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
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Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
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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
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Wednesday, April 17. 2019

Wednesday morning links

Several of the world's richest French billionaires donate more than $500 million to rebuild Notre Dame


 Marine crawls to finish Boston Marathon for fallen comrades


A book:  Defend and Befriend: The U.S. Marine Corps and Combined Action Platoons in Vietnam by John Southard


 What Will It Take To End Anti-Greenhouse Gas Insanity?


Environmental purity, not common sense, motivates the Golden State’s ban on bags, drinking straws, and cutlery.


Related,  How to solve the plastic packaging paradox


Bachelorettes, Bibles and Amazon: is Nashville the perfect model for a second-tier city?


 Panic Erupts At 5th Ave Apple Store After Bedbug Sighting


The horror! 


 Netflix Series Accused of Making Fake Claims About Walrus Deaths


 Nasty Michelle Obama Goes After ‘Divorced Dads’ in Attack on Trump, Gets Hit From All Sides


A College President Stands Up for Academic Freedom


Mike 'Dirty Jobs' Rowe Routs America's School System: "We're Obsessed With Credentialing, Not Education"


Related,  TODAY IN THE COLLEGE APOCALYPSE


Embattled UMKC chancellor urged to resign amid response to conservative assault


McCarthy: Behind the Obama administration’s shady plan to spy on the Trump campaign


 FBI failed to provide details on contact with Clinton campaign lawyer: Judicial Watch


David Brooks: America Wants a ´Reset,´´Moral Cleansing´ From Trump in 2020


As we say, the only critiques left are ad hominems. Orange Man is icky. 


 Chinese Billionaire Jack Ma Defends Country’s 72-Hour Work Week: ‘A Blessing’


Strange looking little feller 

Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 04:27 | Comments (22) | Trackbacks (0)

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The Notre Dame burning was almost right away an entertainment choice across the world. Huge clickability.
#1 rhhardin (Link) on 2019-04-17 08:09 (Reply)
Interesting in the story about all the money to restore Notre Dame, no mention of God, the original reason to build it.
#1.1 grant1863 on 2019-04-17 08:45 (Reply)
Funny isn't it? The building is actually owned by the government and leased by the church.
#1.1.1 FRP on 2019-04-17 14:44 (Reply)
Who knew that there are French billionaires? That doesn't seem right to me, what with all their fraternite and equalite and stuff. I would assume that all their excess wealth would be going to help societe.

I'm really suspicious.
#1.2 California on 2019-04-17 11:03 (Reply)
David Brooks has no fargin’ idea what America wants.

These media types are a toxic combination of clueless and arrogant.
#2 Jeff Brokaw (Link) on 2019-04-17 08:11 (Reply)
"Well, I CERTAINLY know what America wants. Higher taxes, illegal immigration, a chaotic economy, international relations returning to the variability of the Obama era.

"And if you don't want all that, you're a nasty poopyhead and need to be sent to the gulag!"

Wow. I'm so sold. I'll definitely be voting for the preferred (D) in 2020.

Nah. No Ds. They're pretty well proven they don't give a damn about the country - just their party and what power they can grab.
#2.1 JLawson on 2019-04-17 11:26 (Reply)
re Chinese Billionaire Jack Ma Defends Country’s 72-Hour Work Week: ‘A Blessing’

I would imagine our blogging hosts here would be in total agreement with that idea.

The virtue of hard work is continually promoted here along with the idea that retirement is a bad thing.

So what's not to like about a 72 hour work week?

Work is good, yes? So why isn't more work better?
#3 feeblemind on 2019-04-17 09:09 (Reply)
Of interest on the topic of the value of work in China: "This year marks the 40th anniversary of Deng’s decision to scrap collective farming." https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-quiet-revolt-that-saved-china-11555457741 Or, to avoid the paywall, Google "the quiet revolt that saved China."

I grew up on scifi stories that assumed without question we were heading into a global famine, in large part because of an exploding population, particularly in Asia. Turns out there's plenty of food--plenty of everything--if you ditch the counterfactual nonsense that is Marxism.

On the other hand, it's interesting that these extremely brave Chinese rebel farmers employed one collectivist tool: in case they were killed by their Marxist overloads, they all pledged to raise each other's families until the children were 18.
#3.1 Texan99 on 2019-04-17 09:58 (Reply)
The neo Malthusians have been hard at work since Silent Spring. All solutions will, of course, be generated by authoritarians from the globalist elite. The universities assure us this is all true and we must abide by their solutions.
#3.1.1 indyjonesouthere on 2019-04-17 12:34 (Reply)
I work around 60 hrs/week. Not a big deal. Self-employed, of course.
#3.2 Bird Dog on 2019-04-17 09:59 (Reply)
Yes, I've always resented the total lack of laws -- federal, state, municipal, local -- protecting me from the severe abuses of my employer: me, myself and I.
#3.2.1 jma on 2019-04-17 12:28 (Reply)
Lawyer's hours.
#3.3 Jim on 2019-04-17 14:21 (Reply)
Re: Behind the Obama administration’s shady plan to spy on the Trump campaign

To paraphrase Bill Clinton, "That depends on your definition of the word 'spy'."
#4 mudbug on 2019-04-17 10:23 (Reply)
The single biggest greenhouse gas is water vapor in the atmosphere. It is singlehandedly responsible for 97% of the greenhouse effect of our atmosphere. Without it life could not exist on earth. But even this powerful greenhouse gas is not responsible for our very modest warming in the latest (since 1850) warming cycle. Previous cycles have been warmer. The warming and cooling cycles are caused by a complex combination of solar output and planetary movement relative to the sun. These cycles; Milankovitch cycles, have been controlling our climate since the world was formed. We cannot change them, no human action can have effect on them and it is ludicrous to try to argue we are changing the climate in any significant way.
#5 OneGuy on 2019-04-17 10:33 (Reply)
But that doesn't support the gathering of power, control, and money by the global elites...no AGW grants for you. The Antifa police are on the way.
#5.1 indyjonesouthere on 2019-04-17 12:24 (Reply)
QUOTE:
The intervening six years have seen the ongoing accumulation of considerably more evidence, essentially all of it negative to the catastrophic global warming hypothesis, but my faith that actual evidence could resolve the issue has been almost completely shattered.


I wonder if Mr. Menton's faith may have been misplaced to begin with. The argument was never about the evidence refuting or supporting the GW claims, because it was not a scientific debate to begin with. It's a political gambit designed to consolidate both political and social power and to control the wealth of economies. It's pure Power Politics; science is simply the handy cudgel. To abandon the phony science is to abandon the objective.

As with similar efforts that inflict cultural and social tyranny upon the silent majority, there is no downside to ratcheting up the rhetoric and hysteria - why not, as long as these things may be conducted in a peaceful setting of condoned behavior and appeased outrages, without harm to the aggressor?

Of course, with no downside, by definition it will require less peaceful means to make it stop and to make these frauds go away. Personally I don't think they'll stop until they're left with no other survivable choice, figuratively speaking of course.
#6 Aggie on 2019-04-17 12:31 (Reply)
I have great agreement with this. The belief in a crisis will only abate when a new crisis supplants it. It is hard to imagine we might prefer this fraud to the next one, but it's possible.
#6.1 Assistant Village Idiot on 2019-04-17 13:13 (Reply)
The lack of academic freedo on college campuses perhaps is due to a generation or so of professors, TAs and students who have never faced a final grade determined by their scratchings in a Blue Book. The true-or-false tests have replaced that pamphlet as they are easier to grade (when grades are even given) and certainly have refined the entire subject matter of the world down to questions that can be answered by "yes" or "no" responses.

No wonder the U.S. has sunk to 17th from 1st place in the world's evalution of education (which was probably determined by a true/false test)! More terrifying to our future is that Johnny can't read, but neither can he debate from his safe space surrounded by stuffed animals.
#7 jma on 2019-04-17 12:46 (Reply)
The greater share of being 17th is that we are importing far too many AOC "intellectuals".
#7.1 indyjonesouthere on 2019-04-17 13:08 (Reply)
If you are referring to the high school PISA scores, we aren't 17th. We are fine. The scores break out accurately by race across state and international borders. When you compare apples to apples, Asian-Americans outscore all Asians except the magnet cities; European-Americans outscore Europeans, roughly tied with the Scandinavians and Estonians; Hispanic-Americans wildly outscore all Latin-American countries; and African Americans even more wildly outscore all African and Caribbean nations. Our scores look worse because we are multi-ethnic but they are lumped together here.

Not that I'm supporting all that we do in the schools. Schools are largely irrelevant. Good enough is good enough. After that, it is talent and freedom to excel without someone blocking your access that matter.
#7.2 Assistant Village Idiot on 2019-04-17 14:07 (Reply)
"Strange looking little feller."

Actually Jack Ma is a very inspirational person. You should listen to some of his speeches (yes he speaks English quite well, although with an accent--he began teaching himself as a child, partly by going to the airport and interacting with English-speaking tourists). A nondescript graduate of a no-name teacher's college in China, he got where he is by hard work and brains despite his appearance (he sometimes jokes he wanted to be an actor in Hollywood, but even got turned down for working as an employee at fast-food restaurants). As a young man, he came on his own to America to study how it worked (especially the new invention of the internet), looked for opportunities, and then took that knowledge back to China. One of the people in the world I actually would like to meet in person. A real rags to riches story, unlike some of the tech people in the U.S. who actually came from well-off families and got their start at Stanford or Harvard.

I also like that he is using his money to try to revive Chinese culture like tai chi and calligraphy, although unfortunately these days in China that all starts getting mixed in with nationalistic fervor.

As much as I get worked up by a lot of what is going on in China and the potential threat the country is to us (mostly unperceived by us or ignored), Jack Ma is a good example of why that country is where it is today.
#8 Jim on 2019-04-17 15:17 (Reply)
Sadly, Trump IS the moral cleansing following both the abominable Obama calamity and this limp coupe attempt/obstruction of peaceful transfer of power... Doesn't take much to be morally superior to Democrats...
#9 The Distributist (Link) on 2019-04-17 17:15 (Reply)

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