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.
Why do we find more moral gratification in having good intentions than in producing good outcomes? Why do we accept mere symbols of being good—the Facebook photo with the orphan, the public diplomatic démarche, the battleship steaming toward the Oppressor—as evidence of good outcomes, or even as good outcomes in themselves?
It's called "moral narcissism" but some would term it "moral imperialism" or "cultural imperialism." Kipling had the last word on that topic.
Scotland has passed and is beginning to implement a law which assigns every child in Scotland from birth to age eighteen a “named person,” selected by the government, whose job it is to “promote, support, or safeguard the wellbeing” of the child. Parents will not have a choice about whether or not to accept the assignment of an outside government busybody to their children. Some proponents of the law claim that “Families are not required to accept advice” from the named person.
Pardon me if I consider that to be patently disingenuous...
When I read this, I wish he were back in the government. A quote:
If you look at the entire radar screen of things developing both domestically and internationally, we are plunging deep into a perfect storm of policy failure. The American Imperium is collapsing. There is blowback everywhere. The wreckage of prior policy mistakes from our interventionist foreign policy is coming home to roost. The Ukraine is one area at ground zero for that.
But second, monetary central planning is now reaching a dead-end. It is inflating the third financial bubble of the century and the Fed is now clueless as to how it will manage to unwind the massive balance sheet expansion it has been undertaking.
And third, the fiscal doomsday machine continues to crank on. Washington is ignoring the fact that we are six years into a business cycle expansion and we are still running massive deficits and there is no cushion for the next upset that comes to the economy.
I don’t remember what the “Occupy” movement was about. I remember being really mad about stuff, and others being mad at the same thing, I just can’t remember what it was. I went to a few rallies, yelled at things with a megaphone, became a Marxist for a few weeks, and I threw a brick through the windshield of a PT Cruiser, but for the life of me I can’t remember why. It just made so much sense at the time. Something about numbers, there were definitely numbers involved. I might be off here, but I believe 1% of the population currently owns 99% of the nation’s wealth, and 99% of the population only owns like 12% of the nation’s wealth. Which is much too low. Or too high. I don’t know. Anyways, the semantics aren’t important – I’m mad, and I want things to change, immediately. And my straw fell into the juice box, and now I’m thirsty.
Thank God for the government, saving our children from demonic cupcakes
Beyond ‘Beyond Stagnation’- Dissent’s symposium shows the limits of the Left’s thinking about our economic problems:
“Beyond stagnation” is indeed where we, Right and Left alike, want to be. Conservatives can try to educate the Left and those who are attracted by its policies and rhetoric, and we can try to defeat them in the political sphere, which is of course necessary — but it is not sufficient. As a matter of political reality, we are at some point simply going to have to understand why a not-unsubstantial part of the electorate finds the Left’s policies attractive; as I have argued at some length, the conventional, popular conservative explanation — that the Left appeals to the lazy, the juvenile, and the unambitious — is at the very least incomplete, if not flatly wrong. Conservatives’ more thorough rooting in the dismal facts of supply and demand, scarcity, and tradeoffs may give us an intellectual head start, which would be much more exciting if this were a race. But it isn’t a race at all — it is a journey that all of us are going to have to take together.
Caring
for Ebola Patients Deeply Scary For Health Care Workers - See more at:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/02/caring-for-ebola-patients-deeply-scary.html#sthash.DfwkQFJ1.dpuf
The last thing in the world that Hamas wants is peace - except for long enough to re-load and to repair their attack tunnels. Netanyahu to US: Don't second guess me on Hamas. This is not America's fight, so I would just leave it alone.
Golda Meir's famous quote: "We will have peace when Palestinians love their children more than they want to kill Jews."
Does anyone wonder why no other Arab states will accept Pali immigrants or refugees? They don't trust them and don't want any of them - not one. I'm sure many of them are fine people, but their reputation is terrible as a group. During all these years, Pali governments could have built a mirror Israel next door but instead of working for their population, they just want to kill Jews. They have had their chance to be civilized, prosperous, and happy.
The findings suggest, in fact, that relatively wet periods like the 20th century have been the exception rather than the rule in California for at least the last 3,500 years, and that mega-droughts are likely to recur.
Evil exists because human beings exist. No other living thing, and no inanimate object, is capable of being, thinking, feeling evil or of committing evil acts. Only us.
"The world" is not a wicked place. And Humanity is not a wicked thing. Evil is just one of many capabilities we possess. We have to recognize it and (if we're sane) choose not to indulge in it. That's not easy. Most of all, we shouldn't deny evil or act all surprised when it turns up. Like it or not, it's business as usual for us humans.
Fortunately, it's not the WHOLE business. We can do better...
Is there any reason for NATO to exist now? I don't think so, but typically organizations, once born, find reasons to rationalize their immortality. Just like government programs.
Europe is not part of the US. They are old enough to put on big boy pants. Russia is not scary, just corrupt, obnoxious, and untrustworthy. It's their culture.
Similar to Mark Twain's "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still trying to get its pants on."
A taxicab's day - This visualization displays the data for one random NYC yellow taxi on a single day in 2013. See where it operated, how much money it made, and how busy it was over 24 hours.
There is no new math, or old math for that matter. No matter how many other approaches other people try, how much mewling is transcribed on the Internet about socialization, or how many tennis balls you put on the bottoms of the legs of your kindergarten chairs, it's all wrong and it doesn't work. Like a volume knob that makes the radio louder when you turn it clockwise, and diminishes the sound when it's turned counter-clockwise until it clicks off, the design was perfect on the first attempt and cannot be improved. Every variation after that will be worse. People who want to break new ground without doing anything constructive will change the way that knob operates to become notable for the novelty, but it's always worse.
Healthy skepticism – or realism – about the nature of politics is foreign to many advocates of government intervention. These advocates believe in miracles - and, in addition, they too often reason inconsistently about the play of incentives and the incompleteness of information across different institutional settings.
Are there any nations which have willingly voted for open borders? Or for entry from a foreign place with no passport, or for any residency without a visa?
Many pundits from across the political spectrum are advocating open borders for the US, most recently George Will.
Now with Central American, and Chinese, immigrants coming via Mexico, my question for the open borders crowd is "How many, who, and from where?" Or is there no limit and no choice to be made by Americans? I thought we ran this joint.
There are an estimated 3 billion in poverty on this planet, many living without WiFi or big-screen TVs, and I am sure a large fraction of them would welcome the opportunity to take advantage of American material abundance.
NEW ENGLAND’S BLUE-STATE BLUES - Once known for its stiff-lipped prudence, the region is now a case study in fiscal insanity:
If not for the NYC bedroom communities in Fairfield County, Connecticut would probably be as destitute as Rhode Island. The Nutmeg State has the forty-second worst tax climate and the forty-fifth worst business climate in the nation.
And what little life remains in the Connecticut economy is being squashed by its monolithically liberal lawmakers.
After Obama became a U.S. Senator, his wife, Michelle, told a reporter, “Barack is not a politician first and foremost. He’s a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change.”
But who are "the poor"? How can you "help the poor" unless you know who they are?
Some are probably mentally-disabled, some are college or grad students, some are young people starting out, some are Maine Guides, some are hippies, some are single moms in rural or urban areas, some are lazy or feckless bums or addicts, some are ambitious new immigrants (legal or otherwise), some are retirees, some have low income but have assets, many get paid off the books, some may be quite content, some are temporarily down on their luck, some are struggling artists, some are ill, etc., etc. "The poor" is not a unitary category. I used to be poor, and probably most Maggie's readers have been poor at some point in their lives.
That 92 year-old in Florida, now a WalMart greeter, had 10 million with Madoff. Poor, now.
How come nobody ever talks about who they are, and whether it's a temporary situation, or a life-style choice, or whatnot? And how come the value of government and charitable benefits are never included in figuring poverty in the USA?
From the article:
At the left-leaning think tank Demos, Matt Bruenig crunches the numbers of the Census Bureau’s 2012 social and economic supplement to its annual population survey and identifies the “officially poor” as “35 percent children, 8 percent elderly, 9 percent disabled, 8 percent student, 18 percent working, and 21 percent everyone else.” He concludes: “The adult, able-bodied, non-student poor who lack personal market income comprise 3 percent of the population.” It’s just a snapshot, but it tells us there aren’t many Americans who need the intense paternalism recommended by Ryan and others.
I doubt Ryan, a fine fellow I am sure, ever perused such data. He just wants to care but caring for others requires a discernment and art. Money is not everybody's life goal although perhaps only a noble few have the conscience to refuse free money from their neighbors.
Plain emotional "caring" doesn't deserve any moral credit, and when governments go parental they are the worst parents in the world.
Funny or Die posted a video today in support of a minimum wage increase, starring Kristin Bell. It parodied Mary Poppins, and was humorous enough, even if its economics are not well thought out.
Reason TV didn't wait for this to go viral before they provided a smackdown to both Kristin and Funny or Die:
It's doubtful Remy's exposure of the hypocrisy of Kristin's work will get as much exposure.
While Funny or Die, or Kristin Bell, may start lobbying to make other people do what they want via government diktat, it would behoove them to start living up to their own sense of moral superiority. Minimum Wage Laws are a primary reason so many teens are unemployed, as are the vast array of other restrictions preventing them from working. I held my first job at 13. Today, you can't get a job at 13 and it's just as difficult to find one at 15. Neither of my sons worked before the age of 16, not for lack of trying.
More importantly, studies have shown very few people actually 'live' on a minimum wage. Most minimum wage earners are under the age of 25 and are the second or third wage earner in a home.
What happens when automation pushes all these low wage earners out the door? I don't know. Perhaps we should ask the blacksmiths, since they all lost their jobs with the advent of the automobile. Why wasn't their union looking out for them so we could all be riding horses today? To be honest, I have a friend who is blacksmith. He does quite well for himself today, since there are few people with his skill set. Maybe Mike Rowe is on to something.
What's wrong with a little consensual bondage and sado-masochism? Or whatever? A little kink is fun, and everybody knows it. Bedroom games are good things. People are imaginative. As they used to say in Victorian days, "Just don't scare the horses."
For special kink, I will spend this weekend hunting strippers stripers off Block Island. Bleed the fish, cut a chunk out, a little wasabi, and eat the chunks raw at sea temperature with a slug of cold Pacifico. This will excite any normal girlfriend, I promise. Soy sauce interferes with the flavor imo.
If you are in the northeast USA, and not on the water this weekend, you have a bigger problem than Planned Parenthood can solve.
Absent legitimacy it's a sprint to whatever irreducible power center presents itself. As in any other no-rules fight, the violent prevail over the peaceful and the homicidal prevail over the violent. This isn't mere looting, major assets, even national assets, are in play. Mexico for example, one of the most violent countries on earth, is conquering—not merging with, conquering—the southwestern US. National borders are always under control, the only question is by whom, and events are answering that question. We forfeited this essential element of sovereignty by getting wrapped around our own prissy little axle while Mexico and its domestic enablers adapted.
The middle class is the designated prey in all this.
...this time around has been the bleating of moral illiteracy from most of Europe. No European country would countenance a neighboring territory being used as a launch pad to murder its citizens, and every single one of them would make haste to silence the source of fire, whatever it reasonably took. And yet every time Israel does the same, the post-bellicist crowd bows down to the altar of proportionality, accusing Israel of dissing that sacred principle. But would the Eurosheeple really like it any better if Israel responded to Hamas attacks with exact proportionality, by, say, deliberately targeting Palestinian kindergartens and school busses?
I'm sorry but I forget where I found that new
A Kate Bush 
Where Do 
Photo via 
Image from 
Photo: A friend's pic of a fruit dish for a baby shower 
Politicizing 
What's wrong with a little consensual bondage and sado-masochism? Or whatever? A little kink is fun, and everybody knows it. Bedroom games are good things. People are imaginative. As they used to say in Victorian days, "Just don't scare the horses."
Chemistry Lessons
One in 
Anti-GMO Activists