Scott Adams knows a thing or two.....

If you are outside the mass hysteria bubble you might have noticed that President Trump never campaigned to be our moral leader. He presented himself as – in his own words “no angel” – with a set of skills he offered to use in the public’s interest. He was big on law and order, and equal justice under the law. But he never offered moral leadership. Voters elected him with that knowledge. Evidently, Republicans don’t depend on politicians for moral leadership. That’s probably a good call.

When the horror in Charlottesville shocked the country, citizens instinctively looked to their president for moral leadership. The president instead provided a generic law and order statement. Under pressure, he later named specific groups and disavowed the racists. He was clearly uncomfortable being our moral lighthouse. That’s probably why he never described his moral leadership as an asset when running for office. We observe that he has never been shy about any other skill he brings to the job, so it probably isn’t an accident when he avoids mentioning any ambitions for moral leadership. If he wanted us to know he would provide that service, I think he would have mentioned it by now.

-as culled from this blog post

Spengler knows some things too...........

The best solution is a compromise which removes the issue from politics altogether. ... That won't do much good, but there isn't much good to be done. The best outcome would be to defuse the issue, and hope that people can walk away from it and get back to the business of getting an education and making a living. Nothing will console Southerners for their defeat in the Civil War; nothing will compensate African-Americans for hundreds of lost years. The best anyone can do is to find a way to live with it and get on with life.

-as he concludes this blog post

Remember.......................

How are we doing..........................?

     The bedrock attribute of a successful city district is that a person must feel personally safe and secure on the street among all these strangers.  He must not feel automatically menaced by them.

-Jane Jacobs, The Death And Life Of Great American Cities

Nature......................

“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think” 

-Gregory Bateson

Must haves........................

Fifty years ago.......................

At the movies............John Wayne and friends.........War Wagon

On nothingness................................

The best sort of ruler promises nothing, and delivers on his promise every time. The worst sort of tyrant has “plans.”...

“That government is best which governs least,” said Henry David Thoreau. Well, yes and no. The statement is used to champion weak government. But I am for a government that is unbreakably strong.

Chinese sages understood this, too, including the mystical Lao Tzu and those old Tories, Confucius and Mencius: that it takes tremendous power to do nothing. Voting whittles that power away.

-as excerpted from this David Warren post

Consider...........................

Consider how the species we call whales have dwelled on this planet fifty-six million years longer than we have and yet they never found it necessary to invent Trident submarines and other fanciful ways of destroying life.

-Matthew Fox


pix via

Fifty years ago...................

The Sunshine Company.......................Back On The Street Again

On conceptual divisions.........

"... perhaps the great disaster of human history is one that happened to or within religion:  that is, the conceptual division between the holy and the world, the excerpting of the Creator from the creation."

-Wendell Berry

Radical amazement.........................

“Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. ....get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.” 

-Abraham Heschel

photo via

Fifty years ago......................

Kenny O'Dell.....................................................Beautiful People

On conspiracy theories................

Friend Bilbo offers nine more cartoons on the subject.   Always remember:   Just because you are paranoid doesn't mean they are not out to get you.

Fifty years ago...................

Bunny Sigler.............Let The Good Times Roll And Feel So Good

Adding these to my quiver.....................................

The world is just a better place when Jeff posts regularly.

Speaking of global warming.........................

(and probably ending my obsession with this wondrous song)


via

Fifty years ago.....................

John Hartford................................................Gentle On My Mind

Just wondering what "normal rigor" looks like....

Every prominent instance of journalism that proceeds with less than normal rigor when the subject touches on social justice feeds a growing national impulse to dismiss everything published about these subjects—even important, rigorous, accurate articles. Large swathes of the public now believe the mainstream media is more concerned with stigmatizing wrong-think and being politically correct than being accurate. The political fallout from this shift has been ruinous to lots of social-justice causes—causes that would thrive in an environment in which the public accepted the facts.


-Conor Friedersdorf, as taken from here

Opening paragraphs.................

     The propensity to barter and exchange is an innate human characteristic.  An inclination to divine the future is another deeply ingrained trait.  Together they comprise the act of financial speculation.  "All life is speculation," declared the celebrated nineteenth-century American trader James R. Keene, "the spirit of speculation is born with men."  For the earliest know historical cases of speculation we must turn to ancient Rome during the Republic of the second century B.C.  By this date, the Roman financial system had developed many of the characteristics of modern capitalism:  markets flourished because Roman law allowed the free transfer of property, money was lent out at interest, money changers dealt in foreign currencies, and payments across the Roman territories could be make by bankers'draft.  Capital concentrated in Rome, as it later did in Amsterdam, London, and New York.  The idea of credit had also developed, along with a primitive form of insurance for ships and other forms of property.  The people of Rome exhibited a passion for the accumulation of wealth, matched by an extravagance in its display and consumption.  Gaming was common.

-Edward Chancellor,  Devil Take The Hindmost:  A History Of Financial Speculation

Fifty years ago..................

The Parliaments..............................................(I Wanna) Testify

In principle..........................

The study of the psychology of speculators is as valuable as it ever was. I think the clearest summing up of the whole thing was expressed by Thomas F. Woodlock when he declared: "The principles of successful stock speculation are based on the supposition that people will continue in the future to make the mistakes that they have made in the past."

-Jesse Livermore

Fifty years ago......................

Buffalo Springfield (actually Neil Young)..........Expecting To Fly

Well, it would be different..................

What if the biggest black swan over the coming decades is no black swan events?

-asks Ben Carlson

A few stray thoughts...............

As in the pseudoscience of bloodletting, just so in the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and planning, years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense.

It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we no longer care how things work, but only what kind of quick, easy outer impression they give

As in all Utopias, the right to have plans of any significance belonged only to the planners in charge.

There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and be served.

-Jane Jacobs, as culled from her introduction to her 1961 book, The Death and Life Of Great American Cities

One after another....................

I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced that they are about to change the world.  I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference after another.

-attributed to Ellen Goodman

Opening paragraphs.................

     The twelfth day of July 1817 saw the arrival of the first of those sultry, sweaty summer days that Concord's farmers knew as dog days.  Their almanacs marked these as beginning July 3 and ending August 11 - the forty-day period preceding the rising of the Dog Star, Sirius - but they knew that the first furnace blase of austral air could come a week or more on either side of the third.  this was good grass-growing weather; red-top, herd's-grass, sheep's fescue, and Canadian bluegrass and the ripening rye and wheat presented a checkerboard of greens, purples, reds, and golds.  Walking the fields were haymakers in white shirts and straw hats, occasionally setting aside their scythes and calling out to one another.

-Kevin Dann,  Expect Great Things:  The Life and Search of Henry David Thoreau

But, the experts told us......................

     There is a wistful myth that if only we had enough money to spend- the figure is usually put at a hundred billion dollars - we could wipe out all our slums in ten years, reverse decay in the great, dull, gray belts that were yesterday's and day-before-yesterday's suburbs, anchor the wandering middle class and its wandering tax money, and perhaps even solve the traffic problem.
     But look what we have built with the first several billions:  Low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism, and general social helplessness than the slums they were supposed to replace.  Middle-income housing projects which are truly marvels of dullness and regimentation, sealed against any buoyancy or vitality of city life.  Luxury housing projects that mitigate their inanity, or try to, with a vapid vulgarity.  Cultural centers that are unable to support a good book store.  Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums, who have fewer choices of loitering place than others.  Commercial centers that are lackluster imitations of standardized suburban chain-store shopping.  Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders.  Expressways that eviscerate great cities.  This is not the rebuilding of cities.  This is the sacking of cities.

-Jane Jacobs,  The Death and Life Of Great American Cities (1961)

Fifty years ago...................

Bob Crewe Generation................................Music to Watch Girls By

Other than the cold showers, no caffeine.......

..................no sugar, juicing, and doing something terrifying every day, this is a pretty good list for living life large.

Decisions, decisions, decisions......

Every day, either you live by priorities or you live by pressures.  There is no other option.  Either you decide what is important in your life, or you let other people decide what is important in your life.

-Rick Warren

The more things change...................

A good Parson once said, that where Mystery begins, Religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human Laws, that where Mystery begins, Justice ends? It is hard to say, whether the Doctors of Law or Divinity have made the greater Advances in the lucrative Business of Mystery. The Lawyers, as well as the Theologians, have erected another Reason besides Natural Reason; and the Result has been, another Justice besides Natural Justice. They have so bewildered the World and themselves in unmeaning Forms and Ceremonies, and so perplexed the plainest Matters with metaphysical Jargon, that it carries the highest Danger to a Man out of that Profession, to make the least Step without their Advice and Assistance.

Edmund Burke, 1756, as excerpted from here

Actually, there is one rule................

....................................................................You have to do it!

via

Say it isn't so...............................................

.................................Be interesting to see how this turns out.  I'm old-fashioned enough to believe that a good salesperson is a value-added proposition.

Betting against Bezos............................................

...............................................Not sure why you would do that.

Fifty years ago....................

First Edition (Kenny Rogers)...........................Just Dropped In



Purists may say this is from 1968, but it was recorded in the fall of 1967

Judgment..............................

............................................................................................Yep.

Qualifications.......................

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

-Edmund Burke, 1791 Letter to a Member of the National Assembly

As processes go................................

For the most part, God lets the Evolution Factory handle reality. The Evolution Factory is one of his better projects. Brilliant really.

After all, if You were God and were going to create and run an entire universe, You wouldn’t really want to be running around it all the time doing hands-on alterations on everything from quarks to galaxies. Micromanagement is boring and doing a bunch of handwork on the entire universe for all eternity can get old really quick. It’s much better just to create a process that will essentially hunt and peck along for order across billions of years and, sooner or later, come up with a life form that can both apprehend You and make a hot-fudge sundae at the same time.

-As culled from here

You were meant to be here...................

Emerson, Lake & Palmer.............................From The Beginning




There might have been things I missed 
But don't be unkind 
It don't mean I'm blind 
Perhaps there's a thing or two 

I think of lying in bed 
I shouldn't have said 
But there it is 

You see it's all clear 
You were meant to be here 
From the beginning 

Maybe I might have changed 
And not been so cruel 
Not been such a fool 
Whatever was done is done 
I just can't recall 
It doesn't matter at all 

You see it's all clear 
You were meant to be here 
From the beginning

Verse.....................

My son, forget not my law; but let thine heart keep my commandments:

2  For length of days, and long life, and peace, shall they add to thee.

3  Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart:

4  So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man.

5  Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

6  In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

7  Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil.

8  It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones.

-Proverbs 3: 1-8      The Holy Bible, KJV

to minister.........................

     Happiness lies not it the mere possession of money;  it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.  The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits.  These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

-Franklin D. Roosevelt, culled from his first inaugural address, March 4, 1933

Recontextualizing.......................

     Humor is a means of detachment or recontextualizing the events of life.  It is a way of being lighthearted and "wearing the world like a loose garment."  It leads to compassion for the totality of human life and reveals the option that one can play at life without getting involved in it as though it were an exhausting life-and-death struggle.

-David R. Hawkins

Standard..............................

"Most folks figure a true friend is someone who accepts them as they are.  But that is dangerous garbage to believe."  He gave a dismissive wave of his hand.  "The kid who works the drive-through at your local fast-food restaurant accepts you for who your are - because he doesn't care anything about you.  But a true friend holds you to a higher standard.  A true friend brings out the best in you."  Jones cocked his head and leaned across the table as if he were about to tell them a secret.  "A best friend," he said softly, "will always tell you the truth ... and a wise best friend will include a healthy dose of perspective."

-Andy Andrews,   The Noticer:  Sometimes, all a person needs is a little perspective

Fifty years ago.......................

The Bee Gees......................................................To Love Somebody

Spengler makes a point on..............

.....................historical immigration, and suggests some new lines for the President's Senior Advisor.   History is a complicated thing.  Probably why we don't think too much about it these days.

Acosta repeatedly interrupted Miller, chanting "Give me your tired, your poor...," a line from Emma Lazarus' 1883 sonnet The New Colossus which is engraved on the base of the Statue of Liberty. If anything, Miller handled the CNN journalist too gently. He might have said: America had no restrictions to immigration in 1883, and millions of white European immigrants poured into the American heartland. To accommodate them we drove out the Native Americans. By 1890 there were only 250,000 Native Americans left in the United States, compared to 2 million or more before European settlers arrived. In other words, we gave privileges to white people and killed or displaced people of color. You can argue the merits of this policy, but we don't want to return to a situation in which immigration occurs at the expense of people who were here first."

Opening paragraphs................

     On winter days when she was a child, Jane's grandmother told her, they'd skate on the canal, along twenty miles of it frozen solid near their house.  Back in the 1850's, before the railroad finally won out against it, the canal was how you got clean-burning anthracite coal from the mines of central Pennsylvania to big-city markets.  It would be loaded on shallow-draft boats, maybe fifteen tons of it at a time, then towed down the canal that ran alongside the North Branch of the Susquehanna River, by mules on the adjacent towpath.  A dollar a ton, you could figure, from Wilkes-Barre, in the heart of anthracite country, to Philadelphia.  Making the boats, and repairing them, was its own little industry.  And since the 1830s a key center of it was Espy, a town of a few hundred drawn out along the north bank of the canal, home to lock tenders and canal maintenance workers, as well as a tannery, a pottery, and a brickyard.  From early spring, when the ice melted, until late fall, according to a 1936 memoir, the locals, "set the tempo of their lives to the tireless plodding hoof beats of the mules."  Boys in town looked with envy at those their own age driving the mules or else lolling on the decks of passing boats.

-Robert Kanigel,  Eyes On The Street:  The Life of Jane Jacobs

On causes.......................

No need to understand why cities decline, she counseled, only why they prosper:  "The most elementary point is the most startling.  There are no causes of stagnation.  There are no causes of poverty.  There are only causes of growth."

-Robert Kanigel,  from the Introduction to Eyes On The Street:  The Life of Jane Jacobs

A truth about blogging................

Asking the important questions.........

He has only just started................

...........................................but it looks like a fabulous year.

Cosmic or atomic, or something like that...............

Twofer.................................

Fifty years ago.....................

Linda Ronstadt & The Stone Poneys....................Different Drum

Twelve truths....................................

Number one: the first and truest thing is that all truth is a paradox. Life is both a precious, unfathomably beautiful gift, and it’s impossible here, on the incarnational side of things. It’s been a very bad match for those of us who were born extremely sensitive. It’s so hard and weird that we sometimes wonder if we’re being punked. It’s filled simultaneously with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, desperate poverty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together. I don’t think it’s an ideal system.


-Anne Lamott, by way of View From the Ledge

It's the question of the decade........

"One of the puzzling questions about the financial crisis is why none of the executives of the major firms were prosecuted for what some legal experts believe was widespread fraud."

-as culled from here

Wouldn't prosecution of fraud have been a better solution to the problem than Dodd-Frank?  Just wondering.

Wisdom.........................

....................................................another collection of "random thoughts" from the Execupundit.

What could possibly go wrong............

...............................starring Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote

Look Deeper.....................

Look deeper through
the telescope
and
do not be afraid when the stars
collide towards the darkness,
because sometimes,
the most beautiful things
begin in chaos.

Crash and burn.
Let it all fuse into one.

Let it all collide
the way two people exchange
eyes
when they meet for the
very first time.

-Robert M. Drake

Chaos............................

KwangHo Shin           untitled        oil           2013

via gapingvoid.com

One way for Democrats................

...........to reclaim the mantle of being the party "for the people," would be to vow to stop civil forfeiture.   Megan McArdle weighs in.  This whole concept is madness.  What is Sessions thinking?   I can think of no one I would trust with this sort of power.

But the Founding Fathers were not unaware that bad people would sometimes get away if prosecutors had a high burden of proof to meet. They were not unaware that some of those people would go on to do further bad things. What they understood, and Sessions apparently does not, is that there are even worse things than crime, and one of them is a government that is allowed to steal our liberty like a thief in the night.

Life is simpler........................

................................................when you have a "too hard" pile.

On my way..................................

David Sanborn...............................................Comin' Home Baby

Fifty years ago...........................

The Who.....................................................................Tattoo

Opening paragraphs.................

     The dark-haired man stared at the wall in front of him.  His chair, like the rest of the furniture, was pleasing to the eye but not made for comfort.  The style was Early American, the theme Spartan, as if those about to be granted an audience with the occupant of the inner office should reflect on their awesome opportunity in stern surroundings.

-Robert Ludlum,  The Chancellor Manuscript

On dusty roads............................

Mountain.................................Theme For An Imaginary Western

On the importance of "incremental progress"....

John McCain delivers a listen-worth speech.  Lots of great quotes.  One of my favorites, as he describes Senate deliberations, "they haven't been overburdened by greatness lately."   Do give it a listen.

In the right place................

All she needed
was a minute 
to fall in love
with all the stars,

With all the night
and all the day.

With the way the world
took her breath,
and the way
her life took a different
turn.

Things change...

and after that night
it all just changed.

She believed
and
that is all she needed.

That night she inspired me.
That night I, too,
had changed.

-Robert M. Drake

   enlargeable version with description here

This is one bandwagon........................

.........................I won't be getting on.  Talk about slippery slopes...

A very good reason to study history.....

Why am I telling you all this? Because I fear that, except for a few of us remaining graybeards and some immigrants from the world’s manifold tyrannies and anarchies, most Americans are too young to remember, even vicariously, the ills that the world can inflict and the effort it takes to withstand and restrain them. They have studied no history, so not only can they not distinguish Napoleon from Hitler, but also they have no conception of how many ills mankind has suffered or inflicted on itself and how heroic has been the effort of the great, the wise, and the good over the centuries to advance the world’s enlightenment and civilization—efforts that the young have learned to scorn as the self-interested machinations of dead white men to maintain their dominance. While young people are examining their belly buttons for microaggressions, real evil still haunts the world, still inheres in human nature; and those who don’t know this are at risk of being ambushed and crushed by it.

-Myron Magnet, as culled from this essay

via

On civil forfeiture...................

........................................Glenn Reynolds weighs in:

In the meantime, Sessions is doing exactly the wrong thing by doubling down on asset seizure. The message it sends is that the feds see the rest of us as prey, not as citizens. The attorney general should be ashamed to take that position. And, really, he should just be gone.

The Art of Parenting..............

...........23 dangerous things you should let  encourage your kids do.   Pretty good list, but they left off "playing in the creek."

via

Engage..........................

     We crave ease, but stimulation is what really makes us happy.  We try to subtract at work, do less, check out.  These are signs of burnout.  We don't need to subtract;  we need to add novel challenges to create engagement.

-Eric Barker,  Barking Up The Wrong Tree:  The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong

Ah, science..............................

      via

Perfect..............................

       via

Fifty years ago...............................

The Rolling Stones........................Let's Spend The Night Together

Truth telling..............................

“It has long been recognized that getting an education is effective for bettering oneself and one's chances in the world. But a degree and an education are not necessarily synonymous.”

-Jane Jacobs,  Dark Age Ahead

From an Amazon customer review of Dark Age Ahead comes this passage:  In her definition, a "dark age" is one in which a culture loses its past knowledge, falling into a mass amnesia in which life grows more miserable and short under the influence of quacks, fear and superstition, with each resulting failure driving people further into desperation, isolation and further self-destructive action.

Politics as blood sport...............

While Blaine was determined to keep Stalwarts out of Garfield's administration, he knew that he had to resist the temptation to rush in as Sherman had.  Conkling and his men were formidable adversaries.  To succeed, an attack would have to be both clever and quiet.  "They must not be knocked down with bludgeons," Blaine brooded.  "They must have their throats cut with a feather."

-Candice Millard,  Destiny of the Republic:  A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President

Everybody listen to me......................

Grand Funk Railroad................I'm Your Captain/Closer To Home

Memory Lane...........................

Ray reaches back and shares his youthful self's television favorites.   Here's one of mine:



Mighty Mouse wiki here

And also incoherent........................

“our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people’s intolerance, which is intolerable. And, unlikely as it sounds, this has now become the highest, most rarefied form of multiculturalism...."

-Mark Steyn, as quoted here

The good old days.............................

Although he argued that he should "take the stump and bear a fighting share of the campaign," traveling from town to town and asking for votes was considered undignified for a presidential candidate.  Abraham Lincoln had not given a single speech on his own behalf during either of his campaigns, and Rutherford B. Hayes advised Garfield to do the same.  "Sit crosslegged," he said, "and look wise."

-Candice Millard,  Destiny Of The Republic:  A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President

Ed. Note:  History has shown that Lincoln wasn't totally against giving speeches.  See also the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

Mind and heart........................

"Mind and heart.  Materialistic values cannot give us peace of mind.  So we really need to focus on our inner values, our true humanity.  Only this way can we have peace of mind - and more peace in the world."

-the Dalai Lama,  The Book of Joy:  Lasting Happiness in a Changing World

A distinction with a difference............

"Money is a claim to capital, not capital itself."

-Deidre Nansen McCloskey
   

Hmmmm..................................

• A paradox: Boosting efficiency often reduces effectiveness.

-Nicholas Bate, from his wonderful new series

Well...................................

....................................................it would be a good start anyway.   The WaPo clearly picked this up.  Don't know what they said, because it is behind their paywall, one I won't be penetrating.  Let me know what I missed.

Here is where I confess..................

.................to never having read anything written by David Foster Wallace, until now.  Pointed in his direction by this blog post, I read his July, 1996 Esquire magazine essay, The String Theory.  Faithful readers may remember that my love of reading was kindled by Philadelphia sports writers in the 1960s.   DFW puts those guys to shame.  When one gets a kick out of reading the author's footnotes, one suspects the author is among the best.

"You are invited to try to imagine what it would be like to be among the hundred best in the world at something. At anything. I have tried to imagine; it's hard."

On creating problems.................

"It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.” 

-Malcolm Forbes

image via

On problems...............................

 "It turns out that wishful thinking does not solve problems, but creates them."

-Tim Harford, as culled from here

True............................

       via

I know how the story ended............

..................but I still got anxious watching the countdown:




July 16, 1969.  Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins head toward the moon.

Ten declarations...........................

4.    I declare that it is true that life turns out best for the one who makes the best of the way life turns out. The key is improvisation in the face of the unexpected, which is always to be expected. A better name for that is surprise.

-Robert Fulghum, other nine are here


via

Twofer............................

Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington/Don't Get Around Much Anymore




Willie Nelson............................Don't Get Around Much Anymore

 

Morning drive music....................

The Tornados...........................................................Telstar

Steam................................

Steam.......................................Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye

A good question........................

On what principle is it that with nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?

-Thomas Babington Macaulay

Progress................................

"Getting 100,000 miles out of a car in 1970 was cause for celebration.  Not getting 100,000 miles out of a car today is cause to think you bought a lemon."

-Steven Horwitz, as taken from this publication

The more things change............

...............................the more they stay the same.  To wit:

The present moment is one of great distress. But how small will that distress appear when we think over the history of the last forty years; a war, compared with which all other wars sink into insignificance; taxation, such as the most heavily taxed people of former times could not have conceived; a debt larger than all the public debts that ever existed in the world added together; the food of the people studiously rendered dear; the currency imprudently debased, and imprudently restored. Yet is the country poorer than in 1790? We firmly believe that, in spite of all the misgovernment of her rulers, she has been almost constantly becoming richer and richer. Now and then there has been a stoppage, now and then a short retrogression; but as to the general tendency there can be no doubt. A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.

-as quoted from Southey's Colloquies on Society, published in 1830

Remember when we were told..............

.................we couldn't "drill our way out" of an oil crisis"?

Divining the reasons behind ordinary Americans’ disenchantment with the political class is a robust industry these days. They might, in their searches, want to consider that smug, unequivocal assertion that “we can’t drill …” And that patronizing, “addicted to oil” line. The people saying these things were so sublimely confident in their predictions. Seems they weren’t familiar with the wisdom of Yogi Berra who said, immortally, that, “Predictions are hard. Especially about the future.”

-as excerpted from here

via