Maggie's Farm

The leftist tilt of the major American newspapers, from Will:

 Read his whole piece, with more of his typically-informative charts, at Willisms.

From Roger Simon's piece on the Dem debate:

Hillary Clinton does not say what she means or mean what she says.

There is an Ends Justify the Means mentality and ultimately, I suspect, the Ends are Me Me Me even more than they are Socialism. Sounding virtuous about wanting to hand out other peoples' hard-earned money is just her chosen tool, while she hangs out with, and collects $ from, all of her billionaire friends. But she cannot finesse things the way Slick Willie can.

"Happy Halloween, you bunch of freaks." Sippican. Final quote:

While they sleep the deep, comforting sleep of the weary and contented child, I will steal their candy.

As for me, for once I think I will take my everyday mask off my face tonight, and go trick-or-treating for cold beers.

From a student "training" document at the University of Delaware, as quoted in a piece at Thompson:

... “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”

I guess that means that my skin tone determines my character and my moral fate. That sounds a teeny bit racist to me.

Photo: A typical "white people" cocktail party last week in leafy, sophisticated Wellesley, MA

Feldman at American Thinker, quoting a piece by Poe:

In it, Hillary declared, "We are... putting together a network in the blogosphere". She attributed its success to the efforts of "institutions that I helped to start and support like Media Matters and Center for American Progress..."

With these words, Hillary confessed to a federal crime. Both groups are supposedly "non-partisan", 501(c)3 tax-free organizations, strictly prohibited from coordinating efforts with a national political candidate such as Hillary.

The Feldman piece here. The Poe piece here. (thanks, H)

I hate the use of the word 'public' as a synonym for 'government'. The government is the government and the public is what is not the government.

As quoted from Leon Louw at Samizdata

Americans are largely satisfied and optimistic about their personal lives, but pessimistic about their public institutions, says David Brooks in a NYT opinion.

I am not sure that is necessarily a bad thing. A quote:

Sixty-eight percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. Sixty-two percent think that when government runs something, it is usually inefficient and wasteful. Sixty percent think the next generation will be worse off than the current one. Americans today are more pessimistic about government’s ability to solve problems than they were in 1974 at the height of Watergate and the end of the Vietnam War.

This happiness gap between the private and the public creates a treacherous political vortex. On the one hand, it means voters are desperate for change. On the other hand, they don’t want a change that will upset the lives they have built for themselves.

I have no doubt that the relentless negativity of the media contributes to that, but it still sounds like the America I know and love - people running their own lives as they see fit, and grumbling and suspicious about politics and the gummint.

What would make me worry would be people loving their so-called public institutions.

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle, a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God taught as the Christian "conception" of God. 45

Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. "All for sin could not atone." Well, then, let the Christian live like the rest of the world, let him model himself on the world’s standards in every sphere of life, and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin. That was the heresy of the enthusiasts, the Anabaptists and their kind…. 46

From The Cost of Discipleship. (Thanks, Dr. Bob, for the reminder)

From People's Cube:

Sparrows are the mice of the bird world.

Flocks of sparrows are on the move to, and through, our corner of Yankeeland this week on the Atlantic Flyway. Except for our most common and most distinctive species, I have trouble identifying many of them in the field - even up close.

The subject comes up because I IDed a Swamp Sparrow skulking in my raspberry brambles yesterday. One must admit that these are not particularly distinctive birds, except to the expert.

Photo: A Swamp Sparrow, from this photographer's site.

There is a 16 billion pixel image of The Last Supper here, but I cannot get onto the site as yet. Story here.

World's hottest pepper.

Harshest food critic ever, at The Onion. Bad language.

How New Hampshire turned Blue. Opinion Journal

Rufus would debate this:  UN official warns of biofuels driving up cost of food worldwide

Biochemist Arthur Kornberg dies at 89.

Arthur Kornberg was born in Brooklyn on March 3, 1918. As a youth he helped out in his parents’ hardware store. He was only 15 when he entered the City College of New York.

Dr. Kornberg earned a medical degree from the University of Rochester in 1941 and interned at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester. He applied for research training grants but failed to receive any, he said, because of anti-Semitism.

Kling on The Road to McMedicine. He quotes Shannon Brownlee's book:

"Our relentless search for wellness through medicine has created a kind of therapeutic imperative, the urge to treat every complaint, every deviation from the norm, as a medical condition."
--Shannon Brownlee, Overtreated, p. 206

Tom Lantos: Europeans more upset about Gitmo than they were about Auschwitz. True. You have to notice that critics say Gitmo symbolizes bad things - not that it is a bad thing. Confusing symbols with reality is insane.

Luke 18, 9-14

 9To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'

 13"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'

 14"I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

In Maine, last week. I should say "pa'tridge", not "grouse." In Maine, Ruffed Grouse are "partridge". In Canada, grouse are often referred to as "chickens." Hunting grouse is rough on one's legs. Famous soap opera star on the right.

Valentina Lisitsa plays Chopin's Etude Opus 25, No. 12, "Ocean"

h/t, Tim Blair

We missed this piece from Vanderleun, which begins:

The Asheville, North Carolina restaurant was one of those common to our post-post-modern world. Open and airy with a wall of windows framing hanging plants. Casual to the point of paper napkins. Sporting a list of local beers and -- surprise -- local wines. Tarted up with the kind of overtly ironic art on the walls where the painter has one statement and one image in his repertoire and repeats it ad nauseam. This time it seemed that the sensibility being trotted out was one of Hieronymous Bosch meets Hello Kitty.

Read the whole amusing thing, then go to Dr. Bob who noted the above piece, for his links on medicine - and rock and roll.

October has been a very good month for new Maggie's readers. A fine harvest of new friends, whether you agree with us about things or not.

A hearty welcome to all of you in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and the rest of the world. We are pleased and honored to have you all as visitors.

Please sample some of our "recent essays" on the upper left column - we only post "thought pieces" there - not that we are really capable of orderly thought: we do our best, with limited time, limited IQ, not to mention our neanderthal lack of intellectual sophistication. We are simple country bumpkins, recently fallen off the turnip wagon, who aspire only to Common Sense - and a few other things.

And don't forget to send us around to all of your friends and enemies. They should not feel left out.

Image: Autumn, by Currier and Ives, 1871