AlchemyToday

It’s interesting to see some people in a tizzy over indulging in the ceremonies of our uneasy ally Saudi Arabia.  Anyone claiming that we American’s don’t bow down to anyone is ignorant of history:

Didn’t anyone tell President Obama that Americans don’t bow down to anyone? Didn’t anyone tell President Obama that the President of the United States especially doesn’t bow down to anyone?

Didn’t anyone tell President Obama that Americans fought a long and bloody war so we wouldn’t have to bow down to a king anymore?

Or at least ignorant of the recent John Adams miniseries, which dramatized the day when King George III received Adams as the first American minister to Britain in 1785:

On July 4, 1776, John Adams, delegate to the Continental Congress from Massachusetts, voted to adopt the Declaration of Independence, proclaiming the British King unfit to be ruler of a free people. The King had proclaimed the rebellious colonists to be traitors. Could Adams possibly have imagined that, after eight years of warfare, he would stand before that same King, as a respected diplomat on the world stage, presenting his credentials as the first United States Minister Plenipotentiary to Britain?

On June 1, 1785, King George formally received John Adams, representative of the fledgling nation that had dealt the British Empire a bitter defeat. The meeting, as Adams recounted in this official account, was marked by the pomp and ceremony required by the occasion of a royal audience. But beneath the pageantry, Adams described a strong undercurrent of emotion as the King and his former subject—who once reviled each other as bitter enemies—met face to face, as statesmen.

In a letter to Sec. State John Jay, Adams recounts going through the formalities in having an audience with the King:

I went with his Lordership thro’ the Levee Room into the King’s Closet, the Door was shut and I was left with his Majesty and the Secretary of State alone.  I made the three Reverences, one at the Door, another about half way and the third before the Presence, according to the usage established at this and all the Northern Courts of Europe, and then addressed myself to his Majesty in the following words–

So perhaps this is all just kinda silly.  If not, here’s a video of Bush bowing, kissing, and receiving a medal from King Abdullah.  Big deal.  More importantly, John Adams had preternaturally outstanding handwriting.

Parking in Baltimore is always a matter of playing the odds.  Thursday night I parked on the red dot and got broken into; however, I rarely see shattered glass on that road so I considered it quite safe.  On the walk back home, I noticed an open spot on the much safer blue dot and briefly considered moving my car.  If you park on the bridges (green dots) you probably run a 2-5% chance of a break-in.  Spots are always available there at night (and you don’t need a permit), but no one ever parks there.  On any given day there are probably five telltale piles of tempered glass at the curb.

This is all within about a football field of my house.  Baltimore’s weird like that.  There are fewer break-ins here than in Fell’s Point, so really I was improving my odds in moving here.  Insurance premiums do not scale with auto theft rates at all, because the Baltimore PD will never write a report without serious property loss or an accident dispute.  I estimate that I’ve saved roughly enough in insurance premium reductions due to underreported crime & accidents (there is literally an accident every two weeks a block from my house) to cover my busted window.

Minding my own business rushing off to fill up on milk at the Waverly Market and ran into this.

Things left behind:

• Old GPS receiver stashed under seat
• U2 War, Joshua Tree cassettes, Replacement’s Let it Be
• Big book of CDs
• A couple bucks in change
• Tennis rackets
• Check book (wups)

Things stolen

• ?

Seriously, if you’re going to make me pay a couple hundred bucks at least have the decency to get something out of it yourself.  Anyway, catharsis:

This will be more expensive, and less entertaining than when a tree fell on my car:

Perhaps not pork shoulder, but some sort of cut emanating from the shoulder as per the packaging and still fit for braising.  Recipe draws inspiration from the Amateur Gourmet.

Fooling with NextGEN Gallery.

In the last few months I’ve had a number of brief, private exchanges with various conservatives who are regularly pilloried from the left for, variously, intellectual dishonesty, boorishness in the face of contradictory evidence, undue hysteria, and backwards morality.  I might’ve even thought those things or cast judgement based on where someone works.  Even though I always led with criticism, these have all been really honest, brief conversations.  As much or moreso as recent conversations with people on the left, frankly.  I’m not optimistic that this will continue once elections ramp up again (although my one run-in with amateur internet detectives wound up alright), but for the moment it’s quite nice.

Over at the Corner, K-Lo takes note – Obama’s Bow is Carter’s Kiss – approving of this bit of criticism at Power Line:

What’s wrong with this picture? Americans do not bow to royalty. In my view, when the royal is the ruling tyrant of a despotic regime, the wrong is compounded. Putting aside the breach of American protocol, it is akin to Jimmy Carter succumbing to Brezhnev’s infamous kiss at the signing of the arms accord in Vienna in 1979. It is a disgrace. As in Carter’s case, Obama’s supplicant attitude signifies his spirit. In this respect I distinguish it from George Bush’s otherwise embarrasing handholding with the the king.

Image removed — check link below; here’s a video of Bush bowing to Abdullah as he’s given a medal and then kissing him (not as a greeting but as part of the medal ceremony apparently).  This is silly.

Saudi King Abdullah, right, presents President Bush, left, with the King Abdul Aziz Order of Merit following their dinner at Riyadh Palace, Monday, Jan. 14, 2008, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

The entire day was commemorated in pictures over at Free Republic.

The alternative budget introduced today by Rep. Paul Ryan somewhat suspiciously presents numbers as a fraction of GDP without specifying exactly what the GOP projection for GDP is under their budget and how it is calculated.  However, one can extrapolate the calculated GDP from the figures for net receipts in terms of dollars and fraction of GDP.  The result is surprising.

Under their favored budget, House Republicans project a GDP that precisely mirrors the intentionally conservative CBO estimate for the next decade.  One would presume that given that the Republican budget posits that its large corporate income tax cuts, capital gains cuts, and income tax cuts (almost all for the rich – 84% to the richest 20% of Americans) will stimulate economic growth, that they would project some improvement.

Furthermore, the Heritage Foundation simulation that underlies the GOP budget shows that even by their accounting, the Republican plan increases the deficit relative to the current law baseline.

By the logic used to sell the GOP budget (comparing deficit as a % of GDP to Obama’s budget), this budget is worse than doing nothing.  The GOP budget increases the deficit at the expense of cutting a huge chunk of government spending with no benefit to the broader economy over the projected time period.  The only benefit would be fewer taxes for most, although the savings for the majority would be smaller than their cut in the stimulus bill and many would see a tax increase.