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.
Saturday morning, a stroll around the shrubby areas of the Olde Farm revealed a big movement of migrants overnight.
Towhees, calling and scratching in the ground cover:
Flocks of noisy Blue Jays - who do move south in the fall, leaving us in New England with the Canadian birds during the winter. You know what they look like.
Two flocks of about 20 White-throated Sparrows, scratching for bugs under the rose bushes and in the overgrown dead vegetable garden, singing their Spring song:
And a Sharpie buzzed past, doubtless following, and feeding upon, the tasty, tender little migrants:
Good morning, World!
Most images and links from/to the fine CLO bird info website.
In four days, this post is almost outdated. I heard Parula and Palm Warblers singing this morning -
What a fine distraction from the hassles of life. They can swallow good-sized bones now. They just devoured a crow, and it's sorta cool the way they know how to shoot their poops off the edge of the nest:
In my experience, most people do not spend much time thinking about policies or politics. That was fine, before government intruded into every area of our lives.
The O was born in Hawaii. I think the O is toying with the Birthers, playing them for fools. As for his grades, they probably did suck because he was a stoner. But graduating summa from HLS means something.
...deluded about what can be accomplished through mere professions of powerlessness, and advertising their fears as if they were virtues, those who guide the fortunes of the world’s only superpower have embarked upon an experiment in virtual demilitarization.
Serious gardeners in New England, especially food-gardeners, build coldframes to extend the growing season. Properly done, you can add at least a month to the growing season for some things.
I used to mess with things like that, but I don't bother anymore. If I lived in Maine, though, I'd definitely have a coldframe full of spinach, leaf lettuces, etc.
I've even tried putting tomatoes out in late April here, but it never works out. Milk jugs, polyurethane, etc. Big hassle. Fact is, around here, if you put them out in late May they quickly catch up to the early birds, and even exceed them because they have endured no cool weather stresses. Tomatoes do not really put on growth without warm nights - above 55 F. We are still in the 30s on some nights.
If you have money to burn, the best thing is a good-sized real greenhouse. I would attach one to the house, with interior and exterior doors, so you could just open the door and let the rich earthy and flower and herb and plant smells infuse the house. Home-grown Beefsteak tomatoes 12 months/year.
Pic is Beefsteaks, the only tomato I truly enjoy eating, especially when hot from the sun. We usually only get a few weeks of them ripening, mid-late August-early September. Is it worth the trouble? For me, it is. It is especially pleasant when you can find a big ripe one that a squirrel or chipmunk has not taken a bite out of.
In 1882, Klein imagined sewing two Möbius Loops together to create a single sided bottle with no boundary. Its inside is its outside, it contains itself, and you can almost do it yourself… but not quite because you’ll need a fourth dimension to get the surface to pass through itself without making a hole.
Well, if you can’t make one, you can always buy one, at Acme, of course, http://www.kleinbottle.com/. Yep, no doubt about it: Your Acme's Klein Bottle is a real Riemannian manifold, just waiting for you to define a Euclidean metric at every point.
The MSM never told us, but inquiring minds want to know and are curious because he ran for President of the USA and won an election (h/t Sistah). Caveat: I hold nobody's past or stupid youth against them, because we are in America where we are free to invent and re-invent ourselves if we wish to:
If opportunity in America is a sham — if the system is rigged and some people get the breaks only for reasons of luck, birth, or discrimination — then merit is fictitious and redistribution brings greater fairness. But if America is an opportunity society — if you have the chance to work harder, get more education and innovate — then rewarding merit is fair, and it is fair for some to make more money than others.
Most Americans believe we live in an opportunity society. The General Social Survey has asked Americans since 1973 to answer whether people get ahead because of “their own hard work” or because of “lucky breaks and help from other people.” For four decades, 60 to 70 percent of Americans have said “hard work,” while never more than 16 percent have said “lucky breaks.”
It’s hardly a shock that seven in 10 Americans believe in the American dream. If you descended from immigrants, ask yourself: Why did my ancestors come here? I suspect it wasn’t to find a fairer system of forced income redistribution. It was to find a place where they could get a fair shake, where they could start their own business, and where hard work and good ideas would be rewarded.
Politicians have denied the core American belief in opportunity at their peril.
Well, luck, motivation, and personality traits are involved too. However, luck favors the prepared mind, and "Showing up is 70% of success." Most heirs, like most lottery winners, blow their good fortunes on instant gratification. Furthermore, many people do not pursue wealth and "getting ahead" as a life goal anyway. It's just one of many possible choices of life goals, although the Marxists and Materialists might see it otherwise. Choosing life goals is a very big deal, differentiates the adults from the kids, and, for most, is probably best done in a partnership. "Chacun a son gout" - which does not mean each selects his own path to gout.
Great idea, Robert. But my Doc doesn't do Medicare. He wants to get paid for his time and interest in my well-being, and he should be. I pay him, with my own money. I thank him, too, and also send him a holiday basket of goodies for his family.
It's not mainly about oil prices. It's about hedging the dollar with commodities, it seems to me. Global investors must hedge their risks somehow, and China wants to dump dollars. Gold, silver, oil - anything real instead of paper money.
If you’re looking for a place with a remarkably high concentration of literary eminences who can be counted on to spout incredibly fatuous political clichés in a consistently self-regarding tone (though heaven knows why, aside from sheer masochism, you’d be looking for such a place), pack your mukluks and set sail for the frozen North. For the fact is that an extraordinary percentage of this region’s most honored and bestselling writers harbor an ardent, palpable, quivering contempt for America and Israel, and express it in a language that’s breathtaking for its utter lack of moderation, nuance, or restraint (or, for that matter, originality).
If human beings were going to invent a religion based on wishful thinking, they could come up with something a lot “easier” than Christianity. After all, why not wish for a religion that promised eternal life in heaven, but at the same time allowed promiscuous sex, encouraged gluttony, did away with all the commandments, and forbade anyone to ever mention the idea of judgment and punishment?
Yes - why not, doggone it? We have no problem with atheists - or with any other religions, here at Maggie's. Life, and consciousness, is a deep mystery and a puzzlement, and we all must find our own ways through it with whatever sources of illumination we can find. As readers know, I am a Jesus guy - and I am not even particularly attracted to the idea of eternal life.
Preparing Easter feast for after church tomorrow for my in-laws and all the kids we can collect.
Two of my sisters are going to tend to the old folks this weekend while we finally seek some serious home help for them. I think I was in denial about their decline: it is painful to face as they have always had so much adventurousness, vitality, and work-and-study ethic.
Our menu is Butternut Squash Soup with nutmeg with a dollop of sour cream and my special homemade crouton, Arista (bone in, with garlic and rosemary - Arista is pork loin-rib roast, Tuscan-style), roast potatoes, stuffing with apples, apple sauce, roast parsnips, and Brussel Sprouts with garlic and oil. A nice Cote Roti.
For dessert, Wheat Pie, Rice Pie - and a Bunny Cake! With my good Mexican coffee. A multicultural Easter feast.
Next year, I want to make an Italian Easter Pie - Pizza Rustica.
I'd do it in a minute, if I could take 22 days off work.
Warren Buffet once said the the main advantage in life about being rich is private travel. We regular people easily forget that wealthy people worry as much, or more, about money than regular folks. They have more to worry about.
I rarely have a chance to travel by private jet, but have done so enough to say that it is very good. For my luxury, Mrs. BD just informed me that she rented an Alpha Romeo for me for our 10 days in Umbria. Only 100 E. more than the VW. Definitely worth it. Happy Bird Dog.
Jurassic President - Obama's preserved in the amber of an echo chamber where the romanticized version of the 1930s, seen through the new-age gauze of the 1970s, is paradise.
As we have always contended here, the Left are dinosaurs and the myth of the omniscient State is dead. Defunct. An ex-myth. Gone to the choir invisible.
The Lefties often express thoughts about killing, suppressing or censoring those with whom they disagree. Ideology is their Jihad. At Maggie's, we enjoy having our ideas challenged. We welcome fact-based disagreement, but not emotional rants.
America has 400 billionaires with a combined net worth of $1.3 trillion. Congress could confiscate their stocks and bonds, and force them to sell their businesses, yachts, airplanes, mansions and jewelry. The problem is that after fleecing the rich of their income and net worth, and the Fortune 500 corporations of their profits, it would only get us to mid-August.
...President Obama is the culmination of a century of foreign infiltration already in place. The turning of America’s institutions of higher education took place decades ago; it is too little too late to focus on such infiltration now. Beginning in the early 20th century, America’s colleges and universities were infiltrated by German thought, then thought to be the most sophisticated in the world. That school of thought, a merger of Hegelian utopianism and Marxist classism, quickly infected America’s halls of power. Theodore Roosevelt, always trendy, bought into the new “progressivism” with alacrity, jettisoning the Constitution and capitalism in the process. Bringing this perverse ideology to American shores, Teddy announced, “We of to-day who stand for the Progressive movement here in the United States are not wedded to any particular kind of machinery, save solely as means to the end desired.” This was the philosophy of incipient dictatorship. It was brought to its near-term apex under a college professor, Woodrow Wilson, who thought that the Constitution itself needed to be stripped away.
The fact is that we can't keep Medicare as it is. It's broke. We are only arguing about how to transform it. Obama wants the experts to ration, and Ryan wants individuals to chose the type insurance they prefer. Do you trust 50 million consumers making their own financial decisions, or a dozen carefully chosen experts? What could go wrong?
... the rate of income taxation on the highest earning Americans has fluctuated drastically, from 25 percent of income in 1930 to 92 percent of income in the early 1950’s. Despite these vast differences in these top marginal rates, the total percentage of GDP the federal government has collected in revenue has changed little.
The "rich" won't work for nothing. If you take too much of their compensation for their efforts, they just retire, cut back on work, invest in munis, or give their money away. One interesting fact in her essay is that the "rich," as measured by income, are not the same people from one year to another in the US. We have high income mobility here.
God grant that I may live to fish, until my dying day, And when it comes to my last cast, I then most humbly pray, When in the Lord's safe landing net, I'm peacefully asleep, That in his mercy I be judged, As big enough to keep.
I was happy to find out that my Facebook page was doing pretty well,” he said, “I’ve got 19 million friends. Which only puts me half a million friends behind Sponge Bob Squarepants. So that’s something to aspire to, keep up with Spongebob.”
If it’s good, the government should subsidize it. If it’s bad, the government should ban it. If outcomes are in any way perceived by any group to be sub-optimal, then the government should regulate it. Anyone who opposes these bans, subsidies, and regulations must therefore be a supporter of bad outcomes, hate poor people, want people to get sick and die, etc.
Ever looked at the rage-driven Lefty site Wonkette? It's fairly immature and unenlightening in general, but I guess it makes people feel good. Well, they do posts about Trig Palin which probably will hurt the feelings of every parent with a mentally-disabled kid, but which are probably driving their traffic into the stratosphere: Humiliating Meltdown Continues… Wonkette Hatesite Hits Bottom… Digs
"I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE: NO MAN COMETH UNTO THE FATHER, BUT BY ME".
"I AM THE RESURRECTION, AND THE LIFE: HE THAT BELIEVETH IN ME, THOUGH HE WERE DEAD, YET SHALL HE LIVE: AND WHOSOEVER LIVETH AND BELIEVETH IN ME SHALL NEVER DIE."
Botticelli's late work, Mystic Crucifixion (c. 1597). Sadly, in poor condition at the Fogg Gallery.
Image of Ben Franklin's daily sched via 
Serious gardeners in New England, especially food-gardeners, build 
A friend sends this:
Earth Day
Preparing Easter feast for after church tomorrow for my in-laws and all the kids we can collect. 
It's 
Fisherman's Prayer
The government makes 
