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In Iceland, some 67 percent of babies are born to parents who are not married. A combination of generous social programs and a secular society have all but made nuptials obsolete—while giving rise to a unique culture of independent motherhood.

Glenn at Instapundit just threw that up there without comment but I just can’t resist.

Years ago, I offered to expand my home so as to have my Mom and step-dad move in with us and I will admit that there self-interest there – I got tired of getting the 3am phone call of “Eldon is hardly breathing again!” (he had COPD).  It was always “Mom, did you call 911?” answered by “No, I called you first”.  While I generally beat the ambulance, I felt it would be more effective for them to be closer (er, we lived in the same town and she was only 10 minutes away). But the pushback was always

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“There are some other trends at work. In the last few decades there has been a growing divide in the United States when it comes to how many recruits different regions provide. A disproportionate number of recruits come from the southern and the Rocky Mountain states. The northeast, upper Midwest, and west coast are much more difficult to recruit from and the recruits are not as good (less education, overweight, bad attitudes).

Recruiters have the hardest time in urban areas. Back in 2005, the Department of Defense concluded that urban high schools were the source of most problems. Not because of leftist teachers in some of those schools trying to keep recruiters out, but because so many potential recruits had to be turned down because of the poor education they had received in those schools. While only a fifth of Americans live outside cities and suburbs, nearly half of the qualified recruits come from these rural areas. What’s strange about all this is that the rural areas spend much less, per pupil, on education but get much better results than urban schools. Part of this can be attributed to differences in cost of living, but a lot of it has to do with simply getting more done with less. Per capita, young people in rural areas are over 20 percent more likely to join the army, than those of the same age in urban areas.

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Bosse is the Editorial Editor at the UL and decided to both call out UNH students, who are in serious knowledge deficit, and ridicule them.  Seriously, has secondary education quality dropped so low that they can’t even do the intellectual equivalent of just playing tic-tac-toe and figure out “if you do this, how does it affect this other thing?”.  This caught my eye:

Do they have the courage of their own convictions? Are they willing to divest from fossil fuels themselves?

They should refuse to ride in gasoline-powered cars, or electric vehicles recharged by a grid powered by coal and natural gas. They should put down their phones and tablets made with components shipped from around the world in bulky freighters. They should do their homework by candlelight, using pen and paper. And when they sit at their fancy electric dining table, and eat their food grown hundreds and thousands of miles away, they should realize they too are profiting from the fossil fuel industry.

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“The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.”  – President Obama, Inauguration (2009)

What POSSIBLY go wrong? I guess the Ban The Box activists are going to be proud of this – the real question is whether or not they are willing to personally take responsibility, fiscally or otherwise, if what a lot of us thinking, happens:

FEDS HIRED A CREDIT CARD FRAUD FELON FRESH OUT OF PRISON, NOW HE RUNS A BIG VA PURCHASING UNIT: Trust me, friends, the Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s Luke Rosiak did not make up this story that captures pretty much everything that is wrong with the Department of Veterans Affairs (and probably the federal bureaucracy in general as well).

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I am a New Hampshire conservative Independent. I am by no means unique and, in fact, am probably a member of a species that is far more common than most people may realize or care to acknowledge. Over the last several months I have developed distaste for the national Republican Party and it has grown stronger by the day and now, by the minute. I would like to send a few messages to the GOP.

First: Get over yourselves, do what is right for America. Ronald Reagan once said “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.” I believe that if the Gipper were around today to witness the abhorrent behavior of the Republican Party, he would now be saying the same thing about them. He was a decent man, a fair man. I have no doubt that he would be disgusted with how you are acting. You have betrayed the 11th Commandment, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican” time and time again. Although this quote was made popular by Reagan, it was born of a former California Republican Party Chair, George Parkinson. I have no doubt that Ronald Reagan and Mr. Parkinson are turning over in their graves.

Second:  to the national Republican Party members I say – Who the hell do you think you are?

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That would be Dune Capital Management CEO Steven Mnuchin.  I read his bio and if one has been working for the TOPMOST Democrats and Socialists, WHY IN GOD’S GREEN EARTH would have Trump even thought of bringing him on board?  Just the PR of having a Democrat leaning person on staff raises eyebrows – when that person worked for George Soros (Socialist, convicted currency trader), well, it just isn’t going to sit well with the conservative wing of the Party (reformatted, emphasis mine):

More than 80 percent of the campaign contributions Donald Trump’s national finance director has made since 1998 have gone to Democratic politicians, according to a Washington Examiner analysis of Federal Election Commission records. Trump appointed Dune Capital Management CEO Steven Mnuchin to head his campaign’s fundraising operation on Thursday, as he begins to prepare for the general election now that he’s been named the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. But Mnuchin’s extensive history of considerable campaign contributions suggests the Wall Street veteran is more interested in getting Democrats elected than Republicans.

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The entitlements of the welfare state can be summarized by Herbert Hoover’s aphorism: “a chicken in every pot.” True, this is quite small an entitlement, but would be easy enough to multiply the level of the guarantee. In his address on the battlefield of Gettysburg in 1863, Abraham Lincoln recognized that the first American constitutional document entitled Americans to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and nothing more. Chickens in pots and other entitlements came later. Perhaps the most significant quality of the theory of economic equilibrium is its explanation of the interconnected quality of all economic activity within society. Whatever statement that is made in the context of a product [output] market implies come complementary and consistent statement about the factor [input] market that would render sensible that statement made about the product market. Therefore, an entitlement program that offers a chicken in every pot would require an equivalent statement that promised a period of servile labor to staff the chicken farms necessary to put chickens in pots.

-Dick Wagner (Politics as a Peculiar Business)

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NH State Rep Leigh Webb (D): “The role of government is to legislate behavior“

…said NONE of our Foundational documents.  But these Progressive Socialists don’t care much ’bout details…or freedom to choice or the free marketplace:

…The City Council on Thursday green-lit a controversial bill that puts a 5-cent fee on plastic and paper shopping bags at grocery, convenience and other stores. The council voted 28-20 for the bill, which will take effect on Oct. 1. It is supposed to encourage people to bring along reusable bags when they go shopping. Co-sponsor Councilman Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn) first introduced the legislation in 2013 with the goal of dramatically reducing the use of plastic bags in the city.

“It works by irritating us into changing our behavior and remembering to bring reusable bags,” said Lander ahead of the City Hall hearing.

Lander added, “While it may be contentious today, [the bill] is going to help New Yorkers together solve a real environmental problem.”

Who do these self-absorbed

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Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump set his sights on conservative critics who condemn his positions on trade during a rally in West Virginia Thursday.

“I’m a conservative, but the conservatives hate me for suggesting I would dare tax somebody,” Trump said after promising he would punish companies that move overseas with high tariffs when they try to ship products back into the United States.

The GOP has brought it (and him) upon themselves.  They have essentially acted like Progressives in bastardizing the common language to the point where “conservative” has no meaning at all.  Seriously, can anyone look at me (or any of the Groksters) and point and ask “Conservative?” and then do the same to Donald Trump without losing your mind?  Sorry, but it’s not HIS fault but it is the fault of the less-conservative, moderate, or plain-voting-with-Democrats-all-the-time Republicans who apply that adjective to themselves or their BFFs at campaign time.

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