We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Since pregnancy is a disease, then, someone else should pay the premium for insuring against the consequences of a woman’s risky, careless behavior. She shouldn’t even be responsible for grabbing some free condoms at the clinic and taking care of the risk herself.
Look even closer, and we see the real progressive agenda at work: increasing the power and reach of the federal government and its bureaucratic minions by discrediting and marginalizing any other source of authority over our behavior, especially institutions of moral authority such as churches. That way the government can aggrandize its power by relieving people of the responsibility for their choices through palliating their damaging consequences while making others pay for them. Tocqueville noticed 150 years ago this tendency of centralized power to expand by infantilizing the citizenry. Centralized governments, Tocqueville remarked, act as “if they thought themselves responsible for the actions and private conditions of their subjects, as if they had undertaken to guide and to instruct each of them in the various incidents of life and to secure their happiness quite independently of their own consent.”
Above: "almost completely leased before they're complete - if you can manage to get one expect to pay 2000 a month for a small one bedroom and 3400 for a three-bedroom" - Photo of Williston, ND, from this slide show: You've Never Seen Anything Like This North Dakota Oil Boomtown (h/t Carpe)
Why the Titanic Still Fascinates Us - One hundred years after the ocean liner struck an iceberg and sank, the tragedy still looms large in the popular psyche
Having faith in the invisible hand of Purim - The image of an invisible hand can enable us to bridge the gap between those with merely a faith in God and those with merely a faith in man.
The most obviously predictable fiscal train-wreck in the world continues on, seemingly unabated by trillions of dollars of Keynesian-inspired “stimulus” spending whose proponents insist is the only way out of the current crisis, even as they insist that austerity programs are anathema to recovery. They are half-right, yet it is precisely that half-rightness that reveals the insidious nature of socialism: it is the expansion of the state, and the overwhelming number of people thoroughly accustomed to the dependency mindset, that has destroyed the kind of entrepreneurial spirit among those who desperately need private enterprise growth to rescue them. This spiritual debasement, courtesy of state-sponsored self-entitlement, is the dark underbelly of an ideology that can only survive until it runs out of other people’s money to spend. How do those “other people” acquire that money?
The comments here are quite amusing, in a typically crude Wall St. trader sort of way
Apparently electric vehicle maker — and recipient of lots of your and my money — Fisker Automotive is struggling. Who would have thought that a company that could not fully fund itself privately and had to rely on political connections to use the coercive power of government to take money from taxpayers might be a bad investment?
"Over at The New Republic, Timothy Noah explains why it's like totally different when Bill Maher calls Sarah Palin "a twat" and "a cunt," or when Keith Olbermann calls Michelle Malkin a "mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it."
Everything has already been said about Sandra Fluke, Rush Limbaugh, supporters and opponents of each, and double-standards toward misogynistic public statements, except to thank Ms. Fluke and her supporters for setting a new standard for future misogynistic utterances by all politicians and celebrities.
From here on out, we should expect a loud and persistent opprobrium by all and the media against anyone using such excessively derogatory terms to describe their opponent. Or, is such an expectation hollow and the double-standard be allowed to continue? Will the Left be hoisted by its own petard? If so, again thanks to Ms. Fluke and her supporters for making that hypocrisy evident. As yet many undecided voters are watching and taking note.
Here's the heart of the matter. The Fed is a patsy. It is a pathetic dependent of the big Wall Street banks, traders and hedge funds. Everything (it does) is designed to keep this rickety structure from unwinding. If you had a (former Fed Chairman) Paul Volcker running the Fed today — utterly fearless and independent and willing to scare the hell out of the market any day of the week — you wouldn't have half, you wouldn't have 95%, of the speculative positions today.
The Obama worldview based upon retreat from engagement from confrontation with sworn, active enemies of the West and apologies for past resistance has proven time and again to be both fruitless and has increased dangers. This is starkly evident in President Obama and his administration badgering and undermining Israel while turning the other cheek to Palestinian and Arab and Moslem outrageous behavior. This video ably sums up the first three years of the Obama administration's policies with respect to Israel.
Anyway, the birth control ruse is merely the KY Jelly to ease us into the giant butt-fucking that is nationalized health care. If conservatives buy into the frame that liberals are trying to push birth control on us – and, as a commenter pointed out, if we start talking dollars and cents – we’ve lost the game. The response should always be that any sort of government mandate – whether that be for individuals to buy health care or companies to provide certain pre-approved plans – is unconstitutional and coercive. To get sidetracked by birth control or morality plays is to let mandated health care become the norm. To let mandated health care become the norm is to set the table for a debate on nationalized health care. And who do you think will win that debate?
That's right. Never debate on the other side's premise, unless you accept their premise
Last night, I helped my son prepare an Op-Ed piece for his high school class on Economics and Financial Literacy. He chose the Durable Goods report, and we sat down to dissect and discuss what it told us. As a neophyte, he naturally saw discussion of "Shipments rising" and "Orders increasing" and asked "this means things are getting better, right? We're in an uptrend?" Linear thinking is easy. Being human, we do it all the time.
Yes, I told him, but there's much more to the report. I pointed out that Inventories were growing rapidly, Unfilled Orders were increasing, and while Shipments were increasing, the rate of increase was slowing. None of these are particularly good signs of future activity. More importantly, Capital Goods, the building blocks of future productivity, were declining. At best, we decided, the report was neutral, showing that things may have improved somewhat, but many other signs were indicating a stall or slowdown.
Most importantly, I pointed him to the Inventory-to-Sales Ratio, which is a harbinger of true economic activity. A rapidly climbing ratio does not forebode good times, but rather difficulty with pricing and sales in the future. As consumers, we rarely pay attention to what goes on 'behind the veil' with items like inventories. We like our answers pat, easy and predictable. It's a shame they never are.
When I was young I affected to believe that to look a mess was a sign of inner profundity. I made the mistake of supposing that if the wise are bearded, the bearded are wise. If I adopted the supposed manner of an artist, therefore, I too would be an artist, or at least artistic. And, conveniently enough, the sloppiness of inner profundity required no effort on my part. As everyone knows, a lot of human history consists of man’s attempt to escape effort.
Here at Maggie's, we might be termed "skeptics" but, when it comes to climate, we're really of the "Who cares?" school more than anything else. (Of course, worrying about the next Ice Age and its effects on real estate values does keep us up at night.)
Best summary I have seen of The Skeptics' Case, presented in a way that even non-scientists can easily follow.
Seems to me that downtown Nashville had a great opportunity to eliminate all zoning, and see what happened. People might actually, with freedom, provide things that people want. After all, the government, in its infinite planning wisdom, razed almost the entire historic downtown in "urban renewal," aka "urban death."
Yep. Just a question of whether free markets, or politicians, or dictators, or oligopolies control it and its movement. As a freedom-oriented person, I prefer free markets as the best representation of human interests.
In 1995, shortly after it was privatized, only 16 million people used the Internet world-wide. By 2011, more than two billion were online—and that number is growing by as much as half a million every day. This explosive growth is the direct result of governments generally keeping their hands off the Internet sphere.
Net access, especially through mobile devices, is improving the human condition more quickly—and more fundamentally—than any other technology in history. Nowhere is this more true than in the developing world, where unfettered Internet technologies are expanding economies and raising living standards.
The UN regulations sound to me like a solution in search of a problem, and that's one thing organizations excel at.
We are giving them free stuff so they don't threaten us with nukes? Is that called "foreign policy"? I term it blackmail. They have no food because of their own psychotic policies. Aid only prolongs their control.
How can it be that we have so many people in the upper reaches of government who seem to have nary a clue about what America is all about?
Steyn put it well when he wrote about Your Right to Compulsory Education. I suppose we have another Right - the Right to Compulsory Medical Insurance.
But back to Geithner, Lindsay says what I wanted to say in Geithner and the 'Privilege' of Being American - The Founders argued that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were rights that preceded government—not things to be granted by it. My bolds:
... the real problem with this whole privilege argument goes back to what the Founding Fathers were thinking. Being an American is a right, not a privilege. The privilege belongs to those who are temporarily allowed to serve this great nation in a decision-making capacity. When they turn this privilege into a right to distribute government largess in ever larger quantities—and in ways, to use Jefferson's phrase, a "wise and frugal government" would not—it is those in government, and not the governed, who bear the responsibility for our budgetary problems.
I have concluded that we can accomplish very little with convinced warmistas and probably even less with true deniers. So we just make our measurements, perfect our theories, publish our work, and hope that in time the truth will out.
"The data doesn't matter. We're not basing our recommendations on the data. We're basing them on the climate models." -Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
"The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful." -Dr David Frame, Climate modeler, Oxford University
"It doesn't matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true." -Paul Watson, Co-founder of Greenpeace
"Unless we announce disasters no one will listen." -Sir John Houghton, First chairman of the IPCC
"No matter if the science of global warming is all phony ... climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world." -Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
As regular readers know, we tend to believe that this is all a big trumped-up boondoggle, and of no importance. Furthermore, here at Maggie's we pray for global warming.
There’s a lot to like about day-to-day live in the advanced welfare states of western Europe. They are great places to visit. But the view of life that has taken root in those same countries is problematic. It seems to go something like this: The purpose of life is to while away the time between birth and death as pleasantly as possible, and the purpose of government is to make it as easy as possible to while away the time as pleasantly as possible – The Europe Syndrome.
Rights do not come from the exercise of government power, but from the restraint of government power. Once an infrastructure is created to redistribute positive outcomes, the only true beneficiaries of that infrastructure will be the organizers and the administrators. Even that system will be built to fail because the administrations only fully benefit from the system when it does not work properly. To the extent that it works properly the administrations will always be on the lookout for more excuses to justify the expansion of their power. More groups to protect. More civil rights to safeguard. Until no one has any rights at all.
Sometimes, I’m amazed that I know as many decent, intelligent, law-abiding, people as I do. Because the fact is, a disturbingly large number of Americans are simply up to no good and should not be trusted anywhere near heavy machinery, sharp tools, voting booths or me.
The food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, has announced that is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever.
Meanwhile, the National Park Service, also part of the Department of Agriculture, asks us to "Please Do Not Feed the Animals" because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves.
" ...I avoid making forecasts for tenths of a degree change in globally averaged temperature anomaly, I am quite willing to state that unprecedented climate catastrophes are not on the horizon though in several thousand years we may return to an ice age."
MIT Meteorology Prof Richard Lindzen, speaking to Parliament. Of course, we are still technically in an ice age, with the poles covered with ice. It has not always been so. We're in a sort-of interglacial period within a large cold spell. God knows what the next big ice incursion will do to civilization. It will not be pretty, but I will be dead while the pols try to urge us to drive subsidized Hummers on $1. per gallon petrol.
I really don’t get what our Republican candidates find so difficult to grasp. The message is simple. Pay for your own damn birth control…. What more do you want? Free shipping and handling?
Who is crazier: the ignorant, lunatic, hyper-reactive Muslems, or our pathetic Western governments? Gee whiz, I am so deeply sorry I hurt your sensitive feelings while sacrificing our lives while trying to rescue your freedom and lives.
"This is a world in which nobody asked the Islamic conference, the grouping of the 56 Islamic countries, to issue an apology when Christians are attacked and churches are burned in Egypt or in Pakistan. And have we heard a word from any Islamic leader anywhere about the radical Muslims in Nigeria who are not only burning the churches but are burning women and children who are Christian in the churches. When I hear that, I’ll expect my president to start issuing apologies.”
According to The Washington Post columnist, this response makes the United States look weak and despite looking weak, those on the other side rarely reciprocate.
“Nothing but burning the White House can relieve the wound of us, the Muslims, caused by the Burning of Quran in the US,” he underscored.
“Their apology can be accepted only by hanging their commanders; hanging their commanders means an apology,” he reiterated.
Obama has sent a letter to his Afghan counterpart Karzai, apologizing for the burning of copies of the Holy Quran.
These people make Islam look both stupid and bad. If they don't want to understand me, why should I bother trying to understand them? "Hearts and minds"? Are you kidding?
Screw 'em. We gave them a chance, and that's all we can do. On this topic, I agree with Obama and the Russians and the Brits before: Afghanistan is a tar baby. If they aren't one kind of trouble, they're another: heroin, terrorism, tribal warfare, Taliban. Kipling knew this.
Church Ordered to 
I do not understand 
Time-lap