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.
What intellectuals don't get about MIGRATION is the ethical notion of SYMMETRY:
1) OPEN BORDERS work if and only if the number of pple who want to go from EU/US to Africa/LatinAmer equals Africans/Latin Amer who want to move to EU/US
2) Controlled immigration is based on the symmetry that someone brings in at least as much as he/she gets out. And the ethics of the immigrant is to defend the system as payback, not mess it up.
Uncontrolled immigration has all the attributes of invasions.
3) As a Christian Lebanese, saw the nightmare of uncontrolled immigration of Palestinians which caused the the civil war & as a part-time resident of N. Lebanon, I am seeing the effect of Syrian migration on the place.
So I despise these virtue-signaling open-borders imbeciles.
...who works in the mental health field: "You assumed I would hate Jordan Peterson? Wrong. I just finished his book. He is so clear and common-sensical that he's helped me see my own life in a different light, not to mention my work with clients. It's so easy to get fogged over with details and complexities and daily crap that we lose sight of the basics."
Pic is my medicine ball on our Cape Cod driveway. Garbage cans out - a decorative touch.
If you have invested time, money, sweat, and tears into a fitness regimen, it is depressing to learn that your level of conditioning will deteriorate measurably within 7-10 days if all you do is walk around for hours. Many people go for morning jogs but there are plenty of other morning calisthenics that can be done anywhere.
I have done it all, in hotel gyms, in the sandy driveway on Cape Cod, and elsewhere all over the place. Even in Maine. A light protein and banana shake after. There is no more invigorating way to begin an active day outdoors.
One observation: We Americans are fitness nuts by comparison to the rest of the world. It's cultural and, to some extent, class-related We (frequently) overweight Americans try to stay fit and vigorous until something strikes us down. In Europe, not much. In Asia, very little. How often do you see gyms or street runners in those places? An exception might be Switzerland, where I am told gyms are sprouting up on every corner in every town. Especially in Zurich, or course, because Zurich is like a mini-NYC but without the charm.
For a business meeting, a business speech, or a job interview, there is nothing like an hour of calis to prepare.
Use it or lose it. Strength and power diminish measurably after 7-10 days, cardio fitness after one week without stressing your heart hard. The older you are, the quicker the loss.
It will overrule Roe v. Wade, allowing states to ban abortions and to criminally prosecute any physicians and nurses who perform them. It will allow shopkeepers, restaurateurs, and hotel owners to refuse service to gay customers on religious grounds. It will guarantee that fewer African-American and Latino students attend élite universities. It will approve laws designed to hinder voting rights. It will sanction execution by grotesque means. It will invoke the Second Amendment to prohibit states from engaging in gun control, including the regulation of machine guns and bump stocks.
and he concludes with this ignorant statement:
... the Constitution grants only those rights that the Supreme Court says it grants, and a new majority can and will bestow those rights, and take them away, in chilling new ways.
If the US government bestows rights, it's news to me. That turns the Constitution upside-down. The American idea is that individual freedom is a gift of God, and limited powers are given to government only to protect that freedom from threats to it. Rebels wrote the thing, rebels who believed government was a necessary evil. I do not think the youth are taught that.
The Greeks understood these things, and VDH knows the Greeks.
Bill's wife's judgement has been poor most of her life. Arrogance has been a problem too. Blind ambition. Who is she, in her own imagination? Remarkable she got as far as she did, but she did manage to leave a trail of messes and corruption behind her while becoming a mega-millionaire in selfless "public service".
It's the one thing all Americans have in common, other than summer vacations. If it's too malleable, it's nothing, and then America is nothing. The Constitution embodies the radical idea (with a few compromises to get it accepted - all since corrected).
Krauthammer:
“America is the only country ever founded on an idea. The only country that is not founded on race or even common history. It's founded on an idea and the idea is liberty. That is probably the rarest phenomena in the political history of the world; this has never happened before. And not only has it happened, but it's worked. We are the most flourishing, the most powerful, most influential country on Earth with this system, invented by the greatest political geniuses probably in human history.”
Much as I detest the idea of abortion (it is killing, of course), I also detest the notion that the Constitution confers limited rights on individuals. It was not meant to do so. It was designed to confer limited powers to government.
Murray might be the most important social scientist of our time, but he became toxic to the Left for speaking truth about subcultural issues. Most of his recent work has been concerned with the white underclass, which is far larger than other ethnic or racial underclasses in the US.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, accused the majority of weaponizing the First Amendment — an unconscionable position for a person tasked with “faithfully and impartially” discharging the duty to protect the inherent rights of all Americans. The dissenters have perverted the intent of the Founders. It’s none of Sotomayor’s business how we use free expression. It’s her business to protect it.
Americans do not exercise enough according to government CDC recommendations, and they need more help.
"More help"? Does anybody want or need government for elementary life advice? This is the sort of thing that annoys the heck out of me. Hey, let's start a government program to determine your nutrition plan (how did that work out?), your exercise regimen, your heart health (is it now recommending 1-2 glasses of red wine/day? Technically, it should). Anyway, overweight and sedentary is the new normal.
Everybody in America knows what they "should" do for physical fitness. Most do not want to bother. I think fitness is mainly a class/subcultural-related thing. It's a free country. Government should just leave them alone. For anybody who wants to be in good shape regardless of age, Maggie's has written volumes on the topics of nutrition and fitness for anyone to read, for free, and it is smarter and better-informed than any government advice.
As with government nagging, many of our readers are just annoyed by those topics. We post them for the few who find them of interest.
The Gowdy clip is stunning. The arrogance of the bureaucrats is amazing to me. Who do they think they are? Rosenstein's smugness bugs me because he is my employee.
If Trump’s supporters are truly “a basket of deplorables ... racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic” and “irredeemable,” as Hillary Clinton described them to an LGBT crowd, is not shunning and shaming the proper way to deal with them.
Quantum Computing Expert Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty. I still don't get it, but I don;t get how regular computers work either. Bits?
Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts...
Making 
Vacation time. 