Maggie's Farm

Great fun. h/t, Carpe Diem. Except for the practice, this gives you Calc 1. No reason in the world that Calc 1 should take a precious year of school.

Andrew Breitbart's new site, Big Government, looks good. I will make it a regular visit.

Things on the intertubes keep getting better, thanks to free enterprise.

What good is democracy if it doesn't give us the stuff I want? Sort-of from Thomas Friedman. A quote:

That's what you get with one-party democracy: a country run by a bunch of screaming, arguing Appalachian retards, all of whom get the same vote as Pulitzer Prize-winning opinion leaders. Say what you want about China, but they have sensible pre-screening rules to keep these divisive morons away from voting booths in the first place.

When the AP says, as in this piece,

© 2009 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed

do they mean that it cannot be linked? What do they mean? Is linking "redistributing"?

Help me out, somebody. One would think that they would want linking to their stuff.

Obama willing to meet Kim Jong-Il, but not John Boehner.

That's the insanity of it all. The Left continues to show their true colors.

The historic Battle of Teutoberg Forest.

It stopped the Romans in the same way that Lepanto stopped the Moslems.

From Camille Paglia:

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism. 

How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals? (A prominent example is radio host Mark Levin's book "Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto," which was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three months without receiving major reviews, including in the Times.) I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party -- but I must be living in the nostalgic past. Remember Bob Dylan's 1964 song "Chimes of Freedom," made famous by the Byrds? And here's Richie Havens electrifying the audience at Woodstock with "Freedom! Freedom!" Even Linda Ronstadt, in the 1967 song "A Different Drum," with the Stone Ponys, provided a soaring motto for that decade: "All I'm saying is I'm not ready/ For any person, place or thing/ To try and pull the reins in on me." 

But affluent middle-class Democrats now seem to be complacently servile toward authority and automatically believe everything party leaders tell them. Why?

From T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII, Editor at Large, the National Topsider:

The seasonal affective disorder seems especially hard on Montauk's children, cleft as they are from the loving breasts of their household staffs by the stately carillons of distant preparatory academies. I could see it in the dilated pupils of young T. Coddington VIII last week, as his driver Evgeny packed the lad's trunks into the old family Daimler for the long lonely drive to Quonsocket Boy's Prep and Rehabilitation Center. At our farewell I left him with the same bracing words of encouragement left me by my father, swashbuckling Topsider founder T. Coddington Van Voorhees VI, upon my annual boyhood departures to the finishing schools of Switzerland: "the Alps will bloom soon enough, dear boy -- persevere, persevere."

PJ O'Rourke at Reason TV. h/t, Driscoll. A quote: "Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit". Another: "People who go into politics are bad people."

Editor note: Good fun to listen to, even though this is the serious side of PJ.

It recently came to my attention that not everybody knows what I am talking about when I refer to the famously eccentric Collyer brothers.

Get educated! 

There are people out there, similar to these guys, in almost every town. Probably quietly psychotic, or with folie a deux, or some personality disorder or dysfunction, or, maybe, just messy people. OCD? I doubt it. Eccentric is the best word. 

Cleaning up is a hassle, isn't it?

Hoarders, whether of money or of things, miss out on all of the joys and adventures of life. They "plan" for a future which will never arrive, and then they die. Very sad to waste a life that way - a life which is a gift of God. God invited us to trust Him, and to accept His abundance. Hoarders (and I do not mean ordinary, wholesome, prudent folks) reject His offer of "life in abundance," and thus reject Him. It's a big mistake.

And I know I will get to that Aug 2008 New Yorker one of these days, when I get the chance. A photo of the Collyer brothers' house in NYC:

The piece of the above title at Weekly Standard begins:

The cocktail is a lovely simple thing: a mixture of spirits and flavorings that whets the appetite, pleases the eye, and stimulates the mind. It is one of our conspicuous contributions to cultured living, up there with the Great American Songbook and the tuxedo. Yet, like almost everything else to do with culture in this country, the cocktail fell on hard times in the 1960s. A generation preferred other intoxicants and, when they drank, took their alcohol in sickly sweet concoctions that defied any idea of sophistication. As time passed, the places one could order a decent cocktail grew farther in between. By the 1990s, few establishments outside of the fustiest hotels could produce a passable Martini or Manhattan. Fewer still a Negroni, a Jack Rose, or a Sazerac.

Photo is a classic old cocktail, the Manhattan.

Our hero Ted Dalrymple (photo) encounters some PC censorship, and is not pleased about it. But his annoyance does not interfere with his ability to think about it intelligently. One quote:

...who, after all, is this ‘per’ whose son has given his name to everyone in the world? Surely, to be absolutely egalitarian between the sexes, it should be ‘peroffspring’?

Prof. James Duane. h/t, Coyote. Entertaining and essential advice for the innocent and the guilty.

A re-post from a year ago-

Delightful sail with friends. Couple of nice boats to look at in their CT harbor on the way out.

First, Nefertiti, the 1960s 12-meter Boston Yacht Club's America's Cup contender:

Second, the famous racing boat Ticonderoga, built in 1936, and many-time winner of the San Francisco to Honolulu race in the 50s:

I have heard the story that Jimmy Buffet tried to buy her at auction, but lost to another bidder, who graciously now allows Jimmy The Pirate to borrow her every year. A bit closer:

From Rick Moran on Is the end of American as we know it so bad?:

No one except some addle brained liberals believe that big government is not a threat to individual liberty, not to mention being at odds with the very first principle espoused by the Founders; that America should be a land of free men who govern themselves under a Constitution that clearly defines and limits the role of the federal government.

I don’t necessarily begrudge President Obama his efforts to “remake America” - if those efforts were carried out with a respect for that first principle uppermost in his mind. I would probably still oppose most of what he would do, but after all, elections have consequences and the president has a perfect right to try and change America if he finds it wanting in some respects.

But President Obama has no right to fundamentally alter the relationship between the governed and the government as defined in the Constitution. If he feels so strongly about having the federal government gradually taking over 1/6 of the American economy by being able to dictate to free men what kind of health care they will receive and their families will receive, then he should do it in the Constitutionally approved manner of amending our founding document to reflect that change.

From Prelutsky's The Case Against Mortarboarding:

If I were running things, most high school grads would enter trade schools.  America will always need nurses, plumbers, carpenters, glaziers and mechanics.  What nobody needs is some 21-year-old schnook who’s wasted four years and most of his inheritance majoring in black, Hispanic or lesbian, studies.  And, then, to make matters worse, because like the Scarecrow of Oz, they have a sheepskin, they’re actually convinced they’re smarter than their parents.

One of my readers, Penny Alfonso, of Glendale, California, shared a conversation she had with her daughter.  “I told her I won’t pay the tuition for any classes that end in the word “studies.”

Most people agree that the meaning of a college degree has degraded over the years, and is certainly no longer an indication of scholarship or advanced learning. With the commoditization of higher ed, colleges across the country have become glorified high schools. It cannot be otherwise, because most people aren't scholars. Just think about it: Does a college degree today guarantee that a person knows anything about anything?

Of course not, and employers know this.

I agree with Mr. Prelutsky that more people need training in trades, whether in apprenticeships of trade schools, whether in computer programming and software development, or in farming, carpentry and gunsmithing. A serious high school education ought to be a good start for anyone's life-long learning - if they want it.

From Australia on "climate" taxes:

People see this as madness. And they actually get the gist of it. They know it’s a new tax and they are asking: ‘How does putting another new tax on me change the temperature of the globe?’

While riding the trails over hill and dale last weekend, I encountered this enchanting  young lady (what do you call a mermaid that dwells on land?), lounging on a fallen log over the small stream we ride though, and where we water the horses.

Mrs. B. was riding with me. She always seems to be with me when I encounter such succubi, or nymphs, or odalisques, or sirens, or whatever they are called. These remarkable beings only speak with a voice that sounds like a breeze through the leaves and and the rippling of the streams. Sometimes they make themselves visible. Most times, not.

 h/t, Theo

Via Powerline:

A few weeks ago, Eric Holder saw nothing wrong with Black Panthers using billy clubs to intimidate voters. Today, he thinks intimidating terrorists with cigars is a crime. Holder is the one who should be answering tough questions under oath.

Via No Left Turns:

Private insurance works well where it’s least regulated. To find the unaffordable disasters, you must head to states such as New York or New Jersey that have pioneered the reforms Obama is peddling for the entire country. . . .

A 55-year-old man in Allentown, Pa., can choose from 99 plans starting as low as $141 a month for hospital coverage. A zero-deductible HMO plan costs $418 a month. Or he can pick a more flexible PPO, with a higher deductible and pay less monthly out-of-pocket for the premium.

From PJ O'Rourke in our link this morning:

...And never mind that his writing is more than uninformative, it is informationally subtractive. Read him and you'll know less than you know now about what the government is going to do to you and your doctor. Read him carefully and you'll know nothing.

Big surprise:

...when you look at the high-school NAEP scores, you see virtually no improvement in reading or math performance since the early 1970s, despite massive increases in taxpayer funding and reform fads galore.

Everybody knows that education costs next to nothing. It's the education industry that is expensive. Most people also know that "increased funding" and "reforms" are little more than political payoffs.

Enough already. I do not need to add to it nor can I, as I can do neither saccharine nor sentimental very well.  I have yet to hear the word "controversial" or "extreme Left-wing" or "limousine Liberal." If the guy was such a saintly historic figure, how come nobody told me before today? (It does sound as if he was kind to people in person, but I never thought much of his personal or political integrity, even if he had good manners.)

Not to be mean-spirited or anything - just being normal Yankee-grumpy. Now I see the Left is already politicizing his death. Never waste a crisis death. And now here it comes, just as Rush predicted a year ago (and was given hell for saying).

Addendum, from Mr. Tiger:

...Ted Kennedy did more to push American government and civil society toward a European social welfare model than any politician of the post-war era, with the possible exception of LBJ. By my reckoning, he left the country worse off than he found it, and to the moment of his death supported legislation that, if enacted, will make it a lot harder for the generation of my children to succeed, thrive, and reach for their own stars. So I will end on perhaps a churlish note: I wish Ted Kennedy had not led the life he did.

Addendum: Scott at Powerline thinks that Kennedy's "borking" of Bork was his most shameful action. After Mary Jo, I assume.

Mary Jo, and the chicks in the Georgetown pubs that he and Chris Dodd reportedly entertained constantly, were probably the only regular people he ever knew. But "he cared" - always with other peoples' money, of course.

But I am voluntarily off duty for news, so I will shut up.

It all suddenly becomes clear to Randall Hoven. He has this graph:

I guess we're all not gonna drown this week. His post is rational, and deserves to be widely spread around.

I have no doubt that all of the global warming climate change etc. nonsense is about politics and power. And I do not give a darn what the weather does: whatever it does is fine with me as long as I am healthy and free, and my kids are ok.

John McAfee of the famous software company has seen his net worth go from $100 million to $4 million. He is just one of many of the wealthy who have experienced similar things over the past couple of years.

The NYT recounts some of these stories. (h/t, Mankiw). I have seen quite a bit of this happening in clients at the firm - none on the scale of McAfee, but plenty of folks who have dropped from, say, $4 million to $700,000 or $1 million. A few folks who were heavy in Citibank, for example, and a couple of families in Madoff. That hurts if you are 70 and thought you were all set for a comfortable retirement.

The collapse of the value of stocks, real estate, and other investments has led to greater "equality." Achieving greater financial equality in this way doubtless evokes schadenfreude in the envious, happiness in the hate-the-rich populists, and delight in those who erroneously believe that money and wealth are zero-sum games.

But does it do any good for anybody? Probably not. When the rich lose money, government revenues drop, requiring higher taxes on the middle class. When the rich lose money, those who provide the goods and services they enjoy end up in trouble too - like boatmakers, travel companies, landscaping businesses, interior decorators, masseuses, restaurants, furniture-makers, hospital employees, government employees - and lawyers (our firm's income is down 27% thus far this year).

I believe that the Lefty notion of economic equality is insane. If anything, we need more rich people - the more, the better. I want everybody to be rich - if that is what they want in life.