Maggie's Farm

“I have a Glock 9 millimeter, and I’m a pretty good shot.”

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords told the New York Times last year.

Via Insty, Germany Abolishes Itself' – the publishing sensation that challenges Europe's diversity consensus:

How many people in Britain make a living from multiculturalism and “community cohesion”? The number of taxpayer and partly-taxpayer funded government bodies, community groups, political organisations and “charities” devoted towards diversity and equality or race relations is certainly in the four figures, and the total cost to the taxpayer must be several hundred millions of pounds – all totally wasted.

And

The regime of euphemism has not just led to mistakes. It has also empowered a class of so-called Gutmenschen in government and the academy. If Sarrazin is right, then much of what they have lately done is not just misguided but, however good their intentions, corrupt. They are fighting with considerable skill for their political lives. Sarrazin’s few political defenders, meanwhile, tend to have one thing in common — they are retired.

Lots of people out there wanting to destroy Western Civ. I am not sure what they'd like to see replace it, however. Perhaps the Great Transgender-Moslem-Communist-Green-Palestinian-Love and Peace Community Alliance. I bet they throw some real fun parties, but I have never been invited.

I am quite pleased with our Western roots, and with what it does and has done, and for what it makes possible - including the insane thinking which is a necessary side-effect of freedom - and which provides so much entertaining fodder for me at Maggie's.

Suspect's Downward Spiral - Police Records Show Accused Killer Growing More Erratic Before College Suspension

Sometimes you end up wondering who is more crazy - the MSM, or the lunatics. Or the politicians.

Almost everybody had a friend or an acquaintance who unraveled and became psychotic during late adolescence. I had a friend who did, first year of college. Still my friend, but he is a shell of a person. Too sad for words, and an eternal heartache for his parents. He was a star athlete and a math wiz, and now he can hardly feed himself or dress properly, and studies asteroids hitting the earth shut up in his room except when old friends take him out for lunch.

Of course, those asteroids might hit - but who cares? Who has time to worry about that? It's like worrying about Global Warming. Daily life beckons. Don't worry, be happy.

From American Spectator:

Okay, folks. Listen up. There are thousands of great colleges around the nation at which you can learn any skill or profession you choose. And in none of those colleges will you be so indoctrinated in contempt for your nation, its history and values as you will be in the Ivies. Give yourself a boost in life: for all the supposed benefits you'd get in an Ivy League school, you'll learn more and gain a more realistic view of your nation and the world if you attend a college that's not among the Ivies. Learn elsewhere, and graduate without having your nose so stuck in the air that you believe America isn't a force for good in the world. And trust me, guys: chicks dig the uniform, regardless of which college you graduated from.

Read the whole thing. Irony aside, I think we should have ROTC everywhere. In my view, there are four noble (or potentially noble) professions: Medicine, Law, Clergy, and Miltary. The rest of us like me are just regular Citizens - a highly noble thing in itself in America.

She was the first person blamed for the Arizona massacre by angry, hate-filled, destructive Lefty fanatics who have had her in their sights for two years. She speaks out now, presidentially.

Harsanyi: This 'Conversation' is Just a Setup:

Jeez, if I've never written anything that could be construed as violent or hateful, even metaphorically (though I'm sure belligerent and offensive vocabulary crept into columns as needed), what could I possibly have to reflect on? My only contribution to the crumbling discourse, it seems, is believing in the tenets of classical liberalism. That, in and of itself, is a sin.

This leaves the person with two choices: Revise your viewpoint, or shut up. Which, of course, is the point.

Related: Hijacking A Massacre

The Three Media Stooges, via Legal Ins

Insty: Mental Illness and mass murder

And also, a book: Madness in the Streets : How Psychiatry and the Law Abandoned the Mentally Ill. The PW blurb at Amazon says:

Taking aim at advocacy groups who view the homeless as ordinary people down on their luck, the authors of this scorching critique cite findings that 30% to 40% of the homeless suffer from major mental illness, and that a high proportion are substance abusers. Isaac, a sociologist, and freelance journalist Armat, blame the abandonment of the homeless mentally ill on the anti-psychiatry movement (led by Thomas Szasz, Ronald Laing, among others), on civil libertarians and on psychiatrists who foster the "delusion that preventive community psychiatry could eliminate mental illness." Arguing that we have replaced the mental hospital with the 18th-century poorhouse which threw together the mentally ill, the retarded, criminals and the displaced, they warn that a humane system of care will be costly and might involve treatment of some mentally ill persons against their will. Their support for judicious use of electroshock therapy will also stir controversy.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

God, nature, and chance must be against me, because I failed to win that $300 million Powerball. Oh well, maybe next time. And when I do, I'll buy a nice ski place near Killington.

The one pictured is for sale. I think it's ugly, but it would work OK as a party house.

Cold up here today. Love it, love that chill, but hate that stupid green logo for a macho ski area. Anyway, this is worth posting while I take a beer break to warm my fingers and toes: House Votes to Repeal “Job-Killing” Health Care Law 236-181.

It will go nowhere, with the Senate and the O's veto gel pen. Still, a strong message.

Hey - big par-tay here tonite. Readers invited, with toga or thong or whatever. Release those inhibitions! That is your News Junkie, down in front, locked and loaded.

Schneiderman asserts that it's like a funeral without a corpse: ...it’s just a harmless illusion, so why not just go along? 

I have learned that it is often good manners to pretend not to notice certain sorts of awkward or unpleasant things, but there has to be a limit. Like when the elephant in the parlor is taking a crap on your antique Persian.

Every naive, soft-hearted person wants a hand in this guy's redemption. I've dealt with people like Williams. It's a sucker's game, but a pretty good one. Ted Williams' Checkered Past Begins to Emerge.

Oh yeah - he's "spiritual" now, so watch your wallet.

NYT columnist: If censoring “Huckleberry Finn” gets more people to read it, why not do it?

Anybody who thinks they are in a position to bowdlerize Mark Twain needs to be sent back for re-education.

At The American, Living in the Political Wake of the Bubble. A quote:

One of the biggest causes of the bubble and financial crisis was the government itself. How will this highly political body be able to criticize the government? Let us recall the excellent question posed to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke by Senator Jim Bunning: “How can you regulate systemic risk when you are the systemic risk?”

I see Oil price ‘threat to recovery’.

Crude oil pricing is fascinating to me, but I know little about it. I do know that OPEC controls the big spigot, and thus controls global supply and global pricing. (Pricing is global, not local, and I do know that it is determined, in the final details, by global commodities exchanges.) But, in an interesting and rather cool feedback loop, if oil is too high, it can begin to strangle economies, reducing demand and thus reducing the prices the oil producers can get.

I also know that the American oil companies are, sadly, rather small players on the world scene, nowadays:

We probably have readers who can explain the vicissitudes of crude oil pricing, from the producers to the pump. If you can, please do. In 100 words or less (or is it "fewer"?).

At Reason, Ronald Reagan, Ron Paul, & the Fed: Q&A with David Stockman. I can remember when Stockman related how Reagan was never really serious about shrinking government.

Stockman caught hell from the true believers for that blasphemy.

How Videogames Are Changing the Economy - From Silicon Valley to China to media, they are leading the next productivity revolution. So hug a geek today.

I have never played a video game, and have no idea how anybody finds the time in life to do so. I am either blessed or cursed with more things I like to do, and more people I like to spend time with, than I have time for. However, the article says that there is much of real use emerging from the technology.

Lowry: Yes, the Greatest Country Ever - Our greatness is simply a fact.

A cheerful post.

Dynastar Twisters, because I like to do the bumps. No bumps means boring. I can't wait to try these on the giant Superstar moguls.

Skiing and hunting - and drinks by the fire - are the blessings of winter. Too bad I don't play Paddle, because that's another one of those winter blessings.

Headed up north right now to Killington with a gang of pals with wives and/or girlfriends, for a merry weekend. We were going to do Sugarloaf, but decided against that drive. We have a Par-tay house, and one of our gang is happily in the program so we always have a fully-sober and emotionally-mature driver.

HNY to our readers.

Am Thinker: Snow Blind at the NYT

At Watts, Terence Kealey: What Does Climategate Say About Science? It's a good brief history of how science works. A quote:

...scientists are not disinterested, they are interested, and as a consequence science is not dispassionate or fully transparent, rather it is human and partially arcane. As I argue elsewhere, science is not the public good of modern myth, it is a collegiate and quasi-private or invisible college good. That means, by the way, that it requires no public subsidies. More relevantly, it means that individual scientist’s pronouncements should be seen more as advertisements than as definitive.

Peer review, too, is merely a mechanism by which scientists keep a collective control over access to their quasi-private enterprise. One the e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia included this from Professor Phil Jones, referring to two papers that apparently falsified his work:- “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”