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, that's a tough one! Everybody must admit that is one impressive and appealing large family. The analogy with the Kennedys is apt, I think. Brains, glamour, street smarts, high energy, self-confidence to a fault, and new money. Tabloid fodder for sure.
Pedigree may be more high society, but new does more things. These days, I think, pedigree is dead and long dead except for dogs. The Bushies are ancient history already. Fine family, though. Good neighbors.
Haunting this year’s presidential contest is the sense that the U.S. government no longer belongs to the people and no longer represents them. And this uneasy feeling is not misplaced. It reflects the real state of affairs...
What Americans want is government to get out of their way. I might be wrong, but "making America great" still depends on what it used to, which is a culture of self-reliance without government micro-managing, over-taxing, and over-regulating their lives.
Photo: The new Tappan Zee Bridge (on left) under construction. A stunning engineering and construction feat. Drive by and take a look if you're in the area. Also get to see the world's largest floating crane. One of the working cranes fell down on the old span yesterday and remarkably nobody was hurt.
By now I’ve read at least four dozen essays by conservatives, libertarians and Republican stalwarts that seriously weigh Trump’s strengths and weaknesses. There are several themes—but I’ll summarize one I find most compelling.
Viscerally despising President Trump as a personality might be justifiable, Trump’s policy inclinations might well be bull-headed if not wrong-headed, and his flamboyant rhetoric may prove to be a diplomatic problem—but all of these dislikes, downsides and theoretical worries are far preferable to living under Clinton’s guaranteed lawless rule and demonstrated incompetence.
I think Trump was the only potential winner in that supposedly-deep Repub bench. Cruz would lose in a landslide, Rubio is wet behind the ears, Jeb is a schlub, etc. All true.
On trade and immigration, the returns are in. Should the GOP go back to globalism, amnesty or open borders, it will sunder itself and have no future.
And if the party is perceived as offering America endless wars in the Middle East and constant confrontations with the great nuclear powers, Russia and China, over specks of land or islets having nothing to do with the vital interests of the United States, then it will see its anti-interventionist wing sheared off.
At issue in the battle between the Party of Bush and Party of Trump: Will we make America safe again, and great again? Or are globalism, amnesty, and endless interventions our future?
GOP Convention Speakers Trash Trump - They said he's a "con artist," "narcissist," "bully," and "pathological liar" whose candidacy is "a cancer on conservatism."
Vit D is essential to health and to healthy growth, especially bone growth. Almost all of human Vit D is produced by skin in response to UV solar radiation. Animals with fur and feathers produce their own.
In its favor, it seems to help prevent some cancers and heart disease, so it is a good guy.
In the US, Vit D is added to commercial milk to make sure kids get some. About 15-20 minutes/day of unprotected sun seems enough to raise Vit D levels but few people get that daily. Sunbathing nude, of course, makes it quicker. Some of it is stored in fat cells for a while, until it gets used up.
Pic: Right on the fish dock in Wellfleet. It used to be Harbor Freeze, now it's Macs. It's unusual not to run into somebody you know in the ice cream line at night
So certain that their god wants them to do this. Maybe that is what their god wants. Gods do not tend to be like kindergarten teachers. Neither is mine, but mine demands "Do unto others..." which is an extremely challenging and unnatural demand.
...what makes helicopter money so positively insidious is that it relieves elected politicians entirely from their vestigial fears of the public debt and from accountability for the burdens it imposes on future generations. And that’s especially true owing to the Bernanke fillip.
Folks, the Bernank is no hero whatsoever—–notwithstanding his self-conferred glorification for the courage to print. He is a demented paint-by-the-numbers Keynesian who has a worse grasp on the real world than the typical astrologer.
The argument for a public option now amounts to a back-door opening for the single-payer system that Democrats wanted all along. Unlike the co-ops, which didn’t have direct access to general-fund spending, public-option plans would allow the executive branch to direct funds on a nearly unlimited basis as an entitlement program, removing the barriers to a sea of red ink. All it does is rearrange the deck chairs on a sinking ship – and like the Titanic, there won’t be nearly enough lifeboats for the rescue needed from the coming disaster.
“The French must die by the thousands…. Towards paradise, that is the path….Come, brother, let’s go to paradise, our women are waiting for us there, with angels as servants. You will have a palace, a winged horse of gold and rubies….With a little rocket-launcher, you can easily get one of them… you do something like that in the name of Dawla (Islamic State), and France will be traumatised for a century.”
Never in the history of world has a human being been so completely buried under a mountain of no evidence. Hillary Clinton can say there’s no evidence she sent classified emails until the evidence shows up, at which point there is no evidence she knew they were classified, until evidence of that shows up, at which point there is no evidence anyone got hold of it, until 400 people are willing to stake their lives that it was certainly compromised by sophisticated bad actors, at which point there is no evidence that it mattered.
Grow up, Republicans. Your Party nominated Donald Trump and there must have been a reason for it.
The Dems did not do very well either, if you feel Trump is a loser. The Dems had only two plausible candidates, both elderly, and they are going with Bill's wife because she has a vagina - a compulsive liar and possibly the greediest and nastiest woman in America. In contrast, the Repubs selected the only one from their supposed-star roster who could have played Russell Crowe's role in Master and Commander.
The household Repub names who are sitting this one out are looking foolish and petulant to me. If they are mad at Trump they have to be mad at their own party too. Trump did nothing wrong, just offered himself as an option to the voters.
The size of his personality and his fearlessness made the other options appear overly-cautious, depressive, and small by comparison. Thus a candidate (like Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan) who gets the disapproval of the elites. I thought the Bushies were bigger than that but low-energy Jeb was the heir-apparent. Rejection hurts, but come on! Get over it.
Black Lives Matter activists and their propagandists have waged a very effective War On Honesty. Black Lives Matter leaders employ vicious charges of racism to silence political opponents, or, failing that, deter media criticism of their radical tactics, which include violent language and occasional violent incidents. The goal is political provocation and divisiveness. Yes, Black Lives Matter benefits as an organization from divisiveness. It serves their political goals.
There are many dysfunctional and criminal subcultures in America, as there are everywhere. In the US, these are overwhelmingly white of course, and, it seems, disproportionately low among American Asians and Muslims (except for the Somalis in Minneapolis). They need to up their stats to keep up.
American blacks, however, have a lock on violent crime, with Hispanic immigrants (mostly gang-related) coming in as a distant second. Why this has evolved this way I do not know. History tells us it was not this way in 1960.
I do business with plenty of black and hispanic Americans, and they are fine, hard-working and pleasant people. There is almost no racism in America as far as I can tell. None. There is far more bigotry against white tattooed meth heads, white beggars, and whites with nose rings.
In the USA, there is a social contract. Obey laws, aspire to independence and integrity, and be a good contributing citizen. That is all that is required. Otherwise, expect to be poorly-regarded.
A powerful heart-felt comment from police officer Jay Stalien:
I have come to realize something that is still hard for me to understand to this day. The following may be a shock to some coming from an African American, but the mere fact that it may be shocking to some is prima facie evidence of the sad state of affairs that we are in as Humans.
I used to be so torn inside growing up. Here I am, a young African-American born and raised in Brooklyn, NY wanting to be a cop. I watched and lived through the crime that took place in the hood. My own black people killing others over nothing. Crack heads and heroin addicts lined the lobby of my building as I shuffled around them to make my way to our 1 bedroom apartment with 6 of us living inside. I used to be woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of gun fire, only to look outside and see that it was 2 African Americans shooting at each other.
It never sat right with me. I wanted to help my community and stop watching the blood of African Americans spilled on the street at the hands of a fellow black man. I became a cop because black lives in my community, along with ALL lives, mattered to me, and wanted to help stop the bloodshed.
As time went by in my law enforcement career, I quickly began to realize something. I remember the countless times I stood 2 inches from a young black man, around my age, laying on his back, gasping for air as blood filled his lungs. I remember them bleeding profusely with the unforgettable smell of deoxygenated dark red blood in the air, as it leaked from the bullet holes in his body on to the hot sidewalk on a summer day. I remember the countless family members who attacked me, spit on me, cursed me out, as I put up crime scene tape to cordon off the crime scene, yelling and screaming out of pain and anger at the sight of their loved ones taking their last breath. I never took it personally, I knew they were hurting. I remember the countless times I had to order new uniforms, because the ones I had on, were bloody from the blood of another black victim…of black on black crime. I remember the countless times I got back in my patrol car, distraught after having watched another black male die in front me, having to start my preliminary report something like this...
Clean eating and dirty burgers: 
40 Percent of the Buildings in Manhattan 
Image stolen from
Why Turtles Evolved Shells:
Vit D is essential to health and to healthy growth, especially bone growth. Almost all of human Vit D is produced by skin in response to UV solar radiation. Animals with fur and feathers produce their own.
Media Blames Truck, Not Terrorists or Islam, For Nice Attack
Dam Good! 
Japan's