Maggie's Farm

We have posted in the past about that bumper sticker which Bill Buckley used when he ran for Mayor of NYC.

Nyquist takes on the theme re foreign policy. One quote:

Men who are not sufficiently cynical, who are soft-hearted, who do not have the stomach for what they propose, cannot do anything good.

"Universal health care isn't worth our freedom." From Dr. Tom Szasz in the WSJ this morning:

Henry David Thoreau famously remarked, "If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." Thoreau feared a single, unarmed man approaching him with such a passion in his heart. Too many people now embrace the coercive apparatus of the modern state professing the same design.

and

Our national conversation about curbing the cost of health care is crippled by the vocabulary in which we conduct it. We must stop talking about "health care" as if it were some kind of collective public service, like fire protection, provided equally to everyone who needs it. No government can provide the same high quality body repair services to everyone. Not all doctors are equally good physicians, and not all sick persons are equally good patients.

If we persevere in our quixotic quest for a fetishized medical equality we will sacrifice personal freedom as its price. We will become the voluntary slaves of a "compassionate" government that will provide the same low quality health care to everyone.

Our post yesterday morning moved me to look up some Bedford real estate. Since Bedford pretty much abuts CT, and used to be part of it, one might consider it part of New England Yankeeland.

Here's a pleasant 33-acre horse property on Guard Hill Road, Shannon Stables. It comes with a 2-BR cottage built in 1850. Asking $14.5 million. More photos here.

The weather is finally (just barely) warm enough for smokin' season.

I have had a gigantic, fat-covered pork shoulder in this thing for a few hours, covered with my good tasty stuff pork smoking rub.

With the cool breezes today - still waiting for real summer - it will take quite a few hours more until it is fork-tender.

This cheapo electric smoker never quite gets hot enough. My big smoker-grill is great, but I only have time to tend it on weekends.

The smell of the meaty, peppery, fatty smoke from the fresh pear tree chunks is at least half of the pleasure.

Booker in The Telegraph begins:

The moves now being made by the world's political establishment to lock us into December's Copenhagen treaty to halt global warming are as alarming as anything that has happened in our lifetimes. Last week in Italy, the various branches of our emerging world government, G8 and G20, agreed in principle that the world must by 2050 cut its CO2 emissions in half. Britain and the US are already committed to cutting their use of fossil fuels by more than 80 per cent. Short of an unimaginable technological revolution, this could only be achieved by closing down virtually all our economic activity: no electricity, no transport, no industry. All this is being egged on by a gigantic publicity machine, by the UN, by serried ranks of government-funded scientists, by cheerleaders such as Al Gore, last week comparing the fight against global warming to that against Hitler's Nazis, and by politicians who have no idea what they are setting in train.

What makes this even odder is that the runaway warming predicted by their computer models simply isn't happening. Last week one of the four official sources of temperature measurement, compiled from satellite data by the University of Huntsville, Alabama, showed that temperatures have now fallen to their average level since satellite data began 30 years ago.

Whole thing here. (h/t, Mr. Free Market)

Above: Lower East Side of Manhattan, 1937, where many waves of immigrants found their first foothold in America. Those 1860s-1890s tenements are still standing, in what is now one of the hippest young neighborhoods of NYC.

Below: Mulberry St., NYC, c. 1900, packed with southern Italian and Sicilian immigrants. The misguided Progressives wanted to tear down these neighborhoods, from the time of Teddy Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson.

What's a "slum"?

The Dylanologist and I have always been interested in the tragedies of urban planning, and fans of the organic, natural growth of urban areas designed by market forces and human desires, not by hubris-infected government experts.

One of his great-grandmothers, 1st generation Irish, raised 5 kids (with great success) in a NYC tenement, using bureau drawers as cribs. The Dyl said to me the other day:

"I lived in tenements for eight years. No elevators: two to three-story walk-ups, no a/c, shared bathrooms down the hall, unreliable heat, no cable, no phone, no wireless, with one tiny room with a dirty window and an old single bed with one thin, lumpy mattress. For the first four years, my parents paid around $30,000 per year for the privilege, and for the second four years, closer to $40,000."

Here's Jane Jacobs:

  Brief history of European Music, Part 3 - with some perfect morning music.

Psalm 24

24:1 The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it;

24:2 for he has founded it on the seas, and established it on the rivers.

24:3 Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place?

24:4 Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully.

24:5 They will receive blessing from the LORD, and vindication from the God of their salvation.

24:6 Such is the company of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah

24:7 Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in.

24:8 Who is the King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle.

24:9 Lift up your heads, O gates! and be lifted up, O ancient doors! that the King of glory may come in.

24:10 Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory.

Story at Never Yet Melted.

My familiarity with Ubuntu is limited indeed, but I am familiar enough with Christianity to suspect that the Bishop is proposing to invent a new religion based on communitarian political principles rather than on the search for a sustaining personal relationship with Christ and God.

Most of us can figure out our relationships with other humans relatively well on our own, without the Bishop's instructions. It's God that we need help with.

One Train May Hide Another

In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line--
Then it is safe to go on reading.
In a family one sister may conceal another,
So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view
Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.
One father or one brother may hide the man,
If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.
So always standing in front of something the other
As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.
One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide
The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another
On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe;
One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia Antica one tomb
May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide another,
One small complaint may hide a great one.
One injustice may hide another--one colonial may hide another,
One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath
may hide another bath
As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.
One idea may hide another: Life is simple
Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein
One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory
One invention may hide another invention,
One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.
One dark red, or one blue, or one purple--this is a painting
By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,
These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin
May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician
Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but
One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.
A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides
Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in
A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag
Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it.
In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by the mother's
And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker
May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee
Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love or the same love
As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers
The better love lingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts"
Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that"
And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the Garden of Eden
Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.
Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.
When you come to something, stop to let it pass
So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,
Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory
Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,
The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading
A Sentimental Journey look around
When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see
If it is standing there, it should be, stronger
And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore
May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk
May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and
One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs
Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the foot of a tree
With one and when you get up to leave there is another
Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,
One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man
May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It can be important
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

From a David Brooks interview, via Althouse:

BROOKS: You know, all three of us spend a lot of time covering politicians and I don’t know about you guys, but in my view, they’re all emotional freaks of one sort or another. They’re guaranteed to invade your personal space, touch you. I sat next to a Republican senator once at dinner and he had his hand on my inner thigh the whole time. I was like, ehh, get me out of here.

Mark Steyn quoting De Toqueville in his review of Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect by Paul Anthony Rahe:

I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls.

He didn’t foresee “Dancing with the Stars” or “American Idol” but, details aside, that’s pretty much on the money. He continues:

Over these is elevated an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate. It is absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle. It would resemble the paternal power if, like that power, it had as its object to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks, to the contrary, to keep them irrevocably fixed in childhood … it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairs…

The sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations—complicated, minute, and uniform—through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way… it does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting on one’s own … it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Welcome to the twenty-first century.

268 years ago, as of yesterday, Jonathan Edwards preached his most famous sermon in Enfield, CT.

At that time, our readers know, CT was a Congregationalist theocracy, in effect, and the Yale-educated (especially in the sciences) Edwards was a well-known but back-woods preacher.

Scriptorium takes a look at Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

The prissy-mouthed portrait of Edwards does not capture what a fun-loving guy he really was (not kidding).

"They're selling postcards of the hanging..." The recorded version of Desolation Row from Highway 61 Revisited, with good photos:

Appleton at Spiked wants to take a stand against hyper-regulation of life by government. One quote:

It is not so much that the state is remoulding civil society. Instead, the state is demanding that we live our everyday lives through it. We are invited for a walk with the state; we are invited to eat with the state. More and more of social life is now lived through the state as an intermediary. Our everyday actions are supervised – and authorised – by an official bureaucracy.

Painting of a brig off Heligoland by F T Albinus, for sale here.

Government medical care means the government has nationalized your body.

Mark Steyn, filling in for Rush today. Hate to say it, but I'd rather listen to Mark these days.

It's the Codex Sinaiticus, a 1600 year-old Greek Bible.

The British Museum curator notes that it does raise some theological questions in its differences from modern versions.

The hand of God moves in mysterious ways, and, sometimes, we humans are His deeply flawed and inadequate agents - or wish to be.

This photo was on the morning of the 4th, before I got the rest of my hosed-down camo life jackets and my vast assortment of hosed-clean blaze-orange shooting stuff, some waxed and some not, hanging up on this thing to be dried and refreshed in the sunshine.

That basement flood was rough on my gear (much of which was on or near the floor), and it all needed a serious, high-powered hosing-down -not a washing machine. It got most of the mold and dirt out, but everything needed a good long sunshine treatment.

Maybe I need a real outdoor clothes line, like my Mom has. She hates to sleep on sheets that have not hung in the New England sun, summer or winter. That old Yankee gal believes that sun on your sheets gives you good dreams, and the thick scent of the Berkshire wild thyme helps.

The Dems' twist on a GOP strategy: Spend now, tax later

Related at Am Thinker: How would you design a tax?

A radical feminist wonders why people hate Sarah Palin so much

Related, from Dr. Clouthier:

How many iconic images can one woman conjure? Well, that imagery links energetically to the common person’s hopes and fears. She brings out the clucking church ladies, yes, I’m talking about feminists, wanting to brand her with the scarlet letter for being powerful, sexual, female, beautiful and most of all, feminine. The fangs and claws are bared and it’s as transparent as the politics of a sixth grade dance. Make no mistake: If she were butch, we would not be having this discussion.

Related at Hugh Hewitt: Sarah is running a marathon

Daily sex with younger women helps men live longer.

Australian wine prices dropping lower than bottled water

From Spencer at Watts, re Cap&Trade:

...even if cap-and-trade does what is intended, the reduction in CO2 emissions as a fraction of global CO2 emissions will moderate future warming by, at most, around one tenth of a degree C by late in this century. That is probably not even measurable.

Of course, this whole discussion assumes that the climate system is very sensitive to our carbon dioxide emissions. But if the research we are doing is correct, then manmade global warming is being overestimated by about a factor of 5, and it is the climate system itself that causes climate change…not humans.

If that is the case, then nothing humanity does is going to substantially affect climate one way or the other. Indeed, given the fact that life on Earth depends upon the tiny amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, I continue to predict that more atmospheric CO2 will, in the end, be a good thing for life on Earth.

Yet, many politicians are so blinded by the additional political power and tax revenue that will come from a cap-and-trade system that they do not want to hear any good news from the science. For instance, in my most recent congressional testimony, the good news I presented was met with an ad hominem insult from Senator Barbara Boxer.

I can only conclude that some politicians actually want global warming to be a serious threat to humanity. I wonder why?

The NYT implicitly doesn't want Waxman-Markey. Too weak, they think. They'd rather keep the issue going. 

FDR and Positive Rights, etc, at Villainous

"A common bias among the smart is to overestimate how smart everyone else is." Stupider than you might realize

Are you better off than you were 2 years ago, when the Dems took over Congress?

Seen a Christian martyr lately? Here's one.

Human judges can show mercy. But against the laws of nature, there is no appeal.

Arthur C. Clarke (h/t, LGF)