POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Drunk with Sean Hannity

No . . . you're a great American.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Joan Walsh: I’m Not Stupid, Like Sarah Palin

Totally not!

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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In Debunker

Playing a few holes of Rocketman's favorite hypothetical:

News flash: President Obama hasn’t held a formal press conference in almost a year (274 days and counting) yet has golfed 32 times since he was elected—eight more times than President George W. Bush did during his entire presidency.

Bush stopped playing golf in 2003, feeling that it wasn't the kind of thing a war-time president should be doing, and knowing that he'd be pilloried for it if he did.

Strangely, for an article in Salon, a literary critic argues that Burroughs' Naked Lunch is fundamentally pornographic, with no redeeming thought content. One of the most chilling passages in film is in a biopic on Burroughs in a scene where he and Allen Ginsberg are talking on a rooftop about Kerouac, deriding him rather sneeringly as a "nice boy."

Speaking of censorship, my dog Fred eats purple flowers. Hide the Decline videos yanked from YouTube. Fair use, shmair use: Downfall videos pulled. Pam Geller prevails against CAIR in Miami. B-Cast interview with Pam on the subject, here. Via Allahpundit, Comedy Central's disgrace.

I would like to suggest that schools perform an anatomical improbability on themselves.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Jane

Yesterday, I saw my second earthly mom, Jane.

She came to visit our office.

I was elated to see her.

Her hands were covered in dirt.

She had been at the site where her son's mortal cremains will be buried today. I suppose she was making sure it was just so.

She had gone there alone.

She washed her hands and we talked.

I never realized how much my dear friend looked like his mother. Or talked like his mother.

Enoch_Root

AKA. Bobby Donn Brubaker (the most popular man in Mesa, AZ), the Umbrella of Terror, Jack Ketch.

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Why Christians are Hated – Part II

In a previous post, I mentioned a short conversation I had with a Christian woman and posed the simple question, "Why are Christians hated?"

Among the answers:

- Mike commented: In a word: "Christ."

- lamblock: "Because we are an obstacle to their hedonistic ways?"

- Rocketman: "...elitism sneers at a belief in something that cannot be verified by the senses nor co-opted, ideologically speaking, for their personal gain."

- Serr8d: "They are likely projecting their own inner self-conflictions; their own powerlessness to deny the natural…the attractions. So, confused, they want all reminders pushed far, far away; out of sight, and they think, out of mind."

- Fr. Jerry: "They are anthropocentric in their worldview, Christians are Christocentric. In this narcissistic culture most prefer worshipping man than God."

- Princess Nell: "People hate evangelical christians….because evangelical christians proselytize and evangelize. Sadly, all christians have become associated with evangelism. Evangelism is the act of saying Our Christian Way is the best, the one truth….and so we are going to rape you an steal your stuff (if you are black or brown or yellow people) or just oppress you with religious doctrine codified as law if you are fellow citizens. And we are doing this For Your Own Good, to save you for Jesus."

- Thorgina McSaladtosser: "We’ve replaced God with a mirror—truly sad."

- CMS2004: "First off... people always hate the majority. Secondly, Christians live their lives with OTHERS in mind (Love God, love thy neighbor, honor thy mother and father) and the self-involved and ego-centric folks in this country simply can’t wrap their minds around loving someone other than yourself...Thirdly, Christians follow rules, and most people don’t want to have to follow rules. “Christian haters” ...[want their cake and to eat it too]... They see that they can’t have it both ways, and so they hate us."

- yours_truly: "because it is hip to hate ... [the Christian]"

- Nishibot:  "Science is high-value in the emerging Third Culture….conservative christians are anti-science.
It is cultural hygiene."

- Johanna:  "I think some people simply can’t wrap their heads around the fact that christians are called to love God first and others second. That’s how I try to live. I’m not very good at it though. But I try."

- Blackiswhite: "it has far more to do with a belief in an absolute truth in something outside of man, rather than a sanction to follow whatever man impulses man harbors in his heart despite knowing the truth. Christians are society’s salt and light. The lovers of self recoil from Christianity because it is a seasoning, and attack it freely without understanding that it is also a preservative. Still, the knowledge of wrong and right is still in the heart of every person, and the banishment of God and those who adhere to his rules from the corridors of “polite” society brings the lovers of self no solace, which I can’t help but to find amusing."

Keeping in mind the open question (why Christians are hated), what's revealing about this list?

Enoch_Root

AKA. Bobby Donn Brubaker (the most popular man in Mesa, AZ), the Umbrella of Terror, Jack Ketch.

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What’s up, New Jersey?

We've been hearing a lot lately of desperate tactics from public unions. There's the semi-joking prayer from the NJ teachers union, asking God to take Gov. Christie home to Jesus. [this is a very old joke, btw, with many different targets. But I am with those who have decided if the very peaceful Tea Parties are seen as a call for violence, then Christie's humorless demand for a firing is just fine by me.]

Those NJ teachers need to wish for the deaths of all those voters who nixed all those school budgets on Tuesday.

But let's see why the public unions are bringing out their Christie voodoo dolls:

"I said all during the campaign last year that I was going to govern as if I was a one-termer," explains New Jersey Governor Chris Christie on a visit this week to the Journal's editorial board. "And everybody felt that it was just stuff you say during a campaign to sound good. I think after the first 12 weeks, given the stuff I've done, they figure: 'He's just crazy enough to do it.'"

Well, that could go all sorts of ways. I heard tell of a politician who said it would be worth it to be a one-termer as opposed to a mediocre re-elected pol [not in the cases examined: being a failed one-termer. That's a possibility.]

What has he been up to since taking office?

While the state lost 121,000 jobs last year, education jobs in local school districts soared by more than 11,000. Over the past eight years, according to Mr. Christie, K-12 student enrollment has increased 3% while education jobs have risen by more than 16%. The governor believes cuts in aid to local schools in his budget could be entirely offset if existing teachers would forgo scheduled raises and agree to pay 1.5% of their medical insurance bill for one year, just as new state employees will be required to do every year.

A new Rasmussen poll found that 65% of New Jersey voters agree with him about a one-year pay freeze for teachers. But the teachers union wants to close the budget gap by raising the income tax rate on individuals and small businesses making over $400,000 per year to 10.75% from its current 8.97%.

Mr. Christie doesn't think that state and local budget problems can be fixed without tackling education spending. That's because the state has a hybrid system in which local property taxes fund schools and some of the money is redistributed by the state from affluent areas to poorer communities. According to Mr. Christie, New Jersey taxpayers are spending $22,000 per student in the Newark school system, yet less than a third of these students graduate, proving that more money isn't the answer to better performance. He favors more student choice, which is why he's ramping up approvals for charter schools.

I do wonder sometimes, why it's seen as a function of government to be the primary provider of education. But let's move on.

Other government employee unions are also trying to play hardball, but when even Democrats talk about needing to rein in the unions, you know something is afoot. Such as politicians realizing that union money is not enough to get elected.

I want to note a funny electoral calculus that crept up on the public unions when they weren't looking:
1. Public union retirees, due to various demographic trends, are starting to outnumber the active working public employees
2. The "traditional" public employee pension is out of step with the private sector in a major way, and thus changing the benefits for new employees is low-hanging fruit
3. Many of the public employees move to other, lower-tax states upon retirement... taking their pension money, and their votes

Why I think public union retirees may find their benefits slashed, no matter the various legal arguments is this: these people have pissed away their political leverage.

They are no longer providing services, and thus cannot strike if their retirement benefits are changed; current employees don't have solidarity as they don't have the rich benefits to look forward to, and will not strike on their behalf. There is little influence with politicians because, for all the money that can be donated to campaigns... look what happened to Corzine.

Anti-public-union pols are doing well right now, because there's a class war going on, and it's government class vs. taxpayer class. Funny how that happened.

Meep

Meep is a member of the Irish Catholic mafia, having a suspiciously high number of green-eyed, red-haired friends. While she doesn’t have red hair herself [except when she goes into the sun (rare for any vampire)], she does have green eyes. She’s a raving Papist and is a life actuary on the side [i.e., she counts dead people]. An amateur pain-in-the-ass [willing to go pro!], she likes covering retirement, mortality, math, and education issues.

Way To Go, Ohio

Ohio has been shaping up as the new American epicenter of Islamism, and Jawas have the report on how political appointees with diploma mill degrees are collaborating with (unindicted Hamas co-conspirators) CAIR and other Islamic front organizations.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Malkin on Goldman Sachs at the White House

O, what a tangled web. My favorite one is the high-flying financial lawyer, Donilon, who's now a Deputy National Security Adviser.

You may recall that some time ago I argued that Iran was opening a western front in Latin America. Seems the Pentagon has noticed.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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I Hope This is My Last Post About Bodily Fluids (For a While, Anyway)

Technically I'm a massage therapist. But because I'm broke, I detail cars with my mom. Today we did a Toyota Yaris that was so disgusting we had to take the front seats out so we could clean the dried puke from the center console and floors.

I made fun of the Yaris all day because it's such a silly little car. As I continued to work on it, with the dog hair, the dust, the dead insects, the puke, the "what the heck is that sticky stuff on the windshield?!" I thought to myself, "I don't care if it is a stupid little car. No car deserves this."

We've done some pretty gross vehicles before--I can't tell you how many hours I've spent vacuuming, vacuuming, vacuuming dog hair. Or steaming out spilled candy/juice/milk/I-don't-want-to-know stains from children. Scrubbing mud and blood out of ranch and hunting trucks. But the thing about those disgusting vehicles is you feel the life in them (uh, hopefully you don't actually find anything living in them, though). Even though they're gross, you can tell that someone drives them and loves them. Heck, before I started cleaning cars for a living, my own vehicle was a total pig sty but I love my Jeep and there isn't a vehicle out there right now I'd rather have.

This little car was a repo, and one of the most unloved vehicles I've worked on. You might say, "Well, if they knew it was going to get repo'ed, of course they treated it like crap." I thought the same thing. But would I puke in a car because I bought it and couldn't pay for it? Would you? Do I even want to know the answer to that question?

Falahime

Falahime Blah blah blah, Wyoming, blah blah, massage therapist, details cars, used to sell beer, blah blah, hunts big game. That’s about all there is to me; I’m pretty simple.

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Become a Fan of Treacher’s Knee

There's been a concerted attempt in some quarters to squelch the free speech of Treacher's Knee. Whatever you may think of Treacher's Knee's posts, please make it clear that you support its right to speak out.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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