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.
I have experienced a fair number of proposals from women in my life, but never a proposal for matrimony. Things like this: "Let's leave." and "Let's go upstairs." or "Take me on your boat." or "Hey, it's dark. Let's jump in the pool." Also, the magic one: a touch on your thigh instead of your arm.
Acknowledgement of the inconvenient truth of the global warming "pause" - even by Michael "Hide the Decline" Mann, injects some realism into the hysteria. Not that there is anything more than tiny islands of hysteria out there anyway. Nobody really cares unless there is money to be gotten.
Basically, computer models of complex systems, eg economics or climate, are never reality - just conjectures.
As for me, I do not give a damn what the "climate" does as long as we do not have another Ice Age soon. That would make me feel sad about my descendants because they might have to emigrate downhill to Florida or Mexico.
It's not the intention, but it has been the result because, for each event since 9-11, government feels called upon to "do something." In addition, governments rarely refuse opportunities to have power over the citizen.
Hence the Patriot Act, the absurd DHS, etc. Even the arguments against $100 bills include terror fears.
If Sweden and Germany were the only countries wanting these 5 million Middle Easterners and Africans, they should have flown them all directly to Berlin and Stockholm.
A dramatic and impressive argument against Brexit by PM Cameron. Watch it.
Good arguments, but count me a skeptic. Why vote for serfdom to Brussels? I do like the Parliamentary system though, compared with ours. Much more fun.
The dreams of a United States of Europe never made sense. The Common Market did, but it was meant to be just a stepping stone towards the reconstruction of a bigger, better Holy Roman Empire run by grey technocrats in gigantic office towers in Brussels.
It should be no surprise that the colonies are feeling restless as all forms of local sovereignty are slipping away.
"I’m starting to think that ours is a culture drowning in morals but starved for virtues—we all think no one has the right to judge us, but we all reserve the right to judge everyone else."
In the socio-economic utopia to come, there will be no winners and no losers, and there will be no consequences. Human nature will be revised, and psycho-utopia will ensue.
Well, freedom and utopian equality will only be possible when every citizen is lobotomized, including the benevolent, altruistic bureaucracy (there will be no politicians, because equality of power and influence).
Drudge will have to distribute some percent of his website visits to olde Maggie's Farm. I can't wait! But which unequal person will force that to happen? Will they not need to win elections or win wars?
Joke going around DC today: "The Bernie Sanders drinking game: Each time he mentions getting something for free, you have to drink some other guy's beer."
It is all almost unbelievable, except that it is the Clintons so nothing should be surprising. Normal people do not do life this way, even fantastically rich people like the Clintons.
For the effort to make headway against the stories our rulers force-feed us, it has to be outside the script of our public life, but immediately comprehensible to a public educated by pop culture. And it has to be pushed forward by someone who can’t be shut up, and somehow occupies a bully pulpit that can’t be taken away from him. Basically, that means the champion has to be Donald Trump. He’s never been taken very seriously, but that only adds to his ability to say what he wants and to stretch the truth in support of the story he’s telling, and also makes it difficult for respectable people to respond to him effectively. And in any case, he has the incontrovertible authority that comes with loads of money and success in bringing off impressive projects. The effect of it all is that he can’t be ignored, shut up, or bought off, and if he insists that something is an issue that obviously should be an issue—like immigration or trade policy—he can’t be ignored. Those advantages may be enough to send him to the White House—especially in a country that chose Barack Obama, another man with a large ego backed by a compelling myth, but with far fewer accomplishments.
Trump hijacked the Republican Party. Or should it be said that the primary voters are hijacking the Party? I think Trump is non-ideological, not very well-informed, and vulgar but he is one heck of a salesman.
The American proposition is precisely the opposite of what Herself imagines: The U.S. government exists at our sufferance, not the other way around. We have governments because there are some things that we as individuals have a hard time doing through private enterprise, and we have a federal government because there are things that the several states cannot manage separately, such as national defense and border security. (And, bang-up job on the latter, Washington.) A president isn’t a prince, and a citizen isn’t a serf.
Herself’s invocation of serfdom is the logical extension of “You Didn’t Build That”-ism, the backward philosophy under which the free citizen is obliged to justify his life and his prosperity to the state, in order to satisfy the economic self-interest, status-seeking, and power-lust of such lamentable specimens as Elizabeth Warren, a ridiculous little scold who has never done a single useful thing in her entire public life. The American model is precisely the opposite: Government has to justify itself to us. The states created the federal government, not the other way around, and the citizens created the states, not the other way around. We don’t owe these jackasses any service.
Americans have a different view of government from Europe, thank God.
