From Pine View Farm

March, 2014 archive

Facebook Frolics 0

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Citizens Benighted 0

Dick Polman looks at Republicans’ genuflection to Sheldon Adelson this past weekend and sums up today’s political process (emphasis added):

It’s a good thing that what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas, because this weekend we learned anew how mogul-driven politics really works: The more money you have, the more speech you can buy – and the more speech you can buy, the more candidates will fly thousands of miles just to kiss your ring.

Driftglass has his own take on this.

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That Sinking Feeling 0

(Short commercial that will make you think of this at the beginning.)

Read the accompanying article.

Afterthought:

We were wrong. Cali will not fall into the sea because of an earthquake. It will sink into oblivion because of climate change.

It is likely not a good idea to build farms in a desert.

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Freedom of Religionists 0

Plutocrat sacrificing employee on altar.  Bystander:

Via Juanita Jean.

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A Rum Choice 0

Shaun Mullen tries to figure out who was less competent as Secretary of Defense: Robert McNamara or Donald Rumsfeld. Click to find out who wins.

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The Rich Are Different from You and Me 0

Get out of JailThey are delicate flowers of humanity.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Another gun that just went off all by its lonesome, because inanimate objects animate themselves at the confluence of gun nut and stupid.

District Attorney Craig Stedman said Davis was alone with the baby girl and was handling a newly purchased 9mm handgun when the firearm discharged inside his apartment in the 2100 block of Old Philadelphia Pike in East Lampeter Township.

Words fail me.

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The Fiendly Skies 0

A 66-year-old California man is jailed on federal charges after he allegedly sexually groped and propositioned a 15-year-old girl seated next to him on a Delta Air Lines flight Tuesday afternoon, The Smoking Gun has learned.

Men are pigs.

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QOTD 0

James Joyce:

Nations have their ego, just like individuals.

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Who Says Fossils Don’t Roam the Earth? 0

For example.

Words fail me.

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Spinning Biblical Yarns 0

Below the fold because it might autoplay on some systems.

Read more »

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Amateur Hours (and Hours and Hours and Hours) 0

Jordan Weissmann explores NLRB Director Peter Ohr’s reason for ruling that Northwestern University’s football players are employees of the Uni and not amateurs enjoying frolics for fun on fall afternoons. A nugget:

No matter what the NCAA wants you to think, Northwestern’s scholarship football players, he writes, “are not primarily students.” It’s that simple.

Why not? Because math:

  • Players spend 50 to 60 hours a week on football during a training camp before school starts.
  • They also dedicate 40 to 50 hours per week on football during the four-month season. “Not only is this more hours than many undisputed full-time employees work at their jobs, it is also many more hours than the players spend on their studies,” Ohr writes. They spend 20 hours per week in class and more doing homework, sure, but they also work on football outside of official practice time. Ohr’s equation also doesn’t seem to take into account the offseason. But, he writes, it “cannot be said” that they “spend only a limited number of hours performing their athletic duties.”

Read the rest, then turn off that college basketball game.

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Brand Gestures 0

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TSA Security Theatre 0

The resident curmudgeon at my local rag is fed up.

(Then, again, she’s usually fed up, as her SOP is that “other persons don’t deserve nice things.” This time, though, she gets one right.)

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Show politeness at the gun show.

Police spoke with event organizers and a vendor, and say they learned a shot was fired onto the floor by accident after the back of the gun was bumped. A vendor told police that the weapon had been returned to them as defective earlier that week, but during a test firing someone forgot to empty the chamber. The magazine had been removed.

Too stupid to touch guns, let alone sell them . . . .

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How It Ads Up 0

This will be familiar. All it’s missing are the bathtubs.

Via The Inverse Square Blog.

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Freedom of Religionists 0

Thoreau has a thought.

Just follow the link.

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QOTD 0

Kinky Friedman:

Always respect your superiors, if you have any.

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Chris-Crossed 0

Steven M. thinks that Chris Christie may have closed crossed a bridge too far.

I don’t get what Chris Christie is doing. I guess it’s not surprising that he’d try to cook up a report that casts his scandals in the best possible light, because pols in trouble regularly try to get a narrative into the mix that’s an alternative to what the press and political opponents are cooking up — but by doing what amounts to a book tour for the report (a news conference with the Trenton press corps, a softball interview with Megyn Kelly on Fox News, and, as Dave Weigel notes, another interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer), he just comes off as desperate.

Read the rest, where he expands on his point.

In other news, the Rude One sums up the conclusions of the report in three words.

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Doing God’s Workers 0

Chinese workers in sweatshop assembling signs saying,


Click for a larger image.

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