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.
It's all our (evil Western Civilization's) fault that many Muslims seem to like to kill people who are different from them. We all accept that responsibility, don't we?
After all, true cultural understanding means understanding that some may lack moral agency, human empathy, and the idea of the "brotherhood of man," as we understand these quaint bourgeois notions from our culturally-limited viewpoint.
Australian Reptile Park macropod expert Tim Faulkner said Irwin's quality of life needed to be the No. 1 priority.
My point being that the macropod expert sees Irwin as a person too. I'd say that Irwin has got it pretty good when you consider the lifestyle of your average paralyzed Kangaroo.
It is not healthy for our democracy to have half the population with its hand out and no skin in the game. Necessary and proper taxes ought to be the patriotic duty of every citizen.
... there is no such thing as a “McJob.” Putting down the workingman because his wages are not as big as yours is a luxury only a liberal can afford.
True, but I think there was a deal there: We get an Obamacare waiver, and we'll hire 50,000. Maggie's Farm wants a waiver, but we don't know who to call.
Government distorts markets. Problems inevitably ensue. Then government steps in to claim to solve the problems they created - while blaming it on markets.
Egyptian bondage was not a feel-good time for the Hebrew people, and the Crucifixion is a not a feel-good symbol. These are not Hallmark cutie holidays. They were shaped by people who were not sloppy, sentimental, goofy liberals. And no, Jesus wasn't one of those either, no matter what your neighbor thinks.
Passover and Easter are stories of ultimate hope, but they are also pretty unflinching warning about human evil. They are centuries-old warnings, but they are pretty relevant today, aren't they?
It’s a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit. Who are these 50 million Americans? Many are somebody’s grandparents, maybe one of yours, who wouldn’t be able afford nursing home care without Medicaid. Many are poor children. Some are middle-class families who have children with autism or Down’s syndrome. Some are kids with disabilities . . . so severe that they require 24-hour care. These are the Americans we’d be telling to fend for themselves.
—President Barack Obama, April 13, 2011
Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of the government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens. . . .
—Senator Edward Kennedy, July 1, 1987
You can scare half of the people half of the time, but you cannot scare all of the people all of the time.
Off topic, but I also wanted to say something to those pitiful whining gals at Yale: If you have to run to Mommy every time something bothers you, you will go nowhere in life. Maybe you have been a good girl all of your life, played your sport, did your homework, sat attentively in class, pleased your teachers, studied for your SATs, etc. Now it's time to grow a spine. If a guy pisses you off, give it back to them as good as you get. If harmless Yalie nurds "intimidate" you, you will have a real problem with real life.
It's called The War Between the Sexes Genders, and it's all good fun. Running to Mommy is not cool.
Who ya gonna call when you're CEO of GE?
I always got a kick out of the short-skirted long-legged gals in NYC who had snappy repartee ready for the construction workers' whistles. It's fun sport for all, and it's all loaded with sex.
One annual fee. Doesn't cover consultants, though, or hospital. Free markets for medical care would solve all of the problems. For example (with apologies to our local Opthalmologist), our family uses the Costco doc for eye care. Nice guy there. You just write him a manageable check, and their eyeglasses and contact lenses are very reasonable (if not high fashion).
Just one more reason for polygamy. Why not have 5 or 6 of 'em? Send them all out to work on jobs on Wall St., and the stud stays home, works out, goes to gallery openings, writes on blogs, practices his trap shooting, goes fishin', makes a venison stew for dinner, and generally conserves his strength for nighttime fireworks.
Cute spoiled kids, looking for meaning and purpose in their empty, easy, self-indulgent lives through telling me to turn off my lights, my heat, and my computer. (Not their own, of course, because they have important "organizing" work to do, and organizing people is hard, important work.) Furthermore, they want me to quit eating Whale Sushi. I can't help it: it must be a chemical addiction and not my fault.
Via Tim Blair, a vid on Greenpeace indoctrination and training:
The San Diego Union-Tribune sent a reporter to the northern suburb of Oceanside last night. The headline in the print paper: “Tax Concerns Spur Two Rallies: Tea party, nonpartisan groups stage separate Oceanside events”; online’s headline more honest: “Two political rallies raise their voices in Oceanside.”
The same story in both presentations: “more than 1500” showed up for the Tea Party rally, “more than 100” for the raise taxes rally. The one-hundred, riding on the publicity backs of the work by the 1500, given as much space as the 1500. The tax raisers, calling themselves “Rally for America”: “the nonpartisan group stood behind public service employees and unions and blamed government bailouts of big business, corporate tax breaks and cuts to services for hurting the middle class…”
Yeah, “nonpartisan”! The Associated Press’ April poll says that’s the stance of 29% of Americans. That means the other 71% are partisans. Yes, partisans of reversing the US descent into bankruptcy and destroying the wealth producing citizenry that pays the taxes and benefits all.
We are at home, France will soon belong to us. There are already 10 million of us, soon there will be 20 million, you’ll see. You will not be able to stop us from doing anything. This country is ours. - French Muslim
Will the French give a damn when they decide to blow up Notre Dame?
Why not? People are living healthier, longer - and it would help solve the Medicare and Social Security messes. Few people are over the hill at 65 anymore. Prime of life, and at the peak of wisdom and experience. Much to offer to the world.
Gov. Jerry Brown faced growing pressure Tuesday to raise taxes without asking voters, which would require him to break his campaign pledge.
The head of the California Teachers Association, David Sanchez, said Tuesday that state leaders should extend higher sales, vehicle and income taxes through a legislative vote rather than passing the question to the electorate....
"I believe that as much as our governor has been extremely transparent and honest in doing what he told folks he'd do – which is let the people decide – it's too late for that," Sanchez said in a phone interview. "Once you put it on the ballot after June, it's no longer an extension, it becomes new taxes. And once they're new taxes, the people won't support that. I think the Legislature ought to do that themselves."
I recall that Manhattan's elegant Park Avenue was build on top of the railroad lines (The old New York, New Haven, and Hartford line, which still runs down to Grand Central Station, underneath, and carries thousands of commuters to NYC every day - numbers that the highways, roads, and parking could never handle. Plus people get work done on the trains.)
Yes, indeed. Party of Lincoln. We Conservatives want opportunity for everybody and an end to dependency. The American Dream. Who could argue with that?
Email from a friend in CT: "My woods are alive with Myrtle Warblers this morning, so I thought of you." He and I share the perverse insistence of calling them Myrtle Warblers instead of their new name.
In his famous 1968 interview (the very year of protest) conducted for Sing Out! by his friends John Cohen and Happy Traum, Dylan was asked by Traum: “Do you foresee a time when you’re going to have to take some kind of a position?” Dylan answered in one word: “No.” Traum, obviously upset, argued that “every day we get closer to having to make a choice,” because, he explained, “events of the world are getting closer to us … as close as the nearest ghetto.” Dylan’s answer: “Where’s the nearest ghetto?"
When he got to the issue of the Vietnam War, Traum told Dylan: “Probably the most pressing thing going on in a political sense is the war,” and that artists like him “feel it is their responsibility to say something.” Dylan responded by telling Traum: “I know some very good artists who are for the war.” He then added that this painter he knows is “all for the war. He’s just about ready to go over there himself. And I can comprehend him.” Moreover, when Traum suggested he argue with the painter, Dylan asked, “Why should I?”
This is a man who will not be pwned, and he has never needed to be told to "Shut up and sing."
When we embark on a course of action which is unconsciously driven by wishful thinking, all may seem to go well for a time, in what may be called the "dream stage". But because this make-believe can never be reconciled with reality, it leads to a "frustration stage" as things start to go wrong, prompting a more determined effort to keep the fantasy in being. As reality presses in, it leads to a "nightmare stage" as everything goes wrong, culminating in an "explosion into reality", when the fantasy finally falls apart.
We think that in prayer we speak to God, and we are not wrong to think so. But the heart of prayer is that God speaks to us. It is not God whose mind is changed by our prayer, but we ourselves, if we would but cease to speak, and would instead wait upon God, and listen to him. It is the prayer of silent expectation, whereby we who love God wait upon him, like the prophet Elijah who did not hear the Lord in the storm or the whirlwind of the earthquake, but rather in the still small voice, and he hid his face in holy fear.
Re David Corn's predictable response to Rep. Ryans' budget proposal, Paul Ryan's "Adult" Budget, I have two questions for David:
1. Who are "the poor" who Ryan wishes to "mug"? He speaks as if they were some vast, permanent American oppressed underclass. Who, exactly, is he talking about so condescendingly? What individual people?
2. What do these "poor" want? Opportunity in a busy economy, or eternal redistribution with money on loan from China, in a downward American economy? That's the choice. I've been poor, wanted opportunity, and eventually found some through doing a very good job in a thankless workplace. Difficult, never impossible, depending on how the economy is running, and whether you are willing to do some things you do not like to do.
When I am ready to take the plunge and to live up to the Maggie's Farm ideal of being my own boss and running my own show, I will be poor again, at least for a while. I am counting on that. When that day comes, David Corn is the last guy in the world I will want concern or pity from.
The divide between Inside Beltway Republicans and the conservatives of Mainstreet while not as large is the widest today since the Goldwater revolution of 1964.
Now, as then, the less polished but more pointed and demanding cries of Mainstreet were derided or neglected by the establishment Republican Party. But, the insiders now have less holds on power. Now, as distinct from then, the Inside Beltway Republicans more realize that their positions depend upon Mainstreet. It makes for a difficult and tenuous relationship.
Formerly, it was the business, press and politicians of the Northeast that dominated the Republican Party. Barry Goldwater, and the electoral shift to the Sunbelt and West, started an end to that, and Ronald Reagan completed the rout.
Republican leaders rooted in the failed Goldwater campaign of 1964 and the successful Reagan rule of the 1980’s came to prominence in the Republican Party. However, many, most who found position and wealth in Washington, pay lip service to Mainstreet while cozying up to fountains of money from Inside Beltway lobbyists and false praise from the Northeast liberal media when they compromise with their similarly corrupted Democrat brethren.
In their defense, usually by themselves, they call themselves “mature” Republicans. Maturity means playing within the 30 or 40 yard lines, sometimes mouthing ambitions for policies at the goal lines but arguing that only short runs are possible or realistic against determined and organized liberals.
The Obama administration, although through a fraudulent 2008 campaign, is stocked with leftist radicals from top to bottom, however, who have gone for the long pass. Sure, it has bred and fueled a widespread rebellion that has seriously weakened their hold on Congress. The Mainstreet rebels are epitomized by the Tea Party who have earned wider support from less activist Republicans and from Independents who are repulsed by the Democrats’ legislative extremism. The rebels seek a more daring game plan. Meanwhile, many entrenched establishment Republicans and their media allies denigrate the voices calling for more aggressive moves downfield.
They have some good reasons. The liberal establishment is very powerful and controls more levers of power, and most centrist Americans are fragile allies and heavily influenced by the traditional liberal media.
Nonetheless, it is irrefutable that the defensive establishment Republicans would not have their comforts without the conservative rebels, and the conservative new media will not let them hide behind their excuses or corrupted transgressions.
One may argue that the radicals who control the Democrat Party have overstepped, which is now recognized by most voters. Yet, they have accomplished many of their goals, from an increasingly entrenched ObamaCare to economy-stifling environmental extremism to displaying un-American timidity and counter-productiveness abroad and undermining our allies.
Most of these extremist laws, regulations and policies are either fait accompli or will take decades to ameliorate, at least if business as usual continues in Washington.
On the other hand, as with the Paul Ryan budget program moving the goal posts, if the establishment Republicans coalesce around and firmly push for radical reforms, the alliance of Mainstreet with the Republican Party may accomplish a quick and real turnaround of the United States’ fate, from decline to revived robustness and confidence.
Myself, I tend toward the wonkish and well appreciate the defensive arguments of establishment Republicans for practicality and restraint. I don’t watch talking head TV and only listen to a few minutes a day of talk radio. Still, it is an inescapable reality that it is these conservative voices that have and continue to lead the conservative revolution and, by carryover, the Republican electoral victories.
While over-the-top extremism must be avoided and refuted for conservative and Republican respect and viability, it is inescusable for establishment Republican voices to attack leading conservative voices as altogether irresponsible. This is false, indeed a slander, and really only serves the interests of the left and of crony-capitalists who place their feeding at the D.C. trough above the ongoing welfare of the country. They must recognize that their Inside Beltway position papers are but waste- and toilet paper without the backing of Mainstreet, and that Mainstreet will not settle for much more.
I’m not naming names, as I don’t want to contribute to the divide. Either Washington Republicans will stand up for where their – and our -- bread is really buttered or just continue to seek pats from interests less nourishing to America’s future. If they don’t resolutely stand up, their and our opportunities for America’s revival will be squandered. Do they care more for lucrative after-careers courtesy of the K-Street lobbies or for America? The next year will tell.
Among the reasons government agencies cannot run things efficiently are these:
1. The incentive structures are irrational, and there is no profit motive
2. There's always taxpayer money to fill the gaps, so you don't worry about costs. In fact, they are sort of expected to run at a loss.
3. Politicians always intrude on the operation for their own purposes
4. Giant unions like the Postal Workers run the workplaces
I don't know about you, but I always send my packages at my local mail shop via FedEx or UPS, not at the PO. I do not want to wait in line while people take their coffee breaks, and the clerks at our PO, though friendly enough, move as slow as molasses. With email and with commercial competition, I think the USPS is near-obsolete.
The same people want nothing more than to run my medical care. Say I: "Over my dead body."
Should the middle class get health care at public expense? No, there is no one to pay for our health care but us. We can pay out-of-pocket; we can buy private insurance to cover catastrophic risk and thereby get some control over how much health care we buy for ourselves. We can pay taxes to the government which it will then use to decide how much health care we can get; but it will still be us paying for it and decisions will still have to be made as to how much care we get; we'll just lose all control over how much we spend on health care as opposed to, say, food or education.
Seems to me that there are three main drivers of high insurance costs: low deductibles (ie insurance that tries to cover everything including the sniffles, routine exams, and elective things like Viagra and hormone replacement); fear of malpractice lawsuits which is why everybody with a headache gets a $1200 CAT scan; and the frequently insane costs of end of life treatment such as catastrophic strokes or the millions for things like terminal cancer.
It seems quite likely to me that vouchers are going to be better at controlling health care cost growth than a central committee. Every committee decision that cuts off a potentially useful treatment (and I’m afraid it can’t all be back surgery and hormone replacement therapy) will trigger a lobbying explosion from affected groups. Each treatment is a decision with a small marginal cost to the taxpayer; it’s in aggregate that they become expensive. Which means that the congressional tendency is always going to be to override–and while there are supposed to be structural barriers against this in the bill, they aren’t very strong . . . about like trying to quit smoking by hiding your cigarettes from yourself.
When it comes to statist intrusions and Big Brother doublespeak, it's hard to beat President Barack Obama's crowning achievement to bring the entire health care industry under government control because he thinks he knows better. Who needs a free market when we've got top-level bureaucrats and political wizardry?
...And check Kimberly Morin, "Violent rhetoric from AFL-CIO union rally in Boston": "’And to the Republican party of Massachusetts, if you think this is gonna happen here, it is going to be over thousands of dead people’s bodies. If you think Wisconsin was anything, we need to stop these guys in their tracks now and kill their bills at the State house.”
Another fine example of civility brought to you by a union boss (who is also a Democrat). Death threats from a teacher in Wisconsin ; AFSCME threatening businesses; and a male Wisconsin Democrat State Legislator telling his Republican colleague ‘You’re f*cking dead’ because she voted YEA on Governor Walker’s budget bill . Is this the new tone of the Democrat Party? Or is this just the typical behavior that the Left and unions have been using for decades?
Why isn't this violent tone being reported by the main stream media?
The Ryan proposal will help settle the fight over the government shutdown and the 2011 budget because it will remind everybody that the real argument is not about cutting a few billion here or there. It is about the underlying architecture of domestic programs in 2012 and beyond.
The Ryan budget will put all future arguments in the proper context: The current welfare state is simply unsustainable and anybody who is serious, on left or right, has to have a new vision of the social contract.
Is there a pill 
Business School: Where Education Dies
Email from a friend in CT: "My woods are alive with Myrtle Warblers this morning, so I thought of you." He and I share the perverse insistence of calling them Myrtle Warblers instead of their new name.
From Radosh's Dy
Dylan works around China’s bosses?