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Mike Lee

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Mike Lee is currently reading

The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire

by Matt Taibbi

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Dec 07, 2025 10:40AM

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Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside

by Nick Offerman

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Mike Lee said: " I’ve long been a fan of Mr. Offerman’s. I loved his Ron Swanson character and, as a journeyman cabinetmaker with one boat build behind me (a stitch-and-glue kayak – simpler than a strip-built canoe, but I’m counting it), being a fan of the man has be I’ve long been a fan of Mr. Offerman’s. I loved his Ron Swanson character and, as a journeyman cabinetmaker with one boat build behind me (a stitch-and-glue kayak – simpler than a strip-built canoe, but I’m counting it), being a fan of the man has been quite easy. As a lover of nature, I also loved the first section of this book.
However, as I write this, I’m at about the halfway point and not sure I’ll be able to finish it. It comes as no shock to me that Offerman is left of center politically—and that alone doesn’t bother me in the least. I’m about the closest to a true centrist of anyone I know. I base this on the fact that, on the rare occasions I have a lapse in judgment and participate in politically charged discussions, I get called both a “libtard” and a “MAGA moron” with about equal frequency.
My actual belief is that the two mainstream political parties in the USA are little more than organized crime syndicates (perhaps that’s why I like Ron Swanson so much). So I found it very distasteful for Offerman to paint anyone who spends time on the right side of the alleged “aisle” as automatically hateful, bigoted, and greedy. The man is obviously intelligent and about as well-educated as can be expected in this country, so the use of such a broad brush to label a group of citizens feels shallow-minded and—frankly—offensive.
I also find some of his diatribe on other matters to be hypocritical and, at times, naïve. Avid woodworker that he is, I have a hard time wrapping my head around how he can bash the logging industry as harshly as he does in several passages. Worst of all, though, is how he seems to believe that all farming and ranching should happen in some kind of agrarian-pastoral utopia—where the livestock that feeds us should be able to frolic happily in green pastures like something out of a Hallmark card until slaughter.
Wouldn’t that be nice!
In this regard, he reminds me of a guy named Rogan—who has a little ol’ podcast—when he fawns over a certain “regenerative” rancher he likes to trot out once a year or so. Sure, meat raised that way is probably healthier, and if one cares about the animal’s feelings, they’re likely happier right up until we execute them. But some of us work real jobs and can’t be breaking out $20 a pound for fancy ground beef (which frankly tastes terrible anyway, in my less-than-humble opinion), let alone paying even higher prices for better cuts.
Both Offerman and Rogan claim to come from humble beginnings. It’s fairly apparent to me they don’t truly remember them. Of course, Offerman throws out the word “nuance” each time he admits to stepping over the line—as if that exonerates him.
To sum up before I bloviate any more: I think his heart is in the right place on many things, and I agree with him on his views about a number of human wrongs, past and present. But the way he pigeonholes a huge portion of Americans just because they disagree with his pick from the two above noted crime families is downright disgusting.
It’s clearly time to put this one down for a bit. Maybe I’ll come back to it.
Meanwhile I'll leave my rating right down the middle in the hopes that I can bring myself to continue and it turns back the right direction. ...more "

Aug 12, 2025 08:20PM · see review

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President Elect (Luke Stone #5)

by Jack Mars (Goodreads Author)

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May 03, 2025 12:36PM

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Mike’s Notes & Highlights

Book cover for The Moth in the Iron Lung: A Biography of Polio

The Moth in the Iron Lung: A Biography of Polio by Forrest Maready

5 highlights

Whether he was asked to help because of this anomaly, or had planned on assisting anyway, the Mayo Clinic’s Dr. Edward Rosenow, proponent of the poliomyelitic streptococcus bacteria, arrived in Los Angeles and made clear they weren’t ...more

Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside

by Nick Offerman

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Mike’s Quotes

“For Montagu, a special pleasure lay in the subsequent discovery that Hitler himself had fallen for the phony documents: “Joy of joys to anyone,4 and particularly a Jew, the satisfaction of knowing that they had directly and specifically fooled that monster.”
― Ben Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory

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“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.”
― Nick Offerman, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside

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“we were absolutely on cloud nine (a figure of speech that is said to have originated in London in 1896, when Sir Ralph Abercromby’s attention coincided with the newly published International Cloud Atlas. The scientific document listed the cumulonimbus as cloud number nine, the tallest possible cloud. I love it—it wasn’t enough to say “I’m on top of a cloud,” but it had to be qualified by specifying that one was on top of the categorically tallest of clouds).”
― Nick Offerman, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside

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“Government is conceived as a keeper of the peace, a referee of controversies, and an adjustor of abuses; not as a regulator of the people, or the business and personal activities.”
― Michael Swanson, The War State: The Cold War Origins Of The Military-Industrial Complex And The Power Elite, 1945-1963

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“Hugh Trevor-Roper called Operation Mincemeat “the most spectacular single episode53 in the history of deception.”
― Ben Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory

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