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.
h/t Insty, who has been doing a heck of a job lately. I have never understood why people who view themselves as my betters seem to want to control me and my way of life. What motivates that desire for control?
It's all our (evil Western Civilization's) fault that many Muslims seem to like to kill people who are different from them. We all accept that responsibility, don't we?
After all, true cultural understanding means understanding that some may lack moral agency, human empathy, and the idea of the "brotherhood of man," as we understand these quaint bourgeois notions from our culturally-limited viewpoint.
It's the pass given Obama by the media. Whether it's regarding Obama's birthplace, whether Obama personally heard Wright's racist and anti-Semitic sermons, or whether unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers wrote Obama's first book, Obama manages to avoid careful examination from the adoring media.
Trump would not be relevant -- if the media had been.
It's been said (by whom? Dickens? Mark Twain? Homer?) that only a fool would write without compensation. That makes us, and most non-commercial (or de facto non-commercial) website volunteer writers, fools. I am a fool, always have been, and I make no bones about it.
The lawsuit against Mrs. Huffington cracks me up. For their own personal or career reasons, they offered to volunteer their efforts to her enterprise, unpaid, without any equity - and without taking any business risk at all. All they had to do was to mail it in, and their names would be in HuffPo lights. Instant fame! Their free choice. Now, they see dollar signs and want to change the deal and cash out.
That's the greedy, envy-driven Left for you. When Bird Dog sells the sinfully-profitable Maggie's Farm (which he created and for which he tries to ride herd on the willful and cranky volunteer posters) to Google for a trillion zillion dollars, he had better take me out for a good dinner at Hooters, with dessert, or I will never take him fishing again.
It would be decent and gracious for Mrs. HuffPo to show some appreciation and gratitude. At the very least, a big dinner at Hooters and a framed Certificate of Appreciation would be nice.
I always thought it was a private, very well-funded charity abortion mill which makes a profit on its abortions, but I guess not. I guess it's like a government agency, or something. Without their help, after all, how could I possibly plan my parenthood?
Thanks, readers, for all of the comments and info - I was right that I did not understand PP
Re David Corn's predictable response to Rep. Ryans' budget proposal, Paul Ryan's "Adult" Budget, I have two questions for David:
1. Who are "the poor" who Ryan wishes to "mug"? He speaks as if they were some vast, permanent American oppressed underclass. Who, exactly, is he talking about so condescendingly? What individual people?
2. What do these "poor" want? Opportunity in a busy economy, or eternal redistribution with money on loan from China, in a downward American economy? That's the choice. I've been poor, wanted opportunity, and eventually found some through doing a very good job in a thankless workplace. Difficult, never impossible, depending on how the economy is running, and whether you are willing to do some things you do not like to do.
When I am ready to take the plunge and to live up to the Maggie's Farm ideal of being my own boss and running my own show, I will be poor again, at least for a while. I am counting on that. When that day comes, David Corn is the last guy in the world I will want concern or pity from.
From the standpoint of traditional calculations of national interest, this war is something akin to madness. Yet without fully articulating it (and that reticence is intentional), Obama and Power are attempting to accustom us to a whole new way of thinking about war, and about America’s place in the world.
In the US, government was meant to be a minor and necessary evil, but as we say at Maggie's, government has become America's most powerful special interest group, but with guns and cops to back it up.
The US already has boots on the ground in Libya; CIA intel guys and "advisors." Money and weapons too, no doubt, for the rag-tag rebels, whoever they are - certainly some or many are Jihadists - and regardless of what amount of support the current government has in the country - which seems to be unknown.
This is an American war, and it is not about freedom and self-determination and it's not simply about humanitarianism unless the US is to become the world's Chief of Police again. I can't even see that it's about geopolitics, as Iraq was, because nobody cares much about Libya except the Italians who get their oil from them. I do not know what it's about, but I would not be surprised if the Russians aand Chinese are amused by how we stepped in this pile of dog crap.
It is politically risky to try to be a responsible politician (and most politicians don't want to have to go back to real, productive jobs unless all it is is to be a lunching lobbyist rainmaker). See Politico's Govs face budget blowback.
Better just keep borrowing from the Chinese until they own the US. Let our kids worry about it.
I keep saying that the "entitlement mentality" is not just a problem here; it's a problem in the entire industrialized world. England, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Ireland, the USA...governments are beggaring themselves (and their productive taxpaying citizens) trying to fund their brobdingnagian welfare-state apparatus.
As Steyn said in our link this morning: "The collapse of the Entitlement State is not going to be pretty."
This state of childishness, this dependency explains the stunningly supine acceptance of the take over of Sweden by an alien human horde that couldn’t be more incompatible with Sweden’s centuries-old culture even if they rode around on giraffes and lived off boiled vulture. Getting your mouth on the tit is Job No. 1 and daddy and mommy will take care of any unpleasantness, notwithstanding the complete absence of evidence that mommy and daddy want to take care of the Unpleasantness in Question.
What if it turns out, like in Egypt (and in Afghanistan in the past), that the US and Euroland are naively laying out a red carpet for the Jihadists? Then what?
Granted that the region's squalid polities haven't had a decent military commander since King Hussein fired General Sir John Glubb half-a-century back, how difficult could it be even for Arab armies to knock off a psychotic transvestite guarded by Austin Powers fembots? But no: Instead, the Arab League decided to volunteer the U.S. military.
Explaining his decision to wage war, Obama said Khadafy has "lost the confidence of his own people and the legitimacy to lead." Such boilerplate seems designed to anesthetize thought. When did Khadafy lose his people's confidence? When did he have legitimacy?
It's been said (by whom? Dickens? Mark Twain? Homer?) that only a fool would write without compensation. That makes us, and most non-commercial (or de facto non-commercial) website volunteer writers, fools. I am a fool, always have been, and I make no bones about it.
GOP Appears