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.
“The ones we are losing are convicted felons, aliens from special interest countries, and other high risk individuals. We are so overwhelmed and preoccupied by the flood of juveniles and family units that we cannot use our resources to catch the more serious aliens,” the agent states.
The USA is being played for fools, naive fools. If you want to join our club, apply for membership.
"Jewels and binoculars hang from the head of the mule." Visions of Johanna (1966). Post-political, soaked in NYC, this darn song just never quits producing. Lyrics here.
Take heed, y'all readers who don't quite get Bob yet. "Name me someone who isn't a parasite and I'll go out and say a prayer for him."
Please give me the power. I promise to make everything new and beautiful for you ignorant little people who do not understand what you really want or what is best for you. Furthermore, I'll turn your slob husbands into young studs, your wives into Miss Americas, your bank accounts into mountains of gold, and I'll make the oceans recede by shipping water to the moon (with apologies to those with waterfront property).
"What is lost in lucidity is gained in the strange poetic power of association that is Shakespeare's most striking poetic feature. His mind leaps sideways - and, by implication, in cross-referenced, associative language-leaping allusiveness - as often as it bulls forward to a goal. It is the very opposite of what Orwell and the like supposed to be the special virtue of English: plain-pudding simplicity and clarity."
Maintaining a social fabric, social cohesion, shared values and culture, some degree of community, seem important to living in a pleasant place. Despite the melting pot dream, in America, as everywhere in the world, birds of a feather tend to flock together for a long time.
We have posted in the past about the travails of legal immigrants to the US. It's not easy, especially if you are educated and from Europe. Would amnesty apply to Brit, Canadian, and South African MDs? PhDs from India and China? Budding jihadists from the middle east?
In my view, you don't go to a party without an invitation. What is going on, an unarmed invasion? Drudge has this today:
If you think Delta is a mess, try partially-government-owned Alitalia...from Wiki:
On 3 May 2013, in a sting codenamed "Operation Clean Holds", police made 49 arrests at Rome's Fiumicino airport, with another 37 in major Italian airports including Bari, Bologna, Milan Linate, Naples, Palermo and Verona. All were Alitalia employees caught on camera and most were charged with aggravated theft and damage.[21] Hidden camera footage has been released showing employees rifling through, stealing from, and intentionally damaging passenger's baggage belonging to various carriers.
We'll fly them anyway. Travel is always an interesting challenge.
Watching that magnificent Women’s Final at the French Open yesterday reminded us to dig up an unsigned letter written to the Middlebury Women’s Lacrosse Team on the occasion of their National D.III Championship, way back in 1997:
YOUR OLDEST FANS
I wish you could see yourselves the way the old men did who came, faithfully, each home game, to watch you play. (Did you ever even know they were there?) With too much time on their knobby hands, and being no particular use to anyone else on those spring afternoons, they arrived, punctually, to stake out the top row of the stadium bleachers. They had names like "Walter", "Bob", "Ed", "Ralph" and "Gordie". They were between the ages of 70 and 85, but not when they watched you throw and catch. When your games began, the old men leaned back against the chilly cement stadium and forgot the prisons of their own arthritic bodies. They became lost instead in the wondrous distraction of able young women playing their hearts out on a green field.
The distant mountains that lie east of Middlebury's playing fields were of a blue, on those spring days, that suggested a glimpse of heaven on earth. The old men owed you no duty to be there. They did not know you; you were neither their grand-nieces nor granddaughters. They were not trying to set right any male chauvinistic sins of their generation, or to prove their hipness to Title IX. Your gender, in fact, had next to nothing to do with the rapture that this scene - viewed from their top row seats - stirred in them. You were athletes. That is all. Athletes at the pinnacle of youth and at the top of your sport. Graceful, strong-legged, and in love with a game that required only sticks and a ball. It was the simplicity that they loved. When you played this game of run, throw and catch, you embodied such grace and apparent ease that the old men allowed themselves the illusion that you did it all through them. (This is the essence of being a fan, to feel power vicariously through the athlete observed). Each well-turned play you made lifted up the hearts of Walter, Bob, Ed, Ralph and Gordie, and made them believe in something like a heaven on earth.
For 60 minutes it made small boys of them, returned them to an age when it was not corny to invest in one's heroes. When the games were over, they left for home, winners themselves, and they felt less afraid of living in the lonely winters of their lives.
I don't know whether any of this makes sense to you, at your ages, but you did this for a number of old men who were among your greatest fans in the spring of 1997. I just thought you should know.
From Condemned to Joy - The Western cult of happiness is a mirthless enterprise:
The Western cult of happiness is indeed a strange adventure, something like a collective intoxication. In the guise of emancipation, it transforms a high ideal into its opposite. Condemned to joy, we must be happy or lose all standing in society. It is not a question of knowing whether we are more or less happy than our ancestors; our conception of the thing itself has changed, and we are probably the first society in history to make people unhappy for not being happy.
The Green fanatics tend to be irrational or, at best, factually ignorant. From Mead:
Too many greens take their science a la carte. Where scientific research tells greens things they like to hear, greens get all self righteous about “science deniers.” But whenever some poor scientist somewhere attacks a cherished green shibboleth, hordes of vicious and bitter green activists hurl angry accusations about the corruption of the scientific process by corporate interests.
We need solutions grounded in our best understanding of science, and we need to put those into practice. We need fracking, just like we need nuclear, just like we need GMOs. And we need an environmental movement that is realistic, balanced, and committed to the needs of human beings.
So: to save the planet, beat the greens.
"To save the planet"? I hope they are being a bit ironic there, and do not really believe that they will do that.
2:1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.
2:2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.
2:3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.
2:4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
2:5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem.
2:6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.
2:7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?
2:8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?
2:9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,
2:10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes,
2:11 Cretans and Arabs--in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power."
2:12 All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?"
2:13 But others sneered and said, "They are filled with new wine."
2:14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say.
2:15 Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning.
2:16 No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
2:17 'In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.
2:18 Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.
2:19 And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
2:20 The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day.
2:21 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.'
"Bob Benchley first introduced me to Ballantine Ale. It has been a good companion to me ever since. You have to work hard to deserve to drink it. But I would rather have a bottle of Ballantine Ale than any other drink after fighting a really big fish. We keep it iced in the bait box with chunks of ice packed around it. And you ought to taste it on a hot day when you have worked a big marlin fast because there were sharks after him."
- Ernest Hemingway
I remember when we used those green 40s for .22 target practice down at the farm's dump pile standing up at 40-50 yards. Not so easy to find tasty beers in green glass 40s these days. Shooting glass is more satisfying than shooting tin cans, and the big bottles are a little easier to hit.
I have always liked this ale - or whatever it is. Classic label, too. Give it a try, and think of Hemingway. It's cheap and good, if you can find it.
Fun song from 1962. So many of us all have had hard times in NYC at some point in life, but it was mostly for the good in the end. It worked out for Bob, who still loves NY.
At the end of this clip, Ms. Gooding comments jokingly about how Bob might someday be rich and famous. Lyrics here.
A one-of-a-kind triple barreled revolver. Unfortunately not much is known about the Spanish gunsmith who created this firearm. The only information passed on by the previous owner is that the piece is unique.
The gun utilizes a tip-down or break-open system similar to Smith & Wesson models. It's originally crafted from an adapted 6.35 pistol and sports a 3" barrel with-fixed front sight.
Climate
science in chaos due to shortage of scary synonyms - See more at:
http://www.thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/shortage-of-frightening-new-euphemisms-latest-climate-crisis-t13985.html#sthash.sfktswla.dpuf
What do you take from these starry nights, O heart, in all your disarray? Yes, what do you take from their delights To guide you on your path by day?
What did you feel when, in the pale Pond’s shell, its silver overswelled; When, deep within the resting vale, A trembling stream of starlight welled?
Can it slip into shadow, as over the ring Of hills, a white flash passed (night’s noon), And, as the rushing bluish wing Of a cloud clung round the moon?
Can it shatter, like the silent blooms That softly waft their heated prayer Over the villas’ rich doors and rooms To your breathing heart in the late-night air?
Can it quiver too, as, softer, lighter, (A sinking string of pearls or lace), The moon’s gleam over the rocking water Fled for the dark without a trace?
Is nothing left of the whispering spray Of the cypresses along the shore, Not one of your dream thoughts that would stray Along your round for an hour or more?
Perhaps but a verse of the wind in its reeling And pure longing for that time that could bless Like fragrance lost in a gentle feeling Of inexpressible tenderness.
Is Going Topless 
NYC's 
Acts 2:1-21
"Bob Benchley first introduced me to Ballantine Ale. It has been a good companion to me ever since. You have to work hard to deserve to drink it. But I would rather have a bottle of Ballantine Ale than any other drink after fighting a really big fish. We keep it iced in the bait box with chunks of ice packed around it. And you ought to taste it on a hot day when you have worked a big marlin fast because there were sharks after him." 
1st-Grader Accidentally Brings Toy Gun To School,