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.
One of the first posts on this site, back when we had around 20 visits per day and had no idea what we were doing (not that we do now), was our visit to Christo's Gates on a frigid day in Central Park:
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, "Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."
Eighty One percent say the quality of their own, personal health care is Good or Excellent. No wonder there is no popular support for the Dems' plans to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Who wants their doc working for the government? I want them working for me.
Related: SF bookstores refuse to carry Palin's "gross" book. OK, I'll say it: They are weird in SF, but don't know it. It is the Alaskans who are normal.
Bad news for the O: Polls dropping like a rock. All Presidents fall below 50%, he notes. People are fickle, and invest too much in Presidents. It's because they do not trust themselves to be the President of their own lives.
In the primaries, Obama distinguished himself from Clinton on health care by opposing an individual mandate. In the general election, he distinguished himself from McCain by opposing taxes on health benefits. So now he is trying to pass bills with both an individual mandate and taxes on health benefits—and his supporters are saying that Congress should go along because he won the election.
Photo: That is my Christmas Mincemeat, ready now for the brandy and aging. The venison in it provided by my bow-hunting buddy.Too bad our smellovision isn't working today.Allspice, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, cider, vinegar, molasses, apples, raisins, currants, cranberry, meat.
More than 150 Christian leaders, most of them conservative evangelicals and
traditionalist Roman Catholics, issued a joint declaration reaffirming their
opposition to abortion and gay marriage and pledging to protect religious
freedoms.
The 4,700-word document, called "The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of
Christian Conscience," was unveiled one day before the Senate is expected to
consider it's sweeping health care bill that includes a measure permitting
abortion funding.
...the 1079 emails and 72 documents seem indeed evidence of a scandal involving most of the most prominent scientists pushing the man-made warming theory - a scandal that is one of the greatest in modern science.
Piltdown Man, move over. Sample:
From: Phil Jones To: ray bradley ,mann@XXXX, mhughes@XXXX Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000 Cc: k.briffa@XXX.osborn@XXXX
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998.
Thanks for the comments, Ray.
Cheers Phil
Prof. Phil Jones Climatic Research Unit Telephone XXXX School of Environmental Sciences Fax XXXX University of East Anglia Norwich
Is this what they call "research"?These science frauds need to be fired - and/or indicted.They are government employees.
I always celebrate my birthday on Thanksgiving.Selfishly, at least I’m guaranteed a turkey and good bottle of Beaujolais.When fortunate, I’m able to share it with family and friends, which is the ultimate of what Thanksgiving is: time to give thanks for others sharing theirs and our ability to share our bounty in America.
Aside from the 4th of July, there is no other holiday in America that is in every respect for all Americans.Indeed, I’ve been with recent immigrants from many countries who eagerly look forward to joining in our Thanksgiving rituals and meals, because it is for them an important rite of passage to becoming Americans and showing their feelings of gratitude for being here in our land of opportunities.
Thanksgiving, also, says much about the American character, that we early on officially enshrined a national holiday for giving thanks.
In 1789, George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving proclamation with these words: “Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be….”(Read the whole proclamation.)
As you make your plans for Thanksgiving, this early post is to remind you of why we celebrate and dedicate ourselves, in gratitude for all we’re given, achieve, and share, thanks to G-d and each other in America.
Part Whatever of The Hitchhiker's Guide is out, this one written by Eoin Colfer, author of Artemis Fowl. If you live in a cave and missed Douglas Adams' series, it's an amusing science fiction spoof.
The Moonbats want to get rid of "Fighting Sioux." The Indians want it kept. How does "The Fighting Sue" sound instead? Or "The Pacifist Sue"? Beat us, please.
The bill will nationalize the nation’s health care industry, increase costs, ration care, tax cosmetic surgery, cut Medicare, charge a monthly abortion fee, and take away your freedom.
Please take time tomorrow and Saturday to call your US Senator.
According to a recent paper by Drs. June and Dave O'Neill of Baruch College, the City University of New York, two national studies--the National Health Interview Survey and the Current Population Survey--put the number of folks who don't have health insurance because they can't afford it at 21.6 million. That's almost exactly the number that Dr. Reid's big spending plan would leave uninsured.
After spending $848 billion, of course.
Maybe it won't insure anybody, but it will achieve control of us. That's the point.
Next on the Dem agenda: Legalizing illegals. Pete DuPont says Congress is hard of hearing, but they are not. They have a small window of opportunity to ram through their wish list before they are voted out next November. These are not issues that there is a national consensus about. Bad politics, bad news, bad everything.
Seven trees? Isn't the hockey stick graph dead already?
How times have changed. The CA students once protested for free speech. Now they protest about Gimme gimme. What pathetic, whining, entitled children this country has raised. Yes, I worked my way through UMass, and I am the better man for it. The young benefit from challenges. I did.
They don't build 'em like this anymore. My lousy photo does not do justice to this house, which I assume to have been the parsonage of the First Congregational Church of East Haddam, right across the street.
In the old days, the minister was given a house to use and land to farm as part of his compensation. In the real old days, he was paid via town taxes too: The Congregational Church was the established church of CT. Not that that meant all that much: Congo churches did, and still, vote on everything - including their doctrine and their choice of pastor - within their own congregation. Zero hierarchy, for better or worse. Every person was/is considered to have his own hotline to God.
The wife typically ran the farming business: it paid the bills and kept her out of the pool halls.
Update: I think our reader is right - the addition is the part on the left. The congregation must have felt prosperous at the time.
...the history of humanity is a history of social networking all the same, according to Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, authors of Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. “Our connections affect every aspect of our daily lives,” they write.
Some Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were taken aback Wednesday by Attorney General Eric Holder's refusal to reveal conflicts of interest involving Justice Department lawyers who, before joining the Obama administration, worked on behalf of Guatanamo detainees.
It goes against against my instinct, judgement, taste, and sense of proportion to do a Christmas post before Thanksgiving, but I couldn't resist this bizarro Dylan offering. (All money from Dylan's Christmas record goes to charity.)
Remain strange and unpredictable, Bob. We like you that way. This is a good Minnesota Polka:
Sarah seems to be a subject of great fascination. She was charming, smart, and funny on Hannity last night. Yes, her political points were shallow - but more substantial than "hopey-changey," and she has had more experience than he had - both in life and in government.
Here's her book tour schedule. Alas, nothing in New England. She should go to Boston.
The AP supposedly hired 11 fact-checkers to discredit Ms. Palin’s memoir (Did Fox News hire 11 to question the very questionable things found in the two Obama memoirs?)
(I wondered, as did Jammy, whether the AP will assign as many to studying the details of he health care bill: "Considering the AP assigned 11 "fact-checkers" to pore over Sarah Palin's 415-page book, I figure they'll assign a proportional amount to this, right? That would be 55 of them, assuming they're interested.")
If you believe, as I do, that the GOP once again needs to become the “party of ideas” — as it did under Ronald Reagan — then Palin is not the solution to what ails it. At this stage, based on the interviews I have seen with her, she doesn’t seem able to articulate the case for conservatism in a manner that is compelling or even particularly persuasive. She is nothing like, to take three individuals I would hold up as public models, Margaret Thatcher, William Bennett, and Antonin Scalia — people brimming with ideas, knowledgeable and formidable, intellectually well-grounded, and impossible to dismiss.
True, but those folks are not American politicians -
Finally, a word from our commenter MM on our Palin-mania post yesterday:
Sarah is doing a lot of things right. Holding true to her principles in spite of the ugly backbiting of the liberal media, remaining a faithful wife to Todd and a good mother to their children -- these are admirable things. Since I come from 'flyover country' myself, I have learned to discount what the limousine liberals have to say about most things and people. They view the world through a skewed lens of anger and resentment. But I still haven't figured out why they reveal their worst and ugliest selves whenever Sarah Palin is mentioned or comes on the scene. As a New England based commenter said on Neptunus lex the other evening, by all rights, by all they say they believe in, feminists ought to love her. She got her college degree, she married her high school sweetheart, she has five children, and she has been a successful governor of the largest state in the Union, and got a more than 60% approval rating from her constituents..
What's not to like? Of course, she has had more real world experience in managing effectively a large complex enterprise, meeting payrolls, and solving problems by concentrated effort. But what's so bad about that? Ohh, right. I forgot. Our present President hasn't done any of that. No governing ... no meeting payrolls ... no solving difficult diplomatic problems.
I guess you just have to hate a woman [or a man] who can do all of the above, successfully.
Or maybe it's just because she's beautiful. And her husband adores her. And encourages her in her achievements. Yeah ... that's probably it.
‘I love the tea party movement,’ she said. ‘It’s beautiful, it’s healthy. It’s part of that good healthy competition that’s needed in a political party.’ She contrasted the somewhat tumultuous state of the GOP to what’s going on in the Democratic party today. ‘It seems like the Democratic party is filled with more sheep-like individuals, who go along and get along,’ she said.”
The health-care mess grows worse: The Chinese have caught on that Obama wants to borrow more billions for us, who are cash
poor, to create entitlements that they, who are cash rich, would not
create for their own people. The new government suggestion that women
not begin receiving routine mammograms until age 50 comes at a bad
time, given that critics of Obamacare have been arguing that it will
lead to rationing of service.
Americans who are troubled by the decision to send alleged Sept. 11
mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York for trial will feel
better about it when he's put to death, President Barack Obama said
Tuesday.
I said good-bye to a fellow I have worked with on and off for over 15 years yesterday.
His wife died last winter, and he has finally decided to move to Florida to live with one of his daughter's families. Lonely. He is in his 80s. Most of his old pals in town that he worked with, grew up with, and worshipped with are dead. A sad farewell for both of us. He gave me a big bear hug. He was never a regular psychotherapy patient, but an irregularly-regular patient when things got tough.
Strong guys are not afraid of getting help when they need it.
I nursed him through panic attacks (cured them easily with medicine), a major depression after his heart attack, a major depression after the death of his wife, the suicide of one of his daughters. In the process, I learned a lot about his life. A lot about life. It is my privilege to learn a lot about life through people's lives. Their stories enrich mine.
Today, he reminisced about his troop ship trip home from England after having been a tail-gunner - a teenager - for a couple of years in WW2 in Italy and France, and finally in Germany. He was based in Dijon for a while. "We got the news about FDR's death on the ship. Some liked him, some hated him, but he was our boss. Ship was half-filled with guys like me headed for furlough, and half-full of POWs. Why, at that point in the war, they were bringing German POWs to the US I have no idea, but the military never makes sense. That's a given when you're in the service. For my furlough, they took me from New York to Massachusetts to Miami to New Jersey before I could get home to Massachusetts. After my month furlough in the local pub, I had to spend three months down in New Jersey to get enough points to qualify for discharge."
"Doing what?" I asked. "Basically, nothing," he said. "They just had to make us wait out our time. The action then was mopping up in the Pacific." He said "It feels so long ago now that it's like another life."
He is a retired mailman who remembers horse-drawn fire trucks, played trumpet in the Volunteer Fire Department marching band for 50 years, and still sings in his RC choir and delivers food to the elderly. "I'm older than most of the people I deliver to." He was the guy who told me that flak on an airplane sounds like "a bucket of gravel being dumped on the fuselage. You get used to it after a while. We all assumed we would die, and got used to that too."
An American fellow to the bone, and one of the finest, humblest, most giving and unselfish people I have ever known. He dedicated his life, and especially his retirement, to being a good companion and to doing unto others in whatever ways he could.
She's a pheenom. She's a non-elite, non-Hollywood celeb. She is beautiful, fertile, and athletic. Her hard-working, macho hubbie supports whatever she wants to do. The MSM hates her.
She's a yokel with common sense. Like Truman, Lincoln, and Andrew Jackson.
Even if you do not want her to be President, it is difficult not to like her.
Eighty One percent 
The social psychology 
Sarah seems to be a subject of great fascination. She was charming, smart, and funny on Hannity last night. Yes, her political points were shallow - but more substantial than "hopey-changey," and she has had more experience than he had - both in life and in government.
Hard words from VDH: 
She's a pheenom. She's a non-elite, non-Hollywood celeb. She is beautiful, fertile, and athletic. Her hard-working, macho hubbie supports whatever she wants to do. The MSM hates her.