Washington DC – Congress is considering sweeping legislation that will provide new benefits for many Americans. The Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA) is being hailed as a major legislative goal by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition.
‘Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society,’ said California Senator Barbara Boxer. ‘We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they have some idea of what they are doing.’
In a Capital Hill press conference, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pointed to the success of the U.S. Postal Service, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. Approximately 74 percent of postal employees lack any job skills, making this agency the single largest U.S. employer of Persons of Inability.
Private-sector industries with good records of non-discrimination against the inept include retail sales (72%), the airline industry (68%), and home improvement ‘warehouse’ stores (65%). At the state level, the Department of Motor Vehicles also has an excellent record of hi ring Persons of Inability (63%).
Under The Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million ‘middle man’ positions will be created, with important sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.
Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given so as to guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable employees. The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations that promote a significant number of Persons of Inability into middle-management positions, and gives a tax credit to small and medium sized businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires.
Finally, the AWNAA contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the Non-Abled, banning, for example, discriminatory interview questions such as, ‘Do you have any skills or experience that relate to this job?’ ‘As a Non-Abled person, I can’t be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them,” said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as a lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint, Michigan, due to her inability to remember ‘righty tighty, lefty loosey’. ‘This new law should be real good for people like me,’ Gertz added. With the passage of this bill, Gertz and millions of other untalented citizens will finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Said Senator Dick Durbin ( D-IL): ‘As a Senator with no abilities, I believe the same privileges that elected officials enjoy ought to be extended to every American with no abilities. It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her inadequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great Nation and a good salary for doing so.’
20
Aug
CNN is running a survey that means something:
Should corporal punishment be banned in schools?
Yes, 44%, 61725
No, 56%, 80104
Total Votes: 141829
Now, I’m with the No’s on this one. I come from the pre-ban days when teachers just whipped the fire out of kids. However, it wasn’t really like a scene from The Wall. My first introduction to whippins came in third grade. I was about nine years old. My teacher was a lady named Mrs. Smth. She was big. She always looked mad. And, when you entered her class, hanging on the blackboard for all to see, was something like this:
We did what we were told in Mrs. Smith’s class. Mainly because she had the firepower, and it was obvious from looking at her she was more than willing to use it.
Through the years the presence of the infamous three hole wooden paddle lost it’s intimidation. We just became acclimated to its presence. So, around 8th grade or so, a couple of teachers made it a point to use it, in full view for all to see. The sound of striking a buttock just right with the perfectest paddle of all time is unforgettable and distinct. If it was just a glancing blow, it didn’t make the full thwack. Although the spankings didn’t happen that often, you were judged by your thwack level and flinch level. By the time we got to high school, teachers used them all the time. If a particular teacher was opposed to using one, they had designated thwackers. And, they always picked the best. I got my fair share. I was definitely in the top five for my class. I just could never top Mel. Mel was a pro. An obviously experienced pro. No matter my thwack count, Mel probably doubled me. When it became obvvious that paddlings had lost their effectiveness, you were given detention hall. I much preferred paddling. It was over quick and you didn’t have anything to explain to your parents.
Now, in my day as well, if you got paddled at school, you might very well get even worse at home. Parents always sided with the teacher. You also didn’t have kids shooting up schools and generally disrupting the learning environment for everyone else back then either. Both the neutered teacher and the Jeremy’s shooting up schools are both phenomena that occurred after I was safely out of school.
Which leads me back to the CNN poll. If there is no fear of retribution for uncivilized behavior in school, on a level the student understands, then what’s to stop the kid? And, if the kid never learns what the limit to the uncivilized behavior is, in a way they understand, then what’s to stop them from pushing the limit higher and higher? For most kids, detention hall is just more of the same. The punishment is being in the school in the first place. Staying there longer is just more of the same. What all kids understand is pain. A proper spanking, with the proper tool, is a stinging sensation that is easily remembered the next time they attempt to do the same uncivilized behavior. I can still recall my but tingling when I got a notion to do something wrong. And, if done normally, causes no lasting harm. Not even terribly fleeting harm.
So yeah, I voted “No”. Even if your kid doesn’t need a spanking, just seeing that perfect disciplinary tool, the three holed wooden paddle hanging on the blackboard right above their assignment will have some impact. Knowing that teacher could use it on them would have a lot more. Knowing their parent will double the pain at home without even asking the teacher will have the most impact.
Kids will learn diplomacy later.
Sure, there are abuses. Sure, there are limitations. But, to completely remove a teacher’s ability to control their class is what’s causing these recurring serious problems with students never learning to respect others. If their parents won’t enforce some discipline and respect ( fear ), at least let the schools do it.
20
Aug
I picked on Ms. Tubbs Jones a lot here. It was easy. I don’t think politically two people could be more apart. However, I was quite shocked and disappointed to hear of her passing. She was in her prime. I wish her family condolences.
Received this via email. It’s so true in so many ways:
A biker is riding his Harley by the zoo, when he sees a little girl leaning into the lion’s cage. Suddenly, the lion grabs her by the cuff of her jacket and tries to pull her inside to slaughter her, under the eyes of her screaming parents.
The biker jumps off his bike, runs to the cage and hits the lion square on the nose with a powerful punch. Whimpering from the pain the lion jumps back letting go of the girl, and the biker brings her to her terrified parents, who thank him endlessly.
A New York Times reporter witnessed the entire event. The reporter addressing the biker says, ”Sir, that was the most gallant and brave thing I saw a man do in my whole life.”
The biker replies, “Why, it was nothing, really, the lion was behind bars. I just saw this little kid in danger, and I just did what I had to do.”
The reporter says, “Well, I’ll make sure this won’t go unnoticed. I’m a journalist from the New York Times, you know, and tomorrow’s paper will have this story on the front page. . . . So, what do you do for a living and what is your political affiliation?”
The biker replies, “I’m a U.S. Marine and a Republican.”
The journalist leaves. The following morning the biker buys The New York Times to see if it indeed brings news of his actions, and reads, on front page:
U.S. MARINE ASSAULTS AFRICAN IMMIGRANT AND STEALS HIS LUNCH
Now, I’m definitely no fan of Roaseanne Barr, so proceed at your own risk. She had this to offer about Angelina Jolie ( among other, probably worse, things ):
So, according to Barr, if you’re black, you HAVE to vote Democrat. Voting Republican would be an abomination of your roots, since you’re black and all.
I’m not even going to go into how wrong she is. But, I’ll just point out that nearly 1/2 of the time since Reagan has been president has been presided over by Democrats. So, this imaginary economic assault on Africans who have nothing has been done by her own party.
Is there a sane Democrat Roseanne out there?
A friend of mine sent me a petition on facebook. I get them all the time. I almost never “sign” them. Signing them means you get inundated with stuff I don’t want. However, if it’s really that important, I might. Probably won’t, but might. So, imagine my response when I saw this:
Petition: Contraception is NOT Abortion!
Well, that seems obvious enough to me. So, I had to check it out. What I got was this:
20,000 people have joined this group in just 2 days! Please invite your friends!
* * * * *
It seems unbelievable, but the Bush Administration is quietly trying to redefine “abortion” to include birth control. The Houston Chronicle says this could wipe out dozens of state laws that protect women’s reproductive freedom and protect rape victims. This “rule change” doesn’t need congressional approval.Can you join over 250,000 others in signing this emergency message to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, whose department is considering this rule change right now?
Click here to sign:
http://pol.moveon.org/contraception/?rc=fb.cnotaMoveOn and Planned Parenthood will deliver the petition to Secretary Leavitt this coming week.
Petition Text:
“Contraception is NOT abortion. The Bush Administration’s proposal to change the definition of abortion and reduce women’s access to birth control must be stopped.”
If you haven’t caught it yet, if you click on that link, you go straight to moveon.org.
I hate moveon.org.
They are everything that is wrong with politics today.
They put the “swift boat” in swift boating. They just got beat at in 2004.
They circumvent everything McCain-Feingold intended.
They are ruining the United States of America in every conceivable way.
Have I made myself clear how I feel about them?
So, I knew when I saw that link there would be something bad wrong. This is actually the point of contention they are complaining about:
Specifically in regards to situations where:
…the new requirement is needed to ensure that federal money does not “support morally coercive or discriminatory practices or policies in violation of federal law.” The administration said Congress had passed a number of laws to ensure that doctors, hospitals and health plans would not be forced to perform abortions.
Now read that first part again. You don’t even have to read it carefully. But it seems to me totally contradictory from one part to the next. In simple terms, one can not terminate something that never happened. They are not redefining contraception. They are including the morning-after pill as an abortion process in assumption. However, according to morningafterpill.org, their assertion is that morning after pills are an emergency contraception only. It does cause an abortion, it just doubly assures that if you forgot your pill or condom or whatever, you can make doubly sure you don’t get pregnant. Under that assumption, this wouldn’t apply to the rules “change” moveon.org is so wild about. What will happen if this rule change is accepted as proposed is that hospitals accepting HHS monies will have to provide ALL options to someone who is considering abortions. That, as far as I know of, from nurses in the field, is what happens now for the most part. Since they don’t know the circumstances, they just provide all the options available and go with what the patient requests. However, since abortions are not performed here, they are given a list of where to go if they choose that route.
In our case, absolutely nothing would change.
Now, I am not so naive to think there are not medical facilities with vested political agendas, so I’ll assume in this case that some of them try to push their patients in one direction or another. For instance, I seriously doubt a hospital funded by Catholic Charities will be giving patients the option of an abortion. If that hospital is receiving HHS monies, under this change, they will be forced to make the patient aware that abortion is an option and where they could get one.
Not exactly the angle MoveOn.org is giving you is it?
Additionally, since I interpret this as addressing the morning after pill almost singly, and their argument is that it is a contraceptive and not an abortion process, I expect a lawsuit will result that will get very, very, very interesting. Specifically, someone, in order to enforce this rule, will have to prove whether conception has occurred in every single case of someone receiving HHS money and wanting the morning after pill.
Mankind has been debating that issue for decades.
The net result as I predict it will be:
- the government, at this time, does not have the ability to prove when conception actually occurs and therefore can not determine what is technically prevention or abortion. So, that part will be nixed.
- The rest of the rule change, when a lawsuit compels Catholic Charities to offer abortions as an option, will be nixed as well.
- Lastly, not one single person who has signed or does sign that petition at MoveOn.org has even read the rule. If they did, they wouldn’t have signed the petition.
I’ve seen this a couple of times:
Sure, they’ve been spotted together a few times, but the bottom line is no. Obama doesn’t appeal to the rational, middle of the road Democrats who would think it would be swell to sell out his party. He also doesn’t appeal to the rabid Republicans who would jump ship to support a Democrat candidate just to help out a Republican who has traditionally shown little loyalty to his fellow party members. In addition, Hagel’s voting record would make it impossible for the two to consistently stump together and speak as one voice on a LOT of issues.
I’m getting really tired of media “speculating” that every person Obama, and McCain as well, appears in public with is “a potential running mate”.
Obama will pick who Obama picks. I’m sure that is probably what’s going on in Hawaii right now. He’ll weigh the impact of his short list, how they get along together ( read agree on issues ), and whether or not that person will bring something to the campaign table ( read votes and contributions ). What I do not see is Obama, or McCain for that matter, picking someone that will either distract their core voters, or upstage the candidate. For that reason, Hagel doesn’t have a chance.
Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters wonders how the John Edwards flap has affected the 2008 Presidential race:
Well, it’s not terribly clear to me. I like math. Math makes things black and white. However, when it comes to caucuses and primaries, math doesn’t always mean much. So, all we can do is guess at what might have happened. I’ll use the first primary, Iowa, as my example. Going into the caucuses, the polls were fairly split between the top three. Although the assumption in the article is made that Clinton and Edwards were appealing to a seperate demographic than Obama, the numbers don’t really support that. Obama was just beating them both straight across the board, not by a whole lot. So, in my opinion, if Edwards had been completely out of the race, Clinton and Obama would have simply split that voting block. The result of the vote however, did not reflect the polls. When it was all said and done, Obama got more delegates than Clinton and Edwards combined regardless of the parity of the polls and irrespective of the fact that Hillary and Edwards got more votes when combined. So, assuming Hillary got every single one of Edwards’ votes in Iowa, the delegate distribution is not guaranteed to have changed by one single vote.
After Iowa and New Hampshire, Edwards hung on for dear life. But, he was effectively done. The media immediately focused on Obama and the collapsing Hillary saga.
Now, this story also has added entertainment value in that Edwards has done this immediately before the Democrat National Convention. The only reason this has any importance at all is that Hillary has still not taken her name off the ballot. The only reason she would not at this point is hoping for some act of God to intervene. Could this be the act of God? Could this motivate all the Edwards delegates to jump to Hillary?
Even if they did, it wouldn’t change a thing.
Some Hillary supporters are making a deal of this. They need to just get over it and stop looking for some vast left wing conspiracy. Fact is, Obama ran a better campaign than Hillary and Edwards combined in regards to the primaries. Now, the intangible here as I see it is not that it would have changed the Democrat nomination process, but a bigger picture emerges. If you do toss in the Edwards peeps directly into the Hillary camp, it means Hillary would have beaten Obama nationwide by over one million votes.
Now, the argument will be for unity at the Convention. And, there will be a certain amount of unity going into the fall. But a good percentage of people have a hard time supporting a candidate that just beat their candidate. Especially when their candidate won the actual war that it was all supposed to be about.
Getting a million more votes and losing the election rings some bells for a lot of folks my age. Seems like it happened not too long ago. Everyone knew the rules going in, and it still wound up in court and being drug out way longer than most people knew it should have been.
And, for the most part, those are exactly the same players that were involved in the election of 2000. All this speculation is doing is playing into their hands that the election was rigged for Obama the whole time, reinforcing their resolve to not vote for the guy who stole their election, again.
Now, given most media would NOT pursue Edwards during October of last year, I fully expect that same media to NOT pursue the bitterness a lot of Clinton supporters might be holding over the revelation that the guy who lost the race is the guy they are expected to support. But, we don’t have to worry about whether or not media decides to report on the results in November.
Just don’t act surprised.
7
Aug
I have started a new blog with a friend of mine. I’ll be splitting time over there. I have attempted to sort of keep this blog as an objective look at politics in general, with a few of my own biases tossed in. However, the other blog will be purely in the perspective of a traditional moderate Republican. Drop by and let me know what you think!
Just when I thought it was safe to assume Keith Olbermann was completely nuts, he tops himself. This is what the pride of the left wing had to say about John McCain’s recent ad featuring two hot young celebs:
KEITH OLBERMANN: What about when it backfires? Because it seems like the celebrity ad continues to echo. And Bob Herbert of the New York Times was on this network pointing out something I don’t know that anybody noticed before this morning. That not only in that McCain ad where there two underdressed blondes mixed with the black guy in the ad, but there were also images of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Washington Monument, and the Victory Column in Berlin — as Bob Herbert put it, “phallic symbols.” Three phallic symbols, two blondes and Barack Obama. So this is not just a sexist ad anymore. This is what they used to called “miscegenation,” isn’t it? This is what they used against Harold Ford.
JONATHAN ALTER, NEWSWEEK: Well, to suggest that somehow, you know, Obama’s going to-
OLBERMANN: He’s going to wind up dating those women-
ALTER: Yeah.
OLBERMANN: That’s the idea.
ALTER: That’s the oldest and deepest racist, you know, canard in American history, really, is that, you know, the slave is going to come after the wife of the plantation owner. I can’t, sort of, dissect and decode these ads that way. I just, somehow maybe my media literacy is lacking. I didn’t read that out of those ads, but I can see how some people would. And the larger issue, I think, is clear, which is they’re trying to portray him as being uppity. Now, is that racist? I’m not sure, you know.
Wow.
Simply, WOW.
That folks, is beyond nuts. That’s certifiable. There is a word for people who go around seeing a penis in every pointed object. The word is not racist, it’s delusionary. Ithyphallophobia to be more exact. Then, to take Paris Hilton and the Washington Monument and turn it into a black man with a large penis doing plantation owners’ wives that look like Paris Hilton is just amazing. ( Clue here, most plantation owners’ wives never looked like Paris Hilton. )
Now, this is where it gets political instead of space ( as in psychology ). This ad did not really do much for me. I never had any interest in watching it. Now, to say the least, I do. I want to try to follow the imagery that would morph my focus of a boring aging white guy into a black man with a large penis doing plantation owners’ wives that look like Paris Hilton. I really do. So, this ad I’m sure will get a LOT more airplay than it originally did thanks to Keith Olbermann’s fixation with penises.
