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.
Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods is a big deal in the supermarket sector, but its’s also deeply ironic and instructive for those familiar with the business philosophy of Whole Foods founder John Mackey— that business can and should operate on a higher moral plane, striving to manage itself in ways not just profitable but also that would serve some of the purposes of traditional philanthropy.
For you Maggie's newcomers, I blogged on this site about every other day for five wonderful, tumultuous years. This was through the heady election days of 2008 and 2012, so there was obviously a lot to talk about.
Then a bunch of things happened.
I:
- Helped with the construction of four 2-bedroom cottages — built from kits, no less — in a Colorado forest, as well as installing a large wind & solar installation to power them all. I was there for over two years.
- Helped birth a baby and whelped four litters of puppies.
- Lost my beloved to a brain aneurysm.
- Had a heart operation.
- Bought an extremely cool sports car that I didn't even know existed until an hour before I handed over the bread.
- Have lived in four states since the last time I blogged here, surrounded by champion show dogs.
Busy, busy, busy.
I'll relate the whole story below the fold, but for now I wanted to give a shout-out to a number of old friends who I see are still here.
Texan99 - My wonderful Texas belle.
GoneWithTheWind - Always one of the great voices of reason on this site.
Zach - Dude, you're the very definition of fortitude.
Dr.Torch, mudbug, Gringo, jma, bob sykes, Assistant Village Idiot, Sam L, JTW, rhhardin, JC, IdahoBob, Apple Pie, Clovis, Agent Cooper, Old Codger, BillH, Dorf, The Distributist, Claritas, Ben David, SgtBob, NJSoldier, faculty wife, Ken in NH, JLawson, BillH - Hey, doods and doodettes! It's nice to be back.
Side note: Boy, imagine how ol' Zach's going to feel when I pull out my (hold on a sec: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5...) 213 anti-AGW links. It won't be pretty!
And, of course, my best bud, feeblemind - By the way, guy, I noticed that some of your recent comments have actually made lots of sense. We'll have to work on that.
Bird Dog, Barrister, News Junkie, Gwynnie, Dr. Bliss, Bulldog - I'm honored to be back among such distinguished peers.
If you're curious, my main web site is here. The whole mess is comprised of 1,204 posts, 1.1 million words, 2,856 pics and 640 vids.
Nobody knows how, other than eliminating welfare - which will never happen. Perhaps, in a welfare state, people just have to accept a permanent dysfunctional and dependent underclass.
When I got to the stage, I did the first half of my talk as a sexist pig who loved Sharia law. I said women are terrible drivers and with Sharia, you don’t have to worry about broads driving ever again. I said it’s awesome because you get to punish your wife if she doesn’t want to blow you. You make her sleep on the couch and if she still refuses, you get to beat the shit out of her. I also said Sharia is cool because you don’t have to hear women bitching about rape all the time. She has to get tons of witnesses and even then her testimony is worth only half what a man’s is. Finally, I said I get too horny walking down the street and can’t concentrate, but if we could cover up these chicks we could focus on just hanging out with the guys.
Trump was elected to serve roughly 48 months. His progressive enemies are increasingly desperate. Despite an historic five-month assault that has demonized his person and ossified his legislative agenda, Trump is still systematically undoing the Obama agenda through appointments and Obama “pen-and-phone”-like executive orders.
In terms of losing state legislatures and governorships, the Congress, the Supreme Court and the presidency, the Obama progressive project has all but ruined the Democratic Party. And with such catastrophic losses of political power, the left grows less introspective and only more venomous—as if invective can do what appeals to voters have not.
But can Trump survive the incessant onslaught, as the street, the progressive party and the media ratchet up their collective subversions month by month? Is there any way out of the progressive labyrinth?
In an era before the goo-goo’s civil-service reform, Jackson fired 10 percent of the federal workforce and replaced it with people loyal to him. Was that so bad? Arthur M. Schlelsinger Jr. said it was a reform measure that helped restore the people’s faith in government, at a time when the bureaucrats had become a self-serving and unaccountable branch of government.
If that’s what job tenure for bureaucrats has given us today, maybe it’s time to take another look at it.
A considerable portion of America’s permanent bureaucracy, including elements of its intelligence community, is engaged in an illegal and unconstitutional mutiny against the elected commander-in-chief, President Donald Trump.
Living in the NYC area, I have plenty of wacky Progressive friends. They are really wacky these days. Of course, my Republican friends can be just as nutty, at times. It all depends on what you're discussing, though this should go without saying.
What's really crazy, though, is how one Progressive friend mentioned to me that polarization has reached "fever pitch" and the basis of her comment was the recent Congressional shooting. I shrugged and said it had been at that level for 24 years, really, and she'd simply chosen not to notice. Now that she's energized politically, it matters to her. No, no, no, she replied, that can't be it. It most certainly is.
All my Progressive friends are members of the #Resist movement. I am not a Trump supporter, but I'm not suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, either. He's had mixed results so far. Nothing outlandish, nothing crazy. I think he's accomplished quite a bit (both better and worse) for not passing a single piece of major legislation. His bluster and hyperbole bug me, but that's just talk and Tweets. I've seen and heard worse from regular politicians. Yet it's these words that set off the #Resist people. They go bonkers over every little thing! It's fascinating.
The natural impulse of a political system in institutional crisis is to dig in. Too many institutions in the West remain decades after their birth, frozen in the moment of their creation. NASA, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the university system and the United Nations rule us from the past. Public life has become a museum of memes from which nothing can escape without a mummy hand dragging the fugitive back into the darkened interior. It is perhaps no coincidence the two most popular leaders of the Western left, Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, might credibly impersonate Boris Karloff. They are here to lead us back to 1968.
It may not be that Trump earns hatred for unnecessary provocation and vitriol, but instead that he or any other Republican would have earned such venom anyway.
“The losing political party is using a conspiracy theory — without having a single shred of evidence — to DERAIL a constitutionally-elected president.”
Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the election was the recrudescence of the politics of envy and resentment. This is not to say that there are no genuine or severe problems in the country: the stagnation of productivity, the precariousness of income, the deficiencies in public services, the low cultural and educational level of much of the population, the inadequacy of the housing stock, and so forth. But the only solution ever heard to these problems, which are evident the moment you leave a prosperous area whose residents are likely to vote Conservative, is more government expenditure. Even the Conservatives went in for this, though more mildly than Labour. Prime Minister May refused to rule out tax increases, for example.
The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn radiated dislike of the prosperous, even the modestly prosperous...
...
None of this worried the young, who had as yet no stake in property, only what are sometimes called ideals. The Labour Party offered them and others the beguiling vision of living perpetually at the expense of others—Frédéric Bastiat’s definition of the state. The Laffer curve meant nothing to them; punishing the prosperous was more important and gratifying than understanding how to maximize tax receipts.
The election could take Britain back more than 50 years.
... it is so important for the President to Trump the Narrative. The wholesale disregard of what this unremitting attack on Trump might do to the country is breathtaking. Trump’s enemies—including his former Democratic opponent—fancy themselves part of a “resistance.” Leave aside the nauseating presumption of that rubric, as if they were freedom fighters struggling against a totalitarian threat. In truth, what they are “resisting” is the result of a free and open democratic election and the rule of law—what Dershowitz rightly calls “our civil liberties and constitutional rights.”
... this city has never reconciled itself to Trump's victory, and the president daily rubs their noses in their defeat with his tweets.
Seeking a rationale for its rejection, this city has seized upon that old standby. We didn't lose! The election was stolen in a vast conspiracy, an "act of war" against America, an assault upon "our democracy," criminal collusion between the Kremlin and the Trumpites.
Hence, Trump is an illegitimate president, and it is the duty of brave citizens of both parties to work to remove the usurper.
I think they just want to cripple him, same as with Bush-Hitler
It’s a swamp of innuendo based on anonymous sources, investigations fed by illegal eavesdropping, scandals in which the outrage comes before the evidence whose purpose is to overturn an election. These aren’t investigations. They’re a coup by the losing side that refuses to admit it lost a presidential election. The coup isn’t just aimed at President Trump or any single member of his administration.
It’s aimed at America, at democracy and at any policy to the right of free entitlements and no freedoms.
Impeachment is merely a tactic aimed at one man. The broader strategic aim is to stymie and sabotage THE AGENDA. PDT will not be impeached, but if he can be smeared as illegitimate, then everything he wants to do will be made out to be against the will of the people because he "stole" the presidency.
And since the GOP-e is in league with the Dems and the Deep State bureaucracy, this is why everything is being slow-walked and stonewalled.
No one thought he would win. Now that he has, they are scrambling like mad to make every excuse imaginable why the Repeal can't go forward, or Tax Reform or The Wall or you-name-it. The Dems claim fraud/collusion, the GOP-e claims process/rules bullshit, the Deep State Leviathan leaks and sabotages. And the press reports PDT as an insane failure.
It is an amazing state of affairs: A President of the United States who does not at all grasp the Office he occupies, and who thus entirely lacks the proper situation sense, or contextual knowledge, in which a President should exercise judgment or act. Let that sink in...
Insofar as that might be true, I think it is part of why he was elected.
Good morning, kids. Well, the big stories today will be James Comey's delivery of a double-talk nothing burger dressed up as the smoking gun to end all smoking guns that will lead to the impeachment of President Trump. That's the way it will be reported and played from now through November of '18 and '20. What will not be reported in the "news" is the President's historic slashing of regulations which, in spite of Democrat-Republican and Deep State sabotage is boosting the economic outlook and creating real jobs and growth. Hence, the never-ending "collusion" libel which is all the Democrats have. Big national elections in Britain. Perhaps the wave of love from the followers of Mohammed will be a wake up call to Brits to keep Jeremy Corbyn the hell out of 10 Downing Street. Other than that, watch a rabid racist BLM hack go on a rant at Tucker Carlson and for a palate cleanser, enjoy as Richard Burr explains to Kamala Harris to STFD and STFU, but in the nicest of parliamentary ways. .. Have a better one and remain blessed.
Wow. David Blaine used to amaze me with his 'street' magic. Since he became more performance artist than magician, I've been less impressed with his stuff. But magic is fun if it's done well. I don't think I've seen it done this well in a very long time.
Check out the
Good conservation news:
Image is a c. 1850 ad, via 
Photo stolen from Ace 
Recommended by a friend:
Living in the NYC area, I have plenty of wacky Progressive friends. They are really wacky these days. Of course, my Republican friends can be just as nutty, at times. It all depends on what you're discussing, though this should go without saying.
Wonderful Herreshoff via
Transgendered Track Star 
Image stolen from 
California´s huge snowfall 
Photo: finally got the pic of my friend's backyard Barred Owl 
Image via