Tuesday, August 22. 2006
Nothing can come of nothing. Shakespeare
A favorite of the Maggie's Farm hummingbirds, Jewelweed likes it damp and sunny. Its delicate orange flowers are in bloom right now. 
Monday, August 21. 2006
I would say that the sentiments expressed in this Barone piece explain, in large part, why Maggie's Farm exists. We are sick of this crap, as is Barone. One quote: Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and (the term is Professor Samuel Huntington's) transnationalism. At the center of their thinking is a notion of moral relativism. No idea is morally superior to another. Hitler had his way, we have ours -- who's to say who is right? No ideas should be "privileged," especially those that have been the guiding forces in the development and improvement of Western civilization. Rich white men have imposed their ideas because of their wealth and through the use of force. Rich white nations imposed their rule on benighted people of color around the world. For this sin of imperialism they must forever be regarded as morally stained and presumptively wrong. Our covert enemies go quickly from the notion that all societies are morally equal to the notion that all societies are morally equal except ours, which is worse.
He writes gooder than any of us. Read it all.
7 million of them, and, when you read their stats, you will see that not only are they happily breeding at a rapid pace, but they are doing well in other ways too. For example, 46% have a post-college degree, and their family incomes are close to the American average. Their top 3 occupations are, in order, Student, Engineer, Physician. Read the stats at Tangled Web.
How's your geography? This is a game for schoolkids.
Why technology doesn't improve education: his experience. Rt Wing nation The Washington Post didn't know how to handle Juan William's new book, but they did manage to find someone to criticize it. Pitiful, when his views could actually do some real good for real people who are caught up in negativity. The ozone cure was worse than the disease: Big Lizard Great example of how some people think: at Babalu: With such wonderful additions to the world, why vilify Fidel any longer? What's a little suppression of political dissent when people can get treatment for diabetes? What are a few innocent human rights violations when people have access to locally grown produce without toxins? What's a little communism when Cuba is contributing less to global climate change than the rest of us?
What is the IQ threshold for college these days? Auster makes his view simple and clear: Islam is the problem.
However, we do not have the ability to defeat Islam.
Nor do we have the ability to democratize Islam.
Nor do we have the ability to assimilate Islam.
Therefore, the only solution is to separate ourselves from Islam.
Whole piece here. Taliban terrorist will remain at Yale afer all. I wonder how his remedial English is coming along? Bulldog, bulldog, bow wow wow. Cao The long tail? A quick video to bring you up to date with the latest business fad concept. Driscoll Welfare reform, ten years later. The gloom and doom was wrong. They misunderestimated people's abilities. Polipundit Race, bodegas, WalMart, immigrants, and American blacks: VDARE Historic advances in math - totally ignored by the press. YARGB The defense budget, 1945 to present. Dino A quote from Ben Stein, as quoted more fully at LFG: WHAT stands between us and the iceberg(of militant Islam)are the miraculously brave men and women of the armed forces. They're heroes and saints as far as I'm concerned. But can they do it without the rest of us? Can they do it while we're all working on our tans and trying to have our taxes lowered again? How can we leave them out there all alone to die for us when we treat the war to save civilization as something we can just wish away?
August is a prime time for New England wildflowers. This little island in the stream has Joe Pye Weed, Goldenrod, Purple Loosestrife, and a white aster that I cannot identify. Plus some good-looking grasses. 
Heather MacDonald, the superb essayist for City Journal, discussed her agnosticism the other day in The American Conservative, and for reasons I do not understand, she caught some flak. From a piece by Michael Novak at NRO: Heather Mac Donald is perfectly right to demand of Christianity the open display of its truth claims, and to ask that its evidence for these claims be placed on the table, as she has recently in a piece in The American Conservative and in a thread on NRO?s "The Corner." Christians have tried to follow that path since the writings of the earliest centuries ? Origen, Cyril of Alexandria, St. Augustine, and legions of others. Christians were a persecuted minority for three centuries. They did not overcome the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, Cicero and Seneca, by force, but by argument, and not from outside but from within. As a competing horizon, way of life, and intellectual articulation, Christianity better explained many more realities and paradoxes of human life than any preceding civilization. It conquered the world both by argument and by personal example.
Mac Donald is right to demand as much.
Whole thing here.?(h/t, Smart Christian)
 Back from a week camping at Acadia Park. I am agreeing with Dr. Bliss - that Maine codfish stew is the best. You can keep your lobsters: they are just expensive chewing gum.
Someone has written an obituary of the conservative movement. Call it obit #3127. Some of their points are correct, however. Time for another Reagan. Bush is not Reagan. Space tourism is about to begin. I wonder whether there is a market for this. European dhimmitude. Heart-breaking. At Moonbattery, with a quote which we could almost have written here: Soon history will look back and ask how Islam could have displaced European civilization without even encountering resistance. The answer will be that this barbaric death cult is receiving a great deal of help from the liberal elite, which semiconsciously shares its goal of obliterating the West. The liberal elite establishment will see to it that thought criminals ? i.e., anyone suspected of opposing Muslims' gradual conquest ? are silenced, as we recently saw with the Brussels Journal, and as has been illustrated so appallingly in the case of Oriana Fallaci.
History note: Kortrijt and the Battle of the Spurs. Write a brief essay describing the historical effects of this famous battle, in which ten thousand French knights were defeated by ten thousand Flemish infantry. Hezbollah wore IFD uniforms in battle. NY Sun Crucifix necklace banned by Aussie school. Either the school is an idiot, or they are smart enough, like the Romans were, to recognize and fear the subversive and transformational power of the cross. That airline mutiny pleases me. Would you risk your life, just to look politically correct? If I feel creeped out, I am outta there. It's my life. Honey, would you scratch my back?
I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves. Ronald Reagan
Sunday, August 20. 2006
Sorry about the wierd infestation of codes and symbols into our text, including lots of "?"s. Our magician is at work on it. And speaking of magicians, here's a saucy one- a stripper magician.
Saturday, August 19. 2006
 Delacroix's (1798-1863)Diary and Letters are excerpted at Roger Sandall. Learned about his work in art history about 90 years ago, but knew nothing about the man himself. What a tender, strong, determined, and honest fellow.
On life: Think of the blessings that await you, not of the emptiness that drives you to seek constant distraction. Think of having peace of mind and a reliable memory, of the self-control that a well-ordered life will bring, think of health not undermined by endless concessions to the passing excesses that other people's society entails, think of uninterrupted work, and plenty of it. Nothing is better than having some task to perform each day.
On painting: The enemy of all painting is grey. To speak truly, there are neither lights nor shades. There is a color mass for each object, reflected differently on all sides. I discovered one day that linen has green reflections and violet shadows. I notice that it is the same with the sea: I expect this law applies to everything. The special charm of watercolor, beside which any painting in oil always appears rusty and yellowed, is due to the inherent transparency of the paper.
On l'amour: To the studio at nine o'clock. Laure came. We continued with the portrait. It's an extraordinary thing, but although I wanted to make love to her all the time she was posing, as soon as she began to leave rather hurriedly as a matter of fact I did not feel like it at all; I suppose I needed time to collect myself. I need a mistress to keep my flesh in subjection. I'm terribly worried about it, and struggle with my better self when I'm in the studio. Sometimes I long for any woman to come along. God grant that Laure comes tomorrow! Saw Cogniet, and the picture by Gricault, also the Constables. It was too much for one day. Came home about five o'clock. Spent two hours in the studio. Great want of sex. I am utterly abandoned.
Read the selection here, with some comments. You will like him better afterwards.
Friday, August 18. 2006
Apparently "Quinnipiac" is Algonquin for: "Not so fast, Mr. Green Pants with whales on them."
From the NY Times to the left fringes of the blogosphere, denial of the danger of the world-wide Jihad reigns. In the hawkish side of the world (and I see no reason, other than partisan politics,?why these divisions should correspond to liberal vs. conservative), from my beloved Laura Ingraham to the hawkier blogs, I hear Jihad elevated to the diabolical menace in terms which were once applied to the world-wide Commie menace. Don't get me wrong: there was a world-wide Commie menace which was a threat to freedom, offering utopian, fascist pie in the sky at the point of a gun and a nuke warhead, and accompanied by many American Stalin-loving fellow-travelers. But my point is the extremes to which the current discussion?has gone. For example, we saw the once-rational Andrew Sullivan trying to deny the seriousness of the English bombers this week. He essentially was saying "No biggie." Why would he say that? Was the WTC "no biggie?" If they had succeeded, you already know what they would be saying: "Bush/Blair didn't do enough." Or "Iraq caused it," or ... It is a sport. Anyone can play. And I heard Ned Lamont the other day say something like "We should worry more about the quality of the kindergartens in Bridgeport." Huh? Hello??I should care about what Bridgeport teachers unions want? (Like most people, they probably want more of something - probably my money.)?I am aware that many on the Left have had a knee-jerk anti-American reflex since the 1930s, which is unfortunate and which also contaminates reasonable dialog. Our good?friends over in the shrink blogosphere - Shrinkwrapped, Dr. Sanity, SC&A, for good examples (links on blogroll), often attempt to understand such views psychoanalytically, but not only am I not qualified to do that, as a lawyer I find it to be a bit of a generic?"ad hominem." Furthermore, I think the psychological approach may miss the point of how politically-motivated, and disingenuously applied, many of the arguments are: you can never believe that politically-motivated speakers really believe what they say (witness Obama and Gore with their SUVs - they just talk to cover their Greenie flank. All politicians took Boob Bait 101 - it's an easy course to get an A in.). I do not believe, for one minute, that John Kerry really believes that we can chat Ahmadinejad into sanity. (Ned Lamont might believe it, though - he is politeness personified, and has spent his fortunate life insulated among the Christian gentry: polite, honest, and considerate people in pea-green pants in country clubs where the after-golf single-malt scotch and chardonnay is served on silver trays by brownish-skinned persons, immigrants mostly, under the green-striped awnings. Everything very nice, civilized, and honorable. Darn pleasant places, too - wonderful, but also an expensive escape from everyday reality. Too much ease can soften a fellow.) I wear green pants, too, to summer cocktail parties in CT. Everyone does, around here, with yellow blazers, or vice-versa.? On the other side, we see the hawkier bloggers and commentators, which for no reason I can determine tend to be the more conservative, elevating the Islamic Jihadis, or Islamao-fascists, or whatever, to a level of threat which is no doubt flattering to them, but which, I think, exaggerates their dangerousness. And again, do not get me wrong - their threat is obviously real - I am talking about the level of hysteria that I hear. Iraq is just a political football, at this point. The real issue is how to deal with stateless, but generally state- (including the Saudis) sponsored, Islamic Jihadists whose only tool - thus far - is terror and bombing civilians. Neither hysteria nor denial advance any discussion of the subject. And the political polarization further reduces the quality of discussion. And that is my point here: political emotions and?tactics?have contaminated rational discussion. The Left hates Bush because he (at least to some degree)?rejects their political agenda. Yet Bush makes fighting Jihad central to his presidential career. Thus, they must oppose or diminish that. Conversely, Repub and conservative types, while disappointed in Bush's big-government approaches to things, still would prefer his sort to the alternatives. So getting shrill about things supports their "side," and their guys (and gals). Oftentimes, this polarization boils down to a question of whether Jihad is a trivial criminal?threat, worthy only of police work, or whether it demands maximum effort, risk, and sacrifice. But that debate, too, is a consequence of the political polarization, not a beginning of a rational discussion. The White House has had their discussions, but they have not communicated them very well. There has been no summons to the nation, and there has been no inspiring demand for sacrifice for freedom. However, their solution?has been?a rational, if debatable, combination of intelligence, police-type work with international cooperation (FBI, CIA, plus French, Brit, German, Pakistani, etc), and undermining the sponsors of Jihad with diplomacy first, (as with Iraq) followed by war when that fails. What else could anyone do? If you buy?the Jihad?off, they will just come back for more, like any rational but dishonorable?person would who views you as sub-human. Give me some better ideas, dear readers: I am open to them. My tendency is to think that Dems, had they been in office, would do roughly the same thing, since protection of the nation from threat is their primary function and the reason we give them the power to do it. But I am not sure: Clinton only would lob a couple of cruise missiles somewhere, and be done with it, but that was pre-9/11, when the Jihadists seemed more?like feckless?pests. It breaks my heart to see people put party above country, but I am naive, because it seems to be the way the thing works - and probably always has done.?As Solomon said, there is nothing new under the sun. The nukes are what bother me - far more than the leftists. I can handle Lefty-statists, but I cannot handle nuclear-armed loonies. A final comment, about my senator Joe Lieberman (for whom I have never voted, but will vote for in November). He is a lefty, and he comes across as unpleasantly sanctimonious, but he does try to address these questions in a non-partisan, rational manner, whether he turns out to be right or wrong. He does try to decide what is best for the country during a time of danger - and that is why he ran into trouble. He wasn't partisan enough.
Very poor form: Jimmy Carter continues attacks on Bush Mayor Bloomberg really hates smoking. He does have strong nanny-state impulses, but I'd rather see him as gov of NY than run for Pres. Baleen whales once had teeth. Libertarian Leanings takes on George Will and John Kerry. My opinion? If in office, the Dems would do pretty much the same as Bush has done. What was Israel's goal in Lebanon? Dino Dems declare war on Walmart. They will fight them until they no longer? pose a threat to the American Way of Life. Very brave, the Dems. (I think noone told the limo-liberal snobs how much working class people love Walmart.) Captain Ed Interview with Uri Lubrani on Iran. Gateway
Plants. Ever thought about them? They're pretty good. They just sit there in all weathers. You don't have to bring them in when it rains. You leave them. They grow. Norm Geras of Normblog
Thursday, August 17. 2006
"Oh, help me in my weakness,"
I heard the drifter say,
As they carried him from the courtroom
And were taking him away.
"My trip hasn't been a pleasant one
And my time it isn't long,
And I still do not know
What it was that I've done wrong."
Well, the judge, he cast his robe aside,
A tear came to his eye,
"You fail to understand," he said,
"Why must you even try?"
Outside, the crowd was stirring,
You could hear it from the door.
Inside, the judge was stepping down,
While the jury cried for more.
"Oh, stop that cursed jury,"
Cried the attendant and the nurse,
"The trial was bad enough,
But this is ten times worse."
Just then a bolt of lightning
Struck the courthouse out of shape,
And while ev'rybody knelt to pray
The drifter did escape."Drifter's Escape," from 1967's John Wesley Harding. A hard-rocking version from 1995 can be found here.
From his BBC interview, with comments in over the transom: Even those who aren't particularly sympathetic to Bibi Natanyahu could get a good measure of satisfaction from his interview with the British Television this morning. I guess it can be attributed to his days studying history at Harvard. The interviewer asked him: "How come so many more Lebanese have been killed in this conflict than Israelis?" (A nasty question if there ever was one!)
Natanyahu: "Are you sure that you want to start asking in that direction?"
Interviewer: (Falling into the trap) Why not?
Natanyahu: "Because in World War II more Germans were killed than British and Americans combined, but there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the war was caused by Germany's aggression. And in response to the German blitz on London, the British wiped out the entire city of Dresden, burning to death more German civilians than the number of people killed in Hiroshima. Moreover, I could remind you that in 1944, when the R.A.F. tried to bomb the Gestapo Headquarters in Copenhagen, some of the bombs missed their target and fell on a Danish children's hospital, killing 83 little children.
Perhaps you have another question?"
The Fair Tax. Now some liberals support the idea. No lawyers, no accountants - sounds worth thinking about. Defeated Moonbat in Mexico seems to be almost threatening the government. This does not bode well for Mexico. One miracle: nobody blamed the US yet. Empty suit, or Leisure suit? Middlebrow, like many others, demonstrate's Lamont's lighter-than-air platitudes. Free Market health care? Go to India for cheaper surgeries. Why not? For several generations, the prosperous of the world have come to NYC for top medical care. Why not both ways? The secret is that Hezbollah is the government of Southern Lebanon. The NYT loves Hezbollah. And, by the way, do you know what a "hudna" is? I didn't. It is a sort of Moslem rope-a-dope. The application of markets to LSU academic departments. Interesting unintended consequences. Marg. Rev With a whimper. Cubans view Fidel as slowly fading out.
[Without a picture frame], you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. You have to put a "box" around it because otherwise, what is that shit on the wall? Frank Zappa (h/t, Owner's Manual)
Wednesday, August 16. 2006
I am not the only one who is losing patience with the Iraqis. At
 Somehow this link was forwarded to me for comment. It makes the highly newsworthy and earth-shattering point that Christians are a lusty crew.
50% of Christian men are addicted to porn, it says. (What they did not discover is that 99% of Christian men are addicted to sex, and require it on a regular, if not twice-daily, basis.) What bugs me about the piece is that it implies that Christians ought to be pure from sexual desire and interest - or at least from non-marital desire. That very idea is nuts, but I do know from whence it comes: it comes from a thread running through Protestantism (and Roman Catholicism, before that), that our desirous and loving hearts should be fixed on God and His Kingdom, not earthly delights. Of course, fantasy and action are entirely different things. Porn, like art, books, etc., is just assisted fantasy. Adults, Christian or otherwise, are expected by others to regulate their behavior, but whether and how they regulate their fantasy life is their own, personal decision. The use of the word "addiction" is peculiar. I think, for an interest that is so hard-wired. Do guys have an "addiction" to staring at gals' breasts?They do tell me that they can't help it, so I never show cleavage at work. I wrote a piece on internet porn a while ago (porn is the #1 use of the internets). I have looked at a bit of it, and have been struck by the generous anatomy of the fellows who do this, but it's not my cup of tea, and I find it undignified and sleazy as hell, but I think it's fairly harmless. However, when any person's behavior is compulsive - whether it's porn, or blogging, or watching TV, or computer games, or anything - it's usually an escape from something, or from some emotion. Therefore, what is interesting to a shrink is not the object of the compulsion as much as the question of what is being avoided. I am obviously not a pastor, but I say that there is room for both earthly and spiritual delights in this life. As animals with a divine spark, we must pursue both as best we can, while ordering, regulating and directing our life as it is - as it has been given to us - as best we can. Note: That is not me. Our lusty Christian Editor added the charming photo - not for pleasure, of course, but only to get attention.
 Global warming is a hoax.
Lamont-Lieberman. Not many people care. Bernard Goldberg on Mike Wallace. Soros says "war on terror" is no more than a lousy metaphor. (I agree - it's a war against Islamic imperialism.) Ankle Biting. More thoughts on Soros' foreign policy views at View from 1776. You have to wonder who named Soros an expert on anything other than currency trading? Bishop of Rochester blames multiculturalism for Brit Jihadism. I don't know whether he is right, but he makes good points. YARGB Rates up, housing values down. What will be the effect on spending? Daily Pundit A chat with Bibi Netanyahu: Am Thinker A propos of our post on the Red Fox this week, I see that the killing has begun at Free Market Towers, now that the pheasant poults have arrived. Fat? Blame yourself. The world now has more obesity than hunger. Put that on your plate and eat it, Mr. Malthus. Obama delivers anti-pollution speech, then hops into his SUV. How many times have I told you that this is all about politics and power: no-one really believes this stuff. Lebanon. A bit of backlash against Hizbollah, but of course always some anger at Bush!
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