Before I get to the linkage — good luck to all you on the east coast, especially from the Carolinas to New Jersey. Keep to high ground and away from the surf and flooded roads, please. We need to keep you guys around!
- The Freeholder was caught in some of the early storm action and has some thoughts on bugging out when you’re … already out.
- Four of the best comments on the Oregon campus shooting.
- Google has apparently realized that “don’t be evil” long ago quit applying to them anyhow.
- The human quest to find our place in the universe. Beautiful writing by George Will.
- Checkmate, stalemate, complete botch. Call it what you will; it’s Obama’s economic policy, which hardly deserves the name.
- The cultural insanity. It’s not just in the U.S. these days.
- Let’s hope this frivolous anti-gun lawsuit goes the way of the Lucky Gunner suit. Don’t let personal tragedy destroy liberty. Or what’s left of justice in our land.
Oh well, whatever else goes on, at least there are dogs. Climb on board the dog train and enjoy the ride.
New Jersey??? Who the hell wants to keep NJ around? It’s full of anti-gunners for one thing. And has lots of other bad laws. Moreso than a lot of other places.
LOL! Jim B., while I may agree in theory, at least one faithful member of the Commentariat has been trying to get out of New Jersey for years. He and his family had to do some major, terrible coping after Superstorm Sandy and it would be awful for them if they now had to do it all over again.
I hope he’s finally made it out now. But even so, he’s still got family stuck there.
This blog has friends in unlikely places, so I’m also hoping the storm is kind to — ugh! — Massachusetts.
Everything is fine in this corner. A little wetter than Pac NorthWET at the moment, but rode out the storm well.
From Freeholder: “Second, I believe there must be a clear chain of command–someone has to [be] in charge.”
I agree–and it should be the person dealing in practicality, not emotion. The one who can look beyond prior planning to see the bigger picture of what’s shaping up currently. A vacation in Freeholder’s case was a prior commitment–but we live in the here and now, and that’s what must be dealt with first.
~~~
“Don’t be evil” might be considered rather subjective as well. Google was never angelic–subject to interpretation of course!–but must have increased its “evil” to the extent it could no longer apply the maxim, even to fill its own interpretation.
Cute “dog train,” but wouldn’t they be better off running on their own? Couldn’t understand what the man was saying in the video, of course, so I don’t know what the rationale might be. He obviously can’t take them for a run on foot himself! 🙂 The dogs all look fit and healthy… and so happy. 🙂
I caught the idea that he’s feeding wildlife there as well. That’s a very controversial topic here in Wyoming, and I assume in much of the west. Not generally a good idea, since it encourages dependence and produces situations that endanger both the animals and humans who encounter them.
Jim B, I live in South Carolina (not near the coast) but I’m originally from New Jersey and still have lots of family there. And, perhaps more to the point, I own a beach house there which received damage aplenty from Sandy. So this storm got me on two fronts! From all reports we escaped unscathed this time, however (in both places).
My thought on Freeholder’s piece was that while he is certainly correct about the concept of “sunk costs”, the economic sunk costs of a campsite are pretty minimal. I suspect that it wasn’t the money his wife was concerned about, but rather that she had a significant emotional investment in the vacation. That’s the sort of “sunk cost” which is difficult to “write off”.
Obama doesn’t have an economic policy. No one in his administration, or even at the Fed, has an economic policy. They have absolutely no idea what to do about our endless “non-recession” (not that Obama himself is much interested in that, although to be fair some people in his administration really are). So the Fed continues to wield the only remaining tool in its toolbox, monetary stimulation, even though it clearly isn’t working and there is no coherent economic theory which suggests that it could work. They’re the epitome of the old staying “if your only tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail”. So Yellen et al are continuing to “muddle through” (as our British friends would say) in the forlorn hope of being rescued by some sort of economic miracle. (And Obama himself is just trying to run out the clock.)
Got a bunch of bug bites in the Forest last week, so Saturday I went to the Daytona Beach area to go in the ocean for at least 30 min; that usually takes care of anything. Turned out the surf was extremely choppy, which I would have known had I bothered to check beforehand. No real flooding problems around here that I’m aware of. Resorted to clear nail polish. It works, but it doesn’t necessarily get everything the first time around.
There is the theory that Obama wants the economy to crash, along with massive civil unrest, so he will have an excuse to declare martial law. While his “you didn’t build that business” does reveal a staggering ignorance, I don’t see anything in his actions contradicting that theory. What I think he didn’t expect was for Putin and the Chinese to make a fool of him. So he has to turn his anger on us. It meshes perfectly with Glubb’s description of the Age of Decadence of an empire, when external danger is ignored while internal infighting intensifies. http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
I could well be wrong (not the first or the last time) about Obama. http://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-moscow-washington-tehran-axis-of-evil/?utm_source=AIM+-+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=email100515&utm_medium=email
MBV mentioned this: “Camping” on Your Own Land is Now Illegal — Gov’t Waging War on Off-Grid Living.
Kinda punctures one of my not-quite-full-Joel notions of how I might get out of Dodge some day.
Laird, you are partially correct, my wife did have a significant emotional investment in the vacation. However, her statement to me the evening before we left was that she had already paid for a substitute (teacher–she is an elementary school teacher) and that she could not get that money or her her vacation days back.
A relatively sleepless (for her, I actually slept fairly well) Thursday night probably taught her more about sunk cost than any accounting classes ever could. Experience is a great teacher and a frightening experience is the best teacher.
I’m still thinking this little escapade through, especially in light of the continuing news from SC. If we had stayed, the location we were in flooded. Our primary route home flooded and I beleive the secondary flooded as well. We would have been in a bad situation, although not without resources and probably not a deadly situation unless I had gotten very stupid.
Also, I hadn’t really considered Claire’s point of needing to bug out when you were out–I was looking at it as an exercise in GMAH instead, although fortunately without a 200+ mile hike. That angle is very interesting to consider. I think there is a lot more to be learned from this, and I want to tease it out and get it in writing without being unnecessarily dramatic about it. For us, it wasn’t a big event. For a lot of other folks, it’s costing them their homes and their livelihoods, and for a few it’s cost them their lives. My little BS trip home hardly compares, but if I can extract some useful lessons from it, I want those lessons, and I want to share them in case someone else can find something useful in them.
[It meshes perfectly with Glubb’s description of the Age of Decadence of an empire, when external danger is ignored while internal infighting intensifies]
What external danger are you talking about?
BTW thanks for that link, it was worth a re-read. I’m still not convinced of the benefits of empire, despite what Glubb writes, since its maintenance depends on theft, murder and rape.
On reading Glubb more closely, it seems he believes that the rise and fall of empires is a pre-ordained thing due to human nature and not dependent on external influences, but that what happens after the fall depends strongly on external conditions. See section XXXIV.
You may be talking about section XXI, Civil dissensions. I didn’t get that the threat to empire is necessarily external, although that was the case with the first example he used. The second example was otherwise.
On the identification of an empire, Pat Buchanan, in his book A Republic Not an Empire, asserted the during the Spanish-American War, when we captured the Philippines with no intent of annexing it, we behaved as an empire for the first time. He said that if we wanted to avoid the bloody fate of [most] empires, we needed to start behaving like a Republic. Washington of course told us how to behave – but nobody listens anymore. So yes, I believe we’re an empire, and no, I don’t like it either.
I’ll again give credit to MJR for linking a video that referenced Glubb’s article. When I first read it I had to mutter and pace around the room a number of times to get through it. My understanding of Glubb’s point of a natural life cycle, I think, is the same as yours. I believe he was implying that the external threats are always there (they must wax and wane as well) and that when the empire can no longer resist them it collapses. It looks to me like we show all the symptoms of the last phase, the Age of Decadence.
We now are dealing with a much more aggressive Russia and China (warship off the coast of Alaska to coincide with Obama’s visit) and a rise of radical Islam. We don’t yet have a major problem with that here, but the number of Muslim immigrants is rising seemingly exponentially (many of whom have no intention of assimilating), and most would prefer Sharia Law. A Europe which is much further along in the immigration process in terms of percentage of population is now having monumental problems.
Combine this with a president who takes every opportunity to stir up divisive sentiments, who is actively weakening the military, and who is very possibly intentionally aiding Putin http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/5/james-lyons-obama-regulations-stop-troops-for-halt/ and we get a disaster waiting to happen. I believe, as you do, that our system is not far from falling apart and I think martial law is more than a remote possibility. My guess is the inciting incident will come as a surprise; I think we’re so fragile now it doesn’t even necessarily have to be planned. And then things will happen fast. A bounced welfare check or failure of supermarket cash registers to work are only two situations which happen to come to mind at present.
And as you note, Glubb states what happens after the fall depends on external conditions. Some disturbing possibilities exist including: will our president “request” foreign troops to help restore order? I sure don’t have a crystal ball and your guess is as good as mine if things do fall apart.