Thursday, January 22. 2009
Our reader advises "don't read this" unless you want to feel depressed all day - or longer. It's Dick Morris' Here Comes Socialism. He begins:
2009-2010 will rank with 1913-14, 1933-36, 1964-65 and 1981-82 as years that will permanently change our government, politics and lives. Just as the stars were aligned for Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan, they are aligned for Obama. Simply put, we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden — a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.
Obama will accomplish his agenda of “reform” under the rubric of “recovery.” Using the electoral mandate bestowed on a Democratic Congress by restless voters and the economic power given his administration by terrified Americans, he will change our country fundamentally in the name of lifting the depression. His stimulus packages won’t do much to shorten the downturn — although they will make it less painful — but they will do a great deal to change our nation.
Do not read the whole thing at the link above.
Nope, none of the above. Sippican built this for me, and the good guy delivered it in person with his heir as porter. I insisted that they stay for dinner, and put the heir to work keeping the fireplaces stoked.
This big box has a name: The Seven Stogey Mountain. Surely one-of-a-kind. Those "pages" of the "book" aren't painted on: they are grooves in the wood.
I think it will hold around 6 boxes of cigars, maybe more. If they come in tubes, I take them out of the tubes before putting them in.
It is not every day that you find a humidor made of 3/4 inch solid Spanish Cedar and solid Maple. The weight and thickness of this wood will hold humidity better than the ordinary, non-electric humidor. This should become an heirloom, if I can only talk my kids into the fine, peaceful, satisfying and serene habit of tobacco enjoyment. They worry about tobacco when driving cars and sky-diving and working on Wall Street are things that are truly dangerous. Hey, Obama has made smoking cool again.
After I took the photos, I began a rapid humidification of the Spanish Cedar with distilled water. I use a sponge for that, repeating daily for several days before putting any ceegars in it. Otherwise, the dry, thirsty wood will suck the moisture out of the smokes.
Wednesday, January 21. 2009
Tuesday, January 20. 2009
The daily life of a solo doctor: Dr. Bob
We have never done an "open thread" here at Maggie's. In the spirit of 'change," let's give it a semi-open try.
"Hope" and "Change" are empty vessels. What do our readers want for Hope and Change (if anything)?
Monday, January 19. 2009
More snow tonight. Time to declare a federal emergency for plowing costs. Don't you folks in Florida want to unite, and give me a hand? Or some free money would be fine.
 More snow yesterday and last night. This has been a wonderful winter thus far, cold and snowy, and cozy indoors. I got myself some nasty frostbite on my hands splitting and stacking firewood this past week. Just beginning to heal with the help of the BD daughter's special hand lotion stuff. Having sons is a darn good idea, but daughters take care of you.
Photo is my snow-covered duck boat.
16 things it took me 50 years to learn. Dave Barry
Are new jobs "stimulating"?
Jules needs a new system if he is going to continue to put up with his family's resentment of his blogging. His slow loading was bugging me, too.
Jew-baiting, then and now.
Bill Moyers vs. Abraham Foxman
"The sheer arrogance is breathtaking." Samizdata. Same in the US.
Towards market-based universities. Ward Connerly.
It's always fun to kick Tom Friedman around. He is indeed a legend in his own mind.
James Hansen: Obama has just 4 years to save the world. Meanwhile, Princeton Physics Prof unloads on the AGW charlatans
A parody or not?, from Slate's whine wine critic.
George Lakoff's job is to find new metaphors with which to render statist and socialist agenda items more palatable. Wilkinson discusses Lakoff's notion of "countries as clubs." I kept misreading this as "countries as country clubs." Free golf for all? or "Free the Golf Foursome"?
More details from the proposed Dem spending that you might have missed.
Middlebrow Messiahs and The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of The Great Books
A blog the Dyl found: The Contemporary Calvinist. He posted Jonathan Edwards' 70 Resolutions. It's all good.
The Eastern Church: How much do you know about it? One quote:
Eastern priests expect not only regular confession, but regular attendance, and most Eastern priests do not consider only every Sunday regular attendance. Both the Byzantine and Orthodox priests here expect attendance at Vespers as well as Matins and Liturgy on Sundays. The Orthodox parish offers Vespers and confessions every Wednesday and Saturday evening, and the priest expects attendance on Wednesday evenings, as well as Holy Days, in order to receive the Eucharist. Both priests require regular confessions.
The Plague hits Al Qaida. How nice for them.
 I agree with this quote at Am Thinker:
It can be stated without fear of serious argument that no previous president has been treated as brutally, viciously, and unfairly as George W. Bush.
Bush 43 endured a deliberate and planned assault on everything he stood for, everything he was involved in, everything he tried to accomplish. Those who worked with him suffered nearly as much (and some even more -- at least one, Scooter Libby, was convicted on utterly specious charges in what amounts to a show trial).His detractors were willing to risk the country's safety, its economic health, and the very balance of the democratic system of government in order to get at him. They were out to bring him down at all costs, or at the very least destroy his personal and presidential reputation. At this they have been half successful, at a high price for the country and its government.
Related: Bush's Rehabilitation. Krauthammer.
Related: War on Terror most successful US military operation in history. Jefferson on the pirates has nothing on him.
Related: Bush saved ten million African lives. He is better appreciated in Africa than in the US.
Related: To trash Bush was to belong. Related: The infantile tantrums Bush endured, without any hostile reaction from him or from his admin.
Sunday, January 18. 2009
A big thanks today to every site on our blogroll on the left. We read 'em all, and rely on them all for ideas and "content." People put time and effort into their sites, whether commercial and high volume, boutiques like us, or niche sites which are relatively unknown.
I am sure that our readers, like us, are always finding new interesting sites and writers. But there is only so much time in a day.
So a big Thank You from snowy Yankeeland to everybody who toils at all of the sites on our list.
30 people for dinner uses one heck of a lot of appetizer plates, gumbo bowls, dinner plates and dessert plates, serving trays, pots and pans, utensils, wine glasses, linens, etc. It's our family tradition to leave it all out overnight so everything sticks hard to them, then take on the challenge in the morning. However, every last bit is cleaned up now. In keeping with the times, we did the whole thing without any servants/helpers. I am happy to have a left-over mountain of cheese grits. I can live on that stuff.
Well, we are blessed with wonderful friends. And, by the way, I need to mention that the person who "offered to bring desserts" last night is not only a fine lady and a talented pastry chef - but also an avid hunter and shooter. I was afraid she might try to pull a Cheney on me someday in a pheasant field if I didn't add that important detail.
Seen at the bird feeder this morning: A fine male Eastern Towhee (image). One wouldn't think it, but they are technically large sparrows. Early migrant, or over-wintering? They are indeed less common in New England than they used to be, for unknown reasons. They are woodland birds, and our eastern woodlands have been expanding as New England agriculture becomes less profitable.
 Somehow, Tiger just can't get it into his head that Big Corporations are evil, and should be destroyed. A quote:
...to Democrats, virtually every jurisdiction in the world is becoming a corporate tax haven compared to the United States. The federal and state corporate income tax rate in New Jersey, not the highest in the United States, is seven percentage points (or approximately 20%) higher than France, 11 percentage points (or around 35%) higher than Australia and the United Kingdom, and 29 percentage points (or around 250%) higher than in Ireland.
Folks, we are not going to rebuild our economy by vilifying public U.S. corporations that are operating businesses in "tax havens," even tiny little islands in the Caribbean. The relatively new accounting rules around corporate tax (known as "Fin 48" to the cognoscenti) wrap corporate taxes up in the same intensive audit review as other financial reporting. Sure, there will be the occasional case of fraud, but the top U.S. corporations (and even much smaller ones) now have vast internal audit staffs that blow the whistle on any attempt -- which now cannot come from the "top" -- actually to evade taxes. No, if you want to stimulate economic activity in the United States, massively reduce the corporate tax. At least make us competitive with, say, France, which any corporation would prefer to the United States as a location for its profits.
A new progressive's guide to action, from The Nation. Good grief. These folks live in the 1930s.
It's not your great-great-great-great grandfather's Bank Medici
The Milky Way: Not snack-sized anymore
Obama's apparent energy policy. Let's hope it's not what it looks like.
Best Blog? We considered nominating him for the Maggie's Farm Most in Need of Medication Award.
In case you missed it, here's the video of 1549 going into the river.
Surber on Hillary:
Nobody is dumber than someone who thinks she knows it all.
Omama is no Lincoln. He's a Copperhead. Thus far, anyway.
JC Phillips on the taxes on soda pop:
There is no scientific research linking non diet drinks with obesity.
It's not really a nanny state thing: It's a new tax, pure and simple, disguised with virtuous intentions.
Glenn Lowry looks at the future of identity politics and tribalism, in Boston Review. Here he discusses his childhood friend Woody:
Everyone, on first meeting him, assumed as much. I did too when we had begun to play together a decade earlier, just after I had moved into the middle-class neighborhood called Park Manor where Woody’s family had been living for some time. There were a number of white families on our block when we first arrived; within a couple of years they had all been replaced by aspiring black families like our own. Yet, Woody’s parents never moved, which puzzled me. Then one day I overheard his mother declare to one of her new neighbors, “We just wouldn’t run from our own kind.” Somewhat later, while watching the film Imitation of Life on TV, my mother explained how someone could be “black,” even though they looked “white.” She told me about people like that in our own family—second cousins who lived in a fashionable suburb, and on whom one would never dare drop in unannounced because they were passing for white. This was my earliest glimpse of the truth that racial identity in America is inherently a social and cultural, not simply a biological, construct—that it necessarily involves an irreducible element of personal choice.
and
...to the extent that we blacks see ourselves primarily through a racial lens, we may end up sacrificing possibilities for the kind of personal development that would ultimately further our collective racial interests. We cannot be truly free men and women while laboring under a definition of self derived from the perceptual view of our oppressor, confined to the contingent facts of our oppression.
Read the whole thing. I certainly agree with his point that reducing the notion of identity to skin color is a darn thin reed to hold on to. Being white tells me nothing about myself.
 John 1:43-51
The day following Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and findeth Philip, and saith unto him, Follow me.
Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter.
Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.
Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!
Nathanael saith unto him, Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered and said unto him, Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.
Nathanael answered and saith unto him, Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel.
Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these.
And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.
Saturday, January 17. 2009
Reposted from May 6, 2005:
Save the World on Your Own Time
That's the title of Stanley Fish's oft-quoted 2003 piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
It is not paranoid to state that the Left, since the 60's, has targeted non-profits of all kinds, including churches and universities, as easy take-over opportunities, and the "nice" but well-intentioned, naive, denizens of these worlds frequently rolled out a red carpet for them.
Where else would they go besides into politics and non-profits?
Some of the most innocent organizations in the US succumbed, especially the national headquarters. The dues go from Dubuque and Atlanta to DC and NYC, where they are used as their HQ staff see fit, ie often promoting, advocating, and lobbying for left-wing causes. (Check to see what some of your favorite charities are doing with the dollars that go to their HQ, but you need to dig deeper than just checking their happy websites. Follow the money!)
Same thing with the universities, which are similarly naive and well-intentioned non-profits. But I digress.
Fish's central statement:
"My concern, however, is not with academic time management but with academic morality, and my assertion is that it is immoral for academics or for academic institutions to proclaim moral views.
The reason was given long ago by a faculty committee report submitted to the president of the University of Chicago. The 1967 report declares that the university exists "only for the limited ... purposes of teaching and research," and it reasons that "since the university is a community only for those limited and distinctive purposes, it is a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness."
Read entire piece.
Bruce Kesler's excellent health care post yesterday has this PS from him:
This survey also suggests that as in the past early support for a number of reform proposals could fade in the face of arguments that opponents might raise in a public debate. For example, seven in ten Americans (71%) say they favor the idea of employer mandates. But when given the argument often made by critics that this may cause some employers to lay off some workers support falls dramatically, to just under three in ten (29%). The same pattern holds on the topic of individual mandates. Roughly two in three (67%) favor requiring all Americans to have health insurance with help for those who could not afford it. When given the criticism that some people may be required to buy health insurance they find too expensive or do not want, support falls to two in ten (19%).
Americans seem most concerned that any health care plan not raise their costs or involve government limiting or dictating their choices. According to the survey, nearly two-thirds (65%) say they would be less likely to support a plan that would get the government get too involved in personal health care decisions, more than six in ten (61%) would be less likely to support a plan that increases people’s insurance premiums or out-of-pocket costs, and more than half (56%) would be less supportive of a plan that limits an individual’s choice in doctors.
“As we have learned from past debates, public support looms for health reform largest at the beginning of the debate, but it's relatively easy to chip away at that support with arguments about tradeoffs,” said Mollyann Brodie, Kaiser vice president and director for Public Opinion and Survey Research.
Got an email from the NJ in Maine. He had -19 degrees F last night, with snow flurries. Lowest thermometer he'd ever seen in person. Possibly too cold for downhill skiing, even for tough guys. Sounds like pub weather to me. I have heard a number of people say that this cold is due to global warming. Of course - everything is. It's 3 here right now, and our Dr. Bliss is skiing in New Hampshire. Maggie's Farm people like cold weather. It makes us feel alive - and we get to use our gear.
 Two links about coffee: 7 cups of coffee cause you to hallucinate. Also, drinking coffee reduces risk of Alzheimer's/ Photo from the latter article.
A little research on commercial airplane ditchings. Related: Somebody who studies bird-plane collisions
A very good Snow Goose recipe. On a serious note, I think I might make this hors d'oevres tonight, with Canada Goose breast. But I'm afraid the goose will end up overcooked.
Historian offered a choice. Sort of a Hobson's Choice.
The deliberate dumbing down of America. Video
Ace on asexuality:
I'm not being misogynist when I say that men and women are basically alien species living together on the same planet, united only by our matching genitals.
OK, but is matching the best word?
A mere $217,000 per job. That's my money. I earned it.
Road to Serfdom. A condensed version.
Everybody has reported that Bush's wiretapping was legal. It will remain in force, I think.
A gay sex orgy for the inauguration. Dare I ask what rimming has to do with the inauguration? Maybe Chris Matthews might know.
Rick Moran:
Geithner is lying when he says he “forgot” to pay his taxes. This is a given. It also insults our intelligence when he claims that his failure to pay the IRS what he owes is an “honest mistake.” We will now see if the rest of the Washington Democratic establishment plays along with Geithner and pretends they believe his lies, thus perpetrating a “business as usual” climate in the Obama government rather than the promised reform that so many believed so passionately he could bring about.
It is a little lie, a white lie, but telling nevertheless. And like Republican lawmakers preaching “family values” who get caught with their pants down around their ankles, anyone who preaches reform and changing the way Washington does business and then tolerates the bald faced lying of Geithner can and will be rightly accused of rank hypocrisy if they don’t do the right thing and yank this tax dodge from consideration for any high office in the Obama Administration.
Or are Democrats to be allowed a different standard of hypocrisy because of bad economic times?
I appreciate the dilemma. Geithner is a good choice, but I think I tend to worry more about the accuracy of my taxes, and general law obedience, than he does. And I have less to lose. He's a smart and clever Wall Street/DC yuppie.
Friday, January 16. 2009
In the snow and cold (13 degrees F yesterday morning, 9 this morning), we had hungry Gray Squirrels but not much of a variety of birds: Cardinal, Chickadee, Blue Jay, Mourning Dove, Song Sparrow, English Sparrow, Red-bellied Woodpecker, White Throated Sparrow, SC Junco. Boring.
The problem is the rats at night, picking up the cherries fallen off the plate, as it were. It gives some fun for the pup, though. But you hate to get licked on the face by a pup who just ate a rat. Our Great Horned Owls need to get busier. I hear them at night. They like it here in the winter. Lots of rats. I think they ate most of the bunnies already.
“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show... ”
- Andrew Wyeth. Andrew Wyeth dead at 91. Illustrator? Artist? What's the diff? They called his Dad, NC Wyeth, an "illustrator." Image above is Andrew Wyeth's Long Limbs, 1999.
Who voted for Obama? Patriot Post (scroll to Patriot Perspective)
How to deal with a home invasion (h/t, Alphecca). Related: Gun Salesman of the Year
More details of the plane crash
Look on the bright side: Consumer prices fall again. It's a good time to buy stuff.
Citigroup Citibank Whatever update. Thanks for nuthin, Sandy Weill.
What if Israel had lost the Six-Day War?
The mess that is Putin's Russia
Scathing about Bush's Presidency: View from the Right. OK, Lawrence, but drop it now. Just look at these people.
From guest poster Bruce Kesler:
Only when voters speak out loudly, and only occasionally even then, do our legislators take heed. Newly elected president Barack Obama and his choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services former Senator Tom Daschle, who is also tasked as “health reform” czar by Obama, say they intend major changes in how Americans receive health care, with government taking vastly increased control.
The latest Rasmussen poll reports that most Americans are highly skeptical and unwilling to pay higher taxes for it: Forty-three percent (43%) of U.S. voters say the quality of health care in America will get worse if a government-run health insurance plan is created to compete with private plans. Thirty-three percent (33%) say quality will get better, and 10% say it will stay the same… Forty-seven percent (47%) of voters say it is better to expand coverage through private health insurance plans than through government-run programs like Medicaid. Thirty-five percent (35%) believe the opposite to be true, with 17% not sure. In a survey last April, just 29% of American adults supported a national health insurance program overseen by the Federal Government…. just 36% favor a government-controlled health plan for the uninsured if it means an increase in their income taxes. Fifty percent (50%) are opposed to such a plan for those who cannot get insurance if it means a tax increase, and 14% are undecided….
A majority of U.S. voters (58%), however, oppose any kind of government-controlled health plan if it means they have to change their own insurance coverage.
Wednesday’s overwhelming vote in the US House to pass the huge expansion of the SCHIP program, formerly passed by the last Congress and twice vetoed by President Bush, is touted as a “down payment” on Obama-Daschle getting their way on their bigger healthcare goals. Republican efforts to amend the SCHIP bill – for example, requiring that sponsors who pledged to support legal immigrants do so -- were not allowed by the Democrats in the House. The recent empirical evidence in Hawaii was ignored that allowing those with high incomes -- those with incomes up to $80,000 may enter SCHIP -- results in many abandoning existing insurance and greatly increased government deficits. Hawaii abandoned the unaffordable program:
State health officials argued that most of the children enrolled in the universal child care program previously had private health insurance, indicating that it was helping those who didn't need it.
As with many of Obama’s choices for top spots, Tom Daschle’s nomination is running into some turbulence over his dealings with his own “charitable” tax deductions and associations with a “charity” that may have abused its status for political ends – as too many do. He’ll likely be confirmed anyway, especially with Democrat control of Congress.
Yet, as opposition has mounted in Congress – reacting to heavy public opposition – over the lack of transparency and use of hundreds of billions of dollars of “bailout” funds and Obama’s intents for over a trillion dollars more, the portent for Obama-Daschle “charities” getting their way to control over the 15% of the US’s economy in healthcare diminishes.
Thus the key question: Will data dash Daschle?
Thursday, January 15. 2009
It would be infra our dig to award a prize to the low-class and monotonous YouPorn.com, but, for Our Favorite Gun P*rn: Mr. Free Market (It would have been a tie with Kim Du Toit, but he wisely retired from blogging.)
Favorite Gun P*rn Site (where you can buy them): Gunbroker.com. It is even fun just to look.
Best Skank Soft Porn Female Art Photos Lovely Women: Theo
Most Frustrating Site Because When You Think You Discovered Some Cool Obscure Article You Find Out That He's Already Linked It: Insty
Our Most-Linked Pro Columnists of 2008: A three-way tie between Krauthammer, Kimball, and Steyn.
Columnist Who Most Often Articulates Clearly What We're Thinking But Cannot Articulate: Sowell
Met some darn nice all-American folks today, delivering an eBay furniture purchase to us. They drove up here from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. He does intel-related stuff for the gummint. She does eBay. We almost never use eBay, but this worked out very well indeed.
Not only were they good folks, but the item was far better than described and the price entirely reasonable. I steered them to a delicious lunch up here before their trip home.
Thanks, friends!
Never use a wine for cooking or marinating that you would not be very happy to drink in a glass.
Dr. Joy Bliss
Wednesday, January 14. 2009
Some reheated links at Thompson highlighted Vanessa Eagle's documentary series Lefties, which is about the effort to create a Leninist Sunday tabloid in London, and their quixotic effort to topple the great Maggie Thatcher.
If you have a few spare minutes, give the video a look. It's about newspapers, sort of.
Nothing will surprise you about their failure to recognize the realities of life and the demands of high functioning and accomplishment, but it's still a fascinating record. It's sort of like "We're All Bozos On This Bus," or a Monty Python skit. The bits about "caring about the environment" are especially poignant from folks who have probably never hoed a garden, mucked out a stall, or gotten lost in the Maine woods or spent a week camping in the Montana wilderness.
These bozos should have started a blog. That might have worked, but this was the pre-blog era.
Photo: The Maggie's Farm Team presenting the coveted imitation-parchment Maggie's Farm Blog Award to a fortunate winner. (Surely you can pick out our specific contributors in the pic.)
NB: There will be no awards to major sites (ie those with ginormous traffic), in keeping with our envy-filled, redistributionist, Commie, Eat-The-Rich-And-Overly-Successful-and-Overly-Compentent-and Unfairly-Life-Skilled ideology to which we cling here at Maggie's (along with our Bibles, beer, guns, and our Pilgrim heritage). Additional winners will be announced through the end of the week. Here's today's batch:
Wryest and Driest: IowaHawk
Most Similar to Us: It's a tie between American Digest and David Thompson
Always Thinks When He Writes: AVI
Best New Shrink Blog We Found This Year: Ars Psychiatrica
Best Toons: Theo
Best Reportage: Michael Yon
Most Likeable Social Worker: neoneoneoneo
Best Skeptics: Another tie, between Watt's Up and Junk Science. We think skepticism is a virtue.
Winners can see a close-up of their award, and award money transfer details, via one of our previous 2008 awards posts here.
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