Monday, February 19, 2007

On Vacation from my Problems

Just thought I would put up a quick post to advise that I am on vacation and am will not be posting before the end of the month.

Adios

Monday, February 12, 2007

Liberal Environmentalists Suppress Contrary Opinions
(I guess tolerating opposing viewpoints is intolerable)

The hypocrisy of liberals knows no bounds. They're all for diversity, tolerance, etc., etc. when it comes to pushing their views, but if you don't toe the line on one of their favorite pet theories -- look out.

Here is an interesting piece from the New York Sun on the efforts by proponents of global warming to not only attack, but suppress those who dare to disagree:
The debate over global warming has turned hysterical in the wake of the Democratic takeover of Congress and the most recent United Nations report asserting a 90% likelihood of human-caused climate change. And anybody who disagrees had better be prepared for attacks on their scientific credentials, their honesty, and even their right to speak out.
The Cult of Self-Esteem
from the Feb. 12 Patriot Post
“You can tell a lot about an educational system by its vocabulary. When Calvinistic terms like grace and works are replaced by educantisms like self-esteem, you know the system’s in trouble. Or is even to think on grace and works now considered a violation of the separation of church and state? The mere mention of a religious idea in public has been known to make some of our more advanced thinkers break out in hives and litigation. As for those of us inclined to sneak a biblical allusion into our prose now and then, we need not fear; our ‘educated’ classes may no longer recognize it. The theory behind the Cult of Self-Esteem is simple: First get the cart, then put it before the horse. Just feel good about yourself and achievement will follow automatically. It would be too much to call this approach instant gratification; it’s really more like pre-gratification... Want to build real self-esteem, the kind that is the fruit of self-respect and not just an inadequate substitute for it? Expect, even insist on, competence. Don’t pretend it’s there when it isn’t. If that sounds too hard, that’s the catch with self-respect—it has to be earned. Self-esteem, on the other hand, costs little or nothing. And it’s worth just what you pay for it.”
Quote of the week
from Patriot Post
“It might seem at first glance that the left wing of the Democratic Party should be in the forefront to fight radical Islam. Islamic radicals despise women’s rights and gay rights. I think we all know what they would do with Hillary Clinton or Barney Frank. [Their] reluctance to support the war on terror... has nothing to do with cultural relativism or multiculturalism. It has everything to do with domestic politics. Basically the left hates Bush more than it hates Bin Laden... Consider the war in Iraq. This war is tough going in Iraq. But it is even tougher going in America. The war is being lost not on the streets of Baghdad but right here in America... There is no way that Bin Laden could persuade America to give up on the war on terror and get out of Iraq and the Middle East. Fortunately for Bin Laden he has a whole political movement in the United States that is dedicated to exactly this objective.”

—Dinesh D’Souza on his new book, The Enemy At Home

Sunday, February 11, 2007


Warm Fuzzy Liberal Fantasy Meets
Cold Hard Economic Reality


Saw an interesting headline on Drudge today. The headline reads: "New Wage Boost Puts Squeeze on Teenage Workers Across Arizona". What could that mean, I wondered? :-)

The key fact of the story is:
Some Valley employers, especially those in the food industry, say payroll budgets have risen so much that they're cutting hours, instituting hiring freezes and laying off employees.
Welcome to the real world liberals. Like so many other liberal fantasies, minimum wage laws tend to have just the opposite effect of the feel-good intentions of their liberal sponsors. When liberal politicians pass minimum wage laws, those laws hurt rather than help low-wage, unskilled workers.

As the article demonstrates, when labor costs to business go up, those business owners have to make up for it somewhere else. 'Somewhere else' often means cutting the number of employees to offset those increased labor costs.
Mark Messner, owner of Pepi's Pizza in south Phoenix, estimates he has employed more than 2,000 high school students since 1990. But he plans to lay off three teenage workers and decrease hours worked by others. Of his 25-person workforce, roughly 75 percent are in high school.

"I've had to go to some of my kids and say, 'Look, my payroll just increased 13 percent,' " he said. " 'Sorry, I don't have any hours for you.' "
This article focuses on teenage workers, but the principle applies just the same to other businesses. For example, say you have a factory making some kind of low tech widget. Since making the low tech widget doesn't require a highly skilled or educated workforce, you hire workers without much education and/or experience and pay them the minimum wage.

You have, say, 50 workers earning the minimum wage ($5.15/hour). So, 50 workers times 40 hours/week times $5.15/hour means your weekly labor cost is $10,300. Along comes some liberal activist who thinks it would be very compassionate of him to agitate Congress to pass a law giving all your workers to get a nice big raise to say, $7.25/hour. (Ever notice how liberals are so eager to spend other people's money?)

Assuming Congress passes the law, you're weekly labor cost just went up to $14,500 -- an increase of approximately 40%. Now, unless you happen to be the world's sole supplier of low tech widgets, you can't just increase your prices 40% to make up the difference. And it's unlikely that the profits you make on your law tech widgets are so high that you can simply absorb the addtional cost. So, you're left with the reality that you need to cut your costs of production. The easiest place to cut is your labor costs. So, in order to pay the higer wages and maintain a weekly labor cost of approximately $10,300, you'll need to fire 14 of your workers. Of course, since you still need to produce the same amount of low tech widgets, the remaining workers will need to work harder to cover the tasks of the workers who've been let go.

Gee, thanks Mr. Warm and Fuzzy Liberal. Thanks to your "compassion", 14 people just lost their jobs and the "lucky" 36 who got to keep their jobs get to work a lot harder. That's OK though, being a liberal means feeling good about yourself because you're so compassionate.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Return To Innocence

Love - Devotion
Feeling - Emotion

Don't be afraid to be weak
Don't be too proud to be strong
Just look into your heart my friend
That will be the return to yourself
The return to innocence

The return to innocence

If you want, then start to laugh
If you must, then start to cry
Be yourself don't hide
Just believe in destiny

Don't care what people say
Just follow your own way
Don't give up and use the chance
To return to innocence

That's not the beginning of the end
That's the return to yourself
The return to innocence

Friday, February 09, 2007

Take Blob of "Fetal Tissue", Add Oxygen and Shazaam!
-- It's a Baby!


From James Taranto's 'Best of the Web':

Womb With a View
London's Daily Mail offers proof that human beings are not animals:

An unborn elephant, tiny but perfect in every way. A dolphin swimming in the womb, just as it will have to swim in the ocean the moment it is born. An unborn dog panting. Each one amazing and now, thanks to these remarkable pictures, they can be seen for the first time.

Using an array of technology, the images reveal what until now has been a secret--exactly how animals develop in the womb.

The unborn elephant, shown at the link, is quite something to see. By contrast, as we all know from reading the newspapers, there is no such thing as an unborn human being. We develop by a little-understood process in which a clump of cells, similar to a tumor or a fingernail, miraculously becomes a baby at the moment the entire clump is exposed to air.

That humans and animals come into the world in such radically different ways pretty much demolishes the notion that we are the product of Darwinian evolution, doesn't it?

Quotes from The Ronald
“The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.”

“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

“I consider all proposals for government action with an open mind before voting ‘no’.”

“The taxpayer: That’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.”

“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

“Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

From "Life on the Mississippi"

Of course, on the great rise, down came a swarm of prodigious timber-rafts from the head waters of the Mississippi, coal barges from Pittsburgh, little trading scows from everywhere, and broad-horns from 'Posey County,' Indiana, freighted with 'fruit and furniture' -- the usual term for describing it, though in plain English the freight thus aggrandized was hoop-poles and pumpkins. Pilots bore a mortal hatred to these craft; and it was returned with usury. The law required all such helpless traders to keep a light burning, but it was a law that was often broken. All of a sudden, on a murky night, a light would hop up, right under our bows, almost, and an agonized voice, with the backwoods 'whang' to it, would wail out --

'Whar'n the -- -- you goin' to! Cain't you see nothin', you dash-dashed aig-suckin', sheep-stealin', one-eyed son of a stuffed monkey!'

Then for an instant, as we whistled by, the red glare from our furnaces would reveal the scow and the form of the gesticulating orator as if under a lightning-flash, and in that instant our firemen and deck-hands would send and receive a tempest of missiles and profanity, one of our wheels would walk off with the crashing fragments of a steering-oar, and down the dead blackness would shut again. And that flatboatman would be sure to go into New Orleans and sue our boat, swearing stoutly that he had a light burning all the time, when in truth his gang had the lantern down below to sing and lie and drink and gamble by, and no watch on deck. Once, at night, in one of those forest-bordered crevices (behind an island) which steamboatmen intensely describe with the phrase 'as dark as the inside of a cow,' we should have eaten up a Posey County family, fruit, furniture, and all, but that they happened to be fiddling down below, and we just caught the sound of the music in time to sheer off, doing no serious damage, unfortunately, but coming so near it that we had good hopes for a moment. These people brought up their lantern, then, of course; and as we backed and filled to get away, the precious family stood in the light of it -- both sexes and various ages -- and cursed us till everything turned blue.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Presently he [Mr. Bixby] turned on me and said: --

'What's the name of the first point above New Orleans?'

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know.

'Don't KNOW?'

This manner jolted me. I was down at the foot again, in a moment. But I had to say just what I had said before.

'Well, you're a smart one,' said Mr. Bixby. 'What's the name of the NEXT point?'

Once more I didn't know.

'Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name of ANY point or place I told you.'

I studied a while and decided that I couldn't.

'Look here! What do you start out from, above Twelve-Mile Point, to cross over?'

'I -- I -- don't know.'

'You -- you -- don't know?' mimicking my drawling manner of speech. 'What DO you know?'

'I -- I -- nothing, for certain.'

'By the great Caesar's ghost, I believe you! You're the stupidest dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses! The idea of you being a pilot -- you! Why, you don't know enough to pilot a cow down a lane.'

Oh, but his wrath was up! He was a nervous man, and he shuffled from one side of his wheel to the other as if the floor was hot. He would boil a while to himself, and then overflow and scald me again.

'Look here! What do you suppose I told you the names of those points for?'

I tremblingly considered a moment, and then the devil of temptation provoked me to say: --

'Well -- to -- to -- be entertaining, I thought.'

This was a red rag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he was crossing the river at the time) that I judge it made him blind, because he ran over the steering-oar of a trading-scow. Of course the traders sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man so grateful as Mr. Bixby was: because he was brim full, and here were subjects who would TALK BACK. He threw open a window, thrust his head out, and such an eruption followed as I never had heard before. The fainter and farther away the scowmen's curses drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted his voice and the weightier his adjectives grew. When he closed the window he was empty. You could have drawn a seine through his system and not caught curses enough to disturb your mother with.

Thinking Of ...

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.

-- Elbert Hubbard

Being ignorant is not so much as shame as being unwilling to learn.

-- Benjamin Franklin

This Guy's a Dirtbag and an Idiot

Heard about this story on the radio this morning.

Father pleads guilty in soup-tainting plot

February 7, 2007

ATLANTA, GEORGIA -- A man admitted Tuesday that he tampered with his children's soup in an attempt to get money from Campbell Soup Co., a prosecutor said.

William Allen Cunningham's 3-year-old son and 18-month-old daughter were hospitalized twice in January 2006. He forced them first to eat soup laced with hot peppers and lighter fluid, and the second time used antidepressants to poison the children, authorities said.

Cunningham, 41, pleaded guilty to communicating false claims, U.S. Atty. David Nahmias said. He faces up to 5 years in federal prison.

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

First off, you have to be a major dirtbag to poison your kids in order to run some scam. Secondly, lighter fluid and Prozac?? Did he think Campbells was going to just say "Gee, sorry -- don't know how lighter fluid got in our soup. But, it must be our fault so here's a check". What a moron.

What's also outrageous is that this jerk is only facing up to 5 years in prison.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Renee Fleming + Puccini

Check this out -- the awesome Renee Fleming singing "Vissi d'Arte" from Tosca. This is as good as it gets. I could sit here all night, hitting 'replay'.

SuperBowl Fever Sweeps Chicago

I've been pretty much ignoring all the SuperBowl hysteria going on in Chicago. Sports radio beats the topic to death with the 24/7 coverage; fair weather fans are coming out of the woodwork to jump on the bandwagon; and, it seems that every business in the Chicago area is desperately trying to any way they can to associate themselves with the Bears so they can cash in on the excitement.

However, I do get a kick out of putting Bears helmets on the two venerable lions in front of the Art Institute.



























Also, I got this e-mail from the Lyric Opera of Chicago today. They made a short video of one of their singers doing a rendition of the Bears' fight song. Check it out!

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