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.
When Prayer Makes Anxiety Worse - Several new studies show that praying might help alleviate worries—but only if the person has a secure relationship with God
Political entities and boundaries come and go. They should never be frozen in history, because so many are accidents of history anyway. Should powerful empires, crazy-quilt conglomerates - China, Russia, the EU, maybe the USA - devolve? Why not? Would it be worse, or better?
In the US, I can easily see California and Texas as their own countries. They were never envisioned at the beginning anyway. Either one would be more of a nation than Canada, Australia, or Austria. Smalleer governments are more accountable and more responsive.
Even Spain could break into its constituent parts if the empire permits a vote.
They deserve what they get. No one forced this on Britain. The English had a long conversation with themselves, and decided to commit mass suicide and welcome the Muslim hordes intent on replacing them. If anything, Britain should serve as a haunting lesson of what happens when a people intellectualizes themselves into a position so far to the left it condones their own self-destruction.
China has only 31 government and party employees per thousand residents. The number of civil servants per thousand residents in France is 95, in the United States, 75, and in Germany 53.
China
has only 31 government and party employees per thousand residents. The
number of civil servants per thousand residents in France is 95, in the
United States, 75, and in Germany 53. - See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/09/china-fact-of-the-day-21.html#sthash.tv0GCjgE.dpuf
China
has only 31 government and party employees per thousand residents. The
number of civil servants per thousand residents in France is 95, in the
United States, 75, and in Germany 53. - See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/09/china-fact-of-the-day-21.html#sthash.tv0GCjgE.dpuf
The radical movement that the FSM spawned soon imploded into violence and mindless anti-Americanism. After helping to instigate riots in Newark, New Jersey (and writing about his accomplishments for The New York Review of Books), New Left stalwart Tom Hayden heard the siren song of the FSM and moved to Berkeley. He settled into one of the city’s many radical communes and rallied students to support the Black Panthers—America’s “internal Vietcong,” according to Hayden—and to create “liberated zones” to serve as Panther sanctuaries. He pushed the Berkeley radicals to learn how to use guns because the revolution was surely coming. Hayden and some movement veterans organized trips to North Vietnam and North Korea. The youthful political pilgrims came back singing the praises of Ho Chi Minh and Kim Il Sung. Left untold by most of the friendly narratives about the FSM and the New Left is the story of how a once-idealistic student movement crossed the line to antidemocratic ideologies and undermined the possibility of a decent Left in America.
Examples of sexual violence include: discounting the partner's feelings regarding sex; criticizing the partner sexually; touching the partner sexually in inappropriate and uncomfortable ways; withholding sex and affection...
I think the GOP, without a message, can have one simple message — we’re the grown ups who will keep you safe and get out of your way. Many middle class mothers remember their grandfathers fondly. They were men who stormed beaches to kill monsters. They don’t see men like that around here now. They don’t see anyone honoring their grandfathers’ legacies. The world has come undone. America needs grownups, not technocrats, to fix it.
Barack Obama’s address to the U.N. General Assembly was so insubstantial, so full of airy platitudes, and so adulterated with the gaseous clichés of bankrupt internationalism and progressive bromides that I thought at any minute he might just float away.
My explanation: He has already retired. Job is too easy. Also,
This speech proves once again that Obama is not a serious man. His badly trained mind is a warehouse of the sort of leftist and progressive received wisdom and dull clichés that pollute our universities, media, and popular culture. He represents the moral idiocy and fashionable self-loathing that signals to our enemies and rivals that the United States can be had.
Republicans can win a Senate majority, take back the presidency, repeal Obamacare, build the Keystone pipeline, slash oppressive government regulations, end special tax deals and government contracts for the Democrats’ big donors, restore an honest IRS and nominate serious people to the federal bench.
But they’ll never do any of those things if they can’t learn that mass immigration from the Third World is wildly unpopular with voters.
“We have the highest overall corporate tax rates in the world, and we are now the only O.E.C.D. country that also taxes overseas earnings,” Mr. Clinton said. “A lot of these executives, even if they wanted to bring the money home, they think this is crazy.”
It was a New Yorky weekend for us - Brooklyn Sat night, Manhattan Sunday afternoon to join the climate march to attend the opening of the Met Museum's From Assyria to Iberia show. The climate parade did snarl up midtown traffic.
I am convinced there is nothing they would enjoy more than to be targets of America. It elevates them. It's a booby trap, and beheadings are the bait. You can find as many justifications for attacking Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, or Saudi Arabia for that matter. The Jihad of the True Believers will never end, at least in our lifetimes. They are convinced they are doing God's work and do not mind dying for that. It's been going on for 1500 years.
As for borders in the ME, they are all bogus anyway. The concept of the nation-state is not really in their lexicon. Caliphate is - Kingdom of Allah on earth, won by arms if not by faith. It's a culture.
Related, the concept of the nation-state is relatively recent, and possibly obsolete: Did Industry Cause Nations?
The latest culinary fad: famine food - Middle-class foodies are paying a fortune to eat what peasants once lived on.
How Sugar Daddies Are Financing College Education - The popular website Seeking Arrangement sets up "mutually
beneficial relationships" between wealthy older men and young female
students.
So what we have now in the middle east is a replay of the bloody religious wars that once traumatized the West when Protestants accused Catholics of being idolatrous heretics and the latter returned the favor by putting Protestants to the stakes and the racks. In the present instance, the real war being waged by ISIS is not against the liberties which pertain on the streets of New York City, but in Leupp’s words, “against the Shiites, Christians, Yezidis, secularists, and others it sees as unbelievers and as stooges of the west. But its primary target is the Shiites”.
Photo is another from Zambia - a Great Egret. Basically the same bird in North America, which we used to term American Egret.
Remembrance of Trumpets Past -Rosh Hashanah as described in the Torah looks very different from the Rosh Hashanah we know today. What happened, and what exactly are Jews celebrating?
For the Western political observer, Russia judged by common metrics always seems on the verge of being a spent force. As Joseph Conrad reminds us, Russia never seems to vanish from the map, and remains a font of imperialism and war.
Photo: A pal and his wife just returned from two weeks in Zambia. I had to wiki Zambia. They loved the trip. He promises some photos, but sent me just one thus far: A Lilac-Breasted Roller
Obama’s fecklessness is so unique that our adversaries and enemies surely realize they will never face a weaker president. They must assume the next commander in chief will take a more muscular approach to America’s interests and be more determined to forge alliances than the estranged man who occupies the Oval Office now.
French actor Gerard Depardieu, 65, admits to
Pic: rainy day in NYC on Thursday
Thornton:
You Don’t 
Napoleon and Josephine had a prenup
Thousands March in New York to End Industrialized Civilization
Johns Hopkins study: Huge gulf between D.C. political class and the rest of America
Photo: A pal and his wife just returned from two weeks in Zambia. I had to wiki Zambia. They loved the trip. He promises some photos, but sent me just one thus far: A Lilac-Breasted Roller