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.
If you think Russiagate is real, then you will probably conclude that Sessions, Prince, and Page are all part of a single, monstrous criminal conspiracy—and that Adam Entous is one of the most important journalists in American history, an indefatigable shoe-leather reporter who helped whistleblowers inside the federal government put the truth before the American public, like Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, and Neil Sheehan combined. If you think the collusion story is nonsense, then Entous is just a political operative with a convenient byline. And if you think Russiagate is a campaign of political warfare waged in the shadows by bureaucrats who violated the privacy of American citizens in order to undo election results they disagreed with, then Entous is something worse—an asset whom sectors of the intelligence community have come to rely on in order to manipulate the public.
My theory is that the "deep state" and "inside Washington" were determined to save the country and their careers from the lunatic Trump who obviously had no clue about how "inside Washington" works - and didn't even care. In many ways, Trump had lived in a bigger world than they ever had, a world of national and international commerce, media, sports, beautiful girls, and real estate. He took the blows, was knocked down many times, always got back up - and knew how to manage media. He always knew that politicians were low, devious people like him, but easily manipulated.
I believe that many laws were broken in the process of preventing Trump, in the confidence that they could drag Hillary across the finish line. That did not happen, and Freak-out ensued. However, blowing up "Inside Washington" is part of why Trump was elected.
The "Imperial City" is elite, arrogant, ingrown, bien-pansant, too social, and too wealthy. They only talk to each other, and they are all dependent on highly-paid government jobs. Had I the power, I would move every federal agency to a different middle-sized city, and just keep State and Defense in the DC area. DC was built on a Potomac swamp, is a swamp entirely disconnected from regular people.
Trump, with his countless flaws, was the only answer for us peasants. He had to be knee-capped at least. And there we find ourselves.
Snowy day here in Yankeeland. They used to call it "snow", but now they call them "Snowstorms" and give them names. Dramatizing ordinary weather. What's the matter with Yankee people these days? The timidity. Mrs. BD ain't askeered. She's off to Philly this morning, weather be damned.
If it means letting males off the hook for the arduous task of becoming manly gentlemen with the accompanying virtues that the world (and women) expect, then I would see it differently. Developmental arrest is not a thing to encourage.
I suspect those Czechs and Slovaks would understand very well the mentality that got those two food service workers at NYU fired. We don’t even know if those fired workers were conservatives or not. All we know is that they were denounced by this middle-class black daughter of a Chicago administrative judge, and now they are jobless, with the scarlet letter of Racism staining their resumés forever.
It's actually "middle-class privilege", if you need to call it "privilege." From a reader's comment on Wednesday:
Concepts like self actualization, self discipline, fairness, loyalty (though not blind loyalty), valuing individual lives, integrity, rectitude, civic mindedness, reliability and accountability, courage, autonomy, problem solving, saving and postponement of gratification, being productive and contributing to the community and the economic pie. This is privilege?
Wherever men and women are in routine contact (and I suppose, any place where gays are in routine contact), biology requires that there will be some sex and/or romance in the air. Office romance and attraction is, and historically has been, so common as to be a cliche.
With far more women in the workplace than a generation or two ago, what are the rules for men and for women? And what about dress and make-up? And why do most discussions ignore women's sexual and romantic interests? How is it different from college, or high school for that matter?
Peterson is an expert at saying "I don't know." We can all learn from that.
Trump represents such a monumentally grotesque embarrassment to the permanent Washington establishment that they will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the removal of this odious caitiff.
And in the process abandon all reason and decency.
“So now we know that the Parkland shooter was known to the local police, who did nothing. He was known to the FBI, who did nothing. His unstable behavior was known to teachers, who did nothing. The armed guard at the school stood there with his thumb up his butt while the the school was being shot up, and did nothing. In other words, we have a avalanche of failures from the highest levels down to the lowest. Every rule, every procedure, every safeguard that was put in place to stop these shootings from happening failed to stop this one from happening because the adults who were entrusted with the responsibility to keep shootings from happening did not do their f*ing jobs. Everybody knew the kid had serious problems, but nobody wanted to step up and actually do anything about it. And now we’re treated to the spectacle of these fake ‘townhall’ meetings organized by left-wing agitators who teach the kids to recite the anti-gun talking points that they want them to say and we’re supposed to just nod our heads and pretend that all we need to do is pass a few more laws and then everything will be just ducky. Sometimes I think we’re all just cardboard cutouts living in a Potemkin village."
Police are systemically racist. Police act stupidly. Police are overmilitarized. Give the police all your guns. Hey, guys, you can't expect armed police to charge mass shooters. All of these statements are being promulgated by the same people.
Everyone knows that journalism has been transformed in recent years, especially in the news magazines, right and left, from reportage into new forms of paralogical rhetoric: political argument disguised as dramatic reporting. It would be fun to spend the rest of my hour simply describing the new rhetorical devices, and the new twists on old devices, that Time magazine exhibits from week to week, all in the name of news. Mr. Ralph Ingersoll, former publisher of the magazine, has described the key to the magazine’s success as the discovery of how to turn news into fiction, giving each story its own literary form, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, regardless of whether the story thus invented matches the original event. “The way to tell a successful lie is to include enough truth in it to make it believable—and Time is the most successful liar of our time.”
The purpose is to keep up this drum beat, to make him so beyond the pale, so unpopular, that the independent fence sitter-voter just doesn't feel comfortable going against the grain and supporting him
Not from The Onion: 
Roger Bannister, 
How 
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Powerline: 