Maggie's Farm

We make the rules up as we go along...

Dick Morris: Why Democrats Are Doomed if ObamaCare Passes

From 1996, Milton Friedman's A Way Out of Soviet-Style Health Care - Solzhenitsyn's prophetic warning about the depersonalization of medicine

I will always be a Marine wife

Sippican's ancestors

Vandy: Welcome to Your Small World, Suckers

Image on right via Theo

Image below via Moonbattery's Dems Explain Why ObamaCare Must Be Stopped

 Image below from DC yesterday via NRO:

John 12:1-8

12:1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

12:2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.

12:3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

12:4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said,

12:5 "Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?"

12:6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.)

12:7 Jesus said, "Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.

12:8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

Weather adventures are great, but I will not be an idiot either. Since I already have a good gas line, I am finally installing one of these babies. Anything to keep Mrs. BD happy, and it turns out that she is no longer the rugged camper that she once was.

From our archives, because the sound of saws is constant around here this week:

Burning carbon to kill trees! Good work and good fun.

The gasoline-powered chainsaw is one of the finest inventions since the wheel and the plow. It's really just a mechanized stone axe like my Indian sncestors used, and I am eagerly awaiting the laser saw to bring wood cutting into the 21st Century.

While the engineering principles of the chainsaw may go back to surgical instruments of the 1800s, the modern concept dates to the 1920's with bulky and impractical designs until the German engineer Andreas Stihl developed his "tree-cutting machine" around 1929. The one-man saw dates to around 1950 and was perfected by Stihl and their main competitor, the weapons manufacturer Husqvarna. The Stihl family still owns their company. Check out their saws here. (No, this is not an advt.)

I have always enjoyed power saws: my godfather's father started the Wright Saw Company in CT, which produces a reciprocating power saw - an anomaly in the development of power saws which never really caught on except for special uses.

The author begins -

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(so priketh hem nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of engelond to caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
Bifil that in that seson on a day,
In southwerk at the tabard as I lay
Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage
To caunterbury with ful devout corage,
At nyght was come into that hostelrye
Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye,
Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle
In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,
That toward caunterbury wolden ryde.
The chambres and the stables weren wyde,
And wel we weren esed atte beste.
And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste,
So hadde I spoken with hem everichon
That I was of hir felaweshipe anon,
And made forward erly for to ryse,
To take oure wey ther as I yow devyse.
But nathelees, whil I have tyme and space,
Er that I ferther in this tale pace,
Me thynketh it acordaunt to resoun
To telle yow al the condicioun
Of ech of hem, so as it semed me,
And whiche they weren, and of what degree,
And eek in what array that they were inne;
And at a knyght than wol I first bigynne.

Not aprill yet, but almost. A "palmer" is someone who wears a palm leaf as testimony of having taken a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I am posting a "modern English" translation below the fold, but bearing in mind that Chaucer wrote in the closest thing to modern English at the time - some say invented modern English in literature. The British Isles had many languages and language variants at the time; Anglo-Saxon, French, Gaelic, Welsh, etc. Just consider how many Norman-French words he uses. What the literate and well-educated Jeff Chaucer wrote was and is modern English - and fine job he did with it.

Name that gull. Photo from a reader in CT, taken yesterday:

Thanx, BL:

I cannot find Bob's haunting solo version from his record, so I'll post a less impressive live version from '95.

The lyrics:

Oh, the gentlemen are talking and the midnight moon is on the riverside
They're drinking up and walking and it is time for me to slide
I live in another world where life and death are memorized
Where the earth is strung with lover's pearls and all I see are dark eyes.

A cock is crowing far away and another soldier's deep in prayer
Some mother's child has gone astray, she can't find him anywhere
But I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise
Whom nature's beast fears as they come and all I see are dark eyes.

They tell me to be discreet for all intended purposes
They tell me revenge is sweet and from where they stand, I'm sure it is
But I feel nothing for their game, where beauty goes unrecognized
All I feel is heat and flame, and all I see are dark eyes.

Oh, the French girl, she's in paradise and a drunken man is at the wheel
Hunger pays a heavy prize to the falling gods of speed and steel
Oh, time is short and the days are sweet and passion rules the arrow that flies
A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes.

Many friends in town still without power etc. At some point, it gets a little old. A hot shower is one heck of a fine thing. A few more of my storm photos were posted earlier today. A few observations -

- You can get the phone co. to forward your regular phone to your cell phone on an emergency basis. That's a good service. Problem is, it pretty much wears out your cell battery while trying to get through to them.

- The power of nature is a majestic, frightening, unpredictable, glorious, exciting, humbling thing.

- Throwing out everything in your freezers is a bummer. Furthermore, the smelly garbage draws raccoons from all surrounding counties, who spill and drag it all around. Lovely. Thanks, fellas.

- It might be time to spring for a Home Depot generator like Gwynnie has. I am always the last person to have the techy thing.

- Memo to self: "Call your mother." Don't wait for an 80-something lady to call to see how you are doing. She said "Oh, we're fine. Your Pop and I are having quite an adventure with candlelight and the fireplace and the wood stove all going strong. We keep eachother warm. No stove though, so your Pop keeps sending me out five miles to Dunkin Donuts for coffee."

- The importance of fortunate timing: the BD pupette spent this week skiing in Utah with college pals - Deer Valley, where they offer you a hankie and a VSOP or glass of sherry on the lift line - instead of chilling here in the dark. Nice life to be a BD kid. I'd be happy to be one myself right now, around 20 years old with what I know now.

- No government was needed to get New England back up and running. All it took was neighborliness, dutiful utility companies, and tree companies from all over. The guys clearing our roads came down from NH and Quebec. I believe we also had every cherry-picker truck in Mt. Airy, NC, up here.

- No distractions: When you have no radio, TV, internet, phone, or power, you are pretty much stuck with your own thoughts. Sometimes that is interesting; sometimes it is living hell with memories, regrets, remorse, pain, etc. Dr. Bliss posted on this in A New Way to be Insane and in Try turning off the radio: Obsessions, Distractions and Diversions.

- My preferred living temperature is between 60 and 64 F. Keeps me alert, and comfortable in the proper dress code.

- All fossil fuel is just stored solar power. So is firewood. These things are solar power batteries. "Organic," too.

- It is said that fireplaces draw heat from a house. Perhaps that is true - but not in an unheated house. In an unheated house, a fireplace will radiate fairly well. Of course, a Franklin stove will do a much better job of that while burning less wood. Ol' Ben was quite a fellow, even if he was a jerk in some ways.

- Sheesh, Mr. Bruce Kesler! Now I see why people complain about the cheesecake on Maggie's. Every time I stopped by the library to check my email (they had power) and to see how Maggie's was holding up, out popped that seductive St. Paddy's leprechaun for all the world to see. I have to consider my reputation! However, she is one pleasant leprechaun.

- The problem with socialist solutions is always that there isn't quite enough socialism (or enuf $)

- How Obamacare screws the middle class

- 65% say Do nothing or Start Over

- Virginia: If you ram healthcare through, we'll see you in court next week

- People want coverage of pre-existing conditions, but they don't want to pay for it. So who do they want to pay for it?

Maggie's HQ was fortunate to regain heat, cable, and power last night, after losing those fine modern conveniences on Saturday. Here's how we lost them:

another one:

A photo of the HQ at dusk:

When I was in high school, our Headmaster never praised intelligence in his homilies on God and life in daily Chapel, but he did praise what he called "stick-to-it-iveness" and "going the extra mile" all the time. I thought "banal nostrums" at the time, but now I know better -

In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins - not through strength,  but through persistence.

Buddha

Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press on' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

Calvin Coolidge

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Thomas Edison

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Thomas Edison

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.

W.C. Fields

Via Surber:

On Monday, after heavy rains, Gore held a teleconference to leap on the rain as proof of Apocalypse and Armaggedon: “Just look at what has been happening for the last three days. The so-called skeptics haven’t noted it because it’s not snow. But the downpours and heavy winds are consistent with what the scientists have long warned about.

Wasn't he warning us that weather wasn't climate just two weeks ago?

Thanks to our honorary New Englander team for keeping Maggie's flowing with stuff while we are without power up here at Maggie's HQ in Yankeeland (photo).

As of this afternoon, I see utility trucks from Quebec, Ohio, and Maryland buzzing around. I also hear rumors of a union slowdown during contract negotiations...no way to confirm that, of course.

Dad-daughter exchange from early a few mornings ago:

Dad, where's the yellow flashlight?

Honey, if I could find a dang flashlight I could find the yellow flashlight.

Nullius in verba

Motto of the Royal Society.

Once a common bird in New England and the Eastern seaboard but now gone the way of the Passenger Pigeon. From Wiki:

Heath Hens were extremely common in their habitat during Colonial times, but being a gallinaceous bird, they were hunted by settlers extensively for food. In fact, many have speculated that the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving dinner featured Heath Hens and not wild turkey. By the late 18th century, the heath hen had a reputation as poor man's food for being so cheap and plentiful; Thomas L. Winthrop related that they could be found on the Boston Common and that servants would sometimes bargain with a new employer for not being given Heath Hen for food more often than 2 or 3 days a week.

Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, 5:16-21

5:16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.

5:17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!

5:18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;

5:19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

5:20 So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Some wonderful windstorm today here. Hurricane-like and packed with the majestic power of Nature. 66 mph gusts.

Most of the screens blown off ye olde cabin, and a few trees down or half-down. If Maggie's goes down for a while, that will be why.

Only comprehensible to those over 40 -

From an essay of the above name by Craig and Fennell in The New Atlantis, which uses Wolfe's novel as a springboard for a discussion of cultural issues, but let me say that I hated the book, but I enjoy Wolfe's writing very much - the book was just too disgustingly real:

"I Am Charlotte Simmons is an indictment of the primary centers of higher education in America today. These institutions do not well serve the real longings and earnest ambitions of the young people who flock to them, at great cost and with great expectations, year after year. Instead of pointing students to a world that is higher than where they came from, the university reinforces and expands the nihilism and political correctness that they are taught in public schools, imbibe from popular culture, and bring with them as routine common sense when they arrive on campus. Of course, these two ideologies are largely incompatible: nihilism celebrates strength (or apathy) without illusion; political correctness promulgates illusions in the name of sensitivity. But both ideologies are the result of collapsing and rejecting any distinction between higher and lower, between nobility and ignobility, between the higher learning and the flight from reason."

Read entire.

When I was a kid, Kedgeree was my favorite breakfast. My Mom was taken by it on all of her trips across the pond, and we kids just did not go for blood sausage. I think I first had it in Scotland.

This Indian-inspired Brit meal is as rare on US menus as Shrimp 'n Grits is on Maine menus. It's great thing for kids in the cool weather, or anytime. Supper too.

Rice, curry, haddock or smoked haddock, etc., and sliced egg on top. I like it with regular haddock, and even the frozen is OK with this. Wonderfully filling, tasty, and rib-sticking.

Here's one recipe, but it need not be so complex.

Men and women, relationships and politics. Villainous

Another runaway Toyota scam

Democratic candidates distance themselves from healthcare reform

Health care: What gimmick? We just pay the taxes for it for a few years before the thing starts to distort the apparent cost.

New poverty measurements to include government income and benefits. Makes sense. Of course, if poverty is defined as a standard percentage, it will never be eliminated no matter how many cars and TVs the poor own.

Jay Cost: It's Time for Moderate House Democrats to Stand Up to Obama

Moran: How the news gave up its objectivity

Climategate: Once Respected Nature Now Staffed By Moaning Ninnies

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
        It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
        It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
        And all is seared with trade; Bleared, smeared with toil;
        And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
        There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
        Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
         World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Founder of the American Red Cross Nursing Service. It's her birthday.

She said she didn't do it because she was moved by suffering, but because she liked the work.

I prefer people who do fine things because they want to, not because of pious self-congratulatory virtue or grandiose notions of changing the world.

To those for whom the intellect alone has force, such a witness has little or no force. It bewilders and exasperates them. It challenges them to suppose that there is something greater about man than his ability to add and subtract. It submits that that something is the soul. Plain men understood the witness easily. It speaks directly to their condition. For it is peculiarly the Christian witness. They still hear it, whenever it truly reaches their ears, the ring of those glad tidings that once stirred mankind with an immense hope. For it frees them from the trap of irreversible Fate at the point at which it whispers to them that each soul is individually responsible to God, that it has only to assert that responsibility, and out of man’s weakness will come strength, out of his corruption incorruption, out of his evil good, and out of what is false invulnerable truth.

It's about time people began piling on the arrogantly naive goo-goo prissy academic Woodrow Wilson. See George Will today:

Wilson was the first president to criticize the Founding Fathers. He faulted them for designing a government too susceptible to factions that impede disinterested experts from getting on with government undistracted.

Undistracted by the people, that is. Like the EU. Also, from Jonah at NRO - quoted there:

Wilson, once a professor of political science, said that the Princeton he led as its president was dedicated to unbiased expertise, and he thought government could be "reduced to science." Progressives are forever longing to replace the governance of people by the administration of things. Because they are entirely public-spirited, progressives volunteer to be the administrators, and to be as disinterested as the dickens.

God save us Americans from such disinterested expert mandarins. We are the mandarins, and they are our servants! Makes me wonder who came up with the wacky notion of political "science"?

Here's some real Political Science:

A snippet from 1965, Remember Me When the Candlelights are Gleaming (with Joanie), a wonderful Ernest Tubb tune. You can see that Albert Grossman just loves what he has found in Bob. 

How many songs does Dylan know? 

We recently posted a link to a homey discussion about how God speaks to us. But here's Gagdad Bob:

God's speech (happily) shatters all human containers for the same reason that a three dimensional sphere shatters a piece of paper.

Male or female? A test to see how you think. h/t, Attack Machine. (Somebody send this to Larry Summers...)

While you take the test, here's this:

:

Back before they had these

they had these:

White House invents organic Easter eggs. It's about time. Chickens never could figure it out how to produce organic eggs. Sunny-side up or over easy with those recycled wooden government eggs?

Detroit Farms? Makes sense to me.

Cool Baltic shipwrecks. Would love to see the ancient ones.

The NYT as partisan hypocritical hacks, # 3487. h/t, Tiger

Dartmouth's Rob Portman looking good in Ohio

California's College Dreamers - When will students figure out the politicians have sold them out?

Obama Is Late to the Party

Does Government Have To Do Everything? Darn good question. Simple answer: No. We The People aren't morons. In fact, we're the Boss. We create the money that they spend.

Pathetic: Climategate: George Monbiot despairs of the AGW cause – 'There goes my life's work' . Yes, burned up in global warming.

White Trash Barbie. h/t, Vandy

Bob Dylan: Jewish Messiah? Sorry. Just one darn good songwriter and song and dance man.

Fish photo via theo

I hear the Redwings and Grackles croaking and gurgling in the morning, on their way to their breeding marshes further north. The White-Throated Sparrows have begun with their spring song, and, at the same time, I see that my Juncos have left for their breeding grounds on the tundra. The White-Throateds will be leaving now too. See ya next winter, God willing, little fellows.

Redwings:

"I suspect that nationalism became unfashionable not because of Germany, but because it interfered with the spread of communism."

AVI. Germany was sort-of racially imperialistic, not nationalistic in the usual sense. Like Jihad, had they a modern army. We here at Maggie's prefer nationalism, federalism, and localism. Whatever is closest to the real people who pay the tax bills. No "New World Order," thank you. We fear centralism because we know those statist folks are crafty but aren't wise, and that they have their own interests in mind. Our Florentine hero Niccolo understood all that very well.

Shamefully stolen from our pal Surber:

See Dick Morris: The Democrats' Pickett's Charge. And there is more: Obama pushes senators for climate bill. My solution? Add Thorazine to the water in the the Capitol.

Image: The American air is getting cleaner.

Gun-free zones: Shooting fish in a barrel

Brit governments putting microchips in garbage cans. h/t. How do the people put up with that crap? Well, The Englishman doesn't.

Stimulants increase learning and learning speed. h/t Insty. Every college kid knows that.

Poll: Young Adults Turn Toward GOP. Change!

Diane Ravitch discouraged by education reform. Schools should be entirely run by and for localities, not by the Feds and not by the unions. That's how reform can happen. The famous Albert Shanker quote: "When schoolkids get union cards is when we'll worry about their interests." Something like that.

Effects of CO2 are logarithmic, not linear. That's High School math. Is it part of the computer models?

Feminists: College gals should drink, Yes means No, and campus rape definitions. I thought the feminists said all hetero sex was rape.

Don't hold your breath for The New World Order

Bucknell: You cannot debate the 2009 Dem stimulus package. Too controversial for college?

Florida, sugar, government and the Everglades: The corporate State

Not predicted by the models: South Pole cooling, ice increasing

Doc:

...if I am ever told I have to see every patient who wants to see me and the government determines both the appropriate treatment and the fee I can charge, I will retire and find another way to make a living.  (Maybe I will be so disturbed by the changes in my profession that I would need to go on Disability?) 

WHT?

This exciting new project is aimed at increasing public awareness of the links between climate change, poverty and child rights, and engaging ...

Good grief. Those are some crazy links!

The Census: "My race is human"

Doug Hoffman is back! He'll win.

John says the O is an ignoramus about insurance costs. Maybe he is, or maybe it simply does not serve the narrative to mention the reality that if coverages are mandated, costs increase.

Evil, evil Drudge. Do not look at his site!

Are we allowed to have two per day? Previous one was from Lenin, this from Nancy Pelosi on health care:

“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

Alas, the man's name does a disservice to the brilliant Florentine Renaissance political scientist and student of human nature that he was.

However, I did not know that he wrote comedy on the side. Another Renaissance Man, as it were.

I like his face: shrewd and discerning, but ready to laugh.

"Princes and governments are far more dangerous than the other elements within society.”

- Niccolo Machiavelli

"It's not that some people need more sleep than others, it's that some people sleep faster than others."

Peter DeVries

So many good sites, so little time...

Walter Russell Mead

Chicago Boyz

Washington Rebel

Mark Levin at the Reagan Library, March 5

From a commenter on our Communist Manifesto post:

Quite a few years ago I was at a company management training class at which we had a Marxist professor as an invited speaker. He explained to us that our political views were determined merely by our economic self-interest.

I raised my hand and suggested to him that maybe the political views of the academic class are partly determined by their economic and status self-interest.

He had clearly never thought of such a thing, and was a little upset. Some of the other attendees thought I had been rude to a guest by raising the question...

A companion piece, from another brilliant commenter here:

A while back I was chatting with a psychiatrist acquaintance about some topic or event I've since forgotten when he said, "From each according to ability: to each according to need".

My standard and automatic response to that statement (which I hadn't heard anyone actually spout in MANY years) is, "Is there any better way to get people to minimize their abilities and maximize their needs?"

It's a classic, often misquoted as Wimpy saying "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." However, that may have been from a different Popeye episode.

It's Here. I love it.

(This was clearly before credit cards were widespread.)