Maggie's Farm

More good news from Iraq. Watch Iraq quietly slip from the front pages, just as Afghanistan did. 

Eric Schmitt in the NYT: "The top Marine officer in Iraq said Friday that the number of attacks against American troops in Sunni-dominated western Iraq and death tolls had dropped sharply over the last four months, a development that he called evidence that the insurgency was weakening in one of the most violent areas of the country. " Click here: The New York Times > International > Middle East > Insurgency Is Fading Fast, Top Marine in Iraq Says

Yo shmucko editor,
Your blog is just one more fascist right-wing Bushitler rant. Shut it down before the government does. You jerks are a bunch of
stupid ----s. Get a job if you can do anything useful which I doubt, or mow somebodys lawn or clean there garage if you can handel that, and shut the ---- up. No one reads you anyway, you ---ing bunch of hatful unAmerican ----s. Plus you sound like ----ing Christian nutjobs. Hey - guess what? - religion is gone - gone - from Amerika. Gone. We are free from that happy horse----. Get real, schmuckos. We do what we want now.
Anonymous, in "northern California"

Dear Loyal Reader,
Whew... well, we do  love getting mail from our readers. It is deeply gratifying to know that decent, socially-appropriate, well-bred, sensitive, tolerant, well-educated folks like you are reading our blog. You are a testament to our gene pool and to our world-class educational system. I am sure you appreciate our poetry selections, and this kind of thoughtful debate on the issues of the day is just what the world needs. Just curious - do you happen to wear a pony-tail? 
Sincerely,
Bird Dog, Schmucko-in-Chief

Doc Higgins has his password but can't figure out how to sign on, so I will copy his occasional emails until he figures it out:

          I am disgusted by the politicization of the Schiavo case. There is a time to live and a time to die for each of us. Doctors are the only ones who know how to work with families to let people go when their time has come. Clergy too. We do this routinely. Courts and politicians have no business messing with things that are beyond them, things of the heart and the soul and the spirit. The family dispute should never have gotten to a court in the first place. I am not blaming anyone in particular, because I don't know the details, but this should never have gotten to this point. Tough cases make bad law, and this sets a terrible precedent in all ways. Shame on you Repubs. God forbid we ever end up with Socialized medicine. Every case will be like this, and we American-trained docs will get so disgusted we'll quit and open dry-cleaning shops.

"80 percent of success is showing up."

Woody Allen

As a hart longs for flowing streams,
so longs my soul for thee, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and behold the face of God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
while men say to me continually, "Where is your God?"

from Psalm 42, a psalm of the Sons of Korah

"At the very seat of Texas government," thunders the ACLU brief, "between the Texas State Capitol and the Texas Supreme Court, is large monument quoting a famous passage of religious scripture taken, almost verbatim, from the King James Bible." Horrors. From the tone you'd think they had a monument to Hitler on the Texas Capitol. Well, it's part of the job of the ACLU to provoke and infuriate, but it usually ends up with judges determining whether values and morals and cultural traditions and religion should have any role to play in legal decision-making. Lately, it seems not. To renounce values and morals and traditions is one good way to destroy a nation. Let's begin with a couple of new members of the Supremes. As I think about it, the Hitler monument would probably be fine with the ACLU...Click here: Mona Charen: Thou shalt have no others gods before the ACLU

Cuba Watch - Via Opie

"The news today was pretty interesting - fidel came out screaming that Forbes magazine had included him on its annual billionaire's list earlier this month, under the special category of 'kings, queens, and dictators.' Since I know someone at Forbes, I'll add a few tidbits." Babalu Blog is the best Fidel-watching blog:  Click here: Babalu Blog

Cheney's Hard-Headed Realism

Leslie Gelb in WSJ:"As colleagues attest, Mr. Cheney harbors a bleak view of humankind, especially of Democrats and non-Americans. While well aware of American hypocrisies, he conveys the clear sense that other countries are worse, much worse. He condemns those countries that condemned us for unilateralism in Iraq, while themselves failing to enforce fistfuls of U.N. resolutions against Saddam. He reminds others who harrumph now over what we're doing in Iraq that they hardly ever criticized Saddam's monstrous behavior. A lot of Americans just feel safer with a guy who will stick up for America, hold other countries to account, and talk about the world realistically.

Meantime, too many Democrats portray the rest of the world as just a bunch of misunderstood bunny rabbits who misunderstand us. It's just one big misunderstanding. Democrats often seem to say that we can cure so much of the nastiness in the world with anti-poverty programs, and by allowing more foreign students to study here. Democrats correctly argue that while compromise remains the only proven way to gain allied cooperation, the Bush team until recently scoffed at compromising with them. But that good point gets lost in the naïve sense of the world Democrats convey."
Read entire: Click here: WSJ.com - Cheney Envy

This excerpted and paraphrased from a rare phone chat with the busy Yankee Farmer, who is a straight-talker and figures he earned the right to say whatever he wants after his winter in Korea, (with all expletives deleted - the LYF hasn't heard about PC yet, and never will):

The LYF is a passionate conservationist, as everyone knows. Meaning stay the --- off my farm. But he is pleased by yesterday's Senate vote permitting drilling in the ANWAR. Pleased because it is a victory of reason over pure emotion, a victory over what Bird Dog terms "sentimental environmentalism." The drilling will harm little. And we Americans love oil - don't try to tell me you don't slurp it up like Evian. He's got a tractor that gets about 2 miles/gallon, and needs a new quart of oil every two hours. Loves oil.

If people really want a pristine ANWAR, first quit your car and your heat and your electric. Second, chase those pesky Eskimos out of there. They don't recycle their beer cans and Canadian Club bottles, they shoot Rudolf in and out of season, harpoon whales for fun, shoot baby polar bears for target practice, eat cute seals when their check is late, and generally scare the wildlife and make a mess. Similar to what the LYF does in Vermont.

And since these poor, smelly, ignorant, pathetic folks are basically homeless - you can't call a snow pile a home or call seal fat food - they should be moved to government housing projects in Anchorage or Detroit, where they could enjoy the dignity this oppressed minority deserves, along with all of the blessings of civilization including 24-hour corner liquor stores, Planned Parenthood, the local Democratic Club, and McDonald's.

Now if you want to make some place pristine, start with Vermont or Massachusetts or Connecticut. Ski condos, houses, asphalt, schools, buildings, and too many obnoxious people. Who needs 'em? Who are these people, anyway? Get 'em out of there. And while you're at it, get rid of the darn Indians too and their filthy, polluting, corrupting casinos. Just leave the damn farms alone.

(As a qualified 1/8th Iroquois,  the LYF is ALLOWED to criticize Indians, but he would say that you immigrants are too scared to, aren't you? You land-stealing immigrants don't want to find an arrow or a stone ax in your chest while you're sleeping, do ya?) 

Steroid-Ball

The circus hearings yesterday were an embarassment. The players made fools of the grand-standing politicians, showing them minimal respect, which was a true delight. I could easily imagine McGuire and Sosa etc. thinking "Who are these jerks?" Well, it's the end of Steroid-Ball, and that's a good thing.

"Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing at all."

Helen Keller

There are 8 million blogs worldwide. Approximately. Let's hope there are more readers than bloggers, although bloggers read eachother's stuff. Besides general interest (or non-interest) blogs like this one, there are tons of niche blogs that get scientific or technical information around far better than email could. Here's just one example that I read regularly that focuses on Cognitive Psychology: Click here: Cognitive Daily

The Ten Suggestions

Since we're eliminating the outdated, no-fun, difficult, insensitive commandments, along with the socially-dangerous Easter Bunny - I mean Holiday Bunny - it's time to begin work on the rational New Ten Commandments, as determined by clear-thinking, scientifically unbiased, psychologically-approved, sensitive, government-certified Professional Experts - logically and humanistically-determined with proven culture-free or culture-neutral methods under sterile laboratory conditions. They will be presented as they emerge from the Scientific Laboratory of Rational Human Behavioral Management, from a secret, secure, mountaintop location, via email. Here's the first:

The New First Commandment

Thou shalt love and worship the State as the source of all Good and all Wisdom and of Life itself.

There shalt be only one other God before that, which is the State's Holy Sacred Father - the Great International State Uber-God, who knoweth your every thought and liketh them not, and who resides in the Heavenly umlaut-free interstices of cyberspace. The Beloved State (any State) was born by Scientific Miracle from the Sacred Spirit of the Uber-God, and is His only Son. You must have faith in Modern Social Science and Modern Chemistry that this is Truth.

The following extract from The New Leviticus seems to expand somewhat on the above: Either are best worshipped by sacrifice of the individual soul and spirit at specially-designed, social-scientific altars which will soon be present at all government locations including fire-houses and police stations, where they will replace the antiquated creches of false gods.To help achieve this worship, thou shalt worship and love everything that advances the International Socialist Movement or The Brave New World as predicted by Huxley, and anything that undermines American values or American power or American prosperity or American individual freedom or American religious traditions, because Aermicans are the Uber-God's Unchosen People. Members of the media, educators, fashionably right-thinking people, socially-appropriate people, people of color, vegans, chardonnay-sippers, women, and related types SHALT NOT criticize any left-leaning, anti-American, or anti-religious organization or government, politician, dictator, mass-murderer anywhere in the world, ever. This includes Castro, China, Chavez, Kerry-Kennedy, the ACLU, Mbagawa Mgububwe, Kim Sung Il, Pol Pot, Saddam - woops - too late, NOW, the French, The New York Times, Al Quaida, and the like. 

Religion is always a threat to a State unless the State controls the religion. Egypt figured it out by making the King God. Rome tried, but I gather no-one took it too seriously. Falun Gong is of course outlawed in China, as a competitor to allegiance to the State. Falun Gong seems to be a religion-like movement that is concerned with Righteous Thoughts and physical devotions. Herein the testimony of a twice-imprisoned and brainwashed practioner from the Falun Gong website: Click here: Falun Dafa Clearwisdom.net

Oh, the ragman draws circles
Up and down the block.
I'd ask him what the matter was
but I know that he don't talk.
And the ladies treat me kindly
And furnish me with tape,
but deep inside my heart
I know I can't escape.

Oh, Mama, can this really be the end,
to be stuck inside of Mobile
with the Memphis blues again.

Dylan, from Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again

Francis Crick and Oliver Sachs seem like an odd pairing, but so does Oliver Sachs and anyone. A wonderful reminiscence from Sachs - two guys with huge curiosity and brainpower: "The central problem of consciousness and its neurobiological basis, he was convinced, would be fully understood, "solved," by 2030. "You will see it," he often said to Ralph, "and you may, Oliver, if you live to my age."  Read entire:   Click here: The New York Review of Books: Remembering Francis Crick

Ms. Malkin has the moonbats well-characterized, but the moonbats serve several useful functions: 1) the NYT can always use the word "controversial"; 2) objects of humor; 3) raising our self-esteem: "The most unhinged of left-wing activists, from breast-exposing pacifists to the conspiracy-mongers of MoveOn.org, will descend on New York, Washington and other major media markets to "mark the two-year anniversary of the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq." Click here: Michelle Malkin: Moonbats on parade

Doug Giles always presents a muscular, SUV-style Christianity that is inspiring and a good antidote to more passive or goody-goody versions: "Listen: true spirituality is incredibly practical, robust and workable no matter where you dwell or what you do.  If your spirituality/Christianity isn’t viable and stout in the most difficult of cultures, then it ain’t the stuff Moses and Christ sold."  Click here: Doug Giles: Robust Faith

A magical snowstorm in Vermont on Saturday. Better than the Gates?

Man can not live on bread alone. Is the Salvation Army gradually abandoning its soul-saving mission? Click here: Commentary: Soup, Soap, and Salvation: 125 Years of The Salvation Army in the U.S.

It takes one to know one. David Horowitz, ex-radical Leftist, has it all figured out. The players, and the name of their game. And broken down into subcategories for ready reference ! The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy, unmasked ! Click here: Defining the American Left

Will North Korea be brought down by the information revolution?  A good update: Click here: onefreekorea: Breaking the Information Blockade

How come everyone gets it except for the university faculties. Or maybe they really do. "The idea that we should trust the Democrats because they are the good guys is what the postmodernists call a narrative, the myth that a ruling elite tells to justify its power.  Don’t believe a word of such discourse, the professors of English Literature tell us.  OK, we won’t.  We understand now that the Democratic narrative about helping the little guy is just a naked bid for power."  Click here: The American Thinker

The Bird Dog's vision of utopia would be a world in which the government would leave him alone as long as he follows minimal, uncomplicated, reasonable laws. He would much rather spend his time in the world of big enduring ideas, the worlds of farming and gardening and hunting and bird-watching, the world of poetry and music and dance and science and the Kingdom of God. While he believes that politics is cheap entertainment (since the Greeks - Demosthenes was a big draw), but it is also about dopey, mercenary, small people trying to mess with our lives. Like the LYF, the Bird Dog has a strong Libertarian streak.

So, with politics, unless you are talking about freedom and human dignity as granted by God, not man, the Bird Dog feels he's dealing with trivia. Still, ya hafta fight the good fight even though it may not mean much in the big picture, and even though the tyranny of one Caesar or another may win out in the end.

In moments of frustration, the Bird Dog just feels that we need to politically crush the Lefty totalitarians, the Statists, and the World Government dreamers, so we can get on with what is important in life. But it feels never-ending. It is never-ending. Our forefathers set up an arena for a permanent struggle between individual freedom and government power. I notice that even some serious science-dedicated blogs cannot resist detours into politics. Being Citizens of a Republic is a big deal, and a big part of our identity as Americans. So we can't drop the ball. It's a matter of Duty. (And anyway, if all of the Leftys saw the light, we Americans would still find plenty things to argue about.) But I still wish that that Duty didn't have to intrude quite so much on the important stuff...

"It's easy from the cheap seats."

Anon.