Sunday, November 18. 2012
My pic is Fairfield, CT's Greenfield Hill Congregational Church. Timothy Dwight was once pastor there. This back country congregation was gathered in 1725. History of the church here. Always must remember that a church is the people, not the building.
 The sun unleashed a monster eruption of super-hot plasma Friday
Long Island Residents Dealing With Sandy-Related Garbage Nightmare
Lincoln: A review
65% of the 392 top colleges surveyed maintain speech codes and other restrictions on expression that violate First Amendment principles
How Free Speech Died on Campus - A young activist describes how universities became the most authoritarian institutions in America:
A 2010 survey by the American Association of Colleges and Universities found that of 24,000 college students, only 35.6% strongly agreed that "it is safe to hold unpopular views on campus." When the question was asked of 9,000 campus professionals—who are more familiar with the enforcement end of the censorship rules—only 18.8% strongly agreed.
Fordham v. Coulter week
Ranchers, farmers brace for 'death tax' impact
View from the Left: Obama Won. Now It's Time to Change the System
Sultan:
The Democratic Party is defined by the broken family in the same way that the Republican Party is defined by the family. It is a refuge for minority groups where fatherlessness leads to single mothers and government dependency and for white middle-class Julia types who use government dependency as a substitute for parental dependency.
Take away the family and millions of seniors have no recourse for their needs and even their survival, but to turn to the government.
Why are Hispanics a privileged minority when Irish aren't?
Adultery: Medieval Barbarism — It Wasn’t All Bad
Hunch: Obama doesn’t want a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff
FEMA: Welfare Masquerading as Disaster Relief - FEMA's head defends the agency's post-hurricane response by saying that emergency relief is not its job.
An Unusually Stupid Court Ruling on race in schools
The New York Times Sides With Hamas
Real Racism And Hatred In America
Is the Muslim Brotherhood Behind Protests for a Change in Jordan?
Saturday, November 17. 2012
 So how’s it going in Sandyland?
It's Katrina redux, but with mostly white faces this time.
Retirement Plans Can Make Loans, Hardship Distributions to Sandy Victims
The best thing I ever did for my kids’ education is getting her out of the Saskatoon Public School System
Merrill on “Fear of Fracking”
MSM falls for “New Coke” poverty con
Raging against reality in Euroland
The real Hostess story
Maine’s striking Hostess workers say company’s collapse a strong message of union resolve
New White House Petition Demands Obama Nationalize Twinkie Industry
General failure - Senior officers’ ethical collapse
BREAKING: The president knew the truth about Benghazi
How’s That Obamacare Waiver Workin’ Out for Ya?
NRC Report on Electricity Grid Vulnerability
Intel officials unable to say who changed CIA talking points on Libya, lawmaker says
McCain Smashes Obama Back: You're Incompetent or Corrupt
People’s Republik Of California Now #1 In Poverty
The Poor We Shall Always Have With Us. . . as long we keep using the new supplemental poverty measure.
If you get your health insurance through a job, you might lose it as of Jan. 1, 2014
The Audacity of 51% - Get ready for higher taxes and no spending reform.
Compassionate Conservatism Redux - Bush 43 was on to something important, and he got the votes to prove it.
Gov. Rick Scott: Get over the election
Ron Paul’s farewell speech (VIDEO)
Why Rubio is a frontrunner
Europe's Baby Boxes & China's Coerced Abortions
Nicaraguan democracy is being snuffed out.
Russia expands treason law, critics fear crackdown
If the past is any guide, increased conflict in Gaza will be accompanied by international demands for Israeli restraint, frivolous accusations of Israeli war crimes, and perhaps even complaints to the International Criminal Court
The Muslim Brotherhood's rise in Egypt, the chaos in Sinai and new alliances born of Syria's civil war made Hamas think it could attack Israel with impunity
Has the High Commissioner for Human Rights gone mute?
Ballade, Translated by Galway Kinnell
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I die of thirst beside the fountain
I'm hot as fire, I'm shaking tooth on tooth
In my own country I'm in a distant land
Beside the blaze I'm shivering in flames
Naked as a worm, dressed like a president
I laugh in tears and hope in despair
I cheer up in sad hopelessness
I'm joyful and no pleasure's anywhere
I'm powerful and lack all force and strength
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.
I'm sure of nothing but what is uncertain
Find nothing obscure but the obvious
Doubt nothing but the certainties
Knowledge to me is mere accident
I keep winning and remain the loser
At dawn I say "I bid you good night"
Lying down I'm afraid of falling
I'm so rich I haven't a penny
I await an inheritance and am no one's heir
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.
I never work and yet I labor
To acquire goods I don't even want
Kind words irritate me most
He who speaks true deceives me worst
A friend is someone who makes me think
A white swan is a black crow
The people who harm me think they help
Lies and truth today I see they're one
I remember everything, my mind's a blank
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.
Merciful Prince may it please you to know
I understand much and have no wit or learning
I'm biased against all laws impartially
What's next to do? Redeem my pawned goods again!
Warmly welcomed, always turned away.
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The 13th century (1431-1474?) vagabond-thief-troubadour's bio here. This is a free advertisment for The Poems of Francois Villon, translations by Galway Kinnell (1965).
Friday, November 16. 2012
 Whether you’re pushed into a major decision by loving emotions or anger and disappointment, watch out; the forces behind your decision might be pushing you off a cliff.
Out of Touch - E-reading isn’t reading.
Could You Live On Social Security?
Cheap surgery: Oklahoma Doctors vs. Obamacare - Surgery center provides free-market medicine.
Did the Election Save ObamaCare?
Obama Administration Just as Scared of Carbon Taxes as the Rest of America
Failing School Has Every Teacher and Principal Rated ‘Highly Effective’
When recent graduates don’t know how our government is supposed to work or how our economy works — and they voted for Obama by a wide margin — that’s a general-education problem.
How the Welfare State Hurts the Poor and Causes Unemployment
Papa John’s faces food fight over Obamacare
VDH: Oh, We Forgot to Tell You...
Surprise! Jobless Claims Up 78,000 Week After Election; PA, OH Worst Hit
It's the American people who are to blame, for it is we who have lost our morality and our love, knowledge, and respect for our Constitution
Obama Administration Gave Petraeus's Wife a $187,605-Per-Year Job
What Has Movement Conservatism Accomplished in the Last 15 Years?
Fake Indian has fake conversation to avoid fake journalists
To Protect Obama From Libya, Media Turns McCain Into Captain Ahab
Benghazigate: Obama Now Blaming Petraeus for Rice’s Video Lie
Jesse Jackson Jr. says Jesse Jackson Jr. is disabled and if you agree, he’ll go away.
Barack Obama's Persuasion Army - The president has finally made the permanent campaign a reality.
Libya timeline suggests cover-up in attack - Hearings aim to get to truth
China’s Illicit Flows Are ‘Big Issue’ for Money Laundering
Miraculous Recovery by Injured Gaza Man? Pallywood is in high gear as Gazans dupe BBC viewers in time-honored style.
Accountability of Hamas under International Humanitarian Law
Fact Sheets #42: Hamas
Gaza: Would You Raise Your Child in This Neighborhood?
Video: Israel Under Fire: Life in the South
Thursday, November 15. 2012
 I am a great admirer of Tom Wolfe's ability to have his finger on the pulse of the culture, and his ability to crystallize what's going on in a phrase, a concept, or in a story. I read Bonfire twice because it was so dramatic, realistic, and entertaining. Dickensian in scope, but maybe lacking in Dickens' talent for character portraiture.
On the other hand, over the years in real life I believe I have met every character in every one of Wolfe's books.
At City Journal, Tom Wolfe’s California - In the Golden State, the great writer first chronicled the social changes that would transform America. A quote:
“The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby” represents the first time that Wolfe truly understood and was able to formulate the big idea that would transform him from an above-average feature writer into the premier cultural chronicler of our age. Those inhabiting the custom car scene were not rich, certainly not upper-class, and not prominent— indeed, they were almost invisible to society at large. Wolfe described his initial attempt to write the story as a cheap dismissal: “Don’t worry, these people are nothing.” He realized in California that he had been wrong. These people were something, and very influential within their own circles, which were far larger than anyone on the outside had hitherto noticed.
“Max Weber,” Wolfe tells me, “was the first to argue that social classes were dying everywhere—except, in his time, in England—and being replaced by what he called ‘status groups.’ ” The term improves in Wolfean English: “Southern California, I found, was a veritable paradise of statuspheres,” he wrote in 1968. Beyond the customizers and drag racers, there were surfers, cruisers, teenyboppers, beboppers, strippers, bikers, beats, heads, and, of course, hippies. Each sphere started off self-contained but increasingly encroached on, and influenced, the wider world.
If your main goal is to show that your heart is in the right place, then your heart is not in the right place.
Philosopher David Schmidtz, h/t Cafe Hayek
Wednesday, November 14. 2012
Too many smart Asians
Chevy Volt update:
The $40,000 Volt is basically a $17,000 Cruze - with a 500 lb., 25-mile range, eight-hour-to-charge battery. Which is toxic when spent - and costs somewhere between $8,000 and $15,000 to replace.
And the American people aren’t buying? Shocker.
What Does Barack Obama Do All Day?
VDH: A Country Unhinged:
Nothing seems real anymore, not preelection federal data on jobs or food stamps or the release of such “facts”; not foreign-policy information like an Iranian attack on a drone; not the supposedly competent federal relief in response to Hurricane Sandy. Even Saddam Hussein’s plebiscites could not achieve margins like the 19,605 to 0 we saw in 59 Philadelphia precincts. Does anyone care?
Fordham University Pressures Campus Republicans to Cancel Coulter Speech
Her speech is too dangerous and subversive for young minds...
Today’s plot twist: Police find Paula Broadwell’s driver’s license in D.C. park
Blackmail: Krauthammer: White House 'Held Affair Over Petraeus's Head' For Favorable Testimony On Benghazi
Santa Claus and the GOP Civil War
Stick it to blue states a/k/a Country First:
I want you to tax the crap out of the blue states in which I live because I put country ahead of personal fortune. Not because I want to hear my tax-loving liberal neighbors squeal like stuck pigs. I’m better than that.
Country first.
Bookworm: The cult of personality trumped ordinary considerations
Citizens United Not End of the World
Is Obamacare too much work for the Obama administration?
Old Soviet jokes become the new American reality
‘Robust’ EU sanctions no match for Tehran’s tricks, experts say - ‘By the time one company is blacklisted, the Iranians have set up 10 new ones’
'Absolutely no way’ Arafat was poisoned, says top doctor who teaches at Paris hospital where Palestinian leader died
Tuesday, November 13. 2012
Bruce Thornton explains why the ancient critics of Athenian democracy wouldn’t be surprised. It's all about greed. One quote:
This summary of democracy’s dysfunctions is relevant as well to the decades of our wanton entitlement spending that has accelerated during the last four years. In 2010, government at all levels transferred more than $2.2 trillion in money, goods and services to recipients. Since the 1960s, the government has spent nearly $20 trillion on the War on Poverty. The federal government now runs about 80 programs providing aid to the poor, and government at all levels spends nearly $1 trillion annually to fight poverty. Food stamp spending has doubled during Obama’s first term, reaching $75.7 billion for the fiscal year ending 30 September 2011. From 2007 to 2011, spending on unemployment has nearly quadrupled to $120 billion. And don’t forget the ongoing costs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which in fiscal year 2011 ate up 43% of the federal budget at a cost of $1.56 trillion. On top of these already existing entitlement programs, Obama spent nearly $1 trillion on a stimulus package that benefitted political clients like state government workers, and another $25 billion on the auto bailout that mostly rewarded yet another political client, the UAW. As for Obamacare, the CBO calculates it will cost about $2 trillion over ten years, and still leave 30 million people without health care. As a result of Obama’s increases in these wealth transfers, federal spending has now reached 24% of GDP.
A side street off the piazza a year ago. Everybody likes little Todi.
Monday, November 12. 2012
 Affairs are partly about narcissism
Matt Steele Outdoors (3) Shooting Grip Essentials
England: And Next They Came For Bacon
Sex, Yale, God, and ‘Raunch Feminism’
Move to San Francisco, Get a Free Sex Change
... the Obama administration spent $5.60 for every $1 of economic growth.
Foodstamps Surge By Most In One Year To New All Time Record, In Delayed Release
Hipsters on food stamps
Denmark seriously rethinking the world’s first “fat tax”
Cooke:
Conservatives and Republicans have for too long ceded pop culture’s influence to the Left. If we continue to allow progressives to construct a linear historical narrative that casts conservatives and the Republican party as the villains in every piece, we can kiss goodbye to ever winning a national election again.
Can't count on Rasmussen anymore
Good Boy: Obama Lets Obedient Media Know Their Place After Election
“Imagine the howls if Bush played golf during the post-Katrina cleanup.”
Now They Tell Us: Costs of the GM Bailout
The Disappointment of Living in an Electoral Republic
Sarah Westwood: Advice From a Lonely College Republican - The GOP is like a supermodel who's been doing photo shoots under fluorescent bulbs without any makeup.
MORE DEAD BODIES Discovered in Sandy’s Wake – Media Yawns – Obama Golfs
Not Quite Like Being There - Firefights and ambushes make for melodrama, but our soldiers' most difficult struggles are more mundane
Forward! Canada Lures Energy Workers from U.S.
Diplomats still in Benghazi say they had long questioned U.S. reliance on local militia
China's next first lady: a folk singer who threatens to shake up political life
Dark Blots on the Blank Slate - An epic yet intimate history of how the Soviets attempted to remake every aspect of life in Eastern Europe in the wake of World War II.
Sunday, November 11. 2012
And Suddenly It Occurred To Us To Put A Microphone In Front Of The Nine-Year-Old. Oh, Boy!
Who's gonna throw those minstrel boys a coin? Yes, Garrett is indeed haunted in the best sense. I noticed it when I met him. He is inside himself. But who is the invisible retard on bass?
In the good old days before recorded music, everybody made their own music at home. A home is a little empty and dead without it. Everybody in the family was supposed to play something, however ineptly, and it is a delight to hear somebody struggling with a piece on the piano in the living room. The wrong notes are sentimentally memorable. It's the sound of home. Homemade music is the best, and second best is live music. Music has gotten too easy to have. Maybe it's just a Maggie's view, but I believe that music, like sports, is more wonderful to do than to watch or listen to. My musical and singing talents have been elusive, to say the least, thus far, but there is always hope.
Dylan 1970 -
Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin?
Who’s gonna let it roll?
Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin?
Who’s gonna let it down easy to save his soul?
Oh, Lucky’s been drivin’ a long, long time
And now he’s stuck on top of the hill
With twelve forward gears, it’s been a long hard climb
And with all of them ladies, though, he’s lonely still
Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin?
Who’s gonna let it roll?
Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin?
Who’s gonna let it down easy to save his soul?
Well, he deep in number and heavy in toil
Mighty Mockingbird, he still has such a heavy load
Beneath his bound’ries, what more can I tell
With all of his trav’lin’, but I’m still on that road
Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin?
Who’s gonna let it roll?
Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin?
Who’s gonna let it down easy to save his soul?
Dr. Tom Sculco at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York gave my mother-in-law a brand new knee on the Friday night before Sandy. She's doing fine, but a new knee is not exactly pleasant for a while. She had a push-button morphine pump for a while, and the post-op PT would be outlawed by the Geneva Convention.
Between Sandy, no power, the hospital and the rehab, and the tree falling on their house, it's been a challenge around here.
Dr. Sculco is the pre-eminent orthopedic surgeon in the world, has a world class bedside manner too. Spreads love, interest in others, and care all around, as we all should do.
Thanks, Dr. Sculco. Don't retire.
 At last count, we have 32 people, friends and family, coming for Thanksgiving. Ages 4 to 86.
It's a partay! I usually do 2 large turkeys, but was wondering if I needed 3. How Much Turkey Per Person? Use This Rule of Thumb
I like leftovers more than I like the first go-round, and I just like a little bit of turkey to go with my main deal of mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry relish, and gravy.
Which reminds me, I need to get out and buy up my annual supply of fresh cranberries. 10 bags, at least. Perhaps corner the New England market for cranberries, and make out like George Soros. I freeze them whole and use them year round.
From VDH's Anatomies of Electoral Madness:
Marco Rubio would not have won the Latino vote this year. A ticket of Condoleezza Rice and Herman Cain would not have won the black vote. Bobby Jindal and Nikki Haley would not have won the Asian vote. Obama, in brilliant fashion, marketed himself as the above-the-fray great healer and our post-racial future, while his surrogates waged the most vicious race-, class-, gender-divisive campaign in history. More likely, what lost the race for Romney — a decent and strong candidate — was instead the failure of the white working classes to turn out to vote en masse.
Why so? I was in Michigan, near the Ohio border, for all of September, and each night was stunned by the variations in the class warfare ads, mostly brilliant and effective in painting Romney as your kill-Detroit, wet-suited, jet-ski-setting, multi-home employer — a veritable John Kerry, John Edwards, or Ted Kennedy — and “us” as a disabled, homeless, starving, and out-of-work collective victim as a result. Millions, who did not prefer Obama, just stayed home and thought that they would pass on voting for the guy who had too much money and gave them their pink slips. In 2004 they saw Kerry as the wet-suited wind surfer; in 2012 it was Romney.
From Sultan's What Went Wrong?
On 13 September 1786, delegates from Providence County towns met in convention at Smithfield to consider the merchants’ continued opposition. The delegates attacked the subversive tendencies “of the mercantile Interest” and proposed that the legislature consider several plans, one of which called for a state-trade system that would have effectively eliminated the merchant class. As envisioned by a writer in the Providence Gazette, the state would own all stores, ships, wharves, shipyards, and the like. A state commission would send ships on fishing and mercantile ventures while severely limiting the importation of luxuries.
The legislature would “take the lead in this business, and will border it carried on in such manner, and under such regulations, as they in their wisdom shall think most convenient for the welfare, advantage, and well-being of the State.”
Mark 12:38-44
12:38 As he taught, he said, "Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces,
12:39 and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets!
12:40 They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation."
12:41 He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.
12:42 A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny.
12:43 Then he called his disciples and said to them, "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.
12:44 For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on."
Saturday, November 10. 2012
 She was a Phantom of Delight
She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment's ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
I saw her upon a nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveler between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warm, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright,
With something of angelic light.
Winslow Homer
Friday, November 9. 2012
 Is There Such a Thing as the Female Conscience? (my illo is via Theo but it's really a serious essay)
Here Are the Places Where You Can Buy Wine From Amazon
The Universe Is Almost Done Making Stars - Star formation is now 30 times lower than at its peak 11 billion years ago.
I blame climate change
A book: Far From the Tree - "He writes about families coping with deafness, dwarfism, Down syndrome, autism, schizophrenia, multiple severe disabilities, with children who are prodigies, who are conceived in rape, who become criminals, who are transgender." http://www.amazon.com/Far-From-the-Tree-ebook/dp/B007EDOLJ2/ref=kinw_dp_ke
Why All Politicians Lie - It's a job qualification.
Sorry - my link box isn't working this morning, so these links do not keep the Maggie's front page up unless you right-click:
Ensuring condom use on porn sets called challenging - http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-1108-porn-20121108,0,5770187.story
They Work Long Hours, but What About Results? - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/business/measure-results-not-hours-to-improve-work-efficiency.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1349632513-fcn9pmNGnlMOICHy55EYLg&pagewanted=all&_r=0
How the Owl Tracks Its Prey - Experiments with trained barn owls reveal how their acute sense of hearing enables them to catch prey in the dark - http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2012/6/how-the-owl-tracks-its-prey/1
NYC Dark, The Manhattan Power Outage After Hurricane Sandy - http://laughingsquid.com/nyc-dark-the-manhattan-power-outage-after-hurricane-sandy/
The Urban Electorate: Why Republicans Can't Afford to Concede the City Vote Ever Again - http://www.theatlanticcities.com/politics/2012/11/urban-electorate-why-republicans-cant-afford-concede-city-vote-ever-again/3829/
Miller: If Romney’s what’s wrong with America, this country has serious problems - http://hotair.com/archives/2012/11/08/miller-if-romneys-whats-wrong-with-america-this-country-has-serious-problems/
Democrats cement California hegemony - Party picks up enough seats to command two-thirds majorities in Assembly, Senate. http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/democrats-377075-legislature-tax.html
Unions Lose Big in Michigan - http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/11/08/unions-lose-big-in-michigan/
"I think a lot of stuff will be coming out over the next few weeks and months that was carefully kept off the radar before Election Day." http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/157280/
Another example with guns: http://moonbattery.com/?p=20717
Election Consequences: Decline of Doctor-Owned Practices - http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/08/Election-Consequences-Decline-of-Doctor-Owned-Practices
Jungleman: "The GOP should abandon its provincial ideas. Changing political positions on a few issues is easier than changing voter minds." http://jungletrader.blogspot.com/2012/11/opinion.html
U.N. ELECTS GENOCIDAL SUDAN TO TOP HUMAN RIGHTS BODY - UN Watch Urges U.S., EU, U.N. Chief to Speak Out http://www.unwatch.org/cms.asp?id=3587950&campaign_id=63111
Thursday, November 8. 2012
“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”
André Gide, via Zero Hedge's grim The Eight Scariest Charts For Equity Bulls
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