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.
New Yorkers love Uber. The wealthy just phone up their limo or their town cars, but now middle class people and poor people can just summon Uber on their app.
McArdle: "Why was I so glad to read that my ancestors had, in fact, faced nasty discrimination? It's a reaction that needs scrutiny. It's an echo of what happens when activists go looking for outrages..."
Pension payments to Chicago public union employees have become so high that today all the property taxes paid by the households of Chicago go exclusively to pensions.
Obama Turns to U.N. to Outmaneuver Congress - Washington is working on a new Security Council resolution making the nuclear deal legally binding on the next president.
If an African American baker refuses to bake a birthday cake or a wedding cake with a Confederate Flag on top, should the African American baker be fined, boycotted, or otherwise punished?
Economically, the Clinton-Sanders-Warren-O’Malley project is stuck squarely in 1938. Theirs is a country in which tax rates can be set without reference to global competition; in which the taxi commission and the trade union are the heroes while the entrepreneurs and the dissenters are a royal pain in the ass; in which families can simply not be trusted to determine which services suit their needs and which do not. It’s a country in which our heinously outdated, grossly illiberal, neo-Prussian educational system is to be set more firmly in place — even as it crumbles and falls. It is a country in which the state must determine which firms are Good and which firms are Bad, and reward or punish them according to its whim. It is a country in which Upton Sinclair is an up-and-coming writer, and in which anybody who doubts the efficacy of federal control is in danger of falling headfirst into a rendering vat.
He mentions Sinclair. As we now know, his books were pure fiction
In Lewiston, Maine. Amoral lowlifes are everywhere. Why? What happened to the morally-bound, duty-bound America, or did it never exist outside my personal life?
I am glad the issue has been raised. In my wanderings around New England, I see white trash people with tatts and strange body rings lollygagging around all day, and entire black families getting in the way of the Mexican landscapers trying to mow the "lawns" of welfare housing projects on a sunny weekday. A strange sight. The blacks make fun of the Mexicans for working, and the Mexicans despise the blacks.
The Asian (I mean real Asian - Chinese, Koreans, Singaporeans, Vietnamese, etc) legal immigrants are middle-class or more. They tend to arrive with education, skills, and some assets. However, I am not sure that they know much, or care much, about American values or traditions.
What's going on? Around here, the illegals work. Not so in many other areas, I know. Gangs, drugs, welfare, etc. Sometimes, this doesn't feel like "my country" anymore, and I know I am not alone in this.
Steyn: "Trump, like other philosophically erratic politicians from Denmark to Greece, has tapped into a very basic strain of cultural conservatism: the question of how far First World peoples are willing to go in order to extinguish their futures on the altar of "diversity"'.
That men of the cloth, of all people, should be blind to what is really happening right now on the global economic scale is remarkable, ironic, and sad. Cure one or two people of blindness and you’re a saint; prevent blindness in millions and you’re Monsanto.
People of the cloth, like many academics, can be insulated from the realities of production and oblivious as to how or where their iPhones, cars, medicines, airplanes, and foods come from. Not from magic fairies or community activists.
Many of us are parasites, may hate to admit it, but it is important that we do so anyway. Including me, selling business services. Free market production is the engine which eliminates poverty and despair. Even Commie China realized that.
The rest of us are, sadly, parasites on that mechanism: doctors, lawyers, financiers, teachers, insurance salesmen, politicians, government employees, etc etc etc. Often useful and valuable, but still parasites on the producers. Over time, with technology, there are fewer producers and more service parasites to the point that we parasites can pretend that we have a functional economy of our own.
I have friends who make real things: sails for sailboats, parts for machines, tables, tires, oil wells, medical devices, artisanal goat cheese, and things like that. Also, harvest lobsters, harvest peaches, and blueberries. They are the foundation and we are the beneficiaries.
But Williamson's main point has to do with the Church's apparent faith in the State. What State, pray tell, run by whom? God? It's utopian lunacy or dystopian lunacy, take your pick.
I am grateful to our clergy, and if my criticism herein seems unduly uncharitable to these princes of the Church, it is only because their backward views on capitalism are doing real, material, irreversible damage to the world and especially to the lives of poor people, who are most in need of what only capitalism has to offer. His Eminence may not entirely understand it, but the banks and boardrooms are full of men and women doing more in real terms for the least of these than he is — more, in fact, than he would even understand how to do — and what he proposes mainly is to stand in their way. For God’s sake, stop it.
Me? Raised Roman Catholic, love the Church in the abstract, but an evangelical protestant at present. A long story of course, which I will never be able to find the words to explain, but wish the Church would focus on the blood of Christ instead of secular matters.
Now gone fishin' for the weekend. Block Island Sound. Maybe stop up by Cuttyhunk. Got beer, got girl, got boat, got gas, got bathing suit, got flip-flops. Will feed on Blues, Stripers, clams, and oysters. Life is good in New England. (Too bad the retarded government makes us throw back the small stripers and keep the big ones. As usual, government has it ass-backwards - kill the producer-breeders and throw back the useless small ones of whom 1/5000 will survive the Tuna, sharks, and Swordfish.)
Recipe tip: When you filet your Striper on the boat, cut out some thin slices, smear a little wasabi on them and maybe a splash of teriyaki. Then take a swig of Corona with lime in it to wash it down. That is heaven on earth.
We are freeing ourselves of the impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that have been the devices of western European painting. Instead of making “cathedrals” out of Christ, man, or “life,” we are making it out of ourselves, out of our own feelings.
Which
states are in the best and worst fiscal condition? - See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/07/which-states-are-in-the-best-and-worst-fiscal-condition.html#sthash.9XV2mNk1.dpuf
I am happy to be called a redskin. Flattered. I have a lot more injun blood than Mrs. Warren, and my sis looks just like an injun squaw. My grandma, totally. I am 1/8th. Or 1/16th Iroquois. I think it's cool. We were called redskins here in New England because we used old bear fat for winter skin insulation, but that was a bit before I was born. It looked reddish. Had to kill a bear with an arrow to get that stinky stuff.
OK, those ancestors were stone-age lunatics, but so what? I tan readily in the summer sun, I like warfare, and I have good eyes for wildlife. Interesting genes to have. Mayflower Christian fanatic-types on one side, some injun blend on the other. It's no wonder that I am half crazy. Call me "Chief Bird Dog."
I think I did some good by blending that with some Irish-Italian sauce for my kids. More American mongrels.
Recall that it just took one fierce, unknown feminist Harvard faculty member to eject the distinguished Larry Summers from the presidency of Harvard by supposedly having a Victorian-era fainting spell.
It seems to be a tactic which works. I agree that people must push back.
Done with perfect technique, the deadlift is a perfect example of why the use of major multi-joint exercises is superior to a collection of smaller exercises.
I "enjoy" the exercises which involve multiple muscle groups. Not only are they extremely stressful and fatiguing, but they seem to be more useful for life than fussing over small muscle groups. For another example, combining squats with military presses is another hell of an exercise. Also, lunges with heavy hands - and ropes. You know it's tough when your grunts turn into 4-letter words.
Happy Independence Day! If you're like me, you're with your family and being independent together (h/t to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer).
If you're like me, you're probably having hot dogs and hamburgers, potato or macaroni salad, soda or beer, or other kinds of foods which were purchased at a store after being shipped from some other part of the U.S. or even another nation.
If you're like me, you probably don't spend time worrying about the details of how your food reached your table. But you may know people, as I do, who think the whole "eat local' idea will save our health and economy. We have a restaurant here which is excellent, but very expensive, and always booked. We need to make reservations several months in advance to get a table. They only serve locally grown foods (I believe it's a 50 mile radius), and it's BYOB (so I guess they're OK with bringing French wine to go with the Jersey Tomatoes).
Normally I don't go in for faddish trends, and I really don't buy the whole "local food" movement. But this is a good restaurant and just because I don't agree with it doesn't mean I'll avoid a good meal. Good food is good food. There are reasons why I don't necessarily think the local food movement is ever going to change how we live, and it certainly is not going to make our lives better.
As this video (45 minutes long - so be prepared) points out, most nations with small farms have economic problems. This doesn't intrinsically mean small farms are impoverishing those nations, but there's no doubt being a food exporter (and the U.S. is by far the largest) is an indication of economic strength through size. This video also points out the hypocrisy of our nation's politics and its 'solutions' to perceived problems. We have deemed some banks "Too Big To Fail" and willingly subsidize their moral hazard, while at the same time pointing to large agricultural firms and saying they are "Too Big To Succeed" and impose excessive regulations on them while subsidizing failing small farms. So the policy of the U.S. that we subsidize failure, and engage double standards wherever we see fit.
The Jungle is often touted as an example of what would happen if we did not support regulation of the food industry. Unfortunately, this novel was a work of fiction designed to draw attention to the plight of the working man. It was the lies of Upton Sinclair about the Chicago Packing District that stick in people's memory, however. By and large, most food businesses provided healthier foods than smaller firms. It was in their best interest to do so. One does not win new consumers by killing or injuring those you have. In fact, most of these businesses wanted regulation as a means to raise barriers to entry against their smaller competitors, and to prevent foreign foods, which had raised trade barriers, from being too competitive.
“It might be more harmful to consume lots of carbohydrates than saturated fats. If you fear cardiovascular diseases, most types of fats are better than carbs,” says the professor. Svihus thinks that in the worst case all the focus on taking fats out of the diet might have raised risks for heart disease. This is because we drop fats and exchange them with a lot of carbohydrates.
Politico: "As I noted last month with a link to an AEI infographic, if Clinton patiently endures her falls from public popularity she’s almost always rewarded with a rise."
It’s easy to dismiss Greece as a dead beat country full of oily grifters. In theory, the Greek people have only themselves to blame for electing crooks and liars. That’s an argument against democracy, but the people never voted for bankruptcy. They were misled by their leaders, who got hooked on the heroin of global finance. They supported joining the Euro because they were told it would avoid these problems.
Elizabeth Holmes 
Pic via 
Stem-Cell Dental Implants 
My college sex education: In her first year, a student finds a campus obsessed with hooking up —
A masterful and wise piece from Williamson: 
Image from Eratosthenes' 
Americans