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.
It’s time for a better level of discourse over the push for opening bathrooms and showers to all comers. Women from the Left and Right are uniting to make that happen—and here’s the cultural argument for why.
The retrograde author insists that there exist men and women.
Great weekend of boating and fishing on Block Island Sound. No Muslim killers out there on the water. Why can't Muslims find simple ways to enjoy life too? Or is raping and killing their idea of fun? They should try fishing. Or even bowling.
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, a Clinton supporter, praised the police... “At some point Donald Trump needs to take responsibility for the irresponsible behavior of his campaign”....
Incredible. Liccardo isn't some small-town naif. This is San Jose, and Liccardo is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
The violence appears to mostly come from immigrants with Mexican flags, and Bernie people. Trump supporters themselves never bother anybody.
Trump is the Great Disruptor. He is doing the Repub Party a great favor by going to where the votes are - the ordinary people of America like me. The wealthy will always be mostly Dems, as will (for no good reasons) the minorities and the effete snobs. But there are lots of other people in America, and they have felt voiceless in DC.
Winning an election is still very much about connecting personally with key voters and you can only do that if you present a clear personality or brand to the voters in the first place. If you're the person who sees Trump's personality/brand and have decided you hate everything about it, I have news for you: You're not the target audience. But you're still proof that Trump's messaging is at least very clear and that's often more than half the battle in business and politics.
...when “respectable” people won’t talk about things that a lot of voters care about, the less-respectable will eventually rise to meet the need. That’s what Trump’s doing. And a lot of people are cheering him on not so much because they’re fans of Trump personally as because they’re happy to see someone finally stand up to the PC bullies.
The piece has this photo of the wonderful Clintons last week, having a good time pretending to be a couple. I think he's rather be on orgy island, or anywhere else, but he owes her:
... many conservatives are not quite sure whether Trump is just a more in-your-face version of current politicians or if he truly is an outlier in his vulgarity. Consider, after all, the last month in politics. Recently, news stories noted that a White House guest rapper, paroled on a pending felony charge, had his ankle bracelet go off. The White House deputy national security advisor and senior speechwriter Ben Rhodes bragged about how he more or less lied and perpetuated a con to ram through the Iran deal without Senate oversight. Former Obama speechwriters joked on television about writing the lie, “If you like your insurance, you can keep it.” Obama himself threatened to cut off federal funds to states that did not share his reinterpretation of the 1972 Title IX Amendments to include bathroom access of their choice for the transgendered. Meanwhile, the FBI weighs a federal felony indictment against Hillary Clinton, just as stories have resurfaced of Bill Clinton’s frequent and unescorted flights on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein notorious “Lolita Express.” If that is a typical month in the life of the current administration and ongoing presidential campaign, then what exactly are the norms by which we can judge Trump as a renegade? The proper critique of Trump is that he would not restore decorum to political discourse and behavior that long ago were debased.
Pretty much everybody agrees that government charity enables dependency and dysfunction. Pretty much everybody also agrees that there are numbers of people who will not or can not attain functional independence.
Despite the perverse incentives, and many unpleasant side effects (including creating a permanent underclass and supporting fatherless families), such people require basic food and shelter provided by the productive classes. It's not 1800 anymore when everybody could find something useful to do on the farm.
The problem with a guaranteed minimum income is that, if people can not manage their life adaptively, they probably can not handle money adaptively either. Every day we see how foolish people can be with unearned money.
I don't know what to think about all this. There have always been beta males, fearful males, but boys were taught to be brave and not to take crap no matter how they feel. When it comes to capacity for aggression, it often seems to me that women exhibit more.
The mental image of Milo bitch-slapping those jerks is enjoyable, could have happened but "that's violence."
Many others around the intertubes have been saying what I have been saying: The Republican Party is not a Conservative Party, just the more conservative party.
Conservatives are a faction, and libertarian/conservatives like me are a sub-faction.
"Dedicated to public service." Barf. Just those words are a joke to the average American, who knows full well that public service is self-service. Mrs. Bill Clinton and Bill made $200 million in public service. Slacker Harry Reid only made $10 million. Fame and fortune.
Facing a free-wheeling Trump, she is weighted down by tons of baggage. This year was supposed to be Hillary Clinton’s “turn,” after her humiliating loss in 2008 to Barack Obama. She has paid her dues as secretary of state for Obama. And the apparent Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, is written off by most pundits as a buffoon without a chance in the general election. Yet, Clinton’s campaign continues to be dismal, and is getting worse — to the point where the socialist Bernie Sanders polls better against Trump than does Hillary Clinton. How can that be?
At least eight reasons come to mind — several of them relating to Clinton’s innate character flaws and past scandals...
The failure of the center-Left to transform its institutional and intellectual dominance into policy achievements that actually stabilize middle class life, and the failure of the center-Right to articulate a workable alternative have left a giant intellectual and political vacuum in the heart of American life. The Trump movement is not an answer to our problems, but the social instinct of revolt and rejection that powers it is a sign of social health. The tailors are frauds and the emperor is not in fact wearing any clothes: it is a good sign and not a bad sign that so many Americans are willing to say so out loud.
Those of us who care about policy, propriety and the other bourgeois values without which no democratic society can long thrive need to spend less time wringing our hands about the shortcomings of candidate Trump and the movement that has brought him this far, and more time both analyzing the establishment failures that have brought the country to this pass, and developing a new vision for the American future.
I am not sure how new it is, though. The masses of voters were never strongly ideological, just the pundits. Donald Trump is post-ideolological, which is why he could win an election.
Barry Goldwater and Rand Paul were ideological. Well, Reagan was too, in some ways, but he was more American Flag primarily. Like The Donald is. How much did Reagan do to advance the Conservative agenda? Not too much. He was handcuffed. I wish he could have accomplished more such as eliminating entire federal departments.
