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.
One of these days, Romney is going to say something like “Obama just doesn’t understand how the real economy works, partly because he’s never had a job.” And the New York Times will run a front page story, quoting Al Sharpton and a bevy of psychologists, about how that is racist code. Make book on it.
The protest sign in the piece says "Koch kills democracy."
How the unassuming, philanthropic, and low-profile Kochs were selected as bogeymen of the year I do not know. They are known to be supporters of Libertarian and free market organizations so I suppose, by a certain sort of logic, the Left must always demonize defenders of freedom.
As we have noted countless times here, the Left never includes individual freedom in their political calculations (unless it's about sex). That is not an oversight; it's because We The People are viewed as the feckless masses requiring Ivy League overlords to make our decisions for us. To which we peasants say "Basta!"
Is real democracy consistent with maintaining liberty? The ancient Greeks said it wasn't. They believed that democracy was mob rule, and our Founders decided that they were correct. The modern Greeks are proving it again.
As we have also repeated claimed here, individual liberty, unlike money, really is a zero-sum game. Every drop accrued by the State is a drop taken from me whether it is meant to be "for my own good" or not. We're all here for the freedom, not for the government. The American Spirit is to be annoyed with government, and to view it as a necessary evil but limited in its powers.
Still, it seems odd to me to select a couple of wealthy Libertarians as targets.
The real legacy of Obamaism is the effort to turn the U.S. into a managed society, run by elite technocrats who are exempt from their own policies and sermons — all premised on the notion that collective unhappiness is the result of unfairness and someone else’s having more than the government-approved norm. In other words, we are supposed to be uniform and static peasants, always on the lookout for “them,” who somehow cheated to get one more pig than we have.
If David Brooks isn't being facetious here, then he's gone nuts:
I doubt Murray would agree, but we need a National Service Program. We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years. We need a program in which people from both tribes work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement.
If we could jam the tribes together, we’d have a better elite and a better mass.
Mao called it the Cultural Revolution, enforced by the Red Guard at gunpoint. It did not work out well. And what's with "mass"? I think he is calling my parents the "mass." He ought to meet them sometime. They sacrificed everything, and worked two jobs, to put us kids through U Mass (we all had jobs during school to help out) and have never had any money to spare or to save. Good habits and decency, however.
I've always been 'Green'. Not "I recycle and you should stop driving an SUV and if you don't you're evil" Green. I'm more of a constructive 'green'. In my youth I did ecological projects with the Boy Scouts, planting trees, cleaning parks, learning about nature by hiking the Appalachian Trail. I figure it's better to improve than scold, and you should start at home anyway. It's better to be concerned about how you do things and let other people worry about how they choose to live. If people want to be 'green' because they fear Carbon Dioxide, that's their choice and I'm OK with it. I don't agree with them, and I really don't appreciate when they decide their way is better and want to force me to do things their way.
My teen years were marked by two contrived events now known as "The Energy Crisis". Political situations had led to a belief that oil prices would rise forever and we'd run out of fossil fuels by 2000 (technically, we were supposed to hit Hubbert's Peak in 1979 - but Hubbert didn't count on various factors which extended his timeline). All kinds of crazy stories in the 1970's drove many to the point of hysteria. Not dissimilar to what we're being told today, except back then the world was cooling, not warming. It doesn't matter which way the temperature was going, because ecological consciousness was, and is, part of the 'correct' cultural identity. As I matured, I learned it's not just about ecology. It's about efficiency.
To the American liberal, riches are not a matter of economics, but of identity. Wealth is a moral entity, not an economic one. What distinguishes pious millionaires like Warren from the heathens who make their money the old fashioned way is that the former achieve it through the moral pursuit of the public good, which is all the more pious for taking them to a Harvard professorship or a job in government, while the latter achieve it through economic transactions in the private sector. The former is a form of public service, the latter is public exploitation.
But a closer look at the bones and carcass of this system turns those definitions on their head. It is the Warrens who are the exploiters, consuming the wealth of a nation and spawning more committees, regulations and regulatory committees to keep on feeding off the wealth. What they give to us in exchange for what they take is not a service, it is oppression masquerading as feudal protectionism.
In my view, Newt is unelectable, and not only because he comes across as an unusually unpleasant and undisciplined person. I don't know whether Mitt could win a national election, but I think the point is that he would help hold down potential losses in the House and Senate. He is not a rooted Conservative in the way that Obama is a rooted Leftist, it seems to me, and is the white bread candidate. Likeable, in my view. Not exciting, not overtly humorous, and not too quick on his feet. He'd be fine as President, I think, but not an Obama-style media celeb which seems to be what people enjoy these days, and not a Cut Government Down to Size Conservative.
Of course, holding the House and/or winning the Senate are more important than the White House, but we all tend to focus on the White House race because it's a sport, a soap opera, the Kentucky Derby. It gives us stuff to talk about.
Perhaps I am wrong. Maybe a calm, pragmatic, non-ideological CEO Mitt-type is what the country needs and wants now. However, the Conservative Repubs see, rightly or wrongly, the opportunity to crush a weak Obama and to win all the chips. Emotion can get in the way of mature, logical thinking. If Mitt wins nomination, it's because party members have voted for him in the primaries. There is no puppetmaster.
Who and where is that mystery person who can pleasantly and inspiringly articulate the Constitutional Conservative case (it ain't Sarah Palin)? Would it require a brokered convention to bring that person onto the field? That would make for some very good TV.
Otherwise, Moderate Mitt will be the party's figurehead.
You can easily tell if someone is a true environmentalist, i.e. an advocate for a healthy planet – he is one who is happy to hear the news that the arctic ice content has stabilized. He is one who celebrates when the recent climate data show the alarmist’s predictions of catastrophic warming might be wrong. The denier, if he is an eco/political activist, always denies new data that show the planet may be healthy after all. The Media usually defines deniers as those who deny the scientist’s computer model predictions. However, denying the measured climate data meets a better definition in the world of science.
Human nature and the laws of physics, not technocratic liberalism, are still the best guides to the madness around us. Money borrowed has to be paid back or the debt eaten by someone, period. Poverty is defined by a want of material necessities, not by lacking the appurtenances that someone else better off enjoys. Gas and oil are miracle fuels and it is very hard to find alternate energies at comparable costs and reliability. And as a rule, the green class of environmental elites usually uses more fossil fuels per capita than do the muscular classes who mine and drill them out of the ground — and who do not jet, drive, or live in the comparable fashion of their critics. The content of our character alone matters; those who are not so confident in their own, usually demand that their tribal affiliations be essential and not incidental to their personas. Most accept that culture, not race matters, but it matters still more not to say that. Most of the political class has no interest in history; dogma is their creed. They assume that everyone (far less noble than themselves) in the past would have agreed with them, or now can be postfacto made to agree with them.
I am not saying that it is wrong in any way to help people in need. I am not saying that people who need help are bad. I am suggesting that the specific approach that has been favored by the political progressive left and the Democrats has serious, psychologically damaging consequences that lead to never-ending dependence, passivity, and continued poverty.
I recalled a piece I wrote in this column on January 29, 2009, just after Obama took office. It was headlined: “This is the sub-prime house that Barack Obama built”. As a rising young Chicago politician in 1995, no one campaigned more actively than Mr Obama for an amendment to the US Community Reinvestment Act, legally requiring banks to lend huge sums to millions of poor, mainly black Americans, guaranteed by the two giant mortgage associations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
In case readers didn't take the time to read the WSJ opinion piece this week by prominent scientists, here it is:No Need to Panic About Global Warming -There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy.
The brief video interview with the Princeton Physics prof there is interesting too. He says they would have had many signatures if they had taken the time.
These fellows are saying what we have been saying here for years, but they have more street cred than we have. Indeed, the story of the AGW hysteria is a fascinating story of the politicization of scientific inquiry coupled with governmental and academic greed for money and power. It is a cautionary tale.
Furthermore, I think many of us would welcome a little global warming. I think it would improve the planet, overall. It certainly did so in the past. Watch, over the next year, more scientific organizations and agencies find the courage to publicize these politically-incorrect views.
At Maggie's Farm, most or all of us are Environmentalists and Conservationists. We want land and water and air to be protected. We do not even approve of urban sprawl because we may need all of our farmlands someday and, as pleasant as urban hiking can be, we need the woods too. But at the same time, we like to live in reality.
Apple's executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their U.S. counterparts that "Made in the USA" is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.
The elites who denounce poverty despise the poor. Their every high-minded, right-thinking “poverty program” proves this detestation—from the bulldozing of vibrant tenement communities to the drug law policing policies that send poor kids to prison and rich kids to rehab to the humiliation of food stamps and free school lunches to the loathsome inner-city public schools where those free lunches are slopped onto cafeteria trays.
The core institutions, ideas and expectations that shaped American life for the sixty years after the New Deal don’t work anymore. The gaps between the social system we inhabit and the one we now need are becoming so wide that we can no longer paper over them. But even as the failures of the old system become more inescapable and more damaging, our national discourse remains stuck in a bygone age. The end is here, but we can’t quite take it in.
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The blue model is breaking down so fast and so far that not even its supporters can ignore the disintegration and disaster it now presages. Liberal Democrats in states like Rhode Island and cities like Chicago are cutting pensions and benefits and laying off workers out of financial necessity rather than ideological zeal. The blue model can no longer pay its bills, and not even its friends can keep it alive.
State officials have become addicted to federal subsidies because they allow them to spend money taken from taxpayers across the country instead of having to ask their voters to pony up the funds,
“An opposition that would earn its way back to leadership must offer not just criticism of failures that anyone can see, but a positive and credible plan to make life better, particularly for those aspiring to make a better life for themselves. Republicans accept this duty, gratefully.
“The routes back to an America of promise, and to a solvent America that can pay its bills and protect its vulnerable, start in the same place. The only way up for those suffering tonight, and the only way out of the dead end of debt into which we have driven, is a private economy that begins to grow and create jobs, real jobs, at a much faster rate than today.
“Contrary to the President's constant disparagement of people in business, it's one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs - what a fitting name he had - created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew. Out here in Indiana, when a businessperson asks me what he can do for our state, I say ‘First, make money. Be successful. If you make a profit, you'll have something left to hire someone else, and some to donate to the good causes we love.’
The killings at Haditha in November 2005 were blown up by opponents of the US in Iraq into an indictment of the US and its troops. This onslaught sapped the will of many Americans. The following rules of engagement and the drawn out prosecution of the Marines involved have undermined the morale and endangered the lives of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Take the premise that at Haditha both the Marines and those who were killed in houses 1 and 2 were correct in their own view. The long term losers are both US troops and noncombatants.
Both Marines and US troops generally are at increased risk due to perhaps understandable rules of engagement that in practice are often excessive and dangerous. Noncombatants are at increased risk of oppression, or more impersonal death from US technology, in countries where thuggish foes seek domination and can serve as refuges for further attacks on the West.
Haditha was a decidedly treacherous town overrun with Al Quaeda led foes who blew up Marines in the convoy and fired on the survivors from the nearby houses. What else could the Marines do but attack and eliminate the threat from the houses? Walking in, exposing themself to harm, would have been suicidal. Those inside lived in fear of the insurgents, who had already executed the local police force, and were aware that an IED was to be exploded. What else could they do but huddle inside? Warning the Marines beforehand would have exposed themselves to extermination. Walking outside, hands up, after the attack on the Marines, may have been a good move, but they knew gunmen were nearby and they didn’t want to be in the middle of a shootout.
No questions on Iran in the CNN, ABC and NBC debates? No questions about the president's treatment of Netanyahu? No questions about the veto of Keystone XL pipeline?
No questions about Solyndra, Operation Fast and Furious," Joe Biden's serial inanities, the unconstitutional recess appointments? Gibson Guitar, Boeing, the Environmental Protection Agency's generation and cement rules?
Nothing about cutting 20,000 Marines and up to 100,000 soldiers?
Newt's ex-wife is tracked down, but we never got an interview with Bill Ayers or saw the Rashid Khalidi tape? Romney's tax returns are demanded again and again, but we never saw the president's college or law school transcripts?
Newt's display of anger -- even the over-the-top characterization of John King as despicable -- got cheering from everyone who had wanted the GOP candidates to run straight at the MSM and their deeply corrupt insularity and embedded biases.
And I just got done with all of the water well problems as well as having the chest freezer fail and losing over 300 pounds of organic pork and grass-fed beef. Throw in the divorce and 2011 has been a hell of a year.
Since the 1960s, the thrust of economic policy-making has been to smooth business cycles. Democracies crave prolonged prosperity, and economists have posed as technocrats with the tools to cure the boom-and-bust cycles of pre-World War II capitalism. It turns out that they exaggerated what they knew and could do.
As far as I can determine, the Department of Education has no track record of positive accomplishment—nothing in the national numbers on educational achievement, nothing in the improvement of educational outcomes for the disadvantaged, nothing in the advancement of educational practice. It just spends a lot of money. This brings us to the practical question: If the Department of Education disappeared from next year’s budget, would anyone notice? The only reason that anyone would notice is the money. The nation’s public schools have developed a dependence on the federal infusion of funds. As a practical matter, actually doing away with the Department of Education would involve creating block grants so that school district budgets throughout the nation wouldn’t crater.
Murray: The New American Divide - The ideal of an 'American way of life' is fading as the working class falls further away from institutions like marriage and religion and the upper class becomes more isolated. Charles Murray on what's cleaving America, and why.
It is not that the average person is not concerned about the environment. Everyone weighs the balance of economic gain against a respect for nature. It is only the truly affluent, however, who can be concerned about the environment to the exclusion of everything else...
At one time, a college degree was a virtual guarantor of secure, well-paying employment. Now, most college grads leave school with large debts — more than $27,000 on average. A college degree also no longer signifies that the recipient is either well-educated in the traditional sense or that he has acquired specific skills suited to the labor market.
What race is Obama? Black or Caucasion or Middle-Eastern? What race am I? If the one-drop rule applies, I am Native American. And since when is "Hispanic" a race? Are people from Spain "Hispanic"? Are European Cubans Hispanic? Are Central American Indians Hispanic? Or Indians? Are black Cubans Hispanic? So confusing. And I haven't even gotten to the Irish: definitely a race - and a race with a history of cruel discrimination in the US for which generous compensation is due (my kids are 1/4 Irish and would welcome a check).
The average Californian, like the average Greek, forgot that civilization is fragile. Its continuance requires respect for the law, tough-minded education, collective thrift, private investment, individual self-reliance, and common codes of behavior and civility -- and exempts no one from those rules. Such knowledge and patterns of civilized behavior, slowly accrued over centuries, can be lost in a single generation.
Can We Spare Newt Gingrich? He Fights. (Video Added)
The Obamacare issues of Medicaid coercion and the individual mandate are twins. They confront the court with the same challenge, that of enunciating judicially enforceable limiting principles. If there is no outer limit on Congress’s power to regulate behavior in the name of regulating interstate commerce, then the Framers’ design of a limited federal government is nullified. And if there is no outer limit on the capacity of this government to coerce the states, then federalism, which is integral to the Framers’ design, becomes evanescent.
The protest sign 
The Great Texas Pig War of 1841
Spike Lee: The New Bill Cosby?
Old ad via
Image on right via 
The US has 55,000 miles of oil pipelines already. Who would object to a beer pipeline from Canada? 
Life in the country: 
America is drunk