Juxtaposition X

I want to give you your grandchildren's money ... and not just one day a year!

Brier-Patch Politics

In the Joel Chandler Uncle Remus stories (now so politically incorrect that Walt Disney’s great half-animated version, Song of the South, can only be purchased in a pirated version or, English-captioned, from Japan), a just-captured Brer Rabbit beseeches Brer Fox not to “throw me in that brier patch.” And when Brer Fox falls for the ruse, Brer Rabbit hops happily among all sharp thorns and briers singing and taunting Brer Fox with “I was born and bred in the brier patch.”

I think we have a modern day version of this fable in the present tax-rate brouhaha now taking place in Washington. Brer Obama, after years of decrying the Bush tax cuts as ruinous, has (along with many economic advisers) now embraced them as necessary to keep this Nation from suffering a double-dip recession … even including maintenance of the Bush tax rates for couples earning over $250,000 per year (millionaires and billionaires in the Democrat vernacular). Now, if this is the formula for fixing our economic and unemployment problems, why has it taken the Obama administration almost two years to recognize it? And why would Brer Obama ask the Republicans to throw him among all those tax rate nettles and thorns … as it seems his own party might be in open revolt against the idea? I have a few suggestions:

1) The extension of the Bush tax rates doesn’t work to restore economic growth and reduce unemployment between now and the 2012 elections … in which case Obama can repeatedly play “I told you so” in the political debates then. Even though Obama’s Keynesian fire-hose “stimulus” spending over the last two years clearly hasn’t worked, the American electorate will have long since forgotten about this by 2012. So Obama’s political priorities from the beginning seemed clearly to push through as much of his left-wing agenda early on in his administration and the devil take the hindquarters (our Nation’s economic and job growth.) As Rahm Emanuel said, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

2) If, in fact, there IS the likely turn-around in the economy … but our national debt continues to soar … in which case Obama can appeal to the Tea Partiers that the Republicans and their policies have dug us deeper in debt with the Chinese. (It is not accidental that Obama’s proposal includes this 2 percentage point reduction in employee FICA payments and a 13 month extension of unemployment insurance … both designed to make that brier patch toss even more tempting to the Republicans … but both certain to increase our Nation’s debt burden significantly.)

3) Will the extension of the Bush tax rates stimulate economic growth? Probably not in and of themselves. After all, this will not be a cutting of taxes. It will just extend current tax rates for two more years. However, the 2 percentage point FICA tax reduction probably will help economic growth however damaging this might be to the long-term health of the Social Security System.

4) Strangely, Obama has made this proposal AFTER the November elections when, if made prior to the elections, he might have saved many blue-dog Democrats from electoral defeat. One might even surmise that Obama desired this Republican rout in the House to make it even clearer that Republicans are the ones to blame for whatever happens between now and 2012. In other words, Obama was willing to triangulate himself away from Democrats and to sacrifice his party and even his Nation in order to get re-elected in 2012. Machiavelli, thy name is Obama.

5) The vitriol being heaped on Obama by the left-wing press, bloggers, and Democrat members of Congress effectively makes Obama into a bit of a sympathetic folk hero … one willing (for the first time in two years) to reach across the aisle to accommodate the Republicans.  This also, of course, begins the triangulation of his stance running up to 2012.

Can the Republicans resist the temptation to toss Obama in among all those thorns of the Bush-tax-rate brier patch? I doubt it, nor do I necessarily think that they shouldn't take the bait. But, if they do, the Republicans should be even more draconian in reducing future government spending and in the draining of the Democrat’s honey pot of all those unspent stimulus funds.  Otherwise, if the Republicans don't believe that they can exhibit such discipline, may I suggest some Brer-Rabbit purloo?

Juxtaposition IX

E. Holder



A Boulder



Bring back Janet Reno ... or even Alberto Gonzales.

Juxtaposition VIII



WikiLeak's Assange



Lord of the Ring's Gollum



Perhaps I'm being too harsh on Gollum ...?

Juxtaposition VII

Exercise can be torture too ...

Hanoi Jane aiming at us.

Old Europe

For hundreds of years we have opened our shores for many millions of old-Europe emigrants to find a better life here in America.  We have fought many wars (and spilled much blood) for (or against) them while they spent much of their discretionary national incomes over the last sixty years on social welfare and beautiful infrastructure ... instead of their own self defense.  We have provided a super-expensive ICBM/nuclear shield for them throughout the cold war.  We spent considerable Marshall-Plan sums clothing, feeding and rebuilding them after World War II. 

Despite (or because of) their not having to spend very much of their GNPs on national defense, they have instead created a cradle-to-grave welfare culture that has sapped much of their national initiative. We have also spent hundreds of billions funding the U.N. that lavishes much this money on their poobahs' luxuriating in Geneva, Rome and Brussels five-star hotels and restaurants.  And throughout it all, we have listened to their derisive sneers and holier-than-thou preachings with general humility.  Recently we have apparently spent many more hundreds of billions of Federal Reserve dollars (that we clearly don't have) shoring up their banks, see the Yahoo! story.  And Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy are queuing up behind Greece to get their financial rewards from Brussels for their fiscal mismanagement.  And rumor has it that Uncle Sam will be a banker at this porker poker party.

And what has the United States received as recompense for all this selflessness?  Croissants, truffles, Rick Steves' travel logs, and spaghetti carbonara.

Nervy

Georgia O'Keeffe's hands

I recently watched the movie, Georgia O’Keeffe, in which both she and her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, suffered “nervous breakdowns” at different points in the film. Now, when was the last time you heard of someone suffering a nervous breakdown? But, in the early 1900’s it seemed to be a plague. Didn’t Zelda, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife, suffer numerous bouts of this malady along with most of the rest of our nation’s glitterati. I even seem to recall that my mother had one before I was fully conscious of the world about me.

Back then, when one had a nervous breakdown, one retired to one’s boudoir to be pampered and fussed over … and to be served consommé and madolines for a few weeks until one was oneself again. I am intrigued by this apparent societal construct that has gone the way of the Ad Men four martini lunches. Were these nervous breakdowns just bouts of clinical depression … now treated with numerous pharmacologies? Or were they drug or alcohol benders … now treated by numerous Betty-Ford-type clinics? Or perhaps even just colossal self-indulgences ala Madonna. Whatever they were, they seemed to have slipped beneath the waves of our modern wired society. Too bad! No longer can we take to our bed and be spoon-fed hot tea and given toast points and be read to from Proust by our doting acolytes.

Who's the bigger turkey?

 

Angelina Jolie thinks Thanksgiving is disgusting. See: Gawker

Juxtaposition VI

 

Fair and balanced ...

Juxtaposition V

Acknowledgment: Imus (in the Morning)

A Wine Whiner

Oenophiles often wax poetic about their august wine tastings: "This Reisling has a buttery undertone." "This Chablis is quite flinty." "This Bordeaux has just the barest hint of cherries … or apricots … or almonds." I’ve always found this quite curious. If I am paying $85 for a bottle of wine, why can’t it just taste like a good wine? If I want the taste of cherries, I’ll just buy a $1.25 can of Dr. Brown’s.

Juxtaposition IV

Keep your chin up ...

Sean Hannity has a great line, "Next time Obama gives a speech I'm going to tug on his pant cuff and say, 'Mr. President, we're down here.'"

Juxtaposition III

Acknowledgment: Bill O'Reilly

 

Do Not Call

Years ago we put our home phone on the do-not-call list.  This has worked well for quite a while.  However recently, we have started to get numerous junk phone calls (which should be forbidden by this previous ukase) ... just a few minutes ago one from the Home Security Network.  And it seems that just about every mortgage financing company seems to know exactly what time we sit down to dinner.  How does this happen?  May I suggest that government regulations mean bupkus unless they are enforced ... just like our minimum-gas-mileage laws, mortgage-finance laws, and off-shore-drilling regulations haven't been.

So when things go wrong, our buffoons in Washington blame "deregulation," pass another 900-page law, create another agency, and fill it with high-priced bureaucrats (who watch porn on the Internet all day) ... all to no avail.  Why can't our government do what it is decreed to do?  The answer my friend is written in the windbags that populate all the marble buildings in the District of Columbia ... and I doubt that anything will change unless and until there is a real downside to such failings.  In China, bureaucrats who fail (like the one who allowed melamine in infant formula and sickened or killed numerous babies) have the good sense to attempt suicide.  Perhaps we could encourage such results in our country?

The Oracle of Natick

Every New Year's eve a group of our friends get together to dine and celebrate, including a number of traditional events ... one of which is that each of us forecasts what will occur in the following twelve months.   Then the next New Year's eve we re-read these predictions and award a prize to our best oracle.  This year, I think I have exhibited remarkable prescience (if I do say so myself.)  Here were my predictions last time (6.3 right out of 10 ... and there is still a month and a half to go) which, if I were alllowed to win, surely would take the  prize:

• Democrats will lose their majority in the House but not the Senate

• Chinese stock market will collapse (-20%+)

• Obama will have a nervous breakdown

• Russia will shut off natural gas to the EU

• Scott Brown is elected to the Senate

• Gitmo will not be closed down

• Two new Supreme Court justices will be appointed (after much ado)

• Iran’s nuclear facilities will be shut down (or destroyed)

• Terrorist attacks in NYC, Los Angeles and Dallas

• General Motors will go public

Cut on the Bias

Related to my previous blog entry, here are some more instances of pedagogical bias I have uncovered during my tutoring time here in a suburban Boston high school:

- The English reading assignment of the Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem, “Bird with Two Right Wings’ – a more U.S.-loathing screed is hard to imagine. See: Hating the U.S.

- A multiple-choice English quiz which asked students to classify statements as good, bad, or ugly. Then they are asked to rewrite bad or ugly statements into good ones. Here are a few samples of these leading and (I think) inappropriate suggestions: “Transplant patients should not have to pay for their new organs,” “The reason I was rooting for Obama was because if McCain died, Governor Palin would become President; also, Obama would be a change for our country, and lastly, Obama’s vice presidential (sic) candidate Joe Biden has more experience than Governor Palin,” and “Mike Capuano should be our state’s new senator because he will bring the change our state needs.”

- A history quiz which asks students to classify statements as either Socialism, or Laissez-Faire (italics mine) Capitalism [only]. These statements include: “Bill’s 10 year old son has been working 14 hour shifts down at the factory 6 days a week,” “In [our town] each business has been allowed to break up and destroy any trade unions that have been forming,” and “In [our town] each business does not have to allow the Environmental Protection Agency come in and check their factories for chemical leaks.”

- Another multiple-choice history quiz in which the correct answer choice for Socialism was “What economic theory said that the public owns all factors of production and they are used for the good of everyone?”

Stay tuned for more bias cuts over the next year …

You’ve Got to be Taught

In my recent tutoring I have come across numerous instances of the indoctrination of our little skulls full of mush by agenda-driven authors/teachers. Here are two recent examples I detected in Modern Biology by Albert Towle (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, copyright 1999, ISBN 0-03-01744-803. According to Google, Albert Towle is a Professor of Biology at California State University.)

On page 421 Prof. Towle states, “Evaporation adds water vapor to the atmosphere. Heat causes water to evaporate from the oceans and other bodies of water, from the soil and from the bodies of living things. At least 90 percent of the water that evaporates from terrestrial ecosystems passes through plants in a process called transpiration.”

Other than the fact that this is clumsily written, it is just wrong. In rebuttal -- The U.S. Geological Survey of the Department of the Interior states: “Studies have revealed that about 10 percent of the moisture found in the atmosphere is released by plants through transpiration. The remaining 90 percent is mainly supplied by evaporation from oceans, seas, and other bodies of water (lakes, rivers, streams).” See: Department of Interior  In other words, Professor Towle has it ass backwards. (I strongly suspect on purpose.)

And on page 422, he says’ “In the last 150 years, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen nearly 30%. Almost half this increase has occurred in the last 40 years. Human activities are responsible for the increase.”

Prof. Towle sounds convincing enough, eh? Poppycock!  In rebuttal -- The U.S. Department of Energy is referenced when it is stated: “Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC's, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic). Human activities contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small-- perhaps undetectable-- effect on global climate.” See this interesting publication for the source of this data (Table 1 in particular): Department of Energy  I strongly suggest it’s worth a few minutes of your study.

Why do such egregious errors pepper our High School textbooks and teachings?  Stay tuned ... as I intend to display other examples of how the charlatans in our classrooms are trying to shape (warp?) the minds of our children.

An Oldie but Goodie (org. published 12/13/2006)

ON BEING JUDGEMENTAL

A while ago a very bright liberal daughter of some friends said that she didn’t like the religious elementary school that she had attended because they had been “judgmental.” I then engaged her in a short colloquy about this subject (I, being in favor of drawing conclusions) and didn’t make the slightest dent in her social armor. So I have decided to try to memorialize my feelings on this issue in order to argue my case further and perhaps even open her mind a little.

The definition of “judgmentalism” I would like to use here requires a little visualization. Imagine that you are sitting in the middle of a large circle drawn on the ground and that you are metaphysically sorting through all the thoughts and things of life. You place those thoughts and things that you find acceptable inside the circle and those that you don’t, outside. I think we all perform such a chore with some regularity and even pleasure. For instance, you might place “fouling the environment” outside the circle, or unacceptable; and “the smell of baby powder” inside, or acceptable. At some point you must make such a placement decision on “being judgmental.” Aha, now comes the conundrum! Can you place this behavior outside the circle without being hypocritical? And if you do, then you are denying the very process you may savor.

The best path off of this uncomfortable paradox might be for this young lady to admit that she just didn’t like this elementary school because its value system differed from hers. In fact, her put down of people and institutions for being “judgmental” is nothing more that an easy pejorative, a semantic substitution for ideas too weak or embarrassing for social expression. Such pejoratives (for example, “homophobe” or “knee-jerk liberal”) have become, at least to the unthinking, a way of quickly winning arguments with a backward wave of the hand and the nodding approval of one’s clique members. In other words, they are a dialectic code for “the social norm is to find this behavior unacceptable and, if you don’t comply, then we will think less of you.” Notice, I say “we” since such tête-à-têtes are usually sprinkled with such aphorisms as a way of testing newcomers to see if they have enough common receptor sites to be considered as someone to whom we will pay attention. Of course, this newcomer may also be applying a similar Rorschach to the testers to decide whether they too are worth a fiddler’s fart. Then the ridicule-or may become the ridicule-ee.

Historically these code words shift and jive. The older, cruder forms were often short and stabbing, such as “pinko” or “crybaby” or “bum.” Today, our salon societies have evolved much more subtle and sophisticated membership applications ... polysyllabic (and often humorous) aphorisms that slip off the tongues of our dilly dandies like cheap oil off of freshly-opened sardines. There are even those who seem to coin such terms for a living. Those that quickly come to mind are Rush Limbaugh (“femi-nazi” -- a hyper-radical feminist), Tom Wolfe (“x-ray” -- a socialite whose skeletal-look seems to be her only claim to self worth), and James Carville (“sexual McCarthyism” -- daring to pass judgment on President Clinton’s peckerdilloes).

Therefore, I am here pontificating on nothing really new. I’m old enough to remember, in the 1950s and 1960s, when similar semantic weapons, which are now so capably used against the right, were leveled at liberals with equal efficacy. However, I do not recall conservatives denying their left-wing foes the ability to think or form judgments. This is the insidious demagoguery against which I now rail. I honestly hope that this one flicker of liberty is not snuffed out as tribute to our current worship of feelings over consequences.

Unhappy Meals

San Francisco has banned toys in fast-food meals which are considered by the nabobs there as being unhealthy … specifically the McDonald's “Happy Meal.” See: No No McDonald's 

Now, if the powers-to-be at Baghdad by the Bay can intrude on the lives of their citizens to this extent to keep them healthy, why could they not drop a pall over the myriad of other unhealthy social practices there … such as sodomy, marijuana usage, panhandling, designer drugs, street gangs, sea-lion invasions, and re-electing Nancy Pelosi?

Me thinks that those on the San Francisco's Board of Supervisors who voted for this ukase are all, as they say, "a toy short of a Happy Meal"

Extra comments:
- In China they let their citizens eat bugs, cats, shark fins, bird's nests, and rotten eggs ... and we call ourselves a free society!

- Someone on talk radio suggested today that McDonalds put condoms in their Happy Meals if it wants to pass San Francisco muster.

Bittersweet

Bitter
Massachussets -- Barney Frank, Suzanne Bump, John Tierney, Deval Patrick, Jim McGovern, Bill Keating, Martha/Marsha Coakley
California -- ("Call me Senator") Boxer, Governor Moonbeam
Connecticut -- Michael Blumenthal
Nevada -- Harry Reid (polling, -4 percentage points; election, +5 percentage points ???)

Sweet
Pretty much the rest of the Nation

Hall of Lame

The 20th Century has had a number of personalities whose fame far exceeded their ability. Can we say that their grasp exceeded their reach? Here, in my opinion, are a fair number of them:

Architecture – Frank Lloyd Wright
Art – Andy Warhol (honorable mention, Salvador Dali)
Business – Bill Gates
Dance – Martha Graham
TV – Walter Cronkite
Movies – Mae West (honorable mention, Joan Crawford)
Music – Bob Dylan (honorable mention, Madonna)
Poetry – Maya Angelou
President – Woodrow Wilson (honorable mention, Jimmy Carter)
Royalty – Princess Diana (honorable mention, Prince Charles)
Science – Carl Sagan (honorable mention, Al Gore)
Sports – Wilt Chamberlain
Stage – Ethel Merman (honorable mention, Carol Channing)
Writing – Norman Mailer

If anyone wants my rationale(s) for these pick(s), leave a challanging comment and I will respond.

Juxtaposition II

 I can't help myself ...

Juxtaposition

Sorry, I couldn't resist ...

Potato Head

The federal government is making one more insane intrusion into the life of its citizen sheep.  It is considering baning the potato from its child nutrition programs.  See Baning Potatoes.

I recently wrote a blog about another chuckle-headed move by the feds ... its banning of certain incandescent light bulbs.  See Junkier Science.  Now Big Brother has sharp-elbowed his way into our lives once again.  When will he stop?  When he pushes his way into our bedroom?  Oops, of course not, government bedroom intrusion will only be allowed when food or tobacco is included (but not involving cannabis, underage children, or illegal immigrants.)  One medium baked potato has only 160 calories and it is loaded with potassium and vitamin C.  Yet, it is now to be "relegated to the secular arm."  Those in favor of this insanity say that it is not so much that the potato is evil, but it is the butter, sour cream, and salt that we put on the potato ... or the fat in which it is fried.  Isn't that the same argument that was once use against marijuana ... that it was what went along with pot usage that was evil?  (It was a "gateway drug.") Can now we call this carom-shot morality?