Maggie's Farm

A more interesting mission than global cooling: asteroid prevention

Let's debate the Crusades again

Why do we delay gratification even when there is no downside?

Cheney wee-wee’d up the left. Related: Planet Janet

Econ 101: water

Rent or buy? Megan.

Now we own GMAC too. Why?

Reisman: The central problem is the central bank

Are Harvard guys sissies? Some of them are, for sure. Plus, insults are fun. What's the big deal? Anybody who cannot handle an insult or two is a sissy.

Via Lucianne:

When we look back at the decade 2000-2009, we may well define it by three crises: the crisis that didn't happen, the crisis that wasn't supposed to happen, and the crisis that we don't realize is happening. We haven't learned the lessons of the first two, and our ignorance of the third may doom us to be slaves to our government, rather than the other way around.

Related: In Intel as in healthcare (as in everything else): Bigger Government Is Worse Government

Related: Is the Dem healthcare bill consitutional? Inquiring minds wonder. I say No, and I have read the thing (the Constitution) many times. Always seemed to be about individual freedom to me, and restricting the reach of government.

Volokh: $150,000 Settlement for Black Public School Students Harassed by Other Black Students for “Acting White”

Mr. Nyquist has a post about truth, with abundant cool quotes including this from Nietzche: "Nobody dies nowadays of a fatal truth. There are too many antidotes to them." A quote from his piece:

Truth never grows old, unlike the daily news or petty gossip. The truth, furthermore, requires special handling. Those who bungle had best carry a lie. In this regard, we should think on government and bureaucrats. "It is error alone that needs the support of government," wrote Thomas Jefferson. "Truth can stand by itself." And of course, it usually does stand by itself -- with nobody anywhere near it. "I tell the truth, not as much as I would but as much as I dare," wrote Montaigne. "And I dare more and more as I grow older."

There is also Oscar Wilde's admonition: "If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out."  Or as they say in Yugoslavia, "Speak the truth and run."

This one came in over the transom a few years ago:

Sales: "You want answers?"
 
Finance: "I think we are entitled to them!"
 
Sales: "You want answers?!"
 
Finance: "I want the truth!"
 
Sales: "You can't handle the truth!!! Son, we live in a world that requires net license revenue. And that revenue must be brought in by people with elite skills. Who's going to find it? You? You, Mr. Operations? We have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom.
 
You scoff at the sales division and you curse our lucrative incentives.
 
You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what we know:
 
That while the cost of business results are excessive, it drives  revenue. And my very existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to  you, drives REVENUE! You don't want to know the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at staff meetings ... you want me on that call. You NEED me on that call!
 
We use words like upgrades, another round, top-shelf, medium-rare,  on-the-rocks, cabernet, Cohiba and foursome. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent negotiating something. You use them as a punch line!
 
I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to people who rise and sleep under the very blanket of revenue I provide and then question the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a phone and make some sales calls. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to!"
 
Finance: "Did you expense the lap dancers?"
 
Sales: "I did the job I was hired to do."
 
Finance: "Did you expense the lap dancers?!"
 
Sales: "You're goddamn right I did!"

If you need "Business Formal" for your work, but are of the thrifty sort who does not like to spend $2-3000 on a suit, the Brooks Brothers winter sale only has a few more days to go.

I make sure I always have a bit of this stuff on hand, if only for weddings, funerals, and special parties. However, my 20 year-old Brooks tux probably gets more use than my suits: I am not in a Business Formal line of work and I have been fortunate lately in not having many funerals to attend.

"[W]hen the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia."

George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788. h/t, Patriot Post

A BD pupette made home-made pumpkin ravioli last week. Nothing but butter and a little chopped sage on top. Delicious, but one only has to make the home-made ravioli pasta one time, just for the experience. After that, you can use wonton wrappers from the store instead.

Here's Alton on the topic:

Sign via Theo

How Manhattan is out to lunch. Olasky

Expel Students Who Might Kill Themselves? Minding the Campus

Last exit to utopia. City Journal

Iran: The stolen election. Am Scholar

Contemporary Art and Reviving Civilisation. New English Review

Bomb suspects were released from Gitmo

The Dem war against the not-so-rich and the aspiring

Via Riehl re the O and Duncan:

Continuing to follow up on what can be learned of Barack Obama's tenure as the Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), evaluations of the program during his tenure available on line demonstrate that in his only real executive test, Barack Obama was a dismal failure squandering millions of dollars on education programs which had basically no real effect.

I should have known that the line to get into the Guggenheim yesterday would wrap around the block. Thus we just returned the pupette to her apartment with her Christmas loot in time for her to cook a post-Christmas dinner for friends (I think Julia and Julie inspired her), and we banged around town a little. Lousy photographer.

I do love NYC for its vitality. I think this is the Ukrainian mission to the UN on the right:

The walk-up in Yorkville on 85th where Mrs. BD first lived when she moved to NYC. I hiked up those stairs many times to the fifth floor. It was worth the effort. 

Very convenient to the dry-cleaners -

More below the fold -

"The Flanker is by far the most extraordinary, high-performance aircraft you can own. Period."

There are two restored Sukhoi SU-27s for sale to the general public here. Military hardware removed, alas. Travel in style and speed - if not in comfort, and no worry about Jihadist bombers. 

Why not buy both of them for a matched pair? When one is in the shop, no problem.

To set the record straight, a brief photo history of Israel.

Related, Michelle on The myth of the poor, oppressed jihadist

h/t Driscoll -

Had enuf cookies yet?

Among the host of other Christmas goodies, the BD pupettes produced a couple of dozen Ginger Snaps made with grated fresh ginger. All other Ginger Snaps pale in comparison.

The Holiday Train Show at the NY Botanical Garden runs thru Jan 10.

I am taking the Mrs. down to the Kandinsky show at the Guggenheim today. I am a Kandinsky fan.

The Old Flame

My old flame, my wife!
Remember our lists of birds?
One morning last summer, I drove
by our house in Maine. It was still
on top of its hill -

Now a red ear of Indian maize
was splashed on the door.
Old Glory with thirteen stripes
hung on a pole. The clapboard
was old-red schoolhouse red.

Inside, a new landlord,
a new wife, a new broom!
Atlantic seaboard antique shop
pewter and plunder
shone in each room.

A new frontier!
No running next door
now to phone the sheriff
for his taxi to Bath
and the State Liquor Store!

No one saw your ghostly
imaginary lover
stare through the window
and tighten
the scarf at his throat.

Health to the new people,
health to their flag, to their old
restored house on the hill!
Everything had been swept bare,
furnished, garnished and aired.

Everything's changed for the best -
how quivering and fierce we were,
there snowbound together,
simmering like wasps
in our tent of books!

Poor ghost, old love, speak
with your old voice
of flaming insight
that kept us awake all night.
In one bed and apart,

we heard the plow
groaning up hill -
a red light, then a blue,
as it tossed off the snow
to the side of the road.

Dodd Heckled Back Home In Connecticut After Obamacare Vote (Video)

Via Rasmussen's tracking poll report:

A commentary by Michael Barone
notes that it been more than 150 years since such significant but
unpopular legislation was passed through Congress on a partisan basis.
The political ramifications in 1854 were so significant that it led to
the creation of a new political party, the Republican Party.

Related: The O rips the American Way as he leaves for vacation

How long does it take before we surrender our common sense to experts? Dr. Bob

More on Christ and Socialism. Moonbattery

The Dem bill, among other things, will do this:

Primary-care doctors who refer patients to specialists will face
financial penalties under the plan. Doctors will see 5% of their
Medicare pay cut when their "aggregated" use of resources is "at or
above the 90th percentile of national utilization," according to the
chairman's mark of Section 3003 of the bill. Doctors will feel
financial pressure to limit referrals to costly specialists like
surgeons, since these penalties will put the referring physician on the
hook for the cost of the referral and perhaps any resulting procedures.

Coyote on Tiger Woods:

Paying lots of money to stop having sex with hot women seems an odd
thing to do.  From my experience he could take up playing Dungeons and
Dragons and have the same result for a lot less money.

Harry Reid on government control of medical care:

"We're going to hear an earful, but it's going to be an earful of
wonderment and happiness that people waited for for a long time."

VDH on Where do these guys come from? He begins:

I do not think it will be easy to delay Obamism. It is not just that both houses of Congress are under liberal leadership with ample majorities, with a White House and captive media egging them on. The problem is that now the entire engine of the federal government is harnessed in the most unapologetic way to pushing through a far left agenda. There is no shame, no hesitancy in using the full powers of the state.

Lots more of Tiger's photos if you scroll down his front page -

Our Christmas holiday, or feast day, or Holy Day, is a stew of thousands of years of solstice festivals with plenty of ancient gods in the mix.

Indeed, Christmas' pagan ancestry is just one reason Puritan (Congregationalist) Protestants made it a crime to celebrate it. (Another was that it was a Roman Catholic feast day.)

Here's the history of Christmas tree ornaments.

Here's Is Christmas a pagan holiday?

This Christmas Tree History site recalls:

The Puritans banned Christmas in New England. Even as late as 1851, a Cleveland minister nearly lost his job because he allowed a tree in his church. Schools in Boston stayed open on Christmas Day through 1870, and sometimes expelled students who stayed home.

The Christmas tree market was born in 1851 when Catskill farmer Mark Carr hauled two ox sleds of evergreens into New York City and sold them all. By 1900, one in five American families had a Christmas tree, and 20 years later, the custom was nearly universal.

That is good marketing.

Readers know that I love Christmas for all of its historical and current pagan, secular, and religious meanings.

I spent Christmas Eve, as usual, with dear friends and family - and candlelight at church. That is all magical for me and my family. We try not to over-spend.

May yours be merry and bright.

My favorite. This is St. Paul's, London:

From a post by Michael Novak:

Those of us who are of Catholic mind do not believe that the Enlightenment began with Kant (“What is Enlightenment?”), or Locke or Newton, or even with Descartes. We cherish Plato, Aristotle, Cicero. But the first Enlightenment began with Christ Our Lord.

It was only with the Christ that EQUALITY meant every human being, barring none. From then on, no one was “barbarian.” Each bore in his own soul the mark of being called to be a dwelling of the Father and the Son — being called beyond all other calls a son of God. Neither mother nor father, neither civil society nor state, can answer to this call for you or me. None has any deeper bond or precedence than the relation of Creator and human creature. It is a bond of Spirit and Truth.

Thus was revealed each human's LIBERTY primordial, and in that liberty, EQUALITY with all. No other but self can say to the the Father “No,” or “Yes.” That choice is for each single one of us inalienable. That choice brings each into the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of all who are equal in the sight of God.

And that is how universal FRATERNITY became a human principle and an object of our striving.

Moreover, a singular feature of the coming of the Christ is that all have access to him — rich pagan kings riding from the East, Roman centurions (those who would put him to death, even they), Jew and Greek, and those of every nation, station, and state of virtue or of sin. From Bethlehem went out the message of the First Globalization — the global call to become one human family. But only by the narrow path of the free choice of each.

This was the First Enlightenment. There has been no deeper nor more all-embracing since.

Whole thing here at NRO

A photog friend was skiing at Pico and Killington last week (thanks to global cooling) and took this snap. He didn't see the message until he got home.

The Lord is like that often, in my life. I miss Him and His blessing when he is right in front of me. Blind, but then I see...

(By the way, did you notice the Pileated Woodpecker holes in that tree?)

Here are the lyrics.

I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle-aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men strictly accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well-being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on virtually everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God’s heavenly country club. Santa Claus is another matter. He’s cute. He is nonthreatening. He’s always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without thought of a quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he’s famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus.

PJ O'Rourke. Parliament of Whores. h/t, Samiz