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.
Among others, outside of our families, who have left lasting positive impressions on us, some teachers and coaches stand out in all of our minds.
(I combine teachers with coaches because they serve the same relationship functions - guidance, pushing, criticizing, inspiring, and cheerleading of efforts that, in the end, only the person can do themselves within their own minds and bodies. For better or worse, we are not empty vessels into which things can be poured.)
For all of everybody's frustration with the government school monopoly, unions, the insane notion of universal higher education, and obsolete and stultifying educational methods which work best only for the most submissive, obedient, or motivated students, every reader of Maggie's has memories of teachers or coaches who made a big difference in their life.
I was fortunate to have had many of them. Interestingly, where I spent my most formative years, each teacher had to be a sports coach too. They were "Sir" in class, but you were allowed to call them "Coach" on the field, in the pool, or on the rinks.
Let's hear about them, in the comments. (I will put some of mine in there, too.)
Why not? People are living healthier, longer - and it would help solve the Medicare and Social Security messes. Few people are over the hill at 65 anymore. Prime of life, and at the peak of wisdom and experience. Much to offer to the world.
It's been said (by whom? Dickens? Mark Twain? Homer?) that only a fool would write without compensation. That makes us, and most non-commercial (or de facto non-commercial) website volunteer writers, fools. I am a fool, always have been, and I make no bones about it.
The lawsuit against Mrs. Huffington cracks me up. For their own personal or career reasons, they offered to volunteer their efforts to her enterprise, unpaid, without any equity - and without taking any business risk at all. All they had to do was to mail it in, and their names would be in HuffPo lights. Instant fame! Their free choice. Now, they see dollar signs and want to change the deal and cash out.
That's the greedy, envy-driven Left for you. When Bird Dog sells the sinfully-profitable Maggie's Farm (which he created and for which he tries to ride herd on the willful and cranky volunteer posters) to Google for a trillion zillion dollars, he had better take me out for a good dinner at Hooters, with dessert, or I will never take him fishing again.
It would be decent and gracious for Mrs. HuffPo to show some appreciation and gratitude. At the very least, a big dinner at Hooters and a framed Certificate of Appreciation would be nice.
I can only paraphrase it now: "The only difference between Leftist academics and liberal elites, and totalitarian dictators, is that the latter have the armies."
Gov. Jerry Brown faced growing pressure Tuesday to raise taxes without asking voters, which would require him to break his campaign pledge.
The head of the California Teachers Association, David Sanchez, said Tuesday that state leaders should extend higher sales, vehicle and income taxes through a legislative vote rather than passing the question to the electorate....
"I believe that as much as our governor has been extremely transparent and honest in doing what he told folks he'd do – which is let the people decide – it's too late for that," Sanchez said in a phone interview. "Once you put it on the ballot after June, it's no longer an extension, it becomes new taxes. And once they're new taxes, the people won't support that. I think the Legislature ought to do that themselves."
I recall that Manhattan's elegant Park Avenue was build on top of the railroad lines (The old New York, New Haven, and Hartford line, which still runs down to Grand Central Station, underneath, and carries thousands of commuters to NYC every day - numbers that the highways, roads, and parking could never handle. Plus people get work done on the trains.)
Yes, indeed. Party of Lincoln. We Conservatives want opportunity for everybody and an end to dependency. The American Dream. Who could argue with that?
Beer used to be fresh - and locally-brewed. One reason the beer tastes so good in Germany and Austria is because they throw it out after a week. Unpasteurized, of course, and not bottled.
You people of the South don’t know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don’t know what you are talking about. War is a terrible thing!
You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it… Besides where are your men and appliance of war to contend with them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with on of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth—right at your doors.
You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people would stop and think, they must see that in the end you will surely fail.
Each chapter is the story of one man, his dilemmas, his challenges, the deaths of those close to him, his defense of his family and land. These soldiers relate vivid and compelling accounts of their lives and their experiences, including attempts to maintain their sense of humanity in the face of inner and outer battles and stresses, while still becoming better soldiers at the same time.
Email from a friend in CT: "My woods are alive with Myrtle Warblers this morning, so I thought of you." He and I share the perverse insistence of calling them Myrtle Warblers instead of their new name.
Pastor Jones should write a stage play in which he burns the Koran and mocks Islam and then apply for a government grant.
Presently, the piety of Mormon faithful is being mocked with song and dance blasphemy, but most reviewers assert that if they dare be offended they are not in on the joke. Many go out of their way to show that the stage show actually supports true piety, because play reviewers know all about true piety.
Evidently mocking a thing your neighbor loves is acceptable in the name of art, but horrific in the name of religion.
We in America have created suicidal government; the threatened federal shutdown and stubborn budget deficits are but symptoms. By suicidal, I mean that government has promised more than it can realistically deliver and, as a result, repeatedly disappoints by providing less than people expect or jeopardizing what they already have. But government can't easily correct its excesses, because Americans depend on it for so much that any effort to change the status arouses a firestorm of opposition that virtually ensures defeat. Government's very expansion has brought it into disrepute, paralyzed politics and impeded it from acting in the national interest.
Few Americans realize the extent of their dependency. The Census Bureau reports that in 2009 almost half (46.2 percent) of the 300 million Americans received at least one federal benefit: 46.5 million, Social Security; 42.6 million, Medicare; 42.4 million, Medicaid; 36.1 million, food stamps; 3.2 million, veterans' benefits; 12.4 million, housing subsidies. The Census list doesn't include tax breaks. Counting those, perhaps three-quarters or more of Americans receive some sizable government benefit. For example, about 22 percent of taxpayers benefit from the home mortgage interest deduction and 43 percent from the preferential treatment of employer-provided health insurance, says the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
"Once politics was about only a few things; today, it is about nearly everything," writes the eminent political scientist James Q. Wilson in a recent collection of essays ("American Politics, Then and Now"). The concept of "vital national interest" is stretched. We deploy government casually to satisfy any mass desire, correct any perceived social shortcoming or remedy any market deficiency...
The only reason I care about politics is because politics cares (too much) about me.
In his famous 1968 interview (the very year of protest) conducted for Sing Out! by his friends John Cohen and Happy Traum, Dylan was asked by Traum: “Do you foresee a time when you’re going to have to take some kind of a position?” Dylan answered in one word: “No.” Traum, obviously upset, argued that “every day we get closer to having to make a choice,” because, he explained, “events of the world are getting closer to us … as close as the nearest ghetto.” Dylan’s answer: “Where’s the nearest ghetto?"
When he got to the issue of the Vietnam War, Traum told Dylan: “Probably the most pressing thing going on in a political sense is the war,” and that artists like him “feel it is their responsibility to say something.” Dylan responded by telling Traum: “I know some very good artists who are for the war.” He then added that this painter he knows is “all for the war. He’s just about ready to go over there himself. And I can comprehend him.” Moreover, when Traum suggested he argue with the painter, Dylan asked, “Why should I?”
This is a man who will not be pwned, and he has never needed to be told to "Shut up and sing."
One of the better blogs to emerge over the past few years is Bookworm Room. The blogger lives deep in the blue land of Marin County, and even has to contend with a liberal leaning husband. Out of the upbringing of children and her love of America, she felt compelled to defend both from the inanities and threats that challenge both. With a law degree, and a higher degree of common sense, she writes some of the most literate and engaging commentary you could find.
Now, she has published an e-book from out of her 9000 posts, "A Secret Conservative in Liberal Land." For just $4.99, you can carry these 100,000 words of earned wisdom around with you on your Kindle or other mobile reader, and dip in and out at leisure. Whether living in Liberal Land or saner conditions, you'll be delighted. Even more delightful would be gifting a copy to your liberal friends.
When we embark on a course of action which is unconsciously driven by wishful thinking, all may seem to go well for a time, in what may be called the "dream stage". But because this make-believe can never be reconciled with reality, it leads to a "frustration stage" as things start to go wrong, prompting a more determined effort to keep the fantasy in being. As reality presses in, it leads to a "nightmare stage" as everything goes wrong, culminating in an "explosion into reality", when the fantasy finally falls apart.
We think that in prayer we speak to God, and we are not wrong to think so. But the heart of prayer is that God speaks to us. It is not God whose mind is changed by our prayer, but we ourselves, if we would but cease to speak, and would instead wait upon God, and listen to him. It is the prayer of silent expectation, whereby we who love God wait upon him, like the prophet Elijah who did not hear the Lord in the storm or the whirlwind of the earthquake, but rather in the still small voice, and he hid his face in holy fear.
Rules of Misbehavior - Dan Savage, the brilliant and foul-mouthed sex columnist, has become one of the most important ethicists in America. Are we screwed?
The man is not Ann Landers. Holding sexual pleasures and adventure as the centerpiece of life, he seems to have come up with a simple ethic: Let them know what you are doing before you do it.
It happens to me each Lent, settles over me like a dark cloud of self-scrutiny and self-reproach. It's not deliberate. It just happens to me ever since I had my eyes opened.
I am no axe-murderer, but I have my human share of sins, irresponsibilities, cruelties, lazinesses, selfishness, insensitivities, dumb rationalizations, narcissistic defenses, lies, self-indulgences, and plain old unthinking stupidities. All of the flaws.
Unlike the Psychiatric depressions, my Lenten depression, I think, is a gift of sorts. A gift from the Holy Spirit. Painful, but I would not want to medicate it away because it tells me things I need to hear. Our Christian God is a God of Truth and Grace. The Truth part can hurt. God or Grace or something holds up that dark mirror for me, and it's all true and it's all difficult.
It's like the 4th Step.
Pastors advise us to leave it all at the foot of the cross, but I have to go through the dark journey to know what the "it all" is first, and I have to say it all out loud in prayer. I view it as my annual healthy depression.
Among others, outside of our families, who have left lasting positive impressions on us, some teachers and coaches stand out in all of our minds. 
Help for those with a gay spouse problem: 
It's been said (by whom? Dickens? Mark Twain? Homer?) that only a fool would write without compensation. That makes us, and most non-commercial (or de facto non-commercial) website volunteer writers, fools. I am a fool, always have been, and I make no bones about it.
It's about the lives of Israeli citizen-soldiers. 
Email from a friend in CT: "My woods are alive with Myrtle Warblers this morning, so I thought of you." He and I share the perverse insistence of calling them Myrtle Warblers instead of their new name.
From Radosh's Dy