02-21-11grahamsteyn Michael Graham during an interview of Mark Steyn today came up with a term that I hadn't heard before "Fleebaggers"......describing the vacationing Wisconsin Senators "fleeing" the state to reside in "Fleabag Motels" in Rockford IL. Meanwhile Howard Dean, chairman of the DNC apparently funneling money illegally in violation of Wisconsin law to the Wisconsin State Senate Democratic Committee.
From the Daily Mail: Worlds biggest family
This calls to mind the following satirical passage from Mark Twain's "Roughing It" regarding the burdens of polygamy as recounted in a Mr. Johnson's interview with Brigham Young.
He (Brigham Young) searched the faces of the children in detail, but could not decide which one it was. Finally he gave it up with a sigh and said:
"I thought I would know the little cub again but I don't." Mr. Johnson said further, that Mr. Young observed that life was a sad, sad thing-- "because the joy of every new marriage a man contracted was so apt to be blighted by the inopportune funeral of a less recent bride." And Mr. Johnson said that while he and Mr. Young were pleasantly conversing in private, one of the Mrs. Youngs came in and demanded a breast-pin, remarking that she had found out that he had been giving a breast-pin to No. 6, and she, for one, did not propose to let this partiality go on without making a satisfactory amount of trouble about it. Mr. Young reminded her that there was a stranger present. Mrs. Young said that if the state of things inside the house was not agreeable to the stranger, he could find room outside. Mr. Young promised the breast-pin, and she went away. But in a minute or two another Mrs. Young came in and demanded a breast-pin. Mr. Young began a remonstrance, but Mrs. Young cut him short. She said No. 6 had got one, and No. 11 was promised one, and it was "no use for him to try to impose on her--she hoped she knew her rights." He gave his promise, and she went. And presently three Mrs. Youngs entered in a body and opened on their husband a tempest of tears, abuse, and entreaty. They had heard all about No. 6, No. 11, and No. 14. Three more breast-pins were promised. They were hardly gone when nine more Mrs. Youngs filed into the presence, and a new tempest burst forth and raged round about the prophet and his guest. Nine breast-pins were promised, and the weird sisters filed out again. And in came eleven more, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. Eleven promised breast-pins purchased peace once more.
"That is a specimen," said Mr. Young. "You see how it is. You see what a life I lead. A man can't be wise all the time. In a heedless moment I gave my darling No. 6--excuse my calling her thus, as her other name has escaped me for the moment--a breast-pin. It was only worth twenty-five dollars--that is, apparently that was its whole cost--but its ultimate cost was inevitably bound to be a good deal more. You yourself have seen it climb up to six hundred and fifty dollars--and alas, even that is not the end! For I have wives all over this Territory of Utah. I have dozens of wives whose numbers, even, I do not know without looking in the family Bible. They are scattered far and wide among the mountains and valleys of my realm. And mark you, every solitary one of them will hear of this wretched breast pin, and every last one of them will have one or die. No. 6's breast pin will cost me twenty-five hundred dollars before I see the end of it. And these creatures will compare these pins together, and if one is a shade finer than the rest, they will all be thrown on my hands, and I will have to order a new lot to keep peace in the family. Sir, you probably did not know it, but all the time you were present with my children your every movement was watched by vigilant servitors of mine. If you had offered to give a child a dime, or a stick of candy, or any trifle of the kind, you would have been snatched out of the house instantly, provided it could be done before your gift left your hand. Otherwise it would be absolutely necessary for you to make an exactly similar gift to all my children--and knowing by experience the importance of the thing, I would have stood by and seen to it myself that you did it, and did it thoroughly. Once a gentleman gave one of my children a tin whistle--a veritable invention of Satan, sir, and one which I have an unspeakable horror of, and so would you if you had eighty or ninety children in your house. But the deed was done--the man escaped. I knew what the result was going to be, and I thirsted for vengeance. I ordered out a flock of Destroying Angels, and they hunted the man far into the fastnesses of the Nevada mountains. But they never caught him. I am not cruel, sir--I am not vindictive except when sorely outraged--but if I had caught him, sir, so help me Joseph Smith, I would have locked him into the nursery till the brats whistled him to death. By the slaughtered body of St. Parley Pratt (whom God assail!) there was never anything on this earth like it! I knew who gave the whistle to the child, but I could, not make those jealous mothers believe me. They believed I did it, and the result was just what any man of reflection could have foreseen: I had to order a hundred and ten whistles--I think we had a hundred and ten children in the house then, but some of them are off at college now--I had to order a hundred and ten of those shrieking things, and I wish I may never speak another word if we didn't have to talk on our fingers entirely, from that time forth until the children got tired of the whistles. And if ever another man gives a whistle to a child of mine and I get my hands on him, I will hang him higher than Haman! That is the word with the bark on it! Shade of Nephi! You don't know anything about married life. I am rich, and everybody knows it. I am benevolent, and everybody takes advantage of it. I have a strong fatherly instinct and all the foundlings are foisted on me."
Apparently, nonsense is the new norm in European society, and pedophilia is ok as long as you maintain the relationship past the age of majority, uh well, uh, that is if your a Muslim. All others are subject to common decency, and that means follow the example of the three monkeys. Mark Steyn at SteynOnline again points out the insanity of "semantic cleansing" or "purification of intent" (my terms) to mollify the outrage of a religion nearly devoid of any sense of gender equality or individual liberty.
The recent demonstrations in Wisconsin have revealed to the general public something that many of us have known for years: The education bureaucracy in the US is a fraud, and it's time to dismantle it.
Picture this: A large tank has an inlet and an outlet with an adjustable valve. There are 6 other vessels, each of which have an outlet that feeds the line into the large tank. If the valve to the large tank is opened to an extent that the outflow is greater than the inflow the tank will eventually be effectively empty. This process will accelerate if any of the smaller vessels run dry, or are taken out of service.
This simple concept is apparently unfathomable to the teachers in Wisconsin, calling to question their ability to teach at least math and science.
Now imagine that some of the flow into the larger tank is diverted back into the smaller tanks that feed the larger tank, at the rate required to keep the larger tank from running dry, with the added side effect that the smaller tanks also do not run dry.
Essentially this is the scenario in Wisconsin. the diversion of flow back to the smaller tanks as described above is Exactly analogous to what Governor Scott Walker is proposing: the teachers should contribute more towards their own pensions and put more back into the tank and that they should not have the ability to open the "outflow valve" to the extent that the tank will go dry..
The education bureaucracy now has so many touchy-feely child psychology and child development requirements that today's teachers apparently are devoid of the ability to understand the simplest of concepts, and if they are incapable to the extent they are showing in Wisconsin, how can we have any confidence that they can transfer these simple concepts to our children? (not to mention the undignified and thuggish behavior recently displayed)
What has caused the "me first" attitude of public sector employees?
Dennis Miller on his Friday radio broadcast hit the nail squarely on the head when he said that it's one thing for the teachers to express their dissatisfaction with the governor's proposals on the table, but espousing the tired old bromide that it's "for the children" is an outright lie. The laughable but simultaneously profoundly sad result of the attitude of such professed "altruists" is that they are ultimately not altruistic at all.
Albert Shanker who once headed the American Federation of Teachers said: “When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children.”
The SEIU, NEA, and the AFSCME are like panicked non-swimmers floundering in the lake. In their struggle to keep their own head above water, they'll hold their rescuers' heads underwater and sadly take everyone down.
Just like the Global Warming Contortionists who blame Global cooling and everything else on carbon emissions, Ben Bernanke just keeps telling the same lies over and over hoping that a lie will eventually become the truth.
From WSJ:
"Asked about all this (rising prices) at a recent House hearing, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said QE2 is a success because stock prices are rising. He blamed the increase in commodity prices on other things, such as growing world demand and the weather. Mr. Bernanke holds himself accountable only for the asset price increases that are popular.
If that answer sounds familiar, it is because Mr. Bernanke said the same thing in 2003 and 2004 when the Fed last fretted about deflation. Then the Fed also maintained a policy of negative real interest rates for years and blamed asset price spikes on everyone else. Once again the Fed seems to have worried about deflation long after the threat had passed and even as price pressures from its easier policy were preparing to build. Let's hope it turns out better than it did the last time.
From WSJ:
"For Americans who don't think the welfare state riots of France or Greece can happen here, we recommend a look at the union and Democratic Party spectacle now unfolding in Wisconsin"
What happens when the "Gravy Train" runs out of gravy. Democrats again refuse to face the reality of having promised more than they can deliver and have gone AWOL. Even Barack Obama had the somewhat, though limited sense of decency to vote "present" 100 times when he was a state Senator in Illinois. For that matter, Obama is still voting present, as he as abdicated all responsibility for fiscal sanity to the Republicans in the House.
Boston Herald: "But CBS? They sat on their own story. For five days, as reporters reveled amid giddy celebrations in Tahrir Square, and as President Obama praised President Obama’s (not a typo)handling of the Egyptian crisis, CBS reported nothing.
Only when other media had the story did CBS break the news that its own chief foreign correspondent was the victim of “a brutal and sustained sexual assault."
The incessant shielding of Muslim brutality by CBS and other news outfits is a total abdication of professional journalism. At the NYT, WAPO, Newsweek, CBS, MSNBC, and a host of others, Islam is given a free pass on human rights in general, and women's equality in particular. The stories that go unreported in the MSM reveal much more about their subtle dishonesty than what they say.
Conrad Black in NRONLINE
"The United States seems to be enduring a prolonged Groundhog Day. No matter what happens, responses from the governing liberal establishment remain the same."
"At the prospect of freer elections in Egypt, the New York Times produces pages of anesthetizing treacle on the benignity of the Muslim Brotherhood."
"Columnist Tom Friedman, in the same pages, briefly set aside his passionate concerns about global warming in the midst of this frigid winter, and the need to put a hand-held communication device in the fingers of everyone in the world above the age of three weeks, to complain about Israeli settlements. The ability of Mr. Friedman to continue to believe that Israeli settlements have anything to do with the attainment of a durable peace in the region is a triumph of superstitious self-brainwashing over mind, spirit, and flesh."
"And in Washington, after a long drum roll, and intimations of pending mountain-moving in deficit reduction, the Obama administration gave birth to a deformed mouse of a budget."
"Mr. Obama has left it to the Republicans to tackle entitlements, as everyone with the benefit of a Grade Three education in arithmetic who examines the budget, however cursorily, can see must happen."
"Velocity of money is when transactions or other money transfers occur without any real generation of increased collective wealth, because no value is added or created...............There is some of that in the U.S. now, with $4.5 trillion spent annually in legal, consulting, and financial-transaction fees ..(snip).. and $2.4 trillion in medical costs. Very little of it is really value added as primary (extraction of resources) and secondary (manufacturing) industry revenues are."
"American lawyers and stockbrokers work hard, but they are just as much a charge on productive work as German welfare cases are."
"Ben Bernanke is doubtless correct that it will take at least five years to reduce unemployment appreciably, because it will take at least that long for the U.S. to be weaned partially away from the chimera of the service economy."
Think about it: "The Chimera of the service economy".
CHIMERA: A fanciful mental illusion or fabrication. or if you prefer:
An imaginary monster made up of grotesquely disparate parts.
Either one is a good description of the ever popular service economy myth. The notion that real value added can be sustained long term without manufacturing or resource extraction as the primary drivers of economic prosperity is the fabrication of the "professional economics guild" and enlightened academic elite that disdains real productive work in favor of incompetent monetary theories that continually fail to produce any credible predictions of the future. Amen Conrad
NRO:
Randy Hopper is a state senator in Wisconsin. A Republican. He is now holed up with his colleagues — his Republican colleagues — in the capitol. The Democratic senators have apparently fled the state. Hopper says, “None of my colleagues from the minority party decided to come to work today.”
The Democrats are denying the Republicans the quorum necessary to vote on key fiscal legislation.
Hopper says, “I spent two years in the minority, and I came to work every day, even when I didn’t like the bills the majority was passing. I thought it was my job.” The Democrats, he says, “have relinquished their duties. The people sent them here to do a job, and they are refusing to do it. They’re in hiding. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”
From AmSpect:
"On Tuesday, the first salvo was fired against another command-and control scheme of the last Congress -- from the newly purple state of Michigan. There, the state Senate, following the state House last Friday, passed the first resolution against a provision of the 2400-page Dodd-Frank financial "reform" of 2010.
In an amazingly unanimous vote, the Republican and Democrat state senators condemned a specific amendment from U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and the corresponding proposed rule from the Federal Reserve implementing a debit price control scheme that benefits Walgreens, Home Depot, and some of the nation's biggest retailers and shifts costs to consumers in terms of loss of free checking, higher bank fees, and reduced card rewards." (Bold mine)
further:
"The big retailers claim that if they pay less in fees, they'll pass on the savings to consumers. But if Australia's experience in capping interchange fees for credit cards in 2003 is any guide, this just ain't so.
George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki noted in the Wall Street Journal, "Annual fees increased an average of 22% on standard credit cards and annual fees for rewards cards increased by 47%-77%. Card issuers also reduced the generosity of their reward programs by 23%." But Aussie consumers experienced no corresponding decline in retail prices. A study by the Government Accountability Office of the U.S. Congress found no "conclusive evidence" that any of the Aussie retailers' $1.1 billion in savings had been passed on to consumers."
Physically Strong, Mentally Awake, and Morally Straight
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