Chasing Sarah

July 6, 2009 in Conservative, Politics, President Obama | Tags: , , , | by Mike | Leave a comment

Ross Douthat checks in this morning with one of many Sarah Palin inspired posts floating around the web these last few days. Douthat engages in the typical post-game analysis of where Palin went wrong and what is in her future. Not a lot of new ground covered there, but where he takes a more fresh perspective is when he remind us of her continued appeal with the masses:

In a recent Pew poll, 44 percent of Americans regarded Palin unfavorably. But slightly more had a favorable impression of her. That number included 46 percent of independents, and 48 percent of Americans without a college education.

That last statistic is a crucial one. Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

Here’s what I had to say about Palin’s now famous populist rhetoric back in November:

What Palin was selling was a vision. It’s the vision of small towns where everyone knows each other. Where we can leave our doors unlocked at night. Where everyone goes to the football game on Friday night. Is it a an accurate vision? No. But it’s one we all aspire to.

Maybe Sarah Palin is too flawed at this point to ever wage a comeback. Or maybe not. Newt Gingrich has done some magnificent image rebuilding (he still has a long way to go) and Grover Cleveland got himself back in the Whitehouse after being thrown out four years earlier. Stranger things have happened indeed. Palin remains a riveting figure and she has the years on her side. I have no doubt that all eyes will be on her for quite some time.

Independence Day

July 4, 2009 in Progressive | by Mike | Leave a comment

Asymmetric has a great post up today about the Top 10 Reasons it’s great to be an American. Go check it out. My favorites:

9. Canada:

Yes, our neighbors to the the north talk funny, but does any country have a better neighbor than the United States?

10. Physical beauty:

Let’s say you were designing the ideal land mass in Civilization: Wouldn’t it look a lot like the United States? From the mountains to the prairies, to the oceans, deserts, jungles, it’s a very beautiful place.

Happy 4th everybody!

Easy Breakfast

July 3, 2009 in Cooking, food | Tags: , , , , , | by Mike | Leave a comment

I found this recipe the other day buried in unread blog posts from my Google Reader archives. I tried it this morning using baby spinach and it was delicious. It took less than 5 minutes to make and seemed like a healthy start to my day. Rustic, simple…my kind of meal.

My personal Breakfast of Champions is a fried egg on a handful of raw greens–say, arugula, dandelion, baby spinach, watercress, or even mesclun–lightly dressed with extra-virgin olive oil and a few drops of sherry vinegar, salt and pepper, maybe some snipped chives. It is a play on a classic rustic Italian dish: steamed asparagus with a fried egg and some grated Parmigiano. The operating principle is that when you break the soft-cooked yolk, it spills onto the vegetable like a sauce; vegetable and protein marry, with little fuss, in a single delicious dish.

I’ve been trying to find a lot more recipes like this lately. Basic tastes and fool-proof cooking methods. That’s often where the Europeans edge out Americans in my opinion, though by no means do I think they have us beat in cuisine. It’s just different.

Working Man Blues

July 3, 2009 in Progressive | by Mike | Leave a comment

Today marks exactly 19 years since I started my first job, bagging groceries at the age of 15. It has been filled with highs and lows, good bosses and bad and I am happy to report the longest I was ever involuntarily unemployed was about 3 days.

In honor of the occasion, enjoy:

Bugs of Summer

July 3, 2009 in Progressive | by Mike | Leave a comment

I just pulled the first tick of the summer off of the back of my neck. Luckily he hadn’t clamped on yet. He went down the drain with as much malice as I can muster towards something that small. I really should check the dog over since we were at the farm on Sunday and he spent 10 minutes rolling around in the weeds.

My oldest comes home from camp tomorrow after a 2 week stay. She has already written us to say that her legs are covered in bug bites. For some reason they always think her and I taste delicious while my wife and stepdaughter remain relatively bite-free. Maybe our pale, Irish skin has something to do with it? Perhaps they see all the freckles and think they’ll have company?

Bold Ideas

July 2, 2009 in Innovation, President Obama, Progressive | Tags: | by Mike | Leave a comment

I absolutely love this idea from Peter Smirniotopoulos at NewGeography:

There is no modern proxy for flying cars and colonies on the moon. And funding billions of dollars in support of “shovel-ready projects” will certainly do nothing to advance the cause of innovative thought about how we would like to see our current communities – urban, suburban, and exurban, and rural – evolve over the next twenty-five or fifty years. What could life be like in America in 2034 or 2059? We should not have to rely upon science fiction writers, futurists, and block-buster sci-fi movie producers to craft all of our visions of the future.

So here’s an idea for our new President. Now that everyone is relatively comfortable with the notion of spending billions (and even trillions) of dollars, let’s spend a very small portion of that on our future, rather than focusing exclusively on our near-term economic salvation. Make $10 billion available to fund five pilot projects with $2 billion each. Think of is as the “X Prize” for Innovations in Livability. Invite communities throughout the country, without restriction as to size or location, without constraints on the marketplace of ideas, to bring together their best and brightest to craft implementable proposals for how they plan to evolve their community into an exemplar for the future: Then fund the five best proposals. Take the funding decisions out of the hands of elected officials and policy makers, and place it unfettered in the hands of a blue-ribbon panel of experts from a broad range of disciplines.

As a conservative I am supposed to scoff at pie-in-the-sky ideas like using billions of government-supplied dollars to encourage innovation. The market is supposed to do it, so the logic goes. Capitalism is the greatest innovator, I’m supposed to say. But sometimes the government has to be the engine, even if it allows others to steer. This project, as suggested by Smirniotopoulos, would allow that to happen. Given the capability I know exists within the American spirit the return on an investment like this will be tenfold.

If there’s one thing liberals are blessed with that we conservatives often lack it’s optimism. Smirniotopoulos’ idea embodies that. Conservatives would do well to grab a little bit of it.

Software Suggestions

July 1, 2009 in Internet | Tags: , , , , , , | by Mike | Leave a comment

 

As many readers probably know, Mozilla released it’s newest version of the Firefox web browser this week. Every review I have read so far seems very impressed. I used to run FF on our old computer because Internet Explorer was so vulnerable to viruses and pop-ups. Since we upgraded to Vista, installed some heavy-duty security and filters I’ve been very lazy and sticking with IE. This coming week my wife is going to be out of town leaving me with two computers at my disposal and it seemed like a great time to do some tune-ups on our desktop PC.

The first order of business is to do an initial back-up of the hard drive using Mozy, which we just purchased for a year.  My main goal with Mozy is to protect the thousands of digital photos we have on our hard drive. Up till now my security has involved backing the photos up on flash drives quarterly and storing them in our safety deposit box at the bank. That’s getting to be a pain, though I still plan to use that system to protect digital scans of all our important docs (marriage license, birth certificate, social security cards, deed). The initial backup is probably going to take about 3 days. After that Mozy will only backup files that have changed and should be much faster.

I’ve been reading about some other great products, mostly free, over at Lifehacker. Some of them will probably be taken on a test-run later in the week. Just thought I would use this post to solicit suggestions from readers. What tools are you using to make your computing life more fun/better/productive/easy/organized? What could you not imagine anyone living without? For example, I seriously don’t know how I survived blogging before using Google Reader. What is that one indispensible product/application that you love almost as much as your spouse?

A Ban on Linking?

July 1, 2009 in Progressive | by Mike | 2 comments

Richard Posner (via Matthew Yglesias) says new laws should ban linking to copyrighted content without some sort of permission.

Expanding copyright law to bar online access to copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, or to bar linking to or paraphrasing copyrighted materials without the copyright holder’s consent, might be necessary to keep free riding on content financed by online newspapers from so impairing the incentive to create costly news-gathering operations that news services like Reuters and the Associated Press would become the only professional, nongovernmental sources of news and opinion.

Yglesias’ response is predictable given his status as a professional blogger and I don’t disagree with anything he says. What I will add though is that I understand the need Posner is trying to address. The internet is killing newspapers and they are scrambling to find a new pricing model that works. I continue to believe that the best solution is something like Google Reader with a per subscription fee.  I would gladly pay for the professional sources I read daily if the pricing was reasonable (so far I think the price-point through Kindle sucks) and the access universal.

Another side-effect might be that many bloggers would begin to write more original material rather than engaging in what someone at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen called ‘one-off newsblogging’. Admittedly the daily news is a crutch I use as well as many, many other bloggers. We start each day browsing the headlines until something sparks the desire to write a post, we link to it, we quote it, we offer our own perspective and so on. Perhaps with a fee we would all stop piggy-backing on the news for easy blogging ideas.

With that said, obviously linkage is a huge part of blogging. It’s how we find others in the community, it’s how we help one another and it’s how we spread ideas. I couldn’t imagine doing away with the inter-blog linking or charging for it. But I DO think the right thing to do with regards to the news is to start looking for a way we can all compensate the professionals for their hard work.

Happy Birthday Murphy

June 30, 2009 in Dog Training | Tags: , | by Mike | Leave a comment

4187_1136984352367_1460102902_30347303_8239981_n

 

I’ve had three great loves in my life: my wife, my kids and Murphy. Today he turns three. He still has a lot of puppy left in him (last night he stole one of my gardening gloves and ran laps around the yard with it while I yelled for him to stop). But he’s also come a long way as a member of our family and as my favorite hunting companion. He never leaves my side without permission in the field. He barks if someone strange shows up in our yard. He also sleeps with us almost every night, which is my way of saying he is spoiled rotten. He has literally claimed an entire couch in our house and we are happy to let him do it.  

I’ve had a lot of dogs in my life and I’ve loved them all…but this one has something special.  So happy birthday and many more buddy.

“He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog.

You are his life, his love, his leader.

He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart.

You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.”

 

Quote of the Day

June 30, 2009 in Progressive | Tags: , , , | by Mike | Leave a comment

From Bill Kaufman at Front Porch Republic:

Or as Deano Allen of Deano’s in Mocksville phrases it, “People ask me why I do things this way and I say it’s because everybody else always did it.” That’s the way to barbecue pork, say the Lord’s Prayer, and hit a baseball. Innovation, by contrast, gave us the atom bomb, Ellen DeGeneres, and microwaveable tofu burgers.

Change of Tactics

June 30, 2009 in Foreign Policy | Tags: , , , | by Mike | 2 comments

From Daniel Larison:

After quite a few weeks of defending Obama against his more unreasonable detractors, it is refreshing to be able to criticize the administration for its incredible incompetence in responding to the “coup” in Honduras. What is so impressive about the bungling here is that it contradicts every argument the administration has made in support of restraint and caution when it comes to the Iranian protests. Obama didn’t want to insert the U.S. into an Iranian dispute. Iranians, he said, would decide their own future. Hondurans apparently are not accorded the same respect. Their sovereignty isn’t quite as important. Obama withheld judgment about the legality of what had happened in Iran. In Honduras, he just knows that what the military did was illegal, despite far stronger evidence that it was legal and a result of the proper functioning of their constitutional system. U.S. intervention in Honduras has been no less than it has been in Iran. Indeed, it has been far greater. At least six times in the 20th century beginning in 1907, U.S. forces were deployed in Honduras. For fear that the U.S. might be seen to be replicating the error of 1953, Obama has kept his distance from the Iranian dispute. As ever, Central American nations’ past resentments about frequent U.S. intervention count for little or nothing, and so Obama has dived right in.

Perhaps he will cite the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine?

What Larison is too polite to suggest is that the President probably sees low risk in taking a more active verbal role with Honduras whereas there are huge implications for anything said about Iran.  I absolutely hate the notion of running our foreign policy that way.

Contradictions

June 29, 2009 in Agriculture, Progressive | Tags: , , | by Mike | 1 comment

Last week Patrick Deenan at Front Porch Republic threw out a challenge for the folks at Postmodern Conservative to debate the Front Porchers on their competing conservative views. The debate has circulated through the corner of the blogosphere that I frequent. I’m not going to post all the links here but there is some good stuff at The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, PoMoCon and in the comments of Patrick’s original post. There’s also a post by myself available here.

Over the weekend James Poulos, of Postmodern Conservative, asked a series of questions. One was by way of anecdote, which I really identified with:

My family likes making the effort to find and activate green alternatives for contemporary living. But we also like the rewards and benefits of making other kinds of efforts, which make a ‘full blown’ green way of life impracticable. We find contemporary life to be, on the whole, good; but we find much of it rotten. We hate much of what is on TV, yet we own a TV (basic cable) and watch it from time to time. We like country life, but all we can manage at the moment is a small rented cottage. We really wouldn’t want to live full-time at that cottage right now at all. But we love staying there at stretches. Although our enjoyment of the country is, by our lights, in no way superficial, we certainly regret not being able to draw indefinitely the sorts of goods associated with extended country living. We also regret not living on a tropical island, though we don’t really want to live on one.

This statement adequately sums up where I am on some of the things that Front Porch advocates. I love the rural. I love nature. I love spending time in both. I try hard to be more ‘green’ but I also would be lying if I said I didn’t still love my TV and I usually use a plastic water bottle at the gym and then throw it away.

Poulos hits on the contradictions we all must live with. As much as I like the FPR attitude and their affinity for many of the things that excite me (backyard gardens, small towns and all that they imply) I find myself sympathizing with a Postmodern Conservative viewpoint that seems to be more realistic.  Abraham Lincoln said, “We cannot escape history. We will be remembered in spite of ourselves.” I think there’s a lesson there in that we also cannot escape the future and progress, both good and bad.  It is quite near impossible to find a place so remote that airplanes do not fly overhead. Yet we can still enjoy the peace that comes in the moments between.

More thoughts ahead…

Tomatoes!

June 29, 2009 in Gardening | Tags: , , | by Mike | Leave a comment

 

Not much longer and they will be here. Our vines are covered in green tomatoes and I am examining them daily for signs of redness. Myself, my daughters and the dog are all drooling in anticipation. As the old song goes:

“There are only two things in life that money can’t buy…true love and homegrown tomatoes.”

The Continuing Adventures of Lunchbox Jones

June 28, 2009 in Progressive | Tags: , , | by Mike | Leave a comment

When I was a kid I was fairly well-behaved insofar as I only got in serious trouble occasionally and at school the nuns only had to beat me once in awhile. Okay, they never beat me (this was the kinder, gentler Catholic education of the 1980s). I did, however, have some friends who could really get into mischief. They weren’t bad kids, but they just liked to push the envelope a bit. The thing was though, they did so not by spray painting buildings or stealing cars but by doing slightly more exotic things like blowing up the 4th hole on the local golfcourse with a ‘borrowed’ blasting cap or climbing onto the roofs of local churches in the middle of the night to smoke cigarettes just to see if it could be done. We were kids whose brains had been warped by movies like The Adventures of Remo Williams, Goonies and Rambo.

Since I’ve had kids of my own I have decided that rather than keep the stories of our adventures and antics to myself, I would tell them to my kids, usually protraying myself as the voice of reason among my friends (rarely) and assigning all of the actions to one imaginary person. Rather than explain to my kids that all of my old buddies they see at picnics and in my hunting pictures were naughty boys 20 years ago, I created a fictional person I to heap these stories on. His names is Lunchbox Jones, who, according to the story, carried his lunch to school in the same Battle of the Planets lunchbox from 1st grade until our high school graduation.

In some of the stories Lunchbox Jones is just horsing around, but in a lot of them he ends up sounding like the hero. So when I want to tell her about how in 7th grade I saw one of my buddies karate kick another kid into  a urinal during a fight in a school bathroom…it was Lunchbox Jones defending a classmate from a bully. When I want to tell her about how one of my friend snuck out of recess and ran 5 blocks to buy candy at a grocery store and then sold them to everyone for twice what they were worth…it was Lunchbox Jones buying chocolates for his sweetie on Valentine’s Day.

My oldest daughter has figured things out, sort of. She now knows Lunchbox isn’t real but unfortunately she also thinks that I was the one that did all of these things, when the truth is that I was usually just the guy holding the ladder, or running for cover before the mailbox exploded. But that’s alright. My youngest still believes and she loves Lunchbox Jones stories. And she loves that I knew a kid that did all of these wild things. Every once in awhile the stories are actually about me. Like the time I brought a tape player to school and we all listened to a bootleg of Eddie Murphy’s Raw on the playground and laughed until it hurt.

Having great stories to tell is a sign of a life well-lived…I hope. If so, I Lunchbox Jones will still still around when my grandkids are ready for a tale or two.

Friday Evening Quote

June 26, 2009 in Progressive | Tags: | by Mike | Leave a comment

“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”

- Tallulah Bankhead