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.
Today it's a powerful and majestic predator, which comes to mind because our friends who cover hawk migration in New Haven, CT, have seen a few of them passing through recently.
Lucky them. I have never seen a Golden Eagle in the Eastern US, but have seen them in the West, where they are not uncommon. Medium-sized mammals are their main prey, and the wide, open spaces are their dominion.
Picture by J. J. Audubon, as can be easily recognized by the awkward and un-lifelike pose of the animal. Audubon typically painted from dead specimens - he was a famous shot with a rifle, and he liked to get a good, close look at the animal he was painting.
Seabourn Cruises. Nice vacation ideas, and less costly than you might think. Ships are cool, and smaller ones are more cool. In our humble view, the modern mega-ships are horrible. You might as well be on land, and they do not rock 'n roll in storms. If you cannot feel the sea, what's the point?
The next great realignment in American politics is very likely to be a Democratic realignment. It cannot be a Republican realignment, because the GOP has moved so far to the extreme right that it is now far outside the mainstream of American opinion.
I don't know. Many Americans talk conservative, but love their freebies.
NYT: Bleak Portrait of American Poverty Is Off the Mark, Experts Say
Poverty stats ignore government benefits and charitable contributions - and, of course, income from working off the books. Thanks to tax-payers, the US has eliminated serious poverty but, as a side-effect, created two generations of free-loaders. That can't be helped because any safety net also catches those sad souls who jump willingly into the net of dependency.
One The man bent over his guitar, A shearsman of sorts. The day was green. They said, "You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are." The man replied, "Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar." And they said to him, "But play, you must, A tune beyond us, yet ourselves, A tune upon the blue guitar, Of things exactly as they are."
Two I cannot bring a world quite round, Although I patch it as I can. I sing a hero's head, large eye And bearded bronze, but not a man, Although I patch him as I can And reach through him almost to man. If a serenade almost to man Is to miss, by that, things as they are, Say that it is the serenade Of a man that plays a blue guitar.
---read last two verses on continuation page below
Also via Insty: Have you considered the myriad difficulties associated with carrying concealed while shopping? Here are some great ways to overcome those issues.
Cain lacks the grounding and depth needed to be president. If he is serious about wanting to be president, he should be running for the U.S. Senate, or for a governorship, to prepare, because if anything is clear right now, it’s that experience matters. (By the way, it’s interesting to see how widely Republicans are responding to his avuncular warmth; my teenage daughters just love him in the debates, probably because we usually get hard-to-love cold fish, or raffish jerks, as our candidates.) Yes, he’d be better than Barack Obama as president. Much better. And yes, it’s nice that he’s black and conservative, and all these white Republicans are embracing him. But if the GOP’s goal is to win, Cain is a distraction. At the end of the day, if he is the candidate, we lose — even if it turns out that he had no behavior, ever, which could be confused with sexual harassment.
Our contributor Gwynnie will not be seeing this sunset from his duck boat in the reeds this fall, due to (non-serious) medical repairs.
Nice weather and clear skies are terrible for duck hunting. What you want is wind and snowy sleet, because when you are uncomfortable, the ducks are too - so they fly around. Otherwise, they sit and loaf and work on their tans in huge rafts out in the middle of the lake. Photo is not the lake itself - it's a good-sized bay on the lake.
Sunset is quittin' time. When he gets back to the lodge, he would typically clean up and dress in tweeds and a bow tie, and have a couple of single malts and a Habana ceegar in front of this fireplace before dinner. And probably some ancient port and another ceegar after the pumpkin pie with Maple Syrup on top, at the evening post-prandial confab at which non-PC jokes and lies predominate. Women not allowed as guests here. Jimmy Doolittle used to sit in front of this fireplace on his duck hunting trips (It's easy to tell that I'd like to be there now):
If sociological reportage describes one main stream of commentary about Occupy Wall Street, yearning nostalgia describes the other. It turns out that 1960s radicals never die, they just turn rancid and say ridiculous things. They may long ago have lost track of their love beads and peace pins, but somewhere deep down there lives an unextirpatable feeling of solidarity with the Age of Aquarius. The New York Times has been one reliable source of the phenomenon. The columnist Nicholas Kristof, for example, took one look at the spoiled children and social misfits cluttering up Zuccotti Park and declared that it was “reminiscent of Cairo’s Tahrir Square.” Here’s a question: How many things had to go wrong in Mr. Kristof’s brain for him to make that comparison with a straight face? “Reminiscent of” implies “analogous to.” In what sense is an aggregation of permanent adolescents in a park in downtown Manhattan analogous to the regime-changing tumult that exploded in Egypt last winter? In no sense. Mr. Kristof’s heady tweet was nonsense.
It's a good piece, but I have grown weary of these clowns, half-wits, and sociopaths.
Deutscher was a fine example of the scholar who knew a lot and understood little (including, or especially, himself). A man may smile and smile and be a villain. A man may read and read, and experience and experience, and understand nothing.
American life, as journalist Sebastian Junger observed in 1999, "has become staggeringly easy," even "vaguely unfulfilling." The context of Junger's remarks was an exploration into why some people deliberately seek danger nowadays, whether it's bungee-jumping from a high bridge or teasing grizzly bears in the (ultimately fatal) manner of Timothy Treadwell.
The political parallel to Junger's thesis is the oft-cited "solution in search of a problem," of which the Our Children's Trust lawsuit is but one example. (For others, I need only refer you to any Democratic Party political platform.) While it is certainly true that our water and air are not 100% pure (whatever that may be), the fact is that the goal posts keep getting moved back with every improvement in observation that we achieve.
Mayor Mike said this morning that if there is anyone to blame for the mortgage crisis that led the collapse of the financial industry, it's not the "big banks," but Congress.
He is an amateur. That's part of why people like him, but not a reason that people will decide to vote for him. Obama is still surprisingly popular.
Israel: A true ally in the Middle East - Israeli contributions to U.S. national interests, underappreciated by many, include enhanced counter-terrorism, intelligence and technology useful in urban warfare.
Magnificent place, wonderful gardens. Gardens make a house a home. Hydrangeas and cottage gardens make a garden homey. Note that many if not most of the charming homes in Woodstock are second homes, summer and ski-season getaways. This one too, no doubt:
Shanghai Gets Supersized - Boasting 200 skyscrapers, China's financial capital has grown like no other city on earth – and shows few signs of stopping
Are Twentysomethings Expecting Too Much? - They were raised to believe they could do anything, and now they’re demanding more from work than previous generations ever did. Will they change the world or have to lower their sights?
Right now we have what the Left so fervently desires — an us-against-them Tocquevillian nightmare that can only exacerbate the class warfare currently being whipped up in Washington.
In many parts of the country prospective homebuyers will pay almost as much in property taxes as in mortgage interest! No wonder the residential real estate market can’t come up for air, and why the American middle class feels that it is fighting for its existence
The fair-lending task force’s original policy paper undercuts the notion the financial crisis was all about banker “greed,” though it certainly played a role after the fact. Rather, it offers compelling evidence that the crisis evolved chiefly from government mandates and threats to increase lending to applicants who could not afford them.
Just got power back at ye olde Maggie's HQ. Looks like our servers held up with my pre-posts and the other postings. These links are from Bruce, mostly, because I had a productive internet-free, heat-free and electric-illumination-free weekend -
What is worrying is that almost a decade of energy investing hasn’t produced any home runs -- no green-energy equivalents of eBay, Amazon, Google or Facebook. The modest, incremental advances we have seen don’t perceptibly move the needle on the energy problem.
In the meantime, however, a real revolution has happened in traditional energy -- one that poses a serious challenge to companies and investors betting on alternative energy. This breakthrough is arguably one of the greatest advances in energy production since the 1960s. And it came not from a Silicon Valley company, or from MIT or Stanford, but from George Mitchell, the son of a Greek goatherd who immigrated to the U.S.
I usually get my identifications wrong, but I think Sipp would say that this old house in Wellfleet, MA is not so much an architectural style as a local New England vernacular. Tell me why I am wrong.
Like so many homes of its era (I would date this one 1850-80), they put expensive clapboard on the front, and cheaper cedar shakes elsewhere. Wish I had done that with my house because painting is so damn expensive if you hire it out.
My plan for the future is either that new semi-fake impermeable artificial, pigment-infused "wood", or natural cedar shakes. Can't afford continual painting. Just cannot win against the laws of entropy.
I love homey houses like this one, right there on the street so you can say "Howdy" to your neighbors on their evening stroll, and invite them up on the porch for a lemonade or a beer if you are in the mood for a chat.
When I was a kid, we had an old red woodshed out back. It had a little hinged door, down low, to toss logs out of. It was far from the two-holer outhouse.
Mice and squirrels lived in there, and the occasional Black Snake too.
Nowadays, a wood fire is more of a luxury, a comfort, than a necessity for survival. We have grown more wealthy and comfortable than we appreciate. And we always seem to want more.
Some people still have woodsheds (necessary to take your brat kid behind for the wholesome daily whuppin'), but these days I keep my wood mostly out in the weather. Dry wood burns too fast, and causes the dread global warming. Of that, I am certain.
Somewhere in either Tolstoy or Dostoevsky there is a comment about the remorse of the hunter when holding a Woodcock in hand. You have noticed that our head image on Maggie's now is Woodcock hunting.
I have frequently felt something like remorse, when, on picking up a wounded one, I have met the forgiving expression of its full and bright, yet soft hazel orb. How many of the beauties who dazzle and enslave us would be proud of such an eye.
Skinner's charming section on the Woodcock, written back before hunting seasons were instituted, is here.
The Woodcock is a fat little shorebird, fatter but not much larger than the American Robin, who renounced the shore and took up residence in our Eastern woods and swamps.
Like all shore birds, they are ground-dwellers and ground nesters, and do not perch. Because of their camoflage, their habit of feeding and being active at dawn and dusk, and their trick of freezing when approached, they are not commonly seen except in early spring, when the males perform their remarkable aerial mating dance at dusk.
Their long bills are hinged near the tip for capturing earthworms which they probe for in the soil and forest litter. They are thus necessarily migratory, to the Southern US.
A few other details: Woodock is the only "shorebird" which is a legal game bird in the US today. They are not widely hunted, but they make excellent sport and their liver-flavored breasts are a rare gourmet treat. The French especially favor the brains, on toothpicks. People who don't like to eat them should not hunt them. Their habitat overlap with the Ruffed Grouse makes a typical mixed bag for Ruffie hunters. Because of their small size and cute appearance, many hunters will admit a mingled sense of dismay and pleasure when they bag a Woodcock. Unlike grouse, they cannot be hunted without dogs, because you would never find them. A decline in Woodcock numbers has been noted over recent decades, which may be due to habitat loss, but the cause is not certain. They are fond of overgrown fields and orchards, wetland edges, and transitional young woodlands, especially birch and aspen. The European Woodcock looks like ours, but is larger. Woodcock's heads are oddly-arranged: their brains are upside-down, and their ears are in front of their huge eyes.
A tree guy I know just dumped me off a cord or so of green wood, for free and freshly cut from one of his jobs. Some logs large enough for splitting, but much of easily-burnable size.
People who are not fireplace experts think you need kiln-dried split wood for heat or for fireplaces. You do not.
As readers know, I keep the fire going in the MF HQ from October to May. I keep a supply of split and outdoor-dried wood, but once a fire is happy with coals I like to burn either green or wet logs. More heat, less flame, slower burn. Green wood burns fine once you have some coals. Sometimes, I throw a couple of hunks of charcoal in there to keep it hot and happy.
That's a soft point, but for a real dinner bird he'll produce a hard, classic point. Really immoveable on a grouse or pheasant. This guy is from a line of red Standards into which the hunt talent is being bred back.
Lovely snow today. The pup is soft-pointing every sparrow in every bush. He loves snow.
Snow and wind headed to Yankeeland. A Nor'easter. Don't be surprised if our servers go down sometime tonight or tomorrow. As it is, they are just held together with baling wire, duct tape, and hope. New England Yankees are cheap - we always just patch it up. Anyway, how soon before an early snow is blamed on global warming?
Swamp Yankee is a colloquialism that has a variety of meanings. Generally, it refers to Yankees or WASPs (northeasterners with English colonial ancestry) from rural Rhode Island and nearby eastern Connecticut and southeastern Massachusetts. The term "Yankee" connotes urbane industriousness, while the term "Swamp Yankee" signifies a more countrified, stubborn, independent and less refined subtype.
That would be us, more or less, I think. I have plenty of ancestors buried in Kingstown, RI.
What I find most dispiriting is not the decline, which as Gardiner notes is not yet irreversible, but that over 40% of the population still approves of the job Obama is doing.
TRADERS TALK BACK to OccupyChicago.“Go ahead and continue to take us down, but you’re only going to hurt yourselves. What’s going to happen when we can’t find jobs on the Street anymore? Guess what: We’re going to take yours. We get up at 5am & work until 10pm or later. We’re used to not getting up to pee when we have a position. We don’t take an hour or more for a lunch break. We don’t demand a union. We don’t retire at 50 with a pension. We eat what we kill, and when the only thing left to eat is on your dinner plates, we’ll eat that.”
Ha! Joke’s on you, dudes — the Occupy folks don’t have jobs.
There’s lots of talk about self-reliance, and depending on one’s self to get along. Nice thoughts, when you are getting along. Not such a good proposition when you have to spend your last bucks for gasoline to drive to the church’s food pantry to feed your family.
powerful and majestic predator, which comes to mind 
Learn How to Break Down a Door (Without Hurting Yourself)
One
A coming book from Charles Murray: 
SC Sheriff 
21st Century baby names
When I was a kid, we had an old red woodshed out back. It had a little hinged door, down low, to toss logs out of. It was far from the two-holer outhouse.
The Woodcock is a fat little shorebird, fatter but not much larger than the American Robin, who renounced the shore and took up residence in our Eastern woods and swamps.
Where are