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 agree with this guy. There is much to be pissed off today in the land of the free, home of the brave. America was never meant to be a place where people lived in fear of their "public servants."
Like our editor, I am more interested in vigorous fitness for functional life and endurance rather than in conspicuous muscle mass. However, it has not escaped my notice than some mass has a signaling effect on females.
Limitations I have found in my (recent) mixed cardio-resistance-endurance program are strength and power in my extremities, ie forearms and lower legs. Those tend to be neglected in resistance work. They are more or less expected to respond in strength to the other things you do.
That is true to a point, perhaps, but, for examples, but my dead lifts and kettlebell walks are limited by my grip strength. Lower leg strength is needed for everything you do, posture and agility, and especially to prevent injury.
What I am learning is that I have to strengthen everything to pursue my maximum functional endurance. The two go hand-in-hand.
The passionate endeavors to eliminate the classical studies from the curriculum of the liberal education and thus virtually to destroy its very character were one of the major manifestations of the revival of the servile ideology.
It is a fact that a hundred years ago only a few people anticipated the over-powering momentum which the antilibertarian ideas were destined to acquire in a very short time. The ideal of liberty seemed to be so firmly rooted that everybody thought that no reactionary movement could ever succeed in eradicating it. It is true, it would have been a hopeless venture to attack freedom openly and to advocate unfeignedly a return to subjection and bondage. But antiliberalism got hold of peoples’ minds camouflaged as superliberalism, as the fulfillment and consummation of the very ideas of freedom and liberty. It came disguised as socialism, communism, planning.
No intelligent man could fail to recognize that what the socialists, communists and planners were aiming at was the most radical abolition of the individuals’ freedom and the establishment of government omnipotence.
Ludwig von Mises, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, 1956 (h/t Reader)
Biceps are not major functional muscles. There are only three good reasons to strengthen biceps in isolation: arm-toning for middle-aged women, showing off in wife-beater Ts - and, usefully, to provide some complementary balance for the far more useful and important triceps.
However, fact is that most upper-body chest, core, back exercises, and full-body exercises and body-weight calisthenics like pull-ups and ropes activate biceps enough without needing to do very much of those muscle-isolating "curls for girls."
As BD has said, the Maggie's fitness philosophy for sedentary-working people is about overall fitness, muscle and cardiovascular endurance, athletic functionality, posture, core strength, and good body-weight management rather than body-building and body-sculpting. Maximally-functional for life, not for the gym, prison yard, or for the Gay Parade..
In my view, the more muscles an exercise stresses, the better. Besides intense interval cardio, what kills me but makes me fitter are pushing the full-body, mixed cardio+strength+core exercises like ball smashes, ropes, lunges with kettles, pull-ups, burners, and the like. You just do them until you break.
Even without the sports boycott tool, however, the takeover of the college campus by racial hysteria appears all but complete. A video of a black female student at Yale screaming and cursing at her college master is a chilling portrait of self-engrossed, bathos-filled entitlement that has never been corrected by truth, much less restrained by manners: “Be quiet!” she shrieks at the frozen administrator, “Why the fuck did you accept the [master] position,” she continues at full, self-righteous cry. (The student’s tirade was occasioned by a statement issued by the master’s wife disagreeing with Yale’s admonition to students not to wear “culturally appropriative” Halloween costumes.) If anyone has reprimanded the student for her grotesque lack of courtesy, Yale is not letting on. Instead, Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, issued the usual fawning declaration of sorrow for the tribulations experienced by Yale’s privileged minority students: “Their concerns and cries for help made clear that some students find life on our campus profoundly difficult.”
This shocking video is a glimpse of the future—the boorish, hate-filled Cultural Revolution come to America. Colleges have capitulated completely to delusional victimology; unless employers are willing to stand up against the coddled products of the academic hothouse, we may all soon be living in a world of screaming, monomaniacal victims.
My fitness coach is now adding jump rope to the end of all of my daily morning routines.
I know that boxers and MMA people do a lot of jump rope but I still associate it with girls on the playground. Coach says he wants to add it to ramp up my anaerobic intensity. One article says this:
The jump rope is a powerful workout tool. It builds cardio fitness, balance, agility and bone strength. It's also one of the best go-anywhere fitness accessories, fitting easily into even a crammed carry-on.
It is a core-strengthener too. It's supposed to be a good fat-burner, but I don't need that very much although I guess I could use a physical six-pack. It is harmless to knees because all of the minimal impact is taken on the balls of your feet.
Like all cardio, it won't build muscle and it hurts, is not fun. Weight training/strength-building, on the other hand, is good fun. You get to grunt and groan and to look better in your guinea tees, but it's not real functional fitness. It is just a foundation for a fitness program. (It is fun to listen to the females doing their weight exercises. Their noises are sexual and that is a little bit stimulating/distracting.)
Coach will teach me the various techniques next week. Some of them are here. Jumping rope requires instruction. Who knew?
What are the high-intensity, anaerobic general fitness and cardio exercises (ie tough calisthenics)? Burpees, heavy ball exercises like throws and smashes, jump rope, fast squats with weight, jumping jacks with weight bar, sprints, quick high-stepping, running up stairs, and the like. Things that look easy but are not easy at all after a few minutes.
Charles Krauthammer said that he had no doubt some of the 30,000 e-mails Hillary deleted very likely had references to the Clinton Foundation's business, which would be illegal and a conflict of interest. Others say it is organized crime at its finest -- and we are financing it. This is a summary of how the Clinton Foundation works as a tax-free international money laundering scheme. It will probably eventuallyprove to be the largest political criminal enterprise in U.S. history.
This is a textbook case on how you hide foreign money sent to you and repackage it to be used for your own purposes. All tax free. Here's how it works:
1. You create a separate foreign "charity." In this case one in Canada.
2. Foreign oligarchs and governments then donate to this Canadian charity. In this case, over 1,000 did, contributing mega-millions. I'm sure they did this out of the goodness of their hearts, and expected nothing in return. (Imagine Putin's buddies waking up one morning and just deciding to send untold millions to a Canadian charity).
3. The Canadian charity then bundles these separate donations and makes a massive donation to the Clinton Foundation.
4. The Clinton Foundation and the cooperating Canadian charity claim Canadian law prohibits the identification of individual donors.
5. The Clinton Foundation then "spends" some of this money for legitimate good works programs. Unfortunately, experts believe this is on the order of 10%. Much of the balance goes to enrich the Clinton's, pay salaries to untold numbers of hangers-on, and fund lavish travel, etc. Again, virtually all tax free, which means you and I are subsidizing it.
6. The Clinton Foundation, with access to the world's best accountants, somehow fails to report much of this on their tax filings. They discover these "clerical errors" and begin the process of re-filing 5 years of tax returns.
7. Net result -- foreign money, much of it from other countries, goes into the Clinton's pockets tax-free and untraceable back to the original donor.
This is the textbook definition of "money laundering."
Oh, by the way, the Canadian "charity" includes as a principal one Frank Giustra. Google him. He is the guy who was central to the formation of Uranium One, the Canadian company that somehow acquired massive U.S. uranium interests and then sold them to an organization controlled by Russia. This transaction required U.S. State Department approval, and guess who was Secretary of State when the approval was granted?
As an aside, imagine how former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell feels. That poor schlep is in jail because he and his wife took $165,000 in gifts and loans for doing minor favors for a guy promoting a vitamin company. Not legal, but not exactly putting U.S. security at risk.
Sarcasm aside, if you're still not persuaded this was a cleverly structured way to get unidentified foreign money to the Clinton's, ask yourself this:
Why did these foreign interests funnel money through a Canadian charity?
Why not donate directly to the Clinton Foundation? Better yet, why not donate money directly to the people, organizations and countries in need?
This is the very essence of money laundering and influence peddling. Now you know why Hillary's destruction of 30,000 e-mails was a risk she was willing to take.
And in the US as in Europe, they are also coming by government invitation. They are offered homes, money, food, and welcoming groups of young women handing out blankets, language lessons, etc. Free stuff. In Germany and Sweden, though, there is really no honest work for a Somali immigrant if they even wanted it.
That's why you see them running scams and stealing luggage all across Europe these days.
George Bush was right when he talked about jobs that poor and unskilled Americans did not want to do, even though he was mocked for it. America has and had plenty of need for unskilled and semi-skilled labor, but Americans passed on that low-paid work while the Guatemalans and Mexicans jumped on those jobs with pleasure. Now they own those jobs - and those small businesses - while the native poor Americans who supposedly have learned American values and the American Constitution remain on food stamps. Bill Clinton, to his credit, tried to deal with that but illegal immigration won.
When I wonder out loud why these hundreds of thousands of fit young men with their iPhones hiking into Europe don't apply themselves to building futures in their own homes, I am termed a racist. But isn't it racist to assume that young, strong and clearly well-fed young men with iPhones are helpless in their own homelands?
Merkel said European Union initiatives hadn’t gotten far enough and that she will push for a permanent distribution of refugees across the 28-member bloc.
Good luck with that, Angela. You and Sweden, stupidly, created the crisis, and you and Sweden alone will bear the consequences.
How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk - What does the way you speak say about where you’re from? Answer all the questions below to see your personal dialect map.
I came out as New York City/Yonkers/Jersey City. Odd, because I grew up in western Massachusetts. I think the test is approximately accurate, though. My parents were immigrant kids from Queens, and I have been in NYC for a few years now.
In the general fitness and endurancecategory of exercises (as opposed to strength and power), bursts of "balls to the wall"* (not sure what term women might use for that) exertion are far more useful than long stretches of less intense cardio. Except for those over 75 or in cardiac rehab, long stretches of "comfortable cardio" advance none of your goals other than plain functional maintenance. Functional maintenance is good, though, for the aging. (Comfortable cardio means you sweat but do not get winded.)
You can watch Social X-Rays, models, and quasi-anorectics jogging or doing cardio exercises for hours all the time in NYC, but they do not look like that because of exercise. They look like that because they don't eat carbs, or anything else much. Creepy.
What most of us regular exercisers do is a combination, eg 20-40 minutes of continuous cardio machines with brief bursts of maximum speed effort - sprints in effect. Distance runners train with sprints, as do swimmers. Other high-intensity sprint-like exercises? Squats, heavy ball smashes, lunges, high steps with weights, burpees, and the like. Basically, any relatively-brief spurts of demand that make you feel like you might drop dead, or might wish to drop dead.
Remember, cardio doesn't burn fat hardly at all, and does not build strength or power either. It can burn some carbs (roughly 2 slices of toast per hour), help mobilize fat-burning somewhat only when combined with low carb, and it puts whatever strength and power you have to work. It is really just about endurance/fitness. If you build your strength and power with other exercises, your effectiveness with high-intensity will obviously increase because your maximum will be more intense.
Losing fat is low-carb diet, improving fitness is demanding cardio, and improving strength/power is resistance. It's simple. Our goal is simple too: to be fit for whatever life offers.
*Thanks to reader for etymology of the balls expression
The EU power center in Brussels (or is it really in Germany?) has an endless greed for power over its states, and for money along with it.
What one sees is similar to what happened with American states eventually in their relations with a once-weak central government. Will the nations rebel?
There is a line in Baja Oklahoma where a character says something like "America is at peace for a change, and now the only enemy we have is Washington DC." Hilarious book, by the way, and it holds up well.
Biceps are not major functional muscles. There are only three good reasons to strengthen biceps in isolation: arm-toning for middle-aged women, showing off in wife-beater Ts - and, usefully, to provide some complementary balance for the far more useful and important triceps.
My fitness coach is now adding jump rope to the end of all of my daily morning routines. 
