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.
It's about bubbles - things with form but lacking in substance.
Most "homeowners" have mortgages, if not second mortgages, or at least lines of credit against their homes. If you have a mortgage, you are essentially a renter - but a renter with the capital risk and the maintenance costs and risks. The ownership is an illusion and, if the place is paid off, you lose your interest deduction and so what have you gained by that process of eliminating your leverage? Well, if you are retired with lower income, you have gained the ability to remain in the house if you can cover the property tax.
The American Dream of home ownership is and has been a foolish ideal. However, it was an ideal which expert salesmen sold us since the 1950s. A sentimentality sales job, like cars. Chances are, you ain't buying no family estate that your grandkids would want to own.
Expert salesmen, again both in government and out, also sold us the college degree bubble. Once a meaningful social marker, it has become so diluted that it no longer means anything at all, or, I should say, can mean a lot or can mean nothing, depending on what was learned. I know, because I interview people for jobs. I have seen college grads who don't know what it means to graph a f(x), don't know the difference between RNA and DNA, and have never read Chaucer. Oh, I see. They have a BS in Business Administration. Is that "college"? Oh, somebody wrote a term paper about Virginia Woolf? Wow. I guess they can write a sentence. What is meaningful is a rigorous High School degree. From that, you have the foundation to learn anything you want to.
Is a college degree job training, a few additional High School years, a social marker, an expensive prolonged adolescence, a merit badge, a haven for dedicated scholars, or what? Nobody knows anymore, but it is widely sold as a necessary qualification. Hence a piece like this in the NYT: Why go to college at all?
My theory used to be that a college education should prepare you to understand, in depth, every page of the Sunday New York Times. I don't buy their paper any more, which is their loss. Mine also, to some extent.
But Mitt, like Republicans in general, needs to reclaim the language of compassion for the poor. It’s not compassionate to leave the very poor tangled up in our social safety nets. It’s not compassionate to promote dependency. What is compassionate — what actually serves the interest of the very poor, as well as everyone else — is unleashing economic growth that brings greater opportunity, better values and better compensation for everyone. The very poor are not doing fine. They’re drowning in the unintended consequences of liberals’ good intentions — their families are falling apart, their spirits and creativity are languishing, and the economic virtues are withering from their communities because of the perverse mis-incentives of government largesse.
Mitt needs to learn how to be America’s foremost expositor and defender of the power of the free market. He’s not quite there yet.
Mitt is a bit out of touch. Obama was out of touch too. They are both bubble guys.
America's waning influence - Any honest diplomat will tell you that American power and global influence is waning, and if we shy away from acknowledging that fact, we'll only speed up the process.
In Arizona he said, "An economy built to last also means we've got to renew American values: fair play, shared responsibility." Wild applause. For those who think they have facts on their side, it will be maddening and enraging to watch other Obama audiences across the country cheer and applaud "An Economy Built to Last." Get used to it.
The GOP is appealing, as its candidates so often do, to the American brain. Barack Obama is happy to be left by himself, going for their hearts. If he wins, the Republican will wail at the unfairness, irrationality and illogic of what beat them.
One of these days, Romney is going to say something like “Obama just doesn’t understand how the real economy works, partly because he’s never had a job.” And the New York Times will run a front page story, quoting Al Sharpton and a bevy of psychologists, about how that is racist code. Make book on it.
The protest sign in the piece says "Koch kills democracy."
How the unassuming, philanthropic, and low-profile Kochs were selected as bogeymen of the year I do not know. They are known to be supporters of Libertarian and free market organizations so I suppose, by a certain sort of logic, the Left must always demonize defenders of freedom.
As we have noted countless times here, the Left never includes individual freedom in their political calculations (unless it's about sex). That is not an oversight; it's because We The People are viewed as the feckless masses requiring Ivy League overlords to make our decisions for us. To which we peasants say "Basta!"
Is real democracy consistent with maintaining liberty? The ancient Greeks said it wasn't. They believed that democracy was mob rule, and our Founders decided that they were correct. The modern Greeks are proving it again.
As we have also repeated claimed here, individual liberty, unlike money, really is a zero-sum game. Every drop accrued by the State is a drop taken from me whether it is meant to be "for my own good" or not. We're all here for the freedom, not for the government. The American Spirit is to be annoyed with government, and to view it as a necessary evil but limited in its powers.
Still, it seems odd to me to select a couple of wealthy Libertarians as targets.
The real legacy of Obamaism is the effort to turn the U.S. into a managed society, run by elite technocrats who are exempt from their own policies and sermons — all premised on the notion that collective unhappiness is the result of unfairness and someone else’s having more than the government-approved norm. In other words, we are supposed to be uniform and static peasants, always on the lookout for “them,” who somehow cheated to get one more pig than we have.
If David Brooks isn't being facetious here, then he's gone nuts:
I doubt Murray would agree, but we need a National Service Program. We need a program that would force members of the upper tribe and the lower tribe to live together, if only for a few years. We need a program in which people from both tribes work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement.
If we could jam the tribes together, we’d have a better elite and a better mass.
Mao called it the Cultural Revolution, enforced by the Red Guard at gunpoint. It did not work out well. And what's with "mass"? I think he is calling my parents the "mass." He ought to meet them sometime. They sacrificed everything, and worked two jobs, to put us kids through U Mass (we all had jobs during school to help out) and have never had any money to spare or to save. Good habits and decency, however.
To the American liberal, riches are not a matter of economics, but of identity. Wealth is a moral entity, not an economic one. What distinguishes pious millionaires like Warren from the heathens who make their money the old fashioned way is that the former achieve it through the moral pursuit of the public good, which is all the more pious for taking them to a Harvard professorship or a job in government, while the latter achieve it through economic transactions in the private sector. The former is a form of public service, the latter is public exploitation.
But a closer look at the bones and carcass of this system turns those definitions on their head. It is the Warrens who are the exploiters, consuming the wealth of a nation and spawning more committees, regulations and regulatory committees to keep on feeding off the wealth. What they give to us in exchange for what they take is not a service, it is oppression masquerading as feudal protectionism.
In my view, Newt is unelectable, and not only because he comes across as an unusually unpleasant and undisciplined person. I don't know whether Mitt could win a national election, but I think the point is that he would help hold down potential losses in the House and Senate. He is not a rooted Conservative in the way that Obama is a rooted Leftist, it seems to me, and is the white bread candidate. Likeable, in my view. Not exciting, not overtly humorous, and not too quick on his feet. He'd be fine as President, I think, but not an Obama-style media celeb which seems to be what people enjoy these days, and not a Cut Government Down to Size Conservative.
Of course, holding the House and/or winning the Senate are more important than the White House, but we all tend to focus on the White House race because it's a sport, a soap opera, the Kentucky Derby. It gives us stuff to talk about.
Perhaps I am wrong. Maybe a calm, pragmatic, non-ideological CEO Mitt-type is what the country needs and wants now. However, the Conservative Repubs see, rightly or wrongly, the opportunity to crush a weak Obama and to win all the chips. Emotion can get in the way of mature, logical thinking. If Mitt wins nomination, it's because party members have voted for him in the primaries. There is no puppetmaster.
Who and where is that mystery person who can pleasantly and inspiringly articulate the Constitutional Conservative case (it ain't Sarah Palin)? Would it require a brokered convention to bring that person onto the field? That would make for some very good TV.
Otherwise, Moderate Mitt will be the party's figurehead.
You can easily tell if someone is a true environmentalist, i.e. an advocate for a healthy planet – he is one who is happy to hear the news that the arctic ice content has stabilized. He is one who celebrates when the recent climate data show the alarmist’s predictions of catastrophic warming might be wrong. The denier, if he is an eco/political activist, always denies new data that show the planet may be healthy after all. The Media usually defines deniers as those who deny the scientist’s computer model predictions. However, denying the measured climate data meets a better definition in the world of science.
Human nature and the laws of physics, not technocratic liberalism, are still the best guides to the madness around us. Money borrowed has to be paid back or the debt eaten by someone, period. Poverty is defined by a want of material necessities, not by lacking the appurtenances that someone else better off enjoys. Gas and oil are miracle fuels and it is very hard to find alternate energies at comparable costs and reliability. And as a rule, the green class of environmental elites usually uses more fossil fuels per capita than do the muscular classes who mine and drill them out of the ground — and who do not jet, drive, or live in the comparable fashion of their critics. The content of our character alone matters; those who are not so confident in their own, usually demand that their tribal affiliations be essential and not incidental to their personas. Most accept that culture, not race matters, but it matters still more not to say that. Most of the political class has no interest in history; dogma is their creed. They assume that everyone (far less noble than themselves) in the past would have agreed with them, or now can be postfacto made to agree with them.
I am not saying that it is wrong in any way to help people in need. I am not saying that people who need help are bad. I am suggesting that the specific approach that has been favored by the political progressive left and the Democrats has serious, psychologically damaging consequences that lead to never-ending dependence, passivity, and continued poverty.
I recalled a piece I wrote in this column on January 29, 2009, just after Obama took office. It was headlined: “This is the sub-prime house that Barack Obama built”. As a rising young Chicago politician in 1995, no one campaigned more actively than Mr Obama for an amendment to the US Community Reinvestment Act, legally requiring banks to lend huge sums to millions of poor, mainly black Americans, guaranteed by the two giant mortgage associations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
In case readers didn't take the time to read the WSJ opinion piece this week by prominent scientists, here it is:No Need to Panic About Global Warming -There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy.
The brief video interview with the Princeton Physics prof there is interesting too. He says they would have had many signatures if they had taken the time.
These fellows are saying what we have been saying here for years, but they have more street cred than we have. Indeed, the story of the AGW hysteria is a fascinating story of the politicization of scientific inquiry coupled with governmental and academic greed for money and power. It is a cautionary tale.
Furthermore, I think many of us would welcome a little global warming. I think it would improve the planet, overall. It certainly did so in the past. Watch, over the next year, more scientific organizations and agencies find the courage to publicize these politically-incorrect views.
At Maggie's Farm, most or all of us are Environmentalists and Conservationists. We want land and water and air to be protected. We do not even approve of urban sprawl because we may need all of our farmlands someday and, as pleasant as urban hiking can be, we need the woods too. But at the same time, we like to live in reality.
Apple's executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their U.S. counterparts that "Made in the USA" is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.
The elites who denounce poverty despise the poor. Their every high-minded, right-thinking “poverty program” proves this detestation—from the bulldozing of vibrant tenement communities to the drug law policing policies that send poor kids to prison and rich kids to rehab to the humiliation of food stamps and free school lunches to the loathsome inner-city public schools where those free lunches are slopped onto cafeteria trays.
The core institutions, ideas and expectations that shaped American life for the sixty years after the New Deal don’t work anymore. The gaps between the social system we inhabit and the one we now need are becoming so wide that we can no longer paper over them. But even as the failures of the old system become more inescapable and more damaging, our national discourse remains stuck in a bygone age. The end is here, but we can’t quite take it in.
and
The blue model is breaking down so fast and so far that not even its supporters can ignore the disintegration and disaster it now presages. Liberal Democrats in states like Rhode Island and cities like Chicago are cutting pensions and benefits and laying off workers out of financial necessity rather than ideological zeal. The blue model can no longer pay its bills, and not even its friends can keep it alive.
State officials have become addicted to federal subsidies because they allow them to spend money taken from taxpayers across the country instead of having to ask their voters to pony up the funds,
“An opposition that would earn its way back to leadership must offer not just criticism of failures that anyone can see, but a positive and credible plan to make life better, particularly for those aspiring to make a better life for themselves. Republicans accept this duty, gratefully.
“The routes back to an America of promise, and to a solvent America that can pay its bills and protect its vulnerable, start in the same place. The only way up for those suffering tonight, and the only way out of the dead end of debt into which we have driven, is a private economy that begins to grow and create jobs, real jobs, at a much faster rate than today.
“Contrary to the President's constant disparagement of people in business, it's one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs - what a fitting name he had - created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew. Out here in Indiana, when a businessperson asks me what he can do for our state, I say ‘First, make money. Be successful. If you make a profit, you'll have something left to hire someone else, and some to donate to the good causes we love.’
No questions on Iran in the CNN, ABC and NBC debates? No questions about the president's treatment of Netanyahu? No questions about the veto of Keystone XL pipeline?
No questions about Solyndra, Operation Fast and Furious," Joe Biden's serial inanities, the unconstitutional recess appointments? Gibson Guitar, Boeing, the Environmental Protection Agency's generation and cement rules?
Nothing about cutting 20,000 Marines and up to 100,000 soldiers?
Newt's ex-wife is tracked down, but we never got an interview with Bill Ayers or saw the Rashid Khalidi tape? Romney's tax returns are demanded again and again, but we never saw the president's college or law school transcripts?
Newt's display of anger -- even the over-the-top characterization of John King as despicable -- got cheering from everyone who had wanted the GOP candidates to run straight at the MSM and their deeply corrupt insularity and embedded biases.
And I just got done with all of the water well problems as well as having the chest freezer fail and losing over 300 pounds of organic pork and grass-fed beef. Throw in the divorce and 2011 has been a hell of a year.
Since the 1960s, the thrust of economic policy-making has been to smooth business cycles. Democracies crave prolonged prosperity, and economists have posed as technocrats with the tools to cure the boom-and-bust cycles of pre-World War II capitalism. It turns out that they exaggerated what they knew and could do.
As far as I can determine, the Department of Education has no track record of positive accomplishment—nothing in the national numbers on educational achievement, nothing in the improvement of educational outcomes for the disadvantaged, nothing in the advancement of educational practice. It just spends a lot of money. This brings us to the practical question: If the Department of Education disappeared from next year’s budget, would anyone notice? The only reason that anyone would notice is the money. The nation’s public schools have developed a dependence on the federal infusion of funds. As a practical matter, actually doing away with the Department of Education would involve creating block grants so that school district budgets throughout the nation wouldn’t crater.
Murray: The New American Divide - The ideal of an 'American way of life' is fading as the working class falls further away from institutions like marriage and religion and the upper class becomes more isolated. Charles Murray on what's cleaving America, and why.
It is not that the average person is not concerned about the environment. Everyone weighs the balance of economic gain against a respect for nature. It is only the truly affluent, however, who can be concerned about the environment to the exclusion of everything else...
At one time, a college degree was a virtual guarantor of secure, well-paying employment. Now, most college grads leave school with large debts — more than $27,000 on average. A college degree also no longer signifies that the recipient is either well-educated in the traditional sense or that he has acquired specific skills suited to the labor market.
What race is Obama? Black or Caucasion or Middle-Eastern? What race am I? If the one-drop rule applies, I am Native American. And since when is "Hispanic" a race? Are people from Spain "Hispanic"? Are European Cubans Hispanic? Are Central American Indians Hispanic? Or Indians? Are black Cubans Hispanic? So confusing. And I haven't even gotten to the Irish: definitely a race - and a race with a history of cruel discrimination in the US for which generous compensation is due (my kids are 1/4 Irish and would welcome a check).
I like 'perspective' videos and pictorials; that is, displays that snap the whole subject into sharp relief. I found one on relative earthquake strengths the other day that's particularly good because it demonstrates how the Richter Scale is logarithmic, not linear. An 8.7 quake, for example, is far stronger than a mere 8.0. There's an 8.0 somewhere in the world every few years; an 8.7 only every forty or so years.
And here are two videos that demonstrate the perspective of size. From our place in the universe outward:
What's astounding about relative size is that as incredible as the above perspective is, we can go just as far in the other direction:
The average Californian, like the average Greek, forgot that civilization is fragile. Its continuance requires respect for the law, tough-minded education, collective thrift, private investment, individual self-reliance, and common codes of behavior and civility -- and exempts no one from those rules. Such knowledge and patterns of civilized behavior, slowly accrued over centuries, can be lost in a single generation.
Can We Spare Newt Gingrich? He Fights. (Video Added)
The Obamacare issues of Medicaid coercion and the individual mandate are twins. They confront the court with the same challenge, that of enunciating judicially enforceable limiting principles. If there is no outer limit on Congress’s power to regulate behavior in the name of regulating interstate commerce, then the Framers’ design of a limited federal government is nullified. And if there is no outer limit on the capacity of this government to coerce the states, then federalism, which is integral to the Framers’ design, becomes evanescent.
The Associated Press reports the most extensive study yet of whether engaging in sex causes heart attacks.
In its first science-based recommendations on the subject, the American Heart Association says having sex only slightly raises the chance for a heart attack. And that's true for people with and without heart disease.
Surprisingly, despite the higher risk for a heart patient to have a second attack, there's no evidence that they have more sex-related heart attacks than people without cardiac disease.
However,
The doctors' group offers advice for heart patients based on scientific research involving sometimes provocative sex-related topics:
—Who's most at risk for sudden death related to sex? Married men having affairs, often with younger women in unfamiliar settings. Those circumstances can add to stress that may increase the risks, evidence from a handful of studies suggests.
Still, “sexual activity is the cause of less than 1 percent of all heart attacks," says the lead author of the report.
There was a brief period when Clinton actually sounded like a growth and prosperity Dem, but, since then, the party snapped back to its 1930s approach. Tyrrell:
...Obama is a reactionary. He believes in the past, a past of vast government control of the economy, redistribution, and slow growth. Christie and Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin believe in growth. The future is theirs.
The cost of one bad teacher for one year on an average classroom of students is a whopping $266,000 in that class's collective lifetime earnings, which is over $2.6 million which that lousy teacher will cost society over ten years, or possibly $7.8 million over the teacher's tenure.
That's just one bad teacher. Multiply that by the possibly tens of thousands of wretchedly bad teachers whom the teachers' unions protect, and you realize the cost to society of our monopolistic public school system.
So says Robert Redford. (But, I ask, who will stand up against Big Hollywood?)
I think our readers understand that this is not about "Big Oil." "Big Oil" is a straw man. This is about a supply of cheap energy for Americans, and a supply that does not come from the Middle East or from Venezuela. The moonbats, who depend on energy as much as I do for daily life, appear to believe that it grows on trees.
How does Redford heat all of his houses? And does he care what it costs him? Would he care if his estate in Aspen lost heat this winter?
During his campaign, Obama promised to raise the cost of energy. He and his EPA have been doing their best to do that. Makes no sense to me. Now Canada's fuel will be used in China instead of here. What sort of accomplishment is that?
Improving graduation and transfer rates won’t be easy, in part because of the preparation of students who come to City College. More than 90 percent need remediation, and 36 percent are under the poverty line.
Perhaps they should worry about their high schools first...
As a frequent ship passenger, I can say that that means nothing. On large ships, it's not like the Captain is at a steering wheel. Departing the ship before all customers are off is another matter. Still, it seems odd to me that they cut so close to shore. As they say in the Navy, "We don't want Captains with bad luck."
How Stimulus Spending Ruined Buffalo - Four decades of subsidies and high taxes haven't arrested the city's decline, but here comes New York's governor with another billion dollars.
All the signs of a government-triggered death spiral
Captain Pete Hegseth, US Army, has served at Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan, and was Executive Director of Vets For Freedom to support our troops and missions. No weak sister.
During his current deployment in Afghanistan, Hegseth has sent email letters home to those on his mailing list. His most recent arrived today, "Endgame in Afghanistan." It is near 4-thousand words long, so I have put it below the fold. Hegseth is not optimistic, stripping away what he refers to as "wishful thinking."
This isn’t to say that we couldn’t affect a more advantageous outcome for the United States; of course if we got rid of the 2014 withdrawal deadline completely, were willing to truly remove Taliban and Haqqani safe-havens in Pakistan (we know where they are!), and purged the Afghan government of its most corrupt nodes we could “change the game” of this conflict. But for various reasons—be they domestic politics, a nuclear-armed Pakistan (a lesson for Iran, I would suggest), and a trepidation with undermining corrosive “Afghan sovereignty”—it is highly unlikely we will make the hard choices necessary to level the playing field. A bad outcome in Afghanistan isn’t inevitable, but in light of current realities, it is likely.
He believes this battleground is "central to defending the United States."
In the realm of perception and international opinion it is still very important; how we “finish” in Afghanistan will send strong signals to the rest of the world about whether we finish what we start. Recent events in Iraq make this plainly clear. However, the question is whether the cost in Afghanistan is worth the outcome?As my British colleague says, “is the juice worth the squeeze?”I think seeing this through, while gradually drawing down, is worth doing.
According to defense analyst Anthony Cordesman the US will need to spend about $10-billion a year for the next 14-years to stand a chance of stabilizing Afghanistan.
We do not need more good intentions and vague promises from the Obama administration. We do not need a vacuous set of positions from Republican presidential candidates who either do not understand the issues or fear addressing their cost. If the United States is to make this commitment we need to start making it now in every part of our posture and spending in Afghanistan — and be clear that we will do so through 2025. If not, we need to be honest about the consequences for some 30 million Afghans and their country.
There's so much detail and stark facts in Hegseth's email that you would be remiss to not read on.
Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting. Well, for example, the other day, my wife-Annie and I went into town and visited a shop.
When we came out, there was a cop writing out a parking ticket. We went up to him and I said, 'Come on, man, how about giving a senior citizen a break?'
He ignored us and continued writing the ticket.
I called him an "asshole". He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn-out tires. So Annie called him a "shit head". He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first.
Then he started writing more tickets. This went on for about 20 minutes. The more we abused him, the more tickets he wrote.
Just then our bus arrived, and we got on it and went home.
We always look for cars with "OBAMA 2012" stickers. We try to have a little fun each day now that we're retired. It's important at our age.
"I've often been asked, 'What do you old folks do now that you're retired?' Well, I'm fortunate to have a chemical engineering background, and one of the things I enjoy most is converting beer, wine and vodka into urine.
Lubel is a nut (see his other Youtubes. I know a nerdy guy from Long Island who reminds me of him, who has always gotten lots of girls into bed not from his looks or achievements but from plain cheerful confidence and an optimistic, animal openness about his desires):
Marines urinating on the dead? This is war. - The video of US marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters has shocked many. But the dehumanizing of the enemy was much worse back in the day.
In America, the poor do not stay poor, and the rich do not remain rich. Overall, in the US, both great wealth and difficult poverty seem to be transient. I am opposed to the death tax because it discourages people from building a secure and independent future for their kids and grandkids.
Of course, death taxes seem not to affect the very wealthy.
From the latter link:
...if upward mobility is so common, why are there still plenty of poor people in this country? In a recent video about income mobility hosted by the Institute for Humane Studies, economist Steven Horwitz of Saint Lawrence University explains:“Immigrants and young people entering the labor force come into that income distribution at low levels of income. They become the new poor when the old poor slowly move their way up.” Horwitz concludes that “even though a first glance at the data may make it seem as if the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, the reality of the United States in the early 21st century is that everyone is getting richer, poor and rich alike.”
But-but-but, his computer models proved the link between good health and red wine. So whats the problem? So what if he made up a few numbers and tweaked the model to coincide with his theory, nothing new, everyone does it. Hey, the more red wine I drink, the better I feel. That’s all the modeling I need.
Yesterday, Warren Buffett did something that was, in my opinion, outlandish and childish. He says he felt guilty for his comment about needing to pay more in taxes, so he took it upon himself to offer a dollar for dollar match for every extra payment a GOP member of Congress makes. Except for Mitch McConnell, who he will match 3 to 1.
Buffett is mistaken on several levels. First, as the linked article points out, why weren't Democrats and Obama included in this dare? Clearly this is Buffett's partisan nature and bias showing through. He is seeking to demonize one party over the other, without justification. I haven't seen Democrats lining up to make extra payments, nor have I seen Obama going 'over and above'.
Secondly, and more importantly, I shouldn't have to see anybody making extra payments. Not Buffett, not Democrats, not Republicans, not Obama. Making these payments is a personal decision, not a public one. Buffett went public with his statement last year that the wealthy should pay more taxes. Maybe they should, but I don't think that's a real issue. If Buffett wants to pay more, and T. Boone Pickens doesn't, let one send in the extra check as he sees fit, while the other chooses not to. Buffett went public, so he is turning this into a game. It's a game I'm not interested in, unless it is done fairly. Buffett rigged this game from the start.
He is more interested in making certain politicians look bad. I think it makes him look bad.
...the German vision of a Europe transformed into virtuous northern savers who play honestly and conscientiously by the accepted rules of the game looks hopelessly unrealistic, and never so more than now as the Italians get into the game.
Herbert London: The Failure of the Century's Grand Experiments:
If there is one obvious condition associated with the last century, it is the lack of government humility. Among the century’s leadership there was the self confident belief that “good ideas” will trump tradition, customs, history, even instinct. There were scarcely limits to political ingenuity. Here was the triumph of positivism, the assumption that rationality can subdue emotion. The engineers were in history’s driver’s seat and the lights appeared to be synchronized in green. Somewhere along the way things went wrong and the lights turned crimson...
The Great Good Place: 
Most "homeowners" have mortgages, if not second mortgages, or at least lines of credit against their homes. If you have a mortgage, you are essentially a renter - but a renter with the capital risk and the maintenance costs and risks. The ownership is an illusion and, if the place is paid off, you lose your interest deduction and so what have you gained by that process of eliminating your leverage? Well, if you are retired with lower income, you have gained the ability to remain in the house if you can cover the property tax. 
Isolated Peru tribe 
The protest sign 
Spike Lee: The New Bill Cosby?
Old ad via
Image on right via 
The US has 55,000 miles of oil pipelines already. Who would object to a beer pipeline from Canada? 
Life in the country: 
America is drunk
The 
Why God sends rain to Mexico but not to the Middle East 
Genius!