Maggie's Farm

It's not that some people need more sleep than others - it's that some people sleep faster than others.

Peter DeVries

Quoted in this piece at Protein Wisdom by his reader Tomas:

This SCHIP argument is not about who does or doesn’t care about children. Christ. It’s about the proper role of government. That’s why the retorts from the Olbermanns of the world are so clueless at best, downright dishonest at worst.

If the left would at least acknowledge when its proposed programs do not fit in the intended government framework — that they go above and beyond, but are necessary because of such-and-such — the ensuing debates would be a lot less infuriating. But the left reliably skips that part every time. They proceed from the get-go as if everyone is operating in the same terrain, and pretend it’s thus merely a debate about the actual merits of various proposals.

It’s a rhetorical approach that has gummed up the gears of our political discourse for more than four decades now. It has caused us all to waste a depressing amount of breath, time and energy, sitting here constantly arguing past each other, all because the left is sloppy/dishonest with the debate’s most basic premise.

If only from the perspective of efficiency, it’s maddening.

Read the whole piece. Link above.

From an excellent, pleasantly rambling essay by Fjordman which begins with a discussion of Diana West's The Death of the Grown Up. A quote: 

She (West) believes that "Where womanhood stands today is deeply affected by the death of grown-up. I would say the sexualized female is part of the phenomenon I'm talking about, so I don't think they're immune to the death of the grown-up. Women are still emulating young fashion. Where sex is more available, there are no longer the same incentives building toward married life, which once was a big motivation toward the maturing process."

Is she right? Have we become a civilization of Peter Pans refusing to grow up? Have we been cut off from the past by disparaging everything old as outmoded? I know blogger Conservative Swede, who likes Friedrich Nietzsche, thinks we suffer from "slave morality," but I sometimes wonder whether we suffer from child morality rather than slave morality. However, there are other forces at work here as well.

The welfare state encourages an infantilization of society where people return to childhood by being provided for by others. This creates not just a culture obsessed with youth but with adolescent irresponsibility. Many people live in a constant state of rebellion against not just their parents but their nation, their culture and their civilization.

These are themes which have been frequently discussed at Maggie's. Read the whole thing at Brussels Journal.

Exactly right. A quote:

The Democrats just don’t get it. They didn’t get it when questions arose about the Frosts. They don’t get it now. And it is likely they will never get it because they refuse to ask the right questions.

It’s not about income. It’s about choices. It’s about the kind of government we should have. It’s about freedom versus dependence, liberty versus slavery, self-reliance versus serfdom.

And it’s about fairness. In the Frost's case, the consequences of one family’s choices being foisted upon their fellow Americans who may be less well off but are nevertheless asked to pony up to support them.

No one should begrudge the Wilkerson’s their participation in S-CHIP. They are barely above the poverty level and have little in the way of assets. But the Wilkersons and those like them are not the problem and the Democrats know it. Borderline cases like the Wilkerson’s who regularly fall through the cracks of coverage in other government programs are not part of the central criticism against the expansion of S-CHIP. It is subsidizing coverage for those up to 400% above the poverty level that is the basis of conservative opposition to the Democrat’s bill.

A quote:

The engine driving the utopian dream is indeed, fueled by nostalgia, and at the wheel are the wordsmith intellectuals. From philosophers like Rousseau, to Hegel, Marx, Lacan, Derrida, and Herbert Marcuse, intellectuals continue to yearn for a world of perfection—as defined, naturally, by wordsmith themselves. In the sphere of imaginative writing, novels and plays, from H.G. Wells to Norman Mailer, from Arthur Miller to Harold Pinter, these spinners of fantasies cater to the universal human longing for utopia, a prelapsarian time of bliss. They share contempt for the world of capitalist democracy, and scorn for the workers who make it run. Men of letters are of course the preeminent arbiters of the good and true in their own, self-created ideal world.

Read the whole thing at Horsefeathers. The saints are what really bother me the most.

There is little in this piece in American Thinker about Soros that we have not mentioned here before, except we did not know that he was born Gyorgy Schwartz before he changed his name. Why would he do that?

And how pleasant it must be to be guilt-free. I wish I knew that trick. 

God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World, by Walter Russell Mead. Quotes from Mead about the book at Dino or Powerline. Sample:

The conventional wisdom says that the history of the last 300 years is the story of the rise and fall of Europe. I think that is wrong. The main trend in world history has been the development and continuing growth of a global system of power, finance, culture, ideology and trade based first on the power of Britain and then on that of the United States. Since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Britain has only been defeated in one major great power war – the war of the American Revolution. To put that another way, since the seventeenth century, either Britain or the United States or both together have been on the winning side in every great power war in which they have participated.

God and Gold is a book about this Anglo-American world system. Why have the British and the Americans established the most powerful and influential international power system in the history of the world? What does history teach us about the dangers we now face from the conflicts in the Middle East and from other challenges of the 21st century such as the rise of Asia? Are the best days of Anglo-American power already behind us, or do we still have an important role to play in world history?

Chris took this photo in Connecticut on Saturday, and sent it over with an email which said drily "I have some reason to believe this might be the Nantucket Lightship."

Coast Guard Lightships marked the dangerous Nantucket Shoals since 1854. The Shoals are located on the heavily-trafficked transatlantic route to New York, 50 miles off the Nantucket coast. This lightship, "Nantucket 2," was decommisioned in 1983.

She has been refurbished as an elegant charter and events ship. The photos of the interior would surely not be recognizable to the guys who manned her.

You can tour the Ambrose Lightship, familiar to all sea travellers due to its old ocean station outside New York Harbor, in its original condition at New York's South Street Seaport.

John Wayne to the rescue. "One sneeze and you're a dead man." Good job, dude. 12 ga. is what you want for home defence.

The new cure for TMJ. Ace

Warmening killing off all the Europeans. Not Americans or Aussies, however. I guess we get to the hospital, in our SUVs, where our docs are our friends, and do not view us as expense items.

The Daring Book for Girls. Dr. Helen

About the famous "long telegram," by Steyn, via Blue Crab

The Single Man's Diet. Hog

Read Colbert filling in for Maureen Dowd yet?

CIA hijinks.

Most unique horse farm. Coyote

Defining poverty upwards. Driscoll. Get everyone on the dole and/or the government payroll that you possibly can, and they might vote for you, forever. The "poor" are already in the bag. Next, the middle class.

And, speaking of which, more on Hillary's million ideas at Oxford

Insanities Time again. Dr. Pat often finds our insanities to be quite insane.

Speaking of insanities, Vermont Pot? Good grief. Can't a government employee afford the good stuff?

Photo: A Theo lovely. It's Art for Art's Sake, for Pete's sake.

It's good fun to look for villa rentals in Tuscany. One has to wonder how people found these things before Al Gore invented the internet.

We like this one, south of Siena and not too far from the tourist trap of San Gimignano. Sleeps 12, if you are lucky enough to have some friends.

Luke 17: 11-19

 11Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. 12As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy^[a]met him. They stood at a distance 13and called out in a loud voice, "Jesus, Master, have pity on us!"

 14When he saw them, he said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were cleansed.

 15One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. 16He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

 17Jesus asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" 19Then he said to him, "Rise and go; your faith has made you well."

Milkweed turning autumn yellow at Maggie's Farm.

A piece in which the Viola does not play second fiddle. What fun these guys have with this piece.

Ideological purity is for children, who want to insist on exactly what they want, when they want it. Politics is about the practical. As a Conservative, I think it's down to Fred vs. Rudy, and the only relevant question is who can put up the best fight against Hillary Clinton and her machine. 

I do like Fred very much. See The Conservative Case for Fred Thompson, by Hawkins. I also believe that Rudy is much more conservative than people think. Murdock at NRO: It's Wrong for the Right to be Rudyphobic.

Despite all the things that weigh against Hillary, I think it is going to take some fancy footwork to put her on the ropes. Is Fred up to that? Can he be expansive, vital, cheerful, embracing - or is he a grumpy old man like me?

Our contributor Roger de Hauteville, the one-time King of Sicily, reminded me of Roxy Music the other day. Some called them the triumph of artifice over substance, and some saw in them the precursors of punk and other pop styles. I have no idea why this was called "art rock" and "glam rock," but it was, and it isn't really my cup of meat but it is lively.

The WSJ has the old-timey story of the Southside Sportsmen's Club in the 1880s, and Long Island's fishing secret - the Connetquot River, which holds large sea-run (and hatchery) trout.

I am fortunate to have fished that stream. (Reservations required, and barbless hooks, which I prefer anyway for all fishing purposes.) 

Henninger's piece Where Big Fish Caught Big Trout, begins thus:

Assume you are a wage slave in New York City. As respite, you favor the joys of fishing streams for large trout. You have a couple of choices. Travel 2,206 miles to the banks of the Madison River in Montana, or thereabouts. Plan B: Early on a weekday morning, load your car with a flyrod, stream waders and a box of flies, drive some 57 miles out of New York City on the old Southern State Parkway into Long Island, turn in at Connetquot State Park, in Oakdale, walk to your reserved "beat" on the Connetquot River, fat with rainbows, brookies and browns. Oh, and there's a bonus: You will have arrived at the living heart of the politics and history of the Empire State.

Read the whole thing (link above).

Photo above: A big Brown we caught on the Connetquot last September. Below, my photo of my beat on the stream that day.

What happens when the government mandates free hats for all. White Coat Rants (h/t, Bruce Kesler)

Also, Americans' Sense on Health Care, from Bruce re Rasmussen polling.

And, speaking of heathcare and free hats, Hillary asserts access to the internet is a right. As Right Thinking comments in a humorous piece,

Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, is there anything Hillary doesn’t think the government should be doing?

Lastly, a great quote from Fightin' Rudy:

"If we do Hillary care or socialized medicine, Canadians will have no place to go to get their health care."

That line from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani drew plenty of laughs at Tuesday's Republican debate. 

Sure, Michael Moore's absurd fantasy that our northern neighbor's rationed government-run health care system is one to be coveted rings pretty funny.  But the underlying realities are fatally serious.

Our Aliyah Diary author Nathan sends us this piece from Jewish Chronicle describing how noted Marxist Bertell Ollman wishes to "resign from being a Jew" prior to surgery. A quote from the piece:

...it is lonely, on the left, when you step out of line. And the party line, when it comes to Israel and the Jews, is that one can express a proud Jewish identity only through the experience of suffering and victimisation from the past, which the Holocaust has come to embody above all. The Jew as a victim and as a witness of the quintessential, archetypal experience of suffering emerges as the positive Jewish role-model, in sharp contrast to the pro-Israel or even Zionist Jew, who is chastised for having betrayed both universal values and what is seen as the authentic Jew. Again, to borrow from Christian terminology, the Jew as the sacrificial lamb, the Agnus Dei, is what we are being asked to be.

That’s why so many Jews, spiteful of their faith and ashamed of Zionism’s accomplishments as a society which rejects the role of the victim, wish Israel away. For them, it was so much better before Zionism, when we could still say, with some self-righteousness, S’iz shver tsu zayn a Yid — it is hard to be a Jew!

This is rough, from an editorial piece in The Telegraph:

The former US Vice-President has already taken over from Michael Moore as the most sanctimonious lardbutt Yank on the planet. Can you imagine what he'll be like now that the Norwegian Nobel committee has given him the prize?

I don't know what bothers me about him most - his condescension or his lying and hypocrisy. But I could care less about his weight: I'd bet that the Gores have a very good chef. All of this will seem very silly, though, when we hit the next crisis of global cooling, in which case Al will be well-insulated.

Nasty little printer's devils spew forth from the press in this Puck cartoon of Nov 21, 1888. (H/t, Gumshoe)