Quotes

"Fascism and communism both promise "social welfare," "social justice," and "fairness" to justify authoritarian means and extensive arbitrary and discretionary governmental powers." - F. A. Hayek"

"Life is a Bungling process and in no way educational." in James M. Cain

Jean Giraudoux who first said, “Only the mediocre are always at their best.”

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law. Sir Winston Churchill

"summum ius summa iniuria" ("More laws, more injustice.") Cicero

As Christopher Hitchens once put it, “The essence of tyranny is not iron law; it is capricious law.”

"Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." Ronald Reagan

"Law is where you buy it." Raymond Chandler

"Why did God make so many damn fools and Democrats?" Clarence Day

"If I feel like feeding squirrels to the nuts, this is the place for it." - Cluny Brown

"Oh, pshaw! When yu' can't have what you choose, yu' just choose what you have." Owen Wister "The Virginian"

Oscar Wilde said about the death scene in Little Nell, you would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh.

Thomas More's definition of government as "a conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of a commonwealth.” ~ Winston S. Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples

“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.” ~ Jonathon Swift

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

From Liederkranz to Life-Threatening

My favorite writer for American Heritage Magazine is John Steele Gordon. He usually writes the Business of America column. He gives needed background context to current events and insight into past events that are prologue to today. One of his earlier articles dealt with the limited American variety of cheeses,"Consider the United States. It has produced only three great,
uniquely American cheeses: Monterey Jack, brick, and Liederkranz." Mr. Gordon expands, "Soft drinks were invented in this country by businessmen, not chefs. So were canned soups, nondairy coffee creamers, breakfast cereals, and—may the Lord forgive us—TV dinners. Coca-Cola may well be the
most famous American product in the world."
However some elements of American foodstuffs don't fit with mass production, "The essence of industrialized food, of course, is uniformity and vast production. ...The essence of great cheeses, however, is idiosyncrasy and, almost always, very limited production. For natural cheese is a living thing."
"What makes cheese possible is the happy property of milk protein that it coagulates in the presence of acids and other chemicals produced by microorganisms. The protein and fat form curds, allowing most of the liquid to be separated out. The curds are then molded and stored while the microorganisms continue to work their magic, slowly producing the flavor, aroma, and consistency of each type of cheese."
"It is the infinite variety of these microorganisms that makes for the infinite variety of cheeses."
Natural Cheese itself is as individual as the people and the regions from where they came. Like the horse, "Europeans began settling the New World, they brought with them the cheese-making know-how that had developed over many thousands of years. Each immigrant group also brought a taste for the particular cheeses it had known at home, and cheese makers necessarily catered to these tastes." These were not the processed cheeses do familiar to our grocery shelves today. Then, cheeses were not formed and extruded on assembly line like an automobile. These European style cheeses were nurtured from years of experience, milks and bacteria. But cheeses and transportation and buggy whips were about to change.

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1996/7/1996_7_42.shtml

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

A sad way to start the year

Here is a post from NRO that was truly significant.
The cost of a drug over the value of a patient is all too common now.
That is just from State limited and controlled insurance.
We all expect it will improve enormously when the Federalés take over all our health care needs.

 NRO Media Blog 1-5-2010
Memo to Tom Brokaw  [Guy Benson]
Ed Morrissey takes anchor-emeritus Tom Brokaw to task for offering fatuous advice regarding health-care reform on Meet the Press. Brokaw first conflates Medicare with Medicaid, then he urges the federal government to adopt a model similar to Oregon's public-health program:

I'd humbly suggest that Mr. Brokaw review my December post to discover some of the, um, shortcomings of Oregon's government-centric paradigm. In short: it's unaffordable and it rations care. If a visit to NRO proves a tad distasteful to the patriarch of NBC News, he can simply read the New York Times article that effectively rebuts his argument. Or, as Ed says, he could have a chat with Barbara Wagner:

01/05 12:45 AM