We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Hillary Clinton: "I won't quit." Man, I bet she is ready to throttle Obama for pooping on her coronation. The Dems are realizing that they have a real choice now - and nobody ever really liked her or trusted her.
Email comment from a friend here in Massachusetts:
I don't know why you guys waste your time with that moronic blog. It's just part of a big echo chamber of dangerously extreme right wing drivel, and you all say whatever Rove tells you to say to support that so-called President who is the biggest s-head the US has ever produced. That guy and the dickhead should be impeached and jailed, and your blog should be shut down too.
My reply:
All totally accurate, although Karl hasn't called me lately. But at least we have some good recipes occasionally, which Karl's wife is kind enough to send us.
YALE'S REALLY RICH. TOM SMITH OBSERVES: "I have thought of asking Yale to stop writing and asking me for money. But why should I? I like getting the letters. They fill me with a kind of awe. They remind me that greatness comes to those who dare to ask for more than anyone can possibly think they deserve. They fascinate me. What can they possibly say to make me think I should send what $50, $100? to the people who are making 28% a year on $22.5 Billion? They say they need the money, which cannot be true, except in the sense of me and the beggar. I am astonished."
I am a staunch nativist when it comes to wildlife. The damn English Sparrows are really bothering me this year.
We have two pestiferous Limey bird species here in Yankeeland and in the US in general - the English Sparrow (aka House Sparrow) and the Starling.
Both were imported from Albion for a variety of silly reasons, back before people realized that biological imports create a mess for native species. These were two highly aggressive, invasive species who have wreaked havoc on our gentle native birds. Now, the English Sparrow is the most widely distributed bird on earth.
Today, my irritation is with the English Sparrow. It is not, in fact, a lowly, timid mouselike sparrow at all, but probably a variety of European weaver finch. They are city birds, barn birds, and may fit into European ecology quite well but here they drive out our native sparrows and are dominating my bird feeder this year. I have no interest in feeding them because they can do very well feeding from dumpsters in parking lots and eating horse manure - one of their favorite treats.
Stone walls are "newer" in New England than the early enclosures, which were made of wood. Split logs, like ol' Abe used to make, but not post-and-rail. They were the criss-cross leany sort which rested the rails on tilted posts. And to keep animals out of the cottage garden, they used paling fences.
But in post-glacial New England, where the fields seem to grow stones over the winter, you had to put the loose rocks somewhere, so why not make a wall?
It is hard to walk through any woodland south of Maine without stumbling across an 18th century wall, and sometimes you find an old apple tree in the corner, or an old apple-tree trunk. No doubt planted by the farmer for home-made cider, which was the only kind of booze the average Yankee farmer could afford.
This hilly, rocky woodland, as can easily be seen by the size and species of the trees in the photo, was pasture until about 40-50 years ago: it is a young beech and oak woodland, typical of acidic lowlands in New England, and well-past the point at which it is appealing to grouse and woodcock. Good for the wild turkeys, though.
The booming deer population, alas, vacuum-cleans the undergrowth, making it inhospitable for lots of small critters and birds: either we eat those deer or we return wolves and mountain lions to New England. (I'd vote for all of the above.)
These woods are dotted with low-lying vernal - and autumnal - pools, which are excellent for the toads, tree frogs, salamanders, Box Turtles, etc. "Wetlands," as some term them. I call them swamps, and I love them: they are a cradle of life.
'Toon on temporary loan from our friend TigerHawk (who we hope doesn't mind the loan. We borrow good stuff sometimes, but never without attribution. If anybody is bothered by that, they can let us know). Image is tippy due to the Lake Superior boat ride posted earlier today, or maybe Tigers' having one extry glass of his fine single malt Scotch:
Women are indeed fickle. Alagna's name was mentioned in our free ad for the Met's HD live series. A transplanted Sicilian raised in France, his preference seems to be French lyric opera. Here he is, not in a French lyric opera but singing with authority out of his oatmeal hole:
For some opera fun, see continuation page below in which Alagna storms off the stage at La Scala (a tough, demanding crowd, unlike the Met, where most do not know the difference and will offer "bravas" to anybody famous regardless of their effort) after being booed, and is instantly replaced by his understudy (in jeans). Wish I had been there.
Howard Zinn, on the big screen. America-hating commie propagandists are so 1930s 1960s. Even Pete Seeger admitted (this year!) that he made a mistake by loving and defending Stalin all these years. Zinn, I suspect, still a Stalinist?
I read the New York Sun daily, online. However, the full dead tree version is delivered over most of the NY metropolitan area. Their sports department is way above average - and they are not Marxists.
I used to view Al Gore as a fairly decent sort, honest as politicians go, affable, sometimes a bit clownish in his sanctimony and pomposity, a bit naive from his privileged youth and from never having held a real job in the real world, probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer but generally a well-intentioned guy who would be a congenial doubles tennis partner.
(I viewed his failure to be seduced by the Clinton slimy charm to be much in his favor. It has often been said that he cannot stand them.)
Traumatic events can short-circuit people's brains, and I think this fellow has experienced a personality change, if not a psychotic breakdown as a result of the ego injury of his agonizingly close loss of the election. Until then, his charmed life had had no apparent disappointments or major rejections, unlike most people who toughen up from the hard knocks of life. Strings of luck tend to make people want to believe it's because of them, and not La bella Fortuna.
I am not one for ad hominems. In fact, I am concerned about this guy's stability, specifically about the form of paranoid disorder known as monomania.
Those with a monomania want everyone else to join in their obsession (eg Captain Ahab). People who think their mission is to save the world are insane by definition.
Meanwhile, Old Man Winter just won't give us a chance to shovel the front walk before slamming us again. I often consider how many heart attacks would be prevented if only globalisticalistic warmening were really happening, but I love winter - I'd miss it. But I am not worried. Unlike Al Gore, I was a science major and I can look at data and stats with a modicum of savvy and healthy skepticism, knowing that 99% of it ends up being wrong - including, already, much of the science I learned in college. Among other things, my Ivy League scientist profs taught me that the world would be entirely without oil by 2000 with none left with which to produce medicines, and that the next Ice Age would begin about then, threatening civilization itself. Meanwhile, I plow the snow from my driveway today with relatively cheap gas: they might be right about the latter - the coming Ice Age. I am in it.
Don't miss the return of the Metropolitan Opera — Live in High Definition.The series opens this Saturday, December 15, with Gounod's ultra–sensual Roméo et Juliette, starring Anna Netrebko and Roberto Alagna in a performance beamed to theaters in 14 countries. Due to high demand for tickets, additional locations have been added, so be sure to check out the links below. In most countries, tickets for the entire series–including encore performances in select locations–are now on sale.
Join us for world class opera this Saturday!
For theater locations around the US and the world, and details, click here. Now this is a fine use of technology.
Arkansas tackiness?Powerline. Huck: Tacky. Hillary: Tacky and corrupt. She might be as dishonest as Bill. After all, doesn't water seeks its own level?
Al Gore,swindler? God knows, he is getting richer and fatter, and looking like becoming a plutocrat.
Who invited the dog? Family allergy holiday fun, at The NYT
Today's Hillary Clinton quote:
"I am a fan of the social policies that you find in Europe "-Hillary Clinton in 1996," from the book "I've Always Been A Yankee Fan" by Thomas D. Kuiper, p.6
Derbyshire quoted in a piece at Powerline about Nativism:
The U.S.A. has an immigration system, under laws passed by the people's representatives in Congress. For twenty years the federal government, for reasons to do with ideology and "interest," has failed to enforce those laws. As a result, tens of millions of foreigners have settled in our country unlawfully, while other foreigners who wish to settle here but respect our laws, wait long years in their home countries for permission to enter.
A great many Americans are very angry about this. If you were to poll those angry Americans on the topic of legal immigration, you'd get all sorts of answers, from severe-restrictionist to couldn't-care-less. The center of gravity of the answers would probably be somewhere like: "Sure we should have immigrants, but it should be done legally, properly."
The anger, the shouting, the jammed Congressional switchboards, the cable-news bloviating, is about the federal government's failure to enforce federal law. To glibly dismiss it all as "anti-immigrant" is gross propagandistic distortion. . .
The Loyalists have no political descendant. There is no American alive today whose loyalty to the British Crown was passed down to him in an unbroken chain from 18th-century Loyalists. You would be about as likely to find a native speaker of Etruscan. Both Democrats and Republicans are factions of Patriot.
And yet: the Loyalists were right. At least on this one rather important question. Britain was not on a path to a weird, 1984-like future with gold braids and epaulets, crushed under the iron heel of the King, the Church of England and the Lords. Rather, the power of throne and altar and fief in Britain had been dwindling almost monotonically since Mary Tudor - a process which of course has continued to this day.
The Loyalists were right. And yet they have no intellectual descendants at all, not in the US and not anywhere else. At least from the point of view of their political DNA, they were simply obliterated - not unlike the Cavaliers, to whom their resemblance is more than passing. And in what folder does almost everyone alive file this event? I'm afraid that folder is progress.
It's a meaty piece, perfect for a sleety, snowed-in afternoon with a glass of brandy and maybe a big hunk of English Stilton. Mr. Moldbug has the disbelief in the word "progress" which we share and have written about here, and he shares my ambivalence about the justifications for the American Revolution (which he terms a "criminal mob"). However, I am glad that it happened and that the US is not joining the EU today.
I may or not be technically a Libertarian, but I do take liberty as an ethical and not a practical matter. There is little that is easy, practical, or neat about liberty.
Image: A nice wheel of Stilton, correctly wrapped in a linen napkin
Brits sign EU Constitution without obtaining the opinion of the citizens. Who owns a nation's sovereignty? Surely not the slimeball politician du jour.
And remind me again - why would a nation willingly give up its sovereignty to unelected foreign officials? Is this a return to a post-modern monarchy?
Says EU Referendum defiantly today: We are not your citizens! In my opinion, the EU wants subjects, not citizens. But who are they, anyway? Arrogant jerks in suits, who want power and babes.
The members who comprised it were seven-eighths of them, ...the meanest kind of bawling and blowing officeholders, office-seekers, pimps, malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men, custom-house clerks, contracts, kept-editors, spaniels well train'd to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists, terrorists, mail riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the President, creatures of would-be Presidents, spies, bribers, compromisers, lobbyists, spongers, ruin'd sports, expell'd gamblers, policy-backers, monte-dealers, duellists, carriers of conceal'd weapons, deaf men, pimpled men, scarred inside with vile disease, gaudy outside with gold chains made from the people's money and harlots' money twisted together; crawling, serpentine men, the lousy combinings and born freedom-sellers of the earth.
"I didn't mean to treat you so bad You shouldn't take it so personal I didn't mean to make you so sad You just happened to be there, that's all When I saw you say "goodbye" to your friends and smile I thought that it was well understood That you'd be comin' back in a little while I didn't know that you were sayin' "goodbye" for good
But, sooner or later, one of us must know You just did what you're supposed to do Sooner or later, one of us must know That I really did try to get close to you
I couldn't see what you could show me Your scarf had kept your mouth well hid I couldn't see how you could know me But you said you knew me and I believed you did When you whispered in my ear And asked me if I was leavin' with you or her I didn't realize just what I did hear I didn't realize how young you were
But, sooner or later, one of us must know You just did what you're supposed to do Sooner or later, one of us must know That I really did try to get close to you
I couldn't see when it started snowin' Your voice was all that I heard I couldn't see where we were goin' But you said you knew an' I took your word And then you told me later, as I apologized That you were just kiddin' me, you weren't really from the farm An' I told you, as you clawed out my eyes That I never really meant to do you any harm
But, sooner or later, one of us must know You just did what you're supposed to do Sooner or later, one of us must know That I really did try to get close to you."
"One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)," from 1966's Blonde on Blonde. The song was played frequently on the 1978 tour, has been performed only twice since that year (thanks for catching my mistake, Clubbeaux). No live versions are available on Youtube, but someone has kindly uploaded the original album version.
Weather: Arctic freezes 
I am a staunch nativist when it comes to wildlife. The damn English Sparrows are really bothering me this year.
I used to view Al Gore as a fairly decent sort, honest as politicians go, affable, sometimes a bit clownish in his sanctimony and pomposity, a bit naive from his privileged youth and from never having held a real job in the real world, probably not the sharpest knife in the drawer but generally a well-intentioned guy who would be a congenial doubles tennis partner.
Where's the Rock? The Hall of Fame is 
A h/t to 
The members who comprised it were seven-eighths of them, ...the meanest kind of bawling and blowing officeholders, office-seekers, pimps, malignants, conspirators, murderers, fancy-men, custom-house clerks, contracts, kept-editors, spaniels well train'd to carry and fetch, jobbers, infidels, disunionists, terrorists, mail riflers, slave-catchers, pushers of slavery, creatures of the President, creatures of would-be Presidents, spies, bribers, compromisers, lobbyists, spongers, ruin'd sports, expell'd gamblers, policy-backers, monte-dealers, duellists, carriers of conceal'd weapons, deaf men, pimpled men, scarred inside with vile disease, gaudy outside with gold chains made from the people's money and harlots' money twisted together; crawling, serpentine men, the lousy combinings and born freedom-sellers of the earth.