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.
Far more power than you need to find the keys you dropped in the dark. Designed for hunters, these are also good for spotting owls. You can temporarily blind a bad guy with it, too.
,,,instruction is the least important part of education. Most information is accessible from books and the media. Basic literacy and numeracy are important, but many if not most skills used by adults in daily life are picked up on the job. The main objective of education in every enduring society is to transmit authoritative cultural, political, and ethical traditions from one generation to the next. We can speak of the major purposes of education as the Four I’s: Initiation, Indoctrination, Inculcation, and Instruction.
The Montana Department of Employment, Division of Labor Standards claimed a small rancher was not paying proper wages to his help and sent an agent out to investigate him.
AGENT: I need a list of your employees and how much you pay them.
RANCHER: Well, there's my hired hand who's been with me for 3 years. I pay him $200 a week plus free room and board. Then there's the mentally challenged guy. He works about 18 hours every day and does about 90% of all the work around here. He makes about $60 per week, pays his own room and board, and I buy him a bottle of Jack Daniels every Saturday night so he can cope with life. He also sleeps with my wife occasionally.
AGENT: That's the guy I want to talk to - the mentally challenged one.
The period before the first presidential debate when Trump pulled close to a tie with Clinton feels like an eon ago. He had come back with a month of relative discipline beginning in mid-August that now looks like a parenthesis in an otherwise recklessly selfish campaign.
That Trump would become a poisonous wedge issue within the GOP was always a plausible worst-case scenario. Now, it is upon us.
Why did his decade-old locker-room talk matter? A cruder and raunchier America of Miley Cyrus and Beyoncé is now far more sexually sensitive than was the staid America of half a century ago — as if the dirtier we become, the more sanctimonious we end up. Past presidents, such as John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, trumped even Trump in unleashing their reckless libidos on quite young White House staffers, an array of mistresses, and random women. But they were then young, liberal, loved by the media, and skilled incumbent politicians holding the power of the country at key moments in history.
Watching one traitorous fink after another decry Trump’s locker room talk from a decade ago, I was reminded once again that these people were never on my side. It was always a con, a grift, to fool otherwise decent people into putting down their weapons and surrendering to the Left. Buckley-style conservatism, whatever it was, is now just a tool of the managerial class to clear the field for nation-wrecking policies to benefit the ruling elite at the expense of the middle class.
Last night, I was reminded of why Trump was able to obliterate the GOP field despite being out spent a million-to-one. He is not a pussy. Any other Republican faced with the dirty trick pulled on Friday would have gone into the debate prepared to grovel and plead, begging for a second chance. It is not all all inconceivable that he would have offered to step aside. Trump went into the debate prepared to deliver a counter bunch designed to knock the old fat cow on her ass.
The Spanish (Latino?) immigrants to the New World were just looking for the opportunity for a better life with free trade and open borders. (In NYC, Columbus Day is a celebration of Italian immigrants because Chris of course was Italiano. After all, without Columbus, there would be no tomatoes or peppers in Southern Italian cooking.)
Yes, our moral and intellectual superiors. Public servants. It reminds me of the old saying about Ma Bell, when she ran the US phone network: Why don't you care about me, the customer? Because we don't have to.
(Note to our non-American readers: today we celebrate Columbus Day in the USA. Had he sailed in the service of his homeland, the Republic of Genoa, the language of much of the New World would be Italian instead of Spanish. An interesting detail is that he never acknowledged that he had found a new continent.)
If Columbus had not carried some shoots of sugar cane from the Canary Islands to the West Indies on his second voyage, somebody else would have, eventually.
(Sugar cane, a grass, is native to some Pacific Islands, but it spread to India and then around the warm parts of the world. Sugar is good.)
The West Indies proved to be a good place to grow sugarcane. Once the natives were wiped out in hard labor on the Spanish and French cane plantations, importing slaves from Africa was economically sensible if morally indefensible. Thus began the slave trade to the New World and, eventually, the cane/molasses/rum/slave circuit.
We visited Columbus' nice house on Grand Canaria in Las Palmas last fall. By sailing ship, of all things. It is still a nice big handsome house.
Cane is still grown to some extent on the Canaries, and they are proud of their rum, Arehucas.
“I’m at the breaking point,” said Gretchen Gardner, an Austin artist who bought a 1930s bungalow in the Bouldin neighborhood just south of downtown in 1991 and has watched her property tax bill soar to $8,500 this year
“It’s not because I don’t like paying taxes,” said Gardner, who attended both meetings. “I have voted for every park, every library, all the school improvements, for light rail, for anything that will make this city better. But now I can’t afford to live here anymore. I’ll protest my appraisal notice, but that’s not enough. Someone needs to step in and address the big picture.”
As it stand now you’ve already shocked the world. Any additional garrulous speeches on women as sexual objects for men’s gratification is just more of the same at this point.
NARRATOR: Trump said Scandalous, Sexist, Repulsive Thing Number 1! AUDIENCE: Oh My God! That’s terrible! How could he have been nominated! NARRATOR: Trump said Scandalous, Sexist, Repulsive Thing Number 2! AUDIENCE: Oh dear! That’s pretty bad too. NARRATOR: Trump said Scandalous, Sexist, Repulsive Thing Number 3! AUDIENCE: Yes. We know. We get it. Wasn’t there something on The Weather Channel about a hurricane?
One of my Vietnam veteran buddies in North Carolina just sent me this email. It's worth sharing, to help recall what is important, and who. The charity which is linked is very well worth your attention, please.
"Once a year the charity for the crippled old ARVN vets still suffering in Viet Nam holds a dinner concert and fundraiser. (www.thevhf.org ) It was scheduled for this past Saturday evening and the MC and singers flew in from California on Friday for it. But then came the hurricane, which was supposed to mostly miss Raleigh..... but that forecast was just a bit off, and we got 9 inches of rain, very high winds, all kinds of flooding, trees down across roads, power outages all over. Including the rental hall for the party. And the official recommendations from the authorities were for people to stay home until it blew over.
"As I got ready to go in the early evening, my wife asked me why I would go, when it should be cancelled and there was no power at the hall. I told her that 1- the organizers had gotten a 10KW generator to run power as needed, and 2- these are people who went to sea in small leaky boats at great risk, or walked across Cambodia to get to camps in Thailand, or survived "re-education", and spent years in refugee camps to get here with nothing to start all over again in a strange new country. There was no way that rain and slick roads would mean anything worth stopping for to them!
"And sure enough, we had 90% attendance, even with people who had to drive long distances to get there. They had bought dozens of candles to light every table, the caterer (also Vietnamese) had brought sterno warming pans for all the hot food, ice for the drinks, etc. The power wasn't level enough in voltage for the sound equipment, but they brought in a piano and someone to play it for music, and the singers worked through all that.
"Starting first, with the star male singer, a superb baritone, singing the Star Spangled Banner a cappella. And there was NO ONE in this crowd sitting down, everyone was standing, hand over heart, and many sang along. In the flickering candlelight of the tables with the wind and rain drumming outside, it was something special. And OK, call me a sentimental, silly, old American.... but my eyes..... my eyes let me down, they spilled water down my cheeks as I tried to sing along through a throat tightened with emotion. And then they sang the old national anthem of South Viet Nam, and the whole crowd sang with strength and clarity. It was all something to experience.
"After which the show went on and everyone had a great, great time. I was very happy and proud to be there."
That is nonsense. There is nothing redeeming about acute and agitated psychosis. Indeed, we do not usually commit psychotic people to hospitals unless they present some sort of danger. The US is not the Soviet Union. In the US, there are many quietly psychotic people out there refusing treatment or help. That is a tragic thing, but it's a free country.
Another tragic fact is that our ability to treat schizophrenia is very limited. We can usually help with acute symptoms and provide various support systems if they are accepted, but we can not fix the disease, which is chronic. The good news is that we are now excellent at treating the psychoses of Bipolar Disorder. With cooperative patients, it's as close to a cure as is possible.
When the great Tao is forgotten, goodness and piety appear.
From the Tao Te Ching (as quoted in the Introduction to Stephen Mitchell's The Book of Job. Buy the book if only for his Introduction, then stay for his translation of Job. I've been through it twice.)
5:1 Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy.
5:2 Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman's wife.
5:3 She said to her mistress, "If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy."
5:7 When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, "Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me."
5:8 But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, "Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel."
5:9 So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha's house.
5:10 Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean."
5:11 But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!
5:12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?" He turned and went away in a rage.
5:13 But his servants approached and said to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean'?"
5:14 So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.
5:15c Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, "Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel."
Mrs. BD is wondering what the Dems would have done if they had had had Bill on tape talking like a lowlife as he is widely known to do? Everybody knew Bill was a lowlife, and Mrs. Clinton an enabler and attacker of his assault victims, but the party rallied in his defense. That is called power politics. Same with JFK and LBJ, but no audio tapes and the press covered for them or, you might say, colluded. A sample: He (Bill) said Hillary had eaten more p***y than he had.’
Mr. Trump has no such amoral supporters. The Repubs rarely do. Hearsay, however accurate, might be manageable but the tape is a killer. The context is irrelevant. Mrs. BD is with Hinderaker: We’ve Had About All the Genius We Can Stand.
She has already written Pence's speech in her mind. Mike, give us a call. No charge.
A thorough review of the history of medical care in America along with the legal rationales for government regulation of a variety of industries: Medicine as a Public Calling
Had medical care become an industry? A single industry? A monopoly? It's complicated, and like all areas in which government gets involved, it is more political than logical. As FDR said about Social Security, "This is not about economics, it's about politics."
At issue, in part, is whether medical care is a commodity. As my practice goes, it is far from a commodity. After studying the article, I began to wonder whether similar arguments might be equally-applicable to the legal and the accounting businesses. Even to the plumbing business.
The EU, of course, is a solution to the past. More precisely, it is what the Europeans wish they had done before the Great War, believing it would have prevented all of it. Like all solutions to past mistakes, it is wildly miscast for the present. That does not bother the Eurocrats. They are convinced their way is correct and they run forward, head down, into the block wall of reality. It is precisely this sort of stuff that led a majority of Brits to vote their nation out of the project, but facts and events play no role in EU thinking.
Why would someone raised in Gothenburg want to leave one of the most peaceful and progressive countries in the developed world to join a violent extremist group in the Middle East?
Because there is more to life than comfort. Humans are not cows.
Homecoming Marine, by Normal Rockwell. I've been to the Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, but missed this one. I'd love to look at all of the detail. (h/t Ace)
So much for that major threat to the US. The hype certainly keeps people watching the news, though, with the dopey reporters in rain jackets saying "Wow, look at that wind." Of course, if you live in storm or flood zones, you must always expect such things. The poor people of Haiti can not be prepared even though storms are part of life there.
The War on Cash: Banks, governments, credit card companies and fintech evangelists all want us to believe a cashless future is inevitable and good. But this isn't a frictionless utopia says Brett Scott, and it's time to fight back
Bill McKibben is off the rails: 
Drone
Children