home

We have been away for a week, and naturally, I have managed to be inattentive to BIRCHES.

Maybe things will get better this week. I know that one or two of BIRCHES followers have checked in and found nothing new there.

On our schedule as a family, is a get-together with some we haven't seen in quite awhile. Also, we will be canning tomatoes. And we hope we'll have a date with the Skuzzas.

On our vacation, we spent some time with family up north. It's always nice to be in the woods in summer time. We haven't had enough of that lately.

So stick with us, and remember there is room for your "corner" on BIRCHES.

One thing that has been on my mind recently is the thought there is simply not enough work to go around. We have reached a point that mankind has struggled for since time without beginning -- a state of relative worklessness.

Note to MARI:

I can't find my camera.

Rick sez

"Maybe I ain't well educated as good as W Bush but remember, I'm better'n George Washington. He didn't go to school at all."

report card

I decided to try to describe what a public school teacher is, according to prevailing notions:

1. A person getting a pension they don't deserve.

2. A person getting better health care coverage than they deserve.

3. A person with job protections they don't deserve.

4. A person who only works 6 hours a day, if you can call that work.

5. A person who lives too well at taxpayer expense.

6. A person who gets three months off with pay.

7. Someone who will walk out on strike if you don't give them what they want.

8. A perpetual complainer.

9. A person who can't do anything practical. If they could, they wouldn't teach.

10. Someone who looks after kids during the day time. A glorified baby sitter.

11. Someone who tries to teach the children something of value.

12. Someone who does what they do out of love for the job.

13. Someone I remember fondly who helped me when I was troubled.

quick quiz

What can you tell us about this picture?

SCOT's Corner

America has a political problem, but we've seen this coming for some time, haven't we? A party increasingly contemptuous of knowledge and science, built on a voter base beholden to superstition and a quasi-relgious ideology, is one of our two main parties. It serves the purposes of billionaires, and the capital class, but trades on its proletarian appeal to masses of anti-government idiots with their racist anti-Mexican talk, their obsession with guns and abortion, and jibberish about cutting taxes.

Which wouldn't be so awful if the Democrats weren't philosophically adrift. This is Obama's great failure. He is a good man, but perhaps not as great as the man we need.

IRISH MIKE'S corner

My son, a college student, was lucky enough to get a part time job as a laborer in a warehouse, which includes driving a forklift truck. I am glad he got the job, but it put me to reminisce of when I was a college student working as a laborer. In the summer 1972 I was making $5 per hour. It was enough to pay for my college expenses for a year. Now 39 years later my son is also a laborer helping pay for his education and making $8 per hour. Not nearly enough to pay for his education at a state university. The point that got me thinking is that over 39 years, wages have increased for a laborer by only $3 an hour.

In 1972 you could buy a new car for $4,500. Today that same car would cost over $22,000.

A loaf of bread $.25, a gallon of gas $.36, and so on. The purchasing power of one 1972 dollar equals $5.21 in 2010 dollars.

If my math is correct, in 39 years inflation has increased by over 500%, yet a laborer’s wages have only increased by 63%.

Just reminiscing.

I predict

I predict that in 10 years, there will not be, in most states, any graduation requirements or government issued high school diplomas.

I also suspect that only a small percentage of students will be educated in state supported schools, if there are any such schools left at all.

things to cut: veggies or stamps?

In Saginaw County, where I live, one in five people (20%) are now on food stamps. More than 1/3 of children here (37%) are now being fed with food stamps.

This may go on for a long time; well, at least as long as "the people" agree to keep the food stamp program. Now, if you would like to see some real misery, start chopping that program.

Go here to play with an interactive map that shows it all. CLICK

Goodbye and good riddance, James Ford Seale.

Another really bad man has died in prison. This is how he would like to be remembered, I'm sure. He has gone to his own great nightmare.

help!!

QUICK --

I am in the throes of a new evaluation of our President, and need some rapid assistance in maintaining my loyalty to him.

Can you tell me how it can be construed that in this Debt Ceiling "crisis" Obama did not sell out the Progressives?

P.S. I'm serious.