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.
Just a thought about the election: The O cannot run on his record or on his real beliefs about what America should be, so he is going to run mainly as a celeb candidate with a good smile and a good voice. A Hollywood candidate for personal popularity, an American Idol sort of thing?
May your Lent be as self-revealing (if painfully so) and confessional, and yet as grace-filled, as I hope mine will be.
The Lord has already served me up a dose of tough love these recent years through true but unwelcome messages to my soul, and I think I know what I have to address.
..."taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrial animals of which the government is the shepherd."
Alexis de Toqueville, 1830, quoted here yesterday. Soft tyranny is always for your own good, of course, because you are an idiot and they are smart. Either that, or "for the children."
Good news! The Advantages of the Middle-Aged Brain - Despite news reports about cognitive decline starting at 45, the middle-aged brain actually performs better in other ways
Mr. Weston spoke of how Tony Blair and his British Labor Party set out to destroy traditional Britain by encouraging mass immigration to ensure a majority that would vote for the Welfare State in perpetuity. Millions of people from around the world were invited to move to Britain. Pamphlets were distributed in Pakistan, for example, urging locals to move to England and go on welfare. And both of these actions were facilitated and were, fed, in part, by post-colonial British guilt. Today, although a native British citizen cannot marry more than one spouse, the United Kingdom pays welfare costs for immigrants with up to four wives and their children.
Many commentators have shuddered at the way in which Republican candidates are stupidly making this election about women’s sexual rights. What they miss is that the whole abortion/contraception issue is a tar baby* that Democrats placed squarely in the Republicans’ path, so that it was impossible for Republicans to avoid.
Belmont: For years the European Social Model — and Europe itself — was such an act of faith that to express skepticism would have been blasphemy. It still is.
A lot of Venezuelans worry that one way or another, the country is headed for an implosion. A Capriles win could be contested by pro-Chavez generals; if Chavez wins and dies, a vacuum will open. Either way the economy will likely crash, once the pre-election spending binge ends.
That’s why the very orderliness and moderation of Capriles and the opposition coalition are so striking. Theirs is not so much an ideological or partisan crusade as a desperate effort to restore a semblance of political and social order to a country that is unraveling — a grasp at the modernity they glimpse in Brazil and Chile. Are they too late? The next seven months will tell.
...slow-moving trends don’t account for the dramatic spike in political polarization over the last decade, with Bush and Obama. What else is happening?
and
For decades, Democrats have preferred greater social welfare to low taxes, so they are pleased with his policies. Republicans have preferred the opposite, so they are horrified. And the GOP nominee for 2012, whoever that may be, will undoubtedly promise to undo the Obama innovations, cutting back on the welfare state to keep taxes in line with their historical averages. Accordingly, he will have strong support from Republican voters, while Democrats will view him as the devil incarnate. Without economic growth, there is no middle ground for the two sides to occupy together, so polarization is probably the new normal.
...a solicitude for your welfare, which cannot end but with my life, and the apprehension of danger, natural to that solicitude, urge me on an occasion like the present, to offer to your solemn contemplation, and to recommend to your frequent review, some sentiments; which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, and which appear to me all important to the permanency of your felicity as a People. These will be offered to you with the more freedom, as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel. Nor can I forget, as an encouragement to it, your endulgent reception of my sentiments on a former and not dissimilar occasion.
Interwoven as is the love of liberty with every ligament of your hearts, no recommendation of mine is necessary to fortify or confirm the attachment...
In the summer of 1755, 23-year-old George Washington galloped back and forth across a blood-soaked battlefield near present-day Pittsburgh, trying heroically but unsuccessfully to rally the panicked British force in which he served to withstand a withering attack by Britain’s French and Indian enemies in a war his own hotheadedness had ignited two years earlier. An Indian chief ordered his braves to shoot down the seemingly fearless six-footer, conspicuous not only for his height and daring but also for being, as Thomas Jefferson later marveled, “the best horseman of his age and the most graceful figure that could ever be seen on horseback.” The Indians fired volley after volley, putting four bullets through his coat and killing two horses out from under him, but he fought on unscathed. Fifteen years later, the same chief told him how vividly he remembered that day, which convinced him that the Great Spirit must have a brilliant future in store for the young officer whom his braves miraculously couldn’t kill no matter how hard they tried.
John Fairfax, dead at 74. A pirate? Makes the average fellow feel like a metrosexual fraidy-cat wimp.
Are we in an era of many emasculated, fearful men? What's your testosterone level, on the timidity-to-adventure axis? No offense to our lady readers, but these days I know plenty of women with bigger cojones than some guys. The ladies are not turned on by fearful fellows.
Sometimes, you feel like the world has gone mad. Here's #8:
Neanderthals need nerds. The cool gang banger who is knifed on Saturday night suddenly in extremis worships the surgeon who stiches up his liver and kidneys — a target whom he would otherwise have robbed earlier that Saturday afternoon. The thug who strips the copper wire from our streetlights nonetheless assumes a nerdish engineer will keep designing the wiring scheme that runs his car’s CD. For the good life to go on, each illiterate punk demands one corresponding graduate student at MIT to take care of him. When the former outnumber the latter, then civilization usually winds down.
You go to a small town in Umbria and find your way to some modest trattoria, or maybe a market with a few tables. Then lunch arrives, and the top of your head comes off. Meanwhile everybody around you has their elbows on the table and is acting like food this good is no big thing. And you say, why not? Why couldn’t we have a place just like this back home?
How anyone can build a good family and a charming life without a partner's help and companionship is beyond me, but certainly many are better at life than I am.
I demand HHS do something, somewhere, somehow that makes it a law that I receive free Chic-fil-A classic chicken sandwiches and waffle fries.
Because so help me, if my wife makes me eat another goddamn “heart-healthy” Paprika cod fillet and endive salad dinner, I’ma shoot up a fucking Whole Foods, then use my Cold Steel San Mai to start cutting heads off of any dudes wearing sandals.
And yes, Mr Issa. I’d be willing to come before Congress and testify.
9:2 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them,
9:3 and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.
9:4 And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.
9:5 Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."
9:6 He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.
9:7 Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!"
9:8 Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
9:9 As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
The Transfiguration, Raphael's last painting (1516)
You have a bunch of trust-funded limousine liberals railing against the rich — the one-percenters, as they’re being called this year — until a coveted elective office opens up. Then a one-percenter steps up, and all the plebeians in the 99 percent are supposed to automatically step aside and genuflect.
Why Multiculturalism Is Racism - “The worm inside the doctrine of multiculturalism is the lie that all cultures are worthy of equal respect and equally embracing of individual freedom and democracy.” - Dr. Salim Mansur
The War on Wyden - For daring to work on Medicare reform with Republican Paul Ryan, the Democratic senator from Oregon is lambasted by keepers of the liberal flame.
In 1950, Detroit was the wealthiest city in America on a per capita income basis. Today, the Census Bureau reports that it is the nation's 2nd poorest major city, just "edging out" Cleveland.
Meet the ObamaCare Mandate Committee - Think the contraception decision was bad? Wait until bureaucrats start telling your insurer which cancer screenings to cover.
People of all stripes will go to lengths to hold onto their preferred views of things. Re-thinking is difficult and often upsetting to one's equilibrium. But facing reality generally is more effective in life - however painful at times. Upsetting a comfortable equilibrium can also sometimes lead to better things, open up new vistas.
Dr. Sanity has a detailed essay on the topic: DOES THE LEFT UNDERSTAND PSYCHOLOGICAL DENIAL? Even if you overlook the political aspects of her essay, it's a good overview of the points at which psychological defenses and logical error frequently intersect.
Insty found this: 
No-Panic Scientists Reply To Critics
Unbearably self-revealing
George Washington was born on Feb. 22, but his birthday is noted today (mainly for commercial reasons, I think).
VDH: 
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Mark 9:2-9
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The Song of Wandering Aengus
