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.
Knights, Jerusalem, the Seljuk Turks - the history of the Crusades and the future of Islam, by Rubinstein in The New English Review. One quote:
The knights who entered combat against Muslims and pagans did so for Christian objectives. This led to a radical change in Christian thinking about war. Before the Crusades, the Church was ambivalent about killing and wounding in war. St. Augustine helped to formulate the idea of a “just war" by arguing that killing carried out in obedience to divine command or legitimate public authority did not violate the commandment "Thou shalt not kill."[14] Nevertheless, even a “just war” did not receive the Church’s wholehearted approval. A war that the Church promoted and blessed, such as the First Crusade, had been unthinkable.
Pope Gregory VII (1073-85). was the prelate most responsible for the Church’s changed attitude towards war.[15] One of his favorite quotations from Scripture was “Cursed be he who keepeth back his sword from blood.” (Jeremiah 48:10).[16] Gregory proclaimed a new type of Christian soldier-saint.[17] Before Gregory, Saint George and Saint Sebastian had become saints in spite of having been soldiers. As a result of his teachings, men became saints because they had been soldiers. The long-range consequences of this transformation remain with us to this day.
40% of American college admits require some remedial education. I am not surprised. It's not to blame the secondary schools. It's just that we have people going to college who aren't college material - at least not yet.
The fact is that higher education is a booming industry in America, subsidized and supported by countless state and federal programs. Many of these schools are desperate for warm, paying bodies to fill their seats. Anybody can get into some college today, and they will do their darndest to keep him there because lower-tier schools need the income to survive (and need to report decent graduation rates).
We have become a nation of degree mills producing meaningless pieces of very expensive paper. I have interviewed many such people from lower tier schools and can report that they should not have bothered. They had the illusion that we might pay them more to do a clerical job if they had that degree from Eastern CT State College. Surprise, surprise - they can't do algebra, compose a literate and grammatical business letter, or get their minds around an abstract concept.
Who is the bigger sucker: Me, whose taxes subsidize the school? Or them, for wasting years when they could have been doing or learning something useful?
John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin to be his running mate set off a fiercely contemptuous reaction. The chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party said Mrs. Palin's sole qualification for high office was that she had never had an abortion. The comedian Bill Maher scoffed at the idea that "this stewardess" would be first in the line of succession. The scorn moved The Atlantic Monthly's Clive Crook to write that "the metropolitan liberal, in my experience, regards overt religious identity as vulgar, and evangelical Christianity as an infallible marker of mental retardation. Flag-waving patriotism is seen as a joke and an embarrassment."
The denunciation of Palin took place 45 years after William F. Buckley Jr. wrote: "I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University." From Richard Nixon's invoking the "silent majority" to Mrs. Palin's campaigning as a devout, plainspoken hockey mom, conservatives have claimed that they share the common sense of the common man. Liberals from Adlai Stevenson to Barack Obama to innumerable writers, artists and academics have often been willing foils in this drama, unable to stop themselves from disparaging the very people whose votes are indispensable to the liberal cause. The elephant-in-the-room irony is that the liberal cause is supposed to be about improving the prospects and economic security of ordinary Americans, whose beliefs and intelligence liberals so often enjoy deriding.
Buckley's identification of the political fault line running beneath the campus quadrangle was confirmed by "UD," a blogger for "Inside Higher Ed." Belittling Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho, UD concluded, "A lot of Americans don't seem to like highly educated people, and they don't want them running the country." He continued:
We need to encourage everyone to be in college for as many years as they possibly can, in the hope that somewhere along the line they might get some exposure to the world outside their town, and to moral ideas not exclusively derived from their parents' religion. If they don't get this in college, they're not going to get it anywhere else.
Thus, higher education is remedial education, and the affliction it remedies is an American upbringing.
Read the whole thing (link above). Voegli captures one of those things that bugs the heck out of me. But I am "mentally retarded," so I guess my view doesn't count. We aren't opposed to "higher ed." However, we believe in common sense, and we believe that the intelligent will and do educate themselves, and that the foolish will remain foolish with their degrees. Especially nowadays, with our degraded standards and expectations (examples - it is possible to graduate from college in the US today without ever taking any calculus, physics, statistics, economics, or American History).
Gwynnie went to Rawley's last week because it's close to her favorite gunsmith, just around the back of the Sturm Ruger plant on the Southport border.
Got there at 11:45 and so missed the legendary 20-minute wait for a deep-fried hot dog and fabulous skin-on fries. The booths are so covered with carved initials, names and dates it's hard to imagine they are still standing. Inside and out are signs touting the joint's approval by none other than Martha Stewart, a bit uncommon among weenie joints!!
"Rawley's is located west of the center of Fairfield on a rather plain stretch of road that runs alongside high-tension wires and railroad tracks, befitting the working-class feel of this dining spot. In a way, Rawley's has a similar feel to Blackie's in Cheshire (a ways north of Fairfield), in that it is a classic roadside stand housed in a rather forlorn-looking spot, though Blackie's is admittedly in a much more rural setting. But both reside in structures that look more like houses than commercial buildings, both have very old, dark seating areas inside (including counter seating with stools), and both feature some of the best hot dogs and hamburgers in the area.
"Although Rawley's serves a handful of different items, including chicken sandwiches and burgers, the hot dogs are perhaps the biggest draw, as they are deep-fried rather than grilled (as they are cooked at Super Duper Weenie), giving them an outstanding mix of crunchiness on the outside and juiciness on the inside. They can be ordered with a number of toppings, including cheese, chili, and something called "hellish relish," which is fairly hot and very delicious, with a mix of ingredients including onions and peppers. For those who aren't looking for hot dogs, the griddled burgers here are also excellent, with the high fat content of the thin patties giving them a ton of flavor. The crispy and fresh handcut fries are also decent, and go perfectly with the burgers and dogs. One other item of note at Rawley's is the superb milkshake, which is thick and rich, yet not overly syrupy or sweet."
"Robert Dulka of Fairfield said he started eating at Rawley's more than 20 years ago, when he was in high school. "I come in when I feel like being a little kid and eating everything in the world that isn't good for me," he said. "I'll worry about the fat and cholesterol later." "Another long-time customer, Linda Amos, said, "It's a lot of fun bringing people here for the first time. Everybody always says the same thing -- that it's like taking a trip back to the 1950's."
"Mr. Bielik [ed. the owner] said a number of celebrities have stopped in over the years, including Paul Newman, Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Mike Wallace, Phil Simms and Joe Namath. But Mr. Bielik said he's so busy making sure the hot dog buns are toasted properly that he usually doesn't notice until other customers make a commotion. "I took David Letterman's order a few years ago and I didn't even know who he was," Mr. Bielik said. "Look, even the rich and famous have to stand in line here, like everybody else."
"For all of Rawley's ambiance, customers say it's the hot dogs that bring them back. Bruce Bunch, who helped establish the Fairfield County Chapter of the Weenie Wanderers to search for the perfect hot dog, thinks he has figured out the secret. "Chico uses Roessler's hot dogs, which are 100 percent meat, deep fries the dogs, and cooks them until they are grilled brown" atop the stove, said Mr. Bunch, a public relations manager for General Electric in Fairfield. "He also toasts the buns perfectly, and with some mustard, relish and bacon -- well, all I can say is that our group doesn't wander any more," he said. "We just go to Rawley's, get Booth No. 2, and it just doesn't get any better than that."
Yes, you do have one of those psychobabble things.
Your inner child is selfish, self-centered, greedy, jealous, envious, angry, spiteful, grudge-bearing, hyper-sensitive; feels deprived, entitled, fearful, passive-aggressive, and often destructive. It's a nasty thing and results in misery (for others) in life.
My general advice is to avoid being "in touch with" one's inner child as much as possible. Reaching down and finding one's inner adult is a much better plan.
Last year’s choice by my alma mater CUNY’s Brooklyn College of the sole Common Reading book distributed to all incoming students for discussion and work in required English classes was particularly marred by the author’s additionsof anti-US and anti-Israel comments and statistics that were radical and fraudulent. I had a rolein raising the issue to national attention and criticism.
This year’s choice – Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat -- probably won’t raise as many hackles, as the focus is less a prominent political hotspot, Haiti. That may indicate welcome increased sensitivity by the selection committee, but this year’s choice still suffers most of the deficiencies as last year’s.
The book’s primary theme is the author’s upbringing in Haiti, separated from her parents who had immigrated to the US, she and brothers later joining them, and the relations among the extended family. However, the book’s critical attitude toward the US role in Haiti’s sad history of violence, poverty and instability, and the death in immigration detention of the author’s aged uncle, are strong secondary themes that provide the mileau for the tale.
One may argue that these are the author’s acquired views in this personal narrative. But, the prominence of those secondary themes brings the book, and the college, directly into major current political arguments over broader US foreign and immigration policies. This slant is in stark contrast to the author’s reflections exclusion of gratitude to the US for the youngsters’ success in the US. She is an acclaimed writer, her brothers also established in white collar jobs at the time of writing the book. Further, the book does not provide enough political context to allow a better understanding of the author’s criticisms of US policies in Haiti or US immigration practices.
In short, the book is part of the “victimology” and Leftist memoir literature so popular among our liberal elite, compared to earlier immigrants’ books about thankfully escaping repression and poverty in their countries of birth, then struggling and succeeding in the freedoms in the US.
That isn’t to say there isn’t enough in the book to show the horrible conditions in Haiti, that reading between the lines shows the youngsters’ success in the US, that an autopsy of the 81-year old uncle’s death revealed the cause as a previously unknown pancreatic condition, or that the author’s grandfather and uncle had been rebels and the family’s politics aligned with critics of the US in Haiti.
The book is still a poor choice for launching discussion of the political issues raised by the author. It is marred by the underlying anger of the author and her lack of appreciation of the US, her presentation of the US as an oppressive presence in the consciousness of her family, and the lack of underlying contextual details about US foreign and immigration policies. The incoming student will likely read or hear in the classroom discussions little else about the issues from broader or conflicting perspectives or facts.
Amongthe laudatory comments by some Brooklyn College faculty for the book, a senior professor there – Robert Cherry -- raises some of the problems with the book:
Family Tales in the Service of a Political Agenda
Brother, I’m Dying has little about the daily life of Haitians; their jobs, social and cultural institutions. Instead, Danticat focuses on violent episodes in Haitian history: Trujillo’s killings on the Dominican border; U.S. occupation, Duvalier’s Tonton Macoutes repression, and Haitian riot policy behavior. Rather than providing the reader with detailed information, Danticat chooses to promote emotional outrage by presenting tales of family members that accompany each of the episodes.
How true are the tales she has been told? How much has she embellished these accounts? What we do know is that telling these tales as first‐person accounts make them seem factual and puts faces and lives onto important episodes in Haitian history. In particular, Brother, I Am Dying uses Danticat’s family’s tales to invest its reader with emotional outrage at U.S. Haitian policy.
For me, this became clear when she placed Uncle Joseph’s childhood tale after this chilling account of his death in a US immigration detention center. Danticat writes, “Fearing that he might be captured by the Americans to work in the labor camps … Granpe Nozial ordered him to never go down the mountain.” Family illness, however, forced Joseph to seek medicine in town where he sees [US Marines] “white men …kicking the thing on the ground as though it was a soccer ball to one and other with the round tips of their boots. Taking small steps to stand the same distance away as other bystanders, my uncle finally saw what it was: a man’s head.” Thus, from the beginning of his life until its end, Joseph experienced first hand the inhumanity of U.S. policies towards Haitians.
While I sympathize with her pain, and even sympathize with her political agenda, it does not negate my concerns. Absence its political agenda, the book offers little to inform us about the Haitian experience. Brother, I’m Dying should be supplemented by panel discussions of the important issues it raises: U.S. Haitian policy, Immigration Detention Centers, and the issues children face when they are reunited with their parents in the U.S. when they are teenagers.
Professor Cherry informs me that the English Department is considering such discussions. If so, one may expect the Left and liberal leanings of the English Department faculty to emphasize the charges of economic imperialism prompting the US occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934, but notthat the dominance of its economy by German immigrants was feared in the midst of WWI, the huge building of infrastructure there by the US, or that its liberal constitution was written by then Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt.
One may expect the criticisms by pro-immigration lobbies that detention practices are substandard and harsh, but not that the deaths from all causes in detention are a tiny fraction of detainees (about 107 out of over 2.5 million, about 5 per 10,000, during 2003-2008; even the January 2010 New York Times reportof critics says, “In August, litigation by the civil liberties union prompted the Obama administration to disclose that more than one in 10 immigrant detention deaths had been overlooked and omitted from a list submitted to Congress last year.”). The Center for Immigration Studies, opposed to liberal immigration policies, contendsthis is a much lower rate of death than in US prisons. The comparison, however, raises many apples and oranges measurement difficulties that need to be clarified. Both sides agree that many improvements to detention policies and practices have been made in the past six-years, after the author’s uncle died in detention, and both sides agree that there is much – if differing – that needs to be done. – Of note here is that the author’s 81-year old uncle, with a valid visa to enter the US, was fleeing gangs that wanted to behead him and asked for temporary political asylum instead of just entering the US on his visa and overstaying it as so many do, so he entered the detention-adjudication system for a few days, dying there from a previously unknown pancreatic condition despite blood/urine and scan tests provided.
I’ll add a personal note. The apartment that the author’s parents lived in was in my Flatbush neighborhood in Brooklyn, less that 20-years later. I walked a mile to Prospect Park. Their apartment was a block away from the park. The apartment buildings where her parents lived were considered much better than the one in which I was raised. The author’s father was a tailor who in the US became a gypsy cab driver. He raised and educated successful children. My poor immigrant grandparents were, also, tailors, who sewed until retirement for poor health in their ‘60s, and raised and educated a successful family (my aunt was in the first classes at the new Brooklyn College). I drove a cab on graveyard shifts while at Brooklyn College, and like the author’s father was mugged. We were raised to be appreciative of the freedoms and opportunities in the US. It seems that the author of Brooklyn College’s 2011 Common Reading is less so. That is a distinct problem plaguing colleges and the US today.
I haven't thought about this old-timey Yankee diner dessert for many years, but someone brought it up the other day, and I am now hungry for one.
As I recall, the last time I had a slice of one was at a diner with my grandfather. Cannot think about the pie without remembering that polo- and poker-playing, shootin', fishin' slacker gramps of mine, who preferred shopping for horses, and dealing in sailboats and Elco yachts (leaving his real business to others) to regular work - and who died way too young of a series of MIs, at 63.
Boston Cream Pie is Yankee-simple, unfashionable, unsophisticated, and darn tasty, and it's a cake, not a pie, with potent if short-lasting anti-depressant properties.
You can make it yourself if you can't find it in stores. Easy to do.
The last fad diagnosis was ADHD: every little boy who didn't act like a good little girl had it. Now, it is Bipolar Disorder for all kids with unruly emotions. In Newsweek, Mommy, Am I Really Bipolar?
A quote from the article:
I believe... that there is no scientific evidence to support the belief that bipolar disorder surfaces in childhood. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case: the evidence against the existence of pediatric bipolar disorder is so strong that it’s difficult to imagine how it has gained the endorsement of anyone in the scientific community. And the effect of this trendy thinking can have devastating consequences. Such children are regularly prescribed medications that are not effective in kids and have unwelcome side effects.
Diagnostic faddishness is rampant in Psychiatry, and an embarassment to the field. Why does it occur? It occurs because our descriptive diagnostic categories are so elastic, and so fundamentally unvalidated, that there is room for much mischief. Not to mention that the drug companies always welcome new opportunities to sell their wares.
Naturally, police never know what they are walking into and would be more comfortable if nobody had guns - or knives or baseball bats either - but Chief McCarthy is way out of reality. A quote:
..the culture of any given community will determine its level of violence, with gun laws making a minor difference at best. The devastating cultural changes impacting society -- and the black community in particular -- during the 1960s are largely to blame for the violence we see. Political scientist James Q. Wilson summed up that cultural change perfectly, saying, "[P]eople abandoned the idea that self-control was the standard by which life should be led." The current conditions on the South Side and in ghettos around America are a direct result of generation upon generation of excuses -- wrapped up in social-science garb, righteous indignation, and racial sensitivity -- but excuses all the same. The young men committing violent crimes today have been steeped in generational irresponsibility, and Chicago's police superintendant has kept up the flow.
Most people in my community own guns (legally), but we have not had a murder here in 70 years. And that was done by an intruder, from outside town.
The only difference is that they have cops, guns, jails, and armies to back them up and to require their clients' cooperation. An armed monopoly but yes, we consented to the original deal in 1787. I was just a kid back then, but I was all for it, believing it put government in a tight little cage. I did not anticipate, back then, how damn good their mass marketing would become over the centuries. Mass marketing was simple and primitive in those days.
To their credit, the professionals sincerely believe what they're saying. Sure their own interests happen to align with their rhetoric. But so what? Professional politicians have long ago stopped noticing such things and they shortened "Conflict of Interest" to Synergy a while back. They genuinely and truly believe that the government can't afford to make any real spending cuts. That if it did, the system would fall apart. And they're right. Their system would fall apart.
The system is too big to gradually reform. It's interconnected with too many expectations. And a major expectation is that it will keep on going this way. Government is an industry. And numerous industries have grown up around it. You can cut a hundred million, a billion, here and there, and that will just spur on competition among special interests. But you can't dramatically cut spending. If you do an entire supra-economy that has grown up over the regular economy collapses.
Of course that's exactly what has to be done. The professional politician represents the supra-economy. The one that's based on regulation, subsidies and grants. That employs everyone from union organizers to sensitivity trainers, consultants, administrators, suppliers, lawyers, managers and anyone whose job in the private or public sector is tied into the government.
Government is, in fact, the biggest business in the USA - the industry with the most guns, the most revenue, the most employees, the most power, and the most private jets too. But since this leviathan tends to be run by people who could not run a corner candy shop yet has armed persons behind them, it continually expands while losing money every day.
That is, as long as China has a single spare yuan to lend to it to maintain the illusion that it is a going concern. Yes, I know. We voted them all into office. Our bad.
We humans flatter ourselves when we claim to "think" things through, because often our starting point is our conclusion. We rationalize our conclusions and biases, and are attracted to information which confirms them. However, that does not mean that our thoughts are always misguided or wrong.
Anyone who does not know why they hold a particular viewpoint cannot judge fairly whether it should be kept or abandoned. There’s no point in arguing with them.
That's the point. It is in fact a Psychoanalytic point. Two good rules of thumb for introspectives are these: "Don't believe everything you think," and the old AA aphorism, "Feelings aren't facts."
Mark Edmundsen has written a piece at The Chronicle about one of my favorite bugabooos in Health Now: A Provocation. Here's a quote:
Francis Fukuyama glances at this matter in a passage from The End of History and the Last Man. "In America today, we feel entitled to criticize another person's smoking habits, but not his or her religious beliefs or moral behavior. For Americans, the health of their bodies—what they eat and drink, the exercise they get, the shape they are in—has become a far greater obsession than the moral questions that tormented their forebears."
I entirely believe in the value of remaining fit, strong, trim, sexy, and attractive but it is the fetishizing of health and the common delusions about food that annoy me the most. In the end, we are not in control of our fates. And I hate brown rice, don't know why anybody would eat it willingly. The Chinese won't eat it.
F-16, call sign Stroke 3, dodging 6 SAM launches during Desert Storm
As the package proceeded to the Iraqi border the weather become steadily worse until everyone was in the weather, unable to climb out into the clear. As planes got out of position, the package finally broke out into the clear just past the Iraqi border. At this time, a large calibre AAA gun began firing on the aircraft. The AAA consisted of extremely large airbursts that looked like big black rain clouds. The AAA, coupled with the confusion of sorting out the package formation, resulted in 25% of the package being sent home at that time. Meanwhile the package, now a 12-ship, pressed on to Baghdad.
As the flight approached the Baghdad IP, AAA began firing at tremendous rates. Most of the AAA was at 10-12,000ft (3,658m), but there were some very heavy, large calibre explosions up to 27,000ft (8,230m). Low altitude AAA became so thick it appeared to be an undercast. At this time, the 388th TFW F-16’s were hitting the Nuclear Research Centre outside of the city, and the Weasels had fired off all their HARMs in support of initial parts of the strike and warnings to the 614th F-16’s going further into downtown went unheard. The F-15’s also provided air cover and departed with the first part of the strike group. Again, a warning that went unheard. Without knowing it 614th TFS F-16’s were all pretty much alone in downtown Baghdad with no air cover and no electronic support assets.
A low overcast deck covered the northern portion of the city which extended south to the point where the AF Headquarters and the Republican Guard Headquarters were mostly obscured, and the package commander, Maj. John Nips Nichols, called a weather abort for those two targets. The southern portion of the city was clear, and the oil refinery was clearly visible to Crud and Stroke flights. As they approached the action point to roll in on the refinery, an SA-2 launch warning was received. The fighters turned to honour the threat missile launch warning, and some SAMs were seen in the air, but they were not an immediate threat. The remaining F-16’s each pinpoint bombed separate refectory towers on the site, and set the refinery ablaze. The destruction was so complete that the flames from the refinery were seen on Cable News Network (CNN) film for the next two weeks.
As the initial SA-2 launch warning faded however, Maj. ET Tullia, Stroke 3, received additional SA-2 and SA-3 acquisition warnings that went unheeded as he rolled in on the towers. The high angle diving delivery, combined with the on-board ECM pod delayed a full SAM missile system acquisition until he pulled off the target and turned south. As the missiles closed, ET's tape reveals the screams of the radar warning receiver into his headset of a missile launch. The missiles overshot and harmlessly detonated above his aircraft, and he turned back to the egress heading.
Multiple SAMs were launched at the package, some ballistic and unguided and some tracking with a full system lock-on. In spite of this, some members of the package refused to jettison their bombs until clear of the city to avoid possible damage to civilian non-combatants. One of the missiles guided toward Clap 4, piloted by Capt. Mike Cujo Roberts. A missile break warning sounded over the radio and Cujo saw the missile as it guided towards him. It passes behind his aircraft and detonates, and Cujo believes he is safe until his aircraft begins to pitch over and he loses control. As the jet approaches negative 1'g', Cujo ejected over downtown Baghdad. No one observed an ejection, nor saw a 'chute.
I found Dr. Bob's post to be honest, sad, and deeply discouraging. I hear things like that all over from my colleagues these days. Here's a quote from his Still Breathing…
... I am weary. After nearly 30 years in private practice, I am not sure which straw broke the camel’s back, but it is most surely broken. It is a weariness born of 14 hour days; of dictating charts and finishing paperwork until 8 or 9 pm each night, after starting the day at 7 am; of endless audits by the insurance industry and Medicare; of the constant threat of litigation; of the crushing burden of one more federal requirement mandated but never recompensed; of a host of ever-expanding administrative burdens having nothing to do with patient care, and everything to do with bureaucratic micromanagement of the profession. And this before we have even begun to see the nightmare which Obamacare will inflict. Camels weren’t designed to carry such a load.
That's the loss of just one more doctor who would know you and your family, and care about you and your life - and who would be working for you, and you only. Soon enough, the tort lawyers and government bureaurats will have the pleasure of going to an assembly line government clinic, staffed by docs trained in Russia, Mexico, and Croatia, to take care of them in 4 minutes according to a government protocol, with only approved and cost-effective methods depending on your age (and potential productivity).
Life has hardened my cynicism about power and government. I am not a paranoid sort, but I think the Fathers had it right about their determination to limit power. They own half my labor now, and want to own more of it - and my body too. For my own good, of course.
As a traditionalist Yankee born and bred, I somehow cannot find any gratitude in me for such unwanted favors.
“The Affordable Care Act helps stop health problems before they start,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a statement. “These historic guidelines are based on science and existing literature and will help ensure women get the preventive health benefits they need.”
Photo is of a woman's hideous health problem, tragically not cured in time, for free, by modern science. It's sort-of like a tumor, I suppose, but a healthy one which has a strange way of popping out of a lady's hoo-ha when it grows too big.
The deal between the Congressional leadership and the President is much ado about nothing, in that – contrary to the kudos, rationalizations or moans – it actually does and will do little to affect the rapidly rising federal deficits and debts. It is less than trivial in the next year that it actually affects and almost entirely a lie over the next decade as future Congresses and presidents work around or ignore it.
The deal will cause increased demoralization among the citizenry both over its lack of real content and as politicians wrangle vigorously over scraps treated like whole cloth. It will also cause a new sobriety, already in painful motion, among the citizenry who have lesser prospects than before this deep recession and little reason to believe the future will personally be much better. Consumption will be restrained.
It is clear that the status quo is continued, for now at least and likely into the foreseeable future.
Spending is not reduced. It only promises a reduction in the present trendline of forecast spending, a fraction of the increases that will actually occur. And, there is little reason to believe that either Medicare or defense spending will be more than trimmed slightly in 2012. Part of that trendline, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is a $multi-trillion increase in taxes as the Bush tax-cuts are allowed to expire right after the 2012 elections. There is little reason to believe that such a drastic increase in taxes will be allowed to occur. Longer term, even if a trillion$ or three-$trillion dollars of spending were most optimistically avoided over the next decade, that’s a hundred to three-hundred $billion per year, a small fraction of federal spending.
If, as seems likely, the 2012 elections result in a Republican president and both houses of Congress, there will be more trims to spending, a good thing surely but likely to increase the howls of real and defensive pains and hardly likely to actually reduce the deficits significantly. The Cut, Cap and Balance that the Republican House passed is likely, and decidedly a better thing, yet as tides and lobbies weigh in will be weakened and end-run over time.
Fears about the crash of the dollar are overblown, as there is no viable alternative in a euro-myth euro or speciously corrupt Chinese renminbi. Lenders will demand higher interest rates and that will increase the deficits worldwide. Fears about more global conflict are not overblown. Enemies of order or Western civilization will continue to probe and attack. Reducing mental and defense preparedness by the US will encourage such foes and increase the needs to confront, which will be less successful and more costly to servicemembers and foregone goals.
So, long story short, the status quo will continue. It will be perceived as or really be painful for all, even under the best of circumstances.
One can argue that far more severe governmental actions or changes would reverse this. They are unlikely to occur. There will be more restraints on deepening the hole, but the hole remains. We’ve already dug it by a generation or two of profligacy and excuses. Only a generation or two of serious reduction in personal and government spending, plus economic recovery that must depend upon lessened government regulation and interference, will begin to maybe return us to realistic optimism.
I predict that the demoralization will be temporary and the new sobriety will ultimately triumph and set us right. The path will be long and hard to dig out of several generations of delusions that we could spend our seed-corn, requiring perseverance and sacrifice of self and illusions, but it is well marked.
BTW, I'm encoraged that the cautious and knowledgeable Mitt Romney is opposed to the debt deal, both as an economic realist and political positioner. The debt deal will pass anyway but he will be demonstrated as correct during the coming election season. That may not win him enough points to score, but does indicate a will among Republican moderates that together with the more conservative and Independent centrists -- as polls presently show -- will lead to the next vital step up with a Republican White House and Congress. The road of a thousand steps begins with the first. We've taken the first and 999 remain.
Mrs. BD thought that some of our readers, especially those remote from NYC, might like a sample of the retrospective, Savage Beauty, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which ends next week. She particularly singled out ex-New Yorker Marianne.
The show is a big deal. It has been sold out since the opening, and yesterday you had to wait in line 2-3 hrs to get in (unless a member of the Met, as we are, in which case you go right past the lines. It was crowded.).
I liked the show. We usually use those good headphone things, but, for some reason, we did not this time.
This Scotsman, who recently committed suicide, was quite an artist. All the husbands and boyfriends there seemed interested to look, as was I (up to a point). It would have been more fun with live models wearing the things.
They put on a remarkably dramatic presentation of McQueen's stuff with what I presume is edgy-artsy-fashionista music and spooky lighting. My photos are not very good because pics were not technically allowed so I had to be discreet. (I do it for you, our readers.)
And yes, I was rewarded with a good lunch afterwards.
Have you heard Trombone Shorty? I enjoyed hearing him and his band live, last summer. Had a quick chat with him, too, after the set. He is a sweetheart, and very humble despite being such a prodigy and, now, a star.
I know folks who will drive 40 minutes to the Red Rooster Drive-In on Route 22 in Brewster, NY, when they get a jones for their burgers, fries, and onion rings - all made to order, the old-fashioned way. Slow food. Good hot dogs too. Worth a trip from Great Falls, or Phoenix.
Is it over-rated? Maybe. I love it, though.
The place is unchanged since the 50s. There is really no seating, but lots of picnic benches outside. Or eat in the pick-up and drip juice and ketchup on your shirt in the manly American-style.
It's taken a few years for my hunting pal to get his hunting getaway in the wilds of upstate New York into usable shape. He has been doing most of the work himself.
I do not know why he did not throw a match onto the old thing and start fresh. Probably because he is the sort of guy to do things his way, the hard way, preserving the old as best he can.
"Studies show" that, once 10% of a population accepts a notion, it acquires a sturdy enough foothold to have a chance to widely penetrate the population. That's why cranky ideas and crazy notions - along with worthy notions - become part of popular culture.
Politicians know this, which is why they are so full of BS. Their tactic is to repeat a meme until it's accepted by a quorum, even if you Maggie's Farmers know better. You can get 10% of people to believe that the moon is made of Roquefort, that vaccinations cause autism, that JFK's assassination was a conspiracy, or that the planet is about to burn up due to cars.
Another: Lucian Freud: Art without the feel-good factor - No other artist portrays his subjects with such intense and relentless honesty. But can we love the uncomfortable art of Lucian Freud?
I have posted about codes of behavior here, several times. It is an important subject for me, and it seems to me that honor is a core concept in Western Civilization (I cannot speak for alien civilizations because I am still struggling to understand my own.). U VA seems to be dealing with this subject now. One quote:
Complaints that a strict Honor Code represent an antiquated, all male, aristocratic standard appropriate only to the slave-holding ante-bellum South in which it originated, that it needs to be replaced by a new standard more attuned to a diverse community with “nuanced perspectives on crime and punishment” sounds more than odd coming from the Grounds of UVa, where “Mr. Jefferson” is not so much a ghost as a virtually live presence. The Declaration of Independence, after all, another "old boy" product, can be described in exactly the same terms.
Perhaps the psychotics at the otherwise wonderful U VA are not aware thatjobs have honor codes, citizenship has an honor code, all relationships have honor codes, science has honor codes, the professions and business have honor codes, supposedly academia has honor codes, every organization and club has an honor code, even the Mafia has honor codes - everything in civilized life is based on honor codes, whether implicit or explicit. That's why it's called "civilized".
Violate them at your peril. At the least, ostracism and social avoidance are unpleasant consequences of violations of mannerly codes, appropriateness codes, and honor codes. In real daily life, just one screw up often is fatal because nobody forgets. The Law only covers the most extreme violations of the codes.
Knights, Jerusalem, the Seljuk Turks - the history of the Crusades and the future of Islam, by Rubinstein in 
From the I wish I had Written This Department: Voegli's 
Yes, you do have one of those psychobabble things.
I haven't thought about this old-timey Yankee diner dessert for many years, but someone brought it up the other day, and I am now hungry for one. 
Are racist white gun owners 
Mark Edmundsen has written a piece at The Chronicle about one of my favorite bugabooos in 
I found Dr. Bob's post to be honest, sad, and deeply discouraging. I hear things like that all over from my colleagues these days. Here's a quote from his 
I thought it was a blessing and a gift from God - and I naively thought that medical insurance was meant to help cover costly diseases. 
Best Road Burger in the Northeast
