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.
Its political leaders and a credulous national media present California as the “woke” state, creating an economically just, post-racial reality. Yet in terms of opportunity, California is evolving into something more like apartheid South Africa or the pre-civil rights South.
CNN’s Brooke Baldwin: “President Fulfilling A Major Economic Promise, The U.S. Economy Is Booming” - Economy doing so good even CNN can’t lie about it.
It's not uncommon to see small family groups of Chimney Swifts overhead during the summer months. Wonderful fliers, catching bugs on the wing.
I've seen parents pass a bug to a child, both on the wing. Cute.
Their numbers have declined drastically over the past 40 years, for unclear reasons. Maybe more chimney caps, or steel flues. They need masonry flues to get a grip.
My best Chimney Swift story is about the day one accidentally came down our old church's chimney and started flying around the church - on Pentecost! I finally was able to snatch it when it was banging against the window, and somebody opened the window and off it went like the Holy Spirit.
There are a couple of other species of Swifts in the western US. If anybody can distinguish a Vaux from a Chimney Swift, good for you. Swifts spend the cooler months in the Amazon basin.
If the ordinance passes as drafted on July 31, set to take effect in July 2019, local businesses that sell takeaway cups and lids made out of compostable plastic can’t use straws made from the same material.
"I'm so disorganized..." Yes, she's a lefty (h/t American Digest). This is almost unbelievable. Thanks for police camera. Nice patient cop, nutty lady.
Vote for Berky! She needs a job!
Update: She wanted a job with no work, but she lost. The police video didn't help.
Donald Trump could win reelection in 2020, help the GOP win all 100 seats in the Senate, all 500+ in the House, push the Dow over 40,000, reunite Korea, liberate Iran, cure cancer, walk on water and pay off the national debt and it will mean nothing to these people. He will be hounded for the rest of his life, and then they will try to destroy his kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, wipe out his business empire and whatever legacy he leaves behind as retribution for stealing their thunder and making them look like fools for all the world to see. The other reason is as a warning against anyone who thinks they can do what he did and go against the Deep State elitist-globalist enterprise.
Guy on the radio said that if Trump personally cured cancer, CNN would have on people saying "Trump doesn't care about people with heart disease."
Technically-speaking, we are still in an Ice Age (Ice Ages are when there is ice on the poles), so let's worry about the next glacial incursion: The Next Ice Age
Lefty Harvard Math Prof Eric Weinstein is Brett's brother. Like Brett, a rational calm lefty. I find Shapiro smart as a whip but annoying, and the 3 ads are annoying too but it's good to hear people have a serious talk.
Eric Weinstein joins Ben from the shadows of the intellectual dark web to discuss the lack of free thinking on the Left, the costs and benefits of low skilled vs. high skilled focused immigration, and how the Facebook monopoly negatively affects online publishers.
Indeed. As we have been saying, there are always trade wars. EU tariffs on American imports have been a bad deal for decades. Time for pushback, and it takes a Trump to do that.
Portrait of an Artist as an Old Man: Mel Brooks in His 90s.The comic has stormed though 75 years of show business; he remains prodigal in expression, memory, and imagination.
Since I am American, I tend to consider people as individuals rather than as a part of any kind of statistical group but at the same time I know that cultures and subcultures can heavily influence individual life choices and goals.
What is of interest to me with any person are basic questions: "What are your goals in life, and how do you plan to pursue them?" It should not be surprising than many people have non-economic goals.
Yes, it's a must-read. Amusing too. I forgot how much the Euroland tariffs screw US products. Trump is right to push back.
Long sample:
"Trump’s voters get him because not only is he we, but we are he. We were not snowflaked-for-life by effete professors who themselves never had negotiated tough life-or-death serious deals. Instead we live in the real world, and we know how that works. Not based on social science theories, not based on “conceptual negotiating models.” But based on the people we have met over life and always will hate. That worst boss we ever had. The coworker who tried to sabotage us. We know the sons of bums whom we survived, the dastardly types who are out there, and we learned from those experiences how to deal with them. We won’t have John Kerry soothe us by having James Taylor sing “You’ve Got a Friend” carols.
The Bushes got us into all kinds of messes. The first one killed the economic miracle that Reagan had fashioned. The second one screwed up the Middle East, where Iraq and Iran beautifully were engaged in killing each other for years, and he got us mired into the middle of the muddle. Clinton was too busy with Monica Lewinsky to protect us from Osama bin Laden when we had him in our sights. Hillary gave us Benghazi and more. And Obama and Kerry gave us the Iran Deal, ISIS run amok, America in retreat. All to the daily praise of a media who now attack Trump every minute of every day.
So let us understand a few things:
NATO is our friend. They also rip off America. They have been ripping us off forever. We saved their butts — before there even was a NATO — in World War I. They messed up, and 116,456 Americans had to die to save their butts. Then they messed up again for the next two decades because West Europeans are effete and so obsessed with their class manners and their rules of savoir faire and their socialist welfare states and their early retirements that they did not have the character to stand up to Hitler in the 1930s. Peace in our time. So they messed up, and we had to save their butts again. And another 405,399 Americans died for them during World War II. And then we had to rebuild them! And we had to station our boys in Germany and all over their blood-stained continent. So, hey, we love those guys. We love NATO.
I was reminded about how much the American press loved Trump until he was nominated, and thought about how much the American press and intelligentsia loved Russia until Trump. The Dems, Obama and Clinton, wanted to cozy up. Then I thought about how much the American left hated the FBI and the DOJ until Trump.
You get the feeling that Trump is living rent-free in a lot of heads, and controlling their brains. Mind games.
Put yourself in Trump's shoes: a highly successful businessman, in the latter years of his life, taking on the Herculean task of running for and winning the U.S. presidency. In victory he finds nothing but abuse, scorn, and betrayal, by friend and foe alike. He is surrounded by landmines, his intelligence community plotting a path to make sure he steps on one landmine after another. This is a journey few mortals would undertake or survive.
Is it any wonder he is pushing back against those trying to destroy him and his presidency, including the FBI, DOJ, and CIA, all in the thick of seditious activity against the duly elected president? He has few friends in Washington, D.C.; many who should have his back are eager to bury a knife in it instead.
The simplest explanations are often the best. Walk a mile in Trump's shoes, and his actions make all the sense in the world. A guy chosen by ordinary people, trying to make America great again despite so much of America trying to stop and destroy him. How would any rational person behave when standing in Trump's shoes?
I think there are essentially two takeaways from this historic event in Helsinki. The first is that Donald Trump is a bold, risk-taking statesman whose demotic style of delivery prevents many from appreciating the beneficently radical nature of his diplomacy. Maybe he will wind up being played by Kim Jong-un. But maybe his astonishing meeting with the tubby tyrant in Singapore is the beginning of the normalization of North Korea. If that happens—and I acknowledge that history suggests it is a big “if”—then President Trump will have achieved a world-historical diplomatic victory. His willingness to meet “jaw to jaw” would then be seen as a gambit of genius.
Maybe Putin is running circles around a gullible Trump. But maybe it is a real, as distinct from an Obama-Clinton merely rhetorical, reset. Then that, too, will be seen as a masterly and peace-enhancing initiative.
Sheesh. How do you talk with somebody like that? It's always been interesting to me how it is possible to use a victim pose to bully or attack others. Problem is, victim posture supports self-esteem and seems to morally justify obnoxiousness - but gets your own life nowhere. Well, being hostile is fun in some ways.
Apparently UNH is a hotbed of oppression, racism and misogyny, so that's a shame. Poor gal is blind to her incredible privilege. Her superiority tone bugs the heck out of me.
Toon via 
On
Why Are Men So Terrible, 
It's not uncommon to see small family groups of 
Get the L Out: 
Self Control: 