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 an act of determined denial, Washington Republicans and conservatives continue to see and describe Mr. Trump’s nomination as the triumph of a celebrity in a culture that worships celebrity, the victory of a vulgarian in a vulgar age, the living excrescence of our shallow values and lowered standards. Also, he’s tapped into the public’s rage.
He is all of those things. But he is more, and Washington is determined to ignore the more. He understood, either intuitively or after study, that the Republican base was changing or open to change, and would expand if the party changed some policies. He declared those policies changed. And he won. ..
I do not think Trump is a vulgarian. I think he plays one on TV. It is his shtick. He is a shock to the system, to same-old same-old in both parties. He will be elected decisively. The primary voters knew what they were doing.
Style, appearance, dress, and physique clearly vary across subcultures and geography in the US and the Western World, and certainly in the rest of the world.
When people look good, they feel good. Chicken and egg. Codes of personal presentation are useful even if we do not like the codes other groups use. In my somewhat hoity-toity set, being athletic and preppily-proper at all times (except at the gym) is standard, regardless of age. There is a similar expectation, or a higher one, in the American Southland.
I recently began estate work for a new client. She said she was 78. I had to ask her to prove it, because I have seen lots of 45 year-olds who looked far worse than she did and I do not mean at WalMart. I should say, she looked great, elegant, sexy. She skis all winter, golfs and plays tennis all summer, lifts weights, does her own gardening in Vermont and in Connecticut, has two volunteer community projects, plays bridge twice a week, hikes - and has availed herself of a bit of face and neck work in New York. Not enough to notice until she told me her age. A proud lady, I think.
How important do you think it is to look good when in public? Is it about signaling, or class-consciousness, work expectations, or just plain dignity? Or is letting yourself go to pot at some point ok with you?
Everybody has known for decades about the Clinton faux marriage. There is no marriage. She has her own house in DC, and she has Huma. BTW, is Huma raising her kid or is Wiener doing it? Strange people, the whole lot.
Overwhelming medical consensus is that Chronic Lyme Disease does not exist - unless Lyme goes untreated. It is easily treated, once diagnosed.
Nonetheless, many still cling to the idea of Chronic Lyme. Few physicians buy into this, but if they do, I will consider it quackery until I see convincing data.
As with the anti-Vac brigade, some people can not be persuaded by facts.
My excellent fitness trainer told me that it takes 2 years to pass from the beginner phase of weights, regardless of age. That has nothing to do with amount of weight moved; it's just about getting the forms down right, ramping up past the beginner's need for any machine training, and getting to the point of effectively pushing the envelope of your innate abilities - whatever they are - past the initial "waking up" phase.
The antique fitness recommendations of simply running, jogging, walking, rowing, swimming, spinning, etc. have long gone the way of the low-fat diet. Well, the low-fat diet was totally wrong, but low-resistance cardio (only if intervals) does still have a place in the Fitness Triad of Resistance, Cardio, and Calisthenics.
As an ectomorph with a runner's build, I will never bench at the levels of the shorter, muscled guys with short arms. No problem with that. I just want to maintain and improve fitness and not be, or look like, a weak, lazy schlub. That's why I did 45 pull-ups this morning (ok, jumpers), and 5 sets of deadlifts with increasing weight each time. It feels quite good when you stop.
Barbell squats kill me, or will. Matchstick legs and no ass, he says. I ask him to please wait until I finish my coffee to insult my God-given physique: I am easily offended and may need to retire to my Safe Space at the local pub.
Mrs. BD is a more sturdily-built mesomorph. She enjoys the weights part of her program more than I do, but she can't do barbell squats (iffy knees). She does deadlifts, snatches (which I can not do due to one bum shoulder), pull-ups, dumbell rows, bench press, curls, press-downs, pull-downs, overhead presses, and plain squats. Interestingly, doing weights has done a lot of good for her knee issues, just as the trainer predicted.
Rule of Thumb: Make everything a bit harder each week and aim for the goal of condensing everything in the efficient multi-muscle group basic exercises. Takes a while to get there, maybe a year. If middle-aged or +, one 3-6 set of each resistance exercises/week is enough.
Photo above:Your editor last week, after one year of resistance training. Think I should cut my steroid dose a bit yet? Truth is that no middle-aged guy with 5-6 hrs to spend on fitness including only 2 hrs of weights in that will bulk up very much. Mainly weight-redistribution will occur. That, plus energy and vitality. Any gut disappears even if you like beer.
Photo below:Mrs. BD after one year of the Fitness Triad plus Atkins diet. Keep it up!
Rarely has so much changed within a lifetime. Yesterday’s outré and outcast recast as inquisitors; great nations in demographic collapse; primal human practices like marriage, veritable specie constants, condemned as iniquitous and beyond rational defence, and most surprisingly, all happening peaceably, with little alteration in surface political forms. No wonder elders scratch their heads, as do those few historically literate young. This essay proposes to settle their confusions by revealing the deepest drivers of these astonishing and revolutionary changes...
The problem is that the individual can not afford to fight them. Small businesses can neither afford the legal teams, the years, nor nor lobbyists to defend them. Wallach begins:
What sort of political system do we have in America? Why, republican self-government, of course. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people, as mediated by our hallowed constitutional institutions. Doing our thing for 227 years now.
A great many people aren’t buying that story these days. They look at our actual manner of governing and see bitterly contested symbolic elections awkwardly joined to a powerful technocratic administrative state that makes most of the important decisions. The disconnect between the ideal and the reality has brought us a legitimacy crisis that has been often touched upon in these virtual pages lately.
Leviathan is now too big to fail:
We live in a democracy full of fellow-citizens who think that “crucial functions” are very extensive indeed. One libertarian tradition is simply to flip these fellow-citizens the bird and insist that a cadre of the right kind of rulers—anti-technocratic technocrats, more or less—will somehow gain power and make our government best by governing least. That is undoubtedly an applause line in many rooms, but it is the equivalent of not playing the game at all.
I am from the school of loyalty belonging in God, family, country, in that order. When it comes to voting, my loyalty does not belong to any individual or political party. My vote belongs to me. And, I have an obligation to behave responsibly and sensibly with my vote.
In that vein, whether I am a lifelong Republican or conservative is important, but only in so far as my deeply held beliefs are furthered or protected. Many Republicans or conservatives are disaffected or in pique by the apparent triumph of Donald Trump. However, for me, Trump does not get my vote because I am a Republican or conservative but because the alternatives are far worse in a continuation of the Democrats' ongoing literal destruction of our ethics, our economy, and our national security, while in actuality doing relatively less to upraise the unfortunate than to tie them into being lackeys of the central government instead of their own initiative, compounded by our citizen poor being undercut by uncontrolled inflows of foreign competitors for jobs and public funds. To not vote is to vote for the continuation of the past 8-years of the outright assault on the very fiber of the United States.
I cannot accept with any respect any Republicans or conservatives who will now support Hillary Clinton. They do not deserve it. They exhibit themselves as rent-seekers, to profit from her probable election to the presidency due to the lock that Democrats have on a near majority of the electoral college. Or, they exhibit their overriding loyalty to their liberal social circle in New York or Washington. They do not exhibit the judgment to choose the lesser of evils, and they increase the probability of loss of Republican control of the Senate and House, which only increases the damages from a leftist administration.
This is smart: Reform Week Part II/ Politics is the art of the possible. Trump should read that.
Trump has positioned himself brilliantly, as practical and mostly non-ideological. That's why he will win in November, for better or worse. Crazy like a fox.
On the occasion of what would have been her 100th birthday,
First Evidence of Humans in North America Found Off Florida, New Study Says. 
Horse Sex:
My excellent fitness trainer told me that it takes 2 years to pass from the beginner phase of weights, regardless of age. That has nothing to do with amount of weight moved; it's just about getting the forms down right, ramping up past the beginner's need for any machine training, and getting to the point of effectively pushing the envelope of your innate abilities - whatever they are - past the initial "waking up" phase.
Jane Austen’s 
A school that cares: Success Academy’s been awesome for our special-needs son