The French socialist Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin (1807-74) is supposed to have seen a protest and said, “I’d better follow them, seeing as I’m their leader.” The story illustrates a truth about democracy that has only become truer with time: Our leaders are creations and creatures of public opinion. They are made and unmade by popular votes—sometimes even polls. They are always chasing the mood, hurrying to the front of the march to claim it as their own.
This Dominic Green fellow just made my list of people to keep an eye on.
Interesting….lefty friends yesterday and today are questioning how Biden’s cancer wasn’t detected sooner. “Darmok, his eyes uncovered.”
Why the bill is a disaster. those holdouts are NOT grandstanding–they are addressing our economic future.
This has been the coldest and rainiest May in upstate NY I can recall in quite some time. I think 1992 was the last time we had a May like this. Evidently there’s a Nor’easter moving through from Wednesday to Friday, which means more rain and more cold over the next few days.
Mike Plaiss, that was a really good essay. I was interested to read how Denmark has solved its immigration problems. Among the remedies was the requirement that immigrants learn Danish to be given welfare benefits. I am amazed at how many Spanish-speaking immigrants here don’t speak English after decades. We shouldn’t allow it. One of my husband’s Croatian grandmothers was still alive when I joined the family. She spoke everyday English, could read newspapers and understand TV news, and could speak to clerks in stores, all this with only a third-grade education. Since English is the consensus language here because people have come from so many different places, we should require legal immigrants to learn the common language.
Terrible spring here in western WA. We’ve creeped up into the low 70s a couple of times but they have been just one offs and the next week to 10 days doesn’t look much better. May and June are the worst months for weather in the NW as we fritter away the long days under cloudy gloom.
@Griffin:Terrible spring here in western WA.
I’ll say this for Western Washington: if you want to know what the weather is, all you need is a calendar. If it’s July, August, or September it’s not raining. Otherwise, it is. And we rarely have storms of any kind, though we do go get frequent earthquakes and the occasional tsunami or volcanic eruption, but every place has something.
And it’s much rainier as you go a short distance west. Olympia has as much annual rainfall as an Atlantic seaboard city. Points farther west get two or three times as much rainfall. In the Olympics it does little but rain, except in the summer.
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Sometimes I want to link to an essay just because it’s so well written.
Why Keir Starmer Became an Immigration Hawk
https://archive.md/4bjek
This Dominic Green fellow just made my list of people to keep an eye on.
Interesting….lefty friends yesterday and today are questioning how Biden’s cancer wasn’t detected sooner. “Darmok, his eyes uncovered.”
Why the bill is a disaster. those holdouts are NOT grandstanding–they are addressing our economic future.
https://alexepstein.substack.com/p/how-republicans-got-roped-into-a
This has been the coldest and rainiest May in upstate NY I can recall in quite some time. I think 1992 was the last time we had a May like this. Evidently there’s a Nor’easter moving through from Wednesday to Friday, which means more rain and more cold over the next few days.
Mike Plaiss, that was a really good essay. I was interested to read how Denmark has solved its immigration problems. Among the remedies was the requirement that immigrants learn Danish to be given welfare benefits. I am amazed at how many Spanish-speaking immigrants here don’t speak English after decades. We shouldn’t allow it. One of my husband’s Croatian grandmothers was still alive when I joined the family. She spoke everyday English, could read newspapers and understand TV news, and could speak to clerks in stores, all this with only a third-grade education. Since English is the consensus language here because people have come from so many different places, we should require legal immigrants to learn the common language.
Terrible spring here in western WA. We’ve creeped up into the low 70s a couple of times but they have been just one offs and the next week to 10 days doesn’t look much better. May and June are the worst months for weather in the NW as we fritter away the long days under cloudy gloom.
@Griffin:Terrible spring here in western WA.
I’ll say this for Western Washington: if you want to know what the weather is, all you need is a calendar. If it’s July, August, or September it’s not raining. Otherwise, it is. And we rarely have storms of any kind, though we do go get frequent earthquakes and the occasional tsunami or volcanic eruption, but every place has something.
That said our “rain” is more of a drizzle. Seattle gets just about the same annual rainfall as Pittsburgh, and just about the same number of rainy days. Every major city on the Atlantic seaboard gets more rain than Seattle, though they have about 25% fewer rainy days. About 60% of Washingtonians live within 30 miles of Seattle and get roughly the same weather, though we have a lot of microclimates because of all the mountains and inlets.
And it’s much rainier as you go a short distance west. Olympia has as much annual rainfall as an Atlantic seaboard city. Points farther west get two or three times as much rainfall. In the Olympics it does little but rain, except in the summer.