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.
Is there any reason for NATO to exist now? I don't think so, but typically organizations, once born, find reasons to rationalize their immortality. Just like government programs.
Europe is not part of the US. They are old enough to put on big boy pants. Russia is not scary, just corrupt, obnoxious, and untrustworthy. It's their culture.
Similar to Mark Twain's "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still trying to get its pants on."
A taxicab's day - This visualization displays the data for one random NYC yellow taxi on a single day in 2013. See where it operated, how much money it made, and how busy it was over 24 hours.
There is no new math, or old math for that matter. No matter how many other approaches other people try, how much mewling is transcribed on the Internet about socialization, or how many tennis balls you put on the bottoms of the legs of your kindergarten chairs, it's all wrong and it doesn't work. Like a volume knob that makes the radio louder when you turn it clockwise, and diminishes the sound when it's turned counter-clockwise until it clicks off, the design was perfect on the first attempt and cannot be improved. Every variation after that will be worse. People who want to break new ground without doing anything constructive will change the way that knob operates to become notable for the novelty, but it's always worse.
Healthy skepticism – or realism – about the nature of politics is foreign to many advocates of government intervention. These advocates believe in miracles - and, in addition, they too often reason inconsistently about the play of incentives and the incompleteness of information across different institutional settings.
Are there any nations which have willingly voted for open borders? Or for entry from a foreign place with no passport, or for any residency without a visa?
Many pundits from across the political spectrum are advocating open borders for the US, most recently George Will.
Now with Central American, and Chinese, immigrants coming via Mexico, my question for the open borders crowd is "How many, who, and from where?" Or is there no limit and no choice to be made by Americans? I thought we ran this joint.
There are an estimated 3 billion in poverty on this planet, many living without WiFi or big-screen TVs, and I am sure a large fraction of them would welcome the opportunity to take advantage of American material abundance.
NEW ENGLAND’S BLUE-STATE BLUES - Once known for its stiff-lipped prudence, the region is now a case study in fiscal insanity:
If not for the NYC bedroom communities in Fairfield County, Connecticut would probably be as destitute as Rhode Island. The Nutmeg State has the forty-second worst tax climate and the forty-fifth worst business climate in the nation.
And what little life remains in the Connecticut economy is being squashed by its monolithically liberal lawmakers.
After Obama became a U.S. Senator, his wife, Michelle, told a reporter, “Barack is not a politician first and foremost. He’s a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make change.”
But who are "the poor"? How can you "help the poor" unless you know who they are?
Some are probably mentally-disabled, some are college or grad students, some are young people starting out, some are Maine Guides, some are hippies, some are single moms in rural or urban areas, some are lazy or feckless bums or addicts, some are ambitious new immigrants (legal or otherwise), some are retirees, some have low income but have assets, many get paid off the books, some may be quite content, some are temporarily down on their luck, some are struggling artists, some are ill, etc., etc. "The poor" is not a unitary category. I used to be poor, and probably most Maggie's readers have been poor at some point in their lives.
That 92 year-old in Florida, now a WalMart greeter, had 10 million with Madoff. Poor, now.
How come nobody ever talks about who they are, and whether it's a temporary situation, or a life-style choice, or whatnot? And how come the value of government and charitable benefits are never included in figuring poverty in the USA?
From the article:
At the left-leaning think tank Demos, Matt Bruenig crunches the numbers of the Census Bureau’s 2012 social and economic supplement to its annual population survey and identifies the “officially poor” as “35 percent children, 8 percent elderly, 9 percent disabled, 8 percent student, 18 percent working, and 21 percent everyone else.” He concludes: “The adult, able-bodied, non-student poor who lack personal market income comprise 3 percent of the population.” It’s just a snapshot, but it tells us there aren’t many Americans who need the intense paternalism recommended by Ryan and others.
I doubt Ryan, a fine fellow I am sure, ever perused such data. He just wants to care but caring for others requires a discernment and art. Money is not everybody's life goal although perhaps only a noble few have the conscience to refuse free money from their neighbors.
Plain emotional "caring" doesn't deserve any moral credit, and when governments go parental they are the worst parents in the world.
Funny or Die posted a video today in support of a minimum wage increase, starring Kristin Bell. It parodied Mary Poppins, and was humorous enough, even if its economics are not well thought out.
Reason TV didn't wait for this to go viral before they provided a smackdown to both Kristin and Funny or Die:
It's doubtful Remy's exposure of the hypocrisy of Kristin's work will get as much exposure.
While Funny or Die, or Kristin Bell, may start lobbying to make other people do what they want via government diktat, it would behoove them to start living up to their own sense of moral superiority. Minimum Wage Laws are a primary reason so many teens are unemployed, as are the vast array of other restrictions preventing them from working. I held my first job at 13. Today, you can't get a job at 13 and it's just as difficult to find one at 15. Neither of my sons worked before the age of 16, not for lack of trying.
More importantly, studies have shown very few people actually 'live' on a minimum wage. Most minimum wage earners are under the age of 25 and are the second or third wage earner in a home.
What happens when automation pushes all these low wage earners out the door? I don't know. Perhaps we should ask the blacksmiths, since they all lost their jobs with the advent of the automobile. Why wasn't their union looking out for them so we could all be riding horses today? To be honest, I have a friend who is blacksmith. He does quite well for himself today, since there are few people with his skill set. Maybe Mike Rowe is on to something.
What's wrong with a little consensual bondage and sado-masochism? Or whatever? A little kink is fun, and everybody knows it. Bedroom games are good things. People are imaginative. As they used to say in Victorian days, "Just don't scare the horses."
For special kink, I will spend this weekend hunting strippers stripers off Block Island. Bleed the fish, cut a chunk out, a little wasabi, and eat the chunks raw at sea temperature with a slug of cold Pacifico. This will excite any normal girlfriend, I promise. Soy sauce interferes with the flavor imo.
If you are in the northeast USA, and not on the water this weekend, you have a bigger problem than Planned Parenthood can solve.
Absent legitimacy it's a sprint to whatever irreducible power center presents itself. As in any other no-rules fight, the violent prevail over the peaceful and the homicidal prevail over the violent. This isn't mere looting, major assets, even national assets, are in play. Mexico for example, one of the most violent countries on earth, is conquering—not merging with, conquering—the southwestern US. National borders are always under control, the only question is by whom, and events are answering that question. We forfeited this essential element of sovereignty by getting wrapped around our own prissy little axle while Mexico and its domestic enablers adapted.
The middle class is the designated prey in all this.
...this time around has been the bleating of moral illiteracy from most of Europe. No European country would countenance a neighboring territory being used as a launch pad to murder its citizens, and every single one of them would make haste to silence the source of fire, whatever it reasonably took. And yet every time Israel does the same, the post-bellicist crowd bows down to the altar of proportionality, accusing Israel of dissing that sacred principle. But would the Eurosheeple really like it any better if Israel responded to Hamas attacks with exact proportionality, by, say, deliberately targeting Palestinian kindergartens and school busses?
Who can know or understand all of this crap? All people know is that you can get in trouble if you do not. Insane, but it keeps lawyers and lobbyists employed.
In Left-wing La-La Land everyone should either work for The Excellent Benign Government or sell puka shell necklaces to each other (if you can comply with the 4,000 pages of Puka Shell Necklace regulations.) Failing that, Nancy Pelosi suggests writing poetry, an apparent high-paying growth industry.
I’m not saying that parents should take their toddlers into the wilderness and leave them there to hike their way out. What I can’t understand is how our society has lost the ability to distinguish between that and letting your pre-teen hang out in the car for a half-hour or spend some time in a nearby park. As Jessica Grose says, if this had been illegal in 1972, every single mother in America would have been in jail. Yet millions upon millions of us lived to tell the tale.
To deliberately wage war so that your own people can be telegenically killed is indeed moral and tactical insanity. But it rests on a very rational premise: Given the Orwellian state of the world’s treatment of Israel (see: the U.N.’s grotesque Human Rights Council), fueled by a mix of classic anti-Semitism, near-total historical ignorance, and reflexive sympathy for the ostensible Third World underdog, these eruptions featuring Palestinian casualties ultimately undermine support for Israel’s legitimacy and right to self-defense.
In a world of such Kafkaesque ethical inversions, Hamas’ depravity begins to make sense. This is a world in which the Munich massacre is a movie and the murder of Klinghoffer is an opera — both deeply sympathetic to the killers. This is a world in which the U.N. ignores humanity’s worst war criminals while incessantly condemning Israel, a state warred upon for 66 years which nonetheless goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid harming the very innocents its enemies use as shields.
How did the old assimilationist model work? Brutally and effectively. In our grammar schools during the 1950s and 1960s, no Spanish was to be spoken on the playground—officially at least. Groups of four and larger were not allowed to congregate at recess. When we were caught fighting, nontraditional kicking instead of the accepted punching earned four, rather than two, spankings. A rather tough Americanism in class was rammed down our throats—biographies of Teddy Roosevelt, stories about Lou Gehrig, a repertory of a dozen or so patriotic songs, recitations from Longfellow, and demonstrations of how to fold the flag. “Manners” and “civics” were taught each week, with weird lessons about not appearing “loud” in public or wearing glittery or showy clothes, and especially not staring down strangers or giving people the “hard look” with the intent of “being unpleasant.” Our teachers were at times insufferable in their condescension as they disclosed the formula for “making it in America”—but make it in America the vast majority of these immigrants did.
Two images from around the web this week that, I think, capture how many see this:
Image from 
Photo: A friend's pic of a fruit dish for a baby shower 
Shut Up, Please - 
Politicizing 
What's wrong with a little consensual bondage and sado-masochism? Or whatever? A little kink is fun, and everybody knows it. Bedroom games are good things. People are imaginative. As they used to say in Victorian days, "Just don't scare the horses."
Chemistry Lessons
One in 
Anti-GMO Activists 
Governors are 
Image via