Maggie's Farm

Anchoress: Reporting Climategate would be like an attack on the religion of many. Some religions are more sacred than others.

Indeed. Here's the BBC on the climate issue of the day: Scientists fudge data It's hot in Africa Climate has been a major driver of armed conflict in Africa,
research shows - and future warming is likely to increase the number of
deaths from war.

(That's odd - the experts said the tropics weren't affected by AGW, didn't they?)

And here's how ABC handles it: ABC News Instead Runs Headline, "Worse Than the Worst: Climate Report Says Even Most Dire Predictions Too Tame"

Putting one of the BD pups and friends on the plane today to Barcelona or Madrid - I forget which - heading to the wedding of a friend since nursery school and a little vacation. I advised them to live on tapas, and, even if it is a boring food, to try paella in Spain once, just to be able to have done it.

Paella in Spain for Thanksgiving? The American yoots of today have it good. We often forget that Squanto had been to Spain - and to England too, before the Pilgrims met the fine dude who doubtless spoke his English with a refined Brit accent.

And we picked up the BD baby at the airport Friday night after the first few eventful months at college (including a grueling hospitalization with Swine Flu pneumonia - she has been otherwise in perfect health and is finally all better now).

After the airport, right to the baby's favorite little Thai place for a late supper. Very hot mango curry. Then home, at which point the likable and polite boyfriend shortly appears, and out they go.

The yoots of today have it good.

Saturday, she slept until 11, then did the big drive down to NYC - If You Can Drive It in NY, You Can Drive it Anywhere - to meet her big sister to see Men of Iron (basically Troilus and Cressida - I saw it the previous weekend with the $10 tix). Then home for supper (steak and string beans with lemon juice and olive oil), then out again with pals. She was out all day Sunday after throwing in a few loads of wash for us to deal with. I have no idea where, but that's fine with me.

The really good news is that she is obeying the "who pays the piper calls the tune" Bird Dog College Rules (which I once posted here): You gotta take the list of courses I require, since colleges these days do not require much real education despite the big $. Thus she is taking the year-long Great Books course (modeled after my Columbia required course), so I can now happily discuss Genesis, Augustine, Hesiod, Boethius, Aquinas, Homer, etc with her. It's about time. Good fun. Can't wait to discuss Calvin and Adam Smith and Locke with her. And later, Chem and Biochem - but especially Geology 1. (I believe if you don't know basic geology, you don't know what the heck you are looking at when you go outdoors just like if you don't take Econ 1 and 2 you don't know how the world works - unless or until you have a real job or two in the real world, of course.)

She said at supper Friday "Everybody I know at school is studious as hell."

She also said "My friends and I can't decide whether we like Augustine or not."

Said I, with the wisdom of age, "What does 'like' have to do with it?"

By 1940, essentially all American Chestnuts, a dominant climax tree (and a major mast-producing tree - once the major food of Turkey, Deer and lots of other critters) of American forests, were killed by the blight. Their wood has a remarkable durability and their somewhat rusty-colored carcasses can still be seen in our woodlands.

That is a bunch of Christmas Fern behind the fallen log.

From the climate scientists, via SDA:

    Here's HARRY himself;

        ARGH. Just went back to check on synthetic production. Apparently - I have no memory of this at all - we're not doing observed rain days! It's all synthetic from 1990 onwards. So I'm going to need conditionals in the update program to handle that. And separate gridding before 1989. And what TF happens to station counts?

        OH FUCK THIS. It's Sunday evening, I've worked all weekend, and just when I thought it was done I'm hitting yet another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our databases. There is no uniform data integrity, it's just a catalogue of issues that continues to grow as they're found.

    Upon this rests the wealth of nations.

Benjamin Franklin's Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress (1745).

"Lost your job, dear? I'll bring home the bacon... just don't expect our marriage to survive"

This is an annual re-post:

You go around the table or car until someone gets stuck. Then they are "out," just like the great game of dodge-ball. You will be surprised by how long it can continue.  It goes like this:

My first job was in an orange juice factory, but I couldn't concentrate.

I worked as a lumberjack but I couldn't hack it, so they gave me the ax. (a 3 pointer)

After that, I tried to be a tailor, but I just wasn't suited for it.

Next I tried working in a muffler factory, but this was exhausting.

Then I tried to be a chef, but didn't have the thyme.

I attempted to be a deli worker but any way I sliced it, I just couldn't cut the mustard.

My best job was as a musician, but eventually I found I wasn't noteworthy.

I studied a long time to be a doctor, but I didn't have any patience.

I became a fisherman, but couldn't live on my net income.

I managed to find work with a pool company, but the work was too draining.

So then I got a job with a health club, but they said I wasn't fit for the job.

My last job was at Starbucks, but it was the same old grind.

Eventually, I got a job as a historian, but there was no future in it.

I tried being a house painter, but it didn't stick.

So I tried to be a urologist, but I couldn't get the hang of it.

Then I tried being a cosmologist, but it was all too much for me.

Among numerous problems, I think the biggest problem with the Dem medical care bill is that there is no national consensus for this.

It is unwise to do things this large without a national consensus, but the Left is intoxicated with their (temporary, cocaine-like) power. With Medicare - for better or worse - there was a consensus. With Medicaid for the very poor, there was too. As it stands now, the Dems are proposing a solution without a problem. Or, a government solution seeking a problem...

It's a manufactured "crisis." There are easy, simple, cheap, non-governmental solutions to medical insurance unfairnesses which do not increase Federal power. (Yes, we have already noted that Federal employees are the only ones exempt from the bill.)

Cui bono?

Well, the Dems think they will benefit with their names on an historic take-over of 1/6th of the American economy by being rewarded with the gratitude and eternal dependency of the voters. Secondarily, the government will benefit by accruing more money and bureaucracies (111 of them by the last count I read, for our enjoyment) - which means jobs to distribute and more power over our lives. Third, unions will benefit - or so they believe. (Just wait until your doc is a de facto government employee treating you the cost-benefit-analyzed-by-experts government way - and his or her nurse is a member of SEIU.)

The 81% of Americans who are satisfied with their medical care will not. Nor will those increasingly-few who actually pay the Federal income and capital gains taxes to pay the bills.

I did get a kick out of Harry Reid's statement yesterday:

Today we vote whether to even discuss one of the greatest issues of our generation - indeed, one of the greatest issues this body has ever faced: whether this nation will finally guarantee its people the right to live free from the fear of illness and death, which can be prevented by decent health care for all.

Yes, we already knew that Government is the Church for the Left. It ain't my religion. And I don't want to work on Maggie's Farm No More.

Dylan Radio. You can request, too. We like it.

Just push "Tune in" and let it play. You do not need to log in.

The Great American Songbook. Guy has great taste in folk/pop music, whether his own stuff or that of his betters (?).

You can have these sent to you daily via email. Here's today's:

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."

Hebrews 13:5  (New International Version)

Eighty One percent say the quality of their own, personal health care is Good or Excellent. No wonder there is no popular support for the Dems' plans to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Who wants their doc working for the government? I want them working for me.

Princeton and Columbia cancel free speech

What makes nations rich or poor? With world poverty map.

McCain gets sane on climate bill. Meanwhile, EU president wants Copenhagen to give us “global management”. What a great idea!

Related, Aussie skeptics run TV ad

Related, from Powerline: The global warming bombshell

Related via Vanderleun: The truth about global warming will not stop the fraud of global warming. Too much money and power at stake. Same thing with government medical care.

San Franciscan likes Palin's book, but calls Alaska "weird." Enuf said.

Related: SF bookstores refuse to carry Palin's "gross" book. OK, I'll say it: They are weird in SF, but don't know it. It is the Alaskans who are normal.

Bad news for the O: Polls dropping like a rock. All Presidents fall below 50%, he notes. People are fickle, and invest too much in Presidents. It's because they do not trust themselves to be the President of their own lives.

The good news: Booze is good for men's hearts.

Employment looking worse for 2010

Ponnuru:

In the primaries, Obama distinguished himself from Clinton on health care by opposing an individual mandate. In the general election, he distinguished himself from McCain by opposing taxes on health benefits. So now he is trying to pass bills with both an individual mandate and taxes on health benefits—and his supporters are saying that Congress should go along because he won the election.

Photo: That is my Christmas Mincemeat, ready now for the brandy and aging. The venison in it provided by my bow-hunting buddy. Too bad our smellovision isn't working today. Allspice, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, vinegar, molasses, apples, raisins, currants, cranberry, meat.

 Via FOX News:

More than 150 Christian leaders, most of them conservative evangelicals and
traditionalist Roman Catholics, issued a joint declaration reaffirming their
opposition to abortion and gay marriage and pledging to protect religious
freedoms.

The 4,700-word document, called "The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of
Christian Conscience," was unveiled one day before the Senate is expected to
consider it's sweeping health care bill that includes a measure permitting
abortion funding.

Somebody let us know about The Sniper. Good stuff, plus eye candy for both boys and girls:

At Wizbang and Moonbattery.

It is worse than I thought - and I thought it was bad.

Part Whatever of The Hitchhiker's Guide is out, this one written by Eoin Colfer, author of Artemis Fowl. If you live in a cave and missed Douglas Adams' series, it's an amusing science fiction spoof.

It's called And Another Thing...

They don't build 'em like this anymore. My lousy photo does not do justice to this house, which I assume to have been the parsonage of the First Congregational Church of East Haddam, right across the street.

In the old days, the minister was given a house to use and land to farm as part of his compensation. In the real old days, he was paid via town taxes too: The Congregational Church was the established church of CT. Not that that meant all that much: Congo churches did, and still, vote on everything - including their doctrine and their choice of pastor - within their own congregation. Zero hierarchy, for better or worse. Every person was/is considered to have his own hotline to God.

The wife typically ran the farming business: it paid the bills and kept her out of the pool halls.

Update: I think our reader is right - the addition is the part on the left. The congregation must have felt prosperous at the time.

for Sen Landrieu's vote? Hey - that's my money.

h/t, Theo:

It goes against against my instinct, judgement, taste, and sense of proportion to do a Christmas post before Thanksgiving, but I couldn't resist this bizarro Dylan offering. (All money from Dylan's Christmas record goes to charity.)

Remain strange and unpredictable, Bob. We like you that way. This is a good Minnesota Polka:

Sarah seems to be a subject of great fascination. She was charming, smart, and funny on Hannity last night. Yes, her political points were shallow - but more substantial than "hopey-changey," and she has had more experience than he had - both in life and in government.

Here's her book tour schedule. Alas, nothing in New England. She should go to Boston.

From VDH with Palin-odes:

The AP supposedly hired 11 fact-checkers to discredit Ms. Palin’s memoir (Did Fox News hire 11 to question the very questionable things found in the two Obama memoirs?)

(I wondered, as did Jammy, whether the AP will assign as many to studying the details of he health care bill: "Considering the AP assigned 11 "fact-checkers" to pore over Sarah Palin's 415-page book, I figure they'll assign a proportional amount to this, right? That would be 55 of them, assuming they're interested.")

From Wehner on Palin (good piece):

If you believe, as I do, that the GOP once again needs to become the “party of ideas” — as it did under Ronald Reagan — then Palin is not the solution to what ails it. At this stage, based on the interviews I have seen with her, she doesn’t seem able to articulate the case for conservatism in a manner that is compelling or even particularly persuasive. She is nothing like, to take three individuals I would hold up as public models, Margaret Thatcher, William Bennett, and Antonin Scalia — people brimming with ideas, knowledgeable and formidable, intellectually well-grounded, and impossible to dismiss.

True, but those folks are not American politicians -

Finally, a word from our commenter MM on our Palin-mania post yesterday:

Sarah is doing a lot of things right. Holding true to her principles in spite of the ugly backbiting of the liberal media, remaining a faithful wife to Todd and a good mother to their children -- these are admirable things. Since I come from 'flyover country' myself, I have learned to discount what the limousine liberals have to say about most things and people. They view the world through a skewed lens of anger and resentment. But I still haven't figured out why they reveal their worst and ugliest selves whenever Sarah Palin is mentioned or comes on the scene. As a New England based commenter said on Neptunus lex the other evening, by all rights, by all they say they believe in, feminists ought to love her. She got her college degree, she married her high school sweetheart, she has five children, and she has been a successful governor of the largest state in the Union, and got a more than 60% approval rating from her constituents..

What's not to like? Of course, she has had more real world experience in managing effectively a large complex enterprise, meeting payrolls, and solving problems by concentrated effort. But what's so bad about that? Ohh, right. I forgot. Our present President hasn't done any of that. No governing ... no meeting payrolls ... no solving difficult diplomatic problems.

I guess you just have to hate a woman [or a man] who can do all of the above, successfully.

Or maybe it's just because she's beautiful. And her husband adores her. And encourages her in her achievements. Yeah ... that's probably it.