Maggie's Farm

I appreciate the kind words about my attempting to cover our (almost) daily links post while the News Junkie is away. It takes too much time and care, but I am doing my best. However, I will be away part of this week through Labor Day for my undeserved trip. And I need to pack. While I usually travel light, this trip requires suits, sports jackets, ties, etc., along with the usual hideous but comfortable American tourist uniform - including my straw Stetson which was a fashion hit in Turkey a few years ago. When I travel with Mrs. BD, I think I look like an American dork who has had the luck or money to pick up a lovely Italian lady.

Wind farms kill bats by the thousands. Oil does not.

First we had MADD (I agree that drunk driving is a bad thing, but that a couple of beers does not qualify.) Now we have Moms Aginst Ice Cream. What next bunch of controlling cranks will we have to deal with? Summer without ice cream is un-American. Also, Moms, there is always the little word "No."

Imagine if Bush had said it: We are God's partners. Government is God's partner? Give me a break.

Shelby Steele on why minorites are alienated from Conservatives.

It goes unpreported, but the Repubs have some medical care reforms that people might be interested in - and to be able to understand, too.

Theory: Obama thinks you're stupid. Zogby: the O hits new low in polling. Byrd at Wiz: When will Libs figure it out?

Noonan on Pull the Plug:

Right now Mr. Obama's gift is his curse, a Congress dominated by his party. While the country worries about the economy and two wars, the Democrats of Congress are preoccupied with the idea that this is their moment, now is their time, health care now, "Never let a good crisis go to waste," the only blazingly memorable phrase to be uttered in the new era.

It's not especially pleasurable to see history held hostage to ideological vanity, but it's not the first time. And if they keep it up, they'll help solve the president's problem. He'll have a Republican congress soon enough.

Priests, ministers and rabbis: beware -

Priests, beware. OFA’s health-care efforts are only the first of many community organizing projects to come.  “Next is energy and then education, all before the new year,” says Kelley.

Related: Why do the Dems seem willing to drop insurance coverage of illegals? Cuz they plan to make them legal.  The Dems are full of plans, and this is their only chance. Knowing this, immigrants bring mariachi bands and Mexican flags to hopey-changey free medical care rally.

Related: Democrats are right that uncompensated emergency care for the uninsured is driving up costs. What they don't say is it's illegal immigrants who are bankrupting ERs, and the federal government is encouraging them. Should I be paying for their kids' ear aches?

Having gotten the deficit to 9 trillion, the Prez takes a vacation. The plan is obviously to increase debt to the point that dramatic tax increases on everybody become required by the coming "federal debt crisis." Inflation won't solve it.

A fawning MSM asks Gibbs: What more can we do to help? I do not recall such solicitude towards Bush's people. At Insty:

JAMES TARANTO: Q: What’s the difference between the Associated Press and the Obama campaign? A: The AP admits the public is against it. “There’s one more difference between Obama and the AP: He is a politician trying to get a piece of legislation passed. One expects him to shade the truth, to downplay inconvenient facts. Politicians have even been forgiven for outright lies. By contrast, of what use is a news service that is not rigorously impartial and factual?” Oh, the Administration has found ‘em fairly useful.

Leavitt says:

Leavitt says that the Democrats are worried that their Trojan Horse has been spotted, so they are just looking for a new disguise to get the contraption through the gates.

Like that hasn’t been tried before.

Dressing it up in a bunny suit doesn’t make it into something else. Man the catapults.

The inept Gov. Paterson calls Media Racist.  Must be that famously racist New York media.

From Politico:

By doing so much, so fast, Obama never sufficiently educated the public on the logic behind his policies. He spent little time explaining the biggest bailouts in U.S. history, which he inherited but supported and expanded. And then he lost crucial support on the left by not following up quickly with new and stricter rules for Wall Street. On Friday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman echoed a concern widely shared among leading liberals. “I don’t know if administration officials realize just how much damage they’ve done themselves with their kid-gloves treatment of the financial industry, just how badly the spectacle of government supported institutions paying giant bonuses is playing.” 

By doing so much so fast, Obama jammed the circuits on Capitol Hill. Congress has a hard time doing even one big thing well at a time. Congress is good at passing giveaways and tax cuts, but has not enacted a transformative piece of social legislation since President Bill Clinton’s welfare reform of 1996. “There’s a reason things up here were built to go slowly,” said another Democratic aide. 

By doing so doing so much, so fast, he has left voters — especially independents — worried that he got an overblown sense of his mandates and is doing, well, too much too fast. A Washington Post-ABC News poll published Friday found that independents’ confidence in Obama’s ability to make the right decisions had dropped 20 points since the Inauguration, from 61 percent to 41 percent. 

Image via Opie, who says that she hasn't had much to say lately, but that the image captures most of it.

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And Summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:

But thy eternal Summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:



So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Excellent analysis by VDH: The strange case of the Obama meltdown. One quote:

Income is deemed arbitrary and compensation not rational; thus government is called upon to even things out given its greater wisdom and superior moral sensibility. The rapid growth in the state leads to permanent loyal constituencies of those who grant and receive entitlements—and could not be undone for generations, if ever. A religiosity surrounds these proposals, and critics (“fishy”) are targeted on email and websites, considered un-American and now un-Christian, in one of the most glaring examples of the utopian ends justifying devious means that we have seen in our lifetimes. 

Related: Here comes the Blame Game

An experienced outdoorsman can identify most of the plants and trees in the areas with which he is familar - but not so much elsewhere. Like learning languages, though, he can learn a new area quickly because he has woods-sense based on the types of habitats he already knows.

An experienced outdoorsman can also predict what birds and critters are likely to be found in a given habitat. Woods-sense is one of the few talents I have. I like to attribute it to my Iroquois blood.

It used to be called Woodcraft, then Natural History, and now it's called Science: Barcoding plants by their DNA. It's sort-of cool, but it is soul-less and not woodcraft.

Photo: An Alder thicket - a common lowland and streamside habitat in the northern US. I have busted my way through more of these nearly-impenetrable things than I can count. The branches pull your hat off constantly, and sometimes you feel like you are in jail, with no exit. And if you try to raise your gun for a Grouse or Woodcock, there's always a branch to stop you. Good stuff.

The quality of moral behaviour varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

Aldous Huxley (h/t, LGF)

Remember when Calvin insisted to his teacher that "Bats are birds"? (Correction - thanks, reader. I guess it was "Bats are bugs...". I was wrong again! That makes wrong twice in one week.)

New England is the home to around 7 species of bats, all nocturnal insectivores and most with some migratory habits.

Our most common bat is the Little Brown Bat (photo above) often found sleeping behind shutters or in crevices in sheds and attics during the summer and early fall. We had one who got into the house a few years ago. We managed to scoot him out a window. Wonderful - no, miraculous little critters, but worth keeping away from because they can carry rabies.

I noticed seeing very few bats around at twilight this year. I miss them dodging, diving, and ducking around in their bug-catching aerial antics. I checked it out. It turns out that there is a contagious bat disease in the Northeast. Whether this fungal infestation is the cause, or an effect of something else, is still not certain. It's a damn shame.

I hope their populations bounce back in my lifetime because these silent fluttering critters are one of the delights of the evening sky around here.

Photo is down the road from the Farm, in the Massachusetts Berkshires

Not satire: US Program Will Offer Rebates For Household Appliances. I guess I am being required to buy you a new fridge. Great. 

'Reflections on the Revolution in Europe' by Christopher Caldwell:

In Europe, the author argues, the clash between Western civilization and the Muslim world has already been lost -- in the latter's favor.

Brit Dept of Energy and Climate Change refuses to turn off their A/C. Related: Greenpeace admits gross exaggeration to produce alarm

At Driscoll: “Obama Would Like You To See Government As Religion”. Not just the O. I think it is a fundamental assumption - or pose - of the Left that government can be a god and alter reality. The illusion appeals to those guided by wishful thinking, because history shows that governments tend to screw up whatever they touch.

Related: Obama: Medicaid and Medicare are broke, so let us take over everyone’s health care. That is what seems to crazy about all of this.

Charlie Cook: Dem situation has 'slipped completely out of control'. Related at RCP: Amateur Hour at the White House. Look at the map.

From Byron York:

Remember the anti-war movement? Not too long ago, the Democratic party's most loyal voters passionately opposed the war in Iraq. Democratic presidential candidates argued over who would withdraw American troops the quickest. Netroots activists regularly denounced President George W. Bush, and sometimes the U.S. military ("General Betray Us"). Cindy Sheehan, the woman whose soldier son was killed in Iraq, became a heroine when she led protests at Bush's Texas ranch.

That was then.

Riehl on the Leftist Dems:

They know the battle is significant enough to be won over time. And they know this is an important enough gain to matter in their drive to eliminate private health insurance and make it a government run program from beginning to the end.

Cradle to the grave, that's how they view power over the citizen, all for the government's good, while they try to dress it up as the common good. The only thing common about the Democrats is the greater benefit and power that accrues to government, not the people, when it comes to any of their not so grand plans.

From Sowell:

Since it is their own money that they have earned, these people feel free to spend it to give their 80-year-old grandmother another year or two of life, or to pay for a hip replacement operation for their mom or dad, even If some medical “ethicist” might say that the resources of “society” would be better used to allow some 20-year-old to talk over his angst with a shrink.

Barack Obama has talked about the high costs of taking care of elderly or chronically ill patients in terms of “society making those decisions.” But a world in which individuals make their own trade-offs with their own money is fundamentally different from a world where third parties take those decisions out of their hands and impose their own notions of what is best for “society.”

This is good-natured fun: WH announces that Obama has Bipolar Disorder:

If Harry Reid showed up for a job interview, would you hire him?

Mark Simone, filling in for Mark Levin tonight on the radio.

Via Synth:

MY LIVING WILL
Last night, my kids and I were sitting in the living room and I said to them, 'I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug.'

They got up, unplugged the Computer, and threw out my wine.

Shelter from the Storm lyrics here. It begins:

'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood
When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud
I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

And if I pass this way again, you can rest assured
I'll always do my best for her, on that I give my word
In a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Not a word was spoke between us, there was little risk involved
Everything up to that point had been left unresolved.
Try imagining a place where it's always safe and warm.
"Come in," she said,
"I'll give you shelter from the storm."

Here's a good version from the 1976 Rolling Thunder tour:

Photo: Wellfleet, MA last summer

Remarkable story. The lost photos of Hiroshima. h/t, Am Digest

Want to sign the Free Our Health Care Now petition?

Here comes bad news: Media Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd. Unbelievable.

Unbelievable re that "guy with an assault rifle." 1. It was a Pro- Dem Reform rally and 2. The guy was black. h/t, Hot Air

Unbelievable. Can I compare thee to... the Grand Canyon?

Unbelievable. Busing in union guys from 146 miles away for phony Town Hall. Related: The danger in trying to fool ther people

A more nuanced view of Rahm Emanuel

Viking:

Get in line, Grandma - Here's Harvard economist Martin Feldstein with "Obamacare is all about rationing": "The Obama strategy is to reduce health costs by rationing the services that we and future generations of patients will receive." Wow, limited services and an extra trillion dollars in debt? What's not to love?

Bernie Sanders update:

The Senator in true Washington fashion declared that it was a human right that everyone be given what they want, and that the “rich” should pay for it all. As one aspiring to someday have a small degree of wealth, it was less than reassuring to know that my hard work, risk taking, and determination will be met with an even greater involuntary redistribution of what I earn. The health care debate aside, I had the opportunity to ask the Senator why he doesn’t preach more about individual responsibility, and why cautious, fiscally prudent Vermonters are being penalized for the largess of others.

Update on Senate races, incl NH and CT

Powerline: Dems in disarray. And at Commentary:

The supposedly smooth-running Obama Machine is sputtering. Unaccustomed to governing, seemingly in over their heads, and watching their signature domestic initiative turn radioactive, Obama and company are trying to find excuses to latch on to enemies to blame. But this dog won’t hunt. What we’re seeing is a transparent and slightly pathetic effort at damage control. The Obama administration is in a slide; and they don’t know how to stop it. The promise of “hope and change” seems from so long ago and so far away.

Well, "questions of honesty and of competence begin to dog the O." But it cannot be his fault, can it?

This makes at least the second phony doctor at an O health care rally.

Representative democracy or rule of the elites:

MASSA: I will vote adamantly against the interests of my district if I actually think what I am doing is going to be helpful.

(inaudible participants’ comments regarding the “interests” of the district statement from Mr. Massa)

Massa: I will vote against their opinion if I actually believe it will help them.

I guess the "elites" like to imagine that we need help tying our shoes (and if we do, we can thank government education for that). Thus things like this: ACORN May Impose Lifestyle Regulations Under ObamaCare

Big Lizards:

Several pundits ... have quipped that if the Democrats are so anxious for a public (government) option in health-insurance reform, arguing that allowing the government to "compete" with private industry reduces cost without damaging quality, then why do they reject a "private option" for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and schooling?

Insty:

REASON TV: Richard Vedder, author of Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs Too Much, talks about — you guessed it — why college costs too much. Say, if college costs are rising faster than medical costs, isn’t that a crisis?

Surber on government involvement in our medical care:

In the 1960s, the excuse was the poor and the elderly had no health insurance and taxpayers should provide it. That brought in Medicare and Medicaid, which increased demand for health treatment, which was the idea and that is good. But the increase in demand drove up prices, which is fine too because higher prices attracted good doctors from around the globe.

The downside was the government’s refusal to pay in full for services rendered.

But we now have the best medical care in the world. Expensive? Yes, but darned well worth it.

Taking care of the poor, the disabled and the old pretty much ended the public’s desire for universal health care. Hillary tried it 16 years ago. A dozen years ago a Republican Congress approved S-CHIP, which covered lower middle-class children.

Now the excuse is the uninsured, who fall into 5 categories: illegal aliens, people with pre-existing conditions, the self-employed, people who qualify for a program but won’t take it, and people who could afford it but don’t want it. Of the five groups, the pre-existing conditions people draw the most sympathy and we can help them without going to uuniversal health care.

It is not the socialism.

It is the dishonesty.

Barack Obama won’t admit the truth about his plans to impose universal health care upon the nation. This does not help him gain support for his policies, and it undermines the public’s perception of him.

Related, from Reason in 1993:

When Medicare finally passed in 1965, Rep. Phil Burton (D-Calif.) expressed the sentiments of many among its Great Society enthusiasts when he said, "I am equally certain that before many years Congress will choose to extend comprehensive medical care as a matter of right to every man, woman, and child in this country."

So the history of Medicare and the outlook for the program over the next generation provide a sobering lesson for today’s would-be designers of national health insurance. Unfortunately, no one seems to be paying attention to what the Medicare experience has to teach.

If you like it, feel free to borrow or steal parts or all this email which I am sending (all Senate and House addresses here). It's just my first draft -

To my President, my Senators and my Congressman:

I strongly urge you not to support anything that would, could, or is covertly designed (which has been obvious) to lead to a government-controlled medical system. The idea of a government bureaucracy and government "experts" making decisions about my body is horrifying to me. But if government pays for it, they will have the ultimate control.

Everybody knows that the Dem goal is government rationing and control. Why Dems want that in a country that stands for individual freedom is beyond my comprehension. Furthermore, everybody knows that Pres. Obama is lying in his salesmanship. (If it's such a good thing, why lie?) As Rick Moran puts it:

...establishing a system that is deliberately designed to eventually replace private insurance with a single payer government program would never fly in a million years in this country and the left knows it. Hence, the lies about the public option.

The reality that Veterinary care in England and Canada is better, prompter, and more caring than human care is a cautionary tale about government control.

There must be a problem when I see a far-Left Liberal like Nat Hentoff getting worried:

Nat Hentoff: "I am finally scared of a White House administration"   [Andy McCarthy]

After all the battles over all these decades, it took Obamacare to scare the daylights out of the renowned libertarian lefty (whom I read in the Village Voice as a kid, debated on Iraq and the Patriot Act, and have always admired for his honesty).  His column in the Jewish World Review is here.

The problem is the nationalization of a person's body, ultimately. I want the government's hands off my body and out of my personal life as much as possible. People like Dr. Zeke Emanuel (who does not practice medicine) are the sort of arrogant "We know what's best for you" types that disturb me the most.

Only I know what is best for me and my family. I want to be able to make the choices, to buy whatever insurance I want, to pay medical bills out of pocket if I want the services. And I do not want to see a politicized medical system where the loudest whiners get the money.

Let's step back from the ideological issues (I know the powerful Dems always want more government control of everything and rarely include personal freedom in their political calculus, while Conservatives want government to have less power), and look at the real problems.

The real problems, I think, are these:

1. People equate insurance with medical care. Wrong. That has been an unfortunate accident of history, and it was the fatal error of Medicare. We need much more Major Medical available for people. It is affordable, and it is true insurance.

2. Medical insurance businesses ought to be able to compete across state borders.

3. Portability. People ought to be able to keep a coverage they have.

4. Pre-existing conditions. Insurance regulations ought to require companies to pool those with pre-existing conditions, same as is done with multiple-claim drivers with auto insurance.

5. The costs of the Medicare program. It's almost free to the beneficiaries, regardless of their wealth or poverty. Government created that mess, so fix it, if you can, over time. (I think it should have been means-tested, but too late for that now. How about inching up the age? People in their 60s still work, nowadays. In their 70s too, and plenty of them longer than that.)

6. The uninsured. Let's think a bit about who they are, and what, if anything, ought to be done about them. Medicaid already covers the poor. I know that when I pay a hospital bill it includes a charge for the uninsured, the illegals, etc., just the same as my kids' tuition bill includes an additional charge for the scholarship kids, and just as the price of something at the store includes an additional charge for theft and pilferage. I quote from this essay:

 As Steve Chapman argues in the Chicago Tribune, Obama and his allies are proposing way too big a hammer to address the nail representing what is wrong with American health care. The great majority of Americans are happy with their health care. Despite the propaganda, there are not 46 million uninsured Americans who cannot obtain health care or insurance.  If you are here illegally, that might explain why you don't have health insurance (nearly 10 million of the 46 million).  If you earn over $75,000 a year, and have no insurance (10 million of the 46 million), it isn't, except in very rare cases, because you cannot afford to buy a policy. You have made a choice on how to spend your money, and in essence, have chosen to self-insure .  If you qualify for Medicaid or some other government program and don't sign up (another roughly 4.5 million, if not more), whose fault is that? Another 6.5 million of the so-called uninsured are actually insured by Medicaid or S-Chip, but the census taker does not know it. Sally Pipes argues that the number of "uninsured" who would qualify for existing programs is much higher -- as many as 14 million people.

7. Malpractice tort reform. All physicians admit to unnecessary expenses for CYA purposes. Legal concerns rather than medical judgement plays a far larger role in American medicine than people realize.

8. The money spent on medical care in America. I happen to think it's great. We spend more money on medical things because that is what people in wealthy nations do. Dental implants, new knees and hips, physical therapy, psychotherapy, arterial stents, antidepressants, Alzheimer treatments, lazer vision treatment, cornea transplants, etc. That's why Americans at age 70 are so active and in such good shape compared to anywhere else in the world. It's a good thing for medical care to be such a big driver of the economy: what better use of money is there? It only becomes a "problem" when government has to pick up the tab.

In conclusion, I ask that you folks in government please stop doing things "for us." We Americans can figure it out ourselves. We always have, through good times and bad.

Best regards,

Bird Dog 

PS: If you wish to respond, please do not respond with the standard talking points. I do not buy them.

Via Synthstuff, the wonderful Daniel Hannan, MP, delivers a warning to America this week. Why isn't this guy the Tory leader?

16,000 year-old clay figure. In the Sabuniye tumulus. h/t, Jungleman. They always call them "mother goddesses" but I think it was just old-time T&A.

The Cahaba River. I knew nothing about this.

Forget Woodstock's anniversary. Tim Blair notes that this was the 45th anniversary of this very good stuff.

But it's groovy, man, that Arlo is a conservative. Like, far out.

Dick Armey: We'll march on Washington

Ban Ki-Moonbat Vies With Al Gore in Hysterical Self-Parody

Barone: Dear Young Obama Voter

Liberalism: Because we know what's best for you

Why the heck would they bring Howard Dean into this? Even more wacky, they bring in the E Word. Also, was that public option removal thing a head fake? What would Alinsky do? He would lie, wouldn't he? The ends justify the means.

Hey. What happened to the Anti-War Movement? Ah, my naive young friend. Now you see how the game is played.

From Yalie Never Yet Melted on Yale:

Why Obama's Ratings Are Sinking: Americans will put up with a lot. But not with someone who imperils their future.

Dr. Sanity (I thought she retired from blogging):

All thuggish leftists and collectivists, including many of those we have elected to represent us in Congress; as well as the Taliban and other Islamofascist movements, intuitively understand that by controlling the education of the young, they can have an endless supply of fodder for their revolutionary utopia.

Controlling health care, as was pointed out in the previous post, helps them control everyone's life in the present. But, when they completely control education, then the political left will control the future and will have achieved their final victory.

BTW, "Hasta la victoria siempre" was the signoff used by Ernesto "Ché" Guevara in the last letter he wrote to Fidel Castro.

Dr. Melissa:

Who likes being treated like an idiot? No one. And yet, the Left and Liberals in general, speak to the American people like they’re morons. The absolute worst is Al Gore. The most insulting thing is the guy ain’t that smart and he comes across as a doltish buffoon and still has the nerve to lecture stupid Americans. It’s annoying...

And so, rather than engage Sarah Palin on the merits, even the editors at the National Review get lost in what they consider hyperbole. Elites hate hyperbole (except when they’re employing it to chastise the masses into using fluorescent lighting). The form-police ignore the substance because the messenger doesn’t have an air of hauteur and the Ivy league parchment required to engage in the “conversation”.

WSJ:

Right now the entire Beltway—including the West Wing—seems obsessed with finding out what went wrong with the administration's sales pitch. No one appears to think the problem might be substance. Or that the vague answers and vitriolic rhetoric we get from Democrats such as Mr. Reid convey a sense that the plans they favor will not hold up under public scrutiny.

Take this AARP and shove it

Goon Squads: Obama, ACORN, and the SEIU? They Go Way Back

Our contributor Roger de Hauteville, former King of Sicily and a Ted Kennedy fan, emailed me this artistic effort:

Marginal Revolution is a Puffin guy. 

More info about Puffins at All About Birds. Tyler Cowen linked to this Puffin video:

.