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.
I contracted Covid back in March. 2 weeks of coughing and headaches, no fever, and a general haziness for about 2 months afterward. I'm fine now, no long-term issues to speak of. I am heading in for some medical checkups since my insurance is ending soon. If you're over 50 and understand the prep process, you know what I'm talking about. At any rate, the doctors had me take a Covid test last week as a precautionary measure. It's a smart move, and of course I came up negative.
Thing is, I was visiting friends last night, and a few other people stopped in. We wound up spending a few hours together. This morning, one sent us a text telling us he'd awakened with a fever. Later he texted that he'd been tested and came up positive.
Most of the people there last night already had Covid, so we're fairly confident we should be in good shape. We'd all been tested and had the antibodies. There are no guarantees, but I'm fairly confident most of us will be fine. There wasn't a ton of interaction, touching and no coughing. But we were indoors, and Mrs. Bulldog has not had Covid yet. So she will go get tested in a few days. Meanwhile, we will quarantine for a few days...
Except I have that procedure on Tuesday morning. So I shot them a note to let them know, and will follow whatever measures they ask me to engage.
This is how things should be handled. Rather than locking down, we can take steps to manage ourselves properly. Lockdowns haven't stopped the spread, they've merely created a false impression that viral outbreaks can be 'stopped' or 'prevented' with policy. Except the policies haven't stopped anything, and often have only led to worse overall situations.
2:22 When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord
2:23 (as it is written in the law of the Lord, "Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord"),
2:24 and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, "a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons."
2:25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him.
2:26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Messiah.
2:27 Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law,
2:28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,
2:29 "Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word;
2:30 for my eyes have seen your salvation,
2:31 which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
2:32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel."
2:33 And the child's father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him.
2:34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed
2:35 so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed--and a sword will pierce your own soul too."
2:36 There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage,
2:37 then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day.
2:38 At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
2:39 When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.
2:40 The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.
Got vaccinated at 7 this morning at my local hosp. The deal is that, once they open a frozen pack, they have to use them up within 12 hours so they will take all comers if their sched is not filled. No reason to throw away unused vaccines.
Supposedly your doc or employer has to ok it, but it seems they just want to get all of the vaccines put out into the community and let none go to waste.
I did it not because I am a fearful type, but for the comfort of people I encounter. You get a CDC certificate and a sticker to wear if you want to. In 30 days, you can get the booster shot but you are immuzined until then. That's a precaution.
There appears to be no shortage around here. Around here, CVS (good for them) is all set up for delivering to all of the nursing homes and old folk's homes today. Front-line people have already had the chance over the past week, but I saw a few late nurses in our line-up. They were coming cuz of their 5 days off. RNs have strange schedules.
Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? My son says no. I say yes. My brother says yes, the director John McTiernan says yes, and a host of others say no.
Others play Solomon and split the baby. It's not a movie with a Christmas theme, but does include the element of Christmas. So, "no, but..."
Another way of looking at this is to ask if there was a message regarding "the system" in Die Hard. It was based on a book which was clearly anti-capitalist in nature, and McTiernan states it was supposed to be anti-capitalist. Frankly, I think he lost on that score. The proletarian nods don't really add up well. Capitalism had been so successful in providing more for all that by the time the movie was made some of the items he felt delineated 'wealth and privilege' from 'working class' were no longer meaningful. They are even less so today (assuming our economy had not been locked down, which has only exacerbated some of the divisions of wealth which were barely noticeable before).
That said, the most noticiable delineations of class today are not wealth-related, but power related as our "leaders" lock us down and lecture us on how to behave, only to go do the exact opposite things which they suggest we do. The real 'class warfare' today is power vs. the lack of it, not whether one has more money than someone else. Of course, that was always the nature of 'class warfare', but Leftists love to obscure that fact with a veneer of basic economic BS that only people with common sense can see through. McTiernan, therefore, fails miserably in his goal of making a legitimate anti-capitalist story. Mainly because there is no legitimate anti-capitalist story to be made. Unless you are a "trained Marxist" and know how to create one out of whole cloth. (For what it's worth, the term "trained Marxist" always made me laugh. I studied Economics at The New School, which tried very hard to push the Marxist agenda, and I read quite a bit of Marx, Hobsbawm, Gordon and a host of other Marxist garbage. So I'm a "trained Marxist" and one of the things every single Marxist professor said was "Marx left no blueprint, only an idea with no path forward and no clear goal except revolution." That's why Marxism and Leftist thought is such utter BS. Unlike Classical, Neo-Classical, Monetarist or even Austrian schools of thought, Marxism is just an idea and not a fully-formed one, but full of childish and misleading binary concepts. Though I will credit Marx with completely shifting the study of History in a very meaningful and useful fashion.)
At any rate, to me Die Hard is very much a Christmas movie and very much a pro-capitalist one. After all, Hans Gruber himself, like so many Marxists before him, only cared about the power he was managing (his gang) and the money he was trying to collect, and was utilizing a facade to perpetrate his crime...you know, like BLM and Antifa today. These movements are cargo cults, full of images that seem to 'make sense' but cannot ever effectively achieve the goals they have set for themselves because they are inclined only toward one thing. Perpetual Revolution.
We had a memorable Christmas Eve service from the porch of our church last night in the wind and rain with about 200 of us singing carols, doing the readings, with those fake battery candles.
That was Tiny Tim on Christmas Day. We got into a chat today at brunch with a Brit friend about Christmas Pudding.
Whether you like it or not (it's like Fruitcake), it is a necessary Brit tradition.
How to make it is below (recipe and video). Ideally served with flaming brandy, then something creamy on top. Funny thing about Christmas Pudding is that you can make it months in advance.
Even a year or two in advance. Just put it on a shelf. Even mice won't bother it.
Merry Christmas to all! As a contributor thank you all for the kind wishes of a Merry Christmas (it was - I got 2 bottles of whiskey, a book on bourbon, some honey roasted macadamia nuts, a gift card for a massage and a flying lesson) that you left on on BD's card.
But the real gifts are those I've seen here - the caring and love which I believe are natural gifts of our audience. Despite claims by some in our nation that our 'system encourages' greed, hatred, selfishness and a host of other issues, I mainly see kindness, love and charity from all of you. It may not disprove the claims of those who want to undermine our system and way of life - but I know all of us will continue to speak out for truth and fight for what is right and what is ours.
I'd like to personally thank Bird Dog for inviting me to start writing years ago. My first "post" was on Sept 22, 2011 - actually it was an essay that Bird Dog posted on one of my favorite topics, Economics. So this will be my 10th year writing for Maggie's. I'd also like to thank Dr. Mercury, who has come and gone a few times over the years, and I hope he is well - out there somewhere. He encouraged me to write after I'd posted some comments to a few of his posts, gave me writing advice, and made the intro to Bird Dog, for which I am eternally grateful.
Without Maggie's, I wonder if Mrs. Bulldog and I would be doing as much hiking as we are now. That all stemmed from our Urban Hikes - sadly missed in 2020 - which I have come to look forward to every year. I love meeting our readers and sharing time with them, getting to know them. Hope we meet more this year (hopefully we can begin hike planning soon).
What I like most is that our readers are inquisitive, interesting, and independent. We don't always agree on everything, and that's OK. Who wants to be the same as everyone else?
I'll share an email I sent to a large number of former co-workers who I respect and will miss going into the new year. I think it's a nice mix of realism and optimism. Hopefully you will share these thoughts, too. Mrs. Bulldog and I wish you only glad tidings:
Whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Christmas, Boxing Day, Festivus or nothing at all, it is the holiday season and I hope you have an enjoyable time with your friends or, more likely given the times, your family...more to the point, your nuclear family. It's been a strange and wild year in many respects but the prospects for the new year are always good. We entered 2020 with bright eyes and bushy tails and soon found the tails singed and eyes blinded a bit, but we've worked our way through it all and it's time to latch on to new cliches for 2021.
No lights at the end of a tunnel, no dawning of a new day. Just optimism that we can leave 2020 behind and take the best parts of it forward with us.
Clement Moore was a real New Yorker. His lifetime of scholarship is long forgotten, but his doggerel is a gem. His family farm was named "Chelsea", and it is still Chelsea. Moore's family church still stands, St. Peter's. Been there, amazing old woodwork inside.
Moore is buried uptown. We almost got to that cemetary on our last urban hike.
The German Christmas tree — a rootless and lifeless corpse — was never worthy of the day, and no one can say how far the spirit of rationalism which begins with the denial of Santa Claus, the supernatural filler of stockings, and ends with the denial of all things supernatural, has been fostered by the German Christmas trees, which have been adopted so widely in this country. … The Christmas tree, dropping melted wax upon the carpet, filling all nervous people with a dread of fire; banishing the juvenile delight of opening the well-filled stocking in the dim morning light, and diffusing the poison of rationalism thinly disguised as the perfume of hemlock, should have no place in our beloved land.
One bottle vino Veronese, 1/2 cup sugar, some clove, cinnamon, nutmeg. Anise star, lemons, apples, skin, orange juice. Harvey’s Bristol Cream. Medium heat - don’t boil, for 20 mins. Slice of orange peel in glass for zest.
Not sure what Harvey's has to do with Venice, but whatever.
Friends of mine have barraged me with commentary on the "disaster" that Florida is, particularly with regard to Covid. Anecdotally, I was told urban (and this seems to confirm) ICUs typically range from 55-80% full at any given time, depending on seasonality. The current occupancy rates, in some places, are in the 90s, so while that is very high, it's worth noting ICUs are usually very full. The real concern is the ability to expand, as needed. I believe, based on the response in April, this is something our system can handle fairly effectively. I'm not being too relaxed or naive. I'm not diminishing or putting down the efforts of our medical personnel. I am applauding them for their efforts, their hours, their professionalism, and creativity as they have found many solutions and treatments along the way to help mitigate and ease many of these issues. That is the beauty of not only our medical system, but our overall economic system. Flexibility and ingenuity.
Our friend the Manhattan Contrarian has presented his excellent piece on why Florida has made New York look silly and misguided in the midst of all this.
I doubt the media will present the story as MC has. I applaud our friend MC for presenting the facts. After all, he lives near the center of the echo chamber.
I'll toss in one more point of comparison - New Jersey, which like NY has similar governance, though a much smaller population (8.9mm) than Florida (21.5mm) and New York (19.5mm). Covid cases have reached 440k in NJ, about in line with where Florida is as a percentage, but it has almost 19k deaths - similar to Florida (older and with a larger population). Comparatively speaking, New York City alone has roughly the same population as New Jersey, but has had roughly the same number of cases as New Jersday (390k) and more deaths (24k).
"Follow the science" is a real thing, but not the way Progressives present it. For them, it's really "Follow the politics, which pretends to be science."
It's getting worse. California, intent on driving its residents into utter poverty, has sped up its attack on the wealthy. There was a time when people headed there to make their fortune, and many did. California was, for many years, the image of 'the future'. Even with the recent tech boom and Silicon Valley, there was a resurgence of its forward-thinking vision.
Over the years, California has proved itself incapable of managing such basic things as water or even electricity. The misguided desires to centrally plan everything, and overtax people to do it, will kill the state. This is a given.
California has succumbed to politicians' worst instincts and is not only taxing people to death, but chasing business away, and enforcing social ideas that are (to put it mildly) out of touch with humanity and reality. It should not be surprising that so many people are leaving for places like Texas, Montana or several other states which are outside the deep blue Progressive belt of shame.
Cali, which I used to visit regularly for business, is nice. I'd consider living there...at one point in time. Not so much now.
Not that either educational level or income are good measures of a good life, but they are commonly used. It's difficult to measure the amount of satisfaction or love in life.
John Henry Faulk (from 2000): 
That was Tiny Tim on Christmas Day. We got into a chat today at brunch with a Brit friend about Christmas Pudding. 
Merry Christmas to all! As a contributor thank you all for the kind wishes of a Merry Christmas (it was - I got 2 bottles of whiskey, a book on bourbon, some honey roasted macadamia nuts, a gift card for a massage and a flying lesson) that you left on on
Story of famous photo 
One bottle vino Veronese, 1/2 cup sugar, some clove, cinnamon, nutmeg. Anise star, lemons, apples, skin, orange juice. Harvey’s Bristol Cream. Medium heat - don’t boil, for 20 mins. Slice of orange peel in glass for zest.
Was Jesus really born in Bethlehem?