Maggie's Farm

...not to induce paranoi, habu, but i could tell you a story of a grudge getting serviced via a gov't licensing lab tech screwing around with a test sample in order to file a complaint against a private citizen. IOW, someone now could come to your door and haul you away, and it would be up to you to prove there was no, say, rat poison or itching powder, or worse, in your tea sample. Suggest having next sample sent under seal of an independent test lab. excuse me now, i have to go scan the skies and get my toothbrush out of the UV darkroom.

i can't understand why Putin wouldn't stall back the Iran nuke a couple years and let O mothball some of the Carrier Battle Groups, not to mention clearing USA off Iran's western flank. Something don't add up. well, something does, but, naw, that was just a movie.

habu, did you see this flash:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/09/pentagon-chinese-ships-harassed-unarmed-navy-craft-international-waters/

may be starting already. this guy says expect Russia & China to combine strategy:

http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/geo/pastanalysis/main.html

lordy mercy --

"May I engage in this mature, elevating discussion of the issues by calling him a "pinko dwarf"?"

NJ, you magnificent bastard you!

By Mark Steyn

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZGY4MDk4YjVhZTc4YWEyZWJlODYyY2U2M2VhNjM0Mjc=

(snip)

British prime minister Gordon Brown thought long and hard about what gift to bring on his visit to the White House last week. Barack Obama is the first African-American president, so the prime minister gave him an ornamental desk-pen holder hewn from the timbers of one of the Royal Navy's anti-slaving ships of the 19th century, HMS Gannet. Even more appropriate, in 1909 the Gannet was renamed HMS President.

The president's guest also presented him with the framed commission for HMS Resolute, the lost British ship retrieved from the Arctic and returned by America to London, and whose timbers were used for a thank-you gift Queen Victoria sent to Rutherford Hayes: the handsome desk that now sits in the Oval Office.

And, just to round things out, as a little stocking stuffer, Gordon Brown gave President Obama a first edition of Sir Martin Gilbert's seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill.

In return, America's head of state gave the prime minister 25 DVDs of "classic American movies."

Evidently, the White House gift shop was all out of "MY GOVERNMENT DELEGATION WENT TO WASHINGTON AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY T-SHIRT" T-shirts.

Still, the "classic American movies" set is a pretty good substitute, and it can set you back as much as $38.99 at Wal-Mart: Lot of classics in there, I'm sure --Casablanca, Citizen Kane, The Sound of Music -- though this sort of collection always slips in a couple of Dude, Where's My Car? and Police Academy 12 just to make up the numbers.

I'll be interested to know if Mr. Brown has anything to play the films on back home, since U.S.-format DVDs don't work in United Kingdom DVD players.

(end quote)

...i'm reliably informed that Mrs. Brown also sent along "exquisite" gifts for the two children. The reciprocal? Well, let me quote a friend:

"...I've frothed ever since hearing this. It is too repulsive to think about. Mrs. Brown gave the two little girls exquisite dresses and something else...can't remember but equally classy. Michelle sent a Secret Service man down to the WH gift shop for two plastic presidential helicopters. After the fact.

This seemingly small event speaks volumes. As Charles Krauthammer said - Britain has been our staunch ally forever, and their men have died with ours fighting in wars with our men.... He said more, much more exquisitely than I can utter, but his disgust was plain.

ugh. I'm at a loss for words."

(end quote)

...he's a very good wind-up doll, but still a wind-up doll.

In years of watching Kudlow's 'point & counterpoint' segment, he's never once refuted Steve Moore's arguments; he just bangs ahead with the unsupported socialist-lite boilerplate.

he smiles tho, while regurgitating --so, could be woise.

"...is a topic way over his head."

Habu, you magnificent bastard you!

Country Squire, in the milieu from which POTUs sprang, there's almost nothing not perfectly wrong with England --beginning with the long unbroken parliamentary democracy, and the rights of property therein validated & made proof in durability. Needless to say, most of us on this side of the ocean prefer your model over say, most of Africa's, where a leader's popularity is often a matter of taste.

you're probably not going far enough with that truthful line of reasoning, AP. We'll know when some non-DC outsider from, my guess, one of the old agrarian-movement states starts making speeches about voting for the ''real'' America. about "one people, who shall not be crucified on a cross of double talk". We'll be needing a principled internal governor so the hard-lurch-to-the-right doesn't go further than say a DC weekend tar & feather & "ride 'em outta town on a rail" jubilee.

"Tacky" means low-class, and has zero connotation to family or wealth or anything atal but taste and behavior. A good old-timey southern colloquialism. Remembah, Mistah Faulknuh hailt fum Mizzuzzizzipeh.

-One thing about GWB & Tony Blair, they put on a show that made both nations proud of themselves AND each other.