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.
Anglo-American conservatism has never been a single thing. That was the whole point about conservatism, beginning with the British Glorious Revolution of 1699, which helped to define English rights and liberties against a power-grabbing royal house.
This is the drama we just saw play out again in Europe when the Brits revolted against the absurd new Juncker Class, trying to exert Franco-German power over Britain. That Sovietized political machine is not going to give up its drive to dictate the size of cherry tomatoes in Scotland: That is its only mission in life. Without those forty thousand regulations from Brussels, the Euro Soviets would have no function at all.
They are parasites. They do not produce anything useful, anymore than the Soviet Apparat did before the crumbling of the State. Vladimir Putin just pointed out the eerie similarities between the end of Soviet dominance and the end of the EU. That similarity is not an accident. It represents the eternal fight between self-serving power freaks and ordinary people trying to live their lives.
Ordinary Europe has wandered into the ancient trap of deceptive political con artists talking people into giving up their rights and powers. Obama has tried to do the same thing to us.
“Fundamentally, I’m a climate scientist and have spent much of my career with my head buried in climate-model output and observational climate data trying to tease out the signal of human-caused climate change.
Interesting topic. It usually only comes up when an establishment consistently deviates far from the majority. In the case of the UK, the politics are special: Cameron was elected in part by promising a referendum on EU membership. So their national election was, in effect, a referendum on a referendum. It seems to me that, if national sovereignty can not be held to a referendum of the citizens, then nothing can be presented to the direct will of the citizens.
Lyme, CT is a quaint little village, perfectly located on the Connecticut River but close to Long Island Sound. I love this 1789 farmhouse and its easily-manageable 6 acres. It's for sale. I want it. Good for boats and birds and plenty of hunting nearby. Perfect.
And, with our friends, church, kids, and complex lives, I would never have time to get there. A shame we can't have everything we like. Even billionaires can't, because time can not be purchased and it is a rare item.
This is not a vote against Europeans or even against Europe, nor will it divide the U.K. as the ungracious Remainers are saying. It is a vote for Britain to be governed by the British and to co-operate closely and fairly with the European countries. It is not really a vote to leave, but a vote to renegotiate for the next two years. Gove and Johnson are broad-minded, fair-minded modern Thatcherites, and they will strike the right balance between defence of British domestic interests and retention of good relations with the European powers. Prime minister Edward Heath threw Britain’s lot in with Europe, and put the Commonwealth over the side. Thatcher bet on the special relationship with the U.S., and she and Ronald Reagan were the principal victors in the Cold War, but that relationship couldn’t survive the last two American presidents. Britain has come full circle.
Sessions on Brexit: "The interests of powerful international corporations, media, special interests, and leftist international forces are not coterminous with those of our people.
Britain is leaving the European Union. But that reality doesn't begin to tell the story of the larger historical forces at work that are reshaping global politics, the global economy, and global culture and have been for much of the last decade...
When has that approach ever worked in the world? Now, the US like Europe offers government benefits to new (including illegal) immigrants. Is that a good idea? It has never been tried in the US in the past, and immigrants did very well over time.
From 1925 to 1965 the US permitted essentially no immigration. The people had decided, and the politicians had agreed, that we had enough of them. The country thrived.
The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.
If the government secretly can put an American's name on a secret list and, as a result, his liberty is lost, then there are no freedoms—just government-granted privileges. And if it can do this to the natural rights to travel and self-defense, can other fundamental rights be far behind?
Tomorrow is your first chance in recent history to repel German tyranny without needing an army to do it. Vote for independence, sovereignty, self-determination: Vote "Leave"!
It's your last chance. You can always rejoin if you want to.
Pomona junior Steven Glick, admits being taken aback when he arrived in Claremont from his home in Chicago for freshman orientation. “The first day, we got together in groups to go over everyone’s list of triggers and their preferred gender pronoun. I was shocked, couldn’t believe these were real things that people actually did, but it immediately drove home that that’s the way it is at the school, the accepted set of norms.” Still, he says, since he avoids liberal arts classes and hangs out with fellow economics majors and athletes, the political correctness affects him less than it otherwise might; and, while it’s safe to assume that every new acquaintance will lean left, the militant activists remain a minority. This was apparent in the reaction to the editorial. “All we said was, ‘Hey, not everyone supports these protests,’ and we got a lot of support for saying it. Because some people actually do want to be able to talk freely about these kinds of issues.”
Knives are the tool used in 5 times more killings in the US than guns.
Admittedly, though, a firearm can kill more people at a time, making for scary headlines. Omitting 9-11 from the stats, however, the number of mass murders in the US has been on a multi-decade decline.
There is an argument that there are too many knives guns in the US. Admittedly, there are too many illegal handguns in the US. You can buy an illegal handgun on the right ghetto street corner in any American city in 15 minutes if you have the cash. Illegally-obtained handguns are the firearm of choice for criminals.
It is a very rare bad guy who uses a long gun. Too hard to conceal. Mass murderers sometimes prefer long guns because they are more accurate than handguns.
With the exception of Switzerland where firearm ownership is close to required by law, most governments want their citizens disarmed. Disarmed citizens are more helpless citizens. Most of these governments want their police and government agencies well-armed. Why? Because bad guys have firearms even in disarmed places. New Flash: bad guys ignore laws. Police have weapons because bad guys have them, illegally. They were not purchased in gun shops.
You can't keep guns away from bad guys and the occasional lunatic. Impossible. Thus governments try to limit guns going to good guys. Pointless, but good politics in some places.
Essentially all legal firearm sales in the US are for sport and recreation, self-defense, and for collectors. The extremely rare violent exceptions are Muslims and the mentally disturbed. Firearms are as American as apple pie, and as common. The average American is quite comfortable with a firearm. Many if not most American boys and girls learn to use them. They all should. My parents taught us.
The 2nd amendment is not there because of militias so much as because weapons were forbidden for the common man in England. Only aristocrats could own their own swords and firearms. Same as in the UK now.
If by some miracle firearms could be kept from jihadists in the US, they would simply make bombs.
"Assault-looking" rifles? These are just light-weight rifles that look mean. Best-selling rifle in the US today. True assault weapons are illegal in the US except for government agents and the military. Even IRS agents have an arsenal of assault weapons. Isn't that nice?
I think all of the politicizing of the Orlando jihadist's firearms is virtue posing and grandstanding. BTW, I am in favor of vetting all gun buyers, all knife-buyers, and all immigrants from anywhere. Did you know that it is easier for an illegal immigrant in California to stay and to get government freebies than it is to legally-import a hunting dog from England?
I also think anyone using violence or threat of violence whether with firearm, knife, baseball bat, or anything else in commitment of a crime deserves execution. Not tolerable in civilization.
Photo: Good self-defense handgun, the Taurus Judge which fires .45 and .410 shotshells. Popular with judges. With a .45, it takes training to hit anything, but the .410 makes it easy. Best home defense firearm? A pump 12 ga.: Just the sound of the pump action will send any bad guy running for the hills unless they are crazed rural meth-heads. Home defense is like buying insurance. You hope you never need it.
No, Joe. It's Muslims. They use our freedoms against us.
At some point, maybe sooner than we realize, the pols in Washington will
decide they have had enough with the voters. It’s simply too much of a
hassle.
Somehow, over the last half-century, Western elites managed to convince themselves that nationalism was not real. Perhaps it had been real in the past, like cholera and telegraph machines, but now that we were smarter and more modern, it would be forgotten in the due course of time as better ideas supplanted it.
"There’s no doubt the media viscerally loathes Trump — in large part because Trump isn’t afraid to get in their faces and punch back twice as a hard, as a wise community organizer would advise. But they’d be battering any presidential candidate with an (R) after his name right around this time. The old rules are very much in force."
Photo: If you know what that is, you are old 
Photo: If you know what that is called, you're old 
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If you are from New Jersey, do you term this food-like product 
Bluegrass Legend 
Knives are the tool used in 5 times more killings in the US than guns.
Photo from NY Post: 