Maggie's Farm

I will be elsewhere for the next three days, but I want to deposit these droppings. Yes, I am remembering this weekend. My gratitude for those who have fought and died in the service of this country is endless.

Embarassing re Indian men. Who knew?

Jungle Trader is back from his medical adventure, and offers a post about rubber balls.

RIP Les Lines. (h/t, NYM). I grew up with Lines' mag. Great stuff. Audubon Mag sucks now. BTW, Bodio's site has wonderfuo potential, but they do not post enough - especially given the size of their roster.

AVI wonders why it is so difficult to discuss issues with Liberals. His readers have some thoughts.

Using Clinton as a firewall? Hmmm.

Sissy: As Arizona goes, so goes the nation? Ask Massachusetts

I foresee radical chic, TV talk shows, and a book deal. Shucks, all she wanted to do was to kill elected government officials.

Getting tired of being outraged?

Has Obama Lost the Mandate of Heaven? Or is the media just beginning to do their job?

Villainous: Looks, Men, Women: Blah, Blah, Blah

The coming war on bacon. That's a sure loser.

Talking to Libs: The Right Needs To Extend The Olive Branch To The Left

Steyn notices some comments moderation in Canada

Tony Blair and loot from climate change

Empathy: Obama court nominee: Serial killer’s sexual sadism is a mitigating factor

Americans Fleeing Border Invasion

Feds Issue Terror Watch for the Texas/Mexico Border

Rossi runs, hitting 'establishment'

WSJ: ObamaCare vs. Small Business

Sipp is writing again: Das Is Culch

Brill: The Teachers' Union's last stand

Douthat thinks conservatvies should compromise their principles  before they have to make political compromises

Neo: The welfare state’s dirty little secret is out

The commerce clause and Obamacare

Coyote: Germany’s Ban on Short-Selling

Climate alarmism in Britain: “…the poll figures are going through the floor.”

Related, Oxford Union debates warming vs economics, warming loses

The impending battle for Kandehar

Megan: Public Pensions Headed for Disaster

Axelrod implies that Sestak is lying. This is a potential serious mess.

We have no data, but the government should do something anyway

Simon on the culture wars:

Liberalism, as we have known it for decades, is on the defensive. With the welfare state unsustainable, it has nowhere to turn and its adherents are turning tail in every direction. They are mad and they are, in many cases, unmoored. Lifetime ideologies are beginning to crumble. Personality constructs are at risk.

Surber:

Almost half the planet, or up to 3 billion people, depend on fish as the main source for protein in their diet.

There are not enough wild fish to feed all those people.

Google wants to protect cougars from themselves

Demographics and the wefare state: Europe forced to re-examine the concept of “reality”

Denmark: Clear-Cutting Forests to Save the Planet

Peterson at Am Thinker can't believe the O stood for this. I believe it. I think he thinks the enemy is us.

Germany now runs the EU - or owns the EU

Chavez moves against the food producers. Brilliant. Let them eat cake.

Catch up with Washington Reb. One quote: "even peace & love finds that violence is a final measure of intellectual, ethical and philosophical conviction."

The new culture war:

This is not the culture war of the 1990s. It is not a fight over guns, gays or abortion. Those old battles have been eclipsed by a new struggle between two competing visions of the country’s future. In one, America will continue to be an exceptional nation organized around the principles of free enterprise—limited government, a reliance on entrepreneurship and rewards determined by market forces. In the other, America will move toward European-style statism grounded in expanding bureaucracies, a managed economy and large-scale income redistribution. These visions are not reconcilable. We must choose.

Mead:

We are, I fear, living on inherited social capital.  We have cultural patterns and folkways in our society that were created in a time when conscious moral struggle and individual moral responsibility were the subject of more serious introspection and education than they often are today.  These patterns are eroding and the folkways are losing their power and, unfortunately, so far we seem to be falling short in our efforts to find new ways of building spiritual commitment and a striving for moral excellence in the rising generation.

This almost never ends well; fortunately a surprisingly large number of young people today are worried about the moral and spiritual vacuum around them.

Governor Cuomo ll

Socrates visits modern Greece

New Jersey goes Greek

Crittenden: Duty, Honor, Blah Blah Blah, Etc.

Arizona laws vs. New York practices

Krauthammer: This Admin is lawless

Insane on the Canadian border

K Street cashes in on bill

Why the Republicans Could Still Lose in November

Steyn asks Why is (DC taxpayer) Jonah Goldberg buying condoms for 30-year old men he doesn't know?

Town in RI heads into receivership

Powerline: In Sweden and Switzerland, 7 of 10 people work past 50. In France, only half do.

Gratzer in the B Herald: Central planning’s bad medicine begins:

President Barack Obama has nominated Dr. Donald Berwick to a position largely unstaffed during the Bush administration: head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the two Great Society programs.

Berwick has decades of experience in health policy and, on paper, would seem a perfect candidate for the job. But he has fallen into the trap of many intellectual elites, which we might call the Harvard Disease: assuming that a government committee can guide one-sixth of the national economy into efficiency

Texas:

The State Board of Education's offense is great -- namely, restoring to notice in Texas textbooks, to a certain eminence even, quaint ideas about federalism and the religious viewpoint of the American founders.  

McArdle: How to Save for Retirement in One Easy Step

Powerline: The Loser Letters: A Belated Re-Plug

Insty on the legality of recording the police

Where Brazil gets their energy

Douthat: Can anything overcome the dynamics of statism?

Krauthammer: Obama Refuses to Stand Up For His Own Country

Proposed Louisiana Law Would Ban Any Online Speech Intended to “Embarrass, or Cause Emotional Distress” to an Under-17-Year-Old

Rush Blitzes Clueless, Hypocritical Mexican President

Related: Mexican president: Of course we ask immigrants to show their papers

From Robin Hanson's Regulation Ratchets:

How strong would regulations have to be before you’d say that a prolonged period of no big disaster suggests we need weaker regulations? When did you last hear someone using this reason to suggest we weaken a particular regulation?

Chinese Snap to Attention for Bra-Removing Contest

Blumenthal reminded me of Spitzer too. The press seems disinclined to give him a pass, but that will probably pass in a day or two.

Related and amusing: "I Did Not Serve In That Country, Vietnam"

Ace gives Kinsley hell. Rightly so.

Government by Professors? Or Death by Professor.

Immigrant crossings into Arizona on the rise

Related: Why does Mexico want people to leave? And how come they don't let people move to Mexico?

Reason: From Banning Books to Banning Blogs - How the DISCLOSE Act will restrict free speech

Dick Morris: One more vote for the Senate

Spain's "Green jobs" lose 2 jbs for each one created

The moral life of babies

Chuck Schumer vs. Free Speech:

As we noted in our amicus brief supporting Citizens United, the FEC now has regulations for 33 types of contributions and speech and 71 different types of speakers. Regardless of the abstract merit of the various arguments for and against limits on political contributions and spending, this very complexity raises serious concerns about whether the law can be enforced consistent with the First Amendment.  

Pat Buchanan: Greece should default

Attack Machine: Has Obama made enough money?

Chris Shays watched Blumenthal go down that road

Is the O all about sex appeal? Am Thinker

A new holy site? Second mosque planned in shadow of ground zero

Does free trade make humans human?

Because they are so good at running things? Chris Matthews Wants Obama to “Nationalize” The Oil Companies

Got Kleenex? How Hugo Chávez broke my heart. She says she is an "idealist." Meaning reality does not overly concern her.

China does not want to be part of the Post-War World Order. I can't blame them for that.

Who owns the USA? Nice of them to let us use it.

Texas doctors opting out of Medicare at alarming rate

The collapse of private insurors is not a bug, it's a feature: Medical insurance in MA

They lent us the money, so it's their fault: Greece Considering Legal Action Against U.S. Banks for Crisis

Reason: We Are Out of Money -American governance won’t begin to inch forward until the political class faces basic facts.

Less Than One-Third of US Meteorologists Believe In Manmade Global Warming

More Moslems in bikinis, please

Bruce Walker: The Left's War on Free Speech

The wrecking of Venezuela - Venezuelans are starting to fall out of love with their president. Will they be allowed to vote him out of power? h/t, Fausta

From Black and Right's Obama’s Risky ‘Southern Strategy’ II,

With the latest crisis that can’t go to waste, the Obama Administration is now using the Arizona immigration law to codify the Latino vote against Republicans in an attempt to save the Democrat majority. I guess one could say it’s ironic that the same party that excused its own segregationist past by revising the intent of the ‘Southern Strategy’, has now implemented its own.

Obamacare: “Is the Cure Worse than the Disease?”

Samuelson: How Much Should the Government Spend?

Vanderleun finds the bullshit in the gelato

Kinsley tries to explain why the Tea Partiers are much worse people than the 60s protesters. Lame.

Globe: Health care fails small businesses. Related, A Technocrat's Fantasy - and our nightmare

Why does the O avoid the press?

AVI on ingratitude. It's human nature to resent the giver.

Our friend Tiger moved from a fancy stone mansion to a real American home.

Surber: Why Britain won’t get better

Can the Murtha seat go Repub? Unlikely, but possible. Also, Special interests pour cash into Pennsylvania race

CT teens who care more about Polar Bears than you do. h/t, Vanderleun

Climate change all around our solar system

Mort Zuckerman: The Crippling Price of Public Employee Unions

Leaving late tonight for a long weekend, putting the boat in the water, etc. Leaving these links. Y'all fill in for me, heah?

Gov. Christie: N.J. gov. sets tone for US. Wow. NJ got lucky with him. Schwartzenegger is no match for the fat guy.

"We Asked, You Answered: What You Would Do If You Were The Opposite Sex For A Day." h/t, Linkiest. Yo, Tiresias.

City Journal: A Hidden History of Evil - Why doesn’t anyone care about the unread Soviet archives? Why, indeed?

Small Scale Wind Power Analysis – Fail. Everybody is trying to make $ from the dying global warming scam as the earth continues to cool.

Surber - Obama: Policies we can’t stand

Imagine a CA Dem doing what a Socialist is doing

Wizbang on Katrina Oil spill:

Rush Limbaugh has said for years that opinion polls by news organizations are nothing more than efforts to measure how effectively their reporting has impacted the public's perception of current events. Looks like he was right once again.

Henninger: The We're-Not-Europe Party

Global cooling causes floods

College kid reports on his required Diversity Class. Bring barf bag.

Middle school kids in CA made this totalitarian video. Bring barf bag plus weapons

Federal War on Salt Could Spoil Country Hams. Good grief.

I am for a war against people who want to tell me what to eat.

Pethokoukis: How to Pay Down the Debt

Another side of the Sen. Bob Bennet story from Rick Moran. I kinda agree with Rick, but it's OK.

Marketing a mutt: Labradoodles

An apologia for Jonestown. Who knew that Jones was so embedded in CA politics?

Insty: Our sexist higher ed system

An  ATM that Dispenses Pure Gold

Nyquist: white noise and information flow

Is Turkey headed for the dark side?

Is the admin's policy to throw Israel under the bus?

The depopulation of Greenland

Delayed Cement Plugging Is a Focus

Investigating Michael Mann

Goldberg on Woodrow Wilson's progressive legacy

Trickle-down misery in LA

Interesting brief video on Sweden's capitalist welfare state

Gateway: Unreal. Lib Media Outraged That Arizona Will Ban Classes That “Promote Overthrow of US Government”

Ace: 87% of Americans are racist teabagging reactionaries

Is it  time to repeal DADT ?

Also from Q&O, re obesity:

An “epidemic”.  A “national health crisis“.  Got it? 

We have a climate crisis.  Solution: Big government.   We have a financial crisis.  Solution: Big government.  We have a health care crisis.  Solution: Big government.  We have an childhood obesity crisis.

Create a “crisis” and then create the solution. Any guess what the solution might be?  If you’ve been paying attention lately, you do...

Volokh: Another European Prosecution for Insulting Religion. Ridiculous.

RNC: 130 House seats in play

Prosecutorial evil: The Tonya Craft Case: The Mask Slips Off. Indeed, it was a witch trial. h/t Coyote's Katie Bar the Door

Pelosi Says Illegal Aliens Are... Patriotic? States beside Arizona are planning to deal with illegals. Maggie's supports legal immigration, at a level which the citizens deem appropriate. With so many young folks unable to find work, I am not sure that we need tons of immigrants right now. Really, they should work to fix their own countries so they don't feel the need to come here. That would be the right and patriotic thing for people to do.

The political generation gap

The GOP's poor understanding of blogs

US taxpayers helping to bail out Greece. American taxpayer welfare for the Greeks - for whom tax-dodging is a national sport?

Whiteout: The American left is celebrating its hope to racially transform America

Barone: In Britain, a Cautionary Tale for U.S. Parties

A big rush: Democrats poised to move measures with high price tags

Another Rush: He's getting married (again)

The Euro:

'The biggest 'all-in' in the history of poker,' was how Henrik Enderlein, economics professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, described the massive aid package  assembled on Sunday night in an effort to save the Euro from collapse.

Many observers see the measure as delaying the end of the Euro, not preventing it.

Re Kagan at Driscoll:

“[Are you] suggesting that Princeton, Harvard and NYC isn’t the totality of real life?” former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who followed the same academic path, joked in an e-mail when asked about the women’s parallel tracks…

Is Andrew Sullivan Kicking Off A Media Frenzy Over Kagan’s Sexuality? She's not a butch lesbian even though she looks like one, say friends. Who cares?

The Pill turns fifty: are we having fun yet?

Obamacare discourages employers from hiring the young, and part-timers.

64% Still Rate Being A Mother As A Woman’s Most Important Role

Government ‘Cancer Scare’ Report So Bogus Even the New York Times Notices

Somin at Volokh: A Creative Proposal for Reducing Prison Rape

Am Thinker:

If it sometimes seems that the nation is governed by an elite liberal clique of college fraternity and sorority pals who are out of touch with average Americans, that's because it's largely true. Every president, and almost every presidential candidate for the last two decades, has been a graduate of Harvard or Yale. If the Senate confirms Kagan, every member of the Supreme Court will have been a Yale or Harvard attendee, too.

What the Democrats Know: Universal Voter Registration

Goldman is making money

WSJ: Islam's Nowhere Men - Millions like Faisal Shahzad are unsettled by a modern world they can neither master nor reject.

Jammie: Those Racist Republicans In Georgia

The death spiral of the Welfare STate

Moonbattery: The Unemployment Hammock

Good video of the Nashville flood. Related: Nashville flood: The South's self-help disaster

Casino Jack: Documentary goes after Abramoff -- and capitalism

The real cost of Cape Wind

Jules: Living green in California

Driscoll: Life imitates Orwell in academia

Taranto: Everything causes cancer

Venezuela economy update

Coyote: Let’s Make Sure the Internet Remains Just as Innovative as General Motors

Insty:

ARE CARBS WORSE FOR US THAN FAT? If so, can we sue the nannies who have been trying to force us to eat less fat? If nannyists and “public health” crusaders were held to the same standards as, say, drug companies, they’d all be in jail now.

Am Thinker: The Mainstreaming of Anti-Semitism

Also at Am Thinker: Feds to solve problem of children not fishing and hunting enough

Carney: Just because companies are profiting from it doesn’t make it a ‘free-market’ policy

Via Marginal Rev:

Economic enlightenment is not correlated with going to college, at least among the 4835 Americans who completed a Zogby International online survey. Economic enlightenment is highest among those self-identifying “conservative” and “libertarian,” and descends through “moderate,” “liberal,” and “progressive.” Other variables include party affiliation, religious participation, union membership, NASCAR fandom, and Wal-Mart patronage. Zogby researcher Zeljka Buturovic and Daniel Klein report.

Congressman Says Climate Science Should Be Simplified to ‘Sixth Grade Level’ Because Americans ‘Don’t Get’ It

Not kidding. This gal is an Associate Prof at the University of Illinois.

Marriage proposals and social status

Franklin Graham gets a bit political

Wilkinson on Paternalism: Look Who’s Crying for Big Government! 

Perfect timing: Comedy Central developing Jesus Christ cartoon. I really could not care less. Bad taste is part of pop culture, but it no longer serves to epater le bourgeois. It just seems stupid and adolescent.

Playing games with student testing

The euro Ponzi scheme. They all lend to each other, and they are all in debt to each other.

I thought having a black President changed everything. School outing proves divisive - Trip for black kids to boost test scores riles peers, parents

Why not give Puerto Rico independence? Isn't the US being imperialistic with PR? Why not force it on them? h/t, Riehl

What's the matter with Kansas? They are all Dems

Do you want more ethanol in your gas? You're gonna get it anyway.

Do you know what Cinco de Mayo celebrates?

Venezuela has no coffee

The O has been hiding from the press since July 09

I surely do not blame Obama for Islamic terrorism and jihad, but I also suspect that he and his admin imagine that love and appeasement are effective strategies for dealing with hateful killers. Shiver agrees.

Yes, Shahzad was Taliban-trained

Jammie:

The Democrats and their lapdog media love having it both ways. In the span of 24 hours they went from hinting it was evil right-wingers that left the bomb in Times Square to warning about the right being racist toward Muslims.

I wish they'd get their narrative straight.

Why such special solicitude towards Moslems? As compared, say, to Christians or Jews?

Medved: No Political Future for an All-White G.O.P

Similarly, from Hawkins: What the GOP has done for decades to reach minorities has not worked, and will never work.

Conservatives say they want constitutionally limited government - not no government.

A commercial website: How to Profit from Global Warming. Or you can just ask Al Gore.

Related: Is there global cooling?

Graduating from Yale is like leaving Paradise? Well, graduating from any college (or high school) is like leaving the womb - unless you are somebody who is eager to take on the world and to test yourself against tough reality.

Volvo town bans plastic water bottles. Talk about meaningless gestures. If they really cared, they would ban all use of plastics, heating oil and auto fuel.

Statistically, do Liberal men tend to be girly men? Perhaps in San Francisco and in academia, but, in general, I am not convinced.

Blaming Wall St for selling "sh-t" reveals a deep misunderstanding of what Wall St. does. I even hear Conservatives bitching about the "crooks." One quote:

There is no such thing as a financial package or instrument that is inherently "good" or "bad," "better" or "worse" than any other. These packages simply offer different profiles of risk and return. They can be "better" or "worse" only for a particular client, based on what the rest of the client's portfolio looks like and thus what kind of additional exposure to risk and return is optimal for that portfolio. The exact same financial instrument could be a very good investment for one party and a very bad investment for another. It all depends on the desired risk exposure.

At NRO:

A Post poll shows that 61 percent of opponents of the tea-party movement believe “racism has a lot to do with the movement.”

Now, where in the world could that perception have come from?

High water in Nashville

More Tea Bagger Presbyterian violence

"Say it with roses, say it with mink, but never never say it in ink." Be careful about what you put in emails.

Office jerks: How Dad's Yelling Can Spawn an Office Tyrant

"A standup comedian who was sued for making mother-in-law jokes has had the last laugh after a federal judge threw the case out of court."

Gov Christie fires a NJ Judge. Good quote from him:

"Many of these decisions have been results in search of a rationale."

In other New Jersey news: A brave new documentary reveals the corruption, waste, and stupidity of education spending in New Jersey.

Pisciotta: Top 10 Reasons to Rely on Private Sector Markets

Legal Ins: NY Will Actively Subvert Immigration Laws

Mankiw: Much to Love, and Hate, in a VAT

Lowry: The Greek Unions -- And Ours

Leaving Arizona

Kudlow: Keynesian Spending has Zilch Effect on Recovery

Protein: “The Left loses its way by abandoning ‘third way’”

Criminality and illegal immigration: NYM has the other side of the story

Where are the pretty pink unicorns? Peters: We can't appease Islamists

Mead:

Ten years ago, the European Union with great fanfare unveiled the “Lisbon Agenda”, a ten-year action plan to make the EU “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”.

It flopped.  Europe is less of a factor today than it was ten years ago in the high-tech world.  Even before the crash the EU lagged behind China, India and the United States when it came to economic growth.  It is emerging from the recession more slowly than the others and there are no signs that Europe has overcome the problems that have slowed its growth.  As for ‘greater social cohesion’, look at the trade union riots in Greece.  Look at the tensions with immigrants; look at the rise of extreme right-wing parties.

The unofficial bio of Leroy Jethro Gibbs

The ambiguous utopias of Iain M. Banks

Latest Rasmussen: Obamacare: Majority of Americans Are Skeptical

Shrinkwrapped: Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out

Franklin Graham sounds a bit pissed at Obama

Why can't men be more like women?:

It is telling that scientists are so thoroughly steeped in knee-jerk male bashing that they do not even ask whether there might be something positive about having less oxytocin.

Why the Obama-FDR comparison doesn't work 

Williamson at NRO:

Americans love Big Government. But it's not a blind love — it all depends on the direction the arrow is pointing on the cashflow chart. Ask George W. Bush, who got himself cruficied for trying to reform Social Security. Ask anybody who has touched Medicare,  or even idly thought aloud about doing so. Ask a farmer or anybody marching in the Small Business Administration pork parade. 

The problem with big bills, at Commentary:

If the best place to hide a book is in a library, then the best way to hide a favor for a contributor or a quiet little power grab is in a bill 2,000 pages long.

Stelzer: For now, economy is looking up

Greece: tax-dodging as a way of life

Powerline:

If Obama is an enigma today, it's because of the contrast between his remarkably open disdain for his domestic rivals and opponents on the one hand and his obsequious approach to the nation's foreign adversaries on the other. As enigmas go, however, this one is more troubling than puzzling.

Am Thinker on Palin-hatred:

...the fury directed against Palin by leftists is so overwrought, and at times maniacal, precisely because her innate common sense is so powerful and effective when she dares to declare that the emperor of government economic planning has no clothes.  Like Mises and Reagan, Palin understands with utter (and to leftists, frightening) clarity that leftist utopias have no practicality or viability, but are, in Mises' words, "illusory fantasies."

Like most people, self-important intellectuals don't like their cherished dreams and aspirations dismissed as fantasies.  

Sporting Art via Theo

Gorism: From the Sanctimonious to the Ridiculous.

The Gore's fifth luxury home

Iowahawk's Citizen Gore

Adam Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments. h/t, Washington Reb

Shawcross: Britain's humiliation

Legally, what's an "offended observer"? I am one, all day long.

Pew: More trouble for Democrats

If the government runs medical care, they will own your body. Bought and sold.

Mexico acknowledges migrant abuse, pledges changes. Yeah, sure.

Immigration: New third rail in American politics announced

Market-Based Membership Approach to Healthcare At the Same Monthly Cost As a Cell Phone Plan

Obama to Wall Street: “I Do Think at Certain Point You’ve Made Enough Money”. He made 5.5 million last year. Plus he gets free room and board from the government with a free chopper to the golf course. More from Driscoll

"Where's our money?" The SEIU protest (h/t, Theo):

A fun Costco prank. Goat balls?

From The Crushing Patriarchy, Episode 12:

The assumption of a ‘natural’ 1:1 gender ratio in all occupations is itself a prejudice, albeit a modish one. On what basis do we determine that there ought to be a particular ratio of male and female philosophers, or mathematicians, or engineers? At what point and on what basis do we determine that a particular gender is sufficiently “represented” in a given vocation?

Ambinder: The Democratic Message for 2010

Teach Social Justice - Or Else

Obamacare Requires You To "Show Your Papers"

Why reporters are down on the President. And no presser for 10 months! Shocking.

Orszag explains how ObamaCare imposes rationing

Stealth Statehood for Puerto Rico?

Astroturf to support the Cult of Personality

Why Obama is going negative

Adler at Volokh likes Cape Wind. I think it is insane. These costly bird-shredding eyesores will never make money without taxpayer subsidies, and will never amount to a hill of beans as far as energy sourcing goes. Tax-subsidized feel-good baloney.