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.
In World War II, the United States did not have clear postwar goals for Eastern Europe. The brunt of this meant Eastern Europe suffered as Soviet satellites for almost half a century. The illusion of President Roosevelt about Stalin bears substantial responsibility.
The US held a moral stance toward eliminating Germany’s Nazi leadership and German rule over Europe. But, aside from desires, the US placed its eggs in the basket of a better postwar relationship with Stalin, rather than the freedom of Eastern Europe.
During the war, President Roosevelt had to deal with Churchill, who had a closer and clearer appreciation of the impact in Central and Eastern Europe of potential Soviet domination. But Roosevelt largely overrode Churchill. Roosevelt chose to deal with the paranoia of Stalin that (like Stalin had in 1939) the US and England would strike a deal with Germany short of its utter defeat. To the very end of his life, Roosevelt vainly believed, with vanity, that accommodating Stalin would yield trust and improved post-war relations. The fate of other peoples was secondary.
An illustration of Roosevelt’s haphazard policy making occurred at the Casablanca Conference in January 1943.
“THERE IS NO MEANS OF AVOIDING THE FINAL COLLAPSE OF A BOOM BROUGHT ABOUT BY CREDIT EXPANSION. THE ALTERNATIVE IS ONLY WHETHER THE CRISIS SHOULD COME SOONER AS A RESULT OF A VOLUNTARY ABANDONMENT OF FURTHER CREDIT EXPANSION, OR LATER AS A FINAL OR TOTAL CATASTROPHE OF THE CURRENCY SYSTEM INVOLVED”
His problem is likeability and general unattractiveness. His appeal is his cojones. Does Mitt have any cojones? If he does, he had better pull down his trousers and show them to us now.
Unlike we libertarianish people, you people actually hold and have been holding significant political power in the US over the past 50 years. What have you done with this power? You’ve greased the corporatist machine every chance you’ve gotten. You’ve made things worse, not better. Our current problems are your fault. You need to stop.
The guy is a hopeless, spineless putz and an embarassment to Anglicans everywhere. I repeat: How many times did Christ say that he was not there for political purposes, despite the Jews' hoping that he would be a secular messiah?
One must be very careful and calculating about taking on debt, whether for school or anything else. I have seen many lives crushed by unnecessary debt.
"Capitalism" isn't a theory. It's just what people do when they are left alone to do what comes naturally - like sex. Rush was hilarious on the topic yesterday, pointing out to the Prez that capitalist enterprise made his suits, his million-dollar buses, his bulletproof limos, his Blackberry, his airplanes, his vacation houses, his Wall St campaign funds, etc etc.
So Europe’s 60 or 70 year history with socialism is about to end in violent upheavals and misery… and here’s this ignoramus saying that it’s capitalism which is the proven failure.
Free markets have booms and busts. Socialism only has chronic busts.
While my cousins received free cradle-to-grave government handouts, they paid a devastating price for their dependency. They lost themselves -- their self-esteem, pride, and dignity. They lost the joy of success after failure. They lost the pursuit of their dreams. They lost the experience of developing their God-given gifts and talents. For perceived security, my cousins willingly remained slaves on the Democrats' government plantation.
"If a mad scientist were to repair to his laboratory to design a machine that would make white liberals uncomfortable, that machine would be Thomas Sowell":
Now 81 years old, Sowell is known as a libertarian-leaning conservative, which he is, and he has a thriving sideline in debunking racial platitudes. But he is first an economist, which means he is first an observer and reporter of facts, and if those facts take him to uncomfortable places, so be it. No, the prevalence of black men in the NBA doesn’t mean that the NBA is racist, it means that reality is racist. Yes, Barack Obama and congressional Democrats really do practice the same kind of ethnic politics that resulted in the Rwandan genocide and the Sri Lankan civil war, even if they do not practice them to the same extent. Yes, affirmative action is naked racism. No, rent-control laws don’t control rent. No, gun-control laws don’t control guns. No, standardized exams are not culturally biased—but, yes, life is culturally biased.
Because he is black, his opinions about race are controversial. If he were white, they probably would be unpublishable
Does a math professor at California State University, Northridge, have the right to use the university’s web server, the url being the university’s, to post a hate page against Israel and Jews?
The webpage says, “Israel is the most racist state in the world at this time,” Israel engages in “ethnic cleansing”, says “No” to the question “But aren't Palestinians equally responsible for the violence?”, posts links to other similar charges from the usual assortment of Israel-haters, and calls for a boycott of Israel.
According to the California State University’s legal counsel, “The California State University is committed to protect against the misuse of its name.” He continues on “Misuse of the CSU name”, "It is inappropriate to use the CSU name without the written permission of the institution for any purpose, including:…Advertising any meeting or activity that has the purpose of supporting or opposing any strike, lockout, boycott, or political, religious, sociological or economic activity…"
Yet, according to the Cal State Northridge president, retiring this month, a review of the professor’s webpage, spurred by many letters of complaint, “raised many difficult issues, it found no such violations.
From a Brit friend I chatted with: "That's one difference between you Yanks and the Europeans. You Yanks truly view government employees - cops, politicians, bureaucrats - as your servants, as your employees. In Europe, we don't see it that way. Different traditions."
The paradox is that the welfare state, designed to improve security and dampen social conflict, now looms as an engine for insecurity, conflict and disappointment. Facing the hard questions of finding a sustainable balance between individual protections and better economic growth, the Europeans have spent years dawdling. The parallel with our situation is all too obvious.
Politicians in New Zealand are wedded to the idea of the activist state, but despite huge spending increases life is not much better for most people. Over the last decade, government has provided more social services but at such great cost that we have to question whether the marginal improvements in social outcomes justify the cost, whether there are other ways to bring about the same results, and whether such spending is fiscally responsible in the long term.
70% of the Forbes elite are self-made billionaires. Those entrepreneurial successes include not just the names behind Facebook, Google, Apple and Starbucks but also EBay (Meg Whitman, Pierre Omidyar), Yahoo (Jerry Yang), Nike (Phil Knight), AOL (Steve Case), Amazon (Jeff Bezos), Subway sandwiches (Peter Buck, Fred DeLuca), "Star Wars" (George Lucas) and even Beanie Babies (Ty Warner). Does anyone doubt that these members of the reviled 1% have enriched the country in significant ways?
Even more to the point is that all of these club-400 elites were once just like "us."
China's Hard Landing - The state-led growth model is leading the country into trouble:
China is a poster child for the Austrian school of economics' theory of the business cycle. After undertaking the biggest stimulus program the world has ever seen in response to the global financial crisis, the country is drowning in unproductive investments financed with credit.
... in the same summary the IPCC says “Projected changes in climate extremes under different emissions scenarios generally do not strongly diverge in the coming two to three decades, but these signals are relatively small compared to natural climate variability over this time frame. Even the sign (higher or lower) of projected changes in some climate extremes over this time frame is uncertain.” They are saying that up to the year 2040 the climate changes from the emissions of carbon dioxide will be so small as to be virtually undetectable from natural climate variability. This also strongly implies that any effects from global warming on extreme weather now are so small, compared with natural variability, that they are undetectable. This IPCC statement also leads to the conclusion that any claims that global warming is causing noticeable extreme weather events today is false. However, after 2040 the effects of global warming will then overwhelm nature and extreme events will be increasing due to carbon dioxide emissions. It appears the IPCC is worried about the lack of recent warming and is pushing the climate calamity farther into the future. To the general public this must send a very confusing mixed message.
Newt is right, of course. The very poor need to learn work habits as early as possible, and perhaps more so than middle class kids, who tend to be surrounded by adults who have successful work and marital habits (Newt doesn't mention the marital habits, of course)
"America's growing IQ stratification, and the resulting class war that the clever are waging upon the clueless, is one of the great unmentionables." The subsequent subprime disaster exemplified this.
The Democratic Party has been hijacked by the grifters, con men, and hustlers who should be behind bars rather than behind the Justice Department, the EPA, the National Labor Relations Board, or countless other useless, worthless agencies which serve no purpose and have long overstayed their usefulness.
Leading this pack of these charlatans is its leader, Barack Hussein Obama aka Barry Soetero. If Obama is not the killer of American greatness, he is most certainly its weapon of choice.
Ouch. I think plenty of Dems are beginning to realize this now.
I know it's been said by many people many times, but I'll say it again: Sometimes, cameras do not record things - they create them. Reader reminded me of the Palliwood video below, which reminded me of OWS: would those people have been there without the nightly TV cameras, and all the attention from all the people walking by taking their pictures? I doubt it.
Thus the thousands of mostly cheerful people who swarmed into Macy's on Thanksgiving weekend to enjoy giving up their hard-earned money to evil corporations were not a meaningful meme, but thirty scruffy malcontents still at Zuccotti Park got their daily TV notoriety, maintaining the deeply meaning meme. The former activity does not require the presence of cameras, the latter does and therefore is Palliwood.
Greedy for visual content, those with the cameras create the news. Then they create the narrative to go along with it. Yes, we all know this already.
Gotta love those headline writers. "Jobless Rate Falls" will be standard fare for the next week as the MSM continues its cheerleading to promote Obama's campaign. I'm not opposed to cheerleading if it makes sense. But we've heard all this before! It's a broken record.
More workers and lower unemployment are always good. But lying about their meaning is a huge problem. We don't have a hiring trend, let alone a trend meaningful enough to call for an economic recovery!
While part of the decline in the unemployment rate from 9.0 percent in October was due to people leaving the labor force, the household survey from which the jobless rate is derived also showed solid gains in employment.
In other words, about 3/4 of the drop in unemployment is from people leaving the workforce, while the long term trend since January 2011 is flat (at best). In addition, the size of the job gains are still minimal, don't represent a meaningful trend, and come as we gear up for - what? - holiday season. This is a snoozer from the MSM, but if it begins to show strength into 2012 (if we see 200,000+ jobs created in December, Jan, Feb), I'll happily eat crow. But we've seen growth of 122,000 jobs before during the recession. In fact, we've seen months of more than 200,000 several times. At what point does this story get old?
So proclaims Andy Stern in the WSJ: China's Superior Economic Model - The free-market fundamentalist economic model is being thrown onto the trash heap of history.
A centrally-controlled Communist economy? Brilliant idea, Andy. Quite a novel idea. You in charge, of course?
You just have to laugh. I remember when the left envied the Soviet economy, the Cuban economy, the Japanese economy, the West German economy, the European economy. Now, the Chinese - until it blows up.
Given the temper of our time, perhaps Cook's recent brush with oblivion was to be expected. Cook's picturesque destinations -- Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Greece -- now offer torchlit barricades and street mobs spewing "off-with-their-heads" rhetoric. It is not exactly the stuff of tourist brochures.
Henninger: Bring Back the Smoke-Filled Rooms? The campaign-finance laws have made the presidential selection process a self-destructive mess. Eliminate the limits on individual donations.
The party elders used to select their candidates. Not any more.
Personally, I've been a supporter of switching back to a gold standard, even if only temporarily, in order to impose budgetary discipline and promote economic growth.
Regardless, it was only a matter of time before Emerging Economies started to catch up. In the long run, this will benefit the United States, because at some point their workers will want to live like us, demand wages like us, and spend like us. Outsourcing will shift back to high productivity areas like the US.
In the meantime, the question becomes a relatively simple one. Would you rather see the US grow at 2% a year and the rest of the world at 1% or less, or see the US grow at 3% a year and the rest of the world grow at 5% or more? The first is the situation we've been in, recently. The second is more likely over the long haul, because as other small nations grow, they will demand more from the US.
So I reject the concept that we're "finished financially" and suggest we're at a turning point, and the direction we go is dependent on whether we make intelligent economic decisions, or continue to engage crony capitalism financed by fiat currency.
Where we go is dependent on how we choose to manage our current state. Artificially, as we are now, or by focusing on our strengths, such as creativity, marketing, and education. We are entrepreneurs at heart. The rest of the world benefits from the vision and effort the US exhibits.
The Supreme Court has ruled that there cannot be a Nativity Scene in the United States' Capital this Christmas season. This isn't for any religious reason. They simply have not been able to find Three Wise Men in the Nation's Capitol.
A search for a virgin continues.
There was no problem, however, finding enough asses to fill the stable.
I'm not a big fan of religious exhibitions in public venues. I'm not opposed to them, I'm not critical of seeing a prayer circle after a game, or a player thanking God for divine intervention. That's what the player wants to believe? Fine. My issue is really one that relates to this - if God is helping the winning team, then what's He doing for the losing team? Are they just not strong enough believers? Did they not say the right prayers or did they not make the correct sacrifices? It's not really a strong argument to say "God allowed/helped me to win" because it presumes God didn't allow or help those on the losing side.
God gives each of us abilities, and how we use them is what determines how well we do at sports, work, home life, etc. Beyond that, God doesn't intervene much, in my view. If I start using drugs and begin to play poorly on the field, did "God allow/help me to use drugs"? I don't think so.
It's a sword that cuts both ways, and in the end it's a personal decision relating to how you choose to use your God-given talents that determines whether you're a winner or loser. When you're playing for the championship against another believer, then it comes down to your mental toughness. Another God-given talent, one which can be developed and improved (just as any God-given talent can).
Those greedy 1%ers (household AGI $350,000 and up) are Hollywood and Broadway actors, rock and hip-hop stars, sports stars, popular writers, entrepreneurs, TV people, fancy restaurant owners, artists, theater impresarios, prosperous small business owners, some accountants and portfolio managers, opera stars, the CEOs of big businesses, neurosurgeons, plastic surgeons, and some other high-income medical specialists, NYT columnists, college presidents, retired politicians, law partners, real estate magnates, and a few high-level investment bankers.
Not exactly an evil bunch of people. I plan to join that crowd, at least for a while. How many people are permanently in that group? Very few, I suspect. Careers rise and fall, which is why people need to save a little of their money while making sure to fully enjoy and make good use of the rest.
...as (Keith) Richards noted about the band’s early days, “Benedictines had nothing on us. Anybody that strayed from the nest to get laid, or try to get laid, was a traitor. You were supposed to spend all your waking hours studying Jimmy Reed, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson. That was your gig. Every other moment taken away from it was a sin.”
Read it. HuffPo, working on the envy meme: U.S. Income Inequality: Top 1 Percent Take Home 24 Percent Of U.S. Income. The economic ignorance, or feigned ignorance, is astonishing. There is no set "pie:" the pie is infinitely expandable. It's is called "Growth in GDP." Wealth can be created out of thin air, out of effective, creative, and unique qualities of work and investment. The Rolling Stones, on their next final tour, do not "take" their greedy % of American income. Those old boys earn it.
Why Is Art 
Mead to college students: 
This Man Came Up With 
How to Make Beer: Our Family Discovers 
Old-timey 
Those greedy 1%ers (household AGI $350,000 and up) are Hollywood and Broadway actors, rock and hip-hop stars, sports stars, popular writers, entrepreneurs, TV people, fancy restaurant owners, artists, theater impresarios, prosperous small business owners, some accountants and portfolio managers, opera stars, the CEOs of big businesses, neurosurgeons, plastic surgeons, and some other high-income medical specialists, NYT columnists, college presidents, retired politicians, law partners, real estate magnates, and a few high-level investment bankers.