Nor spent more time at the office...

You are probably exactly right.  

I don't know from happy.  Kids are hard, and they make life hard.  That's just a fact.  They keep you from doing things because you spend your time and money on them.  I know a couple that have been all over the world.  They have a big nice house and two nice cars, and they do all kinds of things.  In some ways I'm jealous.  They are very happy, and their life is much less complicated than mine.  

But you don't do life for easy.  You do it for significance.  I am the tied for "most significant person" in the lives of four other humans.  

Is being significant the same as being happy?  Heck I don't know.  I suspect I'll get to the end of my life, and be surrounded by kids, grandkids, maybe even great-grandkids, and I'll be happy.  

What would make me real happy today is if those girls would clean their room.  But that ain't gonna happen.  

Ogres are like onions...

Whenever we go out to eat somewhere with my sister, she always orders her food in a very specific way.  I don't care where we go, or what she orders.  She has something that has to be specifically a certain way.  Guess what:  it's embarrassing   We aren't going out to eat to have the perfect whatever.  We are going out to enjoy each others company.  By making a fuss over how she wants her food, she makes the whole thing into a show about her.  I suspect that these women feel the same about you and your martini.  Ok, we get it:  you somehow think you have the corner on what a martini is supposed to be like.  Do you have to show off every single time?  Or can you just order the drink and let's get to the chit-chat?  You may not want to come off as arrogant, but I bet you are.  Get over yourself.  Order a rum and coke next time.  Nobody can screw that up.

This is dang silly.  Don't we all have better things to do?  The day society's ills are so well in hand that we have time to make a federal case out of bad parking, well that's just a dang good day.  

If I want hope, I'll watch the US Women's soccer team.  If I want change, I'll go to the laundromat.  If I want hope AND change...I may have to vote for Rand.

I know that was really cheesey, but I thought it up on the way to work, and it gave me a non-creeper reason to google images of Hope Solo.  Ok, maybe it's a little creepy.  

More than anything what I love about Rand Paul is he just doesn't sound like a politician.  He sounds like a real person.  

The last time I was at the Brandenburg gate there was a dude dressed as Darth Vader dancing to hip-hop music.  Maybe Obama could do that?

B&O, Babe, B&O

I live in a small town (Lynden, WA) with demographics much the same as you describe.  population was just under 12,000 in 2011.  It is perhaps one of the best small towns in America.  We can point to a lot of reasons why it is growing.  But I'll tell you waht I think (and all of you good economists and political scientists can roll your eyes).  Lynden was founded, and continues to be inhabited, by evangelical Christians who believe blessings come from God.  The city fathers prayed for God's blessing on the land.  And the people of Lynden continue to do so.  I don't think there is any more or less to it than that.  

I am as well.  Although as I begin to articulate why in this post, I realize there is no real reason to be excited.  It's like being excited for the next season of Lost.  

I think its time for some folks to get on with their lives.  Don't we have better things to do than try and figure out if some old guy, who'll be dead in the next couple of years, was a Nazi?

"President Lincoln: The Duty of a Statesman", by William Lee Miller, that's the book I'm reading, in case anyone wanted to know.  

I guess I am more inclined to believe that Bush cared about the Constitution, so I was (am) less concerned about what was going on at the time.  And really, the war on terrorism is over, isn't it?  

"What difference does it make now?"

You mean that kind of oversight, which has held accountable the men and woman (dare I say man and woman) responsible for the deaths in Benghazi?  

I agree with you John on a great many things but I can't bring myself to agree with you here, not now.  I want to.  But I think the Republic is gone.