sisu

How can we ignore the cats next door?

How can we ignore the cats next door? Above one of two semi-indoor neighbor youngsters who gaze down daily from their second-story apartment window and porch at the comings and goings of Sweet Tiny Pea and her suitor, Earl Gray, in our side yard below.

A mockingbird couple are keeping watch, scolding any pussycat or human or other prospective predator in sight. Must be a fledgling or two about to leave the nest.

Tiny is prepared to take care of any irregularities, but as ever, our imperatives differ, and we will fight tooth and claw to avoid any unpleasantness.

Update: All things tooth and claw now boarding Modulator's Friday Ark #254.

Sarah Palin = 1, Saul Alinsky = 0

Less is fewer? Why would you write "in less than" 140 characters when you knew the proper grammar would be "in fewer than"? [see Usage Note] Because you were twittering and honing your prose to keep the tweet count to at or below 140 characters, that's why. The written language evolving right before our eyes. Above, the eyes have it in fanciful Sunday breakfast fruit bowl with canteloupe, strawberry-infused apple and blueberries.

Like President Obama when it comes to the rationale behind police work in Cambridge, when it comes to the rationale behind Sarah Palin's stepping down from her Alaska governorship Sunday, Palinologists have a nasty habit of rushing to judgment in a fact-challenged cloud of psychological denial and projection, curiously incurious about what makes "the other" tick. Why did she really quit? Scroll down beyond Mr. Potatoskin Head (below) for the answer, but first let's review the narrative. Most talking heads cast Palin's exit as a disastrous admission of defeat, but as Carl Cameron said when the Alaska Governor first announced her decision three-plus weeks back:

She's done it again. To some, it's the end of her career. To others, it's the start of her presidential campaign.

And as we blogged at the time:

Like Barack Obama, Sarah Palin can be a blank canvas upon which huddled masses yearning to breathe free — or in Obama's case, huddled masses yearning to be on the dole — project their inchoate longings. The difference is that while Obama speaks from the latest polls, Palin — in Fox Brit ex pat Stuart Varney's words — "speaks from the heart, and maybe that's what Americans want."

Forget about 140 or fewer characters. Tuck trumps Twitter with a postprandial Tw-eat that says "Great meal!" in five menu items: baked stuffed potato skin, mushroom, Stroganoff sauce, sweet potato puree and peas.

John Fund had put his finger on the problem weeks ago, reporting that frivolous "attacks inside Alaska and largely invisible to the national media had paralyzed her administration." Adding at least the appearance of impropriety to the series of accusations, it was reported last week that "the independent investigator who has accused Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin of violating state ethics laws is a major donor to the Democratic Party as well as a partner in a law firm that represented Barack Obama's presidential campaign."

But it was the self-described "Rodeo Clown" with a mission and a microphone, Fox News supernova Glenn Beck who connected the dots the other day with this 140-characters-or-fewer tweet [via KatyinIndy]:

Sarah P. Think like a Comm organizer.They were overloading the system. She is 6 steps ahead. VERY SMART lady.

Expanding beyond 140 characters, Palin recognized that her adversaries — from the dirt-digging thugs on the ground to the fancy lawyers and their bosses behind the curtain — were soldiers in an Alinskyesque, Cloward-Piven-inspired army of "community organizers" out to destroy her and the small-government, free-market principles she stands and fights for by sowing discontent from within the system. Understanding their modus operandi, she outfoxed them, quoting Gen. MacArthur as she exited stage right victorious [via goparchitect]:

We are not retreating; we are advancing in another direction.

Coda: "This guy has a social justice agenda," Glenn Beck told Fox & Friends this morning:

He is going to set all of the wrongs of the past right.

I have a feeling that the paradigm is about to change.

People who have been forced to live in a politically correct world … are just going to say "I'm not living in your politically correct world, and I don't care anymore." You've never seen the media really go after him. He's never really been cornered. How does he react?

The people he surrounds himself with, have you heard them with new ears? When you put in a science czar who has advocated forced abortions and made the case that we could put sterilants into the water to control the births, something's very wrong.

Tea party!

Update: Music to my ears:

Cambridge cop on Obama: 'I voted for him. I will not again."

Listen and take heart. The City Upon a Hill is shining still!

Update II: "Dan Riehl = 1, Palin haters = 0," we wrote in the comments to Dan's perfect-pitch "Sarah Palin: They Just Don't Get Her, Or Us." Thanks for the linky love!

Foxy ladies

Separated at birth? Tiny, above, calculates her chances of springing up perhaps five times her body length to the top of the retaining wall behind the house early morning.

Did you say something? The Fennec Fox (Vulpes zerda) of the Sahara uses its oversized ears (up to 6 inches long) "to dissipate heat and to hear the movement of prey at night." Tips for keeping the little fellow (16 inches body length, about the same as Tiny) as a pet:

Several factors make it important to ensure that a pet does not escape. Its speed and agility — they can jump four times their own body length [about the distance Tiny jumps from the windowsill to the top of the shower] — along with their natural chase instinct, creates the risk of a Fennec Fox's slipping its harness or collar. Since it is also an adept digger (it can dig up to 20 feet a night in its natural environment), outdoor pens and fences must be extended several feet below ground. Escaped Fennec Foxes are extremely difficult to recapture.

For your viewing pleasure, check out this YouTube video of "Kitten sneaking up on a Fennec Fox." When Reynard opts for fight, not flight, Fluffy performs a classic "Halloween Kitty."

Obama is Al Sharpton with a better tailor

Tiger lily, tiger lily, burning bright. Framed by Starburst Lilies, Tiny on the front porch this afta soaks up the rays in the aftermath of a mild morning Nor'easter that gave us a good soaking.

A little birdie told us. Notes from the twittersphere. Race to the finish:

"If you are a racist, everything is about race, twitters ConNews.

Hucksters' hope:

Is "THE RACE INDUSTRY" TOO BIG TO FAIL? asks SissyWillis.

The clothes make the man?

"Obama is Al Sharpton with a better tailor," sez we.

Moral equivalence separates "us" from "them" both ways:

"BHO has conversation w/ Cambridge Police Sgt. and still comes in front of cameras and says that the Sgt. AND Prof. Gates 'OverReacted.' BULL!" twitters OwenS2.

Two warring tribes, a selection of our own tweets:

"Obama has nothing but contempt for the 'little people.'"

"Thrilling the way law enforcement brotherhood standing behind Sgt. Crowley against the vicious racialist attack of members of the 'race industry.'"

"The left's 'critique' of the right = psychological projection."

Conman Aversion Derangement Syndrome (CADS) comes to mind.

Update from our imail correspondent:

Just caught up with Sisu. Am delighted that Obama's "God Damn America" Reverend Wright slip is showing.

A girl can't be too careful.

Ah, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you?

Only furtive shots of Earl Grey. He loves our tiny girl but doesn't trust us, no way.
Catnip's the thing wherein we'll catch the conscience of the king.

Ah, sweet mystery of life at last I've found you?

Update: More sweet mysteries at Modulator's Friday Ark #253, now boarding.

Milton Friedman: Socialized Medicine for Dummies

Milton Friedman's prescient "The Economics of Medical Care" — AKA "Socialized Medicine for Dummies" — delivered to a Mayo Clinic audience in 1978, is going viral on YouTube and Twitter. A few excerpts below, and then listen to the whole thing for yourself. Beyond the wisdom and common sense of his words, his soothingly straightforward, low-key performance is a refreshing antidote to the ubiquitous POTUSs much-ballyhooed "soaring rhetoric" and frenetic use of pumping and pointing hand gestures. Obama's teleprompter was unavailable for comment.

"I believe that this trend [towards increasing government involvement in medical care], including many of the steps that have already been taken, is very much against the interests of patients, of physicians and of other health care personnel," Milton Friedman warned a Mayo Clinic audience thirty years ago. We know in our gut that socialized medicine won't work in our interests because the incentives are perversely turned upside down when government, not the patient, is client. Friedman explains:

This trend is part of a general trend in our society toward replacing voluntary, free market arrangements by government control and regulation.

In industry after industry, producers who protest strongly their belief in free markets have fostered and helped produce government takeover, government regulation, government control … Businessmen, leaders in various areas who are very foresighted when it comes to … the concerns within their own enterprises are very shortsighted when it comes to the area of public policy and allow themselves to be led by small advantages to foster and favor policies which ultimately redound very much to their disadvantage.In the medical case, the initial inducement is that here is a new source of money, and presumably this is why organized medicine has been schizophrenic about the trend toward government involvement …When the government is taking over any activity, there IS more money available, but what typically happens once the government has taken it over, the situation changes. There are no more votes to be gotten by taking it over some more …

In addition to the fact that the ultimate result of a government takeover is less resources, you invariably get lower quality and a lower quantity of medical care.

Unnerved by polls suggesting most Americans are happy with their medical coverage and disapprove his handling of the issue — not to mention a CBO report that his budget is on an unsustainable path — President Obama turned up the volume in promoting Obamacare, misdirecting careless listeners with his ominous assertion that "the need for reform is urgent, and it is irrefutable." Urgency and irrefutability all depend upon what you mean by "reform." The urgency is in his mind, where time is of the essence if he is to ram through misrepresented policies before his approval ratings go further south when the citizenry wakes up to their implications. As for irrefutablity, former Economic Policy Advisor to President GW Bush Keith Hennessey — who has a must-read market-based plan of his own, complete with do's and don'ts — bursts that balloon:

It is unfair to characterize those who oppose the current legislation as opposing all health care reform, or as defenders of the status quo.

Echoing Friedman's early-warning speech, the Mayo Clinic itself "calls health plan bad medicine," the Washington Times reported yesterday:

Minnesota's not-for-profit Mayo Clinic, which Mr. Obama has repeatedly hailed as offering top quality care at affordable costs, blasted the House Democrats' version of the health care plan as lawmakers continue to grapple with several bills from each chamber and multiple committees.

The Mayo Clinic said there are some positive elements of the bill, but overall "the proposed legislation misses the opportunity to help create higher quality, more affordable health care for patients."

"In fact, it will do the opposite," clinic officials said, because the proposals aren't patient-focused or results-oriented. "The real losers will be the citizens of the United States."

That's the problem with good intentions based upon a refusal to take human nature and the processes common to all economic systems — competition, cooperation, adaptation and feedback — into account: "It will do the opposite."

Update: "Still relevant," says Bird Dog with a link.

"An annoying but irresistible combination of sounds"

"Hungry house cats use an annoying but irresistible combination of sounds when they want to be fed, a new study has found," according to National Geographic News (thanks to Goomp for the heads up). Annoying is in the ear of the beholder, and we are, of course, immune. Tiny's wish is our command.

She makes our heart sing. If we want to be annoyed, we look to the powers that be that are robbing us blind and pretending they care about us inside the Beltway.

Update: "My memorable experience with cats, which goes back some 65 years, is that they tend to be more honest and straightforward than humans," writes Goomp in the comments with a sensible suggestion:

Maybe we should limit political office to our feline population.

Update II: "Annoying? Never in life," adds Elisson:

As I recently posted [Be sure to read the whole thing, which has extended commentary by feline motivational speaker Hakuna], "A cat’s language, as we know, is all but impenetrable to the human mind and ear. Delicate, high-pitched overtones, coupled with carefully modulated subsonics, combine to create a vocal medium that can rival the complexity of a Bach concerto, the tonal subtlety of Mandarin Chinese."

Cats are smart enough to know that if they make sounds like a human baby, they activate the loci in our Reptilian Hindbrain that control the nurturing instinct. And we, of course, will therefore feed them — and think they're cute, to boot.

WICKED cute, cats and Elisson both! Goomp too.

Update: Lots more cuteness at Modulator's Friday Ark #252, now boarding.

Update II: The last word prrrt, from our 2007 post "The Cat's gone viral":

From our caption: Detail of a frame from Tandem Director Simon Tofield's brilliant animated short "Cat Man Do," -- wherein the pussycat applies the "Think System on Steroids" to get his food source up and at 'em -- that has ailurophiles all over the internet rolling in the aisles. This artist knows how to draw -- the expressive elegance of his line is deceptively simple -- and as everyone who knows cats knows, he KNOWS cats.

Click here to watch.

Update III: USA Today headline writers get the gist: "Study: Cats overpower owners with 'baby' purr."

Why can't they leave us alone?

In light of President Obama's choice of "nudgy" Cass Sunstein —  father of "libertarian paternalism" and three-month-old Declan Power-Sunstein, his child by brand new wife NSC senior director for multilateral affairs Samantha "under the bus, wink, wink" Power — as his all-powerful regulatory czar, we herewith present a republication of our July 17, 2008 post "The facts are irrelevant":

"They are like bookends. They will bring you many years of pleasure," a veterinarian's assistant predicted years ago of then kittens Tiny (above) and Baby (below), out in the side yard this afternoon assuming full bookend posture.

Googling a half-remembered quotation [see caption, above] from our post "An exultation of adolescence" of a couple of years back, we had a eureka moment this evening — unrelated to the quotation itself — reading the words of Dr. Joy Bliss of Maggie's Farm:

What if the part of human nature which wants paternalism, or maternalism, in the State is sometimes, or often, stronger than the part that wants freedom and self-determination?

It called to mind our imail conversation with Goomp yesterday morning as we shared thoughts on Thomas Sowell's latest essay, "Are Facts Obsolete?" First, here's Tom:

As the hypnotic mantra of "change" is repeated endlessly, few people even raise the question of whether what few specifics we hear represent any real change, much less a change for the better.

Raising taxes, increasing government spending and demonizing business? That is straight out of the New Deal of the 1930s.

The New Deal was new then but it is not new now. Moreover, increasing numbers of economists and historians have concluded that New Deal policies are what prolonged the Great Depression.

Babe mirrors Tiny's leonine pose in the countdown to supper.

"It is depressing how ignorant people are of how the world works," Goomp wrote, responding to Dr. Sowell's point that "A politician's problem is how to look like he is for 'the poor' and against those who are 'exploiting' them. The facts are irrelevant to maintaining that political image":

Goomp [channeling Dr. Bliss's question]: It is all because they want to escape from personal responsibility.

We: They want to continue to suckle at the maternalistic udder.

He: And be told how wonderful they are.

And politicians are only too happy to oblige. Flirting dangerously with Godwin's Law, we summed things up awhile back in "What's wrong with the utopianist left world view," our post linked by Dr. Bliss in her own post referenced above:

As we've blogged early and often, the totalitarian instinct runs deep and dark in our species. It is forever raising its ugly head on both ends of the political spectrum, and cheating your way to victory is precisely where it's at. Ends justify the means. That's why commies and Nazis -- not to mention Islamofascists -- parrot the same party line: We educated elites know what's best for you plebes. Bill and Hill's "What if you spend your money wrong?" and "We are going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good" come to mind.

Then there's "libertarian paternalism," a subliminal approach to political persuasion that has "caught the imagination of top politicians" including Barack Obama, according to a breathless London Times interview of behavioral scientist Richard Thaler, co-author with Cass Sunstein of Nudge:

So why the political interest? Because you can influence people's choices without being accused of "nannying" and it is cheap. Or, as the authors put it: "If incentives and nudges replace requirements and bans, government will be both smaller and more modest … In short, libertarian paternalism is neither left nor right, neither Democratic nor Republican. In many areas, the most thoughtful Democrats are going beyond their enthusiasm for choice-eliminating programs. In many areas, the most thoughtful Republicans are abandoning their knee-jerk opposition to constructive governmental initiatives."

Considering ourselves among "the most thoughtful Republicans," we are skeptical. So is David Gordon of the Ludwig von Mises Intitute, who notes that "Tocqueville long ago warned against the policies of which libertarian paternalism is an example." Blogger Cassy Fiano gets it just right in her post — with video link — on GWs press conference this morning where he tells mewling reporters that "Americans are smart enough to figure out whether they're going to drive less or not."

Liberals just can’t seem to grasp the fact that people don’t need their all-knowing wisdom-filled genius to live happy and full lives. When President Bush said that it was presumptuous to tell Americans how to live their own lives, I wanted to cheer. It’s something that liberals aren’t able to understand. They think that the American people are idiots who can’t be trusted to be intelligent enough to figure things out on their own, and therefore need liberals to come in and do everything for them.

And now back to Dr. Joy Bliss for the final word:

State parentalism is one step from totalitarianism. And not just psychologically, but also in reality. First, you get the people used to the idea that they can depend on the government to take care of you and to solve your problems (rather than simply to defend you, and to keep life reasonably fair), and, having slowly softened them up, you build on that until you can't smoke a cigarette in your car without getting fined, or find a decent fried chicken take-out in NYC.

We're smart enough, Barack Obama. Oh, and we're not a racist.

Update: Maggie's links. Thanks, News Junkie!

An inconvenient population "we don't want too many of"

Even as the world turns and our homo sapient species' totalitarian instinct runs rampant over our better angels, Tiny and Earl Grey clowder cheek to cheek.

"This guy makes Gore look good" we twittered re Obama's new Science Czar, John Holdren, who appears to share SCOTUS judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg's unspeakably eugenistic world view that it's okay to force some of our fellow Americans — "populations we don't want too many of" in Ginsburg's words — to abort their babies against their will, to "save the planet" [via Little Green Footballs]:

Zombie has a report on the book Ecoscience, co-authored by Barack Obama’s “science czar” John Holdren (with Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich) in 1977, and its radical advocacy of mass sterilization and forced abortion to solve a looming overpopulation crisis — that never actually materialized: John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, says: Forced abortions and mass sterilization needed to save the planet.

We should note that the book was written 32 years ago, Holdren was not the only author (and the other authors are known for radical opinions on these issues), and the context — as far as I can tell from reading Zombie’s excerpts — is that these extreme measures would be taken in response to a massive crisis situation.

Still, these are pretty outrageous opinions by most people’s standards, and Holdren should be given a chance to explain or renounce them.

In response to a massive crisis situation? Rahm Emanuel's "Never let a serious crisis go to waste" comes to mind. The Founding Fathers are turning in their graves.

Update: And speaking of "populations we don't want too many of," judges who legislate from the bench come to mind.

"Had we but world enough, and time"

Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, Lady, were no crime.

We would sit down and think which way To walk and pass our long love's day.

But at my back I always hear Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near. 

And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity.*

Update: Incurable romantic Connecticut Yankee delights us with "Tiny's reply (from Song of Solomon 2:8-13)" in the comments:

The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice.

My beloved speaks and says to me: "Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

*Many thanks to our literary love consultant — who notes that "stolen moments are always the most romantic and the most fleeting" — for suggesting Andrew Marvel's "To His Coy Mistress" to illuminate our latest photographic study of the grand passion between our own Sweet Tiny Pea and her mysterious admirer, the elusive Earl Grey.

Update II: Laura Lee links.