Maggie's Farm

Some climate scientists plan to go full-bore political.

That ain't science. That's politics. Idiots, too: who wouldn't enjoy some balmy weather in hunting season? It's sleeting here, this morning. More:

John Abraham panics, apparently he and the AGU are forming a “Climate rapid response team”

So maybe it's war, not politics.

Luntz: Republicans won the midterm elections. Now can they survive?

Doubt it. They're the Stupid Party.

Let Them Eat Biofuels: Enviros Largely Responsible for Worldwide Food Price Increases

Kill people. Gaia likes that. Gaia likes dead people.

Germany attacks US economic policy

Federal Government Fights Obesity, Pushes Cheese

That would be Government Cheese, I believe. I prefer the imported black market unpasteurized stuff, and not in moderation either.

72% OF BLACK BABIES BORN TO UNWED MOTHERS

That is very Progressive and Advanced. Moynihan was just too uptight and bourgeois.

Jacobson: Jewish voting is irrational.

No, it's Progressive and Advanced.

Matthews: Obama’s Travel Expense Questioned Because Of His Race

Obviously. They never would have questioned it with Bush...

The man who saved the whales.  h/t, Coyote

Hint: It wasn't Jacques Cousteau. He just annoyed them.

Insty:

CHANGE: Janet Daley: The West is turning against big government – but what comes next? “So a generation after the collapse of totalitarian socialism, its democratic form is finally crumbling as well. And, oddly enough, the latter may take longer than the former to unravel.”

Via a Vanderleun post:

Memo to file: Do not drive to Manhattan on the day of the New York Marathon. You can't get there from north and, if you do get there, you cannot get out. Here's the Marathon map.

We had an urge to see the Lod Mosaic and the Miro show at the Met today. Just a quick visit, in and out - but it seemed like every highway entrance and exit was closed, with extensive, traffic-jammed detours all around the periphery of the running route.

45,000 mostly out-of-town runners, with family and supporters on the sidewalks, and all the relevant bridges and roads and cross-streets closed, it's a miracle we got home.

We managed to get to the museum by parking 15 blocks away. I think I could have gotten home faster running than driving. I need a Manhattan pied a terre badly, but the government hasn't given me one, yet.

For all the hassle sometimes, and corny as it sounds, I really do love New York. Vitality, variety - all that. It's stimulating to me, just walking around and looking at stuff. Woods and meadows rarely surprise me, because I seem to know them so well. Humans - their works and antics - always surprise me.

I am not blessed with superior brainpower, but I believe I was blessed with a capacity to be enchanted by the details of life.

The Roman mosaic was good to see in person - the teeth of the fish are cool - and the Miro show was fascinating. Miro is always fascinating to me. I don't think of his stuff as surrealism, but instead as just plain hallucinatory. Completely strange, like an acid trip. His work always goes "Ding," Boing," "Snap," "Whirrrrr," "Wheeee," "Pop!" to me. Auditory, synesthetic.

The small show was about his short series of paintings called Dutch Interiors, based on old Dutch images and paintings which he transformed through what he termed his "tragicomic" method.

The show moved from the Rijksmuseum to New York last month. Here's one of the pictures from the show:

I took some random pics, as usual.

I have been told that Grace's Marketplace on 3rd Ave. is the best place to buy cheese in NYC. They generally offer 220+ varieties. Some folks prefer Citarella's, which has a location a few blocks away from Grace's on Third Ave. Better prices, but I know that fancy chefs get their cheeses at Gracie's.

A few more of my lousy NYC pics from today, below:

Pic is from my first visit to a WalMart two weeks ago. It was a 24 hr/day Supercenter. Yes, I was impressed. It was stocked to the gills, clean as a whistle, and the old codger Greeter at 7 AM was just great.

Wal-Mart vs. The Morons

1. Americans spend $36,000,000 at Wal-Mart Every hour of every day.
           
2. This works out to $20,928 profit every minute!

3. Wal-Mart will sell more from January 1 to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th) than Target sells all year.

4. Wal-Mart is bigger than Home Depot + Kroger + Target +Sears + Costco + K-Mart combined.

5. Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people, is the world's largest private employer, and most speak English.

6. Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world.

7. Wal-Mart now sells more food than Kroger and Safeway combined, and keep in mind they did this in only fifteen years.

8. During this same period, 31 big supermarket chains sought bankruptcy.

9. Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world.

10. Wal-Mart has approx 3,900 stores in the USA of which 1,906 are Super Centers; this is 1,000 more than it had five years ago.

11. This year 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at Wal-Mart stores. (Earth's population is approximately 6.5 Billion.)

12. 90% of all Americans live within fifteen miles of a Wal-Mart.

You may think that I am complaining, but I am really laying the ground work for suggesting that MAYBE we should hire the guys who run Wal-Mart to fix the economy.

To President Obama and all 535 voting members of the Legislature,

It is now official you are ALL corrupt morons:

a. The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775. You have had 234 years to get it right and it is broke.

b. Social Security was established in 1935. You have had 74 years to get it right and it is broke.

c. Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You have had 71 years to get it right and it is broke.
                               
d. War on Poverty started in 1964. You have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor."  We still have the poor, and they only demand more. Still waiting for the "Thank you's."
                               
e. Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965. You have had 44 years to get it right and they are broke.
                               
f. Freddie Mac was established in 1970. You have had 39 years to get it right and it is broke.
                               
g. The Department of Energy was created in 1977 to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. It has ballooned to 16,000 employees with a budget of $24 billion a year and we import more oil than ever before. You had 32 years to get it right and it is an abysmal failure.
                               
You have FAILED in every "government service" you have shoved down our throats while overspending our tax dollars.

AND YOU WANT AMERICANS TO BELIEVE YOU CAN BE TRUSTED WITH A GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM?

Nice place for sale: Hedge Fund Billionaire Selling the Farm

And here are some $1000 homes 

The Berkshires: Saving Where the Wild Trout Are

How the rich stay rich: Using a Family Trust Company to Secure a Family Fortune

Gotta get me one of them.

University of Virginia Eliminates All Speech Codes, Earning FIRE's 'Green Light' Rating

GOP to Use Debt Cap to Push Spending Cuts

That won't work

Politico: The ego factor: Can Obama change?

The Dems lost a battle, won the war

Taranto: ObamaCare, a Catastrophic 'Success'

A Nation of Slack-Jawed Yokels?

That's me.

"I think Barack knew that he had God-given talents that were extraordinary."

I wonder what that feels like.

Via Nyquist:

...we find, at our local Borders book store, a small paperback titled The Anti-American Manifesto, written by Ted Rall. In this book the author says that America is collapsing. The U.S. is going to end soon. According to Rall, "There's going to be an intense, violent, probably haphazard struggle for control. It's going to come down to us versus them." Rall is a Communist in Chambers' sense of the word. He warns the "downtrodden and the educated" that the hardcore uneducated fundamentalist Christians are preparing to seize power. According to Rall, "They can't wait to unleash their venomous hatred on the city-dwelling commie hipster fags they despise. They are armed. They recognize that the system is doomed. They've seen this coming." He names the Tea Party as the main decentralized organ of the enemy. "A war is coming," he says. "The government, the corporations, and the extreme right are prepared to coalesce into an Axis of Evil. Are you going to fight back? Will you do whatever it takes, including taking up arms?" He basically suggests that the Right is coming to exterminate the Left, so the Left had better get ready. The book is basically a call to civil war -- American versus American.

Psalm 17:1-9

17:1 Hear a just cause, O LORD; attend to my cry; give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit.

17:2 From you let my vindication come; let your eyes see the right.

17:3 If you try my heart, if you visit me by night, if you test me, you will find no wickedness in me; my mouth does not transgress.

17:4 As for what others do, by the word of your lips I have avoided the ways of the violent.

17:5 My steps have held fast to your paths; my feet have not slipped.

17:6 I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God; incline your ear to me, hear my words.

17:7 Wondrously show your steadfast love, O savior of those who seek refuge from their adversaries at your right hand.

17:8 Guard me as the apple of the eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings,

17:9 from the wicked who despoil me, my deadly enemies who surround me.

The right places to be in New England on a November weekend (preferably with gun and dog).

Deirdre McCloskey, author of The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce, has a new book: Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World

Anchoress discusses Palin.

Love is not enough. (Not enough reason to vote for somebody)

Global Geoengineering Moratorium

Good to see a hint of sanity

Minorities in College---Good News, But... It's a comment on a report. One quote:

 On some of the measures used in the study, whites lag behind Asian-Americans by about as much as Blacks and Latinos are behind whites. If our institutions of higher education have a duty to equalize Black and Latino achievement with that of whites, why not set their goals higher still? Why not figure out how to bring whites up to the level of Asian-Americans, and make this loftier level the aim for African-Americans and Hispanics as well? The answer is obvious. Had the authors contemplated this problem, they would inevitably have had to probe the differences in family values, family structure, and family socioeconomic status that explain Asian educational success. And that would have required them to consider how much these variables shape the performance of black and Latino students as well.

And why not quit categorizing us by skin tone and eye shape? We're beyond that form of racism. When we read about California schools limiting the numbers of Asians they accept, one realizes that this is all absurd. Furthermore, is my friend from Spain Hispanic? Is Obama white or black? Time to end this nonsense.

Obama: U.S. can't afford two years of gridlock

Yes We Can.

Krauthammer agrees that the election was just a return to the norm. A quote:

Nor should Republicans overinterpret their Tuesday mandate. They received none. They were merely rewarded for acting as the people's proxy in saying no to Obama's overreaching liberalism. As one wag put it, this wasn't an election so much as a restraining order.

The Republicans won by default. And their prize is nothing more than a two-year lease on the House. The building was available because the previous occupant had been evicted for arrogant misbehavior and, by rule, alas, the House cannot be left vacant.

I think Dr. K underestimates the force and speed of this return to normal.

The economy: Gridlock's not enough. A quote:

The problem is that Obamanomics has placed the US economy in a hole so deep that it will take more than easy money coupled with political gridlock to fix. To lower unemployment in a meaningful way, Washington needs to unwind the trillions of new debt, higher taxes and new mandates that it's given us over the last two years. The GOP's gains this week aren't enough to make that happen.

How do I know this? It's the assessment made by just about every businessman I spoke to before and after Tuesday's voting. (Almost no one speaks on the record these days, for fear of political retribution. But that's another column.)

Stratfor on the election, via SDA

Image above from post at Watts.

All sane people hope for globalistical warmening. It's too darn cold.

Litotes? Litotes.

FOF: Avoiding and Ending an Affair

ROBERT GIBBS: Efforts to repeal ObamaCare won’t get past the Senate. That’s okay. Make ‘em vote for it again.

It could be—it seems just possible—that the “truth and science and facts” that these Democrats talk about are really only schoolhouse theories that have no bearing on reality; that they are tried-and-failed progressive fairy tales that could only continue to be believed by people who have spent most of their adult lives glued face-first to the public tit. It’s possible that the best-informed populace in history has risen up in a truly spontaneous grassroots movement deeply connected to the nation’s founding principles and prudently given the heave-ho to a bunch of spendthrift, incompetent, supercilious, and self-deceived buffoons who mistook their college degrees for wisdom.

Somebody is crazy angry: Tim Wise at Daily Kos (h/t. Q&O)

I think this guy wants to have me shot. Make my day, weenie. He cannot wait for the demise of the USA - and says so. Where does this sort of anger come from?

For a moment, I thought somebody photoshopped Obama into this Drudge pic:

Readers will be happy to know that we replaced our old server today:

A reader reminded me that David Horowitz really liked Kenyon College.

If David likes something, I like it.

h/t, Coyote:

Bag of uncounted ballots discovered in Bridgeport.

Sounds like Bridgeport. They always have bags of stuff, when needed.

Powerline: Annals of the welfare state

E-mail shows illegal activity in Reid's campaign

What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas.

Bishop Tutu and "Israeli Apartheid"

Krauthammer's take at NRO. Electric cars?

Somebody told me yesterday that electric cars will save the human race from extinction because they have no emissions. What can you say to people like that? I am not kidding: She said electricity comes from the wall outlets. College-educated.

Democrats have to be more competitive in states that don�t touch an ocean if they want to bounce back.

Must be the toxic ozone from the salt water. Ban the oceans, along with the Happy Meals.

Driscoll: How the Gray Lady Became Margaret Dumont

Nancy Pelosi Seriously Considers Staying as Democratic Leader

Goody.

More good links later today, when I find the time to post them.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

 

And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Toast and tea, we used to figger, was the final Communion - Brit-style.

When I was in high school, we all memorized Prufrock. Not because we had to, but because we liked to. As I always say, I define poetry as any writing which contains an inevitability of versification, with some coherence of imagery. Poetry is song-writing. I wish we had recordings of Kipling singing his poems. It would be a hoot, I am sure.

(We memorized things competitively when I was in high school. Shakespeare sonnets and soliloquies, lists of Chem equations and math theorems, Civil War dates and other historical dates. From all that I use 1569 today as one of my main ID codes (Shakespeare's birth year). Sophocles. Ozymandius. Kipling. Le Bateau Ivre. Paradise Lost. We had an official annual school tournament to see who could memorize the most lines of the opening of the Iliad, and another with the opening lines of Canterbury Tales in the original good Old English. Many folks would do 100-200 lines without faltering. The kids taking Latin, of course, had their famous and traditional speed declension contests. I even remember memorizing Babi Yar in Russian for kicks - and I spoke no Russian. It just sounded cool, imitating Yevtushenko's voice. Our hockey team specialized in the Iliad contest - somebody on the team always won. Our hockey coach also taught Ancient Greek. It was a point of honor for the team. A good high school, good fun. I hope high school kids still do amusing things like this. God knows what kids learn in college.) 

From an excellent piece on Eliot at Commentary, T.S. Eliot and the Demise of the Literary Culture:

Understatedly spectacular is the way Eliot�s career strikes one today, at time when, it is fair to say, poetry, even to bookish people, is of negligible interest and literary criticism chiefly a means to pursue academic tenure. Literary culture itself, if the sad truth be known, seems to be slowly but decisively shutting down.

The fame Eliot achieved in his lifetime is unfathomable for a poet, or indeed any American or English writer, in our day. In 1956, Eliot lectured on �The Function of Criticism� in a gymnasium at the University of Minnesota to a crowd estimated at 15,000 people.

Read the whole thing. Eliot was a bank teller, of course - and a rock star. Still is a rock star, in my book. His stuff sticks like Velcro. Christ was his rock.

This one of my Sugar Maples is always bright orange in the autumn. Most of my others are always yellow, and some are in between. It's a mystery.

A spanking is what was administered to the Dems on Tuesday, minus (or not) the fun sado-masochistic eroticism. (Don't ever try to tell me that you've never had kinky thoughts.) Pic is from Vintage Spanking.

Still strange in CT - who won?

First they came for my Happy Meals...

"Soft tyranny"

TNR: The Gates Foundation's Delusional Techno-Messianism

GOP sweeps FL, wins Maine (!) governorship

Wins keep coming in

Harsanyi:

No matter what happens, for now, we can look forward to two glorious years of hyper-partisan acrimonious gridlock: Washington's most moral and productive state.

Gridlock is good.

Wherein Ace gets a taste of Politics 101

Opinion: Why Are Voters Only 'Angry' When They're Tossing Dems Out?

Well, who says it?

SDA: Bits you might have missed

Including Alabama

North Carolina: The strangest beast in all of politics

NRO: New York Wrap

As hopeless as CA

How did Harry Reid do it?

He won ugly.

Podhoretz: No time to celebrate- GOP remarkably sober at win

Us, too.

I love this stuff, testing your boat-handling skills against serious seas. I always loved to take my 23' cuddy cabin Sea Ox out after storms and hurricanes, for practice. The big following seas are the ones that frighten me. (h/t, Theo):

Image above stolen from Surber

Fred Barnes: The Republican Landslide

Wehner: Obama after the fall

Strange.

China's Christians: China could not silence 200 empty chairs in Capetown

Summary of governor's races.

CT's Tom Foley lost, by a Bridgeport.

Some Liberals Still Head Over Heels In Love With Obama

Being in love with a politician is a perversion.

Krauthammer: 'Obama Agenda is Dead,' 'He Tried a 2-Year Experiment in Hyper-Liberalism and the Country Has said No'. (Here's the good video)

Powerline: The trouble with California

Hopeless.

More attacks in Bagdad: Sunni vs. Shiite

Yes, they are mad about Gitmo and American Imperialism. Gotta bomb somebody, for Pete's sake, or your life will have no meaning.

Michelle: Moonbeam wins weirdest victory speech award

Sure sounds stoned. California is in good hands.

The Wrong Sort of Scepticism is a Crime against Humanity Says Penn State Prof

Sheesh. I'm a criminal against humanity. Shame on me.

Here.  It affects the Congressional race and the Governor's race.

It's lawyer time.

Ohio returned to its Republican roots yesterday. It's the Heartland.

That's a decent excuse to post one more of my Ohio pics from 2 weeks ago - the new Paul Newman Field House at Kenyon College. Fantastic for such a tiny college. Kenyon is strong in swimming.

The story is that alumnus Newman offered Kenyon a blank check for new theater and auditorium facilities. Kenyon said "Thanks - but we're good with the old stuff we have." So Newman asked "Well, then what can I do?"

Pic is Kristi Noem, gun-totin' Conservative who happily won in South Dakota.

Many races I feel good about (like Allen West and Dan webster in FL, Toomey in PA, etc), many I feel badly about (like Debicella losing in CT with a 50-50 result, and Sean Bielat's spanking by the horrible Barney). Angle was a lousy candidate, and it will be good fun to have Dingy Harry to kick around again. Summary of votes at RCP. 

I enjoyed this from Gateway:

Racist, sexist teabaggers have elected Marco Rubio, Susanna Martinez, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Bill Flores, Allen West, and...

Still, Eugene Robinson says it's about race and Obama.

Pitiful.

From Chantrill:

In the end, of course, it doesn't matter whether President Obama is a socialist, a crypto-socialist or a liberal.  From the point of view of the ordinary American it's a distinction without a difference.  Faced with a problem, President Obama will always opt for a solution that makes government bigger and Americans smaller.

Unfortunately for the president and his grand plan to transform America, the majority of the American people believe that the solution to our problems is to make the American people bigger and the government smaller.

Former President Bill Clinton - who presided over his own first-term electoral catastrophe in 1994 and is thus something of an expert on Republican landslide wins - denied this election is a referendum on the Obama agenda. "It. Is. A. Choice," he said. "A choice between two different sets of ideas." Well, obviously it's a choice; the people are simply choosing to reject the Democrats' ideas. Mr. Obama quipped, "The big difference here and in '94 was you've got me" - a point on which all sides can agree.

We will not be live-blogging, drunk-blogging, stoned-blogging, pajamas-blogging, nude-blogging, or otherwise reporting or commenting on election returns tonight.

Furthermore, we promise to post no profound statements about "what this election really means."

Mississippi floods are what maintain the delta. New Orleans itself is threatened by manmade river engireering - levees and canals.

It's the old Law of Unintended Consequences.

From Buddy -

I just voted. I enjoyed it.

This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land

Related: This Is America, Stupid! And it's not just the economy. It's the disrespect for the wishes of the electorate, who pay for everything. 

The elite without a country

Sharpton: Blacks Unemployed Because Of Racist Republicans

Al should write for The Onion

Chavez Says Venezuela's Golf Courses Should Be Seized, Put to Other Uses

Chavez should write for The Onion, too.

Tina Brown beclowns herself

She could write for The Onion too.

Was stimulus Barack Obama's 'original sin'?

Slaughter at Baghdad Church- 52 Murdered Including 3 Priests During Al-Qaeda Siege , and Churches Set Ablaze
in Russia's Muslim Caucasus

These perps obviously need better jobs, social workers, teachers with better pensions, and more understanding. Or are they just still mad about Gitmo?

MAINE FAMILY ROBINSON�S Top Ten The Hell With It, I�m Outta Here Movies

Somewhat related: The houseboat on the Pawcatuck River

 The �big dog� in campaign spending. Unions.

Who's Afraid of Marco Rubio?

Marco looks like a star. They always go after the potential stars, drive up their negatives or break their legs.

Americans are about to give Obama a bloody nose. Why? He just doesn't share their core values

My chimney sweep was here at noon (to check my flue after my fire on Friday). As he was scoping out my chimney and sending his brushes and vision device up there like a colonoscopy, he commented "I hope we send a clear message to Washington tomorrow."

He is retired career USMC. He still lifts and runs every day, and it is obvious. Oorah. His son is a SEAL.

(He has a very good business going - at $150 per chimney, he was booked up solid from August through December, and does a second round in Feb. for heavy users. His preferred customers have multiple chimneys. Like a dentist, he sends out reminder postcards to his people each July to make appointments. He has a deer- and turkey-hunting cabin on 200 acres up in West Nowhere, NY, has a modest life and doesn't really need the money, so he uses his income to bring his entire family, including grandkids, on one-month European trips every June. He rents a big house with a cook and housekeeper in a different place each year, flies the the folks over and back whenever they can get free to come, and rents cars for them. Last year, he did Scotland. In past years he has done a Greek island, Tuscany, the Czech Rep., Sweden. This June he plans on Sicily, which I told him I felt was an excellent choice). 

I said to this hearty, red-blooded American: "I think we will send a message, but who will be listening?"

Get your chimneys cleaned, Maggie's Farmers. We cannot afford to lose any readers in house fires.

More at Theo -