Maggie's Farm

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.

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Monday, March 21. 2011

Monday morning links

 



Payne toon above from Reason.


Andrea Mitchell Explains Why NPR Should Be Funded With Your Money


Modernist cuisine, with germs and feces


NEWSWEEK gave 1,000 Americans the U.S. Citizenship Test--38 percent failed.


Obama as arms dealer


Who was more conservative, Bush or Reagan?


Jacobson's Saturday Night Card Game ("I didn't call you racist, I just pointed out you're white")


Apartheid is Alive and Well in Araby


UN Organization Erases Holocaust from Palestinian Textbooks in Jordan


WaPo: Obama’s odd war


WaPo: Is there a Chavez terror network on America’s doorstep?


BBC World Service to sign funding deal with US state department


El Baradai stoned and shoed: The truth in Egypt comes out. Rubin says:



The only thing surprising to me is that the Islamists have been emboldened so fast. I thought they would be cautious a while longer in their pretense at being moderate and pro-democracy.  But revolutionary Islamists quickly become arrogant when people make concessions to them and they conclude that they are strong and victorious.


Leftists, Marxists, Anti-Semites & Pro-Union Activists Hold Antiwar “Palin Whore” Rally


Cuomo and 'the Rich' - A Democrat who isn't raising taxes.

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 05:32 | Comments (9) | Trackbacks (0)

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Egypt going the wrong way? Say it isn't so!

Chock up another win for Obambi and his doe-eyed progressiveness....
#1 Fred Zeppelin on 2011-03-21 06:45 (Reply)
I wish we could shift the focus from NPR to where it really belongs: The CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting). That is the parent company and the larger all-encompassing entity.

The public (read: taxpayer) funding of the CPB, when federal, state and local sources are taken into account, totals something like $1.2 billion, if memory serves me.

I'm sure I don't need to add that this is outrageous, right? I mean, anyone with a brain could see that this violates everything America and our Constitution are about, right? Right?!........ (echoing off into the wilderness....)...
#2 Big___Al on 2011-03-21 09:44 (Reply)
Right, right, right! Especially if you add in the MSM such as Newsweek (and I quote from the article in the MF link above):

"Before the Internet, brawn was enough; now the information economy demands brains instead. And where we once relied on political institutions (like organized labor) to school the middle classes and give them leverage, we now have nothing."

Right. The unions educated us on The Constitution. How do the media get away with this claptrap? And why do people believe that it's, for example, just dandy for a group of people to charge someone to get a job, then spend that money on bloated paychecks for their elite and bribes to get politicians to voe ever higher taxes to support this constituency. Right, right, right?
#2.1 jma on 2011-03-21 11:30 (Reply)
I have no problem with defunding NPR but they did have this at their site:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/03/18/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage?ft=1&f=1026

An excerpt from a book about the the Soviet space program where a cosmonaut crashes to earth in a shoddily built capsule.

As for 'Modernist cuisine with germs and feces', I think it is safe to totally discount that column. We are living longer than ever with the highest quality and safest food in the history of the planet.

'Bathed in feces as a society"? I think not. The authors need to take their tranquilizers and lie down for a bit.
#3 feeblemind on 2011-03-21 09:47 (Reply)
Yes. It was just amusing...
#3.1 Bird Dog on 2011-03-21 09:52 (Reply)
Bathed in feces? Probably a good deal less than in the days when horses filled the streets. Black Beauty did what Black Beauty does where he was when he needed to do it. (There's a kind of Black Beauty Syndrome to go with Bambi Syndrome and Flipper Syndrome.)
The world is full of fellow-travelling organisms. Some of them are harmful to humans. They neither hate us nor love us, they simply are. Anything you ingest will contain a goodly number of them and, normally, your digestive system will handle them. Some are needed for normal digestion anyway. Your colon is a neighborhood all its own and its residents are your friends.
So yes, keep things reasonably clean and cook meats thoroughly. Then feel confident that your food is safe. Washing produce is probably generally a good idea but even that seems less than crucial most of the time.
#3.2 Geoff Brown on 2011-03-21 16:44 (Reply)
Geoff me boy, it's been a mite since any grandieloquenced so well me colon.

Go to head of the class, yank.

Feces and germs is what makes for certified organic cuisine yall are so enamored with this side of yall's colons.
#3.2.1 Leag on 2011-03-22 13:27 (Reply)
I agree with the commentators on the OP article... the only time I have had food poisoning was from restaurant food, the worse being cole-slaw at from a local BBQ place. Never so sick in my life. Trichinosis in pork has not been a U.S. issue for many years now, but I still send undercooked pork chops back to the kitchen for a blast in the nuclear oven to get rid of the pink. I still eat sushi in spite of the rabid fears from raw meats. I do NOT thoroughly wash raw mushrooms to remove all the traces of growing material... there would be nothing left. How many times have I used pre-sliced raw mushrooms from the grocers in salads? I grew up drinking milkshakes made with raw egg, eggnog made with raw egg, real mayonnaise made with raw egg, real Caesar dressing made with raw egg and still order my eggs sunny side up.

The fact is food fear sells books but does little to advance the cause of food safety. Use common sense, the most common of sense is wash-wash-wash your hands. (I wish there was a flashing DID NOT WASH HANDS sign on the restroom door. I cringe every time I see some dude leave the john without a glance at the sink. Low class.)
#3.3 JoeC on 2011-03-21 22:04 (Reply)
My wiener is cleaner than anything else I might touch in your typical public restroom, so no... usually I'm not washing my hands, and if possible I exit by grabbing the door handle with a paper towel.

Go ahead, call me obsessive/compulsive.

(I like the electric eye flushers, too. That way I don't have to touch the same disgusting lever that you touched, right after touching your filthy wiener!)
#3.3.1 Big___Al on 2011-03-24 11:33 (Reply)

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