Maggie's Farm

Dress shoes need to be shined regularly if you do not wish to look bedraggled, don't they?

A spit shine requires a little water (or spit). Here's the USMA method.

And from The Art of Manliness, here's How to Shine Shoes like a Soldier.

It takes a toothbrush to do it right and to get into the seams. People say 30-40 minutes per shoe for a definitive shine, less for a touch-up shine. Obsessionals like to top off a shine with a coat of clear polish.

I read that you are supposed to edge the sole too. News to me, but makes sense.

Photo is a good J. Press Oxford shoe - off the rack and not too fancy, but good enuf for government or academic work. Maybe when I win the lottery I'll have foot molds taken in London and Rome and have them make me custom shoes and loafers like my prosperous friends do.

'Liar' is just as ugly a word as 'thief,' because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in one case as in the other. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law.

Under the higher law, under the great law of morality and righteousness, he is precisely as guilty if, instead of lying in a court, he lies in a newspaper or on the stump; and in all probability, the evil effects of his conduct are infinitely more widespread and more pernicious.

Teddy Roosevelt.

It reminds me that Dr. Bliss says "Lying is worse than theft of property, because it is the theft of somebody's reality."

Howard Zinn. America the Awful---Howard Zinn's History.

Old Stalinists never die, they just fade away.

What was never mentioned in the SOTU? National security.

How Mann and Jones hid the decline. They just abruptly eliminated all of the cooler weather stations.

Related: Brit climate people broke the law

Why Medicare is terrible for docs and hospitals. Dr. Bob

IPCC Head in Glaciergate Crime?

Why not return Detroit to the French?

Gerson: State of the Union: Obama's reality problem

It's about time: Dem Hold on Jewish Vote Slips

How Hugo Chavez's revolution crumbled

VDH: Trashing the job-makers

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money - only for wanting to keep your own money."

Joseph Sobran

We have it pretty good these days. From Gene Expression:

Geneticists have long known that the ancestors of modern humans numbered as few as 10,000 at some time in the last 100,000 years. The critically low number suggested that some catastrophe, like disease or climate change induced by a volcano, had brought humans close to the brink of extinction.

If the new estimate is correct, however, human population size has been small and fairly constant throughout most of the last million years, ruling out the need to look for a catastrophe.

Assuming an average census size on the order of 50,000, it seems as if our species stumbled onto a rather "risky" strategy of avoiding extinction. From what I recall conservation biologists start to worry about random stochastic events (e.g., a virulent disease) driving a species to extinction once its census size reaches 1,000. I suppose the fact that we were spread out over multiple continents would have mitigated the risk, but still.... It also brings me back to my post from yesterday, it seems that for most of human history we are a miserable species on the margins of extinction. For the past 10,000 years we were a miserable species. And now a substantial proportion of us are no long miserable (it seems life is actually much improved from pre-modern Malthusianism outside of Africa and South Asia). If only Leibniz could have seen it!

Driscoll notes that the one nation ignored by the O about their amazingly swift and generous aid to Haiti was Israel and their IDF medical and rescue teams. with their field hospitals.

Thus our photo of an IDF babe from Double Tapper, who has more. (h/t, Theo)

Off topic - We are adding to our blogroll the following good sites:

The Future of Capitalism

Fausta (who has a good post today about Venezuela)

Big Journalism

"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen."

Samuel Adams (Image is Copley's 1772 portrait of the firebrand rabble-rouser and tea-partyer)

The new New Left consists of public employees and their handlers, says Malanga.

There are two Americas: the tax-eaters and the taxpayers. And, he says, there are no red or blue states: only blue metropolitan areas. One quote:

What makes these cities so Blue is a multifaceted liberal coalition that ranges from old-style industrial unionists and culturally liberal intellectuals, journalists, and entertainers to tort lawyers, feminists, and even politically correct financiers. But within this coalition, one group stands out as increasingly powerful and not quite in step with the old politics of the Left: those who benefit from an expanding government, including public-sector employees, workers at organizations that survive off government money, and those who receive government benefits. In cities, especially, this group has seized power from the taxpayers, as the vast expansion of the public sector that has taken place since the beginning of the War on Poverty has finally reached a tipping point. In New York City, this coalition has helped roll back some of the reforms of the Giuliani years. In California cities and towns...

Malanga at City Journal with The Real Engine of Blue America. (h/t, reader BL). I am reminded of Ben Franklin's quote:

"When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."

As I was considering some dinner plans, naturally the idea of foie-gras-stuffed quail came to mind.

Quail, around here, are Bob Whites. (Hunters in the South call them "birds," hence the origin of the term bird dog.) Habitat loss and development is the main reason that these Eastern US birds are approaching endangered status in parts of their range. You can read about them here. 

I have heard them calling their name out on Nantucket, Long Island and on Cape Cod, but nowhere inland in New England.

Fortunately, they are readily pen-raised and thus easily available at supermarkets - and for preserve shooters who typically, even in the South, release thousands of pen-raised birds for the pleasure of the sports.

This site has 91 quail recipes.

From a piece at Moonbattery:

Snaps from my field trip to Costo Sunday. I'm sure it looks just like your Costco or Sam's, but American abundance - and its cheapness - must be a wonder to those from Cuba or Venezuela.

What I was thinking, though, was that I'd like to transport the whole store to Port au Prince today.

Readers know that we are great fans of Dubliner Cheese from Ireland:

More random Costo pics below the fold -

Dollars trump facts in the Climate Hustle. Where are the MSM investigative journalists on the IPCC scam? There's a Pulitzer waiting for somebody...naw, probably not. Wrong narrative for the Pulitzer committee.

Here's the latest:

Here’s the latest development, courtesy of Dr Richard North – and it’s a cracker. It seems that, not content with having lied to us about shrinking glaciers, increasing hurricanes, and rising sea levels, the IPCC’s latest assessment report also told us a complete load of porkies about the danger posed by climate change to the Amazon rainforest.

How many fear-mongering, grant-seeking, $-seeking lies are in the IPCC report?

The now-climate-zillionaire, hot CO2 emitter, and Climate Hustler-in-Chief Al Gore with Ball of Fire:

h/t, Theo

Amendment 1

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

How complicated is that? How did this simple sentence confuse four members of the US Supreme Court? (Not that such an amendment should be needed, since the power to make laws regarding these things is not granted our federal government anyway. We believe, as Coyote might also, that laws regulating the political speech of non-profits are just as unconstitutional as other speech-control laws.)

Addendum: Many, or most, governments in the world hate free speech.

Barone: Voters spurn the 'boob bait' of the educated class (Sorry- cannot get this fine thing to link)

Newsbusters: Chuck Todd: Obama Can't Buy GOP Votes Because of Tea Parties

The O needs teleprompter to talk to schoolkids

Steyn asks Who's panting for O speech #412? A quote:

According to Barack Obama, the problem is he overestimated you dumb rubes’ ability to appreciate what he’s been doing for you. “That I do think is a mistake of mine,” the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”

But you schlubs aren’t that smart. You didn’t get it. And Barack Obama is determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start “speaking directly to the American people.”

Wait, wait! Come back! Don’t all stampede for the hills! He only gave (according to CBS News’s Mark Knoller) 158 interviews and 411 speeches in his first year. That’s more than any previous president — and maybe more than all of them put together. But there may still be some show out there that didn’t get its exclusive Obama interview — I believe the top-rated Grain & Livestock Prices Report — 4 a.m. Update with Herb Torpormeister on WZZZ-AM Dead Buzzard Gulch Junction’s Newstalk Leader is still waiting to hear back from the White House.

More Glaciergate:

In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air.

From Godfrey Bloom, MEP (h/t, Moonbattery):

Haiti: The aid agencies and charities are fighting over the money. Mr. FM: Haiti, Yugoslavia & the disaster relief industry.

Also, David Warren Generous to a fault.  One quote:

The first part of disaster relief is uncontroversial: food, water, medicine, shelter. Surprisingly, that doesn't cost a whole lot, nor take very long. It's the "peace and development" programs that follow which absorb the big money -- the growing of permanent new branches of bureaucracy to mind the population thus saved.

Haiti is not a basket case from the absence of foreign aid. Quite the contrary.

I lived many years in Asia, and much of my journalistic work was focused on "development issues." I've seen the consequences of aid dependency with my own eyes. It is the same story everywhere, where people are desperately poor: they have no freedom, they are landless, everything belongs to an exploiting class. And that exploiting class is, almost invariably, "leftist," and the nearly-exclusive beneficiary of foreign aid.

Photo of the new Metro-North Yankees-E. 153rd St. station from this site.

There has always been good subway service out to Yankee Stadium, but now there is a new railroad service and a new Yankees-E. 153rd St. train station to make things easier for the suburbanites (how often does one hear about a new train service and a new train station?):

From the Northern Suburbs:

Take Metro-North Railroad to its new Yankees-East 153rd Street Station; there's direct weekend-game service from the Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven Lines, as well as weekday service, and shuttle trains from Grand Central. Click here for details.

It's a great amenity for folks in Westchester and CT, because the traffic and the parking have often been discouraging for them.

How well does the baseball transportation work in Boston?

Hey, what happened to the H1N1 scare? Guess the same thing that happened to the global warming scare: NASA: No Increase In CO2, Global Warming A Sham. Related, Expert Warns of 'Climategate' Conspiracy  

Muslims Attack Christians and the Church Blames the Jews

Steyn: The Islamization of the World. What is so special about Moslems?

Rich Lowry: The New Catechism - Liberaldom has new articles of faith.

Prelutsky re government medical care:

Watching Senator Mary Landrieu sell her vote for $300 million and Sen. Ben Nelson sell his for a bigger piece of the Medicaid pie reminds me of an old story.  It seems a man once asked a strange woman if she’d have sex with him for a million dollars, and she agreed.  He then asked her if she’d do it for $20, and with all the outrage she could muster, she said, “What sort of woman do you think I am?!”  He replied, “We’ve already established that.  Now we’re merely negotiating the price.”

61% of US Voters Want Congress to Drop Health Care But Obama Vows to Fight On (Video)

Krauthammer:

An astonishing 56 percent of Massachusetts voters, according to a Rasmussen poll, called health care their top issue. In a Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates poll, 78 percent of Brown voters said their vote was intended to stop Obamacare. Only a quarter of all voters in the Rasmussen poll cited the economy as their top issue, nicely refuting the Democratic view that Massachusetts was just the usual anti-incumbent resentment you expect in bad economic times.

Medical care in Canada:

“I love Canada,” said Lesnar. “Some of the best people and best hunting in the world, but I wasn’t in the right facility. They couldn’t do nothing for me. It was like I was in a Third World country, I just looked at my wife and she saved my life and I had to get out of there.”

He was treated in Bismarck and later at the Mayo Clinic.

White House nightmare persists. Who ya gonna call? David Plouffe

Somin: Restrictions on Corporate Speech Reduce Political Equality

A victory for speech at Front Page:

Can the government suppress free speech critical of elected politicians? In the home of the First Amendment, that may seem an unusual question to pose. But that was the question before the Supreme Court this week, as it handed down a landmark ruling in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

Reason: I Just Love New York Times Headlines Because ...

Krugman in 2002:

To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

Why is the AG in charge of Jihad terrorists?

Insty:

A NEW BLACKLIST: Oakland Mayor to Theatre Board Member — ‘Do you now or have you ever supported traditional marriage?’ Good grief.

Photo is Milton, MA

Luke 4:14-21

4:14 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country.

4:15 He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

4:16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read,

4:17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

4:18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,

4:19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

4:20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.

4:21 Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."