For My Relaxation

I hope this lasts through August.

The grass isn't doing so hot, but the Black Eyed Susans and the Dahlias and are doing just fine.

For My Burgers

Growing tomatoes and peppers in inverted pots. Tonight I'm going to pick a couple.

Amadeus

Watched this last week after it had been perched on my kitchen counter for a month.

Amadeus is an Academy Award winning movie, released in 1984, last 2 hours 40 minutes, and is rated .

This film was written by Peter Shaffer and directed by Milos Forman.

Now, I wrote a big long thing about how wonderful this movie is. Why it won three Academy Awards and why F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce are the greatest actors since sliced bread. But the got damned blospot program obliterated all my writing. So now, you get the short version.

I scored this movie 46 out of 50. My highest mark ever, I think.

John John Doesn't Make It Home

Ten years ago today John F. Kennedy Jr's plane disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean. He as pilot, with wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and Carolyn's sister Lauren Bessette, had been traveling from New Jersey to drop off Lauren at Martha's Vinyard, with plans to travel onward to the family vacation home in Hyannis.
In the next week the Coast Guard found the plane wreckage 8 miles off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. Mechanically the plane was found to have no mechanical flaw that contributed to accident. The accident was attributed to pilot error, inexperience with flying after dark.
JFK Jr. was buried at sea, his uncle Senator Edward Kennedy said this at his eulogy.

"From the first day of his life, John seemed to belong not only to our family, but to the American family. He had a legacy, and he learned to treasure it. He was part of a legend, and he learned to live with it."

Well spoken, even if it is from Ted. JFK Sr. allowed the media, against Jackie's wishes, opportunities to take wonderful candid father-children photographs, painting an idyllic like in the White House. Then with the events surrounding the assassination and funeral, John's persona was welded to the American public's self image.
Like Princess Diana, John John's reputation was built more on perception than acheivment. He became a New York lawyer, after few bad instances with the bar exam, then for a short period, was an employee in the District Attorney's office there. From there he became directing publisher of the magazine George, a Maxim like serial for self-indulgent men.

Don't Give Me Your Opinion

And here I am giving you mine. At least in this arrangement, you have the choice of whether or not to visit the site.
Started re-reading Atlas Shrugged and found this amusing statement.

“It is not advisable, James, to Venture unsolicited opinions. You should spare yourself the embarrassing discovery of their exact value to your listener.”

Francisco d’Anconia to James Taggart

This got me thinking (uh-oh) of something that has been bothering me about mainstream left-biased media. Much of news today is filled with video clips detailing the opinion of common-folk, bundled with the opinions of reporters. All of this obliterates air time allotted for news. Opinions are not the same as news.
The opinions of young people and the under-privileged are portrayed to dis-proportionate advantage. The Democratic party along with the media panders to these groups, giving them a voice disproportionate to the contribution to society. The opinions of young men an women, albeit potentially articulate, are the product of stilted education industry. Opinions that are developed by experienced citizens carry the scars of reality and personal evaluation of effectiveness. If a mature citizens chooses to remain a liberal after his or her experiences, then the opinion is valid and should be honored.
Why is it that in politics, the least informed opinions of, children, illegal aliens and the education deficient, receive the most prominent position display? In business opinion is weighed with respect to position followed by experience, neophytes have probationary periods. In education, opinion and responsibility are releated to tenure. In sports, roles are assigned with respect to proven results and ability. In religion, roles are earned by experience and ability.
In democracy all votes are given equal weight.
Not all opinions deserve equal respect.

Liberty and Tyranny, A Conservative Manifesto

Written by Mark R. Levin, published by Threshold Editions a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc., Copyright 2009

A late Christmas gift from dgj, I was skeptical about reading, fearing that like other talk radio hosts, their publication would be a rehashing of day-to-day opinion. Because of my predisposition, it took a long time to get through the 205 pages.

The thrust of the book is a narrative of current state in today’s politics, trends and how these are devolving from the intent of the Constitution framers. Division between Republican and Democrat is not focused, differences between Conservatives and Statists is. The reason being that like the popular talk radio acronym “RHINO”, for entrenched Washington politicians, there is little difference between Republicans and Democrats, both seeks to remain in office by expanding the government services in a manner resembling socialism. I think a significant reason for this is because real Conservatives are philosophically opposed to government and especially government expansion. Elected officials are motivated by desire to be held in public esteem, the simplest path to esteem, however shallow, is through gifting. Gifting, described here as “statism” is in its basic form requires that wealth be taken from its source and spread onto those without. Efficiency does not matter, effectiveness does not matter, and the only thing that matters to a politician is the perception of being generous to the needy.

Levin does ramble on in a manner like is radio persona, with a much less aggressive tone. Reference to philosophers and constructionists are thorough and consistent. One I enjoyed was a quotation by the economist Fredrick Hayek, who wrote and himself quoted de Tocqueville:

Nobody saw more clearly than the great political thinker de Tocqueville that democracy stands in an irreconcilable conflict with socialism: "Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom," he said. "Democracy attaches all possible value to each man," he said in 1848, "while socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. "

To allay these suspicions and to harness to its cart the strongest of all political motives-the craving for freedom-socialists began increasingly to make use of the promise of a "new freedom." Socialism was to bring "economic freedom," without which political freedom was "not worth having.”

To make this argument sound plausible, the word "freedom” was subjected to a subtle change in meaning. The word had formerly meant freedom from coercion, from the arbitrary power of other men. Now it was made to mean freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us.

Freedom in this sense is, of course, merely another name for power or wealth. The demand for the new freedom was thus only another name for the old demand for a redistribution of wealth.

At the end of the book the last six pages describe “A Conservative Manifesto”:

1. TAXATION
   Eliminate the progressive income tax-replace it with a flat income tax or national sales tax-for its purpose is to redistribute wealth, not fund the constitutionally legitimate functions of the federal government.
   All residents of the country must be required to pay the tax so they have a stake in limiting its abuse.
   Eliminate the automatic withholding of taxes, for it conceals the extent to which the federal government is confiscating income from its citizens.
   Eliminate the corporate income tax, for it is nothing more than double taxation on shareholders and consumers, and penalizes wealth and job creation.
   Eliminate the death tax, for it denies citizens the right to confer the material value they have created during their lives to whomever they wish, including their family.
   All federal income tax increases will require a supermajority vote of three-fifths of Congress.
   Limit federal spending each year to less than 20 percent of the gross domestic product.
2. ENVIRONMENT
   Eliminate the special tax-exempt status granted to environmental groups, since they are not nonpartisan charitable foundations.
   Eliminate special statutory authority granting environmental groups standing to bring lawsuits on behalf of the public, since their main purpose is to pursue the Statist's agenda through litigation.
   Fight all efforts to use environmental regulations to set governmental industrial policies and diminish the nation's standard of living, such as "cap-and-trade" to regulate "man-made climate change."
3. Judges
   Limit the Supreme Court's judicial-review power, which far exceeds the Framers' intent, by establishing a legislative veto over Court decisions-perhaps a two-thirds supermajority vote of both houses of Congress, not dissimilar from the congressional override authority of a presidential veto. [Patrick Leahy deserves to summary execution, in his overreaching poition on the Senate review he has actively stood in the way of presidents that chose candidates based on effectiveness and commitment to constructionalist views. By imposing litmus tests on the Supreme candidates, Leahy and Schumer have both taken Roe v Wades decision to create a right to privacy and made agreement with that incorrect ruling a pre-requisite for acceptance.]
   Eliminate lifetime tenure for federal judges, given the extra-constitutional power they have amassed and their routine intervention in political and policy decisions-which the Constitution leaves to the representative branches.
   No judicial nominee should be confirmed who rejects the jurisprudence of originalism.
4. THE ADMINISTRATIVE STATE
   Sunset all "independent" federal agencies each year, subject to Congress affirmatively reestablishing them.
   Require federal departments and agencies to reimburse individuals and enterprises for the costs associated with the devaluation of their private property from the issuance of regulations that compromise the use of their property.
   Eliminate unions for federal government employees, since the purpose of a civil service system is to promote merit and professionalism over patronage, and the purpose of federal unions is to empower themselves and promote statism.
   Reduce the civilian federal workforce by 20 percent or more.
5. GOVERNMENT EDUCATION
   Eliminate monopoly control of government education by applying the antitrust laws to the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers; the monopoly is destructive of quality education and competition and is unresponsive to the taxpayers who fund it. [The bride, though retured still receives NEA mail, as a union their first priority is the the membership, like the UAW, they propose agendas that a) promote increased employment by preaching smaller class size and supporting inefficient special needs ciricula, b) resistance to any and all means of effectiveness measurement, and c) promote differentiation between competing liberal views rather than liberal versus conservative]
   Eliminate tenure for government schoolteachers and college/university professors, making them accountable for the quality of instruction they provide students.
   Strip the statist agenda from curricula (such as multiculturalism and global warming) and replace it with curricula that reinforce actual education and the preservation of the civil society through its core principles.
   Eliminate the federal Department of Education, since education is primarily a state and local function.
6. IMMIGRATION
   Eliminate chain migration, which grants control over immigration policy to aliens and foreign governments, and which the Statist defends to expand his electoral and administrative state constituency. [Perversion of the 14th ammendment must end.]
   Secure the nation's borders and discourage those who violate them-illegal alien and citizen lawbreaker alike-by enforcing the immigration laws.
   End multiculturalism, diversity, and bilingualism in public institutions, which beget poverty, animosity, and ethnic balkanization; promote assimilation and unity of citizenship, allegiance to American culture, and English as the official national language.
7. ENTITLEMENTS
   Social Security is going bankrupt. Medicare is going bankrupt. Medicaid is going bankrupt. These programs and others have accumulated more than $50 trillion in IOUs due and payable by subsequent generations. Educate the young people about the intergenerational trap the Statist has laid for them-which will steal their liberty, labor, opportunities, and wealth-and build a future electoral force for whom the elixir of entitlements is understood as poisonous snake oil. These programs were created in politics and will have to be addressed in politics. Only in this way can they be contained, limited, and reformed.
   Fight all efforts to nationalize the health-care system. National health care is the mother of all entitlement programs, for through it the Statist controls not only the material wealth of the individual but his physical well-being. Remind the people that politicians and bureaucrats, about whom they are already cynical, will ultimately have the final say over their choice of doctors, hospitals, and treatments-meaning the system will be politicized and bureaucratized. Remind them that this human experiment has been tried and has failed in places like Britain and Canada, where patients have been subjected to arbitrary treatment decisions, long waiting periods for lifesaving surgeries, antiquated medical technologies, the denial of high-cost pharmaceuticals available elsewhere, and the inefficient rationing of health care generally. And remind them that despite past utopian promises, the Statist rarely delivers.
8. FOREIGN POLICY AND SECURITY
   Ensure that all foreign policy decisions are made for the purpose of preserving and improving American society. [The temptation for our new president to curry international favor is bound to put the administration in the position of accepting a "worldly" treaty that encroaches on US soverignty. This can arise in topics such as global warming, international shipping treaties and human rights. Luckily the Senate seems to, at least historically, been more patrotic on these issues, e.g., Kyoto.]
   Reject all treaties, entanglements, institutions, and enterprises that have as their purpose the supplantation of America's best interests, including its physical, cultural, economic, and military sovereignty, to an amorphous "global" interest.
   Ensure that America remains the world's superpower. Ensure that at all times America's military forces are prepared for war to dissuade attacks, encourage peace, and, if necessary, win any war.
9. FAITH
   Oppose all efforts to denude the nation of its founding justification - that is, God-given unalienable, natural rights that the government can neither confer on the individual nor deny to him. The Statist seeks the authority to do both, which explains his contempt for, or misuse of, faith. Moreover, faith provides the moral order that ties one generation to the next, and without which the civil society cannot survive.
10. THE CONSTITUTION
    Demand that all public servants, elected or appointed, at all times uphold the Constitution and justify their public acts under the Constitution.
    Oppose all efforts to "constitutionalize" the statist agenda.
    Eliminate limits on and rationing of political free speech through unconstitutional "campaign finance" laws, which benefit incumbent politicians, the media, unions, and other Statist-related groups. Any American citizen or group of American citizens should be free to contribute to candidates as they wish, as long as the source, amount, and recipient of the contributions are made known.
    Defeat all efforts to unconstitutionally regulate the content of political speech on broadcast outlets, such as radio. The Statist now seeks to consolidate the power he has accumulated by silencing noncompliant voices through a variety of schemes that would regulate broadcast content.

This was a good book, a suggested read for the everyday conservative seeking advice on path forward as responsible citizenship.

I'm Glad I Don't Have Daughters

One evening a man was at home watching TV and eating peanuts. He'd toss them in the air, and then catch them in his mouth. In the middle of catching one, his wife asked him a question - and as he turned to answer her, a peanut fell in his ear.

He tried and tried to dig it out but succeeded only in pushing it in deeper. He called his wife for assistance, and after hours of trying they became worried and decided to go to the hospital.

As they were ready to go out the door, their daughter came home with her date. After being informed of the problem, their daughter's date said he could get the peanut out.

The young man told the father to sit down, then proceeded to shove two fingers up the father's nose and told him to blow hard. When the father blew, the peanut flew out of his ear.

The mother and daughter jumped and yelled for joy. The young man insisted that it was nothing. Once he was gone, the mother turned to the father and said, "That's so wonderful! Isn't he smart? What do you think he's going to be when he grows older?"

The father replied, "From the smell of his fingers, our son-in-law!"