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.
This satirical video is intended to show that much of Western aid to Africa " is more about making donors look good than about doing good for the needy."
Aid campaigns implicitly promise guilt reduction and ego inflation for donors. The grinning Radi-Aid singers perform the same sleight of hand, selling scenes of snow, and their own exuberance, as a reason to pitch in.
More subtly, the video recalls “Kony 2012,” a slick short film produced by Americans about the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda that broke records for viral views. The film is the most recent and prominent of Africa-framing fictions produced by nonprofit organizations. Some call the genre “poverty porn,” others call it marketing. Whatever the name, it relies on giving a narrow impression of a person or place from a vast, diverse continent. Such “assistance” turns extraordinary hardship into an ordinary event and ignores the ordinary folks just getting by, or better.
The Radi-Aid stunt parries this trend effectively. Its creators remind viewers of the limited portrait they are painting. The site asks: “Imagine if every person in Africa saw the ‘Africa for Norway’ video and this was the only information they ever got about Norway. What would they think about Norway?”
They would think Norway is cold. (I hear that it is.) But it is other things as well.
That's the Liberal project. Liberals take the long view and the long march. As Ace says,
The state is benevolent.
The state is wise.
The state loves you.
The state would never hurt you.
The state only wishes to help you.
Will you help the state to help you?
The State is God? Addiction to government "help" is sold and marketed in the same way that drugs are. It is, in fact, a drug in the sense that dependency sneaks into the brain and distorts who you are, strips you of your dignity, corrupts your soul by tempting you to focus on what you can get for free, and enslaves you if you let it. In the end, it leaves you just hungry for more.
Welfare includes crony capitalism, tax breaks for businesses, mortgage deductions, bailouts, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid right down to disability and the now ubiquitous EBT cards.
Naturally, we Conservatives think it best to eliminate all forms of welfare and charity from government control except for the most desperate or hopeless of individual cases. Remove welfare from the middle classes and provide a safety net for the desperate: Restoring a True Safety Net
With the promise of health care completing the project of the 20th-century welfare state, liberals need to envision how to meet the needs of a new century.
Apparently Americans have many "unmet needs" which can only be provided by government - or by our neighbors at gunpoint. It's a sorry sort of mess and will not end well. Americans can do better than this if the government would get the heck out of the way of effort and creativity.
This week's series began yesterday. You never know what you'll find here at Maggie's. America has plenty of Bridgeports these days. We'll have a daily Bridgeport post this week.
Bridgeport, CT (settled 1639 as "Newfield") was a boom town from around 1800 until the end of WW 2. Lots of farming in the back country, fishing, shipping and ship-building on the harbor, and, at its peak, over 500 factories. "Help wanted" signs everywhere.
Few people know that Bridgeport was the first city in America with an auto industry.
Farmers, factory workers, a good share of prosperous folk, tons of Polish, Irish, and Italian immigrants and then southern blacks attracted to jobs during the war, grand theaters, fancy stores, and of course, PT Barnum (who Walt Kelly yclept PT Bridgeport). Today, Bridgeport is about 40% recent Hispanic immigrants, 30% Black, and the rest are various kinds of white.
There has been no gentrification of downtown because there are few jobs and not much to do. Well, nothing to do. The weekend streets, empty of traffic and foot traffic except for the occasional hoodie, give a sense of desolation but not menace. There is no critical mass of activity, which has all moved to the suburbs to escape Blue City decay and taxes. (It's Obamaville for sure. In the previous election, just enough uncounted paper votes were mysteriously discovered in bags in a Bridgeport school basement to turn the election over to a Democrat CT governor days after good Repub Tom Foley appeared to have won the election.)
The city's heyday was probably between 1840 and the late 1940s - a century. In today's post-industrial northeast, the town's population is down to around 144,000, and many of the old factories are now vacant lots and the rest are rotting hulks. Even the old Bridgeport Post-Telegram is now the "Connecticut Post." With the decline of the town's manufacturing and farming base - its main bank used to be Mechanics and Farmer's Savings Bank - corrupt politicians, high taxation, criminals, drugs, welfare recipients, and mob influence have been feeding off the carcass of this failed old Blue State city.
This once-proud city, with abundant advantages, did not deserve this fate. Such bountiful towns are like the third world now.
The main businesses in town now seem to be government services, hospitals, and law, since it's the legal and court center of prosperous southern Connecticut and remains Connecticut's largest urban center. Oh, it also has the woebegone and marginal University of Bridgeport which until recently was owned by the Moonies and one which few would attend given any choice at all. Lots of foreign students desperate for an American degree of any sort.
Nobody visits downtown Bridgeport as tourists except me and a couple of my kids on an urban exploration jaunt last weekend. Well, also visitors taking the Port Jefferson ferry or going to Bridgeport Bluefish games. (They have a decent government-looking transportation hub, with the bus station, the Boston - Washington DC train station, I-95, and the ferry all within walking distance.)
During our tourism, we stopped for a pleasant lunch at The Creek in the Black Rock section of town. They had Palm on tap and the place was full of people. I'm told another good popular joint in the neighborhood is Harborview Market. I'll have to try that next time I'm in the area.
A few of my pics:
A cute old half-block (rest of the block demolished at some point, probably in "urban renewal" aka "Negro Removal" in the 1960s) in Bridgeport's South End, with garbage from Sandy's flooding.
Most of the in-town residential areas look like this. Typical northeast workingman's dwellings from the 1880s-1920s. Cheap housing now, but too-high property taxes for the people who might otherwise afford them. When the taxes are higher than a mortgage, it's not attractive. It leads to a downward, death spiral. The poorer it becomes, the more taxes are raised for government "services." Then voters vote with their feet.
Building on the corner of Main St, a block or two from the big new RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland, for those of you in Yorba Linda) bulding - doubtless located with generous multi-year tax breaks. The graffiti is really pretty well-done:
For a taste, here's Iranistan (pronouced Iranis'tan), PT Barnum's home in 1848 on the corner of Fairfield Avenue and Iranistan Ave. Barnum did a lot of things in his life, made and lost fortunes, was Mayor of Bridgeport for a while, got elected to the CT State Senate to lobby for the railroads (he liked to commute to NYC in the pre-commuter era), promoted and was a major contributor to the creation of Bridgeport's Olmstead-designed Seaside Park, was a great impresario of hoaxes and the strange, and later in life a circus impresario. Everything on a grand scale, always taking risks, a bit of a con man who didn't mind admitting it. An American icon.
His three magnificent Bridgeport homes all burned down but his circus lives on as he first envisioned it: traveling by train and performing in permanent venues instead of under tents. And always, elephants. He transformed the circus industry.
Pine, spruce, hemlock, and fir make excellent firewood. With their pitch content, they may burn hotter and quicker than hardwoods, but they produce plenty of good heat and light. They produce no more chimney creosote than anything else, and probably less. Firs and pines are all they burn out West.
While everybody needs to have a well-used chimney cleaned regularly, creosote accumulates in a chimney mainly from wood with high water content. In other words, "green wood" which has not had 6-12 months to shed its water content by sitting outdoors, or has not been "kiln-dried" like the expensive stuff in stores. Green pine wood is no more problematic than green maple, according to the experts. Ideally, give all wood some time to dry out to minimize creosote build-up.
A second cause of creosote build-up (we are not talking about ash build-up in the chimney, just the greasy creosote) is probably smoldering fires. The hotter the fire, the less likely that creosote will find time to condense and attach somewhere in your chimney. Creosote is, to some extent, water-soluble and thus condenses as it moves up to the cooler parts of the upper chimney.
The problem with creosote is chimney fires. Readers know that I've had a few, and it is not fun. If you are far from a fire station, it can burn your house down by either sparking the roof or penetrating the flue. People like me who burn wood indiscriminately - any wood from any tree, green or aged - must deal with the creosote issue with creosote fighters. Chimney sweeps cannot remove the grease, but chemicals can. I also enjoy quiety smoldering fires rather than dramatic blazes, so I do everything wrong.
Details on creosote oils here. Some creosote oils are what preserves and gives flavor to smoked meats. I remember painting fence posts with creosote as a lad, with my Dad. I don't think people do that anymore but it is a good and cheap wood preservative.
My family of origin voted to ban Christmas presents amongst eachother years ago. It's my two parents, five kids with five spouses, countless grandkids. However, bringing food, booze, and home-made Christmas cookies to the family gathering is welcome and wanted.
In my own family, as the kids have gotten older, we keep it generally in the area of books, scarves, and Christmas socks.
My in-laws, on the other hand, love the whole Christmas ritual of buying, wrapping, and giving presents, and find joy in it.
There are apparently sharp differences among commentators on the Gaza ceasefire. Regardless, the Gaza thanksgiving lesson is that Israel and its supporters have far more to be thankful for, and hopeful for, than does Israel's enemies.
On the one hand are those who say that Israel accomplished its primary objectives: degrade Hamas’ rocket and terror capabilities, retain good will of the Western governments that are usually so offended by Israel’s defense measures, establish self-interested constructive relations with the Islamist rulers of Egypt and not undermine the frail not-attacking PA in the West Bank.
On the other hand are those who say that Israel should have launched the ground operation in to Gaza to further punish and eradicate the threats from there and further degrade Hamas’ capabilities, and that the ceasefire agreement is toothless at restraining future Hamas re-arming and attacks.
Emotionally and militarily I lean toward the second hand. As a practical matter I lean toward the first hand. Anyone who has participated in or observed house-to-house fighting knows its brutality and costs in lives, including our own. This time, I don’t think it was worth another Israeli soldier’s life, as little as I care for the surely much heavier Hamas toll or that on the Gazan civilians who back Hamas. Then, regardless of the public words of any ultimate ceasefire agreement, I don’t think that they would hold water unless Hamas were to actually commit to the actions, and non-actions, necessary to their fulfillment.
Meanwhile, we do not know whether Egypt has committed to or will increase its relatively minor blocking of tunnels into Gaza. We do know that President Obama has committed to increasing support to blocking arms imports to Gaza and to increase funding for more Iron Dome anti-rocket defenses. We do know that aside from bluster the Arab states and Turkey were inactive. They could really care less about Hamas, particularly as far as it is allied with Iran. Even Iran, aside from attempted new smuggled weapons, was inactive, as was its other cats paw in the area Hezbullah in Lebanon.
So, regardless of which side of the debate you take, or another, I think the lesson from Gaza is to give thanks for what we have accomplished.
Israel was not weakened but will continue on to successfully defend its right to exist. Since 1948, when Israel’s fate seemed more dire, to now, Israel has managed to survive and prosper. There’s little reason to believe that will change. The Arab states have not prospered nor advanced. As their oil wealth fades and is substituted from US, Israeli, alternative energy, and other sources, their influence or importance will fade. Hamas has created a stinkhole in Gaza, except for those at the top of the regime and its favors who live luxuriously and will pay the price eventually as impoverished Gazans take their measure.
As to those in the West, the decreasing number of dreamers, who propose trading land or rights for peace, their illusion is thinner than ever, at least until there is a miraculous transformation among Arabs. The necessity of strong security measures cannot be denied by any honest peace-hawks.
There’s much to give thanks for, far more than regrets, on this Thanksgiving.
Anthony is the Reuters Social Media Editor, integrating the “ambient wire” that exists on social networks, where news now breaks before anywhere else, into Reuters platforms. He's also host of Reuters TV's "Tech Tonic" and a Reuters columnist.
This is the kind of media bias that must be exposed. In this case, with impact. Thanks to Honest Reporting. (free online subscription)
5:48 pm: At the beginning of the day, I noted an ugly tweet by Reuters’ Anthony De Rosa. One response to De Rosa was sufficiently embarrassing and, uh, viral enough to make the wire service’s social media editor remove his tweet.
Dunkin Donuts is a Yankeeland item which has begun to colonize the world. Mediocre coffee, mushy donuts which are not really fat-fried and have no crunch, but half-decent daily bagels. Also, "Breakfast sandwiches" made of God-knows-what warmed-up plastic-wrapped thawed-out food-like substances.
People like Dunkin anyway. It's familiar, predictable, comfortably mediocre. A welcome sign to see on a cold, sleety night of driving in the middle of nowhere. Clean bathrooms. A Dunkin franchise is a cash cow for the franchisee. I know a Greek immigrant who now owns five of them. He's rich. He is fortunate in having a loyal, smart, and pleasant mostly-Hispanic staff. A few Pakistanis too.
I haven't had one of their too-sweet and mushy donuts in years, but once in a while I'll have a toasted bagel. I only like fried donuts.
Bob Rosenberg opened the first one in Quincy, MA in 1949, and the first of thousands of franchises the following year in Worcester.
In 2006 the parent company was acquired by a consortium of private equity firms: Bain Capital, The Carlyle Group, and Thomas H. Lee Partners. Heavy hitters, for a humble donut shop. Dunkin' Donuts is the world's leading baked goods and coffee chain, serving more than 3 million customers per day. Dunkin also bought Baskin Robbins a while ago, which is why you sometimes see the two carbohydrate outlets under the same roof.
Almost a year ago, I commented on a tax 'solution' which I think could work here in the U.S.
Here we are, post-election, and what are we hearing from Republicans? Astonishingly little pushback, almost no effort to 'obstruct' (not that were ever obstructionist, in my opinion), and a generally held agreement that taxes have to rise because that's what the election was all about.
I doubt the commentary would be vastly different if Romney had won, but the focus on tax increases versus spending cuts would probably be significantly altered. I also don't think that's what the election was all about, either. But that's the meme.
Can the Tobin Tax rise from the dead?
Still, where do we go from here? Every day, we hear that "something has to be done before we fall off the fiscal cliff."
The author of the piece about the famous long-term study of Harvard students from college to old age says that George Vaillant has demonstrated little more than that an ability to adapt predicts an ability to adapt. From Their Right Stuff -The evolution of the Harvard guinea pigs:
As with orthodox Freudianism, there is a hedonistic bias to the ideal of maturity that the study proclaims. To blossom is to shed “rigid” attitudes. There is nothing more contemptible than an “inhibition.” Perhaps you think that, in a free society, in-hibitions are good since they spare us from having to submit to others’ pro-hibitions.But if that is how you think, you will find this book’s system of values un-intelligible. Vaillant sees evidence of one Episcopal minister’s maturation in the way “he had put aside absolute convictions about faith, morality, and authority in favor of a new appreciation of their relativity and mutability.” If this book has a hero, it is a meathead named Boatwright, who says, “I don’t give a damn if I’m remembered for anything. I’ve enjoyed my life and had a hell of a good time.”
I am sorry to say that the socio-cultural bias is a darn shame. My profession is half-good at defining problems, but terrible at defining relative health. Everybody has at least one problem, and having problems is normal.
Everybody struggles with problems. As CS Lewis reminded us, bear that in mind whenever you meet somebody. Therefore be kind (but always be alert to predators).
Champagne is always right for cocktail hour, but I'm talking about accompaniment to food. As a semi-amateur wine drinker, my advice is to drink whatever you like with dinner, provided that it is red in color. These holidays are not about gourmet cooking, they are about traditional comfort food and so they need comfort wines.
This year for Thanksgiving, I am going for a Brunello di Montalcino Riserva followed up by a nice Chianti Riserva. Why Tuscans, why Sangiovese? Just for the fun of it. Also because they do not overpower turkey and stuffing, but who really cares about that?
Our more mature readers surely remember the cheap and horrible-tasting Chiantis in straw wrappings in spaghetti-and-meatball restaurants. That straw-wrapped bottle is/was called a "fiasco" - a flask. That wine was a fiasco but the bottles made for cute candlesticks.
Well, Chiantis imported to the US can be darn good these days, and the so-called Super-Tuscans (with varying amounts of Cabernet added to the mix) are quite tasty too. The Chianti Classicos and Riservas tend to be tastier than the basic Chianti table wines.
Is "fairness" just a nicey-nice word for nursery school teachers? From Asma, In Defense of Favoritism:
The old folk wisdom that group closeness comes from opposition to others is not borne out by recent data. Nor is the old developmental story that we all start out as egoistic Hobbesians, who slowly learn to care for others. Affective neuroscience research on early-childhood bonding suggests that, as mammals, we probably start out as emotionally glued microcommunities (family and tribe) before we become autonomous ego-driven creatures. Favoritism, not egoism, is probably the primal value system.
In short, favoritism or bias toward your group is not intrinsically racist, sexist, or closed-minded. Privileging your tribe does not render you negative or bigoted toward those outside your tribe. And to top it off, we're now beginning to understand the flexible nature of our ingroup favoritism—it doesn't have to be carved along bloodlines, or race lines, or ethnic lines. Psychological experiments reveal a whole range of criteria for ingroup bias. For example, test subjects have been shown to award higher payoffs to arbitrary ingroups, like people who just happen to share the same birthday as the test subject. And ingroup bias can be demonstrably strong when subjects share allegiance to the same sports teams, and so on.
and
If our high-minded notions of retributive justice have roots in the lower emotions of revenge, then why should we be surprised if fairness has roots in envy? I have no illusions and feel entirely comfortable with the idea that fairness has origins in baser emotions like envy. But most egalitarians will find this repugnant, and damaging to their saintly and selfless version of fairness.
A good, provocative essay about human nature and our need for tribal affinities.
Every Thanksgiving, we kids sang this merry song on the way to our Granny and Grampy's Connecticut house: four of us, bouncing in the back seat of the Chevy station wagon on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Their house was a mansion to us, filled with mysteries. Owl andirons with eyes, bathtubs with claw feet, a real ice box in the basement, a big family Bible from the 1700s, a jar of formaldehyde with a dissected human heart, old medical texts, Tiffany lamps, a Chickering grand piano, Persian rugs, the first EKG machine in Connecticut (German made, in a mahogany cabinet, which still worked and which works to this day), the rooms my Dad and Aunt grew up in with all of their books - and my Granny's Mom, sitting and knitting. She died at age 103. An old Yankee, raised on a hardscrabble farm and who worked as a nurse, she never said very much. She was half Iroquois (her Mom), and looked like an ancient squaw with her hair tied back.
They had a cranky, humorless Polish widowed cook called Mrs. Wos (which was an abbreviation of her last name which I never knew) who helped them in the kitchen and who would smack your hand hard with a spoon if you tried to grab something. Granny was not much of a cook, to put it mildly, but she would help Mrs. Wos when asked. Mrs. Wos kept a filled bird-feeder outside the kitchen window for entertainment, and banged on the glass when a squirrel got into it. Come to think of it, she banged all sorts of things: hands, windows, pots and pans, cabinet doors.
And they had an old widower black guy moved up from Mississippi who did chores and yard jobs, and helped with the garden - the sweetest and most dignified Christian guy you could ever know. "Uncle Ed," who my Granny called Mr. Evans, sang hymns while he worked, and read the Bible and philosophy (and W.E.B. DuBois and Albert Schweitzer) when he was off duty in his cozy apartment above the garage - with a wood stove (in addition to real heat) - and walls of bookshelves. He believed that fiction was the work of the Devil but he never refused whiskey.
Being alone in life, both family helpers joined us at the family tables for Thanksgiving dinner. Ed was always given the honor of offering the prayer which came from the depths of his heart. He went on for quite a while, as the soup got cold. Deep and yet simple, which are the things I still aspire to. He prayed for his country, for the enrichment of his and our spirits, for the soul of his dead wife, for his two boys in the service, and for the glory of creation.
I miss him because he was a dear buddy to me. He was the first black guy I knew. He had worked as a railroad Porter, and he said the railroad was the true friend of the black man. He knew the blues, and he knew the hymns. He taught me to fish, with great laughter and jollity. Bait-fishing from a rowboat, for food, with a bamboo pole. No fancy stuff. Long gone, now, but never forgotten.
Happy Thanksgiving, readers. Thanks to God, and God bless us, every one, living and gone - and our free country.
Photos: Station wagons were the SUVs of their time: if you had kids, you had one. '55 Chevy, of course. The '50 Buick? My grandparents drove theirs until the mid-1960s. Old people used to drive old cars. I recall theirs as having been brown, not black, but I couldn't swear to that. My Gramps, who was a doctor, totalled it into a tree while making a house call late at night in a snowstorm at age 84. He was OK, but the car wasn't. Bought a white Oldsmobile with power windows and began to cut back on work and grumble about socialism and socialized medicine. Johnson was President, with Medicare on the table - and he accepted vegetables, flowers, firewood, and labor as payment from those without money. He felt his poorer patients would feel demeaned by charity, so he expected something. I remember a bushel basket of fresh-dug potatoes on his back porch, with a note scrawled "from Sam." Another time, a bushel basket of sweet corn.
Many years ago, I'd read a piece about how we did as much housework today as we did 100 years ago, despite a plethora of labor-saving devices. This may not be as true as it once was, but the recent storms gave me some insight about why it may have been.
I noticed that without power, we were busy doing many things to keep the house going. Finding firewood, getting gas, sweeping, going to the laundromat, getting and cooking food. Clearly having power means the gas lines are shorter and I don't have to seek out firewood on a daily basis. But what is it about labor-saving devices may have caused us to do continue to spend as much time doing housework as we may have prior to having them?
One day, as I was sorting the laundry, it hit me. By being able to do more in less time, our standards and expectations rose, so we tended to do more. We do things we couldn't do before, because we can.
I didn't like that my home's cleanliness took a slight dip during the storm, but given the time I was forced to spend doing other things, it just seemed like there was a logical trade-off in letting some things go for a bit until I had the chance to get around to them.
It has long been my view that the O is/was a celebrity candidate, a fluffy media creation lacking in substance and in mastery of anything but smooth talk. A sweet-talking guy. For a related essay, see A Tale of Two Cities - Hollywood’s influence on politicians advances not inexorably but in cycles.
I began to make a mental list of the potential news items over recent years which would have been pounded, would have been subjects of relentless, damaging front-page stories, had Obama been a Republican.
- More Americans in poverty than in decades - More homeless than in decades - The Food Stamp/EBT Card Presidency - Ongoing urban addiction, despair, and fatherless kids - Worst recovery from a recession in history - Benghazi would already be worse than Watergate - Mexican gun-walking scandal - The Hurricane Sandy mess - The catastrophic "Arab Spring" - Obama's compulsive lying - The taxpayer's loss of billions on GM - The taxpayer's loss of billions on green energy, crony failures - Obama's time on golf courses - Obama's divisiveness - Obama's coziness with Wall St. moguls - The Obama family's carbon footprint and insanely lavish vacations - Obama's errors of fact, eg 57 states. (Remember Dan Quail and potatoes?)
Add your own lists and items in the comments. It's therapeutic!
I think he's right, at least in part. Rush's tendency is to imagine that voters apply hard logic. It puzzles him when they do not. However, in retail politics, cultural signals and tribal signals matter. Policy wonks like me think it's superficial, but you can't get a policy until you win an election. There are plenty of low-info voters out there who vote on emotion, affinity-feelings, and things like that.
Mitt Romney was an excellent candidate on paper, but too many voters just couldn't "relate" to the guy. Actually, he did quite well, all things considered. A quote from Ace's post:
This was Breitbart's main idea, that politics was simply the expression of choices and preferences that had already been decided by the culture.
The "culture" doesn't care what gays do, and doesn't want to know or to think about it. The "culture" likes pop music. The "culture" is squeamish and ambivalent about abortion, and prefers to sort-of accept it and ignore it. These things are signals, not real policy issues. Let's face it: Conservatism and Libertarianism is a bit dorky. Mitt Romney probably never heard of Beyonce, and all I know of her is the name. Would not know her from Adam. I am more of a JS Bach guy. An East Village dork, but you wouldn't know it if you met me in the pub.
Everybody's probably sick of reading pontifications about the election, but I think Ponnuru's The Party’s Problem is worth a glance. Here's a quote (my bolds):
The Republican story about how societies prosper — not just the Romney story — dwelt on the heroic entrepreneur stifled by taxes and regulations: an important story with which most people do not identify. The ordinary person does not see himself as a great innovator. He, or she, is trying to make a living and support or maybe start a family. A conservative reform of our health-care system and tax code, among other institutions, might help with these goals. About this person, however, Republicans have had little to say.
In the days since the election, Republicans have received (and given one another) a lot of advice: Step up the ground game. Soften on immigration and abortion. Embrace same-sex marriage. Appeal more to single women, Hispanics, and young people. Run the younger, more charismatic candidates Republicans have waiting in the wings. Some of this advice is good, and some of it bad. But the weakness of the Republican party predates the emergence of same-sex marriage as an issue, the development of Democratic micro-targeting strategies, and the growth of the Hispanic vote. And wasn’t Josh Mandel, the losing Ohio Senate candidate, supposed to be one of those great young conservative hopes? However much charisma and brains the next crop of Republicans brings to their campaigns, they need a stronger party.
The perception that the Republican party serves the interests only of the rich underlies all the demographic weaknesses that get discussed in narrower terms.
- For $100, you can get an American Global Entry card "that allows expedited clearance for pre-approved, low-risk travelers upon arrival in the United States." Again, no lines and you just walk through. I believe it speeds things up for domestic flights too.
Both of these programs do a little vetting of you before issuing their passes. Worth doing, if you travel much. Definitely a form of profiling. These passes put you in the "guaranteed good citizen" catgory, same way that a carry permit does.
I am a great admirer of Tom Wolfe's ability to have his finger on the pulse of the culture, and his ability to crystallize what's going on in a phrase, a concept, or in a story. I read Bonfire twice because it was so dramatic, realistic, and entertaining. Dickensian in scope, but maybe lacking in Dickens' talent for character portraiture.
On the other hand, over the years in real life I believe I have met every character in every one of Wolfe's books.
At City Journal, Tom Wolfe’s California - In the Golden State, the great writer first chronicled the social changes that would transform America. A quote:
“The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby” represents the first time that Wolfe truly understood and was able to formulate the big idea that would transform him from an above-average feature writer into the premier cultural chronicler of our age. Those inhabiting the custom car scene were not rich, certainly not upper-class, and not prominent— indeed, they were almost invisible to society at large. Wolfe described his initial attempt to write the story as a cheap dismissal: “Don’t worry, these people are nothing.” He realized in California that he had been wrong. These people were something, and very influential within their own circles, which were far larger than anyone on the outside had hitherto noticed.
“Max Weber,” Wolfe tells me, “was the first to argue that social classes were dying everywhere—except, in his time, in England—and being replaced by what he called ‘status groups.’ ” The term improves in Wolfean English: “Southern California, I found, was a veritable paradise of statuspheres,” he wrote in 1968. Beyond the customizers and drag racers, there were surfers, cruisers, teenyboppers, beboppers, strippers, bikers, beats, heads, and, of course, hippies. Each sphere started off self-contained but increasingly encroached on, and influenced, the wider world.
Is it possible he really doesn't know what is going on? I recall reading that, at the Harvard Law Review, he never did any of the work or ever wrote anything, and would just stop in occasionally to briefly say Hi to everybody. It's curiously unengaged, and many hard-working people might term it lazy.
Why pursue the job if you don't like to work? Or is the presidency really the easiest job in the world in which 99.9% of the effort is delegated? How many private sector CEOs play as much golf and basketball as Obama does?
Roger has opined here that the job is to be a political figurehead on the bow of a great partisan ship. You show up once in a while, and some PR person tells you what to say. You say it in mellifluous tones, then run off to the golf course or to a fancy fund-raising party where everybody kisses your behind.
President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society represents the third great Progressive wave. With the liberal label firmly in place, the goal was now qualitative – to rescue liberalism from the materialism of the New Deal and to empower government to add meaning to the lives of the average person. The Great Society would end poverty and assure abundance for all. But, that was no longer enough. As Johnson explained: “’But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destination where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.’”
What followed was a cultural revolution and a fundamental change in the relationship between the people and the federal government...
As I asked ex-Gov. Mario Cuomo some years ago, "What's next on the liberal agenda after government medical care?"
If you adopt the position that government is God - that government can do everything, can fix everything, can and should make everything in life nice for everybody (which is even far beyond what God does), then naturally government failed to provide perfect safety from hurricane/Nor'easter Sandy.
Also, this one: Devastated Rockaways residents lash out at Bloomberg during unannounced visit. Excuse me, but the Rockaways do sometimes rock away. They are barrier islands, like Cape Hatteras. What do people expect? Barrier islands are just temporary sandbars. Like flood plains, one should try to live there at one's own peril. People should know a little geography. Heck, Long Island itself is just a temporary large barrier island, made of glacial sand from the recent ice age.
Without wanting to sound heartless because the suffering of others is painful to all regardless of the cause, there must be a point at which people are responsible for their own welfare. Has government created an illusion of safety from the hazards of life and the hazards of poor choices? If so, government has done a grave disservice to people. Here's what government did do:
- They have long marked out built-up areas labeled as "Flood Zone A." That includes beach areas, filled-in old coastal marshlands, and barrier beaches. That means that, if you want to live there, you will get flooded and have been flooded historically. Maybe governments should make you sign a piece of paper saying "I understand that I elect to live here in some danger and at my own personal and property risk." Not a great idea to live in flood zones, but if you want to be there you should expect it. In fact, if you live there, you likely are required to own federally-subsidized (big mistake there) flood insurance. People should never have been permitted to build in such places on the taxpayer's nickel, but it happened long ago and has a history of multiple wipe-outs over the past 300 years. I am in favor of free-market flood insurance only.
- Days before Sandy hit land in NJ, Mayor Bloomberg ordered mandatory evacutation of Zone A. No, they cannot force you to leave. This is America. It is a legal misdemeanor not to leave, however.
- For days, radio and TV warned about an especially high storm surge in flood zones due to the full moon and reinforced the evacuation order. They had tons of shelters for those with nowhere to go.
- Local police and fire departments went around all Zone A neighborhoods (Zone A pop. 300,000 on Staten Island alone) with loudspeakers sending out warnings on Sunday and Monday before the storm.
This reminds me of the old church story: The Mississippi is rising, the levee has a hole in it, and the guy looks out his first story window and hears police warnings to flee for higher ground. He prays "God, I have no fear because I know you will rescue me from this flood." A little later, he's had to move to the second floor and again asks God for help. Some guys in a canoe paddle by, but he lets them go while waiting for God. Finally, he's on the roof praying, and a helo goes overhead offering to drop a radio so he can call for help. He waves them off, trusting in the Lord. Yes, he drowns.
OK, I'll add the punchline: The man asks God why he let him drown and God answers "I sent the police, a canoe, and a helicopter. What more were you expecting from me?"
Many people believe that the state is responsible for everything. According to Cass Sunstein, a professor of law at Harvard University and administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, “Government is ‘implicated’ in everything people own. . . . If rich people have a great deal of money, it is because the government furnishes a system in which they are entitled to have and keep that money.”
That’s the academic formulation of a concept that was restated recently in a popular form. “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. . . . If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. . . . Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” That was Sunstein’s boss, President Obama.
and
The evolution of freedom has involved a long process of bringing power under law. The imposition of force has nonetheless left a powerful imprint on our minds. Alexander Rustow, a prominent sociologist and a father of the post-war revival of liberty in Germany, meditated on the origins of the state in violence and predation and its lingering imprint: “All of us, without exception, carry this inherited poison within us, in the most varied and unexpected places and in the most diverse forms, often defying perception. All of us, collectively and individually, are accessories to this great sin of all time, this real original sin, a hereditary fault that can be excised and erased only with great difficulty and slowly, by an insight into pathology, by a will to recover, by the active remorse of it all.” It takes work to free our minds from our dependence on the state.
Winter sports are the best ones (shooting, hunting, Paddle, skiing, Squash, indoor tennis), but you have to be in shape. The Official Maggie's Farm Fitness Program (no TM) is neither for big muscle building nor a rigorous fitness regime to regain a neglected physique but is cheap, time-saving, and highly-effective for those in decent shape who want to tighten up for the black diamonds (but ask your physician whether it is appropriate for you before suing Maggie's Farm or me):
1. Want to lose flab? Go on a no-carb, or almost-no-carb, high meat diet. Carbs are the devil, the delicious fat on the meat is not. Salad is for rabbits, anorectics, or for fun. Fruits are pure carbs. A few kinds of vegetables are low in carbs and tasty, but not necessary except to fill the tummy. Little to no nutrition in them. If you are a food-worrier, take a multivit to relieve your anxiety.
2. Aerobics: 30-40 minutes/day (running, treadmill, spinning, erg, swimming, or especially elliptical), pushing it as tolerated
3. Lower body: Several sets of lunges and squats as tolerated.
4. Abs: Several sets of bicycle crunches, as tolerated.
5. Upper: Push up sets and free-weight (not heavy) military press sets
6. Back, etc: Sets of The Plank, pushing sets as tolerated.
This is fun, only takes an hour/day, and gets your head ready for a good day of mental work. To save time, you can alternate days, aerobics on one day and the rest on the next day. That's enough to tune up an already-fit body.
I wonder what our readers do to keep themselves from going to pot in an America in which fewer and fewer people do real labor.
That's the Liberal project. Liberals take the long view and the long march. As 
Our more mature readers surely remember the cheap and horrible-tasting Chiantis in straw wrappings in spaghetti-and-meatball restaurants. That straw-wrapped bottle is/was called a "fiasco" - a flask. That wine was a fiasco but the bottles made for cute candlesticks.
Every Thanksgiving, we kids sang 
Being alone in life, both family helpers joined us at the family tables for Thanksgiving dinner. Ed was always given the honor of offering the prayer which came from the depths of his heart. He went on for quite a while, as the soup got cold. Deep and yet simple, which are the things I still aspire to. He prayed for his country, for the enrichment of his and our spirits, for the soul of his dead wife, for his two boys in the service, and for the glory of creation. 
I am a great admirer of Tom Wolfe's ability to have his finger on the pulse of the culture, and his ability to crystallize what's going on in a phrase, a concept, or in a story. I read Bonfire twice because it was so dramatic, realistic, and entertaining. Dickensian in scope, but maybe lacking in Dickens' talent for character portraiture. 
Perhaps it can be, if you are never engaged with any of the details. In response to our link this morning to 
Winter sports are the best ones (shooting, hunting, Paddle, skiing, Squash, indoor tennis), but you have to be in shape. The Official Maggie's Farm Fitness Program (no TM) is neither for big muscle building nor a rigorous fitness regime to regain a neglected physique but is cheap, time-saving, and highly-effective for those in decent shape who want to tighten up for the black diamonds (but ask your physician whether it is appropriate for you before suing Maggie's Farm or me):