Tuesday, October 12. 2010
 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
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.
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."
Saturday, October 9. 2010
For true Yankees, being able to sail is a basic outdoor life skill, along with riding a horse, tennis, swimming, ice-skating, log-splitting, starting a fire, dog-training, and shooting. Every region of the country, and the world, has its basics, doesn't it?
One-design racing boats. Sailing season is winding down in the Northeast US, but for no good reason I thought it time to review a few cool boats. If you have never raced, you have no idea how complicated and tricky this game is - or how athletic it can be. Talent, knowledge, experience, and skill win consistently.
The Star (or International Star, or "Starboat"). This 22' 2-man keelboat was designed in 1910. No spinnaker: whisker pole for the jib downwind. It remains an Olympic Class and a favorite of serious racers. Plenty of professional big boat racers would be happier racing a Star, but there's not much money in it unless you are a sail salesman on the side. Not much fun for a day sail.
A new Star goes for around $50-60,000; used $16-35,000, depending on equipment, quality, and age.
Another popular racing class, and also an Olympic class. The Etchells, designed in 1965 by Connecticut's Skip Etchells. A 30' 3-4-man keelboat. You can buy a used Etchells for $15-30,000. There is almost no reason to ever buy a new fiberglass sailboat. A new suit of sails and fancy rigging can cost almost the price of the used boat, however.
The good old Lightning. I could race one of these, blindfolded. A light hand on the tiller telegraphs even subtle wind shifts. The class is nowhere near as large as it once was, but is still one of the largest one-design classes. A 19' three-man racer with a centerboard, the Lightning also doubles as an enjoyable day-sailer.
Over 300,000 Sunfish have been built since the 1950s. Ancient lateen rig. No sailboat is more fun for two people, preferably you at age 18 and a girl in a loose bikini. People do race them - one man - for fun and for serious. We used to think it was amusing to capsize a Sunfish and listen to the girl squeal when her boobs fell out of her top, but the best was when my buddy and I would go out right after a hurricane and surf the 10-15'-foot waves on a Sunfish. (How, and why, did we survive? Our parents never knew we were out there, no life jackets, etc. My Mom would have killed me. She was a serious sailor, though, in youth.)
We learned a lot about boat-handling in the process.
My final boat du Jour, the 33' J-105. Quite popular these days, as a racer and a day-sailer or cruising sailboat. Not much overhead in the cabin, however, and it's a handful for amateurs in a stiff breeze. Over 700 of them have been built. Fast boat. A pal of mine just bought a new one (around $250,000), and promised me we would sail her before he puts her away for the winter. He is getting new carbon fiber sails made. I'd like to take her for a spin in a 25 knot breeze. We'll see whether he calls me...
 George Will:
If Democrats lose both houses, Obama will seem repudiated. If they lose neither, he will seem impotent. So, if Democrats lose big, he loses big. If they lose smaller, he loses bigger.
Union pushes for Obamacare, then is granted waiver
Socialism for thee but not for me
Rasmussen: Tea Party Participation Up As Election Nears
Am Thinker:
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $700,000 grant to a New York City theater company to finance the production of a play about climate change. A musical.
Good grief. This sounds like The Producers.
On the dole in the UK
EPA to drain $1 trillion from economy
The Google Bomb. Democracy at its finest?
Nobel Peace Prize Winner’s Wife has ‘Disappeared’
 Overture to a Dance of Locomotives
Men with picked voices chant the names
of cities in a huge gallery: promises
that pull through descending stairways
to a deep rumbling.
The rubbing feet
of those coming to be carried quicken a
grey pavement into soft light that rocks
to and fro, under the domed ceiling,
across and across from pale
earthcolored walls of bare limestone.
Covertly the hands of a great clock
go round and round! Were they to
move quickly and at once the whole
secret would be out and the shuffling
of all ants be done forever.
A leaning pyramid of sunlight, narrowing
out at a high window, moves by the clock:
disaccordant hands straining out from
a center: inevitable postures infinitely
repeated—
two—twofour—twoeight!
Porters in red hats run on narrow platforms.
This way ma'am!
—important not to take
the wrong train!
Lights from the concrete
ceiling hang crooked but—
Poised horizontal
on glittering parallels the dingy cylinders
packed with a warm glow—inviting entry—
pull against the hour. But brakes can
hold a fixed posture till—
The whistle!
Not twoeight. Not twofour. Two!
Gliding windows. Colored cooks sweating
in a small kitchen. Taillights—
In time: twofour!
In time: twoeight!
—rivers are tunneled: trestles
cross oozy swampland: wheels repeating
the same gesture remain relatively
stationary: rails forever parallel
return on themselves infinitely.
Friday, October 8. 2010
 Rejection Therapy
Rejection is good for personal growth and humility.
Sullivan: There was no housing bubble. One quote:
You borrowed against your house to send your kid to college. Your kid now lives in your basement eating Cheetos and downloading porn all day instead of out in the workforce, sitting at a desk eating Cheetos and looking at porn on company time as God and Nature intended. But that's a college education bubble. A college loan bubble. You borrowed against a useful and valuable thing, your house, and your children learned Ida Tarbell's bra size, but nothing useful enough to make them employable in a recession.
Surber: An epidemic of epidemics
Each one requiring a government program.
Jay Cost: The Latest Sign of the Dem-Pocalypse
Life in the sticks: More on the South Fulton FD Brouhaha
Poverty Pimps
A culture of lying in the Middle East.
It's multicultural to understand that not all people share our values. Truth is far from a universal value, even in the West.
Freedom of speech on trial in the Netherlands
Higher-Ed-Bubble Update: Pansexuality Edition
WSJ: ObamaCare and the Election - The GOP needs to raise the health-care stakes in 2010, and beyond
Sowell: Red Herring Politics: Part II
Postcards from Vermont
I don't get why VT politics are so different from NH.
Via Neo's Left and right, Britain and here:
Not everyone believes Obama is a Marxist. Coming from England he seems pretty right wing to me.
The Battle for America 2010: Labor Unions Looking to Rescue Feingold in Wisconsin
Poll: Sarah Palin Favorable Rating Just 22 Percent.
The media's Newt Treatment worked on Sarah, but it almost always works on anybody who is targeted. I think she should have run for the Senate.
Gallup Finds U.S. Unemployment at 10.1% in September, Underemployment, at 18.8%, is up from 18.6% at the end of August
Rove: Democrats and 'Poisoned' Politics - Incumbents launch personal attacks to divert attention from the economy's poor performance.
Delaware:
If these polls even come close to measuring the sentiment of Delaware voters, then Coons, an out-and-out leftist, will waltz into the Senate and begin serving at the beginning of the November lame duck session.
This did not have to happen.
Thursday, October 7. 2010
True Grit; One Awesome Trailer
Socialist ‘Success’: Food Stamp Use Breaks Record
A horror story about a small businessman vs the Feds. h/t Cafe Hayek
AVI contemplates how Libs view government differently
How Obamacare is already affecting medical practice
Postcards of the hanging
Blue collar folks abandon Dems. The wealthy still like the Dems.
Via Gay Patriot:
...in this election, Republicans are running more blacks in white majority districts than the Democrats are. Shouldn’t that be taken into consideration when accusations of racism are being hurled about?
Driscoll: Individuality is Fine as Long as We All Do It Together
How do they do it without Fannie Mae? International Comparison of Home Ownership Rates
More UK insanity: School installs £9,000 facial recognition cameras to stop students turning up late... and teachers could be next target
At Am Thinker: The Left's Terror Folly
The lesson from these attempted attacks is clear. Islamic radicals are trying to kill us not because of the policies of George W Bush or Tony Blair, or because there aren't enough U.N. or EU resolutions condemning Israel, or any other grievances the left are trying to project upon our enemies. The reason America and Western Europe are being attacked is because radical Islamists hate the Western way of life. They hate that we are not enslaved to their extremist version of Islam, and they hate the freedom and prosperity that we enjoy in the West.
Weekly Standard: Democracy is Winning in Latin America
Via Insty: Psychology: The Latest Threat to Campus Free Speech?
The interesting speech by Pinker about taboo thoughts is here.
Wednesday, October 6. 2010
Reading maketh a full man, conference, a ready man, and writing, an exact man.
Francis Bacon, as quoted at Rick Moran's REFLECTIONS ON SIX YEARS OF BLOGGING
Gagdad Bob takes on the Cosmos
Mao's little helpers in the Western intelligentsia
Former Secretary of State George Shultz to President Obama: “You’re out of your mind.”
Are Dems uninformed?
Breaking news: Bristol Palin eats at McDonald's. Horrors. We think that their Angus Burger with cheddar, mushrooms, and bacon is darn good.
Quote via Jammie:
I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”.
--- Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic
Gov. Christie goes to Iowa.
Your Stimulus Dollars at Work: Teacher Pay Raises
A case of pure projection: On the right, hateful words are fired like bullets. Who, where, what, when?
This fellow Cravaack in MN 8th looks good
Conyers admits Obama care is just the first step to complete government control. As we always say, first they break it, then offer to fix it.
Chicago Boyz: Just say it! Teachers Unions are morally illegitimate
Levin: The War on the Young - Obama tries to fool them again.
Department of Climate Disruption: Coldest winter in 1,000 years on its way
Great idea for "at risk" kids: Unreal. New Hip-Hop Curriculum Refers to Founding Fathers “Old Dead White Men”
Iran Admits It Could Pull Nuke Trigger on US, Israel.
Tiger:
Our Congress is deeply, embarrassingly incompetent. Willful incompetence in my view is simply the equivalent of corruption. Incompetence which springs from ignorance is merely stupidity at work. Whether the current Democratic leadership of Pelosi and Reid is one or the other doesn't really matter. Of course, I have an opinion. But the result is the same.
Sunday afternoon:
Tuesday, October 5. 2010
 Good: ‘Alternative Pathways to Desirable Careers’
Bill Gates: Soak the mini-rich. Brilliant!
Is Rahm ready for prime time?
Samuelson: The government is stifling job-creation
Walter Williams: Politicians Exploit Economic Ignorance. True indeed. It's their stock in trade.
Derbyshire: I love America. Why does it need transforming?
What happens when government gets involved with your medical care
I am deeply offended by what PC insanity the UK is up to now. This is psychotic policy-making.
Coyote on the Corporate State:
A European-style corporate state is typically ruled by a troika of large favored corporations, industrial and public employee unions, and long-time political insiders. Most definitely excluded from power are consumers, entrepreneurs, small businesses, younger workers without seniority, and taxpayers.
The Tea Party is a diabolical cabal
Venezuela shows how it's done. First you break it, then run in to "save" it.
Green jobs scam
Buying gold by the ton. That is called "money on the sidelines."
Powerline: Get your hand out of my shower. How and why is this a Federal responsibility?
Crazy California: Proposition 23 and the damage it would do to California:
Setting aside the state's climate change law would damage the state's green economy and imperil California's commitment to fighting greenhouse gas emissions.
Good grief.
 The rather common American Kestrel - I still call them Sparrow Hawks - is our smallest raptor (size of an American Robin) and, when seen in the right light, our most colorful.
They are falcons, prey on insects, especially grasshoppers, small mammals, and small birds. Occasionally they can be seen in fields hunting from a hover but, more commonly, perched on the wires or branches from which they pounce.
Because of their preference for open spaces, their numbers decline where agriculture gives way to woodland. Their Eastern US population is down, probably due to the decline of farming in the Northeast.
They breed in nest holes, and move south from their northern ranges in the winter, making them "semi-migratory."
Their autumn southerly movements have been correlated with dragonfly migrations. Kestrels are happy to catch dragonflies although I don't know how it is possible. I had no idea that dragonflies migrated, but some species do - all over the world.
More about these fine birds here.
You say, 'If I had a little more, I should be very satisfied.' You make a mistake. If you are not content with what you have, you would not be satisfied if it were doubled.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The wise Rev. Spurgeon might be right, but I'd be willing to give it a try anyway just to find out for myself.
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A big deal: 
RAF leather flying gloves