Tuesday, April 7. 2009
and other topics, including Obama. Mind you, we are definitely of the "Shut up and sing" school of thought, but we're curious about what Bob has to say.
 Dept. of Hopey-Changey: A US-based Al Qaida magazine. Does it have a centerfold like the one on the right? If not, I will not subscribe no matter how good the articles may be.
Most Americans have too much wisdom to devote their entire lives to it, but we do have the right to get rich if we want to do that.
Note to depressed Muslims. Keep us out of it.
This may be news to most Americans, from Janet Napolitano: "This is one NAFTA, one area, one continent..."
Too bad. Looking a bit bleak for Coleman. Can't believe those folks voted for the other doofus.
No more buche de chevre? Sucks, dude. Try a government job.
The arrogance. Nobody even knows where the Missouri capitol is. "Hey, Ahmed. I have a great idea. Let's crash into the Missouri capitol to show the infidel the power of Allah." "Cool, dude. Will you do it? But what's Missouri? Show me."
Powerline on the Strib's terminal ailment. Related: Greedy capitalist newspapers want donations from Google. Why not just make them part of the executive branch?
Hey ladies: get your fellow some of this stuff. We need a happier world.
Tiger and Insty both are interested in token Greenie stuff (nothing real), but Tiger at least admits it.
Why docs are refusing Medicare.
Dems push for voting rights for illegals. We saw that coming.
Students: Beware of the one-party classroom
Readers know that I am always skeptical about labelling and diagnosing people with whom I have not sat and talked for quite a while. Every time a mass murderer goes on a rampage, though, we shrinks come out of the woodwork to opine.
Our friend Shrinkwrapped discusses the Binghamton murders in terms of Narcissistic pathology. It's a good, clear description of pathological narcissism (we posted on the "Narcissism Epidemic" last week) but, in one way, I find it disappointing.
Here's the problem: the world is full of pathological narcissists. Many of them are very successful in worldly terms (if unsuccessful in relationships). Most or all of them endure painful humiliations, failures, and disappointments in life (as does everybody - but narcissists are less resilient in the face of these things and are more likely to sink into rage or depression). Assuming that SW's speculative diagnosis is correct in this case, it still has no predictive power.
Thus my speculative, highly professional diagnosis of killers - whether mass killers or not or whether narcissists or not - is that they have a screw loose. Everybody feels like killing somebody sometimes, but very few do (in Western civilization).
SW did highlight something I had been thinking of writing about anyway. He says:
The Narcissist has a damaged self. When the environment (esp other people) support his self esteem, he does relatively well. He may be charming and charismatic and appear to be self assured and in command of himself. However, should the other fail him the pain of the assault on his self esteem is destabilizing.
True (although I would not say "damaged." I would say developmentally delayed, or genetically retarded, or something. Also, I do not understand what a "self" is despite much study on the subject). The larger point is interesting to me. Everybody has psychological frailties and weaknesses. Everybody wants the external world to compensate for those - to patch those holes and gaps.
We usually are able to find a way, to find a niche, to find supports we need (a devoted spouse is a good one - and so is some money) and, worst case, booze and drugs can paper over lots of cracks in our walls. Oftentimes, people are only made aware of their weaknesses when the external supports are removed.
I have seen many people for consultation who I believed needed psychotherapy but whose world insulated them (or who arranged a life such that the world would insulated them) from the self-awareness and the discomfort. I never try to talk people into treatment: they need to feel the need and the inner disturbance to get help. If old Mr. Reality eventually gets through to them, I know they will come back.
However, people with personality disorders are fairly well-protected from Mr. Reality: they live in worlds of their own imagination. Instead of finding a way to make the world work for them, they just invent a world that suits them - and live in it unless or until it unravels.
Mad about it. Mini DSLR with a fabulous Leica lens which is electronically stabilized and goes from (35mm equiv.) 27mm wide to 486mm telephoto (826.2mm with 1.7x add-on lens). The wide angle and telephoto shots of San Simeon illustrate the power of this lens (the box in the wide-angle outlines the telephoto). At 27mm, it is also f2.8 – very fast for a point-and-shoot. The other photos are of a walnut & wine operation in Paso Robles CA.
This camera will not replace our Canon EOS XTi, but that beauty and its lenses weigh 27 pounds, and are a bit difficult hiking or traveling! Oh, and Abe’s of Maine which we love offers it for $287.95!!!
Here's the Cameralabs review.
Here's the cnet review.
Photo I used it for in San Simeon last week. Go below the fold for more - and to see inside the box:
Continue reading "My new camera - Panasonic DMC-FZ28 from COSTCO"
Monday, April 6. 2009
Obama sells himself to the world stage - to help sell himself to the American stage. America is the only audience that matters.
How is he doing?
Is he a pompous windbag? There can be no doubt that he digs himself. That's for certain. More than he merits? You decide.
Went for a family visit and Palm Sunday Mass in MA at the family church yesterday. Still cold up there: rain, wind and snow today. Spring feels very far away, due to Climate Change.
 More Tea Parties. It's a Protest Movement! Power to the Silent Majority!
Not just for out-of-towners. Hop on and hop off tour busses in NYC. Cool.
It's a tie in upstate NY
Charles Blow needs a change of underpants
This is just wonderful. Indeed it is.
AVI rarely seems to have an ugly thought, but he had one.
Why does O bash the US in foreign countries?
McCain rebukes Hispanics for not supporting him.
Our problems:
We've narrowed down our troubles. Neither small pox nor poor crops are really all that troublesome any more. No, our problems are now pretty much each other. (Inasmuch as small pox and poor crops are still problems in some places, see what the men there are up to.)
If you think man-against-man problems went away in ancient times, recollect the 20th century. One hundred million deaths can be attributed to communism alone. Add in perhaps 21 million more thanks to Hitler. R.J. Rummel tried to count 20th century human deaths caused by governments, not including wars between nations. His count: over 260 million. That was before the Congo (3.9 million), Sudan (2 million), Rwanda (937,000) and recent "famines" in North Korea (2 million), all since 1990.
They say I am afraid of Michelle Obama's vegetable garden. WTH? I am usually afraid of the menacing weeds in Bird Dog's garden, however.
College orientation, for whites only. They've gone full circle! No doubt some pomo logician can explain it to me.
Can we afford to bet our economy on the supposition that Freeman Dyson is wrong?
CNN is running out of religions to respect. h/t Driscoll. In my view, respect for peoples' religion is a simple matter of manners - but all religions need criticism. Everybody and everything needs criticism.
Hate to say it, but I think this is true:
Max Borders argues that the President’s motive is, not ending the recession, but using it as an excuse for truly radical restructuring of American society and further deformation of the Constitution.
If the President’s goals become reality, most of the remaining checks and balances of the 1787 Constitution will effectively have been eviscerated, leaving a nation driven by Tocqueville’s tyranny of the majority, ravenously confiscating other people’s money.
We all know a Prez can't "end a recession" anyway.
No country in the Middle East will take in Palestinian refugees. Is there a reason? Obama wants to take them. I thought they had their own country now, with an elected government and tons of weapons etc.
Tom Sowell says we have a rookie President. Related: Most polarizing Prez in the modern era. Related, the brilliant Obama invents a new language: Austrian.
Protesting Obama at Notre Dame.
Taxation:
"That is the American way," Stroger replied. "And the way that it's generally done is, you find some group that's small enough where they can't beat you up, and you tax them and you tell everybody else, 'See? We didn't tax you.' "
Marriage is a contract, but is it just a contract?
Aussie boobs getting bigger. It's Climate Change.
The politics of vouchers. Choice not allowed:
Mr. Duncan's office spurned our repeated calls and emails asking what and when he and his aides knew about these results. We do know the Administration prohibited anyone involved with the evaluation from discussing it publicly. You'd think we were talking about nuclear secrets, not about a taxpayer-funded pilot program. A reasonable conclusion is that Mr. Duncan's department didn't want proof of voucher success to interfere with Senator Dick Durbin's campaign to kill vouchers at the behest of the teachers unions.
The decision to let 1,700 poor kids get tossed from private schools is a moral disgrace. It also exposes the ugly politics that lies beneath union and liberal efforts across the country to undermine mayoral control, charter schools, vouchers or any reform that threatens their monopoly over public education dollars and jobs.
Meanwhile, the DC pols all send their kids to private schools.
No, this was not our local Ducks Unlimited banquet. We posted the invitations for this little cocktail party, but (fortunately) not too many guys showed up for the little shindig Theo and I hosted on Saturday night. Right Wing Prof would never attend such a thing, and I know Sippican's wife wouldn't let him come, nor would Tigerhawk's or Gwynnie's - but I was sure Vanderleun would show. He didn't. It was good wholesome fun, but a bit exhausting due to the guy-to-gal ratio. Yes, that is me in the center front, the Yankee Doodle Dandy, reluctantly yielding to dissolute feminine charms:
I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 names in the Boston phone book than to the faculty of Harvard University.
William F. Buckley. By my count, the Maggie's staff has 8 Ivy degrees among us all, including a Harvard (you wouldn't know it from reading us, though, due to ADD, learning disabilities, being dropped on the head, excess pot smoking, global warming, radon, immunizations, military service, eating non-organic beef and vegetables, and etc.), and we will heartily ditto WFB. Moreover, we have no interest in governing or controlling anybody except ourselves - which is plenty enough for anyone to do.
How the NYT does politics (h/t, Moonbattery). I know the NYT plays tricks, but this is beyond what I imagined. Are any reporters anywhere covering this story, or are they too much in awe of the NYT...or of Obama?
Or are they too chicken?
From Adam Kirsch's Europe's Last Man:
No sooner had humanity emerged from a century of hot and cold wars than Fukuyama was resurrecting Nietzsche’s admonition that a world of peace and prosperity would be a world of Last Men. “The life of the last men is one of physical security and material plenty, precisely what Western politicians are fond of promising their electorates,” he pointed out. “Should we fear that we will be both happy and satisfied with our situation, no longer human beings but animals of the species homo sapiens?”
While Fukuyama appreciates the seriousness of the Nietzschean warning, he hears it from the perspective of a partisan, not a foe, of liberalism. The danger he foresees is not simply that bourgeois democracy will cause human beings to degenerate, but that degenerate human beings will be unable to preserve democracy. Without the sense of pride and the love of struggle that Fukuyama, following Plato, calls thymos, men—and there is always an implication that thymos is a specifically masculine virtue—cannot establish freedom or protect it:
It is only thymotic man, the man of anger who is jealous of his own dignity and the dignity of his fellow citizens, the man who feels that his worth is constituted by something more than the complex set of desires that make up his physical existence—it is this man alone who is willing to walk in front of a tank or confront a line of soldiers. And it is frequently the case that without such small acts of bravery in response to small acts of injustice, the larger train of events leading to fundamental changes in political and economic structures would never occur.
 Sunday's New York Times had an op-ed - a Sunday op-ed having particular prominence - by George Bisharat, “Israel on Trial.” Bisharat recites every charge raised by any source accusing Israel of violating international law in its treatment of Gaza.
Surely the NYT would defend its publishing of this screed as giving both sides of a story. A law professor who has known Bisharat, son of a Palestinian father, since law school remarks on Bisharat’s “Personal Intifada”:
Bisharat has devoted the past 25 years towards delegitimizing Israel. The links are too numerous to list, but almost everything Bisharat does and says is geared towards isolating and demonizing Israel. But Bisharat doesn't stop there, he also seeks to delegitimize Israel's supporters in the U.S.
One must wonder if the NYT publishing Bisharat’s op-ed means the NYT disbelieves its own reporting, and if the NYT is even sincere in its attachment to international law.
In January, the NYT examined the charges in long detail, “Weighing Crimes and Ethics in the Fog of Urban Warfare.”
Deciding requires an investigation into battlefield circumstances that cannot be carried out while the fighting rages, and such judgments are especially difficult in urban guerrilla warfare, when fighters like Hamas live among the civilian population and take shelter there. While Israel is the focus of most criticism, legal experts agree that Hamas, a radical Islamic group classified by the United States and Europe as terrorist, violates international law.
Shooting rockets out of Gaza aimed at Israeli cities and civilians is an obvious violation of the principle of discrimination and fits the classic definition of terrorism. Hamas fighters are also putting civilians at undue risk by storing weapons among them, including in mosques, schools and allegedly hospitals, too, making them potential military targets. While urban and guerrilla warfare is not illegal, by fighting in the midst of civilians, often in civilian clothing, Hamas may also bring risk to noncombatants.
But Hamas’s violations tend to be treated as a given and criticized as an afterthought, Israeli spokesmen and officials say. They say that Israel has never sought to hit civilians, medical workers or United Nations facilities or personnel. “The rules of engagement are very clear,” said Mark Regev, the government spokesman. “Not to target civilians, not to target U.N. people, not to target medical staff. All this is very clear in Israeli military doctrine.”
Continue reading "NYT Blows Itself Up In International Law Minefield"
 Prof B:
...the Obama administration is engaged in national industrial policy far more radical than ever before seen in the United States and, worse yet, with policymakers who seemingly know nothing about cars and, for the most part, don't even own American cars.
DC voucher kids performed better. Swedish schools are voucher, I think.
Speaking of Sweden, "The point is that students must feel seen, heard, and affirmed." Or they will set their schools on fire. Arsonist students need special affirmation, no doubt.
Why Levin's is the most important book of the year. But is he preaching to the choir?
God and government. Riehl. Quote:
...if you want to tear down anything and everything beyond man, then man is the only concept you have left in which to invest your rights. And once you do that, rest assured, one day some man is going to come along and take them away.
Dem crook du jour: Monica Conyers
What's more important - getting medical care or having insurance?
Axelrod cashes out before taxes go up
O to N. Korea "Come on, fellas. Please cut it out."
From Diana West's argument against Afghanistan:
The point is that sinking all possible men and materiel into Afghanistan to nation-build an Islamic culture into a pro-Western one (while simultaneously fighting Taliban and wading deep into treacherous Pakistani affairs and wars) is not the way to victory. In fact, it is the best way to bleed and further degrade US military capabilities. If I were a nefarious jihad chieftain, I can't imagine a better strategy than to tie up America's best young men in a grueling and open-ended war of hide and seek in the North West Frontier....
My fellow conservatives will say: But withdrawing from Afghanistan will give sanctuary to terrorists including Al Qaeda! My answer is that sanctuaries for terrorists including Al Qaeda exist all over the world, from Iran to London to . But it will embolden the terrorists! Frankly, I can't imagine anything more emboldening than the disgusting, shameful spectacle of Barack Obama bowing in deference to the oil-garch of Arabia--except maybe serving up Israel on a platter to its jihadist foes...and except maybe exhausting US capabilities indefinitely in Af-pak, as they now say.
Canada update:
About 20 percent of Canadians work for one level of government or their agencies. This is the highest per capita public sector employment in history other than in wartime. According to Statistics Canada, in the last three months of 2008, the number of civil servants grew by 96,000. In 2008, the total compensation package of wages and benefits grew by 4.3%, just over double the rate of the private sector.
A report released in December, 2008 by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business found that federal employees made 42% more than their counterparts in the private sector when salaries, benefits and pensions were factored in. At the provincial level the difference was 25% while at the municipal level the difference was 36%.
Sunday, April 5. 2009
 Some say that the 55 Bar, a prohibition-era dive bar on Christopher St., is the best place in the city for jazz and blues.
Two groups nightly - and it's cheap. $10. How can you not afford to give it a try?
Here's the Brooklyn Boogaloo Blowout at 55, with good photography:
"A man can only be young once, but he can be immature forever."
Catherine Aird (h/t, Vanderleun). For every step towards true maturity I take, I seem to take two steps back.
- Planted a ton of purple pansies from Home Depot today as a Palm Sunday celebration. It's cold as heck out, but those Pansies have antifreeze. Dosed them with Miracle-Gro, but they are probably too cold to absorb it.
- Mrs. BD ran down to NYC instead of church to take a long, cold, brisk walk with the Bird Dog-ette along the Hudson River. Chelsea Piers to Battery Park, and back: an fine urban hike. She works in finance. She still needs her Mom sometimes. Her job is secure: they cannot do without her - and she is cheap for what she does. She is worried, though. If her bonus is taxed at 90%, she and her roomates cannot afford their apartment. 80% of her compensation is bonus. The salary is just token. Speaking of token, she doesn't need subway tokens: she speed-hikes 40 minutes each morning in the dark to mid-town from Chelsea, and hikes back home in the dark. 15-hour workdays - and she loves it (most of it). Some people love daily math and complex structured finance challenges at a minute's notice with a 4-hour deadline to redo the details - and some don't. "It's fun. It forces me to think fast, Dad." 80-150 million dollar muni deals. It's not for everybody. A lot of travel too, but she loves that.
- A chat with the gentle young Moslem Bangladeshi mini-mart guy at 5 this morning, whose wife and mother-in-law have arrived after a four-year immigration wait. He takes a cab to work at 1 AM: he is saving all of his money instead of buying a car. "How's the family adjusting to America?" "Pretty good. It's cold for them. I had to buy them coats." "How's their English coming along?" "Good. They study every day. It's coming along fast. My wife just got a job." "Doing what?" "Customer service." "My friend, I love these stories. Tell them I welcome them to America." "I will. Thank you."
No doubt these people are "the poor." America's poor are the young, the new immigrants, the feckless, the self-destructive - plus some plain unfortunate folks who get struck by bad lightning. These new Americans from Bangladesh are as rich as Croesus in spirit, hope, and opportunity, and they ask for nothing from America but a chance to build a life and a friendly word once in a while.
What a wonderful country. No wonder every sturdy soul in the world wants to come here. Too bad we have so many crybabies, when we have people like my minimart guy. Meanwhile, the Obamanauts complain.
Saturday, April 4. 2009
 Photo on right from our webmeister Chris's back yard yesterday. He has hired this fellow to organize his garbage recycling. I did the same. In fact, I have two of them moonlighting for me. The Brits, who seem so obsessed with their "bins," need some of these helpful critters to sort through their trash for them. They do an excellent job of spreading it out for your perusal.
Capt. Capitalism's amusing post about Sam linked to his older post about how the success of Capitalism produced The Mystery
Will Wilkinson outs himself. Come on, Will. Grow up and start drinking Scotch instead.
Speaking of bloggers, have you ever read Cobb? (h/t, 3 Kinds of Black at Vanderleun)
Europe lectures O: Overspending is not the answer. Guess what? It's not meant to be the answer. It's meant to redistribute.
Biofuels are the death of the jungles rainforests
Post-partisan census? This is beyond hardball. This is live ammo.
Where's my bailout?
Democrat debt is morally superior to Republican debt
 Today's Episcopal Church: Lesbian abortion-activist priests. It's not a religion. It's a Lefty, quasi-anarchist propaganda machine. Where are the good old hearty red-nosed Scotch drinking, golf-playing, skirt-chasing, Locust Valley lockjawed Episcopalians I fondly remember?
Re the London protesters last week (via Thompson's Friday Ephemera):
I think that they have looked back at 5,000 years of human history - at pestilence and famine and disease and degradation, at genocide and civil war, at fear and loathing, at bigotry and ignorance, chauvinism and dictatorship - and concluded that our biggest problem is... shopping.
Speaking of shopping, here's the #1 Non-fiction bestseller this week.
How come no bus tours past Fannie and Freddie exec houses?
Obama's political attack machine must be fully staffed. Hopey changey.
China surpasses US in auto production. Capitalism is working well in China.
Hey, Alan Colmes. Who the heck hasn't felt regularly dissed and humiliated? It's a normal part of daily life for everybody.
Why Obama and the NYT do not want the banks to repay their TARP money. Hey - that's my money. Just mail me the check, guys, and say the heck with it.
NYT loves unions - just not their own. They are different.
One more intelligent call to end aid to Africa. Handouts are death to a society, especially a developing one. The only good they do is to feed the egos of the givers.
Two good bits at Flopping: Obama and Krauthammer (unfortunately, not together).
Eric Holder's idea of "constitutional." Says the distinguished Eleanor Homes Norton:
"I don't think members are in the least bit affected in their votes on the question of its constitutionality," she said just last week. "People vote their politics in the House and in the Senate."
We hired these people?
This gives me the creeps: An intarnets czar? First they came for the smokers bloggers...Speaking of smoking, what's with Small Tobacco
Klavan takes on hate. We must always remember that "hate" doesn't mean what it used to. It's been redefined. Now it means expecting decent, civilized, respectful and responsible behavior from other humans.
What do these idiots want? And don't they have jobs? I think they want a free lunch.
MSM ignored O's bow. The House of Saud paid his tuitions, if I am not mistaken.
It's about time. An honest pint in Oregon.
 This is a re-post from one year ago
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison
At Maggie's Farm, we tend to suspect that issues such as medical insurance, gun control, health, and climate fears are indeed Trojan Horse issues (as Coyote terms them), advocated to increase goverment control over our lives and to reduce our choices, freedom, and self-determination as free adults who are capable of managing our own lives, in our own ways - for better or worse.
No, not "capable" - "endowed by our Creator" and our history with that privilege and that freedom. One must be suspicious of motives when vast, costly government-control solutions are offered to trumped-up or imaginary "crises."
"We the people" are smart enough to figure it all out for ourselves, despite what the self-anointed "elite" might think: not one of the "elite" is better educated, or more worldly, than we ADD-victim redneck folks at Maggie's are. As we like to snobbishly say, "Who are these people?"
"I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." - Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 12/20/1787
The people who seek control are not necessarily evil: they no doubt believe that they are not only benign but virtuously-intentioned, and especially qualified to make decions for us. They almost certainly believe that they are more "caring" than I am.
The single most damaging error of the modern age is the misperception of government as an agency of compassion. As a replacement for the "divine right of kings," this misperception has, for those in power, been an astonishing success. For the rest of mankind, it has frequently been a disaster beyond imagining. Government is nothing more than structured, widespread coercion, and the idea that it can implement compassion for us by force is simply a vile and cunning lie. It is cunning because people are primed and willing, even desperate, to believe it. - Glenn Allport
However, individual freedom does not enter into their equations as a caring virtue - or even as a virtue or American ideal at all. (We believe it to be a transcendent ideal, and a gift of God.) Hence what we view as the totalitarian or, as Goldberg and H.G. Wells would have it, "fascistic" proclivities of the Left.
"When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, 'there ought to be a law,' you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap." - Thomas Sowell
Since we at Maggie's view individual liberty, and the responsibilitities which accompany it, as an almost religious, if not religious ideal, we must view those who wish to diminish liberty as enemies of man and of human dignity.
"...every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Ammendment." -- Justice Louis Brandeis (Olmstead v. US)
Are we paranoid about State power? Given human history, and the course of US history, we do not think so.
"It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt." - John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.)
Furthermore, we do not wish to rely on the judgement of anyone who wants to run any part of our lives. As Milton Friedman asks in this entertaining YouTube, "Where are these angels who are going to run my life for me?"
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." - James Madison, Federalist #51.
"It is weakness rather than wickedness which renders men unfit to be trusted with unlimited power." - John Adams, 1788
No, we aren't anarchists. We do not object to drivers' licenses, or even hunting licenses. We will pay a fair share of taxes as a price of civilization. I do not even mind zoning if the people vote for it, and I am all in favor of national, state and local parks. But we are not willing to be "governed." That's where we draw the line. Being "governed" is for children (by "governesses"). Free citizens must learn to be self-governing as adults which, as our Dr. Bliss often reminds us, is no easy task but is a highly worthy and ennobling pursuit.
"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." - George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutions, 1903
It's all about where you draw the line for government intrusion into one's life. Some of us still want to be Americans, not Europeans. But that's enough pontificating for now.
Top image: A photo of Westport, CT's Minuteman statue on Compo Road, near Compo Beach (via Dr. X). In my own, humble internet way, I want to continue our Minutemen's work and their radical ideal of individual freedom and responsibility in a country free of government tyranny. "We the people," (excluding those with their hands out) have more sense and more life experience than anyone in a government career, or any of the elites on the academic dole.
Lower image: An old lithograph of the Boston Tea party
Obama is the Master of Misdirection: Fred Barnes. Yes, we have noticed that too. There's always a distraction from what is really being done. It's effective politics, but it's basically an effort to fool the people who don't follow things carefully.
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Sam is still a child. Lots of Sams out there these days.
I'm glad to see PC finally extending into the fungal kingdom. It's only fair. Don't want to be guilty of speciesism.
Krauthammer: Obama's ultimate agenda
Whither print? Jules
Yet another depraved nominee. Where do they find these people? They are all Moonbats or tax cheats - or both.
Steyn on Obama's faux pas
How the Obamanauts lied about their petitions
Wood pulp and fuel. Your tax dollars at work.
Liberal Fascism at the NYT. Sort-of related: NYT's Bill Keller is losing it.
I wish I had a thick cortex. I do have a thick skull...
Ouch. O loses his place on teleprompter in France. Related: The Guardian's transcript of O's confusion yesterday is darn funny. Cruel, but funny.
Coming soon to your house: O's $163,000 tax bomb
Seems hardly fair that illegals would get a better deal than Americans.
Watts on the winter:
...remember - weather is not climate. and computer models should always supersede observation.
The guy wasn't joking:
The Dignitas clinic in Zurich claims to have assisted in the deaths of more than 100 Britons. The Zurich University Clinic found that more than a fifth of people who had died at Dignitas did not have a terminal condition.
Mr Minelli said that anyone who has “mental capacity” should be allowed to have an assisted suicide, claiming that it would save money for the NHS.
The NHS would be in fine shape if it weren't for all those sick and old people they have to bother with.
Wellfleet: The House (1948)
Roof overwoven by a soft tussle of leaves,
The walls awave with sumac shadow, lilac
Lofts and falls in the yard, and the house believes
It's guarded, garlanded in a former while.
Here one cannot intrude, the stillness being
Lichenlike grown, a coating of quietudes;
The portraits dream themselves, they are done with seeing;
Rocker and teacart balance in iron moods.
Yet for the transient here is no offense,
Because at certain hours a wallowed light
Floods at the seaside windows, vague, intense,
And lays on all within a mending blight,
Making the kitchen silver blindly gleam,
The yellow floorboards swim, the dazzled clock
Boom with a buoy sound, the chambers seem
Alluvial as that champed and glittering rock
The sea strokes up to fashion dune and beach
In strew by strew, and year by hundred years.
One is at home here. Nowhere in ocean's reach
Can time have any foreignness or fears.
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