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.
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.
Sheesh. Those people do not want housing. They reject housing, They are bums, addicts, mentally-ill, and vagrants. It's their preferred life style. Stats say 10% or fewer are normal people down on their luck
As I mentioned in an earlier post today, Chris Christie spoke at my conference. He was part of a panel talking about news, and of course everyone wanted to know about 'Russia'.
Christie was my governor for 8 years. I never felt he was a good governor, but he was better than his predecessor, Jon Corzine, by a long shot. He did a few good things in his first few years, then got a little full of himself. I never believed he would work on the national stage, and he didn't.
However, he fills in on sports talk on WFAN and I listen to him there. He's a good commentator. Lots to say, good insight. He's never afraid to talk. As he spoke to us, he was on a panel with 3 others, and he spoke for 90% of the session. All of it was good.
The one takeaway I really liked was his view on Trump. Most of you know I am not a Trump fan, but I'm in absolutely no way a hater of Trump. I just don't agree with some of his policies and I can't stand his attitude or behavior.
That said, I've never felt there's anything 'there' on 'Russia'. Guess what? Christie didn't either, and as he said, it's more likely to turn out that the Mueller investigation shows that the Trump campaign was dysfunctional, that portions were a mess, that some people were engaging in questionable behaviors, but nobody knew what anyone else was doing. He said that's how he felt while he worked on it. It was clear to him Trump loves a chaotic atmosphere because it produces disruption. Christie pointed out that at no point, so far, has Trump 'failed' in any meaningful way. Every time people count him out, he comes through with a victory. Christie believes this, in part, is related to Trump's management style.
This style, he says, is drawn from the Mike Tyson school of boxing. Don't have a strategy. People with strategies tend to overwhelmingly lean on them even as they fail. As you may or may not know, Mike Tyson made his statement, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." Tyson later explained this saying, "How much can you endure, buddy?" Trump pushes everything and everyone to their limit. Christie said he loves to see how much they can take, because invariably he can outlast them and that's how he wins most of the time, when he wins.
Christie pointed out that Trump loses quite a bit, too, but he's also good at turning that around, or portraying it in a way to make people see him as a winner regardless of his failure.
That said, his final point is that Trump does face some strong headwinds with the Cohen situation. It's becoming clear he engaged in very questionable behavior. Christie, however, does not feel the Democrats have the will, the capability, or the desire, to impeach Trump. It's his view, if they do, they will create a platform for Trump to ride to victory easily in 2020. He said it's better PR and better theater to talk about it and drive emotion, but actually doing anything will certainly work against them heavily.
I am WAY behind on posting. I still have Iceland videos and pictures to post, as well as some from my recent Caribbean sailing trip.
However, for the last 2 months I've been very busy with a restructuring of my office. My job has shifted, as has my department, my management, and my co-workers. I'm essentially doing the same job, but I've dropped some of my duties to another, so I'm training them as I focus more on the important parts of my new role.
I'm sorry for not following up on Iceland yet, but I will.
That said, I returned from our Caribbean sail (no WiFi for 10 days, both a blessing and a curse, mostly a blessing) and turned around and flew to a conference to consolidate our restructure. At one point in the conference, we had guest speakers. One was Chris Christie (more on that later) and the other was Kobe Bryant.
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.
' Missing link' in human history 
