Maggie's FarmWe 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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Wednesday, November 4. 2020Wednesday morning linksWell, another close election indicating once again that the country is fairly-well divided about team-allegiance. We'll see. Meanwhile, life goes on. One thing America needs is a lot less politics Or a lot less government power? The Failing Business Model of American Universities Dartmouth College student op-ed: Cancel ‘racist’ Dr. Seuss It never ends Coronavirus Study In Germany Offers Hope For Concertgoers Keith Olbermann: "Terrorist Trump" And His Enablers And Supporters Must Be "Removed From Our Society" Pelosi Calls Amy Coney Barrett An ‘Illegitimate Supreme Court Justice’ California Legalizes Shoplifting With Predictable Results Politico: Let’s Face It, “Biden Looks Screwed”, even if he wins Media has a meltdown as Biden fails to deliver a landslide Blue Wave Crashes: Democrats' Hopes For Senate Majority Fizzle; House Margin Eroded Canada: Imam Denounces Free Speech, Trudeau Agrees Is it ok to say that Trueau is a pussy? Trackbacks
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Spengler: The Good News Is That Biden Is Screwed, Even if He Wins
QUOTE: My gut says that Donald Trump will snatch victory from the jaws of the pollsters. A great deal hangs on Pennsylvania, where Trump now leads by 600,000 but where 1.7 million mail-in ballots remain to be counted. There’s a 2:1 ratio of registered Democrats to registered Republicans among mail-in voters, and the pundits are saying that this will cancel out Trump’s lead. What they don’t consider is that a lot of registered Democrats in Pennsylvania will vote for Trump. Of course, getting the ballots counted fairly is a non-trivial problem. https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2020/11/04/the-good-news-is-that-biden-is-screwed-even-if-he-wins-n1124975 Question: WTH is up with 1.7 million uncounted votes? Haven't they been counting them as they came in or are they just waiting to see how many votes must be created to give Biden a victory? The latter is sure how it looks. Very Odd: Michigan Found Over 100,000 Ballots and Every Single One Has Joe Biden's Name on It
https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2020/11/04/michigan-ballots-n274829 They're Stealing the Election
QUOTE: Last night, between 4am and 4:30am, a thumb drive containing 128,000 votes was delivered to a Michigan ballot counting center. All 128,000 votes were for Biden. Not a single one was for Trump. At about the same time, something very similar happened in Wisconsin. http://ace.mu.nu/archives/391122.php . . . . Oh, by the way: No big deal, but Wisconsin's vote just exceeded its number of registered voters. That's not suspicious or anything. So they're at 104% turnout, like Iraq used to be. It's all fine. A number of states have laws that state that ballots cannot be counted prior to election day, as it could potentially allow someone to have inside knowledge of how many falsified votes would be needed to throw a race.
I continue to be perplexed by the lack of overlap between the set of people terrified Trump will be reelected and the set of people who believe that the Federal Government has too much control over their lives.
If this election goes sideways, pity General Flynn. Hasn't he suffered enough based on frivolous accusations? I can't wrap my head around the level of malice directed at him and his family over nothing.
Re: One thing America needs is a lot less politics
One of the side effects of our system as it is supposed to be implemented is the reduction of politics. If the government’s sphere (in which politics and therefore coercion resides) is reduced, the personal sphere (in which no politics reside) is increased. There have been all sorts of definitions of “the American dream” including such things as homeownership. We seem to have forgotten that the real American dream is to be left alone. Yes. The key to renormalizing politics is to reduce the role of government in everyone's lives. It began with Franklin Roosevelt continuing Herbert Hoover's interventions in the commerical activities after the Crash, followed by FDR's massive expansion of the federal government's interventions.
FDR's New Deal was the infant monster; it got a shot of steroids from Lyndon Johnson's Great Society welfare programs. To conduct a conservative March Through the Institutions will call for revamping American education from pre-K through college. Luckily, the lower levels of this are in the hands of locally based school boards. Get busy.... "Is it ok to say that Trueau is a pussy?" No. Most women are braver than he is, no need to drag them down, too. Merriam- Webster gives a lot of choices. Why not use them all?
chicken, craven, cur, dastard, funk, poltroon, recreant, sissy defeatist, quitter cream puff, milquetoast, pushover, pussy [slang], weakling, wimp caitiff, snake, sneak ostrich, scaramouch (or scaramouche) You're being far too kind to (sadly) our Prime Minister. This is the man who openly said, There's a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime..." He's doing the same to our economy and not in a good way.
One thing America needs is a lot less politics
-------------- Not in the short term.... and by that I mean the rest of our lives. The problem is that the apolitical majority gather to elect a Reagan or Trump, attend a tea party rally - and then go back to polishing their bass boats. The all-in political critters and "community organizers" on the other side then just pick up where they left off - and make sure that the social, media, and political ratchets move only in one direction. To save America all adult patriots will have to pay attention and remain involved in politics for the rest of our lives. From the local school board on up. Want less politics? Hang around long enough to dismantle what's been piled on. No figurehead is going to do it for you. For example, it will be incredibly easy for progressives embedded at all levels of the educational system to dodge/wait out any policy directives from Washington. It is you who will have to find out what kids are being taught where you live, and rip the propaganda out. Sorry folks. We are all Brexiteers and Eastern Europeans now. ...and then go back to polishing their bass boats.
Amen, brother. And it doesn't have to be that way. Show up to a neighborhood association meeting or a city advisory board, but be prepared to see how few of your fellow citizens attend. These are the places where a few stalwarts can make a difference, often by just asking a few pointed questions. Remain involved in politics for the rest of our lives? You betcha. My local parks group spent 3 years getting the City to plant a friggin' tree purchased in a Macy's Love My Park fundraiser. One of the most effective community organizer tactics is sheer dogged patience; often the folks you want to influence will give in just to make you stop bothering them. Leftists understand that the key to their longterm success is having infinite patience to sit through endless meetings.
>Leftists understand that the key to their longterm success is having infinite patience to sit through endless meetings.
They are paid to do it. That's what "community organizers" (are supposed to*) do. *there are a lot of no-show / no-work jobs in this field to keep campaign staff fed between election cycles. Here we have the phenomenon of Bike Nazis. Our city passed a stupid law a few years ago requiring that all road improvements are supposed to include bike lanes if feasible. The result has been gridlock in portions of the city. My drives to and from work, which used to take me 20-30 minutes, now routinely take 45-60 minutes, Why? Because the roads I have to drive on have lost one to two lanes because of mandatory dedicated bike lanes. The huge frustration is the large majority of these bike lanes are only sparsely used.
However, we do have a large Bike Nazi contingent that pushes these things at public meetings. They all dress in black, and make a big deal about all wheeling their bikes into the meeting and then line them up against the wall to reduce the standing area for testifiers. Then they all sit down in the seats. If anyone should testify against the bike lanes, they get hissed and yelled down. Needless to say, most people don't say anything at these meetings or don't bother to attend. I watched a sad meeting once where an older Chinese shopkeeper was saying the bike lane would take away all the street parking, his customers would not be able to get to his shop and he would go out of business. He was almost in tears. He got nothing but nonstop catcalls. That bike lane went in recently. Among other things, it now blocks cars turning right into side streets after they come off the freeway. Now you are getting long lines of cars waiting 10-15 minutes to make the turn, or they have to drive a number of blocks down to find an open area where they can make the turn. All for a virtually empty bike lane. As much as your post sounds contrary to my post above, I completely agree with you.
We do just want to be left alone but in order to get back to a place of that description, we have to be vigilant and active politically. In order to stay left alone, we will still have to be vigilant and active politically. A lot less politics? Fine with me. All you have to do to get there is make mandatory Voter ID a Federal Law that applies in all states, with no exceptions.
Re: The failing business model of American universities
"In 2012, the number of faculty at public research institutions was nearly equal to the number of administrators. The interesting thing about the administrative bloat in higher education is, literally, nobody knows who all these people are or what they’re doing,” says Todd Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason University. The key term in the above statement is "Public Research Institution". For example Stanford, or MIT, or Berkeley. Washington D.C. makes the claim that "free" tax-money should be given to researchers, who get to keep the results of their work, and they never have to pay the money back. Only a complete moron would argue that taxpayers should enrich certain favored people. But "researchers" fall into the same category as other "deserving people". So welfare, section 8, EBT, research grants, and police pensions are all lumped together into that thing called the "National Debt". Today the unfunded debt is more than $87 trillion dollars. Does anybody think that can go on forever? https://www.usnews.com/opinion/mzuckerman/articles/2012/12/28/mort-zuckerman-brace-for-an-avalanche-of-unfunded-debt The only solution is to get out a pencil, and start crossing items out of the budget. No more grants. Period. No more Medicare. No more Social Security. No more Section 8. No more public or military pensions. No more Veterans Administration. No more free medicine. And no more F-35 airplanes. And that's just for starters. We'll need to eliminate around eighty percent of all State and Federal spending. And to do that, we can't have millions of unidentified administrative personnel walking around. We'll need an employment chart for the entire government which lists every single person, their function and salary, and their Boss, along with contact information. The age of the "Secret Agent for her Majesty's Government" is over. Secrecy is how we got into this mess. We need complete transparency, so that we can decide where to go from here. |