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.
If the preconceptions of the Left were correct, central planning by educated elites who had vast amounts of statistical data at their fingertips and expertise readily available, and were backed by the power of government, should have been more successful than market economies where millions of individuals pursued their own individual interests willy-nilly.
The gigolo industry is gradually coming out of the closet: Male escorts - Is the growing market for male escorts a sign of female sexual liberation or just a re-run of the same old stereotypes?
This has nothing to do with "liberation." Women have always had healthy sex drives, but just kept quiet about it. The illusion of genteel innocence can be sexy to men. On the other hand, the image of dirty, nasty and accessible femininity can be sexy to men too. Almost anything can be sexy to men. Despite modern lesbian feminism, men should never underestimate female sexual longings and fantasies. Female fantasies are at least as reckless as those of men.
Women are, perhaps, more discriminating than guys but their needs for sex are abundant, especially in middle age. Perhaps Mother Nature wants us to get knocked up before it's too late.
Relaxed and enjoyed the sound of waves, played dominoes with the in-laws, ate fish every day, did some surf-casting (caught plenty, but nothing big enough), read my book (The War That Ended Peace by Margaret MacMillan), and today I'm going kayaking or paddle-boarding. If I can, paddle-boarding, it's better for your core. But either is a good workout.
I had blackened lane snapper last night at a restaurant that didn't appear to be more than a hole in the wall, probably the best I've had. Sometimes it's best not to judge based on the superficial appearance. We had breaded hogfish the night before, at the in-laws'.
Flight home tomorrow in the early morning. This is the second year I took a mid-November vacation. It's a good time to go south. Not only do you stay warm when the rest of the country is chilling, but you get two shortened workweeks heading into Thanksgiving. Then you roll right into the Christmas holiday season.
(Late note: We went paddle-boarding and learned a valuable lesson. Pay attention to the wind. Our trip north up the Indian River, I barely dipped my paddle thanks to the wind. I realilzed this would pose some difficulty for the return. In fact, we had to climb out and carry the boards for some stretches. Thankfully, they are not heavy. Just as thankfully, the Indian River is not too deep along the shore and mangroves, so we could wade if necessary. One thing about paddle-boarding, even if you're not paddling, you get a workout. Keeping your balance is tricky if you're not used to it. I got a mighty scare when I passed over a tarpon, who didn't take kindly to our presence.)
Who are the real know-nothings?Warm is good. Don't these people know that we are still in an Ice Age?It's just a momentary interglacial in a lengthy Ice Age. Ask Maine's Sippican about that.
“Whenever the public gets that sort of clear-cut, black-and-white issue for tougher controls — even in Oregon, when they’re legalizing dope — they support them,” Krikorian said. “It really highlights how this issue is not a Republican-liberal issue like, say, taxes and abortion, but an up-down issue, elites versus the public.”
What I am reading now - judge me if you must, but be gentle because there is too much of our culture to keep up with, and it is up to each of us, as a duty, to contain and to transmit all of it that we can. Duty.
The Salt book: Lobstering, sea moss pudding, stone walls, rum running, maple syrup, snowshoes, and other Yankee doings (a good deed to write all that stuff down)
Saving Normal: An Insider's Revolt against Out-of-Control Psychiatric
Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life by Dr. Alan Francis
...paternalism is warranted, they argue, because without the government, people would fall prey to big, bad corporate interests and their efforts to relentlessly maximize shareholder value.
Thus, Obamacare is all about the federal government making decisions on behalf of Americans because -- as Gruber and his liberal brethren would argue -- the people are unable or unwilling to make the choices that elites believe advance the social good. That’s why President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress invented the mechanisms in the law that, for example, transfer resources from those who are young and healthy to those who are old and sick.
I don't think that I am unique in preferring big bad business interests to big, bad crony government and political interests. If you don't like a business, you can quit it. Not so easy to quit an armed government.
Being American is not supposed to be being a US subject.
Related: Gruber is an honest Liberal because he admits to grubering. Seems to me that his confessions are just bragging.
A new word: "Grubering." Lying your ass off to make a better world for you pathetic idiots.
90:1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.
90:2 Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
90:3 You turn us back to dust, and say, "Turn back, you mortals."
90:4 For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night.
90:5 You sweep them away; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning;
90:6 in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.
90:7 For we are consumed by your anger; by your wrath we are overwhelmed.
90:8 You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance.
90:9 For all our days pass away under your wrath; our years come to an end like a sigh.
90:10 The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.
90:11 Who considers the power of your anger? Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you.
90:12 So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart.
We only use ours about 20 times per year, but it is quite an attractive space with a nice old fireplace. With good friends, we tend to dine in the kitchen unless it's a special occasion.
"And you think it's possible for the State to navigate between not enough minority members in the district and too many minority members in the district without taking race into account."
It would seem that for the most part, the mainstream media has no issues with the recently surfaced videotaped comments of Jonathan Gruber. Presumably, the media agree with what he said. Of course, liberals have always been the ends-justify-the-means kind of feelers. In other words, they are people you cannot trust to be honest and straightforward when they have an agenda.
Now that the public is faced with the truth of what their government thinks of them, thanks to Gruber (who was paid approx. $400k for his stellar work), the only explanation the Democrats can offer is either 1) Gruber lied (yes, accuse the liar of lying when the lie is discovered!) or 2) everyone does it.
and
The process of passing Obamacare was ugly, the players corrupt, the deals underhanded and the methods disengenuous, but the end result, to a liberal Democrat, erases all that. Like Gruber, they would ‘rather have this bill than not’. If Democrats have to give up truth, transparency, the rule of law and their very souls to get what they want, so be it.
92% of black male teens in Chicago don’t have a job. In Detroit, 50% of black men are unemployed. It’s not that there aren’t any jobs, but the entry level jobs have been mostly going to immigrants.
Immigrants, legal or otherwise, are doing the jobs I did as a youth
First, her tippet made of tulle, easily lifted off her shoulders and laid on the back of a wooden chair.
And her bonnet, the bow undone with a light forward pull.
Then the long white dress, a more complicated matter with mother-of-pearl buttons down the back, so tiny and numerous that it takes forever before my hands can part the fabric, like a swimmer's dividing water, and slip inside.
You will want to know that she was standing by an open window in an upstairs bedroom, motionless, a little wide-eyed, looking out at the orchard below, the white dress puddled at her feet on the wide-board, hardwood floor.
The complexity of women's undergarments in nineteenth-century America is not to be waved off, and I proceeded like a polar explorer through clips, clasps, and moorings, catches, straps, and whalebone stays, sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.
Later, I wrote in a notebook it was like riding a swan into the night, but, of course, I cannot tell you everything - the way she closed her eyes to the orchard, how her hair tumbled free of its pins, how there were sudden dashes whenever we spoke.
What I can tell you is it was terribly quiet in Amherst that Sabbath afternoon, nothing but a carriage passing the house, a fly buzzing in a windowpane.
So I could plainly hear her inhale when I undid the very top hook-and-eye fastener of her corset
and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed, the way some readers sigh when they realize that Hope has feathers, that reason is a plank, that life is a loaded gun that looks right at you with a yellow eye.
We posted about Tarte Tatin last week, and there is no need to post more about Apple Pie because everybody makes it the way their Mom did. Here are more favorite apple desserts, all quick and easy to make (except for the Apple Tart), and all as American as Sarah Palin (except for the Apple Tart):
Apple Brown Betty (a classic American colonial dessert - a "betty" is a pudding)
Apple Cobbler (I think it's better with a few cranberries added)
I also like to make Apple Pancakes for breakfast. I just throw thin slices into the batter. A good pancake combo is some apple and a handful of cranberries. (Every fall I throw a dozen or so bags of cranberries in the freezer. They seem to last 10 months easily without any deterioration.)
Our Editor tells me his family refers to all of these apple desserts generically as "Upside-down Apple Town Dowdy Betty Bow Wow," and reminds our readers that, in Yankeeland, Apple Pie is traditionally for breakfast, not for dessert.
The broad view is that the Common Core didn’t grow out of grassroots demand for curricular reform. It isn’t the work of school boards or an initiative put in motion by dissatisfied parents. It didn’t come about because good teachers convened and came up with a proposal to improve K-12 education. It was instead the product of a handful of very-well connected intellectuals who dreamed up their own vision of what American schools should do.
and
One of the local realities is that many parents who are actively involved in their children’s education view the Common Core as state-imposed disaster. They are immune to the Coleman-Gates appeal for uniformity of teaching for the sake of uniformity itself. They are suspicious of an approach to math that vaults over tried-and-true approaches for the sake of the unproven benefits of a new “theory.” They are equally perturbed by an approach that derogates the importance of literature and, when it does introduce literary works, chops them into fragments and short extracts.
Combine arrogance, money, fancy degrees, and a top-down attitude, and this is what you get: a one-size-fits-all central plan designed for the masses by our moral and intellectual superiors whether you want it or not.
On a separate video in a different speech, he explains what Obamacare intended: “If you’re a state and you don’t set up an exchange, that means your citizens don’t get their tax credits.” The legislative idea was to coerce states into setting up their own exchanges by otherwise denying their citizens subsidies.
This may have been a stupid idea, but it was no slip. And it’s the law, as written, as enacted and as intended. It can be changed by Congress only, not by the executive. Which is precisely what the plaintiffs are saying. Q.E.D.
A rule not ultimately backed by the threat of violence is merely a suggestion. States rely on laws enforced by men ready to do violence against lawbreakers. Every tax, every code and every licensing requirement demands an escalating progression of penalties that, in the end, must result in the forcible seizure of property or imprisonment by armed men prepared to do violence in the event of resistance or non–compliance. Every time a soccer mom stands up and demands harsher penalties for drunk driving, or selling cigarettes to minors, or owning a pit bull, or not recycling, she is petitioning the state to use force to impose her will. She is no longer asking nicely. The viability of every family law, gun law, zoning law, traffic law, immigration law, import law, export law and financial regulation depends on both the willingness and wherewithal of the group to exact order by force.
When an environmentalist demands that we “save the whales,” he or she is in effect making the argument that saving the whales is so important that it is worth doing harm to humans who harm whales. The peaceful environmentalist is petitioning the leviathan to authorize the use of violence in the interest of protecting leviathans. If state leaders were to agree and express that it was, indeed, important to “save the whales,” but then decline to penalize those who bring harm to whales, or decline to enforce those penalties under threat of violent police or military action, the expressed sentiment would be a meaningless gesture. Those who wanted to bring harm to whales would feel free to do so, as it is said, with impunity — without punishment.
Without action, words are just words. Without violence, laws are just words.
My long-time good friend, Father Paul McNellis S.J., is one of four Vietnam veteran panelists at Boston College (where Paul is now a much loved and respected professor of philosophy) discussing their experiences, what they learned, and how it affected their lives. This 90-minutes is very valuable for all, very informative and touching. Whether you don't know or think you know about Vietnam, watching and listening to this panel will valuably expand your understandings.
I'm talking about good casual leather shoes and boots, and dress/dress work shoes. "Casual," of course, is relative.
Well-made examples of these should last a lifetime, and often would except that our feet increase in size somewhat with age (due to gravity).
If cheap shoes are disposable items, that's one thing, but $300-$500+ men's shoes deserve some attention and the custom-built deserve the most, for sure (for example, John Lobb's custom leather shoes cost as much as a lady's fancy handbag).
Guys with fancy jobs wear $1000+ shoes, but I would die first. Lady footwear is beyond my ken, but I overhear things about it from my daughters and it sounds insane to me. With the cost of appropriate womens' shoes you need to be a Saudi to afford your harem. (We had a fun time last year waiting in the Milan airport while Mrs. BD identified the multi-thousand dollar shoes under the black burkhas.)
Hard-work shoes, hunting boots (if resole-able) and athletic shoes (which you throw out when worn out) are different topics.
- Everybody knows that you should never wear the same pair of nice shoes two days in a row. They do not get time to dry out from your foot sweat. I often ignore that rule out of laziness.
- New shoes, I am told, should be polished and maybe waterproofed before wearing.
- Waterproofing is not a bad idea, does not damage or discolor leather (but mink oil does).
- If your feet expand a bit and you want to keep the good old shoes with the patina of age, shoe stretchers do work.
- Rule of thumb (for men's and women's footwear) generally speaking, I think, good shoes are not noticeable except to women and to gay guys but bad or ugly shoes are, and make a bad impression. You have to be either very rich or very powerful to get away with wearing bad or inappropriate clothing.
- Cleaning and shining are not just for appearance. They are for endurance. Pros do a better job (your local shoe man, or those guys in Grand Central Terminal if you ever pass through there and have a spare 20 minutes). It can be a good exercise to do it yourself: The Perfect Shoe Shine
- Good source for shoe care stuff: Shoe Care Supplies.com . Paste stuff is better than the hard waxes, it seems to me. It doesn't take much. The challenge is matching the colors.
Pic is Brooks Brothers' cordovan tassel loafers - for some people they are casual weekend shoes, and for some - like me - they are more like dress shoes but my life does not require dressy tie shoes altho I have one or two.That applies up here in Yankeeland and the Northeast US, anyway, where lizardskin boots would be an affectation and Ralph Lauren things are for wannabes. Choice of dress in general, besides appropriateness and just plain "what you are comfortable with", is part of tribal identification and signaling, like Indian headdresses.
More random shoe topics -
Most comfortable shoes for men and women? Definitely Mephisto. They might not be proper for high-level white collar work, but they are, by far, the best for comfort.
“It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,” Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said during a speech at the University of Rhode Island in November 2012.
Our urban hike just won't go away. Yesterday, Bird Dog posted pics of Trinity Church. Today I'm posting one location we didn't happen to visit. It was on the original agenda, by the time we got to Washington Square, taking a swing west would have added too much time to the walk. Spirits were high, but it seemed too much to ask. There's always next year.
As a young arrival in New York, I was single and had small amounts of cash to spend on entertainment. There were plenty of ways to find that entertainment at South Street Seaport, midtown in some of the (much more expensive) watering holes, Greenwich Village, and even portions of the West Village. In particular, The White Horse Tavern (warning - the full article, if you wish to read it, requires joining the site, but there is plenty in the portion I've linked to) was one of my favorite places to go after work on Thursday and Friday. For some reason, I never stopped in on the weekends.
Here's the place he bought in Scotland in 2007: Aultmore
I don't want nothin' from anyone, ain't that much to take Wouldn't know the difference between a real blonde and a fake Feel like a prisoner in a world of mystery I wish someone would come and push back the clock for me.
It can be simple or complex. Here's
Nearly 
The kids are going to the 
I'm talking about good casual leather shoes and boots, and dress/dress work shoes. "Casual," of course, is relative.
I post enough recipes that I like, and that I like to make. It's your turn for the most American of foods.