A Tale of Two Cities…

It was the best of times and it was the worst of times in Dickens’ novel; but only the second choice applies today to Stockton or Detroit. Stockton is the first major California city to declare bankruptcy; Detroit has fallen from third largest U.S. city to eleventh, with 27% unoccupied homes and its finances handed to a state-appointed outsider. Both are products of long term, union influenced, Democrat governments.

The reasons for their prominent financial failure are obvious and denied the same as the conditions surrounding the Federal government but: “Who has eyes to see, let him see…” Both cases prominently include public pension promises proliferated past available resources, multiplied by waste and corruption in their pension managements. Their pension investments were just too big a financial playpen for officials and politicians to resist. There was much more of course, but the pensions set the plot.

In crime-ridden Stockton, as the link above explains, the mayor recently appeared for his State of the City address garbed in body armor and faceguard, carrying a can of Mace. In Detroit, the Mayor announced that he won’t run again, likely because the imposed Governor’s financial manager has cut off his graft, though that’s just a guess.

We can analyze the city’s problem in the light of today’s reports telling us of the $22,000 that the Detroit Pension Board (that can’t pay its due pensions) just spent sending four of its trustees to a Hawaiian beach resort for a ‘conference’ that included necessary ‘education.’

This is a tale of two American cities…and unfortunately, many more such that have not been told…yet. If this leaves you unperturbed by such far-off happenings, maybe you should verify your own city and county finances while recalling just who always ends with the unpaid bills in such situations…

Silk Purses, Sow’s Ears and Presidential Pinocchios…

The liberal-leaning Washington Post’s fact checker just awarded our President four Pinocchios for a Benghazi lie. The Presidential promise that Obamacare would not enlarge the deficit, would save money and provide better care is now Pinocchio material, followed by a regular string of truth-challenged statements; the Left doesn’t care. Objectors are merely mean-spirited GOP losers.

But when the boss is a barefaced liar, can you expect to trust his henchmen? Is the U.S. government honest these days? Corrupt government is the largest and most obvious difference between America and most of the rest of the world– those places that send us legal and illegal immigrants all the time. People escaping the poverty and dead end lives that are a perpetual result of such conditions.

And now, by repudiating its religious morality to the point that the government is attacking Christian and Jewish faiths in legislation, America has turned its back on the same principles and beliefs that worked to give it honest government. With those gone, how should any citizen go forward expecting honesty from his governors? Is it not to bureaucrats’ benefit to use their power to reward themselves?

While pondering those questions, multiply them by the very public example being set by the leader of our government… If it’s ok for him to lie to his convenience, will there likely be different rules for his lieutenants? It doesn’t seem so.

America and a few other places have deviated from the historical human median of government corruption; that has contributed heavily to wealth production and the growth of its historically almost unique middle class. American government seems to be following American society away from that, back toward the historical median. Related wealth production should be expected to do likewise, seems to me. You can’t, as the old saw puts it, make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.

Gleanings From the Passing Scene: (Politically Uncorrected)

Atlanta School District officials complained that they were being prosecuted like mobsters, merely because they organized to provide false grades for hordes of students. President Bush’s ‘No Child Left Behind’ testing was making their district look bad; they were just correcting the bad impression in the only way they knew…

The U.S. housing bubble popped after 2006, a collapse widely attributed to the government subsidized and controlled mortgage market with its low-credit loan standards imposed by such Congressmen as Senator Chris Dodd (D) and Representative Barney Frank (D). Now, wishing to restart mass mortgage lending, the Obamafolk are leaning on the banks to return to low loan standards. What is it that they say repeating a past mistake expecting a different result is suppose to define???

On definitions: The Yiddish ‘Chutzpah’ is said to be explained by a boy who murdered his parents demanding mercy because he is an orphan. Here is a New York City alternative definition: NYC sending a $1,200 bill to a cyclist for the damage his bike caused to a police car that hit him. The biker was not ticketed nor at fault…

Our readers and increasing numbers of travelers have learned that after several decades of absence (and the banning of DDT) the once common bedbug has returned to our large cities and is also returning to being considered common. (I’ve been itching to spread this news!) For some reason, our caring, compassionate government (that banned the DDT) hasn’t shown much interest in this subject. But the bedbugs, even with interest lacking, persevere and are now turning up increasingly in hospitals...perhaps they’ve qualified for Obamacare?

Unusually quietly, for government anyway, some Federal economic statistics are being revised, calculated differently than we’re used to seeing them. The new versions will show the economy as slightly (or not so slightly) better than did the older methods. Our governors are always improving things, right?

Yet another signal of our economic rehabilitation: Europe’s closing auto plants. Every day, in every way, things are getting better and better…

The U.S. Army blocked the Southern Christian Leadership Conference from its website; it was considered hostile…

We all know by now that Medicaid pays for care with our money for ‘poor’ folk such as wetbacks, welfare recipients and such; many aren’t aware that people earning well above the poverty line can qualify nowadays. And of course, it runs at a huge deficit. But it’s really worthwhile: a study shows that the general health of Medicare recipients is no better than the general health of folk without coverage. Who’da thunk it? I’m suspicious of ‘studies’ in political matters, but it should at least, be investigated; there are billions of dollars in play.

To Germany now: Moslems in that country with multiple wives come to 35%. And they re mostly supported by welfare…One can see how these folk are outbreeding the natives. And at said natives’ expense, too. But if marriage is applicable to gays, it certainly can’t be denied reproductive women who share a husband, can it?

Such is the passing scene this week; perhaps it deserves some thought…I’ll leave any conclusions to you; we’re politically uncorrected tonight.

Dog Bites Man Isn’t News; Girl Loves Dog, Is…

(Professional models, not subjects of story)

What do you think of a high level public school behavioral specialist who is being prosecuted for preferring sex with a dog to sex with her own species? For me, it’s pathetic, sad, darkly funny and of course, outrageous. For many reasons. School Behavioral Specialist will link you with the details.

But it seems to me that with today’s legitimizing of gay marriage and abortion of our own species we should ask: What’s wrong with that, if she prefer it and the dog hasn’t complained?

If we can kill inconvenient nascent babies, we can’t also claim special status for human life. If we can legitimize gay sex via marriage, we can’t restrict human sexuality any more, the only honest basis for restriction was reproduction. It could as suggested above, be abuse of a pet but that would have to be proven, seems to me. And if the thought raises your gorge, do you have a right to punish others for your sensibilities? Your choice for a bedmate may repel our behavioral specialist, too…pale, hairless and maybe even without doggy breath! Nevertheless, she’s headed for a wholly legal lynching, I’ll bet. And if you’ve read the previous post, you know that at least some scientists likely believe her ‘needs’ are as much a result of a quirk of her brain as anything else. If they’re correct, who’s responsible? Who has the right to judge?

Why is she being lynched…excuse me, prosecuted? Well, I suppose mostly because she’s beyond the sexual norms the majority are comfortable with. Is it likely she was teaching school kids to love dogs? Dunno, but I doubt it.  She’s just too  different and for that, she has to hang. We’ve got past hanging folk for being black, but the pattern is still there in our genes, just now switched to non-race differences. That used to exclude religious differences too, but that’s been tossed now, as the Obamafolk attack on Catholics and Jews makes clear. By which this refers to mandating birth control and abortion onto Catholic institutions via Obamacare and ordering military chaplains to marry gays under penalty of courts martial.

So we or at least, our governors see these standards as subject to change as needed. They, apparently, will decide the need. That sort of thing raises my own gorge quicker than does a sexual fringe dweller’s harmless-to-humans practices.

Does this mean I’m approving bestiality? Hardly. It means I’m disapproving the hypocrisy of both our governors and our society. It is in the end, our own corruption that elects corrupt rulers and facilitates a corrupt society, is it not?

Pope Francis and the Moslems…

 

Religious Conversion Tool

Pope Francis, as this link will explain, has just led the canonization of ‘hundreds’ of Saints–new Saints–of the Roman Catholic Church. So what, if you’re not Catholic? Especially if you’re not religious at all. That ‘what’ adds up to quite a lot, seems to me.

First, if there’s anyone left now representing the Catholic status quo our new Roman Pontiff has not thought to offend, whoever it may be escapes me. He has shaken up all from the pompous prelates through the Vatican bureaucracy to his own security folk. And I suspect he’s just getting started…

But these new Saints are a message. Francis’ predecessor reached out to among others, Islam. In a time of another sort of outreach from fundamentalist Moslems whose ideas of good Christians are limited to dead Christians, preferably in small, scattered pieces. The hundreds of new Catholic Saints share one telling characteristic: they were all beheaded by Moslems for refusing to convert back in the 14th century. The new Pope is willing to forgive and meet on new grounds of charity and worship of the One God of All. But the dead martyrs of Islamic violence and intransigence are not forgotten.

Will a relationship be formed between the Catholics and Islam? No, since there is no such thing as Islam; it is a hodge-podge of mutually antagonistic branches just as is Christianity. But the Moslems too often murder each other for disagreement; Christians have for the moment, learned to forego such methods. The pile of new Saints is but a down payment on the real numbers, who cannot be forgotten either.

The American government is making nice to the Moslems these days, apparently in the hope that it will lose its chronic persona of “Great Satan” in the Islamic world. That isn’t happening, the U.S. is just too convenient a cover for the inadequacies of rulers in Moslem lands. President Obama seems in this, on a fruitless quest powered by wishful thinking rather than reality. That seems likely to be borne upon him by the imminent successors of the Boston bombing, if as expected, it represents a new era in the U.S.

The Pope shares no such delusions; he has his lists of martyrs stretching back into history to remind him. And unlike the American President, he offers outreach that must be met with outreach from the other end. Maybe the Pope should send the President a list of his new Saints, with a short explanation of how  and why each died……

High School Girls, Boys and One Gay Legislator…

The difference between girls and boys, a playground for artists for centuries, has been laid to rest by the California Assembly. There isn’t any. The link: Girls & Boys will provide details, at least for the Land of Fruits and Nuts as the once Golden State is popularly characterized. By which, mind, I mean no disrespect to those sexually or mentally challenged. I number both among my friends and respect them much more than politicians.

Here, we are dealing with California politicians, none of whom are among my friends, so they are fair game. And those in the California Assembly have just passed a bill that mandates schools in the state to authorize girls who wish to play on boys’ sports teams to do so while any boys wishing to play with the girls may do that. And since that is not enough when the Left is on a tear, each may as wished, use the dressing rooms and restrooms of the other. Right, you got it and I’m not making this up; visit the link.

Of course, the Golden State Senate may perform its function of dragging its feet or the Liberal Governor may have an attack of common sense and veto this but since it’s California, do you wish to bet?

When I was in high school (no, no dinosaurs grazing the infield) the girls didn’t like gym classes or most sports and turned out for P.E.behind a high hedge in long ‘shorts’ and high-necked, sloppy fitting blouses that made them about as attractive as say, a flock of chickens. Nevertheless, we boys peeked to the extent possible (minimal). We would have loved the power to just add ourselves to their dressing (and especially, UNdressing) room.

There may have been girls who would have liked to enter our own quarters but if so, we never suspected it. Girls, in those days, ruled us by our own glands and they knew it. Oddly enough, hardly any of them ever became pregnant before graduation, either. Nor needed an abortion.

But all that has been tossed by the California legislators; boys’ and girls’ games and quarters will now be interchangeable at will if this passes the Senate and is signed by the Gov. Progress, right?

All I can do is lament my timing; I was a lousy baseball player, too small for football, too short for basketball and only adequate at track. With this, I could try for the softball team (field hockey might be too rough). And thinking of the mandatory showers after P.E. classes…! But it’s too late for me.

The gym teachers then were all women (more or less) for the girls and men (pretty much) for the boys; I wonder how this new legislation will deal with that? Perhaps recruiting for P.E. teachers is about to become a lot easier?

In the historical romances I read as an oversexed, underfulfilled boy (the standard model then) they had what was referred to as a ‘chastity belt’ which allegedly dated from the Crusades, when Lords left their ladies at home while galavanting off to the Holy Land to kill Saracens. These were locked in place and supposed to prevent unauthorized use of as it were, the facilities in the Lord’s absence. This of course, gave rise to the famous: “Love Laughs at Locksmiths’ quote. Well, famous in my generation.

This should be interesting if it progresses. Maybe they won’t have to plant hedges between the boys’ and the girls’ athletic fields anymore…those hedges had holes in them, anyway.

Per the report, the legislator sponsoring the bill is gay. One wonders what’s his point?

New Jersey Students: Strange Doings In Black and White

Franklin High School, the White Girls’ Club and a boy suspended for his posts on the Internet are a peculiar stew, cooked up following a local newspaper’s story. White Girls Club will provide details. 

Seems a boy was suspended for posting pictures of chimps labeled as “Hallway at Franklin High” or something like that. And–Gasp!–photos of a Confederate flag, predicting that the South Will Rise Again. We’re not told, but I at least, assume that Franklin High is well supplied with black students. 

The problem extended beyond the boy however; apparently there existed, or was thought to exist, something called: “The White Girls’ Club” as well. Which did, or didn’t, connect to the suspended boy. And some or one or all of these girls posted online too.

In response, apparently, to the news story, the Principal of Franklin High rose up to save his institution from these savages: After the boy was suspended, an investigation by experts in racism, bullying, insensitivity and whatever resulted in the school ordering the girls into counseling. What that would amount to wasn’t tied down exactly. But ordered to undergo counseling. Reporters following up in search of more definitive details were unsuccessful, they said. After this much got out, nobody seemed to be talking any more. 

A fascinating microcosm of today’s American racial divide as seen by a public school. And perhaps, more informative of public ‘education’ than of racial attitudes. While unsatisfactory in many ways, the limited information we’re given is useful in the questions it raises for those who follow matters racial.

1. Did the suspended boy and the counseled girls demonstrate ‘racist’ attitudes at school? 

2. What was the difference that suspended the boy and only ‘counseled’ the girls? 

Assuming from the sparse facts that there was no at-school misbehavior, what business of the school was any of this? Students expressing opinions, including politically incorrect ones, on the public internet are not under school jurisdiction, are they? Or are schools now enforcing thought control outside of school precincts? The report doesn’t seem an overt attack on Franklin High. 

If a student were to form a Black Supremacy group online and call it say, the Black Panther Cubs with albino monkeys labeled: “Halls of Franklin High”, would that be a news story followed by suspension and counseling? You judge. I doubt it; we’re into the dog bites man versus man bites dog thing here, right?

School jurisdiction over students used to be justified by a legal doctrine: “In loco parentis.” that means that the school, during the school day, was granted the authority to act that centered the rest of the time in the students’ parents. But these days, courts have been, without legislation, creating a new doctrine that confers authority on schools that supersedes that of the parents. And one result of that is school administrators assuming jurisdiction over students entire behavior, in and out of school as the instant cases suggest may be happening in New Jersey. In simpler words, the schools show signs of becoming the student thought police. The do seem more effective when they do such things than when they merely try to educate, seems to me. But again, you judge.

The question is not really so much whether the given internet behavior was done from school or not. The issue seems rather, is the school to educate kids or to brainwash them into the fashionable social attitudes as defined by politicized ‘educators’ who seem unable to educate far too many of them? And I will leave that answer too, to you to decide. 

As you answer these, remember that such answers have consequences…