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.
George W. Bush famously told Colin Powell, his secretary of state, that he thought the Russian leader was religious. “Powell, I looked into Putin’s eyes and I saw his soul.” To which Powell replied: “Mr. President, I looked into President Putin’s eyes and I saw the KGB.”
Here’s the Kremlin’s summary of the call. In a nutshell: a) The U.S. wanted the call so Putin took it. b) Nothing Obama said to Putin was particularly worth noting. c) Putin explicitly told Obama he reserves the right to move further into Ukraine.
Smart diplomacy at work. Putin is surely quaking in his boots.
Russia is a crappy country full of poor drunks run by KGB thugs. It just happens to produce the most beautiful women in the world - until they turn 35. The Ukraine is another crappy country run by thugs. Should I - or Obama - really care what these people do? I can find no reason to care, but I do feel for all of the people in the world who are living in crappy places with crappy and corrupt governments with delusions of grandeur. It's the norm in the world.
University
of Iowa president apologizes to precious snowflakes for mentioning
reality - See more at:
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=52818#sthash.tqq6n1mf.dpuf
When France's richest man, Bernard Arnault, announced he was leaving over France's new 75 percent super tax on the rich, he got the journalistic equivalent of a kick out the door.
"The full headline in [the Leftist newspaper] Liberation was, 'Get lost, you rich b***d,'" Moutet recalled. "In this country the general attitude in the media, on television, etc., is that bosses are wrong, companies are wrong, and creating business is dubious at best and dishonest at worst."
France is being battered by both a brain drain and capital flight and risks becoming one of the poorer nations in Western Europe.
Unbeknownst to you, I am surrounded by people who claim to identify with the tea party and/or go to the meetings. Most of my family , extended family, friends and associates for starters. When I ask them what they are willing to do to stop the runaway federal spending, they have nothing to offer. Well, they want their taxes reduced a bit. Maybe ease back a bit on defense spending, maybe. But not the veteran's benefits. Most of them resent the welfare queens and food stamp recipients and most of them won't say so out loud. Most are not thrilled with the bank bailouts. But, not one of them is willing to stop paying taxes. None of them would touch 95% of the federal budget. None of them would surrender any of their own federally funded benefits. So, where does that leave us? It leaves us with the conclusion that the members of the tea party want their goodies and are willing to pay enough tax dollars to keep them. But they don't want to pay for some of the goodies other people get. It's just simple logic.
It may be that you don't quite grasp the extent of the gravy train. Or maybe you have so much money, it just doesn't matter? The federal spending train subsidizes nearly everything in this country. And I mean everything. Would you really put all those people out of work - at one stroke? If so, the anarchists would love to have you join their group.
Whether you accept global warming alarmism or not, on the face of it it makes no sense for the average sensible taxpayer to subsidize others' living or building in recognized flood zones, whether on the NJ coast, the Mississippi, the North Carolina barrier beaches, or anywhere else. It's like pitching a tent in a Western river gulch which is prone to flash floods. Periodic flooding in coastal areas and on flood plains is natural and environmentally-beneficial. The unpleasant consequences for people are entirely predictable. I would neither live in a flood zone nor in a wildfire zone without calculating that I could lose it all. People do not act this stupid unless they are paid or subsidized to do so. At the least, let the owner pay the full cost of the insurance. Caveat Emptor.
Yes, I do remember that Al Gore just built one of his new mansions in an ocean flood zone in San Francisco, but that's Al Gore and he can hold back the water (or was that Moses, or Obama?).
From the Google-only bus that bypasses the heralded “public mass transit” to pick up the richeral in his overpriced, Hetch Hetchy-fed San Francisco Victorian, to the tony private academies that richerals’ kids attend, to the Mexican national help that cleans the floors and watches the toddlers before going home to the crammed garage in Redwood City, to the big money that always seems to find exemption from the redistributionist tentacles — such hypocrisy and self-righteousness sermonizing have done more harm to the culture and social fabric of the U.S. than any ideology of the last half-century.
Using it can void your car warranty, and destroy your gas-powered tools. This ethanol fad is a government/farm crony scam, and is hurting all of us except the Big Farmers who quit growing food to get in on the deal. Heck, those farmers are rational businessmen:
Americans who were recipients of means-tested government benefits in 2011 outnumbered year-round full-time workers, according to data released this month by the Census Bureau. They also out-numbered the total population of the Philippines.
Also,
The tragedy of government dependence is the tragedy of the slowly-dying human heart - the loss of hope and the rejection of any personal revitalization that requires more than a bare minimum of effort (followed by immediate and dramatic rewards). In my own time working with at-risk youth in Kentucky, my wife and I found it extraordinarily difficult to compete with the no-strings-attached federal money, where it was all too easy to reject any true reform or true personal initiative in favor of the life they knew.
The
One Investment Allocation Everyone Should Avoid - See more at:
http://servowealth.com/resources/articles/one-investment-allocation-everyone-should-avoid#sthash.kuoCuS0m.dpuf
Over the past few decades we have decided that marriage should be all things to a couple. The worst part is that people expect it to be a therapeutic experience. When it does not provide us with a therapeutic uplift, we feel that something is wrong.
Today's pic is a Calabash Tree (not to be confused with the African Calabash Vine) as seen on a St. Lucia jungle hike. It is odd to see, in the tropics, fruits growing directly out of trunks.
I've...become a blogger, and enjoy the ease and freedom of the form: it's a bit like making a paper airplane and then watching it take wing below your window.
Around 4 million acres of California farms are dependent on irrigation. Without imported or diverted water, those acres cannot grow crops reliably, and never did grow much before irrigation.
It's been a dry year in California and Oregon, but these things happen. California has never had enough water, especially in southern California. As usual in dry places, people fight over water: California Drought Is Not About ‘Climate Change’ – It’s About Policy
I appreciate many of your responses and found them educating, in particular those instances when having a shotgun or rifle may have prevented a home invasion or assault. I don't know of a site where these can be recorded and shared with a larger population and I am certain there would be concerns that this would be used against gun owners and individuals by some government agency but it might balance some of the anti gun arguments.
As for the stories in the media, dog bites man is not news, man bites dog is. A friend of mine who worked at CBS said the news director in New York had one criterion for the line up of stories on the local evening in news: "If it bleeds it leads." That has not and will not change. The issue of carrying firearms at all times is probably more of a regional issue. But did the retired police officer really need to have his weapon with him at a movie theater with his wife in what sounds like a peaceful neighborhood? It doesn't matter who said what to whom, it matters that back in the day in the Bronx those words might have sent fists flying not bullets. And if the other guy is too big and intimidating, stand down or at least ask yourself if your pride is worth taking a beating for.
Michelle Obama: 
You Thought You Were Educated
Wild beavers 
My pic is a cocoa bean pod (aka Cacao), growing in a jungle area which was once a plantation
Today's pic is a 
On blogging at age 93, from The New Yorker's