Maggie's Farm

Chrenkoff is retiring from blogging - a very great loss. It's about his new job - hope it's a good one.

Presbyterians now being anti-Israel. What Fifth Column took over the Protestants? LGF

Massive voter fraud found in '04 Election - Pardon My English is on the details.

Push-polling against Roberts - someone is paying someone plenty of $ to do this. Volokh. Truly a filthy maneuver, unworthy.

Two straight guys marry in Canada: hahahahaha. They get a tax break. SDA

The Decision to drop the Bomb on Japan: from Gen. Tibbets, here

Islam is a cult of death: Auster seems to have reached his limit of modern tolerance, here.

Tony Blair is "growing in the job:"

"We're angry about them abusing our good nature and our toleration," Blair said. "Coming to Britain is not a right. And even when people have come here, staying here carries with it a duty. That duty is to share and support the values that sustain the British way of life."

Ummm, what about fox-hunting, Tony? Anyway, as a consequence, Brit Islamists accuse him of being Hitler- Jihad Watch. and Dhimmi Watch. And, by the way, Jihad Watch has become a 501-c3. There's an idea.

The NYT has gone over the edge. As if attacking Mrs. Robert's dress wasn't enough, now they have gone after the Roberts kids. This is why I quit my subscription. Are they biased, or a Fifth Column? (Thanks, Atlas.) Watch Shape of Days lose it at the NYT, here. X-rated. And Captain Ed finds yet more propaganda in the Gray, I mean  Red Lady.

The Sudan: All you need to know - here. Not ready for tourism.

Sailboat math. Great site. The winners know all of this stuff. Plus a "feel for the sea," which you have to be born with.

The NCAA vs. the Indians. What PC idiots. Don't they realize that sports teams are the only compliments Indians get? Who wouldn't want their ethnic group to name sports teams? It's a compliment - sports are good things, with very positive connotations.  We've have had enough of the sanctimonious scolds who never seem to be part of the so-called "victim" group anyway. Who are these jerks? Ridiculous. See our resident Redskin Bird Dog's post below on the subject, last week. He loves Redskins and Braves and Squaws and Hatchets etc.

One Hell of a Stock...here. Opie got some...did you? She sold hers already. Will give you her next tip in advance - promise. We owe our loyal readers something. Will $ suffice?

Flirting will no longer get you a raise. Here. What a shame. The world is going to hell in a handbasket.

A very bad, very nasty movie. Do not look. Samizdata has details.

Gun-hating jerks. How many logical errors can you find in this piece?

Moving to Mexico

Thanks MM for forwarding this piece which is making the rounds:

TRY THIS: Enter MEXICO illegally.  Never mind immigration quotas, visas, international law, or any of that nonsense.   You won't need a passport. Once there, demand that the local government provide free medical care for you and your entire family.Demand bilingual nurses and doctors. Demand free bilingual local government forms, bulletins, etc. Procreate abundantly. Deflect any criticism of this allegedly irresponsible
reproductive behavior with, "It is a cultural U.S.A. thing.  You would not understand, pal." Keep your American identity strong.  Fly Old Glory from your rooftop, or proudly display it in your front window or on your car bumper. Speak only English at home and in public. Insist that your children do likewise. Demand classes on American culture in the Mexican school system. Demand a local Mexican driver's license.  This will afford other legal rights and will go far to legitimize your unauthorized, illegal, presence in Mexico. Drive around with no liability insurance......and ignore local traffic laws. Insist that local Mexican law enforcement teach English to all its officers.

Good luck!  But I need to warn you that this plan will not work in Mexico, nor El Salvador, nor Iran, Iraq, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Japan, France, Argentina, Sweden, The Netherlands, etc. In fact, it will not happen in Mexico or any other country except right here in the United States......Land of the naive!

Five weeks of cutting brush. That's my idea of a good vacation too, GW. I guess the MSM just doesn't get it. Nothing clears out the fog like hard manual labor.

Bolton's First Day on the job - very funny

The Tolkien Geek Blog is underway.

Pollster: Dems stand for nothing. (Yes they do, but they won't say it outloud.) Here.

The News in France - can you believe this? No Wonder. Samizdata.

One in two million lobsters are blue. Lobsterman in NH got one on Saturday - photo here Can't help wondering what color they turn when cooked.

Georgetown Women's Tennis - How can you not be a fan? Go, Hoyas!

The UN to run the internet? Not a chance, with the Repubs. Can you imagine?

Spenser's book (from Jihad Watch). Good Amazon reviews. Click here: Amazon.com: Books: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)

Brit Tory says Leave it you don't like it here. Damn right. Dhimmi Watch

Beyond Kyoto: Kyoto is dead. I doubt it was ever alive. Glassman at TCS

The report from Saudi Arabia - what a mess. Daily Demarche

More Condi

Now there's a Condi for President blog, and Condi stickers and t-shirts like the logo to the right, here.

Not a bad idea on the face of it, but I have no idea what her positions are on anything. Plus she ought to get married if she wants to know what real life is like. She is welcome to call or email me anytime she needs a date. I will be there, if I have to hitchhike all the way.

A quote from Oliver Stone, via No Oil:  "In Cuba, I observed an openness and freedom that I had not found in any other country in the region, the Caribbean or Central America. I . . . have never seen the kind of spontaneous affection for a leader expressed on the streets as I have seen in Cuba towards Fidel."  Shiny side out, Oliver.

A quote re Condi, in Lib. Leanings: "Colleagues have dubbed Rice the "velvet hammer." Philip Zelikow, State Department counselor and a close adviser, said that "one of her gifts is that she knows how to say very direct things to foreign governments in a way that is not confrontational. She is very assertive, very firm, but doesn't leave them feeling sullen and resentful."

Subways vs. Archeolology, in Instanbul.

Preparation, Motivation, Discipline, and Interest - it seems simple to me. The silliness goes on about women and minorities in math and science. Why doesn't the National Science Foundation just come out and admit that, in effect, they want less Asians and less Jews in these fields? Some of the comments below the piece are interesting, too. Click here: Inside Higher Ed :: Women, Minorities and the Sciences

PBS: A fair and balanced view, in New Criterion. (I personally do not feel that PBS offers enough, to enough people, to be worth subsidizing anymore.) Sample:

Until public broadcasting signals that it can provide entertaining and demonstrably educational programming for television, the Internet, and the classroom, public broadcasting does not deserve to be treated as a sustainable enterprise. If it does rise to that challenge, reaching once again for the educational ideals that animated its founding, the public, corporate, and foundation monies it has been struggling to preserve for the last decade will be made available. And that, not partisan politics, is Patricia Harrison’s and public broadcasting’s real challenge.

Did the Indians kill off all of the big animals in North America? That's the latest theory, at TCS.

Autism Debate: Epidemic vs. Better Diagnosis? Science Daily And SDA reports on the genetics of Autism.

Beautiful Italian Lawyer - Free Mkt Fairy Tales gets it, here. Yes, she is hot.

Forever Wrong: from the Prof. He has a point, does he not? But the Prof. is loathe to admit is that they want America, as we know her and love her, gone.

Hispanics moving to GOP: Newsmax

The Times Online says it straight: We (Brits) are "useful idiots." Here.

An objective look at global warming, at TCS

On Normblog:

Human rights are an indispensable part of a morally decent society (though the eager embracing of victimhood is not, and there's no doubt that the discourse of human rights has, along with multiculturalism, encouraged many to regard the status of victim of rights-violation as the most attractive one going, and hence to reach for it at the slightest provocation). But protection from those whose direct intention is to kill the innocent is also indispensable. Such protection may require us to be more ready to accept defensive policies which constrain, or in emergency infringe, individual rights than we've hitherto been accustomed to.

Read the whole thing here.

Tourism in Turkey surges: for good reason too - what a great country to visit.

Mufti Akram Kashmiri wants me to inquire about what "root causes" we have created to arouse terror. I have a better idea: Ask the Mufti to figure out the root causes for our anger at terrorists. That might keep the Mufti out of trouble for a few hours and he might come up with an answer. Jihad Watch.

Free Speech on campus? You won't believe this one...I must say, truly chilling and scarey that a request not to receive emails from a Lesbian Feminist group could be construed as criminal harassment. Intell. Cons.  Of course, if you told her she looked hot you'd really be in trouble, but I'll bet ya five bucks she doesn't. The world has gone nuts, to take peevish hysteric females seriously. A world without flirting is like a day without sun. Similarly, a day without telling someone to jump in a lake. It is normal. What kind of litigious, hypersensitive people have we bred in America?

Happy Birthday, Milton. Milton Friedman is 93.

The Pirates of ... Malacca? Here. Privateers. Cool - I mean the private navies. Perfect for Jimmy Buffet. Hey, Jimmy, old pal, get a real job, grab an automatic, and get fightin.

Martian Ice Cream. Not yet, but how soon? Hey, Ben and Jerry. Here.

Naive, self-hating Christian organizations. No Oil

How big would this story be if this were a conservative radio station? The scandal of the year, no doubt. Good point, MartiniPundit.

Hispanic illegals in California want to change America. Jeez, I thought it was just Islam that wanted to change America. Stay home, people, and change your own country. We like it here the way it is.  Immigration Blog.

Lady Bloggers - Cotillion is not only good and clever, but they link lots of other lady bloggers.

Surveillance cameras? Pro or con? Big Brother or a source of comfort? I'd hate to see them everywhere, but heck, they are already in stores and gas stations. Anyway, Heather McDonald likes them. I guess, except in times of war and terrorism, I'd like to see them limited to private orgs. and not govt. Creepy, even if you're honest.

Bush is a genius, says Dick Morris. Bush is a genius, says Powerline.

Van Gogh's son has been beaten up. Nice country ya got there, Holland.

I was going to write a few sentences about the NYT calling people "un-American' re the 9-11 Memorial, but Moran did it better, here.

The Grievance Collector femi-Nazis go over the top, (thanks, View from 1776), from John Stossel

Air America caught stealing from orphans and widows. Jeez.

Using our hard-earned money to buy votes: Ankle-Biter on the Highway Bill. Disgusting. And since when do we need more highways anyway?

Frist has a poll for us to take, on immigration and other subjects, here

New biography of Georges Braque. The review is interesting

Are we cyber-sluts here at Maggie's? Maybe kinda sorta. We love new readers, and we love getting linked. We do believe we offer interesting stuff. And we, like many bloggers, have tried to get the great Glenn Reynold's attention with some of our stuff, but at some point you feel like a hopeful young actress who can't get onto Darryl Zanuck's casting couch. It's lousy for your pride and your dignity. Enough self-pity - we are doing fine and our readers are discriminating folk with wit, curiosity, and brains. Abe Lincoln famously said, "Maggie's Farm is my favorite blog, after Powerline,"  and Teddy Roosevelt said "The most influential and eclectic blog in America"  but he may have been referring to another blog. American Digest has a humorous inside look at the mega-blog "gatekeepers".

Why you can't count on moderate reason in the Middle East (as if that were hot news): Many Egyptian Moslems believe Israel did the bombing to frame Muslims! Here (thanks, View from the Right). There is no reasoning with the paranoid and ignorant. It's like a debate with a Hollywood airhead: "Well, it could be Bush and the CIA were behind 9-11 for an excuse to go to Iraq to get the oil...well, it's possible, right? With the Israeli Air Force and Haliiburton. As a favor to Cheney and his friends? Anything's possible, right? We'll never know for sure, right?"

Al Quaida attracts rich kids, mostly. Gee, like the Weathermen here used to be? Mixed-up young pampered nuts looking for meaning? Austin Bay.

The Truth about teen-rebel hero Che Guevara, the James Dean of the 70s: a re-posting here

King Arthur and the Round Table: (really)...A good website for fans of Arthur

Right Wing Nation picked this up from GOP Bloggers:

Here’s an issue that deserves prominent play in the public discussion of what makes a good Supreme Court justice: In recent years, six justices of the Supreme Court have relied on foreign and international legal decisions and other legal materials to construe the meaning of the U.S. Constitution. It should be no surprise that these are the same six justices who have endorsed the vacuous New Age declaration that “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

His comment:  "‘Scuse me? What kind of drugs are these morons on, anyway? I mean, can anybody doubt that these people need to be institutionalized after they spout silly tofu-brained nonsense like this?"

My comment: Ditto about the tofu. The heart of liberty is political freedom and the right to vote. I never want to hear any branch of government dare talk about the meaning of life. It's way out of their league, plus it ain't their job.

Conservative Food - yum yum - pretty funny - from Right Wing Nation

More on food: Nutritional supplements not demonstrably important, says Tufts (but they might be if you live on that Conservative diet above)

Bush's Oil Policy: Defeat the Arabs and Take their Oil. Great idea...hey, why didn't I think of that? Scrappledude.

Orwell on Pacifism: MassRight

The Kyl-Cornyn Immigration Bill - discussed here on NRO, and Tancredo's here

Palestinians believe their terrorism drove Israel to withdraw from West Bank: JihadWatch

Why I have stopped arguing with Liberals: A great piece by Pat Sajak which all Liberals shoud read, but won't. All of us reasonable folks have been through this and finally have given up. It's like a discussion with Palestinians. His story here.  Sample:

When Liberals want to legislate what you’re allowed to drive or what you should eat or how much support you can give to a political candidate or what you can or can’t say, they are doing it for altruistic reasons. The excesses of the Left are to be excused because these folks operate from the higher moral ground and the benefit of the greater wisdom and intelligence gained from that perspective.

Blog Power - Caught a murderer: Who Killed Theresa? , via Instapundit

Romney, on abortion, The Globe

A cool game - Geography - I know a winner for this game, via Chrenkoff

Why you have to shoot to kill, and why not to run from cops: Confed. Yank

Thornton at VDH slams multiculturalism

The "Constitution in Exile" fantasy....but I wish it were real. Hinderaker covers it thoroughly. Click here: False Exile

A bare-faced lie from Dean (really bad): Irish Pennants

Moslem arrests in Newark: JihadWatch

An expensive eminent domain catastrophe in Boston: LA Times

An opinion poll with Brit Moslems: Chrenkoff

Steyn on "Mugged by Reality" :

Bomb us, and we agonise over the "root causes" (that is, what we did wrong). Decapitate us, and our politicians rush to the nearest mosque to declare that "Islam is a religion of peace". Issue bloodcurdling calls at Friday prayers to kill all the Jews and infidels, and we fret that it may cause a backlash against Muslims. Behead sodomites and mutilate female genitalia, and gay groups and feminist groups can't wait to march alongside you denouncing Bush, Blair and Howard. Murder a schoolful of children, and our scholars explain that to the "vast majority" of Muslims "jihad" is a harmless concept meaning "decaf latte with skimmed milk and cinnamon sprinkles".  Read entire here: Click here: The Australian: Mark Steyn: Mugged by reality? [July 25, 2005]

Revaluation of the Yuan is a Very Big Deal: Austin Bay explains why.

Don't worry, terrorists. We don't profile. From Michelle

Krugman and Monty Python: Ex-Donkey nails Krugman. Gotta wonder - Does the NYT take him seriously? Do they actually pay him $? And Atlantic Blog piles on to point out the basic errors in his understanding of economics.

Tolkien and the Crisis of the West: View from the Right

The Media's War on Iraq: Small Dead Animals has a good letter from a serviceman

Roberts is imperfect - he gave a dumb and wrong answer, and he'd better think through the relationship between his faith and his official role. Story in LA Times

A Blogger I haven't encountered before emailed us - James Baxter. And read his profile - a heck of a guy. The Blogworld is full of interesting people.

Protests against terror in Egypt. Gateway

Why the EU will never work: "That's Brussels for you - out of touch, out of control, and in charge." At No Oil...

It's summer up here, so I'm a bit behind on my job. If you've seen all of this, please forgive me:

Gimme a break. NYC won't use racial profiling to check subways. Huh? Right Thinking. That is the stupidest thng I have ever heard. And now there is an anti-search movement in NYC: Confed. Yankee. What jerks. So walk.

Guantanamo soliders complain to Ted about his comments. No comment from Ted.

Excellent point from Sean Hannity: Whatever "fight" there will be over Roberts will be the purposes of fund-raising for the Dems and Dem-allies, not substance. So true.

Robert's humor in most recent decision, upholding a car search, in NYT:

"Sometimes," Judge Roberts wrote in yesterday's dissent, "a car being driven by an unlicensed driver, with no registration and stolen tags, really does belong to the driver's friend, and sometimes dogs do eat homework, but in neither case is it reasonable to insist on checking out the story before taking other appropriate action."

A legal take on how Roberts will effect the court. From Damnum.

Infantile - but a principal orders removal of Bush portrait from classroom in NY. What a nut.  Hey, Long Island, wake up!

Inside North Korea: Stories from those who have escaped, in Open Democracy: Click here: A gulag with nukes: inside North Korea Jasper Becker - openDemocracy

An interesting take on L'affaire Rove, with comments on the flaws of syllogistic logic, at Libertarian Leanings

Bloggers, be careful, if your employer doesn't like what you have to open your oatmeal-hole about. Daily Bus. Review - woops - gotta re-find that link.

Steyn on the supreme court:

"The Democrats drew exactly the wrong lesson from their chad fever. If the case teaches anything, it's the importance of winning at the ballot box, which you do by promoting clear ideas confidently stated. The Dems prefer to leave it to the Divine Right of Judges. You might too if you believed in gay marriage and partial-birth abortion, but, simply as a matter of practical politics, it's disastrous for the party. Poor sad Richard Cohen, unabletomoveon.org after five years, is a fine emblem for the Democrats: Ask not for whom the chad hangs, it hangs for thee." Whole thing is amusing - read entire.

Free Market Fairy Tales on a non-PC roll in the UK:

I suppose that you, like me, have spent the last week being nice to Muslims. It must be a bit unsettling for the poor buggers – dozens of middle-class white people grinning inanely at them instead of completely ignoring them as usual. But you do feel the need to make some effort, if only to mentally project the message that “It’s OK, we understand that you’re not all fanatical suicide bombers … although actually that bloke over there does look a bit iffy”.

Judge Roberts attacked for wardrobe

And his family, too. I guess it's hard to find fault with this ultimate serious, un-hip, straight-arrow guy. Of course, if he wore black t-shirts and were a party animal, his wife dressed like John Dean's wife, and his kids wore ghetto garb, that would be a problem too. Moral of the story: You can never win when someone is determined to find fault.  Michelle has the story. And Captain Ed has the sarcasm.

Two from Chrenkoff: Terrorists target gays, and Miss Universe is in trouble with her feminine wardrobe, in Canada (piece below the above)

Sowell notes the abuse of words emerging in the anti-Roberts trumped-up silliness, at Town Hall.

The Canada-Washington State bad-guy tunnel, with photos, here

ACLU wins another one, against the EVIL EVIL Boy Scouts. This is not your father's ACLU - this is an ACLU which hates American tradition - a destroyer of culture and cultural traditions. It has been co-opted by the Left for years. Here is the Stop the ACLU website: Click here: Stop the ACLU - Beating the ACLU With Their Own Sickle and Hammer

American Thinker notes one more reason Dems can't hit Roberts too hard - he is Catholic, and the RC vote matters to them. So Chuckie and Ted will just make enough fuss to throw some meat to the Daily Kos readers, and it will be over.

The always interesting Bradley writes about "The Hip Hop Sellout" at Acton Inst.

"Pain is just the feeling of weakness leaving your body."

A USMC expression

The Anti-Jihad Left

Their numbers are growing, but not fast enough. Are they possibly realizing that a successful Jihad will get the Left nowhere? Fascinating set of statements at "Unite Against Terror," including Hitchins, Iraq The Model, and other notable "progressives."

How the media helped Kerry lose - by mistake - Opinion JOurnal

Feds encourage illegals to get mortgages...huh? Newsmax

Good piece on multiculturalism and cultural assimilation in the US - Bainbridge

And Steyn - Our multiculturalism is the true suicide bomb

Either the conservative bloggers are nursing celebratory hangovers, or they are just having the joyful feeling of hope. And there's more - American Spectator:

WHITE HOUSE STAFF AND INSIDERS at the Department of Justice insist that they continue to expect as many as two additional vacancies on the Supreme Court. "We've operated from that assumption that once the Chief Justice saw where this was headed, he would be comfortable in stepping aside on his own timetable," says a White House staffer. "We think he'll be happy with Roberts, and will want to at least work with him a bit, but that his retirement will come."

In the wake of the London terrorism, we have CBS following in the footsteps of the BBC and counseling against the "T" word , from LGF. Dare I ask who is being protected here? Surely not the gentle, misunderstood "t-people" from the Religion of Peace.

More on the limits of multiculturalism, by Bone, via Tim Blair

More campaign finance encroachments on Free Speech, in Seattle now. This is scarey. At TCS

Croatia - I have a friend who left for her summer family vacation in Croatia last week, and I thought it sounded odd. Not so - NYT Travel  - it's the New Riviera

Hillary panders to La Raza, offers free college for - illegals. Newsmax

Brit Moslems to confront evil with Blair. Hope it works, but it won't. Jihad Watch

"Fly the flag for Britain again" Johnson in the Telegraph:

If these four young men were perfectly normal Yorkshiremen, then what the hell is happening to this country? Of all the shattering revelations of the past few days, the worst has been that these suicide bombers were British.

Simon quotes Gerecht on the effects of Western nations on Islam. Interesting, but I do not agree.

The economic ignorance of the clergy. Where do they think the donations come from? Dollars are not manna - people work. In American Spectator

Citgo, Corzine, Conservation and Kelo: The Petty Island Story

This story was mentioned on a Rush trailer this morning. Citgo wants to donate its 360-acre Petty Island in the Delaware River to New Jersey as a nature preserve. New Jersey doesn't want it donated for a preserve: they seem to want to either force a sale or to take it - Kelo-ize it - for private development projects. Current Democratic Senator John Corzine, the fabulously wealthy ex-Wall Street mogul, now running for Governor, supports the latter plan, and thus alienated environmentalists. And Corzine's support of yet another massive development project in the Jersey Meadowlands has gotten him into further trouble. I guess birds don't pay taxes. Sierra Activist has a photo gallery of Petty Island.  Eagles do winter on the island, but I think there are principles at stake here that are even more important than eagles - and we love eagles along with all living critters. We have posted, and quoted, various views on Kelo on this blog. To what extent does the Kelo decision make it easier for NJ to take the island via eminent domain rather than to accept it as a gifted nature preserve? Lawyers - please tell me the answer.

It's about time this story makes the NYT - but will it? Or will they decide to protect Corzine? The NYT sure did love Kelo, which, they gushed, "strikes a blow at the property rights movement". And yes, as you have surely realized, Maggie's is a highly pro-conservation blog, but we are far from greenie-wackos. (And, by the way, the Republican candidate, Forester, is in favor of accepting the gift.)

(Photo courtesy of P. LaTourette - his photo link to the left)