A legal immigrant......................

...........has many questions and a few observations:

 Here’s a common-sense proposition: Since we can’t invite the whole world inside our borders, let’s consider the matter as one of optimal limits. Once the need to restrain immigration is acknowledged, the next step should be to seek consensus on the practicalities—the maximum number the country can absorb each year, the skills we most urgently need to import, and, of course, the most transparent and fair process for those arriving, as I once did, on the shores of this fortunate land.

In other words, our attention must turn fully to legality, not illegality. That should be the content of the politics of immigration: devising rules and procedures for legal entry that are intuitive to Americans as well as to potential migrants. The current system, we should accept, is a soul-devouring labyrinth that deserves to be demolished in its entirety.

-Martin Gurri

Slowing down...............

 

Never seek to do fast what is meant to be done slow.  Durable businesses. Loving relationships. Robust health. These things all take a long time to build. 

-Sahil Bloom

Ah, politics.........................

 

A whopping 63 percent of voters have a negative view of the Democrats, according to a Wall Street Journal poll, which adds that it’s the lowest rating in 35 years. . . .

It’s not good: We need two equally hated parties to better ensure eternal gridlock and no Big Ideas. We need to not be sure whether this guy is a Republican or a Democrat and really, does it even matter? We need two different, identical groups of oligarchs fighting over America so that neither ever fully wins (except me, your favorite oligarch, who is beneficent). Because right now, all Republicans are doing is winning, and the center is shifting so fast that Nick Fuentes is starting to be just a normal guy raising a few interesting points.

-Nellie Bowles, as cut and pasted from here

Got to work on this one recently............

 

Take great care to avoid mistakes when the decision is hard to reverse.

But! If you make a mistake that is hard to reverse, there is no sense beating yourself up about it. Your responsibility is to make the best next choice given your current position. You must always make the most of the situation you are in.

Next play mentality.

-James Clear, from this episode

Checking in .......................

 

...............................with Walt Kelly

Having lost sight of our objectives, we redoubled our efforts.

God is not dead — He is merely unemployed...

Looking back on things, the view always improves.

Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent.

We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.

The best break anybody ever gets is in bein' alive in the first place. An' you don't unnerstan' what a perfect deal it is until you realizes that you ain't gone be stuck with it forever, either.

Halp! My powerful brain is blowed itself up!

Albert: I'd give them a piece of my mind if I could find it! I mean, them!
Porky Pine: [to Pogo] Y'know, ol' Albert leads a life of noisy desperation.

Eventually every man gotta face the problem of tryin' to figger if it’s worthwhile to prove that he is himself.

Was hoping for the sports.............

 

via the daily timewaster

iron..............................

 

Whenever you think that some situation of some person is ruining your life, it is actually you who is ruining your life. . . Feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through life.  If you just take the attitude that however bad it is in any way, it's always your fault and you just fix it as best you can—the so-called "iron prescription"—I think that really works.

-Charlie Munger

follow humbly......................

 

Sit down before facts like a child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived Notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.

-Thomas Henry Huxley

standards.........................

 A superior man in dealing with the world is not for anything or against anything. He follows righteousness as the standard.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

Here are four of the characteristics of a superior man:— in his conduct of himself, he is humble; in serving his superiors, he is respectful; in nourishing the people, he is kind; in ordering the people, he is just.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.

-Confucius

centralization...........................

 

     I think that extreme centralization of government ultimately enervates society, and thus, after a length of time, weakens the government itself; but I do not deny that a centralized power may be able to execute great undertakings with facility in a given time and on a particular point.  This is more especially true of war . . . All men of military genius are fond of centralization; and all men of centralizing genius are fond of war . . .

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume II, Fourth Book, Chapter IV

fences........................

 

That which is necessarily and inevitably axiomatic—that upon which everything else depends—is to be touched at great peril.

-Jordan Peterson

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

-G. K. Chesterton

crucial........................

 

Living within your means is a crucial financial skill for anyone.  It is especially valuable to someone who just fell into big bucks.

-Barry Ritholtz