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.
I got so sick and tired of renting the Rug Doctor machine from the supermarket, on weekends, for our carpets that we finally tried Stanley Steemer.
Great guys, very pleasant, professional, hard-working, quick, and cost-effective. Turns out they clean and wax floors too, clean tile floors and walls, clean grout and re-grout tile - and even install tile as needed. They did the carpets, cleaned and waxed the wood floors, cleaned all the tile and re-grouted as needed. They use powerful machines.
How handy is that? I am not afraid of work, but I do have a day job, after all, so I can't do everything.
We told them we need them to come once a month. That's a load off my mind, and one more hassle removed from my otherwise beautiful life.
In a short while, every room on ye olde farm will be ready for royal guests at short notice. A home should not be otherwise.
For those of you who, like I, enjoy “world music” it is saddening that a major venue in San Diego which largely targets children is sponsoring pro-Palestinian propaganda from a virulent anti-Israel, anti-US group operating under the misleading name Middle East Children’s Alliance. The WorldBeat Cultural Center sits on San Diego City property in Balboa Park and is funded by some prestigious foundations and corporate sponsors. This misuse of their funds, and reputations, deserves direct protests.
The Oakland Museum of Children’s Art had dropped this exhibit in October 2011, a Board member explaining:
[T]he museum canceled the show “because we lacked a formal policy for sensitive content and because were not confident that we had the resources to deal with the numerous concerns we received regarding the exhibit.”
Rabbi James Brandt, CEO of the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay, was more direct in a joint statement with East Bay’s Jewish Community Relations Council and the Anti-Defamation League:
“A biased, one-sided perspective filled with depictions of violence has no place in a community-based museum dedicated to serving young children, including 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds,” the statement read….
Even without the stars of David identifying the soldiers [which IDF soldiers do not wear], Brandt maintained, the violent images were “inappropriate for this age group.” As for the Jewish star, he said, “for children in our region… their immediate association is not with the State of Israel, but [with] their classmates who have Jewish stars on their T-shirts from our Jewish camps and after-school programs.”
The exhibit is by the anti-Israel, anti-US Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA). The drawings were done under the supervision of “therapists” hired by MECA. Some art experts doubt the drawings were even done by children, or they were touched up by adults. MECA is the funder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which sends young protestors to Israel to oppose its security fencing made necessary by Palestinian cross-border terror attacks and participated in the May 2010 flotilla from Turkey to Gaza. MECA also raised funds for George Galloway’s “Viva Palestine” convoy. MECA’s Executive Director wrote “I think the Jewish State is racist to the core.” MECA states its goal: “We educate North Americans about children in the region and the brutal impact of US foreign policy on their lives.”
As with other drawings by Gaza children, the viewpoint is one of victimization and hatred as inculcated by all the official Hamas propaganda aimed at Gazan children. For example, a Gaza TV show for children tells them to slaughter all Jews, and another uses a rabbit to say he “will finish off the Jews and eat them, Allah willing."Another encourages children of the glory of death for Allah in attacking Jews. And another Hamas childrens program: “Khaibar, Khaibar, oh Jews!" in reference to Muhammad's battle against Jews in the year 629.
Here’s a sample of the exhibit at the San Diego World Beat Cultural Center :
There are house-style differences between the New Yorker, which still features its trademark cartoons, and Vanity Fair and Esquire, and Time and Newsweek, but they are all basically the same. The same essays repeating the same views for the same audience; all of them fighting for that small slice of urban yuppie audience which DVR's Mad Men, has Michael Chabon novels on the shelf that it hasn't read yet and is forty percent gay.
The real 1 percent is right there. That small elitist fragment of America which writes books for itself, makes TV shows for itself and writes outraged articles for itself about a tiny 1 percent elite that runs everything. It has its own books, its own TV shows, its own music, its own stores, its own stations, its own brands and now it has most of the magazines to itself. It's a claustrophobic village raising its own inner child with inane repetitions of its narrow-minded views.
Now we have a stake in protecting crab populations for the future. Because we aren't in such a race against the clock, we're able to get more young and female crabs we don't keep back into the ocean unharmed. When we find an area has too many juvenile crabs, there's time to go somewhere else instead.
Friends with benefits? Prostitution? Quasi-prostitution? Arranged dating? Men do need their animal comforts and pleasures. Where does one draw the lines in these definitions?
If you don’t think that a little ‘ol blogger like me can take on and win against a trillion-dollar industry’s corporate welfare scheme and its political allies, then read on. I won through careful research and persistence. Then I lost once the allies of the giants of the tourism industry came to power in 2008. But, this tale displays that individual bloggers can have major impacts on legislation, now more than ever as the alternative media has grown and the 2012 elections may turn the tide in Washington.
Unless you are a foreign tourist entering the US, paying $14 to enter, you probably haven’t heard of Brand USA. Today, the Washington Free Beacon describes “The Cronyism Board” of this public-private partnership to promote tourism to the US: “It is governed by an 11-member board. John Connor, director of the Office of White House Liaison at the United States Department of Commerce, appointed the board members….All of the board members Connor has appointed have donated to Democrats and Democratic organizations almost exclusively, if they have donated at all.”
Briefly, the impetus for Brand USA came from the giants of US corporations, immensely profitable already from tourism. Rather than use their own deep pockets to promote tourism, they sought additional taxpayer and tourist funding for their advertising.
On the differences between men and women... Let's say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine.
He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.
And then, one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud...
The United States symbolises the worst ideologies in the world: growth and freedom… Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. The best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and where government would prevent any economic growth… A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life have been organised on the basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her… Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromising control of the individual citizen.
Yes, human desires sure do complicate the lives of those whose main human desire is power.
News you (ladies) can use: 80% of women are wearing the wrong bra size, resulting in discomfort, floppiness, and sub-optimal appearance. Maggie recomments the Nordstrom bra-fitters.
The common pattern: project forward a current trend to an extreme, while assuming other things don’t change much, and then recommend an action which might make sense if this extreme change were to happen all at once soon.
How the Recovery Went Wrong - Of the 11 recoveries in the last 60 years, this one is at or near the bottom in job growth and every other economic indicator.
An amusing article, and at least 50% accurate: Basta la Pasta!
In the USA, Italian food can range from the sublime to the inedible. Same thing in Italy. Fortunately, Mrs. BD and I know where to go and what to order, in both countries.
Even Domino's pizza beats the Italian stuff 90% of the time. And, as I have said many times, pasta with red sauce is only fit to be eaten to prevent death by starvation. They don't even like it in Italy, except in Naples which is not exactly known for haute cuisine.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandates that all hospitals, including Jewish or Moslem, must serve pork instead of beef. Pork is lower in fat and calories, thus better for health, and less expensive than beef, thus better for healthcare spending. HHS opines that only synagogues and mosques may continue to ban pork from their menus.
Can you hear the uproar? Jews and Muslims are required to break their basic dietary laws, rooted in many centuries, to obey a federal mandate. Every civil libertarian and all faiths would protest.
Yet, except for the support of Orthodox Jews, who actually have less stringent prohibitions than Catholics, and the Southern Baptist Convention, most groups which otherwise defend individual and group liberties are silent in backing Catholics in challenging the ObamaCare mandate to provide contraception and abortion by their non-church charities.
One needn’t oppose the president’s re-election or endorse the Vatican’s stance on contraception in order to understand that a ruling against the church would grant the government nearly unlimited power to restrict religious freedom. In the weeks and months ahead as this issue continues to be debated, it is vital that more faith groups rally around the church and make it clear to the administration and the courts that when it comes to protecting First Amendment rights, the church does not stand alone.
You might speak with your pastor or rabbi and ask them not to be silent when Catholics' constitutional right is abridged. Silence is not moral.
(Note Added: There is no such HHS mandate to serve pork, at least yet. It is plausible because of the extent and nature of other ObamaCare intrusions into personal choice and beliefs.)
There is now a grey pallor that seems to engulf this once thriving corridor. The houses that were built in the 1950s and 1960s and kept up by middle class families that took pride in their neighborhoods have been deteriorating for years. The homes are in disrepair. The bricks have grown dingy from years of pollution buildup and lack of power washing. Porches and awnings are sagging. The woodwork hasn’t seen a paint brush since the 1970s. Trash is strewn in the streets. Gardens are no longer tended to. Lawns are overgrown with weeds. The inhabitants of these neighborhoods either don’t care or don’t have the financial wherewithal to maintain their homes. On the current trajectory, these once proud neighborhoods will eventually resemble the 30 Blocks of Squalor.
It's not lack of wherewithal. If you can afford a car, an iPhone, and a big flat screen TV, you can afford a few gallons of paint, a scraper, and a paintbrush from Home Depot. It's just about old-fashioned degeneracy, ignorance, or sloth, which will always be with us in some proportion of the population. We have to accept that reality. For heaven's sake, we have prostitutes in Hartford getting Disability checks for anxiety disorders. It's their loss more than it is mine. If you wish to live a life without dignity, have at it; I won't let you starve, but don't expect any respect from me. A young gal with Down Syndrome works every day at my market. She is not on Disability.
I don't know whether Mr. Welton is right or wrong about government benefits enabling parastic or feral subcultures, but I do think he is correct that the middle class feels that all they can do about it via government is to give them some money and hope they will live, and stay, drunk or stoned or just unmotivated, far away from them. "NIMBY, s'il vous plait. I want a pleasant, peaceful life, and work hard to have one."
Funny, the middle class feels the same way about feral government, most of the time. Except when they are getting freebies. Never dare take freebies from the middle class.
It's because of "jumping genes." These genes may be residues of viral genes which, over millions of years of cellular evolution, inserted themselves into the DNA of cellular forms of life.
Ed Morrisey ably sums up the intimidation campaign by a convicted murderer, Brett Kimberlin, against several bloggers. As Michelle Malkin writes: “This is a convoluted, ongoing nightmare that combines abuse of the court system, workplace intimidation, serial invasions of privacy, perjury, and harassment of family members.” Read it all.
A highly notable issue, aside from that the legacy media has failed to take up the matter, is that the funding for this campaign comes from some of the most-darling of liberal-left foundations (see this list, and some more background on Kimberlin's trail of BS), using the Tides Foundation as their beard. The Tides Foundation acts as a secret conduit to leftist causes for donors, that include George Soros and Teresa Hines-Kerry as well as numerous other liberal foundations but also benefits from grants from the US government. See here.
Morrisey and Malkin and many other bloggers call for a free speech blogburst, of which this post is part. There is more at stake than the first amendment right to factually expose a campaign of intimidation against bloggers who have exposed Brett Kimberlin and his backers. There is the need to further expose the network of leftist donors and by example require greater transparency and accountability to their whole range of activities.
"Today, firms with more than 15 workers cannot get rid of employees even in a downturn without risking legal proceedings that can last years," reports The Economist magazine, referring to Italy's overregulated economy. "If a judge then decides the company has acted unfairly, it can be forced to rehire the worker and pay him his lost earnings
Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club, as usual, sees more clearly, deeply:
We often think that politicians know when they are misleading the public and when they are not. But there’s one other possibility. They don’t know themselves what the truth is any more. They are like a bunch of pirates who, after making the master mariner walk the plank realize they can’t read the “books of navvigashun” for the life of them. They are irretrievably lost and the only thing the pirate chieftains can do is pretend to pore over them.
The situation may be reaching the point where it has become counterproductive to listen to “the leaders” who have neither the knowledge nor skill to think or do anything definite. Perhaps recovery — when it comes — will be the result of people just doing stuff. Creating new businesses, innovating or just adapting to changed circumstances without much reference to the Big Leaders who will continue to pretend to know everything when they know nothing. Maybe the end of Peak Government has already started. The “leaders” will pronounce more and more, and they will matter less and less.
Sir John Gielgud, unforgettable in so many roles – and only he, playing a butler, could so verrry stiffly and silkily respond to Arthur’s bland set-up, “I’m going to take a bath” with such genteel contempt, “I’ll alert the media,” and then keep the rhythm building a series of quiet little comic explosions:
Arthur: Do you want to run my bath for me? Hobson: It’s what I live for. Arthur: I just broke up with Linda. Hobson: I can’t imagine why; a little tart like that could save you a fortune in prostitutes.
Central to its doctrine of embattled and threatened virtue is the notion of what Lionel Trilling has called the avant-garde’s “adversary” relation to the larger (bourgeois) culture in which it functions. If the institutions that now serve as conduits of avant-garde claims are no longer shy about acknowledging this adversary role, it is because the role itself has acquired an unquestioned historical prestige.
We have all been brought up on the legend of avant-garde martyrdom, with its celebrated episodes of tardy vindication. Nothing is more familiar to us than the literature of cautionary tales recounting middle-class resistance to and stupidity about “advanced” artistic innovation. The history of modern art abounds in such tales, which are often chronicles of genuine suffering when they are not mere comedies of cultural manners. As a result, the tendency of modern critical thought, whether sympathetic to avant-garde objectives or openly hostile to them, has been to accept without question an essential, perhaps even a metaphysical, antagonism separating high culture from the middle class—an antagonism readily confirmed in our guilty feelings over the crowded roster of abused and misunderstood genius.
Kramer was wonderful. There is nothing new under the sun. Vanity of vanities: all is vanity. Call me bourgeois - I don't care -Trilling, Kramer, and Gombrich are my kind of bourgeois guys. Sticks and stones...
Heath Hens were extremely common in their habitat during Colonial times, but being a gallinaceous bird, they were hunted by settlers extensively for food. In fact, many have speculated that the Pilgrims' first Thanksgiving dinner featured Heath Hens and not wild turkey. By the late 18th century, the heath hen had a reputation as poor man's food for being so cheap and plentiful; Thomas Winthrop related that they could be found on the Boston Common and that servants would sometimes bargain with a new employer for not being given Heath Hen for food more often than 2 or 3 days a week.
...if feckless men in Fishtown are not unmanly, what are they? Murray invites us to choose our own words; I suggest “remittance men.” In nineteenth-century Britain, sons, brothers, and uncles whose disreputable conduct made them an embarrassment to their families sometimes received an offer they couldn’t refuse: “Move to Capetown, Jamaica, or Tasmania, and—provided you never come back to England—we will send you a monthly remittance. It won’t be a lot, but you’ll be able to live without working.”
Do the residents of Belmont (median household income $95,000) and countless other communities like it have a similar understanding of Fishtown’s feckless men? The Belmonts of America help fund the various government payments that keep neighborhoods like Fishtown afloat. In return for remitting to the tax man, Belmont, Massachusetts (83.5 percent white, 11.1 percent Asian, 3 percent Hispanic, and 1.8 percent black) gets a measure of isolation from the troubles and failures of urban neighborhoods.
Once health insurance can be mandated, Congress will inevitably find that other products or services are equally essential to national well-being. Future Courts will either have to find all such purchase mandates to be legal, in which case there is no limiting principle, or they will have to pick and choose, which means an endless exercise in policy-making.
A key element to this fairy tale is the idea that the journalistic icons of the time, like CBS’s Walter Cronkite, were Olympian figures who would never stoop to play favorites or inject ideology into the news.
Obama orgasmatron photo via 
Who is the better steward of the land: a robber, a plunderer, a squatter, a renter, or an owner?
Friends with benefits? Prostitution? Quasi-prostitution? Arranged dating? Men do need their animal comforts and pleasures. Where does one draw the lines in these definitions? 
Modern dog breeds 
After I read this guest post at Zero Hedge, 
From 
Once a common bird in New England and the Eastern seaboard but now gone the way of the Passenger Pigeon.