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.
Looking back, the improbable election of 2016 proved a Rubicon moment. Once Trump crossed over the Rubicon, carried by his base of “crazies,” “irredeemables,” and “deplorables,” the die had been cast, and those who were fearful where America had been headed had no choice but to follow him through the river.
Either Trump will restore economic growth, national security, the melting pot, legality, and individual liberty or he will fail and we will go the way of Europe.
For now, there is no one else in the opposition standing in the way of radical progressivism. At best, some not actively promoting progressivism are only begging it to slow down a bit; at worst, the “I told you so” others wish for now progressivism to prevail to demonstrate what happens when the hoi polloi do not listen to their supposed betters.
As we'd suspect, the shootings in Texas are being politicized by the anti-gun groups. It seems I can't turn around without some anti-gun nut calling for more laws, if not outright elimination of guns. As if that would actually stop these events. Of course, none of these people have called for elimination of autos or trucks, particularly after last week's events in NYC.
What we hear is 'but that was only 8 people killed by a truck while there were 58 in Vegas and 26 in Texas' as if scale is somehow meaningful. Frankly, I'm less concerned about numbers, and more concerned about means, motive and outcome. The assumption is that the means is a desire to use a weapon, so being concerned with autos is silly since few people use them as weapons. There is a massive flaw in this concept. Two flaws, really. First, they are used as weapons (Nice and London are just 2 recent examples, and ISIS has called for them to be used more...but I should add Charlottesville to the list) often enough to be of concern. Second, whether they are used as weapons or not, autos kill far more people every year than guns, and people aren't even trying. Imagine how the numbers would rise if they were. By any comparative measure, it's not even close. WE MUST BAN AUTOS AND TRUCKS!!
It's a class thing, not a policy thing. They would blackball Trump at their clubs, and so would I. But I prefer him as Pres to Hillary. I did not vote for somebody to be my friend.
It's dominating the news these days, and rightly so.
With humans, for whom it is natural to live within cultural/religious contexts, questions about "natural" are always fraught. However, I will claim that sexual abuse by women and men, but more by men because of dominance hierarchies, is part of the animal side of human nature like violence, etc. Human nature contains much unpleasantness.
There are errors in Freud's Civilization and It's Discontents, but he got the big picture right. Living a bourgeois civilized life is challenging for humanoid animals and, depending on the culture, demands some sorts of instinctual restraints or constraints, at least on regular folks. The elites get away with more, and the poor folks often end up in jail.
Claiming that something is "natural" does not claim any moral valence. However, even in a Christian culture like medieval Europe the knights and nobles pretty much had access to any female who took his fancy (and vice versa, in the fancy courts of Europe - if a princess summons you to her boudoir, No is not an answer). Today in American, females teachers are routinely called on the carpet for seducing their high school students (which is not very difficult to do). For many women, "star-f-ing" is a diverting hobby, so it works both ways.
One of the perquisites of wealth, power, dominance, or celebrity is access to sexual adventure without consequences. In our culture, we consider some of it immoral and some of it illegal. Other cultures have very different rules about sexual behavior.
My point is simply that, in our society, there is and has been far more sexual libertinism, rape, and abuse at all levels of society (but perhaps most at the lowest and highest) than people like to admit or confess. Until they are caught. The unleashed sex drive is a powerful force and in people who don't care much, power, money, lust, and indifference to law or societal codes can let animal spirits loose. Attila the Hun is said to have fathered 10,000 children, which is why most Europeans claim him as an ancestor. 10,000 were not consensual, I am certain. But I wasn't there.
An engaging random session about human history, climate change, Ice Ages, etc. Just advance past the ads for cashews. Carlson does make the point that atmospheric CO2 is now at the bottom of the scale. He is fun to listen to.
As I write, eight are dead - all men, five Argentines, one Belgian, all in the path of an Uzbek Muslim who decided to take a Home Depot pick-up truck down the bike path for 20 blocks mowing down bicycle after bicycle after bicycle before exiting the vehicle and yelling - go on, take a wild guess - "Allahu Akbar!" Well, I never! You could knock me over with a feather duster
I’ve been a journalist for a long time. Long enough to know that it wasn’t always like this. There was a time not so long ago when journalists were trusted and admired. We were generally seen as trying to report the news in a fair and straightforward manner. Today, all that has changed. For that, we can blame the 2016 election or, more accurately, how some news organizations chose to cover it. Among the many firsts, last year’s election gave us the gobsmacking revelation that most of the mainstream media puts both thumbs on the scale—that most of what you read, watch, and listen to is distorted by intentional bias and hostility. I have never seen anything like it. Not even close...
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During the years I spent teaching at the Columbia University School of Journalism, I often found myself telling my students that the job of the reporter was “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I’m not even sure where I first heard that line, but it still captures the way most journalists think about what they do. Translate the first part of that compassionate-sounding idea into the daily decisions about what makes news, and it is easy to fall into the habit of thinking that every person afflicted by something is entitled to help. Or, as liberals like to say, “Government is what we do together.” From there, it’s a short drive to the conclusion that every problem has a government solution.
The rest of that journalistic ethos—“afflict the comfortable”—leads to the knee-jerk support of endless taxation. Somebody has to pay for that government intervention the media loves to demand. In the same vein, and for the same reason, the average reporter will support every conceivable regulation as a way to equalize conditions for the poor. He will also give sympathetic coverage to groups like Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.
I knew all of this about the media mindset going into the 2016 presidential campaign. But I was still shocked at what happened...
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The New York Times has not endorsed a Republican for president since Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, meaning it would back a dead raccoon if it had a “D” after its name. Think of it—George McGovern over Richard Nixon? Jimmy Carter over Ronald Reagan? Walter Mondale over Reagan? Any Democrat would do. And The Washington Post, which only started making editorial endorsements in the 1970s, has never once endorsed a Republican for president.
But again, I want to emphasize that 2016 had those predictable elements plus a whole new dimension.
Big Journalists: Because we're smart and you are stupid, we are idealists and you are not. When you think about it, it's tough on the ego to be a journalist, always watching others, never doing anything. But always imagining that you know better than the common folk or even the big people they write about. Egotism is for people who feel small. Well, that is not really fair to reporters. Most likely most reporters are humble folk who enjoy their reporter roles covering the Zoning Commission and the obits, but the ones in the big time want to be players not observers, moral leaders or some such grandiose BS. Baloney. Nobody anointed you. Just the facts, please. Thank God for the internet.
Michael Goodwin has always been one of the humble guys.
I guess that is an obsolete question in the post-modern universe where it's all gender all the time. As a cis-gendered man-identified white-identified human, I realize I have no right to any opinion whatsoever, so I can only offer my confusion. My confusion is that the current pop theory is that gender identification differences are all-important instead of trivial. That's the opposite of why Larry Summers lost his job due to a crying female-identified scholar at Harvard.
It's difficult to keep up. If they want to Stamp out Masculinity,then these haters must find something different about biological males (via Thompson):
A feminist professor at Occidental College recently argued that men must renounce their masculinity and “denounce anyone who chooses to identify with it.” Calling masculinity a “dangerous idea,” Wade argues that, “The problem is not toxic masculinity; it’s that masculinity is toxic,” adding that masculinity is “simply not compatible with liberty and justice for all.” Wade concludes her essay by urging people to “call masculinity out as a hazardous ideology and denounce anyone who chooses to identify with it,” saying that doing so is crucial for “gender revolution.”
Clearly 99.9% of normal American females do not see things in this crackpot way. We link such things for amusement purposes. Women tend to like manly men, but growing into a "manly man" from a hormone-fueled feral child or man-child is not an easy developmental task in western culture. We all know the list of Manly Virtues (strength/athleticism, success/dominance, honor/integrity, loyalty, courage, respect for females/protectiveness, generosity, helpfulness, etc etc) into which males struggle to learn to channel their primitive apelike biological selves.
What do women struggle to become, as their best and highest selves, to make their parents and children proud?
'The walls are closing in,' said one senior Republican in close contact with top staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. 'Everyone is freaking out.'"
I have a friend who was a reverend in the Episcopal Church. He is technically still in the church, but he has decided to find another vocation. The main reason is that most of the people running the church are women, along with a high number of homosexuals. The result is the people running the church care more about social justice and their genitals than anything else. Like most of the mainline Protestants churches, the Episcopal Church has become a circus of degeneracy and general lunacy. As a result their pews are empty.
"I’m still trying to get my mind around the Vassar College campus reaction to my planned lecture on “hate speech” and free speech..."
You can listen to his speech and the Q&A here.Actually, nothing controversial at all from my view. Even the kids' questions were pretty good for a third-tier $60,000/year college. Some angry-sounding women of course, as usual.
America was never intended to be united culturally or spiritually. The Founders understood that the original colonies had different characteristics, due to the different founding populations. It’s why they maintained the sovereignty of the states in the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. America was supposed to be a collection of states and cultures, that cooperated economically and for common defense, but otherwise existed independent of one another. It’s why they wanted a weak national government.
The creation of a scientific utopia requires mass murder, terror, and a complete loss of individual freedom. Then, if you survive long enough, and wait long enough, utopia appears. Or doesn't.
Unlike the leftist media narrative of Trump/Russia collusion, there is actual evidence to show we have been compromised, and it’s not Trump who has compromised or colluded. It’s the group of people the leftist media has vowed to protect. The Obama/Clinton/Democratic party complex.
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Denver Built Up Its Public Transit, but Where Are All the Riders? 
Humans love dogs 
Why do they always term these Muslim terrorists "deranged" and "cowardly"? They are neither. 
Sciency Liberals 
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Male icons, then and now,