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.
More cartoonish advice coming: Gore’s 24 Hours of Fantasy About To Begin - An effort to "expose" climate change skeptics will instead show that Gore is a charlatan. My questions for Mr. Gore:
1. Has the earth truly been warming lately? 2. If so, can it be proven that man caused that? 3. And if so, why does it matter? 4. What's the ideal climate for the earth? Isn't climate always in flux? 5. If you are really so worried, why do you have two giganto houses, a giganto power boat, travel in huge black SUVs, eat meat, and fly on private jets? 6. How much money have you made off this thing? 7. What is the upside of climate warming, like in the Medieval period? 8. Why aren't you worried frantic about the next ice age, or the next asteroid, the next nuclear war, or the next plague, instead?
Obama is like a lost man who refuses to ask for directions. That's because he has never worked in the real world with people who create real jobs. He operates on theories and an ideology that is incapable of achieving his goals.
For example, he speaks mostly of redistributing wealth, not creating wealth. He wants us to hate the wealth creators, rather than follow their example. The result has been a growing dependency on government, robbing too many of their liberty and opportunity.
True, in my experience: What Job 'Training' Teaches? Bad Work Habits - A 1969 government study warned that teens in federal jobs programs 'regressed in their conception of what should reasonably be required in return for wages paid.'
Government "Job-training" provides jobs for the job trainers, and not much else.
You can’t make this stuff up, folks. That’s right: The people of Michigan, according to this court, violated the Equal Protection Clause when they demanded that their state treat all citizens equally—without regard to race, ethnicity, or sex—in government contracting, employment, and education, including university admissions. Unbelievable.
The preamble to the Constitution lists several reasons for it, including providing for the common defense. It is the only one listed for which the federal government is uniquely essential.
Yet, while our defense expenditures are already being heavily trimmed, it is likely that they will be virtually gutted. Fifty percent of the budget cuts are supposed to come from 20% of our federal spending. Meanwhile, the threats abroad have not only not receded but are growing.
It is disgraceful that the Republican candidates for the nomination didn’t get into this, while spending two hours repeating clichés and arguing how much wall to have along the Mexican border. Yes, the domestic issues are pressing and very important, but to ignore the global threats, the denuding of our military capabilities, the added burdens on our already heavily burdened volunteers, and our responsibilities to defense is deplorable.
Read about what the Republican Chair of the House Armed Services Committee has to say. A sample:
I am afraid that once again, we are sliding back to a place we pledged never to return to, and are repeating the mistakes of a September 10th America. As we begin to emerge from a long, tough fight, this should be the time to reset and rebuild our military. Instead, we are lowering our gloves. At a time when our military is falling into disrepair, we have laid out over half a trillion dollars in projected cuts to Pentagon spending. I cannot understate how dangerous these defense cuts have become.
Apparently, the Republicans vying for the nomination can understate, indeed ignore it. I’m not feeling safer tonight.
And, Jennifer Rubin, also at the Washington Post called the debate A foreign policy horror show : "It’s time to figure out if any of these guys and gal are up to the job of commander in chief."
Jonathan Tobin chimes in at Commentary's Contentions blog, The GOPs Foreign Policy Void: "...the Republicans are in danger of throwing away one of their party’s greatest strengths."
If 9/11 had really changed us, there’d be a 150-story building on the site of the World Trade Center today. It would have a classical memorial in the plaza with allegorical figures representing Sorrow and Resolve, and a fountain watched over by stern stone eagles. Instead there’s a pit, and arguments over the usual muted dolorous abstraction approved by the National Association of Grief Counselors. The Empire State Building took 18 months to build. During the Depression. We could do that again, but we don’t. And we don’t seem interested in asking why.
The debate among Republicans over the 2012 presidential nominee seems to divide between those favoring management skills and those favoring inspiration.
Americans have oscillated between the two. Eisenhower = management; Kennedy = inspiration; Johnson = neither; Nixon = management; Ford = neither; Carter = neither; Reagan = inspiration; Bush (Senior) = management; Clinton = inspiration; Bush (Junior) = management; Obama = inspiration.
These aren’t “pure” characterizations, but rather what aroused the balance of electorability. It was the persona that was the characterization of the nominee.
This may, or not, be applicable to 2012, but I tend toward thinking it very well may be.If so, then, that may explain my leaning toward Romney (and Pawlenty before he dropped out).
On the other hand, one can as well posit that Obama = neither, in which case the oscillation would favor inspiration. That might favor Perry.
On the other hand, the theory may be worthless. The test of a theory is in its simple predictive power. 2012’s election will tell. Regardless, however, internecine battles -- as opposed to civil discussion and debate -- among Republicans will weaken the 2012 chances of defeating Obama. That is a proven theory.
Comments?
From the Comments thus far, let me make this clearer: I'm talking about the persona or characterization at election time, not what comes after.
“Krugman’s comments are an indication of the nature of one of the problems we face; which is, a lot of people in positions to influence our country really don’t like our country. Krugman (by the way, did you know he is a former ‘Enron adviser’?) is among those who earn well, live well and eat well but really wish they could live among a better sort of people.”
They tell us to get over it, they say to move on, and they mean it well: We can't bring an air of tragedy into the future. But I will never get over it. To get over it is to get over the guy who stayed behind on a high floor with his friend who was in a wheelchair. To get over it is to get over the woman by herself with the sign in the darkness: "America You Are Not Alone." To get over it is to get over the guys who ran into the fire and not away from the fire.
And so we commemorate an act of war as a “tragic event,” and we retreat to equivocation, cultural self-loathing, and utterly fraudulent misrepresentation about the events of the day. In the weeks after 9/11, Americans were enjoined to ask “Why do they hate us?” A better question is: “Why do they despise us?” And the quickest way to figure out the answer is to visit the Peace Quilt and the Wish Tree, the Crescent of Embrace and the Hole of Bureaucratic Inertia.
Europeans and their colonial descendants may pen laws of war, but only they are constrained by them. In the real world outside the dinner parties of Washington D.C. and Brussels, there are no laws in war. Islamic law which has regulations for which foot to use when entering a bathroom (the left foot) and which side to sleep on (the right) has very few laws of war that cannot be nullified by necessity or even whim. On the battlefield, Islamic jurisprudence is boiled down to, Do what thou wilt in the cause of Allah, that is the whole of the law.
President Obama tonight seemed simultaneously angry and nervous as he rushed through a speech that was transparently not worthy of a joint session of Congress. His great idea: Cobble together a mish-mash of old ideas (infrastructure spending, a payroll tax cut) and pay for it later, by asking the debt commission to come up with additional deficit reductions later, preferably by hiking taxes on the rich. The second half of the speech was a heated campaign rally aimed at a cartoon version of his future opponent.
We've all seen this sort of urban death spiral happen in many places. Unionization, government costs, and living costs drive business away, taxes rise to support government, the middle class leaves the city behind to drugs, welfare, and dysfunction with a disappearing tax base and a nasty reputation. It is entirely predictable. Hartford, CT is a classic case, voted most pleasant medium-sized city to live in, in the USA, around 1955.
Next, forks? When I took my cc handgun licensing course, I met a guy who had used a baseball bat to fracture the skull of a burglar in his house. (Note to our Brit readers: Cops winked at him and said "Good job.")
This speech sounds pretty much exactly like all his other failed speeches. Pretty much every job he talks about, just like in 2009, 2010, and 2011 are government jobs or jobs dependent on government.
Long execrated by most law professors, Lochner is the liberals’ least favorite decision because its premises pose a threat to their aspiration, which is to provide an emancipation proclamation for regulatory government. The rehabilitation of Lochner is another step in the disarmament of such thinking.
The Calm Before the Storm - Cyberwar is already happening -- and it's about to get much, much worse. A veteran intelligence official explains how America can prepare itself.
Ask yourself: when was the last time you freely discussed any conservative or even moderate political view with friends at work, or on campus, or in public, or at a large social gathering — without hedging your every word? When? Can you identify a single recent instance when you felt your conservative or even moderate views would be tolerated without provoking name-calling or public shaming into the nearest corner of societal oblivion?
Good point. I had that experience at a cocktail party last weekend. Me and my big mouth.
Poll illustrates California voters' anger - Nearly 3 in 4 say the country is on the wrong track, and nearly half favor slashing government spending — a potentially dismal finding for President Obama, who will unveil a jobs plan this week.
So reach deep fellow taxpayer. Time to bail out yet another failing agency which apparently never saw this revolution in communication coming, was never able to compete in the market without monopoly powers granted by government and has overspent and overpromised even as it watched it’s market share continually shrink.
Maybe it is time to, horror of horrors, consider privatizing this service? Actually, that’s something that should have been done years ago. But watch … we’ll still have this government run anachronism around our fiscal necks when your grandchildren are adults.
Beautiful art is not just for cultural enrichment but is an important way to experience God and become aware of the human thirst for the infinite, Pope Benedict XVI has said.
I Get My News Direct From The Seat Of Oxford County, And You Should Too: Read The Rumford Meteor
Global Frauding works like a huge criminal racket, and it should be subject to criminal prosecution, like Bernie Madoff. No wonder George Soros keeps funding the left out of the goodness of his heart. For him it has to be a big profit center. According to Center for Media Research, Soros has spent 48 million dollars funding media. Similar amounts of Soros money are funding all the usual fronts for the radical left, from Moveon.org to The Nation. This is going on while the major media like the New York Times are staggering toward bankruptcy. Soros and friends are buying influence on a huge scale.
His transformation into a Messiah of Hate is timely in the worst possible way. A politician's mask shouldn't start coming off during a campaign. Let alone before it. But the unctuous smile is sliding off and what's underneath it is the entitled anger of a man who is always used to getting his way. And who has yet to understand that for the first time in his life, he's about to lose.
Obama is still suffering from the Speech Illusion, the idea that he can come down from the mountain, read from a Teleprompter, cast a magic spell with his words and climb back up the mountain, while we scurry around and do what he proclaimed.
The days of spinning illusions in a Greek temple in a football stadium are done. The One is dancing on the edge of one term.
They are OK, but I think they would be better if they got out from under the thumb of government and unions and let entrepreneurial schools flourish. Educational monopoly is not a good thing.
Having watched the Left preach all my life, to say they lack zealotry is to ignore the truth. In summary, liberals realize Obama looks hopeless right now and are greeting this news with a great sense of ennui. They should cheer up. In 2013, they get to be the screaming yahoos and unlike the Tea Party, the Left will be embraced by ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, MSNBC and CNN, as dissent becomes patriotic again.
Liberal critics of Obama, just like conservative critics of Republican presidents, generally want both maximal partisan conflict and maximal legislative achievement. In the real world, those two things are often at odds. Hence the allure of magical thinking.
The misdiagnosis of widespread market failure led congressional leaders, after the 2008 election, to propose radical changes in financial institutions and, more generally, much wider regulation and government control of companies and consumer behavior. They proposed higher taxes on upper-income families and businesses, and extensive controls over executive pay, as they bashed "billionaire" businessmen with private planes and expensive lifestyles. These political leaders wanted to reformulate antitrust policies away from efficiency, slow the movement by the U.S. toward freer trade, add many additional regulations in the medical-care sector, levy big taxes on energy emissions, and cut opportunities to drill for oil and other fossil fuels.
That was "Let no crisis go to waste" to advance the Leftist, statist cause
As the President's approval numbers go down, the manic production of new regulations rises to a fever pitch in case the liberal last chance is afoot. According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, 3,752 new rules were created last year and there are 4,225 new ones in some stage of preparedness.
These rules vary from the absurd, such as regulating that dolls of 3 different races must be represented in day care centers to far more substantive power grabs. The list of aggressively abusive implementations of a "social justice" agenda is very long and growing fast.
They think that the O will not be re-elected. Last chance to control every little detail of our lives and businesses.
Me? I'm a believer because... well because I've really got Nothing Better to do. That's because measuring myself against even the smallest, most finite, and bounded idea of God I can conceive I'm about gnat size in relation to that. I wish others saw it that way, but among the smart monkeys most of us think of ourselves as some sort of gigantic intellect -- at least in comparison to, say, a clam. Those who are long on stupidity are always short on humility.
America is more than just her president or her federal government. Liberals do not see that. They see government in every facet of life and thus politics everywhere. They cannot see a nation where people do not care about Washington. If people did care about Washington, then the Tea Party would be twice as large and twice as angry. But Americans are a tolerant people whose patience stems from the knowledge that this too shall pass. Barack Obama caved because a president is not omnipotent. He thought he was when he controlled Congress. He no longer does. It is no fun any more being president. He caved because he no longer wants to be president. Expect more, not less, of this stuff over the next year as the man who once smiled becomes a frowning, scornful and mocked man. The beauty of the American system is that, so far, it is bigger than any one man and it can — and will — correct itself.
The modern liberal is wedded to a thoroughly reactionary worldview in which he worships the institutions he controls and is full of paranoia and suspicion of those he does not. He disdains the common man and longs for enlightened leaders to uplift him and to transform his country into a messianic vision of a kingdom of heaven in which no one ever goes hungry and everyone is perfectly equalized-- a pseudo-religious vision of government as religion that is wholly primitive in its conflation of theology and civics.
One of best-kept secrets in college admissions this coming year is that many top state universities will be admitting more out-of-state applicants than they ever have.
This opens up a whole new group of schools that were formerly much more difficult to get into. We’re talking about great schools , sometimes lots more openings, and for a few campuses, slightly easier academic standards!
Re flooding and our government-subsidized flood insurance, here's what I have been hearing on the radio from upstate NY and from Vermont:
Men:Why should the taxpayer subsidize anybody for living in a flood zone, even if it's only 100-year floods? Actuaries can easily cost it out. If you live near water and not on a hill, you will inevitably get flooded. Duh. Why should your calculated risk and choice be my problem? All it does is to promote building in the wrong places - and insulate people from reality - on my nickel.
Women:These people have lost so much. It's not their fault that they lived where they could get flooded. The government has to help them out and help them rebuild their homes and their lives. It's compassionate.
Pic above via Drudge, Saturday night. Cabs are running but all public transportation is closed. The BD pupette was evacuated from her Chelsea apartment, worked all day Saturday (as usual), then joined a bunch of friends in Brooklyn Heights for a Hurricane Party and sleepover. That's the third Hurricane Party I have heard about.
Even as many families have climbed out of poverty, some families have plunged deeper into it; as I understand it, mostly those headed by women with severe mental illness, drug and alcohol problems, or personality disorders. Before, if your mother was smoking crack, she could at least still collect her welfare check. Cutting off the check after five years, or cutting benefits as some states did, didn't mean she stopped smoking crack. It just meant there was less money around the house.
Those people are unambiguously worse off since welfare reform.
Loftus added that, while there is nothing inherently wrong with a date mentioning that he attended Yale University, bringing it up every 10 minutes is probably not a good idea.
"Yale this, Yale that," Loftus said. "Any way he could work it into the conversation, he would. It was so obvious that he was clinging to his Ivy League pedigree out of insecurity, as a way of making himself look like an intelligent man of substance. It really just made him look like a dick."
Maybe the Swiss never heard of playing doctor. Pedophiles with be grateful for this effort to overstimulate the kiddies. In fact, it comes pretty close to pedophilia. How would it be if your neighbor played with your little daughter's sex box?
Hayward’s First Axiom of Environmental Energy holds that there is no source of energy—“clean” or otherwise—that environmentalists won’t oppose if it becomes cheap, practical, and scalable. So for example the left once favored nuclear power...
From the Hill on Friday: “Al Gore on Friday bashed the notion that climate scientists are manipulating data for financial gain, a charge levied by global warming skeptics, including GOP White House hopeful Rick Perry.”
From the Telegraph on November 3, 2009: “Al Gore, the former US vice president, could become the world’s first carbon billionaire after investing heavily in green energy companies. Last year Mr Gore’s venture capital firm loaned a small California firm $75m to develop energy-saving technology. The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient. The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, the New York Times reports. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts.”
Klavan with three quick tips for would-be pundits. Rule 2 is the best:
The old FDR way of offering progressive government as the antidote to free market recklessness no longer works. It no longer comforts anyone or makes them feel secure. There is a long history of government recklessness that makes it impossible for more than a limited portion of the population to be that naive again.
The public is more accepting of government intervention today than it was then, but it is also more distrustful of it. And that distrust easily comes to the surface in a time of crisis which is why the movement to hold government accountable is gathering steam.
The Great Depression paved the way for a change in the relationship between the public and the government. And the Ought Depression may be doing the same thing. But while the New Deal made it a close relationship, the political wars of the last two years are leading instead to a breakup between the public and the government.
Progressive government has not only failed to avert several economic crises, it has also completely mismanaged the social safety net and become so hideously expensive that it can no longer be kept up. Those are all dangerously compelling answers and the left has come up with no response to them except to throw out conspiracy theories and cry racism. Such intellectual desperation reminiscent of a dictator ranting hysterically on a televised broadcast as the noose tightens around his regime.
The prospects for Irene in the northeast change by the hour. Last night, she was downgraded but now it's just confusing. However, if she does hit New England hard, don't be surprised if Maggie's is down for a while. As of now, predictions are just "rain and wind" on Sunday, warm and sunny Monday. (That's obviously an old toon from the files)
Pull in your lawn chairs and stuff. Prepare for loss of power. Beer, charcoal, batteries, beer, candles, booze, gas, beer, etc.
Bungee cords. Forceps. A large sheet of vinyl. Thirty feet of 1/2" clear tubing. A dead rabbit, two pairs of black pantyhose, a quart of corn oil, a large pumpkin, and a fully charged cordless drill with a size-variety of wood boring bits.
You will need these things. Survival is the word. And, undetectable perversion in early natural darkness. Those are also. Some words.
Business Regulation vs. Growth: The View from Middle America - It has become clear that the Sarbanes-Oxley Act has been a real deterrent to companies that would like to go public.
Zuckerman: Obama and the 'Competency Crisis' - Like many Americans who supported him, I long for a triple-A president to run a triple-A country.
Excuse me, Mort, but a prez does not "run a country" - not in the USA anyway. And your "longing" is immature.
There’s a major difference, though, between New York and the country as a whole. The New York option—move somewhere else—doesn’t apply to private-sector middle-class workers fighting adverse conditions that exist throughout America. So they’ve exercised the classic democratic right of political action, organizing themselves to compete in elections. The Tea Party is the national voice of the private-sector middle class—despite the demonizations heaped upon it by public-policy elites whose own judgment and competence leave much to be desired.
I doubt that the world "needs" more people, but I do think it needs more millionaires and billionaires because they buy stuff and invest in new enterprises.
Texas governor Rick Perry is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination now, at least in the national polls. Undoubtedly that’s the main reason so many East Coast pundits and Beltway wags are making fun of him. He likes guns! He’s from Texas! He talks funny! He’s a — gird yourself now — Christian! New York magazine and others mock his harmless, Bush-like pronunciation of nuclear (“nuke-ular”). They’re scandalized that he doesn’t go to a golf course to relax, but a shooting range. It’s already a cliché among liberals to describe him as the sort of cartoonish, ignorant cowboy ...
Mr. Hinderaker finally gets to 
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Photo: The USS New York, built with WTC steel, arrives in NYC on Thursday
Image via 
Erickson: Sunday Reflection: 
The really good news - I've scavenged a lot of free firewood from the so-called storm. (It was a ton of rain and a stiff gusty breeze.)
The prospects for Irene in the northeast change by the hour. Last night, she was downgraded but now it's just confusing. However, if she does hit New England hard, don't be surprised if Maggie's is down for a while. As of now, predictions are just "rain and wind" on Sunday, warm and sunny Monday. (That's obviously an old toon from the files)