what if?

Better to Have Loved

We have all heard the old expression, "'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."

I assume that this refers to romantic love.  Still, no matter the type of love it is, and no matter how we lose the person that we loved - the loss is signficant.

The New York Times this week provides a feature that highlights this love and loss.  The paper invited people to submit photographs of loved ones who died in 2012, along with a few words in their feature "The Lives They Loved."  I found this to be extraordinarily beautiful .... the photos along with the remembrances, the accolades and the joy from those who who remain here on earth.  If you have the time, I recommend that you peruse through all of the feature.  Then, you can recollect your own "lost loves" - and reflect on how fortunate you may be if you are still surrounded with those you love the best.

Here is a mother, escaped from the Nazis, whose strength, accomplishments and love are recalled.

And here, what must be the deepest loss of all - that of a child.

My thanks to the NY Times for such an astoundingly moving and beautiful feature. 

To those who lost this year:  may your sweet memories overshadow your grief.

And to those who still share this world with their loved ones - treasure your gifts while you have them.  However much time it is - it is never enough.  Yet....  always better to have loved.

 

Open Your Horizons

A thoughtful column today from New York Times opinion writer Ross Douhat.

For a little while, at least, let gridlock take care of itself, shake yourself free of the toils of partisanship, and let your mind rove more widely and freely than the onslaught of 2014 and 2016 coverage will allow.

Overall, this is a prescription I have advised myself for years.  Irrespective of your political views, be sure to expose yourself to distinct ones... and give them an honest and equitable hearing.

Sadly, it is most difficult for some to do this.  I give you this example, one of the many comments following Douhat's column.

Mr. Douthat's piece rests on the untruthful assumption that liberals and conservatives are equally captive to the disease of epistemic closure. Liberals generally engage conservatives or inconvenient facts. In fact, such open-mindedness is integral to the liberal temperament. It's unsurprising that conservatives are the ones withering from a failure to contend with a changing world. Many well-educated conservatives boycott the NYTimes because this paper, widely and rightly regarded as the best in the West, refuses to coddle their delusions.

I read the National Review, the Weekly Standard, Le Figaro, The Spectator, The Telegraph, and the Jerusalem Post, but, even I have had it with the unrelenting torrent of revanchist, voodoo economics, and the incessant avalanche of racism, misogyny, homophobia, creationism, and climate-change denialism. I've stopped reading conservative papers to put my own assumptions through the fire (Iron sharpeneth iron. Prov. 27:17) because they're unserious.

So, fellow readers, heed not Mr. Douthat, at least not for the reasons he mentions. Most mainstream conservative publications aren't worth your time, the only exception being the thoughtful American Conservative. Finally, Mr. Douthat recommends First Things, another publication I read often. Let me warn you – the writing is occasionally peerless but strip off the recondite theological ramblings and you're left with the voice of the American Taliban.

In 2013, read Nietzsche and J. S. Mill.

And a Happy New Year to you, too - LOL!

 

 

The War on Poverty

Many an idealistic young adult has yearned to help those in poverty escape.  And how is that task achieved?

One foot soldier in this battle explains his lifetime experience.

Nearly half a century ago, I dropped out of graduate school and enlisted as a foot soldier in America’s War on Poverty. Today, I’m still on the front lines, working to move people out of dependency and into employment. But with an important difference: I’ve become fed up with the useless policies that I once supported, and I’m trying to change the strategy of our bogged-down army.

We know for certain that income transfers, the preferred tactic of generations of liberals, have utterly failed to end poverty. My firsthand experience with welfare clients has shown me why: being on the dole encourages dependency. Working at a real job, by contrast, is the surest way for a person to climb out of poverty. Accordingly, the surest way for the government to fight poverty is to eliminate cash assistance almost entirely and offer jobs instead.

Jobs can’t replace all welfare and poverty programs. There will always be some people who are emotionally or physically unable to work and who require government assistance. But even the so-called deserving dependents should be more carefully scrutinized. In the last ten years, the number of newly enrolled recipients of SSDI, a federal benefits program that provides aid to disabled people who can’t achieve gainful employment, has risen 44 percent. That suggests that many people are abusing the system.

Can we finally confront the problem of entrenched poverty and dependency and make the difficult choices necessary to fix it? The cynic in me sees little chance that the public would seriously consider my proposals. But my optimistic side, the one shaped by finding jobs for supposedly unemployable welfare recipients, holds out hope that the nation’s fiscal crisis will allow serious consideration of policies that were once unthinkable. Stranger things have happened in America.

 

Above the Law

Much of the guts of America is this simple premise:  no man is above the law.  No matter how powerful, famous, wealthy, intelligent or talented, we all are to abide by the law - or face its consequences.

Why then, does this man seem to be skating when it seems most apparent that he did indeed break the law?

Of course, they can’t just come out and say it, but one of the reasons why the main stream media is pooh-pooh-ing l’affaire Gregory is that the idea that simple possession of an unloaded magazine being a crime is so mind-bogglingly stupid on its face that they understand the unfairness of it all at a gut level. Why should merely holding a metal box with a spring in it be punishable by a $1,000 fine and a year in jail?

Well, our betters passed that law, and now one of them has broken it.

And now we will see whether DC is a city ruled by laws or by men above the laws.

If this really is the reason - then perhaps more of us ought to scream more frequently and more loudly about a government that continues to pass a barrage of ridiculous and non-productive laws.

Sober

New Year's Eve is almost upon us.  Revelers celebrate the coming of 2013 - with an admonition to stay sober .... Or if not, at least not to drive.

But what are we Americans to say about this column?  It's a story of insanity - well; one might say, several stories of insanity.

Political advantage? People who exploit dead children and anguished parents to press an agenda are soulless ghouls. The people's right to know? Spare me. I could give you laundry list of things the people had a right to know about before the presidential election, and the same self-anointed gate-keepers were more than happy to keep a ton of information suppressed until after it was over.

Ironically, the Benghazi story offers a clue as to what these people are really all about. Most of the MSM didn't give a hoot about four murdered Americans, or the most transparent disinformation campaign in recent memory that followed those murders, until Benghazi became a story about which
general was making it with which bimbo. In short, we have become a nation where sensationalism trumps substance, and decency and decorum are little more than anachronisms that only a decreasing number of dinosaurs who now constitute a minority of Americans choose to consider. I could say shame on the majority, but I'm pretty sure that word has no meaning anymore, either.

If this doesn't knock you cold sober - then read it again... and again!

 

Is the Problem Guns?

Or have more than a few of us become utter barbarians and mentally disturbed?

Miami man 'Fighting for Life' Following Christmas Torching...


Los Angeles woman sleeping on bus bench set on fire...

 

A Florida man is fighting for his life after being doused with gasoline and set on fire on Christmas in a horrific attack that has baffled police.

Darrell Brackett, 44, was driving with his girlfriend at 11:30 p.m. in Miami when his car ran out of gas and he walked to a nearby U-Gas station to fill up a can of gas. He told his girlfriend to wait for him in the car.

After leaving the station, "witnesses reported that they saw him running in the middle of the street on fire," Miami-Dade Police said in a statement.

Brackett's mother Bridgett Brackett said she has been told that her son was surrounded by three men who "doused him with gas and set him on fire."

Better Believe It!

This morning, I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine.  We were discussing blogging, Facebook, etc.  On my real estate blog, I refrain from any political posts whatsoever; it's real estate, front and center, sideways and upside down.  Somehow, however, a few of her friends came upon what if?  They commented to her, "I had no idea that Peggy was so conservative!"

"So conservative?"  I believe in abortion rights (at least, as described in Roe v Wade), favor gay marriage, decriminalization of many currently illegal drugs, etc.  Yet, the fact that I support fiscal responsibility, small government and much personal freedom (aka, a classic liberal) has somehow morphed into "so conservative" in today's world.  Go figure.

In any case, I ask of those who consider themselves liberals and/or "progressives" in today's world what they think of these 75 numbers.  Think I am some John Bircher, if you will.  But I cannot figure out how we can sustain numbers like this.  As Margaret Thatcher said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."

Here are just a few of these incredible numbers about our government.

Believers

Some post-Christmas contemplations.

The Christmas Cockatiel

Even Mr Mollo got into the act for Christmas!

Of course, it took a much desired peanut to get him to stand next to the very scary holiday container of cookies!

Race Today

 

This just about sums it up - no?

The Finger of Blame

As a Realtor, it is still rare that I don't see the effects of the great housing bubble crash upon many of my clients.  For some, the result is only a smaller check when they sell their home.  For others?  It's having to bring a big ol' chunky check to closing .... and for yet other people, it is catastrophic.  You haven't lived until you explain to someone that their $100,000 downpayment has vanished, and that you know that they no longer have a job and so their home will be a "short sale," with voluminous paperwork required, their credit deeply harmed and their house ultimately selling for a fraction of what they paid.

Yum.

Many have blamed Evil Wall Street and Eviler Still Banks and We Nasty Real Estate Agents.  I will admit that this overall horror had many fathers (and mothers). 

Too many, however, to not realize where much of the finger of blame truly ought to be aimed:  our federal government.

The federal government just may have played something of a role in inducing, even strong-arming, banks to take risks they otherwise would have avoided. Specifically, the Community Reinvestment Act and related policy pressures are pointed to as culprits, part of a government effort to extend home-ownership in lower-income neighborhoods. Now comes a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research that says, quite bluntly. that the CRA played a major role.

In the academic world, mealy-mouthed delivery of even powerful conclusions is the norm, so it's refreshing to see authors Sumit Agarwal, Efraim Benmelech, Nittai Bergman, Amit Seru answer the title's question, "Did the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Lead to Risky Lending?," with the clear, "Yes, it did. ... We find that adherence to the act led to riskier lending by banks."

"We want your CRA loans because they help us meet our housing goals," Fannie Vice Chair Jamie Gorelick beseeched lenders gathered at a banking conference in 2000, just after HUD hiked the mortgage giant's affordable housing quotas to 50% and pressed it to buy more CRA-eligible loans to help meet those new targets. "We will buy them from your portfolios or package them into securities."

She described "CRA-friendly products" as mortgages with less than "3% down" and "flexible underwriting."

From 2001-2007, Fannie and Freddie bought roughly half of all CRA home loans, most carrying subprime features.

 

Play to the Best of Your Ability

A poignant and wise interview with Larry Elder.

If anyone had a reason to become a criminal or to become vindictive and hateful toward society, the country, the world, it’s my dad. But he told my two brothers and me: that hard work wins, you get out of life what you put into it, and no matter how hard you work, bad things will still happen. How you react to those bad things, he would say, will tell “whether or not me and your mother raised a man.”

Dad says no matter the cards you are dealt, you have an obligation to play them to the best of your ability. If you work hard and people see you trying and struggling, people will help. People help people who try and help themselves. And you can be “raised by apes like Tarzan” and you should know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and the value of hard work. What, he would say, are the options?

And for more on Elder's father, check out this.

A Stranger Bearing Gifts

So often, the press bombards us with stories of greedy wealthy people.  We hear how they build personal mansions, enjoy exotic toys and avoid paying high taxes. 

But many of the wealthy do not fit this description.  Indeed, some rich folks believe that the best purpose for their wealth is to do good for others.

Here is such a story, most fitting for Christmas Eve.  If any man captures the spirit of Christmas, it must be  Donald Denihan.

Donald Denihan, a 51-year-old businessman from Massapequa, N.Y.wanted to see the devastation firsthand. And he wanted to help one family rebuild. He would pay for everything, from demolition costs to new paint. He just wanted to make sure he found the right family, perhaps someone elderly, perhaps someone with a disability.

Over the phone, he asked Beckmann: “Will you help me choose?”

The priest’s heart sank. There were thousands of families in need, people who had lost everything. How in the world could he pick just one?

A few days later, Beckmann and Sister Diane Morgan gave Denihan a tour of their battered barrier-island town off the south shore of Long Island. They took him to the West End, a warren of narrow streets named after the states — Arizona, Ohio, Michigan — and crammed with small homes, many of them passed down from generation to generation. The neighborhood is staunchly working-class; police officers and firefighters and teachers live here, many of them of Irish and Italian descent.

Now, it was a disaster zone. Nearly every home had been flooded. Possessions — kitchen stoves and plasterboard, children’s toys and mattresses — spilled out of trash bins that lined the streets.

Beckmann drove Denihan to 103 Minnesota Ave., a small raised ranch with a wheelchair ramp at the side. The priest told him about the family who lived there, the Troys, how they had evacuated to Connecticut mainly because of their sick son, how Kerry Ann’s childhood home around the corner, newly rebuilt after burning to the ground six years earlier, had been lost to the flood.

Then he took Denihan to another ruined house, the tiny bungalow where the church’s 74-year-old cook had climbed a 7-foot ladder into the attic to escape the rising water. All she could do was pray as she watched her disabled son nearly drown in his wheelchair below.

Both families were in urgent need of help, Beckmann said. Which one would Denihan choose?

Denihan listened intently.

After surviving three near-death experiences — a duck-shooting accident at 16, prostate cancer at 36 and a serious boating accident in 2011 — he had concluded that there was a reason God wanted him around.

And so Denihan, who had made his money in hotel and real-estate investments, had set up a fund. He called it God is Good. Until now, he wasn’t sure how he would use it.

“I can’t choose, Father,” Denihan said as they drove back to the church. “I’ll just have to take care of both.”

Romancing the Farm

A number of my friends love organic foods.  They'll gush about ungodly expensive veggies and fruits like a fashion designer rhapsodizes about haute couture.

So.  Should we all demand haute food in our supermarkets?  Is mass farming gross and wrong for humanity in 2013?  This farmer thinks not - and explains why.

Enough

Christmas is both a religious holiday for many - and a time to celebrate with an abundance of gift giving.  Merry Christmas to all of my friends who celebrate.

Still, for too many Americans, the having of many "things" is too important - every day of the year.  If "enough" is enough for you, you are indeed blessed.  The man who created Vanguard explains.

Mr. Bogle is steadfast in his belief that there remain common-sense ways to invest for the long haul and, as he puts it, claim your fair share of the returns earned by public companies. His list includes buying—and holding—index funds as the core of your portfolio and managing your expectations for future returns.

As for why speculation has eclipsed investing, Mr. Bogle points to, among other things, a broader change in our national culture.

He writes: "... we Americans like to buy things—in abundance—before we have the cash to pay for them. We focus on today's wants rather than tomorrow's needs. Even our wealthiest citizens never seem to have enough. We compare ourselves with our neighbors and, since the realities of life can be so hard to overcome, we look to speculation—even at long odds—to lift us out of the everydayness of our lives."

It's a theme he's explored before, in a little book he wrote called, simply, "Enough." It opens with a story about the novelist Joseph Heller who, at a lavish party on Shelter Island, N.Y., was ribbed by another guest, author Kurt Vonnegut, that their host had probably made more money in a day than all the money Mr. Heller had earned from his best-seller, "Catch-22."

Mr. Heller's retort: "I've got something he can never have…enough."

May you have "enough" this holiday - and for years to come.

 

The Future of America

Prior to Tim Scott's appointment to the Senate, I didn't know much about him.  The more I read, however, about this Republican, however, the more I am super-impressed with him.

Please read this entire Wall Street Journal column about Scott.  Scott sounds so smart, so right about the issues and what makes America great - and is filled with humor and optimism and a sense of reality.  Republicans  -  and all the rest of us -  are most fortunate to have him serving in the Senate.

Here's hoping that Scott and others in the new crop of young Republicans (Rubio, Jindal, Ryan, etc.) can breathe new life into politics for those of us who love liberty, freedom, free enterprise, self-sufficiency and fiscal responsibility.

In a few weeks, when the new Congress convenes, Mr. Scott, 47, will take his place as the first black senator from a former Confederate state since Reconstruction. This will make it exceedingly difficult for liberals to maintain their stereotype of the South as a land teeming with white racists. "If that were true," he says, "how could I have been elected to Congress in a district that is 70% white?" He adds: "I have campaigned all over the state of South Carolina. It is the friendliest state in the country. And truly here people judge you by the content of your character not the color of your skin."

"We have serious challenges in this nation. Some are racial. But in my life, the vast majority of people that have really afforded me the opportunity to succeed were white folks. Is there a better way to say that?"

 

Atlas Shrugged

AKA Gerard Depardieu.

His goodbye letter boasts that he is a European and a true citizen of the world. But he is tired of paying a ridiculous amount of money in taxes and of being insulted for it. While other wealthy Frenchmen who left the country have tried to cover up their reasons, Depradieu, true to form, has been openly confrontational about it.

And in response to being called pathetic and unpatriotic by Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, had this to say.

Shabby, you say “pathetic”?

I was born in 1948, I started working at the age of 14 years as a printer, then as a warehouseman and as a dramatic artist. I always paid my taxes regardless of the rate under all governments…

I’m leaving because you consider that success, creativity, talent, actually and anything different must be punished…

I leave after paying, in 2012, 85% tax on my income. But I keep in mind that France was beautiful and I hope it will remain so…

I paid 145 million (190 million US dollars) tax in forty-five years, I have 80 people working in companies that were created for them and which are managed by them.

I do not wish to complain or to brag, but I refuse the word “pathetic”.

Who are you to judge me so I ask you Mr. Ayrault, Prime Minister, Mr. Hollande, I ask you, who are you? Despite my excesses, my appetite and my love life, I am a free being, sir…

Gérard Depardieu

 

 

His Legacy?

I was a high school student when Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated.  Then, he was my hero - and he remains so well over 40 years later.  Much of this great man's legacy has been implemented.

Nevertheless, I cannot imagine what he would think if he were around to see what some do and say today.

To hear Professor Reed tell it, blacks are a monolithic group of people whose best interests are served when they can be recipients of redistributionist policies at the hands of big government. Let me simplify that for you: He thinks black people need welfare, and can’t make it under the kinds of free-market policies advocated by the likes of Samuel Pierce, Clarence Pendleton, Clarence Thomas and Tim Scott.

And Herman Cain.

Since Professor Reed is also a black man, I wish him well in dealing with his obvious self-loathing. But he might learn a lot if he spent a little time moving in the circles I move in. He would meet lots of highly accomplished black men and women who have pursued their dreams in the capitalist system and have done exceedingly well. They vote Republican because they understand that free-market policies open up this same kind of opportunity for others.

******************************************

Imagine the new vitality in the political discourse inside black America if  serious weight was given to the ideas of people like Supreme Court Justice  Clarence Thomas, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of  Transportation William Coleman and professors Walter E. Williams and Thomas  Sowell?

Instead, these brilliant people, apparently including RGIII, are dismissed as “Uncle Toms” or “cornball” brothers and sisters.

Even thought I am not a Republican, I have experienced some of this same  vitriol firsthand. I don’t fit into the traditional liberal box. I work for Fox  News. My sons are Republicans.

I appear regularly on Fox News with strong right of center voices, like Bill  O’Reilly and even consistently conservative personalities like Sean Hannity  (both of whom I consider friends). I think it is great to engage the other side  in the arena of ideas. I am happy to agree with them when I think they are right  and respectfully disagree with them when I think they are wrong.

Many on the left would prefer if I did not appear on television with folks  like O’Reilly and Hannity, spurned them socially and just called them a bunch of  racists.

Back in 2007, Syracuse University Professor Boyce Watkins said publicly what  many liberals had been saying behind my back for years, that I was Bill  O’Reilly’s “Happy Negro.” A black radio host, on another O’Reilly show, said I  should “go back to the porch,” like a mindless slave.

What can black people  of good character and honest counsel do to push back against these scurrilous  attacks?

I don’t think I can put it better than RGIII did in an interview  with USA Today’s Jim Corbett last week

"I am an African-American in America," Griffin said. "That will never change.  But I don't have to be defined by that...”

 

Thank You, Iran!

My grad school buddy at "I Want a New Left", John Pepple, has an amusing and sad post about why it is so difficult for Israel and its neighbors in the Middle East to "just get along."

Iran’s state-run media outlet PressTV, which broadcasts in English, on Tuesday carried a story blaming Israel for the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. PressTV has a well-earned reputation for incendiary anti-Israel stories and for wild conspiracy theories, but even this seems a far stretch for the organization, which maintains a bureau office in the District.

PressTV portrays Adam Lanza as a “patsy” – their word – who is taking the fall for an Israeli special forces squad sent to punish President Obama for not better supporting Israel. The ongoing investigation is in fact, they argue, a concerted U.S. government “cover-up.” It’s not clear why the United States would cover-up an attack against the U.S. government, but if you think that’s the most glaring inconsistency in this story then I have bad news for you: it gets a lot worse.

The Cost

"There's no free lunch."

All of us have heard that old saw throughout our lives.  But - it's true.  Everything has a cost; we simply have to analyze what it is.

In the wake of the Newtown mass murder, a great many voices have called for significantly more gun control.  Seeing photographs of the young children whose lives have been ended, such cries are most understandable.

Nevertheless, is additional gun control the answer to stopping this insane violence?  What should America do (assuming anything "can be done at all") to mitigate such horrors?

Charles Krauthammer has a thoughtful essay on these topics.

If we’re serious about curtailing future Columbines and Newtowns, everything — guns, commitment, culture — must be on the table. It’s not hard for President Obama to call out the NRA. But will he call out the ACLU? And will he call out his Hollywood friends?

The irony is that over the last 30 years, the U.S. homicide rate has declined by 50 percent. Gun murders as well. We’re living not through an epidemic of gun violence but through a historic decline.

Except for these unfathomable mass murders. But these are infinitely more difficult to prevent. While law deters the rational, it has far less effect on the psychotic. The best we can do is to try to detain them, disarm them and discourage “entertainment” that can intensify already murderous impulses.

But there’s a cost. Gun control impinges upon the Second Amendment; involuntary commitment impinges upon the liberty clause of the Fifth Amendment; curbing “entertainment” violence impinges upon First Amendment free speech.

That’s a lot of impingement, a lot of amendments. But there’s no free lunch. Increasing public safety almost always means restricting liberties.

We made that trade after 9/11. We make it every time the Transportation Security Administrationinvades your body at an airport. How much are we prepared to trade away after Newtown?

Yes, everything has a cost.  We need to judge what benefit we might receive from reforms - and what we give up from same.