Maggie's Farm

Front Page's Jamie Glazov discusses his new book, which addresses a topic about which we are always curious - the affinity between the Liberal-Left and brutal tyranny, especially Islamic tyranny. Relevant today with our government's submissive overtures to Islamic dictatorships.

Fairly short, but it's in two pieces:

Not a new Nail Gun by DeWALT.

It can drive a 16-D nail through a 2 X 4 at 200 yards. This makes construction a breeze. You can sit in your lawn chair and build a fence. Just get your wife to hold the fence boards in place while you sit back, relax with a cold beer and and a smoke and, when she has the board in the right place, fire away like William Tell.

Mr. Free Market would want one, I am certain.

If you have had trouble accessing Maggie's, it is because we are blocking virus-laden machines which are attempting to assault us at a rate of 10,000 every two minutes. 

We are slowly trying to open the door without being overwhelmed by these viral attacks.

MSG, NYC, 1992

The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before, and he does it without destroying something else. A kind of refutation of the conservation of matter. That still seems to me its central magic, its core of joy.

John Updike, from Author's Guild Bulletin, Winter 2009 p. 39

From the Oxford Libertarian Society, the remarkable Prof. Terence Kealey - author of Sex, Science, and Politics (h/t, Samiz). A wide-ranging and fascinating talk, with wonderful Q&A. The guy is a genius. Please watch:

Terence Kealey - 'The Myth of Science as a Public Good' from oxford libertarian on Vimeo.

No national sympathy for the Marines - yet the late-term baby killer is mourned and lamented. As Jammy put it:

Maybe if Private William Long performed partial-birth abortions his killing would have caught the attention of Barack Hussein Obama a little quicker.

But since he was an Army soldier murdered by a Muslim jihadist, it wasn't worth mentioning for over two days, and until after Obama left the country.

18th Century coiffure. Crazy, but good habitat for lice.

10 common misconceptions about blogs. h/t, Norm

Britain on the Brink.

Chavez: "Comrade Obama may be to the Left of me and Fidel." Related: Canadian Socialist leader visits Washington re health care.

Acting like a jerk: US one of the largest Moslim countries? That's plain stupid, worthy of "all 57 states" or Dan Quail. When will the MSM discover that there's less horsepower under that shiny hood? More at Surber

Nostalgianomics from Krugman; corrections at Reason.

A job for a Diversity and Equality Supervisor in England. Not satire.

The hatred. Now it's about hate-f-ing Palin. Against my will, I am introduced to that progressive concept.

My time working in the real West Wing. Hennessey

Dr. Clouthier:

My biggest concern with Government Run health care is that the government will run it and run you. That is, your life will be controlled from cradle to grave. You will eat a certain way…or else. You will do certain things…or else. And the government will have every motivation to force you down a path.

Ultimately, this is a civil liberties issue. Some people say that not having health care for all is shameful in such a wealthy country. Shameful is the notion of a bureaucrat deciding whether you live or die based on the metrics of a chart. That’s shameful. And that would be our future. It is a future I don’t want to see.

Just look at the big government, totalitarian groups that are for this mess. It should give you an idea of what you’d have to look forward to in the future.

Related from Kudlow: Obamacare will bankrupt the US:
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=051409A

What books should the O read? Powerline

This recession more mild that 1982. All my kids have jobs, including my youngest soon-to-be HS grad who has a summer acting job in NYC - and my dau-in-law-to-be just nailed a good one in NYC too. That makes 3 working in NYC. Good on them. All young folks need to spend some time there, I believe.

Hey parents - Leave them kids alone

From the UK re car companies: The US is committing suicide. Related: Iowahawk's take on the new green gummint cars

If the O had Jimmy Carter's fortitude

The O Admin is in permanent campaign mode. Magician in Chief

A European election? WTH? Who will vote? Who has any affinity with the "European Commission"?

Wilkinson: Repubs still the party of Nixon. Truth to that. A very good Pres, overall - if not the most likeable fellow. Too bad he didn't have the cojones to say "We screwed up."

Surber:

55% of Americans want to abolish affirmative action, while 36% support it. Given the great strides minorities have made in the last 45 years under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, most people believe it is time to take the training wheels off. 

Photo on top: Vanderleun
Middle Photo: Moonbattery
Toon: Theo

The "hang" is a very ancient Swiss drum-like instrument which looks like a wok with dings - similar to a modern steel drum. Swiss mythology tells that the idea was born of children playing with kitchen pots and pans. Here is Liron Man playing one:

This observation from Rick Moran

Salon’s “Dear Abbey” for hilariously confused and clueless lefties who ask questions of Glenallen Walken about conservatism - “Dear Wingnut” - is one of the most entertaining things about that publication. The childlike and simple minded questions asked by liberals of the author (and the comment threads his column generates) remind me of a kid asking his dad, “Why is the sky blue?” or maybe “How many stars are there, daddy?”

led me to Salon's Dear Wingnut site. "Walken" is pretty good, matter-of-fact, and deserves - and no doubt gets - attention there. Give him a look.

Kind of cool. (h/t, Ace). I would like to see more.

Many of those lunches look darn good, but the crap the American kids seem to want looks disgusting. Anyway, if I ate lunches like these I'd be asleep for two hours afterwards. An apple is about all I can handle if I have things to do.

Photo is a school lunch in China. Looks good to me - especially that fried fish.

Answer at Thompson.

Our commenting function is screwy. We'll fix it.

There has been a hobgoblin in our system for a week, performing all sorts of random mischievous acts (including shutting us down, hiding comments, and blocking comments) in order to give us fits.

Via Aurelia: The Roman Empire's Lost Highway. A bit more interesting than Route 66.

Photo from the article.

Via Jules, boobs sell:

Via Theo, Boobs for beginners:

Another Taize chant: Veni Sancte Spiritus. I love this one. 

Anchoress reminds us that

The Gifts of the Holy Spirit are Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel (Right Judgment), Fortitude (Courage), Knowledge, Piety (Reverence) and Fear of the Lord (Awe of God).

Good gifts indeed. Who does not hunger for these?

Here's one way to guard your stuff: Shave your dog:

Here's one of the many cave canems from The Dogs of Pompeii:

 Here's my sign, which we picked up in a hardware store in Italy:

Ephemera

"YOUR eyes that once were never weary of mine
Are bowed in sorrow under pendulous lids,
Because our love is waning."

And then She:
"Although our love is waning, let us stand
By the lone border of the lake once more,
Together in that hour of gentleness
When the poor tired child, passion, falls asleep.
How far away the stars seem, and how far
Is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart!"

Pensive they paced along the faded leaves,
While slowly he whose hand held hers replied:
"Passion has often worn our wandering hearts."
The woods were round them, and the yellow leaves
Fell like faint meteors in the gloom, and once

A rabbit old and lame limped down the path;
Autumn was over him:and now they stood
On the lone border of the lake once more:
Turning, he saw that she had thrust dead leaves
Gathered in silence, dewy as her eyes,
In bosom and hair.

"Ah, do not mourn," he said,
"That we are tired, for other loves await us;
Hate on and love through unrepining hours.
Before us lies eternity; our souls
Are love, and a continual farewell."

Sippican sent us the link to the Graham Rust gallery of residential trompe l'oeil. It sure beats wallpaper. Here's one:

I may be one of the few guys around this site who bought the Band's Big Pink the day it came out. I brought it over to a girl's house, and made her listen to it twice on her dad's record player, and then we had tea. I still have the vinyl.

Re Big Pink, said Robbie Robertson: "This is emotional and this is story telling. You can see this mythology. This is the record that I wanted to make."

I didn't think of "The Weight" as being the centerpiece of the record; I thought the record was all of a piece.

Anyway songs and poems are not puzzles. They just are what they are. Still, it's diverting if pointless to look at their references. Vanderleun tracked down a piece on The Weight. The piece seems foolish at some points but interesting at others.

I liked this Robertson quote in the piece:

If I read the lyrics to some of my favourite songs, they don’t mean shit to me. But if I hear ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’, it is so powerful and emotional. All I want out of any of these songs is the right emotion. I don’t give a shit what the lyrics are. Dylan rambled on way too much for my liking. I remember years ago saying to him: ‘listen to ‘When A Man Loves A Woman’; I like this more than any of the songs we’re playing. This is emotional to me; our songs are clever. I don’t care for clever. Let’s try and get somewhere that has an emotional thing.

Also got a kick out of this Rick Danko quote:

So Levon spoke to this chick he was dating. Her name was Kathy and she was the most beautiful girl in Toronto… 16 years old when he met her, and she was a gorgeous, gorgeous lady. She looked beautiful and no one could resist her. Anyway, Levon explained the situation to her, and she kindly gave this cop who was trying to crucify us a blow job. Then she told him she was 14 years old. He was the chief witness against us, but this was some weird shit for him, and he disappeared, we never saw him again. In the end everyone else got off, and I received a year’s suspended sentence on probation.

Maggie's Farm is holding its first Engagement Party tomorrow.

Or I think that's what you might call it. But not really - it's actually sorta like a mini-wedding reception with a receiving line and all that, because the actual wedding will be way up in VT in the shadow of the couple's Alma Mater, good old Dartmouth College (also the Alma of the bride's Dad and late Grandpa, and of the groom's late lamented uncle) - and will be just closest family.

We have the old place sorta spruced up (finally moved the old broke fridges and generators off the front porch, for one thing, got the old duck boat off the front yard, yanked out the saplings growing out of the roof, threw out three year's worth of garbage, and cleaned most of the skeletons out of the coat closets), and I finally even warshed my overhalls, which I hated to do seein as they were just getting comfortable. Might even take a shower if the Missus insists, but I been told that dihydrogen monoxide is bad for you unless it has Cape Cod ocean mixed with it - which is the only dihydrogen monoxide solution I happily enter- and only if it is as cold as hell. (Soap and shampoo are chemical poisons too: consensus science tell us that, and everybody knows it.)

So we got the champagne and the other good booze like bourbon such as Grandpa's Overhalls and the crab cakes and scallop n' bacon thingies and barbecue sliders with dippin sauce (gotta have them) and the required basil-goat cheese tartlets and the apple-onion tartlets, hot mini-tortillas, and a bunch of other tasties on the way. Plus a couple of bartenders and a number of good wait staff, and a couple of off-duty cops to organize the parking because, despite the global warming crisis, most folks still insist on driving automobiles to get where they want to go (horses are too slow, and emit noise-polluting and criminal volumes of methane from their hindquarters).

As a last minute addition, I added a case of Chalk Hill cab to the mix because Gwynnie forced some on me last night against my will, and the fragrance of it blew me away (can be cellared for 15 years? Are you kidding me? How about for three weeks?). Hardly have to bother drinking it, it smells so good. The fragrance is a meal in itself. Why bother with the drinking part, which only makes you stupider than you already were?

The fortunate heir has all four of his grandparents coming, too, along with closest family friends and the whole darn family - including the bride-to-be's family who all flew up to Yankeeland from Birmingham, Alabama in the rain last night.

I hope it don't rain tomorry, because we planned mostly for outdoors, without any silly tent.

Do we love the gal? Yes indeedy we do. She is a peach.