montana, and New York City. That's a good sequeway to the post about The Scarteen Hunt in Ireland.
Wodehouse's Bertie and Jeeves novels are surely the most delightful, amusing, innocent, and refreshing fiction ever written in graceful, wry English.
Christopher Buckley reviews Wodehouse's life and writing: Yours Ever, Plum: The Letters and Life of P.G. Wodehouse. For a man who sought little but serenity, the presence of his wife and his dogs, and books, he had an eventful life.
From one of his letters:
“I sometimes feel,” Wodehouse wrote Townend in 1933, “as if I were a case of infantilism. I seem mentally so exactly as I was then [at school]. All my ideas and ideals are the same. I still think the Bedford [cricket] match is the most important thing in the world.”
A few random quotes from the books:
As a rule, you see, I'm not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps and Uncle James's letter about Cousin Mabel's peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle ('Please read this carefully and send it on Jane') the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It's one of the advantages I get from being a bachelor - and, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that.
It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.
I turned to Aunt Agatha, whose demeanour was now rather like that of one who, picking daisies on the railway, has just caught the down express in the small of the back.
Jeeves lugged my purple socks out of the drawer as if he were a vegetarian fishing a caterpillar out of his salad.
I once got engaged to his daughter Honoria, a ghastly dynamic exhibit who read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and rockbound coast.
Anybody can talk me round. If I were in a Trappist monastery, the first thing that would happen would be that some smooth performer would lure me into some frightful idiocy against my better judgment by means of the deaf-and-dumb language.
In the last thirty years the transformation of the American economy has contributed to income polarization. The old industrial middle class, based on mass employment in unionized oligopolies, has been hollowed out, and no comparable source of stable high income employment has emerged. Large groups in America today are living on transfers from the profits of the healthy portions of the private sector recycled through government spending and subsidies. It is easy to see how rational people can conclude that the only hope of preserving mass prosperity in America comes from transfers and subsidies. If we add to this the belief that only a powerful and intrusive regulatory state can prevent destructive climate change, then the case for the blue utopia looks ironclad. To save the planet, save the middle class and provide American minorities and single mothers with the basic elements of an acceptable life, we must set up a far more powerful federal government than we have ever known, and give it sweeping powers over the production and distribution of wealth.
It's a month or two early to post about bird migration, particularly passerine migration, here in the northern hemisphere, but I did find this excellent review of the most recent science on the topic:
If NYC deregulated housing, there would be affordable housing for everybody. Classic example of a government fix of a temporary problem creating a permanent shortage problem. Markets work when government stays out of the way.
Docs can't "do less" without tort reform. Defensive medicine is a huge factor in medicine today. Many claim it's 30-50% of billings. Other major wastes? Most preventive medicine, and annual physicals. Studies prove it.
By a 75% to 19% margin, Latinos are more likely to believe in a bigger government, with more services, to a smaller one. President Obama got 75% of the Latino vote in the LD election eve poll – a perfect match.
Only somebody like Rubio can preach the American gospel to hispanic immigrants. Past large waves of immigrants (Swedes, Jews, Irish, Poles, Italians, Cubans) got the memo, but in the era of big government, this wave doesn't get it.
What could potentially crash ObamaCare -- if the news gets out -- is the fact that it's much cheaper to pay the ObamaCare penalty than it is to pay for insurance, combined with the fact (which Politifact ignores) that ObamaCare removes the biggest incentive to purchase insurance -- the pre-existing condition clause.
For 40 Years, T
I have to confess that I'm a person who far prefers playing almost any sport badly to watching other people do it well. When I was in grad school, we had the best "touch" - read "shove very hard so the guy falls in the mud" - football games, weekly. A joy. Being quick and agile then, I was usually a runner (and a ball-dropper). That football is a slippery bugger.
It's a month or two early to post about bird migration, particularly passerine migration, here in the northern hemisphere, but I did find this excellent review of the most recent science on the topic:
1 in 4 Swedish Women