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.
Well, I used to identify as a ham sandwich and before that as a bird dog, but now I identify as a 32 year old, 6'2" tall, dark and handsome male with an IQ equal to my weight of 178 lbs of pure muscle and $40 million in my checking account. Call me crazy.
Facing a free-wheeling Trump, she is weighted down by tons of baggage. This year was supposed to be Hillary Clinton’s “turn,” after her humiliating loss in 2008 to Barack Obama. She has paid her dues as secretary of state for Obama. And the apparent Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, is written off by most pundits as a buffoon without a chance in the general election. Yet, Clinton’s campaign continues to be dismal, and is getting worse — to the point where the socialist Bernie Sanders polls better against Trump than does Hillary Clinton. How can that be?
At least eight reasons come to mind — several of them relating to Clinton’s innate character flaws and past scandals...
The failure of the center-Left to transform its institutional and intellectual dominance into policy achievements that actually stabilize middle class life, and the failure of the center-Right to articulate a workable alternative have left a giant intellectual and political vacuum in the heart of American life. The Trump movement is not an answer to our problems, but the social instinct of revolt and rejection that powers it is a sign of social health. The tailors are frauds and the emperor is not in fact wearing any clothes: it is a good sign and not a bad sign that so many Americans are willing to say so out loud.
Those of us who care about policy, propriety and the other bourgeois values without which no democratic society can long thrive need to spend less time wringing our hands about the shortcomings of candidate Trump and the movement that has brought him this far, and more time both analyzing the establishment failures that have brought the country to this pass, and developing a new vision for the American future.
I am not sure how new it is, though. The masses of voters were never strongly ideological, just the pundits. Donald Trump is post-ideolological, which is why he could win an election.
Barry Goldwater and Rand Paul were ideological. Well, Reagan was too, in some ways, but he was more American Flag primarily. Like The Donald is. How much did Reagan do to advance the Conservative agenda? Not too much. He was handcuffed. I wish he could have accomplished more such as eliminating entire federal departments.
The world, in all its imperfection, will have empires of one kind or another. Not one will always be a force for good. But there is better and worse, and if we are sane, we will allow that in our time the American power has been a blessing
Fridays are still mostly moving/calisthenics day for me. It's always a different mix.
After a five-minute elliptical warm-up:
- 4 sets of increasing wt leg press (to try to improve my barbell squats next week) - Then what I call a circus: 5 go-rounds of a circuit of ladder drills, heavy ball floor smashes, and jump pull-ups. Whew. I still can not get 10 regular pull-ups, but getting there. A goal. - Then 4 rotations of heavy ball wall smashes alternating with jump rope variations (singles, running man, and practicing one-footed jumps)
Total body fatigue in one hour, barely able to move. Good stuff, highly stressful and exertional. If I were not doing my program, my life would contain no extreme physical exertion.
Unlike most commenters on microaggressions, I view the entire concept as a joke. And I feel it is a joke that anybody takes the idea seriously. And nobody hardly does, outside of the peculiar testosterone-challenged administrators on American campi.
Here's the deal: Since no real aggressions are anywhere to be found, some people invented the micro. Next will come nanoaggressions. Why? Because the victim/oppressor narrative must continue. It's, like, you know, the System.
In sum, microaggression catalogs are a form of social control in which the aggrieved collect and publicize accounts of intercollective offenses, making the case that relatively minor slights are part of a larger pattern of injustice and that those who suffer them are socially marginalized and deserving of sympathy. [The social conditions that give rise to this form of social control] include a social setting with cultural diversity and relatively high levels of equality, though with the presence of strongly superior third parties such as legal officials and organizational administrators… Under these conditions, individuals are likely to express grievances about oppression, and aggrieved individuals are likely to depend on the aid of third parties, to cast a wide net in their attempt to find supporters, and to campaign for support by emphasizing their own need against a bullying adversary.
One of the greatest delusions of many people is that freedom and ‘voice’ in one’s life resides chiefly in, and is secured chiefly by, the right to vote. In fact, freedom and voice in one’s life resides chiefly in, and is secured chiefly by, the rights of private property (and the associated law of contract and tort).
John Rawls’ Theory of Justice, the 20th century’s most influential text on the nature of social justice, was controversial on the left because it provided a supply-side argument against the assumption that socialist equality was the end-all-be-all of distributive justice. Rawls recognized that incentives to production have something to do with levels of consumption and argued persuasively that unequal shares are justified if they leave society’s least advantaged as well off they can be. For many socialists, admitting that justice can possibly admit of unequal shares gives away the store. Rawls sold them out.
Yet Rawls himself, like many other mid-century social democrats, had an uneasy attitude toward enrichment, and tended not to see much to admire in the human motives or legal rights that tend to produce it. Rawls was a liberal who saw society in liberal terms as a “cooperative venture for mutual advantage,” but there was in Rawls’ theory very little appreciation of the possibility that liberal rights and economic growth might need each other. Indeed, he thought that, after a certain modest level of material comfort had been achieved, a regime of fair cooperation founded on liberal rights would do better—and would still be the most desirable of all regimes—without any growth at all. ..
There are endless, interesting debates to be had on this topic. From my standpoint, I like spare cash but value freedom over wealth. However, the core of freedom is private property. My vote is important in theory but trivial in effect.
As one of my best friends said yesterday, “If any of them were real Republicans they’d be using their shock, outrage and vitriol to attack Obama and Hillary and Bernie every second of every day. They’d be condemning the Democrats over this horrible economy. We’re all drowning. Instead Republican leaders are in panic over Trump? Are you kidding me?”
Six months from now, being #nevertrump is going to be the mark of Cain, regardless of the election outcome. If Trump loses conservatives will blame these traitors for the defeat. If Trump wins, the #nevertrump loons will be packed off to the labor camps. Well, we can dream. Still, life is not going to be fun for these people if Trump is in the White House. There’s just no obvious upside to this #nevertrump nuttiness, other than the craven cash grab.
Human nature stays constant as the material world continually transforms. People are not pawns of history or pilgrims skipping up some radiant celestial arc. Sometimes the people, ideas, and movements of the twenty-first century prove better, and sometimes far worse, than those of the past—and they will likewise again when framed against the future.
In an act of determined denial, Washington Republicans and conservatives continue to see and describe Mr. Trump’s nomination as the triumph of a celebrity in a culture that worships celebrity, the victory of a vulgarian in a vulgar age, the living excrescence of our shallow values and lowered standards. Also, he’s tapped into the public’s rage.
He is all of those things. But he is more, and Washington is determined to ignore the more. He understood, either intuitively or after study, that the Republican base was changing or open to change, and would expand if the party changed some policies. He declared those policies changed. And he won. ..
I do not think Trump is a vulgarian. I think he plays one on TV. It is his shtick. He is a shock to the system, to same-old same-old in both parties. He will be elected decisively. The primary voters knew what they were doing.
Everybody has known for decades about the Clinton faux marriage. There is no marriage. She has her own house in DC, and she has Huma. BTW, is Huma raising her kid or is Wiener doing it? Strange people, the whole lot.
Rarely has so much changed within a lifetime. Yesterday’s outré and outcast recast as inquisitors; great nations in demographic collapse; primal human practices like marriage, veritable specie constants, condemned as iniquitous and beyond rational defence, and most surprisingly, all happening peaceably, with little alteration in surface political forms. No wonder elders scratch their heads, as do those few historically literate young. This essay proposes to settle their confusions by revealing the deepest drivers of these astonishing and revolutionary changes...
This is smart: Reform Week Part II/ Politics is the art of the possible. Trump should read that.
Trump has positioned himself brilliantly, as practical and mostly non-ideological. That's why he will win in November, for better or worse. Crazy like a fox.
Money: 
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Image stolen from 
Are You Raising a Little Criminal? 
First Evidence of Humans in North America Found Off Florida, New Study Says. 
Jane Austen’s