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.
Barack Obama may win or lose the election in ten days, but, in either case, he will emerge much diminished by the sort of disgusting, mendacious, fear-mongering, low-life campaign he has run. A new low for the Presidency.
Watching the final debate, the more I considered Barack Obama's deplorably non-presidential affect and attitude; his reliance on corny, crudely-made zingers; and his almost pathological string of lies and distortions, the more it struck me that, at some level, he knows this is over. His speeches since then show an edge that belies the old “No Drama Obama” who was going to heal the bitter partisan divisions of the past.
The aura of a losing campaign is unique...
and
Romney is drawing astounding crowds at event after event – Denver's Red Rocks event was at standing-room only and over 25,000 people were turned away. This story is repeated almost daily: Romney is drawing the kind of crowds Barack Obama pulled in 2008. The momentum isn'ta bluff or a headfake; Republicans are lit up in the same way they were in 2010. It's happening in Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada and all the battleground states.
Obama is largely reduced to trawling college campuses for political jailbait, stroking the shreds of his coalition in the increasingly desperate hope of getting at least a few salvageable video clips out of each day. Big Bird, binders, and bayonets don't comprise a sweeping vision of a second Obama term and it shows. Vice-President Malaprop wanders Ohio diners, touching people's food and getting biker chicks to sit in his lap. It's a campaign in trouble, and they know it.
Over the last four years, Obama’s faithful could and did blame third parties — the banks, the rich, Bush, Congress, Israel, the tea party, the Olympic committee, etc. — for nearly all of the president’s failures. They were fighting for themselves as much as they were fighting for Obama. But many gave up the fight on October 3.
THE DETERMINISTIC GUIDANCE (PARTICULARLY THE 00Z ECMWF) SHOW PRESSURE SOLUTIONS WELL BEYOND WHAT HAS EVER BEEN OBSERVED NEAR THE NEW JERSEY/NEW YORK COAST (EVEN EXCEEDING THE 1938 LONG ISLAND EXPRESS HURRICANE) EARLY IN THE MEDIUM RANGE PERIOD.
This is what climate change looks like! The Pilgrims experienced one of these. Stock up on canned goods and batteries cigars, beer, charcoal for the grill, and gas for the chain saw. If Maggie's server is down next week, the storm will be why.
Three states form the base of Democratic political power in the United States: California, New York and Illinois. All three states are locked in an accelerating economic, demographic and social decline; all three hope that they can stave off looming disaster at home by exporting the policies that have ruined them to the rest of the country....
and
Illinois politicians, including the present President of the United States, have wrecked one of the country’s potentially most prosperous and dynamic states, condemned millions of poor children to substandard education, failed to maintain vital infrastructure, choked business development and growth through unsustainable tax and regulatory policies — and still failed to appease the demands of the public sector unions and fee-seeking Wall Street crony capitalists who make billions off the state’s distress.
Most recent NOAA storm prediction for the Northeastern US here.
Looks like they predict a major Nor'easter fueled by Hurricane Sandy. The dramatic prediction of perfect storm conditions will likely be wrong but heck, it's time to get your boat out of the water now anyway.
...fasten your seat belt, because the Democrats are about to pull out every stop in their desperate greed to hang on to unearned wealth and political power.
Everything that the West has done to appease Muslims has worked as well as a man jumping into a tiger cage and pouring meat sauce all over his body. Each act of appeasement only makes Muslim violence necessary and inevitable.
I think it must have been painful for him to accept that many of the Liberal policies he had stood for during his career were plain destructive and exasperating to the ordinary citizen who just wanted to make an honest living.
“I can personally relate to a lot of the things Sue was saying about microaggressions against Asian-Americans,” said Christine Noh, a sophomore journalism student. “Yet I was never one to take offense to it- but I see it in a different light now.”
Woodward became a hero not because of WHAT he did, but WHO he did it to. Liberal Democrat politicians can do REPEATEDLY things any one of which would another’s career. These can range from the criminal to the absurd. Imagine if a Republican Presidential or ANY candidate had a girl get weak — “wait, give her some air….somebody give her a bottle of water” at EIGHT consecutive rallies as if it was an old burlesque routine where a singer pops up in the audience the way Al Jolsen was introduced as a kid. Obama pulled that and it was never mentioned in the press –even on Fox. Clinton was accused of rape by two different women and had another brought to his room by state police, when he proceded to “drop trou”…. result??? He is routinely declared a “political genius”. A republican can — after being misled about a foreign word and its meaning say “makaka” at a rally— career over. Get it?
Obama has run far and fast from his own record. Romney, I’m sorry to say, hasn’t always hit him for that as much or as strongly as I think he should have.
But is Romney credible?
Yes. Romney is credible. Perfect? No. Credible, yes.
And that’s a win tonight.
Obama came in with an impossible task, to act as a spoiler and to appear presidential.
Obama’s last stand is also the Democratic Party’s last stand. A hundred years of foreign policy and economic failures at the hands of a corrupt mafia is about to come home to roost. The Democratic Party has marginalized itself, abandoning mainstream Americans while openly embracing a trillion dollar welfare state.
Iconography elevated Obama as it did FDR and JFK, but it cannot see him through a constellation of crises. And if he falls, then his party falls with him.
I tend to think of the Caribbean as a place for sailing. Nothing else to do there unless you like to sit in a chair and order umbrella drinks like Milton Waddams. Get to Tortola, grab some snorkeling gear, lease a bareboat and island-hop around the BVI while imbibing rum is a good plan.
But Guana Island is another thing: a nature preserve, a privately-owned 800-acre island, and takes only 30 guests at a time. I'll call it Jurassic Park because they are dedicated to restoring native species. No Limbo Rock, guaranteed.
(The "Enter" button doesn't work. Stop pushing it. Use my link.)
#8) Only in America would we make people who want to legally become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege while we discuss letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally just become American citizens
Conservatives in particular need to accept that Cuba is now just another loser Third World dictatorship, ruled by parasite-gangsters who ought to be hanging from lampposts, but who do not pose a strategic threat to the security of our republic.
No Humanitarian Aid on Estelle Ship, Says IDF - The IDF has confirmed that there was no humanitarian aid on the Estelle, the boat which sought to break Israel’s naval blockade on Gaza
10:35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you."
10:36 And he said to them, "What is it you want me to do for you?"
10:37 And they said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory."
10:38 But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?"
10:39 They replied, "We are able." Then Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized;
10:40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared."
10:41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John.
10:42 So Jesus called them and said to them, "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.
10:43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,
10:44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.
10:45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."
Two of my pics from an Adirondacks hunting trip a couple of years ago. Drive from covert to covert. Each one 2-3 hrs. of rough, off-trail brush-busting. Good fun, great work-out for man and dogs.
A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness; A lawn about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction; An erring lace, which here and there Enthrals the crimson stomacher; A cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribands to flow confusedly; A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticoat; A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility: Do more bewitch me, than when art Is too precise in every part.
Mrs. BD and I stopped by the Villa Zuccari last summer, in the wine country of the Valnerina (the valley of the Nera River) outside Montefalco. It's only an approx. 3-hour drive from the Rome airport. The Appennines in the distance. It's an easy rural drive to Spoleto, Spello, Assisi, and, of course, our favorite village of Norcia which means GOOD FOOD. We checked out the Villa's menu, in which nobody could be disappointed.
We felt it would be a perfect spot for a destination wedding. Here are a couple of my pics:
Masterful, but forget the clever lines. The guy projects an inner confidence and competence, not narcissism. Now I can post this myself, if you haven't listened to this amusing presentation from last night:
NPR reports, “48 percent of the money spent on food in the U.S. today goes to a restaurant, while in 1955, only a quarter of every food dollar was spent in restaurants.”
George McGovern was hard not to like, but his politics were naive in the extreme. Late in life, he decided to go into business, and wrote about it: 
Pic is a Sugar Maple, on fire yesterday
5 Life Advantages You Acquire from Experiencing Poverty
