Monday, January 12. 2009
 How did we miss this story? Prize farmer run over by dog tractor driver. We let our dogs drive all of our vee-hickles, and this sort of thing hardly ever happens.
CO2 Fairytales. Am Thinker
Failcare in MA. Surber. More from Rick Moran.
Story with a moral: The pirates
Fr. Neuhaus' study:
There was a colossal sound system, for he loved music, especially Bach; there were bookcases containing the Lutheran Book of Worship, from which he and the ecumenical Community of Christ in the City, with whom he lived, prayed vespers every evening, before and after his reception into the Catholic Church; and there were ample supplies of bourbon and cigars, both of which Richard regarded as essential complements to the ongoing, boisterous conversation that was his intellectual and spiritual lifeblood.
To heck with yourself and your family. Sacrifice for the greater good.
Further thoughts on our Open Letter re business careers, from Tiger.
Joe the Plumber's new career
Campaigning isn't governing. Pajamas. Related: From each group that supported Obama, an agenda
Dump Dodd? Fine, but it's not possible to elect a Conservative in CT. Or is it?
WSJ: Palestinian demographics and the fighting culture:
If we seriously want to avoid another generation of war in Gaza, we must have the courage to tell the Gazans that they will have to start looking after their children themselves, without UNRWA's help. This would force Palestinians to focus on building an economy instead of freeing them up to wage war. Of course, every baby lured into the world by our money up to now would still have our assistance.
Golda Meir famously said something like "We will have peace when the Palestinians care more about their kids than they do about killing Jews."
Sunday, January 11. 2009
From our guest poster Bruce Kesler:
If conditions and challenges weren’t ominous enough for the new Obama administration, his strong-willed mother-in-law is moving into the White House. If that alone isn’t enough for most, imagine yourself facing a relocation to very difficult new job, almost every one with power affecting you having differing wants and confronting you with demands often at odds with your own, literally not enough money in the world to satisfy everyone’s desires and the demands increasingly undercutting even necessities, and gangs of lethal thugs roaming the streets around you. Even your formerly most staunch supporters begin to report that most of your previous smooth talk is empty that got you the job and that you’re in over your head. Like vultures expecting a fat carcass but facing a rotting pigeon of a meal, they squabble and fight each other. Almost all your mentors expose they haven’t really much clue what to do. Well, here’s a piece of advice: Don’t just do something, stand there. Most of the challenging conditions will sort themselves out. Running around like a chicken without a head, or doing for the sake of doing, will not only likely have little positive effect but will probably have worse consequences.
Let’s go through a brief list:
The Economy: Not every one, but in aggregate, individuals are better deciders of what is worth working for and spending on than any Delphic group in Washington. Money is the motivation to work and risk. The only economic measure by Washington with a track-record of supporting and increasing this motivation is low taxes. Federal spending, on anything, is inefficient and tends to favor means and ends that reduce individual incentives. Further, in excess -- and multi-trillion dollar printing of dollars is certainly excess, it has been proven, sadly repeatedly, to lead to lasting inflation that is even more impoverishing and destructive of incentives.
Healthcare: As we’ve become wealthier, compared to any other nation, the portion of our personal and national incomes that need be devoted to food, clothing and shelter has declined. That has unleashed the means for medical technologies and treatments that, although often overused, we decide we can afford and deem worthwhile to our better living. Every scheme for “reforming” healthcare is based on forcing us, against our better judgment and self-caring, to have less healthcare, through reduced access and innovation. Bureaucrats’ choices of what they think “cost-effective” for spending our own earnings and taxes are not our choices. The only ones to benefit are government-employment and government-employee unions.
Education: Surely, a well-educated workforce, allowed incentives to be productive, enriches most. Major portions of our enormous spending on education, however, are wasted or siphoned off to non-enriching ends. In higher education, we have lavish campuses failing to serve quality or practical degrees. In primary education, we have multiplying programs that shortchange the basics, while teacher unions expend their huge political war chests to battle reforms. Allowing the influx of uneducated illegal immigrants has diverted a large percentage of education spending to their remedial teaching, reducing standards and programs for excellence among the rest. Border and employer enforcement in motion has and will reduce illegal immigration. Budget restraints are directed by those in power to punish the customers. With the necessity of budget restraints evident, those ideologic and self-serving pedagogues will lose some of their influence to undermine core, productive education.
National Defense: From the pains of combat, we’ve learned that a larger professional armed forces is critical. At the same time, sophisticated, expensive major weapons systems cannot be avoided if we are to have deterring diplomacy with major adversaries, or soundly defeat them if diplomacy fails. The ‘90’s, Clinton path of virtually ignoring the emergence of such threats only leads to larger, more dangerous crises. Cutting defense spending to fuel wasteful domestic spending by Washington is proven suicidal behavior. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Cutting the ounce is deceptively self-destructive.
Middle East: Our avoidance of domestic sources of energy and of transmission has increased our dependence upon and hefty self-impoverishing buying of oil from hostile and trouble-making countries. Take that US financial underpinning out from under them and they are less of a global or regional threat, less capable of attacking Israel as well. A regional conflict is less of a threat to itself or the world.
Having, thus, freed up Obama from otherwise counter-productive activities outside the White House, he personally will benefit not only from things sorting themselves out better but will have more time to deal with his mother-in-law.
Yes, I did have a good hunt yesterday. Thanks for asking. Grouse. Got two, missed two. Passed on shooting one in a Birch tree. Passed on a Woodcock in a swamp because I could not remember whether they were still in season. I was right to pass on that tempting bird. Tired legs from tramping through the snow all day.
 Iraq politics. Sounds like normal.
We all want longer, healthier lives but it's going to cost us. WaPo. One quote:
We are on a collision course between our wish to live longer, healthier lives and our capacity to pay for that wish. Whether we can somehow avoid the collision is perhaps the most important domestic issue of this century. From now on, health care costs will be up there with globalization, terrorism and climate change as a force shaping our world.
Let's fry up some fresh Sea Kittens. Perfect for those good folks who like to eat pussies.
JC Phillips: My New Year's resolution is to make more soup. Mine too.
The MLA is so mad at David Horowitz that they could spit. Idiots. See, unlike Bill Ayers, David had second thoughts about The Revolution. h/t, Viking
The vacuity of contemporary art.
Kudlow on Obama's tax cuts. The Repubs fear Obama's tax-cutting ideas. But Pelosi wants to punish the earners. She's a paleo. In my view, gummint cannot spend to prosperity. It's no different from living high off your home equity.
Fourth quarter GDP coming on Jan 30. What if it isn't terribly bad?
Chutzpah is right. We need to legalize illegals to save our economy. Um, what?
Insty:
WELL, IF YOU ASK ME, free markets are “social justice.”
Ayn Rand warned us about this stuff.
LA: "Put Jews in the ovens." This refrain is going around. It's an old song, and one of the ugliest.
Good point at Neoneo about Obama's negativity.
Saturday, January 10. 2009
 We have been officially notified that Maggie's Farm has probably won the top blog award from the highly-respected ICEIE.
It's quite remarkable and deeply gratifying to us, especially since we think blog awards tend to be bogus and a bunch of baloney, and therefore have nothing to do with them.
But not this one. This one is a keeper. The Grand Pricks. We will treasure it always.
 Remembering Antietam. Jules
What card check would do to the Sun Belt
In search of the just-right desk. Desk feng shui? Gimme a break.
via Jim Miller:
U.S. household debt, which has been growing steadily since the Federal Reserve began tracking it in 1952, declined for the first time in the third quarter of 2008. In the same quarter, U.S. consumer spending growth declined for the first time in 17 years.
Bailing out one of the 20th Century's best business models. Quote from Reason:
Blaming the customer is the second-to-last refuge of any crappy industry, business, or organization (the last refuge being asking for a handout on Capitol Hill). As my ex-L.A. Times colleague and current Reason magazine Contributing Editor Tim Cavanaugh has noted in our pages, the paper we both short-timed for was filled with people making jokes about whether we could just "fire our readers." Over the recent holidays, an entire journalistic Festivus celebration of customer-blaming broke out over New Yorker finance columnist James Surowiecki's lament that, "The real problem for newspapers…isn't the Internet; it's us. We want access to everything, we want it now, and we want it for free." To extrapolate, if only us greedy human beings would realize that our very democracy was at stake, that we "are taking an active step in the formation of a country without a civic conscience," then we'd damned well volunteer to pay an unnecessary premium to keep our finest journalists in permanent six figures. Sounds precisely as convincing as the argument that enlightened voters will surely agree to pay extra taxes so that political campaigns can be financed through "clean" money.
Related: The Seattle P-I is dying.
Allah Akbar in Oslo. Oslo?
Where to put your money: Why mattress sales will take off. Warren Buffet:
“This should be bullish for Berkshire. With great foresight, I long ago entered the mattress business in a big way through our furniture operation. Now mattresses have become fully competitive as a place to put your money, and sales will soon take off.”
Friday, January 9. 2009
h/t, Theo:
Joe the Journalist, plus the fake CNN Gaza clip, at Michelle.
A sand expert
Spending too much? Bad. Saving too much? Bad. It's true: people are not buying stuff. But I am. Some rugs, a standing lamp, and a new Colt in December. Somebody's got to keep the economy moving. I need a sofa too. Everything is on sale these days.
Why party boss Soros wants Norm Coleman out.
How we know that they know that they are lying
A new world economic order? Who are they kidding?
The highest crane operator in the world. In Dubai. of course.
Thursday, January 8. 2009
 Nepotism Nation
Big government never needs justification.
Neoneo loves Sanjay
More on the health care Trojan Horse. Coyote
The Generational Theft Act. Michelle
Porn biz wants a bailout too.
How Bush tried to rein in Fanny and Freddie.Rove
Chesler: “The non-Muslim world must have no illusions.”
Jimmy Carter’s defensive tunnels
Kennedy vs. Palin: Driscoll. Related: Palin strikes back
A little ME history. Tiger
How will people handle the end of The New York times?
Via No Left Turns, from Dick Morris:
So it is both fair and sensible to give the poor a tax break and to draw the bulk of federal revenues from the rich. But to exempt the bottom half - a majority of the voters - from paying any taxes and to award them refund checks instead would dangerously alter the fundamental balance of national politics. For the economically well off, it could effectively become taxation without representation - which, as the founders of our nation warned, leads to tyranny.
London busses: There’s no God, so have some fun Via Mr. Free Market:
Dang link problems and spacing problems have me needing a few cold Morettis.
Extreme Alaska cold grounds planes, disables cars
Deadly cold, heavy snow grip Europe; Poles freeze to death
Wheat prices rise as unusual cold snap may damage U.S. crop
Cold and freezing rain in south and central China
Still having linking problems. This from Insty:
IF ONLY BUSH HAD BEEN SUCH A RAMPANT FREE-MARKETEER: “Mythmaking is in full swing as the Bush administration prepares to leave town. Among the more prominent is the assertion that the housing meltdown resulted from unbridled capitalism under a president opposed to all regulation. . . . Rather than a failure of capitalism, the housing meltdown shows what’s likely to happen when government grants special privileges to favored private entities that facilitate bad actors and lousy practices.”
Wednesday, January 7. 2009
Homeland Security's records of your travel. Creepy.
Take two aspirin and call your Congressman in the morning
Vicar: Crucifix too scarey. What? Sacrificial love?
Record snows. Where's the warming we've been waiting for?
Rebuilding the GOP, one internet user at a time. But we aren't Repubs - we're Conservatives.
Tuesday, January 6. 2009
Owl Wars in the Pacific Northwest. Some want to kill the Barred Owls. However, the two species are essentially different races of the same big bird. I thought they decided to reduce their fossil fuel consumption anyway. So what's the problem? Bush designates more vast marine sanctuaries. Thanks, W. Politics, Chicago-style Half of economists believe the New Deal worsened the Depression From Nyquist on Strategic Reality 101: I believe there is a societal motive behind our culture’s marginalization of “enmity,” and it should be discussed; but first let us give an example of enmity’s marginalization. As America has been targeted by Islamic forces, America’s political establishment refuses to see Islam as an enemy. In fact, today’s Western culture adroitly fends off the notion that traditional Islam signifies universal submission to the will of Allah. Regardless of the fact that nominal Muslims readily coexist with Westerners, the teachings of Islam are unequivocal. The only reason Europe is not under Islamic law today, is because Europe’s military power surpassed that of Islam in the sixteenth century. This point is lost on nearly everyone, and shows the extent to which enmity has been marginalized in the West.
A quote from Krauthammer, on The Necessity of Israel: For Hamas the only thing more prized than dead Jews are dead Palestinians.
Man, am I busy and frazzled at work now that the holiday season is over. My posting will be frazzled too.
Remembering a Maggie's favorite President: Vermont's Silent Cal (fixed)
Remembering Edward Aloysius Murphy
Pelosi opens war against House Repubs. Gateway. Besides the thuggishness, it's a bad idea for many reasons. Related, VDH via NRO on Who will police the police?: If it was true that when the Republicans enjoyed majorities in the House and Senate and ran the White House, there was no one to object when they overspent, grew the government, and ran up the debt, who now will police the Democratic police in matters of corruption? Rep. Rangel oversees (on Ways and Means) U.S. tax policy, but is himself a tax offender, among other, far greater charges and allegations about his behavior and character. Sen. Dodd simply cannot tell the truth about his cut-rate, quid pro quo mortgage deals. His actions and the Barney Frank-Franklin Raines exchange are metaphors for the entire subprime mortgage crisis. It would take a genealogist to sort out all the tribal ties, inside pay-offs, and pay-for-play deals involved in the selling of Obama's Senate seat; meanwhile, we await the tapes of Jesse Jackson Jr., Rahm Emanuel, and co. Al Franken simply relied on Minnesota Democratic officials to keep counting until they came up with the right result. On matters of nepotism, entitlement, and insider favoritism, Democratic egalitarians will probably anoint Caroline Kennedy as senator from New York. Bill Richardson didn't even try to pull off being secretary of commerce. Nowhere is there anyone on the Democratic side to decry the culture of corruption as in the days of Duke Cunningham and Ted Stevens.
Crickets chirping, as they used to say.
Monday, January 5. 2009
 Broadway for 20 bucks.
Hope and Change! 600,000 new government jobs. Heck, we all work for the gummint half the year already. Keep a civil tongue in your head for the next 365 days Obama's New Deal. Bad as the Old New Deal? The Gramsci Award du Jour: Bill Ayers Chavez' secret fan club Sea Ice back to 1979. The earth is cooling, but it doesn't fit the narrative. The funny business, in Minnesota. Related: Stop, thief cries Dick Morris Harry Reid's "worst President," and what he's done The gang rape of a Lesbian you never heard about A blog whose time has come: Democracy in Venezuela Will Neo-Conservatism die for Compassionate Conservatism's Sins?
 Algore got so many innocent and well-intentioned but scientifically-uneducated people upset with his fear-mongering silliness. It's a damn shame. Those with a familiarity with how science works, and who had no political agenda to drive, just stood back and watched bemusedly.
Finally, even the HuffPo gets it. Harold Ambler's Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted. (h/t, No Looking Backwards, whence the borrowed image.) One quote:
If not carbon dioxide, what does "drive" climate? I am glad you are wondering about that. In the short term, it is ocean cycles, principally the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the "super cycle" of which cooling La Niñas and warming El Niños are parts. Having been in its warm phase, in which El Niños predominate, for the 30 years ending in late 2006, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to its cool phase, in which La Niñas predominate.
Since that time, already, a number of interesting things have taken place. One La Niña lowered temperatures around the globe for about half of the year just ended, and another La Niña shows evidence of beginning in the equatorial Pacific waters. During the last twelve months, many interesting cold-weather events happened to occur: record snow in the European Alps, China, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the Rockies, the upper Midwest, Las Vegas, Houston, and New Orleans. There was also, for the first time in at least 100 years, snow in Baghdad.
If Lefties want to take over the world's economy, they need to try Plan D.
Smart thing to do. Obama eyes tax cuts. It's one of the only effective things a government can do to try to shorten a recession. In the end, though, recessions just have to play themselves out. It's the natural history of economies, and, now that economics is fully global, local efforts can have minimal impact on the big picture. Maybe (let's hope) Obama will be more practical and less ideological than has been feared.
A reader sent in this hunting photo from Saturday. That is clearly an old, raggedy CT apple orchard, so I can assume he was hunting grouse. Nice spot. Dinosaurs grew feathers before they became birds. Bailout Bonds. Get 'em while they're fresh. Our blog friend Prof Deneen at Georgetown is going on indefinite blog sabbatical. And I don't blame him. If I could clone my inner dog self to handle this job, I'd do the same thing.  A friend of mine loves the new Garrison Keilor book. It's about aging.
The Lib love affair with Castro Why Clinton as Sec of State? Paglia How the UN funds Pali Jihad The Obama team needs to continue following Tiger's advice Re the seven things nobody tells you about marriage Carville: Watch for a Dem streak of scandals All that talk about "peak oil" has disappeared Steyn (via Driscoll) What was it that then Senator Obama said on the subject? "We can't just keep driving our SUVs, eating whatever we want, keeping our homes at 72 degrees at all times regardless of whether we live in the tundra or the desert and keep consuming 25 percent of the world's resources with just 4 percent of the world's population, and expect the rest of the world to say you just go ahead, we'll be fine." And boy, we took the great man's words to heart. SUV sales have nosedived, and 72 is no longer your home's thermostat setting but its current value expressed as a percentage of what you paid for it. If I understand then Senator Obama's logic, in a just world Americans would be 4 percent of the population and consume a fair and reasonable 4 percent of the world's resources. And in these last few months we've made an excellent start toward that blessed utopia: Americans are driving smaller cars, buying smaller homes, giving smaller Christmas presents. And yet, strangely, President-Elect Obama doesn't seem terribly happy about the Obamafication of the American economy. He's proposing some 5.7 bazillion dollar "stimulus" package or whatever it is now to "stimulate" it back into its bad old ways.
Sunday, January 4. 2009
 I agree with Gateway: These kids must want jobs.
Alternative buildings and cities, from the 60s. EU denounces carbon offset scams projects The cost of hollow virtuousness: Taxpayers pay for UK's mountain of recycling. Isn't it called "garbage" for a reason? Does Israel really want a victory? Related, via SC&A at Shrinkwrapped from March: Has Israel lost the will to live? Rangel update (h/t, Insty). Yes, Rangel is an expert in ways and means. Branford Marsalis: What I've learned from my students is that students today are completely full of sh*t. More Burris Fun 'n Games. Politics is one disgusting game. Two camps on climate in the new admin: Crazy, and crazier. Related, from Junk Science: Obama energy/environment 'czar' is an offical with Socialist International - That's right comrades... Carol Browner is a member of Socialist International's Commission for a Sustainable World Society. Check out SI's principles -- including, "it is imperative to establish a genuinely new international economic order."
Just one more totalitarian bureaucrat who thinks she is smarter than me. She is not. She just likes power more than I do.
From our occasional guest poster Nathan in Israel:  Last night -
My coffee guy (long hair past his shoulders, very cool, very left) spent the night watching the news. "Eyn ma la'asot" - "Nothing else one could do." He says it is like walkiing into zefl (tar); have to fight meter by meter with mines and weapons not only in the ground but in houses. My electrician , Avi, came back from Miluim a few days before the war started (father of four). He has more to say (will write when I have time) . Temenite background; very quiet, diligent. He describes how Isr airforce gives warning 10 minutes before hitting a target; then the Hamas tells women and children to stand on top of the roof to wave at the planes and deter the bombing. He goes on to speak about a Palestinian laborer worked for him for years; good worker. But, when he would telephone his wife, he would get violent and warn her that she would get what is coming to her when he got home. Avi asked him why he didn't speak more respectfully to her -- she makes a life for you, cooks, raises your kids. Guy says, "But, she's a woman."
I plan to visit the children in Kiryat Malachi on Monday.
|
