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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Much Sorry with Delays
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Friday, October 18. 2013

Friday morning links

Soldier's 'Salute Seen Around the World' Brought Men to Tears


Child Marriage Comes to Australia


Dalrymple:  Should an Alcoholic Be Allowed to Get a Second Liver Transplant?


CAN THE GUARDIAN SURVIVE?


Why Do Chinese Students Seem Apolitical?


My Life as a Convicted Gun Offender Who Did Nothing Wrong


When Nina Totenberg is calling affirmative action "racial preferences," affirmative action is in trouble


Camille Paglia on Feminism


Public School Teachers Go Private With Their Kids


Red Jahncke: The 'Universal Pre-K' Fallacy - Free school for 4-year-olds? Sounds great. Too bad it is of no educational value and the cost would be staggering.


Sociologist Theda Skocpol tells Salon what drives the angry right --
and what comes after the government shutdown


What?


Food Stamps Most Rapidly Growing Welfare Program


At Insty, Yale Prof. Surprised To Find That Tea Partiers Are Scientifically Literate, Since He Doesn’t Know Any.


David Horowitz: what the newer left learned from the older left


ObamaCare's Black Box - Why the exchanges are worse than even the critics imagined.


Obama's Best Friend Forever, Erdogan, blows Israeli spies' cover in Iran



Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 05:31 | Comments (10) | Trackback (1)

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RE: Salute - as a former grunt, it too brought tears to my eyes. All our fallen brothers\sisters smiled that day, I hope - a remarkable happening.
#1 fred zeppelin on 2013-10-18 07:47 (Reply)
Having met Theda Skocpol, I can tell you that she is almost bovine in her stupidity.
#2 gpc31 on 2013-10-18 08:31 (Reply)
What a relief to hear she is bovine in her stupidity. Love that. Her responses are so ASStoundingly ignorant, that I begin to doubt my own sanity.
#2.1 Marcy O'Rourke (Link) on 2013-10-18 14:01 (Reply)
"what drives the angry right". Everyone knows or should know that our national debt is a enormous tax on us. It hasn't been levied yet but it is there never the less. It must be levied someday. Perhaps the Democrat strategy is to allow the right to win congress and in their effort to bring our economic house into order they will try to reduce spending and pay down the debt with higher taxes. That would be a twofer for the Democrats. They can accuse the right of raising taxes AND they can show their base howmean the rich Republicans are because they would be cutting important programs and firing union workers. So that is what the right is angry about. Our constant massive overspending, borrowing and printing of money. It is a tax, a tax not yet levied on those who work hard and are productive. It won't tax the base of the left who essentially do not work hard and aren't productive. After all you can't get blood from a turnip. Should the right be angry? Should they demand fiscal responsibility from their government? Don't answer. Lets wait until the piper must be paid. Lets wait until this house of cards collapses and people are out of work and taxes become consfiscatory and most of the congressmen and women of the left move to another country following Chriss Dodd and then ask thjat question. No worries, it won't be long now...
#3 GoneWithTheWind on 2013-10-18 10:24 (Reply)
How right you are!

Our esteemed Leftist\Progressives have such an aversion to math\accounting, much the same as Dracula had to garlic and sunlight, that will have the same effect on them both. No matter the slight-o-hand and other gimmicks, you cannot fool math - its absolute.

But, the fallout will destroy both the country and its citizens with financial ruin and collapse. Sadly, many people have shaded their eyes to this avalanche, and will not be prepped for it.

And, this financial avalanche will make 1929 look like a bank overdraft.

Buy some land, become self sufficient, protect what you have, and weather it out as best you can.
#3.1 fred zeppelin on 2013-10-18 11:33 (Reply)
Quite so. I suspect the bulk of the politicos, save those that are truly innumerate or really believe their own BS, already have their exit plans in place.
#3.2 WalkingHorse on 2013-10-18 19:03 (Reply)
On that Yale Prof, I'd encourage everyone to click through to the prof's actual blog post.

There are two reasons to click through: one, because people seem to be overstating the significance of what he found, and (two) because it is such a fantastic illustration of what has become known as the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect:
"Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved." (pdf link)

Step 1 in the illustration, Prof tells us why he has a negative assessment of the intelligence, morals, and politics of people in the "tea party" movement:
QUOTE:
"All my impressions come from watching cable tv -- & I don't watch Fox News very often -- and reading the "paper" (New York Times daily, plus a variety of politics-focused internet sites like Huffington Post & Politico).


Step 2, we learn of his expectation based on the above that his data will show that survey respondents who self-identify as tea party will be more ignorant of science than the general population.

Step 3, it turns out that the data shows the opposite, and he admits that he has been led astray by trusting his choice of media on this issue:
QUOTE:
I'm a little embarrassed, but mainly I'm just glad that I no longer hold this particular mistaken view.


Step 4, Recognizing the the Times, Politico, and Huffington Post had fed him an impression (of the science literacy of tea partiers) that was contrary to reality, he is still content to believe that they told him the truth regarding the political goals and morals of the tea party:
QUOTE:
Of course, I still subscribe to my various political and moral assessments--all very negative-- of what I understand the "Tea Party movement" to stand for. I just no longer assume that the people who happen to hold those values are less likely than people who share my political outlooks to have acquired the sorts of knowledge and dispositions that a decent science comprehension scale measures."
#4 Douglas2 on 2013-10-18 13:39 (Reply)
And lest anyone think I'm being critical of the professor, I'm not. If he were conscious of the Gell-Mann Amnesia he would not have laid it out so nicely for us.
I suspect that I fall into the same trap quite often, and am just as oblivious.

(I kind of suspect that he knows about it now, as his email address is public. I also suspect that many of the comments in his in-box will reek of anti-elitism, which he will interpret as anti-intellectual)
#4.1 Douglas2 on 2013-10-18 13:51 (Reply)
food stamps the most rapidly growing, not surprising, though, who benefits most, recipients, grocers, wholesalers, factories, producers (farms, ranches), the underground economy or politicians working the old bread and circuses routine needs to looked at.

Dalrymple raises a good point, as we move into obamacare, we have to watch for "hard cases making bad ethics".
#5 walt moffett on 2013-10-18 17:48 (Reply)
Per the food stamp expansion. Victor Davis Hanson points out (http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=6573) that the Obama administration is for the first time using assistance programs not based on their effectiveness in alleviating poverty but as a political tool. This is right out of the Cloward-Piven strategy (http://www.thenation.com/article/weight-poor-strategy-end-poverty) which concludes with the statement: "If organizers can deliver millions of dollars in cash benefits to the ghetto masses, it seems reasonable to expect that the masses will deliver their loyalties to their benefactors. At least, they have always done so in the past." The Democrats, of course, have moved well beyond "the ghetto masses" and the dysfunctional behavior found in those ghetto masses of the 60s has spread now to the rest of society.
#6 lhfry on 2013-10-19 08:02 (Reply)

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