Injun Summer Time Again

This is a seasonal tradition Granny Tea grew up with and passed on down. I first posted about it here our first October of blogging, in 2005. Here's what I wrote:

After blogging about fall and sharing some autumn-y poems, our pre-fall or early fall or whatever it was is over, and we are back up to 96 degrees. When I was small We generally came back to the midwest to visit the relatives in August or September, and my grandfather would tell me about Injun Summer. We have a print of this old Chicago Trib article which has hung in our house for years. It's not p.c. but I don't think it's bigoted, either. Just... quaint.

And then, of course, I had the Injun Summer tale itself, complete with the correct illustrations, which for years and years the Chicago Trib reprinted every fall. This year, we had cool, crisp weather for weeks, and then over the weekend temperatures climbed to over 80 sunny degrees.

As it says in Genesis, the eighth chapter, "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. "

And Injun summer, too, I guess:

John T. McCutcheon
Chicago Tribune
September 30, 1907

Yep, sonny this is sure enough Injun summer. Don't know what that is, I reckon, do you? Well, that's when all the homesick Injuns come back to play; You know, a long time ago, long afore yer granddaddy was born even, there used to be heaps of Injuns around here—thousands—millions, I reckon, far as that's concerned. Reg'lar sure 'nough Injuns—none o' yer cigar store Injuns, not much. They wuz all around here—right here where you're standin'.
Don't be skeered—hain't none around here now, leastways no live ones. They been gone this many a year.
They all went away and died, so they ain't no more left.
But every year, 'long about now, they all come back, leastways their sperrits do. They're here now. You can see 'em off across the fields. Look real hard. See that kind o' hazy misty look out yonder? Well, them's Injuns—Injun sperrits marchin' along an' dancin' in the sunlight. That's what makes that kind o' haze that's everywhere—it's jest the sperrits of the Injuns all come back. They're all around us now.
See off yonder; see them tepees? They kind o' look like corn shocks from here, but them's Injun tents, sure as you're a foot high. See 'em now? Sure, I knowed you could. Smell that smoky sort o' smell in the air? That's the campfires a-burnin' and their pipes a-goin'.
Lots o' people say it's just leaves burnin', but it ain't. It's the campfires, an' th' Injuns are hoppin' 'round 'em t'beat the old Harry.
You jest come out here tonight when the moon is hangin' over the hill off yonder an' the harvest fields is all swimmin' in the moonlight, an' you can see the Injuns and the tepees jest as plain as kin be. You can, eh? I knowed you would after a little while.
Jever notice how the leaves turn red 'bout this time o' year? That's jest another sign o' redskins. That's when an old Injun sperrit gits tired dancin' an' goes up an' squats on a leaf t'rest. Why I kin hear 'em rustlin' an' whisper in' an' creepin' 'round among the leaves all the time; an' ever' once'n a while a leaf gives way under some fat old Injun ghost and comes floatin' down to the ground. See—here's one now. See how red it is? That's the war paint rubbed off'n an Injun ghost, sure's you're born.
Purty soon all the Injuns'll go marchin' away agin, back to the happy huntin' ground, but next year you'll see 'em troopin' back—th' sky jest hazy with 'em and their campfires smolderin' away jest like they are now.

There's another poem about Indian Summer posted here.

When I inherited The Rattery, one of the millions of interesting little things with it was a shirtbox absolutely jam-packed with newspaper clippings and political cartoons my grandfather apparently couldn't find room for in his scrapbooks. They were largely from the thirties and forties. There are quite a few scathing mockeries of FDR and the New Deal, for example, many of them by John T. McCutcheon, editorial cartoonist and Pulitzer Prize winner from the Chicago Tribune, and the illustrator and writer of the Injun Summer art work and story posted above. We've posted a handful of his political cartoons. If you're interested, just type McCutcheon into one of the search boxes here, either at the top left or in the left sidebar.

Unbelievable

Lisa Snyder of Middleville, Mich., says she takes no money for watching the three children for 15-40 minutes each day so that the neighbors can get to work on time.

The Department of Human Services, acting on a complaint that Snyder was operating an illegal child care home, demanded she either get a license, stop watching the kids or face the consequences, WZZM says.

Snyder calls the whole thing “ridiculous” and tells the Grand Rapids TV station that “we are friends helping friends!”

A DHS spokesperson tells the station that it has no choice but to comply with state law, which is designed to protect Michigan children.

More here.

So many questions. What buttinski, busy body, no-life, nosy parker filed that complaint in the first place?

How long until a play date is considered unlicensed child-care? Or Sunday school?

DHS always has a choice. I am not buying that they have no other alternative.
We do not need more laws in this country. We need far, far, less.

Peek-a-boo!!

Taken at one week.

From The Pirate's Mother

Many thanks indeed for the congratulations and well-wishes of all, The Equuschick apologizes for her absence of late but she does hope you will all understand as her excuse is just so very, very cute.

The Pirate continues to do remarkably well and The Equuschick continues to recover, they continue to work on breast-feeding (and here The Equuschick always thought the "blood, sweat, and tears" aspect of mothering applied primarily to childbirth), but things are well. And in spite of her various complaints and hollers and temper tantrums in the heat of the moment she is quite happy with her home birth experience. She was very blessed in her midwife, her mother, and her amazing husband.


Today The Pirate took a walk with The Equuschick out to the pasture to be introduced to Sky the first time. (The Pipsqueak has been on Sky and Zeus duty for almost two weeks. Has The Equuschick mentioned how blessed she is in her family?)

Both were suitably impressed and equally curious. The Pirate, in fact, was so impressed by the majesty of the equine species that once inside he remained wide-eyed with his hand propped contemplatively below his chin for quite some time, no doubt dwelling still on the majesty and sheer bulk of The Horse.

He is now comfortably ensconced on the couch next to The Equuschick listening to Pandora and admiring all the colours of the world.

Double Standards, Much?

The Case for Government-Run Ketchup [Mark Hemingway]

From the Senate Republican Policy Committee:

Senator Kerry just went on about the outrageous profits of health insurers who dominate the market and offer little choice to consumers. That’s an interesting point considering that according to the website of Heinz ketchup, the company holds a 60 percent retail market share. Heinz products enjoy #1 or #2 market share in more than 50 countries. And according to Yahoo Finance, Heinz profits (8.6 percent) are more than double the health insurance industry (3.3 percent). Government run Ketchup, anyone?

Via the Corner

Will Ferrell, who makes 20 million dollars a picture, and other similarly well paid actors, think insurance company moguls make too much money. He and his pals

could literally buy health insurance for tens, if not hundreds of thousands of uninsured Americans. And they don’t even have to wait for the government to take their money at gunpoint. They can just do it. And they should. It’s clearly being positioned as a moral issue, so is it immoral for these folks to hoard money while children are suffering?

Well, not by my standards, but it would seem to be immoral by theirs.

Michael Wilson explains:

I have debated health care with every one of my liberal friends who is willing to engage. And I always ask them the same question when they support the government-run plan. It goes like this: “I don’t have health insurance. Will you buy it for me for just one year?” I ask the question seriously. I mean it. I’d happily accept the gift from someone who wants to help. But they always backpedal. They always refuse.

Why? Because they have mistaken compassion for force. They believe that government will force someone else to pay, that they will not be affected, and that it’s okay because “they” or “the rich” have more than “they” need. But “they” have earned what “they” have, and so have Ferrell and his FOD pals.

The question is whether the folks who preach the message of forcing you to “give” to others are actually willing to do it on their own. Do they really care about those with less or only about appearing to care?

Charles Rangel remains the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in what was allegedly going to be the most ethical Congress ever, and is only true in the sense that 'ethical' means sleazy, underhanded, grafters and thieves.

Not a Line In His Own Hand

We have not a 'line written by his own hand,' and few contemporary 'documents mention him, even ambiguously.'

Interesting, eh? Care to guess the name behind the pronouns 'his' and 'him'?

Those are lines I read about Dante in the book The Life and Times of Dante, published in 1967 by Curtis books.

In an article about the murderous terrorist attack in Mumbai I found this:

Kept in the basement of the Asiatic Society library, a colonnaded marble building in Mumbai's colonial heart, is perhaps the Indian financial capital's least heralded relic: one of the two oldest surviving manuscripts of Italian poet Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Its some 450 richly illustrated pages, dating from the 1350s, are bound and wrapped in red silk. Though the book rarely goes on display, Society staff insist the medieval text is in excellent condition. It came to Mumbai in the possession of a 19th century British antiquarian grandee, the imperially named Mountstuart Elphinstone, and has stayed in the city ever since despite numerous attempts by the Italian government to repatriate it. In the 1930s, rumor has it, dictator Benito Mussolini was keen to buff his fascist pedigree by retrieving the epic and offered the Society one million pounds for it, a staggering sum at the time. But the Society politely refused.

The Divine Comedy was probably completed by 1321, according to this website, and:

According to the Società Dantesca Italiana, no original manuscript written by Dante has survived, though there are many manuscript copies from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The oldest belongs to the 1330s, almost a decade after Dante's death. The most precious ones are the three full copies made by Giovanni Boccaccio (June 16, 1313 – December 21, 1375, Italian author and poet), in the 1360s, who himself did not have the original manuscript as a source.

And yet nobody I know of seriously suggests we do not have an accurate copy of Dante's Inferno.

Planter by my front door

This was my front door back in June. Pretty skimpy, eh? The pot to the left is sitting atop a piece of an old pillar from the old porch at the little house where Shasta and the EC (and our little Pirate) live. In the fifties they took out the porch and made it into a front room. We wondered what happened to the pillars, and then while putting in fencing for the cows that are coming, we dug up pieces of old columns, and I guess that's what they did with them.
Look carefully at the planter to the right- I've got a 'now' picture down below that's pretty cool.


Here's the planter on the left, plus some additional planters. This picture was taken in September. The planter on the left of the door contains hostas, a vine I cannot remember (bought it at the end of the season, dollar a sixpack sale), and some impatiens. The skimpier planter to the left just has some stuff I dug up from the rattery and not enough dirt. I think I'll be dumping that out around a tree in the yard to see what comes up next year.
The tall terra cotta looking things are clay pipes- around here, in the 1900s, they 'reclaimed' farmland by laying down tiles beneath the soil to drain the land into creeks. These are some of the tiles- giant clay pipes. Granny Tea has some u-joint pieces, too. Pretty cool looking, but we don't quite know what to do with them.

The one with the old watering can on top of it is holding begonias. And here's the planter to the right of the door:




Isn't that incredible? YOu can't even see the planter anymore. I didn't add anything, either- these are the same plants as appear in the June photograph at the top of the page.

Contains:

Hosta- dug up from The Rattery yard. They're blooming now, but weren't yet when this picture was taken. The blooms are purple blossoms on tall stems in the back of the planter.

Impatiens- 2, picked up for a dollar a six pack at the end of the season (the others are in a different planter, and doing quite well. That's the spot of pink you see. Next year I think I'll do six impatiens in this planter, maybe more.

Ground Ivy- unless it's gill-over-the-ground, unless they are the same thing. I have never been able to tell. It's taken over the planter, and is the stuff you see draped over the sides and spilling out across the sidewalk. I picked this up from my backyard- just pulled up a handful and stuck it in the planter to see what it would do. As you can see in that first picture there were hardly any vines hanging over the side, and that was only sometime mid-summer.

The planter itself- also from The Rattery. It's a shabby stone urn, covered with green paint, though you cannot tell. I am very pleased with it.

Judy Collins Sings the Gaelic Lullabye

Auntie HG Holds the Pirate

She had a cold when the Pirate was born, so she nobly resisted holding him until she was better, which means he was born on a Saturday and she couldn't hold him until Wednesday.

Guess Who's Getting Worried About Presidential Narcisissm?

Howard Fineman?

The president’s problem isn’t that he is too visible; it’s the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words “I” and “my.” (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story.

There is only so much political mileage that can still be had by his reminding the world that he is not George W. Bush. It was the winning theme of the 2008 campaign, but that race ended nearly a year ago. The ex-president is now more ex than ever, yet the current president, who vowed to look forward, is still reaching back to Bush as bogeyman.

And Richard Cohen of the WaPo, surprise, thinks the President just might say whatever seems good to him at the time?

The trouble with Obama is that he gets into the moment and means what he says for that moment only. He meant what he said when he called Afghanistan a “war of necessity” — and now is not necessarily so sure. He meant what he said about the public option in his health care plan — and then again maybe not. He would not prosecute CIA agents for getting rough with detainees — and then again maybe he would.

This sounds exactly what those who did not drink at the fount of the Obamessiah's kool-ade have been saying all along. Are Fineman and Cohen racists?

Via Hotair.

The Boy's 'New' Bike

See Frugal Hacks for explanation.

And We Have a Wedding In Three Weeks

The Big Stuff:

All the kitchen ceiling tiles and three of the dining room ceiling tiles need to be replaced.

The counter top between the stove and the ovens needs to be replaced, and they don't make my color anymore.

One section of the floor needs to be replaced- possibly not that big of a deal since we still have a couple of floor pieces. Possibly a huge deal since it's tongue and groove, and if they started laying it down at the opposite end, the entire floor would have to come up and be put back down to replace one floor piece at the stove end.

The exhaust fan and associated wiring is a total loss.

The solid maple cupboard over the fan could possibly be cleaned, but probably needs to be replaced completely.

The cupboard to the right has a better chance of being cleaned, but possibly needs to be replaced.

The entire kitchen needs to be professionally cleaned by fire damage specialists, as smoke residue is still showing up on cupboards that we cleaned and that appear unaffected.

Possibly the entire grid system holding up the ceiling tiles needs to be replaced.

500 dollar deductable, and we do have that wedding in three weeks with a couple biggish things still not paid for.

Small things:
Half my kitchen utensils melted- stuff like slotted spoons, pancake turners, spatulas.
Several hot pads were reduced to a sludgy pile of molten cloth
Two of my favorite baskets were charred beyond the point of rescue.
Dinner was a lost cause, so I fixed something else in the crockpot out in the dining room, as we had some 18 or 19 people over that evening (some were coming from afar and could not be put off)
A houseplant I had finally brought back from the brink of death and was just starting to flourish is probably a goner (not the aloe in the picture)
some recipes printed out and left lying on the island scorched by flaming debris
19 girl-hours of labour cleaning the kitchen up
A long list of various odds and ends had to be thrown out- I think I'll miss my spice/coffee grinder the most, although the unused containers to use for seal-a-meal liquids are nothing to sneeze at, either.


Blessings:
Chief blessing- everybody, including the dog, made it out fine, and we could very, very easily have lost the rest of the house but we didn't. Our tea chemist foolishly ran back in and put the fire out, and she was wheezing for a day or two because of the smoke inhalation, but we are fairly certain she did save the house. The fact that we had no other injuries does trump everything else, and it is a blessing not to lose the house just three weeks before the wedding.

Smaller blessings:

The home-made bread was fine-there were holes in the bag on the top layer, but we just sliced off the top of those two loaves and ate the rest.

I never liked my kitchen ceiling tile anyway. I am envisioning copper colored grid with a light green ceiling tile with a pattern of some sort on it- Although I'll probably have to settle for the same style that we'll just paint light green. Anybody know where I can find a great deal on suspended grid ceiling tiles in a 2X4 pattern with some visual panache?

The stove top works fine, amazingly enough.

If the cupboard above the fan isn't salvageable, and everybody doubts that it is, then I'll get to remove it and replace it with a pot-rack.

Since we had to remove most dishes from the cupboards and wash smoke residue off of them, and wash the insides of the cupboards as well, the kitchen is probably cleaner than it has been in approximately forever.

The first insurance dude thought we'd have to send all the furniture in for whatever they do to desmoke it (the girls turned on the whole house fan, which filled the whole house with smoke). But the home restorer says no- the smoke damage is limited to the kitchen and possibly a small portion of the dining room.

The cheesecake had only just been put in the fridge seconds prior to the kitchen catching on fire- otherwise, it would have been coated in ash and smoking debris and we would not have been able to console ourselves later that evening by eating it.

Most of the flower filled tires in the retaining wall are now weeded. What does that have to do with the fire, you ask? I weeded them to vent off some excess frustration, of course.

Bonus: One of the visiting girls was overheard talking to her mom about the fire: "How did Mrs. Common Room take it? Oh, Mom, she was totally cool. She just said, "I'm not cleaning up that mess."

Side note on that: At some point in the afternoon while I was waiting for the insurance people to call me back and I was weeding the garden, the HG came up and quietly asked if I was really okay. "Of course I am," I said. "You know how I am. Big things that can't be helped I can handle perfectly well. It's the little things I freak over."

"That's true," she agreed. So it's a shame she wasn't there fifteen minutes later when I walked back in the house to see if it was all really as bad as it looked (yes, it was) and spotted my charred plant and shrieked, "LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO MY PLANT!!!!"

Three Felonies A Day

Technology moves so quickly we can barely keep up, and our legal system moves so slowly it can't keep up with itself. By design, the law is built up over time by court decisions, statutes and regulations. Sometimes even criminal laws are left vague, to be defined case by case. Technology exacerbates the problem of laws so open and vague that they are hard to abide by, to the point that we have all become potential criminals.

Boston civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate calls his new book "Three Felonies a Day," referring to the number of crimes he estimates the average American now unwittingly commits because of vague laws. New technology adds its own complexity, making innocent activity potentially criminal.

More here

The Presidential Personality Cult for Children

More here.

"Uniting black and white?" "Being both, he cannot take sides?" "Change has come, change has come." "Fly free."

It's supposed to be a PTA meeting, so presumably parents are on board with having their children worship at the alter of this personality cult.

He's just a man, however, and some of these children are going to grow up resenting the way they've been indoctrinated at the cult of unreason.

Dante's Divine Comedy as suitable for the immature...

According to the author of The Makers of Florence (Mrs. Oliphant, 1876), Dante explained the reason he used the 'vulgar tongue' of Italian for his masterpiece instead of Latin thus:

But when I considered the condition of the present age, I saw that the songs of the most illustrious poets were neglected of all, and for this reason high-minded men who in better times wrote on such themes, now left (oh, pity!) the liberal arts to the crowd. For this I laid down the pure lyre with which I was provided, and prepared for myself another more adapted to the understanding of the moderns; for it is vain to give to sucklings solid food.'

Mrs. Oliphant's source for this story is a letter Fra Ilario, Abbot of the monastary of Santa Croce, is supposed to have written in a cover letter accompanying a copy of Dante's manuscript, sent on Dante's behalf to Uguccione della Faginolla.

Based on a good hour's worth of googling, it appears the letter is of doubtful authenticity, although it has been around possibly since the late 14th century, and certainly was well known, if disbelieved, by the middle of the 19th century.

Its authenticity as Dante's own statement doesn't interest me as much as the statement itself. Regardless of authorship, it's likely several hundred years old, yet it could have been written today, changing only the style of the words which seem stilted to the modern ear. Did Dante live today, he (or his counterfeit) might have said:

'When I observe current trends, I see that the works of the greatest poets of old are the most neglected... so I set aside the more advanced language and style that I intended to use, and instead adapted my writing to the understanding of the current post-modern generation; because it is a waste of time to give the strong meat of literature to those with immature tastes.'

IN the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct: and e’en to tell,
It were no easy task, how savage wild
That forest, how robust and rough its growth,
Which to remember only, my dismay
Renews, in bitterness not far from death.
Yet, to discourse of what there good befel...

Imagine a world where The Divine Comedy is considered to be written in a watered down and common tongue easily understood by the young moderns who have not equipped themselves to understand the works of the great poets of old.

Ukrainian Sand Artist

This is beautiful and deeply evocative even without understanding the language or story. It's even more moving when you do understand.

According to what I read about it at Ace of Spades, where I found it, she's telling the story of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine during WWII.

According to the comments at youtube:

first a man and a woman get engaged. then war happens. then everyone gets scared. then they give birth to a baby. then the woman gets a mail saying that the man died in the war. then the man gets covered. then the woman is back in her hometown. then she looks out of the window and sees the man in her imagination and she is happy again.this war took place in 1945 when hitler was in control

A Mariiiya says:

she writes "You are always near" at the end... this makes me cry every time..

Creepr40T says:

The 2 people on the benches was the artists grandmother and her first husband. He was taken to war during the invasion of Ukraine. She had a baby, and received a letter that her husband had died. After the war ended, a man came and met the woman. He helped raise the baby and they soon married.

The artist is Kseniya Simonova. She is the 2009 winner of Ukraine's Got Talent.

Gaelic Lullabye with whales

In 1998 a paper is published by Dr. Michael Mann. Then at the University of Virginia, now a Penn State climatologist, and co-authors Bradley and Hughes. The paper is named: Northern Hemisphere Temperatures During the Past Millennium: Inferences, Uncertainties, and Limitations. The paper becomes known as MBH98.

The conclusion of tree ring reconstruction of climate for the past 1000 years is that we are now in the hottest period in modern history, ever.

See the graph http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/image/mann/manna_99.gif

Steve McIntyre, a Canadian mathematician in Toronto, suspects tree rings aren’t telling a valid story with that giant uptick at the right side of the graph, implicating the 20th century as the “hottest period in 1000 years”, which alarmists latch onto as proof of AGW. The graph is dubbed as the “Hockey Stick” and becomes famous worldwide. Al Gore uses it in his movie An Inconvenient Truth in the famous “elevator scene”.

2- Steve attempts to replicate Michael Mann’s tree ring work in the paper MBH98, but is stymied by lack of data archiving.
[...]

In 2008 Mann publishes another paper in bolstering his tree ring claim due to all of the controversy surrounding it. A Mann co-author and source of tree ring data (Professor Keith Briffa of the Hadley UK Climate Research Unit) used one of the tree ring data series (Yamal in Russia) in a paper published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 2008, which has a strict data archiving policy. Thanks to that policy, Steve McIntyre fought and won access to that data just last week.

4- Having the Yamal data in complete form, McIntyre replicates it, and discovers that one of Mann’s co-authors, Briffa, had cherry picked 10 trees data sets out of a much larger set of trees sampled in Yamal.

5- When all of the tree ring data from Yamal is plotted, the famous hockey stick disappears. Not only does it disappear, but goes negative. The conclusion is inescapable. The tree ring data was hand picked to get the desired result.

More here, including graphs. Think how many laws and regulations have been imposed on us on the basis of that fantasy hockey stick. Think how the media has mocked an dismissed 'global warming deniers' but has refused to bother to look into the data for themselves.

the Pirate's Profile

Looks pretty much like his ultrasound pictures.

Homeschooling, the subtext

Andrew O'Hehir and his wife homeschooler their five year old twins:

After various tense conversations with friends, family members and strangers, Leslie and I have concluded that earnest, heartfelt discussion of exactly how we're approaching our kids' education and why we're doing it is a bad idea. For reasons I can about halfway understand, other parents often seem to feel attacked by our eccentric choices. I guess this is what it's like to be a vegan, or a Mennonite convert. I can certainly remember having a weirdly defensive response ("You know, I hardly ever eat red meat"), one where I reacted to someone else's comment about themselves as if it were really all about me.

At the risk of gross generalization, there's a hierarchy of responses when you drop the home-school bomb in conversation. Childless men don't much care; the question is too remote from their consciousness. Childless women are often curious and even intrigued; the question is hypothetical but possesses a certain allure as a thought experiment. As for men with children, they may or may not be sympathetic, but they don't experience the subject as a personal affront. Let's be honest: It's almost always mothers who react defensively when the subject comes up, as if our personal decision not to send our kids to public school contained an implicit judgment of whatever different choices they may have made.

So they've developed some set surface answers that don't really quite tell the whole story but do divert possible tension. Here you can read the 'public consumption' responses and the real ones.

Racism increasingly becoming the new 'WOLF!!!'

It's like false accusations of rape- I know the real thing is out there, but the more false accusations get credence and protection, the more we have to doubt every such claim and hold it up to closer scrutiny.

Victor David Hanson shares some of the more egregious recent examples.

Dems on Health Care- Y'all are too stupid to read the bill

Republicans argued that the committee should take up the actual legislative language, given the historically unprecedented magnitude of the bill which will affect 17 percent of the economy in perpetuity.

Democrats are vociferously opposed to this for the simple reason that this would slow down the bill and give critics more to chew on. Senator Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) actually argued that having the exact legislative language didn't matter because "there's 5 percent of the American people that understand the legal language." That's right, a United States Senator argued that there was no reason to let the American people in on the Kabalistic workings of the Senate Finance Comittee because 95 percent of Americans wouldn't understand it anyway.

Those for responsible government lost that vote, btw. Why is that okay with anybody?

The Pirate Looks Startled

Sunday Hymn Post

Where shall my wondering soul begin?
How shall I all to heaven aspire?
A slave redeemed from death and sin,
A brand plucked from eternal fire,
How shall I equal triumphs raise,
Or sing my great Deliverer’s praise?

O how shall I the goodness tell,
Father, which Thou to me hast showed?
That I, a child of wrath and hell,
I should be called a child of God,
Should know, should feel my sins forgiven,
Blessed with this antepast of Heaven!

And shall I slight my Father’s love?
Or basely fear His gifts to own?
Unmindful of His favors prove?
Shall I, the hallowed cross to shun,
Refuse His righteousness to impart,
By hiding it within my heart?

No! though the ancient dragon rage,
And call forth all his host to war,
Though earth’s self-righteous sons engage
Them and their god alike I dare;
Jesus, the sinner’s friend, proclaim;
Jesus, to sinners still the same.

Outcasts of men, to you I call,
Harlots, and publicans, and thieves!
He spreads His arms to embrace you all;
Sinners alone His grace receives;
No need of Him the righteous have;
He came the lost to seek and save.

Come, O my guilty brethren, come,
Groaning beneath your load of sin,
His bleeding heart shall make you room,
His open side shall take you in;
He calls you now, invites you home;
Come, O my guilty brethren, come!

For you the purple current flowed
In pardons from His wounded side,
Languished for you the eternal God,
For you the Prince of glory died:
Believe, and all your sin’s forgiven;
Only believe, and yours is Heaven!

Cyberhymnal

Steve Martin sings Tura Lura

So the Bachelorette Party Went Off With a Bang....

The bachelors, btw, spent a large chunk of their Bachelor's Party kindly and generously helping a new friend (a guy they just met last month) move from his old house an hour away from their party up to his new apartment about ten minutes from their party.

The Bachelorettes dyed the HG's feet blue and green, painted her nails in garish colors, stayed up until 6 a.m. being silly, and this morning set the kitchen on fire while I was out getting groceries.

I type this sitting in the golf cart out in my yard while waiting for the insurance guy to call me back and tell me if the girls can clean up the kitchen or if we really have to leave this mess there until Monday when adjusters can get out here.

We are expecting 20 people here for dinner tonight, btw. That's dinner you see in the large stock pot on the back of the stove. It's full of ash, and I don't think we'll be eating it.

Yes, everybody is okay.=)
At least, nobody was injured in the fire.:D

45 minutes after birth

Marigolds and weeds

The morning glories are also blooming, but the blooms are out of sight at the top.

The marigolds make me particularly happy because I bought these at the end of the season, they were scraggly, leggy, drying out, and a dollar a six pack. They are really doing very, very well, and I hope they self seed and come back next year.

Bob McGrath sings Tura Lura Lura

Our Young Buccaneer

Gitmo Not to Close by Deadline

Because the dudes locked up inside are much worse than the Obama administration realized, and after all, how on earth could Obama and company have known they were dangerous? And also the American people are recalcitrant and stubborn. Plus Bush. But it's not Obama's fault. Of course.

Did Gov't Cut Deal w/ Pharma for ADVERTISING?

This video seems to indicate that one Congressman, at least, understands it that way- it's a Congressman sympathetic to the deal and to the White House. He's not confessing about the deal, he's saying, "in view of this arrangement, be nicer to the participants."




REal Problem:

government has no business redesigning the private sector so it can pick its favored winners and losers. When we give government that kind of power, it expands the opportunities for corruption.

Jim Geraghty:

Could we spare a little outrage for the fact that the White House and perhaps members of Congress apparently negotiated a deal on legislation in exchange for running millions of dollars in ads? How is this not bribery and a violation of campaign finance laws?

Treating all businesses like thieves and killers

Do we give antibiotics to everybody because some people have infections?

Do we have CPS take away all children because some children have been abused? (Not yet, although I think there are many who would think this is a good idea).

Then why, Rick wants to know, do we treat all business people like thieves?

The Morns are Meeker Than They Were

"The morns are meeker than they were,
The nuts are getting brown;
The berry's cheek is plumper,
The rose is out of town.
The maple wears a gayer scarf,
The field a scarlet gown.
Lest I should be old-fashioned,
I'll put a trinket on."

Emily Dickenson

This poem was one of our earliest poems for copywork, and we do it again every fall. I love the imagery of meek mornings and the fields in scarlet gown.

Anniversary

The HG has long kept a fairly meticulous journal, which means she was able to note that five years ago this week she met STrider for the first time, at a hymn singing down south. She mainly remembers him because he made a point of introducing himself (that's my first memory of him, too, not the singing, but somewhere else where he made a point of introducing himself and making the newcomers feel welcome), and that he had a wonderful tenor- she notices music. But that was it. She didn't go into raptures over how cute he was or anything silly or romantic, just noticed with approval that he was polite and friendly and sang well.

She noticed the same thing about a young woman she met at the same singing, a fellow history major, as it turned out, with whom she developed a close friendship.

But back to Strider- he doesn't even remember that meeting (not being a historian may have something to do with that).

Little did either of them know, five years ago, that they were meeting their soulmates and would be wed to each other five years and three weeks after that meeting.

Life's a funny ol' thing, iddn't it?

Infantile Women

I don't usually blog about the sordid, but be forewarned, that's what this is.


Some of you may have heard about the Hofstra case- similar to the Duke case- a woman accused four men of, well, you can guess. Only in this case, it was quite provable, and the young men were in jail and being told they would be there for the rest of their lives- except for one who the police were still looking for.

That particular one of the accused turned out to be the caddish sort who had video-taped their little romp, and it was demonstrably true that it was entirely consensual, and the woman who went to the police and accused those men of a crime was bearing false witness and fully intending to put those men behind bars forever out of some secret sick little game of her own.

One of the (many) things that bothered me about this case is that the names and faces of the actual victims were plastered all over the place- for the rest of their lives you can google their names, and the fact that they were accused of a heinous and brutal act will come up- and too many people will believe there must have been some truth to that.

But the woman's identity has been protected by the press. I understand why they don't release the identity of the alleged victims in this case. But once the video tape came out and it was clear she had filed false charges against men who, if not exactly innocent, were certainly not guilty of what she accused them of, and she was the guiltiest party of all, she is no longer a victim. SHE is the criminal, and she does not deserve to have her identity protected.

As Jim Treacher said to one of those reporters who refused to name the criminal (in this story she claims that she did not name the male victims,either, but, in fact, their names and faces accompanied one of her articles on this case):

It's not about what "happened to" her in a bathroom
By: Jim Treacher | Tue, 09/22/2009 - 22:40

(As if she wasn't an active participant! Notice how Ms. Bazelon can't help herself from using the language of victimization.) It's about how the young woman dealt with it: By trying to ruin other people's lives.

Do what you're going to do, Emily, but don't pretend it's because this woman is some kind of victim. She's not.

The excuse for not publicizing her name as the names of her victims were published is that she is only 18 and was drunk. One of her victims is only 19, and he was at the same party so it is likely he was just as inebriated- and it turns out, he didn't even touch the girl, and nobody saw fit to sympathize with him for being in the same condition as his phony accuser. In fact, all of them were at the college party, all of them likely drunk, none older than 21, but apparently, being young and drunk is only an excuse if you're a female.

The other topic that is off limits in situations like this is whether or not each of us bears any personal responsibility for getting ourselves inebriated to the point that others must be responsible for us. In case we haven't noticed, we do not live in a world where every member is full of kind intentions and gentle behavior. But it's somehow mean, even patriarchal to point that out.

HotAir uses this, and other sordid incidents to make this point:

We need to stop infantilizing these women. We need to stop pretending there’s no connection between their behavior and any crimes committed against them, or by them. “It’s not your fault!” we reassure. And to some extent we’re telling the truth because fault does belong to the criminal when a crime has been committed. But it’s not the whole truth, and it endorses circumstances where women will be victimized. It doesn’t “empower” anyone to declare our right to be publicly intoxicated to the point of helpless dependence. No one deserves to be murdered or raped. But that fact does not overcome the reality that people are murdered and raped every day, and that criminals normally choose victims who are easy marks. It is unkind to tell that to a crime victim after the fact. But it is cruel not to teach it to young women before the fact.

How about this declaration? Young women have got to know that when you get fall down drunk, you may make stupid choices for which you should still be held responsible, just as a drunk driver would rightly be held responsible for events occurring after he chose to get drunk and do stupid, dangerous things.

You want freedom, choice, and rights? Then earn it by taking responsibility for yourselves.

It's true that in an ideal world, you ought to be able to walk alone in a dark alley, sleep on a park bench, with impunity (I cannot say in an ideal world you should be able to drink yourself to oblivion with impunity, but you should be able to do so without being the target of a brutal crime). It's also true that we don't live in an ideal world, and it doesn't do anybody any favors to pretend otherwise.

No, women who get drunk and get taken advantage of don't 'deserve' whatever they get.
Nor do young men who get drunk and find themselves falsely accused of a crime 'deserve' whatever they get.

But neither should be exactly surprised when it doesn't turn out well, either.

Links and Thinks

Obama and The Patriot Act, from Dana Milbank and the WaPo:

Obama may

have promised new openness, but "so far, the continuities between the Obama and Bush administration overwhelm the differences," says Steven Aftergood, who runs the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists.

Obama gets credit for making public a 2004 report on CIA interrogations and Justice Department torture memos, and for releasing more records of White House visitors. He restored news coverage of returning caskets of fallen soldiers. On Wednesday, he earned mixed reviews from civil libertarians when he signaled an intention to keep fewer things hidden under the "state secrets" policy.

But transparency advocates such as Aftergood and Elizabeth Goitein of the Brennan Center point to many more shortfalls: refusing to release information about detainees held at the Bagram detention facility in Afghanistan, reneging on a decision to release photos of detainee abuse, using signing statements to undermine legislation, defending the granting of immunity to telecom companies that participated in the wiretap program, and opposing a request that all intelligence committee members be briefed on covert operations.

Of course, these moves could be evidence that Obama is being cautious and responsible as campaigning yields to governing. But whatever the reason, civil libertarians have reason to feel that Obama sold them a bill of goods -- and Wednesday's hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee was unlikely to change this feeling.

There's an interesting review of a new biography of Dr. Johnson, the Dictionary Man:

When the Reverend Jordan, a senior fellow at Pembroke College, confronted Johnson with his absences, the young boor was something less than apologetic: "I answered I had been sliding [skating] in Christ-Church meadow. And this I said with as much nonchalance as I am now talking to you." His friend Mrs. Thrale noted that "he laughed very heartily at the recollection of his own insolence."

This early report is given by Peter Martin in a lively new biography, a book well seasoned with good stories, most of which do not seek always to show the Doctor in a better light. (This was a habit of James Boswell's that has not been adhered to by the biographers coming after him, nor, it might be said, by those immediately preceding him. Sir John Hawkins appears to have rather enjoyed offering the reader a comprehensive tour of the Doctor's warts.[*]) Martin is sympathetic to Johnson and equally sympathetic to the truth about him. He has hitherto written excellent biographies of both Bos-well and Edmond Malone—two of the Doctor's brightest satellites—and he turns to Johnson with a strong and nuanced sense of how he was, as much as anything, the figment of a great many busy pens, not least his own.

Are the banks in worse trouble than we realise?


Very cool- huge hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure found in the UK- fascinating stuff, very exciting.

"This is just a fantastic find completely out of the blue," Roger Bland, who managed the cache's excavation, told The Associated Press. "It will make us rethink the Dark Ages."

The treasure trove includes intricately designed helmet crests embossed with a frieze of running animals, enamel-studded sword fittings and a checkerboard piece inlaid with garnets and gold. One gold band bore a biblical inscription in Latin calling on God to drive away the bearer's enemies.

The Anglo-Saxons were a group of Germanic tribes who invaded England starting in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire. Their artisans made striking objects out of gold and enamel, and their language, Old English, is a precursor of modern English.

The art of handwriting should not be lost:

The art of handwriting teaches us to control our hands and encourages hand-eye coordination.

The three-page article pointed out that writing by hand obliges us to compose the phrase mentally before writing it down. Thanks to the resistance of pen and paper, it does make one slow down and think. Many writers, though accustomed to writing on the computer, would sometimes prefer even to impress letters on a clay tablet, just so they could think with greater calm.

It's true that kids will write more and more on computers and cellphones. Nonetheless, humanity has learned to rediscover as sports and aesthetic pleasures many things that civilisation had eliminated as unnecessary.

Death Panels:

According to the Washington Times editorial:

Yes, there are death panels. Its members won't even know whose deaths they are causing. But under the health care bill sponsored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Montana Democrat, death panels will indeed exist - oh so cleverly disguised as accountants.

The offending provision is on Pages 80-81 of the unamended Baucus bill, hidden amid a lot of similar legislative mumbo-jumbo about Medicare payments to doctors. The key sentence: "Beginning in 2015, payment would be reduced by five percent if an aggregation of the physician's resource use is at or above the 90th percentile of national utilization." Translated into plain English, it means that in any year in which a particular doctor's average per-patient Medicare costs are in the top 10 percent in the nation, the feds will cut the doctor's payments by 5 percent.

Forget results. This provision makes no account for the results of care, its quality or even its efficiency. It just says that if a doctor authorizes expensive care, no matter how successfully, the government will punish him by scrimping on what already is a low reimbursement rate for treating Medicare patients. The incentive, therefore, is for the doctor always to provide less care for his patients for fear of having his payments docked. And because no doctor will know who falls in the top 10 percent until year's end, or what total average costs will break the 10 percent threshold, the pressure will be intense to withhold care, and withhold care again, and then withhold it some more. Or at least to prescribe cheaper care, no matter how much less effective, in order to avoid the penalties.

The National Right to Life Committee concludes that this provision will cause a "death spiral" by "ensur[ing] that doctors are forced to ration care for their senior citizen patients." Every 10th doctor in the country will fall victim to it. Libertarian columnist Nat Hentoff calls the provision "insidious" and writes that "the nature of our final exit" will be very much at risk.

Read it all ...

Know what I find interesting? How suddenly the pro government health care argument changed from 'there won't be any rationing' to "Well, there's already rationing now, so what's the difference," or even, "there's already rationing now, so if we put all health care in the government's hands, the government is the best judge of who gets to live or die."
They don't put it quite like that last bit, but that's the argument taken to its logical conclusion.

Incidentally, the Adminstration recently tried to stifle the free speech of Humana, insisting they were lying to the public. Only Humana was right.

Iran's Uranium enrichment facility, and more.

Jimmy Carter's own racist history- which might explain why he sees racism everywhere.

ACORN: Robbing from the poor to give to the rich.

Is Calling a President a Nazi Inciting Assassination?

Guess it depends on which President it is. This is really interesting.

More of my weed patch

The pinks and purples here are actually brighter in person than in the photograph. If you search for tire retaining wall, you can see other photographs of this area which will show how it's progressed over the last couple years.

The big yellow flowers were from a dollar a six pack end of season sale, as were the snapdragons. I want more giant snapdragons next year- they bloom really well here, bloom a long time, and the cut flowers look fresh for days in a vase of clean water.

The buckets contain cherry and pear tomato plants, one per bucket. The soil is from our own home-grown compost pile, which my son turns over on a weekly basis for me.

We also have some solar lights here and there, I picked those up at a thrift shop.

HEre and there I have wind chimes hanging on shepherd's crooks that I bought last year for the Equuschick's and Shasta's wedding.

Frugal Stuff

B. Durbin- you're the winner in our free giveaway from last week. Sorry it took me so long to do this, but you understand, having the little Pirate born on Saturday put everything else right out of mind.

I got to be there for all but the first half hour or so of labour, btw, and that was a rare treat and privilege.

Meanwhile, check out our Frugal Hack for this week!

Indoctrination

Ongoing. Seriously, this is incredibly creepy. Besides the whole 'Dear Leader' flavor of this, the problem of taking public school children and putting these over the top praises of a single human being in their mouths, and the political partisanship and manipulation of little kids, they've taken the lyrics of an old Sunday School Song about JEsus and changed them to apply to President Obama.





Lyrics
========
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that all must lend a hand [?]
To make this country strong again
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said we must be clear today
Equal work means equal pay
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said that we must take a stand
To make sure everyone gets a chance
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
He said Red, Yellow, Black or White
All are equal in his sight
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama
Yes
Mmm, mmm, mm!

Barack Hussein Obama

segue to

Hello, Mr. President we honor you today!
For all your great accomplishments, we all [do? doth??] say "hooray!"
Hooray Mr. President! You're number one!
The first Black American to lead this great na-TION!
Hooray, Mr. President something-something-some
A-something-something-something-some economy is number one again!
Hooray Mr. President, we're really proud of you!
And the same for all Americans [in?] the great Red White and Blue!
So something Mr. President we all just something-some,
So here's a hearty hip-hooray a-something-something-some!
Hip, hip hooray! (3x)


The Sunday School ditty goes:
Jesus loves the little children
all the children of the world
Red, and yellow, black and white
all are precious in his sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

See here for more on which school it was.

A quartet sings Tura Lura Lura

Tiger Lilies and bugs

The World of Insects, by Margaret Powers, published in 1931. I picked it up primarily for the art deco style cover and the illustrations like the one on the left. And we've been doing a goodly amount of reading about insects of late, and I thought it would be a useful and attractive addition to our bookshelves.

Real Members of Congress

Tax law writing tax evaders.

While you write the rules that make others cough up the cash to the IRS, you failed to report 75 Gs in rental income on your Caribbean villa.
As you forced us to subsidize housing for the needy, you turned a rent subsidized apartment into your personal office (a man's home is his castle)....

So crack open a copy of your Internal Revenue code... and while you're at it, how about a nice, cold, keg of accountability?

Connecting Dots with a Spray Can and other ACORN news

It's no secret that I think ACORN is a criminal organization that needs to be cleaned up, but this particularly 'expose' was awfully weak. I wasn't even going to link to it, because I don't like that style of dot-connecting and don't find it useful- but you have to have some context in order to see how clever and amusing this parody is.

Of course, the propaganda the 'real' media trots out under the guise of real news is even funnier, largely because they don't even intend the hilarity.

Your mileage will vary, but for my money the most entertaining part of the ACORN undercover video sting–which, dollar for dollar, has been the most impactful piece of journalism this year (that I'm aware of anyway)–is watching Respectable News Outlets approach the controversy with radiation-resistant tongs.

Matt Welch at Hit and Run

There is one point to remember when reading that excellent article- he quotes the WaPo on a statement about James motives having something to do with minorities, but after that article was written, the WaPo had to retract that statement. That's not even close to what O'Keefe said. What he said was he went after ACORN because they were single handedly electing politicians and they weren't being held accountable for their criminal behavior- because they are supposed to be non-partisan, but we all know they aren't.

It was, um, the media that confused 'criminal behavior' with 'minority.'

Bobolink

Bobolink picture is from A Year with the Birds, by Alice Ball, available as an etext at the beautiful Kellscraft.

The Way to know the Bobolink by Emily Dickinson


The Way to know the Bobolink
From every other Bird
Precisely as the Joy of him --
Obliged to be inferred.

Of impudent Habiliment
Attired to defy,
Impertinence subordinate
At times to Majesty.

Of Sentiments seditious
Amenable to Law --
As Heresies of Transport
Or Puck's Apostacy.

Extrinsic to Attention
Too intimate with Joy --
He compliments existence
Until allured away

By Seasons or his Children --
Adult and urgent grown --
Or unforeseen aggrandizement
Or, happily, Renown --

By Contrast certifying
The Bird of Birds is gone --
How nullified the Meadow --
Her Sorcerer withdrawn!

Robert of Lincoln
William Cullen Bryant

Merrily swinging on brier and weed,
Near to the nest of his little dame,
Over the mountain-side or mead,
Robert of Lincoln is telling his name:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Snug and safe is that nest of ours,
Hidden among the summer flowers,
Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln is gayly drest,
Wearing a bright black wedding-coat;
White are his shoulders and white his crest
Hear him call in his merry note:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Look, what a nice coat is mine.
Sure there was never a bird so fine.
Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln's Quaker wife,
Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings,
Passing at home a patient life,
Broods in the grass while her husband sings
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Brood, kind creature; you need not fear
Thieves and robbers while I am here.
Chee, chee, chee.

Modest and shy is she;
One weak chirp is her only note.
Braggart and prince of braggarts is he,
Pouring boasts from his little throat:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Never was I afraid of man;
Catch me, cowardly knaves, if you can!
Chee, chee, chee.

Six white eggs on a bed of hay,
Flecked with purple, a pretty sight!
There as the mother sits all day,
Robert is singing with all his might:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Nice good wife, that never goes out,
Keeping house while I frolic about.
Chee, chee, chee.

Soon as the little ones chip the shell,
Six wide mouths are open for food;
Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well,
Gathering seeds for the hungry brood.
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-linl,
Spink, spank, spink;
This new life is likely to be
Hard for a gay young fellow like me.
Chee, chee, chee.

Robert of Lincoln at length is made
Sober with work, and silent with care;
Off is his holiday garment laid,
Half forgotten that merry air:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Nobody knows but my mate and I
Where our nest and out nestlings lie.
Chee, chee, chee.

Summer wanes; the children are grown;
Fun and frolic no more he knows;
Robert of Lincoln's a humdrum crone;
Off he flies, and we sing as he goes:
Bob-o'-link, bob-o'-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
When you can pipe that merry old strain,
Robert of Lincoln, come back again.
Chee, chee, chee.

Original Global Warming Data..... Missing?

In the early 1980s, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists at the United Kingdom’s University of East Anglia established the Climate Research Unit (CRU) to produce the world’s first comprehensive history of surface temperature. It’s known in the trade as the “Jones and Wigley” record for its authors, Phil Jones and Tom Wigley, and it served as the primary reference standard for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) until 2007. It was this record that prompted the IPCC to claim a “discernible human influence on global climate.”

Putting together such a record isn’t at all easy. Weather stations weren’t really designed to monitor global climate. Long-standing ones were usually established at points of commerce, which tend to grow into cities that induce spurious warming trends in their records. Trees grow up around thermometers and lower the afternoon temperature. Further, as documented by the University of Colorado’s Roger Pielke Sr., many of the stations themselves are placed in locations, such as in parking lots or near heat vents, where artificially high temperatures are bound to be recorded.

So the weather data that go into the historical climate records that are required to verify models of global warming aren’t the original records at all. Jones and Wigley, however, weren’t specific about what was done to which station in order to produce their record, which, according to the IPCC, showed a warming of 0.6° +/– 0.2°C in the 20th century.

...Warwick Hughes, an Australian scientist, wondered where that “+/–” came from, so he politely wrote Phil Jones in early 2005, asking for the original data. Jones’s response to a fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

Isn't that, like, the aim of science? To try to repeat experiments, search for improvement, errors to correct, and find flaws, if flaws there are? Shouldn't a good science embrace the opportunity to have his work fact checked?

So now FOIA requests have been filed, so Phil Jones has to release the data.

Except he says it's lost. So everybody just has to take his word for what it originally said. Actually, it's even worse than that, because he's since made corrections to the original data, and so we have to take his word for it both on the original data AND his subsequent corrections.

Do you get the idea here that there's something he doesn't want other scientists, scientists with a healthy dose of skepticism, to see?

See Ace for more, and also NRO's Patrick Michaels, the source of the long quote at the start of this post. It's really well worth reading in whole.

There's quite a bit more that happens between Phil Jones refusing to share his data and finally resorting to the 'it's lost' excuse (Michaels calls that 'the dog ate my homework' excuse), and it's pretty incredible reading.

Sit and Spin

Remember this?

“The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act,” Dr. Chu said. “The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.”

That's the head of the Energy Department. Turns out that was government speak for something altogether different. Fortunately, Energy Department spokesman Dan Leistikow can translate that for us:

“Secretary Chu was not comparing the public to teenagers. He was saying that we need to educate teenagers about ways to save energy. He also recognized the need to educate the broader public about how important clean energy industries are to our competitive position in the global economy. He believes public officials do have an obligation to make their case to the American people on major legislation, and that’s what he’s doing.”

See Cafe Hayek for more

Rick Woldenberg- Things are about to get worse

More here.

Consider Section 102(d)(2)(B) of the CPSIA, the latest horror story to smack you in the kisser:

"(d) ADDITIONAL REGULATIONS FOR THIRD PARTY TESTING . . . (2) COMPLIANCE; CONTINUING TESTING.—Not later than 15 months after the date of enactment of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, the Commission shall by regulation . . . (B) establish protocols and standards— (i) for ensuring that a children’s product tested for compliance with an applicable children’s product safety rule is subject to testing periodically and when there has been a material change in the product’s design or manufacturing process, including the sourcing of component parts; (ii) for the testing of random samples to ensure continued compliance . . . ."

Nice and obscure, buried deep in the CPSIA. Never heard of it? Ayyy! Haven't I told you that you must ALWAYS read the fine print???

This rulemaking, which has been giving CPSC Bar attorneys sleepless nights but has otherwise escaped the attention of the business community, is due in about seven weeks (November 14 deadline). It has the potential to be the final nail in our coffin, guys. Right now, there are no rules on frequency of safety testing. We are free to negotiate with our customers or establish our own testing plan. This has worked rather well for many, many years - after all, less than 0.01% of all children's products are EVER recalled. But no longer. The CPSC is going to tell us how to assure safety and quality now. The premise is that we are incompetent to do so without government involvement. In our company's case, the 130 pieces we recalled in 25 years (one incident) out of perhaps a billion pieces sold is no proof that we know what we are doing, apparently. Thank heavens we will finally have someone qualified to oversee our processes!

Rick also has new updates on how much testing is going to cost his business for a microscope- because kids are always, you know, eating them and stuff, and getting sick from their science lessons- remember how PIRG and Public Citizen insisted testing was only about fifty dollars? Liars:

We recently obtained a new quote on testing - it now costs about $11,500 all-in (including the 23-24 samples). Our annual revenue for this item before the econony crashed was about $30,000 per annum. Assuming gross margins of 33%, typical for the toy industry (and easy for illustration purposes), our annual gross profit (not NET profit) would be $10,000. The cost to test this item is MORE than our annual GROSS PROFIT. This means that the telescope dies - even IF we can set our own reasonable testing program. If testing on this item is conducted annually, our COMPANY dies, too.

ACORN Sues

They are suing Breitbart, O'keefe, and Giles over the Baltimore video, even though they fired the employees involved, because in Maryland it's illegal to videotape without both parties being aware of it, and those fired employees suffered 'emotional distress.'

Should be interesting, since ACORN had lost its incorporated status in Maryland.

More Sugar

The midwife came by for a visit yesterday, and she said she'd discovered that our little man was born on International Pirate Day, so the Equuschick decrees that her son shall be known on this blog as The Pirate.

Walter Olson on the CPSIA

More here

Why did Congress rush to pass this bill, and why is it so reluctant to amend a law whose burdens fall mostly on products that have never been linked to poisoning? One reason is the skill of antibusiness groups claiming to speak for consumers. Groups such as Public Citizen and the Public Interest Research Group seized on and promoted the Chinese toy panic for their own legislative ends and have taken credit for some of the law's most extreme provisions. (The tracking-labels provision was added by then-Sen. Barack Obama.)

Some of the same groups are active in the coalition now pushing for "traceability" principles in food and farm safety. New mandates being talked of include everything from machine-readable leg tags on backyard chickens to batch labeling of orchard fruit. Before ideas of that sort pass into law, one hopes the farm and food communities will study closely the experience of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act.

IRS Severs Ties with ACORN

More here.

Bing Crosby Sings Tura Lura

He set the standard, of course.

I like the fall

The Mist and All
by Dixie Willson
To be read slowly and quietly

I like the fall
The mist and all
I like the night owl’s lonely call
And wailing sound
Of wind around

I like the gray
November day
And dead, bare boughs that coldly sway
Against my pane
I like the rain

I like to sit
And laugh at it
And tend my cozy fire a bit
I like the fall
The mist and all

The President's UN Speech

Read it here.

Social Security, Not So Much

Cash deficts in Social Security by 2010/11- predicted by the nonpartisan CBO.

My Weed Patch

Criminalizing Speech

One of the ways that governments try to "win" debates is to make debate by the other side illegal.

More here.

The New McCarthyism

dlcox1958@DHMrs What are you really worried about, an org that is effective registering minority voters?

In response to several tweets I made about ACORN's disgraceful and venal behavior in counseling a couple they believed to be a pimp and prostitute in the breaking of tax laws to hide their crimes and assist them in setting up a brothel of under-aged girls (as young as 12 and 13) smuggled into the country from El Salvadore.

Because clearly, being a racist is the ONLY reason anybody could have for being appalled by the fact that ACORN employees in at least five offices didn't even flinch when underaged trafficking of 12 year olds from El Salvadore was mentioned, but actually offered tax protection advice and in one case at least hinted that they'd like to partner with the business.





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Incidentally, another round of tweets keeps asking where all the video footage is of the dynamic duo of guerilla journalists getting kicked out of offices and having the cops called.

This is really hilarious because, although I have asked, NOBODY has presented any evidence that more than two offices called the police, and in both of those cases the evidence is dubious.
One is the Philly office- I blogged about that- there is a police report, but it does NOT support the ACORN narrative, as all it says is that the police were called because one James O'Keefe created a 'verbal disturbance' and he wasn't in the office when they arrived. A verbal disturbance is not how I could characterize 'tried to get tax advice on smuggling in under-aged girls for illicit purposes.' ACORN itself says it was another girl with O'Keefe, not Hannah. AND I have asked questions and still gotten no answers about how O'keefe's name appears on the report- didn't he use a pseudonymn? Maybe he didn't- but nobody cares to find out, it seems.

The second is the office in California where the male ACORN worker asks Hannah's prices, offers to help smuggle the girls in, asks if they will work with him, and continue email contact- and ACORN actually fired that guy, so apparently they aren't as impressed with his story as the ACORN apologists in the blogosphere.
Incidentally, He did not call the police, he called his cousin who works for the police. He did not file a police report. And he did this after the pair left his office, not while they were there. I have seen one report that he called the police two days later as well- but I think we should all agree that even if this is true (I haven't seen any copy of a police report), two days later is kind of iffy.

So those ACORN apologists demanding video footage of ACORN offices calling the police are, in fact, demanding to know why Hannah and James didn't record alleged incidents that, by ACORN's own version of events, happened AFTER they were gone, two days after they were gone, in one case.

If there is no record of these phone calls, that would be ACORN's fault, not the fault of two people who were not even present.

Incidentally, and quite interestingly, dlcox1958, the guy who implied I was a bigot for questioning ACORN (they Must Not Be Questioned, apparently), also tried to redirect attention by asking what about corporate welfare (something which my readers also know I dislike). That's a really interesting question- because ACORN's got that going for it, too:

the controversial community organizing outfit ACORN is about so much more than a few tax evasion and prostitution scandals. They're also apparently happy to cash in on corporate welfare and eminent domain abuse. As the New York Post's Rich Calder reports, ACORN is deeply entwined with real estate tycoon Bruce Ratner and his controversial Atlantic Yards development project in Brooklyn, New York...

REad the link. What a mess.

Hurrah! Bluegrass!

A friend shared this video recently; the family in this video are good friends of hers, sweet and lovely people, she said. They definitely make sweet and lovely music. :)

Dyl & Co sing On the Banks of the Ohio

I like this one.

Americans are Children

Steven Chu, Barack Obama’s Secretary of Energy says, and I am not kidding, that Americans are like a bunch of unruly teenagers,and we aren't acting as we should so our Big Government Daddy is gonna have to teach us a few lessons.

Steven Chu is the guy who didn't realize that as Secretary of Energy, oil fell under his department, nor did his own department (or the Whitehouse) pass an energy audit, but they know better than us, because, after all, they are the government.

As Ed Morrisey at Hot Air says:

This is nothing more than a slightly more honest look at the attitude of the Left when it comes to governance. It’s all about paternalism and condescension, and the belief that a group of elites should be appointed to rule over the unwashed and unschooled masses for their own good. That has never been consonant with the American experience, which allows the individual to make his own choices and live with the consequences. Chu gives us a good look at the liberal soul, and most Americans will not like what they see.

And that really is the difference as I see it between 'progressives' and 'conservatives' and libertarians- one side has all the paternalistic condescension of a plantation slave owner, and the other respects other grown-ups AS grown-ups. The level of trust and respect rises to varying degrees when we're talking Libertarians vs Conservatives, of course, , but always, always either of these two groups respects the personal rights and space of others more so than progressives do (I'm not talking Dems vs Republicans- there, I think the difference is simply which partisan gets to enrich itself at the reigns of government).

In one regard, I agree with Chu, our American culture is juvenile, immature, and appeals to the lowest common denominator, and we don't bring up our children to be adults, but to live in childish immaturity forever. We boast about how we are never going to grow up, something that ought to be a cause for shame rather than a silly boast. I just disagree that the answer is to make us all de facto wards of the state.

Oh, speaking of children, here's Tom Delay on Dancing with the Stars.