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.
“Ladies and gentlemen, they gave me a list here. The first person I was instructed to call on was Kelly O’Donnell of NBC.” Biden’s minders in the daycare operation at the White House have failed to impress on him that he is to omit their instructions from his remarks.
If you watch a few of this guy's Youtubes about his boat (as posted yesterday), you quickly see why fiberglass took over recreational boating. It's normal to term such vessels "project boats," and that's for sure.
However charming and quaint, wooden boats were never build to last forever. His lovely wooden 1930s cruiser, like many restored (aka rebuilt) wooden boats, is a sight for sore eyes. On the other hand, his boat is his home and his entire lifestyle.
I believe he is a professional carpenter, a semi-professional electrician, and repairs his cars and knows engines.
All the same, people who do those sorts of deeply impractical things make life more charming for the rest of us.
Not that guy's boat, but a 1939 wooden Chris Craft (for sale):
Iran has doubled forces on Israeli border since 2018, report claims: Istanbul-based Jusoor research institute, which has close ties to Syrian opposition forces, says the number of bases used by pro-Iranian militias and Iranian satellite Hezbollah has increased from 40 to 88 since 2018.
Beato looks under the hood of a Beatles tune. Yes, he also finds George Martin (the "fifth Beatle) under the hood. However, Martin saw something great to work with.
6:10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power.
6:11 Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
6:12 For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
6:13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.
6:14 Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness.
6:15 As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.
6:16 With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.
6:17 Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
6:18 Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.
6:19 Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel,
6:20 for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.
From one of our Colorado friends: Rubber Rabbitbrush and Baldwin's Ironweed. I may use this image as a Christmas card! And snow fell near the Eisenhower tunnel last night.
Given its decadent state, is meritocracy, like the ancien regime in the eighteenth century, heading for the guillotine? It sometimes seems that way. The education establishment is losing confidence in its meritocratic mission. “We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents,” declares the current draft of the California Math Framework. Gifted programs and selective-exam schools are being hunted down like big game. Higher education wobbles between its established purpose of finding and growing young talent and the conflicting goal of advancing social-justice egalitarianism. Wooldridge holds out hope that a “wiser,” “remoralized” meritocracy, cleansed of nepotism and elite hoarding, is still possible. He points to the success of Asian countries like China and Singapore newly committed to their own forms of merit-based hierarchies.
My students, for instance, are surprised to learn that of the 154 love sonnets that Shakespeare wrote, the first 126 of them are to a young man. (The final 28, give or take, are love sonnets to the “dark lady,” who is characterized as both sexually experienced and sexually active, with desires and a will of her own. A woman adored and respected, deserving of admiration and love. So much for repressive patriarchy.) The question students invariably ask, then, is: “So… Shakespeare was bi?” To which I reply, “I think Shakespeare would have simply characterized himself as a man, a husband, and a father, though he clearly had an attraction to the beautiful young man of the sonnets, to say nothing of his many characters who demonstrate sexual flexibility in identity and desire.” “But then he’s bi!” they insist. To which I reply, “I think Shakespeare would have found our need for precise labels strange. Why do we have the need to define and to categorize human desire? Why this compulsion to attach precise labels to attraction, lust, and pleasure? If what Oscar Wilde says is true, ‘To define is to limit,’ then is it really Shakespeare and his contemporaries who are more repressed than us moderns because they didn’t self-identify as a category? Or is it us who try to contain our sexuality by itemizing every possible iteration of lust and attraction? Are we ready to assume that because we attach a label to human sexuality, we somehow understand better than Shakespeare did? Are we in a cultural position to say that Shakespeare’s insight into human nature is limited compared to the average 19-year-old student’s today?”
Here was the paradox: he knew from Vietnam that what the United States was doing in Afghanistan wouldn’t work—but he thought he could do it anyway. And there was something else. If he applied the real lesson of Vietnam—don’t—he would be out of a job. And then who would he be?
Over time, he learned to save Vietnam for his staff. One day, as he sat through another White House meeting on Afghanistan, listening to another optimistic military briefing, a quote surfaced from the deep past, and he scribbled it down on a scrap of paper and took it back to the office to show his young aides, who of course had no idea where it came from: “How can we lose when we’re so sincere?”
Taliban Win Liberal Hearts and Minds 
