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.
If you happen to have a scullery maid on your household staff, great. Otherwise, silver flatware and silver bowls and platters are a serious pain.
We have lots of sterling platters, bowls, and dinner sets. Also, lots of old silver plate stuff which does look pretty at times but really it all tarnishes so fast that there is no reason to use it. Garbage, basically, even if it has an ancestor's initials engraved in it. We have no scullery maid at present, alas.
List is far too short. Wait - "short" is disparaging to short people. Why do people look down on short people and look up to tall people? We should get rid of up and down also.
"Force is among the most simple-minded, and hence primitive and unrefined, reactions that we hairless apes resort to. And it is nothing less than sadly astonishing that some of the most prominent enemies of peaceful commerce and voluntary cooperation have become known as “Progressives.” “Progressives'” first and overriding instinct whenever they encounter some economic or social situation that they disapprove of is to forcibly push, pull, demand, and prohibit individuals who are going peacefully about their own business to behave in ways that “Progressives” have divined is best."
During my lifetime, lamentation over student ignorance has been sounded by the likes of E.D. Hirsch, Allan Bloom, Mark Bauerlein and Jay Leno, among many others. But these lamentations have been leavened with the hope that appeal to our and their better angels might reverse the trend (that’s an allusion to Lincoln’s first inaugural address, by the way). E.D. Hirsch even worked up a self-help curriculum, a do-it yourself guide on how to become culturally literate, imbued with the can-do American spirit that cultural defenestration could be reversed by a good reading list in the appendix. Broadly missing is sufficient appreciation that this ignorance is the intended consequence of our educational system, a sign of its robust health and success.
A "get over it" segment of Prof. Peterson's presentation. Good fun. It's secular, but almost religious. He does not quite get to the idea of laying at all at the cross, so he is dark and misses the joyful part. With a bit more Jesus, he'd be a heck of a preacher. He's right: It is a miracle that the lights are on.
Medical care, unlike Legal care (for which you could make a stronger civic case because legal rights are enshrined in the Constitution), has been inching towards government takeover in the US since Medicare was begun in 1966. Medicare is a single-payer, government-controlled system. It is a popular entitlement for those over 65 (is 65 "elderly"?) for obvious reasons. Later, Medicaid took over medical care costs for the poor and the disabled. It has been 50 years of incrementalism towards total government control over a large hunk of the American economy.
I'd like to suggest a resistance is already underway in America, and has been for quite some time now. The resistance is not to "anyone who isn't sufficiently leftist" as guys like Moore say. Its people sick of the system and demanding things be different. For the most part, Americans want to be left alone, and they want their representatives to listen to what they say. Not what lobbyists say, not what fat cats say, not what big money says, not what the news media and the entertainment community says, but what they want.
And the resistance is not to one policy group or another per se, but rather to the arrogance, dismissive attitude, condescension, and contempt they feel from their government. Americans are increasingly fed up with the crap they're being handed almost daily and want real change.
It is a government sickness. It is evil. Even those road cameras are evil. America does not deserve a Big Brother surveillance state. The CIA is legally prohibited from surveillance inside the United States.
An ex- Middlebury prof wrote last week about the stunning lack of intellectual curiosity among the pampered and privileged Middlebury students. That might very well be nothing new, and we all know that all education, in the end, is self-education.
On a related topic, Prof. Deneen is struck by the lack of knowledge about the fundamentals of history and culture among his students at elite institutions, HOW A GENERATION LOST ITS COMMON CULTURE. I suspect he is talking about the common elite culture, because I don't think the average guy or gal on the street in 1950 could tell you much about Magna Carta, Saul of Tarsus, or John Milton. I might be wrong about that.
In any event, the democratization of culture and of higher ed has resulted in the loss of basic cultural knowledge among the educated such that the numbers of those able to transfer the knowledge, as citizens and parents, shrinks. Or does it? Maybe it was always like that. I remember being confused once in high school social studies when the teacher joked that nobody cared about Plato's Republic and nobody read it. Confused because my Dad often referred to it. A quote from Deneen:
It’s difficult to gain admissions to the schools where I’ve taught – Princeton, Georgetown, and now Notre Dame. Students at these institutions have done what has been demanded of them: they are superb test-takers, they know exactly what is needed to get an A in every class (meaning that they rarely allow themselves to become passionate and invested in any one subject); they build superb resumes. They are respectful and cordial to their elders, though easy-going if crude with their peers. They respect diversity (without having the slightest clue what diversity is) and they are experts in the arts of non-judgmentalism (at least publically). They are the cream of their generation, the masters of the universe, a generation-in-waiting to run America and the world.
But ask them some basic questions about the civilization they will be inheriting, and be prepared for averted eyes and somewhat panicked looks. Who fought in the Peloponnesian War? Who taught Plato, and whom did Plato teach? How did Socrates die? Raise your hand if you have read both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Canterbury Tales? Paradise Lost? The Inferno?
I had the advantage of attending a college where the cultural foundations were required, and came first. The result was that every grad knew the Inferno - and the Bible too. There are a lot of basics that the highly-educated youth that I interview know nothing about.
A good interview with the evil Charles Murray. He discusses social capital, industriousness, civic culture, community, and the stifling of civic life by government.
Most leg strengthening exercises stress more than legs alone, but we call them "Legs" anyway because they mostly engage lower body. Many guys neglect lower body strength in favor of chests and arms.
Cardio doesn't do it at all - runners, for example, tend not to have much leg strength. Also, distance running isn't really a cardio stress anyway - pure endurance. I used to run for miles and hike hills all day, but my legs became neither strong or powerful. Especially for women, lower body bone strength can only be maintained with resistance exercise.
For strength, (not talking about cardio or endurance here) I try to keep it simple. For functional fitness and to postpone muscle deterioration, I think all an ordinary person needs to do are five sets (with increasing reps and/or weights over time) of most or many of these basics, weekly. Some are more Calisthenics, some plain Resistance - R or C:
Barbell squats - R Squat with overhead press - R Plain squats or jumping squats - C Deadlift - R Lunges with and/or without weights in hand - C+R Step ups +/- step up and press - C Kettlebell swings - C Box jumps - C Stair machine intervals - C + cardio
Calf lifts - C, Leg press - R, and leg extensions and curls - R, are optional approaches to building up strength for the big leg efforts, but not substitutes
When you think about it, most of these exercises stress not only lower body but core too and sometimes arms and shoulders. Furthermore, they all are cardio exercises to some degree: A barbell squat routine of 5 sets will leave you gasping for a few minutes, as will just one set 15 of kettlebell swings.
I would not advise doing Deads and Barbell Squats, or any leg "R" - on the same day or more than weekly. Recovery time is needed for the big muscles. "C" lower body exertions can be done as much as you want. I tend to do calis as circuits, and Rs as dedicated efforts.
About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.
But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.
No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.
We were chatting with a couple of other people about this and that when someone she knew from the Times joined in. I then overheard him explain to her that she had to be careful about what she posted on Facebook, Twitter, etc., because anything too explicitly anti-Trump could be used against her when that glorious day came and "they" -- the conventional fraternity of groupthink scribblers -- finally took down that horrible, despicable man.
"We've got dozens of people working on it all the time," he explained, adding that it was only a matter of time before they got the goods on Trump and destroyed him.
There in a nutshell, I thought, is the existential imperative that has been so gloriously productive of fake news and its exacerbated allotrope, first delineated by Donald Trump in his famous media-bashing presser on February 16, "very fake news."
It's time to thank a few websites from whom we often borrow links, sometimes without enough attribution mainly due to time constraints or laziness. We try to, though. Often our fellow- travellers jump on similar links at the same time, but that is just the vast right-wing Nazi fascist conspiracy/echo chamber at work on the nickel of the Koch brothers and Dunkin donuts.
We are rarely amiss with the "content-producers" but sometimes miss the mark with other linkers. I think Maggie's is more linker than content-producer, but whatever.
Anyway, for any times we have stolen links without the proper hat-tipping, thanks to Insty, Hot Air, American Digest, Never Yet Melted, Drudge of course, College Fix, Lucianne, and maybe a couple of others I forget right now. Anyway, sorry for that.
And while on the topic of Maggie's, it's time for our biennial request that our readers spread the word about our eclectic and rational, libertarian-tinged, sane, centrist site to all of your friends, enemies, relatives, neighbors, colleagues, etc. A growing national and international readership is our only reward for this hobby, and we do seem to have that.
Speaking of Obamacare, it seems increasingly clear that it has moved the Overton Window on health care policy. You are not allowed to substitute individual responsibility for Obamacare. Instead, you must come up with a “better” system. The ground rules for any new health care system now state that responsibility for your ability to obtain health insurance ultimately rests with the Federal government.
Obamacare did create a new entitlement expectation.
- you to have to wait 72 hrs after you go out and buy a woman to have your background investigation completed - women to be banned from entering school and college campuses? - women to be banned from any establishment selling alcohol? - women to be banned from polling places on election days - women to be banned from any official government group meetings? - all women to be banned from all airports? - you to have to pay a fee to the state before you can carry a woman on your person? - some women to be banned outright simply because they look too scary? - all women to be locked up at all times that they are not in use?
Hmmmm. And does she think that all guys should have more than one?
Toon via Lucianne 
10 Crazy Creations 
Too Much Emotional Intelligence
Most leg strengthening exercises stress more than legs alone, but we call them "Legs" anyway because they mostly engage lower body. Many guys neglect lower body strength in favor of chests and arms. 
Image via 
It's time to thank a few websites from whom we often borrow links, sometimes without enough attribution mainly due to time constraints or laziness. We try to, though. Often our fellow- travellers jump on similar links at the same time, but that is just the vast right-wing Nazi fascist conspiracy/echo chamber at work on the nickel of the Koch brothers and Dunkin donuts.
Stuck Inside of Stockholm 
I guess that means...