I hate to say it, but, when it comes to Gonzo writing, Mark Steyn has it all over the late-lamented Hunter Thompson. I still swear that I will renew my New York Times subscription if they hire Steyn:

Meanwhile, from Malaysia to Jordan to Scandinavia, it was a bad week for journalists increasingly constrained -- not to mention fired and otherwise humiliated -- in their ability to cover the big story of our time. If I had to pick a single moment to contrast with the hilariously parochial narcissist buffoons of the Washington press, it would be another press conference in another government building, this time in Oslo, called by Norway's minister of labor. Surrounded by cabinet ministers and a phalanx of imams, Velbjorn Selbekk, the editor of an obscure Christian publication called Magazinet, issued an abject public apology for reprinting the Danish Muhammed cartoons. He had initially stood firm in the face of Muslim death threats and the usual lack of support from Europe's political class, but in the end Mr. Selbekk was prevailed upon to recant and the head of Norway's Islamic Council, Mohammed Hamdan, graciously accepted the apology and assured the prostrate editor that he was now under his personal protection. As the American author Bruce Bawer commented, "It was a picture right out of a sharia courtroom."

In Canada, by contrast, the Western Standard (for which I also write) stood firm in its decision to publish the cartoons, and as a result is suffering legal harassment from Muslim lobby groups and has been banned from both Air Canada and two of the country's leading bookstore chains, Indigo-Chapters and McNally Robinson. Paul McNally of the latter defended his action this way: "We feel there is nothing to gain on the side of freedom of expression and much to lose on the side of hurting feelings." Not exactly Voltaire, is it? "I disagree strongly with what you say but I will fight to the death for your right to say it as long as it doesn't hurt anybody's feelings." Maybe it could be Canada's new national motto.

Read the entire, pointed, hilarious piece: Cheering Tidbits

A versatile sporting breed, the Pudelpointer is a mix of Poodle (aka Water Spaniel) and English Pointer.

I have a buddy who has two of them. Good family dogs, strong retrievers and pointers. Unlike Poodles, they like water retrieving. Unlike workaholic Pointers, they are family pets.

There are not many of them, so the gene pool is thin.

The less rare German Wirehaired Pointer (the Drahthaar) is a mix of Pudelpointer with several other German sporting breeds.

This site gives a good run-down on some of the German sporting breeds.

How soon we forget history... Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.

George Washington

(Cool trivia, re his name. Wassa - a Saxon name. "Ing" Saxon for tribe. "Tun" - Saxon for a fortified village. Thus Wassa's family's fortified town. In England. The Saxons...then the Normans...then the Moslems? Good Grief! "The soul of the nation is under the knife" - Dylan)

By way of follow-up on our piece yesterday on flooding and flood insurance, a piece came out yesterday by the AP's Bridges noting the increase of development in flood zones:

Concentrated development in flood-prone parts of Missouri, California and other states has significantly raised the risk of New Orleans-style flooding as people snap up new homes even in areas recently deluged, researchers said Saturday.

Around St. Louis, where the Mississippi River lapped at the steps of the Gateway Arch during the 1993 flood, more than 14,000 acres of flood plain have been developed since then. That has reduced the region's ability to store water during future floods and potentially put more people in harm's way, said Adolphus Busch IV, a scion of the Anheuser-Busch brewing family who is chairman of the Great Rivers Habitat Alliance.

Similar development has occurred around Dallas, Kansas City, Mo., Los Angeles, Omaha, Neb., and Sacramento, Calif., said Gerald Galloway, a professor of engineering at the University of Maryland.

Read the whole thing in the Houston Chronicle. Wish we could get some congressmen interested. Who wouldn't have a chat over a free Bud with Adolphus?

How often do you see a new Congregational Church going up?

The National Flood Insurance Program is bankrupt. Not recently. That means that taxpayers are subsidizing building in flood zones, flood plains, and areas with high risk of natural water disasters - and thus encouraging, rather than discouraging, stupid behavior by making it economically risk-free to the individual.

For reasons of principle, conservation, and common sense, this subsidy should end. If you chose to live in such a high-risk place, you should carry the risk, not me.  Flood Insurance should be a purely commercial enterprise, the same as any other aspect of homeowner's insurance. Not retroactively, but in the future. Somehow, I doubt anyone in DC cares about this every much, but the Katrina costs should be a chance to reconfigure this insurance/subsidy scam.

From Burnett at TCS:

When people own property and are fully responsible for losses due to their poor land use or development decisions, they are less likely to build or rebuild in areas regularly prone to flooding or erosion. This link -- between a person's property ownership and responsibility for their land use decisions -- disciplines people who use their property badly.

Unfortunately, a host of government programs break this link by subsidizing unwise development. All too often the result is lost lives, destroyed property and diminished livelihoods. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) flood control program and federal flood insurance subsidize construction in flood-prone areas and encourage high-risk development by shifting the cost of insurance and physical protection against floods from property owners to taxpayers. The result: more construction in high risk areas. Its economics 101 -- if you subsidize something you get more of it.

I guess politics trumps logic, every time. Read entire. (Image from New Orleans)

Shooting one lawyer is an accident.
Shooting them all is a movement!

Link via Confed. Yank. (What's a Perazzi? Here.)

It could turn out that Loftus over-hyped his tapes for publicity reasons. Rick Moran has it right in his piece in which he quotes Lori Byrd thus:

If the tapes are authentic, the discussion of efforts to deceive the inspectors and to be ready to quickly resume WMD production is huge news, but it obviously will not be reported that way. As I said yesterday, it is going to take a heck of a lot to convince the media, and those on the left, that Bush didn’t lie about Saddam’s WMD. Scratch that. They already know he didn’t lie about it. It will take a heck of a lot to convince them to admit that Bush didn’t lie about it.

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. 

Niels Bohr

Very funny. My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy has the video. She says it's the Islamic Numa Numa, and offers that old video too, just for fun - if you missed it.

(And yes, Maggie's Farm will make fun of anyone and anything we want, including our own religion and our own world view. Whenever we feel like it - and even if it's juvenile. We will not even try to compete with Powerline for brains. We are simple God-fearin' New England Country Folk.)

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in the world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can't find them, make them. 

George Bernard Shaw  

Poetry lies its way to the truth.

John Ciardi

This is what a .28 ga. shotgun looks like. They are graceful-looking little pea-shooters used by good shots on small birds like quail and dove, and clay targets. The only smaller shotgun is the .410, used by expert shots on targets, also on starlings and pigeons around the barn. This one by Connecticut Shotgun Mfg. Co. This pretty side-by-side can be had for a mere $19,000. Too bad it's a little late for the hubby this V. Day.

And here's a nice new .28 ga side-by-side one from our friends at Griffin & Howe, for a reasonable $9950. Nice wood:

The Gospels have become so overladen with myth over the past two thousand years that some Christians - me, for example - are not always certain whether an event was added myth, or actually written in the Gospels. And, of course, the Gospels are not exactly gospel themselves, being oral reports written down years later.

I hope I am not the only Christian who thinks that the question of whether Jesus had a special relationship with Magdalene is 1) dumb, since there is no data, 2) uninteresting, 3) a distraction, and 4) irrelevant. What is highly relevant to me is the following scene from John's Gospel, as described by Jean Acocella, who considers the role of Mary Magdalene in her piece "The Saintly Sinner" in The New Yorker:

Magdalene goes to the tomb in darkness, before dawn, and she goes alone. We feel her hurry, her sense of danger. To her astonishment, she finds the stone rolled away. She runs back to the disciples and tells them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.” Peter and another disciple take over. They rush to the tomb; indeed, they race to see who can get there first. (This exemplary male competition became a favorite scene in medieval morality plays. In John’s Gospel, it adds a bright little note of comedy to the otherwise dark tale.) When they arrive, they see that the Magdalene was right: the body is gone. They go back home, presumably baffled, but the Magdalene stays behind, weeping. She looks again into the tomb, and now she sees two angels dressed in white. They ask her why she is crying, and she repeats her simple complaint: “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.” Even with angels, she’s still looking for the body. But then she turns around and sees another figure, who says to her, “Why weepest thou? Whom seekest thou?” The tomb is in a garden, and the Magdalene thinks this man must be the gardener. A third time—it’s like a song—she repeats her complaint: “Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him.” Now comes the stab through the heart. “Mary,” the “gardener” says to her, and instantly she knows. “Rabboni” (roughly, “My dear rabbi”), she replies, and apparently she reaches out to him, because he says, “Touch me not.” (This is the Latin Bible’s famous phrase “Noli me tangere.”) “But,” he tells her, “go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father.” He then vanishes, and she is left by herself.

Read the whole piece, which powerfully asserts Magdalene's authority on "matters of the soul."

It is widely accepted today that the early Indians were responsible for the extinction of the large animals of North America - the amazing Pleistocene mammals - mammoths, camels, etc. that were abundant here during the retreat of the most recent Ice Age. However, now it appears that the Indians had a major impact on all edible species, and that the abundance of animals found by the early European explorers may have been a consequence of the Indian population collapse due to disease. Story about the Indians and California wildlife here.

For really old animals - Spinosaurus.  It seems that this guy was the largest carnivorous dinosaur. H/T, Lucianne.

This migrating flock of mostly male Robins breezed in around 4 this afternoon, the day after the Big Snow.

Al Gore slanders the US with lies and brown-noses the Saudis - incredible. Cap'n Ed. Michelle has details also. Righteous indignation from Ace, too. Rick Moran also has a fine piece on the subject. What is Gore thinking?

Most popular dog breeds - after mutts, of course. Willisms

The world Lincoln was born into: Am. Thinker

A Shanghai Disney? Travelwire

A message to Sweden from Tammy Bruce:

The values of freedom are lovely and nice when one does not have to defend them.When we are challenged is when we find out who we really are. The Germans learned what was at their core in the last century. Sweden, are you to be the first Western nation in the 21st century to surrender to fascism?

Whenever I see an old lady slip and fall on a wet sidewalk, my first instinct is to laugh. But then I think, what if I was an ant, and she fell on me. Then it wouldn't seem quite so funny.

Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

Snow Update: As of 2 pm, 19'' (58 cm.) and still coming down hard.

A dog photo, from right now:

One more:

The New Cabela's Limited Edition Spring Catalog. Email them, and get your own. Hard-cover, for your bedside table, next to your Bible and your current history book.

¹Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
²Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.
³While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.
⁴For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah
⁵Then I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity; I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah
⁶Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you; at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them.
⁷You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance. Selah
⁸I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
⁹Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding, whose temper must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not stay near you.
¹⁰Many are the torments of the wicked, but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord.
¹¹Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

Jake was dying. His wife sat at the bedside. He looked up and said weakly:
"I have something I must confess."
"There's no need to, " his wife replied."No," he insisted, "I want to die in peace. I slept with your sister, your best friend, her best friend, and your mother!"
"I know," she replied, " now just rest and let the poison work."

Last time, we did the Gordon Setter. The English Setter is a more popular favorite, an excellent family dog, and the finest of gun dogs.

Setters are members of the Spaniel family, with Spanish ancestry, as the name implies. Like most modern dog breeds, their blood lines were established in the late 1800s, but in the case of the English Setter, there are two lines: one bred for appearance and one for the field.

All setters retrieve, track, and point with a "set," a behavior which originally is thought to have been bred for bird trapping. More about the English Setter here.