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.
Mayor Bloomberg wants New Yorkers to compost their garbage. Where? In the hallway of the Plaza Hotel?
Who is "we", by the way? Royal "we"?
As we (Royal "We") frequently say at Maggie's, "If you're so rich, how come you ain't smart?"
NYC remains the greatest city in the world, and the most fun to visit with endless interesting things to do and jammed with smart, ambitious people from all over the world, but it has plenty of issues to be tackled: public education, debt, too much welfare, union control of everything, governmental over-regulation of everything including the housing market, etc. However, Bloomberg focuses on the small, elitist, feel-good issues: smoking, composting, diet, salt, gays, illegal immigration, and other baloney. Why?
We suspect it's because he gave up on the hard issues a few years ago, and decided to deal with the little stuff. He's a Jewish mother at heart, and a pain in the ass. "It's raining. Don't go out without your rubbers." "They're in my wallet, Ma." Rainy Day Women.
I agree with Palin that Americans, much less tough New Yorkers, do not need to be treated like children and neither need to be, nor want to be, preached to by anybody other than a pastor, priest, or a rabbi. I lived there for a while and love to visit, and it's not a place for sissies. It always was a good place to meet tall, elegant and refined debutantes with pedigrees acceptable to my Mother. I did, a long time ago, and so far, so good.
NOCD was the kiss of death when I was young. Snobs.
Today, Congress exercises police powers never granted by the Constitution. Conservatives who favor federal “wars” on drugs, gambling and other behaviors should understand the damage they have done to the constitutional underpinnings of limited government.
Amusing, and heart-warming, to see how this gal who gamed the college diversity scam got in touch with her true inner racial identity, and was able to build a career on it.
As one who has spent a lifetime studying the humanities, my advice for students is to take their business elsewhere. Until humanists can offer an education that truly prepares one for life -- not just with a marketable degree, but with an education of wisdom and hope -- I would consider a degree in accounting or computer science. Then, after work, one can read all the Shakespeare one likes and not have to be informed that the bard was a racist, an anti-Semite, and gender-challenged to boot.
I have written about the history of the concept of retirement several times, over the years. Basically, I tend to believe that retirement is a bad idea for body and soul. My house painter is 74, and he claims work keeps him young and permits him to take better trips than he could otherwise afford.
Twenty-five years ago, when the New York City public school system seemed permanently mired in mediocrity, a New York Times reporter asked me, “Alright, what’s the answer?”
I said, without thinking really, “One hundred nuns.”
We've all known for a while that the DHS has been building a potent paramilitary organization. The justification for that eludes me. Of course, the FBI and ATF are paramilitary too. What am I missing among federal paramilitary agencies?
Would it be criminal to call this guy an un-American jackass? This guy ought to watch the harassment that takes place in every Question Time in the Brit Parliament. The guy is pathetic. Harassment of others is poor manners, but frequently necessary in life because so many deserve it. Including him.
We have a sort of inverted war going on and sadly, that war has enthusiasts on both sides of the aisle. This war is being waged by people who send F-16 fighter jets to Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Egypt, while seeking to limit American citizens to seven bullets in their own defense. It's a war in which our armed forces are emasculated even as domestic agencies amass military weaponry and hardware at an alarming rate, thereby leaving the law abiding citizen vulnerable to both foreign enemies and his own government. This is a war in which an American ambassador and staff are left defenseless during an attack overseas, abandoned by a Commander in Chief who has yet to account for his own actions that day, but who nevertheless scurried about the land for weeks fraudulently insisting that responsibility rested on the head of an American video producer who remains incarcerated to this day. It is a war in which our government labels an attack on US soldiers by a Muslim shouting "Allahu Akbar" as, "Workplace Violence," while labeling Americans who embrace the freedoms enshrined in our founding documents as potential terrorists.
We live in a time in which an Air Force wing commander removes from a base dining facility a Bible verse reading, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God," on word of an unhappy atheist, thereby discovering a heretofore unknown constitutional right not to be offended...
Where is the sane center of sanity these days? I mean, besides here at Maggie's Farm?
Everybody understands that big-time college sports are a big business which has little to do with a university's mission. Indeed, they can corrupt the university's mission.
Like so many things in life, it's about money and status. Big Division 1 athletics brings in big bucks from contracts and from alumni which is why the coaches are paid so well. Everybody working at a sports university gratefully feeds from that trough and are rightly grateful to the coaches and teams.
Status, too. It's called "marketing." How often do you hear kids say that they only want to go to a Big Ten School, or a Southern Conference school? I hear that often. Sports powerhouses attract students. UConn is a perfect example with its booming athletic program (aka sports franchise) in recent years. TV college sports put humble UConn on the national map.
Education is an industry, and Higher Ed is a big industry with crony relationships with TV and government.
Government loans are not a favor for students and their families. They are a subsidy to an unaffordable education industry. Just as with government bailouts, subsidies, and tax breaks, government policies tend to freeze the inefficient status quo in place, and to inhibit reform, new ideas, new more efficient solutions. Obamacare attempts the same.
Yes, I happen to oppose the mortgage interest tax deduction too. (I am also opposed to the income tax in general, the death tax which is a game for lawyers and accountants and prevents families from building businesses and independence, and the corporate tax which also amounts to creating an industry for lawyers and accountants.)
Public schools want to teach sexual matters from Kindergarten, and to make sure the kiddies know all about sex, safe sex, anal sex, oral sex, masturbation, mutual masturbation, gay sex, etc. The schools thus stimulate, or overstimulate our innocent youth. Heck, coeducation is overstimulating in itself.
At the same time, Twerking is sexual harassment of some sort. How a Twerk dance harasses anybody is beyond me. It's meant to be silly fun. As Instapundit says cleverly "Welcome to the neo-Victorian era — bringing back the censoriousness, but not the virtues..."
America’s slow-to-nonexistent economic growth, of which today’s manufacturing data are one of many symptoms, is the result of bad government policies: out-of-control regulations, excessive and inefficient government spending, rising tax rates and the impending disaster of Obamacare, to name the most obvious ones. Until observers are willing to acknowledge the extent to which poor government drags down the economy, they will continue to be surprised by unexpected bad news.
A lawn appreciates being plugged annually, spring or fall. This fellow omits one of the reasons to do it, which is the compacting of even good topsoil by people, dogs, lawnmowers, wheelbarrows, etc. Earthworms do a good enough job of this in a meadow, but not in a lawn. You can rent a plugger for a day quite cheaply.
It's easy to forget that lawns are not natural. They are, in fact, grass gardens.
Boys are more at risk than girls in the U.S. educational system. A MetLife study stated, "Girls appear to have an advantage over boys in terms of their future plans, teacher's expectations, everyday experiences at school and interactions in the classroom." Boys are less engaged in school, and less engagement means less success in the classroom; in fact, engagement with school is probably the single most important factor of academic success. Boys are more likely than girls to come to school without supplies and without doing their homework. Why aren't boys more engaged in school? According to Sommers, "schools today tend to be run by women for girls. Classrooms can be hostile environments for boys. They like action, competition and adventure stories. Those are not in favor. Games like tag and dodgeball are out; tug of war has become tug of peace, and male heroes have been replaced by Girl Power." Boys receive lower marks from female teachers, according to research done for the London School of Economics' Centre for Economic Performance.
American schools are designed for scholars, and gals. The average guy just does not like to do as he is told, especially by a female. Furthermore, many guys like manual work. It feels good.
Smart guy, and a stunningly-clear speaker. It's time to add Wood to the Maggie's pantheon of pundits.
This helps me understand why my friend's daughter quit Bowdoin after her first semester. I think she felt that the college culture there was sick and insane.
The link to the interview is here. It's worth the time.
As you know, Eton College is not a university. It's a private (what they term "public" in the UK) prep school. High school. Eton is right to keep girls out of there. Girls are a fatal distraction to lads during the intense learning years, and vice-versa.
Basically, they are looking for IQ, curiosity, and capacity for the life of the mind because they will want to push you beyond your limits if they accept you.
Mayor Bloomberg wants New Yorkers to 
Amusing: 