Maggie's Farm

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

Rev. William Boetcker, 1873 - 1962

Via Small Dead Archeopteryxes (http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/archives/010430.html) - pardon today's continuing linkage problem which is driving our News Junkie nuts - comes this question:

If sociologists ignore genes, will other academics — and the wider world — ignore sociology?

One quote from the linked site, South Dakota Politics (http://southdakotapolitics.blogs.com/south_dakota_politics/2009/01/sociology-is-al.html), which reveals these folks to be paleo-Marxists at heart:

In fact, a lot of sociologists are as offended by Darwin as your average Creationist.

Just two years ago, in his presidential address to the American Sociological Association, Troy Duster, an eminent sociologist at New York University, went so far as to suggest that any sociologist who embraced genetic approaches was a traitor to the discipline. Two of the biggest problems facing sociology, he argued, were the "increasing authority of reductionist science" and "the attendant expansion of databases on markers and processes 'inside the body.'" If anything defined sociology, Duster said, it was its role as "century-long counterpoint" to such efforts to connect the roots of social problems to biology.

Via HuffPo:

"Actually, one of my favorites during the political season is 'Maggie's Farm,'" Obama said of one of Dylan's tracks. "It speaks to me as I listen to some of the political rhetoric."

Here's the 1965 recording:

This is live, from Cork, 2006:

Fr. Neuhaus was administered Last Rites yesterday: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTg2NGUyYzdhNTU4MDJmZjk0MTY1OGM5Zjg0ODdiMDc=

Here's an interview with him: http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/1991/jun1991p10_706.html

Sorry about the link mess.

Still having linking problems. This from Insty:

IF ONLY BUSH HAD BEEN SUCH A RAMPANT FREE-MARKETEER: “Mythmaking is in full swing as the Bush administration prepares to leave town. Among the more prominent is the assertion that the housing meltdown resulted from unbridled capitalism under a president opposed to all regulation. . . . Rather than a failure of capitalism, the housing meltdown shows what’s likely to happen when government grants special privileges to favored private entities that facilitate bad actors and lousy practices.”

Fitz Hugh Lane, aka Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865) is considered to be sort-of a member of the so-called Hudson River School of painters (a label slapped on these folks by later art historians). Lane is known as a "luminist," for obvious reasons.

This is Becalmed Off Halfway Rock (Casco, ME), 1860:

This is Boston Harbor (1856):

Amusing (h/t And Rightly So):

It's a "best essay" because it is thought-provoking. The Claremont Institute has reposted Charles Kesler's 2005 The Crisis of American Identity in memory of Harvard's Samuel Huntington. One quote:

Huntington outlines two sources of national identity, a set of universal principles that (he argues) cannot serve to define a particular society; and a culture that can, but that is under withering attack from within and without. His account of culture is peculiar, narrowly focused on the English language and Anglo-Protestant religious traits, among which he counts "Christianity; religious commitment;…and dissenting Protestant values of individualism, the work ethic, and the belief that humans have the ability and the duty to try to create heaven on earth, a 'city on a hill.'" Leave aside the fact that John Winthrop hardly thought that he and his fellow Puritans were creating "heaven on earth." Is Huntington calling for the revival of all those regulations that sustained Winthrop's merely earthly city, including the strictures memorably detailed in The Scarlet Letter? Obviously not, but when fishing in the murky waters of Anglo-Protestant values, it is hard to tell what antediluvian monsters might emerge. If his object is to revive, or to call for the revival of, this culture, how will he distinguish its worthy from its unworthy parts?

another:

Modern liberalism, beginning in the Progressive era, has done its best to strip natural rights and the Constitution out of the American creed. By emptying it of its proper moral content, thinkers and politicians like Woodrow Wilson prepared the creed to be filled by subsequent generations, who could pour their contemporary values into it and thus keep it in tune with the times. The "living constitution," as the new view of things came to be called, transformed the creed, once based on timeless or universal principles, into an evolving doctrine; turned it, in effect, into culture, which could be adjusted and reinterpreted in accordance with history's imperatives. Alternatively, one could say that 20th-century liberals turned their open-ended form of culturalism into a new American creed, the multicultural creed, which they have few scruples now about imposing on republican America, diversity be damned.

To his credit, Huntington abhors this development. Unfortunately, his Anglo-Protestant culturalism, like any merely cultural conservatism, is no match for its liberal opponents. He persists in thinking of liberals as devotees of the old American creed who push its universal principles too far, who rely on reason to the exclusion of a strong national culture. When they abjured individualism and natural rights decades ago, however, liberals broke with that creed, and did so proudly. When they abandoned nature as the ground of right, liberals broke as well with reason, understood as a natural capacity for seeking truth, in favor of reason as a servant of culture, history, fate, power, and finally nothingness. In short, Huntington fails to grasp that latter-day liberals attack American culture because they reject the American creed, around which that culture has formed and developed from the very beginning.

Maggie's turns three this winter. Well, more or less three. We actually opened up shop in 2005, but it was more of a practice run for about a year without stats or any visibility. That's the way these intertube thingys go - unless you're a prominent tabloid celeb already like Theo Spark or Caroline Kennedy or Jules Crittenden or Lindsay Lohan or Neoneoneo.

Fact is, we still haven't figured out how to master this blog thing, and we are happily confused about our identity. Erik Erikson would consider us "unresolved," no doubt. Are we a diary? A Kindergarten Show-and-Tell? A Punditorium? A Link Blog?

Well, we call ourselves "eclectic" and and just leave it at that. We post whatever we feel like, and whatever we stumble upon in our lives which we think needs or deserves whatever cyberspace we can offer it. (That's an awkward sentence. We specialize in those, at times. And in incomplete sentences and also in run-on sentences. We always have to dash off to feed the chickens, plow a field, or butcher an ox.)

As we have said at least once a year, readers are our only reward. In our minds, commenters even more so, but we know most people have neither the time nor the inclination.

We seem to be almost doubling our readership each year. By our internal stats (not Sitemeter) we are running around 200,000 visits/month now. (Hits mean nothing other than intertube presence, but they're around 4.5 million per month.) Sitemeter, our Webmeister tells us, isn't very accurate but is useful as a relative measure for comparison purposes. The numbers of "unique readers" is our key metric - and our readers are indeed unique.

Jan 2008

Feb 2008

Mar 2008

Apr 2008

May 2008

Jun 2008

Jul 2008

Aug 2008

Sep 2008

Oct 2008

Nov 2008

Dec 2008

Why do readership numbers matter to us? Vanity, I guess, and simple attention-seeking. (The real secret, shameful truth is that we enjoy doing this, and that we learn from doing it.)

So that's the annual Maggie's update. If you like us, do us a favor and send us around to folks who might enjoy reading us. We aren't famous - yet.

The price is right.

And, while we're on the subject, a big thanks to Chris Southern Consulting, the Vermont born-and-bred blogmeister who makes this site possible and who solves all the glitches and problems with good cheer. If you need website work, give him a shout.

Broadway for 20 bucks.

Hope and Change! 600,000 new government jobs. Heck, we all work for the gummint half the year already.

Keep a civil tongue in your head for the next 365 days

Obama's New Deal. Bad as the Old New Deal?

The Gramsci Award du Jour: Bill Ayers

Chavez' secret fan club

Sea Ice back to 1979. The earth is cooling, but it doesn't fit the narrative.

The funny business, in Minnesota. Related: Stop, thief cries Dick Morris

Harry Reid's "worst President," and what he's done

The gang rape of a Lesbian you never heard about

A blog whose time has come: Democracy in Venezuela

Will Neo-Conservatism die for Compassionate Conservatism's Sins?

We emailed our cuz Mr. Free Market to ask him whether we had borrowed the image of that ceegar-smokin' gal from him. Yes, we had.

He went on to inform us that the lady in question is none other than Miss Dita Von Teese, a burlesque performer and a walkin', talkin' pin-up - with her own web site.

Algore got so many innocent and well-intentioned but scientifically-uneducated people upset with his fear-mongering silliness. It's a damn shame. Those with a familiarity with how science works, and who had no political agenda to drive, just stood back and watched bemusedly.

Finally, even the HuffPo gets it. Harold Ambler's Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted. (h/t, No Looking Backwards, whence the borrowed  image.) One quote:

If not carbon dioxide, what does "drive" climate? I am glad you are wondering about that. In the short term, it is ocean cycles, principally the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the "super cycle" of which cooling La Niñas and warming El Niños are parts. Having been in its warm phase, in which El Niños predominate, for the 30 years ending in late 2006, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation switched to its cool phase, in which La Niñas predominate.
Since that time, already, a number of interesting things have taken place. One La Niña lowered temperatures around the globe for about half of the year just ended, and another La Niña shows evidence of beginning in the equatorial Pacific waters. During the last twelve months, many interesting cold-weather events happened to occur: record snow in the European Alps, China, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, the Rockies, the upper Midwest, Las Vegas, Houston, and New Orleans. There was also, for the first time in at least 100 years, snow in Baghdad.

If Lefties want to take over the world's economy, they need to try Plan D.

A reader took these photos this weekend on the CT shoreline. That is the common Ring-billed Gull (sometimes known as the Parking Lot Gull), an inland, fresh-water breeder. They head for the coasts when the fresh waters freeze up.

 Gulls take seveeral years to reach maturity and to earn adult plumage. These, I think, are second-year Ring-billed gulls hunting in the surf. First year birds would have a darker brown plumage:

And a good portrait:

Matthew 2:1-12

1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, "Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him."

 3 When King Herod heard this he was disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 When he had called together all the people's chief priests and teachers of the law, he asked them where the Christ was to be born. 5 "In Bethlehem in Judea," they replied, "for this is what the prophet has written:
 6 " 'But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
      are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
   for out of you will come a ruler
      who will be the shepherd of my people Israel.'"

 7 Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him."

 9 After they had heard the king, they went on their way, and the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.

Image: Epiphany by Hieronymous Bosch, 1490

via Mankiw:

From our occasional guest poster Nathan in Israel:

Last night -

My coffee guy (long hair past his shoulders, very cool, very left) spent the night watching the news. "Eyn ma la'asot" - "Nothing else one could do." He says it is like walkiing into zefl (tar); have to fight meter by meter with mines and weapons not only in the ground but in houses.

My electrician , Avi, came back from Miluim a few days before the war started (father of four). He has more to say (will write when I have time) . Temenite background; very quiet, diligent. He describes how Isr airforce gives warning 10 minutes before hitting a target; then the Hamas tells women and children to stand on top of the roof to wave at the planes and deter the bombing. He goes on to speak about a Palestinian laborer worked for him for years; good worker. But, when he would telephone his wife, he would get violent and warn her that she would get what is coming to her when he got home. Avi asked him why he didn't speak more respectfully to her -- she makes a life for you, cooks, raises your kids. Guy says, "But, she's a woman."

I plan to visit the children in Kiryat Malachi on Monday.

It's out of the house, but my tradition is to extend the cheer outdoors for a while by keeping the lights on it and putting it outside a window:

Our post about Office Romance: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar prompted this little bit of research. Freud on smoking:

"[Cigars have] served me for precisely fifty years as protection and a weapon in the combat of life...I owe to the cigar a great intensification of my capacity to work and a facilitation of my self-control."

Another:

"My boy, smoking is one of the greatest and cheapest enjoyments in life, and if you decide in advance not to smoke, I can only feel sorry for you."

Via Cigar Aficionado

Among other things, Kindleberger's classic Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises. From a review at Amazon:

Alinsky is the best-known American Gramscian. The Chicago community organizer who was an inspiration to Hillary Clinton (and maybe indirectly to Obama) wrote a deeply cynical handbook for radicals who seek power.

His rules for power tactics are here. We can see those rules followed and enacted every day, mainly in Left-wing in politics.

Kimball reacts to Thomas Franks' WSJ article on the need to "return" to government economic regulation. I think this laissez-faire vs. govt regulation debate is pure politics and boob bait for the economically-uninformed. Kimball agrees. One quote:

The next time someone bemoans the evil of “laissez-faire capitalism” to you, utter the number 69,428. That’s the number of pages in the 2006 edition of the Federal Register, the official government compendium of rules and regulations, the handy-dandy list of things you must do, and not do, if you want to do . . . well, just about anything. “Laissez faire” is the bogey man unhappy leftists use to frighten the credulous. Capitalism was never completely unregulated, and it certainly isn’t unregulated now. In fact, we have much more to fear from the ethic of “défendre faire”–the nanny-state ethic whose ultimate goal is to turn us all into wards of the state. Thomas Frank criticizes  rating agencies like Moody’s and banks like Washington Mutual for being insufficiently regulated. But the real problem was not lack of regulation but unintelligent and overbearing regulation. Mr. Frank derides those who believe that “all sin originates with the Community Reinvestment Act” (on which see here), but really he should pause to consider the disatrous effects of that piece of government regulation which, by intruding into the orderly operation of the market in order to further a utopian social goal, helped to precipitate the global credit crisis of 2008.

Read the whole thing. As we repeatedly note here, any crisis, real or manufactured, is used by the power-hungry as an opportunity to grab more. And, unfortunately, this process only ratchets in one direction.

Furthermore, booms and busts have forever been part of human economics - even in command-and-control economies. No-one should ever be surprised that they occur. Like hurricanes, they blow through and knock down the weak trees and blow away the poorly-built structures, leaving space for new opportunities and ventures. People get hurt in the process, which is why we have safety nets.