history quiz

Loyal readers. Here's the latest little history quiz.

Tell what you remember about the circumstances surrounding this picture. You can do it by email or by "comment".

from the "Loyal" opposition

#Occupy Wall Street

If you've heard about it and want to read more about it, and look at some pictures, go here:

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OccupyWallStreet

The resistance continues at Liberty Square and Nationwide!

CLICK

In Saginaw and the surrounding area, the police have recently seized 36 guns (as well as gambling paraphernalia, cars, money, and people). When things like this happen, the police always say something comforting like, "It's good to get those guns off the street." Or they say, "These are guns that aren't going to kill anymore people."

I appreciate the sentiment. It is nice to have some guns off the street, although I doubt that those guns will be noticed. As fast as they are seized, they can be replaced.

Counterbalance the efforts of law enforcement against illlegalities such as guns, drugs, gambling, and violence, and you have an industry that is perpetual, eternal, and ever-threatening to good folk like us.

more Mari

readers recommend

While we were away on our travels, some loyal followers sent the following: (If you need the cites for the articles, ask me.)

IRISH MIKE sent a link to an article in Rolling Stone which discusses the effort by the Republican Party to reduce the number of votes cast by their opponents.

All told, a dozen states have approved new obstacles to voting. Kansas and Alabama now require would-be voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering. Florida and Texas made it harder for groups like the League of Women Voters to register new voters. Maine repealed Election Day voter registration, which had been on the books since 1973. Five states – Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia – cut short their early voting periods. Florida and Iowa barred all ex-felons from the polls, disenfranchising thousands of previously eligible voters. And six states controlled by Republican governors and legislatures – Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin – will require voters to produce a government-issued ID before casting ballots. More than 10 percent of U.S. citizens lack such identification, and the numbers are even higher among constituencies that traditionally lean Democratic – including 18 percent of young voters and 25 percent of African-Americans.

SPARTY sent on a reference to a recent New Yorker article that suggests that many Americans have become deliberately perverse, preferring to suffer inconvenience and even harm to themselves rather than see other people be happy.

I was struck by this passage commenting on a new book by Thomas Freidman and Michael Mandelbaum in which the authors wring their hands when comparing U.S. public services with those in China and Europe:

The reason we don't have beautiful new airports and efficient bullet trains is not that we have inadvertently stumbled upon stumbling blocks; it's that there are considerable number of Americans for whom these things are simply symbols of a feared central government, and who would, when they travel, rather sweat in squalor than surrender the money to build a better terminal. They hate fast trains and efficient airports for the same reason that seventeenth-century Protestants hated the beautiful Baroque churches of Rome when they saw them: they were luxurious symbols of an earthly power they despised....Americans are perfectly willing to sacrifice their comforts for their ideological convictions. We don't have a better infrastructure or decent elementary education exactly because many people are willing to sacrifice faster movement between our great cities, or better informed children, in support of their belief that the government should always be given as little money as possible....

.....the crucial point is that this is the result of active choice, not passive indifference: people who don't want high-speed rail are not just indifferent to fast trains. they are offended by fast trains, as the New York Post is offended by bike lanes and open-air plazas: these things give too much pleasure to those they hate. They would rather have exhaust and noise and traffic jams, if such things sufficiently annoy liberals. Annoying liberals is a pleasure well worth paying for....

In the long story of civilization, the moments when improving your lot beats out annoying your neighbor are vanishingly rare.

HOME

We are home from our trip to the States of WASHINGTON and OREGON. We had many very good experiences and saw some fantastic sights. This is a trip we've wanted to make for quite a few years. Having left a lot undone and unseen, we hope to go back there sometime.

I will be updating BIRCHES in the next day or so, but this evening, it's off to my 50th reunion. I've never really cared much for the class reunion idea, and have only attended the first 2, years and years ago. But now, I'd like to see whom I've outlived.

MARI

my favorite and most beautiful barista

BIRCHES IS ON HIATUS FOR A FEW WEEKS.

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.