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.
A U.S. Forest Service article on safe marshmallow toasting did not neglect to nag us: It suggested fruit rather than chocolate in s’mores.
Brilliant! Fruit is "healthier" than chocolate? Not true at all. Both are pure sugar. And I defy these idiots to tell me that a single forest fire was caused by a happy flaming marshmallow.
One of your betters in Washington with a degree in Marshmallow Studies was actually paid a good salary with excellent lifetime benefits out of your pocket to convey that advice. I recommend laughter and sarcastic derision. Suicide is out of the question but passive resistance might be a safe approach. Marshmallow afficiandos know that a marshmallow without a burnt crust is just garbage, as is a S'more without Hersheys.
I believe that the economy can potentially absorb five million additional gardeners and nannies. The challenge will be to create a corresponding number of rich young liberals to hire them.
Last year, 76 law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty, and I’m hard pressed to name one of them. Yet, high-profile cases such as the shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin and Mr. Brown in the present case have made these names well known across America and around the world. Their sad fame comes at the hands of those who push the narrative that white cops are motivated by racial animus to kill blacks. How else to explain the media ignoring the thousands upon thousands of blacks who die at the hands of other blacks but the sensationalized 24/7 coverage involved when violence is inflicted at the hands of whites towards blacks?
You all know this already, but I just wanted to jot it down -
In the US, government has grown in importance as it has grown in power, in firepower, and in money. There was a time when nobody really cared about the federal government because it had no impact on daily life.
The Civil War, the Progressive Era of Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt, etc. changed all that. Government changed the culture. Over 100 years, government trained the masses to think "government should do something" whenever life presents them with obstacles, challenges, heartaches, bad luck, and expenses.
To win votes and to enjoy power, government decided to turn citizens into neo-serfs and to cement the impulse to turn to government instead of to God, to their own ingenuity, to family, to neighbor, etc. This infantilises people, weakens them, takes away their dignity.
Nowadays, everybody has his laundry list what government should do for them in their own interest. It is like a list for Santa. I want governments to do less and less.
I never learned in school that a president can make his own laws whenever he is frustrated by Congress, but the NYT says it's ok to do that. I can easily imagine what they would say with a Conservative pulling something like that. Anyway, what's the urgency?
...paternalism is warranted, they argue, because without the government, people would fall prey to big, bad corporate interests and their efforts to relentlessly maximize shareholder value.
Thus, Obamacare is all about the federal government making decisions on behalf of Americans because -- as Gruber and his liberal brethren would argue -- the people are unable or unwilling to make the choices that elites believe advance the social good. That’s why President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress invented the mechanisms in the law that, for example, transfer resources from those who are young and healthy to those who are old and sick.
I don't think that I am unique in preferring big bad business interests to big, bad crony government and political interests. If you don't like a business, you can quit it. Not so easy to quit an armed government.
Being American is not supposed to be being a US subject.
Related: Gruber is an honest Liberal because he admits to grubering. Seems to me that his confessions are just bragging.
A new word: "Grubering." Lying your ass off to make a better world for you pathetic idiots.
A rule not ultimately backed by the threat of violence is merely a suggestion. States rely on laws enforced by men ready to do violence against lawbreakers. Every tax, every code and every licensing requirement demands an escalating progression of penalties that, in the end, must result in the forcible seizure of property or imprisonment by armed men prepared to do violence in the event of resistance or non–compliance. Every time a soccer mom stands up and demands harsher penalties for drunk driving, or selling cigarettes to minors, or owning a pit bull, or not recycling, she is petitioning the state to use force to impose her will. She is no longer asking nicely. The viability of every family law, gun law, zoning law, traffic law, immigration law, import law, export law and financial regulation depends on both the willingness and wherewithal of the group to exact order by force.
When an environmentalist demands that we “save the whales,” he or she is in effect making the argument that saving the whales is so important that it is worth doing harm to humans who harm whales. The peaceful environmentalist is petitioning the leviathan to authorize the use of violence in the interest of protecting leviathans. If state leaders were to agree and express that it was, indeed, important to “save the whales,” but then decline to penalize those who bring harm to whales, or decline to enforce those penalties under threat of violent police or military action, the expressed sentiment would be a meaningless gesture. Those who wanted to bring harm to whales would feel free to do so, as it is said, with impunity — without punishment.
Without action, words are just words. Without violence, laws are just words.
Today we see actions by many groups calling or demanding wage increases; especially when it comes to the minimum wage. Yet, isn’t the real underlying issue more in line with what was once an “entry-level” position filled by teenagers has now turned into the only positions available for the now “entry-level, unskilled, first time employed, degree bearing” 26 year old’s and older?
Let's first accept that men, especially young men, tend to be hormonally sexually alert and curious most of the time. Flirtatious too, when feeling confident. Doesn't that mean that the catcalls and other uninvited words simply come down to a matter of manners?
Here's a related question:
A good and mannerly young fellow on the subway finds himself standing next to a young lady who is reading Jane Austen. Cupid's arrow strikes him. From her appearance, her movements, etc. he feels that this is the girl God has made him for and he can't keep his eyes off her.
Should he say "How do you like the book?" Or should he decide not to be taken as a creep, let it pass, and kick himself for a month for passing up what might have been a life-changing opportunity to meet the woman of his dreams?
Each year, 4.3 million Americans turn 18, and face competition for jobs from roughly 10 million unemployed Americans, 11 million illegal immigrants, plus the annual inflow of 1.1 million new legal immigrants and 70,000 guest workers.
People voted "for an agenda very different from what they want and need."
Sen. Bernie Sanders
Quite different, perhaps, from what his poor Vermonters "need and want" which seems mostly to be free stuff, no jobs, single mothers on welfare, and plentiful meth and heroin. Thank God for our moral and intellectual superiors. We would be lost without them, just like the Pilgrims and the American pioneers were.
What Democrats said to Republicans when Democrats were in charge of Congress: We don’t have to listen to you any more.
What Democrats will say to Republicans now that Democrats are no longer in charge of Congress: Bipartisanship forever!
Bipartisanship to get what "jobs done"? Oh, it's about "progress." Althouse:
I'm uneasy at the word "progress." It assumes the existence of a road and knowledge of where it leads. I see no reason to believe in President Obama's idea of "progress." America rejected it yesterday.
When progress means more Federal money, power, control, and force, it's not progress: it's regression towards feudalism. I have some ideas about "jobs to be done" on the federal level which would mean progress to me:
Fix tort law, install a universal flat tax with no deductions and maybe a negative tax for the very poor and hopeless and helpless (or should that be left to the states?), secure the US border, deport illegals and be more welcoming of valuable legals, revise Obamacare to voluntary with a meaningful mix of options, eliminate the useless Federal Dept of Education, eliminate Death Taxes, make unionizing federal employees illegal, get rid of the failed war on drugs, eliminate the Dept of Homeland Security, shrink the EPA back to its original purpose, eliminate all farm subsidies including the ethanol scam and the sugar scam, eliminate all federal subsidies for flood insurance, eliminate the Dept of Commerce (except for NOAA), eliminate the ATF, tighten oversight for Disability, quit funding the UN, put a tight leash on the NSA, ban all government drones domestically along with banning the militarization of police, put NASA back in space - or privatize it, find a way to felonize crony capitalism, eliminate the Dept of HUD, restructure Social Security, get our military out of Europe and Japan and let them fend for themselves, get the federal government out of the mortgage market entirely, eliminate corporate taxes and make the US a corporate tax haven for the world (economic effects would be amazing), shut down the Fed and let markets work freely for better or worse without central efforts at control...and that's just for starters.
Let's get all those jobs done in a nice bipartisan way, ok? If there was ever a time to reach fearlessly, it's now. It might be a narrow window for real progress.
Like some of you, I've been reading about the election from all corners of the web: Left, Conservative, MSM, etc.
One take-home I get from it all is that the Dem core, on which they rely for votes and/or money, consists of single women, billionaires and multi-millionaires, "old money", crony capitalists, Wall St. millionaires, unionistas, Hollywood and its allies and sycophants, black Americans, government-dependent Americans, and urban white Liberals (including nice gentry Liberals, and academics, students, and college townspeople).
That's not news, but I just find it interesting. I can't really relate to any of those bloc-voting components.
The other take-home I get is that those people have an incomprehensible hatred and contempt for ordinary hard-working and entrepreneurial people like me. Why? I do not hate them, and it is unlikely that they would hate me if they met me. I happily work 14-hour days to build our business and to employ and supervise the new people we need.
Our major challenges to continuing growth are competition (good) and government (bad).
Hooray for sexual liberation!