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 investors and entrepreneurs consider important decisions like where to establish a residence, where to operate a business and, yes, where to die, they compare their options. From a financial point of view, Connecticut turns out not to be a great option.
I love this state, or parts of it anyway. However, it is one of those states, like California, which once were independent-minded and traditionalist Yankee Red, but gradually turned Blue and then finally Dark Blue. They took their prosperity for granted. Farms, inventors, entrepreneurs, booming factories, great private schools, and great universities and colleges; the summer homes of the prosperous of NYC and even Hollywood; a charming coastline great for swimming, sailing, and fishing; old-time Yankee towns and virtues.
Jobs for all. Minimal taxation. A huge middle-class, with more upper-middle than most states had, to spread their money around. Huge Hartford insurance industry. Horses, cattle, fine Connecticut shade tobacco. Old town greens with their Congregational churches. Town Meeting governments where every wise old guy and every crank had his say. The southern half is close to NYC, and the northern half goes to Boston for baseball and football and hockey. Good choices.
Government policies did their damage. State taxes and local property taxes. Unions corrupted urban governments, along with some of the immigrant Mafioso components. Semi-skilled blacks from the rural South moved north in a vast migration for the industrial jobs, jobs which fled this high-tax, heavily-unionized post-War state leaving them with nothing while immigrant Mexicans happily do most of the hard labor and even skilled labor like masonry and construction, and are happy to work in our Dunkin Donuts shops.
For many businesses and many individuals, economics now trump sentimental home-town and home-state attachments.
Probably, like many Californians, government is doing their best to drive me away but it's still home to me. Roots, family, friends, traditions, church, clubs, colleagues. Some of my wealthy friends retire to elite enclaves in Florida for six months plus one day, and spend the rest of their time up here. Not that they really retire, but you know what I mean: they keep working via the internet and phone.
Attorneys and accountants are needed to minimize the damage of the government greed which, unlike private desire for profit, comes to us at gunpoint.
Nothing about Florida holds any charm for me (sorry, Florida readers). It's just how I feel. I have enjoyed visits to the Everglades, and other places in Florida. But not to live. It's just not my subculture.
Now I must be off to a neighborhood cocktail party. Some of the old traditions persist amongst the traditionalist old minority here, where a blazer and tie are still never the wrong attire for a Connecticut Yankee.
Nobody has informed Bridgeport about that yet, but I still hold some hope for that old town if they can starve out the mob, the unions, and etc. "Park City."
The “Cadillac” health plan is a myth - A doctor explains that limiting the scope of
employer-based health care has long been a dream of the establishment
Zinn hated the country which made him millions with his 1930s-style propaganda, and which bought his nice summer place on Cape Cod. He even bought the theater there. There is something twisted about people who welcome opportunity for themselves, but hate it for others.
The alienation of citizens from their government is not limited to people whom the government decides to prosecute. Because so many regulations are so unconnected to anything resembling right or wrong, people who want to be law-abiding find themselves picking and choosing the laws that they deem worthy of respect. It is a pernicious process regardless of whether they get caught when they break the rules. People who feel compelled to judge laws on a case-by-case basis have attached provisos to one of their most basic civic loyalties.
Photo is of the Obamacare law. Nobody in America knows all of what's in it, to this day. No doctor or lawyer ever will and, God knows, no politician will ever bother to know: they exempted all national politicians from it. Teams of hundreds of junior staffers wrote that stuff, and put in whatever they felt like.
The detailed regulations to that pile of crap will fill a library, and every hospital, drug company, medical device company, insurance company, doctor, and nursing home in America will be in violation of something. Work for attorneys, for sure, so I guess that's a good thing.
Our government is insane. My personal definition of insanity is not knowing that you are nuts. If you worry about being nuts, you probably aren't.
When, why, and where, did around 50% of Americans get the notion that government was a good thing rather than the necessary but strictly-limited evil which our founders envisioned? What made tough, independent American pioneers into willing children of the State? Is European-style serfdom contagious?
My ancestors escaped serfdom, at great personal risk. I will be loyal to that. I have no gratitude for government "services." I want to be left alone and never "helped." That's American to me.
There's some old advice about not drawing a gun unless you intend to use it. It's true for individuals and for nations. If you go to war, then you had better mean it. Wars are bloody and messy. They're not for the sort of people who think that putting "Smart" ahead of something automatically makes it better. And "meaning it" means being committed to crushing the enemy.
Washington State fulfills two Jewish laws in one shot... and it would have been even more generous to have been reminded about Washington State’s wisdom in overhauling liquor distribution laws…
Two Laws in the Torah were fulfilled on the same day, and it makes good sense that they become laws at the same time.
The two landmark laws just passed in Washington State, concerning Same-Sex Marriage and the (partial) Legalization of Marijuana, passed on the same day as they might have been considered on the same day because they relate, together, to the list of important prescriptions and proscriptions in Leviticus, the Book Concerning the Levites, the Vayikra, the third of the Great Books that make up The One Great Book, whose thirteenth chapter contains, among other edicts concerning social customs and personal mores, this verse, the 13th, which, it seems, hasn’t often, in the last 2,000 or more years in the history of The One Great Book, hasn’t often, we were saying, been interpreted correctly.
It reads,
"If a man lies with another man, they should be stoned."
Seriously, she was an idiot kid at the time, in a family dispute. Her mess began when the grievance crews showed up and exploited a foolish kid. I feel sorry for her. I think she was just trying to avoid a whuppin' from her father or stepfather or whoever, and quickly got in over her head with her teenage fibs.
In a way, I see both her and Pagones as victims of the race industry.
Flashback:
“Full audio of 1998 ‘redistribution’ speech: Obama saw welfare
recipients as ‘majority coalition’” - See more at:
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=50494#sthash.2xiuODlQ.dpuf
Flashback:
“Full audio of 1998 ‘redistribution’ speech: Obama saw welfare
recipients as ‘majority coalition’” - See more at:
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=50494#sthash.2xiuODlQ.dpuf
In honor of the cool new pic Bird Dog chose for the banner:
Showboat comin' up the river See her lanterns flicker in the gentle breeze I can hear the crickets singin' in the evenin' Old Dixie Lily moving past the Cypress trees.
My little boat, she rocks easy I've been catchin' catfish in the creek all day Oh, and I've never seen ladies like those on the big boats Must be fancy breedin' lets you live that way.
Dixie Lily, chuggin' like a grand old lady Paddles hittin' home in the noonday sun Ploughin' through the water with your whistles blowin' Down from Louisiana on the Vicksburg run.
Papa says that I'm a dreamer Says them mosquitoes a'bit me one too many times Oh, but I never get lonesome livin' on the river Watchin' old Lily leave the world behind.
Republicans still believe in being the party of good government, while Democrats, under lefty influence, believing in being the party of moral government. The more pragmatic authoritarianism of the good government party only paves the way for the moral authoritarianism of the left.
The cycle ensures that the left will always have a right to clean up their messes and to rebel against. They need their Nixons to get them out of Vietnam, try to make their social welfare policy disasters seem workable, and act as the father figure that they can pull down and destroy. They need the Reagans and Giulianis and Eisenhowers to denounce as authoritarian conformists, thoughtless buffoons who prevent progress, because the alternative is the eternally stultifying rule of the left whose existence in a country destroys the left as a meaningful moral force in human affairs.
The authoritarian cycle allows the right to claim credit for cleaning up the messes and the left and allows the left to claim credit for cleaning up the messes of the right. The left blames the right and its "budget cuts" to social welfare programs for causing the mess. The right blames the left's flirtation with criminality and its hostility to the solid citizen. The dynamic is a familiar one from elections.
A new t-shirt easily found up in Yankeeland. I told my wife this is what I want for my birthday, so we got me one. It's all I want for my birthday. I'll wear it in Italy, with my straw Stetson, red shorts, and white sneakers, and nobody will dare bother me. Not even the Somali scum.
$12.95. She got off easy, except for the cost of the Italy trip.
Some time ago, I was working at a job that required 'diversity' in hiring practices. It was about 15 or so years, before this became a standard in most corporate hiring practices. I'm still trying to figure out what it means, particularly because I was always taught to hire the best person for the job. I'm not saying diversity is bad. In fact, I'm all for it. But there is no standard gauge for diversity and as a goal it's a moving target. Would 50% female and 20% black be sufficiently diverse? Do we need to have the same percentages of each group as exist in the US population? Or would some close approximation suffice? At what number of employees does diversity become an imperative? I'm not sure we can realistically set numbers for these kinds of things.
At my company, VP level and above employees actually had bonuses based on 'improving the diversity of their departments.' There was no specific guideline provided, the VPs were left to figure it out for themselves. Many got significantly reduced bonuses, which led to the suspicion that it was a corporate method of reducing payouts. I happen to think that was the case.
But the corporation took this all very seriously and each year we were given a 'diversity update,' during which we were showed charts and graphs of women and minorities as a percentage of the company's staff and the executive suite.
I didn't care much for it. I am not opposed to diversity, but as I said, I always hired the best person for the job. I never think in terms of women, Asian, Black, Indian, etc. Suddenly I was being told what the company required in this regard when I was doing my interviews. I will never forget the laugh of one VP, when I recommended a young man for a position, as he said "Unless he's a black woman, the interview will not be worth his time." Fair enough, but I sent him in for the interview anyway and he was not hired, despite having stellar credentials and strengths in all the key areas the company was seeking to improve.
Whatever you decide you want your relationship with sex to be about, there are opportunities out there. Whether you want to have sex or you don’t, you’re looking for love or a one-night stand, you’re gay or straight or somewhere in between, it’s all possible. And whatever happens remember to be safe, get consent, and watch out for your friends.
Well, OK. What seems odd to me is the college administration selling this. Is selling sexual experimentation part of their job?
Regarding consent, I'd suggest recording it on video on your iPhone, ladies. Make sure the fellow gives you sober consent for you to enjoy his body.
Sitting down? Already eaten a little something today? I want to make sure you've got the stomach to witness what you might later describe as the most horrific display of racism you've ever seen:
Like you, I was shocked into silence. I opened my mouth to respond to the horror I'd just witnessed, yet no words sprang forth.
Likewise, I'm sure you sat there, jaw agape, thinking, Huh? WTF? I don' get it!!"
A CNBC reporter is under fire for using the phrase "chink in the armor" during a Tuesday discussion of Wendi Deng's pending divorce from News Corp and 21st Century Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch.
The comments by CNBC's Robert Frank drew a critical response from the Asian American Journalists Association, which condemned the statements as "offensive" and "inappropriate."
You'll notice they used the clumsy word 'inappropriate' instead of the time-honored 'insensitive', but they're new to this. They'll learn quickly enough.
As we noted a few days ago in Team Asia Drops The Ball, these are exciting times for Asians worldwide as they soar to new heights breaking new ground in uncharted waters.
As both the Asiatic Anti-Defamation League and the National Association for the Advancement of Yellow-Colored People swing into full gear, there'll be nothing but lucrative lawsuit settlements and the admiration of their peers — that is, the other victim groups — in the future for these groundbreaking pioneers using this previously untapped resource.
And, as 200 years of suppressed, rabid anti-Asianism comes boiling to the surface, you'd certainly expect to see the occasional "racist song!" headline, like we do now when some songwriter inadvertently uses the term "niggardly" or "Jew's harp".
But the most racist song in history? That's how far these up-and-comers have already advanced.
The crap-tastic, Sugar Ray–esque L.A. band really performs a song, "Asian Girlz," with the following lyrics: Korean barbecue / Bitch I love you / I love your creamy yellow thighs / Ooh your slanted eyes.
We still think it's some kind of a joke. A very sick and tasteless joke.
This is, of course, what's so wrong with today's Political Correctness. Evenmentioning the attributes of a people puts the stamp of Racist across one's forehead.
Having learned this valuable lesson, I dashed back to the first site and wrote:
So, let me see if I've got this straight.
If I write a song about an English girl and refer to her "creamy white thighs" and "beautiful blue eyes", it's quite possibly the most racist song ever written.
If I write a song about a black girl and refer to her "creamy dark thighs" and "deep brown eyes", it's quite possibly the most racist song ever written.
Likewise, if I write a song about an Asian girl and refer to her "creamy yellow thighs" and "exotic slanted eyes", then that, too, is quite possibly the most racist song ever written.
So we welcome our Asian brothers and sisters to the exciting, lucrative world of grievance and victimization, and wish them eminent success as they brave the waters of this new and bountiful course as they seize control of their shared destiny with other worldwide victims in bringing to light the New World Order where no one will ever feel offended again.
Well, it looks like Bird Dog's having a good time taking a few days off to finally catch the riveting last and final season of 'All My Children'.
I couldn't believe Melissa turned out to be Harry's long-lost sister from his mother's fifth marriage to her second cousin on her father's side! This whole thing is just tearing my emotions apart!
Finally! After all the money we've thrown into the Defense Department, it's nice to see them actually doing a little defense for once, rather than all that 'offensive defense' they're always doing overseas. As this 'comfort blanket' eventually covers and protects the entire nation against attacks from British, French and North Korean missile attacks, we can all sleep more soundly knowing that our 'big brother' is watching over us.
In international news, those clever Israelis pulled another fast one as they snuck a spy (or 'bird' in Mideast lingo) into Turkey and then got him back out on a legal technicality when he obviously should have been put up against a wall and shot for the spy he is.
You'd think Turkish officials would have at least worked out a prisoner exchange.
In late night television news, there's an interesting article on Jay Leno's impending retirement here. As you might have seen, he's come out with a number of Obama zingers in the past few months — quite a change from the past — so maybe the author's onto something when he says:
I will not be surprised if he pops up in some way in late-night television — possibly on Fox.
While there have certainly been the occasional big band orchestras that played together into their dotage, none of them ever pranced madly about the stage to the adulation of millions of screaming fans around the world while actually in said dotage.
In yet more good news, the movement to turn northern Colorado into the 51st state is making headway:
More than four dozen people showed up Thursday at the first public meeting to discuss a proposal to form a 51st state. Nearly all of them said they support secession.
More than four dozen! When you see this kind of groundswell support, you know you're getting in touch with the people's true wants and needs.
And those kooky kids in Hollywood are at it again. First Hitler, then Chavéz, then...
Every time Hollywood lets costs get completely out of hand, something comes along to save it. In the early 1980s it was videotapes, in the 1990s it was the DVD market. Now it’s China, but unlike the home-video market, China makes specific political demands on films. If “WWZ” is any indication, simply removing negative implications about China isn’t enough: The studios have to go out of their way to paint China in a flattering light.
Well, at least this means we won't be hearing any more of those tired "Jews are running Hollywood" stories.
In Dire Global Warming (DGW) news, I'm sure you've seen this terrible truth spread across the news sites recently:
I tracked down a handful of sites that had the article and left this in the comments:
Boy, I'll say! Every time I see one of those fake global warming articles, it makes my blood boil!
So I'm living proof the article is spot on in its analysis.
Lastly, I'm going to end on some really horrific news, figuring that the rest of your day will be much rosier after reading it since emotionally there won't be anywhere to go but back up.
Given what a splendid job California-bashing sites like Maggie's Farm have done in indoctrinating its readers into believing everyone in CA is a drooling, frothing-at-the-mouth liberal and that you pray nightly for the Big One to come along and drop the whole thing into the ocean, it will come as a severe shock to learn that California might actually have some value after all:
If California were to disappear, what would the American diet be like?
Expensive and grainy. California produces a sizable majority of many American fruits, vegetables, and nuts: 99 percent of artichokes, 99 percent of walnuts, 97 percent of kiwis, 97 percent of plums, 95 percent of celery, 95 percent of garlic, 89 percent of cauliflower, 71 percent of spinach, and 69 percent of carrots (and the list goes on and on).
As cruel and horrific as this news is, I figured you'd rather hear it from me than see it splashed across some left-wing site as further proof of the right wing propaganda machine failing once again in its daunting task. Last week they lost the Bible, food stamps and Planned Parenthood — and now this.
But Bird Dog will be back tomorrow and I'm sure these horror stories will end.
Does the name 'John McCain' mean anything to you guys? It rings a bell but I just can't place it. Wasn't he Sarah Palin's long-lost step-dad? Anyway, he's one of those Congresscritters and he's decided it would be best if we stopped using dollar bills and started using dollar coins, instead.
And it appears he's got his thumb on the pulse of the nation:
If this all sounds vaguely familiar, this the third time in recent years that some Congresscritter has gotten this particular hair up his ass. It'll hopefully end in the same resounding defeat the first two measures did. As far as I know, they actually did start printing the first time, but the indoctrination program support never materialized.
Below is my original article during the first go-'round.
I might also note that I solved the problem.
The Valued Maggie's Readership™ would expect no less.
Because of the media, we tend to focus on Congress as the people spending all of our hard-earned tax doubloons, and we tend to forget that there are scads of government agencies out there wasting money by the crateful.
Literally, in this case.
This is the new U.S. dollar coin:
If you would be so kind, our government would like you to use these new dollar coins instead of dollar bills.
Yes, you read that right.
And would you like to know just why you're going to do this?
To save the planet.
To continue sinking into the deep abyss of eternal madness, please...
If you're trying to reduce the incidence of rape of military women, importing a bunch of gays sounds like just the ticket! And that, friends, isculture change.
In the 'Scratching Head' department, we have this:
So, just to get this straight, the winner gets death?
By the way, speaking of your probably-eminent death, in case you've been worried about that MERS virus that's sweeping the globe and is about a week away from stopping by your neighborhood, these two articles should clear things right up:
And Glenn Reynolds of PJ Media has shed a little light on the subject of armed domestic drones and how we should view them.
“The FBI does not use (unmanned aerial vehicles) to conduct ‘bulk’ surveillance or to conduct general surveillance not related to an investigation or assessment,” Kelly wrote.
Hmm.
I think we can safely infer that "Hmm" to mean he doesn't really trust their word.
Uh, buddy, if those scientists had the slightest idea of the names we usually call them, they'd fall to their knees in gratitude for only being called boffins.
Finally, turning to the horrific side of life, a drawbridge wouldn't open the other day, stranding drivers for, as the article states, "almost 45 minutes." When this kind of horror strikes an innocent populace, you can just bet that heads will roll.
And look how they zero right in on the exact problem:
Engineers now know why it happened. The weather affected the electronics.
"Circuit breaker, relay switches, wires are all effected by the elements,
moisture, heat, vibration, barometric pressure," says Virginia Department of
Transportation bridge engineer Nick Roper.
And you think, gosh, if only there was some kind of modern science, like maybe the kind of advanced technology we'll have when we finally put a man on the moon some day, that could be used to prevent such tragedies in the future.
I hear that new-fangled "insulated wire" looks promising. And that new "silicone sealant" isn't being called "the wonder glue of the 70's" for no reason.
An 
'Duck Dynasty’ Premiere 
With good reason. 
Well, let's start off on an upbeat note:
Speaking of history, we have this little phenomenon occurring for the first time in 10,000 years of human endeavor:
Now here's a real jaw-dropper: 
By the way, speaking of your probably-eminent death, in case you've been worried about that MERS virus that's sweeping the globe and is about a week away from stopping by your neighborhood, these two articles should clear things right up: