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.
Fancy folk have Chubb and the others, but good old Allstate has been a boon to our family over the past few months. Also, pleasant, helpful, and easy to deal with. Eager to please.
A near-total car crash and, this week, a burst water pipe in the basement. Whatever it is, they send people to fix and repair every mess, like the Cat in the Hat.
We have their Homeowner's, their Auto, their Business, and their Umbrella. Worth it.
We have been expensive to them this year, but 25 years with only one (also a basement water pipe) previous claim. Hope they don't cancel us. Thanks, Allstate.
Ted Cruz is the only candidate, Democrat or Republican, who understands and is prepared to address the twin dangers of executive overreach and the stealth statism of regulatory bloat.
Maybe Ted Cruz is more appealing than I thought. He is not warm and cuddly. He is incisive. Not a lightweight. Maybe he deserves more attention than just as a placeholder. (h/t Schneiderman)
How
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Donald Trump won’t like it if he loses despite entering the convention with the largest number of first ballot votes, but if that happens to Trump, he won’t be the first GOP front-runner to fall behind in the course of convention balloting. It has not happened recently, not since 1940, but Donald Trump would actually be the 23rd of 22 men who had exactly the same experience (two of them, John Sherman and James G. Blaine, twice).
The more the West indulges its humanitarian sentiments–that is, its squeamishness in the face of absolute evil–the more calamities will befall Muslim civilians, because Muslim leaders from Raqqa to Ankara have learned to weaponize horror. Staging humanitarian catastrophes in order to blackmail the West has succeeded for the most part.
"My thinking now is that the election is likely to be a blowout landslide, somewhere between the elections of 1980 and 2008 in scope. I just don’t know which way."
The seal population around the Cape and the Islands has rebounded remarkably since the Sea Mammal Protection Act. Seals attract Great Whites, and when they are around the seals get out of the pool.
The aerial video is stunning witness. Watch it. In summer, we often swim amongst these big guys, up to 600 lbs. Not cuz we want to, but because they seem to like to swim over to say hi.
Michael worries about dying old mill towns in upstate New York and similar places and wonders why the party of free enterprise doesn’t have more to offer people dwelling in them. He imagines a disability fraudster dwelling in Garbutt, N.Y., and asks what we (we conservatives) are going to do for him and his sad little town. (Among the many dishonest responses to my piece were those treating the addled fraud artist in Garbutt as my hostile literary invention rather than Michael’s sympathetic one; no doubt Michael will have a lot to answer for the next time he visits the Greater Garbutt Chamber of Commerce.) My answer is that if there’s nothing for you in Garbutt but penury, dysfunction, and addiction, then get the hell out.
Singer, actress. "The American Beauty." She was a 200-pounder in this photo.
One of her husbands was Diamond Jim Brady. Diamond Jim liked jewels and food. Probably had Binge Eating Disorder, but all prosperous guys over-ate in those days.
It's all the rage these days, and rightly so. "Over the hill" is just a state of mind. There is a 92 year-old dude who does weights at my gym. Use it or lose it.
That good old guy must love life to pursue it so vigorously.
The reason for strength conditioning is to build or maintain functionality. That means preventing the muscle and bone loss of inertia and age, strengthening joints, improving posture, improving balance, enhancing nerve-to-muscle reactivity, and building or maintaining power and energy for daily life and for sports and recreation.
Strength training is not the same as "body-building." Normal strength-training by ordinary people like us is not meant to build bulging muscles. However, with each increment of improvement and with proper diet your naked self will look and feel a bit less like a weak slob with flab and sagging things, and that is a nice side benefit.
Should a healthy adult male be able to do a minimum of ten push ups and ten pull-ups? Of course. Sturdy males can do far more.
A comment about time efficiency in strength conditioning - and fitness in general - below the fold -
UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour, who insisted that there’s no difference between the once supposedly unassimilable Irish Catholics and East European Jews and the new Pushtun goatherds and Mogadishu hoodlums. It’s one of the curious aspects of self-proclaimed “multiculturalists” that they are, essentially, uniculturalists: they think everybody’s the same. But sometimes history doesn’t repeat itself — and Emma Lazarus’ lousy poem is an even lousier guide to social policy.
...the long-belated saga of the Minnesota Coronary Experiment may also make a broader point about how science gets done: it suggests just how difficult it can be for new evidence to see the light of day when it contradicts widely held theories.
What strikes me about it is the utter pointlessness of it. The endless posing and posturing has no end because it has no end point. A faithful Christian at least has the serenity of his communion with God. The Muslim, at the click of the detonator, knows he will be with Allah. Climate change fanatics have nothing but a hopeless misery. Even if all of their policies are enacted, nothing comes of it.
Problem is that the climate moonbats discredit worthy efforts at habitat conservation and the like. Serious air pollution, for example, almost eliminated in the US. That's good.
A bunch of government lawyers can mess up your life for a long time, even if they are wrong. Makes more sense for a business to not be a hero - just shut up and pay the extortion.
White Privilege Conference 
YouTube and THE SECRET RULES OF THE INTERNET - 
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Singer, actress.
It's all the rage these days, and rightly so. "Over the hill" is just a state of mind. There is a 92 year-old dude who does weights at my gym. Use it or lose it.
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