Life in "Progress" City - Seattle edition

'Tis the season

It's that time of year when everyone gets their parties in a bunch because someone's banning Santa Claus and/or Jesus from the holidays this year.

Let me impart some wisdom to you atheists out there who seem to believe that the very appearance of a cross is some sort of forced attempt to convert you to Christianity.

For years, I was member of a gym who's membership was primarily Jewish. Every year, the place would put up a menorah at the check in area. In addition, there would be all kinds of work shops/programs offered for the Jewish community.

For some reason, I never felt like my Christian beliefs were threatened or that my very presence in the place somehow devalued my beliefs.

You what I made of the activity? That the place was trying to honor those who make up most of the community.... not a slam towards Christians.

The community this center resides in is also primarily Jewish. So much so that the public schools close on Jewish holidays as a result low attendance.

I've told the Lovely Mrs. Gekko that if we are ever blessed with a child. We are selling our place in Methville, and making a bee line to this school system. When we're there, I don't expect to raise a stink about the overwhelming Jewish nature of the community and observance of the holidays. Believe it or not, I would understand that it's not a personal affront to my faith.

You know when people see a great movie or go to a great restaurant, they tell their friends about it. If you are of the persuasion to believe that Jesus Christ is the best thing in your life, you going to tell people about it. If you take personal offense to that, what the hell's wrong with you?

But it's for the children..........

The state's largest teachers union Wednesday fired an early salvo in contract negotiations, serving notice that it wouldn't accept pay cuts easily and that it won't consider linking teacher evaluations to student test scores in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The afternoon news conference, at union headquarters in Koreatown, was a familiar exercise in rallying the rank and file. But it also marked a renewed effort to lead the public debate over school reform, coming shortly after L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa labeled United Teachers Los Angeles the primary obstacle to improving schools.

The union "today is setting the record straight," said vice president Julie Washington, who heads the union's negotiating team and is running for president. "We are not the villains of education. We are the solution. We are dedicated and care about the children and the community. … We are going on the record pushing back."

Riiiiight.

Article here.......

Tow the feminist line

For years, the feminist have given a pass to any lecherous, male, predator as long as they toe the correct political (aka liberal) line.

For instance, kill a girl you get a pass (Kennedy)

Rape a 13 year old...... pass (see Polanski)

Pass child pornography.... pass (see Scott Ritter)

Rape an adult woman (see Assange)

I have an idea for a Planned Parenthood fundraiser. For every $1000.00 donation, they'll give you a free "get out of jail card" which you can use to rape and/or kill a woman, lie about national security or reveal national secrets (assuming they're only western secrets we wouldn't want those Russians or Iranians pissed off).

Fareed Zakaria to the American people: You are 'the big problem'

Here's a question for Fareed. When does the government need to sacrifice?

Life in "Progress' City - NY edition

From the Big Apple, where there hasn't been a conservative run the city since, Tag won the first club throwing contest...............

Of all the city programs that have ever gone wrong in New York, few could compare to CityTime, an automated system meant to streamline employee timekeeping.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has called the project a “disaster,” and perhaps with good reason: the project’s cost has exceeded $600 million, nearly 10 times over budget, and is six months past its due date. Meanwhile, consultants who were hired to oversee putting the project into effect have been paid nearly $50 million — $46 million more than they were initially supposed to receive.

And on Wednesday, federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged several of the consultants with an $80 million fraud scheme that began in 2005, accusing them of manipulating the city into paying out expensive contracts to businesses that they controlled, and then redirecting some of that money to enrich themselves. They even submitted false time sheets, the authorities said.

Graft in big city government?

Now that's "progressive"!

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Life in "Progress" City - Birmingham AL

From the city of Birmingham, where there hasn't been conservative in city government since Gog grunted that off colored joke during the first mammoth BBQ/Christmas party..........

Birmingham police are investigating the early morning incident where copper thieves took decorations off the holiday display and burned down the tree. Officials say the incident occurred around 4 a.m. Thieves took off the lights and used gasoline to separate the plastic from the copper, resulting in the apparent accidental tree torching.

Public works crews this morning took down the charred remains of the holiday display.

The 35-foot tall Norwegian Spruce came from North Carolina and won't be replaced.
Melvin Miller, city parks and recreation director, said this is the first time there has been any major damage to the display.

"It's not good. It kind of dampens the seasons, but we still know what this season is all about. It's not about a tree," Miller said. "This is the first time that has ever happened. We've had ornaments taken from the tree but nothing like this."

Call me a cost/benefit kind of guy but it occurs to me that all the work it takes to steal a bunch of copper wiring and strip it with gasoline would be less profitable than going and getting a job.

Burning down a Christmas tree?

Now that's "progressive"!

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Maybe he was just born that way

So a prominent "progressive" has been charged with incest with a female relative.........

A popular Columbia professor was charged Thursday with incest - accused of a sick sex relationship with a female relative, prosecutors said.

Political science Prof. David Epstein, 46, bedded the young woman over a three-year period ending last year, according to court papers.

He was arraigned before a Manhattan judge on a single felony incest count.

"We ask that everyone remember that he is innocent until proven otherwise and that these allegations are nothing more than allegations," said Epstein's defense lawyer Matthew Galluzzo.
University spokesman Robert Hornsby said that Epstein "is now on administrative leave and will not be teaching students."

Epstein, who specializes in American politics and voting rights,
has taught at Harvard and Stanford and often is quoted by news organizations. He also has blogged on The Huffington Post.

So if you are of the ilk to back same sex marriage let me ask you some questions about this case.

Does the thought of having sex with a relative make your skin crawl?

Even the article references the relationship as a "sick sex relationship". How is it that the author of this article can judge this relationship as sick but yet call someone a bigot if they believe the thought of a man sticking a penis into another man's anus is just as sick? After all, I thought we established a long time ago that our sexual preferences were a result of "being born that way".

If you knew David Epstein personally, would his actions here change your opinion of him?

Instead of being charged with a crime, shouldn't he be allowed to marry this relative?

Why hasn't the relative been charged with a crime? Wasn't she a consenting adult engaging in the same behavior? They won't even publish her name?

I'm guessing that Columbia offers same sex benefits to their employees. Shouldn't Epstein be allowed to marry his honey so he can add her to his benefits?

If Epstein had sex with a male relative, would he have been charged?

So under what criteria does someone who believes in same sex marriage deny the obvious attraction between two consenting adults the same "right"?

My point here is that we have all kinds of laws regulating sex in this country, and actually few laws against gays that are enforced. In addition, we all have sexual preferences we find disgusting and/or perverted. Yet if you find the act of homosexuality one of those acts, you're labelled a bigot.

So if you think of this man as some kind of disgusting creep, are you not every bit as "bigotted" as people who do not want same sex marriage?

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Trickle down economics - democrat style

Who could have predicted this?

Big employers faced with incorporating the first round of health-care changes next month are grappling with how to comply with the long list of new rules.

Many companies are hiring consultants to help sort though the mountain of new mandates, which include extending dependent coverage to children up to age 26, and may eventually result in
covering more employees. Some are also considering changes to their
plans—including pushing costs to workers.

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How to tell if you are an idiot

Ask yourself these three questions

1) Are you a Bengals fan?
2) Do you own Bengals gear?
3) Will you one day set fire to your house burning said gear?

Answering yes to any one of these is probably a good guess that you have moron type qualities.

rated R for language

Yeah Bernie "How much is enough?"

By now you've probably heard the Bernie Sanders rant chastising rich people with a "how much is enough" blast.

Over at the Huffington Post, Brent Willcom, one of the readers noted..........

“How much is enough? I couldn't have said it any better myself. Spot on Bernie!”

Once again, I throw out my challenge to Brent and any of you other "progressives" who believe that the rich do not pay enough.

Take a married couple...... each spouse making $125,000 ($250k total) with two kids, a mortgage commensurate with their "rich" lifestyle and tell me what dollar amount would they have to pay before you would shut up about the fact that they pay so little.

I don't want percentages I want a whole dollar fairness amount for the couple above.

There are over 13,000 comments to this post, I went through about 40 of them to see what any of the readers believe is "fair" for the rich. I didn't find one commenter. It's either because these clowns have no clue what is already being paid or just lapping up the socialist talking point like one of Pavlov's dogs.

Who did she vote for? #1997

Meet unknown ding dong.



Now in the past presidential election, did this person vote for Obama or McCain?

Hint. Her language sounds like those democrats talking about Obama last week.

The education bubble

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Another tea party terrorist

Police and fire officials are investigating an arson fire in Sandwich that has a disturbing similarity with a suspicious incident in Barnstable.

In both cases, the arsonist left a calling card, the message, "(expletive) the rich" at the scene.

At 3:30 a.m. on Nov. 24, flames engulfed an unoccupied home still under construction at 16 Boulder Brook Road in Sandwich. Only the exterior of the house had been completed. The home, which was valued at $500,000, had a three-car garage and three bedrooms, but no plumbing or electric service, Sandwich Fire Chief George Russell said.

The heavy damage burned much of the evidence. But the state Fire Marshal's Office was recently able to rule that an arsonist had set the fire, Russell said.

I guess they're not all that grateful for the rich......

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Our shrinking middle class

A really good piece about the shrinking middle class in our country..........

The unemployment rate for people with a college degree or higher is 5 percent. If that were the rate for everyone, it’d be the 1990s again.

But college graduates are only 30 percent of the country. For the rest of the population, the jobs picture is grimmer. For people without a high-school degree, the unemployment rate is more than 15 percent. If that were the rate for everyone, it’d be the 1930s again.

The unemployment rates are part of a growing divergence between the fortunes of the college educated and the rest of the country, including proverbial Middle America. In his new study, “When Marriage Disappears,” University of Virginia scholar Brad Wilcox details how the college-educated have embraced traditional mores and habits — especially the formation of stable families — while they erode among everyone else.

Our elites, broadly defined as the top third of our society, aren’t nearly as decadent as advertised. According to Wilcox’s data, the highly educated (with a college diploma or higher) are less likely to divorce, less likely to have children out of wedlock, and less likely to commit adultery than the moderately educated (high-school degree or some college) and the least-educated (no high-school diploma).

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Gratitude - not a "progressive" quality

As I've detailed on this blog several times, I am a recovering liberal and have been for about 15 years.

When I look back on the development of my political thought, I don't know if becoming a conservative made me less arrogant or being less arrogant made me more conservative.

See, as a liberal, you know everything. Just watch an hour of MSNBC and you'll catch on to how much liberals know and their willingness to tell you so.

Being conservative has a built in breaker in understanding that you, in Washington, don't know shit about Leah, a married mom with two kids in Spokane Washington. You don't know her dreams, her fears, her wants and needs. To be conservative means that you let Leah and her family deal with her stuff with her resources.

In other words, how do you possibly make policy for 300 million people when you know so little about so many?

Never the less, along with the development of humility, comes gratitude. As I have become more conservative, I have become more grateful.

It's probably not a coincidence that Thanksgiving went from being my least favorite holiday to my most favorite.

But the gratitude I have extends not only to the gifts that God granted me but to the gifts he's granted others. It's amazing how much jealousy I had towards rich people until I started to actually meet those people.

American Thinker with more................

If Obama and the Democrats truly believe millionaires and billionaires are the ones holding the money America desperately needs to solve its economic problems, you would think they might try showing a little gratitude in their arguments for wanting to take more of it from them.

But instead, Obama and the Democrats consistently use their "assault the rich" strategy in a blatant attempt to ignight class warfare in order to gain public support for taking more cash from the "rich."

So tell me, when was the last time you used that same strategy with a lender when you really needed to get a loan?

So let me be the first to thank the guy who builds a $500,000 home and pays more taxes to support the schools so I don't have to.

Or the rich partners of of the accounting firm who wanted to be richer by hiring me at $11.00/hr. and billing me at $33.

Or to my current clients who pay me $120.00/hr to address their financial/tax needs.

Thanks

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Who would have thunk it?

Here's a great post from Doug Ross noting the timing between when people get jobs as timing for when their benefits run out.............




It's amazing that jobs miraculously open up right when the benefits run out.

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Metrodome Roof Collapse Video From the Inside Metrodome

I thought tea partiers were racist..........

How is it that the more tea partiers influence the republican party, the more diversity the republican party gains?

The exodus of white Democrats to the GOP in southern state legislatures this year is the last chapter of a very old story about realignment, one that -- in this homogenous media age -- has finally come to the most local levels of politics.

This, in Georgia, is something different -- and striking to insider because one of the switchers, Ashley Bell, is a former president of the College Democrats seen not that long ago as a Democratic rising star:

Maybe Ashley looked around and said to himself "Geez, we've kicked out all these programs and nothing's changed".


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