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.
Marco Rubio: Riding to the Immigration Rescue - Marco Rubio, Florida's GOP senator, unveils his reform ideas to 'modernize' the system and put illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship.
Whether you agree with his ideas or not, he deserves credit for taking the initiative.
3:15 As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,
3:16 John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
3:17 His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."
3:21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened,
3:22 and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."
A couple of years ago, on Lago Maggiore in northern Italy, my son and wife ate gelati and sat on the steps at night and listened to the choir rehearsing in the sanctuary. The structure on the right is the baptistery. (My photo)
Boring, unless you want to spend two hours looking at Jessica Chastain's quivering lips.
Argo, equally tedious.
Two movies in a row that kept me checking my watch to see how much longer I had to sit there. Much rather read a book. Why do I bother going to the movies? Well, to be a good husband.
You get a mess of big old quahogs or sea clams (steam open and then chop them up), or some chunks of fresh Codfish, Haddock, or Monkfish - or just a bag of frozen corn.
The base of your Yankee chowder is the same, whether Clam, Cod, or Corn. See Grandma's Corn Chowder for the base (substitute other ingredients for the corn).
You can add a little thickener if you want, corn starch or whatever. Not necessary, though.
My Mom would serve chowda with Bisquick biscuits. Good memories: Mom cooking up a chewy, clam-packed chowder with the basket of quahogs we kids had harvested from the low-tide mud off Great Island in Wellfleet.
Fellow parents: Our job is to build sustaining memories and traditions as best we can, isn't it?
You haven't heard of Peter Buck, PhD, but it's a story. Buck was an nuclear engineer, I believe for GE in Bridgeport, CT, and teaching an engineering class at the University of Bridgeport when he loaned a bright and hard-studying local student in one of his classes named Fred DeLuca $1000 to open a submarine sandwich shop to help him pay his way through college after the kid's family ran short of cash. That was 1965.
(I remember that first shop. I think it said "Submarines" on the sign, and I wondered what that was. I had had "grinders," but never a submarine. Just a 12" deli sandwich with lots of good stuff in it, as it turns out.)
A couple of years later Buck lent DeLuca a little bit more to open a second shop in Bridgeport, even though the first was not too profitable.
The privately-owned Subway now has 30,000 franchised restaurants worldwide. I don't believe that Dr. Buck ever worked for Subway or made any substantial further investments in the business but, based on their original deal, DeLuca and Buck have shared the profits ever since, 50-50. No lawsuits.
If you ever wondered why the Subway bags say "Doctor's Associates Inc" on them, it refers to Dr. Buck and his young engineering student Fred DeLuca, who remains the President of the Subway chain's corporation, Doctor's Associates.
The Buck and DeLuca families both still live in Fairfield County, each in fairly modest and quiet ways despite their unexpected wealth. Yes, I do like those Subway sandwiches, especially the Italian combo with Swiss cheese and some jalapenos on it. Oil and vinegar on top.
Their bread is too mushy for my taste, though. As Dr. Merc suggests, experiment with their different bread varieties. Still, compared to the burger chains, Subways are a treat when on the road, and they really do use prime and fresh ingredients.
I cannot eat a whole one. Just a half at most, and save the rest for later. My skinny daughter eats the whole thing.
Bronx crime, like most urban crime, is driven by gangs. The Black Assassins, Majestic Warlocks and the Black Muslim Five Percenters are one of the 70 street gangs in New York's own Detroit. While civil rights activists call for fighting gang violence with peace treaties and afterschool programs, there are really only two things that work. Either a police state of the kind you will find in the Bronx where the cops monitor the Twitter and Facebook postings of gang members, and their text messages, or an armed population that is capable of defending itself against them.
Liberals invariably choose none of the above.
What goes on in the 40th isn't just a New York issue. It's nationwide.
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; As tumbled over rim in roundy wells Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; Selves - goes itself; myself it speak and spells, Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
I say more: the just man justices; Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces; Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is - Christ - for Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his To the Father through the features of men's faces.
Long-time readers of Maggie's know what a fan I am of Hopkins and his "sprung rhythm." Like everything else we post on Saturday Verse, it must be read out loud or it is wasted. Hopkins uses odd accent marks. The gloomy, sexually-conflicted Jesuit produced some wonderful pearls for God but, unfortunately, burned everything he had written before he entered the seminary, so we don't have too much of his stuff.
There are some grim aspects to her report from the front lines of the follow-your-impulses approach to life, but, in the end, I have to comment that I think it's just great that, in America, there is the freedom and opportunity to construct a life any way one chooses.
As long as I do not have to end up supporting it, that is. Despite all of her opportunities, I fear we all may end up supporting her in her old age, if she achieves it. True bohemians are supposed to die young-ish, of TB, cirrhosis, drug overdose, AIDS, broken heart, or other such romantic maladies:
This is entertaining, but the alert and fast-talking Ben Shapiro makes one disputative error which might seem minor, but is not. His error was in answering the question "Why does anyone need an assault rifle?"
The right answer would be "I don't know what your definition of an assault rifle is, but nobody has to justify his wants in America. It's a free country. Piers, why do you need a polluting Town Car and driver to bring you to work?"
When white kids are killed, it's a catastrophe. When young black gangbangers die in Chicago, it's a non-story. The more I listen to all the hysteria, the more I want an AR-15 to play with even though I tend to prefer more aesthetic, old-school firearms, with wood in them. It appears that they are on back-order anyway.
Just had to repost the Hello Kitty AR-15. I would not mess with this pleasant lady:
They called it "Beef Stew" because I don't think they put any wine in it. Mom served it on rice or on slices of white bread.
Good for the cheapest cut of beef you can find because it will tenderize any cut, and the poorest cuts have the most flavor.
It probably tasted similar to that Dinty Moore dog-food-tasting canned thing, because it had no bacon, no garlic, no wine, etc. Tasted good at the time, though.
A more up-to-date recipe for a crock pot is not too bad: Crock Pot Beef Stew With Red Wine. Gets closer to a real Boeuf Bourguignon.
As the politically active Muslim population in France continues to swell, and as most Muslims vote for Socialist and leftwing parties, conservative parties will find it increasingly difficult to win future presidential elections in France.
The right of the people to keep and bear arms is an extension of the natural right to self-defense and a hallmark of personal sovereignty.
His focus on natural rights is the main issue. In my big-picture view, American citizens do not have delimited rights, but government does have delimited powers over the citizen. Neither the "common good" nor the "greater good," however construed, are citizens of the US.
In non-American history, the masses and peasants were forbidden ownership of arms (back when the penetrating weapon of choice was the sword). America was, and remains, different, revolutionary.
Governments are always uncomfortable with an armed populace. Canada, which just gave up on its program of national firearm registration, should not have been surprised to discover that a giant and costly registry of honest gun owners was of no use at all.
That's the Lefty mantra this week, re firearms. So let's ban cars, which are far more deadly. Or urban gangs and urban drug gangs, who do, by far, most of the killing in the US with illegally-possessed handguns.
If it only saves one life, maybe we shouldn’t ban handguns because one of them was used Monday night in Ohio to save two lives and may help take a robber off the streets.
Mind you, I am entirely in favor of banning firearms, or any other weapons including baseball bats, from violent criminals and the criminally insane. However, that is already the law. Crims ignore laws, obviously, worldwide. Criminalizing the law-abiding seems one more example of A nation formed by geniuses and run by idiots.
A rational government would want the law-abiding armed, and the crims disarmed. I happen to believe that our government wants me disarmed. Me, who have been burglarized four times, held up at gunpoint once, threatened with death once, have had an armed home invader running through the area recently, and have never harmed anybody who did not deserve it - and never with a firearm but only with words.
When government and police give up guns, and government officials and celebrities and newspaper offices give up their firearm protection, and security guards begin carrying squirtguns, and the crims give up their guns and we establish the Peaceable Kingdom where the lion lies down with the lamb, then we can talk.
Until then, Maggie's HQ is defended with legal citizen arms just as Mayor Bloomberg and the President are. That's how honest country folk think, who cannot afford security guards and have no gendarmes for many miles. In the country, one must be one's own gendarme. That's the American way. I grew up with guns around. Just tools, like all the others. We kept a .22 revolver in the kitchen drawer with the pliers and screwdrivers. My Mom shot a roaming Copperhead with it one time, when a little one was outdoors in a basinette.
I have written about the illusion of a state of Happiness in the past here. In doing so, I have always pointed out that it's a term without a meaningful definition. However, it has always seemed to me that happiness implies, for some, an imaginary infantile state in which all wants and needs are met rather than the state of stress, difficulty, and challenge which many of us seek.
For a simple example, I have a friend who never feels "happier" than when struggling for hours in a fruitless effort to master a Chopin piano piece.
Transient joys and delights certainly occur, as can periods of contentment with their implication of acceptance of, or resignation to, the limits of reality.
Leszek Kołakowski poses the question Is God Happy? (h/t Althouse) as a way to reflecting about the human capacity for happiness. He says:
Happiness is something we can imagine but not experience. If we imagine that hell and purgatory are no longer in operation and that all human beings, every single one without exception, have been saved by God and are now enjoying celestial bliss, lacking nothing, perfectly satisfied, without pain or death, then we can imagine that their happiness is real and that the sorrows and suffering of the past have been forgotten. Such a condition can be imagined, but it has never been seen. It has never been seen.
Kolakowski clearly adopts the definition of happiness to which I alluded earlier, ie, the serene absence of any disturbing thoughts or feelings. Sounds more like a mindless beach vacation to me than something anybody would aspire to for more than a few days. Sounds like heroin.
Regarding the question re God's happiness, it's an absurd question. God is not human.
You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... You can get arrested for expired tags on your car but not for being in the country illegally.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... Your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more of our money.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... A seven year old boy can be thrown out of school for calling his teacher "cute" but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school is perfectly acceptable.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... The Supreme Court of the United States can rule that lower courts cannot display the 10 Commandments in their courtroom, while sitting in front of a display of the 10 Commandments.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... Children are forcibly removed from parents who appropriately discipline them while children of "underprivileged" drug addicts are left to rot in filth infested cesspools of a crackhouse. ==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... Hard work and success are rewarded with higher taxes and government intrusion, while some slothful, lazy behavior is rewarded with EBT cards, WIC checks, Medicaid, subsidized housing, and free cell phones.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... The government's plan for getting people back to work is to provide 99 weeks of unemployment checks (to not work).
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... Being self-sufficient is considered a threat to the government.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... Politicians think that stripping away the constitution is really protecting the rights of the people.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... The rights of the Government come before the rights of the individual.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... You can write a post like this just by reading the news headlines.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... You pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big screen TV while your neighbor defaults on his mortgage (while buying iPhones, TV's and new cars) and the government forgives his debt and reduces his mortgage (with your tax dollars).
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... Being stripped of the ability to defend yourself makes you "safe".
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... You have to have your parents signature to go on a school field trip but not to get an abortion.
==================================== You know you live in a Country run by idiots if... An 80 year old woman can be stripped searched by the TSA but a Muslim woman in a burka is only subject to having her neck and head searched.
One of Myers’s recurring themes is the ways in which the dumbing down of the general culture has infected American Christianity and conservatism. These are two spheres where we might expect the work of “preserving cultural treasures” to be taken up. Yet wander into a Mass or worship service in any suburban Catholic or Protestant church and you’ll hear “praise songs” that might have been lifted from Sesame Street or, if the service is High Church, the soundtrack of Phantom of the Opera. It’s hard to believe this is the same religion that inspired Bach and Palestrina, whose choral works are no more familiar to the average pastor or parishioner than the chants at a Kikuyu circumcision ceremony. The liturgy, what’s left of it, is either pedestrian or absurd. (The Shepherd who used to maketh you to lie down in green pastures will now, if you’re a Catholic, “in verdant pastures give you repose.”) Among clergy no less than the laity, a desire for beauty and reflection is deemed prissy and dull.
You get a mess of big old quahogs or sea clams (steam open and then chop them up), or some chunks of fresh Codfish, Haddock, or Monkfish - or just a bag of frozen corn. 
A freshened-up re-post:
Our friend
As Kingfishers Catch Fire
Vintage photos of an Oklahoma square dance that capture
My photo is a Hadlyme, CT schoolhouse, built 1792.
They called it "Beef Stew" because I don't think they put any wine in it. Mom served it on rice or on slices of white bread. 
Judge Napolitano 
That's the Lefty mantra this week, re firearms. So
I have written about the illusion of a state of Happiness in the past here. In doing so, I have always pointed out that it's a term without a meaningful definition. However, it has always seemed to me that happiness implies, for some, an imaginary infantile state in which all wants and needs are met rather than the state of stress, difficulty, and challenge which many of us seek.