We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
As if we conservatives don't have enough to worry about (Obama, Biden, Michael Moore, Pelosi and the list goes on), I have been prepping in case of a zombie attack. Now I know some may think it trite or not possible, but if the Dark Shadows movie with Johnny Depp coming out in May is successful, we may be in for a run of the un-dead, dead.
So, in an effort to be prepared (as we good conservatives try to be), I've put together my zombie protection rig. Most rigs are built around the AR 15 platform, a solid, wise and dependable choice. However, being a conservative, I am also a bit more "old school".
The M1 carbine was produced in 1944. It has seen some use, but is reliable and will hold a pretty good group of 3 inches or so at 100 yards, which is plenty good enough for zombie killing. That is a Colt Commando revolver, manufactured during WWII for use by defense plant guards, OSS, etc. The one in the picture was shipped in 1943 to a government warehouse in Reading, PA. Box of 38 Special loadings and an extra box of Vietnam War era production, .30 Caliber Carbine ammo and I am ready. In case they get too close, the carbine has a bayonet and if that fails, I have my pilot's knife. I think I am well-prepared.
The youth vote still supports Obama, but in a chastened, conditional way. In hindsight, Obama's 2008 campaign looks like an indulgent fantasy in which the major conflicts in life simply don't exist. There may be no white America and no black America, no blue-state America and no red-state America, but one thing is clear: There is a young America and there is an old America, and they don't form a community of interest. One takes from the other.
When the Archbishop Met the President - Cardinal Dolan thought he heard Barack Obama pledge respect for the Catholic Church's rights of conscience. Then came the contraception coverage mandate.
Obama claims that free-market capitalism doesn't work. Some retort that it has not been tried lately. Obama certainly never tried it (except with his ghost-written books), but I tried it. Easy to do. Here's how I joined the 1% and got filthy rich in the intertunnel through the miracle of free-market Capitalism (with good tips for other bloggers and website owners):
- Dunkin Donuts pays me $100 k per year for publicity. That's a good deal for them. Plus I get free coffee and jelly donuts, like the cops do.
- Bob Dylan pays me around $100 k per year for free publicity, plus free concert tix. Don't care much for his musical efforts, but the money's good and my kids appreciate the tix. OK, OK, he does have some decent lyrics
- Best Nest offers $1000 per link up to four per year, but also sends me free stuff. I have bird houses coming out of my ears. Ouch. Splinters. They need better sanders.
- D'Artagnan compensates us with $500 of their wonderful produce per link
- my contract with Amazon pays me a paltry $500 per book or item link.
- Sippican pays me $600 per link, limited to 1/month. I would try to squeeze more out of the guy, but I like him and his family so I don't. Pays me double for each Rumford Meteor link - best little newspaper in Maine.
- Brooks Brothers pays me $10,000 for one annual advt., plus one free three-hour shopping spree during their January sale and a bonus for each additional link. What do I need the clothes for? I live in my Brooks Brothers pajamas...and I never go outdoors. There are bears out there.
- Costco pays me $4000 per mention. Cheap SOBs. Evil big business taking advantage of us toilers.
- Don Surber's paper pays us a lousy $75 per link, which is why I link Surber so often - I have to make it on volume or the invoice is hardly worth the stamp! He's pretty good, though, so it's OK despite his liberal slant. Gateway Pundit pays better, per link. Insty doesn't pay a penny, so I hate to link the darn guy. Vanderleun, TigerHawk, Mead, Theo - too holy and pure, or too cheap - to put up the necessary, but our persuasive VP of Sales will visit them again soon for cocktails and dinner at the truck stop lounge of their choice. As for Zero Hedge - he pays us double what we ask for but in the currency of his choice. Filthy Capitalist. Obama needs to raise his taxes.
- Home Depot pays us $8,000 per linked mention, limited to 3/year. Nice check, but always arrives late. I still have to pay when I get stuff there.
- Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce: $750 per Cape Cod photo posted. I have lots of Cape Cod photos, so they limited me to one per month
- What do I get from Big Oil and Big Gas for pretending to be a climate skeptic? My contract with those good old boys prevents me from making the details public but I can say that it is a satisfactory arrangement for now. Plus they fly me down private to Texas and treat me to bird or pig hunts and barbecue anytime I am free. Sent me a custom cast-iron smoker too. Not as good a deal as Anthony Watts gets, but not bad at all.
- Exploitation of workers: I pay our eager contributors nothing (suckers). I am a tough negotiator. My plan for 2012 is to begin to charge themper wordfor each post. After all, our virtual ink and paper costs are going up, as are duct tape costs to hold our servers together - not to mention Obamacare for our elves and farm hands and the rapidly-increasing cost of paying Google to keep us on the top of "Maggie's" searches.
OK. That makes for a profitable day thus far. Heck, everybody has to make a living somehow, and a little extry comes in handy (the girls all want Loro Piana and Anne Fontaine stuff for their birthdays as I am sure your girls do too - there's two more quick n' easy payola ka-chings for me!). Please patronize our benefactors, and assume that every link we provide is paid for in some manner. I don't have time to list all of the rest of the good payola and kickbacks I benefit from at Maggie's, but it is enough to keep my banker on Grand Cayman busy processing the check and (preferably) Fed-Exed cash payments.
All it takes for website success is a good, sweet-talkin' VP of Sales with an appealing product and who just likes to have fun - and thanks for the check, John Deere:
Image is Duccio's (Sienese, 1255-1319) Christ Entering Jerusalem. The piece below stolen in its entirety from our friend The Anchoress a few years ago:
Days that Shook the World, by Greg Kandra
April 9, 2006: Seven Days that Shook the World
After spending the last few weeks in the desert of Lent, suddenly we find ourselves in an oasis, clutching long leaves of palms.
But like so many things you see after being in the desert, it's a mirage. What we see, or think we see, is about to shift before our eyes.
Soon enough, the palms will be whips. The leaves will be thorns. Jubilation will become jeers. That is the paradox and the mystery of Holy Week.
The liturgies of this week are powerful and primal. In the days to come, there is silence and smoke, fire and water, shadow and light. We are a part of something both ancient and new, and what we do this week reminds us of that. The altar will be stripped. The cross will be venerated. The tabernacle will be emptied. The Blessed Sacrament will be moved. Bells will be stilled.
And yet here we stand, at the gates to Jerusalem, palms in our hands and hosannas on our lips, beginning the arduous trek to Calvary.
It is easy to be distracted by the events of the world, and not really pay attention to what we will do this week. Somewhere, wars are raging, and politicians are squabbling. Somewhere, Easter eggs are being sold, and chocolate is being inventoried, and plastic grass is lining wicker baskets.
But not here. Not now. Not yet.
This week, take the time to wonder about what we are doing, and what we are remembering.
For close to two thousand years, we have gathered like this, in places like this, to light candles and chant prayers and read again the ancient stories of our deliverance and redemption.
But are we aware of what we are doing? Do we understand what it means? Do we realize the price that was paid? A proper accounting is impossible. The ledger His life, for our souls seems woefully unbalanced.
So try this. This week, take a moment in each day that passes to wonder: What was He doing during this time of that one week all those centuries ago? What was crossing His mind on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday? What sort of anguish? What kind of dread?
Has anything we have ever worried about, or lost sleep over, or agonized about, even come close?
He was a man like us in all things but sin. He must have been terrified, His mind buzzing with questions. Long after the others had drifted off to sleep, did He stay awake and worry? Maybe He sat up alone, late at night, whittling a piece of wood, the way His father had taught Him, until a splinter sliced His skin, drawing a rivulet of blood. He might have flinched and thought: Well, this is nothing. And still it stings. How intense would the pain of death become? How long would it last? How much humiliation would He be forced to endure, stripped and bleeding? And: What about His mother? Is there anything He could do to spare her from this?
As you shop for Easter baskets and dye, think of this. Ponder this. Wonder about it. Make it a kind of prayer.
And then, remember what we are doing, and why.
Because, of all the calendars in all of human history, this is the week that changed the world.
We served only two side dishes at dinner last weekend: Wild Rice with Apple and Cranberry, and simple String Beans.
At our house, we only eat those skinny string beans that come fresh in packages. French String Beans, Haricot verts. No strings in them. We eat them like candy. Costco sells them in big packages, and our supermarket overprices them in smaller bags. We steam them all up and they are good green food for a week in the fridge. I feel that the full-sized string beans that I was raised on are not really fit for human consumption.
We do them the Italian way:
Steamed for a few minutes until tender but still bright green. Drain, then tossed in the best olive oil you have, with sea salt. In Italy, simple is the best when the ingredients are the best.
... the relationship the president wanted (with the American people) never really knitted together. Health care was like the birth-control mandate: It came from his hermetically sealed inner circle, which operates with what seems an almost entirely abstract sense of America. They know Chicago, the machine, the ethnic realities. They know Democratic Party politics. They know the books they've read, largely written by people like them—bright, credentialed, intellectually cloistered. But there always seems a lack of lived experience among them, which is why they were so surprised by the town hall uprisings of August 2009 and the 2010 midterm elections.
Why Do So Many Americans Drop Out of College? Unprepared students sign up for school because they think a degree is their passport to the middle class. They should have other options.
" If this last desperate effort of the power-mongers of leftism fails, then their whip may become a wet noodle, and the whole corrupt syndicate of leftism may completely unravel. Watch Wisconsin."
Even the fact that the welfare state has grown relentlessly does not, in itself, mean that the growth has been excessive. What does begin to suggest that conclusion is the lack of candor with which the growth has been promoted. For years, the Democratic Party’s raison d’être has been to establish, defend, and expand the welfare state. The Democrats could have told us all along—forthrightly, scrupulously, and unambiguously—that their project would cost a lot of money and that, should economic growth be insufficient to pay for it, big tax increases would be necessary. Had they done so, they would be in a strong position to argue that the terms of the deal they struck with yesterday’s voters oblige today’s Americans to pay higher taxes.
The panicked reception in the mainstream media of the three-day Supreme Court health-care marathon is a delightful reminder of the nearly impenetrable parochialism of American liberals.
A friend who is aware of my interest in art and art history mentioned to me the other day that he has always regretted not having taken at least an intro art history course in college. (Where I went to college, intro Art History and Intro Music History were required courses. Good, but very demanding and well beyond cocktail party art conversation.)
I told him that this regret was easily remedied, at the cost of some time but for very little money. Here's what I suggested:
For starters, these two from Great Courses (the old Teaching Company)
The only possible good thing that could come out of this case would be to set a limit on the Commerce Clause. As far as medical care goes, the government could easily offer Medicare for all (if Congress could pass it and pay for it) and avoid any consitutional issues.
JUSTICE KENNEDY: Well, then your question is whether or not there are any limits on the Commerce Clause. Can you identify for us some limits on the Commerce Clause?
Busybodies of the World, Unite! - it's increasingly hard to escape those who want to deny simple pleasures to you—for your own good:
New York Times' food columnist Mark Bittman praises Storms for raising the important question: "How do we regulate the consumption of dangerous foods?...The government isn't doing its job," he argues.
Bittman quotes Storms approvingly, "It's just bad public policy to allow unfettered access to all kinds of food."
Peter Beinart’s False Prophecy - The Crisis of Zionism, his book arguing that the Israeli occupation alienates young American Jews, is sloppy with facts and emotionally contrived
As I mentioned a while ago, there isn't much Medieval to see in northern Italy except for some churches and monasteries, and some fortifications.
The wealth and urban renewal during the Renaissance is the reason. The narrow roads and alleys are often of medieval origin, but the old buildings are pretty much all Renaissance or later.
We did find one Medieval-era home in Orta San Guilio a couple of years ago (we drove our tiny rental over the mountains from Stresa for a day trip. I don't know how the lad fit his long legs into the back seat of that tin can, but he will put up with anything to explore new places):
The main reason Maggie's Farm exists as a 25-30% political site instead of as a 0% political site is to assert what we consider our Yankee views of freedom. We assume that governments, having nothing better to do, will seek to accumulate power and money. That's what organizations tend to do.
For each smidgen of accumulated government power, a smidgen is lost to the citizen. Power, unlike wealth, is a zero-sum game. It only seems to ratchet in one direction with the State as the beneficiary. We had a revolution about that sort of thing against our (then) democratic Parliament.
Variously attributed to Tom Paine, Tom Jefferson, and Tom Hank Thoreau: “That government is best which governs least.” Indeed, We The People are not retarded, and many of us do not have the submissive genes which the benevolent welfare state welcomes or requires.
The Obamacare argument is, or will be, that medical insurance is a uniquely "necessary and proper one." However, I could make the same argument for legal care, or housing-repair care, or auto insurance, or anything else that seems important at a given moment.
The argument that government power grabs are well-intentioned, or "good," or "for the greater good" is a non-argument to me as an American. We were designed to be a nation of sturdy and proud people, unlike our European ancestors. They think we're rubes: we think they are lame.
As we often remark here, the Libs, the Progressives, and the Left never introduce freedom arguments into debates (unless it involves sex). We put freedom factors into policy equations, and they do not. That's the basic difference.
I suppose I was raised on some foods you might term "Hotdish" - Shepherd's Pie, Tuna Noodle, Macaroni and Cheese, Lasagna, Seafood Casseroles, and the like - but it's not a New England term.
As his main course offering for our game dinner, my hunting pal brought his Oryx Moussaka over in his 18 qt. Nesco roaster oven. Just carried it into the kitchen and plugged it in to keep it hot.
(Being a Louisiana-born-and bred guy, he also made 4 Pecan Pies from his Mom's recipe. Made the crusts, too)
His Moussaka came out great, even though he had never made it before. (At our guy dinners, the men cook, the womenfolk are guests, and a helper cleans up. Mrs. BD does the flowers, of course.)
If your oven is full, these seem to function as a spare oven, large enough for a 16# turkey, and their portability, their ability to keep food warm, and the inability to burn food in them, are useful features.
Can they give you an oven-like crusty or gratin surface if that's what you want? No. To brown the top of something, you have to put the enameled insert under the broiler for a few minutes.
An interesting young fellow. In New York Magazine, The Paul Clement Court - Seven cases. One lawyer. The GOP’s great hope for this Supreme Court season is an unassuming attorney who just happens to be lead counsel on the most polarizing arguments in America.
Image on the right 
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We served only two side dishes at dinner last weekend: Wild Rice with Apple and Cranberry, and simple String Beans.
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The main reason Maggie's Farm exists as a 25-30% political site instead of as a 0% political site is to assert what we consider our Yankee views of freedom. We assume that governments, having nothing better to do, will seek to accumulate power and money. That's what organizations tend to do.
I suppose I was raised on some foods you might term "Hotdish" - Shepherd's Pie, Tuna Noodle, Macaroni and Cheese, Lasagna, Seafood Casseroles, and the like - but it's not a New England term. 