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.
We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it’s in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they’ll do you harm, why isn’t it all right to say you must not eat too much because you’ll do harm? Why isn’t it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you’re likely to die? Why isn’t it all right to say, “Oh, skiing, that’s no good, that’s a very dangerous sport, you’ll hurt yourself”? Where do you draw the line?
Strategy of the Left: Keep everybody else constantly on the defensive. And Trump is Hitler, of course. As Tucker says, nobody seems to care about the American kids whose parents are in jail.
Curating is the new pretentious term for picking and choosing things you like or want. I was recently at a restaurant which offered a "Curated selection of organic teas."
Well, highly-selective colleges now "curate" their admissions. Of course, they always have done so. 80 years ago they wanted to be preppy, WASPy clubs. Not now.
I very much doubt that Harvard, for example, is biased against Asians. Selective schools are not purely meritocratic, if grades and SATs are the only measures of merit. They are not, of course. They do want a mix of interesting and talented people who they think can contribute to, and thrive in, their environment, and who will be future successful ornaments to their alma mater They make a bet that you will be special. Plus necessary legacies and donors. And quarterbacks. And bassoonists.
In my view, as long as past performance and IQ (eg SAT) meet some standard, let them "curate" their Freshman classes at will. Elite schools could fill their classes many times over with kids with perfect grades and perfect SATs, but that would make no sense at all.
From our pal in Maine, a pic from Height of Land in the Rangeley Lake area on a Father's Day trip. A wonderful area, especially for hiking, hunting, and fishing. Not all of Maine is seacoast.
Has the Justice Dept and the FBI been a rogue system? Dem advisor Penn says they have been a state unto themselves. It is true that they hold frightening power, but when they go political, can't be fired, and refuse to respond to congress, what is that?
“We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the marriage in Cana, as of a miracle. But this conversion is, through the goodness of God, made every day before our eyes. Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, and which incorporates itself with the grapes to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy!”
Nobody wants to separate children from parents, but nobody should get to jump the immigration line just because they show up on the beach with a kid in tow.
Unless the laws are changed, I'd just ship every border-crosser back to Mexico with a little lunch money. Clearly the issue is deterrence. Suggestions?
Mrs. BD's Father's Day "present" to me was a trip to her fancy hair salon to get me an updated hair style to fit my Charlie Brown face and my buff body this past Friday. She said her gal there loves to do men's hair.
Can I say that I was not comfortable going to that place? I've been going to Tony, my same old Sicilian barber for 25 years and only when it's past the point of necessity. My wife's cute and athletic hair gal (who I know from the gym) and Mrs. BD agreed that my haircuts were primitive and made me look old and stodgy, like a dorky Senator from Arkansas or a dork from 1980. "Short or long?" was Tony's only question.
My heart beamed Friday night as my sons welcomed the Sabbath with perfectly sung prayers.My heart broke Saturday night as my sons fought while I grilled a perfect wild-caught salmon, and I got indigestion instead of the meal I thought I deserved.
I'm reminded of the saying, "A Man's children and his garden both reflect the amount of weeding done during the growing season." And, the growing goes both ways as we fathers grow, have to grow -- into the men we want to be under our children's careful observation, into the men that they need.
We yearn to please but, most important, to pass on life's lessons.
Father's Day is full of platitudes and real feelings, of missed and appreciated opportunities. And, of how much we care by just being there. I'm reminded of GeorgeStrait's "A Father's Love", of Conway Twitty's "That's My Job", of Rascal Flatt's "My Wish."True, heartfelt, and missing the tougher choices we have to make and impose to make as sure as we can that our children grow into responsible, resilient and caring adults.
There's a wisecrack, "If God is so perfect, how do you explain us."As fathers, we're not perfect, but we try to find and know the ways to be better, and most of us find it. We continue to strive, and so may our children, with a higher hand to reach for and give us the strength to be better and have hope.
5:6 So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord --
5:7 for we walk by faith, not by sight.
5:8 Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.
5:9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.
5:10 For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.
5:11 Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade others; but we ourselves are well known to God, and I hope that we are also well known to your consciences.
5:12 We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you an opportunity to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast in outward appearance and not in the heart.
5:13 For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.
5:14 For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.
5:15 And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.
5:16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.
5:17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
My libertarian self is in favor, but my medical self is opposed. However, it remains a fact that more Americans die from overeating than from drug abuse, and food can not be illegalized. I tend to feel that government has little role in peoples' doing self-destructive things as long as we others do not have to pay their bills. Let reality rule. AA and NA cost nothing.
Lawns are foolish things but unless you live in the woods, a desert, or a beachy place, they are sort of expected.
A lawn is a certain sort of constantly-cut garden, copied from the estates of England where sheep kept the grass neatly cropped and sheep poop kept it fertilized. (Thus putting greens.)
If you want a happy lawn, I recommend aerating a lawn every two years with a coring machine, in late Spring. Or now. Every year, if it is used heavily by kids, animals, sports, or heavy mowers. If you have bare patches, overseed before coring.
At at about the same time, you topdress the grass with compost, manure, sand, or mixes of those. It works as mulch, fertilizer, worm food, microorganism food, etc. Health, because lawns are not natural and you have no sheep.
You can rent a coring machine anywhere for a day or two. Leave the cores on the grass. They disintegrate fast.
For large lawns or golf courses, large machines almost like farm manure-spreaders do the topdressing, but you can spread good compost mixes with a fertilizer spreader or with shovel and rake.
Around here, you can have a pleasant and useful lawn without irrigation and maybe only once or twice/year organic fertilizing if you treat it as the garden that sod is. You have to assume that lawns will brown up in the greatest heat of summer, but it's only a few weeks. That's natural grass dormancy. It bounces right back.
Irrigation and nitrogen fertilizer are like photoshopping a lawn. Fake. An important garden lawn might need irrigation though, to look Spring-like during the late summer weeks.
“There’s no greater threat to our democracy than a government that weaponizes its criminal justice system to target its citizens and in this case the target today is the President of the United States.”
Story here. We now understand that the SAT turned out to be basically a proxy for IQ. It makes sense to me for schools to be interested in IQ. Of course, there is far more to what a person might have to offer than IQ, but I think they ought to know that when making distinctions between applicants. Especially at a school like Chicago, which, unlike most of higher ed, requires that a graduate actually ends up knowing a lot of basic things which are not easy to learn.
I am just talking about Liberal Arts higher ed, of course.
"I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure… The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters."
Millennials may be 
Curating is the new pretentious term for picking and choosing things you like or want. I was recently at a restaurant which offered a "Curated selection of organic teas." 
Where the 'No Ending a Sentence With a Preposition' 
It's a good quote and a true one, but Ben Franklin didn't say “Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
Lawns are foolish things but unless you live in the woods, a desert, or a beachy place, they are sort of expected.