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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Sunday, July 21. 2013I have become a racist
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09:56
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Saturday, July 20. 2013Saturday morning linksHowdy Doody may test limits of protecting Detroit assets Devout Catholics Have Better Sex, Study Says What turns women on? Is there such a thing as private food? Attempt to steer McDonald's diners toward smaller meals backfires American Hero Larry Grathwohl Dead A Very Important George Zimmerman Tip for the Department of Justice Noonan: A Bombshell in the IRS Scandal The Economist Reveals Sensitive IPCC Information HHS Admits You Can’t Keep Your Doctor – Obama Lied Jake Tapper to Spitzer: You’re kind of a sleazy privileged hypocrite, don’t you think? Fluoridation as a Capitalist ploy Must there always be a Detroit? Saudi Arabia Moves Centre Stage Crude Oil’s Fast & Furious Rise Will Hit Consumers Hard, Warns Kilburg Wehner: The GOP's deep hole Ranking the most liberal and conservative law firms Major victory for illegal immigrant students in Michigan Post Postmod Love in Much Ado - In an age of barbaric irony, Joss Whedon goes countercultural and strikes a blow for sincerity. It's hot out. Got beer?The crisis of globalistical warmening this July must be good for beer sales. This pic from the Spital Brewery's biergarten in Regensberg a couple of years ago, on the Danube riverbank adjacent to the brewery. It's just a pleasant walk over the 1135 bridge. I like that "Since 1226." It's true. That Bock was mine. A mistake. At least 10%. Tasty, though. My lad had the dark one.
Friday, July 19. 2013An immigrant looks at race and opportunity in America
I guess everybody loves a freebie. Bowl of lentils. From Nonie Darwish: An Immigrant's View of Racism in America
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13:31
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The Secret of Amazon.com (repost) The article begins:
Well, not exactly.
Like I suppose many people, I thought Amazon.com only sold new things. Not so! I became a big fan of Robert B. Parker and his 'Spencer' detective novels. I had about ten of them out of the thirty or so that are out there. Having a few bucks on hand, I decided to blow the wad and complete my collection. I headed over to Amazon.com, dug up the first book I wanted, then noticed an odd "used" link down near the bottom of the ad. I clicked on it and discovered a whole different side to Amazon.com. Want to guess how much these used books were going for? Five bucks? Two bucks? One? "A quarter?" Nope. Not even close. Gee, you're not very good at this 'guessing' stuff, are you? How about a penny? The deal is, these are all third-party used book merchants, and they charge $3.95 per book for shipping, so apparently they'd rather make a buck off the shipping — plus one penny — rather than just let the thing sit there rotting on the shelf. The ol' better-something-than-nothing approach. It's to note that only the fairly old books go for a penny. Slightly newer ones actually cost a whole quarter or more, so be prepared to spend some big, big money. I ordered 20 books. Granted, I paid $79 in shipping, but compare that to spending two days traveling to every used book store in the tri-county area and paying three to five bucks apiece for them. Nor, most likely, would I have been able to nail down all 20 books missing from my collection. For what it's worth, one book didn't show up. I emailed the vendor, nothing back. Emailed again, nothing back. I emailed Amazon, gave them the invoice number, told them what I'd done, and my credit card account was reimbursed within the day. Ordered the book from a different vendor and out it came. It's to note that there are also 'used' links for things like DVD movies, audio CDs, and a bunch of other things. I'm not so sure I'd go for a used rectal thermometer, but most used items are probably fine, and the 3rd-party items fall into little sub-categories such as "Like New", "Very Good", "Acceptable", "Seriously Trashed", etc, along with a brief description, so you'll have a clue as to what you're getting. And then there's... The Secret of Amazon.com II Friday morning linksI've Hired A New Life Coach. She Leads By Example A Utah longhorn (dinosaur) Douthat rightly criticizes GOP on farm bill Sunspots and the Great Cooling Ahead This guy wants you to turn off your A/C Obama to Detroit: Drop Dead Right decision. Via Q&O:
Good Grief: Magician Needs Disaster Plan For Bunny The hierarchy of Democratic constituencies Two-thirds of small businesses aren’t ready for ObamaCare, survey finds Cloward-Piven and Detroit's bankruptcy Without Warrants, License Plate Scanners Track Millions of Americans O'Reilly: The exploitation of Trayvon Martin New York’s Creep-Off Election - Can’t the city do better than Weiner and Spitzer? ... what's more likely to kill 5,000 New Yorkers each year? Obesity in the abstract or making fat people take the stairs? “The religious left; they were the biggest suckers of Thursday, July 18. 2013AGW, NGC, ACW, NGW Update: the 'desperation strikes' edition
Pic: scientific proof that CO² exists in the atmosphere As we discussed last time, the most wonderful aspect of the climate debate at this moment in time, and a point simply no one could contend, is how many choices we now have: — If you believe the science, then it's obvious that Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is the villain. — On the other hand, if you believe the science, then there's no question that Natural Global Cooling (NGC) is the true menace. — However, if you believe the science, then it's quite apparent that Anthropogenic Chlorofluorocarbonic Warming (ACW) is the real threat. — And, for those who believe the science, it's crystal-clear that Natural Global Warming (NGW) is what's really goin' on. Again, it's all about the science, folks, and the wonderful options it provides. And that's not to mention the unity it brings to the community as we can all now agree that science is ultimately the answer to this imposing problem. Unfortunately, as in any contest where there are multiple participants, scores are being kept and tallies are being tabbed. Since I'm on the NGW team, it's my duty to mock, scorn and degrade the other three contestants at every opportunity. They constantly do the same to my team, so no hard feelings. As they say, all's fair in love and global thermonuclear war. Continue reading "AGW, NGC, ACW, NGW Update: the 'desperation strikes' edition" And so it begins...
Catholic Univ. Law Professor Defends Polygamous And Incestuous Marriages
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11:34
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Wal-Mart deserves the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize for improving the lives of millions of low-income consumers globally
Article from Carpe here.
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Thursday morning linksDriving somewhere? There's a government record of that The NSA must be wondering about my suspicious pattern of repeated trips to Home Depot and Dunkin Donuts What Makes Houston the Next Great American City? Brooks: Men on the Threshold Love and hate aren’t opposites, they’re siblings... Ethanol Still a Boondoggle Ethanol belongs in just one place: a highball glass Banning Advice Columnists in the Name of Occupational Licensing But everybody gives advice...and nobody listens to it Why the Government Was Wrong to Shutdown Fung Wah Bus Company
Bloomberg Wants New Yorkers to Take The Stairs Try a non-air-conditioned 6th floor walk-up, jerk Amazon Algorithm Price War Leads to $23.6-Million-Dollar Book Listing That wacky algo explains those crazy Karen Brown prices The return of the global cooling story Sowell: Is this still America? In Obama's Chicago, a Trayvon Tragedy Occurs Every Day of the Week But that's normal, right? Five cases of black on white crime people want on national TV Black Racism Killed Trayvon ... Eric Holder Asks for Honest Discussion on Race; The WaPo's Liberal Columnist Richard Cohen Offers Some Discussion, and Is Immediately Called a Racist Driscoll: Hispanics and the Zimmerman Narrative Jesse Jackson Calls For UN to Investigate America Look, everybody knows what's really going on. Just as with every hurricane or nor'easter.
Wednesday, July 17. 2013Media silence
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14:22
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Weds. morning links
Today's image stolen from Am. Digest Altho I am a Dunkin' guy, I do like the Starbucks House Blend. The problem's not fatherhood, it's manhood Why Time Slows Down When We’re Afraid, Speeds Up as We Age, and Gets Warped on Mining in Space – The Next Frontier? The man with no memory: Navy vet wakes up, speaks only Swedish Feds admit improper scrutiny of candidate, donor tax records - Justice has declined to prosecute any of the cases Mort Zuckerman: A Jobless Recovery Is a Phony Recovery - More people have left the workforce than got a new job during the recovery—by a factor of nearly three. There are now 175,000 pages' worth of federal laws. Local governments add more. We are all felons The Election of a Black President Has Meant Nothing Sultan: Looking for racism in America IGNORED BY LIB MEDIA: Zimmerman Was a Democrat, Voted For Obama, Tutored Black Kids Althouse on Why Are Black Boys Expendable? A George Zimmerman Tip Line Goes Horribly Wrong I once saw George go to a white barbershop instead of a black barbershop In the postmodern, antifoundationalist world of the New Left, justice is perverted into mob rule - See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=50102#sthash.VQfAipUi.dpuf In the postmodern, antifoundationalist world of the New Left, justice is perverted into mob rule - See more at: http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=50102#sthash.VQfAipUi.dpuf Tuesday, July 16. 2013Health update 3 The good news is that whatever ill effects I've been feeling since around last Xmas appear to be nothing more than ultra-high blood pressure (something like 195 over 155, aka Stroke City) and something about an "elevated red blood cell count", but I never pay any attention to the details. It's just "gimme the pills" and I'm outta there. I did, however, make one real glaring error in my last post on the subject when, puzzling over the recent diagnosis of ultra-high blood pressure, I noted that I hadn't recently changed anything in my dietary routine. That is, if you call your lunches and dinners going from 5% frozen TV dinners to 95% frozen TV dinners over the course of a year "not changing anything". I honestly (because I had ultra-high blood pressure at the time is my best excuse) wasn't thinking clearly and had only dashed back a year in my mind as I typed the words. In truth, until a year ago, I've never been into TV dinners much, usually eating either sandwiches (homemade, deli, Subway) or canned goods for lunch and dinner. It was only after the operation, when moving around became such a chore, than I fell into the warm bosom of easy pop-in, pop-out, meals. Worse, I then discovered how delicious some of them are. The Marie Callender's Salisbury Steak is totally scrumptious. That set me down the whole dark path of going through every Marie Callender's and Stofer's on the shelf, plus the lesser brands, only to end up one day at a notable moment in my life. I had turned down the canned goods aisle by habit, glanced over the beef stew and chili and spaghetti and... and then just kept walking. It was the first time in my life I'd ever done that. All I had eyes for was the frozen section. Such are the depths of the addicted. Well, these days, all tuned into the Daily Value (DV) figure on the back of the package, I have heart palpitations just reading the labels of the things I used to gobble down by the bucketful. With admonishments of "DON'T EAT ANYTHING WITH A DV OVER 20%!!!" blaring in my head, most of the TV dinners and canned meats out there are somewhere around the (cough!) 50% mark. And that's what I'd been piling down for both lunch and dinner for almost a year. And that's before grabbing the salt shaker and giving everything a good blast. In my whole adult life, I've salted very few things (eggs, potatoes), but once you're in the tropics, aka Sweat City, you just naturally start adding salt to your diet to make up for what you drip onto the ground while walking out to the car. As a couple of commenters noted in the thread, some people are much more susceptible to sodium kicking up blood pressure than others, and it appears I'm of that group. I can only say "appears", though, as I've been on blood pressure medicine since that day so I can't really measure how the sudden lack of salt in my diet affects it. I'd also note that both Bird Dog and Dr. Bliss have recently linked to the latest findings by the CDC that salt isn't as harmful as has previously been the notion, although I have reservations about the overall "IT'S OKAY, EVERYBODY, EAT ALL THE SALT YOU WANT! YIPPEE!" tone of the articles. Since human beings are involved, we always have to be on the lookout for that classic human foible of jumping from one extreme to the other, and just because something isn't as bad as previously thought doesn't mean it suddenly goes into the Eat All You Want! column. I have a few more notes below the fold, but that's the gist. Again, my deepest thanks to those who have tossed a little something into my Help Keep Doc From Gnawing Off His Right Foot fund. Any help with these nasty medical bills would be very much appreciated. NCIS fans, be sure to tune in tomorrow for an intriguing update! Continue reading "Health update 3" Tuesday morning linksU.S. Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government-Made News to Americans Now They Tell Us… Union Leaders Now Say Obamacare Will Destroy ‘Health & Well-Being’ of US Workers No more plaster casts? Awesome: We’re All Climate Deniers Now Leno: "With nothing to lose, Jay seems fresher and freer than he has been in years.' How the press de-Hispanicized Zimmerman Organic food – What is an ‘organic’ label really worth? When public contempt for the feds increases, so does the size and scope of government. Monday, July 15. 2013A few Monday morning links Owning a Home Isn’t Always a Virtue What if your gluten intolerance is all in your head? Yes, the middle-class has been disappearing, but they haven’t fallen into the lower-class, they’ve risen into the upper-class McArdle: Why I Think the GOP Will Have Control in 2017 Obamacare Will Make the Primary Care Doctor Shortage Even Worse The Economic Blunders Behind the Arab Revolutions Obama Using the EPA as His Weapon of Choice Zimmerman was No True Hispanic Saturday, July 13. 2013What Is It With Liberals and Food?
It has always seemed to me that if a person can control himself, and his kids, that is plenty challenge enough in life. Is Notre Dame still a Catholic university?
The Secularization of Notre Dame: Is There Hope?
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Saturday vid splash
Next, I'm sure you'll sympathize with me concerning the rude event that occurred last weekend. There I was, innocently tooling along in my Hoverflight XB-3000 personal spy drone (the 1-seat model) when suddenly the rudest thing happened! The nerve of that pilot, startling me like that! Finally, I'm sure you've been secretly pondering the same question I have: So what kind of pet would Rube Goldberg have owned? As if you had to ask.
Saturday morning links Christine Granville, British Secret Agent Women who love . . . sociopaths? CDC: Oops, salt is not actually dangerous, and cutting it may be harmful 27 Facts That Prove That The Family In America Is In The Worst Shape Ever How Junk Food Can End Obesity What's more American than Queens? Why are blacks moving to conservative southern states? The French Malaise Twitter Flooded With New Wave of Riot Threats Israelis Are the Terrorists – Just Ask Janet Napolitano House Lawmakers Ask John Kerry to Reconsider Argentinian Aid Why on earth do US taxpayers give money to a wealthy country like Argentina? Argentina could be the US of South America if they wanted to. Georgetown Student Calls for Death of All Republicans I think that's called "tolerance" Weekly Address: Obama Really Wants Non-Americans To Have Jobs Early on the Stump: Rubio, Cruz Slam Runaway Spending, ‘Ideas of the Old World’ That's true, of course, but John Locke was old world too Friday, July 12. 2013Friday morning linksImage above via Carpe Rocky Marciano-One punch KO The case of Aurelia Fedenisn Sultan: Post-racial, and racially-obsessed Obama supporters against the Bill of Rights Jackson vs. Hamilton: From Centralization to Jacksonianism--A Response to Hamilton John Kerry, still clueless after all these years Florida Hurricanes Occur Half As Often As They Did In The 19th Century I blame global warming Thursday, July 11. 2013Thursday morning linksOpium, gin, and Soma: There’s a Pill for That Roger Kimball goes fishing Related: How Big Government Erodes Quality of Life Documents Detail the Department of Justice’s Role in Organizing Trayvon Martin Protests Small town America: Remington, U.S.A. How to answer questions like a White House press secretary Failure to Rescue: How FDR hurt Jewish would-be immigrants 'The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact With Hitler’ Obama's Sex Harassment Policy for Colleges: Unauthorized, and Very Likely Unconstitutional - See more at: http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2013/07/obamaharrasspolicy.html#sthash.fyFhWTAA.dpuf Dr. Carson: Restoring plain and civil speech to politics - Breaking speech taboos reinforces the power of Just when you think that the EPA cannot possibly get any more idiotic… Britain set to privatize its Royal Mail postal service Wednesday, July 10. 2013Panic Time
Why The White House Is Panicking About ObamaCare
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13:25
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A few Weds. morning links On Immigration, Strong Words Mourning the Birds and the Bees Fear and Loathing at Commerce - How a simple computer bug was mistaken for an act of war. D.C. Council poised to chase off 900 jobs because they don’t like Wal-Mart, so there Charter Schools and Their Enemies - Why undermine institutions that have benefited thousands of city students? Early photos of the Middle East A brief version of Glenn Reynold's Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime Tuesday, July 9. 2013Tuesday morning linksPiano Lessons With The Maharaja of the Keyboard That will give anybody piano-envy. Magic. Five men stuck in a tree surrounded by Sumatran tigers for four days Another ObamaCare Tax That Is Bad for Your Health - Venture capital is drying up for medical-device startups facing the new 2.3% levy. Feds add Greek yogurt to school lunches Gasland Director Presents Anti-Fracking Hoax as Evidence in New Film Why Obamacare Threatens Immigration Reform - In delaying the employer mandate, Obama shows his disregard for the rule of law. Colorado Baker Faces Up to a Year in Jail for Not Baking Cake for Gay Wedding Patty-cake, patty-cake, baker-man.... George Will: 'What ObamaCare Requires For it to Work - Mass Irrationality' Matt Ridley gave up on climate change We are journalists TV Is Americans' Main Source of News - Preferred news source varies by age, education, and politics, among other factors The Year of Confirmed Suspicions, Immigration Edition France's Big Brother, by contrast with the United States, is totally illegal How much do you appreciate people who want to raise your awareness? Hey, New York: It was really only $750/hr Same price as a fancy lawyer Buchanan: Why the Reagan Democrats Departed Sultan: Egypt is never going to get any better Small banks can't afford Dodd-Frank compliance staff Related, from a farmer: “I can fight the bugs, I can fight the lack of rain, but when the guy comes with a clipboard what are you going to do?” Monday, July 8. 2013Monday morning linksCan experts distinguish white wines from red wines? A book from a reader: Archer Garrett's The Western Front (Parts 1-3) F-16 pilot was ready to give her life on Sept. 11 14,000 Abandoned Wind Turbines in the USA University of Maryland Bans Smoking on Campus Does that include weed? Will Obamacare survive? Not Qualified For Obamacare's Subsidies? Just Lie Oh, good: Broke cities looking to unload expensive retirees on ObamaCare, i.e. taxpayers VDH on Obama: Nemesis, After All Cuba has achieved the socialist dream of equal poverty for all, except of course the elite Weiner Compares Himself to Mandela, FDR
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