Maggie's Farm

Who knew that pandering pols put a 54-cent tariff on imported ethanol for the benefit of domestic corn farmers and ethanol producers? Story here.

The ethanol scam industry would not exist without subsidies (which we pay for - via our income taxes, not at the pump) and protective tariffs. Of course, federal and state taxes on a gallon of gas add plenty too.

And this leads me to the big missing campaign issue: Dems refuse further drilling, block refineries, block nuclear and, due to their greenie alliance, want to force fuel prices higher to reduce usage. Yet, at the same time, they complain vehemently about energy costs and want to punish the oil companies. It's nonsense, unless you believe in fairies.

The Dems are selling fairy tales about energy - and about other things too.

If you want self-esteem, do esteemable things.

A friend of Bill

This is Heade's Newbury Marshes (c. 1871) from the John Wilmerding Collection.  Newburyport, MA lies on the coast 40 miles north of Boston, at the mouth of the Merrimack River.

In those days, salt marshes were used for cattle grazing, and salt hay was harvested for winter fodder. Over the past 100 years, the once-vast Atlantic coast salt marshes have been devastated by fill, development, and by channelization in the early 1900s in an effort to reduce mosquitoes (Malaria was a big problem in New England at the turn of the century.) In one of the coastal New England towns I grew up in, the salt marsh acreage dropped from 1000 acres to 30 acres, mostly since 1940.

I think the subject of Salt Marshes will need to be a future post.

At the request of some of our commenters and our Webmeister, we are now requiring (as do all sites like ours) that an email address be included to post comments.

Of course, your email address is private and will not show in the comments - unless you wish it to be shown by listing it on the optional "Homepage" line.

Also, comments are frequently caught by our anti-spam system. Don't take it personally. It happens to me too. It usually just takes a re-phrasing, but I can usually never tell what it is objecting to.

Lastly - please feel welcome to offer comments. Don't be shy. We are quite friendly unless our hospitality is abused. We welcome disagreement and civil debate - in fact, we enjoy it. It only takes a minute to join in, and your comments add vitality to Maggie's. The more, the merrier.

How Amnesty International frames their questions. Norm

Iowahawk will soon be an internet millionaire. Let's hope he continues his Presidential campaign, despite his coming wealth.

Will the press actually raise some questions about Obama? Well, they did here. Related: CT's Joe Lieberman fights back. I guess Joe passed on the Kool Aid.

Yacht sales sinking. No surprise. Oil prices up, demand down. Only a socialist couldn't understand that.

Oil demand down. Prices up, demand down. Only a socialist couldn't understand that.

A question of timing: How come suddenly we hear all about Saddam's ties with Al Qaida?

"Shut the hell up." A Roger Simon quote from his Pajamas piece:

It’s time in America to say - enough.

Spike Lee - like Sharpton and Jackson - is now part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Image: A sultry Theo lovely, lounging in a Springtime meadow with that olde Springtime "Come hither" look.

A quote from Michael Lewis at Bloomberg:

There's a new feeling in the Wall Street air: The big firms are now too big to fail. If the chaos that might ensue from Bear Stearns going bankrupt, and stiffing its counterparties on its billions of dollars of trades, is too much for the world to endure, the chaos that might be caused by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. or Goldman Sachs Group Inc. or Merrill Lynch & Co. or Morgan Stanley going bankrupt must also be too much to endure.

Our post on Race in the Race a few weeks ago reminded me of the several posts we have done over recent years about tribalism and trust, making the rather obvious point that people tend towards "affinity groups" because they are more likely to know where the others are coming from. When there are enough socio-cultural affinities between people, we call it a "tribe." (I have often heard Jews refer to fellow Jews as "the tribe.")

Tribes share, among other things, social signals and cues - the most important being "trust cues." (I was amused and pleased to see that our 2006 bit on Trust Cues and Tribalism was the top of Google when you search "Trust Cues." Very cool.)

I more or less know what to expect from a fellow white middle-aged heterosexual New England Protestant somewhat over-educated professional person who dresses sort-of like I do. I do not know exactly what to expect, but approximately and statistically. And if they like to study wildlife, to garden, to hunt, to mess with boats, and to talk about politics, then even more so. The odds are that we will know each other's rules, codes, signals, cues, language, manners, sense of humor, personal boundaries - even tastes. (Not necessarily their politics, though. My "tribe" has enormous political diversity.)

The further we move from our own tribe into the realm of "the other," the less effective we become at reading the signals and cues. I can use as simple an example as attending a Roman Catholic Mass: I feel awkward because I don't know when to stand or sit, or whether they want me to join in Communion or not. All people, I think, have a comfort bias and a trust bias in favor of their own tribes, and I do not feel that that is a bad thing: it's rational. "Birds of a feather..."

I believe that much of what is termed "racism" has little to do with race. Mitt Romney's Mormonism is a case in point. I think it was a real issue. People don't know what the Mormon view of the world is, what they are taught, how they raise their kids, what they think about, etc. - and are not interested enough in the subject to learn about it. All we know is "It seems kinda strange" - and "strange" = "a stranger."

Thus are our "stranger," tribal instincts ignited. It's not about skin color at all. Some of us are fascinated by "the other," some are a little bit curious, some are hostile, but most folks just don't care to be bothered very much with other cultures. The "multiculturalism" movement of the last decade sought to suppress that Stranger Instinct (for some good reasons, and some bad) - but it cannot be done because it is anchored in reason as well as in biology. All the multicult fascists and nannies managed to do was to silence people while, unfortunately, heightening our everyday consciousness of our differences.

So I finally arrive at the Rev. Wright subject. The Rev. Wright preaches a Black Liberation "theology" which, as best I can tell, seems to have only a superficial relationship to any Christianity I have seen (and which is an ideology that seems to have racial hatred built into its core). However, they seem to be dedicated to doing some good and charitable works in Chicago. But my point is that when Wright preaches "God damn America" I instantly know that I am dealing with another tribe. I cannot tell whether his is hyperbolically throwing red meat to work up the crowd, or whether he means it.

I cannot read the signals at all, and that makes me uneasy and distrustful. Rightly so, in my view: I feel like I have wandered into the wrong pew.

That's all a long-winded way of getting around to linking some of our past posts on the general subject:

Scared by his own research on multiculturalism

The Diversity Cult

Signaling Theory

Trust Cues and Tribalism

Masquerades and Clothing Signaling

Photo: Alaskan Eskimos exist in a culture which is totally alien to me.

At TigerHawk. One quote:

Taking these stories together, one is forced to conclude that the Democrats and their political allies in the environmental movement are pushing for policies that have a disproportionate impact on the rural "working poor," the vast majority of whom live in states that tend to vote Republican. Smart move.

Thanks, reader

I support John McCain. I believe he is a good fellow, but seemingly not as conservative or as reflective a fellow as I would like. However, I've been around long enough to know that life is never perfect.

I forget where I read it, but somebody noted that John McCain has to burst the Obama bubble before he can be heard in the face of MSM and teeny-bopper Obamamania. How does an aging pol like John McCain say "Hey - this isn't real. This is fluff, BS, and pixie dust" without sounding like Gramps breaking up a kegger?

Hillary Clinton tried all that, and nothing seemed to stick because the guy seems so young and cheerfully confident, and such a purveyor of "hope." Try telling an amateur investor that "Hope is not a plan." They get mad when they are told that.

Plus having the gatekeeper MSM deep in Obama's underpants makes it all much more difficult. I think we saw this same scenario with Bill Clinton, not so long ago. And with Jimmy Carter, too, if anybody is old enough to remember that. He was going to change politics forever.

The dude is just a young Commie Chicago pol who talks like a preacher, for heaven's sake. Maybe reporters aren't used to hearing preachers.

The News Junkie of Maggie's Farm, yesterday

Lifted from a comment here by Buddy:

Re oil here's two worthy reads: George Will's current WaPo column, The Gas Prices We Deserve, and an email from a gal in Louisiana, a friend of former Gov. Blanco & until recently an ardent Democrat.

and the body of the email, quoted:

For several decades, the Democratic Party has pursued policies designed to drive up the cost of petroleum, and therefore gas at the pump. Remarkably, the Democrats don't seem to have taken much of a political hit from the current spike in gas prices. Probably that's because most people don't realize how different the two parties' energy policies have been.

Congressman Roy Blunt put together these data to highlight the differences between House Republicans and House Democrats on energy policy:

ANWR Exploration

House Republicans: 91% Supported

House Democrats: 86% Opposed

Coal-to-Liquid
House Republicans: 97% Supported
House Democrats: 78% Opposed

Oil Shale Exploration
House Republicans: 90% Supported
House Democrats: 86% Opposed

Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) Exploration
House Republicans: 81% Supported
House Democrats: 83% Opposed

Refinery Increased Capacity
House Republicans: 97% Supported
House Democrats: 96% Opposed

SUMMARY

91% of House Republicans have historically voted to increase the production of American-made oil and gas.

86% of House Democrats have historically voted against increasing the production of American-made oil and gas.

PAUL adds: It's useful to keep this sort of thing in mind when we hear (on something like a daily basis these days) that the Republicans have run out of ideas or that Republican ideas didn't work. The truth is that most major Republican ideas weren't tried because the Democrats blocked them. Increasing the domestic production of oil and gas (a move so obvious it barely meets the standard for being an idea) is hardly the only example. Social security reform and school choice also come quickly to mind. Republican-backed policies for increasing the number of Americans with health insurance were also blocked by Democrats. And so forth.

Because the bully pulpit wasn't effectively used, that news never really got out. The above numbers do not include the Dems' blocking of nuclear plants, which are going up all over the world including in Africa.

Abundant power is the sine qua non of modern civilization. Combine it with free markets and free people and you have a civilizational rocket. I sort-of understand the Dems blocking every Repub initiative out of pure partisan bile, but I do not know what their energy plan is. All they talk about are "clean alternatives," which is a joke, and they gobble up oil as fast as I do without any apparent regret.

I do know what my energy plan is: Lots of nuke power, plenty of clean coal technology, none of this dopey, subsidized and highly-polluting biofuel, and drilling for oil where we can: oil is great stuff and we are fortunate to have tons of it in the US.

This should be a major campaign issue, if McCain would wake up to it.

Related: Surber notes that gasoline accounts for only 45% of US oil use, in a piece titled What's the MPG of Your Soap?

Thanks, reader. Most of the above quoted is via Paul at Powerline.

Krauthammer says:

For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class -- social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts and their left-wing political allies -- arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).

Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher's England to Deng's China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.

Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but -- even better -- in the name of Earth itself.

I think that just about sums it all up. It is endlessly fascinating and dismaying to me that so many people seem to want to be controlled.

From Tom Friedman on Israel:

From outside, Israel looks as if it’s in turmoil, largely because the entire political leadership seems to be under investigation. But Israel is a weak state with a strong civil society. The economy is exploding from the bottom up. Israel’s currency, the shekel, has appreciated nearly 30 percent against the dollar since the start of 2007.

The reason? Israel is a country that is hard-wired to compete in a flat world. It has a population drawn from 100 different countries, speaking 100 different languages, with a business culture that strongly encourages individual imagination and adaptation and where being a nonconformist is the norm. While you were sleeping, Israel has gone from oranges to software, or as they say around here, from Jaffa to Java.

Read the whole thing at the NYT

A long-lost Wellfleet, Cape Cod 30' lighthouse which stood outside the harbor until 1925 has finally been located at Point Montara, CA.

How it arrived in California is, as yet, a mystery. Some blame aliens, some blame Halliburton, but only I know how and why lighthouses migrate - and I ain't gonna tell.

To keep up with all of your lighthouse news, read Lighthouse Digest.

Matthew 9: 9-13, 18-26

9:9 As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, "Follow me."  And he got up and followed him.

9:10 And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples.

9:11 When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"

9:12 But when he heard this, he said, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.

9:13 Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'  For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners."

9:18 While he was saying these things to them, suddenly a leader of the synagogue came in and knelt before him, saying, "My daughter has just died; but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live."

9:19 And Jesus got up and followed him, with his disciples.

9:20 Then suddenly a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind him and touched the fringe of his cloak,

9:21 for she said to herself, "If I only touch his cloak, I will be made well."

9:22 Jesus turned, and seeing her he said, "Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well." and instantly the woman was made well.

9:23 When Jesus came to the leader's house and saw the flute players and the crowd making a commotion,

9:24 he said, "Go away; for the girl is not dead but sleeping."   And they laughed at him.

9:25 But when the crowd had been put outside, he went in and took her by the hand, and the girl got up.

9:26 And the report of this spread throughout that district.