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.
Capretta and Levin: Why ObamaCare Is Still No Sure Thing - The majority of state governors are Republicans, and they have the power to disarm the health-care law.
Reporters Without Borders accused Israel of a war crime, targeting innocent civilian journalists. The Reporters Without Borders, first, need to better understand the Geneva Conventions. The International Committee of the Red Cross is the authority on the Geneva Conventions.
"Inasmuch as they are civilians, journalists are protected under international humanitarian law against direct attacks unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities."
That does not protect those masquerading as journalists nor does it protect terrorists hiding among journalists. Today, Israel killed five of them. Further, Reporters Without Borders has not protested Hamas directly denying journalists in Gaza their right to leave Gaza.
Reporters Without Borders are without the confining borders of journalistic ethics. Quelle surprise!
The author of the piece about the famous long-term study of Harvard students from college to old age says that George Vaillant has demonstrated little more than that an ability to adapt predicts an ability to adapt. From Their Right Stuff -The evolution of the Harvard guinea pigs:
As with orthodox Freudianism, there is a hedonistic bias to the ideal of maturity that the study proclaims. To blossom is to shed “rigid” attitudes. There is nothing more contemptible than an “inhibition.” Perhaps you think that, in a free society, in-hibitions are good since they spare us from having to submit to others’ pro-hibitions.But if that is how you think, you will find this book’s system of values un-intelligible. Vaillant sees evidence of one Episcopal minister’s maturation in the way “he had put aside absolute convictions about faith, morality, and authority in favor of a new appreciation of their relativity and mutability.” If this book has a hero, it is a meathead named Boatwright, who says, “I don’t give a damn if I’m remembered for anything. I’ve enjoyed my life and had a hell of a good time.”
I am sorry to say that the socio-cultural bias is a darn shame. My profession is half-good at defining problems, but terrible at defining relative health. Everybody has at least one problem, and having problems is normal.
Everybody struggles with problems. As CS Lewis reminded us, bear that in mind whenever you meet somebody. Therefore be kind (but always be alert to predators).
Marco, my pal, remember this one thing: When they ask you a question you must assume it's a trap. They don't care about what you think, they are just looking for a gotcha. If you respond as if it were a casual conversation with somebody truly interested in your thoughts, you will be burnt toast. This is not a chat in a pub with friends.
Bill Clinton was good at this. He often responded to trap questions with something like "Oh, that's gooood." Then he would immediately ignore the question and switch to the talking point he wanted to convey.
Watch out for all the traps, you ambitious conservatives. As lawyers warn you, the prosecutor is not your friend nor is the plaintiff's attorney. They may act friendly, but they are enemies.
By the time Sandy hit the northest coastline, she was no longer a hurricane. She had degraded into a husky Nor'easter, but, with the coincidence of a full moon, her storm surge was well above that of the ordinary Nor'easter. Not a "megastorm" as the news hyped it.
I knew that just by taking a walk outside on that Monday evening. Blustery, but not hurricane-blustery. In the northeast, we are accustomed to the inconveniences of powerful Nor'easters. Trees fall down. The sea surges over the beach. Not unusual.
However dramatic and destructive Sandy was, she was nothing like other storms of the past century. What has changed is not storms (we've had far fewer in recent decades). What has changed is coastal development in historic flood zones in the densely-populated northeasern US.
It's a bad idea, and should never have been subsidized by the federal government. It's the same stupidity on the gulf coast. Free market flood insurance would have largely prevented most of the damage because people would not have built things in flood zones. Subsidized flood insurance had the predictable unintended consequence of promoting development of flood zones. A perverse incentive. Flood zones should be for animals, not for peoples' houses.
Champagne is always right for cocktail hour, but I'm talking about accompaniment to food. As a semi-amateur wine drinker, my advice is to drink whatever you like with dinner, provided that it is red in color. These holidays are not about gourmet cooking, they are about traditional comfort food and so they need comfort wines.
This year for Thanksgiving, I am going for a Brunello di Montalcino Riserva followed up by a nice Chianti Riserva. Why Tuscans, why Sangiovese? Just for the fun of it. Also because they do not overpower turkey and stuffing, but who really cares about that?
Our more mature readers surely remember the cheap and horrible-tasting Chiantis in straw wrappings in spaghetti-and-meatball restaurants. That straw-wrapped bottle is/was called a "fiasco" - a flask. That wine was a fiasco but the bottles made for cute candlesticks.
Well, Chiantis imported to the US can be darn good these days, and the so-called Super-Tuscans (with varying amounts of Cabernet added to the mix) are quite tasty too. The Chianti Classicos and Riservas tend to be tastier than the basic Chianti table wines.
Instead of watching Anderson Cooper on CNN say "Wow! What a big blast"(*actual quote below, just as uninformative and inane), supposedly providing useful reporting from within Gaza (actually a "safe" location there), you'd get more info and quicker via the rapid postings from the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) blog. Israel has every interest in getting facts out there before the pro-Pals and enablers among the international media can distort and lie. Bookmark the site to keep up on what's happening. (Remember, Israel time is 7-hours later that NY and 10-hours than California.) Here's a sample of what's available:
Date: 19/11/2012, 5:05 PM Author: IDF Website
4 senior operatives targeted with a pinpoint strike while inside of a civilian media building. Updates here and on Twitter
6:45 p.m.: A short while ago, the IDF released a video showing pilots aborting airstrikes due to uninvolved civilians in the area. Click here to watch the video and read about how the IDF takes care to avoid harming Gaza's civilians.
5:05 p.m.: A short while ago, in a joint IDF- ISA operation, the IDF targeted a hideout used by senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives, who were a part of the terror organization's rocket launching operations, in the northern Gaza Strip. A direct hit was identified.
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives, who were involved in firing rockets at Israel, were inside a civilian media building when it was targeted.
This is a further example of how terror organizations cynically use those inside civilian populated institutions as human shields.
Baha Abu al-Ata, a member of the Higher Military Council, is the commander of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Gaza City Brigade and is involved in orchestrating rocket launching and terror attacks against Israeli civilians. Al-Ata is also involved in the manufacturing of arms and firing long-range rockets at Israel....[read on for bios of the others]
1:40 p.m.: This morning, the IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Yoav (Poly) Mordechai addressed the Israeli press at a briefing. He spoke of IDF activites overnight, including progress the IDF has made in reducing the rocket attacks against Israeli civilians:
"Yesterday saw a decrease of 40% in the number if rockets fired on our territory from the day before, continuing a downward trend. During the night we made 100 attacks, including the bombing of 40 smuggling tunnels between Rafah and the Sinai Desert. We bombed both the opening of the tunnels and along the course of the tunnels ensuring a long process of reconstruction.
In addition, in the last 12 hours we have struck 6 squads in the midst of launching rockets. We attacked a stadium in Gaza City after receiving verified information of a launch from within the stadium, again showing the terrorists' continued use of civilian centers. In an effort to warn the residents and innocent bystanders and keep them away from strikes, we are, at this moment, controlling the radio stations within Gaza in order to deliver these messages to the civilians."...
* Actual quote: "Whoa!" he said, as he dove nearly out of the camera's frame. "Well, that was a rather large explosion," he added as he stood up straight again. "That was probably the largest explosion that we have heard just in the past -- really in the past hour."
The below email just reached me. The Good People Fund is a nonprofit that operates with the highest transparency and lowest costs, to steer funding to small needs that may fall beneath the radar of the giant charities or governments. See the Guidestar review for its 5-star rating. If you can give, please do at the US address below. Make sure to mark your check or credit card contribution with "Package From Home." - Here's a description of the lady who started this program.
Dear Friends of A Package from Home,
It is now 6:30 PM Saturday night and we have just watched the TV pictures of our troops gathering at the Gaza border. A few minutes ago, I received a call from Lt. Col. Zvika Levy. You may remember that he is the Commander that I deal with concerning the needs and problems of Lone Soldiers and other needy soldiers. . He was on his way from his Northern Kibbutz down to the border at Gaza He told me that there is an immediate need to provide 1.000 packages containing a warm fleece jacket, long underwear, boxer shorts and anti-fungal stockings. The total cost of the packages will be $33,000. As always, I told him that I would do the best I could to fulfill the need.. The urgency is for the warm clothes to be distributed immediately to them while they are waiting, alongside the border, for orders to enter Gaza. The package will also include a washable hand knitted woolen ski cap that is sent to us from knitters around the world, even as far away as New Zealand.
If you are wondering why the Army is not providing these things automatically to each soldier, I will give you the answer that the Army gave me at the beginning of our project, 13 year s ago. I was told, “The Army has a budget and when they have to choose between ordering M-16s and fleece jackets, they buy the M-16s”.
Israel can no longer restrain itself in dealing with those who would indiscriminately kill our citizens. As a result our soldiers have been ordered to report to their units at the Gaza border.. The weather in Gaza is very cold. The tanks are not insulated. The need to supply these packages at this time is evident. We need your support to enable us to provide some comfort for the soldiers who are putting their lives on the line in order to eliminate the firing of rockets against Israeli civilians. Once again, I turn to you for financial support. The current situation is an emergency which requires immediate action.
May Hashem protect our soldiers.
Barbara
Tax deductible shekel or other currency contributions can be made to the AACi ,and mailed to POB 53349,Jerusalem 91533, Israel. Please make a notation that your gift is for A Package From Home.
Tax deductible dollar contributions can be made to Good People Fund 384 Wyoming Ave, Millburn, New Jersey, 07041 USA. (For a credit card donation, please see Good People Fund web site at www.goodpeoplefund.org and follow donate here prompt. Please make a notation that your gift is for to A Package from Home.
About 1500 Jews and Christians attended a rally today in San Diego to Stand With Israel.
A group of about 25 pro-Palestinians showed up and tried to interfere with their vile chants of hate through a loudspeaker. The leader of the chants read them off a phone. When the leader stopped for a moment their crowd stopped, like the puppets they are. -- As I and my family were leaving, a young guy shouted his curses in my ear. I flipped him off and told him to come on and try me. He backed off as I called him a "xxxxxx" (begins with f and ends with t). Pro-Pal punks.
Is "fairness" just a nicey-nice word for nursery school teachers? From Asma, In Defense of Favoritism:
The old folk wisdom that group closeness comes from opposition to others is not borne out by recent data. Nor is the old developmental story that we all start out as egoistic Hobbesians, who slowly learn to care for others. Affective neuroscience research on early-childhood bonding suggests that, as mammals, we probably start out as emotionally glued microcommunities (family and tribe) before we become autonomous ego-driven creatures. Favoritism, not egoism, is probably the primal value system.
In short, favoritism or bias toward your group is not intrinsically racist, sexist, or closed-minded. Privileging your tribe does not render you negative or bigoted toward those outside your tribe. And to top it off, we're now beginning to understand the flexible nature of our ingroup favoritism—it doesn't have to be carved along bloodlines, or race lines, or ethnic lines. Psychological experiments reveal a whole range of criteria for ingroup bias. For example, test subjects have been shown to award higher payoffs to arbitrary ingroups, like people who just happen to share the same birthday as the test subject. And ingroup bias can be demonstrably strong when subjects share allegiance to the same sports teams, and so on.
and
If our high-minded notions of retributive justice have roots in the lower emotions of revenge, then why should we be surprised if fairness has roots in envy? I have no illusions and feel entirely comfortable with the idea that fairness has origins in baser emotions like envy. But most egalitarians will find this repugnant, and damaging to their saintly and selfless version of fairness.
A good, provocative essay about human nature and our need for tribal affinities.
Every Thanksgiving, we kids sang this merry song on the way to our Granny and Grampy's Connecticut house: four of us, bouncing in the back seat of the Chevy station wagon on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Their house was a mansion to us, filled with mysteries. Owl andirons with eyes, bathtubs with claw feet, a real ice box in the basement, a big family Bible from the 1700s, a jar of formaldehyde with a dissected human heart, old medical texts, Tiffany lamps, a Chickering grand piano, Persian rugs, the first EKG machine in Connecticut (German made, in a mahogany cabinet, which still worked and which works to this day), the rooms my Dad and Aunt grew up in with all of their books - and my Granny's Mom, sitting and knitting. She died at age 103. An old Yankee, raised on a hardscrabble farm and who worked as a nurse, she never said very much. She was half Iroquois (her Mom), and looked like an ancient squaw with her hair tied back.
They had a cranky, humorless Polish widowed cook called Mrs. Wos (which was an abbreviation of her last name which I never knew) who helped them in the kitchen and who would smack your hand hard with a spoon if you tried to grab something. Granny was not much of a cook, to put it mildly, but she would help Mrs. Wos when asked. Mrs. Wos kept a filled bird-feeder outside the kitchen window for entertainment, and banged on the glass when a squirrel got into it. Come to think of it, she banged all sorts of things: hands, windows, pots and pans, cabinet doors.
And they had an old widower black guy moved up from Mississippi who did chores and yard jobs, and helped with the garden - the sweetest and most dignified Christian guy you could ever know. "Uncle Ed," who my Granny called Mr. Evans, sang hymns while he worked, and read the Bible and philosophy (and W.E.B. DuBois and Albert Schweitzer) when he was off duty in his cozy apartment above the garage - with a wood stove (in addition to real heat) - and walls of bookshelves. He believed that fiction was the work of the Devil but he never refused whiskey.
Being alone in life, both family helpers joined us at the family tables for Thanksgiving dinner. Ed was always given the honor of offering the prayer which came from the depths of his heart. He went on for quite a while, as the soup got cold. Deep and yet simple, which are the things I still aspire to. He prayed for his country, for the enrichment of his and our spirits, for the soul of his dead wife, for his two boys in the service, and for the glory of creation.
I miss him because he was a dear buddy to me. He was the first black guy I knew. He had worked as a railroad Porter, and he said the railroad was the true friend of the black man. He knew the blues, and he knew the hymns. He taught me to fish, with great laughter and jollity. Bait-fishing from a rowboat, for food, with a bamboo pole. No fancy stuff. Long gone, now, but never forgotten.
Happy Thanksgiving, readers. Thanks to God, and God bless us, every one, living and gone - and our free country.
Photos: Station wagons were the SUVs of their time: if you had kids, you had one. '55 Chevy, of course. The '50 Buick? My grandparents drove theirs until the mid-1960s. Old people used to drive old cars. I recall theirs as having been brown, not black, but I couldn't swear to that. My Gramps, who was a doctor, totalled it into a tree while making a house call late at night in a snowstorm at age 84. He was OK, but the car wasn't. Bought a white Oldsmobile with power windows and began to cut back on work and grumble about socialism and socialized medicine. Johnson was President, with Medicare on the table - and he accepted vegetables, flowers, firewood, and labor as payment from those without money. He felt his poorer patients would feel demeaned by charity, so he expected something. I remember a bushel basket of fresh-dug potatoes on his back porch, with a note scrawled "from Sam." Another time, a bushel basket of sweet corn.
My pic is Fairfield, CT's Greenfield Hill Congregational Church. Timothy Dwight was once pastor there. This back country congregation was gathered in 1725. History of the church here. Always must remember that a church is the people, not the building.
How Free Speech Died on Campus - A young activist describes how universities became the most authoritarian institutions in America:
A 2010 survey by the American Association of Colleges and Universities found that of 24,000 college students, only 35.6% strongly agreed that "it is safe to hold unpopular views on campus." When the question was asked of 9,000 campus professionals—who are more familiar with the enforcement end of the censorship rules—only 18.8% strongly agreed.
The Democratic Party is defined by the broken family in the same way that the Republican Party is defined by the family. It is a refuge for minority groups where fatherlessness leads to single mothers and government dependency and for white middle-class Julia types who use government dependency as a substitute for parental dependency.
Take away the family and millions of seniors have no recourse for their needs and even their survival, but to turn to the government.
Here's another way Hamas stashes its armaments. In this case, under a Hamas leader's house, hit by the Israeli Air Force. Note the secondary explosions.
Here's a depiction of other ways Hamas hides its arms, as discovered during Cast Lead (late 2008-early 2009), and disregards Gazans' safety and lives, indeed callously uses their lives as sacrificial shields and pawns.
Many years ago, I'd read a piece about how we did as much housework today as we did 100 years ago, despite a plethora of labor-saving devices. This may not be as true as it once was, but the recent storms gave me some insight about why it may have been.
I noticed that without power, we were busy doing many things to keep the house going. Finding firewood, getting gas, sweeping, going to the laundromat, getting and cooking food. Clearly having power means the gas lines are shorter and I don't have to seek out firewood on a daily basis. But what is it about labor-saving devices may have caused us to do continue to spend as much time doing housework as we may have prior to having them?
One day, as I was sorting the laundry, it hit me. By being able to do more in less time, our standards and expectations rose, so we tended to do more. We do things we couldn't do before, because we can.
I didn't like that my home's cleanliness took a slight dip during the storm, but given the time I was forced to spend doing other things, it just seemed like there was a logical trade-off in letting some things go for a bit until I had the chance to get around to them.
Below is a dispatch from Israel, bold emphasis added, from -- who woulda believed it -- the frontline in Jerusalem. Yesterday, an Iranian supplied missile landed just miles from the holy sites of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. I haven't seen a mention in the press reports of this that fanatic Muslims are indiscriminately targeting not only civilians but the holy sites of billions of people.
Bill Berk is a transplanted American in Jerusalem, Israel. In his earlier career, Berk was rabbi of a large congregation in Phoenix, Ariz. Now he leads educational cultural tours within Israel. He will be the rabbi for my son's Bar Mitzvah in Jerusalem on April 8.
Dear Friends,
Many of my friends have emailed and asked about my welfare and to share a few words about what is going on.Batya and I are safe.This has been a tense few days.You are watching television and suddenly you see the words at the bottom of the screen “Siren in Ashdod” and then you hear the siren on the television and a few seconds later you might hear a “boom.”For those of us who grew up in quiet suburban American communities it is jarring, to say the least.But, hey, Ashdod isn’t Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.You worry about the folks in Ashdod but it seems far away.After all it takes an hour to drive from Jerusalem to Ashdod.As the crow flies it is 34 miles away.And then suddenly we got the news—rocket heading to Tel Aviv.That certainly raised the blood pressure a bit.Then a few minutes after Shabbat came in we are luxuriating in the soft light of Shabbat candles and enjoying Jerusalem quiet when suddenly for the first time ever, we hear the dreaded siren.Its not on t.v.It is directed at us—a rocket is headed towards us.Quickly we made our way to the stairwell and went down a few floors where it is considered safer.After what happened in Kiriat Malachi (3 dead in a 4th floor apartment) we have learned it is not good to be in an apartment that is on the upper floors.We wait a few minutes and head back to our apartment.I have heard the sounds of war before—on the border with Lebanon and during the 2nd Intifada.But this is the first time somebody is aiming at me.Needless to say we were stunned, along with all the other Jerusalemites.
It is important to know that between January 1, 2012 and the day before Israel killed the Hamas military commander they shot 750 rockets into Israel.Over the past few days they have shot another five or six hundred rockets at us.These rockets are aimed at all of us—civilians—all over the country.What are we supposed to do?What would the United States do if UCLA was closed due to rocket fire from Mexico?What would America do if Canadian terrorists shot rockets into Minnesota and they had to close the University of Minnesota? My step-daughter was sent home from her college in Ashkelon.The whole school was evacuated.She said the scene on the buses and the cars fleeing Ashkelon reminded her of World War II movies where people grab a few belongings and run.
Of course this is not 1939.We have a very strong army, navy, and air force.We know how to defend ourselves and we will defend ourselves.I’ll add one overtly political comment. I think it is fair to criticize Israel for not being as creative as we might be in dealing with the Palestinians.But the whole world, especially the Islamic countries, has been totally unresponsive to the thousands of rockets fired at Israel since we left Gaza.The news is full now of reports of world leaders coming here—now.Where were they when hundreds of thousands of Israelis were huddling in stairwells and shelters?Now you come? It’s a bit late.It is uncomfortable for the world, apparently, when we defend ourselves.This, however, is now squarely on our agenda.Let us pray that soon we’ll have some Islamic creativity and some new thinking—it’s time to accept the fact that Israel is here to stay.
Bill
Rabbi Bill Berk Marketing Coordinator and Tour Educator Keshet: The Center for Educational Tourism in Israe www.keshetisrael.co.il
It has long been my view that the O is/was a celebrity candidate, a fluffy media creation lacking in substance and in mastery of anything but smooth talk. A sweet-talking guy. For a related essay, see A Tale of Two Cities - Hollywood’s influence on politicians advances not inexorably but in cycles.
I began to make a mental list of the potential news items over recent years which would have been pounded, would have been subjects of relentless, damaging front-page stories, had Obama been a Republican.
- More Americans in poverty than in decades - More homeless than in decades - The Food Stamp/EBT Card Presidency - Ongoing urban addiction, despair, and fatherless kids - Worst recovery from a recession in history - Benghazi would already be worse than Watergate - Mexican gun-walking scandal - The Hurricane Sandy mess - The catastrophic "Arab Spring" - Obama's compulsive lying - The taxpayer's loss of billions on GM - The taxpayer's loss of billions on green energy, crony failures - Obama's time on golf courses - Obama's divisiveness - Obama's coziness with Wall St. moguls - The Obama family's carbon footprint and insanely lavish vacations - Obama's errors of fact, eg 57 states. (Remember Dan Quail and potatoes?)
Add your own lists and items in the comments. It's therapeutic!
I think he's right, at least in part. Rush's tendency is to imagine that voters apply hard logic. It puzzles him when they do not. However, in retail politics, cultural signals and tribal signals matter. Policy wonks like me think it's superficial, but you can't get a policy until you win an election. There are plenty of low-info voters out there who vote on emotion, affinity-feelings, and things like that.
Mitt Romney was an excellent candidate on paper, but too many voters just couldn't "relate" to the guy. Actually, he did quite well, all things considered. A quote from Ace's post:
This was Breitbart's main idea, that politics was simply the expression of choices and preferences that had already been decided by the culture.
The "culture" doesn't care what gays do, and doesn't want to know or to think about it. The "culture" likes pop music. The "culture" is squeamish and ambivalent about abortion, and prefers to sort-of accept it and ignore it. These things are signals, not real policy issues. Let's face it: Conservatism and Libertarianism is a bit dorky. Mitt Romney probably never heard of Beyonce, and all I know of her is the name. Would not know her from Adam. I am more of a JS Bach guy. An East Village dork, but you wouldn't know it if you met me in the pub.
I die of thirst beside the fountain I'm hot as fire, I'm shaking tooth on tooth In my own country I'm in a distant land Beside the blaze I'm shivering in flames Naked as a worm, dressed like a president I laugh in tears and hope in despair I cheer up in sad hopelessness I'm joyful and no pleasure's anywhere I'm powerful and lack all force and strength Warmly welcomed, always turned away.
I'm sure of nothing but what is uncertain Find nothing obscure but the obvious Doubt nothing but the certainties Knowledge to me is mere accident I keep winning and remain the loser At dawn I say "I bid you good night" Lying down I'm afraid of falling I'm so rich I haven't a penny I await an inheritance and am no one's heir Warmly welcomed, always turned away.
I never work and yet I labor To acquire goods I don't even want Kind words irritate me most He who speaks true deceives me worst A friend is someone who makes me think A white swan is a black crow The people who harm me think they help Lies and truth today I see they're one I remember everything, my mind's a blank Warmly welcomed, always turned away.
Merciful Prince may it please you to know I understand much and have no wit or learning I'm biased against all laws impartially What's next to do? Redeem my pawned goods again! Warmly welcomed, always turned away.
The 13th century (1431-1474?) vagabond-thief-troubadour's bio here. This is a free advertisment for The Poems of Francois Villon, translations by Galway Kinnell (1965).
Everybody's probably sick of reading pontifications about the election, but I think Ponnuru's The Party’s Problem is worth a glance. Here's a quote (my bolds):
The Republican story about how societies prosper — not just the Romney story — dwelt on the heroic entrepreneur stifled by taxes and regulations: an important story with which most people do not identify. The ordinary person does not see himself as a great innovator. He, or she, is trying to make a living and support or maybe start a family. A conservative reform of our health-care system and tax code, among other institutions, might help with these goals. About this person, however, Republicans have had little to say.
In the days since the election, Republicans have received (and given one another) a lot of advice: Step up the ground game. Soften on immigration and abortion. Embrace same-sex marriage. Appeal more to single women, Hispanics, and young people. Run the younger, more charismatic candidates Republicans have waiting in the wings. Some of this advice is good, and some of it bad. But the weakness of the Republican party predates the emergence of same-sex marriage as an issue, the development of Democratic micro-targeting strategies, and the growth of the Hispanic vote. And wasn’t Josh Mandel, the losing Ohio Senate candidate, supposed to be one of those great young conservative hopes? However much charisma and brains the next crop of Republicans brings to their campaigns, they need a stronger party.
The perception that the Republican party serves the interests only of the rich underlies all the demographic weaknesses that get discussed in narrower terms.
Bird Dog posted a great quote the other day from the terrific (now deceased) author Robert B. Parker, he of the wonderful 'Spenser' novels:
Baseball is the most important unimportant thing in the world.
So true.
By any real-world measure, sports is a complete waste of time. It has virtually nothing to do with the serious issues we face every day. It's whimsical. It's fanciful. It's frivolous.
Then you head for the news sites and read how global warming or the latest pandemic is going to kill you in 20 minutes, then you read about 'Fast and Furious' and how nothing's been done, then about the Black Panthers invading a voting station and nothing's been done, then about the TSA mauling some 90-year-old woman and nothing's been done. Then you drop by a left-wing blog site and read how the media is controlled by a vast right-wing conspiracy and that Romney is secretly a fascist dog-killing cancer-producing monster, then you drop by a right-wing site and read how those evil hippies are responsible for all your ills, how everyone in California is a drooling liberal, and how San Francisco is full of nothing but whacked-out sign-carrying moonbats.
Then you read how the Giants beat the Cardinals 5 to 3, and it feels like the only real thing you've read all day.
Below the fold I shall expound upon this most unique and wonderful of games, present five video clips, and document how something unbelievable happened in the seventh game of the National League playoff series that had never happened in baseball before.
Or, perhaps more specifically, had never been witnessed before.
How to Live Without Irony
Our more mature readers surely remember the cheap and horrible-tasting Chiantis in straw wrappings in spaghetti-and-meatball restaurants. That straw-wrapped bottle is/was called a "fiasco" - a flask. That wine was a fiasco but the bottles made for cute candlesticks.
Every Thanksgiving, we kids sang 
Being alone in life, both family helpers joined us at the family tables for Thanksgiving dinner. Ed was always given the honor of offering the prayer which came from the depths of his heart. He went on for quite a while, as the soup got cold. Deep and yet simple, which are the things I still aspire to. He prayed for his country, for the enrichment of his and our spirits, for the soul of his dead wife, for his two boys in the service, and for the glory of creation. 
The sun unleashed a 
So how’s it