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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Tuesday, June 11. 2013

Tuesday morning links

The Postmodern individual


Women as sexual predators


Psychedelic Academe - Research into mind-altering drugs is back.


Retiring on $1 Million? Think Again


Thomas Sowell from 1984 on ‘Why drugs should be legalized’


Why New Urbanism doesn't work: The latest trend in urban planning builds bureaucracy, not affordable living.


Murphysboro & The Death of Small Town America


Understanding the IRS scandal


A Conservative Case for Prison Reform


From a generation that fought the Nazis to a generation that fights hurt feelings.


There are so many logical and factual errors in Bill Keller's Affirmative Reaction


Last week, I solicited responses to the question, what is the dumbest thing ever said to you by a liberal...


Armed Citizen Project Gives Firearms Training, Shotguns to Single Houston Women


Why Social Security was the New Deal's biggest mistake


@NYTimes: The Dog Ate My Global Warming.


NSA personnel would trade clips of eavesdropped phone sex between US soldiers abroad and wives in US.


President Obama’s welcome plot twist: Edward Snowden

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 05:46 | Comments (21) | Trackbacks (0)

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Equal rights means equal responsibilities. However, that seems lost to many.

A conservative case for prison reform, how about "treat people like animals, you get animals". Confine those who are dangerous (murders, robbers, the incorrigible) and closely supervise/mentor those who are not.

Death of the small town, yep its coming, the jobs went away and aren't coming back.
#1 walt moffett on 2013-06-11 07:29 (Reply)
Social Security is now the problem??? It would appear that the biggest complain the author has is that SS isn't means tested. But he ignores the fact that we spend/waste a lot more money on the 2400 different federal welfare programs that are "means tested". We know that fraud in these programs are more common then honesty. We know that some of these "poor" people get in excess of $60k in "means tested" benefits. And we know that in almost all cases none of the recipients of welfare contribute to the funding of their benefits. At least SS is supported by the very people who benefit from it. It seems to me that the left has two objectives here: 1. to turn SS into a welfare program. 2. To acquire more control of the $830 billion a year the SS system takes in perhaps to buy votes. Be afraid of these liberals they will take your retirement to buy votes and power.
#2 GoneWithTheWind on 2013-06-11 09:26 (Reply)
QUOTE:
Bookworm: From a generation that fought the Nazis to a generation that fights hurt feelings.

That was the generation that pulled their best tank commander off the battlefield for slapping a subordinate he considered coward. (The soldier had no visible wounds, but was running a malarial fever. He suggested Patton was "suffering a little battle fatigue himself.")
#3 Zachriel on 2013-06-11 09:41 (Reply)
The useless have long been with us. Some such as Patton did fall victim to them. But cooler heads prevailed and he was returned to duty.

Sadly, nowdays, the useless have multiplied like vermin and are actively destroying
#3.1 JKB on 2013-06-11 10:21 (Reply)
That's true, and Patton's ghost is available to pin on your medal. Careful: he pins it on.

Anyway - Patton had some sort of public discipline coming after that incident; it wasn't just touchy-feely stuff (though that played a part).

As far as Private soldiers were concerned, there's no point distinguishing between ranks of generals. If you were a private, technically didn't have any rank at all; I don't think you even had an insignia of rank: its absence marked you as a Private. You were there to be bossed by every rank above "Private", which was all of them.

So, given their divergent ranks, for Patton to smack the Private, even if he deserved it, wasn't fair any way you looked at it. Last thing the Army needed was for its soldiers to think that generals could not only send you to die in battle, they could personally knock you around a bit first.

Besides, it gave Ike & the Brits the chance to post him as head of a fictitious U.S. Army Group to confuse the Germans, which worked because no way the Germans believed we were going to waste a perfectly good general over a little slapping incident.
#3.2 T.K. Tortch on 2013-06-11 10:31 (Reply)
JKB: ... have long been with us.

Leaving aside the derogatory, it undercuts Bookworm's original contention.

T.K. Tortch: because no way the Germans believed we were going to waste a perfectly good general over a little slapping incident.

Which is the very point. That was the generation that elected FDR four times, implemented the New Deal, the GI Bill, the Marshall Plan, the United Nations. It was the Americans, with their namby-pamby politics, ethnic diversity, and contention over the feelings of an ordinary soldier while millions were dying, that defeated the fascists.
#3.3 Zachriel on 2013-06-11 18:57 (Reply)
QUOTE:
Steve Maley: Normally, in the scientific method, you make a prediction based on a hypothesis, then observe to see if your prediction comes true. If not, you discard the hypothesis and get a new one.

Or more usually, modify the hypothesis. Science is full of anomalies.

QUOTE:
Steve Maley: If your prediction is wrong, you redouble your search for mechanisms to explain the “variance”.

Of course you do.

QUOTE:
Steve Maley: There is no chance the underlying theory is wrong, or even flawed.

Of course it's flawed, or at the very least, incomplete.

QUOTE:
Steve Maley: Former NASA scientist Dr. Roy Spencer has collected 73 model forecasts, and compared them to observations (circles and squares; H/T wattsupwiththat.com):

The chart only concerns the tropical mid-troposphere. Spencer makes several errors, including averaging incompatible measurements. Measurements of the mid-troposphere are incomplete and inconsistent, meaning a simplistic reading won't provide useful information, certainly not a conclusive falsification.

QUOTE:
Steve Maley: Taking the factoid at face value, though, they’re saying that the energy equivalent of 2.2 billion “Little Boys“, or over 35 trillion tons of TNT energy-equivalent that has just gone missing over the last 15 years. Pooof, just like that.

Well, no. The excess heat is found in the oceans.
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/heat_content700m2000myr.png
#4 Zachriel on 2013-06-11 09:52 (Reply)
WRT AGW Theory:
Zach: Of course it's flawed, or at the very least, incomplete.
It is complete. That's no surprise. It can just as easily be wrong. In the original NYT article, the author makes the point that it makes a difference where you choose your starting point when analyzing and claims that skeptics start their view of the data fifteen years ago since that's when the plateau began. That's at least incorrect. Warmists are the ones with the myopia since they refuse to discuss the fears of the impending ice age that was supposed to be beginning in the 1970s. How quick we went from global cooling to global warming.

Most theories are refined later as more data becomes known. Newton's law on gravity was refined by Einstein and Einstein's theories have been subsequently refined. The result was that each change did not actually change the validity of the previous theory, but just determined a more accurate estimate of the subject. The question is: will the theory be refined away. Each iteration of the predicted change in global temperatures by the IPCC has been reduced.
#4.1 mudbug on 2013-06-11 10:29 (Reply)
mudbug: It is complete.

Oh? So the climate science journals have no new research to publish?
#4.1.1 Zachriel on 2013-06-11 19:00 (Reply)
Apologies - I mistyped. I meant to say "It is NOT complete."

But I think you knew that from the context.
#4.1.1.1 mudbug on 2013-06-11 20:59 (Reply)
mudbug: Apologies - I mistyped. I meant to say "It is NOT complete." But I think you knew that from the context.

No, but your revision does make more sense in context.

mudbug: Warmists are the ones with the myopia since they refuse to discuss the fears of the impending ice age that was supposed to be beginning in the 1970s.

There are two large countervailing anthropogenic forces, greenhouse warming and aerosol cooling. In the 1970s, it became quickly apparent that greenhouse warming would overwhelm the signal from aerosol cooling. In any case, anthropogenic aerosols were substantially reduced during that period.
#4.1.1.1.1 Zachriel on 2013-06-12 07:09 (Reply)
Citing NOAA as "proof" of a global warming point is like citing DailyKos to prove a political point.

Yep, everybody, that's what happened to all that extra heat:

The ocean swallowed it up.
#4.2 Jim Jetson on 2013-06-11 13:38 (Reply)
Because waving your hands has the same merit as an organization that operates a global data collection network.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100519_ocean.html
#4.2.1 Zachriel on 2013-06-11 19:03 (Reply)
QUOTE:
Tyler Durden: Guest Post: Social Security: The New Deal’s Fiscal Ponzi... Yet its fiscal legacy threatens disaster in the present era because its core principle of “social insurance” inexorably gives rise to a fiscal doomsday machine. When in the context of modern political democracy the state offers universal transfer payments to its citizens without proof of need, it offers thereby to bankrupt itself—eventually.

That is not "inexorably" the case, but forms the basis of the entire essay.
#5 Zachriel on 2013-06-11 09:58 (Reply)
ZA,

U're a sad case...

Any "AGW" reason for this...?

'course with all Ur "trollin' any blog for talkin' points..."

Actually...don't bother answering...probly just "bull shite" anyways...

Feed on this:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2013/06/09/ns-blue-lobster-caught.html

Probably your "we" can find an AGW related reason...

Try this...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/30/blame-cfcs-for-warmin-idUSnPNTO244+78+PRN20130530

But, of course, this is science...a study open to a "Peer review"...by true scientists not a friggin' Paki Engineer from the IPCC.

Sad case you are...

TC
#5.1 Garry on 2013-06-11 20:33 (Reply)
There are so many logical and factual errors in Bill Keller's Affirmative Reaction


Yes, too painful to read it all. Nonsense.

Murphysboro & The Death of Small Town America

The US has been hollowing out the country for many years now. DC is gilded, while the Murphysboros disappear. Sad state.

But what will happen is those areas will be re-settled by new immigrants. Won't be good for a country founded on the principles found in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
#6 DrTorch on 2013-06-11 11:11 (Reply)
re Death of small town American:

Out in the middle of nowhere, where I live, most of the small towns are remarkably stable in population. I am not sure why that is the case. Perhaps they are essentially retirement communities as a lot of young people that leave the area for work come back to retire?

re the IRS:

I did not know that five that have retired/been removed from power (for now).

Still waiting to see if anyone will be seriously punished or if the IRS will have its wings clipped. Some how I doubt either will happen.

Ditto for the NSA eavesdropping on soldiers.

The government is lawless and out of control and I don't see it being reined in. The Bureaucracy has a life of its own.

I saw this, this a.m.

400 lost pages of Nazi Rosenberg's diary have been found.

http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-u-finds-long-lost-diary-top-nazi-220221514.html

It is all very interesting but buried deep in the story is this:

"Early this year, the Holocaust museum and an agent from Homeland Security Investigation tried to locate the missing diary pages."

What in the world is an agent from Homeland Security doing tracking down historic papers? Their mission just keeps growing and growing and growing.......
#7 feeblemind on 2013-06-11 11:37 (Reply)
Ultra-liberal Marin was calcified to that state by the generation of Nazi fighters.

Meself, spent years in that cesspool of liberalism.

However, to this day US citizens are waist deep in war against Islamofascists worldwide despite el husn presidente's contrary assurance that war is winding down.

Snowden could be son of the muhammadan in the White House.
#8 Leag on 2013-06-11 12:50 (Reply)
New Urbanists: They hate, hate, hate those who just decide for themselves where to live, ignoring the NUs and their marvelously intelligent concepts.

My little town runs around 10K, and has since a little after WWII.

Rogue IRS agents? I see non-rogue middle- and upper-management doing what the Boss wants.

Bill Keller: Sure would be nice if he had a good education and had a logical mind.
#9 Sam L. on 2013-06-11 13:08 (Reply)
From a Scientific American on-line article by Justin Elliott:

"How much information, and from whom, is the government sweeping up through Prism?

"It's not clear. Intelligence director Clapper said in his declassified description that the government can't get information using Prism unless there is an 'appropriate, and documented, foreign intelligence purpose for the acquisition (such as for the prevention of terrorism, hostile cyber activities, or nuclear proliferation) and the foreign target is reasonably believed to be outside the United States.' "

It is extremely important for the public to know in how many instances the private records of Americans that've been indiscriminately vacuumed up by the NSA have been targeted for detailed analysis and further follow-up, supposedly with FISA court permission. Have, say, 10 Americans been surveilled in great secrecy over the past year? 100 of us? 1000 of us? One million? How many of us are being actively tracked today? In other words, how frequently are these requests made of the court to look into the details of our call and email records? No one seems to have asked that question, and certainly no one who knows the answer has offered an answer. I'll bet you the reaction of the country would be entirely different if the number turns out to be in the millions and not just the tens or twenties.
#10 Agent Cooper on 2013-06-11 18:42 (Reply)
Seattle tops the list of women abusing underage boys. A great example is here:

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=5727
#11 faculty Wife on 2013-06-11 19:14 (Reply)

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