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
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
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
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Tuesday, August 19. 2008

Tuesday links

In their own words: Why I support Obama

The man behind Woody Allen. Pretentiously written but interesting.

How Putin turns language on its head.

Erasing Obama's past. Powerline. Related: Obama desperation?

15 images you won't believe aren't photoshopped

The American Psychological Association wants to manipulate you into worrying about AGW. Is this their job? (h/t, Carnival of the Insanities)

New predictions of an Ice Age. Here we go again.

Is Obama the Howard Zinn candidate? Sounds like it. Interestingly, we now are blessed with a Howard Zinn comic book for those who wish to be bien pensant but don't read too good. (h/t, Jonah G)

What is "fair" about taking the money you earned? How can it be done fairly? Obama wants more "tax fairness." How do you get more "fair" than this:

As we come to the end of the Bush administration, the top 1% of American taxpayers already pay 40% of all income taxes -- the highest level in 40 years. The top 10% of income earners pay 71% of the taxes.

That is beyond fair, and it leaves 90% of the population as minimal contributors to the nation. There is an obvious danger in becoming a nation of 90% "getters" and 10% givers - and not the least being that you discourage the givers.

Posted by The News Junkie in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 12:53 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

1. Thank you for the link.

2. You have some great links above. I love the Obama supporters.

3. As to your last link and comments above, I could not agree more. Everyone needs an ownership stake in this country. That means paying taxes. It should also mean that we have an ownership stake in Social Security - which today is nothing more than America's only legal ponzi scheme.

The move by Bush a few years ago to make it otherwise and to turn it into an actual investment vehicle - giving everyone a clear stake in the business of America - was precisely what needs to happen. We are not a wealthy nation because the government prints money. It is long past time we all had a far greater stake in both funding and insuring the success of our nation.
#1 GW (Link) on 2008-08-19 14:28 (Reply)
GW ...Bush's Social Security concept of a few years ago was an excellent idea for grown-ups who wished to protect and take control of their future. Unfortunately, there are not enough grown-ups around. How many do you know? The rest of the adolescents just want something for nothing, as usual, and are encouraged to believe they'll get it, by every politician and teacher around. I'm speaking of those teachers who believe in teaching every child how unique and special he is. Even if he isn't.

Marianne
#2 Marianne Matthews on 2008-08-19 18:49 (Reply)
Every person is unique. No person is special, except to their Mom and Dad.
#2.1 BD on 2008-08-19 19:32 (Reply)
Re: obama supporters, what happens when they get bored with him? I hope its before the election and not after.
By the way what is a community organizer? Sounds like a Commie union position that is usually thrown in jail because of rabble rousing.
#3 grant1863 on 2008-08-19 18:57 (Reply)
BD ... I should have clarified my teacher comment. I greatly dislike the habit of many modern teachers to tell every child, whether he has accomplished anything admirable or not, that he is unique and special and to be admired. The excuse is that this protects their self esteem. What it does is eliminate the scales of judgment, so that those children who do accomplish admirable things are not justly rewarded by admiration and commendation.

When I was a little girl in Chicago, "progressive education" had just been invented by the NEA. Think I was in third grade at the time. We were given "goal books" and unlimited time to accomplish our goals. I dam near flunked. What I was interested in was things like archaeology and Egyptology at the time, not taught in third grade, so I kept putting off the boring subjects.

I really dislike the educators' current reluctance to introduce young children to intellectual discipline. There's just a lot of boring, 'by rote' stuff one has to learn to be equipped to face a harsh world -- things like grammar and sentence structure, multiplication and long division, civics, economics, and other, sometimes boring but basic subjects. If one doesn't learn them when one is young, one grows up but doesn't mature and ends up astoundingly ignorant about important things, like the fact that there really aren't 57 states of the United States of America.

P.S. And Grant, as far as I can determine, a "community organizer" on the Chicago Daley team is what used to be called a "union agitator."

Marianne
#4 Marianne Matthews on 2008-08-20 15:24 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.