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.
The French Revolution proved a dry-run for the twentieth century. Fanatics systematically liquidated internal enemies. They exported revolution to those unlucky enough to share their borders. They ignored all of history and believed all of posterity would see them as the starting point. Words, such as “Committee of Public Safety,” conveyed the very opposite of their meanings. The inability to attain the glorious ends that rationalized their terrible means left just the terror.
Somewhat similar to Charter Schools, the academies get a flat rate per student, and run themselves. Britain modeled these after the Swedish system which offers an abundance of choices free from the governmental and union system.
Free choice is always a good idea. Here's another good idea: Schools That Work, Literally. Jobs in the real world.
When I was in boarding school, all students were assigned to work crews all year long. That was good, but the above is even better.
What work crews were we assigned to at school? Leaf raking and landscape clean-up, kitchen duty (dishwashing mostly), prep and maintenance of the outdoor hockey rinks, preparing and serving faculty teas and faculty meetings, working in the printing shop and the mail room, cleaning the chapel after Sunday service (we had daily chapel) and waxing the chapel floor, working in the gym's laundry room (gross), shelving books in the library, snow-shoveling, early morning newspaper delivery to faculty, preparing the skeet and rifle ranges, raising and feeding the pheasants for the shooting club, and so forth. Work crew averaged out to around 7 hrs/week. Most of the work was under the supervision of rough-edged townies who didn't mind calling us spoiled brats and sissies who didn't want to get our hands dirty. They did not give a damn about how you felt, and rightly so. That attitude was motivational and, I believe, endorsed by the administration.
Looking back, the work crews did us all a lot of good. Bear in mind, we had plenty of rich kids from NYC who had never seen the inside of a kitchen or touched a rake, much less a snow shovel. Education takes many non-formal forms.
Laura at Ace points out that most ventures fail, but the Warren-Obama theme has nothing to say about that. For example, photo below stolen from Gateway. It's the real Obama HQ for Maine:
Edward Alexander’s latest book, The State of the Jews: A Critical Appraisal, would better have been titled The State of the Anti-Jews. Edward Alexander is a professor emeritus of English as well as one of the better informed writers on matters Jewish, who brings this broad knowledge to a series of “critical appraisals” (using Matthew Arnold’s definition of “criticism”: “to see the object as in itself it really is”) that weave the continuity of anti-Jewish ignorance, indecency, inhumanity, cowardice, and illusion from the paragon of liberty John Stuart Mill to today’s Boycott, Divest, Sanction activists.
Within this fabric, Alexander interweaves the similar traits of some with Jewish blood in their veins but infected with additional self-promotional self-importance to be hostile toward what they declare is the Jewish state as their most important barrier to universalist brotherhood. In liberal-leftist illusions of socialist egalitarianism that miraculously creates wealth for all, a people and state that insists on the right to live and to do so in keeping with its traditions – and that does so successfully, no less -- is an affront that challenges these critics’ core beliefs. Many others in their social or professional circles, and reach, engage in noncritical nods of agreement or indifferent onlooking as the cavalcade of invented accusations and meritless analogies are hurled at Jews and Israel.
Judging only from this clip, what religion is Natalie Portman?
Bonus point question:
What nation was she born in?
If you didn't get it and don't mind lowering yourself to the level of dog drool by cheating and thus shredding any last vestige of self-respect, highlight the following line with the mouse for a clue:
Rep. Jesse Jackson's absence lately has been the source of much speculation and rumor. Yesterday, his mother spoke about his disappearance.
I don't know what's wrong with him, and if he is sick, I hope he gets the treatment he needs and is better soon. But his mother's words ring hollow. Is she saying that her son can't get up in the morning because he didn't get what he wanted?
There are plenty of things I wanted. I thought I'd be a senator, too. I thought I'd be a fireman, an astronaut and a pro soccer player. But I still get up in the morning and do my job, despite many disappointments in life.
People need privacy, particularly when ill. But this is an elected official who is suffering through several scandals. Something seems amiss. One has to wonder how Democrats would handle this if it was a Republican representative who was "disappointed"?
I'm not trying to diminish a physical ailment or a (rumored) addiction. These are difficult and can require much assistance. But the idea that he's not "bouncing back" from disappointment sounds a bit like a mother excusing and rationalizing her entitled son's behaviors.
Blacks had more political power in Chicago than ever before, yet that power had no impact on the tidal wave of dysfunction that was sweeping through the largest black community in the United States. Chicago had just elected Harold Washington, the city’s first black mayor; the heads of Chicago’s school system and public housing were black, as were most of their employees; black power broker Emil Jones, Jr. represented the South Side in the Illinois State Senate; Jesse Jackson would launch his 1984 presidential campaign from Chicago. The notion that blacks were disenfranchised struck even some of Obama’s potential organizees as ludicrous. “Why we need to be protesting and carrying on at our own people?” a prominent South Side minister asked Obama soon after he arrived in Chicago. “Anybody sitting around this table got a direct line to City Hall.”
The article is deeply depressing. The concepts of planning and of delayed gratification seem to be lost. It's consistent with my theory that many or maybe most people will go feral unless raised to civilization. Lord of the Flies. Is this the product of government policy? I think so. Nobody lived this way before The Great Society, and now it has become its own multigenerational subculture.
It also seems clear to me that these teen mothers do not want husbands anyway. Why would they want to marry unreliable losers, drop-outs, or gang members? Or anybody? In my view, government can do nothing to fix what they have irretrievably broken in the name of compassion. Rich, poor, or in-between, big government programs lock people into things and inhibit change. Tragic. Another quote:
Some members of Chicago’s Left will argue against holding fathers or mothers responsible for their children. “To blame it on the family is totally unfair,” says Gwen Rice, a board member of the Developing Communities Project. “I’m tired of blaming the parents. The services for the poor are paltry; it boggles the mind. Historically, you can’t expect a parent who can’t get a job to do something that someone with resources can do. These problems have histories; there are policies that have mitigated against black progress. What needs to happen is a change in corporate greed and insensitivity.” Rice corrects my use of the term “illegitimacy”: “There are no illegitimate births,” she says.
Maybe we need laws to prevent Corporate Greed from impregnating innocent teens. And we need more government services. That would solve it all.
Insty points out that much of the financial "inequality" in the US is due to the marriage gap. Wonder of wonders, even the NYT is finally willing to discuss the forbidden topic: Two Classes, Divided by ‘I Do’. It's not news. Sen. Pat Moynihan famously warned about this decades ago, but the subject was judged to be politically incorrect.
Why is it a forbidden topic? I can think of at least two reasons. One is fear of the racial aspect, although no race has a monopoly on single motherhood. My second reason is the knee-jerk refusal to judge based on bourgeois life style choices, or some such Marxist baloney.
Even with government functioning as a modest trust fund for many, having kids outside marriage is not a recipe for a good, orderly life (from my petit bourgeois standpoint, of course). It's not mostly about income - it's about functionality, support, structure, partnership, responsibility, committment, teamwork. This is not a secret. The income part is just an extra side-effect if two people have jobs.
As best I can tell, it takes at least two people to raise kids properly. Ideally, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and close family friends around too. Nannies or babysitters if you can afford them. Tribally, in extended family and in community. Income doesn't really matter much. Kids thrive on Cheerios, Wonder Bread and baloney, macaroni and cheese, hamburgers, and Fluffernutter. I did. 6'2" and fairly strong.
The more the growing irrelevance of race in society at large, the more the desperation of those careers that cannot continue without it. Rev. Wright, Obama pastor emeritus, last week was, in Alfred Rosenberg-fashion, bemoaning evil “white DNA.” I’ll pass on the NAACP convention other than to note that the media sought to accuse Romney of racism because he had the fortitude to give his plain message to an audience without pandering.
The Associated Press reports: “President Barack Obama’s campaign has spent nearly $100 million on television commercials in selected battleground states so far, unleashing a sustained early barrage designed to create lasting, negative impressions of Republican Mitt Romney before he and his allies ramp up for the fall.” Think of it like the Confederacy’s artillery barrage on the third day of Gettysburg before Pickett’s charge — you have to in essence disable the other side before the charge begins or it's curtains.
Virtually all of the ads were viciously negative, and judging from the number of Pinocchios they’ve racked up, continually and materially false.
But it didn’t work. Romney and Obama are still deadlocked. (The AP quoted Republican operative Carl Forti: “I don’t think . . . [Obama’s] got a choice. He has to try to change the dynamic now, but the polling indicates it’s not working. He doesn’t appear to be making any headway in the polls.”)
"I'm rubber and you're glue..." Romney will never find his inner Christie, so how about Christie - "Governor Awesome"? As much as I favor Marco Rubio who is a possible future President, you are supposed to bring a large gun to a knife fight in a Chicago alley. Ex-prosecutors, rightly or wrongly, know how to take it to you. Plus people can relate to him for being a little on the heavy side. Most Americans struggle with weight.
The playbook is clear: A barrage of negative advertising to define your opponent before he can define himself; a stream of issues and events to mobilize your base; and a meticulous ground game to squeeze every last vote out of the base come November. As for the small number of voters who haven’t made up their minds already, you don’t try to argue that they’ve never had it better, but rather that the other guy is unacceptable. In the end, you win a narrow victory by default. Sure, you haven’t really confronted the country’s deepest problems. But there’ll be plenty of time to deal with them next year.
They are dying, and not very slowly. We have often posted on this topic. The reason is obvious: these churches have been co-opted, captured by soft or firm Lefties who have replaced the search for Truth for political attitudes. People want God, but they are delivering pet funerals.
I suppose you could call that one aspect of "the long march through the institutions." Non-profits and other sorts of do-gooder organizations are vulnerable to being corrupted by that sort of activism because they often attract a certain sort of person.
My Protestant church is bursting at the seams with tons of young couples and tons of little kids. I know our pastors pretty well, but have no idea what they think about any political or otherwise controversial topic. Nor do I care, because they view their job as one of saving souls through Christ and that's what they do. Lots of people hunger for that.
There are many reasons people take two hours on Sunday morning to go to church, but politics and trendy silliness are not among them.
Today... the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism. Which suggests that perhaps they should pause, amid their frantic renovations, and consider not just what they would change about historic Christianity, but what they would defend and offer uncompromisingly to the world.
Absent such a reconsideration, their fate is nearly certain: they will change, and change, and die.
From Akasie: What Ails the Episcopalians - Its numbers and coffers shrinking, the church votes for pet funerals but offers little to the traditional faithful:
General Convention is also notable for its sheer ostentation and carnival atmosphere. For seven straight nights, lavish cocktail parties spilled into pricey steakhouses, where bishops could use their diocesan funds to order bottles of the finest wines.
During the day, legislators in the lower chamber, the House of Deputies, and the upper chamber, the House of Bishops, discussed such weighty topics as whether to develop funeral rites for dogs and cats, and whether to ratify resolutions condemning genetically modified foods. Both were approved by a vote, along with a resolution to "dismantle the effects of the doctrine of discovery," in effect an apology to Native Americans for exposing them to Christianity.
Re the latter, so much for mission work, I guess. "Gee, I'm sorry we told you about Jesus"! My view of ministry is simple. Preach the Word to all, visit the sick, inspire the marrying and comfort the bereaved. Mostly, preach the Word of God. What people decide to do with the lessons should be no concern of churches.
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it. 6 There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9 The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God-- 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' " 16 From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only,who is at the Father's side, has made him known.
Greatest rock band ever? Could be. Is Let It Bleed their best record? Highly debatable.
Funny to think that Keith Richards now lives a quiet, humble, ordinary suburban life in leafy, winding road Connecticut, same as Paul Simon and many rockers and movie stars. I think many sane stars yearn for the quiet and ordinary where they can try to be relatively anonymous and to be the ordinary people they are at heart.
I'll never forget the first time I heard the Let It Bleed record. The girlfriend too, in vivid detail. However, I could say that about quite a number of pop records.
People prone to collectivist fantasies seek to escape the struggles of their present life and transport themselves to a place where mankind has triumphed over the adversities of the “mundane” to frolic like gods amongst the stars.
Now, imagine you are one of these desperate men or women, and someone promises you in a rather convincing manner that their system of social structure and governance will bring that sterling-silver-gravity-defying-Star-Trek-future to you. What would you be willing to trade for even a glimpse into the next epoch? Some, sadly, are willing to trade everything, including their freedoms...
Higher ed faculty 
Man With World's Largest Penis 
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