Maggie's Farm

"If things really suck in America as bad as Obama and Hillary say, then how come everybody in the world who wants freedom and opportunity will do anything to come here?"

That is Mark Levin's correct quote, I think, as I heard it on the radio. We are the world's freedom and opportunity destination. If you want other things, you can go elsewhere - or stay where you are.

Our friend and guest author Dr. Mercury told us how to create links readers can click without losing the page at Maggie's - so you can left-click links now.

The little things in life make a difference. In fact, 99% of life is one little thing after another.

Next project: Enabling links in the comments.

"America runs on Dunkin'"

Indeed it do. It's the new ad phrase written on Dunkin' Donuts cups, and it's just one of those things that distinguishes America from the rest of the world.

Some readers miss our weekend stuff. Here's another QQQ from The News Junkie over the weekend:

Everybody at Maggie's is a gun-totin' Bible-thumpin' redneck hick who wants more from the government. More Coors Lite would be a good place to start. Later, we'll be needing the Chateau Margaux to accompany our government brie, but all Opie wants is free Grey Goose.

And one  from The Barrister:

...now Hillary reinvents herself as a gun-totin' churchgoer. Heck, everybody brings a gun to church, don't they? It's the bitterness, ya know? I always bring spare ammo, just in case.

If you have a lawn and want some ideas, please read the B's Got Grass? The money quote:

Landscape design is a psycho-spiritual enterprise.

Finally, if you missed Dr. Mercury's first of his series here on computer tips, check his piece on Search Engine Tips. I did learn some useful things.

The reason Obama's words keep getting so much attention is because they reveal so much of what we already know about how the self-ordained elite think about regular folks.

Our blog pal Theo sent me this image re Obama as an impostor but, in fact, he is not. Obama gets in trouble whenever he says what he thinks - and either he or his wife do it all the time. They don't hide it. 

Do they think we all live in Berkeley or Cambridge among the bien pensant brie-eaters? (Disclaimer: I am known to eat brie.) Hillary is too "smart" and too lacking in conscience to make these sorts of errors of honesty.

I think the story is that Obama's words have some legs because they expose the old story of the Left's condescension towards, and sense of superiority in relation to, regular folks. Rush has always contended that the Left refuses to run on their real beliefs, and I think that is true. Truth is, the hard working folks of America are doing fine as long as they live within their means. They have many concerns and interests beyond their bank accounts and whatever freebies they could be entitled to.

And Americans are not babies: they neither long for a government mommy nor do they take politicians' promises or pandering seriously. They are used to government taking their earnings and offering little in return. Mostly, they want the nanny government to leave them the heck alone. They are, in fact, thinking, responsible, hard-working adults. I know lots of "them," including myself.

As Mark Levin always says (approx.), "If things are as terrible and hopeless in America as Hillary and Obama say they are, then how come every ambitious and freedom-seeking person in the world wants to come here to pursue their dreams?"

Obama's political problem is that he is not enough of an impostor to fool the savvy American middle class.

Ketchup-lovers like me hate the idea of enriching the wannabe-patricians Theresa Heinz and John Kerry. Plus we like the idea of something with a bit more kick. I am making this one, from the Food Network:

3 tablespoons oil
1/4 cup diced red onion
Can of Roma tomatoes, skinned, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh dill
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Pinch allspice
Pinch celery salt
Pinch mustard seed

In medium saute pan over medium heat, add oil and onions. Cook until brown and caramelized. Add the tomatoes, and garlic and cook for a few minutes, just to soften the vegetables. Then add the remaining ingredients and simmer for 30 minutes.

You can either serve the ketchup chunky or puree it in a blender first and serve it smooth.

At least double the vinegar, in my opinion. If grilling burgers for guests, offer the bottle and the home-made. See which one they prefer.

Dylan's interviews and press conferences, from the 60s through the 90s, here.

No, he is no "prophet," but he is an interesting fellow with a gift or two, and an interesting mind which follows its own path.

The West reveals . . . a hatred of itself, which is strange and can only be considered pathological; the West . . . no longer loves itself; in its own history, it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive, while it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure.”

Pope Benedict XVl, as quoted by Anchoress. We'd like to offer Benedict a hearty welcome to the USA - and we advise him not to park that Popemobile in a No Parking Zone in NYC - the cops will tow it... well, maybe they won't: they are still mostly Irish.

Acts 2:42-47 - The Fellowship of the Believers

Brockton, MA, 1940, by Jack Delano, from the Library of Congress collection

“Every secular religion...comes with its own Liturgies, Rubrics and Rituals, its own Sins, Laws and Saviors."

The Anchoress

Changes in Latitude, Changes in Attitude - with lots of Parrotheads in evidence.

Good poll news for John McCain

NYT writes unbiased article on Iraq

Truth-telling about immigration in Swedish MSM. Gates

An illustrated history of data storage (h/t, Thompson's Friday Ephemera)

The disastrous 17th Amendment (h/t, Right Wing Prof)

Shipping containers and the economy

Barry Obama has a race problem: he is pissed off at whites despite his charmed life in America. The guy misses the point that almost everybody in America is post-racial these days (not in Euroland, however). White folks do not spend one second of their lives thinking about oppressing black, brown, yellow or red people, and to imply that they do is hateful, malicious, manipulative, - and wrong. Character and behavior, not skin, is what folks are interested in. I do not give a damn about skin, and I believe that very few people are hung up on skin these days, and we would be even less so except for the Left constantly pushing skin and genitalia and transgender-mixed-frozen-vegetables in our faces.

Honestly, would Obama be a presidential candidate today if he were a white guy? Of course not. Hillary would have eaten him as an hors d'oevre by now. It's plain as day, but people don't say it. Heck, Congress is full of glib Leftists: consider the always-charming and articulate Barney Frank. Obama is a phee-nom because he is half-black (and he is a likeable fellow, as pols go). The Obama effect is pure reverse-racism - mixed with ageism (he's a kid) and a touch of jaunty metrosexual bias (the American MSM press is not known for its comfort with manliness).

I find this video disturbing, insulting, dumb, and offensive (from piece at Gateway):

Adding to Ye Olde Maggie's Blogroll of Honour:

Neuroanthropology

Captain Capitalism

RightWing Bob

Yes, we send Chris some money every time we borrow, and occasionally wonder whether to post his stuff daily:

From a CNN piece on the Pulitzer announcements, which includes this about Bob:

Long after most of his contemporaries either died, left the business or held on by the ties of nostalgia, Dylan continues to tour almost continuously and release highly regarded CDs, most recently "Modern Times." Fans, critics and academics have obsessed over his lyrics -- even digging through his garbage for clues -- since the mid-1960s, when such protest anthems as "Blowin' in the Wind" made Dylan a poet and prophet for a rebellious generation.

His songs include countless biblical references and he has claimed Chekhov, Walt Whitman and Jack Kerouac as influences. His memoir, "Chronicles, Volume One," received a National Book Critics Circle nomination in 2005 and is widely acknowledged as the rare celebrity book that can be treated as literature.

According to publisher Simon & Schuster, Dylan is working on a second volume of memoirs. No release date has been set.

Why reporters persist with that "prophet for a rebellious generation" nonsense I don't know. Maybe it's to put the guy in a box with a label. Of course, he is not the corporate guy in the grey flannel suit, but if that's rebellious, then bring it on.

I'd call him a prodigious and ambitiously truth-telling singer-songwriter whose work, over 45 years, covers everything from love to God to war, from joy to despair, and which borrows - or steals - heavily from the Great American Songbook using folk, blues, country blues, country, ditties, jazz, nursery rhymes, rock, and love ballads...not to mention the Great Irish and Great Scottish Songbooks - and from movies, books, and especially from the Bible. 

Many folks don't seem to realize that most of Dylan's best stuff is post-60s. We do get a kick out of olde Maggie's Farm though, because all of us have learned to dislike working for other people (what's with the headdresses? Pure loony frivolity, methinks):

Newport Mountain, Mount Desert Island, Maine. 1851. The fellow in the foreground seems to be pulling in a mast from a wreck.

If there is no self, whose flu is this? 

Be here now.  Be someplace else later.  Is that so complicated? 

Drink tea and nourish life; with the first sip, joy; with the second sip, satisfaction; with the third sip, peace; with the fourth, a muffin. 

Wherever you go, there you are.  Your luggage is another story. 

Accept misfortune as a blessing.  Do not wish for perfect health, or a life without problems.  What would you talk about? 

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single Oy. 

There is no escaping karma.  In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited.  And whose fault was that? 

Zen is not easy.  It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have?  Bupkis. 

The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take sides. The Tao has no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao is not Jewish.  

Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Forget this and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems. 

Let your mind be as a floating cloud.  Let your stillness be as a wooded glen.  And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Buddha with such rounded shoulders. 

Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist. 

Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions; Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness. 

The Torah says, Love your neighbor as yourself. The Buddha says “There is no self.”  So, maybe we're off the hook.

Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris discusses the making of The Thin Blue Line in the NYT (h/t Neuroanthropology via Dr. X). My bolds: 

Personally I have never been averse to the use of reconstruction, generic archive footage, still photographs, or whatever techniques exist or we can create for ourselves as film makers so that we can become better story tellers, but the unbreakable rule must surely be that the audience MUST always know what it is they are seeing, at least when it comes to documentary. I know that there is no such thing as objective truth, particularly when it comes to film-making, but if audiences are being tricked without their knowledge, and worse still, when the film makers themselves are unable to distinguish between fact, fiction and distortion, what chance will they or future generations have of being able to disinter even a semblance of truth about what happened?

Huh? If the guy is hopeless about facts and truth, why does he bother worrying, and why doesn't he simply call his own stuff "fiction"? This guy is an exemplar of the pomo notion of "narrative." I guess nobody killed the police officer, or maybe the chocolate shake did it - probably the same chocolate shake that shot JFK.

Al Gore, Michael Moore, Oliver Stone: all fully-conscious propagandists seeking to mess up the minds of the ignorant for their own purposes. Malignant people, clever but not wise.

A quote from Dr. Bob's post, The Prayer of Java:

There is one secret ingredient to make prayer work: trust. Gotta have it. Can God work without your trust? Sure — the rain falls on the just and the unjust, as the proverb says. Our problem is we want to understand God before we trust Him. We want Him to strut His stuff, lightning bolts and miracles and the like, before we’ll acquiesce and maybe give Him a break. Sorry, that’s not trust — just the opposite. But God cannot be understood — even in a limited way with our most enfeebled minds — until we first trust Him. Sounds like a bum deal, a Catch-22, but that’s just the way it works. Get over it — you won’t regret it.

And one last thought in this long-winded essay: If you’re new to this prayer thing (or even not so new), start small. Praying for world peace or a cure for your cancer is fine, but a bit grandiose for starters. Pray about your misplaced car keys, finding a parking spot, the wisdom to deal with that difficult patient, or co-worker, or child, or situation. Then open your eyes, your ears, your heart for the response. You won’t hear it every time — but I bet you’ll be surprised how often you do, and you’ll learn something about God, about yourself, and in some small way about how this spiritual world works.

Just grow them, dry them out, punch a 1" hole in them, and hang 'em in a tree. Instant House Wren house.

A house is not a home unless you have these members of the chattering class around. (Ours haven't arrived yet this Spring. Global cooling is to blame.)