Maggie's Farm

Luke 9:51-62

9:51 When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.

9:52 And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him;

9:53 but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem.

9:54 When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?"

9:55 But he turned and rebuked them.

9:56 Then they went on to another village.

9:57 As they were going along the road, someone said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go."

9:58 And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."

9:59 To another he said, "Follow me." But he said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."

9:60 But Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God."

9:61 Another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home."

9:62 Jesus said to him, "No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

They certainly have meaningful relationships.

... in modern Western science, the whole concept of life is so mechanical that, if you look closely, not even people are supposed to be anthropomorphized. Emotional, holistic terms such as love, sorrow, and concern have no place in an impoverished language of chemical transactions at the micro level and selection pressures at the macro. Not that chemical transactions and selection pressures are not essential influences, because of course they are — but from our current knowledge of them, they are acutely inadequate to describing the subtleties of lived experience.

This framework goes back to Descartes, whose dualistic universe of absolute mind at one end and absolute matter at the other admitted nothing in between. Indeed, Descartes reasoned that since animals are not rational, they are not conscious, and since they are not conscious, they cannot even be aware of pain; their piteous howls during the horrible experiments he conducted on them were to him mere reflex, the unfelt expression of material reactions akin to the shrieking of a teakettle.

Re Trump, I am not a big fan but I am amused by it all. A Pres does not need to be your best pal. He has made some good appts. Yes, he should give Mittens a job. Romney needs a job. Take one more guy off unemployment in this economy.

Viking Ship Stopped by Gov Regulations

Hot Tubs and Luxury Dorms and Climbing Walls, Oh, My!

Who Raised the Snowflake Generation?  Who’s to blame?

Try emigrating to China

How Scientists Are Using Poop to Study New York City's Coyote Population

Soft Drinks Number One Purchase By Food Stamp Recipients…

Free Coke!  Why not?

Toronto is a hotbed of racial intolerance.

Teachers' unions are unhappy

Teachers have unions? WTF? Why?

Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say

Colin Kaepernick Castro T-shirt is ignorant of facts, insulting

SURVIVING CASTRO'S TORTURES

FORTY THREE YEAR STRUGGLE AGAINST CASTRO

Repeal and Revise - Life after Obamacare won’t be as dire as some on the left are predicting

The outrage over fake news is based on fake news about fake news.

Fake rates: CalPERS Staff Nudges Board To Consider Lower Return Rates

I haven't slept in my own room since the election

Sheesh

Bookends to a Disastrous Presidency

Nov. 8 represented an explosion of anger on the right at years of smugness and disdain by liberals.

Trump’s media feud enters new era

Isn't it the media's Trump feud?

Network CNN Vows To Oppose Trump Administration

The Real Legacy in Jeopardy Under the New Congress? LBJ’s - The GOP has plans to take apart many of Johnson’s Great Society reforms. Will Trump let them succeed?

President Trump’s Pentagon To Do List

Unlearned Lessons in Haiti

Sick governance, sick culture. They have to fix it themselves. Not in my lifetime, though.

Lyrics here.

The Federal Regulations That Affect Your Thanksgiving Foods

Florida Woman Accused of Shooting at House Guests Who Stayed Too Long

Makes sense to me

Here's why batteries have started catching fire so often

'Atlas of the Underworld' reveals oceans and mountains lost to Earth's history

A Shocking Find In a Neanderthal Cave In France

A third of men never dance

How AirBNB Awakens Dormant Capital

Rush Limbaugh Children’s Books Banned at Wisconsin School: They’re “Inappropriate”

Yes, it's the Gulag, Western Style

Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high
computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete
medium-complexity tasks.

Students Need Much Better Counseling Before Going Into Debt for College

Black Lives Matter Activists Plan to Disrupt Black Friday Shopping in Major Cities

Spoil sports

Forest Service trying to seize private land from Montana ranchers

Evil

The GOP's Track Record on Illegal Immigration

Central Americans surge north, hoping to reach U.S. before Trump inauguration

Freakout at Vassar College

Why People Lost Their Minds When A Brooklyn Store Played ‘Sweet Home Alabama’

WaPo Releases Report on Russian Propaganda Sites- List Includes: Drudge Report, Wikileaks, Zerohedge, Infowars…

Not Maggie's Farm? The Russians are always emailing me hot info

Stop faking hate crimes. You're hurting your own cause

There aren't enough real ones

The snarling contempt behind the media's fake news hysteria

Flashback: Trump-Trashing Journalists Oozed Over Obama’s ’08 Transition

AVI: Jews and the Left

Jared Kushner’s first interview reveals what the media completely missed in the Trump campaign

Thornton: "If the delicate millennial Eloi were really interested in reforming
their team instead of indulging phony moral exhibitionism, they would
start with the Democrat party."

15 Things Trump and Reagan Have in Common

Robert Reich: How to resist Donald Trump’s first 100 days

Slate: Democratic Politics Have to Be “Identity Politics”

Democrats Lose the Future by Trusting Their Demographic Doomsday Clock

LGBT Advocates Debate Future of Movement Post-Election

Bob Herbert:  The War on the Poor Is Already Underway

Sheesh. I thought LBJ solved poverty decades ago

DONALD TRUMP Addresses Nazi Conspiracies at NY Times: “Boy, You’re Really Into This Stuff”

GOP: Get with the Permanent Campaign

Trump’s GOP: The end of ‘checklist conservatism’

Yes, Trump will keep on changing his mind: here’s why

Trump is seriously committed to the destruction of planet Earth

Of course he is.  He hates the Earth

UCLA Professor Has Had An Especially Tough Time Dealing With Trump’s Victory

Supermarkets are packed with aggressive white supremacists, Esp. Whole Foods. They hassle me all the time cuz of my Hillary button. Hey, she could still win.

It's still raptor migration time here. Seen overhead in the past three days: Bald Eagle, Red Tail, Rough Legged, and a couple of Sharpies. One of the Sharpies was eating a pigeon on my front lawn. This guy yesterday seemed to be enjoying the smell of my grilling turkey (OK, it's probably a Cooper's Hawk. We ararely see, much less get to photo, a Cooper's):

The video is amusing. 

Re-posted -

How did they celebrate their first year and their first harvest in the fall of 1621, when they sat down with their Cape Cod Wampanoag friends?

"Deer and wildfowl." What else? We don't know. I don't think they had the grain to brew their beloved beer until the next year. What we do know is that these folks had been through a nasty voyage in a rotten, leaky boat, landed at the wrong place - remember, they were headed to the Dutch New Amsterdam area - which was better idea. They managed to scrape out a living, thanks to the Indian's education (these folks weren't farmers, anyway) as they watched their family members die.

Only 53 of the original 104 immigrants survived until fall, 1621. Then they gave thanks to God. Thanks for what? Thanks, I think, to God for being there with them through thick and thin.

It's always been a wonder to me that they didn't all catch the next flight from Logan back to Leyden. Trust in God is strong stuff, and many of us are not strong enough to handle the powerful grip of God. Thanksgiving is about putting our faith in the Lord, or trying to - and nothing else. God Bless us, and America, please, and make us Pilgrims in our own time, in our own ways.

Image via Ace

Giving thanks for the invisible hand of strangers, spontaneous order, kaleidoscopic market energy & no turkey czars

Renewed Circus Maximus reopens after 6 years

The Factory of Fakes - How a workshop uses digital technology to craft perfect copies of imperilled art.

Obama Education Secretary John B. King Calls for End to Paddling in Schools

Paddling in schools? Bring it back.

William & Mary Offers ‘Thanksgiving Toolkit’ for Sensitive Students

How come Trump voters do not get toolkits for dealing with their moonbat relatives?

Watching the Snowflakes Melt

But Don’t Call Them Hysterical

The Trump-Climate Freakout

Possibly scariest interview with college Social Justice Warrior I’ve ever seen

University Bullied Students to Change 'America' Theme Party Because Trump Won - America party 'provides an opportunity for students to dress or behave in a way that offends or oppresses others.'

How about a Cuba-themed party?

There is great irony in the sheer hate from those who whine about Trump being hateful.

VDH:  Who Are Wise, Who Not?

Manhattan doesn't love The Donald anymore

After 30 years of love and admiration, a sudden divorce

Green Incoherence: Reaching Out to the Deplorables

The trouble with Keith Ellison

Liberals Are Freaking Out Over The Possibility Of Questioning “High Risk” Immigrants

Every immigrant to the US should make legal application, and be vetted, interrogated, and given probationary status. That's normal everywhere. Basically, a would-be immigrant is applying for membership.

Trump is right: Let’s finally move on from the Clintons

Dem Lawmaker: We Are a Permanent Minority – Not a National Party, We Are a Coastal Party

Jeff Sessions May "Prosecute" Sanctuary Cities That Don't Obey Federal Law

Illegal immigrants pose as families, tell tales of woe to gain entry to U.S.

Illegal Immigrants Set Record By Using Children As Deportation Shields

THE HIDDEN COSTS OF IMMIGRATION

Academics are dangerously racist

Do red state Americans and blue state Americans live in the same country anymore?

America has many more than two subcultures

Democrats’ Answer Is Always the Same: Move More Left - Nearly
every time the Democrats face a crisis, their answer is the same—move
left. This time, they’re about to fall off the edge.

Delusional

Belmont Club on elections:

In socialism's 1930s heyday cadres were exhorted to bear on their shoulders the task of murder, genocide, deceit etc -- so that the masses might be happy in their simple hopes for a Worker's Paradise. The ones in the know knew the earthly paradise would never come. The Grand Inquisitor wore Chekist uniform but his function was otherwise the same. In 2016 the Inquisitors no longer shoot people but they still kept the secret. The reason the liberal project will never perform an autopsy on itself is because that would reveal there's no there there.  It's the pretend that counts. The big secret the Left never wants to face is there's no "arc of history" they control.

Still there are always enough people who would rather be ruled by Grand Inquisitors than bear the burden of freedom; enough to keep a leftist project alive indefinitely.  Life in a community is simple.  And perhaps they are on the correct side after all.  There may be nothing beyond the Big Crunch and the Big Pretend.  So let's pretend.

I have never met a lib who could tell me when the Progressive Project of government expansion could be considered completed

Trump needs to stop denouncing nutcases every time the media heads to the fainting couches

Time for him to rise above. But can he? He's a street-fighting man like Obama wanted to be

MEDIA MOGULS COMPLAIN ABOUT MEETING WITH TRUMP, GET SPANKED BY . . . GLENN GREENWALD?

A Third of Germans Report Feeling ‘Like A Stranger In My Own Country’

A Tiny Minority of a Million Muslims in America

Muslim Refugees: "We Must Have More Children than the Christians Because it’s the Only Way We Can Destroy Them Here.’”

The UK has to accept not being special to the US

World Leaders Gather to Worry About Trump

Migrants Burn Down German Refugee Center After Camp Runs Out of Nutella and Gummy Bears