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.
There are three problems with rewarding those who use accusations of bigotry as a political cudgel. First, those who seek to protect religious liberties are not bigots, and going along with false accusations that they are makes one a party to a lie. Second, it is an excellent way to lose political contests, since there is almost nothing — up to and including requiring algebra classes — that the Left will not denounce as bigotry. Third, and related, it rewards and encourages those who cynically deploy accusations of bigotry for their own political ends.
America has the greatest health care system on earth. It is super cheap, with lots of options and a high degree of customer satisfaction. It is called veterinary medicine.
I would much prefer to say I oppose the RFRA which Indiana (and Arkansas) recently passed. I don't believe in discriminating against people for their race, creed, or lifestyle. I don't think others should, either. What I want others to do, however, is not something I'm willing to enshrine in law, like Progressives tend to do.
As a result, I have a very unnatural feeling about the RFRA. I oppose its existence, but accept that it's needed in today's world of crazies who will sue for any reason that crosses their mind. I pointed out to a friend of mine that, as a Phillies fan, I may not want to sell a hot dog to a Mets fan. I don't like Mets fans, I'd prefer not to associate with them (at least on game day). Based on the concept of freedom of association, I have that right, since an economic transaction is an associative act. It is protected by my right to decide who I wish to interact with. All great societies require freedom of association. The downside, of course, is that sometimes discrimination takes place. Generally that discrimination is price based. An unwillingness to pay the price I set will not yield a purchase. On the other hand, sometimes it could be simply that you're not the person I want to sell my house to - for any reason. Those reasons don't have to be 'good' and they can't necessarily be labeled 'bad', they just are. You don't have to agree with my reasons. They are mine.
Would it be better to not have the RFRA and the debate surrounding it? Absolutely. But we have it because of some basic stupidity in life today. Really? You want that cake so badly it must come from a guy who doesn't want to serve you? There's no other baker in town? Your goal is what? Oh, I get it, you just want to make a big point by shaming him. Well, that's OK. Shaming is perfectly acceptable. But forcing him to make your cake is aggression.
The best way to fight this law, the Progressives think, is to boycott Indiana and its businesses. Several have started to do this, including Angie's List (which, tangentially, actually saved the state millions of tax dollars). However, boycotting is the worst way to 'fight' the law. It will create backlash and will entrench the supporters. The best way to change the law is through business. That is start businesses which do not discriminate and will hire anyone. Engagement and activity undermines discrimination, because it will generate profits. Once a discriminatory business sees its profits leaving, they will change soon enough or go out of business.
Perhaps the best example of freedom of association occurred on The Ed Show on MSNBC, however. As Ed Schultz was losing his debate with his guest, Ed chose to shut the guest's microphone off. Coward that he is, Ed was incapable of making a valid point and decided to muzzle his lucid guest. Which is not censorship, but is Ed exercising his right to associate with people he wants to do business with. Which, interestingly, supports the nature and spirit of the RFRA. While the RFRA references religion, the reality is religion has very little to do with it. It is simply the right to choose who you want to associate with, whenever you please. There is nothing wrong with that. It's a shame Ed Schultz and others of his ilk have yet to recognize this salient point.
Do I agree with the RFRA? Only insofar as it makes sense to let people do business with whomever they'd like without the government forcing them to do its bidding. Do I agree with its existence? No, technically it's covered by the First Amendment. But practically speaking, in today's absurd upside-down Progressive "do as I tell you" world, it's needed.
My view? This has nothing to do with reason other than political tactics. Pence stepped into a political trap. Bad timing. Facts, such as the support of Dems for these laws, and their presence in many blue states and a total of 19 states, is ignored.Pence had a target painted on him.
I agree that ignorance of the law should be part of a defense except for the obvious crimes, because 300,000 laws is more than anybody could know or even understand. This is from Reynolds in USA Today:
"Regulatory crimes" ... are incredibly numerous and a category that is growing quickly. They are the ones likely to trap unwary individuals into being felons without knowing it. That is why Michael Cottone, in a just-published Tennessee Law Review article, suggests that maybe the old presumption that individuals know the law is outdated, unfair and maybe even unconstitutional. "Tellingly," he writes, "no exact count of the number of federal statutes that impose criminal sanctions has ever been given, but estimates from the last 15 years range from 3,600 to approximately 4,500." Meanwhile, according to recent congressional testimony, the number of federal regulations (enacted by administrative agencies under loose authority from Congress) carrying criminal penalties may be as many as 300,000.
There have been times that I’ve felt serious pity for Hillary. All of her efforts -- all the bullshit, all the lies, all the public posturing -- have been so plainly carried out to make up for an empty life. A life spent with a man who simply could not control himself and valued her not at all. Consider how many times she picked up the phone only to hear a hangup, how many strange perfumes she smelled, how many stains she found on Bill’s clothing. Consider what such knowledge -- particularly knowing that it would never end -- would do to a normal woman.
I think his family is more into benevolent Feudalism (the modern term for that is pretty much Socialism with the royals replaced by a new, less benevolent, royalty)
Am I the only person who has little interest in US involvement in the middle east? They are all tribal lunatics and barbarians (except Israel which is basically a European transplant), like most of Africa too.Nobody gave me the job of running them.
Boring topics, I know. Boring only in part because those who write about them tend to be pure Materialists, assuming that money and bourgeois comforts are all that matter in life. I always find that strange from Lefties, but Lefties do love and envy money more than I do. As I have observed before, Maine Guides, NYC would-be actors, adjunct faculty, organic farmers, grad students, carpentry apprentices, etc. all are below the poverty level. They neither need nor want any sympathy.
I see no virtue in economic equalizing. It never worked anywhere, and efforts to impose it by force generally end up with plutocratic, privileged bureaucrats and a nation of serfs serving the State. Why ‘inequality’ can be ‘beautiful’. Furthermore, many people do not base their life choices on money but instead on things more important to them.
Poverty in the US? Let's define it first. The US has an extensive safety net able to contain the unfortunate, the feckless, the mentally-ill, the temporarily out of work, etc., etc. We even go overboard with disability, providing for people who could easily do something useful in the world but are working the system. Nobody in the US goes without food, shelter, and a big screen TV if they want those things. Notable also is that US poverty stats do not include any government charity or private charity contributions. Of course, family always helps out first, and that is ignored too.
Still, poverty will never go away as long as it is defined as the lowest x% of US income. I am still awaiting the official study which can tell me exactly who "the poor" are in America, and whether they care. NYT: How poor are the poor?
If the whole focus of your life is on getting everybody else to agree with you on every detail of your politics and adopt your plans for a perfect society, then you’re setting yourself up to be at war with most of the human race most of the time.
The American legal philosopher Joel Feinberg attacked Mill by saying that we feel offence like a wound. You only have to think about the hurt from slights that have stayed with you longer than the pain from a broken bone to see the truth in his argument. Societies and individuals feel disgust, revulsion, shock, shame and embarrassment when they hear views that don’t physically harm them, Feinberg said in the 1980s. They can and should replace Mill’s “harm principle” with his “offence principle”—that the law can stop speech that causes serious offense.
Feinberg’s mild authoritarianism buttressed the illiberal version of liberalism that flourishes to this day. It supports the laws against “hate speech” which may not be so hateful it provokes its audience to violence, but is still grossly offensive. It provides the philosophical justification for the incessant Twitter storms and media fits about “gaffes”, “misspeaks”, or to use a modern phrase that reeks of the Victorian drawing-room, “inappropriate language”.
Go into the modern university and you won’t hear much about Mill or Milton or the millions around the world who have had to learn the hard way why freedom of speech matters. Instead, you will be fed philosophers far less rigorous than Feinberg.
The totalitarian impulse is omnipresent, and must be resisted at all times. The "offence principle," however, is nothing but a self-ridiculing bullying tactic which deserves mockery rather that resistance. If you equate offense with a wound, you live on the wrong planet. I am offended by people and things continuously, and that's normal life. But this is not really about emotional wounds - it's a bullying tactic and rarely if ever genuine. Not that that matters anyway.
One of my proposals is for kids to learn stuff anyway they can, with degrees issued by degree-offering institutions following oral and written examinations.
You can tell quickly whether a person knows their stuff in an oral exam. You can ramp up your questions to determine the limits of their knowledge and thinking. If some kids need to be spoon-fed their education, so be it. There's been enough of this overly-costly "college experience" nonsense.
You can almost do that today, but you still have to pay. One of the brightest fellows I know got his BS in Physics from a highly-prestigious university in three years without ever going to class, while playing drums in a touring rock band. Picked up the syllabi, and showed up for exams.
His “Imagine” speech seemed calculated to ridicule every Leftist shibboleth with predictable effect. The Left lost no time characterizing him as a Christian bigot, a patriarchal supremacist, an uneducated, crazy, anti-poor, anti-abortion “uppity loudmouth” besides being that supreme abomination, a White Latino. If there’s some sacred cow in the Leftist canon Ted Cruz has left undefiled, he will soon enough defile it. That’s the plan.
Hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, have you heard the news, folks? Have you heard the news? Some guy who has only been a senator for a short time, some guy without any real executive experience, some guy whose biggest qualification is he went to Harvard Law School, some guy with a foreign name and mixed ethnic background, some guy who has questions about his birth certificate, have you heard this guy's running for president? Isn't that crazy? And the Democrats are telling us this guy is not qualified, that he's dumb, that he's stupid, that he's incendiary, and that he doesn't have it right on global warming.
Why would any on-campus crime be handled any differently than an off-campus crime? Colleges today find themselves in a funny spot. Are they in loco parentis, or not? Do they enforce morals, or not? Do they have codes of behavior, or not? They certainly seem to have absurd speech codes. In any event, I would take them out of the criminal justice business.
Why the Ethanol Mandate Is Terrible Policy - Politicians of both parties may bow before Big Corn, but the biofuel requirement is an unmanageable economic distortion.
Connecticut remains the most heavily-taxed state in the US (and the wealthiest, per capita), with supposedly the most government services (or maybe just the most costly) and almost the highest-paid government employees (after California): Connecticut Residents Work 6 Weeks Longer Than Louisianans to Pay Taxes
We often wonder what is gained by contributing all of this money, but in a Blue State you are at their mercy so you just try not to think about it. With all its dying cities filled with government-dependents, its liberal gentry, and the union power, you're screwed.
The higher they raise them, the faster they drive away the people who can pay them. It's a shame, because it's a wonderful little state with plenty of history, recreation, rural beauty, schools and universities, educated people, social life, every kind of church, seaside, rivers, real seasons, etc.
Recently mandated “positive interventions” have only exacerbated discipline problems in the largely minority Santa Ana public school district, where middle-school kids now regularly smoke pot in bathrooms — some even in class — and attack staff — spitting on teachers, pelting them with eggs, even threatening to stab them, according to the Orange County Register
I recently read that there are only 1 million Americans with net worth of $5-25 million, and only 142,000 Americans with over $25 million in net worth. There are so many millionaires in NYC, you would think it's normal and end up with a distorted view of life.
All inequality statistics could be solved by confiscating all of these wealthy assets. However, it would not even put a dent in American's debt to China. Another problem is that those people would go out and do it again, so best just to take their money and houses and stuff and then kill them, and kill their kids too just to be on the safe side. Kill the kulaks.
Maybe better just to confiscate the wealth of old people who lack the energy to make money again. Hey - there's a policy to campaign on.
Where 
Government 
John F. Nash Jr. and Louis Nirenberg 
Will Your Kids Go to College, or to the University of Everywhere?
It must be Spring - it snowed all night again.
It's Spring, with snow coming today, 1 below zero F in Rumford, Maine, and the migrating