Chaos vs. Linear Thinking

Interesting article by Butler Shaffer. Here's the first bit:

My last words on the gallows will be to praise the study of chaos. For the sake of our very survival as a species, the destructive and dysfunctional nature of our highly-structured world may soon force humanity into an outburst of intelligence. Should that occur, an understanding of the creative and orderly processes of chaos may save us from the consequences of our collective hubris.

What can be more insane than mankind’s continuing insistence upon playing out the simple-minded notion that the intricacies and variability of our complex world can be fully comprehended and rendered manageable by wise leaders? In a world caught up in the madness of wars, genocidal campaigns, economic depressions, and the resort – by some – to the despair implicit in suicide bombings, there is no better occasion for us to consider a major paradigm shift in our thinking.

"Desperation" may well be the best word to describe our current responses to the ubiquitous malfunctioning of social systems premised on the necessity for vertically-structured, top-down, command-and-control organizational forms. Western civilization collapses all around us, and yet most of us continue to insist upon a renewed commitment to variations of the Platonic vision of a world made orderly by philosopher-kings.

Here's the whole thing.

Gluttonous debt

From Dr. Mercola's website:

...from the moment of the U.S. constitutional birth in 1789, the debt accumulated by the federal government did not hit $1 trillion until 1981.

It took 183 years to incur the first trillion dollars.

It only took 20 years to grow that debt to $5.7 trillion, and a mere seven years to reach $9 trillion.

How on earth will increased government spending, more corporate bailouts, and stimulus packages aimed at getting American’s to open up their pocketbooks like we used to, actually make matters better?

It's all pretend

The notion that this is a government "of the people" etc., should be dead by now, but many people still believe it. It's hard for me to keep pretending, though, when you see that the powers-that-be blithely take things into their own hands, even if they have no explicit authority to do so.

Buried in a Bloomberg article was this quote:
The Treasury Department changed the tax code on Sept. 30 to allow banks to expand the deductions on the losses banks they were buying, according to Robert Willens, a former Lehman Brothers tax and accounting analyst who teaches at Columbia University Business School in New York.

From the Wall Street Journal:
Some experts argue that the Treasury has effectively shifted from administering parts of the tax code to changing tax laws on its own. "It doesn't seem possible that they have this authority," said Robert Willens, an independent corporate tax analyst.

Freedom

"We Christians acknowledge man to be morally free and the guide of his own personal will and actions and responsible for them before God's truth. Such freedom is a most great gift to man from God, Who seeks from man not a mechanical submission, but a freely given filial obedience of love."
- St. Philaret of New York

The ship is already sunk - stop bailing!

Some interesting thoughts on the potential bailout of GM:
Many of the Big Three's problems are self-made. The contraction of demand is just the latest dark cloud, and a problem that affects all industries, not just autos. Thus, if Detroit should get a bailout, why not help America's home builders, coal miners and masseuses, too?

Detroit's problems predate the financial meltdown. Management and labor consigned the Big Three to a future of troubles when they agreed to preposterous work rules, requiring management to pay workers at 90% of their salaries when they were laid off. Those rules compelled General Motors in particular to keep pumping out vehicles in the face of shrinking demand earlier in the decade, ushering in the period of "0% financing" for five, six and seven years. Because labor costs were locked in, it made more sense to keep producing and selling at below the full cost of production.

Management also gave labor the "Cadillac platter" of health and retirement benefits, all of which substantially increased the cost of producing vehicles at unionized plants in America. Management and labor always assumed that the U.S. government would come to the rescue when the chickens came home to roost over this inefficient, uncompetitive cost structure.

Those were only the beginning of the industry's economic sins. On the demand side, Big Three management demonstrated an egregious failure of imagination, if not downright dereliction of duty, in assuming that large pickup trucks and SUVs would never fall out of favor. When SUVs and trucks are excluded, Big Three offerings barely make the list of the country's top 10 selling cars of the decade. None has been a top five seller. Shouldn't producers try to make things that people want to consume before scapegoating their failures and seeking bailouts?

Whole article here.

Obama's pen - "kinda cool"?

Glenn Greenwald, a big critic of the GOP (and the "establishment" in general) is concerned about Obama's plans:

What fueled the abuses of the last eight years as much as anything else was the ongoing (and severely accelerated) abdication of power by Congress to a bordering-on-omnipotent presidency. It's critically important that an Obama administration reverse the substantive transgressions of the Bush era -- closing Guantanamo, ending torture and rendition, restoring habeas corpus, rejuvenating surveillance oversight, withdrawing from Iraq, applying the rule of law to political leaders past and present -- but it's at least as important that this be accomplished in the right way, that our constitutional framework be restored. That means restricting the President's role to what the Constitution prescribes and having Congress fulfill its assigned duties and perform its core functions.

This is anything but an abstract concern. Central to the design of the republic is the power of the citizenry to remove all members of the House and 1/3 of the Senate every two years. That's the central mechanism by which the people, through their representatives in Congress, keep the Government responsive. But none of that matters -- it's all just illusory -- if Congress has no real power and exists as little more than a passive and obedient vassal of the President. We shouldn't want that arrangement even if, at a given moment, we are lucky enough to have a magnanimous President who makes good decisions and wants to do good things with his centralized, unchecked and imbalanced power.

The Lieberman controversy merely symbolizes how entrenched this problem has become. Just consider reports this week that Obama intends to use unilaterally issued, unchecked Executive Orders, rather than acts of Congress, to dictate outcomes on a whole range of politically controversial policy debates that are so plainly the province of the Congress to legislate -- from restrictions on stem-cell research funding to regulations governing aid to foreign family planning groups to oil drilling. Here's what Obama's transition chief, John Podesta, said about that:
"There's a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for congressional action, and I think we'll see the president do that. I think that he feels like he has a real mandate for change. We need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set."

Podesta's infatuation with the power of executive orders recalls the infamous comment made by Clinton aide Paul Begala regarding the robust use of executive orders by the Clinton administration to make policy: "Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool."

That isn't actually how things are supposed to work. The Constitution doesn't vest the President with the power to make laws with the "stroke of the pen," and it's not "kinda cool" that we've allowed it to happen. It's actually quite dangerous and anti-democratic, as James Madison warned in Federalist No. 47:
"The accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

As Madison explained in that paper, it was only because the Constitution separated those powers among the branches -- with the legislative power (the power to make laws) assigned exclusively to Congress and the executive power (the power to execute those laws) assigned to the President -- was Madison convinced that the presidency created by the Constitution, deprived of lawmaking power, would pose no threat to republican liberty.

Let's be clear: Obama didn't create these erosions and he hasn't even been inaugurated yet, so it's irrational to begin blaming him for this state of affairs. Many of the policies he is contemplating changing via Executive Order were ones that were improperly implemented by Executive Order in the first place. And, principally, it's the responsibility of Congress to defend its constitutionally assigned powers, not of Obama to refrain from encroaching on them.

Nonetheless, we have strayed indescribably far from the system of Government we were supposed to have. That we trust a particular President and believe he'll do good things, achieve good outcomes, with excessive power is no reason to be happy with that state of affairs. As is often the case, Democratic Congressional leaders seem far more content to submit to power than to exercise it. But we shouldn't treat the framework created by the Constitution as optional or waivable when it seems there are good things to be gained by doing so. Podesta is right that "we need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set." That should include, first and foremost, respect for the roles assigned to the various branches by the Constitution.

Let's hear it for regulation!

The right kind of regulation, that is. From DownsizeDC:

Often, the repeal of a government regulation will result in the restoration of free market regulations that are far stronger.

Free market regulation comes in several forms. One involves customers taking their business elsewhere when a company fails to provide a good product at a good price. Businesses are regulated by their customers.

Please notice that the government operates under different rules . . .

If the government charges you too much to do too little, then too bad. The government continues to extract money from you, even when it performs poorly.

* You can't fire the government!
* You can't take your business elsewhere.

In this sense government is almost completely DE-regulated.

But the free market also regulates businesses in other ways. Indeed, the free market imposes the strongest possible form of regulation . . . bankruptcy.

We must recognize that the politicians are in the process of repealing bankruptcy. Companies are being rescued from bankruptcy by the Big Bailout.

This is the correct way to think about things . . .

* The current economic downturn is a free market attempt to regulate bad business practices (many of which were fostered by government banking and housing policies)
* Bankruptcy equals the strongest possible form of regulation.
* Bailout equals the strongest possible form of DE-regulation.
* The Big Bailout equals Big DE-regulation.

See the whole article here.

Yet another example...

of how the gubmint is NOT looking out for the individual's best interest.
That the $100-billion fast food industry rests on a foundation of corn has been known more through inference and observation than hard scientific fact — until now.
Chemical analysis from restaurants across the United States shows that nearly every cow or chicken used in fast food is raised on a diet of corn, prompting fresh criticism of the government's role in subsidizing poor eating habits.
"People had talked about what they observed or found out about, as individual journalists or individual consumers," said University of Hawaii geobiologist and study co-author A. Hope Jahren. But anecdotes do not add up to scientific proof, she said. "We got national data on how this food is being produced. It's very objective."
Corn is central to agriculture in the United States, where it is grown in greater volumes and receives more government subsidies than any other crop. Between 1995 and 2006 corn growers received $56 billion in federal subsidies, and the annual figure may soon hit $10 billion.
But in recent years, environmentalists have branded corn as an icon of unsustainable agriculture. It requires large amounts of fertilizer and pesticides, both of which require large amounts of fossil fuel to manufacture.
Most of the resulting corn is fed to livestock who didn't evolve to subsist entirely on corn. In cattle, eating corn increases flatulence emissions of methane — a potent greenhouse gas — and creates an intestinal environment rich in e. coli, a common cause of food poisoning. That necessitates mixing cow feed with antibiotics, in turn producing antibiotic-resistant disease strains.
Many of those livestock end up in high-calorie, low-nutrition franchised fast foods, which have been repeatedly linked to obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Fast food's biggest selling point is its low price — and that, say industry critics, is largely possible because of corn's ubiquitous cheapness.

The whole article is here.

Democrats make some sense!

... in their 1932 party platform, which helped FDR get elected. Of course, he turned around and did many things completely opposed to what he campaigned on. (Sound familiar? "Humble foreign policy"?)

It's not all libertarian principles or anything, but there are a few good tidbits-
The Democratic Party solemnly promises by appropriate action to put into effect the principles, policies, and reforms herein advocated, and to eradicate the policies, methods, and practices herein condemned. We advocate an immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures by abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating departments and bureaus, and eliminating extravagance to accomplish a saving of not less than twenty-five per cent in the cost of the Federal Government. And we call upon the Democratic Party in the states to make a zealous effort to achieve a proportionate result.

We advocate a sound currency to be preserved at all hazards and an international monetary conference called on the invitation of our government to consider the rehabilitation of silver and related questions.

The removal of government from all fields of private enterprise except where necessary to develop public works and natural resources in the common interest.

For another shocker of a Democratic platform statement (vowing not to interfere with education), see this post.

The Real Election Results...

NOTA by a landslide!

As a percentage of the eligible-to-vote U.S. citizens:
NOTA - 42.35%
Obama - 27.46%
McCain - 24.13%
Other - 6.05%

NOTA stands for None of the Above. In other words, many of us refused to give our vote to any of the candidates listed on the ballot.

On the other hand...

Here's an interesting take on the current recession and why we shouldn't be so afraid of it.

Excerpt:

Most people will profit from the current slow-down, and also from any recession that may follow.

How can this possible? It is possible because most of the pain felt in economic corrections happens at the margin, hurting some people badly, but making things better for most people, overall. Think about it . . .

Businesses will suffer lower profits, but most of them will re-think and re-engineer their operations, emerging better and stronger than they were before, while those businesses that fail will see their assets moved to more productive firms, paving the way for greater societal wealth in the future.

Those who are close to retirement, and stayed in the stock market too long, may have to delay their retirement for a year or two. But if they refuse to panic by selling out now, they too will likely emerge better than before.

The greatest pain will be felt by those who lose their jobs. This pain will only impact, even if we have a severe recession, about one out of ten Americans. This is too much pain suffered by too many people, but the fact remains that . . .

Roughly 70% to 90% of all Americans will suffer NO economic pain at all. Instead, they will actually BENEFIT from the correction, because the cost of living will drop, and new investment opportunities will be available at bargain prices.

Hmm, what to think?

My town in the NYT

Does this mean a lot of New Yorkers will be coming here soon?
Here's the article.

I like this article

This website is pretty weird looking, but I really enjoyed this article about the current economic crisis. It blended a very easy-to-follow explanation of our ponzi-scheme economy with a meditation of what it means for our civilization and human relationships in general. Pretty cool. He's writing from a new-agey point of view, but I didn't find that incompatible with my Christian way of thinking, such as it is.

Here's the first part:

Suppose you give me a million dollars with the instructions, "Invest this profitably, and I'll pay you well." I'm a sharp dresser -- why not? So I go out onto the street and hand out stacks of bills to random passers-by. Ten thousand dollars each. In return, each scribbles out an IOU for $20,000, payable in five years. I come back to you and say, "Look at these IOUs! I have generated a 20% annual return on your investment." You are very pleased, and pay me an enormous commission.

Now I've got a big stack of IOUs, so I use these "assets" as collateral to borrow even more money, which I lend out to even more people, or sell them to others like myself who do the same. I also buy insurance to cover me in case the borrowers default -- and I pay for it with those self-same IOUs! Round and round it goes, each new loan becoming somebody's asset on which to borrow yet more money. We all rake in huge commissions and bonuses, as the total face value of all the assets we've created from that initial million dollars is now fifty times that.

Then one day, the first batch of IOUs comes due. But guess what? The person who scribbled his name on the IOU can't pay me back right now. In fact, lots of the borrowers can't. I try to hush this embarrassing fact up as long as possible, but pretty soon you get suspicious. You want your million dollars back -- in cash. I try to sell the IOUs and their derivatives that I hold, but everyone else is suspicious too, and no one buys them. The insurance company tries to cover my losses, but it can only do so by selling the IOUs I gave it!

So finally, the government steps in and buys the IOUs, bails out the insurance company and everyone else holding the IOUs and the derivatives stacked on them. Their total value is way more than a million dollars now. I and my fellow entrepreneurs retire with our lucre. Everyone else pays for it.

This is the first level of what has happened in the financial industry over the past decade. It is a huge transfer of wealth to the financial elite, to be funded by US taxpayers, foreign corporations and governments, and ultimately the foreign workers who subsidize US debt indirectly via the lower purchasing power of their wages. However, to see the current crisis as merely the result of a big con is to miss its true significance.


Here's the whole essay.

Thank goodness Congress is protecting the children

from DownsizeDC:

On September 17, the House passed the "School Safety Enhancements Act of 2008."

My first thought was, "The DC Upsizers are at it again!"

My second thought was that the Constitution gives Congress no authority over public safety, except on federal property. This power is left to the states.

But even aside from this, the bill implies something distressing -- that state and local governments are incapable of preserving public safety without Congressional help. But if the states really lack the will and competence to keep schoolchildren safe then they must also be incapable of governing at all. This would imply that, but for Congress, our country would be a nation of 50 Somalias.

This just isn't true.

But when you read the bill, you realize it isn't about school "safety" at all.

The bill expands an already-existing (and unnecessary) grant program for local governments to install metal detectors on school grounds. The bill increases the funding from $30 million to $50 million per year. Worse, it specifically expands the program to include funding for "surveillance equipment."

This, on top of Real ID, Animal ID, TWIC, warrantless spying . . . Perhaps if the younger generation are always being watched at school, they'll get used to it and won't mind the same on the streets, at their jobs, or in their homes.

Do you want to know how your Represenatitive voted for this atrocity? Too bad. Congress couldn't be bothered with a roll call vote; it passed under "suspension of the rules" by voice vote. (Somehow, though, they did find time for a roll call vote on whether to name a post office building after Theodore Roosevelt.)

Should I Vote?

Here's a really interesting and challenging article by a man who, based on ideological grounds, does not vote.

Ron Paul vs. the Bailout

Here are a couple of brief statements Ron Paul made yesterday to the Financial Services Committee and the Joint Economic Committee. Great explanations of how government intervention was primarily responsible for this mess and why the proposed bailout (i.e., more government intervention) is the wrong thing to do.

Dude, I voted!

A DJ on the radio today was promoting an online movie that is aimed at young adults - specifically "slackers" - to encourage them to vote. Am I the only one who sees something wrong with encouraging "slackers" to vote? Shouldn't we first encourage them to not be slackers - to be mentally active and reasonably informed before nudging them towards the ballot box?

Trusting the government

I think that most people in the US think that health and safety issues like safe drinking water has to be handled by the government, rather than through private means. Here's an article about an EPA decision regarding perchlorate levels in drinking water.

quote: The ingredient, perchlorate, has been found in at least 395 sites in 35 states at levels high enough to interfere with thyroid function and pose developmental health risks, particularly for babies and fetuses, according to some scientists.
The EPA document says that mandating a clean-up level for perchlorate would not result in a "meaningful opportunity for health risk reduction for persons served by public-water systems."
....
Lenny Siegel, director of the Center for Public Environmental Oversight in Mountain View, Calif., added: "This is an unconscionable decision not based upon science or law but on concern that a more stringent standard could cost the government significantly."
The Defense Department used perchlorate for decades in testing missiles and rockets, and most perchlorate contamination is the result of defense and aerospace activities, congressional investigators said last year.
The Pentagon could face liability if EPA set a national drinking water standard that forced water agencies around the country to undertake costly clean-up efforts. Defense officials have spent years questioning EPA's conclusions about the risks posed by perchlorate.

Now I don't know who's right here about the perchlorate levels, but what I do know is that when there is a "public system", there is no one we can "fire" if we don't like what they are doing. If I am unhappy with the quality of bottled water, I can buy another brand. If I don't like what's coming out of my tap, I can't switch to another provider. It's especially aggravating that we are trusting the government to be responsible for the environment, when the government itself is the biggest polluter!

Whoa.

The egg on the right is a pretty good-sized, normal egg. The egg on the left was laid by our hen named "Omelet" this morning and is the biggest chicken egg I've ever seen. And, no, I didn't hear any screaming coming from the coop! We haven't cracked it open yet to see what's inside.

Republocrat Theme Song

Very odd, but accurate!

Jumpin' Dobby

Hard to do...

In these days of vacillation, confusion of thought and corruption, we confess the true teaching of the Church regardless of the opinions held by those who might hear us, and disregarding the skepticism and faithlessness of our environment. If, for the sake of conforming to the errors of the times, we would suppress the truth or yet profess distorted doctrines to please the world, we would in fact be offering stones instead of bread. And the higher the position of one who would act in this way, the more profound the temptation and the more serious the consequences.

- St. Philaret the New Confessor

We are Chicken Farmers

Because we have so much free time, and we love fresh, organic eggs, we decided to get chickens! Some friends of ours with a large flock graciously gave us a few of their layers and sold us one of their nifty homemade "Arks" - a great summer coop.
Here's the set-up. The red shed in the background will soon be converted into a winter coop.

Sam checks the voltage of the electric netting.

A few of the girls in the ark.

Stephen really wanted an omelet for breakfast.

"I'll lay you an egg when I'm good and ready!"

Peckin' around.

R.I.P. Henry

1999 to August 5, 2008
---------------------------------------
Henry was such a strong presence in our home; it's really hard not to have him around! We are especially sad that he met such a sudden and violent end (he was killed by some animal in our woods - a fisher cat or fox, probably). He stayed so close to home that we assumed we would have many more years with him. But, we are glad for the 7 1/2 years that he spent with us. He was well loved and cared for, and we are left with tons of entertaining memories and pictures!

He was such a pretty cat, yet would strike the most ridiculous poses!

He often insisted on being on our chairs or desks, even if we did undignified things to him while he was there.

And he got along well with our other critters.



We miss you, Henry!

Early Summer Blur of Activity

I haven't posted in awhile, mostly due to the crazy pace of June and early July. We had the Homeschool Drama Troupe production of The Taming of the Shrew (set in the wild west!), a dance recital, then a driving trip down to GA to visit all the relatives. We are back for a couple of days, then off to Maine for a week! Here are a few random pictures taken over the last coupla months.
I know you've all been missing my cat pictures. Here's what I saw one morning recently when I woke up (he's on my tummy). Please ignore the hideous wallpaper in my bedroom. I do.

The cast of Taming of the Shrew.

Hanging with cousins in GA.

Swimming with more cousins.

Hanging with Yiayia and weird Uncle Andy.

Our last Chick-Fil-A's before crossing the Mason-Dixon back into yankee-land (where Chick-Fil-A's are very rare).

How do we make money? Volume!

The price of oil is given by the cost of one barrel of oil. A barrel of oil is 42 gallons. At an oil price of $138 a barrel, the price of oil is $3.29 a gallon. Yet we wonder why gasoline costs $4 a gallon. With gasoline prices in the range of $4 a gallon, this leaves about $0.70 (70 cents) a gallon for oil to be processed into gasoline and other derivative products and for gasoline to be delivered and sold at the local gasoline station. Costs that must come out of the $0.70 include transportation to oil refineries, actual oil processing in accordance with environmental regulations, delivery to the gas station and ultimately to the pump.

Taxes also are part of the price of gasoline at the pump. To begin the tax calculation, the federal tax on gasoline is $0.184 per gallon (18.4 cents). State taxes vary from state-to-state, from a low of $0.08 a gallon in Alaska to a high of $0.32 per gallon in Wisconsin. Gasoline taxes in most states are in the 18 to 25 cents a gallon range but New York state gasoline tax is 32 cents a gallon and in Pennsylvania the gasoline tax is 31 cents a gallon.

Now recall that we started with $0.70 (70 cents) a gallon over the oil price for processing, etc. the oil and for bringing gasoline to the pump at the gas station, and all together the gasoline price of $4.00 a gallon includes state and federal taxes for a total of $0.27 per gallon in Alaska to $0.51 in Wisconsin. This leaves a potential "profit" maximum of $0.33 (33 cents a gallon) in Alaska and $0.19 (19 cents a gallon) in Wisconsin.

The profit for the oil company and the gas station must come out of the 33 cents or 19 cents. However both the oil company and gas station have costs that must be added to costs they incur before setting the gasoline price to you at the pump. These costs vary but there isn’t a lot of room for oil company stockholders and gas station owners to reap the benefit of their investments. The obvious question then is how come oil companies are reporting such large profits if the numbers show the profit potential per gallon of oil to be so relatively low. The answer is volume.

Whole article is here.

Oh, yes, let's nationalize heath care!

Here's another story of how wonderful it is to have government in charge of health care.

Until a few years ago, all women in the UK were offered regular screening for cervical cancer from the age of 20; then in 2004 the screening age in England was raised to 25 (it remains at 20 in Scotland and Wales).

...which is unfortunate for the young women who are dying of cervical cancer because they couldn't get pap smears even though they wanted them!

According to Professor David Luesley, adviser to the NHS Screening Programme, 'The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the very few.' Wonderful.

(The whole story is here.)

Obomba?

I had thought that the only potential positive thing about Obama as a president would be a more sane foreign policy. I was disappointed to read this over at Antiwar.com.

Don't look to Barack Obama for deliverance from this looming conflict [between Israel and Iran]. In his speech to AIPAC, he clearly signed on to the Lobby's latest project, departing from his prepared text to declare:

"I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything in my power. Everything."

"Everything" includes murdering tens of thousands of Iranians, mostly civilians – driving the price of oil up above $300 a barrel and destroying the US economy – and involving us in a war that will make the Iraq conflict look like a Sunday school picnic. And for what?

The irony, of course, is that Iran is nowhere near obtaining nuclear weapons, as the President's own intelligence agencies recently informed him: but no matter. That's a small obstacle to those who disdain "the reality-based community," and see themselves as Making History while the rest of us watch, helpless and aghast.

Challenging stuff

I'm in the process of watching "The Americanization of Emily," a 1964 movie starring Julie Andrews and James Garner. I never realized how anti-war it is. I just saw a scene where James Garner's character is talking with a war widow about the war. It almost sounds blasphemous given the type of patriotic sentiments we are raised with and surrounded by in this country. But it's important to challenge those notions, I think. Here's a bit of the dialog (courtesy of this article on the movie):

Emily warns him that her mother is a bit mad and has taken to referring to her fallen husband and son as though they were still alive. He does his best to charm Mrs. Barham (Joyce Grenfell), and then initially attempts to impart his views on war in a facetious manner:

War isn’t hell at all. It’s man at his best; the highest morality he’s capable of … it’s not war that’s insane, you see. It’s the morality of it. It’s not greed or ambition that makes war: it’s goodness. Wars are always fought for the best of reasons: for liberation or manifest destiny. Always against tyranny and always in the interest of humanity. So far this war, we’ve managed to butcher some ten million humans in the interest of humanity. Next war it seems we’ll have to destroy all of man in order to preserve his damn dignity. It’s not war that’s unnatural to us – it’s virtue. As long as valor remains a virtue, we shall have soldiers. So, I preach cowardice. Through cowardice, we shall all be saved.

She is completely oblivious to his irony:

That was exalting, Commander … after every war, you know, we always find out how unnecessary it was. And after this one, I’m sure all the generals will dash off and write books about the blunders made by other generals, and statesmen will publish their secret diaries, and it’ll show beyond any shadow of a doubt that war could easily have been avoided in the first place. And the rest of us, of course, will be left with the job of bandaging the wounded and burying the dead.

His mockery unsuccessful, Charlie makes his point as clear as possible in one of the most pointed, devastating anti-war monologues ever heard in film:

Charlie: I don’t trust people who make bitter reflections about war, Mrs. Barham. It’s always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a Hell it is. And it’s always the widows who lead the Memorial Day parades … we shall never end wars, Mrs. Barham, by blaming it on ministers and generals or warmongering imperialists or all the other banal bogies. It’s the rest of us who build statues to those generals and name boulevards after those ministers; the rest of us who make heroes of our dead and shrines of our battlefields. We wear our widows’ weeds like nuns and perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices. My brother died at Anzio – an everyday soldier’s death, no special heroism involved. They buried what pieces they found of him. But my mother insists he died a brave death and pretends to be very proud.

Mrs. Barham: You’re very hard on your mother. It seems a harmless enough pretense to me.

Charlie: No, Mrs. Barham. No, you see, now my other brother can’t wait to reach enlistment age. That’ll be in September. May be ministers and generals who blunder us into wars, but the least the rest of us can do is to resist honoring the institution. What has my mother got for pretending bravery was admirable? She’s under constant sedation and terrified she may wake up one morning and find her last son has run off to be brave.

Charlie’s compelling speech is so stunning, so jarring, that Mrs. Barham snaps out of her delusional denial and admits aloud, for the first time, that her husband and son are dead.

Surprises in the main-stream media

An article on folks preparing for life to change as oil and other goods get scarcer.

Another article explaining the cost of gas, that includes a reference to the falling dollar.

This is all stuff I've been reading about for awhile in alternative media - interesting to see it hit the Associated Press.

Late Spring in NH

After so many months of posting our snowy pictures, I thought I'd show you what late spring in our yard looks like. The leaves have only recently been fully unfurled, a bumper crop of dandelions are in full bloom, and the ferns are popping up in the woods.
And the daffodils are waning, but not completely gone.Note the "sagging" iron railing in the background - those were straight last fall - the snow falling off of the roof and piling up there (that door is rarely used) somehow caused that to happen!

The Importance of Decentralization

From today's Downsize DC dispatch:
Everyone is feeling the pinch of increased gasoline prices. But that's nothing compared to the rate at which the cost of first class postage has risen. The average price of gasoline has increased 1,400% in the last 89 years, but the price of a first class stamp has risen 2,100%.

There are many reasons for this. Here's a big one: Government is a monopoly. It has no incentives to economize. Another problem is that spending decisions are made for political reasons, not because the social benefits outweigh the costs. Here's another example, that relates to the first one . . .

The U.S. Postal Service has purchased more than 30,000 ethanol-capable trucks. This has caused their gasoline consumption to rise by more than 1.5 million gallons. A Postal Service study found that the new vehicles get as much as 29% fewer miles to the gallon.

Aren't you glad we have the government to solve our energy and environmental problems?

The American people are partly to blame because when they look to the politicians to solve problems they are appealing to the most wasteful, incompetent, and often harmful institution in the world -- Big Government.

The solutions to our problems can't come from the top-down. They can't be dictated by monopoly government. They must and they will come from the bottom-up. Solutions are found when creative individuals can profit by responding to the demands of consumers. Today's higher prices are the inventor's and the entrepreneur's signal to get to work.

The knowledge and ideas we need to solve our problems can't possibly be concentrated in Washington, DC. Knowledge and creativity are decentralized resources, dispersed across the entire world population. This is why the worst errors are centralized in the halls of government, while most of the truly viable solutions are decentralized.

This is true even of our environmental and energy problems. While the politicians are floundering in error, with their top-down mandates for mass-produced ethanol and farm subsidies that drive-up the cost of food, the decentralized sector of our economy is busy creating real solutions.

We recently reported on a breakthrough in solar power technology by Sunrgi. Their new solar cell technology concentrates the energy of sunlight by a factor of 1,600. But within days IBM announced a similar technology that concentrates sunlight by an even larger factor -- 2,300.

Ecology vs. Economy?

This is interesting. Many people advocate population reduction as being important for the environment, but how many people understand the implications of shrinking population on the economy - specifically the financial well-being (or even just survival) of the elder generations? In this interesting article, a German writer discusses this problem:

"There is nothing complicated about finance. It is based on old people lending to young people. Young people invest in homes and businesses; aging people save to acquire assets on which to retire. The new generation supports the old one, and retirement systems simply apportion rights to income between the generations. Never before in human history, though, has a new generation simply failed to appear."

Yikes!

I don't like his statement towards the end that "free markets give them the sort of economy they deserve." I think I understand what he means, but I don't like people referring to what we have as a "free market". When you've got an intrusive centralized Federal government like ours, we definitely don't have a "free" market.

The Last Little Bit

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!
Well, here we are on May 1st, and this is the last bit of snow left in our yard. It held on pretty well - through several 70+ degree days during Holy Week! I guess my prediction on April 10th that it would take "forever" to melt was a bit off. As much fun as it was in the winter, by now we are glad to see it go!BTW, if you've been following my snow posts this winter, Concord, NH fell short of the all-time snow record by 4 inches this winter!

No words...

...can adequately describe his puffitude.Click the pic for the extreme closeup!

The Big Melt

Today was officially the first day I left the house without putting a jacket on since last fall! Yay!
As the snow recedes, the bulbs are poking up.
The backyard is melting fast.
But these mounds on the north side of the house will take forever to go away!

Questions with no straight answers

... on Iraq and Iran

Oh, but we would do it better here

From the UK's Times Online
Health service dentists have been forced to go on holiday or spend time on the golf course this month despite millions of patients being denied dental care.

Many have fulfilled their annual work quotas allotted by the National Health Service and have been turning patients away because they are not paid to do extra work. This is despite the fact that more than 7m people in Britain are unable to find an NHS dentist.

Prom!

Nothing like your oldest child going to the Prom to make you realize how fast their childhood has gone by. This event was, as far as we know, the first Homeschool Prom in NH! Here she is at home, ready to go.
Here she is at the beginning of the event, when the adults gathered to take pictures of them as they promenaded (the source of the term "Prom", btw) in a circle for us. They weren't too thrilled to be doing it, but it's a small price to pay the parents for all of the time and money that went into getting them there! (Click pic for larger view)
Here is video of said stroll (click the play button):

We're at number 2!

After record-breaking snow amounts in Dec, Jan, and Feb, March has been pretty lackluster. But we just got another 4 or 5 inches, putting us at Number 2 on the list of all-time snowiest winters (since they started keeping records).
(From wmur.com)
Snow Totals (10:45 a.m.)

1. 122" 1873-1874
2. 115.2" 2007-2008
3. 115" 1872-1873
4. 113.2" 1995-1996
5. 111" 1886-1887
5. 111" 1887-1888
7. 103.2" 1898-1899
8. 103" 1874-1875
9. 100" 1875-1876
10. 100" 1971-1972
The average snowfall is around 60 or so inches per winter.
Not everyone is excited to have more snow on March 28th, but since I know that we won't really have spring weather to make it all go away for another few weeks, we may as well get another coating to freshen it up a bit (old snow by the roadsides gets really dirty and gross looking) - and try to break the record, as well! For some reason, that's exciting to me. It makes one feel very hearty to live in a climate like this.

The cats are somewhat less excited - Ron-ron is the only one who ventured out for a bit. He likes it better when the surface of the snow gets icy and he doesn't sink in.

This has gone too far

as the line continues to blur between human and critter territory in our house.
"Oh - sorry, Ronron - did I disturb your sleep?"

FDA: Protecting us from that evil white stuff

FDA HARASSES DAIRY COMPANY EMPLOYEES
Grand Jury Investigation is Latest Government Tactic against Raw Milk

March 24, 2008: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Special FDA agents and investigators from the US Food and Drug Administration aggressively interrogated two young female employees of Organic Pastures Dairy Company, the nation's largest raw milk producer, with questions focusing on the dairy's interstate sales of raw colostrum and raw milk for pet food.

The surprise interrogations took place after work in their private homes on the evening of March 19, just hours after Judge Tobias of the Hollister Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order against the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The state court ruling blocked enforcement of California's anti-raw milk AB 1735, which mandates unnecessarily stringent standards for beneficial coliform bacteria in raw milk. The temporary restraining order represents an important legal victory for raw milk producers and consumers in California and throughout the nation.

The federal agents threatened one employee with arrest if questions were not fully and truthfully answered about Organic Pastures' order fulfillment practices. Her answers reflected information that is readily available at the company's website, www.organicpastures.com. The other employee was told FDA would "make it worth her while" to "wear a wire" and record conversations with Organic Pastures president Mark McAfee. The employee refused the offer. "We are like a family, I would never do that to a family member," she said, reflecting her close relationship with the McAfee family.

Both employees were served subpoenas to appear April 3 for a secret grand jury investigation. In 2003, Organic Pastures received a confirmation letter from Larry Childers of the FDA, which clearly stated that interstate sales of raw colostrum are not regulated because colostrum is not milk. The FDA website notes that "pet food" requires no pre-market approval and is unregulated by the FDA.

The Bronx Zoo in New York and other zoos regularly order raw colostrum and raw dairy products from Organic Pastures to save babies of endangered species and keep other animals healthy. Orders stipulate that the milk and colostrum must be raw because pasteurized versions make them ill. Many veterinarians recommend raw milk for cats and dogs.

Fasting

Do you fast? Give me proof of it by your works. If you see a poor man, take pity on him. If you see a friend being honored, do not envy him. Do not let only your mouth fast, but also the eye, and the ear, and the feet, and the hands, and all the members of our bodies. Let the hands fast, by being free of avarice. Let the feet fast, by ceasing to run after sin. Let the eyes fast, by disciplining them not to glare at that which is sinful... Let the ear fast... by not listening to evil talk and gossip... Let the mouth fast from the foul words and unjust criticism. For what good is it if we abstain from birds and fishes, but bite and devour our brothers?

St. John Chrysostom

"The Proof of Fasting"

"Sub-prime" mess

As a follow up to yesterday's post...if you, like me, have had a tough time understanding what this "sub-prime" thing is, here is a great explanation from DownsizeDC.

The current housing crisis, and all that flows from it, comes from two main sources, both deriving from Washington.

First, Congress passed something called the "Community Reinvestment Act" in 1977, resulting in the creation of bureaucratic regulations designed to encourage, or even compel, financial institutions to make loans to people with lower incomes. These regulations were then amended in 1995 and 2005 to create different rules for institutions of different sizes, so that various kinds of institutions would be better able to meet the government's goals for fostering home ownership in lower income communities.

Second, the Federal Reserve starting making loans available to the banking system at extremely low interest rates.

Third, steps one and two combined to make cheap housing loans available to people who could not have afforded or qualified for them before. This caused an increased demand for housing that sent home prices spiralling upward.

Fourth, mortgage lenders managed the risk involved in making these loans by selling their mortgages to other companies, which in turn thought that they were managing their own risk because they had a wide variety of mortgages, from many different types of borrowers, in their portfolio.

Fifth, these decisions about how to manage the increased risk created by the "Community Reinvestment Act" were all in error, because the Fed's policy of easy money had falsely inflated the value of ALL homes. This meant that good mortgages could not be used to manage the risk involved in questionable mortgages, because the value of ALL homes was falsely inflated.

Sixth, as with all inflationary booms, increases in home prices finally absorbed the increased purchasing power provided by the Fed, leading to a slow-down in home purchases. When this moment arrived everyone realized that the homes they had purchased weren't really worth what they had paid for them. The defaults and foreclosures then began, along with the collapse of the financial institutions that owned these unsound mortgages.

Now, the complicated, multi-part scenario described above has been simplified in popular reporting to just two words: sub-prime loans. These two words, combined with the idea that lenders took advantage of poor unsuspecting customers, are supposed to explain everything. But this explanation is both simple and simply insufficient.
A study by the Mortgage Bankers Association tells the true story. In the third quarter of last year fixed rate mortgages accounted for 45% of foreclosures, while sub-prime ARMs accounted for only 43%.

Read the rest here.

Economic turmoil

Of course, this dramatic and distracting economic news had to happen at the beginning of Great Lent. It's challenging to figure out how to pay just enough attention to things like this, without getting completely absorbed. If you are interested...here are a couple of articles today on some of the historic economic events going on right now...

"Why aren't we furious?" by William Norman Grigg

and

"Musings from the Titanic" by Steven LaTulippe

Here birdie, birdie!

Ron-ron invites his bird friends to come and visit

Forgiveness, by Fr. Tom Hopko

The first commandment is that you love God with all your mind, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and the second is that you love your neighbor as yourself. The only way you can prove you love God is by loving your neighbor, and the only way you can love your neighbor in this world is by endless forgiveness. So, “love your neighbor as yourself.” However, in certain modern editions of the Bible, I have seen this translated as, “you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.” But that’s not what it says.

I once had a discussion with someone on a Sunday-morning television program about this. We were asked what we thought was most important in Christianity, and part of what I said was that the only way we can find ourselves is to deny ourselves. That’s Christ’s teaching. If you try to cling to yourself, you will lose yourself. And of course, the unwillingness to forgive is the ultimate act of not wanting to let yourself go. You want to defend yourself, assert yourself, protect yourself, and so on. There is a consistent line through the Gospel—if you want to be the first you must will to be the last, and so on. And the other fellow, who taught the psychology of religion at one of the Protestant seminaries, said, “What you are saying is the source of the neuroses of Western society. What we need is healthy self-love and healthy self-esteem.” And then he quoted that line, “you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.” He insisted that you must love yourself first and have a sense of dignity. If one has that, however, forgiveness is then either out of the question or an act of condescension toward the poor sinner. It is no longer an identification with the other as a sinner, too. I said that of course if we are made in the image of God it’s quite self-affirming, and self-hatred is an evil. But my main point is that there is no self there to be defended except the one that comes into existence by the act of love and self-emptying. It’s only by loving the other that myself actually emerges. And forgiveness is at the heart of that.

As we were leaving we saw a very old, venerable rabbi with a shining face. He called us over and asked if he could say something to us. “That line, you know, comes from the Torah, from Leviticus,” he said, “and it cannot possibly be translated ‘love your neighbor as you love yourself.’ What it says is ‘you shall love your neighbor as being your own self.’ “Your neighbor is your true self. You have no self in yourself.

After I heard this I started reading the Church Fathers in this light, and that’s what they all say. They say, “Your brother is your life.” I have no self in myself except the one that is fulfilled by loving the other. The Trinitarian character of God is a metaphysical absolute here, so to speak. God’s own self is another—his Son, to use Christian evangelical terms. The same thing happens on the human level; so the minute I don’t feel deeply that my real self is the other, then I’ll have no reason to forgive anyone. But if that is my reality, and my only real self is the other, and my own identity and fulfillment emerges only in the act of loving the other, that gives substance to the idea that we are potentially God-like beings. Now, if you add to that that we are all to some degree faulty, weak, and so on, that act of love will always be an act of forgiveness. That’s how I find and fulfill myself as a human being made in God’ s image. Otherwise, I cannot. So the act of forgiveness is the very act by which our humanity is constituted. Deny that, and we kill ourselves. It’s a metaphysical suicide.

(Excerpted from: Parabola: The Magazine of Myth and Tradition, “Forgiveness,” Volume XII, Number 3, August 1987, pp. 50 - 59.)

Interesting numbers

From DownsizeDC:

In 2007, over 53% of the federal budget went to mandatory entitlements and welfare spending, and 20% to the Department of Defense. About 9% went to interest payments on the national debt. And just 18% went to Everything Else, from the FDA to Homeland Security to foreign aid. Source: Congressional Budget Office

To clean up America's fiscal mess, we will have to think about entitlement reform and a new, more efficient national security strategy. Steep budget cuts for Everything Else will help, but only a little. There's a better reason to cut Everything Else: these departments and programs tend to do more harm than good. A lot more.

Here are just a few examples. Ethanol subsidies increase the price of food. Non-violent drug offenders waste away in federal prison when they could be in the workforce. Public education has deteriorated greatly as the federal government has assumed more and more control. And then there's the cost of regulation . . .

As Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute wrote last year, federal regulations cost the economy $1.14 trillion in 2006. That is more than what individuals paid in income taxes that year. It was more than total corporate profits. And it cost the federal government just $41 billion to administer and police the regulatory state. Source: Competitive Enterprise Institute

That is to say, for every $1 the federal government spends writing and enforcing regulations, it destroys $25 that could have been generated in the economy. The cost of regulatory compliance hurts small businesses especially, destroys competition, and drives up prices.

But the worst part is, "we the people" generally have no say. In 2006, 321 bills were passed by Congress and signed into law, whereas unelected bureaucrats in regulatory agencies issued 3,718 final rules and added almost 75,000 pages to the Federal Register.

The Constitution requires that Congress, not executive branch agencies, make the laws. If the people's representatives in Congress can't or won't sweat the details of writing complicated regulations, then why should the people have to sweat the details of complying with them?. If Congress had to write all laws and regulations, only the most necessary would pass, and the number of unnecessary and burdensome regulations will drop dramatically. To restore the Constitutional Separation of Powers, increase the freedom of the people, and revive the economy, DownsizeDC.org has introduced the Write the Laws Act.

A Sign of Spring

When you see the "Frost Heaves" signs go up, you know spring is just around the corner. A humongous corner that takes a couple of months to get around, but we do eventually get to the other side.

Decadent Creature

Our ridiculous cat, Henry, otherwise known as "Puff".

Hard money, inflation, and your wallet

Economics can be dry to some people, but there is a serious economic crisis that has been brewing for some time and is rapidly coming to a head, and it already affects us tremendously. Here are a couple of good youtube clips of Ron Paul speaking with the Fed Chairman this morning. He briefly covers some of the concerns that we should all be aware of.

Getting Buried

It's not even March and NH has already had more snow than we've had for over 100 years - nearly 100 inches. (Average is more like 45 inches per year.) Here are a few pics:

I guess it'll be awhile before we can use this door.
The swingset is disappearing!
And the boys are clearing the deck for the umpteenth time.

Stagflation

From an AP article:

Worries grow for worse 'stagflation'
By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer
1 hour, 9 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - It's a toxic economic mix the nation hasn't seen in three decades: Prices are speeding upward at the fastest pace in a quarter century, even as the economy loses steam.
Economists call the disease "stagflation," and they're worried it might be coming back.

Already, paychecks aren't stretching as far, and jobs are harder to find, threatening to set off a vicious cycle that could make things even worse.

The economy nearly stalled in the final three months of last year and probably is barely growing or even shrinking now. That's the "stagnation" part of the ailment. Typically, that slowdown should slow inflation as well — the second part of the diagnosis — but prices are still marching higher.

The latest worrisome news came Tuesday: a government report showing wholesale prices climbed 7.4 percent in the past year. That was the biggest annual leap since 1981.

But nowhere in the article is there a discussion of one of the fundamental problems: the government's ability to print money out of thin air, rather than have it backed by gold. Yet another issue that Ron Paul stands alone in talking about.

Update (2/28/08): Pres. Bush and Fed. Chairman Bernanke assure us we are not headed for a recession or stagflation. Phew! Okay, everybody go back to watching American Idol. But seriously...I hope they are right, but I'm not comforted by the government's track record on being right.

It's not a test!

The way many people describe voting, it's like they think it's a test. Somehow it's wrong to vote for someone who doesn't look like they "have a chance" to win.

From LewRockwell.com:
More Political Inanities
Posted by Butler Shaffer at February 25, 2008 04:20 PM
A network news channel was interviewing a Texas voter the other day. This man was very troubled by the current state of politics and thought it was time for a change. When he was asked about voting for Ron Paul, this man replied that he really liked what Paul had to say but that he wasn't going to get elected president. Because McCain had the nomination all sewn-up, he added, he concluded that he would be voting for McCain - even though he would have to hold his nose to do so.

This is the kind of mindlessness that politics generates. If this man doesn't like McCain, and prefers Paul, but then concedes that McCain will get the nomination anyway, why on earth vote for McCain? Does this man feel such a need to have voted for the winning candidate that he must "hold his nose" to do so? If so, what's the point? What better opportunity for him to express his criticism of present conditions - as well as his support for Ron Paul - than to vote for Ron Paul?

It's Not Dead Yet!

This picture was taken this past weekend at a rally in Austin, TX
Most in the mainstream media would have you think that Ron Paul's campaign is over, but the funny thing is people keep giving money and showing up in droves to cheer him on.

Prescient

"Under the pressure of fanaticism, and with the mob complacently applauding the show, democratic law tends more and more to be grounded upon the maxim that every citizen is, by nature, a traitor, a libertine, and a scoundrel. In order to dissuade him from his evil-doing the police power is extended until it surpasses anything ever heard of in the oriental monarchies of antiquity."
H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1920

Presidents' Day

Here's an excerpt from a different and interesting look at the institution of the Presidency by Anthony Gregory:

Americans shouldn’t look to the president for their self-respect, patriotism and cultural identity. The presidency in its current form is entirely too powerful and thus an inherently corrupting and inhumanely destructive thing. The presidency as it supposedly should be, under the Constitution, is a relatively humble office overseeing the executive branch, one of three composing a radically restrained government with very limited enumerated powers. Today, the presidency overshadows the other branches, the states, and all Constitutional and statutory limits on its power. In any event, why should 300 million people, and to a great extent the rest of the world, have to live under one all-powerful law enforcement official? The whole idea seems like some kind of insanity. How did this become the American way? If we are to restore our freedom, we need our compatriots to snap out of this trance. The silver lining in the Bush administration has been the disgust he has elicited so universally, especially among the left and center. This has constrained his actions somewhat. I am not looking forward to the many Americans turned off by the obvious horrors of the Bush administration once again respecting and trusting the president.

Here's the whole article.

Shiny Trees and the Icicle of Damocles

(Note: These pictures are much more impressive if you click to see the larger view!)
Whenever we have freezing rain followed by a sunny day, we are treated to some particularly beautiful "shiny" trees!

And we had this mighty impressive icicle.

I say "had" because after this photo the kids threw ice chunks at it to break it off.

More Gratuitous Kitten Stuff

This just never gets old for us.


Bubba is no longer the boss of his bed.

Blatant, pt. 4

Ah! Here's someone addressing this directly (see my previous 3 "Blatant" posts about the main-stream media's treatment of Ron Paul's campaign).
From a National Public Radio interview with Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, in response to a caller's question about the media blackout of Ron Paul -
"It raises obviously one of the fundamental questions: is press coverage a self-fulfilling prophecy? Can a candidate who doesn’t get press coverage win votes, or do you need the exposure, the oxygen of attention? Last week, the week before Super Tuesday, the coverage that ended Feb. 3, Ron Paul was a significant or primary figure in zero percent of the stories that we analyzed, 600 stories across 48 different news outlets.

Andrew [the caller] is correct in suggesting that the press has discounted the chances of Ron Paul having any success. The fundraising success that he’s having is one of the traditional metrics that journalists use to test viability. If someone is raising money, usually that translates into some attention.

For a variety of reasons, some of them are obvious and some of them are mysterious, Ron Paul gets less coverage than he does raise money, and he gets less coverage than he gets votes. We can go on and on about this. There is no doubt, it’s an objective fact, that the press has decided Ron Paul is not a viable candidate."