Maggie's Farm

When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.

Niccolo Machiavelli 

The Pope's Mass, at Yankee Stadium, via the miracle of TV. Wonderful.

For us Protestants, it is always a wonder and a privilege to experience a formal RC Mass, and Benedict's homily about obedience was simple, and just right. Benedict is an evangelist.

I am ashamed that we were so distracted by April fishing that we missed Patriot's Day yesterday.

Rick Moran covers Paul Revere, and Jules covered several first-person accounts of that first skirmish of the war.

Wish I could say that my Yankee ancestors were among the rebels, but they probably were not. Best we can tell, approx. 1/3 of the colonies' population sympathised with the rebels, 1/3 were on the fence, and 1/3 were hard-core Tories. I am not aware of any Revolutionary War veteran ancestors. The Farm itself in Massachusetts, if you recall from earlier posts, was a land grant to my family from King George, and we remain thankful for that - but not ambivalent about our revolution because of its elevation of the idea of individual freedom from the power of The State.

(Thanks, Buddy)

John 14: 1-14

14“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. ²In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? ³And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.

⁴And you know the way to the place where I am going.” ⁵Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” ⁶Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” ⁸Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” ⁹Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. ¹¹Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.

¹²Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. ¹³I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.

The fellow at Dovetail Designs makes very nice custom humidors.

We are urging our friend Sippy to do the same.

Sonnet LX

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope, my verse shall stand
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

We did a little upgrade of our comments editor yesterday, but something went wrong with it. It is rejecting all comments.

Sorry for any annoyance.

Fixed now.

Mount Tom, 1865. That is the Connecticut River in the foreground, near Northampton, MA.

Stockbridge Bowl, yesterday:

To Villainous, from her husband, in A suspension of Contempt:

"Babe. I know we were planning on retiring. But I cannot, in good conscience with everything that is going on in the world, get out now. I think important things are going to happen and the Marine Corps will need all the leaders it can get. I still think I have something to contribute, and believe it is important to stay in and do my part. I trust you will understand."

Yes, the guy paints and draws. I don't know how he finds the time.

This from a show of his stuff in Germany last year.

Norwich VT (properly pronounced "norrich,") population 3000, is directly across the Connecticut River from Hanover, NH. The two towns in different states share a school district, which I believe is unique. 

What caught my eye was this handsome place:

Built in 1998, but looks right for the land. I like the attached barn, but the place only has 19 acres. Asking price $3,450,000. Things are not cheap in New England these days. You can read about this house here.

"All human institutions since the dawn of prehistory or earlier had always been designed to prevent change - all of them: family, government, church, army. Change has always been a catastrophic threat to human security."

Peter Drucker (h/t, Vanderleun)

I confused some folks by posting our Tips to Commenters on the blog yesterday instead of at the top of our Categories over on the left, where it belongs. My bad.

However, due to popular demand, we can now tell you how to put linkable links in our comments. You have to type in the command, thus:

[url]www.domain.com[/url]

Give it a try, if and when you feel like it. I did it without the bolds, and it didn't work.

Our pub-crawling friend Kondratiev, seeking a high-paying job at Maggie's Farm, offers this submission:

As Mark Twain said with attribution to Benjamin Disraeli, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”  Let’s look at U.S. foreclosure filings, which increased by 0.067 percentage points in March from a year earlier as adjustable mortgages increased and more owners gave up their homes to lenders.

More than 0.186% of the 125,892,000 U.S. households (234,000 properties) were in some stage of foreclosure.  Properties in foreclosure in March 2007 were 0.118% of U.S. households (149,045 properties).

About 1.99% of US homes (or 2.5 million foreclosed properties) may be on the market this year and in 2009.

This doesn’t sound too scary, moving from twelve hundredths of one percent to nineteen hundredths of one percent, with a maximum two-year potential of less than two percent of US homes.  However, a liberal press agenda is to maximize the fear factor in the months preceding the election, so let’s see how the press maximizes the potential fear factor editor’s comments in [brackets]:

U.S. Foreclosures Jump 57% as Homeowners Walk Away (Update2)

By Dan Levy

April 15 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. foreclosure filings jumped 57 percent and bank repossessions more than doubled in March from a year earlier as adjustable mortgages increased and more owners gave up their homes to lenders. [that’s the ratio between 0.118% and 0.186%]

More than 234,000 properties were in some stage of foreclosure, or one in every 538 U.S. households[doesn’t one in 538 sound like a larger number than 0.186%?], Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac Inc., a seller of default data, said today in a statement. Nevada, California and Florida had the highest foreclosure rates. Filings rose 5 percent from February.

 “We're not near the bottom of this at all,'' said Kenneth Rosen, chairman of Rosen Real Estate Securities LLC, a hedge fund in Berkeley, California and chairman of the Fisher Center for Real Estate at the University of California at Berkeley. “The foreclosure process will accelerate throughout the year.''

Rising foreclosures will add more inventory to an already glutted market, keep home prices down through at least next year and thwart efforts by Congress and President George W. Bush to help homeowners avoid default, Rosen said in an interview.

‘Drag' on Prices

About 2.5 million foreclosed properties will be on the market this year and in 2009, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. analysts led by Michelle Meyer said in an April 10 report. U.S. home price declines will probably double to a national average of 20 percent by next year, with lower values most likely in metropolitan areas in California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada, mortgage insurer PMI Group Inc. said last week in a report.

What PMI actually said was:

“Given the drop in prices already the broad S&P/Case-Shiller house price index could decline by roughly 15-25 percent [from the 2006 peak]. The narrower OFHEO index could decline by a lesser 5-10 percent, because it excludes jumbo loans and the large portion of subprime and Alt-A loans that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac don’t participate in.

“The odds of the ultimate price decline being toward the lower end of these ranges (5 percent for OFHEO and 15 percent for S&P/Case-Shiller) has increased recently because of policy changes that have taken place in the past few weeks. . . .

“We still expect the housing market to stabilize sometime in the second half of this year in response to expansionary monetary and fiscal policy, while builders continue to reduce the number of single-family housing starts into 2009. If this occurs, then the inventory of unsold homes should peak later this year and fall throughout next year. As a result, the downward pressure on national house prices should begin to abate in the second half of 2008. It is likely, however, that prices will continue declining well into 2009, as inventories will still be large (even if falling).”

Note that this directly contradicts the statements by the Berserkley guy Ken Rosen, but the writer chose to ignore that. 

Frightening the consumer is paramount in accomplishing regime change in the United States, and if we do indeed have a recession, it will be the first to have been entirely caused by the media – the underlying economics in the country are excellent!

Here's a 2008 review of this 43 year-old dancing pheenom. Here's a brief excerpt from a solo piece.

The reintroduction of Moose to Scotland. Very cool. But why do they have to be fenced?

Battles over wolves in the American West.

It's Skunk Cabbage time in New England. They are the earliest of marsh plants, producing their fleshy flower (in photo) before they produce their abundant cabbagy and funky-smelling leaves.

Remarkable fact about these plants: They are thermogenic. That's how they can punch through snow and ice so early in Springtime.

Map of the world, as seen from America. Tiger

Brit Navy: Be nice to pirates. Maybe it was Be Nice To A Pirate Day.

The normally calm Right Wing Prof blows a gasket over Obama. Related: A Category ll Kinsley Gaffe. Related: Allentown, at RWNH. Good piece, Rick

First photograph ever taken.

Jules takes a look at Marx Lite.

From Blackjack to Wall Street: Gross and Thorpe

"Natural" food doesn't mean safe.

McCain's heart, at Villainous. Mo Udall was a good guy.

I had this idea too. Complaint filed at the Canadian Human Rights Commission against a Montreal imam

Mexico cracks down on illegal imigration - into Mexico

Poor starving because of our "green" fuel. Related, at Boston Globe: Can't Eat Ethanol (h/t, Viking)

Is Obama Cassius Clay? asks Scott at Powerline. He certainly acts like he can take the hits.

Photo: A cigar-lover at Mr. Free Market

You just click on a date and see all the jazz in NYC. Cool resource.

Photo is The Blue Note.

Author A. J. David is doing a diary of his reading of Herodotus, the man who invented history.

Here's his Travel Writing as History. Here's Herodotus and Bad Fate.