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.
"Anyone who doesn't know that Hollywood has been the epicenter of filth, perversion, sex, drugs, and other reprehensible behavior has been living in a cave in Afghanistan.
Scratch that. The Taliban gave that as one of their reasons for attacking us. So even cave dwellers in Afghanistan aren't immune to the disease Hollywood has spread."
Good news is hard to find at this year’s United Nations climate conference in Bonn, Germany. Diplomats from nearly 200 countries have gathered to review progress made on the “historic” Paris climate accords, signed two years ago. But as the champagne-fueled self-congratulation of Paris recedes into memory, the agreement’s underlying fraud is becoming obvious.
The dominant strategy of the outsiders is to focus on the negative, exposing and denouncing the failures, imperfections, and corruption of the insiders. On the left, this means heaping blame on the institutions of capitalism and free markets. On the right, this means heaping blame on the institutions of government. Neither side will propose, much less implement, an effective reform agenda.
1925, the state of Bavaria issued an order banning Adolf Hitler from making any public speeches. The Nazis responded by distributing a drawing of their leader with his mouth gagged and the caption, "Of 2,000 million people in the world, one alone is forbidden to speak in Germany."
Today is the 242nd birthday of the Marine Corps. There's good reasons we're the few and the proud, and feared by our nation's enemies and respected by our nation's friends. Those of weak spine and mind may resent those of us who are not, but they are not the ones first called to charge forward, known to win. Instead weaklings guard their own rears (sometimes).
Socialist W. E. B. Du Bois—Harvard’s first black Ph.D., a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and editor of its magazine, Crisis—wanted no part of American industrial capitalism. Redistribution, not production, was his focus. Let white America wallow in the world of grubby accumulation; “We black folks is got the spirit,” says a character in one of his novels. So while he valued education, like Washington, its goal was political power, not economic advancement, and he urged blacks not to let their education dilute their sense of a separate, special group culture.
That proved fatal advice, especially given Dattel’s interesting account of Du Bois’s cultural premonitions. However much he disdained bourgeois economics, Du Bois sensed the necessity of conventional morality for a people’s rise. He worried that, by his estimate, a quarter of black births in 1900 were out of wedlock, and only half of blacks observed “monogamic sex mores,” as opposed to whites’ 2 percent and 90 percent, respectively. He also worried that black preachers were too interested in making money to “adopt a new attitude toward rational amusement and sound moral habits.” He saw, in other words, that black cultural mores had a self-destructive streak, and that the one indigenous black institution that could preach a moral message was shirking its principal duty...
Next, we ban golf clubs. After that, how to deal with fists – boxing gloves? If killing is already illegal, does making the instrumentality thereof also illegal have any relevance
Eliminate all deductions in the individual income tax code except for a single personal deduction Eliminate the corporate income tax. Tax capital gains and dividends as regular income. Eliminate the death tax as well as the write-up of asset values at death
Mountain Climbers are plank position, so they are full body exertions: shoulders, arms, core, legs. And cardio of course.
To do them correctly, knees to elbow, and no humping your back or butt - flat back. No jumping either. A left and right leg counts as one Mountain Climber. Start slow, and do not try 200/day at first unless you are in tough shape. As with the pushups, divide your sets in time but push for the most you can do in one set. If too easy, push the speed.
And don't quit with your pushups. 100/day should be comfortable by now, so maybe go to every other day with them, or vary the type of pushup to reduce the number. I did.
Looking back, the improbable election of 2016 proved a Rubicon moment. Once Trump crossed over the Rubicon, carried by his base of “crazies,” “irredeemables,” and “deplorables,” the die had been cast, and those who were fearful where America had been headed had no choice but to follow him through the river.
Either Trump will restore economic growth, national security, the melting pot, legality, and individual liberty or he will fail and we will go the way of Europe.
For now, there is no one else in the opposition standing in the way of radical progressivism. At best, some not actively promoting progressivism are only begging it to slow down a bit; at worst, the “I told you so” others wish for now progressivism to prevail to demonstrate what happens when the hoi polloi do not listen to their supposed betters.
Storm King, Breakneck Ridge, Tuckerman's Ravine, Mohonk's Labyrinth are just a few of New England's famous mountain day hikes. In Europe, they call such things "hill-walking" because they are not technical climbing even if you have to be on hands and knees at some points.
Thanks to all US military veterans, living and dead 
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