Maggie's Farm

If your dogs need work - hunt-training, obedience, etc., and you are in the CT area, Rick emailed us to recommend Quinebaug Kennels:

Jennifer is doing a great job with Parker and Sammy, my two hunting labs.  Maggies should put her site up. A lady  who can train dogs AND shoot guns. Nice.

http://www.quinebaugkennels.com/

Oh - she has a new litter of black labs - only hunters need inquire.

Bush does indeed want to be the First Hispanic President, just as Clinton was referred to as the First Black President.

And Bush is a stubborn guy, if nothing else. Once he makes his mind up, he stays with it. So, besides throwing a few bones to the enforcement-oriented majority of the country, he is sticking with his plan. And plenty of smart guys are with him on this, like Tony Snow and Kristol and others.

I do not see their position as pure political calculation, but maybe as secondarily so, because all of these Mexican kids born in the US will be able to vote in just a few years. No, I believe that Bush and others believe it is the right thing to do - the virtual amnesty and all that.

At Maggie's Farm we believe in managed, controlled immigration. We are not "a nation of immigrants" - we are a nation descended from immigrants, with, until recently, a small percentage of immigrants. An experiment such as Bush and the Senate propose - a Katrina-force flood of immigration into a settled and reasonably assimilated country - has rarely occcurred in history without force of arms. This is our country, and we do not want to be the guinea pig. If that is "nativist," then fine. Every nation is and must be nativist to a degree, if they value their culture and traditions and their approach to life.

I doubt that any citizen would welcome 100 million new immigrant citizens in 20 years. We need to bear in mind that much of the world's population would rather be in the US than where they are, and it's much easier to move than to fix your own country. If someone wants to come to the US, my message is to imitate the US where you live.

Linknzona has an analysis of the details of the speech, along with a bit of a rant:

Something is seriously wrong. President Bush seems hell bent on putting the interests of Mexico ahead of the interests of the US; he seems hell bent on rewarding criminals at the expense of legal immigrants and US citizens; he seems hell bent on doing anything and everything to further the interests of Mexico and its millions of illegal immigrants; and he seems devoted to this cause beyond all reasoning and understanding.

He also adds this info - everyone needs to be heard, regardless of how they feel:

Here is a site where you can email Repub Senators as they consider immigration legislations.

Here is the White House Site, where you can contact the President.

And here is a site where you can register and send free fax messages to all members of Congress and the White House. It is an excellent, personalized, and free site.

Image shamelessly emigrated from here.

It requires Tequila, Dos X, extra worms, plus lime, salt,
etc. Gateway. It could be the only way to survive Bush's
speech.

Why are those things necessary? Because the Pres will propose all of the wrong things. Quote from Michelle's update (quote is from Paul):

Paul Mirengoff: "...the Hagel-Martinez legislation would lead to a rapid and fundamental transformation of the social, economic, and political nature of our society. This fact needs to be brought into the open and discussed -- something the bill's supporters seem reluctant to do."

That is for certain, if the 100 million number is accurate.

One more comment from NRO (h/t, Driscoll):

A political-junkie friend who I can always count on to find the political silver lining if there is one just said to me:  "Tonight could be the first fully televised political suicide in history. I don't even want to watch."

We received the most heart-warming and
encouraging compliment ever, as a comment on
our Sunday Nite/Monday Mornin' Links last night.

That is the kind of soul food we need to continue slaving on Maggie's Farm. As Dickens said, only a fool would write without getting paid. We are thus fools, by definition: our compensation is your interest in our writing and "thinking", such as it is.

All we ask is that the folks who enjoy our brand of eclectic stuff send us around to friends, relatives, enemies, and neighbors, so we can get the discriminating and intelligent readers we deserve.

Image: Yes, that is our own Dr. Joy Bliss again, in a pensive mood, reflecting on Object Relations theory. She has promised us a major essay on "happiness" this week. In my opinion, an eyeful of Dr. Bliss is happiness enough for anyone.

I was so poor when I grew up, if I wasn't a boy I would have had nothing to play with.

Rodney Dangerfield

If you are a Tom Wolfe fan, you will enjoy the speech he gave as the Jefferson Lecture at the National Endowment for the Humanities on Wednesday, printed in the New York Sun. In this wide-ranging and a bit random essay, he discusses speech, status, Freud, neo-Darwinism, immigration, Max Weber, rednecks, politics, college kids, drugs, and a host of other matters. One quote:

Evolution came to an end when the human beast developed speech! As soon as he became not Homo sapiens, "man reasoning," but Homo loquax, "man talking"! Speech gave the human beast far more than an ingenious tool. Speech was a veritable nuclear weapon! It gave the human beast the powers of reason, complex memory, and long-term planning, eventually in the form of print and engineering plans. Speech gave him the power to enlarge his food supply at will through an artifice called farming. Speech ended not only the evolution of man, by making it no longer necessary, but also the evolution of animals! Our animal friends—we're very sentimental about predators these days, aren't we—the lions, the tigers, the wolves, the rhinoceroses, the great apes, kangaroos, leopards, cheetahs, grizzly bears, polar bears, cougars—they're "endangered," meaning hanging on for dear life. Today the so-called animal kingdom exists only at the human beast's sufferance. The beast has dealt crippling blows even to the unseen empire of the microbes. Stunted adults from Third World countries with abysmal sanitation come to the United States and their offspring grow six or more inches taller, thanks to the wonders of hygiene. Cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens, turkeys would be extinct by now had not the human beasts hit upon the idea of animal husbandry. So far the human beast enjoys the luxury of crying sentimental tears over the deer because she's so pretty. But the day the human beast discovers deer in his cellar, fawns in his bedroom closet, bucks tangling horns in the attic at night above his very bedroom . . . those filthy oversized vermin, the deer, will be added to that big long list above. We're sentimental about the dolphins, because they're so smart. What about the tuna? It's okay to kill tunas by the ton because they're dimwits? It would take an evolutionary mystic (and there are such) to believe these animals will ever evolve their way out of the hole they're in thanks to man's power of speech.

Call the Chianti Squad: Haha. It must smell like my kitchen. Blair

Won't you be my neighbor? (h/t, Allah)

 

I will be seeing an early pre-screening of the movie, and will share my impressions when I do. But I think I already know what they will be: Another solidly-made, tasteful, and very entertaining Ron Howard film, representing no danger either to God or man.

A Nukak tribe from the Colombian bush has arrived in town, and seems to enjoy the free food and shelter. NYT  If it were the US, these folks would already be registered to vote.

Quoted from the French feminist  author Phyllis Chesler's new book, in a very entertaining mini-review at No Pasaran:

The kind of closed-minded "political correctness" which I have just described above is typical of groupthink and totalitarian thinking. If someone thinks for herself in an independent and creative way and dares to come up with non-party-line conclusions, she or he is then, in classic Orwellian style, deemed the enemy, a traitor, a non-person. Their work will not be read or discussed. They will not be invited to debate or to debate in a civilized and honorable way. They will be called a "racist" and a "neoconservative." If a feminist dares raise the specter of Jew-hatred and the demonization of the Jewish state among leftists and feminists, she will quickly discover that she has become unwelcome in the mainstream media and among leftists (who actually think of themselves as liberals), and among feminists.

But what is its safety record?

 

From a fishin' song by Woody Guthrie:

Well I went down to the fishing hole,
And I set down with my fishing pole;
Somethin' grabb'd my hook and it got my bait
And Jerked me out in the middle of the lake.
Huh it was some jump boy,
I got sunk, kinda baptized on credit.

Jumped in the river and went down deep,
There was a hundred pound cat-fish lying there asleep,
Well I jumped on his back and rode him all aroun'
Saddled him up and I came into town.
People came runnin', lookin', dogs a-barkin'
(Kids a-squallin').

Proof that fishing is a fair sport. Fisherman killed by large catfish.

Opie likes to tell me about the thriving Cuban art scene. Not even Fidel and his cops and thought police can destroy the human soul. This from a young Cuban artist:

 

At Maggie's Farm, we link things we would like to discuss, had we the time to do so. But what with milkin' the cows, feedin' the chickens, chasin' the bunnies out of the lettuce, poachin' deer, paintin' the shed, bakin' bread, teachin' the goats to speak English, practicin' juggling, shootin' rats at the dump, trainin' the dogs for fall, replacin' the geronificator on the old Ford, arguin' with the neighbor, beatin' the dog, greasin' the snake, and plowin' and plantin', we jes' cannot do it all. Country life.

Leatherback sea turtles stage a comeback. That is happy news. All credit to Bush, of course.

Date Rape. The very notion of date rape seems to be an invitation to injustice - although I am sure it occurs. Here's one guy who really got screwed, at RCP. The un-sayable dirty secret is that gals can get just as out of hand, and excited, as guys. The radical feminists deny that - probably because they don't: they are as sex-less as they are humor-less.

What's Wrong with Harvard? Plenty, and the college alums should get on the job and fix the mess. A new book.

Newark and School vouchers. Slowly but surely, it's an idea that is coming.

The insane rage of the Left. It will not help their case, but it energizes their base. Am. Thinker

Francis Fukayama takes a fresh look at his 1992 book. He remains a neo-Hegelian.

Just one quote:

The question is, therefore, whether the principles of liberty and equality that we see as the foundation of liberal democracy have a similar universal significance. I believe that this is the case, and I think that there is an overall logic to historical evolution that explains why there should be increasing democracy around the world as our societies evolve. It is not a rigid form of historical determinism like Marxism, but a set of underlying forces that drive human social evolution in a way that tells us that there should be more democracy at the end of this evolutionary process than at the beginning.

Take a few minutes, and read the whole thing.

Stolen from Mr. Free Market:

 

Truth is, I know a fair bit about algebra, and trig too, including many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse. I even remember key bits of calc.

I have no idea how anyone can consider themselves educated if they do not. And it isn't all that difficult - it's simple logic. I can teach anyone, with an intact brain, the basics of algebra in an hour. After the basics, it's all fun and creative problem-solving. Good for the mind.

Is it useful, or necessary? I would say so. There is not much that can be understood in depth without math. Silber at TCS takes on the reporters who "don't get it", (and thus surely cannot understand economics either, or statistics, science, or ...). It is difficult for me to believe that reporters would brag about not knowing basic math, but I guess it explains a lot. But how did the guy Silber mentions graduate from college, not to mention high school, without learning it?

Good piece. He also touches on the long history of algebra.

We will try not to rely
on Gagdad Bob too
much, but the guy is
good. He opens with a quote:

Nothing happened in the sixties except that we all dressed up. --John Lennon

He goes on to discuss what the freedoms of the 60s really mean, and why he rebelled against the fashionable dogma. One parapraph:

Obviously, freedom itself cannot be the goal of freedom, for that is a nonsensical tautology. But for the left, it is. This is why most leftist “liberation” movements quickly devolve into the liberation of one’s own inner slave master to further enslave them. Thus, the feminist movement has nothing to do with truly valuing femininity or allowing a woman to truly become herself in the deepest sense. In order to do that, you must specifically rebel against feminist dogma. Likewise, “sexual liberation” hardly leads to anything beyond self-indulgence. The civil rights movement which began with such noble ideals quickly became nothing more than an entrenched establishment platform for venal ethnic lobbying and special consideration. This reached another new low last week, with the massive criminal marches all over the U.S. Why does the left relate to these entitled narcissists? Oh, that’s why.

Yes, read it all.

If anyone gives you the idea that Dylan has lost it - forget it. He just gets more real and true. Less word-intoxicated, for sure, but this 2005 song is one of his very best, and not on any CD. Simple and perfect.

Tell Ol' Bill is available on i-Tunes, so we cannot offer the download. Listen. Lyrics here - on Maggie's.

Revolution

You say you want a revolution
Well you know
we all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know you can count me out, in
Don't you know it's gonna be alright
Alright Alright

You say you got a real solution
Well you know
we'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well you know
We're all doing what we can
If you want money for people with minds that hate
All I can tell you is brother you have to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be alright
Alright Alright

You say you'll change the constitution
Well you know
we'd all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well you know
You better free your mind instead
But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow
Don't you know know it's gonna be alright
Alright ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT ALRIGHT

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.

Mark Twain

So says Scott, of Bing Crosby.

"In the beginning was the Word..." Our favorite blogging metaphysician, Gagdad Bob, takes on gnosis and logos. You have to give his stuff a little time - he should not post more than once or twice a week: you cannot rush a search for Ultimate Truth. Like all really smart guys, Bob has his eccentricities: he can switch from the cosmic to hearty conservative politics so fast you can get whiplash. I do not think you can sue someone for mental whiplash...or can you? It is time to blogroll him.

But gnosis is neither naturalistic or idealistic. Rather, it is logoistic. That is, the truth of things is found neither in the external world nor in the mind that contemplates it. The esoterist worships neither gaia nor the intellect. Rather, he worships the eternal Word that is the source of each. As expressed by an anonymous Christian friend, reality is founded upon the Word, or Logos, “whose objective manifestation is the world of prototypes underlying the phenomenal world, and whose subjective manifestation is the light or prototype of human intelligence”: “all things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”

So therefore, the only truly true and objective knowledge is knowledge of the Word. Objects are only real in the sense that they inhere in the Word--otherwise we could not know them. And our intellectual conceptions--our gnosis--are only true insofar as they reflect the Word. Real truth is not a construct or acquisition of the ego, but something to which we humbly submit.

His whole piece is here.