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.
Pizza requires government rules: I want a hard, thin, half-burnt crust and hate the soft soggy crap, and I demand government action now. It should be free, too. The People need good pizza.
Count me in with those who believe Social Security is a Ponzi scheme. After all, many Ponzis start with a surplus and garner interest, but over time the payouts exceed incoming revenues. All Ponzis are based on paying dividends to "investors" out of active money incoming from new "investors". But even Ponzis don't pay out additional money to people who petition for someone else's funds. If they did, I presume they would lower one person's payout to cover the person making the petition.
I'm not sure how long Social Security can last. A friend of mine who is dyed-in-the-wool liberal/progressive believes the upper range limit for SocSec payments should be eliminated and it should be handled the same way as an income tax. That is probably the first step that will be taken. Soak the Rich. This will extend the scheme for a few more years. Then they will undoubtedly implement means-testing, which will extend it a bit longer. At some point, all the financial engineering will fail. Until then, keep kicking the can down the road.
Religion is a map. A map provides orientation and direction, but one is under no compulsion to go anywhere with it. It lets you know YOU ARE HERE and GOD IS THERE. The rest is between you and him.
"What I like to do is to start businesses. It can be any kind of business, I've done everything from restaurants to specialty wire manufacturers. Most fail, some struggle along, some do OK, and occasionally there is a home run. It's great fun, all of it."
Why does it matter? It's a business, and makes money for the school. This is not news. Universities have become businesses, and, often, big ones. They serve their consumers.
Homeland
Security Secretary: Illegals Have ‘Earned Right to be Citizens’ - See
more at:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/homeland-security-secretary-illegals-have-earned-right-be-citizens#sthash.yxvC3JIs.dpuf
Jaywalking is as much a part of New York as salty pretzels and the carriage horses of Central Park. While Bill de Blasio claimed to be inspired by Mayor La Guardia, the latter had an entirely different view of the relationship between the people and the city government.
“I prefer the happiness of our unorganized imperfection to the organized perfection of other countries,” La Guardia said after vetoing a jaywalking bill, and added, referencing the growing fascism in Germany that was then admired by many progressives, “Broadway is not Unter den Linden.”
Remarkably, more than a quarter of retirees will un-retire at some point, not due to financial necessity, but because they find work more rewarding and enjoyable than retirement.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio emphatically backed New Governor Andrew Cuomo’s controversial remarks that “extreme” conservatives – which he defined as being pro-life, second amendment advocates, or supporters of traditional marriage – “have no place in the state of New York.” “I stand by that 100 percent,” de Blasio told reporters at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.
From: Phil Jones <p.jones@xxxxxxxxx.xxx> To: “Michael E. Mann” <mann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx> Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL Date: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004
I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !
Hostility towards mass immigration arises not just from fears of economic “progress”, but from instructive experiences of cultural incompatibility, social disadvantage, imported crime and terrorism and an uninvited threat to national identity. To brush aside such considerations as trivial, intolerant, nostalgic, racist, nasty and even Nazi exposes a faulty and counter-productive analysis, itself blinkered by global-growth criteria.
An economy is not a country. Although bankers may not appreciate this, voters understand it all too well.
Poverty is the normal human condition. Comfort and affluence and cheap carbohydrates are the exception. We take it all for granted, don't we? Even our "poor" are wealthy and comfortable as heck by world standards.
IN my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million — and I was angry because it wasn’t big enough. I was 30 years old, had no children to raise, no debts to pay, no philanthropic goal in mind. I wanted more money for exactly the same reason an alcoholic needs another drink: I was addicted.
It's basically government day care, isn't it? Progressives relentlessly pursue their cradle-to-grave programs to turn all Americans into wards of the State (or serfs - we're already serfs, given the % of our labor we have generously voted to offer to our morally- and intellectually-superior Lords).
We wonder why we serfs do this. Perhaps we have so many immigrants with serf and slave heritages that they are comfortable with it or comforted by it, but not even Marx would have imagined Democratic Feudalism.
The Lowdown on Low-Cut: Salary's Dress Code Survey - Find Out the 
A course from Great Courses: 
Kid-Rearing (This is like, so Un-PC… But is it useful?)
