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.
Since it's a topic I have posted about a couple of times in the past, I'd like to highlight it. A quote:
It makes one think: If the lawyers are designing the health-care system, shouldn’t they be forced to operate under regulations similar to those they’re imposing? How, for example, do lawyers get paid? Today, they negotiate fees with clients. That hardly seems fair. In health care, doctors don’t negotiate fees with patients, they get paid according to an opaque schedule determined by health plans. Lawyers should do the same. The solution is “legal insurance”. After all, who amongst us knows when we’ll need a lawyer? It is often an unpredictable expense, and yet the “market” seems to have failed to provide such insurance. Government must intervene.
I have been an American all of my life, and I still cannot figure out whether Americans want freedom or freebies. Probably both, but that does not work.
This is a story of brazen administration action of dubious legality undertaken with transparently corrupt purposes. Yet it has received amazingly little coverage. You might almost think we lacked a free press or something.
He is like a pro with Photoshop. As readers can tell from my snapshots, I have never used that program. I have neither the time nor the interest. What I snap is what I get. Were I an artist, I would paint pictures.
These things have all of these buttons and menus. Who wants to bother with that? OK, call me a luddite.
A group of students at the University of California, San Diego, claim exclusive rights to wear clown costumes, and accuse anyone else wearing one to be clownaphobic. Ridiculous, right?
Then, keep reading.
After the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine at UCSD lost the vote in the student government for divestment from Israel, they have turned to baseless and in this case utterly absurd attacks upon anti-divestment members of the campus.
First they made up charges against a music professor that he’d intimidated a student, which the official UCSD Office of Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination investigated, clearing the professor.
Now, beclowning themselves, SJP member Noor El-Annan and cohorts accuse a campus-wide elected member of the student government, Ashton Cohen, who voted against divestment, of being Islamaphobic, denigrating Moslems, and being culturally insensitive. The pretext: the student Senator wore an Arabic costume at a costume party.
The student is a Persian Jew, with Moslem family members. He bought the outfit in Dubai, and wore it there for comfort when it was very hot. On that same trip, as a guest of the Indian government along with other US student government leaders, he’d also bought Indian garb, but it was at his family’s house in L.A. If he’d worn that Indian garb, would he be Indianaphobic? Ridiculous.
At the costume party a photo was taken of him, along with three female friends, two of whom are Moslem. One of the females posted the photo with a humorous subtitle, “three wives?” That’s what the pro-Palestinian fanatics call an insult to Moslem polygamy practices. Would they have preferred photos of clitorectomies, which is also a common Moslem practice?
I spoke with Rep. Todd Akin on Thursday night and here is his response to this smear by President Obama.
“He’s good at personal attacks but bad at attacking problems. He uses the same solution on every problem – that is more government and more and more and more debt. Obamacare has taken over one-sixth of the economy and the government has pushed private lenders out of student loans. Now they’re creating the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac of student loans. And as the government takes it over, more and more debt is created. The reason Obama is upset about use of the word socialism is because his administration is asserting the government into what was once private sector areas. The reason Obama is attacking me is that I don’t have the same faith in big government as he does.”
They should be protesting the federal debt they are facing, instead of the debt they freely took upon themselves in an effort to improve their prospects in life. Apparently higher education does not instill emotional maturity.
I am asked to do a brief post about Disability and have been sent a couple of links. "Disability," as in our Social Security Disability welfare program, is one about which I have unpleasant feelings which some might view as cruel. I prefer to view it as Tough Love.
However, it comes from experience. The fact is that I will not consult with anybody on Disability, nor will I participate in anybody's Disability application unless they are in a coma, severely brain-damaged, or the like. Can people with (treated) schizophrenia work, be useful, and maintain some dignity? Of course they can. Every patient of mine with schizophrenia works, except for one housewife.
Here are my reasons for that, from a psychiatric standpoint:
1. Nobody with a treated mental problem is incapable of doing something useful 2. Helping a patient obtain Disability is a way of saying that you have given up on their future 3. Many people on Disability give up on making a life, and just mope around for years 4. I see people with severe disabilities working all sorts of jobs, maintaining their pride and independence 5. The scam component is huge, I believe: free money. I've seen it plenty of times. I even get spam emails weekly inviting me to fill out a form for Disability lawyers: "Find out if you're entitled." Also, lots of people with Disability seem to work off the books.
Few people have any idea of how easy it is to get on Disability these days. Here is one of the links: Workers Comp. and Unemployment
Well, the answer seems obvious to me. Liberal Fascism. The authoritarian, or totalitarian, streak in the Left has always been there, and always will be.
From Prof. Johnson's piece:
What will it take for wider outrage to emerge? We've already had a case of an innocent student (Caleb Warner) expelled from school under the preponderance-of-evidence standard, as the AP article mentioned. But to my knowledge no congressional Democrats or liberal columnists commented on the Warner case. And so, I suppose, we'll continue to wait, and be told that issues of campus due process and civil liberties haven't popped up in recent years.
NY Times Public Editor: The Times' Coverage of Obama Has Been More Favorable Than Any Recent President; It's Time For A Skeptical Look At Obama and His Record
Joel Kotkin: The Great California Exodus - A leading U.S. demographer and 'Truman Democrat' talks about what is driving the middle class out of the Golden State:
... the Golden State's fastest-growing entity is government and its biggest product is red tape. The first thing that comes to many American minds when you mention California isn't Hollywood or tanned girls on a beach, but Greece. Many progressives in California take that as a compliment since Greeks are ostensibly happier. But as Mr. Kotkin notes, Californians are increasingly pursuing happiness elsewhere.
Nearly four million more people have left the Golden State in the last two decades than have come from other states. This is a sharp reversal from the 1980s, when 100,000 more Americans were settling in California each year than were leaving. According to Mr. Kotkin, most of those leaving are between the ages of 5 and 14 or 34 to 45. In other words, young families.
Are we allowed to make them clean their rooms? How about mowing the lawn? My kids have split wood, stacked wood, mowed fields, cleared brush, cleaned the bathroom.
I’ve never had the pleasure of having a black person as a best friend, or anything beyond a casual acquaintance. I’ve never dated a black woman, nor have I ever asked one out. I grew up in the ’50s and ’60s in an all-white suburb of Chicago. I went to an all-white Catholic boys high school and a nearly all-white private college.
I’ve never lived in a town that is more than 10% black, nor have I ever lived in a city run by blacks. I’ve never had a black next-door neighbor, nor have I lived in a neighborhood where blacks were more than a scattered presence. I have never had occasion to visit an all-black neighborhood or attend an event where a majority of the crowd is black. And I’ve never been approached by a black man while walking down a dark street at night, wondering if I should cross the street or not.
I suppose this makes me sheltered, naive, even ignorant of the way the world works and the how the racial divide colors our attitudes in our everyday lives. Frankly, I don’t care.
When you strip out all of the excessive and grandiose rhetoric, what the president is attempting to argue in these speeches is that the keys to higher economic growth in the United States are higher marginal tax rates on the successful, no reforms to entitlement programs, and more government spending on selected “investments.” To say that this is a pathetic plan for growth would be to give it too much credit.
Arab Spring 3.0 What’s more revolutionary in the Middle East: Facebook or porn?
"The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.
That's a big deal. He's the guy who thought up the Gaia Hypothesis, or religion, or whatever. Humility can arrive at any age.
As Jim Manzi argues in his new book “Uncontrolled,” we can’t predict what this new work world will look like. It will be invented through trial and error.
What we can be sure of is that creating your own career will produce a stronger sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. Young people who do so won’t hate their work the way those autoworkers hated those assembly line jobs.
Mitt Romney branded Barack Obama’s economic policies “European” in his speech last Tuesday after Rick Santorum’s withdrawal from the Republican primaries. As a British citizen living in Italy, it was music to my ears to discover that “European” has at last become an all-purpose term of abuse, at least in America, for a good reason...
The 20 Best Small Towns in America - From the Berkshires to the Cascades, we've crunched the numbers and pulled a list some of the most interesting spots around the country
"...Matthews is right: Romney will be at a huge disadvantage this year, running as he is against one of the warmest, most approachable, just-us-folks politicians that has ever graced our public life."
A shout-out to two of our internet friends, 
A photo nut pal loves this new one he's been using: 
Bob Dylan
, by Peter Atkins and 
, by Paul Feyerabend
Miracles Do Happen: 
College students protest debt on "Trillion Dollar Day"
That pic of a Texas tan-line is going around
Toon 
Kobe beef is a scam
Image: Via