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.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

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Thursday, October 31. 2013

Thursday morning links

Mead: Immigration: A Bigger Problem Than You Think


15 outrageously NSFW Halloween pumpkin carvings


Unfortunately, being beautiful imposes real, ugly burdens...


David Warren on his Mom's death


NYC politics:  When Class Trumps Identity


Is Mike Lee The Better Liar I've Been Waiting For?


The Ten US Cities With Less Than Ten Days Of Cash On Hand


David Coleman: Architect of the Common Core and, soon, the SAT


Keynesian Economics, Government Shutdowns, and Economic Growth


Sultan:  Liberal Greed is Good


Obama's 'Transformed' America Is Worse In Every Respect


Scarborough: Obama a ‘deliberate,’ ‘flagrant’ liar


The Passionate Chris Matthews Rant on Benghazi That Will Probably Leave You Speechless



HHS Predicted Much Employer-Backed Health Coverage Wouldn't Survive Obamacare, Either


Steele, What's Wrong with Obamacare:



I think many citizen supporters of the ACA are well-intentioned -- they believe that this program will increase insurance coverage, reduce prices, and make Americans better off.  After all, that's what they've been repeatedly told by their leaders.  I don't believe that advocates of ACA among the political class are well-intentioned at all, nor do they believe what they've said about it.  That's why Congress specifically insisted on exemptions for themselves and their staffs.  That's why union leaders and some big businesses have been crying for exemptions.  That's why Obama himself is exempt.  They know it is a bad plan and also know the implementation is being bungled badly.  But their goals never were to fix problems in health care and to make Americans better off.  Their goals have always been power and wealth, to be had at the expense of the America people.



Obama tells insurance companies to shut up, if they know what’s good for them


Obamacare will cause people to freeze in geographic location. Insurance companies cannot compete across state lines, so your policy is only portable within your state.


Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 05:55 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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Re: Obama vs insurance companies

To my mind, there are two types of socialism - that practiced by the Communist countries where the government owned the businesses and that practiced by the Nazis where the government regulated businesses to the benefit of the government. With Obummercare, we are getting the Nazi version. When the government is the largest customer of a company, it gets to ask for and usually get concessions that are detrimental to the business because the alternative for the business is worst. Obummer tells insurance companies to shut up about what's going on and has gotten away with it because their largest customer is the govt.

Great stuff, right?
#1 mudbug on 2013-10-31 09:16 (Reply)
You're conflating "Communism", "Socialism", and "Fascism" - the great Triumvirate of mid 19th century European post Napoleonic thought.
To many of us on this side of the pond, they're three faces of the same thing, but to those up close, they are distinctionss worth the killing of millions.

Oh, the combination of state + non state corporation + veneration of ideal or leader = Fascism
#2 Jess1 on 2013-10-31 10:08 (Reply)
For Drs. Bliss and Schneiderman

and anyone else interested in the abuse of math by poorly qualified academics

http://narrative.ly/pieces-of-mind/nick-brown-smelled-bull/
#3 faculty wife on 2013-10-31 10:37 (Reply)
I liked the post you referenced but I couldn't pass up this little minor but delicious irony in the story;
A. "Basically, the way to be lucky is to just put yourself in situations where good things can happen,"
B. In 2002, with a $2.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, the Penn Resiliency Program (part of the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center) began a four-year study of positive psychology’s effects on ninth-graders at a high school outside of Philadelphia.
Now how lucky was that? But it's just more proof of our out of control federal government. Perhaps it's time to end grants and all forms of handing out free stuff by federal bureaucrats. Can you imagine how much happier everyone from the ninth grade all the way to full retirement would be if we cut the federal budget by half and eliminated federal borrowing. Wait! I think I smelled bullshit and have discovered a new facet of positive psychology where the way to make people happier is to allow them to keep their money! Eureka!
#3.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2013-10-31 11:48 (Reply)
Branch Rickey - "Luck is the residue of good planning"

At a job many years ago, I did a presentation on Luck. I wish the Money magazine article I used was still around, but I haven't been able to find it.

Basically, it talked about how people make their own luck - a fact that I truly believe. My wife used to disagree with me. Until we got neighbors who were the biggest pigs she'd ever met. Slovenly, overweight, the kind of people who go out in public with stains from the food they ate on their shirts. He walked around with a nail clipper on a neck chain, and would use it on the front stoop, in public.

One day, he shows up with a puppy. Chocolate lab. You could tell the dog was going to be big. Huge, actually. And he was.

One day, the guy is sitting on the front stoop, sobbing. I asked what was wrong. "We have to move and we had to get rid of the dog. She jumped on an old man and he fell over and broke his hip. We're being sued."

I gave him some consoling words, and walked up to my apartment.
My wife, upon entering the apartment looked at me and said "OK, now I believe you. You really do make your own luck."

The old Woody Allen line is, I think, 90% of life is just showing up. I think this rings true. If you show up to work each day in a bad mood because of the commute or traffic, then change your attitude fast. I work very hard to remain positive, because I am by nature a cynic, quick with a snide remark or snarky commentary.

I don't enjoy schadenfreude, but when I was younger I reveled in it, for reasons I've long since forgotten. When I was laid off the first time, after finally getting my VP stripe, I was stunned. VP's don't get laid off! Except in, as my case, management changes. Out with the old regime, in with the new! I realize now that just doing my job wasn't enough for them to like me. I wasn't going out of my way to really HELP them make the changes they wanted.

Mainly because I disagreed with them - but that's a whole other story. Fact is, I could've agreed with their POV just fine, I'd chosen not to. And hence, after some reflection, realized my attitude needed adjustment.


Politics and grant-giving takes this out of the equation. Life is no longer about improving yourself in politics. It's about greasing palms and finding marks, and developing political clients.

It's ugly. As ugly as managing your own life is, managing a political life is like working in the sewers. You need the positive facade. That's what people see and vote for. But deep down, most of them are just disgusting.
#3.1.1 Bulldog on 2013-10-31 12:32 (Reply)
Socialism, communism and fascism are merely all variations of socialism in much the same way a border collie, pit bull and Boston terrier are variations of dogs. The neo-socialist have tried to create a 4th version of socialism light or The Third Way but it too is just socialism in a green dress. What the left in this country is trying to do is sneak socialism in through the back door with incremental creep, one socialist policy at a time.
#4 GoneWithTheWind on 2013-10-31 11:26 (Reply)

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