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 top story today continues to the be the continuing insanity of the Mueller "investigation" which, with the Torquemada-ing of Michael Flynn has officially morphed from trying to find/fabricate evidence of "collusion" into a political witch hunt into "obstruction."
If it's about obstruction, perhaps the FBI ought to investigate itself
In a series of heavily criticized tweets (aren't they always) Trump is asserting that the FBI's reputation is in tatters. Of course, he's right. This isn't justice as it's supposed to be, not even faintly. It's Kafka meets Orwell in the Deep State.
Robert Mueller may not realize it, but the conclusion of his investigation, whatever it is, will never be accepted by a huge percentage of the public. As the French say, Mentir est honteux. Lying is shameful. Mike Flynn may have lied, but so, undoubtedly, has the FBI, multiple times, more than Flynn could ever dream of doing or be capable of doing. And they're the ones we're supposed to trust in the end.
The FBI appears to be fully complicit in a cover-up that attempted to influence a presidential election for a favored candidate – Hillary Clinton. And the truth was trampled on a Phoenix tarmac.
I would answer No. The sex drive is strong in most people. Bill Clinton did not have a "stronger more manly sex drive" than other people; he was just a predator and exploiter. Manly men don't do that even if they want to because the key to "manly" is self-mastery, not self-indulgence or mastery of others - especially women.
Are there badly-behaved people, criminal people, boorish people, and people with poor self-control out there? Of course, as in all areas of life besides sex.
Related, THE PURGE OF THE DEVIANTS MAY GO TOO FAR. Regarding that piece, I'd remove the terms "deviants" and "pervs" that I keep hearing. Historically, rich and powerful men were free to use women as they wished to fulfill their fantasies without consequence. The Kennedys were famous for that, as were British royalty. I'd prefer to talk about decent and indecent behavior except in the cases of assault or rape, in which cases I would discuss criminality.
If John Conyers were a Republican, Cokie and her fellow females in the press corps would have wired themselves up with spy cameras and intentionally rode the elevators with Conyers day after day, capturing every lurid moment until they had enough to run an hour long expose on Nightline.
But he isn't, so they left this predator to prey on other unsuspecting females instead.
They still don't get that Trump is smarter than the lot of them. They think that because he does not speak as they do, because his sentence structure is unlike their own, he must be stupid. They are slow learners.
The male desire to interact with, flirt with, or hit on charming females will never be eradicated no matter how hard the man-haters try. We can accept that groping and touching in the wrong context are over the top, and not effective ways to initiate a connection anyway.
As an aside, I wonder why so many of these recently-exposed skirt-chasers are so into presenting themselves nude to women. I am thinking of Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Al Gore, etc etc. Do they really think they look good naked? Or are they delusional? Not from personal experience, but it seems to me that the only guys who look great without clothing are gays. Women, on the other hand...
Secret truth: Guys wish that appealing women would hit on them. Guys complain that they have to take all the risk and do all the work in this game. Generally speaking, guys don't mind being grabbed by appealing females, but it doesn't happen in normal life much.
Can't we simply accept that male-female interactions frequently contain elements of fun with sexual overtones, and that life without that would be dreary indeed.
Many students are given just one lens—power. Here’s your lens, kid. Look at everything through this lens. Everything is about power. Every situation is analyzed in terms of the bad people acting to preserve their power and privilege over the good people. This is not an education. This is induction into a cult. It’s a fundamentalist religion. It’s a paranoid worldview that separates people from each other and sends them down the road to alienation, anxiety and intellectual impotence.
Perhaps it is projection. It seems to me that most Americans, at least, seek power only over their own lives to seek their own form of satisfaction as best they are able to. Meanwhile, the power-seekers seek control over poor little us who only want to be left alone and to be given nothing.
All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it.
DEMOCRAT NEWS NETWORK: CNN Fails To Report These 24 Democrat Sex Scandals. All of the Democrat sex scandals that CNN has failed to report on have made news in 2017, with 19 of the 24 making news within the last month.
Apple’s vice president of inclusion and diversity, Denise Young Smith, who once whitesplained how hiring 12 white, blond, blue-eyed men could actually be seen as promoting diversity, has been replaced. By a blond, blue-eyed white woman.
Deplorables grew furious as amnesty Democrats and especially corporate Republicans preached about the values of open borders and unchecked illegal immigration—but never quite experienced first-hand the effects their policies had on distant others. Influential advocates of lax border security tended to put their kids in private schools, lived in mostly apartheid communities, saw illegal aliens largely as cheap labor and personal servants, did not have any personal desire to live among, befriend, tutor or mentor those they championed—and assuaged their guilt by blasting their own fellow conservative with charges of xenophobia and nativism...
Yes, Centrist. It's only in contrast to Obama that he seems conservative.
And, in international affairs, he has been better than most of his predecessors. Obama, for one, was an embarrassment to the US. Even China humiliated him by making him get out the rear of his airplane with no big welcome.
As I’ve predicted in the past, the first time a major employer winds up standing in front of a judge in an orange jumpsuit and being handed a ten year sentence, the hiring of illegal aliens will plummet overnight. And when the word gets around that there are no jobs to be had, many of those thinking of jumping the border will have second thoughts and probably stay home. You don’t need the same massive level of enforcement resources if far fewer people are coming in.
The New York Times a few days ago ran a column called "I Believe Juanita". I believed Juanita, too - way back when, eighteen-and-a-half years ago, when it counted and when the Times was covering the story only as an illustration of "shadowy, subterranean" media "mechanics"...
If you listen to the stories of some young starlet or aspiring reporter and force Kevin Spacey or Charlie Rose out of their industries, maybe you’ll help the next young woman trying to make it in either business. But who is going to help the bank teller, the nurse or the real estate agent who is putting up with invasive groping because they can’t afford to lose their jobs? If they come forward and nobody believes them, reports on it or publicly holds the perpetrator to account, they’re going to wind up out of work and the next woman who applies to be their replacement will be in the same position.
I oppose any corporate taxes. They make no sense. We already have income taxes and dividend taxes and capital gains taxes, etc. High business taxes just drive business away. That's the opposite of a rational goal, which is to nurture business and thus job growth. This chart via NR
The slightest glance at political, entertainment, and business headlines demonstrates that the bourgeois virtues of restraint, frugality, reticence, self-control, self-discipline, and fidelity are not only absent in our public life. They are denigrated. Nor is this a mere political phenomenon. The liberation of the sovereign self transcends race and creed, religion and party. It has bloated our waistlines along with our national deficits, tossed families into a spin cycle of disorientation and breakdown, and endangered and addled children. And though a great many families of schooling and wealth have been able to insulate themselves from the gale-force winds of instant gratification and narcissistic self-expression, those in the middle- and lower-ends of our society do not have the luxuries of loving two-parent families, good schools, safe neighborhoods, well-paying jobs, and welcoming churches.
The idea of settlements for congressional misconduct being paid secretly with taxpayer money in a republic is absurd. On what planet does a government that makes even a pretense of accountability allow the miscreants in its ranks to engage in malfeasance and stick the public with the bill without even admitting their misdeeds?
“I come from the poor people and I’ve been here working my whole stinking career for people who don’t have a chance, and I really resent anybody saying that I’m just doing this for the rich. Give me a break. I think you guys overplay that all the time and it gets old, and frankly, you ought to quit it,” said Hatch, clearly agitated.
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On Advent: 
India’s Punishment
Photos: Above, Romanian bread lines under socialism, below, Romanians line up for new iPhone, Via 
Photo of a SF bus from my California buddy 
How Does Costco 
How plants 
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Why We Love Farmers Markets - 
Image stolen 