Sunday, June 16. 2013
Steyn: Big Politically Correct Brother -The bozo leviathan sees everything . . . and nothing.
SARAH PALIN ON FIRE – BLASTS NSA: “Couldn’t Find Two Pot-Smoking Deadbeat Bostonians With Hotline to Terrorist Central”
Watch the Good Guys and Leave the Terrorists Alone
Senator Moran: ‘IRS Committed Felony’ --The Kansas Republican says he has waited weeks for Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to answer his questions.
NSA admits listening to U.S. phone calls without warrants
The Constitution is just a hassle for governmental wisdom. It's obsolete with all of its antique anti-statism and distrust of state power.
Janet Napolitano Denies Existence of ‘Orwellian State’
Well, OK then. But who asked? Anyway, we all believe our glorious government officials, especially the southern Italians.
Orrin Hatch: Think the IRS Is Bad Now? Just Wait. The mismanaged tax agency will have a central role in administering ObamaCare.
They will have your medical records too. They need your medical records. Everybody's. Not to worry, because they won't tell anybody about your herpes or your Bipolar Disorder.
Why the IRS scandal is worse than the others
Saturday, June 15. 2013
 Amusing: How college turned me into an Indian
Amusing, and heart-warming, to see how this gal who gamed the college diversity scam got in touch with her true inner racial identity, and was able to build a career on it.
It's not from The Onion.
 The U.S. Open golf tournament is on this weekend.
Miss Merion is giving the boys a spanking.
At a paltry 6,900 yards, probably the shortest U.S. Open since the last time they played at Merion in 1981, the pundits were all raving about how it wouldn't stand up to the modern beefed-up player and his technological bag of tricks in the form of 12th-generation Big Bertha drivers and multi-faceted computer-generated putters. They were predicting scores of 8 or 9 under par, easy.
The current tied two leaders after two days of play?
1 under.
There are three playing at even par and the entire rest of the field is in the plus column.
Like I said, a spanking.
Of the four masters, the Open is usually considered the 'nastiest' of the lot. While the others might rely upon ultra-long holes, ultra-slick greens and ultra-tough pin placements, the Open is usually defined by a zillion sand traps and rough that goes halfway up your calf.
And there's even more to it than that, such as the toughness of the grass. Merion uses a particularly tough grass around the greens, a lesson Tiger Woods handily learned just yesterday. The ball was a few feet off the green, embedded in some short, gnarly rough. He took the proper swack at it and the ball plopped about 10 inches. He took another swack and it flopped onto the green a few feet and stopped nine feet from the pin. Welcome to Merion Golf Club, Mr. Woods, still catering to that old, pre-modern tough-love style.
They also don't have pin flags at Merion; they use straw baskets which were originally used to store the players' lunches so they'd stay safely out of reach of deer, caddies, and other course varmints. What this means is that the players are forced to use such ancient, archaic means of determining wind direction as "blowing tree branches" and "clouds". This 'getting back to the basics' approach is enough to throw the strongest player off his game.
Broadcast time is noon (ET), NBC. Original info and slideshow here, updates here. Live streaming is here, fairly decent full-screen quality.
What's going to add to a spanking good time is that Merion was drenched with rain in the week up through Thursday, so it's actually been playing slow these last two days. As things dry out, the fairways will become even faster (giving the ball an even greater chance of rolling off into the rough, something that happened over and over again on a couple of particular holes yesterday, even to the greats like Mickelson and Woods) and, of course, the greens will make a big jump on the Stimpmeter. They were already in the 'scary' category yesterday (it was raining Thursday to the point where they were basically putting around small lakes, so yesterday was the first day in which the course could actually be judged), so today should take a fairly dramatic jump in green speeds.
A bit more below the fold. Go, Team Merion!
Continue reading "The U.S. Open: Miss Merion takes them on"
 There's something somewhat interesting about the game of golf:
It's not a game.
It's not a sport.
It's not a contest.
It's not a competition.
It's not really much at all.
It's just you, a field, a ball and some clubs, and the only fellow competitor within sight is a man who might have died twenty years before.
It can be made into a sport, of course, but golf, in its essence, involves no one but you and the course designer, perhaps long passed on these many years.
Even when others are on the field, you're not playing against these players. There's none of the sez you mentality you see in normal sports. It's just you, the course, and the fewest number of swings you can make to see it through to the end.
Except for the pros, where they really do have the option of cutting the corner by knocking it over the trees on a par-5 dogleg, for everyone else there's really just one shot in the bag, and you really want nothing more than for it to be your best shot — and the score and fellow competitors be damned.
In that moment you step up to the ball, it is nothing but essence.
This clip from The Legend of Bagger Vance demonstrates this fairly well.
You have to look with soft eyes.
Much more below the fold.
Continue reading "In the spirit of the green"
 Image via Moonbattery
More thoughts about diamonds
U.S. Agencies Said to Swap Data With Thousands of Firms
Markets Are "Tepper'd Out So Don't Get Sucked In"
Noonan: Privacy Isn't All We're Losing - The surveillance state threatens Americans' love of country.
The Founding Founders?
David Cameron hints at further cuts to green energy subsidies
Just like Germany. Sanity.
Pelosi: Late-Term Abortions Are ‘Sacred’
Sacred to Baal, maybe.
Time for white guys to give their jobs to minorities
Race discussion may crowd out scandals in wake of Supreme Court affirmative action decision
All In the Family -Why the mainstream media failed to break Obama scandals
Illegal immigration: David Brooks and the shape of things to come
Illegal immigration: Liberals Prepare to Sell Out America’s Working Class
Hillary Clinton's professed ignorance
Obama Family Africa Trip Most Expensive In HISTORY… Estimated Cost $60 to $100 Million
Emergency manager: Detroit won't pay $2.5B it owes
The protesters say "Let the banks pay." What? It's the banks who are getting screwed.
CBS News confirms Sharyl Attkisson's computer hacked
Goldberg: Freedom: The Unfolding Revolution - The libertarian idea is the only truly new political idea in the last couple thousand years.
Democratic Congressman: 'Not Fair' To Subject Congress To Obamacare Just Like Everyone Else
No significant warming for 17 years 4 months
Great moments in bureaucratic excess: City officials in Hartford shut down barber giving free haircuts in park
Most people think the federal government would have no interest in them, but many discover to their horror how wrong they are
Stop the Farm Bill: FDR’s Socialist Structure Still Violating Farmers
By now you’ve read about the rampaging Jewish mobs threatening to kill
European newspaper editors for a cartoon ridiculing the religious rite
of circumcision.
Researcher Says that Berenstein Bears, Franklin the Friendly Turtle Perpetuate "Racist," "Socially Dominant Norms" to Children
Parents who read their kids stories about happy, human-like animals like Franklin the Turtle or Arthur at bedtime are exposing their kids to racism, materialism, homophobia and patriarchal norms, according to a paper presented at the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
That's the state of the Humanities today
Friday, June 14. 2013
 I think everybody's ideal is to have an internist or family practice doc who knows you well personally as well as medically, and where you can call or come in anytime if you have a concern. For various reasons this has become elusive.
Based on what I have seen, three trends are growing. The first is the Doc-in-a-Box or, more likely, a PA in a pharmacy.
The second is concierge medicine in which, for a modest annual fee, you have unlimited contact - 24/7 - with your generalist.
The third is generalist docs who will not accept insurance but who charge modest fees and will offer a bill that you can send for your own reimbursement, if any. They can charge modest fees because they do not need to hire a large back office staff for coding and billing.
It's a good idea to have a generalist who knows you and your family. With ObamaCare, I think all three of these modes will grow in popularity, especially the last one. They are all working mostly outside the system. They are not likely to want to make time to see you, however, unless they have met you (except for the PA in a box trend).
Generalist physicians, whether Family Practice, Internal Medicine, or whatever, are the ultimate docs. They see everything, major and minor, and know when to refer. People who want to use their Medicare and Medicaid are going to have a tough time with office visits in the future.
I had always aspired to be a country doc, a generalist, in the New Hampshire countryside, but became too fascinated with what I now do. I had dreams of fixing broken arms, stitching up nasty cuts, treating poison ivy, delivering babies, consoling the terminal, sending appendicitis patients to a surgeon friend, etc. It's kind of funny, but my generalist friends tell me that half of their work is Psychiatry anyway.
With the training I had, I suspect that I could still do those country doc things pretty well, but my malpractice insurance does not cover it. In my training, I caught 42 babies. Some were dangerous and complicated. As I have admitted here in the past, I refused to participate in abortions not because I am so religious but because I did not want it in my memory.
Primum non nocere.
 Where should transgender teens pee when at school? In some precincts, this seems to be a burning civil rights issue.
Oregon County Requires Gender-Neutral Bathrooms
A Maine court case signals the next frontier of civil rights: transgender equality.
You've come a long way, baby.
I think these teen transgenders are probably just terribly mixed-up confused people. Some days I feel like I am trapped inside a human body, and not a particularly wonderful body either.
But I cope with it. I am taking a cute little gal on a fishing trip off Block Island this weekend. How good is that for June 15? Is that a keeper?
Thursday, June 13. 2013
Tracy Britt. She's cute, and a farm girl too.
 From George Will's Scowling face of the state:
Government requires trust. Government by progressives, however, demands such inordinate amounts of trust that the demand itself should provoke distrust. Progressivism can be distilled into two words: “Trust us.” The antecedent of the pronoun is: The wise, disinterested experts through whom the vast powers of the regulatory state’s executive branch will deliver progress for our own good, as the executive branch understands this, whether we understand it or not. Lois Lerner is the scowling face of this state, which has earned Americans’ distrust.
From Henninger's The Sum of All Fears - The IRS audits and NSA surveillance flow into the same
national anxieties:
Whatever inchoate anxieties predated this presidency are now worse: a politics rife with suspicion and retribution, and most of the people believing the government, for starters, threatens their freedom.
But how about this: Not Shocking At All: Obama’s Snooping Excludes Mosques, Missed Boston Bombers
We New England Yankees assert that it is un-American to trust governments. That's the whole point, the reason we exist as a nation.
Wednesday, June 12. 2013
We've all known for a while that the DHS has been building a potent paramilitary organization. The justification for that eludes me. Of course, the FBI and ATF are paramilitary too. What am I missing among federal paramilitary agencies?
However, I never imagined that the IRS was doing the same. Gun Control? Not at the IRS!
Is the US constructing the ingredients of a police state at home because of the actions of some wacko Jihadists?
Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 5th July, 2005: “The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant….”
That was written 8 years ago but I believe, to be more accurate, there has been slight cooling since 1995, not 98.
Dr. Phil Jones – CRU emails – 7th May, 2009: ‘Bottom line: the ‘no upward trend’ has to continue for a total of 15 years before we get worried.’
"Worried"? I thought we were supposed to get worried if it got warmer, not if it didn't...but I don't really care what the weather does. I like any and all weathers except for tornadoes.
Those are via a commenter at The warming ‘plateau’ may extend back even further
Yes, the alarmists are worried because they want a crisis. Here's Powerline: Times Struggles to Keep Climate Hope Alive
 New Study Finds It Is Impossible To Lose Weight
Oldest maps of the world
Are Women Too Passive When It Comes to Sex?
The Arab Slave Trade Predates European Slave Trade: 650AD to 2008
A large assortment of Hayek YouTubes
University of Chicago Removes Pews from 88 Year-Old Chapel to Accommodate Muslim Prayers
Gaze into the abyss of Cali’s cap-and-trade
60 percent of Richmond families are single parent
George Will on sugar:
Sugar protectionism is government planning. It is industrial policy —
government picking winners and losers — applied to agriculture. It is
politics supplanting the market in allocating wealth and opportunity.
And it is perfectly all right with 20 of the 45 Republican senators.
Sen. Ted Cruz: Democrats Designed Immigration Bill to Fail – So They Can Use It as a Political Tool
Al Gore: Scientists 'Won't Let Us' Tie Climate Change To Recent Tornado Activity
New York Times: Lack of Global Warming Proves There's Global Warming
So would global warming prove that there is no global warming? Or is it "Heads I win, Tails you lose"?
Nyquist: Economic Recovery vs. Government Intervention
Tuesday, June 11. 2013
Crime to Post “Indecent” Speech “About a Person” with “Purpose to Harass”?
Would it be criminal to call this guy an un-American jackass? This guy ought to watch the harassment that takes place in every Question Time in the Brit Parliament. The guy is pathetic. Harassment of others is poor manners, but frequently necessary in life because so many deserve it. Including him.
Monday, June 10. 2013
Manliest Father's Day Pie
TrackingPoint: Does Technology Take the Sport Out of Shooting?
Once dying, Birmingham is suddenly hot
Why Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion effects were more real than CGI
More Crucial Education Research
Is Big Pot on the way?
Philly crane operator was stoned
HHS Website For Girls, 10 to 16, Informs Youth About Birth Control, Gay Sex,
‘Mutual Masturbation’
Professors Are About to Get an Online Education
Mailvox: writing back to a young female engineer (h/t Driscoll)
Slut-Shaming Isn't Just a "Girl-On-Girl Crime" (h/t Insty)
Offshore Wind: The Enormously Expensive Energy Alternative
 Lying liar Anthony Weiner’s underage girl problem
You Won’t
Believe What People Think is the Leading Cause of Poverty in America -
See more at:
http://menrec.com/you-wont-believe-what-people-think-is-the-leading-cause-of-poverty-in-america/#sthash.bfLkA6Mk.dpuf
You Won’t
Believe What People Think is the Leading Cause of Poverty in America -
See more at:
http://menrec.com/you-wont-believe-what-people-think-is-the-leading-cause-of-poverty-in-america/#sthash.bfLkA6Mk.dpuf
You Won’t
Believe What People Think is the Leading Cause of Poverty in America -
See more at:
http://menrec.com/you-wont-believe-what-people-think-is-the-leading-cause-of-poverty-in-america/#sthash.bfLkA6Mk.dpuf
Leno: ‘We Wanted a President That Listens to All Americans - Now We Have One’
Global Warming Alarmism In Twilight
Homeschooling Growing Seven Times Faster than Public School Enrollment
Temp staffing jobs hit record as firms dodge ObamaCare costs
Why Schumer-Rubio is a fraud — the nutshell version
Few options for online users to avoid spying, experts say
Here's a site: SueTheIRS.com
Obama in Palo Alto: Fundraising with the Rich Radicals
Stealth Edit: The New York Times Has Now Lost all Credibility
NSA Obtains Data from 50 Companies
Pelosi on Obamacare: Hey now, I never said premiums wouldn’t go up
China and Hong Kong Hold Edward Snowden's Fate
Snooping Concerns Emerge Over Congressional Blackberries Serviced By Verizon
Via Gateway:
“In order to train for this method of Jihad, you must consent to being sodomized for a period of time, so that your anus becomes wider, making room for the explosives."
Allah wants you to try it.
Sunday, June 9. 2013
College grads are waiting on tables. Is that a bad thing? Is it a result of the terrible Obama economy? It's been decades since a college degree guaranteed a good career. BAs are commonplace now, and are not as elite as they used to be in the job market. Many graduate degrees aren't worth the cost in cash or time either.
At the moment, talented people are begging for any kind of work. ‘Waiter and waitress nation’ might not be so bad if it means we’re becoming more of an ‘eating out at restaurants nation’
Americans are using restaurants and take-out more than ever. It's a cultural shift in which home cookin' becomes something special and in which diners, McDonalds, and Thai take-out becomes the American middle class routine.
If it's not all about the Obama economy, some of it could be about what Cowen calls economic resets. Not enough work for the cognitively-talented, but I hear that a good chef can always find work. Cognitive talent is not rare, and probably never was. Social class and lack of opportunity kept a lot of it hidden and invisible.
As far as I'm concerned, if you don't know Calc and Stats, if you don't know the Gas Laws and Avogadro's Number, if you don't know about mitochondrial RNA, if you can't discuss Haydn's role in Western music and can't write a brief but elegantly-structured essay on any cultural topic at the drop of a hat, you have a degree but you ain't "eddicated." That's why people like me, who have risen in new businesses to the point of interviewing new hires, ignore resumes and ask probing questions. We want people who know a lot about everything because we are a pioneering business with, as yet, no annoying HR Department.
Saturday, June 8. 2013
NSA Whistleblower: Obama Took Down General Petraeus By Using Illegal Surveillance.
This administration looks lawless. Dems are beginning to see it too. Petraeus was inconvenient. Most of us are inconvenient.
Officials: NSA mistakenly intercepted emails, phone calls of innocent Americans
Cleta Mitchell: How to Investigate the IRS - Cleta Mitchell, the attorney who helped expose
the tax agency's abuses, has a road map for identifying the culprits. It
doesn't stop in Cincinnati.
Justice Department Fights Release of Secret Court Opinion Finding Unconstitutional Surveillance - Government lawyers are trying to keep buried a classified court finding that a domestic spying program went too far.
Whose government is this?
How the Robots Lost: High-Frequency Trading's Rise and Fall
Google is the new GE and Amazon is the new Sears Roebuck.
Unemployment Rate Jumps to 7.6%
Big Brother also collecting your credit-card transactions
I bought a crock pot on Amazon a few months ago, not a pressure-cooker.
Government Storing Vast Phone, Email Data at NSA Data Center in Utah
The Asymmetric Outrage of Big Government Scandals - Spare us the talk of bipartisan disgust with the IRS.
Analysis: Obama's agenda scorched in firestorm
U.S., British intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program
Mounting concern over NSA in Congress
Nice distraction from the hideous IRS
Is Obama Lying About Big Brother?
Breaking: NSA Eavesdropped on People With Whom They Had Personal Grudges
Max Boot defends the NSA
Obama tells donors: Democrats favor ‘light touch’ on regulation
As in Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, IRS...
Shoot The PRISM-Gate Messenger: Obama To Launch Criminal Probe Into NSA Leaks
But Woodward and Bernstein are heroes?
Republicans Focus Fire on IRS Involvement in Obamacare
Wehner: Obama Can’t Be Trusted with Power
This administration is in deep manure
Internet Companies Deny They're Helping the NSA Collect User Data. Should We Believe Them?
Friday, June 7. 2013
 Democratic Senator: I Wasn't Briefed on PRISM and In Fact Had Never Heard of It Until Yesterday
"It can't happen here," right?
Never, ever try to tell me that big government is benign. The road to hell is paved with the best of intentions; power corrupts; etc etc. Everybody knows this even if they hope government could be a benevolent parent to them. Our Dr. Bliss considers that notion to be a naive, infantile fantasy.
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
George Washington said that. He was a big-enough man to reject power and a truly reluctant public servant. Most of our so-called "leaders" are arrogant and ignorant. "Don't follow leaders, watch your parkin' meters..."
I was taught that even Karl Marx planned for the eventual dissolution of The State.
How Obama Scandals Threaten to Kill 'Good Government' - Emerging narrative supports claims that Washington is intrusive, incompetent, untrustworthy and heartless.
Duh. That's been mostly true since Woodrow Wilson. There is no "trust in government" crisis. Old-time Americans have always viewed government as a necessary evil and always subject to distrust.
When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Tom Jefferson said that. Well, our government seems to be suspicious of us (eg IRS, etc) so maybe this is some sort of liberty.
Breaking, via Drudge: Feds: Postal Service photographs every piece of mail it processes
1984 was not meant to be a governance manual.
|
