Maggie's Farm

Taking a little break from cleaning the basement, which has now dried out but still smells musty. I had to hose down and sun-dry tons of hunting and fishing gear. Mold on my Filson wax trousers and chaps, but it could be hosed off.

Later, will trim some hedges. Then, take a needed shower, and go to a big annual 4th barbecue party with the reading of the Declaration followed by bbq pork, squid salad, shrimp risotto, lobsters, and burgers, tons of different salads and pies including rhubarb - my favorite - and real cocktails too. Hope it doesn't rain again, but a t-storm will probably blow through. It always does, as if to remind us of the battles for freedom. God's fireworks make man's fireworks seem small.

At Reason TV, PJ O'Rourke asks "Where was the government with Studebaker?" I miss seeing them, but never would have bought one.

The Anchoress has tons of misc thoughts about Palin. I like the lady, but I'm just not that into celebs.

Speaking of Palin, here's Alaska

Speaking of celebs, fat celebs are stoking the obesity crisis. Stoke on, celebs. It's a free country.

East Germans: life was better under Communism. As we have said repeatedly, not everybody is suited for freedom. Americans are supposed to be.

The "ominous rise" of adjuncts in colleges and universities. Seems to me like normal job conditions for most folks.

Is Afghanistan "winnable"? Matthew Parris doubts it. Afg. isn't a country, except in name only. So what is there to win? Afg, it seems to me, is an attempt at nation-building where there never was a nation. A tall order.

The Great Lakes water levels are rising again. They said AGW was making them drop. Waiting to see if they'll say that AGW is making them rise. My view? There is no "normal" level any more than there are "normal" temperatures. Nature is always in flux.

Shut down debate on health care, says the O to the Dems

What's with Powell? Is he just a regular confused person like me?

Powell in May: Americans Want to Pay More Taxes... Powell in July: But We Can't Afford This

Image: Our international readers may not realize that the Gadsden flag, often featured on libertarian-minded websites, was an early American flag back before the upholstery stripes.

It's a big travel weekend. In Yankeeland, you might very well find yourself driving through the Merritt Parkway's Hero's Tunnel under West Rock ridge in New Haven.

Amusingly, the Merritt, the earliest American parkway, had these criteria in its design:

To ease objections from county residents who feared an influx of New Yorkers on their roads, in their towns, on their beaches and through their forests, highway planners called on engineers, landscape architects and architects to create a safe and aesthetically pleasing limited access highway - one with exit and entrance ramps, but no intersections - that would not spoil the countryside.

With the lighting, the Hero's Tunnel looks like the gates of hell - but it really just takes you to Hamden:

Her speech showed how good she is, how real she is.

No notes, no teleprompter either. From the heart. I almost cried when she said "The world needs more Trigs" to keep us oriented to the important things. The "elites" don't get it - nor do they know how to operate a fishing boat.

She sounds sane, refreshingly unpolished, as Levin says. She has a life, unlike most pols. Too sane for politics? Or what does she want? Whatever it is, she sure does get attention, doesn't she?

A cool story.

A few links at Insty.

Via Attack Machine -

He thinks so deep that he studies Urdu poetry. No doubt.

That Urdu poetry might be why he is becoming such a screw-up. An overdose of Urdu poetry is known to be dangerous and I know why: I have read more of it than the O has.

Billions and billions of Indian sodomists are off the hook. What a relief. 

Betsy, with more on Ricci:

As people celebrate the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor simply because of her ethnic background and not because of her judicial background, we know that giving people a leg up solely because of their ethnicity is nowhere near over.

Kristol:

Almost a half-century before, a young Democratic president had said this:

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

 

Once an American president had promised we would bear any burden. Our current president promises "we will continue to bear witness." It's quite an evolution.

Is this like "I like to watch"?

From his boss at the EPA:

Mr. McGartland blasted yet another email: "With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate." Ideology? Nope, not here. Just us science folk. Honest.

I say, Burn the heretic at the stake. Thereby adding a little CO2 to warm up New England. We need it.

Powerline:

Where does the Obama administration end and the Washington Post begin? That is becoming an increasingly metaphysical question.

Related from Discoll: Was anybody really surprised?

More Honduras:

Last Saturday, Honduran soldiers marched into the presidential palace, bundled up President Manuel Zelaya and put him on a plane for Costa Rica.

The ouster had been ordered by the Supreme Court and approved by the Congress, as Zelaya was attempting an illegal referendum to change the Honduran constitution so he could run for another term.

Will someone please explain why this bloodless transfer of power to the civilian legislator first in line for the presidency, in a sovereign nation, is any business of the United Nations, the Organization of American States, Hugo Chavez, the Castro brothers or Barack Obama? For all have denounced the "coup" and demanded Zelaya's immediate return.

The hypocrisy here is astounding.

Thoughtful post on adverse selection at Marg Rev. It's a handy concept.

Krugman makes for a fine straw man. Sort of like Sullivan does. Usually straw men are unreal, as in "some say...", but these buffoons are, seemingly, real. Krugman wants more government stimulus. WTH? This is like idiot religion: If your prayers aren't answered, just pray harder.

Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

Charles Krauthammer, via a piece at Classical

h/t to Tiger for this series of photos from Afghanistan from the past couple of days. God bless 'em and protect them. Here's one of the pics (note the pup keeping an eye on the photog):

VDH struggles mightily to identify some theme to make sense out of the ways moral flaws and hypocrisies are played out in the politics of today.

While I admire his effort and enjoy his examples, I think he mostly misses a simple point, the one Lyndon Johnson made about some Central American dictator: "He may be an SOB, but he's our SOB."

It's pure politics, VDH. Politics is not the place to look for moral consistency, moral energy, or intellectual integrity. This is why many believe a degree of sociopathy and narcissism are required in politics.

(As Ace puts it re Sanford: "You can get away with being a bastard, but you can't get away with being a buffoon.")

To the Left, at least, politics is war in which, as they often brag, the ends may justify the means because they like to believe that they are well-intentioned. "By all means necessary.." etc.

I always grant more trust to those who claim to be self-interested - even if they are lying - than to those who claim virtue.

Update: More on public virtue from Rick Moran.

A soulful traditional song (lyrics here).

Not embeddable, but a good tune about desire for a prostitute. Fun video too. 1993. 

Bogus or not, I like these ideas for guys to avoid accompanying their spouses on shopping trips. (It's like the age-old trick of breaking the vacuum cleaner every time one is asked to use it). This is from Mostly Safe for Work:

We support the fish ladders. Government built the dams: government should build the fish ladders too.

The Repub's problem with black voters. Solve it, geniuses. In America, it's crazy for any skin color or ethnic group to vote as a block.

Time to declare victory in Iraq. Tiger

Construction spending:

We say it again: That was no military coup in Honduras.

Insty:

MORE CRUSHING OF DISSENT. I remember when protest was patriotic! Seems like it was just a little while ago . . . .

Health care lawsuits, and how they drive medical costs. If an OB pays $250,000/yr for insurance, you are the one who must pay for it.

Synthstuff:

I call it the SUE defense, the Shut-Up Explanation. Here’s a quick and dirty example of how it works:

Skeptic – “There has been no global warming since 1998.”
Green – “Shut up!”

In which Tom Friedman permanently convinces me that he is a partisan, fad-chasing knucklehead.

More hysteria:

"Today, international action on climate change is urgent and essential. Indeed, there can no longer be any debate about the need to act, because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), of which I am chairman, has established climate change as an unequivocal reality beyond scientific doubt."

Sorry. There is nothing in science which is "beyond doubt."

Sowell does not want discount medical care.

The hangings have already begun in Iran

The current status of US States' budgets. They love those credit cards, because they spend on our cards, not theirs.

Where did the Madoff money go? Kudlow

Viking:

The law trumps empathy - It was yet another 5-4 Supreme Court split in the Ricci case, but buried in the details is the fact that not a single Justice affirmed the reasoning that SC nominee Sonia Sotomayor used to rule against the New Haven firefighters claiming reverse discrimination.

Extra - Cato: "The Ricci ruling: a victory for merit over racial politics."

The Shrimp and Grits I had on Saturday in Alabama were served hot in large Martini glasses with a tiny silver spoon. It was something new to me. Like a dessert. The shrimp and sauce were spooned on top of the grits.

I detected a faint hint of cilantro and lime in the shrimp sauce, but I do not have the recipe. The shrimp were sweet as sugar, fresh from the Gulf, and bite-sized - about an inch long. I do prefer the tender little ones to the big ones for most purposes.

I learned the below from this site (which includes one of the countless recipes for this treat)

In the Low Country of South Carolina and particularly Charleston, shrimp and grits has been considered a basic breakfast for coastal fishermen and families for decades during the shrimp season (May through December). Simply called 'breakfast shrimp," the dish consisted of a pot of grits with shrimp cooked in a little bacon grease or butter. During the past decade, this dish has been dressed up and taken out on the town to the fanciest restaurants. Not just for breakfast anymore, it is also served for brunch, lunch, and dinner.

It gets no better than this.

Thanks for these from the Golden Gate Quartet, AVI, from your fine music post. Real American music:

At Am Digest, Bungee dating in NYC. The guy is right. He is an idiot. A gentleman never, never takes a nice girl on a date to a Korean whorehouse.

5 minutes ago. I love storms. Cameras cannot capture thunder, wind, and driving rain:

I like to explore and learn a bit about the places I go to.

Birmingham, Alabama is a rather new city, by Eastern standards. Even the "old" stuff there isn't very old. There wasn't much of anything there until after the Civil War. Railroads (it has no navigable river), coal and iron ore were the key to that city's wealth, hence the borrowing of the name from the Brits. Amost all of that is now gone.

A new city in the New South.

With a metropolitan population of around 1 million, it's a good-sized city, but the city proper lacks downtown residences. It's a biz center now (most recently a banking center) - not a hopping urban scene. The Univ of Alabama Medical Center also is growing like crazy.

Still, there is no visible urban scene: life happens in the leafy, lovely, quiet suburbs. 

On a weekend, there is not a soul to be seen on the streets yet it looks clean, prosperous, and safe. No "mixed use" as you find in NYC. A Jane Jacobs case study, because I have seen photos of the downtown in the 1920s which were packed with people on weekends and holidays, with the streets lined with storefronts. 

In recent decades, the suburbs which had been part of the city spun themselves off so as to be independent of the constantly-alleged and often court-confirmed corruption of the Dem machine which runs it, and which seems determined to drive people out of town.

One cool thing about cities this size: you can get from Mountain Brook, Homewood, or downtown, to the airport in about 15 minutes. Everything seems easy to do. It's manageable and friendly. For the comfortable, golf seems to be king in Birmingham. Too darn hot for tennis, if you ask me.

Beautiful: the tee of the 4th (or 14th?) hole at Shoal Creek:

A free ad for the nifty mag Garden and Gun, with another golf course in the background:

Every city carries its burden of woeful history. The 16th St. Baptist Church, where the Civil Rights movement tragically obtained energy when some KKK killed four choir girls in church in 1963. The reputation of the fine people of the city was smeared for a generation by the behavior of a handful of murderous scumbags.

More below on continuation page -

Thanks, y'all, for putting us up in these fine lodgings in Birmingham (photos below), for the fine very Southern-style party (with excellent grits 'n shrimp), and for showing us around.

Can any reader name this good old club?

 View from our balcony:

More reminiscences from our friend, during his time in the Indian Health Service. He is probably referring to the Prairie Rattler:

From afar, it might have sounded like "Thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk"; at the base of my skull, it was more like "K'thunk, K'Thunk, K'thunk, K'Thunk."  What I didn't know was what how it sounded to a rattlesnake in the dusk of the Dakota scrubland.  My second day's doctoring done on Eagle Butte, the heat dissipating quickly at sunset, I hit the asphalt's edges to jog. 

In Chicago, I had snagged a pair of Nikes, the early waffle-sole design, discovered by Bill Bowerman when he poured urethane onto his wife's waffle iron. Then, Bowerman and Knight's company was still called Blue Ribbon Sports; word was that their victory shoe would protect knees and add speed. I came up in an era when leather was treasured for feet; once yearly, before Pesach, we visited the leather shoe store, where we played with this tall contraption, like a scale, into which you could insert your feet and see your skeleton; a time more innocent, before parents knew to protect their children from Xray exposure.  Good money, hard-saved dough, was spent on a pair of Oxfords. High-tops of flimsy cloth and thin sole were for basketball and any other weekend activity.  It was an era before I knew the difference between an Oxford and a Brogue, between open- and closed-lacing, nor would have cared; a time when I most admired my pediatrician's penny-loafers, shining coppers adorned.  Loafers I desired, but parents believed that laces protected growing feet.  Now, I had laid out precious bucks on some rapidly evolved descendant of polyester to protect my feet and knees.

Minimally dressed -- white T, running shorts (the days before wick-a-ways)  and my Nikes -- I ran with traffic, not yet knowing the treacherous combination of Sioux and cowboy drivers in pick-ups.  But, it was the K'Thunking in my head, the tatooing of my feet in the desert eve that should have hinted to me why the Indians came out to look, some pointing, some waving  -- not quite a greeting, not a hello, a different sort of wave; a mother stepped onto her veranda holding her child, pointing;  words were shouted, muddled in the evening breezes so I understood them not; I thought it was a welcome to the new doc.

Nurse Alpern greeted me in the lot between hospital and my apartment building.  Rattlers are out. Like this M.D., Crotalus Horridus also leave their rocks in the eve, but looking for meals. Rattlers also hear K'Thunking or Thunking, or some rattled version of this to find their meal: they too are served, who simply listen and wait.  Mrs. Alpern, the ever practical:  Don't do this again; can't afford to lose docs.  The Indians who came out to see the doc in shorts and Tee?  They thought I was dumb; wondered how far I would get.

It was a few weeks later that I saw my first snake bite. 

This is long, wonderful, nerdy, and informative. h/t, Language Log:

2 Samuel 1:1, 19-27

¹⁹ "A gazelle lies slain on your heights, Israel.
       How the mighty have fallen!

    ²⁰ "Tell it not in Gath,
       proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon,
       lest the daughters of the Philistines be glad,
       lest the daughters of the uncircumcised rejoice.

    ²¹ "Mountains of Gilboa,
       may you have neither dew nor rain,
       may no showers fall on your terraced fields. 
       For there the shield of the mighty was despised,
       the shield of Saul—no longer rubbed with oil.

    ²² "From the blood of the slain,
       from the flesh of the mighty,
       the bow of Jonathan did not turn back,
       the sword of Saul did not return unsatisfied.

    ²³ Saul and Jonathan—
       in life they were loved and admired,
       and in death they were not parted.
       They were swifter than eagles,
       they were stronger than lions.

    ²⁴ "Daughters of Israel,
       weep for Saul,
       who clothed you in scarlet and finery,
       who adorned your garments with ornaments of gold.

    ²⁵ "How the mighty have fallen in battle!
       Jonathan lies slain on your heights.

    ²⁶ I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother;
       you were very dear to me.
       Your love for me was wonderful,
       more wonderful than that of women.

    ²⁷ "How the mighty have fallen!
       The weapons of war have perished!"