Republicans Replace System of "Checks and Balances"
...with Ca$h and Carry!
1/14/2006
1/13/2006
President Bush Has Head Wound
"As you can see, I have an injury myself -- not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch. As a matter of fact, the colonel asked if I needed first aid when she first saw me. I was able to avoid any major surgical operations here, but thanks for your compassion..."
-- President Bush
At Brooke Army Medical Hospital in San Antonio, Texas
(...where he kidded in a way that again showed his jarring lack of empathy with the amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan.)
Republican$ Endor$e Ca$h and Carry
"Now that Dick Cheney has freed Congress from the bother of advising and/or consenting, lawmakers can work on new ways to game the system and wallow in the GOP's culture of corruption -- while tit-tutting about the decline in American moral values.
Since the Republican-run Capitol doesn't have to worry about holding the Bush White House accountable for excesses in torture and spying, and the other myraid ways it has placed itself above the law, congressmen have more leisure hours for Abramoff successors to treat them to some Redskins games and steak dinners.
Checks and balances are now as quaint as the Geneva Conventions. Congress is complicit in putting its thumb on the scale for the executive branch."
-- Maureen Dowd
1/12/2006
President Bush Nominated For Sainthood
...sort of
President George W. Bush was scheduled to visit the Methodist Church outside Washington as part of his campaign.
Bush's campaign manager made a visit to the Bishop, and said to him "We've been getting a lot of bad publicity among Methodists because of Bush's position on stem cell research and the like. We'd gladly make a contribution to the church of $100,000 if during your sermon you'd say the President is a saint."
The Bishop thinks it over for a few moments and finally says, "The Church is in desperate need of funds and I will agree to do it."
Bush pompously shows up looking especially smug today and as the sermon progresses the Bishop begins his homily:
"George Bush is petty, a self-absorbed hypocrite and a nitwit. He is a liar, a cheat, and a low-intelligence weasel. He has lied about his military record and had the gall to put himself in a jet plane landing on a carrier posing before a banner stating 'Mission Accomplished.' He invaded a country for oil and money, and is using it to lie to the American people. He is the worst example of a Methodist I've ever personally known. But compared to Dick Cheney and the rest of his cabinet, George Bush is a saint."
1/11/2006
Quote of Note:
"I'd rather be ashes than dust. I would rather have my spark burnout in a brilliant blaze than be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and persevirant planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist."
Jack London
Jack London Born January 12, 1876
London (1876-1916) was an illegitimate child, and spent his childhood in poverty in the Oakland slums. At the age of 17, he ventured to sea on a sealing ship. The turning point of his life was a thirty-day imprisonment that was so degrading it made him decide to turn to education and pursue a career in writing. He became the most successful writer in America in the early 20th Century. His vigorous stories of men and animals against the environment, and survival against hardships were drawn mainly from his own experience.
His years in the Klondike searching for gold left their mark in his best short stories; among them, The Call of the Wild, and White Fang. His best novel, The Sea-Wolf, was based on his experiences at sea. His work embraced the concepts of unconfined individualism and Darwinism in its exploration of the laws of nature.
London was a socialist and supporter of the workers movement, but like many socialists of his time, especially in the “settler nations,” he was prone to racism and was a populist rather than a communist. He retired to his ranch near Sonoma, where he died at age 40 of various diseases and drug treatments.
1/09/2006
Remember the Sago, West Virginia Miners
"Jesse was and is a coal-mining man. Jesse's gandpa and his daddy's side died in a mine exposion. Coal mining runs deep in the blood of many of our families."
Reverend Donald Butcher
Buckhannon, West Virginia
Jesse Jones, 44, died with 11 other miners after the January 2, 2006 mine explosion in the Sago coal mine.
Borderline Humor: Free Market, Capitalist, Worker Exploitation Training Course Offered
Dr. Bill the OTBL blogger walks into a cafe with a shotgun in one hand and a bucket of buffalo manure in the other. He says to the waiter, “Give me a double latte you socialist, working class swine."
The waiter says, “Sure, coming right up." He gets Dr. Bill a tall latte, who then drinks it down in one gulp, picks up the bucket of manure, throws it into the air, blasts it with the shotgun, then just walks out.
The next morning Dr. Bill the blogger returns. He has his shotgun in one hand and a bucket of buffalo manure in the other. He walks up to the counter and says to the waiter, “Give me a cup of coffee”. The waiter says “Whoa, fella. We’re still cleaning up your mess from the last time you were here. What the heck was that all about, anyway?”
Dr. Bill smiles and proudly says, “I’m in training to be a free-market, capitalist, worker-exploiting pig. You know! Come in, drink coffee, shoot the shit, and disappear into my corner office and spend the rest of the day cutting and pasting Ludwig von Mises quotes into really long and boring posts that only grown men who never read anything more indepth than the pictures of Penthouse find so extremely intelligent that they find it necessary to call me "doctor Bill'.”
Note To Mark Pribonic at OTBL
Misinformed ignorance is curable...
Redneck stupidity ain't!
I noticed a post over at ontheborderline.net by Mark Pribonic titled "Self-Reliance." He pulled it from a web site out in Wyoming. It compared a 2005 blizzard with 52 inches of snow and 80 mph winds to Hurricane Katrina. Above is a comparison picture of a Wyoming blizzard and Hurricane Katrina. Below is an what Prubonic posted under the heading of "General Humor:"
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Subject: Why Wyoming is a great state!
Wyoming News Bulletin
This text is from a county emergency manager out in the western part of Wyoming after the storm.
Amusing, if it were not so true…WEATHER BULLETIN
Last winter in Wyoming we recovered from a Historic event —may I even say a “Weather Event” of “Biblical Proportions” –with a historic blizzard of up to 52 inches of snow and wind to 80 MPH that broke trees in half, stranded hundreds of motorists in lethal snow banks, closed all roads, isolated scores of communities and cut power to 10’s of thousands.
FYI:
George Bush did not come...FEMA staged nothing...No one howled for the government...No one even uttered an expletive on TV...Jesse Jackson did not show up...Nobody demanded $2000 debit cards...No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House...No one looted...Phil Cantori of the Weather Channel did not come...And Geraldo Rivera did not move in.
Nope, we just melted snow for water, sent out people on horseback to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars, fired up wood stoves, broke out oil lanterns and put on an extra layer of clothes because up here it is ‘work or die’. We did not wait for some affirmative action government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for ’sitting at home’ checks."
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I hi-lighted the last sentence, because I believe it helps illustrate what kind of thinking goes on at the OTBL blog site. Look at those pictures above. If you've lived in Wisconsin for a few decades, you've seen some substantial blizzards. Only a heartless, selfish redneck would be stupid enough to compare a blizzard with Hurricane Katrina. I'm sure if you read between the lines of the sentence in red, you can understand that racism is alive and well in the good ol' US of A.
Check out the pictures below. They show the day after the Wyoming blizzard and Hurricane Katrina. I hope Mr. Pribonic notices the family struggling through the flood waters is white folks. I hope Prubonic knows that two of the parishes in New Orleans each have a population equivalent to the population of Wyoming. I hope Pribonic knows Katrina devastated a section of the Gulf Coast the size of Great Britian.
...and to think it's people like Mr. Pribonic and the OTBL klan who think they know how best to run this country.
What would Jesus say?
1/08/2006
I Compared: OTBL Post Is A Cheapshot
Last week I read a post on ontehborderline.net titled "You Compare." The post links to a home school advocate site. The site compares two letters to the editor published recently in the Charlotte Observer. One letter writer is a 19-year old education major at Appalachian State University in Boone, KY and the other letter writer is a 14-year old home schooled in Charlotte. Below are the two letters as they currently appear in the Charlotte Observer. I used these copies, because -- for some reason -- they are slightly different in the OTBL post.
Haley Price, 19, Appalachian State University, Boone: As an education major, I feel the most pressing issue is the public school system. The idea engraved in No Child Left Behind is noble, but the way in which the government has gone about it is doing nothing but pushing good teachers out and making young people less than eager to join the education field. How are we expected to solve world problems and make them better for future generations when the future generation is not even literate? Where is the logic in sending boys and girls to fight overseas when they don't even know the location of the country they are being sent to?
Post comment: "That 'graf' is absolutely horrible. Not even Fisk-worthy. And then... "
Dane Keil, 14, home-schooled, Charlotte: "While it may not be the nation's top priority, finding alternate sources of energy is very important. If we had homes, cars and businesses that ran on electricity generated from wind, solar and hydroelectric power, we would have less dependency on foreign oil. One area to consider is electric power generated by the tides. A tidal generator works on the natural movement of the ocean, thereby providing a virtually inexhaustible energy source."
Post comment: "It's a sad but unsurprising commentary on our schools that a 14-year-old HEK can write a more literate and cogent paragraph than a 19-year-old education major."
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Maybe I'm missing something in these letters, but they both seem adequately written. Some of the sentences are long and wordy and could be revised. Although they are not English-teacher perfect, I don't see any evidence that would condemnemn either writer to literary hell. However, check out these comments to this post:
Comment by ChoosingLife ([EMAIL]), 1/4/2006 @9:59 pm
"This should be a red flag to people that socialization, aka socialism, has taken over as top priority in government schools, to the detriment of education. No matter what your parental preference is for your children, e.g., government education, charter schools, home education, or vouchers for private school, education should be about education only leave the socialization and socialism indoctrination out of taxpayer-funded government schools. Supervised socialization should be for parents' discretion after the education has been completed to merit a passing grade to standards of old. Taxpayers should not have to pay for socialists/isms to be indoctrinated into their children without parents permission. Dr. Dobson has some fantastic resources available on his web site: www.Family.org. Just type in "homeschool", and you'll receive pages of information and examples of what was discussed in this original post."
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I find it interesting that OTBL'ers Choosing Life plays the socialist card so quickly. How quickly judgmentsements are made ontheborderline.net! From a couple wordy paragraphs by a 19-year student, we jump to a condemnationnation of the public education system and the glorification of home schooling. I work on this site as a supporter of education -- regardless if it's public, private, homeschooled, etc. No provider of education is perfect. Part of effective education is to have patience, understanding and empathy with the student. With this in mind, I e-mailed letter writer Haley Price to get her side of the story. She quickly responded to me and provided the following answers to the questions I submitted to her:
Mr. Nelson,
Thank you for your concern. I would be more than happy to answer your
questions.
1. Yes, I have attended public schools in North Carolina from 1st to
12th grade.
2. The following is the saved letter that I sent the Charlotte Observer
(not known, might I add, for it's highly accurate editing staff):
As an education major, I obviously feel that the most pressing issue in
America is the lack of substantial growth in the public school system.
I think that the idea engraved in No Child Left Behind is noble, but
the way in which the government has gone about it is doing nothing but
pushing good teachers out and making young people less that eager to
join the education field. As a principle, I think that most people
would agree that a more educated society is a better one. How are we
expected to solve the current world problems and make them better for
future generations when the future generations that we are growing are
not even literate? Where is the logic in sending young boys and girls
to fight overseas when they don't even know the geographical location
of the country they are being sent to? Education and the problems
therein should defiantly be a top priority for the American people and
it's government.
3. I never rewrote the letter. All of my responses, as they always are,
come straight from my reaction after reading the question.
4. I tend to rely, I suppose sometimes too much, on the spellcheck in
the email server that I use. Other than that, I simply do a quick scan for accuracy of the message I was trying to convey and let that be that.
5. My Word application is set to check both spelling and grammar.
Again, thank you for your concern and have a wonderful New Year!
Haley Price
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Haley's response to my question strike me as very honest and intelligent. Part of the criticism leveled at her in the OTBL post dealt with spelling. Evidently the Charlotte Observer is responsible to a large share of the criticism focused on Haley. I don't know how the other letter writer wrote his letter, but we do know that Haley typed it in e-mail, spelled checked it and sent it to the paper. It appears to be a spontaneous response to a question posed by the newspaper and not a homeschool writing project with mom and/or dad guiding the hand of the writer...
This OTBL post is another excellent example of their agenda. They will twist something as innocent as a young college student's letter to the editor in a monsterous, socialist conspiracy from which only Dr. James Dobson can save us.
How do you spell "fruitcakes?"
Dr. James Dobson Speaks!!!!!!!!!!
"My observation is that women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership."
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"One of the problems with sex education... is that it also strips kids - especially girls - of their modesty to have every detail of anatomy, physiology and condom usage made explicit."
--
"State Universities are breeding grounds, quite literally, for sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV), homosexual behavior, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, alcoholism and drug abuse."
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Admin's note: I believe that final quote would also apply to most local bars frequented by high school dropouts and graduates not currently enrolled in a college degree program.
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