Tuesday, April 7. 2009
 Dept. of Hopey-Changey: A US-based Al Qaida magazine. Does it have a centerfold like the one on the right? If not, I will not subscribe no matter how good the articles may be.
Most Americans have too much wisdom to devote their entire lives to it, but we do have the right to get rich if we want to do that.
Note to depressed Muslims. Keep us out of it.
This may be news to most Americans, from Janet Napolitano: "This is one NAFTA, one area, one continent..."
Too bad. Looking a bit bleak for Coleman. Can't believe those folks voted for the other doofus.
No more buche de chevre? Sucks, dude. Try a government job.
The arrogance. Nobody even knows where the Missouri capitol is. "Hey, Ahmed. I have a great idea. Let's crash into the Missouri capitol to show the infidel the power of Allah." "Cool, dude. Will you do it? But what's Missouri? Show me."
Powerline on the Strib's terminal ailment. Related: Greedy capitalist newspapers want donations from Google. Why not just make them part of the executive branch?
Hey ladies: get your fellow some of this stuff. We need a happier world.
Tiger and Insty both are interested in token Greenie stuff (nothing real), but Tiger at least admits it.
Why docs are refusing Medicare.
Dems push for voting rights for illegals. We saw that coming.
Students: Beware of the one-party classroom
Monday, April 6. 2009
Went for a family visit and Palm Sunday Mass in MA at the family church yesterday. Still cold up there: rain, wind and snow today. Spring feels very far away, due to Climate Change.
 More Tea Parties. It's a Protest Movement! Power to the Silent Majority!
Not just for out-of-towners. Hop on and hop off tour busses in NYC. Cool.
It's a tie in upstate NY
Charles Blow needs a change of underpants
This is just wonderful. Indeed it is.
AVI rarely seems to have an ugly thought, but he had one.
Why does O bash the US in foreign countries?
McCain rebukes Hispanics for not supporting him.
Our problems:
We've narrowed down our troubles. Neither small pox nor poor crops are really all that troublesome any more. No, our problems are now pretty much each other. (Inasmuch as small pox and poor crops are still problems in some places, see what the men there are up to.)
If you think man-against-man problems went away in ancient times, recollect the 20th century. One hundred million deaths can be attributed to communism alone. Add in perhaps 21 million more thanks to Hitler. R.J. Rummel tried to count 20th century human deaths caused by governments, not including wars between nations. His count: over 260 million. That was before the Congo (3.9 million), Sudan (2 million), Rwanda (937,000) and recent "famines" in North Korea (2 million), all since 1990.
They say I am afraid of Michelle Obama's vegetable garden. WTH? I am usually afraid of the menacing weeds in Bird Dog's garden, however.
College orientation, for whites only. They've gone full circle! No doubt some pomo logician can explain it to me.
Can we afford to bet our economy on the supposition that Freeman Dyson is wrong?
CNN is running out of religions to respect. h/t Driscoll. In my view, respect for peoples' religion is a simple matter of manners - but all religions need criticism. Everybody and everything needs criticism.
Hate to say it, but I think this is true:
Max Borders argues that the President’s motive is, not ending the recession, but using it as an excuse for truly radical restructuring of American society and further deformation of the Constitution.
If the President’s goals become reality, most of the remaining checks and balances of the 1787 Constitution will effectively have been eviscerated, leaving a nation driven by Tocqueville’s tyranny of the majority, ravenously confiscating other people’s money.
We all know a Prez can't "end a recession" anyway.
No country in the Middle East will take in Palestinian refugees. Is there a reason? Obama wants to take them. I thought they had their own country now, with an elected government and tons of weapons etc.
Tom Sowell says we have a rookie President. Related: Most polarizing Prez in the modern era. Related, the brilliant Obama invents a new language: Austrian.
Protesting Obama at Notre Dame.
Taxation:
"That is the American way," Stroger replied. "And the way that it's generally done is, you find some group that's small enough where they can't beat you up, and you tax them and you tell everybody else, 'See? We didn't tax you.' "
Marriage is a contract, but is it just a contract?
Aussie boobs getting bigger. It's Climate Change.
The politics of vouchers. Choice not allowed:
Mr. Duncan's office spurned our repeated calls and emails asking what and when he and his aides knew about these results. We do know the Administration prohibited anyone involved with the evaluation from discussing it publicly. You'd think we were talking about nuclear secrets, not about a taxpayer-funded pilot program. A reasonable conclusion is that Mr. Duncan's department didn't want proof of voucher success to interfere with Senator Dick Durbin's campaign to kill vouchers at the behest of the teachers unions.
The decision to let 1,700 poor kids get tossed from private schools is a moral disgrace. It also exposes the ugly politics that lies beneath union and liberal efforts across the country to undermine mayoral control, charter schools, vouchers or any reform that threatens their monopoly over public education dollars and jobs.
Meanwhile, the DC pols all send their kids to private schools.
 Prof B:
...the Obama administration is engaged in national industrial policy far more radical than ever before seen in the United States and, worse yet, with policymakers who seemingly know nothing about cars and, for the most part, don't even own American cars.
DC voucher kids performed better. Swedish schools are voucher, I think.
Speaking of Sweden, "The point is that students must feel seen, heard, and affirmed." Or they will set their schools on fire. Arsonist students need special affirmation, no doubt.
Why Levin's is the most important book of the year. But is he preaching to the choir?
God and government. Riehl. Quote:
...if you want to tear down anything and everything beyond man, then man is the only concept you have left in which to invest your rights. And once you do that, rest assured, one day some man is going to come along and take them away.
Dem crook du jour: Monica Conyers
What's more important - getting medical care or having insurance?
Axelrod cashes out before taxes go up
O to N. Korea "Come on, fellas. Please cut it out."
From Diana West's argument against Afghanistan:
The point is that sinking all possible men and materiel into Afghanistan to nation-build an Islamic culture into a pro-Western one (while simultaneously fighting Taliban and wading deep into treacherous Pakistani affairs and wars) is not the way to victory. In fact, it is the best way to bleed and further degrade US military capabilities. If I were a nefarious jihad chieftain, I can't imagine a better strategy than to tie up America's best young men in a grueling and open-ended war of hide and seek in the North West Frontier....
My fellow conservatives will say: But withdrawing from Afghanistan will give sanctuary to terrorists including Al Qaeda! My answer is that sanctuaries for terrorists including Al Qaeda exist all over the world, from Iran to London to . But it will embolden the terrorists! Frankly, I can't imagine anything more emboldening than the disgusting, shameful spectacle of Barack Obama bowing in deference to the oil-garch of Arabia--except maybe serving up Israel on a platter to its jihadist foes...and except maybe exhausting US capabilities indefinitely in Af-pak, as they now say.
Canada update:
About 20 percent of Canadians work for one level of government or their agencies. This is the highest per capita public sector employment in history other than in wartime. According to Statistics Canada, in the last three months of 2008, the number of civil servants grew by 96,000. In 2008, the total compensation package of wages and benefits grew by 4.3%, just over double the rate of the private sector.
A report released in December, 2008 by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business found that federal employees made 42% more than their counterparts in the private sector when salaries, benefits and pensions were factored in. At the provincial level the difference was 25% while at the municipal level the difference was 36%.
Saturday, April 4. 2009
 This is a re-post from one year ago
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison
At Maggie's Farm, we tend to suspect that issues such as medical insurance, gun control, health, and climate fears are indeed Trojan Horse issues (as Coyote terms them), advocated to increase goverment control over our lives and to reduce our choices, freedom, and self-determination as free adults who are capable of managing our own lives, in our own ways - for better or worse.
No, not "capable" - "endowed by our Creator" and our history with that privilege and that freedom. One must be suspicious of motives when vast, costly government-control solutions are offered to trumped-up or imaginary "crises."
"We the people" are smart enough to figure it all out for ourselves, despite what the self-anointed "elite" might think: not one of the "elite" is better educated, or more worldly, than we ADD-victim redneck folks at Maggie's are. As we like to snobbishly say, "Who are these people?"
"I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 12/20/1787
The people who seek control are not necessarily evil: they no doubt believe that they are not only benign but virtuously-intentioned, and especially qualified to make decions for us. They almost certainly believe that they are more "caring" than I am.
The single most damaging error of the modern age is the misperception of government as an agency of compassion. As a replacement for the "divine right of kings," this misperception has, for those in power, been an astonishing success. For the rest of mankind, it has frequently been a disaster beyond imagining. Government is nothing more than structured, widespread coercion, and the idea that it can implement compassion for us by force is simply a vile and cunning lie. It is cunning because people are primed and willing, even desperate, to believe it. - Glenn Allport
However, individual freedom does not enter into their equations as a caring virtue - or even as a virtue or American ideal at all. (We believe it to be a transcendent ideal, and a gift of God.) Hence what we view as the totalitarian or, as Goldberg and H.G. Wells would have it, "fascistic" proclivities of the Left.
"When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, 'there ought to be a law,' you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap." - Thomas Sowell
Since we at Maggie's view individual liberty, and the responsibilitities which accompany it, as an almost religious, if not religious ideal, we must view those who wish to diminish liberty as enemies of man and of human dignity.
"...every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Ammendment." -- Justice Louis Brandeis (Olmstead v. US)
Are we paranoid about State power? Given human history, and the course of US history, we do not think so.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." - John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.)
Furthermore, we do not wish to rely on the judgement of anyone who wants to run any part of our lives. As Milton Friedman asks in this entertaining YouTube, "Where are these angels who are going to run my life for me?"
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." - James Madison, Federalist #51.
"It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power." - John Adams, 1788
No, we aren't anarchists. We do not object to drivers' licenses, or even hunting licenses. We will pay a fair share of taxes as a price of civilization. I do not even mind zoning if the people vote for it, and I am all in favor of national, state and local parks. But we are not willing to be "governed." That's where we draw the line. Being "governed" is for children (by "governesses"). Free citizens must learn to be self-governing as adults which, as our Dr. Bliss often reminds us, is no easy task but is a highly worthy and ennobling pursuit.
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." - George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutions, 1903
It's all about where you draw the line for government intrusion into one's life. Some of us still want to be Americans, not Europeans. But that's enough pontificating for now.
Top image: A photo of Westport, CT's Minuteman statue on Compo Road, near Compo Beach (via Dr. X). In my own, humble internet way, I want to continue our Minutemen's work and their radical ideal of individual freedom and responsibility in a country free of government tyranny. "We the people," (excluding those with their hands out) have more sense and more life experience than anyone in a government career, or any of the elites on the academic dole.
Lower image: An old lithograph of the Boston Tea party
Sam is still a child. Lots of Sams out there these days.
I'm glad to see PC finally extending into the fungal kingdom. It's only fair. Don't want to be guilty of speciesism.
Krauthammer: Obama's ultimate agenda
Whither print? Jules
Yet another depraved nominee. Where do they find these people? They are all Moonbats or tax cheats - or both.
Steyn on Obama's faux pas
How the Obamanauts lied about their petitions
Wood pulp and fuel. Your tax dollars at work.
Liberal Fascism at the NYT. Sort-of related: NYT's Bill Keller is losing it.
I wish I had a thick cortex. I do have a thick skull...
Ouch. O loses his place on teleprompter in France. Related: The Guardian's transcript of O's confusion yesterday is darn funny. Cruel, but funny.
Coming soon to your house: O's $163,000 tax bomb
Seems hardly fair that illegals would get a better deal than Americans.
Watts on the winter:
...remember - weather is not climate. and computer models should always supersede observation.
The guy wasn't joking:
The Dignitas clinic in Zurich claims to have assisted in the deaths of more than 100 Britons. The Zurich University Clinic found that more than a fifth of people who had died at Dignitas did not have a terminal condition.
Mr Minelli said that anyone who has “mental capacity” should be allowed to have an assisted suicide, claiming that it would save money for the NHS.
The NHS would be in fine shape if it weren't for all those sick and old people they have to bother with.
Friday, April 3. 2009
Obama is "keeping score". So am I.
Why these guys do not work in a real business
Is it time for the Atlas Shrugged movie?
Do we now have The Soros Doctrine?
Is this legal?
FIRE's Speech Code of the Month
How money messes with your mind. h/t, Marginal Rev
Via WSJ Best of Web:
To be sure, America has made some racial progress. But the dream of equality will not be truly and fully realized until President Obama’s political detractors treat him with the same respect George W. Bush’s detractors showed him.
The night I met Bob Dylan, via Grow a Brain
The Coon Man of Detroit
They used to call this cowardice
Obama bows to King. WTH? These people don't know how to behave. Isn't there a Protocol Office? And what about that iPod? Is that "It's all about me," or what? These stories make me cringe.
Dem Senator: Obama budget unacceptable. Also, a Nashville Tea Party April 15
Time magazine, looking deep into the news
On shredding the Constitution. Where's the outrage?
Cap and trade is tax farming:
The cap-and-trade mechanism is primarily a method of constricting electricity production. The United States only gets 3% of its electricity from oil. Thus taxing electricity will do nothing to free us from dependence on foreign petroleum. Quite the contrary. To the extent that electrified transport offers an alternative to oil, such as subways, trolleys, and trains actually do today and electric cars might hypothetically do tomorrow, taxing their motive power can only make the situation worse.
The defenders of the cap-and-trade proposal, however, have advanced the proposition that strictly speaking, cap-and-trade is not just a tax, as its mechanism contains features not included in a conventional taxation system. In this they are correct. Cap-and-trade is not just a tax. It is worse than a tax. It is a modern version of tax farming.
Of course, the electric comes from coal. So what's so "green" about electric? We need to persuade the little people to give up electricity, so let's tax the heck out of it. Let them eat cake.
This tidbit via Willisms:
Thursday, April 2. 2009
 Why does the most volunteering and most donating nation in the world need this Americorps? Some might be amazed by the good deeds my church does, asking nothing in return.
Success is now an evil for the FDIC
10 terms not to use around Moslems. At first I thought this was an April Fool. I am too insensitive for this.
Groupthink Conference at Duke. I think these folks inhabit an alternate reality.
Good war story at Jules
Is it just possible that the Taliban doesn't want peace? Their pitiful, hateful lives would lose all meaning and purpose.
Homeland Security becoming an employment agency for illegals
The press forgot to ask how much more money the taxpayer is donating to the car companies.
Fighting for free political speech:
BCRA... makes it a federal felony to fund any TV or radio broadcast that names a candidate for federal office in the thirty days prior to a primary election or sixty days prior to a general election, called the "blackout" periods.
The Obama Justice Department defended the FEC's action with a team from the department's elite Solicitor General's Office. But that team was outmatched by the lawyer representing Citizens United, renowned former Solicitor General Ted Olson.
Who is Harold Koh? We should care.
Sen. Gregg on national debt
Jacoby:
For years the political class has taken care of its own at taxpayers' expense. That is why so many former public employees enjoy retirement perks far more lucrative than anything typically found in the private sector. "The nation is dividing into two classes of workers: those who have government benefits and those who don't," USA Today noted in 2007. "The gap is accelerating in every way - pensions, medical benefits, retirement ages."
Dick Morris on Obama's plan to reduce the charity deduction:
In 2006, the most recent year for which data is available, four million taxpayers had adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 or more. They comprised 3% of the tax returns, made 31% of the income, but donated 44% of all charitable contributions. Together, they provided charity with $81 billion in that year.
Obama’s plan will cost them $10 billion in extra taxes on the income they allocated to charitable donations. How can the president be so glibly certain that they will not curtail their charitable contributions by a like amount or even more?
Imagine all the harm Obama’s program will cause. Churches will be hit most hard. They account for the largest share of charitable donations, but universities, disease research, hospitals, soup kitchens, and cultural institutions will also be hard hit. So will international relief efforts that funnel aid abroad through churches or directly.
It is totally dishonest for Obama to pretend that his curtailment of these deductions won’t hurt the poor. It will most directly impact them since most of the charities Obama is hurting focus on helping the impoverished.
This proposal is not about saving money. It is about controlling it. By, in effect, transferring at least $11 billion a year from private philanthropy to government spending, Obama empowers the public sector at the expense of the voluntary one.
That is exactly the point. The Left wants people beholden to The State, not to their neighbor. So they have to take the money from you to give to your neighbor - after taking their cut, of course.
Obama likes to talk about "false choices." It's a lawyer's trick. The false choices he discusses are about fundamental values:
Obama claimed in the Chicago Tribune that Americans “need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy.” That choice, he said, is a “false choice.” It is a false choice as he phrases it -- capitalism isn’t chaotic and unforgiving. But the simple choice between capitalism and a government-managed economy is a real choice -- and it’s the most important choice Americans have faced in half a century. Obscuring the need to make that choice by glossing over it with happy talk does a profound disservice to the American people.
According to Obama, “false choices” aren’t restricted to the economy...
Wednesday, April 1. 2009
I am back from Atlanta with this rather obvious thought: those of us who think about policies rationally, practically, and with a modicum of economic knowlege are hopelessly naive. Policies are foremost about politics, and achieving political advantage. It's a street game with no rules. I have always known that, but I keep forgetting it. Politics is where the action is, and people get termed "statesmen" when they don't seem to get the political games, or who find them distasteful. Especially true since the 16th and 17th Amendments (which I think were disasters).
I think this is why so many talented people either stay away from, or get discouraged by, politics.
This time, I am fully resolved to stop expecting reason or principle from public policy. I am sure this resolution will last about as long as most of my resolutions.
Tuesday, March 31. 2009
Milwaukee school voucher program is a success
Being green is for the little people. Al Gore is big people. If you want to know what people really believe, watch their behavior and ignore their words.
I doubt that cap and trade will happen, partly because of how it would destroy trade
Kling gets it (h/t Insty):
ARNOLD KLING: “For quite a while, but especially over the last nine months, the best way to predict developments in politics and finance has been to ask: what will do the most to increase the concentration of power? Every headline, from the Geithner regulatory plan to the proposed cap on the charitable deduction, to the resignation of the General Motors CEO, should be viewed in that light.”
PETA is a big-time animal killer. Where's the outrage?
Just one reason that International Human Rights Law is a joke. Related: Ow, my vanity
The Call of Obama. Related: Is Obama twice as self-centered?
Whitewashing FDR: A New Deal apologia
A splendid essay: Oh, What a Wonderful Recession. One quote:
These pundits, left-leaning economists, and other designated “experts,” differ on the precise ramifications of the vanished “American Dream,” but the crux is similar: we’re entering a long, long era of reduced expectations and simpler way of life. Considering the sources—and academia is the epicenter—it’s not surprising that “Reaganism” is now a filthy word, Wall Street money-grubbers are and will be considered pariahs on the order of pornographers and ambulance-chasing lawyers, and high taxes are both necessary and desirable. An element of this commentary is the lingering resentment of the Bush years—the “stolen” election of 2000, Kerry’s loss in ’04, and the supposed philistinism of the former president—but the larger theme is, hey, we’re now in charge! Most of the writing expresses hostility to entrepreneurship and the commercial world, the belief that business, large and small, is somehow dirty, anti-intellectual, and brings out the worst in people. The underclass must be protected because it’s too fragile to be trusted to the greedy, corrupt upper class; a huge, benign government needs to steer such unfortunates in their private and professional lives.
Typical of this paternalistic mindset is the cover story of April’s American Prospect, “Less is the New More: Why post-consumer America could be a better place,” written by Cornell University economist Robert H. Frank, an out-and-out exercise in wishful thinking that’s not uncommon among self-styled “progressives,” who, between the lines, believe that the current financial collapse will ultimately be recorded as a positive paradigm shift. In other words, to use the catchphrase from Martha Stewart, one of the discredited icons of the “greedy” culture that purportedly began with Reagan, the continuing economic crisis can be turned into “a good thing.”
Absolutely pathetic. Read the whole thing, and weep for our spineless, pitiful and over-educated, decadent and entitled co-citizens. Our elites just don't get it.
Monday, March 30. 2009
What waterboarding bought us.
Glenn Beck: New enemy of The State. He is a good entertainer.
The whiff of Fascism. Driscoll
The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy. h/t, Insty
Dino:
WFB’s dystopic vision of being governed by the Harvard faculty has largely come true in the person of President Obama. He appears to have the political instincts, executive ability and private sector experience of your average liberal arts professor.
Ameerica's #1 growth industry: Government. And it always needs a bailout, from us. In fact, it is pure bailout.
Idiot takes Al Gore's advice, hilarity ensues
Smartest woman in the world says "You have a marvelous virgin." Who hasn't heard of Our Lady of Guadalupe?
WH questions viability of GM and Chrysler. Duh.
Dr. Sanity reacts to the Greenie Doctrine:
America was never perfect, but it was never conceived to be some abstract utopia showcasing human perfection. The 56 men who came together to usher it forth understood that in order to form a more perfect union they had to pledge their lifes, their fortunes and most of all, their sacred honor. They understood clearly that human freedom only guarantees that mistakes will be made; but that the human soul is only able to thrive when human nature is allowed to be free. Further, they understood that society too, will inevitably progress when the individual human soul is unchained.
Sunday, March 29. 2009
 Sunday is Bath Day (h/t, Theo)
ACORN and the Youth Brigades. It is a Leftist's dream. Imagine if Bush had proposed this sort of thing.
Imagine if Bush...never mind. Obama will stay away from floods.
This is how you sell hamburgers
Via Lizards:
During a recession, the private sector lowers prices, because the public is not obliged to buy its services.
During a recession, government raises prices -- because the public is.
The mirage of "green jobs." It's a scam.
Bill Ayers banned in Boston
Transitioning towards Statism. Dr Helen
We tend to average around 360 seconds. A smarter look at blog stats. (h/t, Althouse)
The Captain did his bit for carbon emissions yesterday.
Saturday, March 28. 2009
 These maids in Canada will do everything except clean toilets.
The UN's climate dreams of power. Since they cannot stop war, I guess they want to find something else impossible to do to justify their existence. Gateway has more.
My Dad was a sharp-dressed man and an honest salesman.
The history of domesticated maize pushed back to 8700 years.
Coyote sort-of defends Ward Churchill. (Of course, he rightly assumes there are no standards in Churchill's line of work.)
Did you check out Zinsser's piece On Writing Well: Visions and Revisions? Darn interesting. His book is a classic, right up there with Strunk&White.
The scandal of thermodynamics. It doesn't allow for life.
The Journolist propaganda machine revealed.
Obama appears to mean business in Afghanistan. That is good.
Dems consider taxing medical benefits. What?
AIG as straw man
Steyn:
As President Reagan said, we are a nation that has a government, not the other way round. The nation pays for the government, not the other way round. I pay for Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd, not the other way round. I would appreciate it if they'd take up a less destructive pastime, perhaps joining Senator Kerry in windsurfing off the Irish coast in buttock-hugging yellow Lycra. If you have even a modest asset - a small house, a sluggish savings account or pension provision - these people are making you poorer. Good luck digging yourself out from under.
Thursday, March 26. 2009
 I'm away tomorrow. Leaving these:
Socialism requires hatred. Am thinker
Update on college grade inflation
Good news. Cap and trade is sinking
Why pro athletes go broke
Floods=Global warming? I think floods go way back in time, don't they?
Want welfare? Then clean up your urine
Ezra Levant's book, Shakedown
Bayh wants to be a sane Dem. Is it possible? Related: Obama facing Dem defections. Related: Dems bid adieu to the private sector. Why is it so easy for them to forget that the govt is totally dependent on the private sector's being happily productive?
Govt needs the hedgies to bail out the regulated institutions. Irony indeed.
The homelessness BS. Kaus. Those measures would have counted me as homeless last year.
It never ceases to amaze me how Dem pols always get rich. Emanuel's $ from Fannie. As I see it, Dems love money too much, both their own money and other peoples' money that they can get their hands on.
If O has his way, watch for huge gas taxes at the pump. The gas taxes are already huge, aren't they?
This isn't government. It's a morality play. NRO
"Comrades, remember when Michelle Obama said, “Barack will never let you go back to the way you used to live…” She meant that." Sheesh. I kinda liked the way I lived, simple, honest, and free. Anchoress
Brownwell, via Protein:
Why would I choose to be a conservative? Why would I choose the persecution? I am constantly ridiculed for my beliefs. I have been compared to Nazis. Liberals call me a sexist, racist, bigoted homophobe. My intentions are mischaracterized, and then I am judged by those mischaracterized intentions. For example, because I favor policies to help get everyone off of welfare to succeed on their own, my intentions are characterized as trying to keep blacks and minorities poor. These liberals then brand me a racist because they perceive my intentions are to keep blacks poor.
You would think I would choose to be a liberal. Liberals worldwide are hailed as compassionate for merely “raising awareness” of the plight of the poor. Forget that the poor don’t see a dime from the “awareness” raised. Despite poverty winning the war we waged on it, liberals get judged by their intentions rather than the results of their policies.
Wednesday, March 25. 2009
Are we becoming a nation of spineless weenies? RWNH
In poor taste: Ted Kennedy memoir book covers
From our friends up north:
NDP President Anne McGrath said [Marshall] Ganz stressed the left needs to do a better job of connecting its message with people's values.
"The right-wing has had a real ability to promote particular values such as self-reliance and competition," said McGrath. "We need to be more obvious about what (our) values are," she said. (Ottawa Citizen)
How about no self-reliance and no competition?
Obama's attack on the Second Amendment. Pajamas. Related: Obama is a bold-faced liar
Does the US have any energy policy?
House passes Hitler Youth Bill
From anger to madness: A class-warfare government run amok. Sounds about right.
Memo to the pres: There is no free lunch
What a human catastrophe is the doctrine of human rights!
Tuesday, March 24. 2009
Waiting for Spring and some warming. It was 23 F here in NYC this morning.
The states that are begging for bailouts. Talk about moral hazard. It's a terrible precedent.
Of course AIG paid their money out to banks and funds. That's what the money was for.
Dem tax crook of the day.
From Tiger:
I ... do not think that anger improves any argument ever, or that the intensity of anger influences the morality or justice of an argument. The merits of an argument are quite independent of the emotion with which the argument is conveyed. Finally, it is the job of elected leaders in any serious country to dampen anger rather than accelerate it. To the extent our politicians (of either party) are exploiting or promoting anger rather than calming people they are doing their constituents and their country a great disservice. The exploitation of anger is the specialty of demagogues and dictators, and is not worthy of American leaders. Not even members of the House of Representatives.
The CBO on the federal gummint's share of the economy:
As a share of GDP, CBO says this means spending will hit an astounding 28.5% in fiscal 2009, which ends this September, and still be at 25.5% next year, staying at close to 23% to 24% of the economy for the next decade. As CBO dryly notes, this is "above the average of 20.7 percent over the past 40 years." Even CBO's estimate is conservative because it assumes that most of the spending in the stimulus bill will be temporary, though Democrats are already planning to make much of it a permanent part of the budget baseline.
John at Powerline has become a warming denialist. Just in time: the rationalists have won the debate.
Nobel Economist Gary Becker: This is no time to concede to big government
False Solutions and Real Problems. Jarhead
Why financial regulation never works. Mankiw
Dodd's wife was a Director of an AIG company
Predator drones are killing Al Qaida
 The MSM should resign over Obama's failures.
Related, Steyn:
The trouble with all this off-prompter stuff — the Special Olympics joke, the whining about everyone in Washington being a Simon Cowell wannabe — is that the glimpses of the unscripted Obama are disquieting in what they reveal.
And one thing they reveal is that O doesn't seem to know much:
All terrific press for Orion, except that Obama kept pronouncing the company's name wrong, calling it OAR-ee-on.
Unbelievable. Orion is one of the best-known constellations, mostly because it actually looks like its namesake. So evidently we have to add astronomy to history and economics as subjects of which Obama is remarkably ignorant. I'm beginning to fear that our President has below-average knowledge of the world. Not for a President, but for a middle-aged American.
To what extent is his self-confidence and reputation for brains justified? Or is he just another slick and shallow narcissistic pol?
Monday, March 23. 2009
Obama is becoming a terrible bore. h/t, Viking
Judd Gregg: America headed for bankruptcy. Not a joke. At NRO, the Obama admin is trying what Hoover tried.
Related: Newsman asks Obama if he is punch-drunk. Here's the transcript. Good grief.
Goldman didn't want their $13 billion. They had hedged against AIG already. Those guys are not paid their bonuses for being stupid.
Via Insty:
...the New York Daily News editorializes: Congressional Democrats’ bonus witch hunt will sink N.Y. “The tax plan approved by the House as revenge against a handful of obscenely greedy AIG executives would slam tens of thousands in the financial industry, many of them New Yorkers, who have nothing to do with AIG or any other wrongdoing. And that would be just start of the collateral damage. The levies are so draconian that major banks that took bailout money are threatening to give it back - defeating the purpose of jump-starting the economy with an influx of cash.”
The Tea Party in CT was 7 times larger than the ACORN busload of (probably paid)protesters from Hartford. Who got the MSM coverage?
From David Warren at RCP, on why Obama is in trouble:
As I mentioned during the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama was seriously unqualified for the job of president. He had no practical experience in running anything, except political campaigns; but worse, his background was one-dimensional.
All his life, from childhood through university through "community organizing" and Chicago wardheel politics, through Sunday mornings listening to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, to the left side of Democrat caucuses in Springfield and Washington, he has been surrounded almost exclusively by extremely liberal people, and moreover, by people who are quick and clever but intellectually narrow.
He is a free soul, but he is also the product of environments in which even moderately conservative ideas are never considered; but where people on the further reaches of the left are automatically welcomed as "avant-garde." His whole idea of where the middle might be, is well to the left of where the average American might think it is. To a man like Obama, as he has let slip on too many occasions when away from his teleprompter, "Middle America" is not something to be compromised with, but rather, something that must be manipulated, because it is stupid. And the proof that it can be manipulated, is that he is the president today.
It is at this point that the phenomenon known as "too clever by half" sets in.
How can being a Lefty be avant garde in 2009? It's so passe now.
It's a long-term political strategy: The Dems obviously want to create larger groups of the entitled:
...there is a risk to the U.S. system with more people relying on entitlements. "Well, they become an interest group," Mr. Becker says. "The more you have dependence on the government, the stronger the interest group of people who want to maintain it. That's one reason why it is so hard to get any major reform in reducing government spending in Scandinavia and it is increasingly so in the United States. The government is spending -- at the federal, state and local level -- a third of GDP, and that share will go up now. The higher it is the more people who are directly or indirectly dependent on the government. I am worried about that. The basic theory of interest-group politics says that they will have more influence and their influence will be to try to maintain this, and it will be hard to go back."
No kidding. Everybody loves a free all-you-can-eat buffet.
Friday, March 20. 2009
 Photo: Star Trek Captain's Chair. Every blogger's dream seating.
Benedict's argument on condoms, explained.
That PSA test doesn't accomplish much.
NYT killing unfavorable ACORN stories. Related: Networks now insist on covering the minor Obama speeches that they refused to cover with Bush.
Chaplain barred from saying "God." Might be offensive to "some." It's always that famous "some." But what if not saying "God" is offensive to me?
Where are the war crime accusations against the Palestinians?
Discussion of the quantitative easing. Cowen. My ignorant view? Banks will take the money and hoard it to recapitalize. Who wouldn't?
Not in my neighborhood. Admin considers releasing Gitmo guys in the USA. Just one more reason to have an armed home.
The WaPo took a ride to CT to get the other side of the AIG story. h/t, NRO
In case you don't know it yet, Obama's teleprompter has its own blog.
Just One Minute begins:
I deplore this confiscatory tax aimed at whoever Congress is mad at today. Right now it's AIG and Fannie Mae; later it will be Merrill and Citibank, and eventually it will be defense contractors, profiteering oil executives, or whomever the Congressional Dems single out as their whipping boy du jour.
And of course, rolling this ex post tax out at the same time the Fed and Treasury are trying to encourage private investors to partner up with the government to get the credit markets moving again is insane. What investor needs the likely aggravation to follow? Who needs to be hauled in front of Barney Frank a year from now in order to be blasted as a profiteer who exploited our national crisis for his own profit, which Barney will then tax back? Who will be daft enough to come out of retirement as Liddy did to endure the abuse Liddy took?
Thursday, March 19. 2009
 Shining Path Maoists embrace Capitalism. And shame on Amherst College: I guess they are the new Maoists. How come Lefties refuse to discuss ideas? All you get from them are insults, ad hominems, and censorship.
40% of US births are out of wedlock. Aren't we progressive? The gays want marriage, and the heteros don't.
Pretty funny about our Irish President being so teleprompter-bound that he thanked himself for hosting the party. Is he smart, or just slick and handsome?
Village for sale in England. Does it come with serfs?
Health information technology does no good. But it sounds good. How can you be against something called health information?
The War against Farmers' Markets. Next it will be a War against Tag Sales. Related: What if the kiddies decide to chew on their bicycles? Toys dangerous until proven safe
Prof B argues against bringing back the uptick
We hope you disagree with some of our political views, because, if you agree, you might be a Terrorist. In Missouri, anyway.
Here's where the tax increase is supposed to come from. It doesn't note that those "low-income tax cuts" are government checks to those folks. Related: Obama's climate plan could cost us $2 trillion. It is insane.
The Fed throws another trillion at the economy. Economists: Spending spinning out out of control.
The Journo-list thing is beginning to bother me. When the press is in cahoots with the government, we're in trouble.
From Dino's A TV Show for Morons:
Of course this is all a sham, today’s TV show for the rubes and morons to keep them riled up and to distract attention from The Great Train Robbery that really deserves universal opprobrium (and perhaps also to distract attention from genuine executive incompetence). AIG’s bonuses were only about 5% of what was paid by Merrill Lynch, for example. But AIG is Villain of the Day and so today we watch while AIG is thrown to the lions. Who gets eaten by the lions on tomorrow’s TV show?
Obama is an interesting character. His professorial approach and failings as an executive are paired with an apparently effective political strategy, at least as of this moment. Always have a clear enemy, always attack, and have a clear political aim. We wonder just how long the American people will let themselves be distracted by this endless cavalcade of villains being paraded before them to serve the purposes of the administration and congress.
Experiment with Lesbianism. Why not? I can relate: women are appealing.
Keeping Christians out of the UK. Right thing to do. You never know when those Christian wackos might decide to blow people up in buildings and subways.
Wednesday, March 18. 2009
Too fat to work? They look like half the people at Disney World.
Soros' Media Matters is leaning hard on CNBC.
Reaching the beginning of the end of the recession? More at Financial Times
What is the extent of the urban heat island bias in land temperature measurement?
Tax my products, please, at WSJ. A quote:
The U.S. government mandates fuel-economy standards that force Detroit to make cars Americans don't want to drive. When Detroit loses money on those cars, Washington throws taxpayer dollars at its mistake, and the car makers demand a tax increase that would prod Americans to buy the unpopular cars that Washington mandates. As for what the American consumer or taxpayer wants -- or can afford in today's economy -- who cares? Welcome to government-run energy policy.
Obama's $100,000 bonus from AIG
More new evidence that intelligence is inherited (h/t, Gene Expression)
Cap and trade would be the largest tax ever
Afghanistan: "far from a catastrophe." Max Boot et al
Cosmetic surgery down in sagging economy
ACORN to participate in Census. That is unreal. Somewhat related: Do you know what OFA is? A quote from Am Thinker:
...we have a Movement -- this is their term, not mine -- organized by, and loyal to, a sitting President. Pledge canvassers, armed with your name, will ask you to pledge loyalty to the President too. A president whose term has already become a permanent campaign, is signing up ground forces in a mass organization pledged to personal loyalty to their Leader.
Does anyone know of any historical precedents for this in the United States?
On Social Security, he said "changes will be necessary" to the nation's retirement program. He emphasized, however, that the single most important thing the U.S. could do to put itself on a firm financial footing is to reform health care.
Pure baloney. There is no linkage there, unless they just repeat it often enough somebody might buy it.
More on the bonuses from the Financial Post. “To use a current cliche, frequently deployed to humiliate bankers and CEOs: He doesn’t get it. Barack Obama, that is. He just doesn’t get it, and nor do millions of others who are following the U. S. President on his long destructive march against bankers and corporate executives for their alleged ‘recklessness and greed.’ . . . The leading government-created disaster behind the financial crisis is U. S. housing policy and the multi-trillion dollar securitized mortgage market created by the U. S.-government backed mortgage agencies known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In comments in 2007, Mr. Bernanke reported that the two agencies, with $5.2-trillion in mortgage obligations, posed a systemic risk."
Tuesday, March 17. 2009
 "I am just going out and I may be some time."
The conference that went unreported in Europe. Why?
Imagine the luck!
Rewriting the history of Poland
I'm surprised that Clinton didn't think of this: White House Council on Women and Girls
Dick Morris: Can the Pres do the job?
Why we have to take good care of AIG. We own it.
What exactly did Obama inherit? Good or bad?
Report from a seething climate-crazed cranium
UW study says climate shifts are natural. h/t, Surber
Berkeley physics prof: Gore "exaggerates"
Shelby Steele on Why the GOP can't win with minorities. One quote:
...American minorities of color -- especially blacks -- are often born into grievance-focused identities. The idea of grievance will seem to define them in some eternal way, and it will link them atavistically to a community of loved ones. To separate from grievance -- to say simply that one is no longer racially aggrieved -- will surely feel like an act of betrayal that threatens to cut one off from community, family and history. So, paradoxically, a certain chauvinism develops around one's sense of grievance. Today the feeling of being aggrieved by American bigotry is far more a matter of identity than of actual aggrievement.
Photo: Since he asked so nicely, and since we love old rugs, we'll add the informative Rug Rag to our Eclectic blogroll. That's a Soumac. Our favorites are antique Caucasians, but they are expensive, even now. We are also adding the newly-crowned Ross Douthat's site to our blogroll (even though we do not know how to pronounce his name).
Monday, March 16. 2009
 More snow tonight here. Where's that warming they keep promising?
Sex in church in Alabama. Makes sense to me.
Famous war criminal to visit Canada
Dramatic advances sweep Iraq. (h/t, Insty)
Victimology 101 at Yale
Management 101 at Sippican
AIG defends their bonus compensation. Bonuses are how these folks get paid. Not their salaries. Same way with me. My salary is pin money. My bonus is what I get paid for working hard. No bonus means it's your time to leave because you aren't adding enough value to the enterprise. A job is not an entitlement.
Need financial aid for college? Related: Do we really need more college grads?
Also related: The College of Social Change
How is Roubini investing?
How a college defines hate. Idiots.
Paging Dr. Obama: Looking forward to government-run health care. If anbody imagines that the gummint will offer more, better, cheaper, they are dreaming. Gummint will offer controls and rationing of medicines and procedures, way beyond what any "evil insurance company" would do. You can count on it, because they are already saying so.
Related, a quote from Dr. Bob:
Here’s the question I’ve been pondering: is it an absolute good to be continually striving for a longer life span? Such a question may seem a bit odd coming from a physician, whose mission it is to restore and maintain health and prolong life. But the article which Glenn linked to, describing the striking changes in health and longevity of our present age, seemingly presents this achievement as an absolute good, and thereby left me a tad uneasy — perhaps because I find myself increasingly ambivalent about this unceasing pursuit of longer life.
Of course, long life and good health have always been considered blessings, as indeed they are. But long life in particular seems to have become a goal unto itself — and from where I stand is most decidedly a mixed blessing.
The joke is on our kids. (I have no kids, yet. No wife, either, yet: she will need to be lovely, sweet, serene, sexy, competent, smart, outdoorsy, vigorous, and devoted to me despite my flaws - and interested in everything.)
Related: Administration not Socialist enough, at Jules
Related: The Obama team decides to take control of the Capitol. Don't I recall that "one-party rule" was a bad thing? Never mind.
Who is my neighbor?, posted here at Maggie's.
If it's just a symbol, the heck with it. Anchoress
Facebook? Pointless. Twitter? Pointless. No doubt.
Kaus: Is this Admin too preoccupied with morals? Doesn't strike me that way. At all.
Bumpersticker below from Theo:
Sunday, March 15. 2009
Steyn: There are no enemies anymore
How the NYT covered the skeptic conference. Related: In denial about denial, Dr Sanity
Also related: Clouding up global warming. Reason
"pour encourager les autres." Origin of the phrase.
Health care reform taking place in secret. With no normal people, either.
Why Keynes is so popular in Washington
Brain begins aging at 27 (but wisdom continues to increase)
Riding the Blame Bush theme as long as possible
Corrupt Dem du jour: Rep. Engel
Obama's overtures to Cuba and Russia have been answered
Private school for me but not for thee
I don't know about you, but I don't want my medical records online
George McGovern revisited. Am Thinker
Hayek grabbing a bull by the balls, photo
Emerging question: Is the Administration incompetent?
The case for big tent parties. National Journal. I agree.
Friday, March 13. 2009
 Re Yale: "Get the hell over yourselves, you whiny, parasitic little bitches.” More on Yale's peculiar preoccupation with sexuality from Yalie Never Yet Melted.
Finally, we have affordable housing. (h/t, Coyote)
This guy Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, posted by Roger here yesterday, is a piece of work. Where has he been hiding?
Wisdom from AVI:
I know how dangerous I am when I make pronouncements without examining my own motives. Do I fear poisonous ideas being left out on the buffet for anyone to take? A bit. There should at least be a sign that says, “Some people think this is poison.” But I object more strongly when the poison is being actively loaded onto people’s plates. I tend to intervene.
That comes awfully close to the center of my religious, social, and political arguments. Do you want a particular answer to be true? Then be most suspicious of that. Or, working in reverse, is there an answer you resist? Find out why.
Now Obama: Economic probs "not as bad as we think." Huh? Higher energy taxes and socialized medicine is what economy needs, claims Obama. How dumb does he think I am?
And how about this one: Cigar tax hike and other Congressional bullshit. Must be a tax aimed at Rush - and at The Barrister.
Taxman. You have to give the Brits credit for finding excuses to tax things. Well, maybe it's because they still believe they need to give China economic aid. More likely the opposite is true.
A new and frightening number. Dino
Insty:
BUSTING THE BRADY CAMPAIGN for firearms dishonesty. Of course, the alternative explanation — complete ignorance of what they’ve been banning — is even more damning.
"There will be blood." Henninger says This presidency is going to be an act of retribution (h/t, Blue Crab). Obama is a multimillionaire living off tax money. How about a cut in his salary?
The O's honeymoon fading: The Hill. Obama's quirks: Weekly Standard
We never mentioned the closing of Yucca Mountain. That means they don't want us to have nuclear power.
Sen. Dodd may have worn out his welcome. It's about time.
Americans like Big Government. They just don't know it yet.
How do you cut medical costs without tort reform? asks Zoller at Pajamas. Around here, OBs pay $150-200,000/year in malpractice insurance. In medicine these days, the rule is CYA rather than applying considered judgement. Thus a $2000 MRI for anybody with a bad headache or a dizzy spell.
Powerline:
...the destruction of trillions of dollars in wealth that we have witnessed over the last six months is unique in modern history. It isn't just the bursting of a bubble like the dot com collapse of 2000. It is a sort of neutron bomb effect, in which the physical means of production--buildings, fields, factories--are still standing, but the living heart of the economy, confidence in the future, has been wounded if not killed. I don't think that confidence (or, as Bill says, trust) will return any time soon.
Photo: Jefferson, at a rainy and foggy Quai d'Orsay, taken by our friend Nathan yesterday. He holds his plans for Monticello in his left hand.
Thursday, March 12. 2009
John Sununu speaks on the Politics of Global Warming.
Not satire: EU considers Fart Tax
Advanced paternal age and neural abnormalities
States ranked by freedom. Barone
Via Insty:
GOOD THING WE’RE NOT FACING A FINANCIAL CRISIS: “More than one out of every five dollars of the $126 million Massachusetts is receiving in earmarks from a $410 billion federal spending package is going to help preserve the legacy of the Kennedys.”
What "legacy" is that, exactly? Will it include a stone memorial for Mary Jo on Chappaquiddick?
Stimulus for illegals, but no jobs allowed for foreign-born US biz school grads.
Horowitz' book: The One-Party Classroom
NYT: In favor of filibustering GOP nominees, but not for Dem nominees
Warren Buffett's comments. I like them.
Pelosi's air rage. Sheesh. She is shameless. Who does she think she is? The new mandarins.
Sec. of Education Duncan says:
D.C. has had more money than God for a long time, but the outcomes are still disastrous.’
Judd Gregg says:
All the presidents -- including George Bush -- since the beginning of our republic, will not have run up as much debt as this budget will run up in the first period of its term.
And there is no factoring in, really, of what is coming at us in a significant way, which is the retirement of the baby boom generation, the cost of entitlements on top of all of that.
So, you essentially have set up a scenario here under this budget, where we will pass on to our children in the very near future, at about the end of four years from now, a debt-to-GDP ratio which is unsustainable and a deficit ratio which is unsustainable. And that means our kids are going to have a hard time digging themselves out of this hole.
Gitmo guys go back to their same previous job. Moral of the story: Take no prisoners.
Europe warns re US spending
Rush's stats: Not everybody enjoys him. Interestingly, Camille Paglia does. So do I.
Don't kill Armey's Army
The Goracle refuses to debate. Or even to discuss. I think he has a problem of some sort.
Jammy notes Move-On war against medical insurors (and thanks for the link to us, JWF)
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