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.
There isn't much to say about this, except what we all know. The press got it wrong by a long shot, is now incapable of winding it back, and the Progressives have latched on to a David Hogg-type character they can hate for a single reason. He smirked (no, really, that's their reason, it has nothing to do with a MAGA hat. I've already been told it has nothing to do with that hat. Nothing.).
Let's see where the basis of hating the smirk comes from.
"The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called."~George Orwell, 1984
I'll admit smirking can be criminal. I'm not sure a teen's confused smile is a 'smirk'. But if it is, it certainly can be criminal, as we've seen:
In the post-national world, that old definition of citizen no longer works. In a world where foreign people can just move in, claim the benefits and protections from the government, citizenship loses all value. At the same time, the state is increasingly alien to the people over whom it rules. In the European Union, the people are no longer ruled by their national governments, as all of the big decision are made in Brussels. In America, political offices are increasingly being filled by exotic weirdos with no connection to the natives.
The question then is what does it mean to be a citizen in a democratic empire?
...the roar of racist rage from the great and good directed at an innocent Kentucky boy is all about implementing the Democrats’ grand strategy, which is to assemble a coalition of the margins of American society: immigrants, welfare mothers, tech billionaires, transgenders, hedge-fund guys, black church ladies, gays, Jews, the unmarried, movie stars, felons, and so forth and so on.
In contrast, the more similar you are to a Minuteman of 1776, the more likely you are to vote Republican. The GOP appeals to Core Americans, the Democrats to Fringe Americans.
Mass immigration offers the Democrats good reason to hope to overwhelm their foes in the long run...
Whoopi Goldberg on the media smearing the Covington Catholic boys: "So many people admitted they made snap judgments before all these other facts came in. ... Why is that? Why do we keep making the same mistake?"
Joy Behar: "Because we’re desperate to get Trump out of office."
Seeming to equate maleness with sociopathic behavior is appalling to all normal people. I hated that disparagement of "boys will be boys" because, well, they will be. Sociopathic behavior is an entirely different topic.
Photo: My chilly Mockingbird, getting out of the wind. Doubt he'll survive the winter up here. About 30% of birds die each winter, whether by migration or by staying put.
The real and ongoing source of Democrats' outrage is that President Trump has continually and, it must be said, gleefully, skewered the establishment. He has challenged the conventional wisdom on nearly everything, revealing the shallowness of the group-think that has so long dominated our political discourse.
If the NYT understood infant mortality stats, they wouldn't make this claim. Most countries don't bother trying to save early premies or defective babies, so our stats look worse. It's like saying Memorial Cancer Hospital's stats make it look like the worst hospital in the US
At Great Books' podcast, an enjoyable discussion of Dante's Inferno. "Dante was a man of tremendous and wide desires, desires for personal, literary, political excellence. And then he lost everything." Of course, Verona is not a bad place to which to be exiled. That's where he wrote The Divine Comedy. In the end, they did make his tomb back in Santa Croce.
We've seen those giant hillside marble quarries in northern Italy, around the lakes region, gleaming in the sun. Marble is metamorphosed Limestone. Limestone is mostly made of little ocean critters' remains. Travertine is a sort-of unconsolidated marble. Travertine is good stuff too.
Our genial and elegant host at a cool tenuda on the hill overlooking Lago Maggiore shipped an approximately 12'X6'X5' block of marble across the lake, up by truck and cranes to his hillside, and had stonecutters turn it into a giant sarcophagus-like hot tub in his olive grove, surrounded by lime and lemon trees, with the heated water from a stream which flowed through it. Just begged to be a sexual invitation, there in the dark with the scent of the lemon blossoms. Is there anybody who disdains outdoor sex? I've always thought it was the best thing. Natural, primitive.
Christ knew his vino. Wine was their coke. In that time, however, wine was typically diluted with some water and sometimes with herbs added. Like a spritzer, maybe, but probably without the fizz. No seltzer water yet, I suspect.
John 2:1-11
2:1 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.
2:2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.
2:3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine."
2:4 And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come."
2:5 His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."
2:6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.
2:7 Jesus said to them, "Fill the jars with water." And they filled them up to the brim.
2:8 He said to them, "Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward." So they took it.
2:9 When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom
2:10 and said to him, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now."
2:11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
A chef friend brought me this canned treat from a trip to Paris. She swears it is delicious, and she is always right. It's a goose confit cassoulet. Cassoulet is peasant food, and confit is for things that would be difficult to eat without the confit treatment.
If you've made a cassoulet yourself you know how much work it is, mainly making the confit. I've done it only twice, making confit of things my friend and I shot: Snow Goose breast, wild boar sausage, wild duck leg, pheasant leg. It is remarkable how the confit process can dissolve all of the tendons in a duck or pheasant leg.
Anyway, if you want to try the canned I discovered that you can get them via Amazon, shipped from France. What can't you get on Amazon?
Here's a homemade cassoulet, correctly finished with breadcrumbs on top. You serve it with baguette. Yes, it's a white bean casserole with sausages and confit meats.
Sorry, Sweethearts: America’s most popular Valentine’s Day candy won’t be on shelves this year - 
What the Press Missed About Vanguard Founder's Fortune: 
Photo: My chilly Mockingbird, getting out of the wind. Doubt he'll survive the winter up here. About 30% of birds die each winter, whether by migration or by staying put.
