Saturday, June 16. 2007
Addendum - by coincidence, a piece by Driscoll yesterday on pre- and post-Dallas liberals.
Nice description of the near-impossibility of hitting a baseball. Right Wing Nut House. With a note on Barry Bonds.
 As you know, Nifong resigned in disgrace. Every detail of the trial at Durham in Wonderland. Thus far, no apologies from the Duke faculty who so desperately wanted the rape story to be true.
"Canadian nice" just never lets up. Canadians honor terror supporters. Dust My Broom The lovely Clinton couple "peeked" into their blind trust. Wizbang. What would be the news if Dick Cheney did that? "Body movements and non-verbal responses such as moans are not consent." They aren't? Since when? Coyote. A WMD flashback, from The Guardian, at Norm Smart Dem women prefer Obama to Clinton. Oxblog The EU as an Orwellian Superstate. Tangled Web What is a criminal and what is a terrorist/combatant? TigerHawk Teaching Truths: Attack Machine on a Dr. Sanity piece on edumacation. Remembering the Bonefish. Reasoned Audacity Maggie Thatcher, Reagan, fear, and cats: Sisu The unwelcome return of the immigration bill: Don't get me started. Kesler explains some of the things that are wrong with Trent Lott. Art photo: A friend of Theo
Friday, June 15. 2007
 Maggie's Farm supports and admires the work of The Land Trust for Tennessee - as we do the good work of all land trusts.
Photo from yesterday's celebration of a donor of a conservation easement on her working farm. Some things in life mean more than money. Yes, Maggie's Farm has had a conservation easement for a number of years, and can never be developed. Nice old farmhouse. What style would ya call that, Sippican? Sippican: It's "a nice little spindle-style Queen Anne house, a little spare on the embellishment."
We are all simple-minded country folk here at Maggie's Farm, so here is my final simple statement on immigration: This country is my home, and it means a lot to me. In fact, my country, and what it represents, is precious to me. You may enter it only on my invitation, and on my terms. Comment from Bird Dog: And if you don't like your own country - fix it, and make it more like America. It can be done - our ancestors did it here.
 One angry email and one - or more - flaming posts. Other blogs, I know, get more anger, but we tend to be civil. Where does this come from?
First, an email response to today's post highlighting the introspective liberal: What dribble but coming from a party who's (sic) hero is a big fat white guy on the radio who needs drugs to get an erection what can you expect?
Our reader 1) Failed to realize that the piece was written by an ardent liberal and 2) Failed to respond to a single point in Taibbi's entire essay and 3) somehow tried to turn the discussion into a discussion of Rush Limbaugh's potency. Slightly off-topic?
Second, this comment on the same post:
Aaah, you mean like such not-angry and thoughtful political philosophers as Rush Limbaugh, Mike Levin, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Neil Boortz, and Michelle Malkin, right? If only liberals could bring to their movement the authenticity and intellectual consistency of the three pillars of modern Republicanism: nigger-hatred, religious fanaticism, and proto-fascist war-mongering.
Please tell me this: Where is the hate on Maggie's Farm? There is none, although we are certainly in favor of killing Jihadists who war against us and want to kill us. We posted a thoughtful liberal viewpoint, as we occasionally do, and we received such hateful - but contentless -comments...from liberals! I just don't get it. . We will engage anyone on the issues and on the merits, if done in a neighborly and respectful manner. The only thing we are knee-jerk about here is Freedom and the freedom and autonomy of the God-made human individual.
Meant to post this major story earlier this week, but forgot to. Supremes decide unions cannot spend dues on politics without permission of the members. That is a just decision, and long overdue. Forced political contributions are not the American way. Thanks to Right Wing Nation for the reminder, because this decision is a very big deal with potentially huge implications.
The views of voters sure do get in the way of government. Ace. It's about illegal immigration. We voters should just shut up and leave the decisions to our betters, right? Where does Trent Lott get off trying to dis me?
Gateway notes, in his update today, that it only took the WaPo a few hours to blame Bush for the Gaza mess. Incredible.
 John Edwards the Witch Doctor. An ambulance-chaser thinks he is going to solve Health Care! Solve what? Surber.
Hahaha. The Cornish Liberation Army. h/t, Blair Roger Simon interviews The Great Steyn, on video. Pajamas California wants all dogs castrated. That doesn't sound very nice, but Classical Values opines that what they really want is all males neutered. Speaking of castration, Synthstuff has a perfect pair of balls. Why Gaza now? Powerline Flipping out about the flipping Senators. View from the Right. "When they say "cycle of violence", it means Pallie attacking Jew. When they say "senseless violence", it means Pallie attacking Pallie." SDA 2000 Waterbury CT students may need to repeat grade. Don't they have Truant Officers any more?
The video here. h/t, Flares
A big hat tip to Never Yet Melted for finding Matt Taibbi's excellent The American Left's Silly Victim Complex. It's good to see a liberal or, as he calls himself, a "progressive," being introspective and thoughtful instead of angry, these days. More quotes at Never Yet Melted from the piece at Adbusters. A sample: Here’s the real problem with American liberalism: there is no such thing, not really. What we call American liberalism is really a kind of genetic mutant, a Frankenstein’s monster of incongruous parts – a fat, affluent, overeducated New York/Washington head crudely screwed onto the withering corpse of the vanishing middle-American manufacturing class. These days the Roosevelt stratum of rich East Coasters are still liberals, but the industrial middle class that the New Deal helped create is almost all gone. In 1965, manufacturing jobs still made up 53 percent of the US economy; that number was down to nine percent in 2004, and no one has stepped up to talk to the 30 million working poor who struggle to get by on low-wage, part-time jobs. Thus, the people who are the public voice of American liberalism rarely have any real connection to the ordinary working people whose interests they putatively champion. They tend instead to be well-off, college-educated yuppies from California or the East Coast, and hard as they try to worry about food stamps or veterans’ rights or securing federal assistance for heating oil bills, they invariably gravitate instead to things that actually matter to them – like the slick Al Gore documentary on global warming, or the “All Things Considered” interview on NPR with the British author of Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. They haven’t yet come up with something to replace the synergy of patrician and middle-class interests that the New Deal represented.
Read the whole thing.
Icarus, 1947 
Thursday, June 14. 2007
The talk in the back of my mind, from a piece in Provocations: I was struck by the revelation that I have an unceasing inner voice that chatters a non-stop monologue in the back of my mind. Now some of you may be thinking, “I don’t know what you are talking about; I don’t have an unceasing inner voice.” That’s it—that’s the voice. At night we call it dreaming. In the day we can recognize it as worry, or the sub-vocalization of a frenzied and ever-changing personal focus. But what Lawrence learned to do was to move that voice from a monologue to a dialogue with God.
What, indeed? EU Referendum. What, besides simply trying to build a "post-democratic" Oceania, ruled by genius, unelected bureaucrats who will generously spare you the trouble of thinking for yourself and stressing your tiny brain?
Clearly, the problem in Gaza is that people talk too much about Good and Evil. John at Powerline.
A curiosity: China has only around 100 surnames. How do you keep track of people when half the country is named Bill Smith? The Conspiracy
 Coldest June in MA in 7,412 years. You could look it up. Lows in the 40s. Women and minorities hardest hit.
Don't let the rabble vote. Some things are far too important and complicated to let the people decide. Like gay marriage. Viking Gov. Patrick wants to spend a bit more of our money. As quoted (from a Globe columnist!) in a piece at Squaring the Boston Globe: The governor is proposing free community colleges, universal preschool, full-day kindergarten, 1,000 new police officers, an extended commuter rail line, a $1 billion biotechnology investment, and property tax breaks. That's like pulling a new BMW into my driveway, putting Red Sox season tickets in the glove compartment, leaving the hottest cellphone on the driver's seat, filling the trunk with video games and DVDs - and then asking my son if this dazzling array interests him. Of course it does. But just like the taxpayers of Massachusetts, he has no way to pay for it.
 Stumbling on Happiness: A book I want to read. h/t, Dino, who has a quote.
"We got it whether we liked it or not." A Brit on immigration. Small Dead Gophers. The Haditha story. Bruce Kesler has been following it closely. I suspect that all will be exonerated, but their lives will be in ruins and their hearts broken. The deportation abyss. Why is it so difficult to throw someone out? Michelle Gaza. It's now a brand-new mini-state in the Middle East, controlled by Iran. Some wag on a blog (I forget who) noted that the Palis now have their two-state solution: Gaza, and the West Bank. At Ace, But we're not Jews. Antioch College surrenders to reality. Jag, Volvo and Land Rover are for sale. '08 Elections. I hate discussing this - it's way too early. However, I think McCain is a goner. I think the old-time smoke-filled back rooms might have picked Romney. I think Giuliani could win a national election, but could have trouble with some primaries. I like Fred Thompson.
The ultimate determinant in the struggle now going on for the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas-a trial of spiritual resolve: the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish and the ideals to which we are dedicated. Ronald Reagan (h/t, Tammy Bruce)
Humble Brit cell phone salesman takes the stage at the UK's version of American Idol. Story and video at Anchoress. (Wolf Flywheel of The Shelf notes in our comments that this fellow, Paul Potts, is not exactly a newbie. He studied with Pavarotti, has toured in Italy. Oh well, still a good story, and I suspect the guy can quit his day job now.) Comment from The Barrister: The moral of the story (or should I say "narrative"?) is that we listen to too much lousy pop music. When we hear the real thing it makes a big impression.
I'm sure it is possible to receive a rigorous and challenging secondary education in the UK but, according to Lubos Motl's summary at The Reference Frame, it's getting harder to find. Motl is specificially speaking about the softening of the sciences. A quote: ...all subjects have been affected. In literature, great poets are omitted while third class poets are included according to a political key. Civitas also confirm Grey's statement that the new subject "scientific literacy" is not really about chemistry, physics, and biology but rather about media studies. The children are expected to discuss AGW, GM crops, and whether scientists should be trusted. I have no idea how they can decide whether scientists should be trusted if the children learn no science.
If this is taken too far, where will their engineers and naval architects and doctors and physicists and science teachers and inventors come from? Eastern Europe, India and China?
The destruction of America's egret population was one of the reasons for the creation of the Audubon Society. The special breeding-season egret plumage made great decorations for ladys' hats. Our egret populations have recovered nicely. If you have a rookery anywhere nearby, where often many species of egrets nest together, you are fortunate because you will see these fellows all the time, stalking for food in the shallows. When you see a Snowy, watch for those bright-yellow feet on their black legs. Like Mickey Mouse. You can read about the Snowy here. (thanks, reader, for the nice photo) 
Wednesday, June 13. 2007
The subsidized use of corn for ethanol production is now consuming 18% of the corn harvest, thus raising the cost of food - and milk.
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