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
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
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Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
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Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
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How to Pick a Kayak
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Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

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Thursday, September 28. 2017

Thursday morning links

Toon via Never Yet Melted 


 “I’m a Marxist-Feminist Slut — How Do I Find an Open Relationship?” 


I hope her Mom never sees her article 


Is Gender Dysphoria a Fad? Camille Paglia recently suggested that the rise of gender dysphoria is simply the new face of the counter-culture. 


 Rewarding Rigor - U.S. News tweaks its college-ranking formula.


 Yet More Evidence the SAT is Being Dumbed Down


Chuck Todd: Roy Moore Doesn’t Seem To Believe In The Constitution, He Believes Rights Come From God


 Why is the FBI trying to enforce NCAA rules?


 One-Third Of British 16-22-Year-Olds Say They’re Gay Or Bisexual


That is news? 


Why Government's Push For A Cashless Society Won't Go Away


 Alabama tide portends another angry voter wave


Blue State Blues:  Hartford Downgraded Further Into Junk Status, Moves by S&P and Moody’s cites increased likelihood of default as early as November


 Will Fed's Reliance On Archaic Economic Models Doom The Economy?


 Obama Hauls In Millions From Wall Street, Not A Peep From The Media


Ace:



 What They Promised: Smoking Gun Proof of Trump-Russia Collusion
What They Walked That Back To: Russia Bought Some FaceBook Ads
What It Is Now: Russian Ads Promoted Black Lives Matter



MacDonald:  Hard Data, Hollow Protests - FBI crime figures paint a very different picture of crime and policing than this weekend’s demonstrations suggest.


Obamacare:  Republicans’ Self-Inflicted Wounds


Trump's Unintended Consequences: The Turn of the Culture Wars


Ace:



 I don't think it'll work out well. TV watching is an indulgence, maybe even a vice if indulged excessively, and people do it partly because they justify it as imparting some secondary benefits -- having a shared social vocabulary, feeling united with other fans, feeling that watching football on Sunday is a shared civic ritual celebrating some worthwhile aspects of the American secular religion.


Take away that goodwill, and rely only on the eleven total minutes of actual football action during a four or four and a half hour game -- and, well.



Via Sailer's Tackling Race:



 Do you like white women? Because we have a lot of them at Baylor and they love football players.



 Trump preparing executive order to let Americans purchase health insurance across state lines


 Navy Returns to Compasses and Pencils to Help Avoid Collisions at Sea


I thought all blue-water sailors compared electronics with paper and pencil 


 France to Have Muslim Majority in 40 Years


A good reason to tour France now


A brief history of Palestine 

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 06:20 | Comments (31) | Trackbacks (0)

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Peace and Love to All today. You too zach.
#1 Concered About Us on 2017-09-28 08:14 (Reply)
 "I’m a Marxist-Feminist Slut - How Do I Find an Open Relationship?"

You don't. 
#2 JJM on 2017-09-28 08:42 (Reply)
"I thought all blue-water sailors compared electronics with paper and pencil "

Too busy knocking out sexual harassment and gender sensitivity training.
#3 CAPT B on 2017-09-28 08:43 (Reply)
"Is Gender Dysphoria a Fad?"

Yes, I believe for many it might well be. However, at its most extreme, I have no doubt it's a manifestation of serious mental illness.

I do love Paglia.

Too many left-leaning commentators are a glum, uninspired lot, full of cant and leaden ideology. With the demise of writers like Chris Hitchens, there are too few stars on the left these days.

Camille Paglia is one of those stars.
#4 JJM on 2017-09-28 08:55 (Reply)
"Chuck Todd: Roy Moore Doesn’t Seem To Believe In The Constitution, He Believes Rights Come From God..."

Yeah, where would an American get a crazy notion like that?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
#5 JJM on 2017-09-28 09:02 (Reply)
but, but....isn't their Creator the Government funneling bennies through their dreadlocked ma and wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am pa?
#5.1 BillH on 2017-09-28 10:32 (Reply)
"One-Third Of British 16-22-Year-Olds Say They’re Gay Or Bisexual"

I'll bet very few of them are named "Mohammed" - and of those who are, they are much more likely to get married and have kids anyway.
#6 RonF on 2017-09-28 10:46 (Reply)
The cashless society is basically a government/politician wet dream. They live in fear that someone somewhere has some money and they aren't getting their cut of it. I use cash for everything except when buying airline tickets or renting a car. I actually resent waiting in line to pay for something while a credit card user goes through the motions to buy a $2 item.
#7 GoneWithTheWind on 2017-09-28 11:02 (Reply)
I believe that reassignment surgery as treatment for gender dysphoria is going to go down with trepanning and lobotomies as an ultimately cruel surgical treatment for mental illness. Why I say cruel is that it carries the inherent message that if you have this condition, the best outcome for your life is to live out as an artificially-created and maintained simulacrum of your true identity.
#8 Another guy named Dan on 2017-09-28 11:09 (Reply)
And I will add to that and say that in the future people will be judged VERY harshly for allowing children (with the condoning of some very very bad doctors) to be experimented on with 'puberty blockers' and pushed to pretend they are girls when they are boys or vice versa before they've even had a chance to figure themselves out.

Child abuse on a horrific scale. History will not be kind to these people.
#8.1 MissT on 2017-09-28 12:28 (Reply)
Good cartoon!
#9 RL on 2017-09-28 12:51 (Reply)
I used to see a lot of cars with the pan-African flag. I thought it was racist then and still do think it is racist. Kind of a black nationalist thingy. As for the confederate battle flag, the only opinion I have of it is from knowing many Southerners who believed that the civil war was unnecessary and was a war of Northern aggression followed by terrible suffering of Southerners imposed by a vindictive government. The flag, to them, represented the good fight against tyranny and federalism not slavery or racism. I assume that most of the bad connotation of the Confederate battle flag was the result of the Democrat KKK using it at their rallies and elections
http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/23/confederate-flag-campaign-pins-of-both-clintons-pasts/
#9.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2017-09-28 14:57 (Reply)
Fair generalization.
#9.1.1 Fred on 2017-09-28 15:34 (Reply)
Chuck Todd: I pity da fool (h/t, Mr. T)

Obama and Wall Street: As a retired Democrat president, well, he DESERVES the money he gets from speeches!

Repealing Obamacare: The GOP been stringin' us along for too long. TOO LONG. NOT trustworthy. Hated the Tea Partiers, too.
#10 Sam L. on 2017-09-28 12:58 (Reply)
Obama: "At a certain point, you've made enough money..."
#10.1 mudbug on 2017-09-28 14:28 (Reply)
It is quite true that there has never been an independent state named Palestine.

However, that is not in itself a reason why there can never be one.

And if the Arab population now wishes to identify itself as Palestinian, who is to say it cannot?
#11 JJM on 2017-09-28 16:03 (Reply)
They can. They can call themselves whatever they want. It's deceptive, but most peoples have some deception in their names. Most tribes even today call themselves some version of The People or The Real People.

It is fair to point out that it doesn't mean what they claim it does, though.

I was very curious about that article. It is in a style that is often used by extremists who are inflating their case. What they put forward looked pretty good, but I wondered what pieces were missing. Is anyone knowledgeable about that topic?
#11.1 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2017-09-28 18:45 (Reply)
Jews lived in this part of the world for at least the last 3500 years probably much longer. Those who call themselves Palistinians today moved to the area from neighboring Arab states between about 1900 to 1940 or so. There were times that warring Arabs took possession of these lands but they didn't choose to stay there very long. Should there be a "Palistinian" land/country? Sure, why not in Jordan where most of those present day Palistinians probably originated from.
#11.1.1 GoneWithTheWind on 2017-09-28 19:36 (Reply)
GoneWithTheWind: Jews lived in this part of the world for at least the last 3500 years probably much longer. Those who call themselves Palistinians today moved to the area from neighboring Arab states between about 1900 to 1940 or so.

That is probably not correct. The male lineage, traced through the Y-chromosome, shows that Palestinians are more closely nestled with Jews than to many other Arab groups, diverging sometime in the late Neolithic. This implies a common geographic origin, a habitation Palestinians have maintained over the centuries. Consequently, modern Palestinians males are probably descendants of Muslim converts of Jews and Christians that had lived in the area since time immemorial.

See Hammer et al., Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations share a common pool of Y-chromosome biallelic haplotypes, PNAS 2000.
#11.1.1.1 Zachriel on 2017-09-29 10:31 (Reply)
Z: modern Palestinians males are probably descendants of Muslim converts of Jews and Christians that had lived in the area since time immemorial.

Not all Palestinians are Muslims, however, they have largely adopted Arab culture, even if they haven't adopted Islam.
#11.1.1.1.1 Zachriel on 2017-09-29 10:34 (Reply)
"Jews lived in this part of the world for at least the last 3500 years probably much longer. Those who call themselves Palistinians today moved to the area from neighboring Arab states between about 1900 to 1940 or so."

While there certainly have been Jews in this region for thousands of years, there have also been Arabs and others.

And indeed, while it is true that many Arabs moved into the region while it was under Ottoman and then British mandatory rule, so did most Jews in a series of aliyahs.
#11.1.1.2 JJM on 2017-09-29 14:41 (Reply)
All kinds of people have lived in what is now Israel and the Palestinian National Authority: Turks, Jews, Arabs and others.

In Mandatory Palestine under British rule, the two principal population groups were always referred to as Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Arabs.

When Israel was established in 1948, the Palestinian Jews became Israelis of course. The Palestinian Arabs retained the term Palestinian.
#11.1.2 JJM on 2017-09-29 14:30 (Reply)
"The Claim of Dispossession" (Arieh Avneri) takes a close look at how title shifted to Jewish owners in the lead-up to the establishment of modern Israel. As a rough summary, the author argues that the Arabs cultivating the land were mostly tenants whose landlords sold to Jews for cash. Then the tenants complained of dispossession, and in many cases were paid off via a second "purchase" price from the new Jewish owners. It certainly was a more complicated picture than a lot of Israelis showing up and forcing innocent farmers off the land at gunpoint.
#11.1.3 Texan99 on 2017-09-30 09:37 (Reply)
Find an old unabridged Websters dictionary from the 40's and you will find a flag with Palestine printed on it (blue and white) and the star of David. When the Romans defeated the Jews they renamed the land Palestine in order to diss the Jews. Arab Palestine is a very recent creation.
#11.2 indyjonesouthere on 2017-09-28 23:44 (Reply)
JJM: It is quite true that there has never been an independent state named [i]Palestine. However, that is not in itself a reason why there can never be one.[/i]

Very good point. The nation-state is a fairly modern invention. Italy and German didn't unify until 1871, the U.S. not until 1789, the Kurds maybe one day. It's important to note that all nations were originally amalgams of disparate kingdoms or tribes.
#11.3 Zachriel on 2017-09-29 10:12 (Reply)
My teen daughter was disturbed the turn of a few of her friends from girly-girls to militant "lesbians" over the course of their 7th grade year. Then one went further to become a "boy". The one who decided she was a boy had been a good friend but was high maintenance before going down that path.

My daughter and I discussed what she was seeing and experiencing with these friends over the year. Toward the end of the year I came upon an insight. I realized they were this generation's punk. Once that occurred to me, I was able to better explain what was happening to her friends. I pointed out that punks are perpetually out to "shock the squares", but the psychic damage done by isolating themselves from friends and family takes a toll. More, they change out the "normal" friends for those who encourage their "iconoclast" behavior and get into a feedback loop that eventually leads to lasting consequences. In my day, it was punk rock, doom metal, huffing glue (and other inhaleable intoxicants), piercings and tats, and later hard drugs and felonies. Goths might have been the 90s version of punk (or one of the versions). In the late 90s and early aughts I think the gangsta rap and thug culture took hold (and made us laugh at baggy pants teens getting caught for not being able to run). Now it's gay and trans.
#12 Ken in NH on 2017-09-28 17:02 (Reply)
The fact is that a certain portion of kids believe that becoming "LBGTQTISM" confers all sorts of benefits in our grievance society. That's now been pounded into them for years.

Now the worst thing you can be in school is a Christian hetero male virgin who doesn't drink or do drugs. Guaranteed that is going to get you ostracized as a weirdo and categorized as an intolerant hater.
#12.1 Jim on 2017-09-28 18:04 (Reply)
MacDonald's racial crime stats and, by extension, the FBI's stats are AWKWARD.
It is so bizarre. Do they really think, the rest of the public doesn't know that they are crying wolf?
#13 Exasperated on 2017-09-28 17:21 (Reply)
'A good reason to tour France now'

Fruck Fance. I refuse to support "that shitty little country".
#14 Millie_Woods on 2017-09-28 21:50 (Reply)
"Why is the FBI trying to enforce NCAA rules?"

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing.
#15 DrTorch on 2017-09-28 22:30 (Reply)
I have no idea either but if NCAA rules are tied to taxation rules similar to the NFL 501c3 tax rule then they might have some kind of legitimate interest. But I have heard nothing to that effect as yet.
#15.1 indyjonesouthere on 2017-09-28 23:50 (Reply)

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