Ever since M'Lady and I moved to our current pastoral setting this kind of thing keeps getting funnier and funnier. If the commercial isn't enough for you - try this story about paying to work on a farm as a vacation.
Still want to find out where your food comes from? I would be willing to let you clean our chicken coop if you paid me $50.00. But you can't keep the eggs or "the compost".
H/T: Instapundit
"A trillion here and a trillion there and pretty soon
you're talking about unreal money."
-Vanderleun
Dr. Andrew Weil has an interesting article at The Huffington Post entitled Should You Get Your Drug Information From An Actor? Dr. Weil makes a fair case against direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical marketing but then goes off the rails at the end of the article when he recommends a government solution to this "problem". Not much of a surprise considering where the article is posted.
I don't know about you, but I have a hard time getting my primary care physician to do anything he doesn't want to do. A few years ago I had a much worse than usual case of the flu and my doc basically said "What do you want me to do? You're sick. You have the flu, go home, force fluids and rest. And no I won't give you any antibiotics - they're over-prescribed as it is." Now how much luck do you think I would have getting him to give me a prescription for some medication I saw pitched on television? Not that I would even ask - that's why I go to him. He's my expert and if he thinks this test or that prescription is a good idea, we talk about it and then I do it. I hired him for his expertise because I don't even play a doctor on TV.
So if direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical marketing works as well as Dr. Weil suggests there is something wrong with the medical profession and government intervention ain't going to fix it. Perhaps they should just let us self-diagnose, put vending machines in the waiting rooms and call it close enough.
But Dr. Weil's point about where and from whom we get our information is a very valid. I have repeatedly expressed the same concern in the political arena. In politics, everyone is allowed an opinion, no matter how illogical or uninformed it is. But when an opinion is given more crediance because it came from this actor or that musician we have a problem. For years I have been telling people "When I want the lastest information about geo-politics I consult the Dixie Chicks." I usually just get a blank stare.
Which leads me to the juxtaposition I found so interesting at The Huffington Post. Among their guest bloggers are Bill Maher (comedian), Larry Flint (pornographer) and Eve Ensler (playwright/actress). In addition, one of the most commented on posts was a video of Jon Stewart (comedian/news caster/comedian) and with whom I have a major problem - see here and here. I have to ask - how is this any different than Sally Fields hawking Boniva to the great unwashed? Especially if the readers are not very discerning? How does this elevate the discourse?
No, no - the telephone book came last week. I was just looking at Google Analytics for my little blog or as I refer to it - my digital scrapbook (want to know when the wild blackberries will be ready for pie - just type "blackberry" in the search box). Anyway, as you can see, I don't take this blog very seriously. It's mostly me just howling at the moon and throwing things in the "digital box" that I might want to refer to again. I've never had an Instalanche and because my blog is pretty mundane I don't expect that will ever happen.
But every once in a great while I amuse myself by looking at where my small trickle of blog traffic comes from. I suddenly noticed something interesting and, lo and behold, I made Sippican Cottage's blog role! This is truly an honor for me because I think Sippican Cottage is one of the finest sites on the Internet. If you have never visited Sippican Cottage before, make it a point to do so now. Don't forget to check out the furniture - where antiques are made fresh daily. M'Lady and I can personally attest to the high quality of these products. And while you're at it visit The Borderline Sociopathic Blog For Boys. My childhood comes to life again - when boys truly could be boys and people still read "Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel".
Thanks Sipp!
Now read "The Difference Between Informative and Insightful" at Sippican Cottage, where insight reigns supreme.
File this under "Only Nixon Could Go To China". Craig Fugate is the Obama appointed head of FEMA. If Michael Brown said this after Katrina he would have been drawn and quartered. From The Atlantic (emphasis added):
“We need to change behavior in this country,” he told about 400 emergency-management instructors at a conference in June, lambasting the “government-centric” approach to disasters. He learned a perverse lesson in Florida: the more the federal government does in routine emergencies, the greater the odds of catastrophic failure in a big disaster. “It’s like a Chinese finger trap,” he told me last spring, as a hailstorm fittingly raged outside his office. If the feds do more, the public, along with state and local officials, do less. They come to expect ice and water in 24 hours and full reimbursement for sodden carpets. But as part of a federal system, FEMA is designed to defer to state and local officials. If another Katrina hits, and the locals are overwhelmed, a full-strength federal response will inevitably take time. People who need help the most—the elderly, the disabled, and the poor—may not get it fast enough."
I have to say I like this guy and the self sufficiency he stands for - because during the next big disaster he's going to need help - from you:
To avoid “system collapse,” as he puts it, Fugate insists that the government must draft the public. “We tend to look at the public as a liability. [But] who is going to be the fastest responder when your house falls on your head? Your neighbor.” He criticizes the media for “celebrating” people who choose not to evacuate and then have to be rescued on live TV—while ignoring all the people who were prepared. “This is a tragedy, this whole Shakespearean circle we’re in. You never hear the media say, ‘Hey, you’re putting this rescue worker in danger.’”
It seems Mr. Fugate watched what happened right after 9/11 when people were still being dragged out of the rubble. Or how the ferry boat captains and others immediately organized to rescue the airplane passengers and crew that crash landed in the Hudson River. For the most part this is how we Americans roll. You do what needs to be done because most of us sure don't sit around waiting for the government to do it for us.
Besides, I've been looking for a reason to post this video.
H/T TigerHawk
So I dropped the girls off at a movie, and — since the Insta-wife was lunching with her mom — stopped at a Sonny’s Barbecue for lunch. A man — late 40s, big, with a wife and a daughter — came in with an empty holster on his belt. As he sat down at the booth next to mine, the manager came by and asked him if he’d left his gun in the car. Yes, said the man, who had a permit but thought he wasn’t allowed to carry in restaurants in Tennessee.. Well, they’ve changed the law, said the manager, and if you want to go get it that’s fine with us. It’s legal now, and I’m happy to have you carrying — if somebody tries to rob me, it’s two against one.
The man stepped outside and returned with a Springfield XD in the holster, chatted with the manager for a bit about guns, and then sat down and had lunch with his family.
Posted at by Glenn Reynolds at 2:24 pm
I have always been a big fan of Matthew Sweet. And tell me who doesn't love Susanna Hoffs? Check out more tracks from their most recent collaboration "Under the Covers - Vol 2" on their MySpace page.
Or maybe it's just a matter of class. Anyway, I thought the juxtaposition of the two was interesting since they took place within a week of each other. Dylan could have easily dismissed the police as idiots, which musically speaking they are, but instead he completely co-operated with them. Problem solved.
From the AP:
By WAYNE PARRY
Rock legend Bob Dylan was treated like a complete unknown by police in a New Jersey shore community when a resident called to report someone wandering around the neighborhood.
Dylan was in Long Branch, about a two-hour drive south of New York City, on July 23 as part of a tour with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp that was to play at a baseball stadium in nearby Lakewood.
A 24-year-old police officer apparently was unaware of who Dylan is and asked him for identification, Long Branch business administrator Howard Woolley said Friday.
"I don't think she was familiar with his entire body of work," Woolley said.
The incident began at 5 p.m. when a resident said a man was wandering around a low-income, predominantly minority neighborhood several blocks from the oceanfront looking at houses.
The police officer drove up to Dylan, who was wearing a blue jacket, and asked him his name. According to Woolley, the following exchange ensued:
"What is your name, sir?" the officer asked.
"Bob Dylan," Dylan said.
"OK, what are you doing here?" the officer asked.
"I'm on tour," the singer replied.
A second officer, also in his 20s, responded to assist the first officer. He, too, apparently was unfamiliar with Dylan, Woolley said.
The officers asked Dylan for identification. The singer of such classics as "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Blowin' in the Wind" said that he didn't have any ID with him, that he was just walking around looking at houses to pass some time before that night's show.
The officers asked Dylan, 68, to accompany them back to the Ocean Place Resort and Spa, where the performers were staying. Once there, tour staff vouched for Dylan.
The officers thanked him for his cooperation.
"He couldn't have been any nicer to them," Woolley added.
How did it feel? A Dylan publicist did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Friday.
"When I was waiting in the lobby for the doctor to see me, the "Town Hall" meeting with President Obama was on the television. It occurred to me that I'd never listened to the guy give a speech, same as his predecessor. It was surreal for my wife and I to sit there and listen to us being discussed like we were a kind of furniture that needed rearranging. It's supposedly a time for questions, but I only have one question, and it's for the audience, not the dais demagogue -- for anyone that would watch or participate in such an event, pro or con:
Why would you let someone who knows precisely nothing of value about you talk to you like that?"
- Sippican Cottage
From Jill Lawrence at Politics Daily:
"LAS VEGAS – Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, was having second thoughts – or was he? – about the way he had characterized people who are disrupting town halls with "lies, innuendo and rumor," and not letting others speak. They are, he had said, "evil-mongers."
A day after tossing out the term "evil-mongers" in the closing speech of his annual clean energy conference, Reid was alternating between pride in his coinage and knowing that he probably should be trying to defuse, not escalate, the turmoil erupting at town meetings across the country on health care reform.
"It was an original with me. I maybe could have been less descriptive," Reid said. He also said, "I doubt that you'll hear it from me again." But a few minutes later, he couldn't resist a sardonic little joke. "I feel I haven't done anything to embarrass them," Reid said of his children. "Except maybe call somebody an evil-monger."
"The future of this Republic will be decided in the streets, Chicago style.
This is what Obama wants after all. He threatens that “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
Deal. We will both bring guns. Out of the 200,000,000 guns in this Republic, how many belong to the enemies of liberty?
Game. Set. Match."
- The Return Of Scipio
As defined by Wikipedia:
"Reductio ad Hitlerum is rationally unsound as guilt by association (a form of association fallacy), it illogically attempts to shift culpability from a villain to an idea regardless of who is espousing it and why."
Apparently Nancy Pellosi has not heard of this or Godwin's Law. Again, citing Wikipedia:
"For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically "lost" whatever debate was in progress. This principle itself is frequently referred to as Godwin's Law."
Speaker Pellosi recently accused the "AstroTurf" protesters of showing up at town hall meetings carrying swastikas.
What????????? I've seen a lot of American flags but no swastikas. And I wouldn't really think the Nazi Party or any of their symbolism would get any kind of love or understanding from a Tea Party type of crowd. However it does make for a pretty wide brush to smear your opponents with, now doesn't it?
And you know, I wasn't going to put up a copy of the poster that is taking L.A. and the Internet by storm - until I ran into an article in The Washington Post that contends the poster is racist.
Edgy? Yes. Racist? Give me a break. The tortured logic (if you can call it logic) employed by the writer doesn't stand up to even casual scrutiny. But it sure is effective when it comes to quelling that viral poster and branding anyone associated with it.
This is already ugly and it's going to get worse.
UPDATE - Frank J. Fleming weighs in:'Whatever you give a woman, she will make greater. If you give her sperm, she'll give you a baby. If you give her a house, she'll give you a home. If you give her groceries, she'll give you a meal. If you give her a smile, she'll give you her heart. She multiplies and enlarges what is given to her. So, if you give her any crap, be ready to receive a ton of shit.'
- Anon.
Paul over at Powerline:
"Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Arlen Specter held a town hall meeting on health care today in Philadelphia. The audience appears to have been mostly hostile.
In the one exchange I've seen, Specter tried to explain how he goes about learning what's in a 1,000 page piece of legislation. Specter said that, because of time constraints, his practice is to divide responsibility for reading the bill among his staffers. This explanation brought boos from the crowd.
The Senate fancies itself "the world's greatest deliberative body." But it's becoming increasingly clear that the Senate is not a deliberative body at all -- not when Senators concede that they would vote on legislation to overhaul one-sixth of our economy, and arguably the most important sixth, without having read the legislation. Specter's defense that there's not enough time for him to read it all himself simply raises the problem in a more acute from: why would the world's greatest deliberative body consider legislation on a timetable that leaves Senators with insufficient to see for themselves exactly what's in the bill?
Americans inevitably will disagree over how our health care system should operate. But nearly every American would agree that Senators should know what's in major health care legislation before they vote on it, and that such legislation should not be enacted in a rush.
The problem is not unique to health care legislation. The same thing happened last year with comprehensive immigration reform and earlier this year with the stimulus bill. Congress is at risk of losing the confidence of the American people based on purely procedural concerns."
H/T Instapundit
Glenn Reynolds provides this picture of the Ohio State House in Columbus. It seems a few folks turned out for the latest Tea Party today. As I have been telling everyone, this new Washington crowd has made and continues to make a very basic mistake - they keep pissing off the wrong people. This is not a rent-a-mob provided by a union or ACORN. These are grassroots events organized by common, everyday people that are greatly concerned about where this country is headed. These are the people that make this country work and most of them are too busy to protest - though they have made the time to make their views known. And they are not going away any time soon.
