Maggie's Farm

I was reminded of this after reading Powerline's What Missouri Showed Me. The states, and the people, are not pleased with Imperial Washington and its mandarins.

Climategate review: Jaworski from December: Climate Gate – Global Warming The Myth: CO2 The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time. Scathing.

How Chavez does it: Welcome to Censorship in the 21st Century

Morris: THE COMING CATASTROPHE: STATE GOVERNMENTS

Is this hyperbole? Google-Verizon Deal: The End of The Internet as We Know It

Q&O: Jobless claims “unexpectedly” rise

It's back: The Return of the $1,000 Down Mortgage

70% of the births at Dallas' Parkland Hospital are to illegals. Parkland makes a profit on that, via Medicaid. We are paying those bills. h/t NRO

Chicago Boyz asks:

Why does the Ruling Class, using Codevilla’s term, have such strong cultural confidence? And what can we do to undermine it?

Prof Bainbridge's post on Conservative style attracted much commentary. From Tom Smith's post:

...take Sarah Palin, who graduated from the University of Idaho, whose alma mater was sung at my father's funeral, so don't neg the U of I around me.  She's not as well educated as Michelle Obama. She's not as well educated as a President or Vice President should be.  But had she gone to Harvard Law her ideas about the constitution would be a lot less sound than they happen to be.  That is what we have come to.

More on that from Insty.

And from AVI

A friend and reader emails this, re the old Wellfleet place we posted a couple of weeks ago:

I've been in a bunch of really old shacks down that way. The people that built them were really amazingly flinty and resourceful. I've attached a picture of a threshold of a door from Truro. They couldn't manage to have a door sweep, so they made a sort of rain gutter with a drain hole in the nose. You know how the rain comes at a house down there. There was never any overhang in those old houses, so the rain sheeting down the door would probably flood the floor, and some poor bastige named Higgins or Crowell or Snow or Starbuck got it off the honeydew list as best he could. Marvelous.

In the London Review of Books.

I must say that I enjoy French haute cuisine enormously, but that might be because I indulge in it so infrequently. There are two or three restaurants in the vicinity who do it up grand. Pricey. $50. entrees, etc.

My 3-star French chef hunting buddy has cooked for me and friends a few times. He can make anything, but his favorite things to make are peasant foods - rabbit rillette, wild duck terrines, a wild game broth consomme with woodcock ravioli and black truffles, cassoulets, tarte tatin, and things like that. His favorite food to eat is indeed a Big Mac and fries.

A re-post from a couple of summers ago -

Two young Carolina Wrens fecklessly fluttered into our den today while the door was open. The pup promptly swallowed one, as any half-trained retriever will do, but I gently grabbed the other and carried him out to a safe branch. He crapped in my hand, but I don't mind that at all. Glad to be of service. I will take it as a frightened "Thanks," like when God grips you.

Birds frequently fly into our house. A couple of years ago, two dumb young flickers flew down the dining room chimney, and their beaks are sharp. They were tough to catch with the 11' ceiling. But I will never forget my friend who found a befuddled Screech Owl perched on an andiron in his fireplace. He called me and asked what to do. I said grab him firmly but gently around his wings, and open your hand outdoors. It worked out fine, but the bird was confused a little by the sunlight and took a magical minute or so to compose himself perching on his hand, reorient himself, and then to fly into a dark, dense pine.

Our Carolina Wrens are noisy in spring (a piercing "teakettle teakettle teakettle"), invisible during their breeding season, and out and about again now. I thought they were migratory, but I had one at my feeder last winter, and apparently they are not, entirely. Harsh winters kill them off, but their populations bounce back.

They look twice the size of our happy House Wrens, and are noisier. Rugged little guys.

Tom Jones in May, 2010, with Dylan's 1989 What Good Am I? (h/t, The Englishman)

NYC has more millionaires than the entire population of Boston.

But Rep Jerry Nadler has an idea: Democrats: Say, Let’s Exempt Rich People in Blue States From Tax Hike!

You can get almost anything at Costco

Hard Drinkers, Meet Soft Science

Home Alone

Lessons from Ma Bell

Michelle: Mad Maxine’s minority fat-cat bankers

Insty: Is higher ed a waste of money?

Driscoll: Paranoia, Short-Term Thinking, and the Ongoing Media Death Spiral

Sowell: Democrats Bite Democrats: Part II

WSJ: Liberal Piety and the Memory of 9/11

What was that movie where they handicapped everybody? Universities That Use Kindles vs. the ADA

Missouri's Prop C will be ignored. McCaskill: Message received (that the voters don't get it). Says Brewton:

If the practical effects of this conflict between state and federal law are likely to be limited, more importantly, Missouri’s vote revealed once again that the country is still aghast over President Obama’s health-care presumption. Earlier this week, the Congressional Research Service reported that the new bureaucracy the bill created is so complex and indiscriminate that its size is “currently unknowable.” Capitol Hill’s independent policy arm added that among “the dozens of new governmental organizations or advisory bodies,” it is “impossible to know how much influence they will ultimately have.”

No wonder Missourians rebelled, as with voters in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia last year. There will be more such what-have-they-done ObamaCare moments. Wait until the public discovers the government is now literally determining what qualifies as “health care” in America.

Fighting the union for school innovaton

Am Thinker: The Revolt of the States. It's about time.

GOP aims for House seats in New England

Everything about dating blunders. h/t, Linkiest

More on The Higher Education Bubble

Related: Colleges Serve the People Who Work There, Not the Students

Update on Open Water At The North Pole

Brilliant: Police: Officer Baited In Altercation That Injured Him. Cop goes to black church to discuss public safety, is ambushed. Doubt he will volunteer to help those folks in future.

The folly of banning online gambling. Gambling is legal: see "stock market" and "Las Vegas" and "race tracks" and "football pools" and "Indian casinos."

With Dems in Hot Seat, the Times Undergoes a Sudden, Cynical Softening on Ethics Charges

Lowry: "If you want to find a grown-up in government, don’t look in the Oval Office or the Capitol. Look in the statehouses of New Jersey and Indiana."

Breitbart: I Got My Correction Thanks to the The New York Times — Now Who’s Next?

Princess Robin of Berkeley: My mate is sleeping with the enemy

Voegli:

(The) tactile aspect of liberalism is the one that causes so many conservatives to pound their heads on the table in frustration. I refer to the moist-eyed, quivering-voiced, morally preening affirmation of the tautology that when the government gives people stuff, the people it gives stuff to wind up with more stuff than they had before the government started giving them stuff. After they calm down, conservatives say, “Fine. Stipulated: Benefits are (or at least can be) beneficial. Now, can we please talk about how we’re going to pay for all these programs? And how we’re going to make sure that the Santa Clausification of American government does not transform us from a republic of free and equal citizens into a nursery of wardens and wards?

 The 100 worst stimulus projects

Instead of arresting the guy, I'd hire him to work in the ER

Is it greedy to want to make money? Were the 80s the Decade of Envy instead?

Last I heard, envy was a deadly sin. Last I heard, wanting to make an honest living and to be productive was a basic adult responsibility. Greed, also one of the 7 deadlies, is "an insatiable desire for wealth." It's a sin because it makes an idol of wealth, replacing God.

Government cannot run something this big and important and complex: Rethinking Socialized Medicine In Canada

Related: America's first vote on Obamacare

Related: Folks with Medicare are already beginning to feel the changes. Soon, the rest of us: Wave of Health Reform Provisions Coming Next Month.

By forcing insurance to cover things we do not want and do not need, in ways that are not sensible for us, they will drive up prices with the goal of putting all of us on a one-size-fits-all government plan. And what's this about covering your kids until they are 26? That's insane. Why not until they're 40, when real adulthood begins nowadays (if it ever does)?

From Betsy:

When civil-rights groups such as the NAACP and National Urban League come out condemning charter schools, you know that they have decided to fall down on the side of the teachers rather than the students. As Paul E. Peterson and Martin R. West of Harvard point out, many charter schools serve minority populations and are increasingly popular among minorities. These organizations are ignoring the needs of the families who are crying out to get their children in the charter schools and out of the regular public schools.

The Other McCain:

“Everyone must come to grips with and make sense of their own failures. Excuse-making, blame-shifting, scapegoating — ‘It wasn’t my fault!’ — prevents us from learning the lessons of our failures. . . . Persistently attempting to externalize blame for our own failures is a recipe for moral disaster.”

 

What's that thing behind the old VW?

Answer below -

From Dr. Bob's The Doctor Will See You Now – Or Else!

Mark my words, we are witnessing the disassembly of the American system of medicine — a system which, for its many flaws, has provided the best and most advanced health care the world has ever known. For some, its destruction will be a victory, flush with the naive utopian vision of universal, government-controlled health care.

For you, the patient, the outcome will prove far less sanguine.

"Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline."

G.K. Chesterton

City Journal: What Social Science Does—and Doesn’t—Know. Our scientific ignorance of the human condition remains profound.

No Big Bang: A new model of the cosmos. h/t, Vanderleun

When The Government Owns GM… the other auto-makers are not going to be treated very fairly.

Challenge to Health Care Law Advances

State and Local Debt Bombs Ticking Throughout US Heartland. Beware of muni bond funds.

Via Thompson:

And then there’s the leftwing think-tank, the New Economics Foundation, whose Head of Social Policy, Anna Coote, tells us we would become “better parents, better citizens, better carers and better neighbours” if only our incomes were dramatically reduced. “We,” she says, will be “satisfied” without the “dispensable accoutrements of middle-class life,” including “cars, holidays, electronic equipment and multiple items of clothing.” The preferences of the British electorate – whose taxes fund the NEF - don’t figure in this brave new world and the NEF’s deep thinkers simply know what’s best for us. What’s best for us is “introducing measures to reduce the gradient between high and low earners,” “growing our own food,” and “mending and repairing things.”

Top Ten Most Left-Biased Working Journalists

The Secret History of Climate Alarmism. It's about German politics.

At Volokh: Philipson and Posner on the Causes of Obesity. Some of the comments there are very good.

Ace on Paul Ryan's Roadmap:

I honestly would be in favor of the conservative bait and switch in '12 and pay the price in '14 if we got anywhere near the results the Democrats have gotten in the last year and a half. Somehow though, the Republicans never seem to pull the trigger.

 Rep. Pete Stark: Federal Government Can Do Most Anything:

Has this guy ever read the Constitution? Didn't he have to swear to uphold it? People like this are dangerous.

Q&O: Bush tax cuts – it’s not your money, so quit whining

David Stockman on the debt: Four Deformations of the Apocalypse. He wants a tax hike. Kudlow .takes on Stockman

Up on the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is Big Bambu. You can take tours up through it. I guess you would call it an "installation." It is an endless work-in-progress. I wonder how it would stand up to a good Nor'easter.

The views from up there are magnificent, overlooking Central Park.

"The real argument against aristocracy is that it always means the rule of the ignorant. For the most dangerous of all forms of ignorance is ignorance of work."

G.K. Chesterton, 1918

Tiger takes a walk on the High Line

Women 'view modesty as sign of weakness'

The WaPo doesn't get it

Report: Connecticut No. 2 In Unfunded Pension Liability

ADA update:

In recent months a New Jersey jury ordered a rheumatologist to pay $400,000 for not providing a deaf patient with a sign language interpreter at his own expense...

Related: Jury Damage Award Could Close Calif. Healthcare Facilities

Megatool Prince Charles Declares He's Here to Save the Planet or Something

The Ruling Class Tosses Americans Overboard

Young Illegals Out Themselves, Daring To Be Deported

Americans Cut Back On Visits To Doctor

Alcohol Use Now at 25-Year High

Palin: Obama lacks 'the cojones' to tackle immigration

Michelle: Summer of Corruption: Maxine Waters/OneUnited Bank refresher course\

The yacht vs. the pickup truck - Democrats are now the party of perceived privilege, and GOP is the party of the people

Related: the story of two weddings. Also related: Dems are the party of the rich

Surber: It was not a stimulus. It was a raid on the Treasury

Powerline:

That's what happens under government medicine. Political considerations are substituted for medical judgment, and over time many doctors and nurses, government employees all, come to view their patients much as postal employees view the letters and packages they sort. With no competition, patients have no choices, and the quality of care steadily erodes even as the price--like the price of everything run by government--rises.

Gateway: It’s Back: Public Option Again Rears It’s Ugly Head

Can Rubio win?

NYT Blogger Who Knocked Fox News' Audience Diversity Has the Same Problem

Something we can learn from Cuba:

After the crash of the former Soviet bloc, Cuba's cash-strapped government in the 1990s approved a wide range of self-employment. Positions such as beauticians, dog groomers, small restaurant owners and even lighter refillers were legalized as long as workers got licenses and paid taxes.

But social resentment emerged as an issue when some workers, particularly in small private restaurants, achieved dramatic levels of success.

The government began increasing taxation and regulation, and decreasing license-granting, until the self-employed sector was largely rendered paralyzed, like the rest of the economy.

Why? Because he says it all, here.

Photo from the post.

That's a Picasso quote. For me, even his small etchings and line drawings have more soul and substance and solidity (and variety and visual surprise) than all the work of the other great artists I have seen. Every line shows strength, boldness, certainty, inevitability, regardless of whether it is etchings, lithos, oil, ink, watercolor, collage, sculpture - anything. It's called "talent."

If you're in the neighborhood, I'd advise not missing the Picasso show at the Metropolitan Museum. We got there yesterday. 300 works, all dusted off from their own mind-boggling collection. If I didn't suffer from "museum brain," I could have spent an hour just in the last room with the small etchings from the 1960s. As always, the audio guide is very good ($6, and two for one if you are a member.)

The show runs until Aug 15, and it's never crowded in August. I'd say the show is worth a special trip to NYC because it is a visual feast. For me, an overdose because just a handful of wonderful pictures fills my feeble brain to the brim.

This from his "Classical" period, 1920s.

More of my pics below the fold -

FBI Files Reveal Historian Howard Zinn Lied to Hide CPUSA Membership. Who is surprised? This America-hater made many millions, and led a cushy life in freedom on his fashionable America-hating. The only good thing about Zinn is that he loved Wellfleet, which fortunately was never in the Soviet Union.

Malanga: Government dietary advice often proves disastrous. As we have repeatedly said here, nobody knows what an optimal diet is, and definitions of "healthy eating" change constantly. It's a field full of fads, and full of cranks with the delusion that they know what's best for you. At Maggie's Farm, we have been thriving on Thai Noodle Soup (the hot version) this summer. Eat your Bok Choy! Scientists say it's good for you!

Vanderleun on poetry. We like poems.

Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14; 2:18-23

1:2 Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

1:12 I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem,

1:13 applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven; it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with.

1:14 I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.

2:18 I hated all my toil in which I had toiled under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to those who come after me

2:19 --and who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet they will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.

2:20 So I turned and gave my heart up to despair concerning all the toil of my labors under the sun,

2:21 because sometimes one who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave all to be enjoyed by another who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil.

2:22 What do mortals get from all the toil and strain with which they toil under the sun?

2:23 For all their days are full of pain, and their work is a vexation; even at night their minds do not rest. This also is vanity.

Who do you think has the firmer handshake? The fellow has some strange submissive, unmanly impulses. Perhaps Harvard removed his testosterone and replaced it with a dose of narcissism. This via Vanderleun via Fausta:

Thanks, Opie, for these photos with the data, which came in over the transom. I cannot source it, but kudos to whoever put this together. It is interesting not only to see the different sorts of families (extended, nuclear, large, small, desert, middle-class) but to see what they typically eat in a week.

Germany: The Melander family of Bargteheide. Food expenditure for one week: 375.39 Euros or $500.07. (I guess that included the wine and beer) 

Brilliant ad for Linda McMahon in CT. We think she has a real chance against Blumenthal. 

Tim Pawlenty talks. He seems like Mr. Rogers.

A Dagestan wedding. Good grief.

Bruce told me about the 1949 movie, The Third Man. Sounds wonderful.

A reader sent this link which explains Gramsci's cultural hegemony

More about the sleazy Sherrods

Powerline: Whatever happened to the Constitution? Apparently it is too radically right wing for modern times, with all its focus on individual freedom and restrictions on state power. I like to remind myself that King George lll had nothing close to the power that our modern federal government wields today.

Reason: Growing Pains - ObamaCare won't stop rising health care costs.

A basic component of air remains illegal

Justice Department Encourages Voting by Felons as It Suppresses Military Vote

VDH: The Truths We Dare Not Speak About Illegal Immigration

 Forbes: Why Keynes Was Wrong

Did The Government Cause The Gulf Oil Spill? Indirectly, yes. But the government directly caused the housing bubble and housing bust.

Maybe it’s Time For Jews to Fess Up. Evil Jews run the world. Everybody knows that. More about the evil Jews at Legal Ins.

The Screw-Guns

(A Screw-Gun was a small mountain ("mounting") cannon. Like many of Kipling's poems, this has been put to music, with wonderful success. Sadly, I cannot find a Youtube or midi-file of the tune, but I can hum it for you.) 

Smokin' my pipe on the mountings, sniffin' the mornin' cool,
I walks in my old brown gaiters along o' my old brown mule,
With seventy gunners be'ind me, an' never a beggar forgets
It's only the pick of the Army
that handles the dear little pets -

Refrain:

For you all love the screw-guns - the screw-guns they all love you!
So when we call round with a few guns,
o' course you will know what to do
Jest send in your Chief an' surrender -
it's worse if you fights or you runs:
You can go where you please, you can skid up the trees,
but you don't get away from the guns!

They sends us along where the roads are, but mostly we goes where they ain't:
We'd climb up the side of a sign-board an' trust to the stick o' the paint:
We've chivied the Naga an' Looshai, we've give the Afreedeeman fits,
For we fancies ourselves at two thousand,
we guns that are built in two bits -
For you all love the screw-guns . . .

If a man doesn't work, why, we drills 'im an' teaches 'im 'ow to behave;
If a beggar can't march, why, we kills 'im an' rattles 'im into 'is grave.
You've got to stand up to our business an' spring without snatchin' or fuss.
D'you say that you sweat with the field-guns?
By God, you must lather with us -
For you all love the screw-guns . . .

The eagles is screamin' around us, the river's a-moanin' below,
We're clear o' the pine an' the oak-scrub,
we're out on the rocks an' the snow,
An' the wind is as thin as a whip-lash what carries away to the plains
The rattle an' stamp o' the lead-mules -
the jinglety-jink o' the chains -
For you all love the screw-guns . . .