Maggie's Farm

Some cartoons from the Arab press (sample on the right). Where's the outrage?

Poo for Peace Day

Personal responsibility? What's that? Inside the Liberal Mind

Never die lost in the woods with this

Filthy rich Dems. This week we have linked on the Clinton and Gore multi-millions. Here's a new windfall for Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, all they can say is that everything in America is terrible: Bleak House, at Dr. Sanity.

The UK: The lower your grades, the more money for college

This golfer Isenhour is a good shot but he is a world class jerk. Maybe he should stick to indoor golf.

S&P warns re NYT debt

Noted scientist Prince Charles tells me I am insane. I guess that means that Frederick Seitz, who died this week, was also insane.

Will Obama go to meet with FOX News?

From SDA:

If you speak out against Guantanamo Bay, that doesn't mean you're promoting terrorism. But if you speak out against the human-rights prosecution of Marc Lemire, you're "promoting" him and his views. Funny how that works, isn't it?" - Damian Penny

George McGovern at the WSJ. I can't believe my ears:

Since leaving office I've written about public policy from a new perspective: outside looking in. I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.

Why do we think we are helping adult consumers by taking away their options? We don't take away cars because we don't like some people speeding. We allow state lotteries despite knowing some people are betting their grocery money. Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. But we don't operate mindlessly in trying to smooth out every theoretical wrinkle in life.

(Sorry - had the wrong piece earlier.)

From Cartoons by Chuck Asay via Dr. Sanity:

DIVERSITY

I have been hearing much praise for this year's Philadelphia Flower Show. It is known as the best and the biggest plant and flower show in the country.

Should have sent somebody with a camera. Some exhibitors have constructed entire small scale landscapes and gardens - with trees - in the Convention Center. Here's a photo from the show's photo gallery: 

Our first migratory wave of flocks of Common Grackles and Robins arrived here this week from their winter in the southern US. We have spoken of Turdus Migratorius (Robin) here in the past, but not about the Common Grackle, who has been extending his range from the Mississippi Valley across the US east of the Rockies, and north into Canada.

A flock of these large wetlands-loving (but highly adaptable) blackbirds will empty your bird feeder in a few hours, accompanied by their loud screeching and squawking.

Our friend Sippican sends this photo of a migratory flock in his yard on the Massachusetts coast last September:

You can read about the Common Grackle here.

I will support this fellow. I do not agree with him about every issue - but I do not agree with anybody about every issue.

I just hope he won't be another Bob Dole in the campaign. Here are some bits from his March 4 comments:

The New York Post reports on the growing movement to bring God into the workplace. A quote:

Not only has there's been a rise in the number of Christian "work affinity" groups at city firms - including American Express, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Suisse Bank, Goldman Sachs and Ernst & Young- there's also a growing number of city-based advocacy groups promoting the integration of faith and work.

They stay low-profile, though. It almost reminds me of the early days of Christianity in Rome:

"There are very strong religious groups in New York City, it's just that people don't talk about it," said the woman, 25, who asked not to have her name or the firm name used, citing company protocol about speaking to the press - and noting that firms do not endorse or sponsor such groups. "It's all here, it's just not as public."

(A desire to stay under the radar seems to have been reflected in the reporting for this story: Most leaders of work-site groups contacted either didn't respond to messages or declined to comment.)

I say bring Him to work. He can handle it, and Wall Street needs His companionship as much as any other workplace.

From The Last Waltz, 1978. (h/t, Tangled)

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

King Solomon in Ecclesiastes, 9:11 (thanks, H. - I studied Ecclesiastes a couple of years ago. It is packed with good things.)

Main Street, Cascade, Idaho. July, 1941, from Shorpy

The Washington Post is mocking the climate conference in NYC this week. Here at Maggie's we are skeptical about APW, as we are skeptical about most scientific claims (although we do accept the notion of a spherical earth).

The only reason we write as often as we do about climate is because the subject has been hijacked by people with socio-political agendas. Were it not for that, we'd only be mildly curious. In any event, we suspect that some warming would be a boon to the world economy and food production, and we suspect that the coming Ice Age will be the real threat to humanity in the northern hemisphere.

A graph from Powerline's piece on the conference, which does not extend back to the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago:

And, just for fun, here's the big picture. As the graph shows, we remain in an extended cold spell, historically - in a tiny little interglacial which doesn't even make a dent on a graph with this time scale. As every money manager knows, the way to lie with graphs is to select your time frame. The earth is shivering (graph reads right to left in time):

The link to neoneo this morning about the religious-like fervor of the Obama "movement" led me to this link: How can I recognize a false teacher? It says it all, but unfortunately does not link to the scriptural quotes.

Uncentered souls are often attracted to "movements" - but I think some of Obama's appeal is simply to Dems who dislike and distrust Mrs. Clinton. The promise of heaven on earth will gain no traction with me because I have been around the block once or twice.

If Obama fails, it will be because he will be exposed as a phony: it's beginning to happen. And speaking of phonies, here's one more of these fake memoirs. Why don't these folks just label their books as fiction?

h/t, Theo. Photoshop is fun.

Reposted from 2005

Everything is so scary.

You can drown in the bathtub, you can cut yourself with a chain saw, you can choke on a steak, you can spill hot coffee in your lap, you can slice your finger with a paring knife, you can get fat from eating bread, you can get hit by an SUV, you can get heart disease from french fries, you can get blinded by a tennis ball, you can get brain-death from watching TV, you can catch mono from kissing a girl, you can fall down the stairs, you can get hit by lightning playing golf, you can lose your sense of reality by studying astronomy, you can get Lyme disease from weeding the garden, you can get a rusty hook in your scalp while fishing, you can get skin cancer from going outdoors, you can get a papercut from copy-paper.

Given how treacherous ordinary life is, it should be no wonder that all medical treatments, including medicines, have side-effects too. The recent pulling of Viox and Celebrex from the market puzzle me, because ordinary aspirin seems far more dangerous due to its frequent ability to cause gastric bleeding. Still, every MD I know takes an aspirin a day, not to combat paperwork headaches but to prevent heart attack.

My point is not to specifically discuss medical care - I think almost everyone assumes that physicians know how to balance risk, and, nowadays, how to discuss these with patients. When people exercise judgement in life, they not only balance the risks and rewards of choices of action, they also balance the risks and rewards of action vs. inaction. Inaction always has its own cost - opportunity cost. Every fellow who ever contemplated asking a girl out knows what I mean. Or vice versa. My point is to talk about the expectation that life should be safe, and that someone (the gummint?) could or should magically protect us from that reality.  That, I think, is part of the infantile impulse behind the wish for the Nanny State.  Or the Mommy and Daddy State.

This is not to promote a radical libertarian viewpoint. I like the Pure Food Act, and I am glad kids can't buy guns and dynamite.  And I don't want to have to caveat emptor in everything I use or buy...but you kinda sorta have to anyway, don't you?  Still, the endless seeking to be made safe from risk is a psychological state - a wish that reality be a certain way -  and, as such, it is not amenable to correction by adjusting reality. It can only be corrected by growing up ...and by hamstringing the tort lawyers who have fed off, promoted, and exploited, these childish wishes that sometimes lurk even in the most mature people, including me.

I did not realize that No Country for Old Men was a McCarthy book. At one point, I read everything he wrote, but I guess I lost track. Will read it before seeing the movie.

JC Phillips' wife loved it. The book was reportedly edited down from 600 pages.

An annual re-post

Miller Nurseries. Our source for hardy fruit trees, grapes, and more.

Musser Forests. Our favorite source for seedlings for your farm, game preserve, conservation land, or country place, including Christmas tree plantings. Lots of native plants.

Seedland. Great source for large-volume lawn, pasture, game preserve, farm, etc. seeds. I buy meadow clovers from them.

For garden seeds, including heirloom vegetables (h/t, readers):

Renee's

Johnny's

The Cook's Garden

Gary Ibsen's Tomato Fest (These sound wonderful, but tomatoes from seeds is too much hassle for me)

How the potato led to free trade

The International Conference on Climate Change begins today, in NYC

Dems are the "architects of modern racism." (Here's the website of the National Black Republican Association)

Truth about NAFTA and Ohio. Cafe hayek

David Brooks remembers the mentor

On Michelle Obama at Powerline: "She's a depressing specimen of a post-modern class of victim -- demanding, whining, self-absorbed, self-pitying, and infantile."

This is why Mark Levin is calling him Barry Milhous Obama. Speaking of which, this Obama video is creepy.

Your kids belong to me. RTLC

One more borrowed from Dr. Merc's collection:

John 9: 1-41

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him. We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." As he said this, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and anointed the man's eyes with the clay, saying to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Silo'am" (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing. The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar, said, "Is not this the man who used to sit and beg?" Some said, "It is he"; others said, "No, but he is like him." He said, "I am the man." They said to him, "Then how were your eyes opened?" He answered, "The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes and said to me, `Go to Silo'am and wash'; so I went and washed and received my sight." They said to him, "Where is he?" He said, "I do not know."

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. The Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, "He put clay on my eyes, and I washed, and I see." Some of the Pharisees said, "This man is not from God, for he does not keep the sabbath." But others said, "How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?" There was a division among them. So they again said to the blind man, "What do you say about him, since he has opened your eyes?" He said, "He is a prophet."

The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight, and asked them, "Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?" His parents answered, "We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age, he will speak for himself." His parents said this because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if any one should confess him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, "He is of age, ask him."

So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and said to him, "Give God the praise; we know that this man is a sinner." He answered, "Whether he is a sinner, I do not know; one thing I know, that though I was blind, now I see." They said to him, "What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?" He answered them, "I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you too want to become his disciples?" And they reviled him, saying, "You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from." The man answered, "Why, this is a marvel! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if any one is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that any one opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing." They answered him, "You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?" And they cast him out.

Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, "Do you believe in the Son of man?" He answered, "And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?" Jesus said to him, "You have seen him, and it is he who speaks to you." He said, "Lord, I believe"; and he worshiped him. Jesus said, "For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind." Some of the Pharisees near him heard this, and they said to him, "Are we also blind?" Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, `We see,' your guilt remains.

Brace's Rock, Eastern Point, Gloucester, MA, c. 1864. Oil on canvas. John Wilmerding Collection

Our Dylanologist is in Mexico, in Cabo this week for a well-deserved break from reality.

Cabo used to be a funky place, but it's turning into Miami West. He contemplated a quick trip to Guadalajara to catch the Dylan performance, but the air fare from Cabo was prohibitive. He promised to pre-post his weekly Dylan entry, since internet is iffy in Mexico.

A heachache blog! (h/t, McArdle)

The Boston Globe's decline. Jules

Communism has only killed 100,000,000 people. Let's give it another try. No Pasaran

Not your everyday book review: re Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale

Somebody give these kids an English passport. Theo 

It makes everything more interesting: Adderal abuse.

Strangest statue in Bennington, VT (h/t, Grow a Brain)

Makes the US Postal Service look good. Brit hospitals

Photo from Theo's billboard collection