Maggie's Farm

Snaps from my field trip to Costo Sunday. I'm sure it looks just like your Costco or Sam's, but American abundance - and its cheapness - must be a wonder to those from Cuba or Venezuela.

What I was thinking, though, was that I'd like to transport the whole store to Port au Prince today.

Readers know that we are great fans of Dubliner Cheese from Ireland:

More random Costo pics below the fold -

Dollars trump facts in the Climate Hustle. Where are the MSM investigative journalists on the IPCC scam? There's a Pulitzer waiting for somebody...naw, probably not. Wrong narrative for the Pulitzer committee.

Here's the latest:

Here’s the latest development, courtesy of Dr Richard North – and it’s a cracker. It seems that, not content with having lied to us about shrinking glaciers, increasing hurricanes, and rising sea levels, the IPCC’s latest assessment report also told us a complete load of porkies about the danger posed by climate change to the Amazon rainforest.

How many fear-mongering, grant-seeking, $-seeking lies are in the IPCC report?

The now-climate-zillionaire, hot CO2 emitter, and Climate Hustler-in-Chief Al Gore with Ball of Fire:

h/t, Theo

Amendment 1

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

How complicated is that? How did this simple sentence confuse four members of the US Supreme Court? (Not that such an amendment should be needed, since the power to make laws regarding these things is not granted our federal government anyway. We believe, as Coyote might also, that laws regulating the political speech of non-profits are just as unconstitutional as other speech-control laws.)

Addendum: Many, or most, governments in the world hate free speech.

Barone: Voters spurn the 'boob bait' of the educated class (Sorry- cannot get this fine thing to link)

Newsbusters: Chuck Todd: Obama Can't Buy GOP Votes Because of Tea Parties

The O needs teleprompter to talk to schoolkids

Steyn asks Who's panting for O speech #412? A quote:

According to Barack Obama, the problem is he overestimated you dumb rubes’ ability to appreciate what he’s been doing for you. “That I do think is a mistake of mine,” the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”

But you schlubs aren’t that smart. You didn’t get it. And Barack Obama is determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start “speaking directly to the American people.”

Wait, wait! Come back! Don’t all stampede for the hills! He only gave (according to CBS News’s Mark Knoller) 158 interviews and 411 speeches in his first year. That’s more than any previous president — and maybe more than all of them put together. But there may still be some show out there that didn’t get its exclusive Obama interview — I believe the top-rated Grain & Livestock Prices Report — 4 a.m. Update with Herb Torpormeister on WZZZ-AM Dead Buzzard Gulch Junction’s Newstalk Leader is still waiting to hear back from the White House.

More Glaciergate:

In fact, the 2035 melting date seems to have been plucked from thin air.

From Godfrey Bloom, MEP (h/t, Moonbattery):

Haiti: The aid agencies and charities are fighting over the money. Mr. FM: Haiti, Yugoslavia & the disaster relief industry.

Also, David Warren Generous to a fault.  One quote:

The first part of disaster relief is uncontroversial: food, water, medicine, shelter. Surprisingly, that doesn't cost a whole lot, nor take very long. It's the "peace and development" programs that follow which absorb the big money -- the growing of permanent new branches of bureaucracy to mind the population thus saved.

Haiti is not a basket case from the absence of foreign aid. Quite the contrary.

I lived many years in Asia, and much of my journalistic work was focused on "development issues." I've seen the consequences of aid dependency with my own eyes. It is the same story everywhere, where people are desperately poor: they have no freedom, they are landless, everything belongs to an exploiting class. And that exploiting class is, almost invariably, "leftist," and the nearly-exclusive beneficiary of foreign aid.

Photo of the new Metro-North Yankees-E. 153rd St. station from this site.

There has always been good subway service out to Yankee Stadium, but now there is a new railroad service and a new Yankees-E. 153rd St. train station to make things easier for the suburbanites (how often does one hear about a new train service and a new train station?):

From the Northern Suburbs:

Take Metro-North Railroad to its new Yankees-East 153rd Street Station; there's direct weekend-game service from the Hudson, Harlem, and New Haven Lines, as well as weekday service, and shuttle trains from Grand Central. Click here for details.

It's a great amenity for folks in Westchester and CT, because the traffic and the parking have often been discouraging for them.

How well does the baseball transportation work in Boston?

Hey, what happened to the H1N1 scare? Guess the same thing that happened to the global warming scare: NASA: No Increase In CO2, Global Warming A Sham. Related, Expert Warns of 'Climategate' Conspiracy  

Muslims Attack Christians and the Church Blames the Jews

Steyn: The Islamization of the World. What is so special about Moslems?

Rich Lowry: The New Catechism - Liberaldom has new articles of faith.

Prelutsky re government medical care:

Watching Senator Mary Landrieu sell her vote for $300 million and Sen. Ben Nelson sell his for a bigger piece of the Medicaid pie reminds me of an old story.  It seems a man once asked a strange woman if she’d have sex with him for a million dollars, and she agreed.  He then asked her if she’d do it for $20, and with all the outrage she could muster, she said, “What sort of woman do you think I am?!”  He replied, “We’ve already established that.  Now we’re merely negotiating the price.”

61% of US Voters Want Congress to Drop Health Care But Obama Vows to Fight On (Video)

Krauthammer:

An astonishing 56 percent of Massachusetts voters, according to a Rasmussen poll, called health care their top issue. In a Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates poll, 78 percent of Brown voters said their vote was intended to stop Obamacare. Only a quarter of all voters in the Rasmussen poll cited the economy as their top issue, nicely refuting the Democratic view that Massachusetts was just the usual anti-incumbent resentment you expect in bad economic times.

Medical care in Canada:

“I love Canada,” said Lesnar. “Some of the best people and best hunting in the world, but I wasn’t in the right facility. They couldn’t do nothing for me. It was like I was in a Third World country, I just looked at my wife and she saved my life and I had to get out of there.”

He was treated in Bismarck and later at the Mayo Clinic.

White House nightmare persists. Who ya gonna call? David Plouffe

Somin: Restrictions on Corporate Speech Reduce Political Equality

A victory for speech at Front Page:

Can the government suppress free speech critical of elected politicians? In the home of the First Amendment, that may seem an unusual question to pose. But that was the question before the Supreme Court this week, as it handed down a landmark ruling in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission

Reason: I Just Love New York Times Headlines Because ...

Krugman in 2002:

To fight this recession the Fed needs more than a snapback; it needs soaring household spending to offset moribund business investment. And to do that, as Paul McCulley of Pimco put it, Alan Greenspan needs to create a housing bubble to replace the Nasdaq bubble.

Why is the AG in charge of Jihad terrorists?

Insty:

A NEW BLACKLIST: Oakland Mayor to Theatre Board Member — ‘Do you now or have you ever supported traditional marriage?’ Good grief.

Photo is Milton, MA

Luke 4:14-21

4:14 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country.

4:15 He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

4:16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read,

4:17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

4:18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,

4:19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

4:20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.

4:21 Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

We're highlighting Agassi's autobiography Open, 2009. Read the WaPo review at that Amazon site.

Pro tennis players have strange lives.

For a little project, I am putting together a taxonomy of attacks on business and enterprise through history and thought that the blogosphere might make a useful contribution.  In this post (http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2010/01/help-tigerhawk-who-have-been-enemies-of.html), to which I hope you will consider linking, I ask readers to suggest the types of people from history (including the present day) who have attacked business (physically, through the state or regulatory apparatus, or politically) and the tactics they have used to do so.  It would delight me if you would send your no doubt brilliant readers in the direction of this post.

That's supper for our friend the ex-blogger Hog on Ice (I like that raw sweet onion on the plate) whose book we'd like to plug.

Fortuna

The wind blows east, the wind blows west,
And the frost falls and the rain:
A weary heart went thankful to rest,
And must rise to toil again, 'gain,
And must rise to toil again.

The wind blows east, the wind blows west,
And there comes good luck and bad;
The thriftiest man is the cheerfulest;
'Tis a thriftless thing to be sad, sad,
'Tis a thriftless thing to be sad.

The wind blows east, the wind blows west;
Ye shall know a tree by its fruit:
This world, they say, is worst to the best; --
But a dastard has evil to boot, boot,
But a dastard has evil to boot.

The wind blows east, the wind blows west;
What skills it to mourn or to talk?
A journey I have, and far ere I rest;
I must bundle my wallets and walk, walk,
I must bundle my wallets and walk.

The wind does blow as it lists alway;
Canst thou change this world to thy mind?
The world will wander its own wise way;
I also will wander mine, mine,
I also will wander mine.

Ayla Brown at a Celtics game (h/t, No Pasaran):

and, as Insty observes:

SCOTT BROWN’S WIFE IN 1984: “As you watch it, remember: Somehow this is supposed to make you like him and his family less.” Yeah, those stupid uptight repressed Republicans:

A few midtown NYC snaps from last week, with brief comments.

First snap - the #1 reason to get a degree from Yale: it gives you a clean civilized place to pee in midtown with CNBC running in all the bathrooms if you join the Yale Club. Also, a very nice place to stay in the city for cheap, a cozy hang-out, pretty good dining, and top-notch meeting and reading rooms. The giant hall on the second floor is a good place to hold your memorial service when you croak.

More below the fold -

I cannot explain why this is, but it's been like this for quite a while. Maybe some readers can splain it to me:

It's Paul Mole on Lexington, in operation since 1912. There are still guys who get a straight razor shave there every morning on their way to work - hot towels etc. I am told many guys get a weekly trim. Not me.

And yes, they have a shoeshine guy there too.

She wonders what her kids should study in college, and considers what women used to learn in school. The daily Military Drill sounds good - like the IDF:

“Marxism is my hustle.”

One of the New Left’s favorite black criminals, Soledad Prison inmate George Jackson, as quoted from a Sol Stern piece via Driscoll. It was true back then, and still true today.

Definitely the political essay du jour: Mort Zuckerman's He Did Everything Wrong. A few quotes:

..they turned it over to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who can run circles around him.

It’s very sad. It’s really sad.

and

In the campaign, he said he would change politics as usual. He did change them. It’s now worse than it was. I’ve now seen the kind of buying off of politicians that I’ve never seen before. It’s politically corrupt and it’s starting at the top. It’s revolting.

and

Let me tell you what a major leader said to me recently. “We are convinced,” he said, “that he is not strong enough to confront his enemy. We are concerned,” he said “that he is not strong to support his friends.”

The political leadership of the world is very, very dismayed. He better turn it around. The Democrats are going to get killed in this election. Jesus, looks what’s happening in Massachusetts.

It’s really interesting because he had brilliant, brilliant political instincts during the campaign. I don’t know what has happened to them. His appointments present somebody who has a lot to learn about how government works. He better get some very talented businesspeople who know how to implement things. It’s unbelievable. Everybody says so. You can’t believe how dismayed people are. That’s why he’s plunging in the polls.

It is to me a new and consolatory proof that wherever the people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, January 8, 1789, as quoted in the WSJ's Boston Tea Party this morning.

 A book. That was quick.

- h/t to a piece at Classical Values about the book.