Maggie's Farm

Krauthammer on the warming craze, at Moonbattery. One quote:

Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but — even better — in the name of Earth itself.

Waiting for - or planning?

Jules has a dandy summary, Audacious Hopefulness. If that mystery tape comes out on YouTube, it might be time for Obama to throw Michelle under the bus too. I've lost track - has he already thrown Farrakhan under it yet, or not? (The MSM didn't tell me that Obama used Pfleger as a counselor. Sheesh.)

A close-up of a bit of the shade border, yesterday. Yes, our azaleas are in bloom now up here.

Richard Wiseman of Quirkology seeks the funniest jokes in the world.

Of course, Monty Python already addressed this subject:

A quote from a Cindy in the Wind Amazon review of Shelly Lewis' Five Lessons I Didn't Learn From Breast Cancer (And One Big One I Did):

Have you received a breast cancer diagnosis? Got a friend who has? Before you make another move, read this funny and truthful lowdown from Shelley Lewis, whose emotional viewpoint matches mine so precisely I can't shake the feeling that I should've written it myself (after all, I went through this a year before she did). Unlike just about every other book on the breast cancer "experience," with its pretty pink cover and its crapola about how dealing with breast cancer will make you a "better person" (just like it supposedly made its author!), Lewis gets down to the real nitty-gritty. Namely: Breast cancer, at least for some people, isn't a "spiritual growth program," a "journey" or a "gift." It's not the ultimate opportunity for the perfect boob makeover. It's not necessarily going to turn you into Lance Armstrong and an inspiration to everyone. It's just a DISEASE--a scary, upsetting DISEASE that makes you hope you can get through the treatment so you can get back to your life--if at all possible.

A friend who has had breast cancer sent some quotes from the book, with the comment: "I Finally Found My Club! Good laughs @ all the BC bullshit. Thought this book might be helpful if you know others who aren't using their B.C to accomplish a spiritual makeover... & don't expect B.C. to fix what's wrong w/ them."

"My only growth was the one removed by the surgeon."

"Its completely life affirming to want to remain who you essentially are, good...and bad, rather than make permanent accomodations for a disease that you have to believe is just passing through."

"Lots of us decide we don't have to stop our lives to have cancer with all the trimmings - support groups, chat room visits... You don't see a lot of TV or magazine stories about those of us trying to keep b.c. impact to a miniumum."

"I felt about the Cancer Club the same way I did when I got my first invitation to join AARP."

"I draw the line at "Cancer was a gift"... You hear it a lot"

"B.C. wasn't a journey that led me to anywhere worth going...."

"Wherever you go on b.c. web sites somebody is trying to sell you an angel...I hate to say it but if you had a guardian angel before you got b.c., apparently that angel was a fuckup....(or) a slacker..and not just angels, fairies too.  I don't know where fairies land on the spiritual ladder ...(but) it seems that those of us who battle serious diseases are practically being overrun with them.  If Lou Dobbs weren't so concerned with Mexicans sneaking across our borders, he'd probably do a big expose about fairies..."

"Pink Ribbon Barbie" should be stripped, head shaved, (one-breasted) & forced to replace her pink tulle dress with a green hospital gown...."

"I was happy in Healthyville. Couldn't I just get a short-term sublet in b.c.world briefly then move back to my old place..?  I felt pressured to go into the Pink Ghetto, but I couldn't stay there, I couldn't breathe... I couldn't wait to get the hell out of there..."

I tend to agree with Ms. Lewis. Bad disease is a plain bad deal. Scary (if you like life), with little redeeming about it.

As a contrast to our occasional New England houses, a reader thought we might like a peek at the 250-acre Rose Ranch, 50 minutes from Missoula. It's for sale, asking $995,000. Pretty nice views and nice wetlands on it, but 250 acres seems a bit small for Montana. I wonder whether they have Grizzlies.

This is a 46' Palmer-Scotto built in 1939. She is for sale in Belfast, Maine. Details and more photos here.

Matthew 7: 21-29

²¹“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. ²²On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ ²³Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers.’ ²⁴“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. ²⁵The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. ²⁶And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. ²⁷The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!” ²⁸Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, ²⁹for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

2 highly amusing Ikea ads

In your heart, you know he's right. Go to 1964, and listen to a few Goldwater ads. He was right about pretty much everything. What a shame that he wasn't elected. (thanx, B)

Milford is a pleasant seaside village with a nice harbor that sits between Bridgeport and New Haven, and is a bit far for a NYC commute although it has a Metro North train station and a number of intrepid train commuters. Its fine harbor lies at the mouth of the Housatonic River. It's a comfortable but not wealthy middle-class town which doesn't put on airs but which has fairly high property taxes, and has a serious racing yacht club in the wealthiest (by income) state in the country.

The house below is right in town in the historic district, in walking distance to the train and to the marina and harbor. Built in 1836 probably by a ship captain, but totally updated with a/c, 1st class kitchen, 5 bedrooms, family room addition on the back, etc. Look at the pictures of it: I think it is a perfect Yankee home which I would be very happy to live in, modestly elegant, with 1/4 acre offering enough space for flower gardens and tomatoes without burdening you with maintenance - plus a handy 3-car detached garage with room for a duck boat or a spare sports car. Asking only $749,000. (And again, no, we do not sell real estate. We just appreciate interesting shelter.)

(The old house is too exposed to the street, though. I think it could benefit from a 4' hedge or picket fence out front along the sidewalk with a row of hydrangeas, and some nicer, less-random and more vigorous plantings in front of the porch - either a simple perennial border or a low hedge. And maybe a red Cherokee Dogwood or Magnolia in the middle of the the right side of the little front lawn. A cool thing about America is that, when you improve your plantings, you inspire your neighbors to do it too. It starts them thinking. The current plantings in front of this nice house insult the simple dignity of the place.)

Overall, however, this house sits there like it's been there for a while and wants to be where it is, and I admire it very much.

An excerpt from Bejart's 1959 Le Sacre de printemps. Maurice Bejart died last November. I believe this is by the Wuppertal Dance Theater:

Jules found this bit from Blazing Saddles - "Taggart, take this down":

Indeed a natural and perfect second banana. Here with one of my all-time favorites, Tim Conway:

The boomers are in power, and they aren't too grown up. A quote from VDH's "All About Me":

Those who came of age in the 1960s now hold the reins of power and influence -- and we are starting to see why their values have worried almost everyone for nearly a half-century.

History has seen something like them before in the "blame them" years of Demosthenes' Athens, the self-indulgence of Julio-Claudian Rome, the "after me, the deluge" generation of late 18th-century France, the Gilded Age, and the Roaring Twenties.

What are the baby boomers' collective traits? Like all perpetual adolescents who suffer arrested development, we always want things both ways: Don't drill or explore for more energy, but nevertheless demand ever more fuel from other suppliers.

There are never bad and worse choices, but only a Never Never Land of good and even-better alternatives. Housing not only has to stay affordable for buyers, but also must appreciate in value to give instant equity to those who have just become owners.

When things don't go well, we always blame someone else. Why drill off Santa Barbara or Alaska when we can sue those terrible Saudis for not putting more oil platforms in their Persian Gulf?

Read the whole thing, of course. Link above. Thanks, reader.

Gas prices by county, across the nation. Looks like CT and CA have the highest "carbon taxes"

Gas taxes around the nation, by region.

Re guns, etc. Maybe we posted this earlier - can't remember.

To speak of man's search for God is like speaking of the mouse's search for the cat.

C.S. Lewis, in Surprised by Joy. (h/t to Dr. Bob)

YouTube is becoming an excellent outlet for short films.

Anchoress posted this exquisite and gentle short by Joe Gleason, The Dinner Guest, which, to me, combines the theme of anticipation with the ancient theme of the power of the word, wherein God the Playwright, like the mystical weaver at the loom or Aslan's singing the world into existence, creates time and space and everything that was, is, and will be. Bryn Terfel is singing a Welsh folk song.

Our Dylanologist just sent us the video he recorded a week or two ago - 32 seconds in Prague. He always pans too quickly: http://www.dr-mercury.com/site/mags/prague.wvx

(Thanx, Dr. Merc, for hosting his film.)

Many people swear by this stuff for their vegetables and perennials, including my Mom, who knows whereof she speaks: Sea Kelp Liquid Fertilizer.

It's difficult to find, except online.

Why the credit and banking problems are not a "trillion dollar catastrophe"

Is your moral code deontological or consequentialist? And where did it come from?

Deceptive credit card practices.

Rock star Ken Heebner: America's hottest investor.

Carbon ration cards proposed in the UK. Hey, what a great idea.  Related: Environmentalists killing the rhinos. Related: Pres Klaus wants to debate Al Gore

Foreclosure tourism. Home sales are rising. Hmmm. That is an example of price elasticity. Prices down, sales up. Only in spec bubbles do you get prices up, sales up.

11 essays on the state of Africa, at Boston Review

Dartmouth against Democracy. WSJ

VDH on Obama:

Is it going to be this way each day of the campaign: We get some pious sermon relating the selflessness of his own past to shame us into being similarly idealistic, followed by a complete Orwellian rewrite of history? If so, it's going to be a long five months.

Image: Bumper sticker from Patriot Shop

Our readers know that we are in favor of global warming, (and fear the current cooling phase) but doubt that we will get any good warming other than the usual warm summers. As quoted from Freeman Dyson at Reason:

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion.

and

... some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard.

For whatever it's worth, we agree that the global warming craze is sucking the oxygen - and the sanity - out of a conservation movement of which we consider ourselves to be a part.