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.
Six Justices of the Supreme Court kicked the ball back to the court of Congress and the Defense Department to save stolen honor. The six Justices' decision this morning holds that the Stolen Valor Act exceeds the bounds of permissible government restrictions on speech. The decision is here. The six Justices, however, lay out how Congress may rewrite the Stolen Valor Act to make it acceptable to the Court and to strengthen the ability to expose frauds.
It's a laff riot as Rep. Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Government Oversight and Reform Committee, quizzes some Obama stooges officials on what constitutes a 'green' job:
But it's still guffaws galore as even Rep. Issa wasn't aware how all-encompassing the 'creative accounting' had gone:
I'm far more concerned with the precedent the Court will set regarding the further expansion of the Commerce Clause. If the Court fails to declare a federal mandate of this type unconstitutional, that would be an enormous triumph for "progressives"---far beyond the momentary victory of the Court's upholding Obamacare.]
Cahoon Hollow is a beach in Wellfleet, on good old unfancy lower (ie, upper, or outer) Cape Cod. It's their only ocean beach with a bar/restaurant - The Beachcomber - in an old life-saving station. They have bands. I believe Sippican played there in his dissipated youth.
The area is undeveloped thanks to JFK's Cape Cod National Seashore. Sometimes government does good things - but usually not. If you like warm water, the Cape Cod beaches are not for you. And unlike California beaches, at Cape Cod beaches people sit under beach umbrellas, sometimes have to wear wind-breakers in August, and tend to bury their heads in books while the cheerful sand fleas nip at their ankles.
These beaches attract some surfers, but the main water activity is body surfing: exhilarating fun, endlessly challenging, and the turbulence will pull down a gal's bikini top in an instant. Modest gals who like to body surf do not wear bikinis.
Lots of seals to swim with out there in August. The occasional Great White Shark, too. No fraidy cats allowed.
I used to think I could be important, and ordered my life accordingly. Now I realize I’m not and try my best to simply know, understand, and do my duty.
What the US needs is bipartisan health care reforms, not the partisan ram-down that we’ve experienced with Obamacare.
Everyone has a prediction for tomorrow’s Supreme Court decisions on Obamacare, and no one has a clue, including President Obama who has three different speeches prepared for different decisions. Regardless of the decisions, all except those addicted to government-run and single-payer medical care recognize that either Obamacare will need serious revisions or that we will need to start from scratch.
Below is an op-ed that I had in the San Diego Union-Tribune with proposals based on my decades of experience and credentials in health insurance. Republicans and Democrats should be able to agree.
We probably don't eat as many hamburgers as we should, here at the Farm, but I am planning a friends and neighbors cookout for around 30 people and thought I would do some research on the best burger recipes.
Seems like a couple of splashes of Worcestershire sauce per pound, salt and pepper, and some Cuisenarted red onions is the simplest way to prep the meat. My preference for grilling is fatty beef, not lean. From Costco, of course.
My reading informs me that some people stir eggs, herbs, and all sorts of other things into the meat, but that sounds more like meatballs than burgers to me. Plus I like a burger rare, and who wants to eat raw eggs?
The official Maggie's Farm Weight Loss plan eliminates carbs for the same reason: even minor carbs give you an insulin spike which undoes any conscientious diet effort. If you cannot grow some spine and resist carbs, just give up on your weight issue because it ain't gonna happen.
What I think what they mean is "Is being Conservative a mental ailment?" After all, people routinely change their political views with life experience. Anyway, in my view it's a stupid and pointless question.
This biological or psychic determinism -- the peculiar notion that fundamental political differences "don't really have anything in particular to do with politics" -- should explain liberals as well as conservatives. Most of its practitioners, however, seem to assume that liberal values such as fairness and compassion are, for lack of a better term, normal and that it is conservatives' beliefs and values that are different, even deviant, and thus in need of explanation... John Jost, a professor of psychology at NYU, sees conservative "aversion to ambiguity, a sense of threats, and disgust." Scott Eidelman, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arkansas, says "conservatives generally crave closure, prefer to act quickly, choose instinctive solutions." Riley Dunlap, a sociologist at Oklahoma State, thinks the effort to be fair and balanced is misguided. "I'm not personally convinced that there is an equal balance of bias," he says. "I believe that we see things like authoritarianism, dogmatism, closed-mindedness, to be distributed currently more on the right than on the left
What crimes have you been subject to in your lifetime? - Not including ordinary rip-offs, school-age or barroom fist-fights, or unpaid invoices.
I'll start it off. I had a car stolen in Hartford about 15 years ago, and we had five saddles stolen from the barn about 6 years ago while vacationing. That's all I can recall. Never anything with violence or threat of violence, thank God. Well, I did run from two would-be young muggers in Cambridge many years ago when I was fleet of foot. Got into my car on a dark street before they caught up with me. I have a CT carry permit now, but I never carry out of state. That's jail time.
I lay on the grass, counting tweety-birds, after falling off the top step of a 12-foot ladder while trimming a tree in the front yard, my 12-year old son’s concerned face looking down at me. My father, who could and did do anything he set his mind to, until the day he died in his eighties, also stared down at me. At 64, I had something important to live up to and pass on to my son, so I forced myself to get up, smile, and say, “let’s get back to work” (ibuprofen to secretly follow later).
“NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP reads a plaque behind Dole.” So ends a respectful interview, “Great American”, with 88-year old former Senator Bob Dole by an otherwise snarky toward Republicans young lady from GQ. The young lady can't let go of the diminished physical condition of the man before her, but can't hide the respect and awe at his life. From athelete to crippled veteran to candidate for President to helping today's war wounded, Bob Dole gave all of himself, which stands tall before her.
As it so happens, this morning brought home that message from several other accomplished old men interviewed by my local newspaper, stirring me to talk about other old men and women with whom I spoke or chat with now on the phone. Their politics vary but they all came from impoverished roots here or abroad, are self-made, involved themselves fully in our national life. From my youth to now they share their anecdotes with their younger friend, from my callow days to me now at 64, as I sat or now sit figuratively enthralled at their feet listening. In their twilight years, still, they never never never give up, regardless the challenge, price or risk.
It’s their sense of duty to things greater than themselves, their love of country, which has animated them from youth to old age, a sense of humility before the obligation to pass on a better, stronger, decent world in which the only limitations are those placed on self. From famous labor leaders and former communists or socialists to industrialists to globe-trotting journalists and diplomats to national political figures to best-selling artists, authors and academics, all of theireyes sparkle and inspire as their self-effacing words did and do inspire me.
I met Bob Dole in the early 1970s, at the height of his political power, as he took the time to encourage me. I met the others either at the height of their successes or after. They took time to talk with me, answer my ignorant questions with enlightenment, and kick me in the ass when I dithered or wandered. I could list their names and the lessons they shared with me, but that would fill another several thousand words to even be very brief.
After years of hectoring him to write down some of his encounters with the famous and formative people who he met as an international journalist from the last days of WWII to now, a friend and mentor is now doing so. I hope to help him get it published. He laughed at me for constantly needling him to set his anecdotes down, saying no one cares anymore. I find myself saying similar to younger friends who similarly needle me to write it down. Maybe I will...if I make it to my eighties. You probably had or have similar people in your life. They need to be reminded that someone cares and many more will care if you help their lessons to be remembered by passing it on.
I have been cursed throughout the years with perfect pitch.
And, amazingly, the Yankees don't want me.
I mean in the musical sense, of course. And, after a thorough, exhaustive 2-minute search through Wikipedia, it appears the precise nature of my affliction is known as 'relative pitch', or, in medical terms, relativepitchitis. That is, I can hear a note being just the teensiest bit off.
My first clue that I was crippled with this life's burden was when a group of us rowdy college students went up to Seattle and visited the World's Fair, which had taken place a few years earlier. Space Needle and all that. There was a machine that would issue a tone for a few seconds, then you tried to match it exactly using a variable dial. I was the only one of five who could do it, and did it three times in a row.
It's been pretty much downhill ever since.
When I walk into a night club with a live band, everyone else is thinking, "Hey, what a great lead guitarist!" Me, I'm thinking, "His high E-string is a little flat! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!"
Cursed, I tell you.
Which brings me to Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion and Sarah Brightman.
In less than 40 months, Obama destroyed the greatest bipartisan good will that any recent president has enjoyed, and has done more to discredit Keynesian neo-socialist politics than have all of talk radio, Fox News, and the internet combined. In just two years, he took a Democratic Congress and lost the House in the largest midterm setback since 1938. In other words, the people — fifty percent of whom either do not pay federal income taxes or receive some sort of state or federal entitlement or both — saw the best face of modern neo-socialism imaginable, and they were not quite sold on it.
Second, it is hard to screw up America in just four years. Look at it this way: gas and oil production has soared despite, not because of, the federal government. The rest of the world — the unraveling European Union, the Arab Spring, Putin’s Russia, aging Japan, authoritarian China, the recrudescent Marxism in Latin America — reminds us of American exceptionalism. The verdict from Wisconsin is that the statist model is over. The public union, big pension, non-fireable employee model is left only with an “après nous, le déluge“ sigh. The private sector is not doing fine, but shortly will be when it is assured taxes won’t soar, energy will be cheaper, and Obamacare will cease. The irony is that the last four years have reminded us of what we still can be, and how we differ from most other places in the world.
..."I'll say this, I don't give a damn about your dreams."
Thunder on the Mountain. How good is this? A masterpiece, in my opinion. The punch of the lyrics and the punch of the tune, plus the way the more recent Bob records sound under-produced. "I got the pork chops, she got the pie, she ain't no angel and neither am I..."
What is amazing to me is that there were any votes on the Supremes opposed. Why would anybody in America want to squelch voices and opinions? Unless they have contempt for the peoples' opinions?
It's a sickness, and it has a foothold, but not quite a majority, on the Court. We The People need all points of view, and we have the duty to apply our BS Detectors and biases as best we can. Seems to me that politicians are the biggest purveyors of self-interested BS, but their expensive speech cannot be outlawed.
While putting together my Penn & Teller: Fool Us post, I couldn't help but notice how striking the background music was in the fourth clip. I eventually hunted it down and discovered it was the main theme song to Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 remake of The Phantom of the Opera.
Since this is a musical, not a movie, there aren't any videos of the entire song being sung by the original performers, Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman, but they gave a live performance at the 1988 Tony Awards that featured the last verse of the song, merging into the musical's second-most popular tune, 'Music of the Night'.
Since we here at Maggie's Farm aim to be the best darn-tootin' blog site around, offering the Maggie's Valued Readers™ (that would be you slobs) something that no other site in town has to offer, I've employed the wonders of digital magic to combine the sound track of the first part of the song from a YouTube clip with the clip from the Tonys.
Maestro, take it away.
That crowd certainly got its money's worth.
The lyrics to the theme song are here. I have another clip below the fold.
No president in memory has done more to divide America than Barack Obama. Exploiting every division for political gain, he has pitted poor against rich, blacks and Hispanics against whites, gays against straights, women against men, young against old, and union members against business and government leaders. Mainstream Americans are tired of these divisions, and they want a president who speaks of "believing in America," not believing in black America, Hispanic America, young America, female America, gay America, or unionized America.
The American people are tired of change. What they want is jobs, better wages, stability, and security.
...you directly imply that I am a “denier”, as I am highly skeptical of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (not just “anthropogenic global warming”, which is plausible if not measurable, although there are honest grounds to doubt even this associated with the details of the Carbon Cycle that remain unresolved by model or experiment). Since I am a theoretical physicist, I find this enormously offensive. I might as well label you an idiot for using it, when you’ve never met me, have no idea of my competence or the strength of my arguments for or against any aspect of climate dynamics (because on this list I argue both points of view as the science demands and am just as vigorous in smacking down bullshit physics used to challenge some aspect of CAGW as I am to question the physics or statistical analysis or modelling used to “prove” it). But honestly, you probably aren’t an idiot (are you?) and no useful purpose is served by ad hominem or emotionally loaded human descriptors
Special Operations Speaks website has received 750,000 hits in just two weeks. If you know anything about blogging, that's simply incredible sightings. If you know anything about how President Obama's re-election campaign has exposed secret operations, tactics, intel, and allies, in order to make Obama look like something else than a foreign affairs wimp, then please go to the site and sign its petition. Meanwhile, there's lots more coming. Stand by, Obama, incoming.
Well, it's about women but it might as well be about men. In a sense, everybody wants it all, but everbody's "all" is different. Furthermore, there is this annoying thing called reality which always gets in the way of wishes.
How happy hour can 
We probably don't eat as many hamburgers as we should, here at the Farm, but I am planning a friends and neighbors cookout for around 30 people and thought I would do some research on the best burger recipes.
CNN: 
I considered asking readers what crimes they may have committed, but figured few would respond despite the fact that we all have made dumb mistakes. (See 
Those two peacocks 
