37. Agree completely. Goes for nonfarming rural folks as well.

I made the mistake of listening to CBS Sunday Morning while visiting friends some years ago when Jane Pauley was hosting and some ancient white guy was doing a feature from the Andy of Mayberry museum in Mount Airy, NC.

Reporter encountered a sweet young family that watched nothing but Andy Griffith, Mayberry RFD, and so on.

He asked, dripping with condescension, "Aren't you afraid your minds will turn to mush?"

They were quite kind in their response.

Great.

Now if only the Bureau of Reclamation can fully support allowing nature and the land's original inhabitants to reclaim the w/West . . .

I can't imagine what information Putin could have against any US official that would

* Be meaningful to the usual 30 percent of hardcore idiots

* Be shocking at this point to another 60 percent of the populace

The P tape? So what?

The NRA was a Ruskie front for decades? And?

It's all chump change now.

"It's very well suited to certain kinds of tasks. It's good at finding signal in noise; pattern recognition. Good at coming up with working answers to hard optimization problems."

Yippee skippy. Let's get rid of our high-IQ employees.

Buncha overachievers anyway.

"Charlie Manson never touched a hair on a human head."

All this because Fred Trump was an ass for a father and both of them probably got stuffed in too many lockers?

I know dementia -- now going through it for the third time with a very close family member -- and in no way does Trump have dementia, in my opinion.

But his behavior now versus his campaign shows obvious evidence of a change in drug regimen.

Slurry and stupid (and yet-unelected) was a better circumstance for all.

A shanda. Pure and simple.

12: We moved a couple years ago from 20+ years in central Appalachia. That's about 70 percent of the population.

Of the people who I had some respect for who were still toting the GOP line when I left, most were just unrepentant good ol' boys whose families had been there for generations and they were lawyers or business owners -- sizeable small businesses. Rarely a doctor.

And a smattering of people would still like to be liberal Republicans -- "conservative fiscally, socially liberal" -- but they were lying very low. And if they were voting D, it wasn't showing up in the polls.

Free Luigi.

Sonnenfeld had a weird history leaving ATL decades ago.

Anytime articles about academics include "later exonerated," something's up, but they're pretty well buried.

I live in an area with big Farmers for Trump signs.

Not a single one has come down.

I want the button that'll bring back Cousin Brucie in 1966.

My posting is neither affirmation or denial of anything therein. I haven't read most it.

I didn't think this needed explanation.

Lazy sumbitch. Does sadopopulism sum it up for you?

FTA:

Consider two recent high-profile books. The first, Anne Applebaum's "Autocracy Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World," published in 2024, is right on point. These days, she argues, more and more illiberal regimes collaborate " not out of shared ideals but from a "ruthless, single-minded determination to preserve [the] personal wealth and power" of their leaders.

Timothy Snyder is even blunter in his book, "On Freedom," also published last year. The world, he claims, is divided into two types of political systems: liberal democracies (which embrace positive values) and autocracies (which lack values entirely). The tens of millions of Americans who voted for Trump? They're "sadopopulists" who enjoy inflicting pain on others more than helping themselves. What about China? Clearly, "the entire country is a kind of prison." And whenever a country veers away from liberal democracy, the only question is whether it's using oligarchy to get to fascism (as in Russia and Turkey) or fascism to get to oligarchy (as in Brazil and India).

"The major illiberal regimes worldwide do not lack values or ideals " they overflow with them."
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From this perspective of correct liberal opinion, understanding the illiberal world boils down to a few core principles. First, today's illiberal regimes maintain power primarily through repression, violence and corruption. Second, their leaders and deputies are driven by the spoils of tyranny: power, wealth, sex and glory. Third " though opinion is more divided on this point " their populations are either systematically deceived by their rulers or, more insultingly, incapable of tolerating the complexity, openness and pluralism that liberal democracy promotes.

If these critics are right, there's no need to hold a new Colloquium of the Seven. We know what illiberals are about. They are driven by greed, not ideals; anger, not affection; and base interests, not human goods.

A Counterproposal
This article presents a counterproposal: The major illiberal regimes worldwide do not lack values or ideals " they overflow with them. They believe in their values sincerely. So much so, in fact, that each advances a positive and specific vision of human flourishing for its members. Finally, here is my thesis: They are ready and willing to use the soft and hard powers of the state to realize their visions of the good life. They are in the business of crafting souls, or soulcraft.

With this in mind, if I had the major representatives of these regimes at the colloquium table, I'd ask three questions:

1. What is the dominant conception of the good life in your country?

2. Why is it excellent and worthy of devotion?

3. How does " and should " your state advance it?

A weeklong conversation around this could go a long way toward helping poor liberals, like myself, understand the allure, potency, stability and deep human aspirations of my rivals.

I wouldn't listen to anything for 37 minutes either.

Sorry to say, Chick Publications hasn't condensed it.

1. Article is a 37 minute listen. Check the link for details, if you want em.

Made you look.

33.

We're way past tense. We're living in bungalows now.

--Groucho Marx

Matter of time. Birds of a feather.

Just wait and see how much anti-US sentiment costs Florida's economy.

Maybe we can break down into micro units where we're surrounded by people who think like us and all have the same goals.

First-century church?

Communes?

What comes after anarchofascism?

I come from generations of car dealers back in the good old days of GM in the 30s through the 70s (and then beyond, when my father said it was no longer fun when the MBAs came in -- which only meant he could no longer lie to GM).

Just when I thought impressions of my ancestors couldn't tank anymore.

From the Amazon page:

How Israel makes a killing from the occupation of Palestine

**WINNER OF THE 2023 WALKLEY NON FICTION JOURNALISM PRIZE**
**Shortlisted for the 2023 Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing**

Jesuits have been kicking a$s for 500 years. Trump isn't gonna stop them.

^

FTA, for you fair-use freaks.

He drew a crowd of 4,000 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Friday night. He faced another 2,600 or so the next morning a few hours away in Altoona, Wisconsin, a town of less than 10,000 residents. And his crowd of 9,000 in suburban Detroit exceeded his own team's expectations. By design, each stop was in a swing U.S. House district represented by a Republican.

Sanders, who was just elected to his fourth Senate term from Vermont, conceded that this is not the role he expected to play at this stage of his career.

In the 90s? I was ------- my wife, raising my kids, starting a business, and watching our mothers' brains rot.

Now I've got grandkids, business is very good, and my wife's brain is rotting.

Life in these United States. Remind me to send you a Christmas card.