Maggie's Farm

Chris took this photo in Connecticut on Saturday, and sent it over with an email which said drily "I have some reason to believe this might be the Nantucket Lightship."

Coast Guard Lightships marked the dangerous Nantucket Shoals since 1854. The Shoals are located on the heavily-trafficked transatlantic route to New York, 50 miles off the Nantucket coast. This lightship, "Nantucket 2," was decommisioned in 1983.

She has been refurbished as an elegant charter and events ship. The photos of the interior would surely not be recognizable to the guys who manned her.

You can tour the Ambrose Lightship, familiar to all sea travellers due to its old ocean station outside New York Harbor, in its original condition at New York's South Street Seaport.

John Wayne to the rescue. "One sneeze and you're a dead man." Good job, dude. 12 ga. is what you want for home defence.

The new cure for TMJ. Ace

Warmening killing off all the Europeans. Not Americans or Aussies, however. I guess we get to the hospital, in our SUVs, where our docs are our friends, and do not view us as expense items.

The Daring Book for Girls. Dr. Helen

About the famous "long telegram," by Steyn, via Blue Crab

The Single Man's Diet. Hog

Read Colbert filling in for Maureen Dowd yet?

CIA hijinks.

Most unique horse farm. Coyote

Defining poverty upwards. Driscoll. Get everyone on the dole and/or the government payroll that you possibly can, and they might vote for you, forever. The "poor" are already in the bag. Next, the middle class.

And, speaking of which, more on Hillary's million ideas at Oxford

Insanities Time again. Dr. Pat often finds our insanities to be quite insane.

Speaking of insanities, Vermont Pot? Good grief. Can't a government employee afford the good stuff?

Photo: A Theo lovely. It's Art for Art's Sake, for Pete's sake.

It's good fun to look for villa rentals in Tuscany. One has to wonder how people found these things before Al Gore invented the internet.

We like this one, south of Siena and not too far from the tourist trap of San Gimignano. Sleeps 12, if you are lucky enough to have some friends.

Luke 17: 11-19

 11Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. 12As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy^[a]met him. They stood at a distance 13and called out in a loud voice, "Jesus, Master, have pity on us!"

 14When he saw them, he said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were cleansed.

 15One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. 16He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

 17Jesus asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" 19Then he said to him, "Rise and go; your faith has made you well."

Milkweed turning autumn yellow at Maggie's Farm.

A piece in which the Viola does not play second fiddle. What fun these guys have with this piece.

Ideological purity is for children, who want to insist on exactly what they want, when they want it. Politics is about the practical. As a Conservative, I think it's down to Fred vs. Rudy, and the only relevant question is who can put up the best fight against Hillary Clinton and her machine. 

I do like Fred very much. See The Conservative Case for Fred Thompson, by Hawkins. I also believe that Rudy is much more conservative than people think. Murdock at NRO: It's Wrong for the Right to be Rudyphobic.

Despite all the things that weigh against Hillary, I think it is going to take some fancy footwork to put her on the ropes. Is Fred up to that? Can he be expansive, vital, cheerful, embracing - or is he a grumpy old man like me?

Our contributor Roger de Hauteville, the one-time King of Sicily, reminded me of Roxy Music the other day. Some called them the triumph of artifice over substance, and some saw in them the precursors of punk and other pop styles. I have no idea why this was called "art rock" and "glam rock," but it was, and it isn't really my cup of meat but it is lively.

The WSJ has the old-timey story of the Southside Sportsmen's Club in the 1880s, and Long Island's fishing secret - the Connetquot River, which holds large sea-run (and hatchery) trout.

I am fortunate to have fished that stream. (Reservations required, and barbless hooks, which I prefer anyway for all fishing purposes.) 

Henninger's piece Where Big Fish Caught Big Trout, begins thus:

Assume you are a wage slave in New York City. As respite, you favor the joys of fishing streams for large trout. You have a couple of choices. Travel 2,206 miles to the banks of the Madison River in Montana, or thereabouts. Plan B: Early on a weekday morning, load your car with a flyrod, stream waders and a box of flies, drive some 57 miles out of New York City on the old Southern State Parkway into Long Island, turn in at Connetquot State Park, in Oakdale, walk to your reserved "beat" on the Connetquot River, fat with rainbows, brookies and browns. Oh, and there's a bonus: You will have arrived at the living heart of the politics and history of the Empire State.

Read the whole thing (link above).

Photo above: A big Brown we caught on the Connetquot last September. Below, my photo of my beat on the stream that day.

What happens when the government mandates free hats for all. White Coat Rants (h/t, Bruce Kesler)

Also, Americans' Sense on Health Care, from Bruce re Rasmussen polling.

And, speaking of heathcare and free hats, Hillary asserts access to the internet is a right. As Right Thinking comments in a humorous piece,

Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, is there anything Hillary doesn’t think the government should be doing?

Lastly, a great quote from Fightin' Rudy:

"If we do Hillary care or socialized medicine, Canadians will have no place to go to get their health care."

That line from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani drew plenty of laughs at Tuesday's Republican debate. 

Sure, Michael Moore's absurd fantasy that our northern neighbor's rationed government-run health care system is one to be coveted rings pretty funny.  But the underlying realities are fatally serious.

Our Aliyah Diary author Nathan sends us this piece from Jewish Chronicle describing how noted Marxist Bertell Ollman wishes to "resign from being a Jew" prior to surgery. A quote from the piece:

...it is lonely, on the left, when you step out of line. And the party line, when it comes to Israel and the Jews, is that one can express a proud Jewish identity only through the experience of suffering and victimisation from the past, which the Holocaust has come to embody above all. The Jew as a victim and as a witness of the quintessential, archetypal experience of suffering emerges as the positive Jewish role-model, in sharp contrast to the pro-Israel or even Zionist Jew, who is chastised for having betrayed both universal values and what is seen as the authentic Jew. Again, to borrow from Christian terminology, the Jew as the sacrificial lamb, the Agnus Dei, is what we are being asked to be.

That’s why so many Jews, spiteful of their faith and ashamed of Zionism’s accomplishments as a society which rejects the role of the victim, wish Israel away. For them, it was so much better before Zionism, when we could still say, with some self-righteousness, S’iz shver tsu zayn a Yid — it is hard to be a Jew!

This is rough, from an editorial piece in The Telegraph:

The former US Vice-President has already taken over from Michael Moore as the most sanctimonious lardbutt Yank on the planet. Can you imagine what he'll be like now that the Norwegian Nobel committee has given him the prize?

I don't know what bothers me about him most - his condescension or his lying and hypocrisy. But I could care less about his weight: I'd bet that the Gores have a very good chef. All of this will seem very silly, though, when we hit the next crisis of global cooling, in which case Al will be well-insulated.

Nasty little printer's devils spew forth from the press in this Puck cartoon of Nov 21, 1888. (H/t, Gumshoe)

Some further thoughts about The Barrister's fine post Freedom? No Thanks, and a word about Erich Fromm:

Freedom is about the relationship of the individual to the State. I think of freedom as being a zero-sum game: either freedom, and the heavy responsibilities that go with it, belong to the individual or the power belongs to the State (but that may be a bit too black-and-white).

Even in democracies, the State is not "the people" and is not "the nation." Institutions have a power-seeking dynamic of their own. Our Founders knew that - and rightly feared that.

Does "security from the vicissitudes of life," when provided by the State, result in a diminution of individual freedom? Our Libertarian-minded Barrister often speaks dramatically about "selling our birthright of liberty for a bowl of lentils."

Ed Driscoll quotes a piece by Orin Judd. A snippet:

...the importance of the responses to the Depression by both Hoover and Roosevelt lay in their decision to elevate a negative idea of Freedom, freedom from want, from hunger, from "the vicissitudes of life" above, and against, the traditional American ideal of republican Liberty. This shift from a government aimed at protecting Freedom to one designed to provide Security is the single most important thing that happened in 20th Century America.

This is why we sometimes refer to FDR, except for his role as a wartime leader, as the worst President of the US. In his noblesse oblige socialist fashion, he shifted the psychology of the nation to one in which people were encouraged to look to a government as parent (while grossly mis-managing the economy, and while viewing the Depression as a "market failure" rather than partly the consequence of mis-management).

I understand very well the human desire for security: emotional, material, physical, spiritual, etc. These are things most of us strive for. However, the psychological shift from "Uncle Sam" to "Mom and Dad" government has been momentous and has, I believe, weakened the American spirit by appealing to the dependent child inside all of us and the notion that somebody else can do it for us. Naturally, many politicians jump on this opportunity to win votes by the transfer of money from neighbor to neighbor.

We are ambivalent about freedom and autonomy, and our ambivalence is exploited by politicians. Even those who do not chose lives of wealth-seeking unashamedly covet the wealth of others through government programs and benefits - from corporate farmers to single moms to those on Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare and SCHIP to those on government pensions, etc. etc.

That is why we find ourselves in a place where people can complain, with a straight face, that "Bush doesn't care about the health of our children" - as if the care and feeding of our kids were the job of the federal government, instead of ours. The thought contains an infantile assumption and an infantile wish. The trend leads to a royal, if not god-like, view of the State, as if reality no longer counted, and as if the State had the power to immanentize the eschaton. As Robert Parker would say, "Pretty to think so."

The conservative JFK tried to reverse this trend. "Ask not..." was an appeal to the best in the country, an effort to right the ship, to redefine the country as something that depended on us, the people, rather than something we looked to for care and parenting. He was trying to say that "the country" is not "the government." He was saying that the duties of citizens of a free republic and large, and serious. But then we had Johnson.

Neoneo reminds me of her piece from Passover, 2006, In Celebration of Freedom. She quotes the immortal Dostoevsky in The Grand Inquisitor chapter of Brothers:

Oh, never, never can [people] feed themselves without us [the Inquisitors and controllers]! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?

Addendum: Our blog pal Shrinkwrapped happily picked up on the theme with a thoughtful piece which focuses on the psychology of freedom - On Autonomy and Regression.

Late Addendum from Dr. Bliss:  Lest this post, with which I entirely agree, sound too heartless, we are entirely in favor of a safety net for the unlucky, the feckless, the mentally ill, and for those who, for whatever good reason, cannot make it in the modern world. We are not in favor of policies which put every able-bodied soul on the dole, and reduce them to political and literal serfdom. We resist anything which causes or tempts the able-bodied towards dependency in some way: that is not the American spirit nor does it do justice to the human spirit. Plus, if we do that, who will be motivated to take the risks and to create the wealth to pay those bills? That has been tried, and it failed, because of human nature. Governments cannot create wealth: they can only help create conditions under which people can create it. On the whole, humans will rise to challenge, but will take what they can get, if their pride and conscience permit.

We are happy to receive emails, but we check the blog email very irregularly. If readers have a link to share, toss it on a comment, even if it's off-topic.

Tri-State University tried a faculty dress code - for a week.

The Army is looking for a new rifle.

The banality of evil. A Nazi photo album.

Interview with Hirsi Ali. Reason

The 11 lies in Al Gore's movie. Crittenden

Dems considering personal retirement accounts. Didn't we just go through this last year?

Larry Summers is a symbol. John Leo. Not a human being anymore.

Obama wants Calif. to provide college aid to illegals

The bogus Dem poster people. Gateway

Live free or die? Jailed for using old token in NH

This is what I call Hand Soap.

Trying to get rid of feral hogs in Texas. Not easy.

A rowing boathouse in Oklahoma?

Fregans seek salvation in dumpsters.

SISU. She quotes Schopenhauer from John Tierney's NYT piece:

We should find that it is two or three persons who, in the first instance, accepted it, or advanced and maintained it; and of whom people were so good as to believe that they had thoroughly tested it. Then a few other persons, persuaded beforehand that the first were men of the requisite capacity, also accepted the opinion. These, again, were trusted by many others, whose laziness suggested to them that it was better to believe at once, than to go through the troublesome task of testing the matter for themselves.

When opinion reaches this stage, adhesion becomes a duty; and henceforward the few who are capable of forming a judgment hold their peace . . . there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?

from Peanuts, The Lost Strips (h/t, reader)

Only a person in Rhode Island could make this up. From the state where drunk driving is considered a manly sport comes this tale (thanks, Craig):

Recently a routine police patrol parked outside a bar in Lincoln, RI.  After last call at the Lodge, the officer noticed a man leaving the bar so apparently intoxicated that he could barely walk. The man stumbled around the parking lot for a few minutes, with the officer quietly observing.  After what seemed an eternity in which he tried his keys on five different vehicles, the man managed to find his car and fall into it. He sat there for a few minutes as a number of other patrons left the bar and drove off.

Finally he started the car, switched the wipers on and off - it was a fine, dry summer night- flicked the blinkers on and off a couple of times, honked the horn and then switched on the lights.  He moved the vehicle forward a few inches, reversed a little and then remained still for a few more minutes as some more of the other patrons' vehicles left.

At last, when his was the only car left in the parking lot, he pulled out and drove slowly down the road headed toward 146. The police officer, having waited patiently all this time, now started up his patrol car, put on the flashing lights, promptly pulled the man over and administered a breathalyzer test.

To his amazement, the breathalyzer indicated no evidence that the man had consumed any alcohol at all! Dumbfounded, the officer said, I'll have to ask you to accompany me to the police station. This breathalyzer equipment must be broken."  "I doubt it," said the truly proud driver.  "Tonight I'm the designated decoy."

Ducks in the AM, Ruffed Grouse in the woods or Sharptails on the prairie after lunch, then ducks again in the evening. Then it's cocktail hour. A very fine trip, if the weather is nasty and the ducks are flying. But, of course, if the weather is nasty it doesn't work for grouse. I prefer the grouse, in a way, because sitting fatigues me. The lodge:

The dock in the lodge's front yard: