what if?

David Mamet's Coming Out Party

In a sea of artistic liberals, playwright Mamet comes home to conservatism.

Mr. Mamet rattles off the works that affected him most: "White Guilt" by Shelby Steele, "Ethnic America" by Thomas Sowell, "The Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War" by Wilfred Trotter, "The Road to Serfdom" by Friedrich Hayek, "Capitalism and Freedom" by Milton Friedman, and "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mill.

He couldn't move on, so to speak, before he understood "what the nature of government is, just sufficient so that I as a citizen can actually vote without being a member of a herd." Same for taxes: "I pay them, so I think I should be responsible for what actually happens to them." As for the history of the country itself, he wanted to understand "the vision of the Founding Fathers. . . . How does holding to it keep people safe and prosperous?"

Reading and reflecting got him to some basics. Real diversity is intellectual. Whatever its flaws, America is the greatest country in the history of the world. The free market always solves problems better than government. It's the job of the state to be just, not to render social justice. And, most sobering, Mr. Mamet writes in "The Secret Knowledge," there are no perfect solutions to inequality, only trade-offs.

The Greatness of America

Much about our nation makes America great.  Our freedoms of speech, of religion, of choice and liberty itself; all are freedoms that literally billions in other nations do not enjoy.

In my state, Minnesota, an amendment to our constitution about gay marriage will be coming up for a vote.  Here is a speech from a Republican in the state about how Minnesotans should choose.

I hope we choose well.

Memorial Day

My thanks to friend Keith Burgess-Jackson.  This photo surely captures the spirit of Memorial Day.

 

Business Philosophy at 30,000 Feet

What good intentioned politicians apparently cannot understand about business and the economy.

The man in the aisle seat is trying to tell me why he refuses to hire anybody. His business is successful, he says, as the 737 cruises smoothly eastward. Demand for his product is up. But he still won’t hire.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know how much it will cost,” he explains. “How can I hire new workers today, when I don’t know how much they will cost me tomorrow?”

He’s referring not to wages, but to regulation: He has no way of telling what new rules will go into effect when. His business, although it covers several states, operates on low margins. He can’t afford to take the chance of losing what little profit there is to the next round of regulatory changes. And so he’s hiring nobody until he has some certainty about cost.

“I know there are things the government has to do. But they need to find a way to do them without people like me having to bump into a new regulation every time we turn a corner.” He reflects for a moment, then finds the analogy he seeks. “Government should act like my assistant, not my boss.”

Bridge, Bridge - and More Bridge

This week is our annual Gopher Regional tournament.  The venue is about 10 miles from my house.  With 3 sessions a day of competition (9AM, 1:30PM and 7:00PM), real estate to monitor and a few other tasks - like keeping up our bridge blog - my "spare time" is virtually non-existent.

I will try to post here and there if I get the opportunity.  If, however, my posts are few and far between - you will understand why!

For the curious, you can see what I am posting at my bridge blog here.

Hitting Bottom

I attend a twelve-step meeting most weeks.  One of the principles by which we devotees of the Steps live is that to get better, a person must first "hit bottom."  Of course, there is no formal definition - nor could there be - of what "hitting bottom" is exactly.  One person's bottom may be light years away from that of another.

Is our nation, addicted to benefits for which we are unable to pay, ready to "hit bottom"?

Allahpundit at HotAir isn't sure if we've gotten there yet or not.

I feel increasingly fatalistic about the whole Ryan effort. I hope it works, for my sake and yours, but if he and the GOP really do succeed in educating the public about the consequences of inaction and they end up voting for unsustainability anyway, then fair enough. This problem is, as Ace says, “self-correcting”; those corrections will be more terrible the longer they’re delayed, but I’ll refer you to Mencken for further thoughts on that. Why Democrats would want to inherit full responsibility for dealing with this problem down the road when they could share responsibility with the GOP right now, I have no idea; presumably it’s a simple matter of the logic of electoral politics being “win first, worry later,” even when it comes to a radioactive problem like this. The irony is, if all their Mediscare dreams come true and they win big next year, they’re the ones who’ll have to break the news to the public that for socialism to truly be “victorious,” they’re going to have to hike taxes on the middle class and/or take a scalpel to the cherished Medicare program anyway. That glimmer of schadenfreude is my only comfort as we speed towards the cliff.

Some people "hit bottom" when things are bad, but not catastrophic.  Others seem unable to kick their addiction until things are so horrific, you wonder how they are still standing.

For all of our sakes, I do hope that we are able to enter recovery prior to catastrophe. 

Think Obamacare is Great?

Then explain this.

Question: What do the following have in common? Eckert Cold Storage Co., Kerly Homes of Yuma, Classic Party Rentals, West Coast Turf Inc., Ellenbecker Investment Group Inc., Only in San Francisco, Hotel Nikko, International Pacific Halibut Commission, City of Puyallup, Local 485 Health and Welfare Fund, Chicago Plastering Institute Health & Welfare Fund, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, Teamsters Local 522 Fund Welfare Fund Roofers Division, StayWell Saipan Basic Plan, CIGNA, Caribbean Workers' Voluntary Employees' Beneficiary Health and Welfare Plan.

Answer: They are all among the 1,372 businesses, state and local governments, labor unions and insurers, covering 3,095,593 individuals or families, that have been granted a waiver from Obamacare by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

All of which raises another question: If Obamacare is so great, why do so many people want to get out from under it?

More specifically, why are more than half of those 3,095,593 in plans run by labor unions, which were among Obamacare's biggest political supporters? Union members are only 12 percent of all employees but have gotten 50.3 percent of Obamacare waivers.

Free Speech - For Me and Not for Thee?

If ever there were two sisters more disparate from one another, it must be my sister and me.  You know my ideological preferences.  For the most part, take the opposite of each - and you get my sister's thoughts.

This morning, she had this posted on her Facebook page. 

Oy.

I can only wonder - what do my sister and all her cohorts think about this?

Do We Need Voter ID?

Yes.

Evidence of voter fraud is present in all 50 states, and public confidence in the integrity of elections is at an all-time low. In the Cooperative Congressional Election Study of 2008, 62% of American voters thought that voter fraud was very common or somewhat common.

Fear that elections are being stolen erodes the legitimacy of our government. That's why the vast majority of Americans support laws like Kansas's Secure and Fair Elections Act. A 2010 Rasmussen poll showed that 82% of Americans support photo ID laws. Similarly, a 2011 Survey USA poll of Kansas voters showed that 83% support proof-of-citizenship requirements for voter registration.

We need ID to cash a check, purchase a cell phone, step onto a flight, or purchase cold medicine.  Surely our right to free and fair elections is as important as purchasing Sudafed - no?

Bubble, Bubble

Toil and trouble.  Anyone with a pulse is well aware of the bubble in real estate we experienced over the last decade.  Are we now seeing a bubble in higher education?

If you do not think we are, then read this.

The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) produced a comprehensive study of law schools in the late 1950s, sending detailed surveys to 129 law schools, with a 90% response rate. Here are a few interesting tidbits about the cost of attending law school:

Median annual tuition and fees at private law schools was $475 (range $50-$1050); adjusted for inflation, that's $3,419 in 2011 dollars. The median for public law schools was $204 (range $50 - $692), or $1,550 in 2011 dollars. [For comparison, in 2009 the private law school median was $36,000; the public (resident) median was $16,546.]

Remember, this is adjusted for inflation.  "Bubble," as far as I can determine!  And trouble, too.....

Just Say "No"

A number of politicians seem to have interest in running for president.  Yet, they ultimately decide not to put their hat in the ring.

Why?

Obviously, a potential candidate can have many reasons.  They may feel their odds of winning are simply too low, that they aren't quite "ready" yet, that they may have a superior shot at a future date, that the fundraising requirements would be too steep, and so forth and so on.  Yet, in recent history, I think that there is another critical reason.  Some of these candidates simply are not willing to subject their families - and themselves - to the scrutiny, attacks and raking over the coals that comes with the territory. Like, for instance, Mitch Daniels.

Every Bunny Loves Some Bunny

Get more than one bunny and what do you have?  Lots more bunnies.

Try to make a modest income with those bunnies (less than $5,000 a year) and then what do you get?

Tsoris.

Translation from the Yiddish?  Perhaps $4 million in fines from the federal government.  No; I am not kidding you...

Recently, the Dollarhites received a “Certified Mail Return Receipt” letter (dated April 19, 2011) from the USDA informing them that they had broken the law and must pay USDA a fine of $90,643. Their crime? Violating violating 9 C.F.R. § 2.1 (a) (1): Selling more than $500 worth of rabbits in a calendar year.

At this point, Dollarvalue Rabbitry is expected to produced a $90,643 certified check to cover the fine issued by the Department of Agriculture. The USDA was, however, kind enough to provide in the letter the web address for a website — www.pay.gov — where they could go to pay their fine by credit card by May 23, 2011. Now, that’s convenient!

Based on an average price per rabbit sold being $10.45, the fine comes out to more than $206 per rabbit. In addition, the letter contains the following statement:

APHIS laws and regulations provide for administrative and criminal penalties to enforce these regulatory requirements, including civil penalties of up to $10,000 for each of the violations documented in our investigation.

If the threat contained in the letter is to be believed, the family could be fined as much as $10,000 per rabbit beyond the first 50 bunnies that netted the family its first $500. Do the math (390 rabbits x $10,000 each) and, if they don’t pay the initial fine, they could face additional fines totaling $3.9 million.

And thanks to my bridge buddy Don Mamula for one more unbelievable-yet-true story about our government "at work."

He Who Laughs Last

My dad always used to tell me, "He who laughs last, laughs best."

This is an old saying that Stephen Colbert is now experiencing.

Wishing to mock the recent Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United v. FEC on free speech, Colbert found that laughing at the Court was not going to be quite as easy as he'd thought.

The hilarity began last month, when Mr. Colbert began to have difficulty setting up his PAC, which is a group that can raise money to run political ads or make contributions to candidates. So he called in Trevor Potter, a former Federal Elections Commission (FEC) chairman who is now a high-powered Washington lawyer.

Mr. Potter delivered some unfunny news: Mr. Colbert couldn't set up his PAC because his show airs on Comedy Central, which is owned by Viacom, and corporations like Viacom cannot make contributions to PACs that give money to candidates. As Mr. Potter pointed out, Mr. Colbert's on-air discussions of the candidates he supports might count as an illegal "in-kind" contribution from Viacom to Mr. Colbert's PAC.

After more and more road blocks, Colbert opined: 

"Why does it get so complicated to do this? I mean, this is page after page of legalese. All I'm trying to do is affect the 2012 election. It's not like I'm trying to install iTunes."

Uh, that's kind of the point, Mr. Colbert.  Citizens attempting to exercise their right to free speech found it "so complicated" - like you.

I don't know if the Justices are laughing now.  At least Mr. Colbert is not.

"Have You Stopped Driving Your Big SUV?"

A great video highlighting the hypocrisy and bias of the press.

Of course, we already knew that about politicians!

"Leave Me Alone"

If only they would.

Poking and prodding" is what good government does to perfect strangers. And that's what the Obama administration has been doing, with unusual zeal, for the past 2 1/2 years.

You're not a real president until you fight a metaphorical "war" on a social problem. So, to LBJ's "War on Poverty" and Reagan's "War on Drugs," add Obama's "War on Fun." Like the "War on Terror," it's being fought on many fronts.

C.S. Lewis once wrote that "of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." Rulers who just want to exploit us may relax once their greed's sated.

But "those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience," Lewis said.

On the whole, I prefer House Speaker John Boehner's attitude. When Fox News' Chris Wallace asked the Ohio Republican, "Why don't you stop smoking?" Boehner replied, "It's a legal product. I choose to smoke. Leave me alone."

 

Broke

What if you ran your household finances like the government did?

You'd get this.

The federal government will take in $2.173 trillion in 2011. That's their income, and it sounds pretty good. Until, that is, you factor in that the federal government will spend $3.818 trillion during the year. So, just like many families, the government's outgo exceeds their income--to the tune of $1.645 trillion in overspending. That's called the deficit. 

Altogether, the government has $14.2 trillion in debt. What would happen if John Q. Public and his wife called my show with these kinds of numbers? Here's how their financial situation would stack up: If their household income was $55,000 per year, they'd actually be spending $96,500--$41,500 more than they made! That means they're spending 175% of their annual income! So, in 2011 they'd add $41,500 of debt to their current credit card debt of $366,000!

In other words - you'd be broke.  You know; like our government is.

 

 

 

Choose Your Weapon

A weapon that our nation shall never, ever have.

Police seized a nine-year-old and three others aged between 12 and 14 as they tried to cross into eastern Afghanistan.

A spokesman for the Afghan intelligence agency said the boy is believed to be the youngest suicide bomber ever intercepted, though children as young as five have been used to plant bombs in Helmand.

The use of child suicide bombers to target Nato troops, government officials and those working with Hamid Karzai's government has been an insurgent tactic for several years, he said, but had increased recently.

We should never stop being at war against a culture that promotes such evil.

The Lie

Do children always tell the truth?

Read this story of how a life was altered inexorably - and utterly unfairly - due to the lies of children.

Sean Lanigan’s nightmare began in January 2010, when the principal at Centre Ridge Elementary School pulled him out of the physical education class he was teaching and quietly walked him into an interrogation with two Fairfax County police detectives.

He had no warning that a 12-year-old girl at the Centreville school had accused him of groping and molesting her in the gym.

Nearly a year after an acquittal on molestation charges, Sean Lanigan’s torment hasn’t ended.

The girl, angry at Lanigan about something else entirely, had made the whole thing up. But her accusations launched a soul-sapping rollercoaster ride that still hasn’t ended.

“Emotionally, a part of me has died inside,” Lanigan said in a recent interview. “I’m physically and mentally exhausted all the time, how the whole process has been dragged out to this date.

For Rox

 

 

This is my best friend from 1st grade, Roxy.  Though thousands of miles now separate us, we are still close.  Rox is also my "twin".  We were born on the same day in September of 1951, and our mothers had the same name:  Claire. 

Unfortunately, as of this weekend, now only I still have my "Claire."  Rox lost her mom, who had been struggling with life threatening health issues for some time now.  Though, as Rox says, her mom is now at peace, I can only imagine what the loss of no longer having your mom is like. 

 
Here are "the twins" in Mrs. Anderson's first grade class.  Rox is the girl with the long braids and dark eyes in the left column, second from the bottom.  I can be found dead center, bottom. 

Rox's mom was a free spirit, perhaps best described as a "beatnik" from decades past.  She was most intelligent, very opinionated, quite vibrant and the lady who gave me my life long friend.  Oddly enough, Rox and I share many similar political and philosophical beliefs - and her "Claire" was on a most different page for quite a number.  Still - she helped to shape both of us and loved us little girls with all her heart.

My thoughts and prayers are with Rox and her big sister, Sandy.

 

Bridge - Work - Photography

 
You know that movie "Eat, Pray, Love"?  My life is bridge - work - photography - though I must confess, some eating does creep in here and there!

This week I spent 2.5 days in Las Vegas photographing the creme de la creme of bridge players in the United States.  The team that emerges from these 16 contenders will be one of two teams to represent the U.S. in the most elite world competition there is - the Bermuda Bowl.  I did not touch a card.  But, I got to watch some incredible play from the sidelines - and shoot everyone in the process.

At home, busy with wonderful new listings and some new buyers, too.  Then - tomorrow early, I head for two days of bridge in beautiful Des Moines!

Which leaves - virtually no time for blogging.  Back when I can come up for air!