George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, who later changed it to George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, English poet, towering personality, and leading figure in the Romantic movement, was born January 22, 1788.
“A man of genius whose heart is perverted,” William Wordsworth called Lord Bryon.
“The most vulgar-minded genius that ever produced a great effect in literature,” George Eliot called Lord Byron.
“Mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” Caroline Lamb said of Lord Byron.
“The greatest poetic genius of our century,” Goethe called Lord Byron.
(“The greatest poetic genius of our century,” Lord Byron called Goethe.)
Byron was nine-years-old when he was introduced to sex by his nurse, one May Gray.
(Goethe did not go to bed with a woman until he was forty.)
Quoth Lord Byron’s friend, the fellow poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, in a letter from Venice:
The most ignorant, the most disgusting, the most bigoted, countesses smell so strongly of garlic, that an ordinary Englishman cannot approach them. Well, Lord Byron is familiar with the lowest sorts of these women, the people his gondolieri pick up in the streets.
“Wonderful man! I long to get drunk with him,” reads a line from Lord Byron’s journal, regarding Sir Walter Scot.
The Irish actor Gabriel Byrne once played Lord Byron in a bad B movie called Gothic:
“As long as I retain my feeling and my passion for Nature, I can partly soften or subdue my other passions and resist or endure those of others,” wrote Lord Byron.
“Lord Byron — the 6th Baron Byron — club-footed and handsome, whose full name was George Gordon Noel Byron, was as much a genius of personality as he was of poetry. He was only thirty-six when he died, yet he had already grown overweight and flaccid, with thinning hair and abominable teeth. Nonetheless, every second town in Greece would name a public square after him.”
But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;
It’s strange, the shortest letter which man uses
Instead of speech, may form a lasting link
Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces
Frail man, when paper — even a rag like this —
Survives himself, his tomb, and all that’s his.
Wrote Byron in Don Juan.
Lord Byron, one of the pulpiest of them all, 1788 – 1824, RIP.
James M. Buchanan, economist and Nobel Prize winner, died Wednesday, January 9th, 2013. He was 93. He was also among the most important economists of the 20th century:
“A founder and profound contributor to the discipline of public choice, the branch of economics that examines how governments actually make policies. Prior to his work, many economists focused on market failures, assuming that government actions would bring efficiency. Buchanan argued that self-interested individuals decided both private and public matters. Government failure was a likely outcome in response to market problems. After Buchanan, economists could not blithely assume that government had a solution for every problem on the public agenda.”
James Buchanan, a brilliant polemicist, was the perfect antidote to the overwhelming trend of Keynesian economics that pervade world culture, but which are destined to fail. The following is a brief but irrefutable critique of central planning — a critique Buchanan wrote in 1982 and which Don Boudreaux described as “Word for word, the most insightful thing I’ve ever read”:
James M. Buchanan, “Order Defined in the Process of its Emergence”*
*A note stimulated by reading Norman Barry, “The Tradition of Spontaneous Order,” Literature of Liberty, V (Summer 1982), 7-58.
Norman Barry states, at one point in his essay, that the patterns of spontaneous order “appear to be a product of some omniscient designing mind” (p. 8). Almost everyone who has tried to explain the central principle of elementary economics has, at one time or another, made some similar statement. In making such statements, however, even the proponents-advocates of spontaneous order may have, inadvertently, “given the game away,” and, at the same time, made their didactic task more difficult.
I want to argue that the “order” of the market emerges only from the process of voluntary exchange among the participating individuals. The “order” is, itself, defined as the outcome of the process that generates it. The “it,” the allocation-distribution result, does not, and cannot, exist independently of the trading process. Absent this process, there is and can be no “order.”
What, then, does Barry mean (and others who make similar statements), when the order generated by market interaction is made comparable to that order which might emerge from an omniscient, designing single mind? If pushed on this question, economists would say that if the designer could somehow know the utility functions of all participants, along with the constraints, such a mind could, by fiat, duplicate precisely the results that would emerge from the process of market adjustment. By implication, individuals are presumed to carry around with them fully determined utility functions, and, in the market, they act always to maximize utilities subject to the constraints they confront. As I have noted elsewhere, however, in this presumed setting, there is no genuine choice behavior on the part of anyone. In this model of market process, the relative efficiency of institutional arrangements allowing for spontaneous adjustment stems solely from the informational aspects.
This emphasis is misleading. Individuals do not act so as to maximize utilities described in independently existing functions. They confront genuine choices, and the sequence of decisions taken may be conceptualized, ex post (after the choices), in terms of “as if” functions that are maximized. But these “as if” functions are, themselves, generated in the choosing process, not separately from such process. If viewed in this perspective, there is no means by which even the most idealized omniscient designer could duplicate the results of voluntary interchange. The potential participants do not know until they enter the process what their own choices will be. From this it follows that it is logically impossible for an omniscient designer to know, unless, of course, we are to preclude individual freedom of will.
The point I seek to make in this note is at the same time simple and subtle. It reduces to the distinction between end-state and process criteria, between consequentialist and nonconsequentialist, teleological and deontological principles. Although they may not agree with my argument, philosophers should recognize and understand the distinction more readily than economists. In economics, even among many of those who remain strong advocates of market and market-like organization, the “efficiency” that such market arrangements produce is independently conceptualized. Market arrangements then become “means,” which may or may not be relatively best. Until and unless this teleological element is fully exorcised from basic economic theory, economists are likely to remain confused and their discourse confusing.
David Bowie is one of my absolute favorite musicians. Today he turned 66-years-old, and in honor of the occasion, after a full decade of silence, he released a new single called “Where Are We Now?”
Syncretism: a term that means the combining or reconciling of opposing practices and principles. It’s most commonly used in a religious or philosophical context, and as with Easter, Christmas too is syncretic in its origins: a pagan celebration whose provenance long predates Christ’s birth but which eventually made its way into the Christian mainstream.
As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until approximately 300 years after the death of Christ that the Roman church began observing Christmas, and it wasn’t until the 5th century AD that the church officially mandated that Christmas be observed by Christians throughout the world “as a festival honoring the birth of Jesus Christ” (though, let it be noted, Christ was not born in winter but most likely fall).
Not all Christians have agreed with this official Christmas mandate: in 1659, for instance, the Puritans of New England, about whom I’ve written before, banned Christmas by law throughout the Massachusetts Bay Colony, calling it “heathen, papist idolatry,” and even went so far as to deem its observance a crime punishable by imprisonment. It was until 1856 that in Boston people stopped working on Christmas.
What follows are some fascinating facts about the long and little-known history of Christmas.
From The Encyclopedia Americana:
Christmas was not observed in the first centuries of the Christian church, since the Christian usage in general was to celebrate the death of remarkable persons rather than their birth…a feast was established in memory of this event [Christ’s birth] in the 4th century. In the 5th century the Western church ordered the feast to be celebrated on the day of the Mithraic rites of the birth of the sun and at the close of the Saturnalia, as no certain knowledge of the day of Christ’s birth existed.
And from the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia:
Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the Church. The first evidence of the feast is from Egypt.
From The Buffalo News, November 22, 1984:
The earliest reference to Christmas being marked on Dec. 25 comes from the second century after Jesus’ birth. It is considered likely the first Christmas celebrations were in reaction to the Roman Saturnalia, a harvest festival that marked the winter solstice–the return of the sun–and honored Saturn, the god of sowing. Saturnalia was a rowdy time, much opposed by the more austere leaders among the still-minority Christian sect. Christmas developed, one scholar says, as a means of replacing worship of the sun with worship of the Son. By 529 A.D., after Christianity had become the official state religion of the Roman Empire, Emperor Justinian made Christmas a civic holiday. The celebration of Christmas reached its peak–some would say its worst moments–in the medieval period when it became a time for conspicuous consumption and unequaled revelry.
And here’s a passage from the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge:
How much the date of the festival depended upon the pagan Brumalia (December 25) following the Saturnalia (Dec. 17-24), and celebrating the shortest day of the year and the ‘new sun’…cannot be accurately determined. The pagan Saturnalia and Brumalia were too deeply entrenched in popular custom to be set aside by Christian influence…The pagan festival with its riot and merry-making was so popular that Christians were glad of an excuse to continue its celebration with little change in spirit and in manner. Christian preachers of the West and the Near East protested against the unseemly frivolity with which Christ’s birthday was celebrated, while Christians of Mesopotamia accused their Western brethren of idolatry and sun worship for adopting as Christian this pagan festival.
Finally, from the Encyclopedia Britannica:
Christmas was not among the earliest festivals of the church…. Certain Latins, as early as 354, may have transferred the birthday from January 6th to December 25, which was then a Mithraic feast…or birthday of the unconquered SUN…The Syrians and Armenians, who clung to January 6th, accused the Romans of sun worship and idolatry, contending…that the feast of December 25th, had been invented by disciples of Cerinthus.
The Democrat and Chronicle, of Rochester, New York, in December 1984 wrote:
The Roman festival of Saturnalia, Dec. 17-24, moved citizens to decorate their homes with greens and lights and give gifts to children and the poor. The Dec. 25 festival of natalis solis invicti, the birth of the unconquered sun, was decreed by the emperor Aurelian in A.D. 274 as a Winter Solstice celebration, and sometime (later)…was Christianized as a date to celebrate the birth of the Son of Light.
And in December of 1989, Dr. William Gutsch, chairman of the American Museum of Natural History, said, in the Westchester, New York, newspaper:
The early Romans were not celebrating Christmas but rather a pagan feast called the Saturnalia. It occurred each year around the beginning of winter, or the winter solstice. This was the time when the sun had taken its lowest path across the sky and the days were beginning to lengthen, thus assuring another season of growth.
If many of the trappings of the Saturnalia, however, seem to parallel what so many of us do today, we can see where we borrowed…our holiday traditions. And indeed, it has been suggested that while Christ was most likely not born in late December, the early Christians — then still an outlawed sect — moved Christmas to the time of the Saturnalia to draw as little attention as possible to themselves while they celebrated their own holiday.
The Saturnalia, of course, celebrated Saturn–the fire god. Saturn was the god of sowing (planting) because heat from the sun was required to allow for planting and growth of crops. He was also worshipped [sic] in this dead-of-winter festival so that he would come back (he was the “sun”) and warm the earth again so that spring planting could occur.
In an Easter post I once wrote, I quoted the genius priest-poet Gerard Hopkins, in a poem he wrote about spring. And in response to the passage just cited above, it seems relevant to recall those same words that Hopkins’s wrote:
What is spring?
Growth in everything.
Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,
Grass and greenworld all together;
Star-eyed strawberry-breasted
Throstle above her nested
Cluster of bugle-blue eggs thin
Forms and warms the life within;
And bird and blossom swell
In sod and sheath or shell.
All things rising, all things sizing
Mary sees, sympathizing
With that world of good,
Nature’s motherhood.
Winter. Death. Rebirth. The lengthening days. Life.
That, in part, is what Christmas represents.
But it also represents something more, something equally beautiful, and something much wider than the laws laid down by any one particular custom or creed: it represents peace on earth and good will towards women and men.
[T]hose who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common.
“There is no pattern, there is no increase,” says criminologist James Allen Fox of Boston’s Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass shootings in post offices.
The random mass shootings that get the most media attention are the rarest, Fox says. Most people who die of bullet wounds knew the identity of their killer….
Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America, said that while mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, according to his data. He estimates that there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first decade of the century.
This was written by the late Ted Hughes, most famous, I think, for being the husband of Sylvia Plath:
The pig lay on a barrow dead.
It weighed, they said, as much as three men.
Its eyes closed, pink white eyelashes.
Its trotters stuck straight out.
Such weight and thick pink bulk
Set in death seemed not just dead.
It was less than lifeless, further off.
It was like a sack of wheat.
I thumped it without feeling remorse.
One feels guilty insulting the dead,
Walking on graves. But this pig
Did not seem able to accuse.
It was too dead. Just so much
A poundage of lard and pork.
Its last dignity had entirely gone.
It was not a figure of fun.
Too dead now to pity.
To remember its life, din, stronghold
Of earthly pleasure as it had been,
Seemed a false effort, and off the point.
Too deadly factual. Its weight
Oppressed me—how could it be moved?
And the trouble of cutting it up!
The gash in its throat was shocking, but not pathetic.
Once I ran at a fair in the noise
To catch a greased piglet
That was faster and nimbler than a cat,
Its squeal was the rending of metal.
Pigs must have hot blood, they feel like ovens.
Their bite is worse than a horse’s—
They chop a half-moon clean out.
They eat cinders, dead cats.
Distinctions and admirations such
As this one was long finished with.
I stared at it a long time. They were going to scald it,
Scald it and scour it like a doorstep.
Here is a small sampling of the things that Barack Obama supporters backed — please own it — in backing Barack Obama:
Mohamed Morsi — first Islamist president in Egypt’s history and a member the Muslim Brotherhood which openly advocates violence against women much like the unspeakable deed we see in this photo — is supported and sanctioned by Barack Obama and his administration.
Barack Obama recently welcomed the election of the first Islamist president in Egypt’s history.
This is a man who during his campaign, a campaign the Obama administration openly supported, said: “The Koran is our Constitution, the prophet is our leader, jihad is our path, and death in the name of allah is our goal.”
This same man, Mohamed Morsi, belongs to an organization called the Muslim Brotherhood, which among other things explicitly pledges in its charter to “infiltrate western society and destroy it from within.”
This same man, to whom Barack Obama sent $450 million taxpayer dollars, also supportsforced female circumcision, genital mutilation, and the absolute rejection of women’s rights.
If, therefore, you believe, as I do, in women’s rights, gay rights, and the inalienable rights of all human beings regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, color, class, or creed, please note that if you backed Barack Obama, you backed a man who backs a man who sanctions this. Because when the Obama administration says, as it recently did: “We look forward to working with President-elect Mohamed Morsi, and the government he forms” — they were not, I assure you, kidding (though in reality it sounds like a very sick joke indeed).
The bureaucratic monstrosity known as the Internal Revenue Service — the IRS — will now control the majority of your healthcare decisions, thanks to ObamaCare. The private, one-on-one relationship between you and your doctor will be effectively abolished.
Obama not only extended but expanded the so-called Patriot Act, which among liberals George Bush was properly vilified for, and which supports among other things warrentless wire-taps, invasive surveillance, and spying on American citizens.
Obama then went on to signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which among other things grants him the power to indefinitely detain and arrest any American citizen any time he wants, under his discretion. Obama supporters (unwittingly) called Barack “a psychopath” for these very policies, although when they realized it was in fact Barack who signed these policies, everything became inexplicably okay:
Instead of “cutting the deficit in half,” as he pledged on February 23, 2009, Barack Obama has amassed the greatest debt this country has ever known, and which will turn a once economically great nation on its economic head.
When pot smokers and recreational drug-users voted for Barack Obama because, during his initial campaign for President, he promised “a compassionate drug policy,” they may not have realized that in actuality Obama requested $25.6 billion for drug control by 2013. That is the highest yearly total ever by an American president. More here on this absolutely pointless and profligate life-destroying war-on-drugs:
And let us not, of course, forget the so-called stimulus package which Barack Obama rammed through before anyone had even read the bill — a very partial listing of which expenditures runs something like this:
Department of Agriculture – Office of Inspector General $22,500,000
Department of Commerce – Office of Inspector General $10,000,000
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – Office of Inspector General $6,000,000
Department of Justice – Office of Inspector General $2,000,000
NASA – Office of Inspector General $2,000,000
Defense Department – Office of Inspector General $15,000,000
Department of Energy – Office of Inspector General $15,000,000
Department of the Treasury – Inspector General for Tax Administration $7,000,000
General Services Administration – Office of Inspector General $7,000,000
Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency Board $84,000,000
Small Business Administration – Office of Inspector General $10,000,000
Department of Homeland Security – Office of Inspector General $5,000,000
Bureau of Indian Affairs – Office of Inspector General $15,000,000
Environmental Protection Agency – Office of Inspector General $20,000,000
Department of Labor – Office of Inspector General $6,000,000
Department of Health and Human Services – Office of Inspector General related to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology $17,000,000
Department of Education – Office of Inspector General $14,000,000
Corporation for National and Community Service – Office of Inspector General $1,000,000
Social Security Administration – Office of Inspector General $2,000,000
Government Accountability Office salaries and expenses $25,000,000
Veterans Affairs – Office of Inspector General $1,000,000
State Department – Office of Inspector General $2,000,000
Department of Transportation – Office of Inspector General $20,000,000
Department of Housing and Urban Development – Office of Inspector General $15,000,000
Aid to People Affected by Economic Downturn $36,910,807,000
Rural Housing Service insurance fund program account – direct loans and unsubsidized guaranteed loans $11,672,000,000
Rural community facilities program account $130,000,000
Special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children (WIC) $500,000,000
School lunch programs for schools in which at least 50% of students are eligible for free or reduced price meals $100,000,000
Food bank commodity assistance program $150,000,000
Temporary increase in benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) $19,900,000,000
Food distribution program on Indian reservations $5,000,000
Agricultural disaster assistance transition – Federal Crop Insurance Act
Farm operating loans $173,367,000
Direct farm operating loans $20,440,000
IRS health insurance tax credit administration $80,000,000
Emergency food and shelter $100,000,000
Bureau of Indian Affairs job training and housing improvement programs $40,000,000
Indian guaranteed loan program $10,000,000
Community service employment for older Americans $120,000,000
Extra funding for state unemployment insurance $150,000,000
State re-employment services for the jobless $250,000,000
Child care assistance for low-income families $1,651,227,000
Child care assistance for low-income families through state programs $255,186,000
Child care assistance for low-income families to improve infant and toddler care $93,587,000
Community Service Block Grant Program $1,000,000,000
Social Security Act funding 50,000,000
Social Security Administration processing of disability and retirement workloads $460,000,000
Aid to State and Local Governments $58,355,000,000
State administrative expenses to carry out increase in food stamp program $295,000,000
Economic development assistance programs $150,000,000
Violence against women prevention and prosecution programs $225,000,000
Office of Justice Programs state and local law enforcement assistance (Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grants) $2,000,000,000
State and local law enforcement assistance grants to improve criminal justice systems, assist crime victims and mentor youth $225,000,000
Southern border and high-intensity drug trafficking areas $30,000,000
ATF Project Gunrunner $10,000,000
State and local law enforcement assistance to Indian tribes $225,000,000
Crime victim assistance $100,000,000
Rural drug crime program $125,000,000
Internet crimes against children initiatives $50,000,000
Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants $1,000,000,000
Justice Department salaries and expenses for administration of police grant programs $10,000,000
Community Development Financial Institutions Fund for financial assistance, training and outreach to Native American, Hawaiian and Alaskan native communities $100,000,000
Local and state fire station upgrades and construction $210,000,000
Disaster assistance direct loans may exceed $5,000,000 and may be equal to not more than 50% of local government annual budget if the government lost 25% or more in tax revenues
State Fiscal Stabilization Fund to avoid cutbacks and layoffs (82% must be used for education while 18% may be used for public safety and other government services. The latter part may be used for repairs and modernization of K-12 schools and college and university buildings.) $53,600,000,000
Business $870,000,000
Rural Business – Cooperative Service: rural business program account $150,000,000
Small Business Administration salaries and expenses, microloan program and improvements to technology systems $69,000,000
Surety bond guarantees revolving fund $15,000,000
Small business loans $636,000,000
Education $48,420,000,000
State grants for adult job training $500,000,000
State grants for youth job training and summer employment opportunities $1,200,000,000
Dislocated worker job training $1,250,000,000
YouthBuild program for high school dropouts who re-enroll in other schools $50,000,000
Job training in emerging industries $250,000,000
Job training in the renewable energy field $500,000,000
Head Start programs $1,000,000,000
Early Head Start program expansion $1,100,000,000
Education for the disadvantaged – elementary and secondary education 10,000,000,000
Education for the disadvantaged – school improvement grants $3,000,000,000
Education impact aid $100,000,000
School improvement programs $650,000,000
Innovation and improvement of elementary and secondary schools $200,000,000
Special education funding under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act $12,200,000,000
Pell grants for higher education $15,840,000,000
Institute of Education data systems $245,000,000
Institute of Education state data coordinators $5,000,000
Dislocated worker assistance national reserve $200,000,000
School improvement grants awarded based on the number of homeless students identified in a state $70,000,000
Student aid administrative costs $60,000,000
Energy $41,400,000,000
Energy efficiency and conservation block grants $3,200,000,000
Weatherization Assistance Program (increases maximum income level and maximum assistance) $5,000,000,000
State energy program $3,100,000,000
Advanced batteries manufacturing, including lithium ion batteries, hybrid electrical systems, component manufacturers and software designers $2,000,000,000
Modernize electricity grid $4,400,000,000
Electricity grid worker training $100,000,000
Fossil energy research and development $3,400,000,000
Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund $390,000,000
Department of Energy science programs $1,600,000,000
Advanced Research Projects Agency $400,000,000
Innovative technology loan guarantee program $6,000,000,000
Western Area Power Administration construction and maintenance $10,000,000
Bonneville Power Administration borrowing authority $3,250,000,000
Western Area Power Administration borrowing authority $3,250,000,000
Leading edge biofuel projects $500,000,000
Federal building conversion to “high-performance green buildings” $4,500,000,000
Energy efficiency federal vehicle fleet procurement $300,000,000
Health Care $18,830,000,000
Indian Health Service information technology and telehealth services $85,000,000
Indian health facilities $415,000,000
Grants for public health centers $500,000,000
Construction, renovation, equipment and information technology for health centers $1,500,000,000
National Health Service Corps funding $75,000,000
Addressing health professions workforce shortage $425,000,000
National Institutes of Health grants and contracts to renovate non-federal research facilities $1,000,000,000
National Institute of Health grants and contracts for shared resources and equipment for grantees $300,000,000
National Institutes of Health fund to support scientific research $7,400,000,000
National Institutes of Health Common Fund $800,000,000
National Institutes of Health renovations of high-priority buildings at the Bethesda, Md., campus, and at other locations $500,000,000
Comparative effectiveness research $300,000,000
Comparative effectiveness research by the National Institutes of Health 400,000,000
Comparative effectiveness research by the Department of Health and Human Services $400,000,000
Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology $1,680,000,000
National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s regional or subnational efforts $300,000,000
Department of Commerce health care information enterprise integration activities related to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology $20,000,000
Department of Health and Human Services computer and information technology security $50,000,000
Department of Health and Human Services Prevention and Wellness Fund $1,000,000,000
Prevention and Wellness Fund immunization program $300,000,000
Prevention and Wellness Fund evidence-based clinical and community-based prevention strategies $650,000,000
Prevention and Wellness Fund reduction in incidence of health-care-associated infections $50,000,000
Rehabilitation services and disability research 540,000,000
State grants for rehabilitation services and disability research $18,200,000
Rehabilitation services in independent living centers $87,500,000
Rehabilitation services for older blind individuals $34,300,000
Other $2,147,000,000
Census Bureau programs $1,000,000,000
Digital-to-analog television converter box program $650,000,000
President shall establish arbitration panel under FEMA public assistance program to expedite recovery efforts from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
Requirement that Department of Homeland Security uniforms be manufactured and sewn together by U.S. fabric and apparel companies
National Endowment for the Arts grants $50,000,000
Department of Labor salaries and expenses $80,000,000
Additional awards to existing AmeriCorps grantees $83,000,000
AmeriCorps program salaries and expenses $5,200,000
AmeriCorps program administrative costs of expansion $800,000
National security trust appropriation $40,000,000
Social Security Administration health information technology research $40,000,000
Filipino World War II veterans compensation $198,000,000
Science and Technology $13,142,000,000
Farm Service Agency salaries and expenses to maintain and modernize the information technology system $50,000,000
Distance learning, telemedicine and broadband program $2,500,000,000
National Telecommunications and Information Administration – broadband technology opportunities program $4,690,000,000
National Institute of Standards and Technology scientific and technical research and services $220,000,000
National Institute of Standards and Technology construction of research facilities $360,000,000
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration operations, research and facilities $230,000,000
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration procurement, acquisition and construction $600,000,000
NASA science $400,000,000
NASA aeronautics $150,000,000
NASA exploration $400,000,000
NASA cross agency support $50,000,000
National Science Foundation research and related activities $2,500,000,000
National Science Foundation education and human resources $100,000,000
National Science Foundation major research equipment and facilities construction $400,000,000
National Science Foundation – Office of Inspector General $2,000,000
Veterans Affairs for hiring and training of claims processors $150,000,000
Veterans Affairs information technology systems $50,000,000
State Department technology security upgrades $252,000,000
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) technology $38,000,000
Transportation and Infrastructure $98,325,000,000
Agriculture buildings and facilities and rental payments $24,000,000
Agricultural Research Service buildings and facilities $176,000,000
Natural Resources Conservation Service watershed and flood prevention programs $290,000,000
Watershed rehabilitation program $50,000,000
Rural Utilities Service water and waste disposal program account $1,380,000,000
Defense Department facilities operation and maintenance, Army $1,474,525,000
Defense Department facilities operation and maintenance, Navy $657,051,000
Defense Department facilities operation and maintenance, Marine Corps $113,865,000
Defense Department facilities operation and maintenance, Air Force $1,095,959,000
Defense Department facilities operation and maintenance, Army Reserve $98,269,000
Defense Department facilities operation and maintenance, Navy $55,083,000
Defense Department facilities operation and maintenance, Marine Corps Reserve $39,909,000
Defense Department facilities operation and maintenance, Air Force Reserve $13,187,000
Defense Department facilities operation and maintenance, Army National Guard $266,304,000
Defense Department facilities operation and maintenance, Air National Guard $25,848,000
Army research development, test and evaluation $75,000,000
Navy research development, test and evaluation $75,000,000
Air Force research development, test and evaluation $75,000,000
Defense-wide research development, test and evaluation $75,000,000
Defense Department medical facilities repair and modernization including energy efficiency $400,000,000
Corps of Engineers investigations $25,000,000
Corps of Engineers construction $2,000,000,000
Corps of Engineers – Mississippi River and tributaries $375,000,000
Corps of Engineers operations and maintenance $2,075,000,000
Corps of Engineers regulatory program $25,000,000
Corps of Engineers formerly utilized sites remedial action program $100,000,000
Bureau of Reclamation water and related resources, including inspection of canals in urbanized areas $900,000,000
Central Utah Project water programs $50,000,000
California Bay-Delta restoration $50,000,000
Non-Defense environmental cleanup $483,000,000
Defense environmental cleanup $5,127,000,000
Federal buildings and courthouses $750,000,000
Border stations and land ports of entry $300,000,000
Department of Homeland Security headquarters consolidation $200,000,000
Customs and Border Protection non-intrusive inspection systems $100,000,000
Customs and Border Protection tactical communications equipment and radios $60,000,000
Border security fencing, infrastructure and technology $100,000,000
Land border ports of entry construction $420,000,000
Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactical communications equipment and radios $20,000,000
Transportation Security Administration checked baggage and checkpoint explosives detection machines $1,000,000,000
Coast Guard shore facilities and aids to navigation facilities $98,000,000
Coast Guard alteration of bridges $142,000,000
FEMA public transportation and railroad security $150,000,000
FEMA port security grants $150,000,000
Bureau of Land Management maintenance and restoration of facilities, trails, lands, abandoned mines and wells $125,000,000
Bureau of Land Management construction of roads, bridges, trails and facilities, including energy efficient retrofits $180,000,000
Wildland fire management and hazardous fuels reduction $15,000,000
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service maintenance and construction on wildlife refuges and fish hatcheries and for habitat restoration $165,000,000
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service roads, bridges and facilities, including energy efficient retrofits $115,000,000
National Park Service facilities and trails $146,000,000
Historically black colleges and universities preservation $15,000,000
National Park Service road construction, cleanup of abandoned mines on parkland and other infrastructure $589,000,000
U.S. Geological Survey facilities and equipment, including stream gages, seismic and volcano monitoring systems and national map activities $140,000,000
Bureau of Indian Affairs construction of roads, schools and detention centers $450,000,000
Superfund site cleanup $600,000,000
Leaking underground storage tank cleanup $200,000,000
Clean water state revolving fund grants $4,000,000,000
Safe drinking water capitalization grants $2,000,000,000
Brownfields projects $100,000,000
Diesel emission reduction grants and loans $300,000,000
Forest Service road, bridge and trail maintenance; watershed restoration; facilities improvement; remediation of abandoned mines; and support costs $650,000,000
Wildfire mitigation $500,000,000
Smithsonian Institution repairs $25,000,000
Construction, renovation and acquisition of Job Corps Centers $250,000,000
Social Security Administration’s National Computer Center replacement $500,000,000
Military construction, Army – child development centers and warrior transition complexes $180,000,000
Military construction, Navy and Marine Corps – child development centers and warrior transition complexes $280,000,000
Military construction, Air Force – child development centers and warrior transition complexes $180,000,000
Military hospital construction and energy conservation investments $1,450,000,000
Military construction, Army National Guard $50,000,000
Military construction, Air National Guard $50,000,000
Family housing construction, Army $34,507,000
Family housing operation and maintenance, Army $3,932,000
Family housing construction, Air Force $80,100,000
Family housing operation and maintenance, Air Force $16,461,000
Temporary expansion of military homeowner assistance program to respond to mortgage foreclosure and credit crisis, including acquisition of property at or near military bases that have been ordered closed. $555,000,000
Veterans Affairs hospital maintenance $1,000,000,000
National Cemetery Administration for monument and memorial repairs $50,000,000
State extended care facilities, such as nursing homes $150,000,000
State Department diplomatic and consular programs for domestic passport and training facilities $90,000,000
International Boundary and Water Commission – Rio Grande levee repairs $220,000,000
Additional capital investments in surface transportation including highways, bridges, and road repairs $1,298,500,000
Administrative costs for additional capital investments in surface transportation $200,000,000
Capital investments in surface transportation grants to be awarded by other administration $1,500,000
Federal Aviation Administration infrastructure $200,000,000
Grants-in-aid for airports $1,100,000,000
Highway infrastructure investment $26,725,000,000
Highway infrastructure investment in Puerto Rico $105,000,000
Highway infrastructure funds distributed by states $60,000,000
Highway infrastructure funds for the Indian Reservation Roads program $550,000,000
Highway infrastructure funds for surface transportation technology training $20,000,000
Highway infrastructure to fund oversight and management of projects $40,000,000
High speed rail capital assistance $8,000,000,000
National Railroad passenger corporation capital grants $850,000,000
National Railroad passenger corporation capital grants for security $450,000,000
Federal Transit Administration capital assistance $6,800,000,000
Public transportation discretionary grants $100,000,000
Fixed guideway infrastructure investment $750,000,000
Capital investment grants $750,000,000
Shipyard grants $100,000,000
Public housing capital improvements $3,000,000,000
Public housing renovations and energy conservation investments $1,000,000,000
Native American housing block grants $510,000,000
Community development funding $1,000,000,000
Emergency assistance for the redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed homes $2,000,000,000
Additional capital investments in low-income housing tax credit projects $2,250,000,000
Homelessness prevention and re-housing $1,500,000,000
Assistance to owners of properties receiving section 8 assistance $2,000,000,000
Grants and loans for green investment in section 8 properties $250,000,000
Lead hazard reduction $100,000,000
So congratulations are in order, I suppose, to all Barack Obama supporters who, even though they don’t have any real understanding of political-economic philosophy, got exactly what they wanted — while the rest of us must deal with the utterly despicable and disastrous consequences.
In hell, said Randal Jarell, Americans tell each other how to make a martini.
A martini — “the elixir of quietude” as E.B. White described it — consists of gin and vermouth. The ingredients are chilled and then strained into a cocktail glass. That, at any rate, is the original martini, though vodka is now, somewhat grudgingly, accepted in the place of gin.
Gin is a strange and fascinating spirit, with a long and diverse history. It is in essence an admixture of grain alcohol and juniper-berry oil and was invented by a 17th Century Dutch medical professor named Francois de Boe Sylvius, who created it to relieve kidney disorders and, he said, “to purify the blood.”
Sylvius called his confection “Genever,” which is the Dutch word for juniper.
Gin is relatively easy and inexpensive to produce, and, in large part for this reason, it took England by complete storm.
Vermouth today — whether sweet or dry — is an entirely different deal from the vermouth that existed back in the days of Francois de Boe Sylvius. Back then, you see, Vermouth was a sweet(ish) digestif made from a myriad of things, such as: orange peels and flowers, juniper and nutmeg, cloves, coriander, cinnamon, marjoram, brandy, white wine, tree bark, and that’s not even the half of it. Today, however, vermouth is mediocre wine, usually white, with herbal-and-spice infusions and alcohol fortification. Sugar is often added.
The true origins of the gin martini are murky, though many stories do exist. Some, for example, say that back in 1912, a legendary New York bartender by the name of Martini invented the drink. Others believe it was first concocted much earlier and in prototypical fashion, back in 1850, in San Francisco, by Professor Jerry Thomas, who purportedly made it for a miner on the way to Martinez, California. The result: the Martinez cocktail, which is a gin-vermouth-maraschino drink, slightly different from the martini, but a venerable drink nevertheless, which still exists to this day. Yet the citizens of Martinez, California say that the martini originated right there, in 1870, and the bartender who first built it was a man named Julio Richelieu.
One thing that’s known for certain: The Martinez cocktail first appeared in The Bartenders Guide in 1887.
The Oxford English Dictionary, a usually impeccable source, tells us — incorrectly — that the martini was invented in 1871, but this was a full twenty years after Jerry Thomas’s drink came into existence.
The English, on the other hand, say that because of its kick, the martini comes from a strong British rifle called a Martini & Henry.
Many New Yorker’s would have us believe that a bartender at the Knickerbocker Hotel — one Martini di Arma di Taggia — invented the drink in 1911 for John David Rockefeller, who, by the way, took his martini with London Dry Gin, dry vermouth, bitters, lemon peel and a single olive.
But, whatever.
About the shape of the glass there is little dispute.
The ritual is really the thing,
holding the stem of the chalice to the light,
somewhat to bless the dying day.
But ever you are ready to begin,
Be extra careful not to bruise the gin.
In his phony-baloney speech from 2007, Barack Obama explicitly claimed that unlike those in New York City following 9/11 and unlike those in Florida following hurricane Andrew, the federal government wasn’t spending enough on the predominantly black victims of Hurricane Katrina because, as then-Senator Obama put it,”they don’t care about [you] as much.”
But as the economist Thomas Sowell points out in his recent column:
Departing from his prepared remarks, [Obama] mentioned the Stafford Act, which requires communities receiving federal disaster relief to contribute 10 percent as much as the federal government does.
If you want to know what community organizers do, this is it — rub people’s emotions raw to hype their resentments. And this was Barack Obama in his old community organizer role, a role that should have warned those who thought that he was someone who would bring us together, when he was all too well practiced in the arts of polarizing us apart.
Why is the date of this speech important? Because, less than two weeks earlier, on May 24, 2007, the United States Senate had in fact voted 80-14 to waive the Stafford Act requirement for New Orleans, as it had waived that requirement for New York and Florida. More federal money was spent rebuilding New Orleans than was spent in New York after 9/11 and in Florida after hurricane Andrew, combined.
And here’s the real kicker:
Unlike Jeremiah Wright’s church, the U.S. Senate keeps a record of who was there on a given day. The Congressional Record for May 24, 2007 shows Senator Barack Obama present that day and voting on the bill that waived the Stafford Act requirement. Moreover, he was one of just 14 Senators who voted against — repeat, AGAINST — the legislation which included the waiver.
When he gave that demagogic speech, in a feigned accent and style, it was world class chutzpah and a rhetorical triumph. He truly deserves the title Phony in Chief.
If you can listen to his speech affectation without wincing in embarrassment, you’re a stronger person than I:
Barack (“My-Grandmother-Is-A-Typical-White-Person”) Obama, a garden-variety racist who because he’s black has been given a pass on his devotion to Jeremiah Alvesta Wright.
The Drudge Report has this as its headline right now:
Barack Obama in 1998: “I Actually Believe In Redistribution”
I’d personally file this under the “No Shit” column, but evidently there is still some question about it, so here you are, straight from the dingy source:
Eric Arthur Blair — A.K.A. George Orwell — 1903-1950
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity,” wrote George Orwell, “and when there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”
I confess I myself sometimes feel like that cuttlefish spurting out ink, but that’s perhaps beside the point. The quoted line is from a timeless essay George Orwell wrote in 1946 called “Politics and the English Language,” which essay, like George Orwell himself, influenced many writers, at least one of whom later went out of her way to deny any influence.
In his essay, George Orwell rather convincingly makes the surprising argument that there’s a direct and demonstrable link between politics and poor writing, between governments and the degeneration of language.
How so?
Because, says George Orwell, and I agree, all issues are at root political issues, and “politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.”
His essay is a fascinating read — I can assure you not boring even to those uninterested in politics — and what one finds perhaps most striking about it is that it touches upon the profound connection that exists between thought and language, between the proper use of words and clarity in thinking.
Pretentious diction, dying metaphors, verbal false limbs, these are the cardinal sins he catalogs and condemns — “an accumulation of stale phrases chokes like tea leaves blocking a sink” — whereas, on the other hand, the scrupulous writer, in every sentence she or he writes, will ask four basic questions:
1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
And then probably two more:
1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?
Generally I’m wary of the overly proscriptive, and this essay does have a little of that stench about it. Yet it’s so thoughtful and so well-written that it’s faults are overshadowed.
