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.
The EPA Overreaches Again - A new EPA rule is a disaster for farmers and the traditional
understanding of the relationship between the federal government and the
states.
Sweeping income and corporate tax cuts on the way…in Spain?
“My old boss, my sorority president, my congressional representative, my current boss—they’ve all been soulless, backstabbing dickheads whose only concern is getting what they want,” said administrative assistant Sheryl Gittens of Fort Worth, TX, who went on to list the bully back in her seventh grade class, her homeowners association president, and the coordinator of her Bible study group among the legions of selfish jagoffs who have inexplicably been granted commanding roles by the acquiescent masses. “What’s even more annoying is that we essentially reward these people for only thinking of themselves and repeatedly screwing us over. If you stop and think about it, that’s pretty messed up.”
“Jesus,” she continued. “What the hell’s wrong with us?”
“How should we do x?” The main problem is not the answer, but the question itself, and the assumptions behind that question, the belief that an answer exists.
Some policies must, by their nature, be implemented at the national level. If you’re going to have a sovereign nation-state, you need a national defense apparatus (which is not to say you need our national-defense apparatus; there are alternatives), and you probably need a national immigration policy, etc. The basic architecture of the current American constitutional order, which is a remarkably wise and intelligent piece of work, contemplates national policies in those areas in which the several states interact with foreign powers and in those cases in which the states cannot coordinate efforts or resolve disputes among themselves on their own. That, along with some 18th-century anachronisms (post roads, etc.) and some awful economic superstitions (political management of trade, a political monopoly on the issuance of currency), constitutes most of what the federal government is in theory there to do. That and fighting pirates and others committing “felonies on the high seas,” of course, which is awesome, and we can all feel patriotic about fighting pirates.
But . . . if we look at federal programs by budget share, almost nothing that Washington does requires a national policy. There’s national defense, of course, at around 20 percent of spending; you may believe, as I do, that that number is probably too high, but national defense is a legitimate national endeavor. But most federal spending is on various entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and various other welfare benefits. There is not much reason for any of these programs to exist at all — government is a criminally inept pension planner and a thoroughly incompetent insurance company — and there is very little reason for any of them to exist as uniform, one-size-fits-all national programs. Start digging into that non-defense discretionary spending and you end up with very little more than a catalog of crony payoffs and political favoritissm.
There is no more reason to believe that a single government-run pension scheme is in each individual’s best interest than to believe that a single city or single model of car is right for everybody. And the people who design and plan these programs know that. The point of Social Security — like the point of insisting that health insurance is “a right” rather than a consumer good — is to redefine the relationship between citizen and state. That is the real rationale for a national pension scheme or a national insurance policy. For several generations now, we’ve been changing the very idea of what it means to be an American citizen. It used to mean being entitled to enjoy liberty and republican self-governance under the Constitution. Eventually, it came to mean being eligible for Social Security, functionally if not formally. Now it means being eligible for Obamacare. The name of the project may change every generation, and its totems may evolve from Bismarck to Marx to “the experts” — that legion of pointy-headed Caesars who are to be the final authority in all matters in dispute — but the dream remains the same: society as one big factory under the management of enlightened men with extraordinary powers of compulsion.
Bravo to him. I hate Washington with the aggrandizing, pre-fascist pseudo-Roman pretensions of that town, as if it were an imperial city with its statues, monuments, pillars, and memorials imitating ancient Rome. I hate the idea of a luxurious presidential mansion. I hate the pomp, the parties, and all of the government limos. I hate all the money that flows through there, tax dollars, lobbying dollars, legal dollars. I hate the idea of a "national art gallery" and a national theater and all those sorts of imperial trappings. I hate those giant buildings filled with bureaucrats with power over me. I hate the amount of power which is ensconced there. I think all of the grandiosity and money and power and scheming and careerism and celebrity is disgusting and un-American.
I even dislike Arlington cemetery. Those boys and men should be buried at home with their families, in my opinion.
George Washington would have hated his monument, and Lincoln would hate his. Those were humble men, not seeking idolization.
Mead: The Jihadi Menace Gets Real - ISIS is bigger, badder, richer, and better organized than any jihadi threat the United States has faced thus far. Its rise represents a foreign policy disaster of the first order.
Of all the cities in the nation, Washington, D.C., with its immediate environs, is the deepest in historical importance. The grotesquely sacrilegious monuments, the puerile exhibits within the museums, the ostentatiously-built neoclassical bureaucratic monstrosities—most of the District is a tribute to its own history of aggrandizement. It’s only in the little places, far removed from the shadows of the Lincoln and Washington apotheoses, that real moments of lasting impression are made. The swaps of journalistic scoops in classy restaurants, the sexual quid pro quos that either enhance or destroy careers, the backroom deal-making to ensure reelections; these ephemeral events end up defining the rooms, hallways, tables, and meeting spaces we normally take for granted.
Excellent videos on this post:The Alchemists of Wall Street Video Documentary - Why It Needs to Matter What Companies Do and Not Focus Only On the Price of Stock With So Called Value - Attack of the Killer Algorithms
The Victimology of Hillary Clinton - Even though her 2008 campaign took advantage of racially
charged attacks on Barack Obama, she still think she's the one who had
it tough.
It's the job of the press to hold everybody's feet to the fire, and to carry nobody's water (to the fire, as it were). The American press had a reputation for fearless pursuit of the truth, once upon a time. Or maybe that's a myth. Still, as the MSM has turned Progressive-partisan over the past 40 years or so (thus resulting in the emergence Conservative radio, FOX, etc), press fearlessness is gone.
In Watergate, we were outraged that Nixon ordered the IRS to go after political foes — even though the IRS refused to do his bidding. A Nixon ally was forced to whine that the IRS was controlled by Democrats. There was evidently little or no evidence that IRS power was abused, because the second Article of Impeachment against Nixon charged merely that he “endeavored” to sic the IRS on enemies.
In the Obama administration, on the other hand, we know that the IRS went after political foes. We don’t know whether the president was involved, but if Nixon’s IRS had targeted liberals because it believed it had an implicit go-ahead from the boss, wouldn’t that be fairly disturbing also? Would a breezy dismissal from Nixon make you feel better?
The purpose of the NHS is political, not medical. In the UK, in our Coronation of the State as our Bountiful Lord, it is the Crown, the dole is the Orb and State Education is the sceptic sceptre.
Those who question the State threaten to leave you without medical treatment, leading to a horrible death, or starve or be illiterate. Yet a Slaughterhouse like the Mid-Staffs can kill on a scale that an early 1940s German bureaucrat might admire, and nothing happens until hospital the pile of corpses becomes too obvious for excuses not to be shuffled out.
Put a couple of thousand of hormone-intoxicated boys and girls in the same place, in the same dorms (and in the same bathrooms) in a place with no rules which encourages kinky sex and sexual adventurism, then add alcohol and various other recreational drugs, and it seems guaranteed that some bad things will occur. That is not to excuse sexual violence at all, just a prediction based on common sense. Lots of people are dirtbags, but Bill Clinton set the new national standard for sexual liberation.
Why? I was never convinced about the adventure in Iraq in the first place. Contra Dick and Liz Cheney, this has nothing to do with American freedom. The greatest threats to American freedom come from our own government. Governments will use any excuse to impinge on individual liberty.
I entirely understand why eating tacos and drinking Margueritas on cinque de mayo is a racist act and offensive to lunatic grievance-seeking Latinas and Latinos who own that bogus holiday, but I still do not understand what is offensive about "redskin."
In the US, it's a silly narcissistic badge of something to be part redskin. I am 1/16th, can prove it, and I stupidly think it's cool.
Indians aren't really red-skinned. It was a term based on the habit of eastern Indians coating themselves with bear grease to stay warm in winter and, I think, other Indians decorating themselves with reddish make-up.
One of Bush's major errors was creating the Dept. of Homeland Security. Something like that was bound to become trouble in the future. It has produced a police/surveillance state which, I would suggest, no American wants: Has the Dept. of Homeland Security become America’s standing army?
What do traffic cameras on my semi-rural Main St. have to do with preventing another 9-11? Nothing, but they are getting a nice shot of me waving crazily at the camera as I park in front of the hardware store to buy a door hinge.
"Just stopping in to get a door hinge," I shout out to the camera as I wave. "Harmless errand."
You do not have to be paranoid to get creeped out by this stuff, and the NSA. It's not American. I would abolish it all. The FBI was enough.
Greedy Group to 
Newly discovered 50,000-year-old poop proves the Neanderthals ate better than you do 
19 Real Reasons Not To Go To The Beach This Summer
Good photos of Italian 
I am convinced that juicy fat is healthy. All science in the past 30 years says so, but before that the experts said fat was bad. 
Fun with 
A book: 
I entirely understand why eating tacos and drinking Margueritas on cinque de mayo is a racist act and offensive to lunatic grievance-seeking Latinas and Latinos who own that bogus holiday, but I still do not understand what is