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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Thursday, February 20. 2020

Thursday morning links

You Thought Quantum Mechanics Was Weird: Check out Entangled Time - Adding a new layer to the already complex world of metaphysics


 Bighorn Sheep Captures Aid Research


 Female confidence gurus: inside the feminist fad taking New York by storm


 New Marvel superhero film to feature ‘beautiful,’ ‘moving’ homosexual kiss


 Boys Will Be Girls ... and Feminists Will Be Furious


Why the Restoration Hardware Catalog Won’t Die - The surprising persistence of the mail-order business


 Why Do New Disease Outbreaks Always Seem to Start in China?


Bee:  Jussie Smollett Offered Job At CNN After Fabricating News Story Out Of Thin Air


 Liberals Angry: Jeff Bezos DONATED ONLY $10 BILLION To Fight Climate Change


People fleeing blue states 


 K.T. McFarland Says Mueller Interrogators Put Her Through ‘Hell’ and Left Her ‘Traumatized’


Why Trump commuted Blago's sentence 


Pennsylvania’s Democratic Civil War - The divide between labor leaders and environmental activists widens in a state dependent on fossil-fuel industries


WaPo Claims Elites Should Run Elections; Quietly Edits Article After Public Outrage Ensues


 Bret Baier on Dem Vegas Debate: "The Biggest Winner Tonight? Donald Trump"


Hinden-Bloomberg: NYC mayor goes down in flames at Vegas debate - A disaster of epic proportions


 Elizabeth Warren Says If She Becomes President She Will Decriminalize Border Crossings: ‘Glad To Do It’


What's pushing Bernie Sanders to the Democrats' top?


 Bloomberg in debate: Billions of dollars, zero vision


 Mike Bloomberg: The Incredible Shrinking Candidate


 Winners and Losers of the Las Vegas Democratic Debate


 Biden: We Should Be Paying Other Countries To Not Cut Down Trees…


 If Duterte Wants Us Out, Let's Go


European Defense Funding Takes $1.5 Billion Hit in Pentagon Budget Request



Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 07:00 | Comments (33) | Trackbacks (0)

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" feature ‘beautiful,’ ‘moving’ homosexual kiss"

Doesn't pornhub already have that covered?
#1 DrTorch on 2020-02-20 09:14 (Reply)
It will be of passing interest to see whether this new film ends up slowing down the successful run of these Marvel superhero movies.

As they say: "Get woke, go broke."

(Full disclosure: I have absolutely no interest in such movies at all but I must admit they do seem to be doing well for themselves).
#1.1 JJM on 2020-02-21 11:35 (Reply)
China as source of virus interspecies jumps. The Chinese agricultural sector is beyond comprehension. The 25 million people of Shanghai go through 125 million chickens per month, extrapolate that to 1.5 billion Chinese, and you could estimate 9 billion chickens per month. These jumps happen all over the world and there are survellance programs even in some places that you would think of as too poor and too backward. The key is detecting it before it goes human to human.
#2 Exasperated on 2020-02-20 09:28 (Reply)
The Chinese have a prefetence for buying live chickens hence the prevalence if live markets. Don't know if this compounds the liklihood of a species jump.
#3 Exasperated on 2020-02-20 09:34 (Reply)
Sorry for typo, should read 150 million chickens a month in Shanghai.
#3.1 Exasperated on 2020-02-20 10:27 (Reply)
As someone who makes grammatical errors, spelling mistakes, quite frequently, all of which I can not blame on typo's, I do wish we could edit our posts. I always find my errors, after I hit the submit comment button. I never seem to find my mistakes with the preview button. Exasperating! ;)
#3.1.1 B. Hammer on 2020-02-20 11:44 (Reply)
Darn you, autocucumber!
#3.1.1.1 JLawson on 2020-02-20 12:49 (Reply)
Re: Boys Will Be Girls

Sorry, I couldn't resist...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NFwP2huyNzg
#4 mudbug on 2020-02-20 09:41 (Reply)
QUOTE:
Jussie Smollett Offered Job At CNN After Fabricating News Story Out Of Thin Air.

Oughta' fit right in.
#5 BillH (Link) on 2020-02-20 09:50 (Reply)
re Why Trump commuted Blago's sentence

Blago’s commuted sentence puzzles me. Politically, Trump gains nothing from the Right in commuting the sentence, and this act wouldn’t even budge the needle on the Dem’s pegged out hate meter towards Trump.

So why do it?

The cynic in me wonders if someone campaigned for Blago’s release and gave Trump something in return. One wonders what that could be?

Or maybe Trump is just that magnanimous, and wanted to correct a wrong in what he sees as an egregious sentence, because he has so little else to do?

Why didn’t 0bama pardon him on his last day in office? Wouldn’t have bothered the media a bit.
#6 feeblemind on 2020-02-20 10:03 (Reply)
4th generation Chicago here. It seems to have been pushed by Graham of the Chicago FOP. They are also providing security for Blago and they did provide security for Trump in Chicago. Blago is very connected and knows where the bodies are buried.
#6.1 Exasperated on 2020-02-20 10:37 (Reply)
To be sure, nobody thinks Blago was in an innocent lamb, but lots of people believe that he was subjected to an prosecution that was less than ethical, and was unsavory and underhanded, much like Trump or Walker in Wisconsin. In addition, I dont know anyone that believes the 14 yr sentence was proportionate to the crime. Federal subpoenas were delivered in Cook.Co, today. Coincidence?
#6.1.1 Exasperated on 2020-02-20 12:48 (Reply)
If you know where the bodies are buried, selling the info could be... profitable.
#6.1.1.1 JLawson on 2020-02-20 13:03 (Reply)
Every politician in Chicago has done far worse than Blago. Someone wanted him punished and I would LOVE to know why. I suspect Blago knows who and why because that kind of revenge is sooo much sweeter when your victim knows who screwed him. Having said that I think Trump did this out of compassion and the belief that Blago's sentence was to long.
#6.1.1.1.1 OneGuy on 2020-02-20 19:17 (Reply)
I can think of three non-exclusive reasons Trump may have commuted the sentence.
1. Trump was developing property in Chicago around then, so there may have been a professional acquaintance if not relationship between them. Blogo may just not seem like the kind of guy who deserved to go up for a 12 year min to Trump.
2. Trump is a dealer. he facts of the case may have sounded pretty much like the broad strokes of deals Trump himself made to get things done in city halls and state capitols.
3. the fact that Blago is a Democrat helps at least partially inoculate Trump against claims that he's just trying to get all of the rich white Republicans out of Club Fed.
#6.2 Another guy named Dan on 2020-02-20 13:28 (Reply)
As to why Obama didn't pardon him, you have to realize that there is not a Chicago Democratic machine, there are two, which I'll loosely call the Daley and Washington branches. Much of the time they work in parallel in the same direction, but there is a lot of antipathy between them on certain issues. The '68 Convention riots were the Daley wing bashing the skulls of what became the Washington wing, for instance.

Obama was the paramount of the Washington branch, generally a coalition of the North Shore limousine set with the south-side minorities. Hillary Clinton was the darling of the Daley branch, the working and middle class Ethnic-Europeans (Irish, Italian, and Slavic) that once dominated the landscape. Blago was firmly on the Daley side of the divide
#6.2.1 another guy named Dan on 2020-02-20 13:43 (Reply)
By pardoning Blago, Trump is acknowledging the decades-long weaponization of the judicial system. Blago's actions were just business-as-usual for Chicago and many other venues across the country, but frivolous use of the courts and the legal system must be brought to a screeching halt if our rule of law means anything. I do not appreciate nor would I ever vote for my former governor, but that sentence was totally out of line.

Lots of people were petitioning Trump over the last three years while that same type of abuse was trying to bring down him and his administration. He acted as soon as he could following the impeachment disaster, which wasted enormous time and money, frankly, to hide the travesties of the last four administrations. Hopefully, this very public action will help bring the justice system under saner control.

King Obama? He hated Blago. Enuf said.
#6.3 jma on 2020-02-20 14:18 (Reply)
FWIW:

I think the word "terrified" in the headline below is an overly dramatic word used to lure clicks.

In a nutshell, 0bama was miffed because Blago didn't appoint Valerie Jarrett Senator. So . . . no pardon. Does Blago have the goods to exact revenge?

Why Obama May Be Terrified by Trump Commuting Blagojevich’s Sentence

https://pjmedia.com/trending/should-obama-be-terrified-by-trump-commuting-blagojevichs-sentence/
#6.3.1 feeblemind on 2020-02-20 15:44 (Reply)
QUOTE:
"It’s not a big mystery why this is happening… lots of concentrated population, with intimate contact with lots of species of animals that are potential reservoirs, and they don’t have great hygiene required. It’s a recipe for spitting out these kinds of viruses..."


He said a mouthful, there, inadvertently, or maybe he was being a little sly. I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but the common Chinese have some really filthy public habits - for example spitting everywhere, frequently, and blowing their noses with their fingers. It's not too hard to imagine how it could result in very high transmission rates with these kinds of viruses, considering the population densities. I'm surprised that the Central Committee Dept of Public Surveillance hasn't started a 're-education program' yet.
#7 Aggie on 2020-02-20 10:20 (Reply)
European Defense Funding Takes $1.5 Billion Hit in Pentagon Budget Request: Don't call us, EU; you're a big boy now, and on your own.

Why didn’t 0bama pardon him on his last day in office? Wouldn’t have bothered the media a bit.
#6 feeblemind on 2020-02-20 10:03 (Reply) Spite, is my guess.
#8 Sam L. on 2020-02-20 11:24 (Reply)
Elizabeth Warren is going to legalize border crossings? Is she just going to sign an executive order? Bypass congress? Is this not what they accuse Trump of doing? Acting like a dictator? Hitler esque, even. It's always different when a democrat does it. They only act with compassion and understanding. Not a dictatorial bone in their glorius bodies.
#9 B. Hammer on 2020-02-20 11:37 (Reply)
It is what they accuse Trump of doing (he mostly isn't, partly because of the Circuit Courts blocking with injunctions) but it's really another case of Democrat projection: Obama did precisely these things with "a pen and a phone" and proved that he could front-run the courts to advance his agendas, in spite of Constitutional Law - and it's precisely the plan that is in place for the next Democrat President. That's one of the reasons why the Trump / McConnell judicial appointments are so important.
#9.1 Aggie on 2020-02-20 12:36 (Reply)
Entanglement is the result of thinking you can write individual schrodinger equations for separate things, when you need one equation for the whole universe. Entanglement is the error made by that mistake - things we fail to represent properly that turn up if we look carefully.
#10 rhhardin on 2020-02-20 11:45 (Reply)
There's a concept that became prevalent ..back when we were dairy farming. Biosecurity.

The dairy we shipped to basically said we were prohibited from also housing pigs on the property.
From what I know of animal husbandry in China, they allow species to roam (as we did in the early founding of this country)free to mingle with also wild animals. (although not in the numbers that China has. )
For instance, they allow geese to clean up after pigs and vice versa.
This is basically a recipe for viral transmission jumping species.

Especially since hogs are similar endocrinology wise to humans.
#11 fjord on 2020-02-20 12:21 (Reply)
From what I have heard from visitors to rural China, they live WITH their pigs. Wallow, daily, around in their shit. Also, they don't have running water and washing is not paramount to them. I remember being in on this 'conversation' when an 'herbalist' of my acquaintance was extolling the wonders of Chinese medicine.

This is back in '77 when China first opened up to 'alternative medicine' morons. I doubt much has changed in rural China.

Pigs are close enough to humans that the same sorts of viruses infect both - ask a pig farmer.

When I grew up in rural (very poor) Quebec, we kept pigs in a separate building from our cows. NO electricity, only a hand pump in the kitchen, but washing was paramount. NO boots in the house - they had to be left outside of the milkhouse (connected to the main house).

Cleanliness is next to Godliness? Perhaps, but it is certainly a bulwark against disease.
#11.1 TheCaptain on 2020-02-20 14:09 (Reply)
Ref McFarland

Welcome to our circular firing squad.

I am seriously concerned that this is an escalating tit-for tat where whoever is in power will put the screws to those who supported the opposition (Mao, anyone?). Even if it does not come to actual shooting (not impossible) politics, or even open political speech is too great a risk to take.

One will need to be careful, not only who one is seen with, but whether your associates may be in the crosshairs in the future.


This ain't good.
#12 jay on 2020-02-20 12:21 (Reply)
re If Duterte Wants Us Out, Let's Go

I am inclined to agree with Pat.
#13 feeblemind on 2020-02-20 12:45 (Reply)
Exactly, the stats in my comment above came from Mike Osterholm, Univ of Minnesota, a national expert on biosecurity and public health.
#14 Exasperated on 2020-02-20 13:03 (Reply)
This comment was meant to reply to fjord #11.
#14.1 Exasperated on 2020-02-20 13:08 (Reply)
and the othere really SCARY thing was, the proposal that chickens raised HERE would be shipped to China to be processed, then s hipped BACK.

as if that made any sense. As if there weren't millions of able bodies sitting around with their thumbs up their butts and no employment, but on welfare...


I don't know what happened to that proposal but from what I understand certain states employ low IQ, low impulse control, '"immigrants" from shit hole countries that don't know what toilet paper or indoor toiletry is for to process our food because it's cheaper to employ them than Americans.
#14.1.1 fjord on 2020-02-20 13:53 (Reply)
Now think about the same cultural attitudes as it relates to the pharma we have processed in China.
#14.1.1.1 jma on 2020-02-20 14:26 (Reply)
Actually, immigrants have first choice on jobs, even before those jobs are offered to Americans. Social service agencies contract with companies, in order to secure employment for their clients. So a couple from Somalia would be offered a job in a packing house, before any locals could be hired. That's standard procedure, all over the country.
#14.1.1.2 Ron Lieberman on 2020-02-20 21:30 (Reply)
I dont know the status of that effort but some stores and food brands in NH incorporate statements of origin and location of processing on their packaging. I pay attention.
#15 Exasperated on 2020-02-20 14:13 (Reply)

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