“Blah blah blah CRA Fannie May blah blah blah…led to an increase in the number of people being given home mortgages who really never should have gotten them.”

Translation: “Our economy was destroyed because niggers and other mud people stole mortgages from honorable and blameless lending institutions.”

See, we get what you mean – you don’t have to dogwhistle that particular, uhhh, canard for us. Keep repeating that narrative and you’ll surely convince those who already believe it.

For some reason you tools never bring up the equally pertinent impact on the economy of all those good, god-fearing white people in suburbia who were addicted to serial refi’s. Remember when they were reaping non-existent equity out of cul-de-sac houses they’d bought just six months previous? So they could go out and buy new suv’s and breast implants and spray-on tans and all that shit? Shampoo, rinse, repeat. That irresponsible behavior had to be several magnitudes larger a factor in the collapse than your low-income scapegoats.

To be fair, though, it’s worth noting that Woody has grown and progressed as an artist. Forty years ago when he was still doing stand-up and having his schtick pieces published in Playboy, he always included at least one jailbait joke. But now his fetish/obsession has matured into a more respectable high-teen to twenty-something sort of Trilby. If we’re patient, and he lives to be 120, we may yet see a thirty-year-old woman as the object of his desire in one of his grotesquely sub-Bergman wankfests. But I’m betting he’ll have her in a plaid schoolgirl skirt and pigtails. Woody Allen: America's answer to Lolicon.

I first read Rand in my teens, which is when most of us are introduced to her. Usually by some well-meaning lit teacher who assigns ‘Anthem’ as a class reading assignment because it’s righteous and noble and speaks to the glory of the individual. And short, to boot.

Then, after that appetizer, I consumed ‘The Fountainhead’ and ‘Atlas Shrugged’. And it was all grand, heady stuff to my thirteen-year-old mind. Note that: thirteen-year-old mind.

Alas, one grows up and out of adolescence and realizes what an utter wasteland the Randian universe is, and how self-serving, mean, and simplistic are her ideals. And you conclude that anyone who takes Ayn’s bunkum seriously is most likely a middling pissant of an intellect, with delusions that he is one of those without whom the world would screech to a halt.

But why take my word for it? As far as I know, no one has yet bettered Whittaker Chamber’s brilliant assessment of ‘Atlas Shrugged’: “From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard... commanding: "To a gas chamber — go!"”

http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/flashback200501050715.asp

I’m sure there are some goat farmers who give lifelong homes to their goats but I think they’re more the exception than the rule – and they tend to be people who look on the goats as pets. They also tend to be the people who accumulate all sorts of animals, which is a whole ‘nother subject.

I can’t speak for Mr. Kessler, but this is how we manage our herd, and it’s fairly typical of the farmers we know:

We have a half dozen female dairy goats (does) that we milk to provide us with raw milk, cream, butter and homemade chevre. We also have two males (bucks) whose sole purpose is to breed in the fall for the next cycle of kidding and milking.

This is the optimal size herd for us since we only produce for our own consumption. Regardless whether any of the current production goats are replaced by younger goats, we will maintain the herd at the same size and the same ratio of bucks to does. After kidding next spring, we will have anywhere from six to twelve kids. Some will be sold to other goat farmers or to people who want them as pets or as therapy animals.

We slaughter any surplus kids and retired bucks and does in the fall. The meat will go into our freezer, to be used in curry or stew. Bones will be used for bone stock. We have a neighbor who will tan the hides for us. Anything else left over will be fed to the chickens.