Bookworm Room

Does history repeat itself? I fervently hope not. Ok, I have grudgingly thrown my support behind Mitt Romney. It’s not that I am excited about Romney as a candidate, but I am genuinely excited about the need to get Obama out of office before he does irreversible damage to this country. But, here is where [...]

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Here’s a Robert Samuelson article, “bye bye Keynes” that should give us all pause: the arguments he uses to write Keynes’ obituary are arguments that we all posited in our own excoriation of Keynes in years past, in response to a string of commentators, ranging from A to Z. I’ve been reviewing our last few [...]

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I own (or, rather, the bank and I own) a nice lot here in Marin County.  I’ve got a pretty back yard with views of hills and water.  When the trees at the back of my property get too tall, I hire a reputable tree trimming company to cut them down.  That sounds perfectly reasonable, [...]

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In the wake of the horrific child abuse scandal roiling Penn State, many have been trying to understand how Sandusky’s predatory behavior could have continued unchecked for so long.  The focal point of this “how could this happen” question is the fact that Mike McQueary actually witnessed an assault.  Rather than rearranging Sandusky’s face, McQueary [...]

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What the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protestors don’t realize (yet) is that they have been suckered into becoming the agents of their own enslavement. Orwell had it so right in defining the Left because he was a man of the Left. The term “Orwellian” now refers to the Left’s use of terms to mean the [...]

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Don Quixote asked me at lunch today what I thought of the Wall Street Protests.  In one way, I think they’re utterly stupid.  After all, how seriously can you take people who storm Wall Street with this particular list of demands? Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by [...]

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When I was a little girl, one of the refrains in my life was “get your cotton-pickin’ fingers out of that.”  I didn’t mean to be destructive.  I was always certain I could make things better.  I had bald Barbies, because I was pretty sure I could make their hair look better.  I had misshapen [...]

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I’m working on a settlement statement in a very depressing divorce case (divorce cases, which I work on as infrequently as possible, are always depressing, but this one is worse than most), so blogging will suffer today.  Nevertheless, I wanted to share with you a matched set about government overreach: At the White House Dossier, [...]

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I woke up this morning to find that my Leftist friends literally plastered Facebook with the above poster.  (Since I grew up and still live in the Bay Area, I have lots of Leftist friends.)  If the text on the image is unclear, this is what it says: There is nobody in this country who [...]

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For those readers under 40 (and I know I have at least one), let me open this post by explaining what a Potemkin Village is.  The story goes (and it is a story) that when Catherine the Great traveled through late 18th century Russia, her lover and go-to guy Prince Gregori Potemkin would hasten to [...]

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Sometimes the matched sets just write themselves.  Both of the articles I’m quoting here are from England.  The first in our set is an article saying that town councils across England are being told that they need to reinstate actual playgrounds.  The current versions, which are the kid equivalent of a padded room, are creating [...]

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Last night was back-to-school night at my daughter’s new high school.  I was deeply impressed.  The facility is beautiful; the classrooms are clean, bright and well-maintained; the teachers are engaging; the test scores are over-the-top; and the expensive extras (fancy computers, lab equipment, etc.) are all in place.  My daughter loves her new school.  All [...]

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My child participates in a youth swim league.  In a couple of weeks, all the regional swim teams are gathering together for the big meet of the season.  Each swim team has to pay a fee to participate.  Because I’m on the planning committee this year, I learned something interesting:  the private swim clubs pay [...]

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Do you ever listen to Frank Caliendo?  He’s a talented impressionist who spends much of his time ragging on John Madden.  One of the things Caliendo claims that Madden does is restate his premise as if it’s a different conclusion, i.e., “Here’s a guy with mud on his jersey.  When you mix dirt and water, [...]

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There are  few issues that have been obfuscated as diligently by the media organs of the MSM Left as has been the housing crisis that led to our current economic depression. Why, of course they would do that: the Democrats are guilty as sin! We’ve observed on the pages of this very blog the attempts [...]

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I like to consider myself a true and patriotic American, but I have a confession to make:  I hate baseball.  Yes, I know it’s the quintessential American sport, right up there in Americana with Mom and apple pie.  But I still hate it.  I find it boring and surprisingly non-athletic.  It’s such a static game.  [...]

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A charming and pointed reminder about Obama’s game-playing with our money: Hat tip:  Long-time blog friend judyrose.

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This post tells the story of a case on which I worked.  It’s a true story. Picture this: It’s 2001.  You live in California and you own a small business that consists of you and maybe three to five at-will employees.  Your profits are decent. One morning, Jane, one of your employees, announces that she’s [...]

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Is our democracy germinating the seeds of its own destruction? Alexis de Toqueville warned, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” That day has come. It is not yet gone. Democracy  in ancient Athens lasted about 250 years. We in the United [...]

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There’s a fiery debate over whether Republicans won or lost the budget round over discretionary spending.  Good examples of the pros and cons on that debate are Peter Wehner (Boehner did great) and Dick Morris (Boehner was a spaghetti-spined disaster). What do you think?

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DQ here.  My wife works for the government.  She received an e-mail today from the Dan Tangherlini, Assistant Secretary for Management, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Performance Officer, U.S. Department of the Treasury.  The message related to the possible shut down of the government and it began with the following paragraph: Throughout the discussions about funding [...]

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I am cheap.  Very cheap.  That means that I’m a bargain hunter.  I like used books and cheap clothes.  I prefer to buy American but, if my pocketbook tells me that America isn’t a good deal, I’ll usually follow my pocketbook.  Usually, but not always.  If buying something from another country would put me in [...]

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I find Ron Paul abhorrent, and I worry about Rand Paul, who seems like a slightly more polished version of Daddy.  Nevertheless, even creepy people can be right, as Rand Paul is about government spending. His point, basically, is that Republicans and Democrats are battling over bandage quality, rather than actually treating the wound.  The [...]

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I was reading Rick Steves’ Italy 2011 (the 2010) version, when I was surprised to learn this little fact on page 21: Because Europeans are generally careful with energy use, you’ll find government-enforced limits on air-conditioning and heating.  There’s a one-month period each spring and fall when neither is allowed. For those of us in [...]

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It’s not often I get the pleasure of laughing out loud when I read a “serious” political piece, especially one from an Obama acolyte, but I have to admit that this one completely lifted my mood.  The author, David Kendall, at heart, seems to be an honest soul because he recognizes that there is nothing [...]

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