Monday, October 22, 2012

Amuse bouche


Oh, Jack Welch.  What a gutless weasel.  "Those Chicago guys will do anything...change the numbers", but he's not accusing anyone of anything?  I'm just a simple guy with a worthless BA from a public university, but that sounds like two accusations (general lack of integrity and willingness to manipulate data, i.e., lie) to me.  If he stands by his tweet, he's making the accusations.  This shows how stupid Welch thinks everyone of us is. It's the old journalistic "alleged".  One can safely (i.e., without being sued) publish nearly anything if one essentially admits one has failed to check one's facts. An "allegation", look it up, is a claim, usually of wrongdoing, typically without proof, i.e., not necessarily more than a nasty rumor. Why does anybody want to read anything this robber baron (look it up) has to spew?
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A Texan school district is testing RFID tags for students.  This really sucks, but answer this:  Washington DC's defense for being unprepared for the occasional blizzard, every occasional blizzard, is always "it doesn't happen every year".  Make sense to you?  Well, the one time in ten years one school has an armed intruder, a boiler explosion, whatever, won't it be a good thing to know who is where precisely and immediately?  Not to say I don't see the drawbacks.  The official motivation is apparently combatting truancy because, drumroll, funding is based on attendance!
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It is actually quite deniable that the "Palestinian people" have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. They are a synthetic, syncretic people invented in 1964 by Egyptian intelligence. The cannon fodder was drawn from captive Arab populations in ARAB countries. They have suffered because their own ARAB people won't have them. Most of them actually originate from other ARAB countries, immigrating to Eretz Israel only as the influx of Zionists and Zionist money produced livable conditions for a larger population. Three generations of indoctrination in Lebanese, Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi prison (refugee) camps may have produced the illusion of social and cultural cohesion, but it was all made up in the last half century. And thanks, Russia, for the logistic and AgitProp support, and UNRWA for the "special" regime.
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Some doynck has a picture of what gas prices were when Obama took office, implying the current prices are his fault and under his control, as opposed to how things were under his predecessor.  MULE FRITTERS!!!  I live in the Washington DC suburbs of Maryland. In JULY 2008, I was paying $4.09. Then prices fell, right up to the election, to $1.49, which was (just BTW) what it was when Dubya took office!  Look it up. Amazing. 60% decline in three months.  Explain THAT economically.  The prices started back up less than two weeks later, and skyrocketed back in less than two years.  No, oil didn't go up by a factor of three. And we STILL have subsidies on these companies, because a few billion in profit per quarter... PROFIT...per QUARTER... look it up... isn't sufficient reason for them to stay in the business.
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Obama apparently wears, and has since before he met Michelle, a ring inscribed with the Shuhada, the Muslim declaration of faith, on his wedding ring finger.  Where did he get it, and does he know what it says?  This is not necessarily damning.  Not NECESSARILY.  This is the guy who told us his name (Barack) was Swahili.  He has two Arabic names, and a family name from a Muslim clan in mostly Muslim Kenya. Look it up, there are several swahili and kiswahili online dictionaries. Barack is exactly as Arabic as Houssein.  Was he ignorant or lying? It needs to be determined before the meaning of the statement, or the ring, can be.  Although, as a big Tolkien fan, I can't say a gold ring with an ominous inscription makes me feel exactly warm and fuzzy.
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Some small minded, emasculated weasel named Matthew Desmond said, "It always irritates me that the people who say 'give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime' are unwilling to give the man a fish AND, when it comes down to it, they're unwilling to pay to teach him how to fish.  What they're really saying is 'I don't care if you starve, as long as I have a fish for myself."  

"Being Liberal" asks if we agree.  No.  I can't help if a quote is misunderstood or misused.  I'm not saying there aren't "I got mine" people out there.  That doesn't affect the wisdom of the quote.

It is a paraphrase of Maimonides.  Maimonides (12th cent) never said give a hungry man ONLY a fishing rod. Helping a person to be independent is the highest of eight levels of Tzedaka. The point of the teaching is, if you are not rich, if you aren't a saint, you are not absolved of all responsibility to help because you are unable or unwilling to solve the whole problem.  See Avot, Rabbi Tarfon (late 1st, early 2nd cent):  "It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work, but you are not free to desist wholly from it.  The day is long, and the work is great, the workers are lazy, the reward is great, and the Master of the House is impatient."
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"Fact! Presidents don't control oil prices!"

But he could. Wage and price controls. Nixon. Remember? Obama COULD declare that the oil giants are entitled to limited profits for the next few years, and would have to prove they were not breaking even to get a price rise. It could be done. Well, in his first two years, it could have.  You remember his first two years, when gas recouped the eight years of Bush, Jr era inflation that mystically magically disappeared in the three months before the last elections, while he kept asking the Republicans to please, please, please cooperate, while they publically declared that their big goal was to keep him from achieving squat, especially a second term? Remember them?
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Scotland is holding a referendum in 2014 on whether the kingdom ought to remain united, or whether the Sassenach ought to pay for their own underclass's dole.  Flanders wants out of Belgium.  Once, all that was needed to break up a multiethnic state was the old elements of nationalism: geography, ethnicity, language, religion.  Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia fractured on ethnic lines simply because they were there.  There are several ways to consider of the break up of the FSU.  Beware, Iraq, Turkey, Syria.  But I see a confluence of nationalism and economics: Scotland and Belgium are fracturing on ethnic lines, but because of an economic gradient.  That's what I see tearing several European countries apart: when one cohesive group in one area sees itself being exploited for the good of a different group in a separate area.  There is one more factor:  size: Northeast Philadelphia wanted for some time to separate from the city of Philadelphia and incorporate as "Liberty County".  It was just too small, and had no real economic or ethnic base: the middle class largely, but not exclusively, lived in the Northeast, but many (except store clerks, waiters and dentists) worked elsewhere, many in Philadelphia city proper.  Setting up their own schools, fire, police, for example, were insurmountable obstacles.  So, I don't see Cornwall pulling free, nor (short of a big recovery leading to a huge influx of tourists into northern Spain) the Basques.  I don't see Italy disintegrating: the difference from one region to another is more culinary than anything else.  Germany, on the other hand, in the event of serious difficulties, I can imagine fractionating.

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