1 Response to Links 10/17/19

1. 

   Zachary Smith says:

   October 17, 2019 at 8:00 pm

   Just Another Nineties Workday

   And I remember what really matters. I remember that, once I sock away five figures, I’ll have just enough money to put my seven kids through college.

   I could make no sense of this article. And the part I’ve quoted is even crazier. Seven kids?

   Two centuries ago, University of Virginia students beat and raped enslaved servants, historians say
   Was this a bad article? Or was the book being highlighted the problem? Wealthy young men behaved badly at Universities. OK, but what about everybody else in the system doing the same – to the extent they were able. I’m not talking about just young men, for young white women were not any kind of saints either. Nor were the middle-aged and old geezers of either sex.

   Still, he wanted students to differentiate themselves in at least one important way: He wanted them to end slavery in America.

   In his late 70s at the time, the former president said he was “too old” to take any action himself, a claim he first advanced in his 40s, according to Taylor. Instead, Jefferson insisted, the up-and-coming generation should fix the problem by “emancipating the enslaved and deporting them to Africa,” Taylor said.

   My own reading tells me that just about every claim here is wrong. Jefferson did not want to end slavery. He didn’t want to emancipate anybody. Hell’s Bells, when Tadeusz Kosciuszko empowered Jefferson to (upon his death) use his American estate to free as many slaves as the money would allow, Jefferson refused. That’s where the “too old” crap came in. Jefferson wanted rid of the already free blacks, not the slaves. The mere existence of the freemen made a lie of much of the Southern propaganda, and all of the Slave South wanted them gone – or reinslaved. As late as 1851 there was a scheme for the US government to buy a bunch of “mail ships” which would carry free US blacks to Africa. I doubt if it would have mattered whether or not they wanted to make such a trip.
   Jefferson was an all-around piece of filth, period.

   For Some Native Americans, No Home Address Might Mean No Voting

   Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court just weeks before the midterm elections declined to block a North Dakota law requiring IDs with street addresses. P.O. boxes would not suffice, the court ruled, sending local tribes and activists into a frenzy trying to meet the new standard.

   They’re just black-robed rightwingnuts – the Judicial arm of the GOP.

   What the ridiculous attacks on the Ukraine whistleblower get wrong
   Weak stuff here. I’ll stand with Taibbi until I see better arguments than this. It’s entirely possible for Trump to be guilty of everything he has been accused of regarding Ukraine and for him to also be a target of a Neocon Coup.

   As the welfare state decays, public libraries become sites of social trauma &
   How Private Equity Makes You Sicker
   Two more examples of the US falling apart.

   Fearing the ‘Insect Apocalypse’? Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’
   The author must live somewhere the local ticks don’t love tall grass. And where the Local Authorities ignore efforts to turn a lawn back into Prairie land. Neither is true in my area.

   China Is Breeding Giant Pigs the Size of Polar Bears
   This is probably a fad, for hogs of this size are hardly “new” news. It took me only a moment to locate an article from 1917 describing “Mastadon”, a 44 inch tall boar weighing 1140 pounds. I’d say the Chinese made a search for some surviving examples of the old monster breeds, brought them home, and now make a lot of noise about a ‘breeding miracle”.

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