A Little Country Humor

For the uninitiated, this farm implement is used to fertilize fields by distributing bovine feces.

Move Over Uncle Ted

Rocker Eric Clapton is a fan of shooting trips in the countryside - because the outings help him bond with like-minded people.

The star is the co-owner of London shop Cordings, a supplier of hunting and fishing supplies, and admits he often indulges in trips to bag game.

And Clapton is adamant he has learnt a lot from his favourite pastime.

He says, "I'm not really that gregarious. And shooting with groups of people up and down the country has taught me a lot about how to get on with my fellow human beings."

The musician recently cleared out his gun cabinet, selling 13 pieces off at auction in Britain.Clapton insists he had to get rid of the weapons, because he became hooked on collecting them.He adds, "It is following the same pattern as when I collected guitars - I get obsessed, then engulfed and finally narrow the collection down."

Quote Of The Day

"Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another. "
- H.L. Mencken

The Boxing Day Hunt

From The Telegraph:

"This will be a grand day for traditional England – Boxing Day always is. Folk will turn out in force to watch the merry spectacle of the local hunt, as it mills around on the village green or beside the ha-ha of a country house: mince pies and port; horsemen uncertain how to consume them without dropping whip or reins; cream and tan hounds under the eye of a leathery huntsman; red-coated masters receiving the gratitude of all, as well they might, since making good any holes in the hunt finances falls to them; everyone as smart as guardsmen, the steaming horses seeming to share the sense of anticipation, if not bonhomie, with their riders, as the pageant moves off to follow hounds into the frost-spangled, midwinter countryside."

What is England without fox hunting? The mere fact that it was outlawed four years ago does not keep hunters from participating. Over 300,000 showed up this year.

So True

The Mom Song

The Mom Song from Northland Video on Vimeo.

Mark Steyn At His Best

I haven't posted any Mark Steyn for a while and this was just too good to pass up:

We're In The Fast Lane To Bailoutistan

"See the USA in your Chevrolet!" trilled Dinah Shore week after week on TV.
Can you still see the USA in your Chevrolet? Through a windscreen darkly.

General Motors now has a market valuation about a third of Bed, Bath & Beyond, and no one says your Swash 700 Elongated Biscuit Toilet Seat Bidet is too big to fail. GM has a market capitalization of about $2.4 billion. For purposes of comparison, Toyota's market cap is $100 billion and change (the change being bigger than the whole of GM). General Motors, like the other two geezers of the Old Three, is a vast retirement home with a small money-losing auto subsidiary. The UAW is AARP in an Edsel: It has three times as many retirees and widows as "workers" (I use the term loosely). GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people.

How do you make that math add up? Not by selling cars: Honda and Nissan make a pretax operating profit per vehicle of around $1,600; Ford, Chrysler and GM make a loss of $500 to $1,500. That's to say, they lose money on every vehicle they sell. Like Henry Ford said, you can get it in any color as long as it's red.

In the 20th century, most advanced nations made automobiles but only America made them mythic: "Drive the USA in your Chevrolet!" sang Dinah. "America's the greatest land of all!" America had road movies. With car chases. Thelma and Louise drove their vehicle off the cliff and, unlike the Old Three, they didn't demand American taxpayers come along for the ride. But, if you didn't want to hit the open road, you could just hang around, being cool. In Chuck Berry's immortal quatrain:

"Riding along in my automobile
My baby beside me at the wheel
Cruising and playing the radio
With No Particular Place To Go."

Not if you were a European teen. Cruising was an American activity. A Saturday night out for a Brit meant hanging around at a rain-streaked bus shelter hoping the night service would show up. Even if you had a particular place to go, you had no means of getting there.

So many areas of endeavor that once embodied the youth and energy of this great land are now old and sclerotic. I include, naturally, my own industry. I loved the American newsrooms you saw in movies like "The Front Page," full of hard-boiled, hard-livin' newspapermen. By the time I got there myself, there were no hard-boiled newspapermen, just bland, anemic newspaperpersons turning out politically correct snooze sheets of torpid portentousness. The owner of The Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune recently filed for bankruptcy protection. The New York Times is mortgaging its office to fund debt repayment. The Detroit Free Press is cutting out home delivery except on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, thereby further depressing sales of delivery trucks in the Motor City.

The newspapers blame the Internet, just as Detroit blames Japan. But the Japanese have problems of their own. One day they'll get theirs. That's the beauty of capitalism. Nothing is forever. The big railroad barons smoking cigars and enjoying pheasant under glass in the dining car on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe thought Henry Ford was a schmuck. Who'd want to ride around in that thing? Next thing you know, everyone's getting their kicks on Route 66:

"You'll see Amarillo
Gallup, New Mexico
Flagstaff, Arizona
Don't forget Winona
Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino."

Ah, California. The Golden State! To a penniless immigrant named Arnold Schwarzenegger, it was a land of plenty. Now Arnold is an immigrant of plenty in a penniless land. What's the motto on the license plates? "Ah'll be back …for more of your money!" In California you don't have to be an orange to have your pips squeezed. The Terminator makes Gray Davis look like Calvin Coolidge. Care to terminate a government program, Governor? Hey, great idea! We'll hire 200 people to do an impact study on terminating the Department of Impact Study Regulation and get back to you in a decade. And when Gov. Girlyman has run out of state taxpayers to fleece for his ever-more-bloated bureaucracy, he'll go to Washington to plead for a federal bailout of Cantaffordya.

California! The state that symbolizes the American Dream! If you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere!

No, wait, that's New York. "This is the worst fiscal downturn since the Great Depression," announced New York Gov. Paterson. So what's he doing? Why, he's bringing in the biggest tax hike in New York history. If you can make it there, you'll be paying state tax on it, sales tax, municipal tax, a doubled beer tax, a tax on clothing, a tax on cab rides, an "iTunes tax" on downloads from the Internet, a tax on haircuts, 137 new tax hikes in all. Call Albany today and order your new package of tax forms, for just $199.99, plus 12 percent tax on tax forms and 4 percent tax-form application fee partially refundable upon payment of the 7.5 percent tax-filing tax. If you can make it there, you'll certainly have no difficulty making it in Tajikistan.

Hey, and who needs to make it there when you can just get appointed there? Gov. Paterson is said to be considering appointing Princess Caroline of Kennedy to Hillary Clinton's vacant Senate seat. After two and a third centuries of republican experiment, America has finally worked its way back to the House of Lords.

"Friends Say Kennedy Has Long Wanted Public Role," Anne Kornblut assured readers in an in-depth Washington Post tongue-bath. She hasn't "long wanted" it to the extent of, you know, running for dog catcher in Lackawanna and getting – what's the word? – "elected," but, if you have a spare Senate seat, she's graciously indicated that she'd be prepared to consider accepting it. As lady-in-waiting Anne Kornblut pointed out, Caroline is highly qualified, being "the author of several books." It's true! She's an experienced poetry editor. She edited "The Best-Loved Poems Of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis." Jackie Kennedy wrote poems? Of course! She wrote so many poems that some are better loved than others.

See the USA from your Chevrolet: An hereditary legislature, a media fawning its way into bankruptcy, its iconic coastal states driving out innovators and entrepreneurs, the arrival of the new Messiah heralded only by the leaden dirge of "We Three Kings Of Ol' Detroit Are/Seeking checks we traverse afar," and Route 66 looking ever more like a one-way dead-end street to Bailoutistan. Boy, I sure could use a poem by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis right now, even one of the lesser-loved ones.

"I feel like I lost my country," the Hudson Institute's Herbert London said the other day, wondering whatever happened to the land of opportunity and dynamism. But I'm more of an optimist. Maybe Princess Caroline will be appointed CEO of GM and all will be well. Or maybe Bed, Bath & Beyond will put wheels on the Swash 700 Elongated Biscuit Toilet Seat Bidet.
And on that cheery note let me wish you a very Hopey Changemas.

Red Neck Christmas Pictures

You Didn't Know They Made A Tractor? Have You Seen Their SUV?

A Last Minute Holiday Gift Suggestion For Yours Truly

Bumper Sticker Sighting

o1/20/13

Apparently, turn about is fair play. Reported by our young miss.

Quote Of The Day

"A moderate Republican is like a Volvo with a gun rack."
- Robin Williams (paraphrased)

Picture Of The Day

Courtesy of my brother in-law and taken in Monterey, CA.

Quote Of The Day

"Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered."
- Albert Camus

How Well Did You Score?

It's test taking time over at ISI and you can participate here:

Our Fading Heritage: Americans Fail a Basic Test on Their History and Institutions is the third major study conducted by ISI on the kind of knowledge required for informed citizenship. In 2006 and 2007, ISI published the first ever scientific surveys of civic learning among college students. Each year, approximately 14,000 freshmen and seniors at 50 schools nationwide were given a 60-question, multiple-choice exam on basic knowledge of America’s heritage. Both years, the students failed. The average freshman scored 51.7% the first year and 51.4% the next. The average senior scored 53.2%, then 54.2%. After all the time, effort, and money spent on college, students emerge no better off in understanding the fundamental features of American self-government.

This year, ISI sought to learn more about the real-world consequences of this collegiate failure. ISI crafted a study to measure the independent impact of college on the acquisition and maintenance of civic literacy over a lifetime. First, a random sample of 2,508 American adults of all backgrounds was surveyed, allowing comparisons to be made between the college and non-college educated. They were asked 33 straightforward civics questions, many of which high school graduates and new citizens are expected to know. Respondents were also asked several questions concerning their participation in American civic life, their attitudes about perennial issues of American governance, and other behaviors that may or may not contribute to civic literacy. Finally, the results were run through multivariate regression analysis, allowing ISI to compare the civic impact of college with that of other societal factors.

Do Americans possess the knowledge necessary to participate wisely in the affairs of the nation?

Seventy-one percent of Americans fail the test, with an overall average score of 49%.

Earning a college degree does little to increase knowledge of America’s history, key texts, and institutions. The average score among those who ended their formal education with a bachelor’s degree is 57%, or an “F.” That is only 13 percentage points higher than the average score among those who ended their formal education with a high school diploma.

Officeholders typically have less civic knowledge than the general public. On average, they score 44%, five percentage points lower than non-officeholders.

A Literary Confession

I am not, at this moment in time, the most gifted of writers and have amply documented my meager proficiency here many times. I personally consider my use of English to be fairly unique. With all due respect, I understand at times it’s a nightmare. But at the end of the day, we can all absolutely agree on one point about good writing - it’s not rocket science. I probably shouldn’t of written this but if I hone my skills 24/7….

Santa Fred Explains The New Economy