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.
My buddy got two this year. Here's one of them. Then I wonder, if he's a buddy, how come he never invites me along? (Woops, my dumb error - that was a pic of his spring Turkey)
No doubt these lies are "for my own good," just like the Obamacare lies. I am sick of an overly-powerful federal government, and sick of the fawning respect it gets from the media. It disgusts me, this culture of branding and pop-culture, high-school, leg-tingling nonsense which has invaded government.
From a good post on Washington DC and it's over-importance and self-importance, Fifty Years after Dallas - In a TV cult like Kennedy’s, there is more than a whiff of Roman decadence.
The real difficulty is that the presidency has come to occupy too large a place in our individual psyches, even as the federal nation-state over which the president presides has come to occupy too large a place in our individual lives. The imperial presidency that had its beginnings in the administrations of the first Roosevelt and Wilson has grown up with the imperial state, a noxious weed that is only too likely to culminate in a kind of Caesarian first magistracy, an office very different from the one the Founders envisioned when they drafted the second article of the Constitution.
As the federal government grows ever more potent, local and regional culture diminish apace; we are left only with national power and the national sanctities. Kennedy, who made the slenderest of marks on the policy of the nation, left the greatest impression on its imaginative life. He had, indeed, an eye for the enchanting symbol. He approved the peculiar logo that is to this day blazoned on the presidential aircraft; he conceived the Medal of Freedom; he laid down the protocols for the pageantry of the modern state visit. What is more, he chose for his mate a brunette of excellent taste who turned the dowdy White House into the most stylish of 20th-century courts, and selected for his (most notable) concubine a platinum blonde who continues to haunt that dream-vision of an America in which Huck Finn, Abe Lincoln, and Betsy Ross (or some such mythical company) are forever laughing and swapping yarns on a raft on the Mississippi.
It is, alas, a spurious dream.
JFK was not much as a president, but he was a pre-Beatles pop-idol for the gals, and he enchanted the media. The only good thing about him was his basic conservatism. Rich and handsome, with good, expensive speech-writers. So what?
Political views as social signaling. I get it. I am better than those hick bitter clingers. No - wait. I am one of them, but not very bitter. I'm a sweet person.
We did one turkey in the oven, stuffed with cornbread stuffing, and the other one on the grill with occasional doses of soaked apple wood chunks from my neighbor's tree, and with white wine in the steam water. Both birds were brined 24 hrs before cooking, and each around 18 lbs.
We had plenty of family and friends to eat it all up.
I think people preferred the grilled (no stuffing in the grilled bird). It was my first time trying grilled turkey. Beginner's luck: It came out perfectly: moist, with a pleasant hint of smokiness. It took around 3 1/2 hrs to cook. Keeping the temp at near 325 involved carefully titrating the number of briquettes and fruitwood chunks to keep the heat low, but to not let the fire go out. Basted it with veg. oil and honey.
Nice grill, eh? This cast-iron thing weights 500 lbs. I had to assemble the darn thing off a truck, and got most of it right. Except for the wheels, which fell off. Now it takes a few pall-bearers to move it.
This is halfway:
And done:
The puppy seemed equally happy with scraps from the grilled and from the oven-roasted turkey.
We have plenty of space if you would like to go on a duck goose combo hunt. We get ducks and geese in the same blinds on the marshes we hunt. It is $190 (plus $10 tax) per full day per hunter. We hunt all day and meet you at 5:15 am and hunt till sunset. We can come in for a lunch break or a break at anytime during the day or we can bring you lunch from a local restaurant if you want. We have many nice duck blinds, most all have roofs, we have all the decoys, you will be in your own blind & dogs are welcome. Hotels are listed on our website and off season rates are about $55 a night. Just bring your gun, ammo, boots and lic. You can get your license by calling 866-721-6911, it is easy and immediate over the phone, you get your lic, hip number and state stamp, just get the federal stamp at the post office, you can also get a 3 day out of state lic. for about $40, be sure to sign your state and federal duck stamps. You will love this place, we get a large variety of waterfowl: black ducks, mallards, teal, shovelers, brant, pintails, wigeon, gadwall, a bunch of other ducks plus Canada and snow geese.
It depends. As Freud knew, memory is distorted by our choice of defensive narrative of the moment. One of the many fascinating things about Psychoanalysis is to see how memories change over time.
Just the euphemism "unprepared" exposes the college diploma fraud that is sold to so many American kids and families. As I have asserted many times, if you can't handle calculus, statistics, college physics, Econ, Plato, and Thomas Aquinus, you do not belong in a serious 4-year college.
There are immense other learning opportunities in the US for anybody who wants them, for motivated scholars. Public libraries, for one example. They do not close at 5 pm. Useful community colleges have sprung up all over America to provide some of the basic and remedial education that was not done in government high schools, and to teach practical skills that used to be learned in apprenticeships or on the job.
"Unprepared" is a euphemism for unmotivated, uninterested, or unable for personality or intelligence reasons. Not everybody can play in the NFL either.
Remember the shocking reality that half of Americans have below-average IQs. College curricula have been aimed at well-above average IQ and well-above average curiosity and self-motivation levels. Some "experts" opine that only 5% of a population are really able and interested in the demands of traditional and rigorous higher ed. I'm willing to admit that, of that 5-10%, only about half would be motivated to self-educate without the structure of a school. That's simple lazy human nature.
Were I (God forbid) a college admissions officer, one thing I would care about is what the applicant learned outside of school on their own initiative. As I have often said, learning is not something that is delivered, it is something that is taken. You can lead a horse to water, etc. Even the "worst" schools, whatever that means, offer huge opportunities for anyone who wants them. Teachers want nothing more than motivated, capable, and respectful kids, and will respond to them. Yes, even unionized teachers.
People can dumb higher ed down all they want to fill seats, collect tuition, etc., but it doesn't mean a thing anymore.
I recently had a discussion with one of the hiring managers at my office, discussing an informational interview she'd had with a young fellow graduating from college. Good experience was all over his resume, plenty of jobs, references and the candidate played on a Div. 1 football squad. He was second team on defense, but he had an agent encouraging him to go pro. He had a good shot at making the NFL, either on a practice squad somewhere or possibly special teams, both offering the chance of better things.
He was a good student, too. As a result, he opted out of the NFL, and decided the working life was a better career choice. He was a bit tired of the culture of football. He loved it, but it's grinding work. He wanted to use other skills he'd developed. I don't blame him.
As the hiring manager and I spoke, she commented "Well, he has the added benefit of being diverse."
I looked at her and said, "What do you mean, exactly?"
"I think you know what I mean, he's ethnic."
"So he's black. You're telling me this makes him more qualified?"
"No, not more qualified, but you know how things are today. We have to remain conscious of this fact, diversity is so important in the workplace."
"Yes, I agree, it is important. But having me as part of the team doesn't make us more diverse? I'm curious if I'm diverse?"
"Well, you're diverse in terms of thought. You think in ways nobody else here does, but that's not what we focus on in diversity."
Quite remarkable, really. It could be like Singapore or Hong Kong, or something, but much bigger, I guess. It is odd that such a thriving metropolis would elect a Commie mayor. Something in the water, maybe. Sure, it's expensive, but that's supply and demand. There is high demand to be here. Sometimes it feels like the whole world wants to move here, despite the living challenges and the fierce, if invigorating, competition.
I will ask one more time: "Why don't all the ardent Lefties who love living in this terrible, capitalistic, and thriving NYC move to Portland, Oregon? Better yet, Mexico City, Havana or Managua."
...Paine sat down beneath the dark December sky and wrote his electrifying The American Crisis, the first of a series of essays, on a drumhead by the flickering light of a campfire. “These are the times that try men’s souls,” he wrote—words that should be engraved on every American heart and that never lose their power to thrill. “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, at this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” How unworthy of a man and a father to sigh, “Well! give me peace in my day.” A loving father would say, “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” As for the American army, Paine reported from firsthand experience, it remained cool and orderly during the tough retreat across New Jersey, and the soldiers, “though greatly harassed and fatigued, frequently without rest, covering, or provision . . . bore it with a manly spirit. . . . The sign of fear was not seen in our camp.” And now, “we are again collected and collecting; our new army at both ends of the continent is recruiting fast.”
This was just the bucking up that the army and the nation sorely needed, and when the essay appeared in the Pennsylvania Packet on December 19, 1776, the soldiers read it to one another as they huddled together for warmth by the banks of the Delaware. Wavering civilians within reach of Washington’s camp made up their minds to join his force, and long-expected reinforcements finally arrived, temporarily swelling the Continental Army to 7,600—enough to cross the ice-choked Delaware River on Christmas Day, win the Battles of Trenton and Princeton in the next ten days, save the revolution, and change the course of world history. “Without the pen of Paine,” John Adams judged, “the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain.”
I suspect that most of my ancestors were Tories, but so were most Americans at the time. A dramatic rebellion, nonetheless, with the American Constitution as its crowning jewel.
The brief article is here. Politicians like Keynes because he encourages them to give money to their supporters. The economics might not add up, but the politics does.
The inability of any party seriously to retrench is surely the consequence of the growth of central government, which is now so deeply imbricated in the economy that it is often difficult to distinguish the public from the private. There are many companies – and very large ones too – that are at least as dependent on the government as any single welfare mother: and therefore so are their employees, managers and shareholders. It is not just welfare mothers, therefore, who will vote for the continuation or extension of dependence on government spending, but many of the most prosperous. When the government in Britain finally gave up on its project of the unification of all health care records in a single IT system, after having spent up to $20,000,000,000 on it, there was nothing to show for it except many IT millionaires. Unsurprisingly they were not against the government expenditure that was the foundation of their wealth.
The government is now so big that when it sneezes the whole economy catches cold. That is why, in matters of economics, we are all fascists now.
I have mixed feelings about this general topic, but I conclude, at the end, that the federal government has no business in local education. Not in their job description. It always seems to me that, the more jobs they take on, the more costly failures occur.
Some readers have asked what tools my pal used for his fine outdoor Churchill photos which I have been posting for the past week.
He says "I only use Nikon D800 with a Nikon 200-400 zoom, f4 straight through." I don't know what any of that means, but readers might. I don't do photography - I take snapshots. When I was young, I drew pictures and painted pictures.
If the true history of
the West and Islam is being turned upside its head, what other
historical “orthodoxies” being peddled around as truth are also false?
It's an opiate agonist/antagonist. Apparently it's a mild high. I know a doc who prescribes it. He is all about $.
My bias tends to be in favor of sobriety and standing up and facing life and oneself directly, but those things are difficult for everybody. In the UK, however, certified addicts can pick up their heroin etc at the docs' office on the way to work. The NHS figures it's cheaper than rehab. Of course, the NHS also considers death cheaper than cancer treatments.
Head Start is just one more useless, expensive federal boondoggle. It has a constituency, however, and nobody really wants to be "against the children." It was a failed and possibly destructive experiment which devolved into federal babysitting with unionized babysitters.
The wisdom of Reagan: "...a government program is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!"
When Women Compete Against Women
Just the euphemism "unprepared" exposes the college diploma fraud that is sold to so many American kids and families. As I have asserted many times, if you can't handle calculus, statistics, college physics, Econ, Plato, and Thomas Aquinus, you do not belong in a serious 4-year college. 
Heritage 
Thanks to Myron Magnet for 
