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 overwhelming cause of poverty in America today is family breakdown, not inadequate government spending on welfare programs or low wages. Children in single-mother households are over four times as likely to be poor as children raised by married parents. And an adult can avoid poverty by taking just three simple steps: graduate from high school, work full-time, and wait until marriage to have children. Only 2 percent of adults who followed those rules are poor, according to the Brookings Institution’s Isabell Sawhill; 75 percent of adults who obey the rules have entered the middle class, defined as making at least $55,000 a year.
Note to readers and to website proprietors: We frequently fail to give appropriate h/ts to link sources. We try to make up for that by linking their pieces when it makes sense to.
Anyway, thanks to those who send us interesting links, and thanks to some of our frequent but sometimes unacknowledged resources:
From Steyn: "A Disgrace to the Profession"- The World's Scientists - in their own words - on Michael E Mann, his Hockey Stick and their Damage to Science
Hillary Clinton has a $350 billion plan that she says will make college more affordable. Which has to be better than my parents’ plan to make college affordable: “Be good at sports.”
Hillary! says Marco Rubio is too young. Below the fold, a pic of Bill and Hill on a dreamy beach vacation...somebody was lucky to get that photo because those two have hardly ever been together for 8 years:
I'm an enormous fan of Jonathan Haidt's work. Nonetheless, I've always had two outstanding questions about it (and would note that these are not exactly questions of which Professor Haidt is unaware). The first is simply whether his surveys capture the actual moral reasoning that people do, or represent people pretending to do the sort of moral reasoning they think they ought to do.
... they laughed when I said how strange it was that I met many people who fell in with the wrong crowd but never any members of the wrong crowd itself.
Hillary and Cheryl and Huma ought to have one of those seances Hillary used to have with Eleanor Roosevelt's ghost, only this time contact Richard Nixon's ghost and ask about the wisdom of getting in a urination match with a federal judge.
O, Utopia. Why must your sweet governance always turn so quickly from the Edenic to the Stalinist? The college revolutions of the 1960s—the ones that gave rise to the social-justice warriors of today’s campuses—were fueled by free speech. But once you’ve won a culture war, free speech is a nuisance, and “eliminating” language becomes a necessity.
Cheryl Mills To Destroy Emails About Boss Hillary Clinton
Read more at http://observer.com/2015/08/breaking-cheryl-mills-to-destroy-emails-about-hillary-clinton/#ixzz3iDKgTMLl
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Read more at: http://tr.im/OfUsG
Hope y'all have as fun a summer weekend as I am planning - fishing and thriving on seafood and beer with my gal off Block Island on the usual shared Whaler. I still have no idea why the gal likes me. Yes, I do have a cooler with wasabi, fresh ginger, and soy sauce so we can have sushi fresh from the sea, still flipping, so that might be why. Sushi + Corona with some lime in it.
They predict good sized seas on the ocean this weekend. Ride 'em, cowboy! Carpe diem, friends.
We do not make fun of true mental ailments here because there is nothing funny about them, but sometimes we encounter relatively-normal people who sound totally batshit crazy. Not sometimes, often. Good example: Undone By Her Radical ‘Do. "New frontiers of outrage."
Annah Anti-Palindrome is “a Bay Area-based writer, musician, optical sound-smith and queer/femme antagonist.”
Wow. She sounds mighty talented but she seems to be all about her hair style. Probably lives on the dole. Heck, reality and haircuts are difficult for everybody. I try to be understanding towards those who avoid reality, but there are always plenty enough nuts around to make you feel normal within your own "community." The internet says 2% of people are Borderline psychotics living in a mental world between ordinary and totally nuts. That 2% manages to get plenty of press if only for entertainment value.
For those who actually want to do something other than make noise, there is no shortage of challenges. Chinese-sponsored gangs, well armed with heavy rifles and automatic weapons, are presently killing elephant at an unprecedented rate. Recently, elephant-rich areas of Tanzania, Mozambique, and Zambia have been all but wiped out. The demand for lion and leopard bones from the Far East is at an all-time high, putting a premium on big cats. Meat hunters are wiping out the antelope and buffalo herds throughout Africa. For many of these animals the safari hunters were their only hope.
“Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it… gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
More
Green Cards in 10 Years Than Population of Iowa, New Hampshire, and
South Carolina Combined - See more at:
http://moonbattery.com/?p=61492#sthash.HQShWIRR.dpuf
The arc of progressivism is on the wrong side of history when it comes to the disruptive technologies that benefit the middle class that progressives love to defend. Whether conservative and libertarian-leaning leaders can offer an alternative vision remains to be seen, but the progressive tendency to stand athwart history on these matters has given them an open door to try.
USDA reported in 2012 that 43 percent of the 571 samples of “organic” produce that were tested contained prohibited pesticide residues, and that “the findings suggest that some of the samples in violation were mislabeled conventional products, while others were organic products that hadn’t been adequately protected from prohibited pesticides.”
She’s just a classic, corporate exec or bureaucrat type who would prefer to be at her desk behind closed doors, imposing her power schemes on the proletariat.
I'm sure she calls us plebes, not proles. I know her type.
Pay
Attention Republicans — Especially You, Mr. Trump - See more at:
http://bernardgoldberg.com/pay-attention-republicans-especially-you-mr-trump/#sthash.W23KWWdt.dpuf
In just days, Clinton has issued dire warnings about climate change; been caught jumping on and off a private plane; pledged, because of the plane’s emissions, to the make her campaign carbon neutral (without revealing how); jetted to New York City for a $600 haircut; and refused to reveal her position on the Keystone XL pipeline, which those same voters interested in climate change are asking her about.
Big game is hunted all the time in Africa, quite legally. All you have to do is pay and the guides will find a convenient target for all of the Bungalow Bills. Poor schmuck shot the wrong one (but with a bow, to his credit). For real heart-wrenching, ‘It’s Another Boy!’
So we progressively humanize animals and dehumanize people. Something wrong there. I am neither pro-abortion nor anti-all abortion. I have been in a moral limbo about it for years while finding the very idea of abortion spiritually revolting. Abortion is not health care. PP abortions should not be funded by taxpayers. They can abort all the lions they want if they have too many.
"Although I grew up in a union household and surrounded by progressive peers, I kept noticing liberal policies sound good but actually reinforce poor choices. It dawned on me: I’m a conservative."
Maybe you read about this today. Cecil the lion was killed by a dentist who is now in hiding due to death threats from those who 'cared' about Cecil.
I wish I could care about Cecil the Lion, but as much as I think his killer is a bit of an asshole, I'm more disturbed by the outpouring of death threats he has received.
More to the point, I'm trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be upset about today? The kid whose body they found in the dumpster or a freaking lion who was killed legally (however much the kill was rigged to be legal, and however much of an ass the guy is, it was legal).
Yeah, Cecil is a sad story. Yeah the dentist is probably an idiot. But let's face it - we have a presidential contest about to start and a host of issues here at home that have led us to be concerned about way too much:
1. a moron former first lady who claims she is 'for the people' and gets $600 haircuts, while roping herself off from the people in parades
2. a moron socialist who occasionally says something cool, but is generally an asshole because he wants to pay everyone a minimum of $15 an hour but won't even pay his own staffers that wage - because it's too much.
3. a moron businessman who speaks plainly and pisses people off because running the country isn't the same as running a business. Yeah, he makes a few good points, but he has no shot at winning and even if he did I wouldn't trust him with my tax dollars.
4. a moron president who is no doubt hoping someone will change laws and allow him to run for a third term (while I'd support changing that law, I don't support him)
5. a bunch of morons trying to ban the Confederate battle flag, but not really caring about the 20 other Confederate flags which were equally "racist" then, but have different meanings today.
6. a bunch of morons who think banning guns is a good idea so they created "gun free zones" which have become kill zones - and they believe this supports their cause!
7. a bunch of morons who think certain words are triggers and should be outlawed because they 'offend'
The list of things I need to care about is endless. I have to remind myself each day to not offend anyone, to not be myself because someone else may not like what I am or what I stand for, to abide by some of the dumbest laws a nation can devise (and be concerned about others which are certainly headed our way), and generally be sensitive and caring to all people and all animals, all the time, everywhere, no matter what.
I'm pissed off about Cecil. But he's a freaking lion and he's thousands of miles away. There will be more lions, and he's not in my backyard. But I'm tired of having to care about every little thing that someone thinks is 'important' to them. I care about me, and my family, and my friends. I care if they are healthy, and I care if someone is impinging on mine, or their rights. So yes, I care. But I really just can't find time in my day to care about Cecil. Sorry.
Africa is beginning to go down that dark road towards western-style prosperity, development, and freedom. Like Cuba, see it now before the old Africa disappears. Is "poverty" a Western concept? Masai warriors with iPhones? What next? Disney Africa?
Already, there is no "wild Africa" remaining. Its future is like South America.
Note to readers and to website proprietors: We frequently fail to give appropriate h/ts to link sources. We try to make up for that by linking their pieces when it makes sense to.
Massive Study 
How To Slice A Bagel Along A Mobius Strip —
Notes on the Republican Presidential Debate
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Photo of the new American rural landscape