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.
Each chapter is the story of one man, his dilemmas, his challenges, the deaths of those close to him, his defense of his family and land. These soldiers relate vivid and compelling accounts of their lives and their experiences, including attempts to maintain their sense of humanity in the face of inner and outer battles and stresses, while still becoming better soldiers at the same time.
Email from a friend in CT: "My woods are alive with Myrtle Warblers this morning, so I thought of you." He and I share the perverse insistence of calling them Myrtle Warblers instead of their new name.
Pastor Jones should write a stage play in which he burns the Koran and mocks Islam and then apply for a government grant.
Presently, the piety of Mormon faithful is being mocked with song and dance blasphemy, but most reviewers assert that if they dare be offended they are not in on the joke. Many go out of their way to show that the stage show actually supports true piety, because play reviewers know all about true piety.
Evidently mocking a thing your neighbor loves is acceptable in the name of art, but horrific in the name of religion.
We in America have created suicidal government; the threatened federal shutdown and stubborn budget deficits are but symptoms. By suicidal, I mean that government has promised more than it can realistically deliver and, as a result, repeatedly disappoints by providing less than people expect or jeopardizing what they already have. But government can't easily correct its excesses, because Americans depend on it for so much that any effort to change the status arouses a firestorm of opposition that virtually ensures defeat. Government's very expansion has brought it into disrepute, paralyzed politics and impeded it from acting in the national interest.
Few Americans realize the extent of their dependency. The Census Bureau reports that in 2009 almost half (46.2 percent) of the 300 million Americans received at least one federal benefit: 46.5 million, Social Security; 42.6 million, Medicare; 42.4 million, Medicaid; 36.1 million, food stamps; 3.2 million, veterans' benefits; 12.4 million, housing subsidies. The Census list doesn't include tax breaks. Counting those, perhaps three-quarters or more of Americans receive some sizable government benefit. For example, about 22 percent of taxpayers benefit from the home mortgage interest deduction and 43 percent from the preferential treatment of employer-provided health insurance, says the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
"Once politics was about only a few things; today, it is about nearly everything," writes the eminent political scientist James Q. Wilson in a recent collection of essays ("American Politics, Then and Now"). The concept of "vital national interest" is stretched. We deploy government casually to satisfy any mass desire, correct any perceived social shortcoming or remedy any market deficiency...
The only reason I care about politics is because politics cares (too much) about me.
In his famous 1968 interview (the very year of protest) conducted for Sing Out! by his friends John Cohen and Happy Traum, Dylan was asked by Traum: “Do you foresee a time when you’re going to have to take some kind of a position?” Dylan answered in one word: “No.” Traum, obviously upset, argued that “every day we get closer to having to make a choice,” because, he explained, “events of the world are getting closer to us … as close as the nearest ghetto.” Dylan’s answer: “Where’s the nearest ghetto?"
When he got to the issue of the Vietnam War, Traum told Dylan: “Probably the most pressing thing going on in a political sense is the war,” and that artists like him “feel it is their responsibility to say something.” Dylan responded by telling Traum: “I know some very good artists who are for the war.” He then added that this painter he knows is “all for the war. He’s just about ready to go over there himself. And I can comprehend him.” Moreover, when Traum suggested he argue with the painter, Dylan asked, “Why should I?”
This is a man who will not be pwned, and he has never needed to be told to "Shut up and sing."
One of the better blogs to emerge over the past few years is Bookworm Room. The blogger lives deep in the blue land of Marin County, and even has to contend with a liberal leaning husband. Out of the upbringing of children and her love of America, she felt compelled to defend both from the inanities and threats that challenge both. With a law degree, and a higher degree of common sense, she writes some of the most literate and engaging commentary you could find.
Now, she has published an e-book from out of her 9000 posts, "A Secret Conservative in Liberal Land." For just $4.99, you can carry these 100,000 words of earned wisdom around with you on your Kindle or other mobile reader, and dip in and out at leisure. Whether living in Liberal Land or saner conditions, you'll be delighted. Even more delightful would be gifting a copy to your liberal friends.
When we embark on a course of action which is unconsciously driven by wishful thinking, all may seem to go well for a time, in what may be called the "dream stage". But because this make-believe can never be reconciled with reality, it leads to a "frustration stage" as things start to go wrong, prompting a more determined effort to keep the fantasy in being. As reality presses in, it leads to a "nightmare stage" as everything goes wrong, culminating in an "explosion into reality", when the fantasy finally falls apart.
We think that in prayer we speak to God, and we are not wrong to think so. But the heart of prayer is that God speaks to us. It is not God whose mind is changed by our prayer, but we ourselves, if we would but cease to speak, and would instead wait upon God, and listen to him. It is the prayer of silent expectation, whereby we who love God wait upon him, like the prophet Elijah who did not hear the Lord in the storm or the whirlwind of the earthquake, but rather in the still small voice, and he hid his face in holy fear.
Rules of Misbehavior - Dan Savage, the brilliant and foul-mouthed sex columnist, has become one of the most important ethicists in America. Are we screwed?
The man is not Ann Landers. Holding sexual pleasures and adventure as the centerpiece of life, he seems to have come up with a simple ethic: Let them know what you are doing before you do it.
It happens to me each Lent, settles over me like a dark cloud of self-scrutiny and self-reproach. It's not deliberate. It just happens to me ever since I had my eyes opened.
I am no axe-murderer, but I have my human share of sins, irresponsibilities, cruelties, lazinesses, selfishness, insensitivities, dumb rationalizations, narcissistic defenses, lies, self-indulgences, and plain old unthinking stupidities. All of the flaws.
Unlike the Psychiatric depressions, my Lenten depression, I think, is a gift of sorts. A gift from the Holy Spirit. Painful, but I would not want to medicate it away because it tells me things I need to hear. Our Christian God is a God of Truth and Grace. The Truth part can hurt. God or Grace or something holds up that dark mirror for me, and it's all true and it's all difficult.
It's like the 4th Step.
Pastors advise us to leave it all at the foot of the cross, but I have to go through the dark journey to know what the "it all" is first, and I have to say it all out loud in prayer. I view it as my annual healthy depression.
Retriever got some great shots of baby Great Horned Owls yesterday, in a nest about 25' above the ground in New England. Great Horned Owls nest early, laying their eggs while the snow flies. These babies are probably raised on delicious rats and crows, and the occasional squirrel, skunk, and house cat for variety.
The nest itself is probably a renovated crow or squirrel nest, since Great Horned Owls do not build nests themselves, as far as I know. Most likely squirrel, with all of the leaves in it.
11:1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
11:2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.
11:3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill."
11:4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, "This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it."
11:5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus,
11:6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
11:7 Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again."
11:8 The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?"
11:9 Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world.
11:10 But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them."
11:11 After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him."
from Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey,On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, by William Wordsworth, 1798:
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again: While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years. And so I dare to hope, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was When first I came among these hills, when like a roe I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams Wherever nature led: more like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved.
Entire poem below the fold - for some reason, you need to scroll down to get to the body of the poem -
I always thought it was a private, very well-funded charity abortion mill which makes a profit on its abortions, but I guess not. I guess it's like a government agency, or something. Without their help, after all, how could I possibly plan my parenthood?
Thanks, readers, for all of the comments and info - I was right that I did not understand PP
Re David Corn's predictable response to Rep. Ryans' budget proposal, Paul Ryan's "Adult" Budget, I have two questions for David:
1. Who are "the poor" who Ryan wishes to "mug"? He speaks as if they were some vast, permanent American oppressed underclass. Who, exactly, is he talking about so condescendingly? What individual people?
2. What do these "poor" want? Opportunity in a busy economy, or eternal redistribution with money on loan from China, in a downward American economy? That's the choice. I've been poor, wanted opportunity, and eventually found some through doing a very good job in a thankless workplace. Difficult, never impossible, depending on how the economy is running, and whether you are willing to do some things you do not like to do.
When I am ready to take the plunge and to live up to the Maggie's Farm ideal of being my own boss and running my own show, I will be poor again, at least for a while. I am counting on that. When that day comes, David Corn is the last guy in the world I will want concern or pity from.
It's about the lives of Israeli citizen-soldiers. 
Email from a friend in CT: "My woods are alive with Myrtle Warblers this morning, so I thought of you." He and I share the perverse insistence of calling them Myrtle Warblers instead of their new name.
From Radosh's Dy
Water is always a good choice to rehydrate after working out, 
Dylan works around China’s bosses?
Should I Bag or Mulch the Clippings?