Maggie's Farm

A garden at Villa le Balze, Fiesole, a year and a half ago. The morning mist obscures the view of Florence spread out across the Arno valley below.

I noticed the similarity between Gen. Pacepa's examples of KGB psy-ops and John Kerry's testimony in Congress. So did Sissy Willis, but Gateway shows the real deal.

Gateway calls it "useful idiocy," but I think otherwise. "Useful," but not an idiot: I am not saying he was a spy, but perhaps a willing ally of the Soviets, and one who had clearly been handed a KGB script designed to undermine support for the war. I agree with Sen. Kerry about almost nothing political, but he isn't an idiot.

Kerry was reading from the KGB propaganda script, word for word. So am I insane when I sometimes wonder what Bill Clinton was doing on that trip to Moscow (also here) while be was at Oxford?

Yes, probably paranoid, but if I had told you a week ago that Kerry was reading a KGB script when he testified to Congress, you would have (rightly) called me crazy too.

There are Americans out there who truly hate America enough to ally themselves with America's enemies. That sad and unsettling fact opens the door to all sorts of suspicious thoughts which are unpleasant to entertain. That is what happens when one's reality is shaken. I thought Kerry was disloyal, but not a man who would read a KGB script in Congress.

Coulter on poverty. It's a simple fact that poverty in America correlates with terrible decisions in life about having babies (h/t, Vanderleun):

"Democrats resolutely refuse to tell the poor the secret to not being poor: Keep your knees together until marriage.

"That's it. Not class size, not preschool, not even vouchers, though vouchers would obviously improve the education of all students. You could have lunatics running the schools -- and often do -- and if the kids live with married parents, they will end up at good colleges and will lead happy, productive lives 99 percent of the time.

"But Democrats don't care about the poor. They don't care about the children. They care about government teachers and other government bureaucrats -- grimy, dowdy women who "woo" at political debates. Or as CNN calls them, the "young," "hip" crowd."

We are interested in IQ at Maggie's Farm. I suspect that most of our readers  are among the 10% that measures over 120.

If yours is over 120, Charles Murray believes you need Special Education.

(Sorry those links on the archived piece didn't work.)

We should be grateful for the free heat, since we pay plenty for heat from October through May. Thought this photo from last winter might help us cool off.

Definitely Fred country, says Beth at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, who posted the above relevant Lynyrd. Much as we are open to Fred, we don't really know where he is coming from yet, or what sort of candidate he can really be.

h/t Ace

It is my honor today to announce the MFBA winners for the blogs with the most interesting images and photography. Our editor and staff have voted unanimously this year.

Best Totty on a Non-Porn Blog: Theo Spark

Best Historic Photographs of Real Life: Sippican Cottage

Best Old Photos, General Category: Dr. X

Best Images of British Military History: Free Market Fair Tales

Congratulations to our winners, who we expect will wear their readily-recognizable MFBA medal proudly if and when they ever leave the house.

For the fine arts to revive, they must recover their spiritual center. Profaning the iconography of other people's faiths is boring and adolescent.

Thus comments atheist Camille Paglia in her excellent essay. She makes the case, with which I agree, that art without a spiritual center quickly degenerates into narcissism, commercialism, propagandizing, or adolescent shock-art. Another quote:

A primary arena for the conservative-liberal wars has been the arts. While leading conservative voices defend the traditional Anglo-American literary canon, which has been under challenge and in flux for forty years, American conservatives on the whole, outside of the New Criterion magazine, have shown little interest in the arts, except to promulgate a didactic theory of art as moral improvement that was discarded with the Victorian era at the birth of modernism. Liberals, on the other hand, have been too content with the high visibility of the arts in metropolitan centers, which comprise only a fraction of America. Furthermore, liberals have been complacent about the viability of secular humanism as a sustaining creed for the young. And liberals have done little to reverse the scandalous decline in urban public education or to protest the crazed system of our grotesquely overpriced, cafeteria-style higher education, which for thirty years was infested by sterile and now fading poststructuralism and postmodernism. The state of the humanities in the US can be measured by present achievement: would anyone seriously argue that the fine arts or even popular culture is enjoying a period of high originality and creativity? American genius currently resides in technology and design. The younger generation, with its mastery of video games and its facility for ever-evolving gadgetry like video cell phones and iPods, has massively shifted to the Web for information and entertainment.

I would argue that the route to a renaissance of the American fine arts lies through religion.

Read the whole thing in Arion. h/t, reader.

Image: One of Andy Warhol's Tomato Soup images, to my mind just one example of "art" lacking in a center - unless his idea was to mock the very idea of artistry. He made himself fabulously wealthy with this sort of stuff, but his Hollywood-style celebrity was at the core of it all.

Read the Amazon reviews of Piper's Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist.

I ordered it yesterday. I am grateful to a Brit friend for letting me know about Piper, whose church in Minnesota he attended last week while on a cross-country road trip. The high points of his trip? Meeting Piper, and camping in Glacier National Park.

Two excellent links from readers:

US Forest fires, mapped and updated. You can click on each fire and learn the details. I wonder how that map compares with past summers. Montana and Idaho look rough.

Mark Steyn implies that the media covers up for Saudi jihad-supporters.

From ONN, h/t, Evangelical Outpost

I won’t meddle any more than Arthur Sulzberger does.

Rupert Murdoch, on his purchase of Dow Jones and the WSJ

From Le nozze di Figaro (h/t, Reader). When Figaro was first produced in Vienna in 1786, the mockery of the aristocracy was shocking. Shortly thereafter, however, Emperor Joseph ll had to set a limit of 9 encores, because the 4-hour opera was running too late at night.

A Do-it-Yourself Test for Sociopathy

"I was nowhere near there." Neurotic Guilt and Politics

The Connetquot River (a trout stream on Long Island)

Tempest in a B cup: Boobs, bosoms, and tits (no p*rn)

By the way, can you name that library in the photo?

One of the most beautiful sights in the world: A reserved clay court at 8 AM on an August Saturday morning.

I've seen lots of bonnie lassies travellin' far and wide,
But my heart is centred noo on bonnie Kate McBride;
And altho' I'm no a chap that throws a word away,
I'm surprised mysel' at times at a' I've got to say

Chorus:
Roamin' in the gloamin' on the bonnie banks o' Clyde,
Roamin' in the gloamin' wi' ma lassie by ma side,
When the sun has gone to rest, that's the time that I like best,
O, it's lovely roamin' in the gloamin'!

One nicht in the gloamin' we were trippin' side by side.
I kissed her twice, and asked her once if she would be my bride;
She was shy, and so was I, we were baith the same,
But I got brave and braver on the journey comin' hame.
Chorus:

Last nicht efter strollin' we got hame at half-past nine.
Sittin' at the kitchen fire I asked her to be mine.
When she promised I got up and danced the Hielan' Fling;
I've just been to the jewellers and I've picked a nice wee ring.
Chorus:

This "traditional" Scottish song was written and performed by the entertainer Sir Harry Lauder. "Gloamin'" is twilight. Here's the music in midi.

The Clancy Brothers with Tommy Makem, Brennan on the Moor. Only Liam remains of the original group. A piece by Rick Moran here.

The big sale is on until the end of August.

Long-time readers know how much we all love the Teaching Company. It's one of the ways we all try to continue to learn. But it's much more fun than school, because no single school could contain so many suberb and enthusiastic communicators - plus no tests or term papers. We use the CDs in the car and while working out.

I cannot praise these people enough. Look through their catalog to find the gaping holes in your education. In my family, we trade them around, but we only buy them during the sales.

h/t LGF. The Brit Left is shocked!

Like him or not, he is an impressive and accomplished fellow. h/t, RCP. I like Fred, but I suspect Giuliani wants the job more. The nation might be ready for a black president, but is it ready for an Italian? Not many Italians outside of the Northeast, and even I cannot spell his name. OK, OK - we're all Americans, I know.