Maggie's Farm

Economy slows; government hires. Is their goal to get everyone on their payroll? (Not that we aren't already working for them, for the first third of each year.)

You saw this already: Bill O'Reilly terms Hillary socialist.

Broder: GOP needs a new southern strategy

Nice boat show in the Persian Gulf

Kill the fatties?

No wonder Obama is running for Pres: Smoking rooms removed from Senate Office Building

Tax on fast food? I favor special taxes on Chardonnay and Brie.

Does limited liability make any difference? Cowen says no.

Are the collectivist trends of Western democracies reversible? No, says Mediocracy

The Swiss government focuses on the really important matters - like whether your goldfish is lonely.

eBay feedback:

NEGATIVE: Though you did nothing wrong, I am giving you this negative feedback to teach you that the universe is arbitrary and unfair.

More of them here.

What's going wrong in Basra? Civilization is happening.

How localism (as in Italy) could save Europe. Yes, save them from the EU Empire.

How the Dems are screwing you at the gas pump. Important post.

Global warming on vacation, say scientists. Do the models predict 30-year vacations?

NYT proposes regulation of textbook prices. Mankiw notes the irony.

50% of LA job-holders were born in other countries

It still could happen, and likely will - but we don't have a recession yet.

Spank those kids or they could end up in jail

Bet you didn't know that global warming causes AIDS. Silly you.

More BBC censorship. The very notion of government media should be anathema in free societies.

Need somebody to hate today? This low-life scum deserves yours. If I were a better person, I would say he needs our prayers...but I'm not that good yet.

Right Wing Prof says that this NYT piece on Bio-bigotry makes him want somebody to shoot him. The NYT should have made it a companion piece to their Rev. Wright article, who is a genuine bio-bigot. I hate rats and Starlings. Sue me.

Imus, who refers to Hillary Clinton as Satan, referred to Obama this morning as a pencil-neck wimp, or pansy, or something like that. Dean Barnett wonders the same thing.

Pixie dust on solar, from Tom Friedman

We'll all miss Red Ken, who is going down, tomorrow, with any luck. He was good for humor, though:

More here.

(h/t, Ace)

Save the NYT! RWNH. Related, quoted from Auster:

The editors and reporters of the Times are not just “biased.” They are conscious, stone-cold, Soviet-style liars. And somehow they get away with it.

Wrigley sold to Mars

Hillary's $3 billion in earmarks

Dartmouth prof wants to sue her students. It's the victim/grievance culture run amok.

Governments make problems worse, then demand more money to fix their unintended consequences

Soak the rich isn't working this time around. Powerline

"You have been had," at Am Thinker. A quote:

It comes as a blow to the solar plexus to confront the fact that in urban African American communities all across America a frank racist hate-filled rhetoric is not merely condoned but actually celebrated.  We white conservatives have been taught for the last generation to button our lips and never to give utterance to a racist thought.  We thought that we were parties to a bargain: that if we shut up and truckled to the liberal race bullies sooner or later we would emerge from the post civil-rights era and its hypocrisies of affirmative action and diversity and we would ascend to the sunny green uplands of post-racism.

Now we hear the ravings of Reverend Wright and realize that we have been had.  While we were buttoning our lips and attending compulsory diversity seminars liberals were not holding up their end of the deal and neutralizing the Reverend Wrights of America and their vicious racist bile.  On the contrary, liberals were pumping them up! 

Photo from Bits and Pieces

Awful but lawful.

Steep declines at the NYT. Related: Where have the smart media moguls gone?

Buy your own Taser

The science of doom and gloom

The oil panic. Don't worry

From Boundless (read whole thing): "It would be difficult to exaggerate the extent of antipathy towards the ROTC on the Left in America."

Koreans heading for the Ivy League

Wright's poison. Sullivan

The surrender of free speech in the face of Jihad: Bawer at City Journal

And it looks as if Rev. Al has learned from them. Isn't this terrorism, of a sort? Rev. Al is another Rage Boy.

"Operatic" displays of guilt and grief on the Left. Thompson

Obama's character: Is it a distraction? Krauthammer

The deep swimmers of the Left: Why Bill Ayers is more dangerous now

Terming Obama "too extreme" is racist? The NYT says so, so it must be true.

Some atheists want their own churches and ministers. Quote from NY Magazine:

Many atheist sects are experimenting with building new, human-centered quasi-religious organizations, much like Ethical Culture. They aim to remove God from the church, while leaving the church, at least large parts of it, standing. But this impulse is fueling a growing schism among atheists. Many of them see churches as part of the problem. They want to throw out the baby and the bathwater—or at least they don’t see the need for the bathwater once the baby is gone.

Darwin's garden, at the NY Botanical Garden

How McCain is dodging McCain-Feingold

Oxblog's David Adesnik's life is too interesting for him to find computer time

Beyond Discrimination: African American Inequality in the 21st Century

TNR: Cheer up, Democrats

The biofuel backlash

England removed from the European map. My brave ancestors, castrated and played for suckers. Very sad to watch cultural suicide unfolding before ones' eyes.

Repubs are racist? Not the ones I know. Let's start with Lincoln, and work forward towards Eisenhower. We will vote for a Conservative guy or gal - brown, black, yellow, Jewish, or Mormon - in a New York minute.

A quote from Norm:

Argue about when wars are necessary and when they aren't, when they are justified and when they aren't, and whether a particular war should be fought or not. But to pontificate about the meaning of war being bad, as if you really hate it and are therefore with the angels - unlike the rest of us - is a feeble ruse. War has been tested to destruction? Yes, I also wish. Unfortunately, if others decide to wage it against you, it does put you in something of a quandary.

I did not have sexual relations with Rev. Wright (or with Bill Ayers)

To fix medical care, first fix Medicaid. Surber

Hillary: Losing at winning

Fun and games in Baghdad. Basra could use a Hooters: the fight would be over.

Ford makes a profit. Good.

Islamists getting fed up with Al Qaida. About time.

Who pays for Medicare Part D?

Last weekend we learned that Nancy Pelosi created a new meaning for Holy Communion. Now we have her inventing Scripture. What next?

I am no expert on coffins, but I never got the point of being embalmed (which is gross - they suck your blood out and then pump formaldehyde in) and dumped in a fancy polished piece of furniture which is then put inside a cement and/or steel vault. I don't know how we got to that. Anyway, in England they now have "Green" coffins, at ecoffins.

None of my best friends are terrorists. Hewitt

Photo: An embittered small-town American farm girl, from Theo. We need to interview her for the Jr. Assistant Comments Editor job that we outsourced to India last year.

The Patton of counterinsurgency. Wkly Standard

Big-city pundits turn bitter. Will they now turn to God and guns?

Banking woes are easing. CSM

The coming revolution in Africa. Let's hope so

The war between Murdoch and the NYT heats up

Finally, scientists begin to talk about the coming Ice Age

Above stolen from an IowaHawk entry.

State Dept. eliminates Jihad. Problem solved!

The dangers of second-hand drinking.

It's about power. Dr. Sanity

Economic crisis? The sky is not falling

Who is really to blame for New Orleans' flooding problems? Unintended consequences of government policies.

Masochistic Omnipotence Syndrome. Thompson

My Weather Underground, and Obama.

Five great cigars and why (and when) I smoke them. Mike Adams

Please come to Denver. It'll be groovy, dude.

The Second Coming of George McGovern. VDH

Black and Progressive Sociologists for Obama. Blair. Hey, that is one compelling endorsement.

Global Warming update. The list of consequences, to date. (h/t, Englishman)

Why I quit Greenpeace

The friends of Barack Obama. Powerline

Bitterness oozing out of them, in photo above: small-town Americans on April 19

The songs of past Earth Days

Bill Cosby: This is how we lost to the white man

St. George gets the ax

News should neither be fair nor balanced

Obama's plan for NASA

A moron speaks: "No-one told us" that we bought at the top. Tiger

The new Willy Horton ad

An intercepted Al Qaida strategy letter, in Iraq (h/t, Belmont)

We have Pallywood - now Lhasawood

Watch how this NYT writer slips global warming into the article - with no evidence

Adidas vs. Puma: A story of two brothers (h/t, Wall St. Fighter)

Deck of Weasels playing cards

Chicago: Ban guns once again?

The rich and their taxes. (h/t, Flares)

Yo ho ho. Pirates as a victim class

Mookie mocked by a girl

Obama is the media's man. John Fund

Al Gore: The wealthy don't need to save the planet. Just the "little people," I guess.

Poll presented as if it were data. Idiotic. Not a soul on earth can say how much oil we have.

I always liked Michael Pollan, but this morally-agonized piece in the NYT just fills me with pity for him. He's a putz.

The Ayers story gathers steam. As it should.

Help! I'm a snob like Obama. Micky Kaus

Has Al Gore failed? Tiger

Coyote loves his Squeezebox

Mankiw on income inequality

Why plants are green

Borneo Pigmy Elephant update

The "Why bother?" societies, via Blue Crab:

A British think tank has issued a report that shows that high taxes, an entitlement mentality and poor education are sapping the British populace and turning the nation into a "why bother" culture.

In memoriam: Tibet

Is this for real? Why am I skeptical?

Driscoll begins:

Mark Steyn notes that, pace Obama, guns and God, and proper respect for both, are what make Red State America a much healthier--and sustainable--place than the Biggest Blue State of 'em all: Europe. Steyn writes, "In the other G7 developed nations, nobody clings to God’n’guns. The guns got taken away, and the Europeans gave up on churchgoing once they embraced Big Government as the new religion":

WSJ: Gun owners are happier people

Brussels commands Scots to pipe down

Straight talk about casual sex. Am Thinker

Virtue by default. David Thompson

Woman turns 115

Carnival of the Insanities at Dr. Sanity

That's a quote via Kimball on how Ms. Shvarts has inadvertently helped us draw a line between primitive  barbarity and art. Indeed, the bar for nauseating the bourgeoisie keeps getting higher, doesn't it, as pop culture digs down into depravity, ugliness, and psychosis for cheap and easy thrills, chills, and barfs?

It gave me a cool idea though: I could mix some Texas Medicine with some Railroad Gin, get the video rolling, puke my mind and brains out, and become a famous artist. $$$$. Maybe get recruited as a Junior Assistant Curator at the Whitney.

More good comments on the dehumanization of art from Small Dead Animals and SC&A,

As Dr. Bob comments:

One wants to rail at a society gone mad, at a civilization which has lost its bearings and moral compass, at a decadence fed by materialism and secularism, force-fed with the rotgut wine of postmodern relativism, drunk with the notion that ideas have no consequence and idols worshiped bring no destruction.

Yet the time for such anguished mourning seems long past, its passing but a point in a pitiful past history. We have, it seems, entered the post-human age.

Our secular prophets have heralded the Good News: there is no God; we are but accidental apes. We have been liberated from the bondage of religion and morals; we are, at last, in this twenty-first century, at the pinnacle of human achievement and potential. The shackles of superstition are broken, the potential of man unbounded, his glory unlimited but by the constraints of his imagination.

My opinion? Tasteless, no-talent attention-seekers have always been with us, as have individuals who find it adventurous (and yet all-too effortless) to degenerate to their inner ape - or to their inner dog turd.

What I found most telling in this entire pathetic and disgusting story was Yale's inability to stand for anything. Perhaps their motto should be changed from "Lux et Veritas" to "Whatever."

That would be "Progressive," and more accurate. But, even so, how do you explain to your parents the $180,000 they paid for that exclusive "education"?

Barone: The rules change for Obama

"The descent of civilization into the fluffy totalitarianism of PC tyranny is accelerating."

Privacy and Property Rights

If Obama were a white Republican, and... Powerline

To John McCain: Embrace your inner Teddy Roosevelt

Noted theologian Pelosi reinvents meaning of Communion

Sorry, Portuguese.  You aren't Hispanic enough. Huh?

David Brooks as quoted at Betsy, re the debate:

Obama and Clinton were completely irresponsible. As the first President Bush discovered, it is simply irresponsible statesmanship (and stupid politics) to make blanket pledges to win votes. Both candidates did that on vital issues.

Both promised to not raise taxes on those making less than $200,000 or $250,000 a year. They both just emasculated their domestic programs. Returning the rich to their Clinton-era tax rates will yield, at best, $40 billion a year in revenue. It’s impossible to fund a health care plan, let alone anything else, with that kind of money. The consequences are clear: if elected they will have to break their pledge, and thus destroy their credibility, or run a minimalist administration.

Vets rip Time magazine cover

Dangerous expansion of the Fed's power. Boudreaux

That sick Yale story was fiction. Still sick.

Dissent is good, right? Kenneth Green on the global warming dissident scientists

Dean Barnett on A Dash of Harvard Disease. A quote:

Although hardly identical, Obama's and Frank's sentiments do share critical commonalities. Both evidence an unbecoming condescension to the American people. And both share modern liberalism's assumption that Americans are a bunch of dullards. Perhaps no other trait has so thoroughly harmed the left at the ballot box.

Anyone who has ever walked by Harvard Yard has heard the kind of condescending comments that Obama offered in San Francisco. Heck, anyone who has listened to a Michelle Obama speech has heard the same kind of contempt for the American people expressed in unequivocal terms.

If you want to find this kind of smug superiority on the left, you don't have to look very hard. If you're of a mind to do some field research, I recommend you tune into Bill Maher's show on HBO next Friday night. I predict you won't have to wait more than ten minutes before Maher and his panel of Hollywood philosophes agree on what a stupid and ignorant place America is.

Related, via Just One Minute (h/t, Insty)

Small-town people of modest means and limited education are not fixated on cultural issues. Rather, it is affluent, college-educated people living in cities and suburbs who are most exercised by guns and religion. In contemporary American politics, social issues are the opiate of the elites.

Habu needs to explain flag handling to this young lady

Sustenance from Maureen Dowd? Bruce?

Bloomberg explains why NYC cannot hyper-tax the hedgies

Progressives hate the poor. Climate Skeptic

I never thought this book was literature.

65 years of LSD

The search for the Phantom Subtext

Photo: The popularity of the Bardot vs. Moslem story on the internet may be, in part, due to the opportunity to post a photo. Interesting story, too, though. Where's that link? Aw, never mind.

Oh, here it is.

Listening to the Pope. Several pieces at Anchoress

Not nautical: world's largest cruise ship

The topic which always bugs me: "root causes"

More execution of witches due to global warming

DO NOT take vitamins!

Sickest story I've seen today. At Yale, of course.

Iran torches 7 ancient synagogues

A cure for the airline industry. WSJ

Corn prices and starvation. Austin Bay

A nation of givers. h/t, AVI

Like Adlai Stevenson, stylistically?

Robo-soldier

Photo of a Maggie's Farm staffer (via Theo)

The use and abuse of tax havens.

I thought this was satire, but it isn't.

Hurricane Alert! It's not global warming

Markets in kidneys. Make sense?

Wouldn't you agree that I have led a sensational life?  Ed Koch

Decision-making is surprisingly unconscious

McCain-omics needs a theme

VA school bans tag. Too aggressive? Good grief.

Minimal consequences for violent crime in the UK. Dalrymple

Don't rescue me. Sipp

As the Pope arrives in NYC, Anchoress looks at The Reality of Pope Benedict at Pajamas

The Left goes down, in Italy

Is the Ivy League a meritocracy now? Princeton's Flim Flam Man, in the NY Sun

Why women should not rule the world. Big Lizard

Turning around America's worst schools. The American

The price of appeasement. Chesler

For the first time this Spring, the bird song chorus this morning at dawn had the volume turned all the way up, despite below-freezing temps. It always sounds new to me.

A bitter squirrel to swallow: A Pennsylvanian at Kos claims neighbors are bitter and live on squirrels

San Francisco Democrats. The NY Sun

Douglas Feith explains and defends Iraq war decision. Video

Rev. Wright is back at it. That's what I call bitterness.

Mandatory niceness: Human rights in Canada

From McCain's electoral college math, at Am Thinker:

...John McCain is in very good shape for the general election run. The Republicans have landed on the one candidate in their party ideally suited for the race this year, with broad appeal among Democrats and independents, a veteran and war hero during a time of war, a candidate with a reputation for being a straight talker (and not talking down to voters, or outright lying to them), and with real strength in larger swing states.  McCain is also benefiting from the fact that the Democrats continue to snipe  at each other rather than at him, and each candidate has exposed weaknesses in the other, which become ammunition for McCain in the fall campaign.

McCain opens up the map to a broader Electoral College victory than George Bush achieved in 2000 and 2004, particularly against Barack Obama.

Obama's elitism. Pajamas. Photo: Our effete Editor Bird Dog, who is not an Obama guy and who does not care for Chardonnay with the Big Macs on which he feeds. More on the topic via Insty here, and also here:

TOM MAGUIRE: A TYPICAL SORT OF FLARE-UP: "Hmm, how typical is it for a candidate to characterize a huge swath of his target voters as bigoted, gun waving religious fanatics?" And a big roundup from James Joyner, who observes: "Class bias works both ways. Urban elites tend to view rural America, especially Southerners, as a bunch of yahoos. Rural Americans, meanwhile, think big city types are elitist snobs who don’t love America. There are similar resentments between rich and poor, educated and not, and even Ivy League -State College. In private gatherings, where people think they are among the like-minded, one hears shocking bigotry along those lines."

And sometimes it's recorded and circulated on the Internet.

Everybody at Maggie's is a gun-totin' Bible-thumpin' redneck hick who needs more from the government. More Coors Lite would be a good place to start. Later, we'll be needing the Chateau Margaux to accompany our government brie. All Opie wants is Grey Goose.

A lesson on denial, at Dr. Sanity. A quote:

• In the short-term, psychological denial can help a person maintain their sanity--which would be threatened by awareness of a painful truth or reality
• In the short-term, denial can help a person function day to day
• In the short-term, denial can prevent a person from having to acknowledge painful thoughts, feelings or behavior and help them maintain a world view threatened by an unacceptable reality or truth

Steyn on the nightly news, at Driscoll. A quote:

(it's) actually the place for people who aren’t interested in news. And it’s pathetic in a time of war, and a time of great turbulence and great change, to switch on, and there’ll be the light item about the new fat pill, or whatever. I mean, it’s formulaic, it’s tired, it’s shallow, and it’s unwatchable.