Maggie's Farm

Here are some dynamite short stories. Commentary's Contentions.

The gals are back from this year's Vision New England, in Boston. They learned that 1% of New England men are evangelical Christians. I think that's pretty good, really. Many are called, etc.

Among other things, they loved a group that sang for them - Confirmations.  Blues/gospel. Gritty, not sweet, and not old-fashioned.

I will buy one or two.

Why is this day different from all other days? I'll go for the Colts +4, but I'd be just as happy to see Chicago win.

As Seinfeld said: "You are rooting for laundry." Watching TV is not sport...well, I guess getting to the bean dip after 14 Coors Lights is a bit of a sport.

Anyway, for real sport, try Tucks - Tuckerman Ravine on Mt. Washington. No lifts. You hike up the trail, and ski down the natural snow (or ice).

Image: Tuckerman Ravine skiiers in 1937. Same as today. Not for yuppies. For other old-timey skiing (but with lifts) we recommend Mad River Glen ("Ski it if you can"), and the Dartmouth Skiway. Yes, we love Stowe, - the home town of our webmeister Chris - but it's not really fully old-timey anymore.

From stem-cell harvesting, to abortion on demand, to triage (as in the UK: "too expensive to bother treating"), to physician-assisted suicide for the terminally-ill, we see the steady march of a soul-less scientific rationalism.

I believe it is fear of that march which energizes the "crazy fundamentalists" who are not comfortable with treating human life as a disposable object.

Now we see the practical Swiss planning to add mental illness to the list of diseases which will have physician-assisted suicide available. "Suicidally depressed? Hey - we can help!" Who's next on their list? Diabetics? Drug addicts? The unemployed?

Sometimes a slippery slope is a slippery slope. How soon until Denmark and Holland have suicide teams roaming the hospitals (now often called "Death Services"), urging ill people to unburden society of their expensive and inconvenient problems? I can even see the ads: "Do it for the greater good", with some sort of happy, serene image of a smiling middle-aged lady floating on a fluffy cloud. Harp music, of course.

"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.

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 ... let the Christian live like the rest of the world ... and not presumptuously aspire to live a different life under grace from his old life under sin. That was its heresy ..."

In 1939, Bonhoeffer joined a hidden group of high-ranking military officers based in the Abwehr, or Military Intelligence Office, who wanted to overthrow the National Socialist regime by killing Hitler. He was arrested in April 1943 after money used to help Jews escape to Switzerland was traced to him. He was charged with conspiracy and imprisoned in Berlin for a year and a half. After the unsuccessful July 20 Plot in 1944, Bonhoeffer's connections to the conspirators were discovered. He was moved to a series of prisons and concentration camps ending at Flossenburg. Here, he was executed by hanging at dawn on 9 April 1945, just three weeks before the liberation of the city. Also hanged for their parts in the conspiracy were his brother Klaus and his brothers-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rüdiger Schleicher.

I always knew eating game made a person feel good, but I always figured it was the wine. Or the memories. Or both.

Maybe not. Telegraph.

When I see pheasants hanging like this, I remember that the French way is to age them until the body falls from the head. That's when they're ready to clean and cook.

READ THIS SPEECH, if you do nothing else today.

Fascinating, and full of examples and images. I won't quote from it because it the link contains all sorts of frightening copyright warnings. It is from 2005.

In my opinion, getting speeches like this distributed and read is the best thing blogs can do: it's the magic of the link, which we already take for granted.

(Thanks, reader, for letting us know about this speech.)

Dunn's piece in Am. Thinker. He points out that warming is just the latest in a long series of environmental apocalyptic visions - none of which have panned out. One quote:

That environmentalism is in fact a pseudo-religion goes without saying. Like all such, it possesses every element of contemporary legitimate belief. It has a deity, in this case the goddess Gaia, the personification of the living Earth, (first envisioned by James Lovelock, whom we can slot in as high priest). It has its holy books, most changing with the seasons, and most, as is true of the Bible with many convinced Christians, utterly unread. It has its saints, its prophets, its commandments, religious rituals (be sure to recycle that bottle), a large gallery of sins, mortal and otherwise, and an even larger horde of devils. (Let me pause here to sharpen a horn.)

Another item that a pseudo-religion must have is an apocalypse - and that's what global warming is all about.

Dunn really nails the mindset. Wish I had written this piece. Whole thing here.

We must confess that we take this notion about as seriously as we take MLK's Birthday. Not racist at all: just aware that such things are sops thrown to loyal constituents of the Dem party. Party favors that cost them nothing.

Note that there is no Asian History month, and no Hispanic History Month (although the story of the Spanish invading Central America, stealing the gold, and killing all the natives, would be an exciting and inspiring story for the kiddy-poos). No Swedish History month either - and no Indian History month (for either kind of Indian). There is no Arabic History Month, but coming soon, no doubt, to a government school near you. Gimme your vote and we'll give you a month. No vote - no month.

LaShawn has the best post on the subject, here and especially here.

BBC

Daylight Savings Time comes early this year.

Grievance Training at ASU. One student complains, and gets into trouble. LGF. His grievance doesn't work! The irony is just too much. I bet he's one of those sub-human white heterosexuals whose grievances don't count, because he has the wrong skin color.

Imam: Italy will be a Moslem state. Gateway

They call this a college education. Durham in Wonderland

Shrinkwrapped looks at Samuelson's piece on Universal Health Care

How come nobody talks about the sun. Well, they do, but it's the wrong "narrative".   Classical Values. The correct narrative is "Western Civilization is evil."

The importance of amateurs. American.com. Heck, at Maggie's Farm, Amateurs Is Us.

The Moslems will be watching this party: Clinton and Edwards vye for pro-Israel money

Immigration Fees, from the WaPo:

Under the plan, announced yesterday by Emilio Gonzalez, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the government would charge $905 -- up from $325 -- to apply for a green card or to adjust residency status. Immigrants with green cards would have to pay $595 to become naturalized citizens, a $265 increase. The cost of bringing a foreign fiance to the United States would more than double, to $455.Increased Immigration Fees Denounced - washingtonpost.com

"This drastic increase will price the American dream out of reach for qualified immigrants wanting to be citizens of our country," Kennedy said. He called on Congress to appropriate more money to USCIS, which depends on fees for 99 percent of its budget. "We are a nation of immigrants, and Congress should recognize its responsibility to support the vital work of immigration services by appropriating the necessary funds," he said.

Image: Stop clicking that thing - you might hurt your finger. You know we don't do p*rn here.

"There is only one antidote to racism: the philosophy of individualism and its politico-economic corollary, laissez-faire capitalism. Individualism regards man—every man—as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being. Individualism holds that a civilized society, or any form of association, cooperation or peaceful co-existence among men, can be achieved only on the basis of the recognition of individual rights-and that a group, as such, has no rights other than the individual rights of its members."

Ayn Rand (h/t, reader). Here's an Ayn Rand website.

As a low moves up from the south into New England this afternoon, promising to bring a bit of snow and ice with it, the birds out my window are getting ready before darkness falls. I have rarely seen so much activity.

A small flock of around 10 robins are hitting the holly berries and the rose hips hard, and tossing leaves in a leaf pile around like crazy, looking for bugs. Juncos all around, and white-throated sparrows are scratching little pits in the garden mulch. A fat and handsome flicker came within two feet of my window, trying to get his beak into the half-frozen garden soil next to the foundation. Best of all, a Hermit Thrush. He was eating some of the holly berries, and generally poking around.

Except for robins, the Hermit is our hardiest thrush. His rusty tail diagnoses him and, in summer, his song.

Read about the Hermit Thrush here, (CLO) from which the image is borrowed.

A Bristol, Rhode Island lawyer built Janet in 1903.

This 50' yawl was designed by Fred Lawley and built by George Lawley and Sons. She won the NYC Mayor's Cup in 2000.

Yes, she is for sale.

We post the photo to please Chris, who has worked overtime for Maggie's Farm this past week, and who finally subdued - or outlasted - the Botnet beast.

Chris loves sailboats and hates stinkpots - even old wooden ones.

Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation.

Edward R. Murrow

"Elites to anti-Affirmative Action Voters: Drop Dead." That's the title of Heather McDonald's exhaustive review of all the of tricks that California has been using to sneak around Prop 209, which forbids race-quota based admissions and hiring.

One thing that struck me about this piece is how the state universities believe themselves to be above the law, and that they are somehow entitled to operate illegally, with impunity.

The last decade in California shows the power, and the limitations, of the crusade for a colorblind America led by Ward Connerly, architect of the 1996 anti-preference initiative. Without a doubt, Proposition 209, as that measure is called, has cut the use of race quotas in the Golden State’s government. But it has also exposed the contempt of the elites, above all in education, for the popular will. “Diversity”—meaning socially engineered racial proportionality—is now the only official ideology of the education behemoth, and California shows what happens when that ideology comes into conflict with the law.

Read the whole thing. It's a remarkable story - and a disturbing story -about people who believe that the ends justify the means. And it's a story about academia's entirely unwholesome obsession with race. And, finally, it's a story with a sub-theme about a large black subculture in America which rejects the dominant culture's value of disciplined self-improvement. If you want to blame the schools, you are probably missing the point - although it is their challenge to counter the influence of self-defeating attitudes.

In the end, race quotas will always be rejected by voters. And the voters pay the bills. Quotas are obviously unfair, they discriminate against other skin colors - and nobody wants an affirmative action pilot or doctor.

This is a 26' triple cockpit runabout with a 425 hp Chevy V8. Mahogany, of course.

Pefect for Lake Champlain or Lake Winnepesaukee, if you don't mind being noticed. Or Long Island Sound, in nice weather.

You can buy it here.

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.

Edward R. Murrow

Over the last century, millions of people from all over the world have come to New York City. They didn’t come here to be taken care of and to be dependent on city government. They came here for the freedom to take care of themselves.

Rudy Guiliani (h/t, Ace)

A quote from Ben Stein's piece in American Spectator:

And suddenly it hit me. The media is staging a coup against Mr. Bush. They cannot impeach him because he hasn't done anything illegal. But they can endlessly tell us what a loser he is and how out of touch he is (and I mean ENDLESSLY) and how he's just a vestigial organ on the body politic right now.

The media is doing what it can to basically oust Mr. Bush while still leaving him alive and well in the White House. It's a sort of neutron bomb of media that seeks to kill him while leaving the White House standing (for their favorite unknown, Barack Obama, to occupy).