I had a friend of mine once tell me "In our current culture, we treat sex like we're rubbing a couple of slot machines together in the ultimate hope of simultaneous jack pots".
Some people are starting to get it.......
Two weeks ago, Katie Jean Arnold had her celibacy wake-up call. After hooking up with a stranger on the L train platform and going back to his place, she woke up at his apartment and decided to leave. On her way out the door, he came up to her, naked, and said the words she’ll never forget: “What’s your name?”
It was then that she made her Big Decision.
No. More. Sex.
She’s led a sex-free life ever since. It’s not a long time to remain chaste, you might argue, but the 29-year-old musician did a “celibacy cleanse” back in 2003 for eight months and says it made her feel fantastic. This time, she says she’s going to wait until she gets a record deal and puts out her first album before succumbing to temptation.
I don't believe that student loans destroyed American.... I blame air conditioning.
None the less, this is an excellent piece analyzing how student loans didn't do anything but line the pockets of the education infrastructure while saddling students with a life time of debt.........
The Facts
The colleges have been increasing the cost of tuition by far more than the increase in the Consumer Price Index for over three decades. This may not be hot news to many people, but the graph below shows by just how much.
Average Annual Percentage Increase in Inflation-Adjusted Prices 1979-2009 - Source: The College Board, Trends in College Pricing 2009; Annual Survey of Colleges.
The coloured bars show the percentage above the Consumer Price Index that tuition fees have risen on average each year. So if we take the (lowest) increase of “four year” tuition and fees at public colleges and universities between 1979 and 1989 (the dark blue bar), we will see that every year tuition fees increased by an average of 3% above the Consumer Price Index. This might seem like quite an insignificant amount, but compound 3% per annum over a decade during which the CPI increased by 82% and the total increase in fees during the period is an unjustifiable 137%.
The Last Twenty Years
Effectively, colleges in the 1980´s felt it was okay to increase tuition costs by 67% more than the rise in our incomes and the cost of living. And, because they got away with it in the 1980´s, they did it again in the 1990´s – only this time by more! Consequently, when the new millennium started, they thought “What the Hell!” and really got down to screwing students.
In the period from 1999 to 2009, the Consumer Price Index rose by just 28.50% over the decade. College tuition fees over the same period rose by 104.20% – more than four times the cost of living!
Once again, another liberal pipe dream that never did anything but hurt the very people the program was designed to help.
They called it Paradise The place to be They watched the hazy sun Sinking in the sea
From the Golden Shower State of California.............
It is galling for private sector workers to see so many public sector workers thriving because of the power their unions exercise. Take California. Investigative journalist Steve Malanga point out in the City Journal that California's schoolteachers are the nation's highest paid; its prison guards can make six-figure salaries; many state workers retire at 55 with pensions that are higher than the base pay they got most of their working lives. All this when California endures an unemployment rate steeper than the nation's. It will get worse. There's an exodus of firms that want to escape California's high taxes, stifling regulations, and recurring budget crises. When Cisco's CEO, John Chambers, says he will not build any more facilities in California, you know the state is in trouble.
The business community and a growing portion of the public now understand the dynamics that discriminate against the private sector. The public sector unions organize voting campaigns for politicians who, on election, repay their benefactors by approving salaries and benefits for the public sector, irrespective of whether they are sustainable. And what is happening with California is happening in slower motion in the rest of the country. It must be one of the reasons the Pew Research Center this year reported that support for labor unions generally has plummeted "amid growing public skepticism about unions' power and purpose."
This column is from your run of the mill red neck conservative; but from Mort Zuckerman.
Paying off unions so much that it bankrupts your state? Now that's "progressive"!
A metal legend has fallen. Ronnie James Dio, former frontman of Black Sabbath and his own band Dio, died today from stomach cancer. He was 67. His wife, Wendy, posted the sad news on his website: "Today my heart is broken, Ronnie passed away at 7:45am 16th May. Many, many friends and family were able to say their private good-byes before he peacefully passed away. Ronnie knew how much he was loved by all. We so appreciate the love and support that you have all given us. Please give us a few days of privacy to deal with this terrible loss. Please know he loved you all and his music will live on forever."
Mark Morford believes that life in blue states is far superior to red states.
If that's the case, why is Detroit bulldozing 10,000 abandoned houses? Remember Detroit hasn't had a republican run the city since 1962................
Wrecking crews are preparing to tear down a landmark 5,000-square-foot house in the posh neighborhood of Palmer Woods in the coming weeks, a sign that Detroit is finally getting serious about razing thousands of vacant and abandoned structures across the city.
In leveling 1860 Balmoral Drive, the boyhood home of one-time presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Detroit is losing a small piece of its history. But the project is part of a demolition effort that is just now gaining momentum and could help define the city's future.
Detroit is finally chipping away at a glut of abandoned homes that has been piling up for decades, and intends to take advantage of warm weather and new federal funding to demolish some 3,000 buildings by the end of September.
Mayor Dave Bing has pledged to knock down 10,000 structures in his first term as part of a nascent plan to "right-size" Detroit, or reconfigure the city to reflect its shrinking population.
Seriously, my take is that I don't have to prove that "progressive" areas suck. Millions of people who leave make the case for me.
Destroying 10,000 abandoned houses because people don't want to live there anymore? Now That's "Progressive"!
So a city who has millions of dollars to blow on Thomas the Tank Engine has no money for city pools..........
This is the first time the city has closed pools for budget reasons. Doing so should save about $300,000, said Norman Merrifield, director of recreation. The commission's also saving more by keeping the remaining pools open eight weeks compared to the 10 weeks in previous years. The cuts to the recreation commission were part of many officials made to fill a $51 million budget hole.
Closing pools isn't something the Cincinnati Recreation Commission likes to do, Merrifield said. City Council doesn't like to either. In fact, City Manager Milton Dohoney suggested closing 20, but council told him to cut it to 10.
"Our economy is the biggest problem," Merrifield said. "It drives our general fund budget. Until the picture begins to turn around a little, it's going to be tough."
I keep putting on the video as a running gag about the stupidity of your average democrat but now I'm thinking the joke's on me.
Unemployed? Owe more on your mortgage than your home is worth? Your state might one day pay your mortgage.
Giving people free money to cover their home loans is just one of the radical ways that four states -- Florida, Michigan, California and Arizona -- plan to use $1.4 billion the Obama administration is sending their way to help the unemployed and underwater avoid foreclosure.
So you mean to tell me that the Gekko's who live in a 1336 square foot palatial estate are going to be paying for some asshole's $400,000 mortgage?
Reader Jeremy forwarded this article from an author who would like to challenge a red stater to a debate about how blue state communities are so superior to red staters. Here's a taste......
What if I were to trot out the irrefutable stats about, say, education levels, or teen pregnancy rates, or abortion? How about college graduation rates, marriage stability, or even adoption? What about general health? Obesity? What if I were to casually mention, with sufficient factual backup, how blue states tend to trounce nearly every red state across the board in these key markers?
First, his piece focuses on divorce rates, teen pregnancies and obesity as red stater's hypocritical "family values". That seems hilarious to me given that this guy is probably a proponent of teaching Sarah has two mommies in school. I thought blue state types agreed a long time ago that a nuclear family with a mom and a dad and children was so passe.
But he conveniently leaves out the other family values. How about violent crime? I'm thinking you're more apt to be raped, robbed and murdered on a San Francisco street than you ever will here in my nice community of "Redville".
Is homelessness a family value? I've been to San Francisco and let me give you an eye witness account of my time there. The pervasive smell of urine everywhere. I witnessed not one, not two, not three but four different people lifting trash can lids and eating out of the garbage. I saw a naked stoned dude near Golden Gate park shit himself before some cops finally arrested him. Speaking of Golden Gate Park. It's a beautiful park if you are able to get through the internment camps for the homeless.
Here's what Wiki has to say about Golden Gate Park......
The large chronic homeless population living in Golden Gate Park has often resulted in police "sweeps" aimed at clearing homeless encampments from the park. Some visitors and nearby residents argue that such encampments bring unsafe and unsanitary conditions, e.g. areas strewn with used needles and syringes, garbage, and human excrement.[2] Critics of the crackdown on homeless encampments in the park argue that the situation has not worsened in recent years, and that campaigns against homeless people have often been undertaken by mayors of the city for symbolic, political reasons.[3] In 2006, the American Civil Liberties Union brought a lawsuit against the city government on behalf of ten homeless people alleging property violations by the City during sweeps in Golden Gate Park the year before.[4]
Now those are some wholesome "family values" we can all huddle around......... as long as you don't get poked by a syringe. But Mark is probably right. Most of these people probably aren't divorced or overweight.
To me, I would think that having a job would be a "family value". Anyone want to offer a wager as to the unemployment rate in blue urban counties over red suburban counties?
Or how about the welfare roles?
I'm thinking that red staters are fatter because we have less HIV running around the community. Do you really want to compare life expectancy of an average urban dweller to rural types when a black man is lucky to live to age thirty without a gunshot wound?
Pollution?
Congestion?
Tax rates?
Public Schools in urban areas?
Do you think our prisons are more populated with violent criminals from "Redville" or "Progress" City.
So Mark Morford I'm ready to have that talk about how wonderful life in "Progress" city is. Do you really want to go there?
Finally, I leave it to San Francisco Mayor Newsom on the quality of life in "Progress" City...........
It could soon be illegal to sit or lie on public sidewalks anywhere in San Francisco, a law Mayor Gavin Newsom says would make city life safer for pedestrians and merchants, but that homeless advocates and others say would amount to profiling against the poor.
Newsom will introduce two separate versions of a sit/lie law today at the Board of Supervisors. One version would prohibit sitting or lying on public sidewalks in about 20 commercial corridors throughout the city and is modeled on a similar law in Seattle that was upheld as constitutional by the U.S. Court of Appeals.
The other would prevent the behavior everywhere, including in residential neighborhoods, and is believed to be a first nationwide.
Yeah us unedumacated bumpkins out here in "Redville" always worry about some asshole sleeping in front of our house.
Has been about as effective as the war on Poverty........
After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread.
Even U.S. drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked.
"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."
This week President Obama promised to "reduce drug use and the great damage it causes" with a new national policy that he said treats drug use more as a public health issue and focuses on prevention and treatment.
Nevertheless, his administration has increased spending on interdiction and law enforcement to record levels both in dollars and in percentage terms; this year, they account for $10 billion of his $15.5 billion drug-control budget.
Kerlikowske, who coordinates all federal anti-drug policies, says it will take time for the spending to match the rhetoric.
"Nothing happens overnight," he said. "We've never worked the drug problem holistically. We'll arrest the drug dealer, but we leave the addiction."
His predecessor, John P. Walters, takes issue with that.
Walters insists society would be far worse today if there had been no War on Drugs. Drug abuse peaked nationally in 1979 and, despite fluctuations, remains below those levels, he says. Judging the drug war is complicated: Records indicate marijuana and prescription drug abuse are climbing, while cocaine use is way down. Seizures are up, but so is availability.
But hey, it's easier for me to buy Sudafed at the local meth lab than to get it at the store.
Apparently, Miami U sororities have been behaving badly..........
Miami University President David Hodge has called for changes in policies and standards of Greek organizations after two sorority formals turned into drunken puke fests.
Details of the second destructive incident - involving Alpha Xi Delta's affair at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center on March 26 - came out Wednesday, a day after university officials suspended Pi Beta Phi's Ohio Zeta Chapter for similar behavior at Lake Lyndsay Lodge in Butler County.
Pi Beta Phi received a one-year suspension from campus activities, but university officials recommended a tougher two-year suspension for Alpha Xi Delta. The sorority is appealing that recommendation, university officials said.
In a letter Hodge sent Wednesday to staff and faculty on three campuses, he said he was "appalled and embarrassed" by the incident at the Freedom Center "because it was a place of such cultural and historical significance to our community."
Johnathan Turley on Supreme Court diversity.........
If confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, Elena Kagan will bring greater diversity to the court by adding a third woman. What she will not bring is educational diversity. Her confirmation will leave the court entirely composed of former law students at either Harvard or Yale.
The decision of President Obama to select a nominee from one of these two schools is particularly disappointing as a replacement for Justice John Paul Stevens — an iconic figure on the court who was also its only graduate from an alternative institution (Northwestern). Kagan will join fellow Harvard graduates Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Stephen G. Breyer and Anthony M. Kennedy. This leaves three justices from Yale (Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Sonia Sotomayor). Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also attended Harvard but graduated from Columbia.
Why should we care? When you virtually exclude all but two of the nation's 160 law schools as sources for justices, it not only reduces the number of outstanding candidates but guarantees a certain insularity in training and influences on the court. This bias is not only elitist but decidedly anti-intellectual. Moreover, there is no objective basis for favoring these two schools. Annual rankings from law schools on publication or reputation or student scores show relatively small differences in the top 20 law schools. The actual scores of the small pool of students in the top tier vary by only a few points. While Harvard and Yale are routinely ranked in the top spots, the faculties and student bodies are not viewed as manifestly superior to such competitors as Stanford, Chicago, Michigan or other top schools.
If Obama had looked more broadly at outstanding graduates from other schools, he might have found someone with more professional experience, a more extensive writing record or some actual experience in the judiciary. What Kagan had was a Harvard connection and one of the most powerful legal cartels behind her. When challenged on this obvious bias in favor of two schools, leaders usually insist that it is just coincidence. Ironically, the federal government has long rejected the claims of businesses that insist their failure to hire from certain groups, such as women or minorities, is unintentional.
He didn't even mention the lack of hair style diversity.
The only thing that makes the Obama administration somewhat humorous is that most of the people so high on him are the ones taking in the shorts the most.
Our Lady of the Snows School in southwest Reno will be closed Monday today as a precaution after a man was arrested Saturday for making bomb threats against the school, police said today.
Leland E. Dement Jr., 60, was arrested for calling 911 more than 20 times Saturday morning and making threats against the school, Sgt. Patrick Dreelan said. The arrest was near Fourth and Valley streets in Reno about 9:30 a.m. Saturday.
Now is Leland here a racist tea partier who was acting out his health care outrage on a school (McCain voter)? Or is he just a ordinary Main Street voter with a stylish hairdo who needs help from the government (Obama voter)?
Get a good look at the latest "would be" puppy killer from Butler County. Here's Beth Deaton. She just pleaded guilty to abandoning the puppies (page down for the story) we talked about last Saturday. Nothing like zipping them up in a duffle bag and leaving for dead, Beth.
Now in November, 2008 did Beth here pull the chain for one Barack Obama or John McCain?
Los Angeles—to get from downtown to the residence of the man who, in 2005, became the first Hispanic elected mayor since 1870, you drive through a sliver of Korea. With 125,000 people packed into 2.7 of the city's 469 square miles, Koreatown is typical of this polyglot city where more than 100 languages are spoken and nothing is typical except recentness: 46 percent of the residents are foreign-born.
So when His Honor Antonio Villaraigosa was invited to appear at a recent rally protesting Arizona's law concerning illegal immigrants, he went. But he stipulated: "I want American flags." He knows that protesting immigrants should not carry the flags of Mexico and other nations where they have chosen not to live.
The city is chin-deep in California's trickle-down misery, and last week Richard Riordan, who was L.A. mayor from 1993 to 2001, coauthored with Alexander Rubalcava—an investment adviser—a Wall Street Journal column declaring the city's fiscal crisis "terminal." They say Villaraigosa should "face the fact" that "between now and 2014 the city will likely declare bankruptcy." Villaraigosa says that will not happen. But look what has happened.
For 15 years Villaraigosa was an organizer for the Service Employees International Union and the city's teachers' union. Now he is trying to cope with, and partially undo, largesse for unionized public employees: "I have to sign the checks on the front, not just the back."
Riordan and Rubalcava say two numbers—8 percent and 5,000—define the city's crisis. L.A. has conveniently but unrealistically assumed 8 percent annual growth of the assets of the city's pension funds. The two main funds' actual growth over the last decade have been 3.5 percent and 2.8 percent. And Villaraigosa added 5,000 people to the city's payroll in his first term.
Adding 5000 workers to an already insolvent city. Now that's "Progressive"!
Remember how some democrats played the "it's revenue neutral" card during the health care debate.
Well, Christmas is over and guess what, the tab is a lot larger than originally estimated.
The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday released a new estimate attributing $115 billion in additional spending to the new national health care law, driving the full cost over the first decade to over $1 trillion.
But the CBO cautioned that it didn't have enough information to project all of the additional costs.
The discrepancy between the new figures and the oft-cited $938 billion ObamaCare cost estimate comes because during the health care debate, the media only focused on the cost of the spending provisions aimed at expanding insurance coverage.
But the health care law also had all sorts of other discretionary spending costs, and implementation expenses, that were never calculated into a total figure. These include spending such as $39 billion for the Indian health improvement act; $34 billion in Federal Qualified Health Center grants; $9.1 billion in funding for the National Health Service Corps; and $5 billion to $10 billion in increased costs to the Internal Revenue service.
During the eighties, I had friends in college learning to speak Japanese because they thought it was a prudent business decision. Then in the late 90's people thought Chinese would be the language of the future.
I'm starting to think we all need to learn how to speak Greek.
Oh wait, borrowing trillions of dollars of money we can pay back is Greek.
Benjamin Cardozo, regarded as one of the country’s most intelligent justices, was described by friends as delicate and sensitive. He lived out his life with his sister and never married, saying he could never relegate his sister to second place in his life by marrying. He was presented officially as having chosen a celibate life, but rumors persisted that he was either sexually dysfunctional or gay. He had been personally tutored by Horatio Alger, who, among other things, was accused of engaging in inappropriate relations with young boys.
This continues to be my issue with people like this writer. What exactly is "sexually dysfunctional". I mean we've been told for decades now that homosexuality is normal and that gays are just "born that way".
If that's the case, how can anyone judge any other sexual practice as "dysfunctional"? Seriously, maybe pedophiles are just "born that way".
Regardless, I care as much about who Elena Kagan sleeps with as she cares about who I sleep with.
I'm still a fan of "Don't ask don't tell" and I don't care if it's Tiger Woods or Elena Kagan.
Looking at the current state of the world economy, the underlying reality remains little changed: there is more debt outstanding than is capable of being properly serviced. It's certainly possible to issue government debt in order to bail out one borrower or another (and prevent their bondholders from taking a loss). However, this means that for every dollar of bad debt that should have been wiped off the books, the world economy is left with two - the initial dollar of debt that has been bailed out and must continue to be serviced, and an additional dollar of government debt that was issued to execute the bailout.
It's hard to get the unemployment rate down when people won't take jobs...........
In a state with the nation's highest jobless rate, landscaping companies are finding some job applicants are rejecting work offers so they can continue collecting unemployment benefits.
It is unclear whether this trend is affecting other seasonal industries. But the fact that some seasonal landscaping workers choose to stay home and collect a check from the state, rather than work outside for a full week and spend money for gas, taxes and other expenses, raises questions about whether extended unemployment benefits give the jobless an incentive to avoid work.
I was pulling some information from the Ohio Department of Taxation and I ran across this nice brochure from ODOT on what is food.
I think this was designed for the five year old who eats paste. None the less, it's very important that we have a government entity to remind us of what exactly is food and that it's not changed since 2004.
These two quasi government businesses are going to costs us more than all the TARP crap put together..........
Fannie's losses were driven partly by accounting changes but also reflected continuing weakness in the housing market. The quarterly loss was an improvement from the $23.5 billion loss for the first quarter of 2009 and marked the 12th consecutive quarterly loss for the Washington-based firm.
Over that time, the company has had losses totaling nearly $148 billion, or nearly double its profits for the previous 35 years. The government's tab for Fannie Mae will climb to $84 billion, and its tab for both Fannie and Freddie will reach $145 billion. The government took control of both companies in 2008 through a legal process known as conservatorship as rising losses threatened to wipe out their thin capital reserves.
While many of the nation's biggest banks have repaid their government loans and some are back to racking up big profits, red ink continues to gush from Fannie and Freddie because of their massive exposure to defaulting home loans.
Maybe Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick can testify on their personal looting of these entities.
Ever heard the one about the guy who hated government until a deregulated Wall Street crashed, an oil spill devastated the Gulf of Mexico, a coal mine collapsed, and some good police work stopped a terrorist attack?
Rarely has the news of the day run so counter to the spin on the news of the day. It's hard to argue that the difficulties we confront were caused by an excessively powerful "big" government. Rather, most of them arose from the government's failure to do its job in the first place.
So how exactly does that show that government works?
I mean let's face it, the first and maybe sole reason to have a federal government is to secure our borders from outside threats and we see how that's working now don't we?
So a bunch of countries are getting together to bail out Greece.....
Isn't that like your brother in law hitting you up for a loan to make his boat payment when you don't own a boat because you realized long ago that you can't afford one?
So you're house is getting ready to be foreclosed on. You're 60 delinquent on your car payment. Your credit cards are maxed out and your kids haven't had a good meal in a week. What do you do?
Well, if you are a "progressive" you work out a deal to do a home edition so you can have a TV room for yourself.
That's the equivalent deal "progressives" are trying to work out this week in Cincinnati, as they attempt to fund the world's largest Lionel Train set...........
A momentous Cincinnati City Council debate this week on the $128 million streetcar plan will be packed with political intrigue and drama - unusually sharp passions on both sides, thorny ethics questions, eleventh-hour arm twisting and the expected presence of a seriously injured council member whose vote could be pivotal.
The highest drama about Wednesday's council meeting, though, is whether there will be enough votes to give a green light to the proposed Downtown-to-Uptown streetcar, something that appears less than certain despite Mayor Mark Mallory's prediction that he has a dependable majority in hand.
I think I get the liberal fascination with trains now. See the Gekko's love to watch all of our little nephews play with their Thomas the Tank Engine sets. But it's really clear that liberal parents must have made their boys play with dolls; hence the infatuation.
Spending money you don't have. Now that's "Progessive"!
