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.
Back to Drudge for more headlines; it offers a daily survey of events that are contra naturam. … Breitbart is also good, but for my tastes, too engagé. … Maggie’s Farm is for the connoisseurs. … They help you keep up with the Devil’s agenda.
1984 author George Orwell gives us perspective from the past. In a piece entitled “Looking Back on the Spanish War”, in the periodical New Road, (1943), Orwell wrote about the controlling techniques used by the Communists in the Spanish Civil War: “If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’—well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five—well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs…”
"Even gender-neutral pronouns don’t feel as if they fit me. I feel no identity or closeness with any pronouns I’ve come across. What describes me is my name."
Britain, along with France and Germany the linchpin of the 28-nation EU, has opted to leave rather than continue living under the arbitrary, unelected bureaucracy that now runs Europe. A number of other countries — including France, Greece and Italy — are now talking about exit.
All the good intentions of its creation have been buried under a blizzard of regulations, paperwork and quasi-laws intended to definitively write an end to the idea of the nation-state. Right now, however, in country after country, people are getting sick of the EU.
It's "Kwik-Trip - A Revolution in Travel." Who would not like to push a button on your phone and be transported near your favorite restaurant in Epernay for luncheon or dinner, and, after dinner, stroll around town until ready to be transported back to your home?
Our killer, but not entirely original, idea is a high-tech travel app which will only require an in-home transporter dome and transporter domes located in desirable travel and dining locations, but this could eventually be scaled to travel anywhere we can build the domes. We haven't worked out all of the bio-engineering details yet because of the molecule issues, which is why we need investors. If possible, we'd like to avoid that Cinderella pressure to get back home.
Molecular transport talents do not come cheap and one of the challenges is the time frame. Molecular patterns change over hours, and transport reassembly accuracy is important to most people. Right now, we feel three hours (including a nice dinner) is about all our models can handle. We have good computer models.
What's the elevator pitch? It's Time and Hassle. It is not very expensive to fly to Paris and take the train to Epernay, and then hike through the charming area to your restaurant, but who has time for that if all you want is a nice lunch with a pal, your spouse, or business associates? And do you really want to mess with the Paris airports? They suck big time.
We are looking for visionary investors to get in on the ground floor who have deep pockets, a sense of adventure, and tolerance for risk and the opportunity for long-term profitability. We are also considering government Green grants to support our early development, and have received some verbal interest from many Western governments as our app could eventually eliminate the need for carbon air travel. On request, we can provide our provisional business plan to credible investors.
With all the many problems facing the biosphere (man being its parasite in chief), the arrival in the Dutch parliament of the Party for the Animals is a small step forward—but it is not enough. Everyone knows (or ought to know) that man could not live for a day, for a second, without bacteria. I therefore hope and expect before the end of my life to see the emergence of a Bacterial Liberation Front, to save bacteria from the ravages of antibiotics.
Apparently Jews and Christians are fair game in the West, but not scary Muslims. Why is that?
I will disparage such monsters as much as I want. In fact, as polite a person as I try to be, I will disparage anybody any time I want to. That is part of being a free person. Sad that Canadians might be too nice to be free. Can they see that enforced "nice" might not be a good plan?
I was reading pretty well at 5 with phonics. Mom taught me to read. Expecting school to teach a kid to read is like expecting government to be your doctor.
... it appears that at least one person has perjured himself over this and that one person is FBI Director Comey. There’s no way to square his testimony with these new revelations. The best he can do is split hairs and claim he was not part of the spying effort. Of course, there’s no way to touch him as he runs the FBI. In fact, there’s no way to investigate any of the intelligence organizations. This is the point where many of the robot historians of the future will say the American political class murdered itself.
As long as people are still free to criticize Christianity, I'm cool. Christianity is used to it. Christian guy or gal might feel hurt or insulted, but all they will actually do is to throw in a prayer for your soul. They won't scare the crap out of you the way the Canadians are askeered of their Muslims.
‘No European…can walk safely on the streets,’ Turkey’s Islamist President Erdogan Warns Europe
We aren’t a nation that has a cost-growth problem; we’re a nation that had a problem a couple of decades ago, when we failed to keep costs from outpacing the hog-wild inflation of the 1970s. Which means that we can’t even hope to get our costs down in the future, relative to other countries, by switching to a more government-driven system now, as many people have suggested when I pointed this out.
Let me repeat Josh Barro’s point that health care is 1/6th of our economy but nobody wants to spend 1/6th of their income on it. When health care spending was lower as a share of GDP, we had the luxury of setting up a system dominated by third-party payments, without the insurance companies or the government imposing difficult restrictions on what procedures could be approved or what doctors could receive in compensation. But health care spending has gotten to be too large a fraction of GDP to be handled that way. The system is bound to change, and the change is bound to feel uncomfortable to many people.
Nationalism was the centerpiece of the rise of liberal democracies because liberal democracy was built around the liberation of nations. Liberals in Europe and America did not deny that, but they simply could not grasp that the nation cannot exist unless the people feel a common bond that makes them distinct. The claim was that it was legitimate to have a nation, but not legitimate to love it inordinately, to love it more than other nations, to value the things that made it different, and above all, to insist that the differences be preserved, not diluted.
if America and Europe are becoming more insular to guard their welfare states, Canada is becoming more exclusive. All of this flies in the face of using the welfare state to create a "just society" full of compassion and caring communities. Indeed, in their effort to use the welfare state as a vehicle to create a new spirit of cosmopolitan socialism, liberals have only fueled a resurgence of the mean-spirited tribalism that they'd wished to purge.
Far from making all of humanity hold hands and sweetly sing kumbaya in a newfound brotherhood, welfare statists have ironically produced new fissures and divisions for nativism to prey on.
Europe: Another day, another Muslim atrocity in Europe. Can those people ever learn from experience? Can they learn the real meaning of multiculturalism, which is that cultures are deeply different and often conflicting?
It's no mystery to anybody, at this point. As we have said, this is war but I am still not sure what this war is about. Bathrooms? Or just to hamstring a player who is not on your team?
Even Megan McArdle can't really see what the fuss is about. She says the administration is asking these simple questions which any federal government should ask:
- Can the government actually make this problem better?
- If so, must this problem be solved at the Federal level, or could it be done as easily or better by the states?
- Even if the government might help solve this problem, would the associated costs in terms of loss of freedom, deadweight losses from regulation or taxation, and the declining accountability and manageability of government as it grows, actually be worth the benefit?
Good. In my high school, we had randomly-assigned tables rotating every 6 weeks, with a teacher at each table. That was good, civilized, and over time everybody met a lot of people that they might have never spoken with.
Good stuff. I would add that DiCaprio, like Al Gore, could convince me, at least, of his seriousness if he got rid of his many giant houses, giant boats, and constant private jet travel. My view: conspicuous, fashionable virtue-signaling by people who would not recognize a virtue if they stubbed their toe on one.
Jonathan Haidt on "the Coddling of the American Mind" and How We Should Address It. Students rather than deans are calling for less speech and expression. That should worry us all.
One of the reasons that the costs of medical care services in the US have increased more than twice as much as general consumer prices since 1998 is that a large and increasing share of medical costs are paid by third parties (private health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, Department of Veterans Affairs, etc.) and only a small and shrinking percentage of health care costs are paid out-of-pocket by consumers.
From time to time I'm called simple minded. I take it as a compliment and thank my accuser for noticing. Few things are as complicated as they're made out to be. Examples: before ObamaCare there was no ObamaCare. Duh. It made things worse. Repeal it and make things better instantly.
Nullify and denounce every federal, state and municipal gun control act, law and regulation ever passed, including the commerce clause stuff. The Constitution prohibits government from interfering, in any way, with our right to keep and bear arms. So stop doing it.
And illegal aliens. They have to go. It's the law. Don't like it? Change the law. Until then it's the will of the people, duly enacted. Either enforce it or stop saying 'representative democracy' and 'rule of law'. => Insert "it's not that simple" and pictures of baby seals here <=.
And why is it a routine winter snowstorm can cross the whole country unremarked until it reaches the east coast, then it becomes a blizzard emergency with a name and 'round-the-clock national breaking news?
Gwynnie's photo of overhead Snows 
How 
Participating In Your Office’s March Madness Pool
Behold The Big Bend - the incredible U-shaped New York skyscraper 
West Virginia 
Here's What Happens to Your Brain 