Maggie's Farm

"I suspect that nationalism became unfashionable not because of Germany, but because it interfered with the spread of communism."

AVI. Germany was sort-of racially imperialistic, not nationalistic in the usual sense. Like Jihad, had they a modern army. We here at Maggie's prefer nationalism, federalism, and localism. Whatever is closest to the real people who pay the tax bills. No "New World Order," thank you. We fear centralism because we know those statist folks are crafty but aren't wise, and that they have their own interests in mind. Our Florentine hero Niccolo understood all that very well.

Shamefully stolen from our pal Surber:

See Dick Morris: The Democrats' Pickett's Charge. And there is more: Obama pushes senators for climate bill. My solution? Add Thorazine to the water in the the Capitol.

Image: The American air is getting cleaner.

Gun-free zones: Shooting fish in a barrel

Brit governments putting microchips in garbage cans. h/t. How do the people put up with that crap? Well, The Englishman doesn't.

Stimulants increase learning and learning speed. h/t Insty. Every college kid knows that.

Poll: Young Adults Turn Toward GOP. Change!

Diane Ravitch discouraged by education reform. Schools should be entirely run by and for localities, not by the Feds and not by the unions. That's how reform can happen. The famous Albert Shanker quote: "When schoolkids get union cards is when we'll worry about their interests." Something like that.

Effects of CO2 are logarithmic, not linear. That's High School math. Is it part of the computer models?

Feminists: College gals should drink, Yes means No, and campus rape definitions. I thought the feminists said all hetero sex was rape.

Don't hold your breath for The New World Order

Bucknell: You cannot debate the 2009 Dem stimulus package. Too controversial for college?

Florida, sugar, government and the Everglades: The corporate State

Not predicted by the models: South Pole cooling, ice increasing

Doc:

...if I am ever told I have to see every patient who wants to see me and the government determines both the appropriate treatment and the fee I can charge, I will retire and find another way to make a living.  (Maybe I will be so disturbed by the changes in my profession that I would need to go on Disability?) 

WHT?

This exciting new project is aimed at increasing public awareness of the links between climate change, poverty and child rights, and engaging ...

Good grief. Those are some crazy links!

The Census: "My race is human"

Doug Hoffman is back! He'll win.

John says the O is an ignoramus about insurance costs. Maybe he is, or maybe it simply does not serve the narrative to mention the reality that if coverages are mandated, costs increase.

Evil, evil Drudge. Do not look at his site!

Are we allowed to have two per day? Previous one was from Lenin, this from Nancy Pelosi on health care:

“We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

Alas, the man's name does a disservice to the brilliant Florentine Renaissance political scientist and student of human nature that he was.

However, I did not know that he wrote comedy on the side. Another Renaissance Man, as it were.

I like his face: shrewd and discerning, but ready to laugh.

"Princes and governments are far more dangerous than the other elements within society.”

- Niccolo Machiavelli

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

Peter DeVries

So many good sites, so little time...

Walter Russell Mead

Chicago Boyz

Washington Rebel

Mark Levin at the Reagan Library, March 5

From a commenter on our Communist Manifesto post:

Quite a few years ago I was at a company management training class at which we had a Marxist professor as an invited speaker. He explained to us that our political views were determined merely by our economic self-interest.

I raised my hand and suggested to him that maybe the political views of the academic class are partly determined by their economic and status self-interest.

He had clearly never thought of such a thing, and was a little upset. Some of the other attendees thought I had been rude to a guest by raising the question...

A companion piece, from another brilliant commenter here:

A while back I was chatting with a psychiatrist acquaintance about some topic or event I've since forgotten when he said, "From each according to ability: to each according to need".

My standard and automatic response to that statement (which I hadn't heard anyone actually spout in MANY years) is, "Is there any better way to get people to minimize their abilities and maximize their needs?"

It's a classic, often misquoted as Wimpy saying "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today." However, that may have been from a different Popeye episode.

It's Here. I love it.

(This was clearly before credit cards were widespread.)

The Azimut Magellano. A 74' blue-water boat, but you can park her with a joystick and make tight, high-speed turns like a speedboat.

There is a market for such wondrous craft but, for better or worse, it ain't me.

I tend to think we still live in a Greco-Roman civilization. This from George Mason Prof Steven Davies:

Image via Moonbattery. Related, Obamacare Is a Budgetary Disaster

Related, $2.3 trillion later, 23 million still uninsured

Related, a quote at Powerline:

The great mystery of the health care debate is why liberals, who don't trust doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies or insurers, trust Congress and federal bureaucrats.

Natural methane, from the ground

Can Wild Bison Repopulate the Plains? I am all for that.

A good summary of the issues at Weekly Std: In Denial - The meltdown of the climate campaign.

School Board President of Failing Detroit Schools Can’t Write

All about Rahm Emanuel and health care, etc. TNR. h/t, Driscoll

Krugman vs. Krugman

Chile quake shifted earth's axis. h/t, Vandy

Prof Bill Gray responds to Globe's op-ed titled Climate Change is Proven Fact. At least we are finally getting some debate, and outing those who benefit from the alarmism.

Stossel: The case for legalizing drugs, prostitution, organ sales, and other consensual acts.

While College Fails to Adequately Transmit Civic Knowledge, It Influences Opinion on Polarizing Social Issues. h/t, Protein

Can there be a value-neutral tax? Does income tax punish work?

 Left gears up to fight media wars

David Warren:

Economic decline is a choice, not a fate, and it has everything to do with big, intrusive government.

We posted about the prodigal son a couple of weeks ago. We are finding Tim Keller's The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith so compelling and eye-opening that we want to re-recommend it, especially during Lent.

Image is Rembrandt's Prodigal Son

I've been a kid, and I've been an adult. Adult's better.

Robert Parker, quoted at Wash. Rebel

Re the press and climategate:

The Times seems to have forgotten the most important aspect of the news business.  For years now ’skeptic’ has been a dirty word at the Times when the subject of climate change comes up.  Excuse me, but reporters are supposed to be skeptics.  They are supposed to be cynical, hard bitten people who trust their mothers — but cut the cards.  They are supposed to think that scientists are probably too much in love with their data, that issue advocates have hidden agendas, that high-toned rhetoric is often a cover for naked self interest, that bloviating politicians have cynical motives and that heroes, even Nobel Prize laureates, have feet of clay.  That is their job; it is why we respect them and why we pay attention to what they write.

Jimmy Rodgers is said to have risen from his sickbed to record this the day before he died. h/t SDA

This is a re-post from guest author Skook:

Glaciers and mountain-building have created many distinct species of trout throughout the Pacific drainage.  To find them, fish a mountain river, take a boat out on the Pacific, or hike to a desert lake.

Rainbow (above) – Silver with black spots and a reddish band along the side.  Their native range is the West Coast mountains, though they have been introduced elsewhere in North America and beyond.   Redbands are a variant found in the Great Basin, where they have adapted to high summer temperatures.  Steelheads are anadromous rainbows that spend parts of their lives in the North Pacific from Kamchatka down to Malibu Creek near Los Angeles.  In the Northwest, rainbows and steelhead are the premier game trout of the rivers and coast.

(While Rainbows are to be found in the East, these are all transplants or hatchery fish. The native stream trout in the East is the Brook Trout - which is a char.)

Cutthroat – Meriwether Lewis stopped at a Philadelphia tackle shop before setting out and his purchases served his expedition well, like on the Great Falls of the Missouri in June 1805.  Private Silas Goodrich fished the river as Lewis described events.  Goodrich caught a trout “with specks of a deep black…and a small dash of red on each side behind the front ventral fins… the flesh, when in good order, of a rose red.”  There are at least 14 types, often unique to particular river systems.  Cutthroats are the classic trout of the inland American West, and they sometimes interbreed with Rainbows.


Dolly Varden  - These are char (as is the eastern Brook Trout), like trout but with different teeth and coloration.  Dollys are olive or gray-green with yellow to pink spots and light gray bellies.  A character from a Dickens novel, Dolly Varden became the name of a patterned dress and in the 1870’s the name was given to the char found in California’s McCloud River. Dolly Varden are similar to Bull Trout, another char, and at one time they were thought to be the same species. They spend time in the ocean as do Cutthroats.     

There are a few other species found in isolated areas that exist today only due to the hard work of folks like Trout Unlimited.  Here are two examples:     

Apache Trout - Jump in your car and drive to the Ft. Apache Indian Reservation about three hours northeast of Phoenix.  There in the White River is the gold, red, and black Apache.  It has been a long struggle due to loss of habitat and interbreeding with rainbows.  But now things look good enough to move it from the endangered list to merely “threatened” so you may legally try your luck at catch and release.

Gila Trout – Another modestly reviving species in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, it too had been pushed to the brink by development and competition with non-native trout introduced decades ago.  Gilas have black spots on gold and copper bodies and grow to over a foot. Long term restoration has brought them back enough to permit limited fishing in a few beautiful mountain streams.  Bring your hiking boots.

That's what the beer man calls out at Yankee Stadium: "Hey! Beer man! Beer man here! You know you want it." Devilish marketing.

You know you want this pretty Hinckley 49, currently for sale. But even if you afford her, can you afford to keep her?