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.
It's party season. Everybody has his favorite Eggnog recipe. I prefer Eggnog made with Kentucky bourbon rather than rum, brandy, etc.
Here's the correct, home-made version from Alton Brown. However, I tend to be lazy and to do the wrong thing - to buy the pre-made, and fuss it up with the fixins. Lots of fresh-grated nutmeg.
My Dad always made it the correct way at Christmastime, but I think he made it way too strong, Brit-style like punch. It had a punch.
... the media had zippo to do with uncovering many of the major scandals that hit the Obama White House. Were we naive enough to count only on the media to uncover scandal, we would not know about the IRS, the myriad of surveillance improprieties, the truth about Benghazi, Fast and Furious, or the Clinton Foundation. Moreover, instead of uncovering scandal, our media did everything to ensure these inconvenient truths couldn't cripple Obama.
. . . want to make America great again? Then let us be America. Preside over a government that stops telling us how to do it, that pretends its “progressive” pieties are “our values.” Preside over a government that does well the few things we need it to do and gets reacquainted with its limitations. Do that and there will be no need in 2020 to explain how you can eke an electoral victory out of a popular minority
I have been assigned - again - the task of running the bar for the fancy Christmas cocktail party of one of Mrs. BD's lady clubs next weekend. It's a formal, traditional sort of group, dressy but not black tie. The husbands are very fine and jolly guys most of whom I have known for years and are happy to pitch in with tending the bar for 1/2 hour when asked, so the manpower part is easy. The bar generally needs only 2 guys at a time.
There will be tons of excellent "heavy hors d'oevres", aka supper, with desserts - but that's not my department.
My past experience with this group, which will be around 100-120 people for 2-3 hrs, is that most ladies are light drinkers (a couple of glasses of wine or a couple of beers), most guys will do a bit more, and there is a subset can get cranky without vodka or Scotch. I want everybody to be happy but I like to keep it simple.
Thus my provisional shopping list:
Bag of limes and lemons A few bags of ice Case of Coke Case of Diet Coke 1 case of Perrier 2 cases of Harpoon beer 2 cases of some other beer 1 bottle of Johnny Walker 1 bottle of Grey Goose 1 bottle of Rum 1/2 case of Prosecco 1 1/2 cases of red (which one to be determined) 1 1/2 cases of Sauvignon Blanc
Does that sound right to you? Too much? A case of wine is about 50 glasses of wine. You hate to be stingy and run out of something basic but you don't really want leftovers either. As a rough guide, I use this party site.
Recently, returning from another World Youth Day in Kracow, Poland, the Pope made the fantastic and disturbing claim that “Catholic violence” is just as much a problem as “Islamic violence”—and this right after the brutal assassination of Father Jacques Hammel by Islamist terrorists in a church in northern France. The only example of “Catholic violence” that Pope Francis could come up with was that of a baptized young man who had killed his girlfriend for clearly non-religious reasons or motives.
...
Cardinal Zen of Hong Kong recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the Pope has no understanding of Communist theory and practice, that he associates Communists exclusively with those activists and intellectuals imprisoned or killed by the military government during the “dirty war” in Argentina during the 1970’s. In a word, his vision is remarkably parochial and blind to the greatest evil of the twentieth century, a totalitarianism inspired by viciously anti-Christian ideology.
Almost every major initiative that Obama pushed has largely failed. Obamacare is a mess. He nearly doubled the national debt in eight years. Economic growth is at its slowest in decades. The reset with Russia, the Asian pivot, abruptly leaving Iraq, discounting the Islamic State, red lines in Syria, the Iran deal — all proved foreign-policy disasters.
Yet Obama has been quiet about one of the greatest economic revolutions in American history, one that has kept the U.S. economy afloat: a radical transformation from crippling energy dependency to veritable fossil-fuel independence. The United States has become the world’s greatest combined producer of coal, natural gas, and oil. It is poised to be an energy exporter to much of the world.
Stop using Republican interpretive frames like "entitlements" to describe the very things that benefit the hopeless people who just granted unfettered power to Paul Ryan and his fellow granny-starvers. If Republicans are intent on gutting Medicare, do not under any circumstances compromise to make such a fiasco slightly more palatable. This is the only way for the Democrats to recapture power at a scale significant enough to fundamentally transform the American political system. And when this moment finally presents itself, in 2022 or 2024 or 2028, Democrats must have an extraordinarily radical agenda ready to roll: A massive amnesty. Compulsory voting. The end of plurality-rule elections. A new Voting Rights Act. Sweeping criminal justice reform. Medicare for all. Higher education whose cost is truly nominal. A basic income for all Americans. A Marshall Plan for climate change.
I was working tonight, but I gather from Mrs. BD that his speech was wonderful and uplifting, humorous, half-scripted and half off the cuff, and neither Republican nor Democrat but just plain American. It takes a lot to impress Mrs. BD, especially if you are not a Conservative (which Trump is not).
It reminded some pundits of Teddy Roosevelt. Things are getting more and more interesting.
If you heard or watched that speech, what did you think?
He is a Thatcherite, a devout Catholic, and a political realist. The fact that he won the primaries by a two-third majority is but another confirmation of the gap between elitist narratives and popular feelings.
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Fillon is also an outsider because of his social conservatism and of his foreign policy realism. He is a practicing Catholic in a country where religion is mocked by the elites (Fillon is dubbed a “Catho,” the secularists’ catchword to deride church-goers). He is a faithful husband of 36 years and a father of five in a country where divorce, mistresses and affairs are de rigueur for politicians. And while he has vowed not to repeal abortion and gay marriage, he is an unabashed and proud conservative when it comes to family and to education.
They let the peasants vote. That's what happens sometimes. Peasants can be wise, politicians are mostly just clever.
Iran regime even more oppressive since nuclear deal, dissidents say
The Overhead Press (aka Military Press) stresses your shoulder muscles and your triceps, and stresses your abs for stabilization. I can not do these because of an old shoulder injury (skiing accident). I can do them on a machine with light weights, though, but even then it is painful.
What is left is the reality that the Democratic Party has been propped up by the personal likability of President Obama that pushed them past the finish line in 2008 and 2012. Now they are grappling with what is next in a post-Obama landscape.
It only takes a couple of minutes to fix up some fresh cranberry sauce for chicken or game. Before stores run out, grab a few bags and just pack them in the freezer.
Throw a few handfuls of frozen berries in your Saturday morning pancake mix too. Dynamite.
... in modern Western science, the whole concept of life is so mechanical that, if you look closely, not even people are supposed to be anthropomorphized. Emotional, holistic terms such as love, sorrow, and concern have no place in an impoverished language of chemical transactions at the micro level and selection pressures at the macro. Not that chemical transactions and selection pressures are not essential influences, because of course they are — but from our current knowledge of them, they are acutely inadequate to describing the subtleties of lived experience.
This framework goes back to Descartes, whose dualistic universe of absolute mind at one end and absolute matter at the other admitted nothing in between. Indeed, Descartes reasoned that since animals are not rational, they are not conscious, and since they are not conscious, they cannot even be aware of pain; their piteous howls during the horrible experiments he conducted on them were to him mere reflex, the unfelt expression of material reactions akin to the shrieking of a teakettle.
Re Trump, I am not a big fan but I am amused by it all. A Pres does not need to be your best pal. He has made some good appts. Yes, he should give Mittens a job. Romney needs a job. Take one more guy off unemployment in this economy.
Thornton: "If the delicate millennial Eloi were really interested in reforming
their team instead of indulging phony moral exhibitionism, they would
start with the Democrat party."
Supermarkets are packed with aggressive white supremacists, Esp. Whole Foods. They hassle me all the time cuz of my Hillary button. Hey, she could still win.
It's still raptor migration time here. Seen overhead in the past three days: Bald Eagle, Red Tail, Rough Legged, and a couple of Sharpies. One of the Sharpies was eating a pigeon on my front lawn. This guy yesterday seemed to be enjoying the smell of my grilling turkey (OK, it's probably a Cooper's Hawk. We ararely see, much less get to photo, a Cooper's):
How did they celebrate their first year and their first harvest in the fall of 1621, when they sat down with their Cape Cod Wampanoag friends?
"Deer and wildfowl." What else? We don't know. I don't think they had the grain to brew their beloved beer until the next year. What we do know is that these folks had been through a nasty voyage in a rotten, leaky boat, landed at the wrong place - remember, they were headed to the Dutch New Amsterdam area - which was better idea. They managed to scrape out a living, thanks to the Indian's education (these folks weren't farmers, anyway) as they watched their family members die.
Only 53 of the original 104 immigrants survived until fall, 1621. Then they gave thanks to God. Thanks for what? Thanks, I think, to God for being there with them through thick and thin.
It's always been a wonder to me that they didn't all catch the next flight from Logan back to Leyden. Trust in God is strong stuff, and many of us are not strong enough to handle the powerful grip of God. Thanksgiving is about putting our faith in the Lord, or trying to - and nothing else. God Bless us, and America, please, and make us Pilgrims in our own time, in our own ways.
It's party season. Everybody has his favorite Eggnog recipe. I prefer Eggnog made with Kentucky bourbon rather than rum, brandy, etc. 
Pic borrowed from 
A beginner’s guide to
Boycott
Planning for retirement? 
It only takes a couple of minutes to fix up some fresh cranberry sauce for chicken or game. Before stores run out, grab a few bags and just pack them in the freezer.
Re-posted -