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Merina Smith's Posts
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In early August 2014, my husband and I spent a delightful day hiking around Sydney harbor with Zafar, ending at Bondi Beach. It was a beautiful, sunny, perfect day. We had a lot of time to talk about all kinds of things, our families, politics, Rico members (all kind words) places we’d lived and traveled, […]
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I am personally technologically challenged, but I have kids who try to drag me kicking and screaming into the 21st century. My son recently purchased a virtual reality apparatus and I tried it out last night. It was magical! I traveled to Iceland and stood by a craggy outcropping in beautiful meadow that rose up […]
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Over at The Federalist, James Heany has written a refreshing piece that insightfully makes the point that it is fruitless to try to puzzle out where the conservative movement stands in the age of Trump because there is no conservative “movement” at the moment. This will come as a surprise to many of you. After […]
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I’ve been down with pneumonia for the past week, so unable to do much of anything. I’ve passed several hours re-watching productions of Jane Austen novels. Most of you know that her works are all intimate depictions of more or less ordinary middle-to-upper class society in the Regency period. Though some of her characters are […]
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So Trump thinks he can lure socons with a running mate who completely wimped out on protecting religious freedom in his state? Yeah. There’s a plan. Preview Open
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Neil deGrasse Tyson sent out a revealing tweet a few days ago. Here’s what it said: Earth needs a virtual country: #Rationalia, with a one-line Constitution: All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence. Preview Open
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Now that our children have all graduated from college, we can afford to remodel our kitchen. When we moved into the house 14 years ago, that was my first priority, but life intervened. It is a galley kitchen and I love to cook with other people, so you can imagine that now, after having spent […]
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Juan Peron has been on my mind ever since Trump became a serious contender for the GOP nomination. The parallels between the two men and the nations they represent are not exact of course, but they are striking. Their beginnings, however, are not similar. Trump and Peron came from very different social backgrounds–Peron came from […]
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I had an interesting conversation last week-end at a history conference with an old professor of my husband’s. Like most professors, he’s a Democrat, and we had a bit of a heated discussion about the race this year. He is a Christian though, and at the end of the conversation, I said something in passing […]
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This past week I went to my Larsen family reunion–that’s my maiden name–in Flagstaff, Arizona. Arizonans, you have a beautiful state. I think I want to move there someday. The Larsen family meets for a week each year, every year in a new place, usually near a beautiful state or national park. What a lovely day […]
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I’m going to be at a family reunion in Arizona when the CA primary happens, so am voting by mail, but I have no idea how to vote. There are 12 Republicans on the ballot for US Senator. Can anybody suggest who might be the best one to vote for? I haven’t heard anything about […]
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My daughter asked a good question yesterday in a article over on NRO. What is Trumpism? I can see that the Trump phenomenon is to some degree a personality cult, one that I have never understood because I have always disliked him, but nevertheless, since he does not represent conservatism nor, fully, progressivism, it is […]
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I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed being a mother at first. I loved my baby, but I was tired all the time and missed my freedom. I hated those nighttime feedings and having to take a wagon load of baby stuff with us every time we left the house. I figured out how […]
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We need an independent conservative candidate and we need one now. Who do you favor? Those who were part of the vast Republican field last fall took a pledge to support the winner, but I think it is permissible for them to support someone else at this juncture, though running as an independent is a […]
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If Trump is the nominee, it is becoming clearer and clearer that we need a conservative candidate to make a third party run. Many conservatives will not vote for Trump, but will rally around such a person. He or she would be unlikely to win, though with a demagogue and a felon as competition, there […]
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What is the Path Forward?
We all expected yesterday to be pretty awful, so let’s not spend too much time mourning today. I wish Rubio had dropped out before yesterday and proven himself to be the statesman that many of us believe he’s capable of being, but the job now is to find a way forward.
Kasich did those of us who are #NeverTrumpers a favor by winning Ohio, of course, but I think he’s going to be a thorn in our sides from here on out. He will divide our side’s vote and prevent Cruz from cleaning up. I can’t see him dropping out, however, even though there’s zero chance he’ll win enough delegates to secure the nomination. He surely hopes to be the compromise candidate at a brokered convention, but he must know that’s highly unlikely, because even in what would be a best-case scenario for him, he won’t win very many delegates. More likely, he hopes to play kingmaker and score the veep slot.
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We’re spending a few months here in Italy. We’re loving it, of course, but since we are visiting a lot of beautiful churches, museums and monuments, and riding the metro everywhere, we’re running across many beggars. There’s at least one at the door of every church, some just poor and ragged, some exhibiting deformities. I […]
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My husband is on sabbatical and is working on a book about Paganism, so we are headed off to Italy for a few months. We’ve been before and seen the most famous sights in Rome, Florence, Venice, Pompeii, Capri, the Amalfi Coast, etc. My favorite spot, visited a few years ago, was the beautiful Cathedral […]
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It’s Groundhog Day. Here in SoCal Punxsutawney Phil would definitely have seen his shadow, but we don’t really care if we get 6 more weeks of sunny warm winter weather with an occasional rainstorm. Ever since I saw the iconic movie about this day, however, I consider it a day to be aware of the […]
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We are all familiar with the eye-rolling articles that surface regularly claiming that yet another study has found that conservatives are “simple-minded” and progressives are “complex thinkers.” A new study actually challenges this received lefty wisdom. It turns out that the test derived to test simple or complex thinking, the Rokeach dogmatism scale, was biased […]
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