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.
I recently learned that there is software out there to make overly crisp digital images into more film-like images. Here's one of them. Other programs are out there to specifically change your images to Kodachrome-like, Ektachrome-like, etc.
Anthony Weiner now joins a disturbing list of elected officials in our
time who've lost any sense of self-discipline. If there are others out
there wandering in the confused ethers that trapped Anthony Weiner, we
have a request: Get out now. Spare the rest of us.
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the threat of tax increases and increased regulatory burdens have produced something in the nature of a hiring strike.
You can't make this stuff up. What's this country coming to? The government doesn't have enough to do? If something is copyrighted, should it be embeddable on YouTube in the first place? No.
Crazy thing is, lots of people use YouTube for self-promotion. If you are a would-be performer or show or whatever, and copyright your stuff, do not make it embeddable. Simple. Can't have it both ways. Can't tell me not to post a photo of your billboard along the road.
YouTube is good fun, a vast resource, and one of the best time-wasters ever invented. If George Shearing's estate, or the Feds, come after Maggie's for embedding his YouTube vid, I have good defenses planned already. Make my day!
Liberals just love hearing America denounced as "parochial." It makes them feel worldly and superior. This phony posture in part explains the tasteless joke we now have in the White House.
They're the ultimate Sherlock Holmes mysteries. You're given mere scraps of information, the wreckage is usually twisted beyond recognition, and you're faced with the knowledge that nine times out of ten you're looking for a chain of failures, not just a single part that suddenly went kaflooey.
And unless it's an actual bomb, which is fairly easy to detect afterward because of the micro-pitting that takes place during an explosion, the one thing that modern airliners almost never, ever, do is suddenly just go poof and drop off the radar screen without a peep from the crew.
As Air France Flight 447 did two years ago, taking 228 people to a watery grave.
Below the fold I'll present a 1-hour video on the mystery and an update on the recent findings. Unlike normally, where the black boxes provide the vital clues that solve the enigma, this time around the complete opposite occurred.
People seem to feel it's pretty lousy, unless you are lucky enough to have a government job. Since we all work as serfs for the government from January 'til May, and since the Chinese are loaning us money to pay the bills, no surprise there.
Speaking of the economy, my neighbors down the road are adding a fancy new master bath, and I stopped by to take a look. I like construction. Things are not universally bad, I guess. Those are legal Mexicans working on it, of course. The jobs Americans don't want to do.
One of the problems facing the United States is deteriorating infrastructure. Everything from highways, byways, airports and freight facilities are in need of some sort of repair, renovation or downright replacement.
Recently at the launch/commissioning ceremony for the USS William McClean (part of the Navy’s Prepositioning Program) Fred Harris President and CEO of General Dynamics NASSCO (NASSCO is a large shipbuilding complex outside of San Diego) spoke of the need for a National Marine Highway System . Mr. Harris made the case that vital part of the national transportation is being neglected – mainly the Maritime Coastal routes and facilities.
What Harris is talking about is using what used to be called “coasters” – basically small ships to handle freight movementalong coastal routes. His point addresses a larger issue – that our maritime industry has fallen on some hard times.As a nation that relies on sea power to extend our military and diplomatic reach across the world, we have basically relegated our Merchant Marine to other nations to build ships and transport goods.Our Maritime tradition not only extended from the Merchant Marine through the Navy and Coast Guard, but at one time, the world’s second largest Navy was the United States Army!
The problems, of course, are simple – we just aren’t competitive in terms of labor costs and building/maintenance facilities. Our Merchant Marine is highly unionizedwith the attendant costs associated with union shops – including feather bedding.We’ve lost our ability to produce the tons and tons of high quality steel needed for a vibrant ship building industry.And the same infrastructure problems facing our highway and railway system also affect the Maritime routes that already exist.Our intracoastal waterways system is seeing less and less dredging needed to keep it open and traffic flowing.While the Gulf system seems to be fairly stable in terms of maintenance, the Atlantic system is in dire need of dredging and width repair in several places along it’s length. The last time I brought a boat down that route (a53 foot Viking sport fisher) there where places in the Atlantic system where we were plowing through the sand and silt – not a good thing for raw water cooled engines. Tugs and barges are also restricted in certain parts of the Atlantic system.
There are otherchallenges facing a new, bigger and better maritime system.NIMBY is a huge factor in the placement of facilities to off load or on load goods and raw materials. The recent contretemps in Narragansett Bay over the LNG facility is a good example.“Honest” Dick Blumenthal when he was Attorney General of Connecticut killed the Long Island Sound LNG/oil platform facility with misinformation and downright lying about the facilities impact on both the LIS ecosystem and it’s financial impact. Last, but certainly not least, access to distribution points are almost not existent due to the sale of port facilities to real estate developers to build hotels, convention centers, sports stadiums and private marinas. Harbor real estate is expensive and the competition is fierce to obtain and develop it.
Mr. Harris has the right idea – a strong national maritime system able to move cargo, goods and materials using our long seacoasts and river systems should be a priority.I’m certain private investors would welcome the opportunity to be involved in building small ships, tugs, barges and facilities – as long as the government and the Maritime and Port labor unionscan be kept at bay.
The President’s descriptions of the situation are comprehensive and urbane. He correctly identifies the forces at work. He develops interesting policy ideas and approaches that address important political and moral elements of the complex problems we face. He crafts approaches that might, with good will and deft management, bridge the gaps between the sides. He reads thoughtful speeches full of sensible reflections.
But the last few weeks have cast him as the least competent manager of America’s Middle East diplomatic portfolio in a very long time.
and, Mead continues,
Netanyahu beat Obama like a red-headed stepchild; he played him like a fiddle; he pounded him like a big brass drum. The Prime Minister of Israel danced rings around his arrogant, professorial opponent. It was like watching the Harlem Globetrotters go up against the junior squad from Miss Porter’s School; like watching Harvard play Texas A&M, like watching Bambi meet Godzilla — or Bill Clinton run against Bob Dole.
WILL AMERICA SEE EUROPE-STYLE RIOTS?Newsweek sounds hopeful, but in America, unlike Europe, it’s usually the taxpayers who are behind the revolutions, not the parasites.
Nobody knows what we should eat. I believe we should eat whatever the heck we want to, and ignore the experts and the nannies. We're all gonna die. Just take some Lipitor and hope for the best.
It seems that, when I wasn't looking, secret Chinese agents replaced my trusted and faithful American bathroom mirrors with a mirror "Made in China." It is a hideous substitution and one that would go unnoticed except for the fact that from time to time I look in my mirror for this or that grooming ritual. When I do I know that the mirror has become a Chinese mirror because the effect is immediately and consistently horrifying. Briefly put, the person in the mirror is someone that does not resemble me at all. I don't know how he got in my mirror but he's got to go.
Vanderleun's a guy, so he's understandably unaware of the parable of age visiting a woman. Doorbell rings. Woman answers. "Hi, I'm age," the fellow at the doorstep says, then grabs both her breasts and yanks down on them as hard as he can. Unwisely, she turns around to run away, and, well...
The Washington Times has the straight skinny on the downstream effects of our porcine federal government's expenditures. There's the usual stuff about billion dollar toilet seats without holes in them and so forth, but there's one gem hidden among the awful offal that makes the annual three trillion spree worth it. Oh, yeah. Shrimp on a treadmill!
Well, that's cooler than a HUD block grant, I'll say that much for it. But I gather everything the government does isn't nearly as essential as that.
Is "jello wrestling at the South Pole" a euphemism for something actually naughty? Or is it just dull, useless, ugly people wrestling in jello at great expense, in between bouts of fudging statistics about how hot it is in the Antarctic because I drive a four-door car? I'm sorry, it's hard to keep up with these hipsters. Next thing you know, you're going to tell me Pabst Blue Ribbon is popular again.
C.S. Lewis once wrote that "of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." Rulers who just want to exploit us may relax once their greed's sated.
But "those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience," Lewis said.
While she was flying down the road 20 miles over the limit, a woman passed by an overpass only to find a cop with a radar gun on the other side lying in wait.
The cop pulled her over, walked up to the car, and with that classic patronizing smirk we all know and love, asked, "What's your hurry?" To which she replied, "I'm late for work." "Oh yeah," said the cop, "what do you do?" "I'm a rectum stretcher," she responded. The cop stammered, "A what? A rectum stretcher? And just what does a rectum stretcher do?" "Well," she said, "I start by inserting one finger, then work my way up to two fingers, then three, then four, then with my whole hand in. I work from side to side until I can get both hands in, and then I slowly but surely stretch, until it's about 6 feet wide." "And just what the hell do you do with a 6 foot asshole?" he asked. "You give him a radar gun and park him behind a bridge..."
Traffic Ticket $95.00 Court Costs. $45.00 The Look on Cop's Face. PRICELESS
One more: Things not to say to a police officer...
When he pulls you over and says,"I think I smell alcohol. Have you been drinking?" Do not say "I think I see powdered sugar on your face. Have you been eating jelly donuts?"
All health care will be delivered by this method soon. Requests for chest X-rays will entail sending you an application to work at a Japanese power plant with a film shirt. Deafness will be treated by ordinances requiring that everyone yell at you -- not just the clerks at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Instead of glasses, those suffering from vision loss will be supplied with an even uglier spouse, because what difference will it make, anyway? At this point, with all our light fixtures filled with CFL bulbs, you can barely tell if you're living with a mammal, never mind a hottie. Good-looking spouses will be re-assigned to those with good eyesight, but who want Viagra, which doesn't grow on trees, you know.
Would you like to know more? Put in another quarter, and press pound. Your pound key generates all the electricity for your house, too, so press it a lot, really fast.
The president just finished speaking to a packed convention room at the AIPAC policy conference. He was not booed when he entered; most stood and offered brief applause. Still, the crowd during the speech had long periods of stony silence, and audible boos were heard when he brought up his plan to base an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal on the 1967 border lines. President Obama took nothing back from his foreign policy speech on Thursday and blamed the press for any controversy. He doubled down, making this upcoming presidential election a time for choosing for friends of Israel....This president once again has proved an apt negotiator on behalf of the Palestinians and a thorn in Israel’s side.
Conveniently, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has now released a statement, transforming Obama’s border guidelines into preconditions for renewed talks. Until recently the Palestinians had no problem negotiating without those preconditions. It was widely recognized that the Palestinians were trying to get to Obama’s position—a final status agreement structured around the 1949 lines plus land swaps—but that they would have to negotiate to it and make concessions along the way. Now Erekat is insisting that “there is no point talking about a peace process” unless Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu accepts the final Palestinian position as everyone’s starting position. Since that’s not going to happen under any circumstances—nor should it—we are again in a situation where President Obama’s de-facto advocacy for the Palestinian cause has made peace more difficult to achieve.
Me:
Obama to Israel, "Let's agree to disagree, and you'll pay for it later, out of sight of this audience."
Netanyahu replies: "My audience will hear from me tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, and the next, despite your sellouts."
Without major changes, “we fear that very few providers will enroll … and that (Medicare) and the provider community will miss the best opportunity to inject value and accountability into the delivery system.”
By "accountability," I think they mean cheap. One of the reasons I agreed to post my thoughts at Maggie's Farm was because of our editor's "Ain't gonna work on Maggie's Farm no more" ethos. The Medicare and insurance company's regs drove me nuts, so I quit them all. See me, pay me. If you're rich, I'll charge you a lot. If you're poor, a little. Rightly or wrongly, I do it my way.
There are two simple things that can be done to reduce medical costs in the US: 1. Tort reform, so that everybody with a tension headache doesn't get a $700 cya CAT scan and OBs don't have to spend $200,000/yr for malpractice insurance, and 2. A wide market for interstate major medical insurance.
NYT: "Peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle East reality," an unsmiling Netanyahu told Obama in the Oval Office.
Reactions: "Respect goes two ways and Obama, a leader who has a history of cavalierly dismissing the sensibilities of American allies, cannot pretend that he is the injured party here."
Because of current U.S. policy, U.S. companies are prohibited from developing oil fields that lie in Cuban waters and come within 50 miles of Florida. However, Cuba is exploring and developing these oil fields, estimated by the U.S. Geological Survey to possess more oil than the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, and Cuba is partnering with China and other countries, such as Spain, France, and Canada.
The Castro Regime will begin drilling off the coast of Florida this year and will go deeper than the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April.
France's culture, the article says, writes off a lot of behavior that would be considered in the Anglo-American world to be borderline menacing and assaulting -- not rape, but the knocking on that door -- as some kind of boys-will-be-boys seduction.
Obama came to Boston in March to rub elbows with wealthy businessmen -- whose businesses have benefitted from his policies. For the pleasure of face time with the President, these businessmen contributed to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, anywhere from a few hundred dollars to more than $30,000.
I must confess before God and a jury of my peers:
Transportation in Bob Dylan's Music 
Update on Prof