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.
"I have spent much of my life among the poor or relatively poor. I can honestly say that it never occurred to me for a single moment that any one of them was not a true human being. Indeed, if they were not true human beings, their poverty would be nothing to worry about. I neither romanticized them as the fount of all goodness and wisdom nor saw them as mere objects."
... government is inherently corrupt. There is no way around it. That's just one of the reasons (although perhaps the most important one) why we are complete fools to entrust to the government more and more power to redistribute the wealth of society, supposedly to create more fairness and justice in the world. What this process actually creates is more corruption. And does this process create more fairness? If it did, why does Manhattan -- the jurisdiction with the highest taxes and the most extensive suite of progressive welfare and redistributive government programs in the whole country -- have the highest income inequality?
Well, that last question is not entirely fair to NYC. It takes a while for all of the new immigrants to get with the program but they get more help than NY immigrants of the past. The help probably slows them down. Plus NYC has large dysfunctional, dependent "inner city" "communities" which nobody knows what to do about except to give them stuff and get their votes.
The American colonies were doing well economically and the taxes and levies the King wished to impose were minor. Despite this economic realty, the colonies revolted anyway. It was early proof that homo economicus has always been nonsense. Humans as not rational and narrowly self-interested agents. Humans, individually and collectively, are biological.
When the Brits went to the polls and decided to leave Europe, they did not do so with economics in mind. That was part of it, but patriotism, identity, class and other non-economic factors were at the front of their mind. The winners were not waving the Union Jack because it happen to be handy. The Brexit forces were not talking about sovereignty and self-government by accident. Libertarians are so blinkered they could not comprehend what was so blazingly obvious. They remain convinced that humans are just moist robots.
Today’s open-borders agenda has its roots not only in economic factors—the need for low-wage workers who will do the work that native-born Americans or Europeans supposedly will not—but also in several decades of intellectual ferment, in which Western academics have created a trendy field of “borders discourse.” What we might call post-borderism argues that boundaries even between distinct nations are mere artificial constructs, methods of marginalization designed by those in power, mostly to stigmatize and oppress the “other”—usually the poorer and less Western—who arbitrarily ended up on the wrong side of the divide. “Where borders are drawn, power is exercised,” as one European scholar put it. This view assumes that where borders are not drawn, power is not exercised—as if a million Middle Eastern immigrants pouring into Germany do not wield considerable power by their sheer numbers and adroit manipulation of Western notions of victimization and grievance politics. Indeed, Western leftists seek political empowerment by encouraging the arrival of millions of impoverished migrants.
Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady -- a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation -- is a congenital liar.
I understand that ardent Hillary supporters could not care less about Clinton lies and Clinton money. Clinton morality is already baked in the cake and has been known for many years. No matter what is revealed, it changes no vote. Still, it's an ugly story that has to be told. Shut It Down: The Clinton Foundation Is Too Corrupt to Exist.
It is nothing more than a family slush fund and corrupt to its core. Quite remarkable, really, that anybody had the hutzpah to try the obvious scam of collecting money from foreign businesses and nations while Secretary of State. Hire some friends, your kid, and political allies, make a few token international efforts which fail except for the photo ops - and Voila!
Americans Indians on reservations live like many Black Americans live in urban areas. It can easily be a soul-destroying life where everything for survival is free because the powers that be have written them off as people without productive potential and figure that the sensible route is to give them stuff and get their votes.
Everybody admires those who escape any Indian government plantation. The worst thing about the Indians' plantation: No work at all to be done. No food needs to be produced, no buffalo left to kill, no enemy tribes to fight. Nothing. Escape is the only way to salvage a life.
Government treats blacks and Indians as if they were helpless children. Give them stuff and they will shut up. Maybe they - not the government - will figure that out someday but I do not see it happening anytime soon.
All the damage done to him this week was self-inflicted. The arrows he’s taken are arrows he shot. We have in seven days witnessed his undignified and ungrateful reaction to a Gold Star family; the odd moment with the crying baby; the one-on-one interviews, which are starting to look like something he does in the grip of a compulsion, in which Mr. Trump expresses himself thoughtlessly, carelessly, on such issues as Russia, Ukraine and sexual harassment; the relitigating of his vulgar Megyn Kelly comments from a year ago; and, as his fortunes fell, his statement that he “would not be surprised” if the November election were “rigged.” Subject to an unprecedented assault by a sitting president who called him intellectually and characterologically unfit for the presidency, Mr Trump fired back—at Paul Ryan and John McCain...
...the fall campaign is not going to be about ideology or policy. It's going to be about whatever crazy things Trump says between now and Election Day.
Given where the race is headed, the most likely outcome of the election is this: Clinton wins as Americans reject Trump. But, despite a victory, she will still remain broadly unpopular and distrusted among a public that probably won't have paid much attention to her actual policy proposals.
Don't blame the press. Press hostility is assumed. Don't feed the trolls, stupid. Always think before speaking. Generally, that's a good idea in life.
Just ask Mrs. BD. If you are losing her, you are losing bad because nobody likes Hillary
Hey Donald, Got Some More Targets for You… Having insulted war heroes, firefighters and
babies, Trump may be running out of people to offend. Here are some
suggestions.
On August 1, Professor Hasia Diner of NYU and Professor Marjorie Feld of Babson College in Massachusetts took to the pages of Ha’aretz to denounce the world’s only Jewish state for being racist, colonialist, reactionary, aggressive, and – this above all – Jewish.
Please discuss. I have no answer. I vote for Mike Pence who I wish would slap some sense into The Donald who appears to be on some unhinged and uninformed ego trip. Politics is reality TV, but a certain kind of more serious reality TV which actually has effects on lives. I might be wrong...
He needs to know that he is a yuuuge target now. He signed up for that. Suck it up, Buttercup as Megan would say.
Haven't you heard? Top 10 lists are so 2010. Why, no one that doesn't eat their vegetables by scooping up mashed potatoes with a butter knife and smooshing them in the peas refers to TOP TEN lists any longer. It's just not done by our class of people, dear. We're busy, important people who don't have time to peruse ten entries on any topic. If we wanted a decalogue, we'd hire Moses and a headstone company. We live in a Snapchat society. Keep it under a half a dozen, will ya?
In order to get in the spirit of the exercise, we've come up with a sort of test pattern of TOP FIVE lists. Don't strain yourself reading them all at once. I tried, and my lips got really tired. My advice is to dip into this treasure trove of minutiae over a period of days. When you're all done, you'll have bulked-up reading muscles and can move on to reading the comment sections on the daily crop reports from the USDA. It's bracing stuff.
So without further ado, here's our TOP FIVE LIST OF TOP FIVE LISTS:
This is dedicated to all the people promising to leave the country if Donald Trump wins the election. It also works for all the preppers that are promising to leave the country if Donald Trump loses. It's also handy for Libertarians who promise to leave the country whether Donald Trump wins or loses.
It's against the law in Georgia to use foul language in front of a dead body in a funeral home? People in Georgia must know a different class of people than I do. There's no other reason to attend a wake in my social set.
Hmm. I didn't see clerk at the Quik-E-Mart on there. On the plus side, it's an infographic, which is great for people who think a TOP FIVE list is a workout.
I'm really dull, so I just bought 1,100 Neon Tetras and dumped them into a goldfish bowl. It saves a lot of time, because there's only room for 17 tablespoons of water, making it much easier to clean.
Bucket lists are things you're supposed to do before you die, aren't they? Well, my list only has one item on it. I want to move to Georgia so no one can tell me what they think of me after I croak.
If you're dissatisfied with our selection of TOP FIVE lists, suggest one in the comments. Remember, six or more is right out!
But even amidst the torrent of meaningless platitudes, it is possible to discern a political vision in this speech: It is a vision where government -- the federal government of the United States -- has the solution to every human problem, big, small and medium. A vision where the government can eliminate all down side risks from life by just spending a little more of the free money from the infinite credit card. A vision where the fundamental role of the politician is to promise goodies to pass out to buy the votes of the electorate. And a vision where we pretend that essentially everybody but a few bogeymen ("Wall Street, corporations, and the super-rich") can be a net gainer from the government handout game.
The almost total absence of public mourning for an 85-year-old Christian priest whose throat was slit by Islamicist terrorists while he led prayer in a small church in Normandy, France, is a scandal.
Let's grant that a hack—a way of obtaining information—and a leak—a means of disseminating information—are very different things. But, still, does the particular distinction Foer draws between the two make sense? Suppose, for example, that Russian intelligence, instead of feeding its trove of hacked secrets to WikiLeaks, had chosen to pass them along to an American investigative reporter, who then wrote about a selection of them in, say, the pages of the New Yorker or the New York Times. Would Foer have any grounds for objection?
Outside Plato's fantasies, the Philosopher Kings always turn out to be power-mad psychotics divorced from reality and morality. Governance by your moral and intellectual superiors, that is, by the genius experts: The Fourth Circle of Statist Hell
Higher min wage kills off Mom and Pop shops, benefits the big boys like McDonalds and WalMart who have the tools to adjust. Mom and Pop end up working at WalMart.
... as John Quincy Adams so profoundly observed, America’s security does not require that it search the world for monsters to destroy.
Apparently, Hillary Clinton does, however. For her Secretary of Defense-Designate is none other than Michelle Flournoy. Both share an obliviousness to Adams’ profound truth because they are credentialed member of the Washington War Party.
And as a team, they are as good a reason as any to give Donald Trump a shot at the commander–in-chief job.
The post-modern male has only his own strange and unaccountable package of appetites and lusts; and the strange and unaccountable restraints upon them, beyond self-regulation. He is pure consumer, and he is lost. That is what lies behind, “No more war!” It is not principled pacifism, ready to sacrifice — to die, rather than to kill — but a consumer choice, a lifestyle option.
Hillary Clinton Begins Building Her Coalition - The Democratic nominee for United States president made a play for progressives, moderates, and Independents alike during her address in Philadelphia on Thursday night.
Absent a beneficent deus ex machina, I will probably vote for Donald Trump. Since I live one of the brain-dead, deep-blue "progressive" states of the Northeast, my vote won't count. But it will be some small satisfaction to make a gesture, however futile, against the most corrupt person ever to run for the presidency.
Apex predators are necessary for a healthy ecosystem. An excess of ungulates is destructive to natural balance. But if a pack is destroying your herd of sheep, shoot 'em, or get some guard dogs. German Shepherds were bred to protect livestock from wolves.
The near total lack of traditional male leads today probably reflects the fact post-scarcity America has lost the will or ability to do the hard work of civilization. Maybe it’s simply no longer necessary. The people making TV and movies seem to think that’s the case. Hollywood is, after all, the agit-prop of the ruling class. The people in charge want docile males, who are willing to be bossed around by women in Lycra jumpsuits. For the same reason the schools dope up the boys, Hollywood promotes the ideal male as being the Stepin Fetchit for the womyn’s studies department.
America has no race problem other than the ones always ginned up in election years. America does have a problem with its dysfunctional underclasses, white and black, urban and rural. Definitely more white but blacks more violent. Maybe it's a problem, maybe it's just normal.
In fact, it is the wealthy Liberal elite's world - today's ruling class - and we all just live in it and try to cope. They control our politics, our economy, their crony businesses, and they design our education and our medical care.
The Clintons and Their Corruptocrats - In Hillary’s term at State, wealthy crooks, influence-seekers and tyrannical governments rushed to donate millions to the Clinton Foundation, its spin-offs, Bill Clinton personally or vague combinations of all/any of them. Figuring large on the donor list, Australia's taxpayers
I did not think that was their job, but times have changed. Now the MSM is an unashamed mouthpiece for the Democratic Party and the only MSM that offers balanced views of things is the dreaded FOX.
FOX is no Republican megaphone. Just ask Mrs. BD, who almost threw a string bean at the TV last night.
Frigatebirds 
Meet Samson — the biggest cat in NYC
Being overweight 
The 
Is he a genius, a lunatic, or an idiot?
'Tacky' clothes and 'high society' weddings 
How archaeologists 
Haven't you heard? Top 10 lists are so 2010. Why, no one that doesn't eat their vegetables by scooping up mashed potatoes with a butter knife and smooshing them in the peas refers to TOP TEN lists any longer. It's just not done by our class of people, dear. We're busy, important people who don't have time to peruse ten entries on any topic. If we wanted a decalogue, we'd hire Moses and a headstone company. We live in a Snapchat society. Keep it under a half a dozen, will ya?
Why Verizon 
Image: Yesterday was early Mondrian, today late (c 1922) 
Image: Early Mondrian (1909)
Hillary Corrupts Everything: