There is one moral failing that is devastating to the future of our nation. That failing, which has wide acceptance by the American people, is the idea that Congress has the authority to forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another American. --Williams
..an overly generous level of wealth transfer harms economic growth. Many people end up working less, or working less hard,
and the associated higher tax rates discourage entrepreneurship and can lead to economic stasis. Furthermore, if it is standard procedure to approach government for a handout, that will induce too much rent-seeking, dependency, corruption, and eventually fiscal
imbalances and perhaps even insolvency or a financial crisis.--Cowen
Republicans have established a clear pattern on health care. First, they rail against whatever big-government scheme Democrats
propose. Then, after a half-hearted and incompetent effort to convince the public of the benefits of a market-oriented system, they abandon their principles and adopt the big-government idea as their own in order to win or hold power.--de Rugy
The volume of the child abuse in the Church is overwhelming. And, like every organization despite its claims, the organization put itself first.
This is so terrible I'm not sure the organization will survive as it is.
I remember an article written about a well regarded political analyst who was commenting on the Trump election. At the time everyone was looking
for some Grand Unifying Cause for his election and some smart guys were looking at the subtle ones--like that extraordinary interview Zito had with the militant feminist in the Northwest who campaigned for Trump among her fellow feminists because of his Second
Amendment position. This guy said that Trump was elected by blue collar woman in the mid-west who were furious over Clinton's connection through Huma to Anthony Weiner and his child porno. Men are the abstract Church but women are its beating heart. If the
women walk away, the reorganization could be revolutionary. In ten years this Church could be unrecognizable.
Government power, a vast, organized, and living body, naturally tends to grow. It feels cramped within its supervisory mission.
--Bastiat
Golden oldie, with wife's furious comment:
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Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephens. She was an unfortunate, haunted genius, and one of the great Modernist w...
steeleydock.blogspot.com
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A patient who works for the Pa. Wildlife Commission talked about trapping and tagging local animals and says that cougars are making a comeback
in western Pa.. Full grown they are 200 pounds. There is no reason to go into the woods.
Hostile forces in the Middle East are targeting American pilots with laser pointers at a growing rate, imperiling
aircrews and reflecting a problem more widespread and longstanding than the Pentagon has previously acknowledged. (wsj)
Who is.... William Jennings Bryan?
A list of America’s adversaries now contains the Taliban, the Houthis of Yemen, Bashar Assad of Syria, Erdogan’s
Turkey, Iran, North Korea, Russia and China. That is a lot, especially since we don't have a lot of eager allies.
Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic; but destroy our farms and the grass will grow in
the streets of every city in the country.--William Jennings Bryan
Evidence of the steeply declining utility of campaign dollars: Beto O’Rourke raised $7 million, then $10 million, then $38 million in 2018’s first three quarters, and his Quinnipiac poll numbers were 44 percent
in April, 43 percent in July, 45 percent in September, 46 percent in October. As of last Wednesday he received 48.3 percent of the vote.
Henry Adams defined politics as “the systematic organization of hatreds.”
"Conversation" is much more complex than it seems.
Conversation: noun:
- Expression and exchange of individual ideas through talking with other people; also, a set instance or occasion of such talking. [from 16th c.]
- (fencing) The back-and-forth play of the blades in a bout.
- (obsolete) Interaction; commerce or intercourse with other people; dealing with others. [14th-18th c.]
- (archaic) Behaviour, the way one conducts oneself; a person's way of lif. [from 14th c.]
- (computing) The protocol-based interaction between systems processing a transaction.
Etymology:
mid-14c., "place where one lives or dwells," also "general course of actions or habits, manner of conducting oneself in the world," both senses now obsolete; from Old French conversacion "behavior, life, way
of life, monastic life," and directly from Latin conversationem (nominative conversatio) "frequent use, frequent abode in a place, intercourse, conversation," noun of action from past-participle stem of conversari "to live, dwell, live with, keep company with,"
passive voice of conversare "to turn about, turn about with," from assimilated form of com "with, together" (see
con-) + versare, frequentative of vertere "to turn" (from PIE root
*wer- (2) "to turn, bend").
Sense of "informal interchange of thoughts and sentiments by spoken words" is from 1570s. Used as a synonym for "sexual intercourse" from at least late 14c., hence criminal conversation, a legal term for adultery
from late 18c. Conversation-piece is from 1712 as "painting representing a group of figures arranged as if in conversation;" 1784 as "subject for conversation, something to talk about."
So "conversation" is more than communication, it is a way of life under rules--or was.
A Pew survey in Britain:
In 31 of the countries surveyed at least 50% of people said "religion should be kept separate from government policies".
Pew reiterated its previous finding that 60% of British adults believe this, while just 38% think "government should support religious values and beliefs". The
NSS reported these figures earlier this year.
Ninety-two per cent of people think it is very or somewhat important to respect British "institutions/laws" to be truly British.
The survey also suggested Britons are largely disinterested in religion. Just 10% of respondents said religion was "very important in their lives". Six per cent
prayed daily. Twenty per cent attended religious services at least once a month.
But the figures also suggested substantial proportions of Britons have attitudes unwelcoming of religious minorities. Just 53% of non-Muslims said they would be
willing to accept Muslims into their families. Sixty-nine per cent of non-Jewish people said the same about Jews.
National Secular Society CEO Stephen Evans said the research highlighted "more evidence that secularist principles enjoy broad support in the UK". But he added
that the "significant level" of mistrust in religious minorities was "a cause for concern".
Indeed, [Adam] Smith pointed out that benevolence is inadequate for the task of building cooperation in a large society, because we are irredeemably biased in our benevolence to relatives and close friends;
a society built on benevolence would be riddled with nepotism. Between strangers, the invisible hand of the market, distributing selfish ambitions, is fairer.-Ridley
When Pope Pius IX condemned liberalism as essentially Satanic, what precisely did he mean? According to Rosenblatt there is no doubt: the Pope (fearing the loss of political control) was condemning what we
think of as liberal virtues: the commitment to religious freedom, the rights of conscience, the freedom of choice. Catholic officials spent the better part of the 19th century resisting the best that modernity had to offer until finally flipping on the whole
liberal question with Dignitatis Humanae
in 1965.
Wooldridge
on "state capitalism," the "democratic socialists:" "I think China in particular, and state capitalism in particular, is the biggest single challenge that America has ever been faced with. Partly because state capitalism is quite clever. It’s much cleverer
than the pure socialism of Soviet Russia because it tries to merge the best features of capitalism with the best features of statism in its mind. ...[it has].. not
demonstrated an ability to innovate. It has demonstrated an ability to be a fast follower, and while it has demonstrated an ability to create some impressive companies, it hasn’t yet demonstrated an ability to discipline those companies when they get too big
and too dominant. They throw a lot of resources at that those leading companies, but they tend to reduce the efficiency of the use of those resources over time."
This is a provocative, if completely unproven, analysis.
AAAAaaaaaannnnnddddd....a bar graph that probably means little:
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