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 only conclusion I can draw at the moment is that candidates like Le Pen and Wilders really have the wizened heads at the European Union in a panic. The lesson we can take from this is found in observing the response. Actual freedom requires a robust rebuttal and persuasive argument against real hate speech. But in the EU they can simply make your speech disappear, and the powers that be get to determine what qualifies as acceptable.
How the Blue Model fails. For a century, this conservative Protestant state, the "Land of Steady Habits," was a state of tough Yankee self-reliance and no faith in or expectations from government of any sort. It had no income tax until recent years (damn that Republican jerk Gov. Lowell Weicker who put in the tax and fled the state to avoid his taxes as soon as he was out of office).
Weicker swore that the state income tax would solve all the problems. It was the opposite, with deeper and deeper debt and higher and higher taxes ever since. Did I mention that, since Weicker, the state has been basically bankrupt?
Under the Blue Model, jobs have fled, manufacturing has fled, the cities are in the ICU and run by various union, ethnic, or other mobsters and predators, and the government unions control the levers of government. Catastrophe. Few remember that in the 1960s Hartford was the most desirable small city in America according to Time magazine. Now it is a dangerous (at night) shithole of degeneracy, dependency, and hugely-expensive and failing government schools.
Pubiic schools in Hartford now cost taxpayers more than fancy private schools.
All the Liberals and Lefties now want to move to red states to survive which I find grimly amusing. Of course, they bring their blue votes with them.
Without the wealth of Fairfield County which is basically a prosperous suburb of NYC, the state wouid now be one of the saddest in the nation. A thin thread of hedge fund taxes barely holds the state together because government has killed the other industries and does its best to kill small businesses. The governor is a pathetic putz, a union hack. A sad story about how the Blue Government illness can kill the goose that laid golden eggs in a lovely New England state.
We stay here despite all the mess. I think it's the same reason people stay in California despite its mess. If you can figure out how to make a living and to minimize your taxes, it's still a fine home.
Best article I've seen about illegal immigration, at the leftist The Week:
President Trump has jumpstarted an important and rancorous debate about immigration that is likely to drag on for several years. Democrats are vitally important participants in that debate. But they will be more likely to shape its outcome if they make their case on the merits instead of denying the legitimacy of having the debate in the first place.
If you want deranged men in sundresses in your daughter's bathroom, raise your hand. And while we're on the topic, Mr. Cuomo, do your daughters want to see your penis in your bathroom? Maybe they do...I don't know. Girls are curious critters.
Donald Trump is supposed to be the 12th invisible Hitler, returning to impose a dictatorship on America. The trouble is, Trump sounds like a Jewish guy from Queens and his kids converted to Judaism when they got married. So far, his most enthusiastic supporter among world leaders is the Prime Minister of Israel. They ain’t making Hitlers like they used to. This comes after the nation twice elected a black guy president. The unhinged hatred of white people that has carried the Left for generations has descended into madness.
Sure, there are plenty of issues to think about in the world and in the US. What Brooks misses in his condescending op-ed is that Trump was elected as a last-ditch effort to address the very things Brooks is upset about. We hope Trump can do that. Hillary would not and could not.
One thing Brooks does not suffer from is Toxic Masculinity.
... the country was at an inflection point. It desperately needed a new brand of politics that could break the deadlock and set it upon a new course toward its future and destiny. In such times, a gap inevitably emerges between the political establishment, guided by the lessons of the past (increasingly irrelevant lessons, as it happens), and the electorate, always ahead of the establishment in seeing the need for new political paradigms, new dialectical thinking, and new coalitions designed to bust up political logjams and set the country upon a new course.
The electorate is always ahead of the comfortable establishment because the electorate lives in the real world. Voters used Trump to mess up the status quo which had worked well for the wealthy, the press, the bureaucracies, the dependent class, and the politicians but not for the regular people who had been held in contempt. It was a legal insurrection, and today's protesters represent the tired old establishment. Interesting times. I wish Trump and his folks the best of luck.
If you live in the world of Facebook, Lyft, Netflix and Airbnb, crowding into airports shouting, "No Borders, No Nations, Stop The Deportations" makes sense. You don't live in a country. You live in one of a number of interchangeable megacities or their bedroom communities. Patriotism is a foreign concept. You have no more attachment to America than you do to Friendster or MySpace. The nation state is an outdated system of social organization that is being replaced by more efficient systems of global governance. The only reason anyone would cling to nations or borders is racism.
The demographic most opposed to President Trump is not a racial minority, but a cultural elite.
Every conservative I've personally heard from thought his press conference was excellent and long overdue. I've listened to those on the right for many years complaining that Republicans never fight back when they are slandered and lies and misrepresentations are spread about them. Now, we have someone who will fight back hard and not just lie down and take it.
Naturally, heavily biased, partisan, unethical "reporters" are outraged that they can't just get by with doing whatever they feel like no matter how dishonest and manipulative without getting called out for it. At the same time, they are getting so explicit with their Trump hatred that even non-partisan people couldn't avoid noticing it. It's very hard not to admire Trump's guts. He'll go right into the lion's den and antagonize the violent lions without hesitation. The "press's" refusal to recognize how millions of Americans actually view Trump (and them) is one of the reasons Trump won.
Donald, the anti-hero and anti-politician, is one heck of a politician. Finally, the news is fun again and Washington a circus again. Journalists whisper "This is insane." Wrong again. Journalists don't get it. Why should they be expected to? They are just bystanders in life, outside the arena.
In my view, climate science and weather science are interesting but not very important. If the tropospheric temps go up a degree or two per century, who cares? It's just a political hobby horse. If anybody thinks a "carbon tax" could change the earth's climate they are insane. It would enrich government, however.
Whatever causes climate variations in the present and caused drastic variations through the history of the planet, nothing can be done about it and, furthermore, who can define an ideal climate for the planet anyway? Nobody. All anybody can say for sure is that warmer is better than colder.
I see it as a sign of health that she hates the dumb job. Modern women do not want to be public ornaments to their husbands' lives or, in this case, political accessories. I think the Donald is ok with that.
Donald's new job has not enhanced her life. It has damaged her life. Where did this "first lady" idea come from, anyway? Is it like a sort of queen or something? I am glad Melania has no interest in being a celeb. She doesn't need it, and she seems shy anyway. She should live the way she wants, as best she can with the current restraints. Maybe she can trample this "first lady" thing just as Bill Clinton would have done had Hillary won.
Some object that Trumpism is pure nihilism and a vandal act rather than a constructive recalibration. Perhaps. But red-state America shouted back that if those who demanded open borders never themselves lived the consequences of open borders, then there would be no open borders. If those who proposed absolute free transfers of capital and jobs always expected others to lose money and jobs as the cost of the bargain, then there would be no such unlimited free flows. If the media were continually to stereotype and condescend to others, then they themselves would be stereotyped and talked down to.
For a brief moment in 2016, rural America shouted that the last shall be first, and first shall be last. Before we write off this retort that led to Trump as a mindless paroxysm, remember that it was not those in Toledo, Billings, Montgomery, or Red Bluff who piled up $20 trillion in collective debt, nearly destroyed the health care system, set the Middle East afire, turned the campus into Animal Farm, or transformed Hollywood into 1984-style widescreen indoctrination.
It is fascinating how the intellectual elites of Jackson’s time had the same level of contempt for the common man as the arrogant ruling elite have for the “deplorables” inhabiting the towns and hamlets of flyover America today. Alexis de Tocqueville, a pretentious French intellectual, and contemporary of Andrew Jackson, treated Jackson, his presidency, and his supporters disdainfully in his book Democracy in America, written during Jackson’s presidency. The haughty condescension of the rich and powerful elite towards the plebs has spanned the ages, with the NYT, Washington Post and CNN scornfully filling the role of Tocqueville today.
In reality, the chief political “weakness” of conservatism—it is better to think of it as a challenge—is that modern Americans are conditioned to expect that government can solve all our problems, or must at least try to solve them. It is the lot of conservatives to resist solutions that are popular but barmy. Populism cannot change the fact that government is incapable of solving problems upstream of government—problems of culture and complexity that government amelioration efforts, however well-intentioned, often exacerbate.
How the Blue Model fails. For a century, this conservative Protestant state, the "Land of Steady Habits," was a state of tough Yankee self-reliance and no faith in or expectations from government of any sort. It had no income tax until recent years (damn that Republican jerk Gov. Lowell Weicker who put in the tax and fled the state to avoid his taxes as soon as he was out of office).
New York has always been home to 
George Washington:
Photos 
Florida wants to 
Six Plants and Animals