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.
In the Mueller sham investigation, now that it has all but fallen apart, Mueller is now crossing a red line by digging into the President's business dealings as far back as 20 or more years ago in an effort to ruin him financially and thus force him from office. At least Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds Grassley, Graham Cornyn and Tillis are calling for a special counsel to investigate the investigation. I think it's time for PDT to shut this down, before it gets any closer to the midterms.
Your Right to Free Speech, Like My Right to Self-Defense, Isn’t Open to Debate - Rallying to call for restrictive laws is a whole lot easier than getting people to submit to them.
She's the young assistant teacher in Canada who got in trouble for showing a 30-second TV clip of Jordan Peterson in a class. A lefty who was mugged by greater lefties. She is smart and charming too.
All cultures are not equal. Or at least they are not equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy. The culture of the Plains Indians was designed for nomadic hunters, but is not suited to a First World, 21st-century environment. Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-"acting white" rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants. These cultural orientations are not only incompatible with what an advanced free-market economy and a viable democracy require, they are also destructive of a sense of solidarity and reciprocity among Americans. If the bourgeois cultural script — which the upper-middle class still largely observes but now hesitates to preach — cannot be widely reinstated, things are likely to get worse for us all.
There are so many things today one hesitates to preach, or even to utter. You can get in trouble. Crazy world in which it can be dangerous to say obvious things.
"The same people who insist that buying a gun at a store, which at a minimum requires a government-issued ID and background check, is too easy will also tell you that requiring an ID to vote is an impossibly high hurdle to expect average people to overcome."
• For social justice, focus on symmetry and risk sharing. You cannot make profits and transfer the risks to others, as bankers and large corporations do. You cannot get rich without owning your own risk and paying for your own losses. Forcing skin in the game corrects this asymmetry better than thousands of laws and regulations.
• Ethical rules aren’t universal. You’re part of a group larger than you, but it’s still smaller than humanity in general.
• Minorities, not majorities, run the world. The world is not run by consensus but by stubborn minorities imposing their tastes and ethics on others.
• You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot. “Educated philistines” have been wrong on everything from Stalinism to Iraq to low-fat diets.
• Beware of complicated solutions (that someone was paid to find). A simple barbell can build muscle better than expensive new machines.
• True religion is commitment, not just faith. How much you believe in something is manifested only by what you’re willing to risk for it.
If you feel too shy or timid to take fitness/athleticism classes (get over that - timid and shy are bad habits for life), you are stuck with doing your calis and HIIT on your own 2 days/week if you follow the Maggie's balanced fitness ("Functional Fitness For Life") advice of 2 days powerlifts and other heavy weights, 2 days calis/cardio, 2 days mixed cardio).
Every few weeks, I will cut a day out for recovery if I feel I need it. That's an age factor, I think. However, consistency is key.
Two years of that program will get anybody of any age, gender, or condition into decent fitness - with the appropriate nutrition for weight-gain or loss. Physical renovation, literally. Lean, no bulging muscles but just solid strength, endurance, and athleticism. I am towards the northern region of middle age, so I can speak to this with some authority. Not to mention a deplorable history of intermittent tobacco abuse.
Re the calisthenics component, right now I take one cross-train class/week (basically no-rest cardio/calis, lots of burpees, rowing, mountain climbers, and jumping around), and a mixed calis/HIIT session I do on my own for 75 minutes/wk on Sat. morning.
Typically I do 3 circuits of each group of four exercises until my time runs out. I see many guys and gals doing similar sorts of circuits on their own at the gym, but classes push the cardio and sweat harder than many will do on their own.
Below the fold, the typical circuits I use after a 5-minute elliptical warm-up and calf stretch. It's not classic HIIT, but it works in the same way. I do classic HIIT weekly on the treadmill - 30-sec sprint, 2 min slow walk.
This is classic old-fashioned "exercise" (asterisks for the things I consider HIIT) --
Articles like that are so misguided and cynical that it makes me sad. Clearly there are hundreds of sorts of education, some formal and some informal, some practical and some impractical.
I learned the Bible in Sunday school, in college, in church, and in a men's study group. Enriched my life greatly. Never helped me get a job.
Regardless of the reasons (calling Trump a moron probably didn't help), the firing of Tillerson was done in a shameful and appalling way. Tillerson is a far better man than Trump. Maybe not the right guy for the job, but Trump picked him.
If you work for Trump, do not expect to be treated in a civil manner.
The ballet-trained Tommy Rall branched out into Broadway, movie acting, singing, opera. And painting. Is it fair that talent is unequally-distributed? Many talents in one package, via neo's The man who could do everything: Tommy Rall
Too often, the functionally-impaired abandon families which might offer shelter and support, reject treatment which might help if only a little, and refuse government assistance either out of pride or misunderstanding. People often write about "more services" and more "help for addicts," etc., but these things are commonly rejected.
Currently, jails are said to be the largest mental health facilities in the US. Have we have returned to Bedlam? More likely, family homes are the largest, jails second, and the streets third. Rightly or wrongly, government-coerced "help" was politically and morally abandoned.
If you are a parent or relative of an impaired person, and have some assets, best thing is to make a trust for them with a good trustee. The low-functioning relative might reject all that, but it's all one can do. Once upon a time, there were permanent "retreats" and "homes" for such people, but when government got in the game they became hellholes.
I have no solution. Functioning at a high level is challenging enough for all of us even without tragic difficulties.
"We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us."
For Urban Hikers, Pocket Guide App. It's fun to get lost sometimes, though. Interesting things happen.
It's now good urban (and rural hiking) season. Get out there, friends, and do 9 miles with friends and family. Pizza and beer afterwards is the Maggie's Way.
Conservative fiscal policy, coupled with the missteps of rival states, helped bolster the Connecticut economy throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. New York State’s top income-tax rate surged into the double-digits around 1960, and an extra city-level tax was imposed in 1966. New York’s combined top state and city gross income-tax rate reached a peak of 19.7 percent in 1976. By contrast, Connecticut’s gross income-tax rate was zero, and would remain so until the early 1990s. During New York’s fiscal crisis, debates about the city’s future often invoked fears of residents and businesses fleeing to Connecticut, where taxes were lower and services widely considered superior.
This lovely Yankee state, "The Land of Steady Habits," is broke. It is still a wealthy state, thanks to Fairfield County's proximity to NYC, but the rest of the state is on a downhill slope. The prosperous cities are a distant memory. The government is now mainly ruled by the unions which drove manufacturing away. Currently, the tax structure is driving wealthy residents away. Six months + one day gets you Florida residency, so you can summer in CT with your friends.
2:2 in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.
2:3 All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.
2:4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us
2:5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by grace you have been saved--
2:6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
2:7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God--
2:9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast.
2:10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
K-12: 
Why are
