Tuesday, October 12. 2010
 Peggy Noonan gets it right this time: Revolt of the accountants (behind $ wall). A quote:
There is a real fear that government, with all its layers, its growth, its size, its imperviousness, is changing, or has changed, who we are. And that if we lose who we are, as Americans, we lose everything.
This is part of what’s driving the sense of political urgency this year, especially within precincts of the tea party.
Much of her essay is at Never Yet Melted, who comments:
The liberal elite, when faced with resistance to its agenda, invariably contemptuously labels its opponents as people afraid of change. Peggy Noonan, in one of her better columns... in the Wall Street Journal, explains that the popular revolt which is going to bury the democrat party in the next cycle of elections is fueled by perfectly legitimate fear of, and opposition to, change: change in the nature of the country’s character and culture.
Villainous also has some good commentary in A Nation of Insurors, including this:
Governments do not elect themselves. Politicians make promises and we pick and choose from the menu they present to us. Representative government, unrestricted by some limiting principle, inevitably reflects the human failings of the governed. The problem is not government, nor too many bean counters, but our own desire to insulate ourselves from risk.
Where is this leading us? I think we are in a battle for soul of this nation, with those who understand moral hazard in a pitched battle against those who don't. There is an illusory security to be found in large numbers. Somehow we feel safer in a crowd. Making society more interconnected and interdependent doesn't eliminate risk - it expands it.
From Roff at US News, The Tea Party Movement Is a Middle Class Revolt:
All across America the people derided by the likes of Sinclair Lewis as “Babbitts” are awakening. They are beginning to reassert themselves, pushing back, saying “No” for the first time in a long while. It may not last--the politicians may find a way to mollify them or they may give up and go home. Or they may change the country. Either way they are a more serious, more substantive movement--even in what the smart set patronizingly likes to point out are its inconsistencies and innocence--then what the columnists and commentators who deride them are willing to acknowledge.
The arrogance and condescension of the "smart set" particularly irks me. The "Babbitts" are the people who create the jobs, pay the taxes, raise the families at great sacrifice, build America - and contain in them a picture of what America is about. The smart set consistently underestimates - excuse me - misunderestimates - the common sense, decency, and patriotism of Americans who exist outside the Beltway.
"Babbitts" want to be left alone by the government as much as possible, and to be powerful only within their own lives. That's freedom. Every time government imposes one more law, one more demand, one more impossible-to-meet-or-to-understand regulation, people feel their autonomy slipping away.
See this: Americans' Image of "Federal Government" Mostly Negative
Sunday, October 10. 2010
Butternut squash or Acorn Squash, halved lengthwise and a wide shallow groove cut out of the meat, with butter, maple syrup, salt and pepper. Brown sugar would substitute for maple syrup. Good simple Yankee food. I think the Indians ate the same thing - without the butter. I would happily eat all of these.
If one is not being proper, a spoon works well.
Saturday, October 9. 2010
He's rich and plays in politics because his father-in-law owns the Empire State Building, and presumably supports his life style. Video at Ace. What a weenie putz.
Linda has created jobs, built a large business, and knows how the world works.
You don't approve of wrestling entertainment? Then what job-creating, profitable biz could any candidate have been in that you would approve of?
How different is wrestling from MSM news? We need more entrepreneurs in government, and fewer professional politicians who know nothing except government. Government is a parasite. Blumenthal has been on the government teat all of his life - and I assume, the teat of his in-laws. It's all ego for him because he has never done anything real in his life.
Send this smarmy, slippery, phony jerk back to his poolside in Greenwich. He'll be just fine, like his dear buddy Spitzer (they are called "the twins") in New York who I think also lives off family real estate in NYC when he isn't busy with hookers.
For true Yankees, being able to sail is a basic outdoor life skill, along with riding a horse, tennis, swimming, ice-skating, log-splitting, starting a fire, dog-training, and shooting. Every region of the country, and the world, has its basics, doesn't it?
One-design racing boats. Sailing season is winding down in the Northeast US, but for no good reason I thought it time to review a few cool boats. If you have never raced, you have no idea how complicated and tricky this game is - or how athletic it can be. Talent, knowledge, experience, and skill win consistently.
The Star (or International Star, or "Starboat"). This 22' 2-man keelboat was designed in 1910. No spinnaker: whisker pole for the jib downwind. It remains an Olympic Class and a favorite of serious racers. Plenty of professional big boat racers would be happier racing a Star, but there's not much money in it unless you are a sail salesman on the side. Not much fun for a day sail.
A new Star goes for around $50-60,000; used $16-35,000, depending on equipment, quality, and age.
Another popular racing class, and also an Olympic class. The Etchells, designed in 1965 by Connecticut's Skip Etchells. A 30' 3-4-man keelboat. You can buy a used Etchells for $15-30,000. There is almost no reason to ever buy a new fiberglass sailboat. A new suit of sails and fancy rigging can cost almost the price of the used boat, however.
The good old Lightning. I could race one of these, blindfolded. A light hand on the tiller telegraphs even subtle wind shifts. The class is nowhere near as large as it once was, but is still one of the largest one-design classes. A 19' three-man racer with a centerboard, the Lightning also doubles as an enjoyable day-sailer.
Over 300,000 Sunfish have been built since the 1950s. Ancient lateen rig. No sailboat is more fun for two people, preferably you at age 18 and a girl in a loose bikini. People do race them - one man - for fun and for serious. We used to think it was amusing to capsize a Sunfish and listen to the girl squeal when her boobs fell out of her top, but the best was when my buddy and I would go out right after a hurricane and surf the 10-15'-foot waves on a Sunfish. (How, and why, did we survive? Our parents never knew we were out there, no life jackets, etc. My Mom would have killed me. She was a serious sailor, though, in youth.)
We learned a lot about boat-handling in the process.
My final boat du Jour, the 33' J-105. Quite popular these days, as a racer and a day-sailer or cruising sailboat. Not much overhead in the cabin, however, and it's a handful for amateurs in a stiff breeze. Over 700 of them have been built. Fast boat. A pal of mine just bought a new one (around $250,000), and promised me we would sail her before he puts her away for the winter. He is getting new carbon fiber sails made. I'd like to take her for a spin in a 25 knot breeze. We'll see whether he calls me...
Friday, October 8. 2010
Mitch is repairing my favorite 16 gauge, a boxlock manufactured nearly 100 years ago by John Blanch in London and bought in marginal shape (read "affordable") in the Hamburg, PA Cabela's store.
In answer to Bird Dog's 28 ga. question, just as a 28 ga. throws a better pattern than a 20 ga., so also does a 16 ga. throw a better pattern than a 12 ga. It was not for nothing that they were called "Sweet 16s". The Sweet 16 in the picture weighs 5-1/8 pounds, and so can be carried comfortably by Yrs. Truly (an ol' guy) until the Lab has retrieved a limit!
 Whose violent words? Not the Tea Party. Not Conservatives (via Gateway).
** Obama: “They Bring a Knife…We Bring a Gun”
** Obama to His Followers: “Get in Their Faces!”
** Obama on ACORN Mobs: “I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I’m angry!”
** Obama to His Mercenary Army: “Hit Back Twice As Hard”
** Obama on the private sector: “We talk to these folks… so I know whose ass to kick.“
I have yet to hear anything close to this inciting from the evil Tea Partiers. This Tea Party sympathiser is planning to do some Right Wing violence this weekend though: I am going fishing, up around Montauk. Blood sport, and the freshest Striper sushi.
Slice of cucumber, piece of watercress, slice of wiggling Striper right out of the water, a generous slice of pickled ginger, and some wasabi. Maybe the slightest dip in the Teriyaki, and a few Coronas with lime. We'll be well-fed when we come back to the dock, and will have one filet to grill for supper plus a couple of Bluefish filets. We never keep more than one Striper. That is, of course, if we are lucky to get into fish this weekend.
Otherwise, it's the fish market. This is our final boating of the year.
Thursday, October 7. 2010
Today’s federal district court decision on a challenge to ObamaCare’s mandated purchase of medical insurance seeks to so expand federal powers as to override all personal decisions about almost anything.
The Commerce Clause in the US Constitution has been expansively interpreted to allow the federal government to classify almost anything as an “economic activity” affecting interstate commerce. There are some guideposts laid out by the Supreme Court, basically that the regulation of economic activity be necessary to implement the regulatory purpose and that it be proper, not invading constitutional state sovereignty.
A federal district judge in Michigan today decided to further expand the federal government’s regulatory authority to “economic decisions.” In the case at hand, the judge says that the ObamaCare mandate to buy insurance is legit as the decision to not buy insurance may affect others who do by possibly shifting costs to the latter. So, even if aspirin will do the job, instead of a visit to the doctor, you are shifting costs to an insurance buyer.
At law blog Volokh Conspiracy, Randy Barnett points out:
By inventing a new “economic decisions” doctrine, Judge Steeh has gone beyond the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clause doctrines established by the Supreme Court. Only the Supreme Court is authorized to expand its own interpretation of the scope of Congressional power….
If the Supreme Court ever accepts the government’s “economic decision” theory, then there is nothing it cannot mandate in the future in the name of regulating “commerce . . . among the several states.” Congress will then have the general police power that both the Constitution and the Supreme Court has always denied it.
Ilya Somin adds:
The Michigan court’s decision doesn’t bind the Virginia and Florida district courts currently considering the two biggest challenges to mandate (those brought by 21 states and the National Federation of Independent Business). Moreover, Judge Steeh’s conclusion that this case is fairly easily covered by existing Commerce Clause precedent is at odds with the Virginia judge’s earlier ruling concluding that no previous precedent covers this case. It therefore seems to me unlikely that the latter will follow the Michigan reasoning in his own eventual decision (though he could of course uphold the mandate on other grounds). And of course both this ruling and those that will be eventually issued by the other district courts are subject to review by the US courts of appeals, and ultimately the Supreme Court.
Our post a while ago about Claire's Knee had me thinking about enchantment. You may recall that the Rohmer movie was about a gentleman who became enchanted, bewitched, charmed, by a teenage girl.
Nowadays, in our pathologizing way, we might say "obsessed" instead, even though it is an entirely natural thing for men to be bewitched by women (and, until very recent history, entirely normal for young teens to marry). It doesn't necesarily take much to have this effect: a knee, the way she holds a teacup, a dimple, a sexy imperfection, the delicate way her fingers touch your hand during conversation, or the way she says "Thank you." Feminine graces do have a magic to them. Men, piggish oafs that these adorable creations are, generally lack the magical effect on women... unless they are sociopathic or narcissistic.
We now say "What a charming person" without necessarily meaning too much. Perhaps just meaning that they are pleasant, use the right fork, and do not say the f word at dinner. However, the etymologies of the word charm, like enchanted (and certainly like bewitched) have powerful origins in notions of magic spells and of being captured or controlled by something. (And, interestingly, in singing. Music can be an enchantment, can't it?).
The things that these words describe have remarkable powers for good, and for destruction. Like drugs.
Editor's addendum: Some may recall that the three bat brothers in Pogo were named Bewitched, Bothered, and Bemildred. Always cracked me up, because my Godmother was named Mildred. She was from Tallahassee, dramatic in her graciousness and warmth, and always wore big, high-fashion hats. Would not go out without a hat. An enchanting lady who held my Godfather in her spell until he died.
Tuesday, October 5. 2010
Just catching up on my email and received this from my friend Captain Wayne Beardsley - a short video from his recent trip to the Burgundy region of France along the Seille River.
These are self- captained barge style boats that are easy to navigate and control having 40 hp engines and bow thrusters to aid in positioning while docking or using the river locks. They aren't hard to control at all as they have a really slow hull speed at 4-5 knots (about 5 mph +/- 1) and hydraulic steering makes it all a breeze. The other boat in the video is one from the same company heading back up river.
The company who rents these boats is called Le Boat (what else would they call it?). The boat they rented was the Tango model.
One of the interesting comments Captain Beardsley mentioned was the river lock system. Apparently there are three styles of locks - fully manual/self operated; unattended automatic locks; and the more typical operated by a lock keeper.
I found the description of the automatic locks really interesting. "The way it works is a blue pole is suspended over the water from an overhead cable. If the lock is closed with a red signal light, the procedure is to approach the pole slowly and for someone on the boat to give the pole a half twist activating a switch causing the lower gate to close, and the lock to start a refill cycle. Meanwhile the light signal turns to both red and green with a flashing strobe. After the lock fills, the upper gate opens, the signal light turns green, and all of the boats enter that can fit in. When everyone has their lines secure, someone activates another blue pole along the side of the lock which closes the upper gate and starts the lowering sequence."
Wayne said that the manual/self-operated locks took a little getting used to. While they operated all the same way, the instructions written in French were a tad "terse" as he put it. He went through this type of lock with a couple of more experienced boats to get the procedure down then off they went on their own.
It sounds like a great trip as there were a lot of medieval towns along the route and, as Wayne put it, great food and great wine.
They finished off the trip in Monaco at the Monaco Boat Show which, just from looking at the exhibitors on the show site, must have been something to see. Use the search, select the brokers and charters selection under the activity sector tab and check out some of the boats.
 The rather common American Kestrel - I still call them Sparrow Hawks - is our smallest raptor (size of an American Robin) and, when seen in the right light, our most colorful.
They are falcons, prey on insects, especially grasshoppers, small mammals, and small birds. Occasionally they can be seen in fields hunting from a hover but, more commonly, perched on the wires or branches from which they pounce.
Because of their preference for open spaces, their numbers decline where agriculture gives way to woodland. Their Eastern US population is down, probably due to the decline of farming in the Northeast.
They breed in nest holes, and move south from their northern ranges in the winter, making them "semi-migratory."
Their autumn southerly movements have been correlated with dragonfly migrations. Kestrels are happy to catch dragonflies although I don't know how it is possible. I had no idea that dragonflies migrated, but some species do - all over the world.
More about these fine birds here.
 If Repubs win the House and/or the Senate, what will they decide to do?
Many Repubs really cannot answer the question. Paul Ryan has his answers, but I'm not sure they are election winners. The only winners, I think, are to undo Obamacare, to stop the January tax increases, and to halt any further Federal intrusion into our lives.
Related at Reason - The Tipping Point:
Suddenly the country had a Resistance movement, standing athwart the flow of Obama history, shouting, "STOP!"
That brings us to this historical moment. If it was not clear during Obama's 2008 campaign (and he made deliberate efforts to obscure it) certainly in late 2010 it is clear where he wants to take the county--toward a European-style socialism, a command economy, driven by an all-powerful central government, determined to redistribute wealth and remake America as a multicultural, secular humanist state.
The election next month is not about returning the Republican Party to power in Washington. It is about stepping back from this tipping point, this precipice that Obama and the Pelosi-Reid Congress have led us to. There is a pervasive sense that this is momentous.
Important? Yes. Momentous? I am not sure. A reaction? Certainly. Much of this is just vague sentiment without specific content, but much of politics is about emotion. Devil is in the details, etc.
I think this post reflects much of the current sentiment: return to the default setting. But which status ante? Here are some default thoughts I can relate to.
Related, Beinart sends a warning: How the GOP Could Blow It:
...Which brings us to the Tea Party, many of whose activists seem genuinely dedicated to slashing government spending (except on the military, of course) and making the party of Reagan and Bush, once again, the party of Goldwater and Gingrich. Maybe this is one reason the GOP establishment is so scared? Over the last half-century, the Republican Party has been, at times, a genuinely anti-government party and, at times, a politically successful party. But it’s never been both at the same time. Once this fall’s elections are over, I suspect the Tea Partiers will begin learning that, the hard way.
Sounds like sour grapes already, yet he has a point. But does Beinart forget Reagan?
Monday, October 4. 2010
I put this video together to see whether our readers might be interested in this sort of topic. If you are, I'll do more of them.
 Sometimes we're lucky to have friends with whom we can have civil conversations, even when we disagree. Fewer times, we're even more fortunate to have a friend whose learning and temperance wakens new thinking in ourself. Such a friend earns the right to be listened to carefully, always.
The Rabbi at my synagogue is such a friend. He is deeply liberal in all the best senses of that term, courageous in stating his views, and in altering them as new information is found. Several years ago, at his High Holiday sermon, the most heard of the year, he called for more openness in our listening to criticisms of Israel, not to pull it down but to get closer to our ideals.
In the meantime, others have gathered force to pull Israel down. So, this year, the Rabbi's sermon confronted those who cross the line from legitimate criticism to delegitimization. "When it comes to Israel’s many faults, there is a bold line between criticism and delegitimization, and that line is being crossed by those whose real agenda is the elimination of the Jewish State."
It is a beautiful and informative discussion. As usual, the Rabbi speaks clearly and covers the pros and cons, resulting in a reasoned conclusion. "To teach our children, to educate our neighbors, and to raise our hands against the slaughtering knife of delegitimization of the Zionist Project."
Read it all for yourself.
A re-post from many years ago -
The chirp of the crickets reminds us that hunting season is fast approaching. I have been too busy focusing on yard and farm work to pick up my 12 ga. Belgian boxlock s/s which I only use for pheasant, which has been at the gunsmith since January for a bad firing pin. Sad to say, I only have a paltry two non-local trips planned for the fall: Duck, goose and grouse in Manitoba, and grouse + woodcock (and maybe trout) in the Adirondacks. I made a mistake and scheduled my Adirondack trip to overlap with an annual group trip to New Brunswick for grouse, and puddle duck too.
But there are abundant local opportunities for winter duck, grouse, and "flying mattresses," (ie pen-raised pheasants which is to hunting as miniature golf is to golf but is highly gratifying to dogs who get a little bored or frustrated after two hours without putting up a grouse). The pup is definitely ready and I have gotten him off pointing turtles, mice, and grasshoppers. He still points snakes, and finds them interesting but fortunately will not pick them up. Yes, he likes birds. Why does the subject come up? It's time to get to the outdoor catalogs real quick.
I like The Ugly Dog and of course Filson's. Cabela's hardly needs my help. Sierra Trading Post often has very good deals on outdoor stuff, along with lots of other useful clothing.
I should put in a plug for Arrow Lake Lodge in Canada where a pal of mine likes to go - photo from their website.
What kit catalogs do our readers enjoy?
We took a stroll with friends on the High Line yesterday, after seeing Batsheva at the Joyce.
This new walkway sure is a popular item. It's an old elevated railroad line which ran down to the meat-packing district. It's been converted to a walkway with private donations, and it is not complete yet - it will run uptown all the way to the Javits convention center.
Part of its appeal, I think, is that you can really see the sweep of the city up here, instead of just sidewalks and storefronts. You can see the architecture - industrial and otherwise. Views of the Hudson, and a good distant view of the Statue of Liberty out in the harbor.
If you don't care for heights, the Greenway is another popular walking, running, and people-watching route. The staid East Side of Manhattan is lifeless, these days.
More pics below the fold -
Continue reading "A walk on the West Side - The High Line"
Sunday, October 3. 2010
I used to have a Browning 28 ga Featherweight. It was truly light. In fact, a little too light in weight for my accuracy or lack thereof. However, it was a pleasure to carry for 6 hours in the woods.
At some point, I turned it in to buy something else in s/s, but I wish I had that 28 now for grouse and especially Woodcock.
Many claim that a 28 patterns better than any other gauge. I wonder whether any of our readers ever hunt with a 28.
Saturday, October 2. 2010
 Regular readers know what a geology buff I am, although I do not post about it very much. My view is that you do not know what the heck you are looking at when you step outdoors unless you know some basic geology.
I was recently reminded about John McPhee's Annals of This Former World.
The book is a treat, but much better appreciated if you know basic Geo.
(As my friends know, my kids are all given my list of what they are required to study in college - or as AP high school courses - if I am to pay for their education. Intro Geology is on my list. Maybe I should post my Dad's Required Courses one of these days. It might stimulate some fun discussion here. Being a Yankee, I am cheap and hate to waste money on transient nonsense du jour. One reason I love Columbia and the U of Chicago is because they dare have an opinion about what kids need to know from the wisdom of past generations.)
Friday, October 1. 2010
In just three months, on January 1, 2011, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves.
On January 1, 2011, here’s what happens... (read it to the end, so you see all three waves)...
Continue reading "Your looming tax disaster"
Thursday, September 30. 2010
Via, Ars Psychiatrica. A quote from the article he linked:
If surveys conducted by physician recruiting companies accurately reflect current trends in the job market, the news is very good for psychiatrists—and less promising for many patients with mental health disorders. Chief among those who may not receive the psychiatric care they need are children and adolescents and people who live in areas that are not densely populated.
Also,
The Bureau of Health Professions predicts that demand for general psychiatry services will have increased nearly 20% between 1995 and 2020. The Bureau also foresees a 100% increase in the need for child and adolescent psychiatric services during that period.
I think one of the reasons that fewer American medical students are going into Psychiatry these days is because it is turning into more of a pill-pushing and check-list diagnosing specialty than the "understand the whole person in depth" specialty that I became interested in.
 It must be some failure of multicultural education in the West when we imagine that other people in the world want what we want. Things like peace, material well-being, freedom, etc.
Bruce Thornton notes The West fails to imagine that its adversaries might have different values. One quote:
Munich in particular illustrates the dangers of projecting one’s own motives or goods onto an aggressor. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain failed to imagine that Hitler and the Germans, fired by revanchist passions and the lust for recovering lost prestige and power, were eager for conflict and had spent most of the interwar period preparing for it. Worse yet, this ignorance of true motives puts one at a disadvantage when dealing with an aggressor, who can conceal his aims under the pretext of diplomatic negotiation (as Hitler did), thus buying time and misdirecting his adversary by the duplicitous endorsement of ideals he knows are important to the West.
Yes, you could make a case that the Sudetenland was part of Greater Germany - Austria too - but that's not what it was about.
Thornton's piece is mainly about militant Islam. In the West, we often prefer to be in denial of the evil intentions of others. I'm sure there is a psychological explanation for that. To me, it just seems like a pleasant Edenic fantasy.
Wednesday, September 29. 2010
From Charles Kesler's The Stakes of Obamacare:
Judged by his own standards, however, Obama has good reason to take pride in his record. For his presidency already has accomplished a historic transformation of American government. Thanks to his victories on the bailouts, health care, and financial regulation, government's size, cost, and agenda have swelled enormously and are set to expand further over the long term. Obamacare may be controversial, but it's the law now. He's succeeded in what many liberal commentators and politicians, and most conservatives, too, thought impossible—launching a fourth wave of liberal social reform, adding to the storied legislative accomplishments of the New Freedom, the New Deal, and the Great Society.
and
Among its other effects, this act marks a new stage in the decline of constitutional government in America. One sign of this was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's remark, "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy." After shepherding the equally massive financial regulation bill into law, Senator Christopher Dodd was moved to say something very similar: "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works." In late August, Senator Max Baucus, Finance Committee chairman, chimed in: "I don't think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the health care bill....We hire experts." These statements make both an epistemological and a political point. The first is that these bills are so long, complicated, and unreadable that no one who isn't an expert can possibly decipher them. That implies, in turn, that no amount or quality of democratic deliberation can clarify them to citizens, and in most cases to legislators, in advance. Indeed, Pelosi suggests that political debate itself, "controversy," mostly dims public understanding by generating "fog." The second point is that neither she nor Dodd nor Baucus is especially troubled by this breakdown in democratic accountability. With this kind of legislation, they imply, there's no choice but to trust the experts—not merely those who patch the law together, but perhaps more importantly those who implement it. For the truth is that this kind of bill, almost 3,000 pages long, will mean what the bureaucrats say it means.
Or if one wants to be generous, this kind of bill will mean what the bureaucrats, in conjunction or conspiracy with their congressional overseers, say it means. In short, these bills are not so much laws as administrative to-do lists. They are contrivances fit only for the modern liberal state, ambitious to regulate all local and state affairs from the center, which means through a bureaucracy of experts or so-called experts. The result is not a government of laws but of men, albeit men who think themselves wise.
Read the whole thing. It is clear that the Dems were and are willing to risk losing any or all control in Congress in exchange for getting this done. As Kesler says, they are playing the long game, and this version is just a beginning. It's meant to fail, and they will rescue it with their next step. If they had been more clever and had chosen a less circuitous route, they would have simply planned on Medicare For All. People love their Medicare.
It's worth losing a battle or two to win a war. For the Left, it is war and they really don't mind the short-term sacrifice of some pawns and a bishop this November. It's just a predictable bump on the road to utopia, and I do not think they really care too much about it. They already have the golden fleece: our bodies.
 We have no "insurgency" in the US now. What I think we have is a reaction to governmental overreach - an overreach which, as I posted yesterday, will only with time ratchet ever upwards until it breaks.
What did the guy say? "Tighten the bolt until it breaks, then back off a little."
Being a Constitutional Conservative is a depressing role.
From Protein's One Party Washington? No-Party Insurgency:
The American government has become a gigantic regulatory juggernaut. It decides the fate of individuals, businesses, whole industries, and entire regions. A few lines in a statute, or a paragraph in one of the many administrative codes that enmesh our productive lives, can mean wealth or ruin. This is a huge, unchecked, and increasingly unaccountable power. Where there is such power, as our Founders knew, it will be abused. Picking better people won’t solve the problem, because where such power exists, it will corrupt the people who have access to it. This is a political law almost as universal as those of Newton and Maxwell in the realm of physical phenomena. A regulatory state this powerful will necessarily be corrupting, venal, and suffocating.
OK, sure. But people voted for that stuff. What can anybody undo? Even Ronaldus Magnus could not take on the ridiculous and useless federal Dept. of Education. Megan McArdle mulls over government coercion, and exposes the straw man of Somalia. A quote:
Unfortunately, I don't have a Grand New Theory with which to replace it; I think of "society" as a chaotic system, within which government, like corporations, are necessary evils that will only ever imperfectly perform the idealized roles to which we would like to assign them. As such, I can't generate any neat sound-bytes like "Taxation is theft!" or "Why don't you just move to Somalia, huh?"
Nobody is advocating nihilism. I do have a grand theory, from Thomas Jefferson: "That government which governs least, governs best." A light hand. The Constitution remains a good idea, and it worked pretty well for a long time. We had a country of self-reliant, strong men and women and kids who took nothing for granted except that their lives were in their own hands, and God's.
Stanley Fish urges opponents to engage the Tea Partiers on the merits, instead of name-calling. He is right.
And Matt Taibbi snarkily notes the Medicare Tennessee Tea Partiers in their government-paid scooters. I think that Medicare should have been means-tested, but that fight is long gone. The Liberal youngsters are going to pay my medical bills in a few years - if they can find a job. The joke is on them because, the way things are going, I have far more assets than they will ever have. Too bad it's not a joke.
Tuesday, September 28. 2010
No idea where this was. (thanks, Buddy). We photographed a scene like this (but without the bird-feeding) driving down from Whistler to Vancouver some winters ago. Awesome. Even the non-birders in our skiing group were impressed.
The eagles were like gulls. These greedy fish-eaters have no idea that they are symbols.
Another pic below the fold
Continue reading "Eagle feeding station"
Freud's early studies of Hysteria led him (and Breuer) towards what is termed the Seduction Theory of neurosis - a trauma theory.
His eventual abandonment of Seduction Theory marked a deepening of Psychoanalytic respect for the role of fantasy - especially unconscious fantasy - as a shaper of a person's character and neurosis. His realization that memory, like all other mental activity, is shaped to varying degrees by thoughts of which we are unaware, was a key which opened many doors of understanding of human nature.
Some of this is detailed here.
Thus the fad of ascribing mental illness and emotional problems to childhood trauma in the 1970s and 80s was a big Been There - Done That to Psychoanalysts.
Today, Psychoanalysts understand that trauma at any age is just one shaper among many, including genetics, unconscious activity, early relationships, ego characteristics and strengths and weaknesses, etc.
Re childhood sexual encounters, we know that the acceptance of this, or the disgust with this, is highly culture-specific. Whether that matters or not to the discussion I do not know.
In "My Lie": Why I falsely accused my father, one very destructive and suggestible person explains how she got caught up in the trauma fad. Freud, I imagine, would offer a grim smile of recognition at this story.
 It's been going on for many years, at least since Teddy Roosevelt: While the Left claims to want bipartisanship and compromise, the incremental clicks of the ratchet only go in one direction: toward European-style social democracy.
That's what William F. Buckley Jr. meant by "A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'"
The fatal flaw of democratic systems, of course, is that people figure out they can vote themselves things. The US wasn't planned that way, but it's become that way. Progressives call it Progress.
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