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.
Good advice, for bloggers and for everyone, from Wizbang:
Never say anything you would not be willing to repeat under oath.
Never say or write anything you would not want to see plastered across the front page of the newspaper.
Never write when you can speak.
Never speak when you can nod.
Never nod when you can wink
Well, I am not a winker but I would add, as lawyers always advise, "Say it in flowers, say it in mink, but never, ever, say it in ink." I'm afraid that I break all of these rules, daily, as I have a perverse tendency to actively resist PC just for the fun of it. Fortunately, I have no employer to object. That's the Maggie's Ideal Way of Life.
"The encouragement of a proper hunting spirit, a proper love of sport, instead of being incompatible with a love of nature and wild things, offers the best guaranty of their preservation."
Theodore Roosevelt
Pic is Emeril's roast pheasants on wild-mushroom bread pudding. A wild mushroom risotto would be good as an alternative, or mashed taters.
I am bird-hunting today with Gwynnie, a real dog, and some friends. 20 ga., not binoculars. Hope our readers have a fine and jolly day too. I am in fine fettle, having only indulged in one beer last night, and early to bed. With a little luck, some pheasants for a late dinner tonight and a little vino.
Where the heck did Bob acquire that phony accent? That's not how people talk in Duluth. OK, I know. He is a self-invention. Our best wishes to ol' Bob, too.
There is a fixed amount of good things. Life is a pizza. If some people have too many slices, other people have to eat the pizza box. You had no answer to Mitt Romney's argument for more pizza parlors baking more pizzas. The solution to our problems, you said, is redistribution of the pizzas we've got—with low-cost, government-subsidized pepperoni somehow materializing as the result of higher taxes on pizza-parlor owners
Frederick II (26 December 1194 – 13 December 1250), was one of the most powerful Holy Roman Emperors of the Middle Ages and head of the House of Hohenstaufen. His political and cultural ambitions, based in Sicily and stretching through Italy to Germany, and even to Jerusalem, were enormous. However, his enemies, especially the popes, prevailed, and his dynasty collapsed soon after his death. Historians have searched for superlatives to describe him, as in the case of Professor Donald Detwiler, who wrote:
A man of extraordinary culture, energy, and ability – called by a contemporary chronicler stupor mundi (the wonder of the world), by Nietzsche, the first European, and by many historians the first modern ruler – Frederick established in Sicily and southern Italy something very much like a modern, centrally governed kingdom with an efficient bureaucracy
So claims Peggy Noonan, and I think it's darn good and enjoyable too: George Will on Religion in Politics at Washington U on Dec 4. (You have to click the link to video playlist for the speech, on the right)
"Do 'natural rights' presuppose religious faith?"
Will is not a man of faith and he is an old-fashioned Liberal. It's not a political speech; it's a wonderful historical-philosophical survey from the Greeks to Woodrow Wilson and the notion of progress, and it goes a long way towards explaining the historical underpinnings of the Maggie's chronically anti-statist and revolutionary view of the world.
Every 6th-grader to high school kid in America should know this basic stuff, but I bet many do not. "Should the State have a monopoly on social and civil authority?"
The Q&A after is excellent too. Family disintegration. Do not skip it. He speaks slowly and methodically, but it still deserves two listenings. George Will, like us, is a Madison and de Toqueville fan. Those guys were smarter and wiser than all of us. Those who think they know better need to beware of hubris: they were wary of all power.
America has indeed been exceptional in world history, and, we hope, will stick with it. I hate the idea of people voting without knowing their history.
2:41 Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover.
2:42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival.
2:43 When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it.
2:44 Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day's journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends.
2:45 When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him.
2:46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.
2:47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.
2:48 When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, "Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety."
2:49 He said to them, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?"
2:50 But they did not understand what he said to them.
2:51 Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.
2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.
The books from the people who know my reading tastes and tendencies but are always trying to nudge me towards a slightly higher fiction ratio. Having been rid of TV for the past few months, my reading rate has not increased at all because I never turned the thing on anyway. Who has time for TV when there is life to be lived, and a website to be edited?
I prefer dead-tree books to digital. Precious things. This is all great stuff to nourish brain and soul:
Mark Helprin: In Sunlight and in Shadow
Leonardo Sciasia: The Wine Dark Sea
Tom Reiss: The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
Guiseppi di Lampedusa: The Leopard (I can't believe I've never read this classic, but Mrs. BD decided it was time that I did)
Andrew Motion: Silver: Return to Treasure Island
Giles Foden: Turbulence
Orhan Pamuk: Snow
Sandra Benjamin: Sicily: Three Thousand Years of Human History
Louise Dickinson Rich: We Took To The Woods
Frank Oppell (ed): Tales of Old New England (Who knew that Boston used to export ice to India?)
Paul Driessen reported in the Washington Times that ‘the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that wind turbines kill 440,000 bald and golden eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, cranes, egrets, geese, and other birds every year in the U.S., along with countless insect-eating bats.’ The actual numbers are probably far higher.
It's as if David Duke invented a holiday called "Anglika," which he based on the philosophy of "Mein Kampf" -- and clueless public school teachers began celebrating the made-up, racist holiday.
Glory be to God for dappled things For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings; Landscape plotted and pieced--fold, fallow, and plough; And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.
A family friend just returned from a year's posting overseas, and despite massive jet-lag got himself over to the Maggie's HQ to cook up a storm last night.
After a year of southeastern Asian food, he wanted to cook a rustic Ragu. Either rabbit or duck are fine, but he used duck because rabbit was sold out at the market. Lots of Italians around here in Yankeeland. Use Porcini for the mushrooms, or at least the dried mushroom mixes with porcini in them.
There are excellent versions of this without tomato, too. "Italian" does not = tomato sauce. The Italians were cooking tasty dishes for thousands of years before tomato seeds were brought over from Mexico.
(Another great Italian classic is Rabbit Stew - like Veal Stew - which is usually not served with a carb or, if it is, with rice or risotto.)
For a Ragu - or for almost any meat concoction like Beef Bourguignon or Beef (or venison) Stroganoff - the only pasta I like to serve is pappardelle, which is a broad, egg noodle. It's also the best pasta for Pasta al Funghi with Porcinis. Trust me. How much do we love Porcinis? Is there any other mushroom really worth eating?
A Chianti Classico or Chianti Riserva works well with it, too.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Supposedly handcuffed the government and liberated people. Composed by James Madison, ratified 1791, now often disparaged as "meaningless inkblots" by statists whose hunger for power accepts no bounds
The more I study the history of intellectuals, the more they seem like a wrecking crew, dismantling civilization bit by bit -- replacing what works with what sounds good.
"The encouragement of a proper hunting spirit, a proper love of sport, instead of being incompatible with a love of nature and wild things, offers the best guaranty of their preservation." 
US on Pace for 
How To Be an Overachiever
Quite a
So claims Peggy Noonan, and I think it's darn good and enjoyable too: 
Luke 2:41-52
Food info: 
A family friend just returned from a year's posting overseas, and despite massive jet-lag got himself over to the Maggie's HQ to cook up a storm last night.
Oxygen TV to Run ‘All My Babies’ Mamas’ Show
This morning's art photo stolen from