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.
A pal took this pic of the USS Saratoga in Newport, RI last weekend. Some people want to use her for a new Naval museum, but Naval museums aren't really profitable. Even the Intrepid loses money.
With its sales weak, its share price crashing, and its business model still a mess, some analysts already are predicting that GM will return to bankruptcy — but not until after the election.
Dylan recently told Rolling Stone that he had intended to write religious songs for this album, but the songs just didn't end up that way, even though the Book of Revelations makes an appearance right on schedule. Chaos has come again, and Dylan seems pulled to the dark side. From listening to this album - filled with killing floors, "lyin' and dyin in blood," and a "flat chested junkie whore" all leading him, if not to temptation, than a tempest of the soul - it's clear that Dylan's done his three score years and eleven, and he's not going quietly.
Early fall (ie late Sept to November) is the best time for planting or transplanting most things in the temperate zone.
There's less heat to stress the plants, there's more rain, and plants have just enough time to send out new roots so they will be established by Springtime (and also because all plants begin growing - underground - well before what we consider Spring planting season. Thus fall planting gives them a double head-start to prepare. Plants grow roots at least a month before they show any green).
I planted three Knock-Out Roses this weekend. They are the easiest, most care-free, toughest shrub roses around. That's why they have become the biggest sellers. (Bill Radler built them - not the government - and he is getting rich from his creation. It's called genetic engineering.)
September to early October is the time to plant Peonies, too. I remember when everybody's grandma had a circular peony patch somewhere, but now people just put them in borders. Prepare their soil well, because Peony plants last a long time and take a year or two to become established and strong.
People recommend full sun for them, but half-day sun seems fine.
My favorites: BLT, Club Sandwich (with extra Mayo on the side), Po' Boy (fried oysters). Best of all? The Thanksgiving Leftovers Sandwich.
They omitted the classic Northeastern Italian-inspired sandwich: Fried eggplant on a hard roll. And what about the ordinary tuna sandwich? I like capers on mine.
I like 'em all though - except for Fluffernutter (h/t Marginal Rev)
And I don't mean large in a Chris Christie kinda way, I mean large in a spit-in-the-face-of-the-law, let's-incite-anarchy kinda way. That kinda large.
I've never gone to Coyote's site on a regular basis. Coyotes are, to be perfectly frank, scavengers. And a pretty scruffy lot, to boot. As such, I also tend to view his writing as 'scruffy'.
Such is the power of word association.
Well, Bird Dog bravely linked to this scalawag the other day, so I held my breath (coyotes live in filth, I needn't remind you) and checked it out. I enjoyed the article, but it seemed like there was something 'off' about it. I read a few more posts and continued having this strange feeling that all wasn't right in the world of coyote scruffiness.
Then I discovered the raw, naked truth: A blatant admission to the world that he had spit in the face of Truth, Justice and The American Way by preaching outright anarchy against the government!
Automatic weapons, you ask? Incendiary bombs? Molotov Cocktails?
No!
I am proudly holding the government-mandated flow restrictor I just removed from my most recent shower head purchase.
Pic: Artist's concept of the crime in progress
After calling the FBI, DHS, EPA and OSHA (just for good measure) about this self-admitted nihilist, I felt it my duty to warn you, the Maggie's Valued Reader™, about this 'gateway crime' — where the pusher draws you into his web of sin with a 'simple' crime — only to have you later trapped into doing his bidding when it comes time to rob that armored car guarded by six ex-Army commandos with Uzis and you end up dying a horrific, painful, bloody death — and all because you visited Coyote's blog.
I also thought I might elaborate on his post, so that you may further know exactly what to watch out for while steering clear of gateway crimes such as this. I have a little perspective on the whole water-rationing thing because I was a sub-contractor when California went through an official 8-year drought back in the 80's. Then the weather cycle flipped back around and 'flood control' was at the top of everybody's list.
Such were the whims and vagaries of weather, back in the days before global warming, back when nature still had a say.
Today, as Mort Zuckerman accurately contended in a Friday evening Wall Street Journal op-ed, “we are experiencing, in effect, a modern-day depression,” where “dependent millions” relying on food stamps and swelling the disability rolls “are the invisible counterparts of the soup kitchens and bread lines of the 1930s.”
Hinderaker suggests that it might be the increase in the dependency culture. I wonder whether it's just because Obama's brand is cool, and Romney's is square. I doubt that the country has suddenly swerved Left.
BTW, I think Obama's DNC speech was entirely on purpose. That speech worked before, so why change anything? If it ain't busted, don't fix it.
2:1 My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?
2:2 For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in,
2:3 and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, "Have a seat here, please," while to the one who is poor you say, "Stand there," or, "Sit at my feet,"
2:4 have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?
2:5 Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?
2:6 But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court?
2:7 Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?
2:8 You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
2:9 But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
2:10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.
2:11 For the one who said, "You shall not commit adultery," also said, "You shall not murder." Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law.
2:12 So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.
2:13 For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.
2:14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you?
2:15 If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food,
2:16 and one of you says to them, "Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill," and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?
2:17 So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
Sure, in heavily Democrat California Senator Feinstein is a sure thing to win re-election. But, does that mean that the state's voters should not hear her views directly compared to her Republican challenger in a debate. Well, according Feinstein's incumbant attitude, Feinstein says NO and leaves the news interview and her empty chair!
As a Californian, I deeply appreciate (not) Senator Feinstein's attitude toward Californians' informativeness.
Everybody should have whatever they want. So we should just outlaw prices.
Education is not a necessity. Ask Larry Ellison. It's a very good thing to have, and it's certainly something to strive for. But not everybody should get a college education. It's this mind-set which is part of the cause of increased costs.
Re-posted because it's so good, because it's been in my brain all week, and because it's stormy here today:
Gonna make a lot of money, gonna go up north I'll plant and I'll harvest what the earth brings forth The hammer's on the table, the pitchfork's on the shelf For the love of God, you ought to take pity on yourself
I woke early on the morning of the operation and lay in bed thinking about the young mother I had operated on the previous week. I had operated on a tumour deep in the right side of her brain and somehow – I do not know how since the operation had seemed to proceed uneventfully – I had caused a major stroke, so that she awoke from the operation paralysed down the left side of her body. I had probably tried to take too much of the tumour out. I had probably strayed too deeply into her brain. I must have been too self-confident. I had been insufficiently fearful. I longed for this next operation, the operation on the pineal tumour, to go well – that there should be a happy ending, that everybody would live happily ever after, Neurosurgeons look with awe and excitement at brain scans showing pineal tumours, like mountaineers looking up at a great peak that they hope to climb. and that I could feel at peace with myself once again.
It's a wonder how many physicians are natural writers. Dr. Marsh is one.
...this is America’s best and brightest — or, at any rate, most expensively credentialed. Sandra Fluke has been blessed with a quarter-million dollars of elite education, and, on the evidence of Wednesday night, is entirely incapable of making a coherent argument. She has enjoyed the leisurely decade-long varsity once reserved for the minor sons of Mitteleuropean grand dukes, and she has concluded that the most urgent need facing the Brokest Nation in History is for someone else to pay for the contraception of 30-year-old children. She says the choice facing America is whether to be “a country where we mean it when we talk about personal freedom, or one where that freedom doesn’t apply to our bodies and our voices” — and, even as the words fall leaden from her lips, she doesn’t seem to comprehend that Catholic institutions think their “voices” ought to have freedom, too, or that Obamacare seizes jurisdiction over “our bodies” and has 16,000 new IRS agents ready to fine us for not making arrangements for “our” pancreases and “our” bladders that meet the approval of the commissars. Sexual liberty, even as every other liberty withers, is all that matters: A middle-school girl is free to get an abortion without parental consent, but if she puts a lemonade stand on her lawn she’ll be fined. What a bleak and reductive concept of “personal freedom.”
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim and roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves - goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
I say more: the just man justices; Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is - Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men's faces.
But we can't let that energy fade -- because in just 60 days, voters will decide who gets to serve in the White House for the next four years. So every single one of us has got to pull together to finish strong.
I know you feel the urgency: Already this week, supporters like you have made more than 500,000 grassroots donations to build this campaign. So if you're fired up, let's keep it going -- let's see how many people we can get to show their support by the end of the day.
Barack's got something that the other side doesn't: more than 3 million grassroots supporters like you -- and together we're going to win this election the right way.
The donation you give today will make a big impact in the final stage of this race. And on November 7th, you can wake knowing that you did everything you could to help us deliver on the full promise of the next four years.
Make this our biggest week yet, and give $5 or more right now to win this election in the final two months:
There is plenty of motherly and grandmotherly wisdom in that book. Men used to talk about "settling down." Women need to learn how to make that happen unless their desire is to live forever like Hollywood starlets.
Here's a quote from the Amazon comments:
"Getting to I Do" catalogued various relationship scenarios, where the authors pointed out what worked and what didn't. I have to be honest, being a self-supportive "modern woman", I at first thought that the simplistic illustrations of male/female dynamics were really old-fashioned and that I might as well just talk it out with my grandmother. But, the book went way beyond just designating roles. For me it helped me to embrace the woman I was and to understand the relationship dynamic I wanted to have.
The book is terrific. I read it and applied it to my next relationship-someone I fell in love with and wanted to marry. I went through the "phases" as stated in the book and when it got down to the "negotiation" phase, my boyfriend wanted to move to France, with me. Great! But, not with an engagement. Turns out he was not ready to be married. It was a very painful to think about being without him. To have my dreams of being married to him dissolve. Fortunaltely, I had learned that I would be putting myself through so much more pain and anguish if I had up-rooted my life without any commitment other than being a great boyfriend. So, I let him go.
There was the relentless emphasis on Government as Community, as the thing that gives us spirit and makes us whole. But government isn't what you love if you're American, America is what you love. Government is what you have, need and hire. Its most essential duties—especially when it is bankrupt—involve defending rights and safety, not imposing views and values. We already have values. Democrats and Republicans don't see all this the same way, and that's fine—that's what national politics is, the working out of this dispute in one direction or another every few years. But the Democrats convened in Charlotte seemed more extreme on the point, more accepting of the idea of government as the center of national life, than ever, at least to me.
The fight over including a single mention of God in the platform—that was extreme. The original removal of the single mention by the platform committee—extreme. The huge "No!" vote on restoring the mention of God, and including the administration's own stand on Jerusalem—that wasn't liberal, it was extreme. Comparing the Republicans to Nazis—extreme. The almost complete absence of a call to help education by facing down the powers that throw our least defended children under the school bus—this was extreme, not mainstream.
The sheer strangeness of all the talk about abortion, abortion, contraception, contraception...
It is un-American to love government. In America, government is to be viewed as a necessary evil.
In 1890, rail was the dominant form of land transport. Now, it's a niche market and the passenger component is, alas, subsidy-dependent. I love trains, but (subsidized) highways, cars, trucks and airplanes won the battle for the future.
When I read the other day that food stamps are being used to buy pop tarts, cookies, honey buns, candy bars, corn dogs, taffy, and cheesecake, it finally clicked: liberal economic and social policies reward stoners.
...the same self-righteous progressive error—of the sense that the Republicans are offering radical individualism and a cold and selfish you’re-on-your-own philosophy of government. And to this extent it was answered by a very revealing display of the left’s tendency to collapse all of society—all that stands between the individual and the state—into the state. Different speakers this week took this up in different ways (starting with the opening video in which one of the speakers said that government is the only thing we all belong to), and Obama’s way was to say that his party’s alternative to the every man for himself philosophy of the Right is an idea of citizenship. “We believe in citizenship,” he said, “a word at the very heart of our founding, at the very essence of our democracy.” It’s an odd claim, as the word “citizenship” doesn’t appear in any founding document (and to the extent that “citizen” does it describes a legal resident, and never seems to be assigned much significance)...
A pal took this pic of the USS Saratoga in Newport, RI last weekend. Some people want to use her for
Early fall (ie late Sept to November) is the best time for planting or transplanting most things in the temperate zone.
The 
Pic: Artist's concept of the crime in progress
The Town-Gown Connection - 
Clint Eastwood talks #ECOTUS
A good book for single girls and ladies who think having a good husband might be a good idea for a good life:
Is