More.....Here is a sincere question: Why have the good people of Rochester, N.Y., failed to tar and feather school superintendent Bolgen Vargas as a prelude to running him out of town on a rail?
Mr. Vargas is fortunate enough to have in his charge one Jada Williams, a 13-year-old eighth grader who voluntarily took on some difficult extra work: reading Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life and writing an essay on the subject. Frederick Douglass is dangerous reading, truly radical stuff. Miss Williams, like most of the students in her dysfunctional school, is black. Most of the people being paid to go through the motions of teaching them are white. Coming across the famous passage in which Douglass quotes the slavemaster Auld, Miss Williams was startled by the words: “If you teach that nigger (speaking of myself) how to read, there will be no keeping him. It will forever unfit him to be a slave. He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.” The situation seemed to her familiar, and her essay was a blistering indictment of the failures of the largely white faculty of her school: “When I find myself sitting in a crowded classroom where no real instruction is taking place I can say history does repeat itself.”
Her teacher was so offended by the essay that she circulated copies of it to the rest of the faculty and to the principal. Miss Williams, an A student, suddenly began to receive Ds. According to accounts, her mother received harassing telephone calls from teachers who suggested that she was in some way disturbed rather than merely observant. She was forced eventually to withdraw from the school and enroll in an even worse one. (The Blaze has more.)
Monday, March 12, 2012
Life in "Progress" City - Rochester edition
Life in "Progress" City - Detroit edition
For decades, Detroit has been the poster child for urban decline in America. Now things have reached an even newer low: The city is projected to run out of money by next month and seems to have no credible plans to make up this shortfall.
Interestingly, despite statements by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder that the state would appoint an emergency manager to run the city in lieu of the elected government, the Wall Street Journal reports that Snyder and Detroit Mayor David Bing have agreed to forgo this process as well, leaving the city in the hands of many of the people who brought it to this point in the first place. The turnaround should begin any minute.
Unemployment in the city of Detroit is estimated at about 20 percent; two thirds of the city’s children live in poverty. The two largest employers in the city: the dysfunctional public school system and the crippled city government. Decades of incompetence and corruption by elected officials in tandem with the decline of the once flourishing American automobile industry and (entirely understandable) flight by the better educated and the better off have thoroughly blighted what was once one of America’s most flourishing cities.
Leftie intellectuals spend a lot of time analyzing the “false consciousness” that keeps American workers voting for Republicans who (in the view of the intellectuals) support anti-worker policies. We don’t hear nearly as much from these incisive social thinkers about the false urban consciousness that keeps voters supporting policies and politicians that have ruined the cities, but there you are. Many of the policies that are dearest to the hearts of powerful Democratic politicians are responsible for wrecking the lives of many of their most loyal supporters, but the loyal supporters turn out year after year.
More.....
Friday, March 09, 2012
Stupidity on display
More work needs to be done to keep young Americans from using tobacco, including creating smoking bans and increasing taxes on tobacco products, the U.S. Surgeon General’s office said in a report released Thursday.Here's an idea.Almost one in five high school-aged teens smokes, down from earlier decades, but the rate of decline has slowed, the report said.
It says it’s particularly important to stop young people from using tobacco because those who start smoking as teenagers can increase their chances of long-term addiction. They also quickly can experience reduced lung function, impaired lung growth, early heart disease and other health problems like asthma.
Let's make it illegal for teens to buy cigarettes! Oh, you mean it already is?
OK let's increase the prices of cigarettes through increased taxes! Oh a pack of cigarettes costs costs over $5 a pack, which is comprised of taxes in excess of $3 a pack?
But hey, it's government and like the definition of insanity, let's do more of the same and expect a different result
More.......
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Life leaving "Progress" State - California edition
Where Pharoah Brown rules the land where the business exodus begins...............
In 2011, 254 California companies moved some or all of their work and jobs out of state, 26% more than in 2010, according to Irvine business consultant Joe Vranich who has been tracking these departures since 2009.
Twenty-eight of these companies were in Orange County. Seven of them moved or expanded to Texas, three to Mexico, two to Washington and one each to 16 other states, said Vranich, who has changed the name of his business from The Relocation Coach to Spectrum Location Solutions, which helps companies define their goals, find new locations and coordinate the move.The pace is accelerating, Vranich said. An average of 4.9 businesses left California each week of 2011, compared to 3.9 per week (202 total) in 2010 and one a week (51 total) in 2009.
In what he calls "disinvestment events," Vranich counts companies that move jobs, facilities or headquarters out of California and "in carefully selected instances, companies making major capital investments in plants elsewhere that in the past would have been built in California," Vranich said.
Sounds like Joe Vranich is a modern day Moses to me.....
More.................
Monday, March 05, 2012
Life in "Progress" State - California edition
A group of gang members in California is helping Nancy Pelosi stimulate the economy by collecting unemployment checks for one member who is in jail for murder.
“Family members of a convicted murderer in the L.A. County jail system were arrested for allegedly cashing $30,000 worth of his unemployment checks, authorities said,” according to the LA Times.
“‘Anthony Garcia had family and friends cashing his $1,600-per-month government assistance checks while he served time,’ said Capt. Mike Parker, spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. His accomplices would then deposit a portion of the money into Garcia’s jail account. They also shared the cash with Garcia’s fellow incarcerated gang members.”
C'mon man. You can't work if you're in the hole.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Life in "Progress" City - Detroit edition
Former City Treasurer Jeff Beasley was charged with taking bribes and kickbacks in a six-count indictment unsealed Tuesday following a long-running FBI investigation of the city's two pension funds.Beasley, a fraternity brother of ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's at Florida A&M University, accepted the bribes and kickbacks in return for approving more than $200 million in pension fund investments, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Beasley conspired with others to pocket bribes, including cash, travel, meals, golf clubs, drinks, gambling money, hotel rooms, entertainment, Las Vegas concert tickets, massages, limousine rides and private plane trips, prosecutors said.
"I had no idea the kind of money and the kind of things they said he was getting," said George Orzech, a trustee on the city's police and fire pension board. "It just blows my mind. It's sad. That was a dark time in the pension board history."
If convicted, Beasley faces up to 20 years in prison. Charges include extortion, attempted extortion, and conspiracy to commit honest services mail and wire fraud.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Flash Back
But just how sensitive are these people to other faith's?
Let's take a trip back in time and watch this.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Oscar predictions
So if there are any of those people in the field, go bet the house.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Wanted..........Investors
Of course, your first response might be. What the hell does Gordon know about algae and gasoline?
The answer.....nothing.
But who really needs to know anything about alternative energy to actually make money off of it.
I'm looking to use the Solyndra business plan for turning green into green.
First, we take the $10,000,000 in our original investment and hire a chemistry professor from Urbana State Community College who can testify to the feds as to the energy potential for algae.
Second, we use a million or so to rent an empty commercial building and fill it with some temporary staging (lots of beakers, test tubes and centrifuges) so it looks like a great place to do all our research.
Third, we use about five million to fund various super pacs and host several fund raisers for the Obamunists achieving "bundler" status.
Fourth, we invite Joe Biden over to do a speech where he offends Indians, 49er fans, Catholics, etc.
Fifth, we apply for 150 million in loan guarantees and grants.
Sixth, when we get said funding, we tip the limo driver outside the office and call it a day.
Seventh, file bankruptcy.
Let me know if you're in.
If that doesn't work for you, I'm thinking of setting up a subsidiary where we can fuel cars with Obama magic beans. I'm telling you........... the possibilities are endless.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Now go out and abstain from soda pop
Especially, when they're so gung ho about teaching abstinence for nearly everything else in life........... smoking, drinking, turkey and cheese sandwiches for lunch.
Do you think we'd be preaching abstaining from deodorant if wearing deodorant if the health impacts included increased risk of gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia, HIV/AIDS, not to mention the future of any children you may have from an unwanted pregnancy.
Oh, I forgot what about HEP C...........
A new study indicates that one in every 33 baby boomers has the Hepatitis C virus, and many don’t even know they have this liver destroying disease.So just go out and keep screwing your brains out. It's so good for you. Now put away that bag of chips.Federal health officials say Hepatitis C is now killing more people than the AIDS virus, and most are over 45 years of age.
Dr. Robert Bettiker, associate professor of medicine in infectious diseases at Temple University School of Medicine, says that once symptoms appear, the liver is already damaged.
More.......
Who did he she vote for?
In the 2008 presidential election did Meredith pull the chain for HR Hopenchange Or President 4moreyears?
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
WH Senior Adviser: Unemployment Stimulates the Economy
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Back to the future
“If drilling [in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] were approved today, it would be ten years before oil arrived in refineries.” — Sierra Magazine, January-February issue, 2002.
“Oil extracted from the Wildlife Refuge would not reach refineries for seven to ten years and would never satisfy more than two percent of our nation’s oil demands at any one time.” — Senator Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.), April 17, 2002.
“It would take years and years of development” to generate any supply. — Vice President Al Gore, September 30, 2000. He preferred releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve instead.
The Bush plan to drill in ANWR offers “no real action to bring oil prices down now, no real prospect of freeing ourselves from dependence on big oil and foreign oil.” — Al Gore, Sept. 30, 2000.
remember that when you're filling up a $4 a gallon.
Read some more......
Two America's
Unemployment is down, according to the official numbers, yet more people than ever are not working. What are they doing instead? The New York Post reports that an astonishing number of them are classifying themselves as disabled in order to continue receiving government benefits:
Mental-illness claims, in particular, are surging. During the recent economic boom, only 33 percent of applicants were claiming mental illness, but that figure has jumped to 43 percent, says Rutledge, citing preliminary results from his latest research. …
That last statistic is remarkable: a quarter of those who are dropping out of the job market, and hence out of the unemployment statistics, are going on disability instead. Disability, unlike unemployment benefits, will most likely go on forever.
More........
Why I'm a libertarian?
Think about it, if I have a job overseeing the trucking industry, do I move up the government scrotum pole faster if the trucking industry is kicking ass or failing?
Here's a real life example..............
Federal inspectors knew of serious food safety violations at a Washington state fruit processing plant. It seemed like the kind of thing that the United States Department of Agriculture would jump on. But that’s not what happened.
Government whistleblowers tell the KING 5 Investigators that the agency was more concerned about the money Snokist was generating for the USDA than the safety of the citizens it serves.
“I think it’s pretty poor,” said Wendy Alguard, the USDA’s former inspector assigned to Snokist. “All (the USDA) is out to do is try and make money, instead of doing what their original job is, being concerned about the product and the safety of people,” said Alguard.
“Money, it’s money,” agreed Jerry Pierce, the USDA inspector who as Alguard’s predecessor at Snokist.
More.....
Monday, February 20, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
Ikea..... the American dream
The Boss sheds some light on the answer......
During a press conference in Paris, The Boss explained that much of the inspiration for his new album, set for release on March 6th, is anger at what he sees as the crushing of the American Dream in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
“I have friends who lost everything they had,” Springsteen explained, according to the Dagens Nyhter (DN) newspaper.
In 2009, he put pen to paper began writing the album's lead track “We take care of our own”.
“In this song, I pose a number of questions. Questions which I later try to find answers to in other songs,” said Springsteen.
The 62-year-old rocker claimed the 2008 financial crisis was the result of decades of deregulation that spawned an ethic of unbridled greed.
“We've destroyed the idea of an equal playing field," he said, according to the AFP news agency.
When asked if he thought the United States should be changed into something closer to a Swedish-style welfare state, Springsteen responded enthusiastically.
“Exactly! That's my dream! It's written between the lines. But you have to listen very closely,” he said, according to DN.
I just wonder what Bruce would say if everyone who has fewer assets than he does were to download all of his songs for free. He'd be OK with that right?
But hey, nothing says Americana like Swedish meatballs during the holidays.
More.....
The Useful idiot isn't so useful anymore
My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end.
After 10 enjoyable years, I am departing, after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous.
The calls for my firing began almost immediately with the Oct. 18 publication of Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?? A group called Color of Change, whose mission statement says that it “exists to strengthen Black America’s political voice,” claimed that my book espouses a “white supremacist ideology.” Color of Change took particular umbrage at the title of Chapter 4, “The End of White America.”
My take.........Buchanan was only on MSNBC because they needed a representative of the conservative movement who they fashion as a racist, anti-Semite, which Buchanan was more than willing to oblige.
Now he sounds like a woman who cheated with a married man and now finds out that he's unfaithful to her.
When you lie with dogs, you'll get fleas.
More....
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Clue phone for team Romney
For instance, you can live in a $600,000 home if you make $9,000 a year. Where people get into trouble is when their tax documents do not match their particular narrative.
The same is true for politicians which is where I get to Romney. I'm throwing out the question for someone to please answer, what the hell is Romney for?
Now I get that most people who run for president have some warped personal resume they want to complete but generally they have some overriding issues that they want to accomplish once they're in office.
Romney has been running for president for over six years now and all I can derive is that he wants to be bigger, better, stronger than the idiot we already have in office.
That's not enough.
As a result, we have these few things that Romney has done which paints a picture of a guy who's only real principle in life is what is politically expedient at the moment. That's his narrative (see Romneycare). Clue phone to Romney, you're not going to win a Republican primary that way.
I'm only offering this advise because I truly think Romney is the only one left in the field who can beat Obama, but if his advisers can't offer him this one idea than he probably can't win either.
Republicans have been starving for over twenty years now for a guy who can articulate and lead the conservative movement and all we can seem to get from the establishment is a younger version of Bob Dole.
But don't take my word for it. Keep doing what you're doing, it seems to be working so well.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The Nanny State............ literally
When reader Jeremy sent me the link, I decided to read the whole thing and this should make everyone's blood boil.........
A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.
The girl's turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.
The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs - including in-home day care centers - to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.
When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.
The girl's mother - who said she wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter from retaliation - said she received a note from the school stating that students who did not bring a "healthy lunch" would be offered the missing portions, which could result in a fee from the cafeteria, in her case $1.25.
"I don't feel that I should pay for a cafeteria lunch when I provide lunch for her from home," the mother wrote in a complaint to her state representative, Republican G.L. Pridgen of Robeson County.
The girl's grandmother, who sometimes helps pack her lunch, told Carolina Journal that she is a petite, picky 4-year-old who eats white whole wheat bread and is not big on vegetables.
"What got me so mad is, number one, don't tell my kid I'm not packing her lunch box properly," the girl's mother told CJ. "I pack her lunchbox according to what she eats. It always consists of a fruit. It never consists of a vegetable. She eats vegetables at home because I have to watch her because she doesn't really care for vegetables."
The Gekko's have one nephew out of about twenty who eats green beans out of a can and will eat broccoli without bathing it in ranch dressing. So the fact that her kid doesn't like vegetables would make her normal.
But instead, we all have to play pretend and make believe that if the kid only had access to a vegetable they would eat it.
Seriously, where does it end?
More................
Life in "Progress" City - Detroit edition
More.....Imagine a city where all the major economic planks of the statist or "progressive" platform have been enacted:
- A "living wage" ordinance, far above the federal minimum wage, for all public employees and private contractors.
- A school system that spends significantly more per pupil than the national average.
- A powerful school employee union that militantly defends the exceptional pay, benefits and job security it has won for its members.
- Other government employee unions that do the same for their members.
- A tax system that aggressively redistributes income from businesses and the wealthy to the poor and to government bureaucracies.
Would this be a shining city on a hill, exciting the admiration of all? We don't have to guess, because there is such a city right here in our state: Detroit
Detroit has been dubbed "the most liberal city in America" and each of these "progressive" policies is alive and well there. How have they worked out?
In 1950, Detroit was the wealthiest city in America on a per capita income basis. Today, the Census Bureau reports that it is the nation's 2nd poorest major city, just "edging out" Cleveland.
Could it be pure coincidence that the decline occurred over the same period in which union power, the city government bureaucracy, taxes and business regulations all multiplied? While correlation is not causation, it is striking that the decline in per capita income is exactly what classical economists predict would occur when wage controls are imposed and taxes are increased.
Life in "Progress" City - Chicago edition
From the city of Chicago, where there hasn't been a conservative run the city since Moses parted the Red Sea.........
A former Chicago alderman turned political science professor/corruption fighter has found that Chicago is the most corrupt city in the country.
He cites data from the U.S. Department of Justice to prove his case. And, he says, Illinois is third-most corrupt state in the country.
University of Illinois at Chicago professor Dick Simpson, who served as alderman of the 44th Ward in Lakeview from 1971 to 1979, estimates the cost of corruption at $500 million.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Life in "Progress' Country - Greece edition
Looks kind of cool doesn't it?
Sunday, February 12, 2012
C'mon man
I've probably watched a total of one hour of award shows during my entire lifetime. Tonight reminds me why.
Coldplay? Seriously, an audio of an animal with its leg in a trap would do a better vocal than Chris Martin.
I think I better be getting some serious brownie points for this.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
I just don't understand
In sports, it's Wade Phillips and Isaiah Thomas. These guys keep getting prestigious jobs despite failure after failure.
In Washington DC, you have Jamie Gorelick, champion of some of the biggest FUBAR's in world history..............
Amazon.com just added a new board member: Jamie S. Gorelick, a veteran of the U.S. government and no stranger to controversy. The company announced the appointment in an SEC filing a short time ago. Gorelick, a litigator at the law firm WilmerHale, was a long-running U.S. Deputy Attorney General who... blah, blah, blah...
It has to say something about the value of compromising photographs because I don't get it.
Here's my advise. Sell Amazon short. Yesterday the share price was about $185. We'll check back in from time to time to see Gorelick's value add to the board.
More....
Friday, February 10, 2012
Who do you think is going to pay for those premiums?
Just where are the insurance companies going to get those funds?
I can't imagine some alternative universe where businesses go "geez what a great idea! We'll pay for the abortions out of our own pocket because the church doesn't want to cover the bill".
No. They'll pass along the costs to the Catholic institutions in the form of higher premiums..... still making the institutions conspirators in what they believe is genocide...........
The White House announced today that, instead of forcing religious employers to pay for birth control, it will force insurance companies to offer the drugs free of charge to all women, no matter where they work.The plan, put forward as a concession to freedom of religion, was immediately denounced by Catholic Rep. Chris Smith as fundamentally the exact same mandate.
“The so-called new policy is the discredited old policy, dressed up to look like something else,” said Smith. “It remains a serious violation of religious freedom. Only the most naive or gullible would accept this as a change in policy.”
“The White House Fact Sheet is riddled with doublespeak and contradiction,” Smith continued. “It states, for example, that religious employers ‘will not’ have to pay for abortion pills, sterilization and contraception, but their ‘insurance companies’ will. Who pays for the insurance policy? The religious employer.”
Do these guys think everyone's a dumbass?
Let me retract the question.
More....
Life in "Progress" City - San Francisco edition
San Francisco, as even casual observers of the political scene know, is one of the most liberal cities in the country. Many of its citizens fear big business — but not big government — and speak lovingly of locally owned small businesses. Its Mayor, Edwin M. Lee, recently announced a $1.5-million fund to assist small businesses. Despite their professed love of the small and local, however, the leftists in charge of the City by the Bay have made it next to impossible for anyone to start a small business in that town. Just ask Juliet Pries.
In January Pries opened the Ice Cream Bar, an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, in the Cole Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. But before she could start serving up hot fudge sundaes and banana splits, she was forced to spend two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars — supplied by family and friends — navigating the city’s labyrinthine planning codes and otherwise satisfying the bureaucrats’ whims.
For example, writes the New York Times: “Ms. Pries said she had to endure months of runaround and pay a lawyer to determine whether her location (a former grocery, vacant for years) was eligible to become a restaurant. There were permit fees of $20,000; a demand that she create a detailed map of all existing area businesses (the city didn’t have one); and an $11,000 charge just to turn on the water.”
“Even after she acceded to all the city’s demands,” the paper adds, “her paperwork sat unprocessed for months.” All this time “she still had to pay rent and other costs, going deeper into debt each passing month without knowing for sure if she would ever be allowed to open.”
“It’s just a huge risk,” she told the Times. “At several points you wonder if you should just walk away and take the loss.”
More......
It's the Hill they'll die on
Apparently, some Catholic Democrats are "surprised" the Obamunists insistence that Catholic institutions fund abortions for their employees........
Without former Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak, President Barack Obama wouldn’t have gotten his health care overhaul in 2010 passed through Congress.
But Stupak, a pro-life Catholic who voted for the health care reform after being promised that federal dollars wouldn’t fund abortions, now isn’t happy with Obama.
Appearing Wednesday night on Fox News, Stupak made clear he opposes the Obama administration’s insistence that religious-affiliated organizations are not exempted from the law’s requirement that health insurance plans cover contraceptives.
Voter Fraud Tag
Since I read that, I believe I've read of at least a couple of dozen cases of voter fraud across the country. So I'm going to keep track as I run into them.
Let's start with this one...........
More dramatic testimony occurred in the Troy ballot fraud trial. A major witness for the prosecution says he was approached by a Democratic Party operative just before he testified before the grand jury and offered a job in Vermont and the services of a defense attorney.Anthony DiFiglio says he believes the Democrats were trying to find out what he planned to tell.
This trial is really starting to sizzle with DiFiglio's appearance on the stand. At one point Thursday, the trial had to be halted when DiFiglio's own attorney jumped up in court to keep DiFiglio from answering questions about some stolen money from a charity he was involved with.
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
I'm calling BS
But apparently, I was mistaken...........
Clint Eastwood made President Obama’s day by cutting a Super Bowl ad on Detroit’s rebirth that sounded as if it could have been a re-election appeal — yet both Chrysler and the White House yesterday denied having anything to do with the attention-grabbing spot.“It has zero political content,” the automaker’s CEO, Sergio Marchionne, told a Detroit radio station. “It was not intended to be any type of political overture on our part. We are as apolitical as you can make us.”
Life in "Progress" City - Detroit edition
Vigilante justice is rising in one of America’s most violent cities as residents in crime-ridden neighbourhoods take matters into their own hands.
Detroit, Michigan, saw 34 self-defence killings in 2011 - a 79 per cent increase from the previous year, according to statistics in The Daily.
The 'justifiable homicides' rate is 2,200 per cent above the U.S. average, as citizens cope with alarmingly high response times and police cuts.
Friday, February 03, 2012
Attack of the Branch Gorevidians
Students at a high school in Boca Raton, Florida, must step over rivers of urine and endure the stench of rancid waste after a plan to bring 'green' waterless urinals into bathrooms backfired.
School officials at Spanish River High School thought they had found an environmentally-friendly, cost-saving solution for their bathrooms when they installed Falcon Waterfree urinals in their boys bathrooms.
But with no water moving through the school's copper pipes to flush the urine into the sewer system, the waste produced noxious gases that ate through the metal, leaving leaky pipes that allowed urine to drip into walls and flow onto floors.
'It was pretty disgusting,' school board chairman Frank Barbieri told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
'The girls had to step over a river of urine. I could smell it as soon as I walked into the hallway.'
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Why your kid's college costs 40 gabillion dollars a year
Through it all, Jim Tressel never lost his charm.As he worked the room the way he did for a decade as Ohio State’s coach, delighting students and faculty members, school trustees and Akron’s president with stories of past successes and plans for the future, Tressel felt like he had come back home.
“This,” he said, “is a second chance.”
Tressel is back on campus. He’s starting over where he began.
Tressel, forced to resign in disgrace last May amid a cash-for-tattoos scandal at Ohio State that toppled the football powerhouse, was introduced Thursday as Akron’s new vice president of strategic engagement, — a position created just for him.
More......
Why I don't worry about the poor
Why? Let me share this anecdote......
On my way back from a client meeting, I stopped in a local carry out for some gum.
In front of me was a lard ass picking up her Code Red and bag of chips. Now I wouldn't care one iota about someone buying this crap........except that it wasn't her buying it.............. it was me and the rest of our taxpayer's who paid for this skank's nutrition fill.
When I came out of the store she was wedging her ass into a moderately aged minivan while her "old man" was enjoying one of those flavored cigars.
When our poor have enough resources to fund Code Red, chips, flavored cigars, and a minivan, I'm not losing any sleep over their struggles.
Maybe I can take Soledad O'Brien on a welfare field trip.
BTW The woman in question was white so you can tell Rep Moore (see previous post) my anger crosses racial lines.
There goes Anna Galt
Another heir to the Getty oil fortune, Anna Getty, has cut permanent ties to the U.S. and may have renounced her citizenship, according to a government report published Thursday.
As the U.S. presidential campaign is rife with debate over issues of tax fairness, the name of the 39-year-old actress, cookbook writer and prominent organic living aficionado has appeared on a new Internal Revenue Service list of U.S. taxpayers who have renounced their citizenship, often for tax reasons.
Getty was described by Forbes magazine in 2007 as one of the world's 20 most intriguing billionaire heiresses, largely for her work on green living. She is the stepdaughter of the late J. Paul Getty III, a scion of the Getty oil clan who led a notably troubled and tragic life. He was kidnapped in 1973, at age 17, and had an ear cut off by his captors. His father, John Paul Getty Jr., paid a $2.2 million ransom to secure his son's release. The son developed a serious drug habit, suffering an overdose and stroke in 1981 that left him paralyzed until his death last year at age 54.
But hey we don't need her stinkin' taxes.
More.
Joke of the day
ALL GRANDCHILDREN ARE VERY SMART
I was eating lunch on the 20th of February with my 10-year-old Granddaughter and I asked her, "What day is tomorrow?"; She said "It's President's Day!"
She is a smart kid. I asked "What does President's Day mean?" I was waiting for something about
Washington or Lincoln .... etc..
She replied, "President's Day is when
Obama steps out of the White House, and if he sees his shadow we have one more year of unemployment."
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Life in "Progress" State - California edition
I don't know why
Somebody laid the mountains low
While the town got high
California will run out of cash by early March if the state does not take swift action to find $3.3 billion through payment delays and borrowing, according to a letter state Controller John Chiang sent to state lawmakers today.More......The announcement is surprising since lawmakers previously believed the state had enough cash to last through the fiscal year that ends in June.
But Chiang said additional cash management solutions are needed because state tax revenues are $2.6 billion less than what Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers assumed in their optimistic budget last year. Meanwhile, Chiang said, the state is spending $2.6 billion more than state leaders planned on.
The Assembly budget committee approved a bill today that would enable $865 million of borrowing from existing state accounts, Senate Bill 95. Chiang, after consultation with the Department of Finance and state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, is also seeking about $2.4 billion in delayed payments to universities, counties and Medi-Cal, as well as additional borrowing from outside investors.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Life in "Progress" City - Philadelphia edition
More.....IN A HORRIFIC assault in Center City on Saturday night, three teenagers who were spouting racial slurs pulled a man out of a cab to beat him. And when the cabdriver intervened to stop the assault, the teens turned their rage on him, police said yesterday.
About 8:25 p.m., a cab was stopped at a red light at 15th and Chestnut streets when two 17-year-old boys and a 15-year-old boy approached and started calling the male passenger in the back seat racially derogatory names, police said.
The boys then threw an unknown liquid at the cab before they opened the door, pulled the passenger out and started to pummel him, police said.
When the cabbie got out of the car to see what was going on, the passenger ran away and the teens turned on the cabbie. They punched him in the face, kicked him and threw a liquid on him, police said.
Why Braveheart is one of my favorite movies
Seriously, do you remember the scenes from Braveheart where the Scottish lords and land owners would pay lip service to William Wallace and pledged to fight the British and repeatedly sold out Wallace and his army?
It's a similar scene playing out in the republican party...........
We tea partiers are just dying for someone to ride a horse in the GOP head quarters and start lopping off heads.The conservative Republican base understands Newt Gingrich better than the GOP establishment thinks.
They are aware of his intermittent apostasies and occasional adventures with crackpot policy. They know Mitt Romney is the one with executive experience and that Gingrich can’t really run things.
And they don’t want Gingrich to run things. They want him to destroy things.
If you are in Washington and you see a member of the Republican establishment, say, walking down K Street, wrap your arms around them. He or she needs a hug, because probably for the first time ever in a Republican presidential primary the establishment is in danger of being completely ignored.
The Republican establishment believes that the birth and rebirth of candidate Gingrich should have ended in the cradle, that he had no right messing up Romney’s coronation in South Carolina and had better be stopped in Florida.
The establishment knows Gingrich. He’s kind of a friend of the Republican establishment. And Gingrich, the establishment says, you’re no president.
The establishment may be right. But it may not get its way. Win or lose Tuesday in Florida, Gingrich is in the game for real, because the Republican base is giving him a chance.
The grass-roots conservatives, tea partiers, evangelicals and the like who compose the base have had it with the establishment. The base is not only angry at President Barack Obama. The base wants to eat its own.
It was nice, polite Republicans, like Romney, who colluded with Democrats in expanding the federal government and who piled up the $15 trillion debt that now threatens to destroy the country. It was upstanding members of the GOP who added a new Medicare entitlement without paying for it, who created new agencies and wove myriad regulations to govern the lives of regular folk.
The base wants someone who is not polite, who is not conventional, who has the potential to grasp the established order in Washington by its cuff links and rip out its entrails.
We don't care if it's Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, Newt, Michelle, etc. etc. as long as we see some blood on K street.
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The Golf War
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Life in "Progress" City - Cincinnati edition
Thanks to City Hall’s generous vacation, sick and leave policies, one in every three city of Cincinnati employees was off the equivalent of more than six normal work weeks last year, an Enquirer analysis has found.
City records show that in 2011, nearly 2,000 city employees were off time comparable to at least six 40-hour weeks, including nearly 370 who took vacation, sick and other leave totaling more than 10 standard work weeks.
Those totals, significantly higher than those in the private sector, stem primarily from the relatively high allotments of annual leave included in city contracts – much of it time off that can be carried over from year to year, often to be cashed in upon retirement. That costs the city millions of dollars annually, as in 2011, when those payments were a major portion of City Hall’s $39.5 million “special pay” tab.
But hey the Just because the benefits are awesome doesn't mean the retirement plan can't be as well.........
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