There can be no justice so long as laws are absolute; even life itself is an exercise in exceptions.
Joined May 2009
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How to raise a high performing student with an ambition to participate in the economy as soon as possible?
It sort of requires a heroic attention to idealism, which their concentration wanes if you ask them to do that.
Books all high school and college students should read... This is my list. It's not in any particular order but it is a list of my favorites. If you're a parent to a tween, figure out how to carve out time for your child to read. Don't *force* them, instead figure out a way to encourage it, by suggesting repeatedly that they do it. Ask them to put the tech device down for one hour the first time they get started. I would start these by age 11. Not all can be read at that age, so go through the list and make wise choices. Obviously you and your child have been reading before age 11 but these are the books to transition to starting around 11.
Buy one of the books below and just give it to them. I suggest Animal Farm as a starting point.
Also here's a suggestion. I created a list of ten questions after each book, printed it out and asked my kids to take the quiz. I gave them a reward just for doing it (like a Texas Roadhouse gift card for example, but anything will do). Didn't matter if they scored 6 out of 10 or 10 for 10. I found my child who embraced these quizzes after each book did better in school than my child who pushed back a little bit. Call me crazy! (but the results are kids that score top of their classes in every subject).
Animal Farm (Orwell)
1984 (Orwell)
Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
The Road to Serfdom (Hayek)
Intellectuals and Socialism (Hayek) (this short book is usually attached to the end of The Road to Serfdom but if not, it is public domain and you can search for the PDF).
The Other Wes Moore (Moore)
Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World
Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck)
Night (Elie Wiesel)
A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
The Wealth of Nations (Smith)
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck)
Ulysses (Joyce)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Angelou)
The Demon-Haunted World (Carl Sagan)
Economic Facts and Fallacies (Sowell) or
Basic Economics (Thomas Sowell) (need an entire summer!)
Lord Of The Rings (Tolkien)
The Moon is Down (Steinbeck)
The Myth of the Robber Barons (Folsom, Jr.)
Capitalism and Freedom (Friedman)
Doctor Zhivago (Pasternak)
Atlas Shrugged (Rand)
The Constitution of the United States
Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes)
Crime and Punishment (Dostoevsky)
Macbeth (Shakespeare)
Hannah Arendt "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
Iliad (Homer)
Odyssey (Homer) (recommend Iliad before Odyssey if possible)
The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer)
Paradise Lost (Milton)
The Inferno (Dante)
Common Sense (Paine)
Cosmos (Sagan)
The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger)
The Old man and the sea (Hemingway)
A Farewell to Arms (Hemingway)
The Outsiders (Hinton)
Tom Sawyer
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Brave New World (Huxley)
Uncle Tom’s cabin (Stowe)
The Scarlett Letter (Hawthorne)
The Call of the Wild (London)
The Red Badge of Courage (Crane)
The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Doyle)
The Closing of the American Mind (Bloom)
A conflict of visions (Sowell)
Who Stole Feminism (Christina Hoff Sommers)
Here are four books all young ladies should read… All of life’s experiences, the good and the bad, are described in beautiful and instructive detail:
The Secret Garden
The Little Princess
Little Women
Anne of Green Gables
- Live long and prosper.
I understand @CatholicVote position (or change thereof) on Mike Rogers.
The Catholic message often and mostly needs to adhere to certain unbreakable principles. Abortion and the right to life are examples of those unbreakable tenets.
With that said, I urge all Michigan voters, Catholic or otherwise, NOT to misconstrue a message of non-endorsement by CatholicVote as your justification or your rationale to either NOT vote or to vote for the Islamic socialist.
Voting comes down to a binary decision. Good or bad.
Yet we are not binary in our minds, thoughts, or principles, and neither are our candidates. Our candidates do NOT hold every view that we do; to do so would render us all as bots (robots). I don’t know about you, but I’m not a bot - I have my own mind and my own conclusions, but I seek objective truth.
We are not bots, and we have differing opinions, even in our households where we might hold 99% of the same values and views, we can and do disagree on things. We are humans!
Therefore, we narrow the nominees down to two candidates typically on the ballot. Thus, you will never hold all the same views as the candidates.
You MUST assess where a candidate stands on most issues, and then you must vote. To protest your vote is NOT a protest, it is simply giving the other side two votes… their radical vote and your vote (because you don’t offset them).
My friends in Michigan: get out and vote!
After all, the continuity of our existence depends on the well-being of children. Your children’s well-being depends on private property rights, and civil liberties. If you don’t vote, you risk your posterity.
It is logical. 🖖
Cc: @catholickelsey
An important message from CatholicVote President & CEO Kelsey Reinhardt following Mike Rogers' position shift on abortion:
"Just before Election Day, Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, announced that he will not take a pro-life stand on abortion.
Mr. Rogers could have made the best of the Dobbs decision, which made abortion a state issue as well as a federal one. Sending it to the states has allowed several states to pass laws protecting unborn children. Abdul El-Sayed wants to eliminate state pro-life laws and make abortion legal in all 50 states. Mike Rogers could have simply said he respects the decision made by Michigan voters—without parroting pro-abortion lines.
While we believe that Abdul El-Sayed would be far worse, CatholicVote cannot endorse a candidate who supports abortion. There will be Catholics who will now say that they cannot vote for either candidate, and we understand and respect that decision.
Many of you gave, knocked on doors, and prayed for his campaign because you trusted that he would stand for the unborn, as he did for years in Congress. I trusted that too.
The priority of life
So let me tell you plainly: I am deeply disappointed, and I know many of you are as well and CatholicVote now will regrettably be suspending our endorsement.
The principles that guide CatholicVote are clear and consistent and also hierarchical. The teaching of the Catholic Church is that the threat of abortion is the preeminent priority because all rights are second to that first right, the right to life.
While many issues are prudential: data centers, tax rates, how best to fund and operate education, this issue is non-negotiable.
The whole picture
But we at CatholicVote still owe you the whole picture, which is now a rather more complicated look at the lesser of two evils.
Rogers' opponent, Abdul El-Sayed, offers Catholic voters no refuge. He is a firm supporter of abortion on demand and abortion expansion, and on issue after issue, from his total support of transgender ideology, his total disregard for parental rights, his opposition to school choice, and his problematic ties to Islamic radicals—to mention just a few—makes clear that his agenda runs directly against what the Church teaches.
As I wrote to you recently, El-Sayed has also responded to fair questions about his judgment with false equivalences that put our own Church at the center of them. Rogers' failure to defend life does not make that alternative any less grave. At the very least, he will not expand access to abortion.
Living out faithful citizenship calls on Catholics to engage in prayer, evaluate each candidate's record with honesty, and occasionally cast a ballot for the candidate who is less flawed."
@catholickelsey
I support @RepKeithSelf on this legislation 100%.
I have long written and advocated for controls & restraints on the surveillance state in the U.S. illegally perpetrated against US citizens.
Currently it is the wild wild west across states as they do their own things. Pennsylvania has surveillance cameras capturing citizens’ movements without consent or warrant. In Pennsylvania for example, a police officer will sit in a private parking lot (e.g., Wawa) and have some coffee while their automated surveillance camera scans every license plate driving and and out of the lot. When it flags a plate where the registration has lapsed, the officer will follow the vehicle and pull them over on a public road.
Many say this is a great way of catching illegal activity. I say it’s illegal search and seizure. The search took place on a private lot without the consent of the owner. The search lacked probably cause.
Scanning license plates is NOT probable cause in itself, so it can’t be used legally for a stop.
I WANT to catch people doing illegal things, but I want law enforcement to do so using existing laws and existing procedures that do not cross Constitutional lines for search and seizure. Citizens have a right not to be randomly searched by the government and this extends to citizens traversing public roads to visit marketplaces, jobs, etc.
The state of Pennsylvania argues its right to randomly scan license plates because it claims “ownership” of the license plates. I call that out as patently false and therefore an invalid argument. Your state does not “own” your license plate. The People own them. The state is given limited authority to facilitate these license plates for the use of registering vehicles and identifying them in lawful circumstances. They manufacture them on our behalf, and manage the assignment of them to us for purposes of registering and identifying our vehicles belonging to us. The state cannot simply assert ownership privilege and therefore unlimited privilege to use them any way it sees fit. The citizens cannot authorize random warrantless surveil and search of license plates even if we wanted to because the 4th Amendment affirms our innate (God given) right against arbitrary government search and seizure. This right extends to our homes, and our persons and our property when we’re in public.
Again, government should utilize existing frameworks to carry out its law enforcement activities, including discovery, investigation, and petitions for search warrants when probable cause has been gathered. Randomly searching your license plate while in public is NOT within that legal investigative framework.
All liberty-loving citizens should advocate for ENDING the SURVEILLANCE STATE. If you allow one link to be broken in our chain of liberty and freedom, you ALLOW the government to control you as a serf and to abridge any and all of your rights. You may as well live in Russia, Cuba, or China in that instance. The U.S. is the ONLY country that affirms creator granted unalienable rights (that is, rights you’re born with simply because you exist, and you could not have been born to serve as a slave to the state or other people). We MUST maintain our Constitutional Republic; it’s the only one we have. Support this legislation. Support it nationally.
It is logical.
My PRIVACY Act confronts the surveillance state at the federal level by:
🔒Requiring a warrant before extracting data from automated license plate reader systems.
⏱️Limiting how long collected data may be retained.
❌Prohibiting federal funds from being used to purchase these systems.
This is a commonsense bill that needs to be brought to the House floor and passed!
Parallel Spock retweeted
Every father has that one moment when his kids are younger that he remembers vividly and wants to visit again some day.
To what end?
Kerry proposes the 19,000 school districts in the United States take the unbelievably complex action of moving school back an hour, and the resulting consequences on families and supporting businesses that have to deal with that change, amplified across the nation, instead of rolling back the clock to normal time (standard) which happens at 2am and doesn’t impact people’s actual schedules the way changing the entire school schedule would.
I ask Kerry: what happens when selfish adults decide one hour daylight saving isn’t enough for the winter hours, the mob democracy wants another hour of sun in the evening, and successfully lobbies their government keepers to move it yet another hour? Do we then start school another hour later?
Permanent standard time is logical.
After all, the continuity of our existence depends on the well-being of children.
It hasn’t been our dad’s Democrat party since Clinton; his wife was/is a socialist and has been advocating for central planning and state control virtually her entire adult life.
Kennedy was a conservative who affiliated with the Democrat party because he thought it was the party that advocated for individual liberty; he was wrong (but right about a lot of things).
Shout out to @PlotWeaver for the receipt (screenshot). I should have credited HappyGranddaddd!
Parallel Spock retweeted
This is insane
A federal judge in SDNY just ordered that this video of Trump offering $5000 if Republicans win the elections had to be DELETED
It would sure be a shame if we all made it go viral again!
It is logical.
I Support Making Standard Time Permanent!
Here are 10 reasons why.
Every year, millions of Americans are forced to “spring forward” and “fall back,” but few stop to ask why. Daylight Saving Time (DST) disrupts our sleep, safety, and health twice a year without providing any proven benefits. It’s time to make Permanent Standard Time the law of the land.
1️⃣ Safety First:
Who wants it to be dark when their children walk to school in the morning? That’s unsafe. And who wants sunlight pouring through their windows at 9 PM, making it harder for older Americans to fall asleep? Standard Time addresses both problems by aligning daylight with our daily lives.
2️⃣ We’ve Tried Permanent DST: It Failed:
In 1974, the U.S. adopted year-round Daylight Saving Time. The result? Disaster. Children went to school in pitch darkness, safety concerns mounted, and public backlash became so strong that Congress reversed the decision within a year.
3️⃣ Standard Time Matches Human Biology:
Standard Time follows the sun’s natural cycle. It aligns with our circadian rhythms, supporting better sleep and reducing the risks of obesity, depression, and cardiovascular disease. Our bodies were designed around the sun, not the clock.
4️⃣ Health and Safety Benefits:
Studies show that switching to and from DST increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes, and car accidents. Keeping Standard Time year-round eliminates these dangerous transitions and helps keep Americans healthier and safer.
5️⃣ Proven Success Across the Map:
Arizona, Hawaii, and all five U.S. territories already observe Permanent Standard Time. Most of Mexico also restored Permanent Standard Time in 2022. The rest of America should follow their lead.
6️⃣ Expert Consensus:
More than 80 organizations, including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Society for Research in Biological Rhythms, support Permanent Standard Time. When doctors, scientists, educators, and faith leaders agree, it’s time to listen.
7️⃣ Practical and Reliable:
No more biannual clock changes. No missed meetings. No software errors. Permanent Standard Time makes scheduling, coordination, and business operations smoother and more predictable.
8️⃣ Better for Students and Families:
Students benefit when their school schedules align with natural daylight. Standard Time supports morning alertness and better learning outcomes instead of groggy mornings in the darkness.
9️⃣ Safer Roads and Stronger Communities:
Research has shown that car accidents increase immediately after DST transitions. Standard Time keeps sunrise closer to our daily activities, helping reduce drowsy driving and potentially lowering crime rates during dark morning hours.
🔟 Stability for Health and Happiness:
Time changes disrupt sleep and increase stress and anxiety. Permanent Standard Time provides consistency and a foundation for healthier, happier lives.
It’s simple: Standard Time is natural time.
It’s time to stop changing the clocks and start restoring common sense.
For as much as I admire and mostly side with Travis’s takes, I must point out what a knucklehead he is with these comments.
First, he claims Nashville will be pitch dark tonight at 4:30.
Sunset in Nashville this evening is 4:50. It takes about 25 minutes after sun set to be “pitch dark”. It won’t be super dark until 5:15pm in Nashville this evening; that’s 45 minutes after he claims it will be dark. Now who is stupid?
Secondly, his entire premise is that anyone who debates this should be deported (he likely doesn’t really want that but it’s for dramatic effect to label anyone arguing with him as an imbecile). If we can all agree that the amount of daylight is EXACTLY the same regardless of whether we use daylight saving or standard time, then it follows that this is simply a debate of which is preferred or which is better: setting clocks so the later part of the day has more daylight or setting the clocks so that the earlier part of the day (that is, the morning) has more daylight.
The logical answer is morning because it is better for children walking to the school bus stop to have daylight. Why? Because when it’s dark in the morning, some drivers don’t see kids crossing the street until it’s too late; that’s when tragic accidents happen.
If we set the clocks ahead in the winter, we aren’t gaining much for anyone, because kids and adults tend to play outside less in the winter due to colder weather.
After all, the continuity of our existence depends on the well-being of children.
It is my supposition that Travis must have been drinking or on dope when he posted this; what else would explain his temporary bird brain position on the matter?
Becerra learned much from his former mentor. Yimby-nimby is a phrase straight out of Brandon’s incoherent speeches!
We asked Xavier Becerra if he identifies as a NIMBY or a YIMBY and I am still dying over his answer. Great interview by @SophiaBollag, who tried to get him to say literally anything substantive.
Precisely.
I’m with @RepKeithSelf on this and have been arguing this for some time (as I know CJ has).
How is it possible any elected official in the United States at any level can affirm the oath of office including upholding the Constitution, if they don’t understand the Constitution? Let alone they promise to vaporize it if elected to office??? It’s bizarre where we are today.
I love Patrick Stewart more than I can express.
I’m saddened by this news however I have faith that our Lord will grant him the grace to welcome him into the kingdom of heaven.
Rest in Peace Sir Patrick. It is logical.
🖖🙏
Patrick Stewart, 'Star Trek' Captain and 'X-Men' Superhero, Dies at 86 hollywoodreporter.com/movies…
I agree w/ @mattvanswol
Before social media, this is not a prosecutable offense. The level of risk the mother took might be debated by great people, but great minds would likely agree this is not criminal at any level.
We regularly leave our kids in the good hands of a babysitter. We take the risk. Later, when our kids are old enough (we decide) we often go out without having a babysitter!
Many 14 year olds are equipped to watch a 9 year old (i.e., mature and responsible). My daughter earned money babysitting around our neighborhood when she was 14 years old. Should those parents be prosecuted?
Charges should be dropped and she should bring a case against the government to recoup lost income and recompense for defamation. The government should settle.
🖖
Everyone seems to be misunderstanding the story about the mom arrested for leaving her 4 kids home while she went to Vegas.
>It was a work trip, not a vacation
>Babysitter came every morning to get kids ready for school
>The babysitter checked on them again after school
>The kids were 14, 12, 11 and 9
>She was coming home in 5 days
>Kids father charged with hitting the mother
>Florida has no law setting an age kids can be home alone
...call me crazy, but when I was a kid this would have been NO PROBLEM AT ALL.
I'm on the mother's side here, all charges should be dropped.
Parallel Spock retweeted
When Democrats screech about “affordability,” I laugh then cry.
Why? I laugh because they think we’re all stupid. I cry because everything costs a lot more. Democrats were the ones who DESTROYED affordability in America.
Look at inflation during the Biden years. The cost of homes and rent increased by 40% or more IN JUST FOUR YEARS. We saw the same increases in food costs and gasoline.
A home you could have bought when Biden took office for $300,000, with a 2.75% interest rate and a monthly payment of only $1,000 to $1,100 cost $400,000 to $500,000 when he left office, with a 7%-plus interest rate and a monthly payment of $3,000 per month — or more. America has never seen such a dramatic change in affordability in just four years — the Biden years.
Now, inflation is under control but it’s Trump’s fault prices are still high? Prices don’t decrease after inflation. They just increase a lot less, and they are.
A few of us are paying attention. A few aren’t.
Parallel Spock retweeted
We no longer teach actual history, only revisionist history.
In the financial and housing history that Mayor Parker received, the 2008 housing bubble was a problem of not giving out enough mortgages and homes to those who couldn’t afford it according to the math. Math is therefore racist (or at best, irrelevant).
Give more mortgages, protected by the pocketbook of the city coffers! That’s the ticket!