We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
As everybody knows by now, NY Gov. Spitzer dropped his vote fraud plan, AKA drivers' licenses for illegals, and Mrs. Clinton "changed her mind" six minutes later.
I guess that is what they call "practical politics." 80% of Iowa voters opposed the notion. In my opinion, the damage is done, because now we know what they want, if they could only get it. And I have no doubt that Spitzer got an earful from Hillary on the phone.
Nature vs. nurture re race is no longer taboo at the NYT. Auster
Jules after one year of his blog: "I also discovered it’s a colossal pain in the ass, like owning a restaurant." Indeed. Only idiots like us would even try to do it.
The revolting, oily Sidney Blumenthal is back working for the Clintons again.
This is the sort of Kos-like shrill hysteria, enraged derangement, fear-mongering, and distortion which is his stock in trade, from a piece at Salon:
Under crisis conditions of an extraordinary magnitude political leadership of the highest level will be required in the next presidency. The damage is broad, deep and spreading, apparent not only in international disorder and violence, the unprecedented decline of U.S. prestige, and the flouting of our security and economic interests but also in the hollowing out of the federal government's departments and agencies, and their growing incapacity to fulfill their functions, from FEMA to the Department of Justice.
What is an "involuntary father"? Whatever it is, should it pay child support? Dr. Helen
"Stewardship" of the people. Brits called upon to control their people more thoroughly. Moonbattery. This is totalitarianism, or monarchy, by bureaucrat, and Brussels is the new Versailles.
A negative hotel review from Rick. Tropicana. For starters, I would not be caught dead in Las Vegas. Second, if taken there dead against my will, I would stay at the Bellagio.
Forget the briefings from generals, the intelligence evaluations and the Pentagon status reports. There is a handy indicator for whether the war in Iraq is going well — its relative absence from the front pages.
CNN's Wolf Blitzer has been warned not to focus Thursday's Dem debate on Hillary. 'This campaign is about issues, not on who we can bring down and destroy,' top Clinton insider explains. 'Blitzer should not go down to the levels of character attack and pull 'a Russert.'' Blitzer is set to moderate debate from Vegas...
ie, No tough questions or you are screwed. Russert's question was a "character attack"? That is a lame spin. Related: Camille Paglia on Queen Hillary's Disruptive Court
Our Yankee friend Raven has had enough of politics at And Rightly So, and has moved over to her Just Raven site - whence the moose photo on the right. As the New England moose population burgeons, this is becoming a common roadside sight. Scary, too: you do not want to hit one with your Prius. A year or two ago I enjoyed a moose filet. Very fine.
Non-poverty in the West creates dire political crisis for Left. I guess their only option now is to convince the middle class that they are oppressed by The System. (h/t, No Pasaran)
The Big Green Scare Machine at Am. Thinker. And I cannot resist re-linking this: Weather Channel founder says AGW "greatest scam ever."
Hitchins falsifies MLK's inspiration. Hitchins is by no means stupid, so can I assume that the errors are deliberate?
Worried yet? Up to $400 billion in write-downs due to sub-primes? I see tasty buying opportunities in my near future: stocks, plus maybe a time to get out of my rental.
Most of what passes for tolerance today is nothing more than intellectual cowardice, a fear of intelligent engagement. Those who brandish the word "intolerant" are unwilling to be challenged by other views or grapple with contrary opinions, or even to consider them. It's easier to hurl an insult—"you intolerant bigot"—than to confront an idea and either refute it or be changed by it. In the modern era, "tolerance" has become intolerance.
Whenever you're charged with intolerance, always ask for a definition. When tolerance means neutrality, that all views are equally valid and true, then no one is ever tolerant because no one is ever neutral about his own views. Point out the contradiction built into the new definition. Point out that this kind of tolerance is a myth.
He recommends:
Be egalitarian regarding people. Be elitist regarding ideas.
How many academics feel like frauds?Norm. How many people, in general?
Hate speech: If you are Conservative or Libertarian-minded,you will surely recognize yourself in these words.
The Vioxx settlements. Worstall. Thus was an excellent drug taken off the market, and a great, innovative business damaged. It's probably just about greed that these lawsuits are brought. Does anybody really expect medicine to be without side effects? No free lunch.
There is no milk but there is yogurt. There is no sugar, but there is Splenda. There are no eggs, nor meat, nor rice, but there is caviar, salmon and all the things to make Sushi. What type of economy is this? Who are the geniuses that play politics in the name of the poor and the result is that all that is available are the goods for the rich?
"There is something profoundly wrong — something that should trouble all of us — when we have elected Democratic officials who seem more worried about how the Bush administration might respond to Iran's murder of our troops, than about the fact that Iran is murdering our troops.
FL company prohibits smoking off the job. That would be an interesting legal case, on either side. Makes you want to be a lawyer. The guy also doesn't want to hire fat people.
Richistan: A journey through the American wealth boom and the lives of the new rich. A new book by WSJ writer Robert Frank, reviewed in The American. One quote:
It’s not the existence of these well-heeled, free-spending Americans that’s remarkable, Frank writes, but their sheer abundance. In 1995, there were 230,000 U.S. households worth at least $10 million and 50,000 households worth at least $25 million (in inflation-adjusted terms). In 2004, there were 530,000 and 110,000 such households, respectively. The accumulated wealth of America’s top one percent of earners—about $1.35 trillion—equals more than the total national incomes of Canada, France, and Italy. Perhaps most striking, roughly half of all American wealth has been created in the past ten years.
What a wonderful thing it is that, if you want big money, you have the chance to make it.
The reclamation of LA's Skid Row. Heather MacDonald in City Journal. A quote
For 25 years, the advocates used lawsuits and antipolice propaganda to beat back every effort to restore sanity to Skid Row. They concealed the real causes of homelessness under a false narrative about a callous, profit-mad society that abused the less fortunate. The result: a level of squalor that had no counterpart in the United States. Smith’s policing initiatives—grounded in the Broken Windows theory of order maintenance—ended that experiment in engineered anarchy, saving more lives in ten months than most homeless advocates have helped over their careers. The forces of lawlessness are regrouping, however, and Smith’s successes may wind up reversed in a renewed attack on the police.
and
An Urban Land Institute study warned in 1987 that the “invasion of the homeless” was threatening the older SRO population and local businesses; stronger police protection was essential, argued the institute. The recommendation failed to take into account a second new population invading Skid Row: homeless advocates. Some of the same groups that had challenged public-order laws and pushed for the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill now seized on the resulting homeless for a host of ends, including a right to housing and further restrictions on the police. A made-for-the-media “tent city” erected by sundry homeless advocates outside City Hall in December 2004, for example, sought to end workfare and job-search requirements for welfare recipients—measures that had nothing to do with why people were on the streets.
Election Day: Do not vote today - unless you understand the issues, and have thought it all through. When uninformed and foolish people vote, everyone loses. As we have noted, it's all about whoresStoogespandering for a sinecure desiring to serve you.
Looking behind those health care stats. Mankiw in the NYT. (h/t, Viking). He pokes a hole in all of the scare tactics. What people want is portablility, I think. Of course, everybody wants cheaper too - but not if it means less freedom of choice. Medical treatment is not a commodity, and a physician is not a factory worker.
A good point on the supposed "problem" of income disparity. Cafe Hayek. The numbers are deceptive because women are working more these days, and the stats are based on household income, not individual income.
Why doesn't Maggie's Farm enter those annual "Best Blog" contests that are going on now?
1. We think it's a little silly. 2. We might not win. 3. We have no clue about what blog category we could be in, and there are far better tractor blogs than we are. I reckon we could win, though, in the "Best Commenters" category- but there isn't one.
The Perils of Petrocracy. Something good from the Sunday NYT. It begins:
Who holds the world’s oil? You might assume it’s in the hands of big private oil companies like ExxonMobil. But in fact, 77 percent of the world’s oil reserves are held by national oil companies with no private equity, and there are 13 state-owned oil companies with more reserves than Exxon-Mobil.
Tony afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted - like us. More on Tony Snow's speech,at SDA. Another quote from Tony:
Political rhetoric has turned nasty, childish, and very personal, especially on Capitol Hill, and Americans are sick of it. Hotheads seem to be enjoying a false spring of fame. And members of the mainstream press are scratching their heads and asking, “What's going on here? Why are the nation´s newspapers hemorrhaging readers? Why are the television networks losing viewers? Why has cable news suddenly hit still water? What is going on? Don't Americans care about the news?"
Well, of course they do: The problem is, they don't think they´re getting news — and they´re right.
Since when do Bill and Hillary live together? Not since the White House, I'd wager. Doesn't she have her own townhouse in DC? Why do people talk as if they were actually ever together these days? Anyway, Althouse on Krauthammer on father-son vs. husband-wife connections.
A person who believes so strongly that a problem needs to be remedied that she dedicates substantial time to ... getting other people to fix the problem.
"It’s time for the press to declare themselves either free guardians of the public trust or owned members of a political movement. They can’t be both."
Without question, the most entertaining thing on the Intertubes right now. If Iowahawk ever calls, and says: Road trip!, never say no. You can sit in the back with me, the Techno-Viking, and the Seven Horsemen of the Apocalypso. And Dick Dale, if'n he ain't busy.
...the larger point is that her policy approach revealed all the impulses not of the New Centrism but the Old Leftism. Her statements were redolent of the 1990s phrase "command and control." They reflect a bias toward the old tax-raising on people who aren't rich, who aren't protected, the old "my friends and I know best, and we'll fill you dullards in on the details later."
Working for Murdoch: 
Howard Dean makes up 
A negative hotel review from Rick. 
Our Yankee friend Raven has had enough of politics at And Rightly So, and has moved over to her 
How well 
Those sneaky, 
Norman Mailer: Roger Kimball and I are on the 
A school voucher debate, at 
Convicted of poetry, in part. 
Randall Hoven on "Inordinate Fear" at 
Climate skepticism 
More on the Dems' problems with illegal immigration. 
Why doesn't Maggie's Farm enter those annual "Best Blog" contests that are going on now?
The micro-celebrity and the world of image: 
From today's 
Boston Globe discovers relationship between 
Blacks in the top chairs.