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.
The ME is one of those little disputatious, duplicitous corners of the world which attract the interest of diplomats and strategists far out of proportion to their intrinsic importance or value. Small pawns in the big game of international politics.
Obama or not, the world is not America's sandbox. Most of the world does not think like Westerners, much less think like Americans, and they never will see life through our eyes.
Furthermore, while the American people like the idea of being the world superpower, they have not been particularly enthused about geopolitical adventures and military maneuverings in minor places since WW2 - none of which have ended very successfully anyway (eg Korea, Cuba, Southeast Asia, the Muslim world, Nicaragua, Ukraine, etc.). Reagan's pressure for the dismantling of the Soviet empire was a success without a single military death, but the result is less than beautiful except for a few ex-eastern bloc nations.
The argument is always that X is critical to America's interests. Really? Syria? Ukraine?
Syria has been a Russian client/ally for a long time. Some good points here: The Mind of Mr. Putin
If you wish to debate, first tell me a few places in the world which can not be construed as"critical to US interests." (I'll use "critical" meaning worth going to war about.)
Global
Warming Hoaxer Jagadish Shukla Involved in “Largest Science Scandal in
US History” - See more at:
http://moonbattery.com/?p=63767#sthash.twBfVuky.dpuf
The Breakdown of the Black Family - Any attempt to
address mass incarceration has to begin with an effort to tackle
crime—and the social conditions linked to its rise.
We have known how much of a scam it is for many years. Still, people make money from it via governments.
The upside is that it provides an avenue to an easy and costless feeling of virtue. Either that or, in some municipalities, protects you from a garbage ticket. We have noted that most recyled garbage ends up in landfills anyway.
Pope Francis claimed that firearms and firearm makers cannot be Christian. A curious statement as he is surrounded by heavily-armed guards whenever he leaves his house. The Vatican is equally protected.
The same thing applies to Obama's pontificating about firearms. He is surrounded by firearms every day, and will be provided with armed guards for free for the rest of his life. I guess it's supposed to be different for us little people but not for me. I carry. If you worked in today's Hartford, CT, you might too.
The HK MP7 (probably) rides shotgun with the dark (purple) suit wearing Swiss Guardsmen closest to the pope.
Mental illness. The press also mentally-disturbed.
Psychologist
Pours Drain Cleaner in Woman’s Eyes Because She Thinks She Was Meant to
Be Blind - See more at:
http://moonbattery.com/?p=63680#sthash.13Z9hwbd.dpuf
“An aggressive foreign interference has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions. ... Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster. Nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life.”
These Muslims are not looking to become German, even if that were a possibility. They are not seeking temporary shelter from a storm back home. The majority are men of military age, who should be back home fighting to make their country safe again. No, this is just a bunch of people looking for a better deal.
It is excruciating. The tone is professorial, patronizing, obnoxious, and unmanly. Obama challenged, and was followed by, Vladimir Putin. Putting the merits to one side, the contrast was not to Obama’s advantage.
Best
estimates are that American debt cannot be fixed with taxes on capital -
See more at:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/09/best-estimates-are-that-american-debt-is-not-sustainable.html#sthash.mPDXxVzD.dpuf
In the article, Sanneh likens free speech advocates (like me, I assume) to "gun nuts," claims that campus speech codes have mostly been repealed (which is completely false), then bizarrely questions if people can believe in a diversity of belief. Those of us who are big fans of the concept of pluralism found the latter particularly mystifying.
It sure does. It used to be done by wise old politicos in smoke-filled rooms, shrewd guys who really knew the people. Now it's up to the press, amateur and professional.
Normal Americans would never even consider these sorts of scams. Even normal sleazy and corrupt politicians:
These email summaries show that the Clinton Foundation was the State Department and the State Department was the Clinton Foundation. All one, big, seamless, Clinton-promoting entity. We would know far more if State released the full emails. It is citing personal privacy as one reason not to make some public. In others, it claims the emails “shed no light on the conduct of U.S. Government business.”
I am waiting for The Donald to label the Clintons as grifters. Somebody needs to say the obvious.
Among the islanders, signing was considered a life skill, like knowing how to fish, more than a formal language to be taught. “It was passed on to kids as part of, ‘Here’s the stuff you need to know to make a living in this corner of the world,’” Van Riper said. Children picked it up from their parents; no records indicate that it was ever taught in schools.
Hillary Clinton doesn’t have a message, she has ambition. Her obsession with becoming president has overshadowed any reason that anyone might have to vote for her. She offers no hope and less change. Her candidacy is historic… but only for her. There is no promise she can make that anyone will believe.
After having spent much of her life trying to become president, she will leave once again a failure.
Some people just can't or won't make it on their own. Some people are not functional and lack family supports. Even England had poor-houses, as did colonial US.
In what may be the classic example of bad journalism in the field of economics, I offer this example
"In what may go down in history as the textbook example of how dangerous an unregulated free market can be when a company decides it wants to be greedy, Turing Pharmaceuticals of New York hiked the cost of a powerful drug used to treat people with life-threatening illnesses like AIDS and cancer by over 5,000 percent overnight."
The last time I looked, patents were government-protected monopolies. The benefits of patents are debatable in the discussion of free markets. Most economists recognize their value as an tool for creating the incentive for innovation. However, it is recognized as a temporarily assigned privilege.
I don't hold a particular stance on whether or not patents are viable tools. Unlike Jeffrey Tucker, I'd venture that removing patents altogether would not be good for innovation. I'm willing to accept his arguments, they do make a great deal of sense, I just don't think they have practical applications (I could be wrong...saying something doesn't have practical application just means it hasn't been tried, so we're wary. In fact, patents didn't exist for many years and humans still made tremendous innovations without intellectual property rights.)
Since patents are a government rigging of market management (controlling production), perhaps the length of patents should be reduced. Or perhaps upon the sale of a patent, the protections are eliminated within a shortened time frame.
Patents are government regulation and an inhibition on markets. Thus, the government has the means to 'fix' what it broke with patents. That said, the journalist needs to learn quite a bit about what a free market is.
Late note: A comment mentions that Daraprim is off-patent and the firm purchased 'exclusive rights', which the journalist failed to look into and assumed was a patent. I looked into it at lunch, because I'd assume the same thing. There are no 'exclusive rights' without a patent. What the firm purchased was the only factory currently making the drug. There are no 'exclusive rights' at all. By keeping the price down, the current company was making a profit and reducing competition (which should have, oddly enough, brought it up on anti-trust laws). But the new owner may make a short term large margin, only to face a competitor who decides to now enter this market and drive prices down.
All in all, the free market is working far better than this journalist ever imagined, even if the short term hit for people is substantial. My guess is the competition will push the price for the drug far lower than it was previously.
The big danger ever since this migration got underway is that it would get stopped up somewhere. The day after Germany closed its border with Austria, there were 20,000 migrants stuck in the Austrian villages of Nickelsdorf and Heiligenkreuz. And the further south you go, the fewer resources residents have to give the travelers a welcome. The migrants are largely young men from rough, tough parts of the Muslim world. There is now a queue of them that stretches all the way east to Bangladesh and beyond, and deep down into sub-Saharan Africa. People have sold cattle, abandoned houses, robbed employers, left wives and children, and burned all sorts of bridges to come. There are now hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of them. Many are war-hardened. They are looking for money, food, and female companionship, and they are convinced that Europeans are gullible sissies.
This is where Frau Merkel’s Willkommenskultur has led: With the impending closure of the Croatian border, hundreds of thousands of young Muslim men are about to hit a brick wall in Serbia. Serbia!
Hating Pumpkin-Spice Lattes
Cool site:
U.S. 
New clay tablet adds 20 lines to Epic of Gilgamesh
Toon via 
Seattle-area school 
Image stolen from 
Have A Doughnut: 
Photo: Yesterday's pickings from a friend's garden. That's some heritage tomato