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.
Reason has little to do with the firearms issue. I'm sorry, cutie, but The Second Amendment isn't about hunting and shooting sports. It's about freedom.
Can we please make murder illegal? It might help, or do the guns kill people? Can't we just Do Something?!?!?
She is so wrong. Under British law, commoners were not allowed to own swords for centuries. Commoners want weapons too for whatever reason. Now the elites want their armed bodyguards but they don't want me to have my .22?
Harsanyi: Come And Take Them, Bret Stephens - As an American-Jew whose ancestors came here escaping both Nazism and communism, I totally 'get' the Second Amendment 'fetishists.'
Of course, the grandstanding hacks and moral midgets in DC are going for the guns; most shockingly (or not, really, when you think about it) some in the GOP are going wobbly as well. What-the-actual-F**K; I mean, here we are, with majorities in both houses and holding the Oval Office, a political third rail to end all third rails, science, statistics, reason, history, the friggin' US Constitution and 200 million legal, responsible gun owners to back us up and McYertle meat-puppet John Cornyn is stuttering and muttering about a possible bump-stock ban. For the love of all that is righteous and good, will no one who is putatively on our side in the Senate or Congress rise and shut these tyrants up once and for all? You've sold us out on healthcare, the budget, prosecuting the IRS and other bureaucratic tyrants and laughing at us while you do it. But on the Second Amendment, is it too much to ask to reject the propaganda and fight?! I guess it is.
"The immigration seen in recent years is changing our country not in a positive but in a negative way... Uncontrolled immigration destroys the order in a country." — Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz.
According to a leaked German government report, up to 6.6 million migrants -- both refugees and migrants seeking a better life -- are currently waiting to cross to Europe from Africa.
At least 50% of American medical students are women. That has been a dramatic cultural change in the profession, at least in the US. When I was in medical school we were around 20%.
At the obvious risk of being assaulted for stereotyping and demeaning females in my profession, I will share some of my observations (with countless exceptions, of course):
- Women in medicine are very smart and detail-oriented. Excellent students without much rebellion or cantankerousness. However, they are often too much "by the book" and rule-oriented to adjust to specific situations. I have fought this in myself. The men tend to be willing to take more risks, less rule-bound, more blunt, and willing or eager to work ungodly hours. Definitely more defiant and skeptical of authority.
- Women in medicine tend to view it more as a career than as an identity. Men in medicine have traditionally seen it as their raison d'etre, members of an ancient priestly caste. Men in medicine feel heroic and manly about responding to that 3 AM phone call, women generally not so much.
- As a career rather than as a 24 hr/day identity, women in medicine tend to be more comfortable with a regular paycheck, defined hours of responsibility or even part-time hours of duty, and good job benefits. That often means working for somebody else.
For better or worse, the coming dominance of American medicine by women will be changing the culture of the profession. Other influences, like the emergence of large group practices, and of hospital-owned practices, are changing the character of American medicine too.
I'm not saying we shouldn't help Puerto Rico. We must and should. The situation is dreadful. But this is a learning opportunity for the islanders. They should take it. Blaming Donald Trump is the most reactionary and self-destructive thing they can do. It's victimhood redux. Leave that to the rapacious ideologues at CNN, the New York Times, etc. They'd blame the eruption of the Indonesian volcanoes on Trump, if that were possible -- and even it it weren't.
Despite what global warming fanatics might say, hurricanes are nothing new in Puerto Rico.
.. the (other) major story is the hideous behavior of the hack mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz. First she praises FEMA for their response then, I guess after receiving her talking points from the Media Complex, blasts away at President Trump for letting people die in the streets; kind of an ironic statement from Cruz considering when she gave it, she was standing in front of a warehouse full of foodstuffs and supplies just brought in from the mainland. In fact, she was so utterly full of shit that even the grand wizard of being full of shit, Geraldo Rivera, called her on it. But unlike Dubya, who just silently sat by and allowed assholes like Spike Lee and Kanye West to accuse him of committing genocide against Chocolate City, the President and his team are having none of it. And the collective head of the Left is exploding because neither is a large majority of Americans having any of it either.
Hayward: "The only surprising thing about the total catastrophe in Puerto Rico is that it took so long for the “Trump-Is-A-Bigot-Who-Hates-Brown-People” refrain to get cranked up to eleven..."
The idea that Trump hates brown people is totally nuts. It's meant to scare brown people. Does it work?
Puerto Rico is basically a poor third-world country with a fragile infrastructure, dysfunctional and corrupt governments, and a long experience with bad weather. We had to send in the Marines to clear their roads. Why? Are there no chain saws in Puerto Rico?
The CEO linked above says:
I have a message for the U.S. Congress: Watch out what relief funds you approve and let our local government handle. Don’t let the Puerto Rican government play the victim and fool you. They have no clue what they are doing, and I worry that they will mishandle anything that comes their way.
“It’s a lack of drivers for the transport trucks, the 18 wheelers. Supplies we have. Trucks we have. There are ships full of supplies, backed up in the ports, waiting to have a vehicle to unload into. However, only 20% of the truck drivers show up to work. These are private citizens in Puerto Rico, paid by companies that are contracted by the government,” says Col. Valle.
“The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump,” the president wrote on Twitter. “Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help.”
Mr. Trump said the people of Puerto Rico should not depend entirely on the federal government. “They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort,” he wrote. “10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job. The military and first responders, despite no electric, roads, phones etc., have done an amazing job. Puerto Rico was totally destroyed.
Trump is probably correct to imagine that some are attempting to stage another Katrina scenario:
The Science 
A book: 
New York’s 9/11 tribute mesmerizes birds — a
Sad about Tom Petty. classic rocker, classic rock. 66. Carpe diem.
Roger Simon, 
Photo: Granny Smiths from a reader's garden this week