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.
Did he ever find the plot? The guy is a first-class putz. If this bozo believes that the C of E is about money and politics instead of about saving souls, I suggest that he donate all of the C of E real estate and buildings to the poor - if they can find any poor in the UK with all of their government freebies. Looks like more parasites than poor.
...too many people, of both parties, of both political philosophies, believe that when housing prices fall, the federal government has a duty to skoosh 'em up again. And since the federal government cannot, however fervently it wishes it could, suspend the law of supply and demand by edict, the only way to sop up excess supply is to increase demand. And the only way to increase demand in a shortage of qualified buyers is to bring in a lot of unqualified buyers.
And that's precisely what we've been doing by, for example, lowering creditworthiness standards, forcing down interest rates, and reducing the percentage of purchase price required for a down payment.
"I start dreading Christmas from the time the decorations go up in the stores," she says. "It stopped being fun for me, so I'll find out this year if I can do without it altogether. I think it will be a relief. It already is."
Remember, back in the day, when a bankruptcy was simply called a bankruptcy? Naturally, this was well before ISDA came on the scene and footnoted the living feces out of everything by claiming that a bankruptcy is never a bankruptcy, as long as the creditors agree to 99.999% losses at gunpoint, with electrodes strapped to their testicles, submerged in a tank full of rabid piranhas, it they just sign a piece of paper (preferably in their own blood) saying the vaseline-free gang abuse was consensual. Well, now we learn that as the global insolvency wave finally moves to China, a bankruptcy is now called something even less scary: "deferred loan payments"...
Welcome to Cairostan - Egypt’s radicals eliminating country’s connection to West, but does anyone care?
Bruce wonders whether you've ever seen a Jewish Zebra:
They claim they confiscated over a hundred thousand dangerous items. One of them was my over-large tube of Crest toothpaste, and one of them was my jar of Amish mustard.
Just a bunch of bitter, redneck clingers, not Real Americans. Want to see real clueless parochialism? Try DC or NYC, San Francisco, or the entire state of Massachusetts
Nobody works 9-5 anymore in America, unless government jobs or union jobs. Furthermore, seems to me that most Americans work far more than 8 hour days. Americans are not afraid of work. Heck, my daughter is working all day today.
Terrific piece at ZeroHedge today using Christmas Trees and land management as an allegory for the Fed's interventions in the market, and why it's dangerous.
We can increase moral hazard by taking effective steps to 'insure' against its downside. At some point, however, everything has to revert to the mean.
A quote:
From a forestry point of view, the lessons were learned. In 1995, the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy stated, "Science has changed the way we think about wildland fire and the way we manage it. Wildland fire, as a critical natural process, must be reintroduced into the ecosystem."
Herein are pearls of great wisdom for central bankers today. Central banks are creating a tinderbox by keeping alive many very bad investments, fertilizing them with everything from artificially low interest rates to preferential liquidity to outright securities purchases. As these institutions and instruments overrun the financial landscape, they hamper the economic ecosystem and perpetuate the environment of low growth and high unemployment in which we currently find ourselves.
We're entering a slow time on the intertunnel between pre-Christmas and the New Year. Normal people don't want to have to think too much right now, and don't want to get bummed out with the daily depressing news.We will press on, however, but readers might anticipate a fair number of recycled posts next week. Many of our staff will be merrily skiing and wassailing in the frozen north, but we have "content" in the pipeline.
A book coming out soon: Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren't the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room, by David Weinberger
Ever since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, Americans and Israelis who were trying to make peace in the Middle East have had one insoluble problem: how to explain the fact that Palestinian leaders say one thing to the Western media and quite another to their own people in Arabic.
I visit Cafe Hayek regularly, though missed the past few days. I was shocked to see today that the Comments section had been closed. I had commented on a few topics there over the years, but generally avoided it because it frequently becomes a quagmire. In fact, I noticed this recently when I'd posed a question, only to find myself under attack for asking any questions that didn't agree 100% with the authors.
Strange thing is, the question I'd posed was a request for clarity by posing an example, not a statement of opposing viewpoint. Suddenly, however, I became a "two-bit moron" and an "uninformed boob". I'll cop to being both, though I think using these terms on people you're exchanging views with, in a somewhat public forum, is rude.
It's unfortunate the professors found the need to shut down their comments. Commenting on articles is a fine balance, not unlike sending emails. You can't properly convey emotion, and as a result sometimes meanings are misunderstood. Typically I try to employ the same courtesies I utilize in real life. I refrain from name-calling and will restate a point, if necessary, to add clarity. On comments (unlike email), you can't always pick up the phone and say "no, that's not what I meant".
I'm happy that I've never seen a comment thread on Maggie's become a name-calling mess. There have been plenty of disagreements, and that's healthy. But when you stop respecting others, you stop respecting the process.
Tax the heck out of the 1% to reduce inequality? As a person happy to be in the 1%, albeit in the lowest reaches of it, I wonder how many people would simply decide that working doesn't pay? When 50% of your income is taken, are you really still working for yourself and your family? Or are you simply subsidizing political campaigns?
I suppose the Tiger Woods could retire for the year after winning a single golf tournament. Brad Pitt could make half-a-movie.
Or Derek Jeter could play in four games. In Canada, doctors have income caps but lawyers and accountants do not. Docs quit working for the year when they hit them, and open other businesses on the side. I have heard that wine shops are popular with them.
I see that the economics-challenged Charles Blow is on the same trail, agonizing over the data that most Americans are neither particularly envious of, or angry with, the prosperous. He also wants to tax the heck out of the prosperous, not for the cash, but for fairness. It would be more fair to lobotomize the rich. Why not?
...what if you are afraid to control your own destiny? What if you have such low self-confidence that you believe it isn’t worth it to even try, that a Steve Jobs is the exception rather than the rule?
The reason to link that bit of trivia is to reflect on how these sorts of things would have been handled by the MSM in the Bush admin. Bush, on his vacations, went to his dusty ranch and labored. A Texan with his family's Yankee genes and habits.
ZeroHedge posted an article that lists 50 crazy facts about the US Economy. It is pretty impressive how this economy has been 'recovering' for so long, and yet these facts exist. Did I say impressive? My bad.
One of the 50:
A staggering 48.5% of all Americans live in a household that receives some form of government benefits. Back in 1983, that number was below 30 percent
But is Maggie's a "conservative" website? I think we're centrist. Speaking only for myself, in my link collections I just try to link info, events, and perspectives that the MSM tends to overlook or desires to insulate us from for their own political reasons. Perhaps "contrarian" would be a word.
She's wrong, I think. Rich or poor, there will always be rotten people who work any system and use any system for freebies. Shame on them all, whether Welfare Queens, lazy jerks with aching backs, or Jon Corzines. They are more deserving of pity than of scorn. Throw them some money, and the heck with them.
I'm not too smart, but it seems to me obvious that, in general, the higher your graduation rates, the lower your expectations, rigor, and demands. Let's face it: Big Education is an industry, and they need to please the buyers. If expectations are too high, buyers will go elsewhere. Does your kid's school require second year calc? Latin? Stats? Plato? If not, it's expensive babysitting. I would have more faith in the integrity and standards of programs with substantial wash-out rates. As an example, it's damn tough to get into the US Navy SEALs program (eg 100 push-ups in a minute) - and they still have an 80% washout rate. Thus graduation has a meaning.
This is not "insurance." This is pure control of your darn body. As far as I know, however, you will still be "allowed" to purchase your own help, if needed.
Country is not dead in spirit yet. Between the EPA, Obamacare, and some other things, people are getting nervous about Federal aspirations for control and command. The average red-blooded American person does not desire a Philosopher-King, but wants to be King of his own life - for better or worse. We do not want to be babied European serfs. Perhaps much of the world has servility in their blood.
The Cellulosic Ethanol Debacle - Congress mandated purchase of 250 million gallons in 2011. Actual production: 6.6 million.
Is my Ford supposed to burn hay? It's not a freaking horse. Fact is, I'd like a horse too. Dad first put me on a horse at age 3, and I learned to ride bareback. I have learned that a horse is just a retarded, insane motorcycle that runs on hay.
Every time our dear, sweet president gets in political hot water, he gives a speech that his fans in the press box immediately praise as a instant classic — a masterpiece worthy of Martin Luther King and John Kennedy. Every one of these instant classics is pedestrian and partisan.
The Church of Kathleen Sebelius - A zealous administration wants to require all health insurance plans to cover contraception, sterilization and drugs known to induce abortion.
It is a frightening prospect to have a president who lives in a time warp that lets him believe that the failed policies of 1935 can lead this nation back from the brink.
Today, Yahoo! asked if I am I better off than my parents? Do I have more opportunity and a better life overall? These are questions that politicians will be asking the next few months. They are questions pundits continually ask. But posing these questions doesn't really inform us.
Depending on how I define 'better off', I could reply yes or no to both questions. If all I did was pay attention to the broad statistics and ignore my personal situation, then no. I should join OWS and complain incessantly.
Am I earning more in real terms than my father at a similar age? No. I do have much more saved for retirement, but at my age my father was finishing putting two boys through college, and looking to pay for three more children. He had a larger home and a nicer car, and he went on some very nice vacations (sometimes with us, usually without). The problem is, no matter how well off he was, his life is not mine. I can't compare how well I'm doing to him, because we entered very different professions and made very different choices. Do I feel better off? Yes. Do I live very well? Yes. So whether I am better off or not is a vague question. It is not dependent purely on statistics. Answering the two original questions will beg other questions rather than providing a concrete response.
After all, we tend to have very short memories about our situations and how we've progressed.
Started thinking about Christmas shopping yet? I began to think about thinking about it last night. At the Farm, the immediate blood-related BD family (my two parents with five kids, each with a very nice spouse, countless grandkids of all sizes) decided years ago to prohibit presents as an interference with just getting together for drinks, food, and fun - just too many people. For my in-laws and my kids, focusing on theater and music tix and restaurant vouchers in NYC. Cool memories last longer than things. Maybe some Christmas socks or a book too. (The Jesus part is the bigger deal for me, says the sanctimonious Bird Dog - but I do mean it.)
I have seen this too. How can these people look at themselves in the mirror, knowing they are milking their working neighbors and avoiding opportunities?
The dystopian fantasies which imagined that a police state would be the product of some right wing takeover never seemed to anticipate that just as in the east, it would be the left that would resort to it. That is where George Orwell, who came out of the left, proved far wiser than many other writers. The police state is a consequence of the left's failures, its economic failures and its demographic failures. That is as true in the United States as it is in the UK as it is in Israel and throughout what was once known as the free world.
Chicago: Feds probe union pension deals - Subpoenas show feds investigating how 11 leaders qualified for inflated retirement payments
"The first man I saw was of a meagre aspect, with sooty hands and face, his hair and beard long, ragged, and singed in several places. His clothes, shirt, and skin, were all of the same colour. He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. He told me, he did not doubt, that, in eight years more, he should be able to supply the governor's gardens with sunshine, at a reasonable rate: but he complained that his stock was low, and entreated me "to give him something as an encouragement to ingenuity, especially since this had been a very dear season for cucumbers." I made him a small present, for my lord had furnished me with money on purpose, because he knew their practice of begging from all who go to see them."
Jonathan Swift, from Gulliver's Travels (h/t Englishman)
More nice Adirondack Christmas pics from Tiger 
Book Review: 
For many, 
The subversion of Christmas has 
Terrific piece at ZeroHedge today using Christmas Trees and 
Dance Teacher: 
Stuck in Ohio with the Memphis blues? 
Why you 
Reader informed us that 
Toon via 
Started thinking about Christmas shopping yet? I began to think about thinking about it last night. At the Farm, the immediate blood-related BD family (my two parents with five kids, each with a very nice spouse, countless grandkids of all sizes) decided years ago to prohibit presents as an interference with just getting together for drinks, food, and fun - just too many people. For my in-laws and my kids, focusing on theater and music tix and restaurant vouchers in NYC. Cool memories last longer than things. Maybe some Christmas socks or a book too. (The Jesus part is the bigger deal for me, says the sanctimonious Bird Dog - but I do mean it.)
