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.
Why the Titanic Still Fascinates Us - One hundred years after the ocean liner struck an iceberg and sank, the tragedy still looms large in the popular psyche
Having faith in the invisible hand of Purim - The image of an invisible hand can enable us to bridge the gap between those with merely a faith in God and those with merely a faith in man.
I have some family visiting midday on Saturday en route to pay homage to a newborn member of the clan, and figured we'd provide soup and sandwiches for the crew.
Somebody happened to mention turkey-mango sandwiches to me. It's a wonder how mangos have taken over in the supermarkets in Yankeeland, for good reason (I'll give y'all my mother in law's mango salad recipe some other time.)
Here are two versions, but I suppose one can mix and match. These could either be sandwiches or roll-ups (I have come to prefer roll-ups - less messy, less bread, and you don't need to eat as much if you cut them into 3" lengths).
Thin slices of fresh mango lettuce slice tomato swiss cheese or provolone avocado slices couple of turkey slices mayo
or
slices of Stilton slices of turkey arugula fresh mango, mango salsa or mango chutney lemon juice
or (if one is fresh out of mango)
turkey slices any cheese lettuce tomato very thin apple slices apple butter on one side (or prune butter. I love both of those old-timey things.) mayo on the other side
You can't get these at Subway. OK. I am hungry now.
This is what I term "a real job." These guys have balls. You may have seen this one before. I hate the way he has to make sure to tighten each hand-hold bolt on the final stretch. It's a nightmare for me.
An ex-Navy aviator, recently a contract pilot for the Navy. Loved those jets. I don't know what happened. I presume a crash. I had read his frightening Streamer post yesterday.
The most obviously predictable fiscal train-wreck in the world continues on, seemingly unabated by trillions of dollars of Keynesian-inspired “stimulus” spending whose proponents insist is the only way out of the current crisis, even as they insist that austerity programs are anathema to recovery. They are half-right, yet it is precisely that half-rightness that reveals the insidious nature of socialism: it is the expansion of the state, and the overwhelming number of people thoroughly accustomed to the dependency mindset, that has destroyed the kind of entrepreneurial spirit among those who desperately need private enterprise growth to rescue them. This spiritual debasement, courtesy of state-sponsored self-entitlement, is the dark underbelly of an ideology that can only survive until it runs out of other people’s money to spend. How do those “other people” acquire that money?
The comments here are quite amusing, in a typically crude Wall St. trader sort of way
Apparently electric vehicle maker — and recipient of lots of your and my money — Fisker Automotive is struggling. Who would have thought that a company that could not fully fund itself privately and had to rely on political connections to use the coercive power of government to take money from taxpayers might be a bad investment?
"Over at The New Republic, Timothy Noah explains why it's like totally different when Bill Maher calls Sarah Palin "a twat" and "a cunt," or when Keith Olbermann calls Michelle Malkin a "mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it."
James Q. Wilson had been frequently referred to that way. He knew about everything.
My first reading of him was in his The Moral Sense, back when it had just come out. The book made a lot of sense to me (if you haven't read it, those Amazon comments on it are helpful).
Here's a Wilson quote from the end of the book:
Mankind’s moral sense is not a strong beacon light, radiating outward to illuminate in sharp outline all that it touches. It is, rather, a small candle flame, casting vague and multiple shadows, flickering and sputtering in the strong winds of power and passion, greed and ideology. But brought close to the heart and cupped in one’s hands, it dispels the darkness and warms the soul.
Here's the heart of the matter. The Fed is a patsy. It is a pathetic dependent of the big Wall Street banks, traders and hedge funds. Everything (it does) is designed to keep this rickety structure from unwinding. If you had a (former Fed Chairman) Paul Volcker running the Fed today — utterly fearless and independent and willing to scare the hell out of the market any day of the week — you wouldn't have half, you wouldn't have 95%, of the speculative positions today.
Being a loyal and dutiful husband, of course I showed up. All the husbands show up in their finest and tend bar for the opening night cocktail party, and later to see the big show again. We learn to look at these things, and to appreciate them as ephemeral sculptures.
Garden clubs, I know, are not only great creative outlets for gals, whether they work at jobs or not, but, like so many organizations, they also constitute a form of social capital. I even met a lady at this show who lives down the street from my Mom and belongs to my Mom's garden club.
I grabbed a few pics right after they folded up the show, before we took it down:
Except for some Romanesque churches and monasteries, and a few old tenuta, there is very little Medieval left in tourist Italy.
The reason is because they became so wealthy during the Renaissance that they knocked down all of the old stuff to build new. The "old stuff" in Florence today is mostly Renaissance-era, except for some early churches. San Miniata is a good old one, and it's a fun walk over the bridge, over the Michelangelo-designed defensive walls, and up the hill from downtown, and you can sit and listen to the monks chant if you visit during a chanting time. Very friendly monks, too, who speak excellent English.
Italy never really bought into Gothic style in the 1200s. Too French. Many Brit builders did buy into it, though.
Photo: The Baptisterie in Firenze is Medieval, begun in 1059 long before the current duomo was built (by Cannobio, with the dome by the great Brunellesci in the 1400s. The fancy facade of the duomo is new - 19th C - which most visitors do not realize. The churches were always renovating and updating.) The previous church had stood in the square when the Baptisterie was built. A Baptisterie was always needed then: unbaptised kids could not enter the duomo. As in many areas of northern Italy, the Eastern Orthodox style of art (thought, at the time, to be based on original images of Jesus, Mary, etc) is prominent inside this wonderful jewel-box. The doors are masterpieces, as is the ceiling art inside. The Baptisterie in Pisa, just down the road a piece, is similarly wonderful.
Anyway, the birth control ruse is merely the KY Jelly to ease us into the giant butt-fucking that is nationalized health care. If conservatives buy into the frame that liberals are trying to push birth control on us – and, as a commenter pointed out, if we start talking dollars and cents – we’ve lost the game. The response should always be that any sort of government mandate – whether that be for individuals to buy health care or companies to provide certain pre-approved plans – is unconstitutional and coercive. To get sidetracked by birth control or morality plays is to let mandated health care become the norm. To let mandated health care become the norm is to set the table for a debate on nationalized health care. And who do you think will win that debate?
That's right. Never debate on the other side's premise, unless you accept their premise
4:13 For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith.
4:14 If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void.
4:15 For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.
4:16 For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us,
4:17 as it is written, "I have made you the father of many nations") --in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.
4:18 Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become "the father of many nations," according to what was said, "So numerous shall your descendants be."
4:19 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah's womb.
4:20 No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God,
4:21 being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.
4:22 Therefore his faith "was reckoned to him as righteousness."
4:23 Now the words, "it was reckoned to him," were written not for his sake alone,
4:24 but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,
4:25 who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.
And Bob Dylan. Very cool arrangement by Bob - best version of the song I've heard:
I've driven through the Shenandoah Valley a couple of times. Lovely country. Reader wants me to add Van Morrison's version with The Chieftains. Here 'tis:
I've seen the embattled winds hurtle together, Uprooting, tossing high and scattering The lush-eared crop; then the onrushing gale With black tornado carry off light stalk And flying stubble. Oft advances huge A host of waters in the sky, and clouds, Gathering from the sea, marshal the storm, Foul, dark with rain. Down pour the heavens sheer, In mighty flood sweeping away glad crops And labours of the ox. The ditches fill: Deep rivers rise in thundering spate: the seas Breathe and boom in the narrows. Jove himself, In blackest darkness of the storm-cloud, wields With flickering hand his bolt, at whose dread shock Earth trembles, wild things scurry, and stark fear Lays prostrate, nation-wide, the hearts of men.
From A Farmer's Calendar, 40 BC. (You can spell Vergilius' name as Vergil or Virgil)
The main drag on the isola is an alley (pic from a couple of years ago). Our advice in Italty: Never eat the pizza. Terrible stuff. Sit down someplace and grab a gelato and a tiny coffee instead. Hazelnut gelato is my favorite.
The case for rewarding performance is that we can do it, not that it is the same as rewarding merit. Likewise, holding individuals personally responsible for the consequences of their own actions is a social expedient for prospective control, not a cosmic retrospective moral judgment.
When I was young I affected to believe that to look a mess was a sign of inner profundity. I made the mistake of supposing that if the wise are bearded, the bearded are wise. If I adopted the supposed manner of an artist, therefore, I too would be an artist, or at least artistic. And, conveniently enough, the sloppiness of inner profundity required no effort on my part. As everyone knows, a lot of human history consists of man’s attempt to escape effort.
I think of them as the nighttime version of the Marsh Hawk, because they like the wide open spaces, grasslands, fields, and marsh edges. They are not woodland birds.
I know we do not have them at the farm, because we have a hundred acres of meadow and a perfect barn loft open for them to use, and they have never used it. Plus there are hundreds more acres of horse field and cow pasture nearby. I think we're at the northern edge of their range. For owls, we have only Great Horned, Barred, and Screech as far as I know. Probably Saw-Whet in winter, but I haven't seen one there.
The last time I saw a Barn Owl was when one flew across the road in front of me at night in the headlights, between a marsh and some large estate fields in lovely Lloyd Harbor, Long Island. Lloyd Neck, actually.
Breitbart was a new media pioneer and hero. God bless him.
A comment from his family's announcement: "Andrew lived boldly, so that we more timid souls would dare to live freely and fully, and fight for the fragile liberty he showed us how to love."
I have some family visiting midday on Saturday en route to pay homage to a newborn member of the clan, and figured we'd provide soup and sandwiches for the crew.
Church Ordered to 
James Q. Wilson had been frequently referred to that way. He knew about everything.
Except for some Romanesque churches and monasteries, and a few old tenuta, there is very little Medieval left in tourist Italy.
I do not understand 
I think of them as the nighttime version of the Marsh Hawk, because they like the wide open spaces, grasslands, fields, and marsh edges. They are not woodland birds.