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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Friday, March 16. 2007

Friday Morning Links

We have crocuses in the snow, this morning.

Time, Inc. is shrinking fast. Deservedly so. They do have some fine writers/reporters, but people just do not want their lefty pablum nowadays.

The science of jury selection. I have heard about these jury consultants. Big bucks. Psychology Today: Unnatural Selection

Kondracke thinks Bush and congress can agree on immigration reform this year. RCP. That's what I'm afraid of. If we can send Mexico a bill for $10 million per illegal, I'd consider it - but I'd still reject it.

Another major scientist says anthropogenic warming is a crock.

A Great Wall of Bacon? I like that idea. Yum. Powerline. It's about CAIR.

The science of jury selection. I've read about these jury consultants. Big bucks. Psychology Today

This question, via Driscoll, via Blair:

If you’re already getting burglarized, do you really want to add to your problems by confronting a desperate criminal with your own loaded weapon?

Umm, damn right I want to. Make my day.

More Euro riots - but different, this time. Tangled Web

What's your view on gays in the military? I think I tend to agree with Hillary's third or fourth version of her opinion, at Riehl. But I really don't know. I'd like to defer to the opinions of the officers and generals.

Thanks, Alphecca. You said it better than we could. Gun control idiot of the day. If rights are conditional, then they do not really exist at all.

May we ask, one more time, why it matters whether global climate is man-influenced or not?

Posted by The News Junkie in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 06:27 | Comments (9) | Trackbacks (0)

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Re: jury selection. They never want me. i have been called numerous times, and interrogated each time, as I would like to serve on a jury. I would like to think that it's because I seem too intelligent, but I think it's simply that I answer questions at length, make it clear that I draw my own conclusions. Probably the curl of my lip at the sleazy lawyers. Also, my arch-conservative demographics.

The only time I got selected for a case I was terrified: drug dealer in front of a judge who was in the papers at the time for handing down 30 year sentences. They interviewed us with all kinds of identifying details in front of the accused (they would have been able to kidnap my kids on the basis of what they required me to disclose). We all showed up with heavy hearts the opening day. Thank God, the bugger had copped a plea....
#1 retriever on 2007-03-16 06:51 (Reply)
Why does it matter whether global climate is man influenced? As I blogged a couple of years back:

"We suspect that beyond media manipulation for funding purposes, the primal human need to believe we can control nature is what makes the human-causation thesis so appealing to both buyers and sellers of junk science."

http://sisu.typepad.com/sisu/2004/11/mccain_in_the_b_1.html
#2 Sissy Willis (Link) on 2007-03-16 08:37 (Reply)
Agree about our hubris. Nevertheless, as I repeat in other contexts, it's a dirty bird that fouls its own nest. We should take better care of this beautiful world God gave us. Stewardship. Just because He controls the big stuff, doesn't let us off the hook for our own waste and mismanagement.
Its hard sometimes to know where to begin. When my kids were tiny I breastfed, washed an linefried cloth diapers and all our clothes, household goods and toys came from thrift shop and I walked everywhere, grew our own veggies' canned stuff, cooked from scratch. But a drop in the bucket. People told me I was not American for not consuming enough.I was too poor to have a bigger carbon footprint.
#3 retriever on 2007-03-16 09:18 (Reply)
Interesting posts all over the blogosphere on Khalid the terrorists' confessions from Gitmo. One theory that resonated some with me is this one. (Warning, I am very biased. I have always 'felt' Saddam and Sons might have been in it up to their necks.)

The Iraq Government was very much involved in several attacks against Americans including the '93 attack on the WTC and 9/11.

The White House knows it and they are 'covering it up'. Maybe they really are 'lying'.

Pres. Bush may have decided that if America went into Iraq for justice it would be seen as revenge and then the ME and the Iraqi people would never stand up for freedom. The Bush Doctrine demands that the ME democratize. That might not happen if the USA invasion was that of avengers instead of freedom seeking liberators.

Trying is lying and timing is everything. More interesting info and data could be forthcoming in the next two years, much of it on the White Houses' own time.

Also it is chilling to read when Khalid says he personally cut off Danny Pearls' head, and if you don't believe him, just watch the video on the internet. I have never watched those snuff videos. I can not help but hope they waterboarded Khalid to get that confession. Or at least made him listen to Britney Spears over and over and over. Cruel?

And it is creepy that this story is being buried and dismissed and attacked by our media, while they look the other way towards the important issues, like those involving John Edwards and Barack Obamas' girly traits, and drowning polar bears. And if we should bring this terrorist to the USA for a fair trial. WTH? At least the Congress has stood up to the courts on that and told them that military trials for terrorists are legal. And Congress better not cave. I think this terrorist must have NO rights to access to court except a military one. If they are good enough for US military they are good enough for him.
#4 Patina on 2007-03-16 12:14 (Reply)
Actually, we didn't post on Khalid because everyone else did, and we had nothing to add. But I agree with you. However, my guess is that he could be bragging by taking credit for everything since 1993. He wants to be a famous martyr.
#5 BD on 2007-03-16 12:19 (Reply)
Why is important that global warming be man-made? Seems obvious to me. If it is NOT man made, then we can't blame it on anybody (blaming it on God would of course require admitting that God exists, so that's right off the list of possibilities, isn't it?).

So we have to invent ways (speaking of "post-modern" science, have you ever read any of the books and articles surrounding the "Sokal Hoax" (Alan Sokal)?) to blame it on people, specifically and particularly the people in the so-called "third world" or "developing nations" who are trying to build better lives for themselves.

We (who have already burned down most of our rain forests, dug up most of our coal, and converted most of our and everybody else's petroleum into smog and Tupperware) can buy dispensations, pardons, and such from the peddlers of the same so we can label ourselves "blame-free".

That "global warming" be "man made" is an important weapon in the War on Brown People.
#6 Laurence F. Sheldon, Jr. on 2007-03-16 15:31 (Reply)
Sheldon, our biggest wars--Revolutionary, Civil, WWI, WWII, and the Cold War, have been against white people, and ALL our wars have been about winning freedom for people of ALL colors.

Why do you insist on distorting history? It doesn't suit your politics as it actually is?
#7 buddy larsen on 2007-03-16 18:25 (Reply)
Oops, delete that. I read you wrong. haste makes waste.
#8 stupid larsen on 2007-03-16 18:27 (Reply)
Brown people? I have no doubt that they are just like people of every other color, and I do not give a damn what color people are.

However, I recently learned that we have 500 years of coal left, in the US.

That gives us plenty of time to convert to nuke power, which is as close to a free lunch as there is. Like the sun, which is also nuke power: safe and reliable - at least for a while.
#9 The NJ on 2007-03-16 19:00 (Reply)

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