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 wait a minute between each presentation. Good fun on a warm day. He is indeed a passionate and entertaining atheist, but that is not his main theme.
What happened to large numbers of American blacks between the beginning of WW2 and 1970? Before WW2, blacks, mainly in the South at the time, led aspiring, family-oriented, church-going, bourgeois lives (despite social segregation). How and why did this subcultural transformation happen?
I blame government policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences. Charles Murray gets it. So does Justice Clarence Thomas.
The high school teacher begins:
The mainstream press gives a hint of what conditions are like in black schools, but only a hint. Expressions journalists use like “chaotic” or “poor learning environment” or “lack of discipline” do not capture what really happens. There is nothing like the day-to-day experience of teaching black children and that is what I will try to convey.
Most whites simply do not know what black people are like in large numbers, and the first encounter can be a shock...
another:
Once I asked my students, “What do you think of the Constitution?” “It white,” one slouching black rang out. The class began to laugh. And I caught myself laughing along with them, laughing while Pompeii’s volcano simmers, while the barbarians swell around the Palatine, while the country I love, and the job I love, and the community I love become dimmer by the day.
Kenyon College's young Andrew Pochter was tragically uneducated in the existence of evil and malice. I do not blame Kenyon for that. It is a wonderful school which is not overly-steeped in moonbatism.
A friend drove a Tesla msp85 around 100 miles last weekend. The guy knows cars. Said it was the best car he had ever driven, by a long shot.
He said the power, comfort, and design were stunning. Goes about 400 miles before a 6-8-hour recharge with the super charging device. Consumer Reports says it's the best car they have ever tested.
I don't want one, even without the $125,000 price tag of that model. I'd be happy to try one out, though.
Each Tesla is made to order. When you think about it, they basically run on coal but the coal-burning is remote.
...the Bill authorizes somewhere between 30 million and 60 million new legal immigrants over the next ten years, 90% of them low-skill and low-wage. The Democrats hope this will create a mammoth and permanent underclass that will be forever dependent on government for security, and will reliably vote Democrat for generations. Certain business interests hope the bill will deal a crippling blow to America’s working class, driving down wages and providing an inexhaustible supply of cheap labor.
The streets of Manhattan are full of smiling white yuppies riding their Citibank bikes, blue lights flashing as they sail through midtown traffic. But the great rack of bike share bikes planted next to a housing project is filled with its cargo of blue vehicles. No one is checking them out here. Instead black kids sit on the locked bikes, occasionally fitfully pedaling them, going nowhere.
When people ask whether there is a constitutional right to gay marriage, I can't understand where they are coming from. The people do not have enumerated rights. It's the federal government which has enumerated powers. It's about freedom from the federal state.
I am not aware that the power to regulate marriage is among the federal powers. The case for polygamy:
As a man, I can only imagine how much more efficient it would be to have one wife in the workforce and another wife at home with the kids. This would be much better for the children than shipping them off to some nursery school. And having three parents is a lot better than having just one … or none.
How about two wives working on Wall St., one wife home with the kids, and the dude fishing and hunting all day? Well, I guess that would not be very manly in today's world and might not attract committed women.
Jean-Paul Sartre is sitting at a French cafe, revising his draft of Being and Nothingness. He says to the waitress, “I’d like a cup of coffee, please, with no cream.” The waitress replies, “I’m sorry, Monsieur, but we’re out of cream. How about with no milk?”
The moralising stridency of so many arguments for cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, and global emissions treaties was founded on the idea that there is a consensus about how much warming there would be if carbon emissions continue on trend. The rather heated debates we have had about the likely economic and social damage of carbon emissions have been based on that idea that there is something like a scientific consensus about the range of warming we can expect. If that consensus is now falling apart, as it seems it may be, that is, for good or ill, a very big deal.
Finally, even The Economist has become skeptical about weather alarmism. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Obama to Announce Sweeping New Powers on Tuesday – Will Regulate Power Plants to Save Country from ‘Global Warming’
Why not cut off power to the federal government first? Heat, a/c, and electric. That would show real leadership. Pres. Lincoln managed fine without electricity, central heating, or a/c, and he rode around town on a low-emission horse powered by biofuel. First, the gummint should cut the power to the NSA and the IRS. Then, the White House. Then Congress. Our moral and intellectual superiors should show us the way.
It's always "for the children" when there is no good argument. Now, I think Save the Polar Bears is a better angle to tug at the heartstrings. So cuddly, unlike bratty kids. The problem is that the bears are reproducing like crazy and are going to eat all the cute seals and all the Eskimos they can catch. But wait - the Kennedys are shooting seal pups. Too many seals? WTH?
Do the seals get a vote on that? At least the Kennedys aren't shooting the Eskimos who kill the Polar Bears and Killer Whales which would otherwise eat the supposedly "extra" seal pups, etc., etc.
I am waiting for the next crisis: Polar Bear population explosion attributed to global warming.
I am only speaking for myself, not for all on the commune here. My opinion is that we have immigration laws for a reason. If you are here illegally, it should be illegal for you to have a job or to even be here. I don't care whether you are Mexican or Bulgarian or Canadian. The US should enforce its immigration laws. What is "broken" about US immigration is absence of enforcement.
There are legal paths to become an American citizen. First, you apply for a green card. Then we decide whether you would add value to the country in some way that Americans can't. It usually takes years.
Otherwise, fix your own country so it's more like ours. America does not need more people. We have too many losers already.
There are tons of Soprano clips on Youtube. You can waste lots of time sampling them. There is something fascinating about sociopathy, but how much brain space do you want it to take up?
His death, at the age of fifty-one, in Italy, does not come entirely as a shock. But that makes it no less a loss. Gandolfini was not a fantastically varied actor. He played within a certain range. Like Jackie Gleason, he’ll be remembered for a particular role, and a particular kind of role, but there is no underestimating his devotion to the part of a lifetime that was given to him. In the dozens of hours he had on the screen, he made Tony Soprano—lovable, repulsive, cunning, ignorant, brutal—more ruthlessly alive than any character we’ve ever encountered in television.
Niall Ferguson: Tocqueville saw a nation of individuals who were defiant of authority. Today? Welcome to Planet Government:
Tocqueville would not recognize America today. Indeed, so completely has associational life collapsed, and so enormously has the state grown, that he would be forced to conclude that, at some point between 1833 and 2013, France must have conquered the United States.
A friend drove a Tesla msp85 around 100 miles last weekend. The guy knows cars. Said it was the best car he had ever driven, by a long shot.
The Life Of Julia, Amnesty Applicant
It's estimated that Bob Dylan has given more than 
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