Maggie's Farm

A quote from Herb Meyer via Am Thinker:

Let me put this as starkly as I can:  What's going on today in our country isn't normal politics.  In normal politics honorable people will disagree, sometimes fiercely, about how best to deal with the issues that confront us - national security, border control, healthcare, education, energy, the environment, and all the rest.  What's going on today is a kind of domestic Cold War -- a seemingly endless standoff, with the occasional hard skirmish -- between those of us who see the US for what it really is, and those of us who are seeing the US through a prism.  And remember, unlike real prisms these intellectual prisms -- or, if you prefer, these political prisms -- are invisible.  If you're looking at the US through a political prism, you don't know you're seeing through a prism and you won't believe anyone who tries to tell you that you are.

This is why Americans who see our country and the world through a prism are impervious to facts. 

Read the whole, excellent thing.

But Roger Kimball says it better. One quote:

Which brings me back to the Times’s story on Obama’s career at the University of Chicago. In course of that story, the reporter confronts the reader with “what may be the ultimate test of racial equality–whether Americans will elect a black president.”

I stopped short reading that because I think it gets the issue 100% wrong. The implication is that if Obama is not elected, then Americans fail the test. But that, I submit, is a racist idea. How many liberals do you know who plan to vote for Barack Obama because he is black, that is to say, for a racist reason? Sure, they also like the fact that he plans to institute a European-style confiscatory tax plan...

That must be it. Nobody complains about Obama's prayers for God's guidance and protection.

Maybe they assume he's faking it for political purposes. But what if it's for real? 

No, that's not what he said. What he said was if you're white and vote against me, you're racist:

Democrat Barack Obama, the first black candidate with a shot at winning the White House, says John McCain and his Republican allies will try to scare them by saying Obama "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills."

The Obama campaign wants to divert attention to the issues by making this an election about race. Hillary tried to pull the same trick, but with her genitalia. I don't give a damn about Obama's color - or anybody's color. I will vote against him because he is a naive, extreme Lefty nut who has never accomplished anything in his life other than the smooth delivery of pablum speeches and maneuvering quickly in the sleazy, corrupt world of Chicago politics.

Come come! We have had enough of this. I will put an end to your prating. It is not fit that you should sit here any longer! You have sat here too long here for any good you have been doing lately. You shall give this place to better men! Call them in! Call them in! (the musketeers). You call yourselves a Parliament. You are no Parliament; I say you are no Parliament! You are whoremasters and drunkards, corrupt and unjust men, how can you be a Parliament for God’s People? Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

Cromwell dismissing the Rump Parliament, April 1653. h/t, Mr. Free Market

Thus says Pelosi. Surber asks "Who asked her to?"

I finally figured out why liberals turn me off. It’s their egos. They think they know everything and must save the rest of us mouth-breathers from ourselves.

The ten Capitalist things all economists believe. City Journal. One quote:

To help the losers in the free market, government shouldn’t back away from either free trade or creative destruction and start subsidizing doomed and obsolete activities, a protectionist course that guarantees only economic decline. Instead, it should help the losers change jobs more easily by improving educational opportunities and by facilitating new investment, which creates more employment. An essential task of democratic governments and opinion makers when confronting economic cycles and political pressure is to secure and protect the system that has served humanity so well, and not to change it for the worse on the pretext of its imperfection.

Still, this lesson is doubtless one of the hardest to translate into language that public opinion will accept. The best of all possible economic systems is indeed imperfect. Whatever the truths uncovered by economic science, the free market is finally only the reflection of human nature, itself hardly perfectible.

Bob Novak, hospitalized today in Boston for a brain tumor while on a trip to Cape Cod, filed his Closer than He Should Be for today's WaPo. One quote:

In the contest for president, Barack Obama is a magnetic candidate supported by a disciplined, well-organized campaign. John McCain seems wooden, with a campaign that appears to be in shambles. Yet Obama's lead in the polls over McCain is fragile because he so far has not won the support of a majority of American voters.

We shall see whether McCain can add some zip to his campaign. As we have said here, "John - give people a reason to vote for you." We already have a multitude of reasons not to vote for Obama.

Also, our best wishes to Bob. Seems like he's been around forever. The Old Guard.

There was a time when a gent would no more leave his house without a tie than a lady would leave the house without a hat. I showed up at a tennis team outdoor dinner-dance event at my club on Saturday night with jacket and tie. Not wishing to make everybody else there feel grievously under-dressed, I quickly removed my tie and stuck it in my pocket.

I am an old-fashioned believer in the idea that professionals should dress up a little bit. Even if it isn't entirely comfortable. And I still believe in wearing a tie to church - not that God cares, but simply as a sign of respect for the occasion.

From Neato, American Tie Guys Untie Their Own Association.

Brooks Brothers ties have been my mainstay since I was 10 years old, but I have been known to wear other brands when given to me as gifts. Brooks summer ties are on sale now, but I think I have enough to last me. Easy to find a new one to like, though.

"The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin, in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting."

McCain now supports, Obama opposes. I support: "All men are created equal." Story at Betsy

"Weren't the eighties grand? Cash grew on trees or, anyway, coca bushes. The rich roamed the land in vast herds hunted by proud, free tribes of investment brokers who lived a simple life in tune with money. Every wristwatch was a Rolex. Every car was a Mercedes-Benz. A fellow could romance a gal without shrink-wrapping his privates and negotiating the Treaty of Ghent. Communist dictators were losing their jobs, not presidents of America and General Motors. Women wore Adolfo gowns instead of dumpy federal circuit court judge robes. The Malcolm who mattered was Forbes. Bill Clinton was only a microscopic polyp in the colon of national politics, and Hillary was still in flight school, hadn't even soloed on her broom. What a blast we were having. The suburbs had just discovered Martha Stewart, the cities had just discovered crack. So many parties and none of them Democratic...Back then health care was a tummy tuck, not an inalienable right. If you wanted a better environment, you went to Laura Ashley."

P.J. O'Rourke, via Samizdata

All-American Colleges: Top Schools for Conservatives, Old-Fashioned Liberals, and People of Faith. h/t, Dr Helen

Also via Dr. Helen, Choosing the Right College

Stuff White People Like. The book.

Quote from Surber:

Maliki got Obama off the hook in Iraq. But Berlin was a bridge too far. He became a rock star. And like many American celebrities on a high from European adulation, Obama knocked his native nation.

 

I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.

He went on to say he loves his country, but the damage was done.

He slammed the country.

Factual, yes. But totally unnecessary. He apologized overseas for”mistakes” ahem “around the world”  in a nation we liberated and protected for 45 years at a great cost of treasure, as critics of Iraq say.

He apologized to a nation that exterminated 6 million Jews — two-thirds of all the Jews in Europe before the start of the war — for America?

That is surreal even for an Ivy League egghead.

His praise of German’s love of freedom was a joke.

Germans no more love freedom than they love Jews.

You do not knock America in a foreign country, to suck up to their America-envy, in a campaign. Maybe he should run for office in Germany? Fortunately, German groupies do not vote in the USA.  

I think people just want McCain to give them a reason to vote for him. Powerline shares this McCain response ad:

Obama's on a different planet. John Bolton. Sing it along with me, kids. 

And if you combine that song with this one, you've got the Obama campaign in a nutshell.

State and federal governments in the US "make" more money in "profits" per gallon of gas and oil sold via taxes than the oil companies do.

Our governments are addicted to "big oil." Doubt me? Do the research yourself.

I happen to love gas and oil, but I do not love the taxes on it.

From Wiki:

The conjunction fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when it is assumed that specific conditions are more probable than a single general one.

The most oft-cited example of this fallacy originated with Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman ^[1]:

Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

Which is more probable?

1. Linda is a bank teller.
2. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

85% of those asked chose option 2 ^[2]. However, mathematically, the probability of two events occurring together (in "conjunction") will always be less than or equal to the probability of either one occurring alone.

Thus is the brain seduced by detail. All writers know this fact. Which works best: "Dick wore a hat." or "Dick wore a green felt hat with a pheasant-feather hatband."

One of my favorite sites to visit, Overcoming Bias, wonderfully discusses When not to use probabilities. He says:

The laws of probability are laws, not suggestions, but often the true Law is too difficult for us humans to compute.  If P != NP and the universe has no source of exponential computing power, then there are evidential updates too difficult for even a superintelligence to compute - even though the probabilities would be quite well-defined, if we could afford to calculate them.

So sometimes you don't apply probability theory.  Especially if you're human, and your brain has evolved with all sorts of useful algorithms for uncertain reasoning, that don't involve verbal probability assignments.

Those algorithms are "gut feelings." Often wrong, often accurate. There is one thing that I know for certain: the more time I have to think about how to hit a tennis ball, the more likely I am to blow the shot. He also says:

In general a rationalist tries to make their minds function at the best achievable power output; sometimes this involves talking about verbal probabilities, and sometimes it does not, but always the laws of probability theory govern.

If all you have is a gut feeling of uncertainty, then you should probably stick with those algorithms that make use of gut feelings of uncertainty, because your built-in algorithms may do better than your clumsy attempts to put things into words.

I have hesitated to post about Tony Snow's reflections on his death. It felt intrusive, but I know he wrote to be read, so here's one quote from his above essay written shortly before he died:

The moment you enter the Valley of the Shadow of Death, things change. You discover that Christianity is not something doughy, passive, pious, and soft. Faith may be the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. But it also draws you into a world shorn of fearful caution. The life of belief teems with thrills, boldness, danger, shocks, reversals, triumphs, and epiphanies. Think of Paul, traipsing through the known world and contemplating trips to what must have seemed the antipodes ( Spain ), shaking the dust from his sandals, worrying not about the morrow, but only about the moment.

There’s nothing wilder than a life of humble virtue, - for it is through selflessness and service that God wrings from our bodies and spirits the most we ever could give, the most we ever could offer, and the most we ever could do.

Read the whole thing. Link above. If you didn't know, Tony grew up in the wonderful town of Berea, Kentucky. A remarkably likeable, cheerful, positive, genteel and gentle fellow. I miss him, even though I never met him.

John H at Powerline: "If committed by a Republican, this would be a gaffe of historic proportions." So true. This guy is phoney baloney, but he has one heck of a road show.

PS: Here is The Committee

The Greek drachma was originally defined as 1/6000th of a talent of silver (a talent was a unit of weight equal to about 56 pounds). But Solon, the leader of Athens at the beginning of the sixth century B.C., ordered the minting of 6,300 one-drachma coins from each talent of silver, an instant profit of 5 percent. (In fairness, it should be pointed out that setting the face value of the coinage slightly above the bullion value also helped safeguard the money supply, because people would not be tempted to melt down the coins for the metal content.) The profit from minting coins with a face value greater than the bullion value is called seigniorage, a word that clearly implies the sovereign nature of the power to coin money. 

But if the money supply soon came under the exclusive jurisdiction of the sovereign, the sovereign, all too often, became the money supply’s greatest threat. For while governments possess the power to coin money, they have always been hard-pressed to pay their bills—proof, if any were needed, that money and wealth are by no means the same thing.  

When people tell you, "You can’t get up, you’re a victim," that’s when you know it is the devil you’re hearing.

Bill Cosby, quoted here.

 Photo: School, Henderson, KY. 1916

I've given it a week, and this story never became a big deal in the MSM. The 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found in Iraq.

I guess this remarkable fact just doesn't fit the media's political narrative. Inconvenient truth, for sure.

A quote from Myron Magnet's piece of the above title at City Journal:

With a 50 percent high school dropout rate and a 70 percent illegitimacy rate, with African-Americans committing half the nation’s murders though only 13 percent of the population, black America—especially the poorer part of it—is in trouble. “We cannot blame white people,” Cosby asserted in his incendiary speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown v. Board school desegregation decision. “It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing.” As Jesse Jackson used to say, Cosby recalls, “No one can save us from us but us.”

Sure, racism hasn’t vanished, Cosby acknowledges in his 2007 book Come On People, a follow-up to his speech written with Harvard psychiatrist Alvin Poussaint. “But for all the talk of systemic racism and governmental screw-ups, we must look at ourselves and understand our own responsibility.” Even with lingering discrimination, “there are more doors of opportunity open for black people today than ever before in the history of America,” and “these doors are tall enough and wide enough” for just about all black people “to walk through with their heads held high.” So while “there are forces that make the effort to escape poverty difficult,” African-Americans are by no means merely the playthings of vast forces and helpless victims of racism. “When people tell you, ‘You can’t get up, you’re a victim,’ ” Cosby warns, “that’s when you know it is the devil you’re hearing.”

Read the whole thing. There are few things I would welcome more than for black Americans to abandon unhealthy victimhood and its accompanying sense of entitlement, and to feel and believe that they are fully part of this country - with all of the wonderful and exciting challenges and opportunities that everybody else faces in a free American life. 

Black Americans are not the only Americans to fall victim to sick, hedonistic, irresponsible or sociopathic subcultures. Plenty of whites do that too - and not just the poor. Wealthy people too: I've seen that plenty of times.

Washington is teeing up "the rich" for a big tax hike next year, as a way to make them "pay their fair share." Well, the latest IRS data have arrived on who paid what share of income taxes in 2006, and it's going to be hard for the rich to pay any more than they already do. The data show that the 2003 Bush tax cuts caused what may be the biggest increase in tax payments by the rich in American history.

Whole thing in the WSJ. 

My advice to Dems: No matter how hungry you are, never kill the geese that lay the golden eggs. When peoples' tax rates start hitting 60% (as predicted in NY State under Obama's tax plan), only the ultra-income folks still feel motivated to work hard, to take risks, and to be entrepreneurial and create new jobs. People want disposable income, and they want to save money their own way, for their own personal goals.

Otherwise, they just work less, and some elect to enter the already-huge American "cash economy" - something I hate but which is growing fast. I do hear this more and more often: "$400 for the job for cash, $800 for check or credit card." 

Extreme taxation has already driven the work ethic out of Europe, while Asia relaxes taxes and regulation -and grows like a weed. The goal for America should be that every family can and should be wealthy, remain that way via inheritance, and never be forced to rely on the government (ie, their neighbor's income) for anything they need. Dependency on "government programs" ain't independence. It's forced charity.

Wealth is not a zero-sum game. Wealth is created out of thin air by work, creativity, investment, and risk-taking.

- Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered at the American Physical Society

Finally, a critical mass of scientists are openly doubting the warming alarmists. It's about time. I don't think scientists are fraudulent: I think they develop enthusiasms for their opinions and their intricate computer models like regular humans, and, like regular humans, are reluctant to change their minds.

It's the politicians, bureaucrats, and warmist activists who are fraudulent. They are seeking $ and power out of this deal. I have nothing to gain either way, even though I do believe that some warming would overall be a benefit for humans, as it has been in the past.

Significant cooling would be the real threat to civilization.