The Internet’s ability to sustain the Long Tail, to provide enough space to cater to the interests of what would otherwise have been a small and scattered group of people sharing similar interests, has allowed not just communities of perverts, but connoisseurs of esoterica to flourish. For example, there are a strangely large number of sites devoted to Last Meals. For some reason people seem very interested to know what people ate, or chose to eat, before they died. The motivation for this morbid curiousity ranges from the exalted sociological and culinary investigations of the Last Dinner on the Titanic, a best-selling book which has inspired numerous historical recreations of the final meal served on that Night to Remember, to the more inexplicable fascination of with menus selected by the Death Row prisoners on the final mile.
One source of interest is probably the unanswered question of what we ourselves would order if our last hour had come. The Edwardian elite on the doomed Titanic might have preferred Veuve Cliquot believing they going to live, but what would they have chosen knowing they were about to die? Would they have dulled themselves with drink? Or would they as so many others have done, opened the windows to look their last, with senses undulled at the sky and the sea. Although the policy which denies alcohol and tobacco to condemned men (because prisons are now alcohol and smoke-free zones) may distort choices, a large number of those condemned to die on Death Row prefer soda and comfort food — bars of chocolate, ice cream, beef enchiladas and the like, to pate de foie gras and lobster americaine, as their last meals on earth. Society may pretend to run on champagne but maybe it really travels on Dr. Pepper.
There’s something about comfort food that takes us back to when it all seemed right. The longing for the food of our childhood may explain the popularity of an obscure pie shop in Woolloomooloo, which has served Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, Marelene Dietrich, Kerry Packer and more recently, Sir Richard Branson, Russell Crowe, Kevin Costner, Brook Shields, Pat Rafter, Olivia Newton-John, Jerry Lewis, Billy Crystal, Pamela Anderson, Sara O’Hare, Lachlan Murdoch, Kerri-Anne Kennerley, Adrian Greiner, Anthony Bourdain and Colonel Sanders — served them a meat pie topped with mashed potato, pureed peas and brown gravy. It may explain why the loco moco or plate lunch is popular in Hawaii, because when you come right down to it, what could be better than having two scoops of rice and one of macaroni salad plus a hamburger topped with a fried egg?
In times of trouble we go back to the old ways, the criminal with his simple food to the time before he was a perp and societies with their Tea Parties to the time before cool and sophisticated wrecked it all. Societies like individuals have a way of reverting to checkpoints in the same way that a database administrator goes back to a known good configuration when all the current data is sour. When we are lost we instinctively return to a place when it all worked before things went wrong.
America is now in the middle of a crisis but it has still not reached the point of ordering its last meal in the sense of trying to get back to the place it was before. On the contrary, as Mark Steyn points out, it is still ordering champagne it can’t afford on the basis that the future is anything Europe does; and therefore anything Europe does it must copy. The irony that Europe is literally in the midst of a “Greek tragedy” — with Greece pulling at the financial strands that will unravel the EU — is lost to Washington. It is in the grip of the need to flatter itself by imitating others and has ordered full speed ahead. The result will not only be a Greek tragedy, but a ersatz one, with fake columns of styrofoam. Writing in the Washington Times Steyn says of Greece:
They’re at the point where the canoe is about to plunge over the falls. America is further upstream and can still pull for shore, but has decided instead that what it needs to do is catch up with the Greek canoe.
And the best way to catch up is to double down on the welfare state and hopefully reproduce the societies that can’t sustain it.
What’s happening in the developed world today isn’t so very hard to understand: The 20th century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to. In America, the feckless insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento, Albany and elsewhere are screwing over our kids and grandkids. In Europe, they’ve reached the next stage in social democratic evolution: There are no kids or grandkids to screw over. The United States has a fertility rate of around 2.1, or just over two kids per couple. Greece has a fertility rate of about 1.3: 10 grandparents have six kids have four grandkids – i.e., the family tree is upside down. Demographers call 1.3 “lowest-low” fertility – the point from which no society has ever recovered. And compared to Spain and Italy, Greece has the least worst fertility rate in Mediterranean Europe. …
Think of Greece as California … the problem is there are never enough of “the rich” to fund the entitlement state, because in the end, it disincentivizes everything from wealth creation to self-reliance to the basic survival instinct, as represented by the fertility rate. In Greece, they’ve run out Greeks, so they’ll stick it to the Germans, like French farmers do. In Germany, the Germans have only been able to afford to subsidize French farming because they stick their defense tab to the Americans. And in America President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are saying we need to paddle faster to catch up with the Greeks and Germans. What could go wrong?
What could go wrong? I wah-wah-wah-wonder. And while we figure it out, pass the Dr. Pepper.
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Mashed potato flakes and ‘gravy’, with canned corn, served on a frisbee, brings back memories.
Just remeber, anything tastes better deep-fried.
Seriously though, a discussion of the waning abilities and adventurousness of American taste buds is an interesting one. Vast swathes of the country exist on boring iceberg lettuce, white bread, and white-meat chicken with the skin off, washed down with either cheap white wine or “light” beer.
Nothing wrong with this from time to time, but not that long ago we had robust and interesting regional cuisines, with riotous flavors, and a few good dishes that would have been found all over.
I don’t know if the growing bland-isation of the American palate has to do with laziness, an overall obsession with avoiding ANYTHING challenging including flavor, an attempt by those possessing pseudoscience to live forever (by virtue of the alleged ‘healthiness’ of an all bland-and-chicken diet), or some combination of these.
I’ll take fishcakes and beans (made with bacala, not fresh, of course), barbecue, jambalaya, elk tenderloin, fried chicken with collards, key lime pie – any imaginative and provocative and densely flavored dish – over the all skinless white-meat chicken all the time snoozerama, thank you very much.
America is now in the middle of a crisis but it has still not reached the point of ordering its last meal in the sense of trying to get back to the place it was before.
No, not necessarily. It all depends on where your paradise is. If it’s only in the past, then you need Bob Dole and his Bridge To The Past. But I think the American spirit is still forward to some Jetsons science-fiction paradise, but the point is, it’s something new and better, not nostalgia even for a stable past.
And California’s problem is not demographic. Oh, sure, supporting a couple of million illegal immmigrants is expensive, but the point is that the legislature (and the voters for initiatives) have simply ignored good financial discipline, just like 50,000,000 Americans with bad loans. And, the legislature completely froze solid about twenty years ago – so we KNEW it was just a matter of time until the same problem hit the federal government.
And sho’ nuff, the same financial un-discipline has also now hit Washington DC with the advent of the Obamanation, and the moronic, if not clinically paranoid schizophrenic Nancy W. Pelosi. Saw her on ABC News this morning, spewing paranoid fantasies in her monotone botoxed voice and face, … OMG.
But remember, the financial un-discipline hit FIRST on wall street at AIG and Citibank. When the people lead, the leaders do follow.
I just realized something silly from something I wrote earlier today on another PJM blogger’s blog. There’s really no such thing as “all-you-can-eat” when the ship is sinking.
no mo uro, as much as I dislike using anecdotes as evidence, let me tell you a little story.
The Panda Express chain recently introduced a dish they call SweetFire Chicken Breast, which is part sweet and part fiery… somehow you taste the sweet a moment or two before the fire hits, but that’s not really the point.
SweetFire was intended to be a temporary menu item, but it proved to be so popular that they’ve made it permanent.
Not sure if that demolishes your theory or supports it… perhaps people are so tired of bland cuisine that something sweet and fiery becomes an instant hint, but perhaps it’s proof that we are still somewhat adventurous when it comes to our food.
It’s been a long winter in north Florida. Homemade jellies and preserves on my biscuits start the day well—-native crabapple, mayhaw, fox grape, muscadine, chickasaw plum, flatwoods plum, elderberry, native black cherry, calamondin, Meyer lemon.
As to my compatriots’ last meals in their canoes, let them eat cake because not 1% of them work as hard as I do.
California’s problems ARE illegal aliens. Who run up medical bills, schooling (exclude Hispanics and Blacks and California’s schools and students are the equal of any other nations), prisons, and so on.
Middle Class Whites don’t consume much social spending or government services. And yet must pay for it. This is the xerox copy of Greece and Spain and so on paying for Muslim immigrants.
Absent Illegal aliens (and their descendants), California would be a middle class, prosperous state, with about half the mandatory budget expenditures for prisons, schools, health care, and so on. The Budget would be balanced.
However, the rich White elite, the Gentry Liberals as Kotkin called them, made war on the conservative in spending/social ideas middle class, and imported a helot class, to turn California into a obscene parody of Sparta — effete hereditary “knowledge class” elites and helots building McMansions or providing nanny services.
In Britain, the BNP is appealing to White Women on the idea that NHS would be much better, and more services accrue to natives, if they could just kick the immigrants out.
The logical extension of ObamaCare is that free six-month breast exams and testing and cancer care, from screening to surgery to chemo therapy to radiation treatment, can be had by the White Female voter (the supporter really of ObamaCare and Liberalism and so on) …
If only Illegals, and Welfare recipients are excluded. The formula, 310 million residents of America – 30 million (Illegal Aliens, Welfare Recipients) = free breast cancer screening and treatment, no restrictions, is a winning one to women.
If the Titanic is sinking the question is not last meals but who gets the lifeboats?
One largeproblem in California not touched upon by Whiskey are the out-of-control unions, which is also a problem in Detroit, DC and other places with problems coming up with enough taxpayer funding to cover their entitled privileged classes.
I’ve never seen a breakdown of what color(s) union members consist of, but I have been noticing a distinct lack of pallor in Post Office employees, for one example. And I know when I used to have to work with the Patent Office in DC, it was damned near impossible to get anyone on the phone who was understandable because of their heavy ghetto accents. And isn’t it interesting that now that the auto workers unions have finally pushed *that* industry over the edge into government bailout territory, the only people left in Detroit are unemployed and unemployable blacks?
I just don’t know what we’re going to do about the class(es) of people WHiskey refers to, because we’ve been giving them preferential, go-to-the-front-of-the-line affirmative action for 50 years now, and, if anything, it’s *worse* than it was when Martin Luther King had his dream. And now we’re out of money.
no mo uro,
I’ll toss out another possibible cause for the blandness. With the rise of feminism, the skills of older generations of women were played down. Not as much time was spent teaching grandma’s recipes to the next generation because the latter were told to aim for such things as equality in school sports. This generation was then more vulnerable to the nutritionist’s advice and the convenience of packaged and fast foods. Comfort foods are typically what one received at home, but today they are probably just as often what you pick up at the convenience store. I don’t have much hope for the healthy eating movement unless it incorporates an element of mother-child bonding. A 3rd grade teacher nagging you to eat your raw carrots is just not going turn them into a comfort food.
Love the clip, Wretchard – I don’t think you want to get that Del Shannon thread started, though.
I’ve seen a few of those go on far too long and turn way too dark. Not as dark and ugly as today’s Frank Rich column, mind you, but there’s a certain something about that song. Frank is so panicked about the failure of the progressive agenda these days that he’s busy trying to find or create the next Tim McVeigh to save the Democratic Party and Western civilisation. He thinks that strawman will save him and the rest of the Obami from getting what’s coming to them from the regular folks whose grandchildren are expected to pay for this.
Now let me sit back and listen to the Musitron play that lick in the bridge on more time.
Ridgerunner – I’m in Jacksonville, and I’ma looking for you next time I’m holding a hot fresh biscuit, friend. We’re busy smokin up some pig, here. I bet we can work a deal.
“like French farmers do. In Germany”
erroned !
I corrected the info on MS’ blog under “frogqueen”
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/greece-236468-government-america.html?orderby=TimeStampDescending&oncommentsPage=1
Well, I don’t know the actual numbers in California, so I can’t say just what the situation would be without illegal aliens. Certainly less severe, but I can’t say by how much. Would not put the state into the black, I don’t think. Let’s see … well, this doesn’t break out illegal aliens, but gives a framework, see p 13:
http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/BudgetSummary/FullBudgetSummary.pdf
major numbers
expenses
$35b K-12 education
$25b health and human services
$11b higher education
$8b corrections
revenues
$49b personal income taxes
$28b sales tax
$9b corp tax
let’s say 10% of the education numbers are for illegals, 30% of the human services, and I dunno maybe 20% of the corrections. That’s 3.5 + 7.5 + 2 = $13b expenses on illegals. But, some of those illegals also contribute to the revenues, let’s say, oh, 5%, say $4b. So the expense of carrying the illegals would be around $9b. Problem is, the state has a budget deficit on the order of … $60b. WHAT, $60b? When total revenues are on the order of $85b?!?!?!?
Holy Mackerel.
“It may explain why the loco moco or plate lunch is popular in Hawaii, because when you come right down to it, what could be better than having two scoops of rice and one of macaroni salad plus a hamburger topped with a fried egg?”
Minor correction: the loco moco is a subset of the plate lunch, of which there are many types. The standard loco moco also has brown gravy ladled over the whole mess, including the mac salad if you like. Makes you wonder how Hawaii got to the top of the State rankings for health and longevity.
#5 CW
From your lips to God’s ears.
Actually, I think most humans are genetically wired for flavorful cuisine but that laziness and other things (nutrition nazis and government-approved food pyramids etc.) get them to adopt blandness as a desired end.
#6 ridgerunner
Homemade jellies and jams are something I’ve made for years. Domestic fruit is good but wild ones are supreme.
I have wild plums and wild cherries here but no mayhaws, damn the luck.
#9 VB
Have to add your theory to the ones I posted. I’ve encountered tons of women under 50 who are inordinately proud of the fact that they don’t cook or sew, signifying, I guess, that they’ve “made it” and are as good as or better than men (apparently skill in the domestic arts marks you as being evil like Sarah Palin or some such nonsense).
Pity. I think everyone should be able to cook. Perhaps missing out on what the culinary world has to offer with their consumption of boring but “healthy” skinless white meat chicken and “immortality inducing” boring farm raised salmon is its own karmic punishment.
#7 Whiskey
You forgot to point out that the free breast exams have SPECIAL savor if they come at the expense of some treatments for menbecause that will signify elevated status vs those men.
Look at the expenditures for breast cancer research vs prostate cancer and any claims on women’s health being “underfunded evaporate. Women have been able to use the power of “greatest victim” to acheive an increased status in terms of receiving medical research money which affects exclusively female afflictions.
Be of good cheer, the falls are some distance away, time enough for yet another chorus of that old favorite, Ramona.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIGYA9PynfY
Lounging in the stern of the drifting canoe
Ramona sang the sweetly dulcet voice
The ukulele chords rang sweet and true
As toward the falls they drifted quite by choice
Ramona, when day is done you’ll hear my call
Ramona, we’ll meet beside the waterfall
I dread the dawn when I wake and find you gone
Ramona…
Mr. Fernandez writes:
“For example, there are a strangely large number of sites devoted to Last Meals.”
There is a (to me) grating grammatical mistake in that sentence. I encounter it frequently, these days. Though it jumps off the page and grabs you by the throat, I suspect some readers won’t immediately spot it. If you don’t, check below:
What is the subject of the verb “are”? It is “number”, a singular noun. Thus the verb should be singular: “…there is a strangely large number of sites…”.
English is, overall, grammatically poor and undemanding. All the more reason to uphold what few standards it has.
California isn’t called the Golden State for nothing. It has a long history of gold diggers coming to the state expecting to get rich at public expense.
It isn’t just gold. It’s land. It’s water. It’s federally subsidized industry. And it’s state taxpayers living beyond their means and then blaming a convenient scapegoat. The rest of the United States is expected to bail out California because Californians supposedly have a divine right not to live as frugally as Americans elsewhere.
Rich Californians routinely hire illegal immigrants to water their lawns, cook their meals, baby-sit their children, and wash their clothes. They then buy illegal drugs from street criminals. Then they rant and rave that their taxes are too high while demanding all the best publicly funded services for themselves. Then they get upset when neighborhoods of illegal immigrants and street gangs get too close. So, they leave to somewhere else in the West.
Then, these exiles will then insist upon hiring illegal immigrants to do the housework, buy illegal drugs from the street gangs, demand lower taxes to pay for police and schools, and then wonder why there’s a crime wave in their new town. So, they leave again, bringing their problems with them. People throughout the West have a word for this – Californication.
Los Angeles is big, powerful, and it takes whatever water and electricity it likes from elsewhere. And since “environmentalism” has taken hold, California insists upon exporting its pollution to other states. Even the dairy farms of Eastern New Mexico are a result of corporations evading Californian environmental codes. When coal-burning plants are built elsewhere, they are called “jobs”. When coal-burning plants are built in California, they are called “pollution”.
Illegal aliens?? Illegal aliens aren’t the problem California is facing. No, they are the effect of a bunch of rich Californians who can’t bring themselves to do without the goods and services that illegal immigrants and street gangs deliver. If illegal immigrants didn’t have such a ready market for their services, they wouldn’t be here. If drug gangs didn’t have a ready market for their products, they would just be a bunch of low down punks.
No, it is rich Californians who are causing one problem after another and then expecting the rest of the United States to wipe their rear ends. If you want to stop illegal immigration, tell rich Californians to take care of their own children instead of fobbing off childcare to some stranger named Maria. If you want to stop illegal immigration, tell rich Californians to stop watering their lawns and then expecting some stranger named Jesus to cut the grass. If you want to lower the crime rate, hire more police and expect them to arrest rich people who want to get high. Even better, tax every marijuana joint to the skies and earmark that money for midnight basketball.
It’s easy for Californians to blame the Chinese, or blame the Mexicans, or blame the El Salvadorans. But there is no getting around the fact that rich Californians insist upon both labeling people by race and playing races off against one another, all the while acting so self-indulgently that their civilization crumbles as fast as it gets built. Illegal immigrants exist because rich Californians want them here. If they didn’t hire illegal immigrants, those immigrants would leave this country. So perhaps it isn’t the barrios that are the problem. Perhaps it is in the neighborhoods of ranch-style mansions for rich executives with their coke parties.
So the next time we hear any more complaints against illegal immigrants, let’s crack down on their rich employers.
Damn, you’re making me hungry. I will consider that I have not lived until I have had the loco moco.
A friend of mine lived on Saipan for some years. In one phone conversation he was making fun of the odd syntax of the menu at a Korean diner. One dish, he said, was “chicken with all the kind of spices that you like.” I told him “What’s wrong with that? That sounds good! In fact I’d like some right now!”
The system will not and cannot be reformed. It can only continue as it is until it collapses. Going off the grid in the US and establishing a presence in some sane country (one not Western social democratic) is the only option.
Ben Crain wrote: “Thus the verb should be singular: “…there is a strangely large number of sites…”.”
Since we are all going over the waterfall together, and since I just had the most wonderful curry (in Dallas!), we might as well talk about grammar instead of Last Meals.
Your suggested rewrite is logical, but unsatisfying. Either in the original or in the rewrite, the brain still stumbles over whether a “large number of sites” is truly singular or plural. The easiest sentence flow comes instead from changing “number” to “numbers”. As in, ‘there are strangely large numbers of sites …’.
Hey, we are just wasting time until the economy goes over the falls and we can officially start the necktie parties for politicians & bureaucrats. Should we include lawyers too?
16. Ben Crain
I noticed that too. At least he used “there are” instead of “there’s”.
Chew on this and then beg borrow or steal the money to buy yourself at least one good “Assault Weapon”.
Obama to seek new Assault Weapons Ban
And of course more ammo.
Best served clean and lubricated and loaded.
Papa Ray
What is the subject of the verb “are”? It is “number”, a singular noun. Thus the verb should be singular: “…there is a strangely large number of sites…”.
I think that both are acceptable usages. If you do a Google search on the phrase “there is a great number” you get approximately 22 millon citations; with “there are a great number” you get 9.97 million.
But how much of this is literate usage as opposed to common misusage? One indicator is to see whether “are a great number” appears in well-edited and parsed text, such as the jurisprudence of higher courts. Certainly the phrase is used in Canadian Supreme Court: “… and I may add that there are a great number of cases, where accused have undergone second trials, when it was established that the plea of “autrefois acquit” or “autrefois convict” could not be successfully raised.” It also appears interestingly enough, in lower court decisions involving Brown vs Board of Education. “There are a great number of cases, both federal and state, that have dealt with the many phases of segregation.” GK Chesterton uses the phrase in reviewing the poetry of Robert Browning.
Virginia Woolf uses the phrase in Jacob’s Room. “Life is thoroughly pleasant, although unfortunately there are a great number of fools about.”
Collins seems to think it’s alright and uses this sentence to explain the uses of the word ‘all kinds’. “You can use all kinds of to emphasize that there are a great number and variety of particular things or people.”
Based on the Google count, “is” seems preferred by more than 2:1. But “are” is by no means completely out of bounds.
“For example, there are a strangely large number of sites devoted to Last Meals.”
but if you simpify it, is plural:
‘There are sites’ vs. ‘there is sites?’
‘There are many sites’ vs. ‘there is many sites
So yes, you would have to drop ‘a’ and add ‘s’ to number.
At the rate things are going our last meal will be ramen noodles. It is all we will be able to afford.
Papa Ray @ 21: re: “Obama to seek new Assault Weapons Ban”
molon labe
Best ones I have are 8mm Mauser action made in former Yugoslavia AND Ruger Mini-14 Ranch Rifle. No ugly black guns. Never needed them. Also have that ATR-100 in .270 WIN that is downright deadly (1/2 deg MOA @ 100 yds right out of the box). They can ban all the ugly guns they want. It will not help them one bit.
That article – the inaccuracies, lies and downright stupid statements just blare out LOUD. If the US has sunk so far as to buy that dreck then we deserve the pain and anguish that is coming our way. Until the rest of the country makes some serious efforts to right itself, we deserve the gov’t we are going to get – good and hard.
BTW, accepted a good position in Texas recently. Moving there as soon as the house sells here. Start work in two weeks. Will camp with relatives until then. At least when the SHTF I will be in a place with mostly reasonable citizens and can have some hope of weathering the pain and destruction.
I truly quake when I see the depth of the destruction that the libs and the DNC are thinking is good governance. They will set their cause back decades or at least until the memory fades once again.
Josh –
Expenses in Education for Illegals in California are about 50%, of the total, including ESL and various other remedial efforts. If you include the descendants of illegals almost all of whom are high-cost and low achieving students, requiring extensive remediation and anti-gang, dropout efforts, that cost rises to approximately 65%. [Note: Pew link here has California K-12 enrollment as 47% of students for Hispanics, IMHO that is an undercount, but lets round off to 50%]
About 75% of Health and Human Services are consumed by illegal aliens and their descendants. About half of corrections are consumed by illegal aliens and their descendants.
So the correct expenses figure would be: (.5)* 35 + (.25)*25 + 11 + (.5)*8 = 38.75 billion.
Revenues, illegal aliens pay almost no personal income taxes, since most of it is under the table. Nevertheless let us be conservative and have a 25% reduction. The same for sales taxes (illegal aliens spend most of their money on remittances for people back home and are the major source of income for Mexico, ahead of oil exports). There is no impact on corporate taxes.
So the correct revenue figure would be (.75)*49 + (.75)*28 + 9 = 66.75 billion, as opposed to expenses of 38.75 billion for big line items. If I read your link to the PDF correct, CA total revenues would be $88 billion and expenditures $86 billion. Phony numbers to be sure, but definitely adjustable. Getting rid of illegals would on the plus side reduce expenses by 40 billion while reducing income by only 19.25 billion, on a “big line item” analysis.
We can play these games all day, but the net end is that illegal aliens (and their descendants, crucially) are huge drains on the public treasury, while contributing almost nothing. Mexican day laborers who stay here and bring their kids up do not turn into millionaires. Or even middle class people. They remain poor, largely illiterate, with their kids illiterate and poor as well. This makes them net HUGE drains on the public treasury.
California has still, a substantial middle class. It can afford and well afford the University of California, a large state bureaucracy, and and higher education.
Look at the line items on your link. The TWO HIGHEST NUMBERS by expense are K-12 education (driven by poor, illiterate, Spanish only speaking kids of illegals, and their descendants), and Health and Human services.
How much welfare do middle class people use? NONE. How much do Illegal aliens (and critically, their descendants) use: A LOT.
Bottom line: California is screwed because it is Mexico’s Welfare system. Other states take the overflow, and that has hurt them.
Alexis — California did quite well during the initial booms of the 1880′s-1920′s, the post WWII booms. The state usually ran a surplus, even while building the University of California system from nothing, the Cal State system, the freeways, the aqueduct system, and so on. Even with constricted geography (only the coast is really livable) and water issues.
What changed was the people — from a White majority middle class to poor Mexicans who were illiterate in two languages, and brought the politics of Oaxaca or Guerrero or Michoacan with them.
This is not due to rich Californians hiring nannies or gardeners from Mexico. There are not enough rich people around. It is due to failure to BUILD A WALL and ENFORCE THE LAWS. To stop illegal immigration, a continuous border WALL (akin to the Berlin Wall) must be built and PC, “Civil Rights,” and all the rest thrown out as citizenship is checked for employment, health benefits, schooling, and so on is rigorously enforced with serious penalties. The Supreme Court has held that children of Illegal Aliens must be educated in whatever state they reside in, by the taxpayers of that State. This is a luxury we cannot afford, any more than giving Illegals welfare, health care, or jobs (that rightfully belong to Americans). This means penalties against Wal-Mart for hiring Illegals, and telling LULAC, MeCha, and La Raza to shut up when raids happen, illegals are sent to prison (for five years, then sent home), and those who cannot prove citizenship are denied jobs, schooling, health care, and the rest.
Otherwise California and the US will continue to be in huge budget deficits, to provide Mexico social welfare, over its own citizens.
I can assure you that US Citizens cannot just waltz into Mexico and take jobs, vote, receive benefits, obtain schooling for their children, and this is as it should be.
But yes, bluntly and concretely, IT IS THE FAULT of Mexicans in California illegally as to this State’s decline. Los Angeles population explosion is almost ENTIRELY DRIVEN by Mexican immigration — LA is the second largest city by population after Mexico City of Mexicans.
Talk like a pirate:
“For example, there be a strangely large number of sites devoted to Last Meals.”
Yargh.
Spaghetti – frankly I don’t understand how anyone can live without it.
Strangely enough, large numbers of people do….
@26 Josh
Which it is stranger still. Yargh yourself, mate
If I were ordering my last meal, I would order:
3 doz. oysters on the half shell (or clams if oysters weren’t in season)
A bowl of clam chowder
Fried shrimp
Cole Slaw
Any trip to a Calif. emergency room will confirm that it is 90% full of Hispanics and in my area that means the majority are illegals. I’m told the schools are the same, but my kids long ago graduated and when they were in school we lived in an area that was primarily military families, as we were, so I can’t really say. I know at that time if a military kid missed school, the school lost $90 per student per day, a subsidy from the Fed. that was supposed to off-set the expense of having so many transient military families in the area, as if we didn’t have to pay property taxes which supported the schools.
The Unions are a large part of the problem, costing the state billions in pension plan payouts.
Via SFGate:
“Over the next 16 months, the state has a $20 billion deficit in the general fund budget. That’s the equivalent of nearly a quarter of the current spending plan of $84.5 billion. Much of that spending is locked in because of voter initiatives and federal mandates, limiting options for lawmakers. The deficit this year is more than the state spends on higher education and prisons combined.
The state’s pension fund, CalPERS, has $16.3 billion more in liabilities than assets at the latest calculation, although that number fluctuates with the system’s investment portfolio. Adding to that, a state report released this month calculated that California also faces a $51.8 billion bill – in 2009 dollars – for the health and dental benefits of state retirees and future retirees.”
whiskey – I see nothing on that page that differentiates illegals, unless “foreign born” is supposed to be that. And I’m not sure if I really want to call an illegal’s child born here and therefore a citizen, as legal. So we could fiddle the numbers endlessly. Say the cost for illegals is somewhere between $10b and $20b.
(googling further, the conventional number seems closer to $10b, about 3m illegals out of a total of about 12m hispanics)
I have nothing against chasing them all home, except as I’ve said we’d probably bring about half of them back with papers, but at least those might be less of a drain.
(and you might have to calculate the burden on the US if the Mexican economy collapsed entirely in part because we return them 10m illegals and deprive Mexico of remittances)
Even twenty years ago, the majority of welfare even in California went to white, IIRC. But now, if 1/3 of the state is *legal* hispanics, you have to figure 1/3 of state welfare is going to go to *legal* hispanics. Again, with households with US born children confusing the issues.
The Hawaiian Loco Moco is a true “fat bomb”…while the Americans of Japanese Ancestory (AJA’s) have lifespans that exceed the norm, and seem to favor the udon noodle and broth with sushi, the Hawaiians, Tongans and Samoans who eat the Loco Moco’s are plagued with obesity, diabetes and a short lifespan. In Samoa the treat is Palusami. Its made with taro leaves ( very healthy) and canned corned beef (not so healthy)…but man it really tastes good with a Vilima Beer.
Hawaii like California is also broke. 40% of the population works for the government, 60% for the “tourist” industry (if you can really call it one). The current down turn has tourism way off and yet the State refuses to downsize the unionized governement workers. If it wasnt for the US military bases on Oahu the State would be totally bankrupt. The Dems have the Akaka Bill up again to give race based soverignty to the “Hawaiians” which if it passes will doom the state to legal battles over land rights and affirmative action…total disaster thanks to Bill Clintons appology for the Annexation of Hawaii during his second term which spurred on the soverignty movement.
Sara @ 28: on the retirements, yep, and we can’t really blame those on the illegals.
No Josh, I don’t blame the illegals for the huge union payouts, I blame the nanny-state libs who have run this state for forever, the teachers union and SEIU. We now pay one of the highest sales taxes in the country at 8.5%, my fees for car tags went up over $125 this year to $425 for a 5 year old vehicle. Our state tax rate is crazy high. I cannot afford to live here and they keep me so broke, I can’t afford to move away.
Josh: If you talk to my son, he’ll blame the illegals for keeping wages so low.
Josh/3; says “But I think the American spirit is still forward to some Jetsons science-fiction paradise, but the point is, it’s something new and better….”
Jetsons? –THANKs for giving me an excuse to post this piece of raw 60s American power jazz (don’t call it schlock until you’ve listened –preferably thru your headphones).
Anyhoo it extends wre wre wre wretchard’s illo de retro by arti fact music –really this need to be loud –it’s *so* packed –be prepared for birdman trumpet neon flash across the inky void –on the ‘daughter Judy’ phrase –
With all this snow and blizzard – storms across the north US, Algorologists claim global warming will kill us all as this was the hottest winter in recorded history. No facts allowed, place your checks into the mail to the White House Global Warming Committee on Saving Planet Earth.
Oh Wretchard, how do you do it??? That opening to Crime Story is one of my all time favorite openings to any crime drama, *ever*!!!
now of course, I have to link the original “Runaway” by Del Shannon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TLLcvWeiKw
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/94746/
There are many parts of the United States that don’t have illegal immigrants. The reason is simple. When local businesses don’t hire illegal immigrants, they go away. When local businesses hire illegal immigrants, they stay.
Certain professions have an importance that vastly outweighs their numerical importance. Nannies and gardeners may be few in number, but they function as hooks or anchors for communities of illegal immigrants. They not only get people accustomed to seeing unfamiliar faces in rich neighborhoods, but they accustom the ruling classes to a normalized acceptance of illegal activity. When the ruling classes think of their maid or gardener whenever they think of “illegal immigrants”, they won’t crack down on illegal immigration.
Iowa Public Television has had a program produced in Los Angeles at 5:30 in the morning aimed at Spanish speaking nannies on how to take care of children. Think about what this means.
Who hires illegal immigrants in California? If there aren’t enough rich Californians, rich growers, powerful corporations, drug addicts, and other illegal immigrants to hire them all, that means somebody must be hiring them. Now, who could they possibly be…? Could it be possible that “middle class white people” in California could be hiring illegal immigrants?
This isn’t just about law enforcement. It’s about Californians obeying the law for a change. If you don’t want illegal immigrants around, don’t hire them. Make it unfashionable for employers to break the law. The problem, though, is that California has a long history of lawlessness. Too many people think they are above the law. And that goes triple for Hollywood.
Police officers cost money. Are Californians willing to raise their income taxes to pay for doubling the number of police officers in their state? Are Californians willing to cut institutionalized water subsidies to southern California to pay for more law enforcement? Are Californians willing to levy stiff fines against employers who hire illegal immigrants? Are Californians willing to give up access to water from the Colorado River in exchange for money to hire more police officers? I don’t think so.
Of course many Mexicans see California as an object of their “reconquista”. The Aztec nationalism of La Raza and its secessionist agenda to create a Spanish-speaking Aztec homeland in the American Southwest ought to be opposed by all patriotic Americans. I am under no illusions that either a Mexican “reconquista” or the creation of an Aztec sister state north of the border would be disastrous not only for the United States but also to loyal American citizens who happen to speak Spanish. The federal government of the United States is, for all of its faults, an improvement over the federal government of Mexico.
I am under no illusions about the nature of Mexican irredentism and Aztec imperialism. They don’t bother to hide their bloodthirsty nature. Yet, you could build a wall from San Diego to the Rio Grande fifty feet tall, ten feet thick, and thirty feet below the ground – and you would still not stop illegal immigration into California unless and until employers of illegal immigrants are punished in the pocketbook. If any Wal-Mart store hires illegal immigrants, that store must get closed down and the building must be confiscated by the state. Anything less would be a slap on the wrist. If any farm hires illegal immigrants, that farm must become the property of the State of California.
The State of California must not shy away from confiscating the property of those who hire illegal immigrants, even if it means confiscating Pepperdine University, Citgo gas stations, or the Los Angeles Times. The only way to stop illegal immigration is to stop hiring illegal immigrants and stop subsidizing drug gangs. It’s really that simple.
The “California Way” seems to be “If you got it, flaunt it, and rub everybody else’s nose in just how successful you have become”. It’s about acquiring one token of success after another and not hiding one’s power from anybody. California politics is rough and tumble even by the standards of the American West, where the current ruling faction regularly runs roughshod over its rivals. The political polarization in California is so intense that one wonders if California is already more of an extension of Mexico than part of the United States.
It appears that few rich people from the Sun Belt have learned how to legitimize their power. Instead, they revel in ostentatious display as if they were modern day pharaohs. One wonders if the Hearst Castle led the way for the “California Way”. Look at how the Los Angeles Times crowed about Mulholland’s victory against the people of the Owen’s Valley. Harry Chandler wasn’t particularly shy about expressing his joy at grabbing water for the Los Angeles Basin. How Mexican.
The whole point in the “California Way” isn’t to just take whatever one likes. Oh no. It’s about completely humiliating one’s enemies as if one were imitating a Pharaonic inscription of an Egyptian king whacking a war captive on the head. It’s about making it clear who’s in charge and kicking the loser in the teeth while he’s down. That’s certainly the attitude of Nancy Pelosi in the House of Representatives! It’s about running roughshod over other people and reveling in it. And that’s why the Left and Right are so utterly polarized in California. It’s about more than just policy – it’s about all out vendetta.
The ideology of the Dennis Kearney lives on, never mind how laughable it is that an immigrant to the United States from County Cork should be seen as any more American than the Chinese immigrants he sought to exclude.
Alexis: I don’t entirely agree with everything you say in the last two comments, some but not all.
I live in So. Cal in the Inland Empire. We are a very red county, Bush-McCain country primarily. I think the Calif. Way is alive and well in parts of L.A. and up North in San Fran and Marin County, perhaps in Santa Barbara too. But around here it is middle class, military, etc. For instance, the houses on either side of mine are both for rent because the guys who own them are on their ways to Afghanistan for a year. No one around here has the money to keep up with the Jones or for show, we are all barely making it and keeping the utilities on. We have babysitters, usually a relative, not nannies and nary a gardener in sight. The illegals in my area don’t work as gardeners and nannies, they work in the fields, they work in fast food or dry cleaners, beauty salons, etc.
I think you’ll find that those around here feel disenfranchised because the Hollywood libs, the inner-city LA minorities, and the moonbats who live in and around San Francisco dominate because they are the population centers. The whole state could go red and if these three areas go blue, we’re all screwed. And that’s what happens. We hate the No. Cal libs. Look who represents us, Pelosi, Boxer and Feinstein, all from the North. No one is looking out for us down here. Yes we have my Congressman Darrell Issa and when I lived two blocks down the street, my rep was Mary Bono, both Repubs, but with little power. Bono is in trouble within her own party, the Tea Partiers are very dissatisfied with her. Issa is safe and well-liked. But statewide, we have no one.
As a woman, I am constantly embarrassed that we have three powerful women in Congress and every one of them is a D-bagger fool, with Boxer the biggest, dumb as a box of rocks.
I have no problem with immigrants. No problem with Mexicans, who are plentiful, but afterall, they were here first. I do have a huge problem with the illegals.
I’ve just spent 15 minutes checking collective noun and verb agreement in several books, including Strunk and White and Safire’s What’s the Good Word. The consensus seems to be that you have to figure out whether the noun is meant to signify the group as a single entity or as the individuals it comprises. So there is flexibility. The Brits have been more rigid about using a singular verb for collectives, but one of my sources notes a change.
I would say that the adjective “great” seems to direct one to seeing “number” as a single entity, but rather than think this through to the end, I would substitute “numerous.” I doubt that I would win a battle with true grammarians, thus the cowardly evasion.
Papa Ray #21
I’m not worried about a new AW ban. The Dems are too busy with socialized healthcare and the economic mess. Their majority is eroding and playing with gun control would be yet another nail in their coffin.
That being said, I’ve made several “purchases” since last November.
There is another issue in the “a great number of” grammatical conundrum. It’s a stylistic issue. This problem would normally be avoided altogether and the text improved by substituting “there is(are) a great number of” with “there are many”.
This is a common problem. “At this moment in time” substituted for “now” for example. And I’m sorry, but this kind of useless verbosity is an American habit – now being spread to the UK like so many other bad habits.
I recommend the hot and sweet combo flavor, as mentioned by conservative wanderer in comment no 5.
Here’s winner. Take thick cut bacon and put it on bamboo skewers twisting as you go. Then coat with brown sugar and red chile. (red chile is powdered dried chiles, not brown stew) Use the hottest spiciest chile on hand – I use cayanne. Bake in the oven so that the fat drips off and the sugar and spice form a glaze on the skewered bacon. These meatsicles are good for warming up as appetizers. Not quite satay, but strong competition.
Hot and sweet also goes well with beef. Just add the sugar later in the cooking so it doesn’t carmelize before the meat is cooked. This applies as well for molasses, honey, etc.
FC/43; And I’m sorry, but this kind of useless verbosity is an American habit – now being spread to the UK like so many other bad habits.
should cut ‘this kind of’ & replace ‘like’ with ‘as’; to read:
And I’m sorry, but useless verbosity is an American habit – now being spread to the UK as so many other bad habits.
Grits and eggs.
I grew up in California. Lived in SD, Riverside and Monterrey. (Thank God I went to an East Coast University!)
Eldest is a Silicon Valley geek working at UCSC. (Can’t afford SC)
Never is a big word, but I could never go back, at least without enough income (not California based) to totally insulate myself from the insanity.
We could start the I Hate California blog just to trade the stories of insanity.
PS I am not a grammerian…live with it.
The end is near.I don’t mean rump roasts.
Alexis@17,
Sweetly writ. It occurs to me that doublespeak has obscured the issue since WWII. The issue is slavery. What you describe above is as close as the elite class can get to having slaves. But they remain hopeful. Unlimited medical care for everybody? Just optimizing the herd health at taxpayer expense.
It started with them telling US, this was capitalism. Laissez faire, only tempered by gov’t intervention, to protect US from those evil barons of industry, who weren’t. Moving to “infinitely precautionary” at taxpayers’ expense.
So the two dominant political parties are portrayed as business interests vs. the peoples’ interests. Like there’s some natural contradiction. Here, we’re in a struggle pitting Man against State, and both parties are enabling the State. The Repubs are said to be financed by big biz, which claims it needs the low cost workers to survive. Ergo, our borders remain open to the slavers. How’s that wage slave thing workin’ out? And, the other party supports enslaving everyone in the US all the time; not just during business hours.
The scam seems to have been that the Republican position has been merely a carve out in the expanding slave trade, while reducing taxable footprints. H1A visas during 20% and rising unemployment?
Since I was first allowed to vote (Goldwater – you had to be 21), it’s been two slavers inexorably expanding their reach, each always jockeying for position, while acting as if they were diametrically opposed. Reaching across the aisle? Bi-partizenship describes their collusion in the on-going move to involuntary servitude.
BTW, Dennis Farina in that edgy series drove the boat I’ve pined over all my life. Black 1957 Chrysler 300C convertible, with red leather and white top. Now rare and $75 large. The Crime Scene characters would all be in jail on police brutality charges.
AWB:
I think this is excellent. I’m sure that’s why all the dealers were giddy this Saturday at the local gun show. All this legislation (or even the talk about it) will do is support ever increasing, frenzied buying. The show was the most crowded yet that I’ve attended at this site, we literally had to park about a 1/4 mile down a side road since all the lots were brimming full. The facility used to be a regional stockyards, so it had ROOM for tractor/trailers back in the day which has all been coverted to parking. Message to the progs: We are legion. We are mighty.
Prices are back down to reasonable levels, ammo still a bit high but not nearly as bad as this time last year. I even bought into a NRA raffle supporting youth shooting sports… I mean come on, it’s “FOR THE KIDS” and I wouldn’t weep if I managed to win a Rock River A4.
Richard writes: “In times of trouble we go back to the old ways . . . .”
If people have families, they pool resources. But to benefit from family structures, people need to have families (increasingly scarce in the traditional sense) and those families need resources (increasingly stressed in the current recession). Current government policy and economic legislation undermine traditional families, whose resources will be drained to provide for those without family resources, driving more and more people to look to the government for support. Few of the canoes are going to make it to shore.
Whiskey writes: ” . . . effete hereditary ‘knowledge class’ elites and helots building McMansions or providing nanny services.”
Ouch. I wish I could disagree. The knowledge class, primarily denizens of higher education, and primarily at state-funded institutions, is (are, depending on antecedent) on the deck of the ship of state Titanic. Their motto: let the champagne (taxes) flow, as long as the champagne keeps flowing to the campuses.
Papa Ray, I don’t have to stock up…..I still have all m toys from the last time there was a Dem in the White House. Been buying ammo all the time in-between as well!
One problem with State employment in California is that nepotism and cronyism are such large factors. Some State workers seem to view State employment as a vast, lucrative welfare system for their friends and relatives. Often, they are protected from the consequences of unethical behavior by a network of relatives and friends in the State system, built up over decades.
Money is directed to friends and relatives both by manipulation of hiring procedures (resulting in lots of unqualified employees) and by funneling State money to friends and family in the private sector in ethically questionable, and often illegal, ways.
It’s not like this in every single State-run department, but State workers don’t get much done in departments where some of the workers think that the rules are only meant for employees “outside the car”. Reform will not come from the bottom up. And reform imposed by the Feds (as in the receivership of the abysmal health care systems in the prison system) is extremely expensive, and not entirely effective. But at least it results in funding for some very fancy desks in the offices of prison administrators.
Buddy larsen@45: ”should cut ‘this kind of’ & replace ‘like’ with ‘as’”
Very well done.
Karen @53. Google Kentucky Supreme Court Chief Justice Joe Lambert Re: Take over of non-performing county schools in the Commonwealth. Joe developed a set of metrics (janitor to student ratio, cook to student ratio etc) that had a reverse coorelation to school system performance…to a fault.
School systems in most of Ky were (and to some extent still are) fiefdoms of the elected superintendent and his family.
Joe could teach California a lesson or two.
Jo @35: Algorologists claim global warming will kill us all as this was the hottest winter in recorded history.
This exceptionally snowy winter DOES end up being hotter because, ironically, the massive and unusual amounts of snow in many places causes a rise in temperature because of snow’s latent heat. Snow traps heat. So a cold winter day is LESS cold if the ground is covered in snow. You can get the scientific details here:
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/01/warming-induced-by-latent-heat-of-snow.html
And speaking of Gore, he now more-or-less has blood on his hands, as two psycho-warmists got so afraid of global warming that they killed themselves and put bullets into their children, one of whom survived.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/argentina/7344329/Baby-survives-parents-global-warming-suicide-pact.html
Finally, on the subject of bland food. Totally disagree. America has been in a 15 year renaissance of good food. You can now get fabulous gourmet meals even in Tier 2 and 3 cities, meals that were once the sole province of New York, Chicago and a few other major urban areas. Not to mention the enormous success of food shows of all kinds on cable TV (think Rachel Ray). Americans are more into good food than ever before. Sadly, they still spend way too much on crappy processed foods in order to save time.
Alexis @17 Which Dwight Yoakum song about California do you like better, “In the Late Great Golden State” or “I Sang Dixie As He Died?”
Pity most of my generation, they only know “Californication” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and “California Love (No Time to Party)” by 2PAC.
peterike @ 56 “Sadly, they still spend way too much on crappy processed foods in order to save time.” Americans also get too much processed food because King Corn and the Corn State Senators make sure you can buy whatever you want so long as it has corn syrup or starch in it. They are the folks that make sure if you don’t want that crap you have to shop at the most expensive on average supermarket in the U.S., Whole Foods, though there might occasionally be some deals at Trader Joes. Costco would also do well to start selling grain in bulk and not just rice.
It cannot possibly just genetics that explains why Mexican women in Mexico are slender and (or pick another major immigrant ethnic group like Ukrainians and compare) and in the U.S. they’re ballooning. And it is not just the TV, even the gals who go to the gym are not as slim as their cousins back in the homeland.
Why is buckwheat a dirt cheap staple in Russia and an exotic $5.00 per pound health food in America (I am talking about the raw buckwheat, some oatmeals are cheaper)? Couldn’t some of those Iowa corn acres be converted to buckwheat (or more likely, Texas, given that this used to be more common in the South)? Are we all just cattle on a feedlot, and must be fed corn, along with our SUVs?
With mainstream media dying and new media emerging my hope is that some of these corporatist/monopolist tendencies in the U.S. ‘free market’ will be exposed and competition will emerge. David Bossie and Steve Bannon’s documentary film Generation Zero appearing on Fox News was a good start. Hannity usually just mouths the latest GOP talking point, unlike Beck, and is less interesting as a result. This was perhaps the first time I’d seen Hannity acknowledge the de-industrialization of the U.S. (agreeing with Bannon on why the stimulus failed) rather than simply blaming it on Democrats and generic Big Government. It’s not just Big Government. If you want a smaller government, guess what, most of the Fortune 500 with the exception of maybe the Koch Family is NOT on your side, and sometimes Boss Murdoch isn’t either, he’s just the best billionaire media mogul you’ve got for now since he hasn’t pulled the plug on Beck yet. MSNBC on the other hand, is content to keep losing money on Olbermann’s show as good PR for the Obama Administration courtesy of GE. Call it a massive in-kind contribution.
Mr. X. Easy two part fix. 1. Quit yer belly-aching. 2. You and your friends buy what you like….market will supply at an ever decreasing price. It is a law of nature.
Why do we eat corn? Because we are constantly seeking protein, meat protein. Corn fed meat protein gets the best price. Farmers, 70 or 80 years ago, grew corn to use or sell as animal feed, and ate the balance to feed the family. Farmers chase the highest return, just like everyone else.
It is not ‘medias’ fault or ‘corporate America’s’ fault, it is simply demand and supply.
See also Fernan Braudle’s seminal work on the food/ farm practices of everyday people through the ages. Corn (maize) has a fasinating story. You might learn a thing…or two.
geoffgo:
I like your point. It’s about slavery.
I don’t think it’s just about money. It is utterly infuriating to hear from President George W Bush that illegal immigrants do “work that Americans won’t do”. What does he tell American citizens who do the kind of work “Americans won’t do”, that they aren’t really American? Is being an American citizen somehow tied to a refusal to do manual labor?
However likeable President Bush may have been, his remarks on illegal immigration betray a Third World attitude toward work. The United States of America became a strong nation because we are a nation of people who aren’t afraid to work for a living. Yet, President Bush’s remarks essentially label America’s working class as “un-American”. That is wrong.
Americans must stop electing (and letting the political parties nominate) people who sneer at us, regardless of political party.
I don’t blame illegal immigrants for coming here. Usually, they just want to make a living. I do blame employers who hire them for breaking the law – employers who systematically hire illegal immigrants are a class of professional criminals. I blame those who sneer at good honest labor and use race to divide and conquer – they talk incessantly of “the white race” yet refuse to actually crack down on employers. I blame those who sneer at working class Americans who perform the labor that President Bush thinks illegal immigrants are supposed to do – those elitists are the real trash.
The definition of the Third World ought to be any place where the ruling class does not bother to legitimize its rule, a place where the ruling class acts as though work and discreet generosity are beneath them, a place where the rich vie for building the most opulent mansion. Whenever the ruling class is also seen as legitimate, it is possible for a nation to become a great power. Whenever the ruling class is too lazy to legitimize itself, a Third World mentality takes over.
Elitists who seek to legitimize themselves will seek to hide their power within a velvet glove. In war, we need leadership that is more interested in defeating the enemy than keeping fellow citizens down. In peace, we need leadership that understands how America’s strength comes from the people, that a free people with freedom to bear arms and freedom of religious conscience is the backbone of our national power.
America is not and must never be the “New Rome”. We are, can be, and must be better than any “New Rome” ever can be. Architecturally speaking, the Pentagon and the World Trade Center represent departures from the old Roman standard. Perhaps that is precisely why our enemies attacked them.
They are the folks that make sure if you don’t want that crap you have to shop at the most expensive on average supermarket in the U.S., Whole Foods.
I don’t shop at Whole Foods because I can’t afford it. But I can go to my local Stop n’ Shop and not buy one damn thing with corn in it. It’s easy if you actually cook your own food . Granted, as soon as you pick up something in a box or bottle, you’re likely getting corn tossed at you. I live by myself. Dinner tonight is a steak (not prime beef, sadly, too expensive for everyday, but I’ve dry aged my steak in the fridge for a day and it will taste better as a result), broccoli rabe sauteed with garlic, fresh bread and a salad. Nary a corn kernel in sight, except to feed the beef. And I’ll have the whole thing cooked and on the table in under an hour. Though granted, it’s quite a bit more costly than a frozen pizza or some other pre-processed dinner.
That said, another interesting book that covers the history of corn and a number of other staples is Margaret Visser’s “Much Depends on Dinner.” Highly recommended if you are interested in food.
Josh — The problems with illegal Aliens are two-fold.
One: Their kids stay here, remain poor, and a drain on wages, taxes, and welfare/education/prison spending. Whites consume almost nothing in welfare spending, and prison spending, since they commit crimes at a very low rate and are almost never on welfare.
Two: Their kids disrupt the ethnic/racial patterns to provide voting along what Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore said is racial-religious lines. It is in the class interest of Mexican descended nationals to vote against more immigration, legal or otherwise, because it degrades their wages. However it is in their ETHNIC and RACIAL interest to vote FOR IT because it allows them to dominate politics and assume racial spoils victors.
These two reasons are why California is bankrupt. We had about the same per-capita spending ON WHITES during Pat Brown’s era. Whites only consume education spending which is not that expensive. Whites rarely consume welfare (indeed White voters don’t like it for that reason — it is only for other races, not them).
Alexis — Places in the South are experiencing massive invasions by illegal aliens. Virginia’s Richmond, Fall’s Church, and other places far from Mexico, are now inundated by them, with huge rises in social costs for cash-strapped governments. Same for Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and so on. It is indeed a major issue for the South and something even Pew agrees on.
I am constantly astonished by the attitude that race, ethnic make-up, domination by one group, and changes do not matter. It is as if shouting with fingers in ears will make reality go away (the similarity to Europeans wrt Muslims who want to dominate them is striking).
I am not ashamed of my White skin. Nor do I wish to be a discriminated against minority, facing constant physical threats from Non-Whites and official discrimination and constant ethnic cleansing efforts. I have no illusions of what my life would be like as an ordinary White guy in a non-White majority area because I already live it as as second class citizen in my own State. Second class and dropping, in a State mostly socialist.
I love Mexicans and Mexico. Like De Gaulle, who loved Germany so much he wanted two of them, I love Mexico so much I want Mexicans in their own country, fixing the broken body politic, so Mexicans fully exploit their potential and become less poor, more prosperous, more middle class, and a bigger market for American goods and services. Not band-aid remittances that only make the problem WORSE so the explosion is worse.
None of you have answered my question? Why should I be a despised minority in my own State and Nation where I was the majority previously? Why should I not forthrightly blame Mexican illegal immigration and the immigrants themselves for the ills they cause? I don’t sneak into Mexico. Why should Mexicans sneak into the US, illegally, and not be called upon it? I would find that any Mexican denouncing Americans sneaking into Mexico, illegally, would be correct in demanding his nations laws be enforced.
whiskey, you’re just wrong. Hispanics mostly assimilate to US cultural and political patterns within a generation, and of those who don’t, probably most of those would if they could. You are equally wrong about whites and welfare, wrong on the fact, wrong on the attitude, and wrong on the implications.
Thirty seconds on Google find this, snarky comment and all:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_race_percentage_for_welfare_recipients
Based on the 2006 TOTAL population of each respective race in the United States, it is:
5.27% white* (5.27% of the white population is on welfare)
27.78% black* (27.78% of the black population is on welfare)
11.47% Hispanic* ** (11.47% of the Hispanic population is on welfare)
Many people like to report the following statistic, as it is more politically correct-as they can state that more whites are on welfare, than are blacks.
Base on the the number of people that receive welfare it is:
39% white 11,661,000 of 29,900,000 recipients
38% black 11,362,000 of 29,900,000
17% Hispanic 5,083,000 of 29,900,000
Illegals. I live right smack dab in the middle of about 20 families out in the country, yes families complete with hordes of kids and every family owns at least one fairly new pickup truck. The kids when not in school are entirely unsupervised (just like I was when I was a kid) and torment their little brothers and sisters and dogs and have a good time throwing stuff, but not many balls. They play loud mexican music, sit on their tailgates and open the doors and let the music blast out. They sit outside in all kinds of weather drinking beer and leave the cans where they fall. The same with their trash if the kids don’t make it to the dumpster with it. They wash and clean their trucks at least twice a day, or I should say that with the help of their wives, girlfriends and kids they supervise the cleaning and polishing of their trucks.
The Law is out here in this area almost every day. Sometimes three police/sheriff cars at a time. I moved out here in the boonies to get away from people and crowds and the same applied for them I guess.
I may have to move again.
While I’m here, let me leave a link to a neat and scary graphic.
“Judge me by the people with whom I surround myself.”
Read it, I was informed of a couple I didn’t know about.
Everyone should have believed him. I did and a few million more did but the majority had no idea and wouldn’t have listened to us (they didn’t) if we had told them.
Papa Ray
I was going to say if California can just clean up our welfare act, we could reduce those total numbers significantly, but now I wonder:
http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_14344263
FTA:
In the radio spot, Whitman picked up on a statistic also used by Poizner: California is home to 12 percent of the nation’s people but more than 30 percent of its welfare recipients.
…
Ross said Californians need to be reminded that “this is a program that is all about children.” Of the 1.35 million people on welfare in California, a million are under 18, she and others note.
…
A family of three in California now gets a maximum of $694 in monthly cash assistance. The benefit today is 17 percent lower in real dollars than it was in 1996, when Clinton’s landmark welfare reform law passed, Schott said. And beginning next year, California will begin cutting aid to children in half if their parents fail to meet work requirements.
Whiskey said:
‘California’s problems ARE illegal aliens.’
No. That is not correct.
OK, it’s partly correct.
The problem is government spending and regulation. The ‘illegal’ workers choose to work illegally. They see it as a good thing. It is a very good thing for them and us.
I was at Home Depot yesterday and overheard a customer complaining that the price of a generator was higher than a week before. He was angry about the price of something he needed. Don’t gouge me bro’?
California, PIIGS, U.S., Japan, we are all like that customer. We are spoiled brats who ‘know’ that the prosperity, affluence and peace we were given is normal.
We are beginning to live and experience the curse of the oil states, who make nothing. Of the rich heir, who has waited patiently for the money he knew would be his. Of the lottery winner, who is dirt poor in five years.
What the left-tards fail to understand is that giving someone everything, over the long term, makes them pets. Allowing us to become independent, free, creative, (destructive?), self-sufficient, makes us human and alive.
I suggest that California is enslaved by the ‘services’ they provide. American charity will more than care for the needy.
62. Josh
However, those stats don’t take into account the number of illegals who don’t officially get welfare but demand a form of it: they walk out on their hospital bills. They show up on the brink of having a baby (usually in distress because of poor or no prenatal care thus more expensive than average) or they have gotten hurt at work were they pay no income tax since they are paid under the table and can’t file a workman’s comp claim. Not talking about a strained back. I am talking life threatening injury at least where I live. Agricultural and industrial accidents ain’t pretty and they ain’t cheap.
I have worked with hispanics in the big city as well as a small town (I am an interpreter as well as a biller in a small hospital) and if the assimilation rates are true, I sure can’t see it.
Once upon a time, a town called Marysville had a problem. It was faced with a skunk invasion. That’s right. A skunk invasion.
It all started when Marysville became the regional dumping ground for cats people no longer wanted. Kindhearted people then put out cat food to make sure that the feral cats didn’t starve to death. The problem was that cats and skunks were friendly with one another, and skunks discovered the joys of eating cat food. So, Marysville attracted skunks from miles around and become known for a highly memorable aroma.
Faced with a skunk invasion, animal control has come to the rescue. The plan? People are now being told not to feed the skunks.
So, here’s a note to Whiskey. If you don’t want skunks in your neighborhood, watch for the cat food lying around because the cat food will attract skunks. I realize that some people may like the idea of killing every skunk in sight, but it is more effective to simply keep the cat food away. You might like the idea of surrounding your house with a chain link fence and a burglar alarm, but you’re probably better off watching for cat food – and the telltale paraphernalia of the cat food dish.
So you feel overwhelmed and outnumbered by skunks! You have three choices. You could move. You could learn to like skunks. Or you could make it unfashionable to put out cat food that skunks love to eat, even to the point of going out on patrols looking for cat food.
Skunks like to live in Marysville because they like the plentiful food available there. If you don’t want a skunk invasion, don’t feed the skunks!
Illegal immigrants come to the United States because of the jobs. Jobs earn money and the money buys food. People look for jobs for the same reason that animals look for food. People like to eat too.
So the next time we hear any more complaints against illegal immigrants, let’s crack down on their rich employers. – Alexis
I’m sorry, but national sovereignty has nothing to do with class-warfare. Neither does nasty, rich employers. (Every employer I’ve ever worked for was “rich” compared to me, and I liked that a lot. Working for a poor employer is kind of unsettling on the 15th and 30th of each month.)
We have “illegal immigrants” in California for two reasons. (a) Congress will not write reasonable immigration policy based on what’s best for America. For that reason, we’ll see college educated professionals from the Philippines (disclosure: my brother in law), unable to join the rest of his family for 20 years in America, even though his father fought along side Americans fighting the Japanese in WWII. However, people with allegiance to America come in on H1B Visas to take American’s jobs, and people with no skills come via the porous Southern border – both use America. (b) Congress will not allow American sovereignty to be enforced at the border, because they either don’t believe in the concept, or they are bought by special interests.
Again, class envy has nothing to do with immigration. However, California’s deficit is at least half-attributable to unconstrained immigration and unconstrained social benefits (and half due to government employee unions – a seditious if ever there was one).
Finally, one should take care in generalizing about anything. Don’t tar every Californian with the same brush. We all aren’t rich, living beyond our means, and we all aren’t left-wing liberals. There’s LA and SF and Sacramento, and then there the rest of the hard working Californians. Except for Gerrymandering, we’re a lot closer to 50/50% politically. There’s nothing wrong with California that large scale privatization and de-unionization would cure. Unfortunately, there is no way to beat a publicly funded employees union. The union’s must die for California to survive. If the GOP (i.e. anyone other than a Democrat) candidates for governor or the Legislature want see me at the polls, they’d better define how they’re going to fire the state unions, or the whole exercise in “democracy” is pointless.
- OldSalt
But remember, the financial un-discipline hit FIRST on wall street at AIG and Citibank. When the people lead, the leaders do follow.
People are always going to do dumb stuff with cheap money. When the Fed is begging you to take money at less than 2% interest, a lot of bad ideas start looking better, like CDOs and CDO-squareds and 30x or more leverage. OPM makes Wall Street run, and cheap OPM makes it run that much faster. It’s all fun and games until the engine of finance throws a rod.
The Fed is still keeping rates low, I guess to help mop up the bad debt and get things “moving” again. I suppose if banks really aren’t lending for stupid derivative-driven investment strategies that is a good thing, but until money becomes dear again the money will not go to quality investments. The Keynesian pump-priming already happened, we call it “The Housing Bubble”. What’s happening now isn’t stimulus, it’s the makings of a Greece-style tragedy if we’re not careful. Interest rates have to go up, and bad things will happen with more mortgage foreclosures — but the abscess of bad investment still has to be drained. The economy is still septic and hypotensive, and the penicillin drip of government debt isn’t killing the bugs fast enough.
Everything I needed to learn about economics I learned from rap music. Entertaining and highly informative.
Maybe if states like California, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida and Illinois, where most Mexican illegals wind up, would start acting and voting like they wanted it to stop, the Feds could act. If they didn’t entice illegals to come, with free medical care, education, and other services, maybe they wouldn’t have so many illegals? Tho, it might cost 20 cents an hour more to hire a gardener or assembler or fry cook. Don’t just blame Democrats, Republicans and businessmen, large and small, have all been together on this.
The problem is far beyond illegals, it is the almost total disconnect between our ruling class and reality… exemplified by the incredible moral rot and corruption among our rulers, and the fact that for so long most people just pretended all was well and let themselves by lied to for the one month every 2 years they paid attention, at all… and then they returned the same creeps to power.
We are collectively going to get what is coming to us. We were masters of our fate in 1960 and even later, and we chose to live as lotus eaters for more than a generation. The tea parties are 20 years too late; where were they all when George W Bush needed someone to stand up for him in 2005-7? Where were they in 2008? When Pat Buchanan told the truth about the culture war in 1992, and was pilloried for it (not that I’m a big Pat Buchanan fan, but he got that one right). Asleep.
We are leaving hubris and, I fear, entering nemesis.
While I agree that “is a great number” has a certain grammatical superiority to “are a great number” but I’m willing to allow either locution. Changing these to “many” might work in a written text but in spoken words things happen more quickly than that. The emphasis in “are a great number” is on the on the multiple, the plural. So it can be correct. It also has a stronger impact than “many.” I’m willing to accept it. (OTOH W needs to be read the rules about ‘its’ on a regular basis.)
Man, there’s a lot of rednecks on here aren’t there (not there’r, hah). I don’t know why lot’s of people have food issues. I do know lot’s of relatives that prefer white bread and mayonnaise. I think they were raised by lazy parents who only fed them MickeyDees and ColSanders and they literally fear eating foods strange to them. Some kids have control issues where they don’t like their parents trying to make them eat weird foods like asparagus and broccoli and fish. Kids also have peer pressure issues. If their friends don’t like anything green or smelly they don’t either.
@ michaelhoskins, If you know something about KY then you know they make some good stuff with corn. Mix it with a little rye, mash it up, cook it, let it grow a little, distill it, bottle it. Knowwhatamean? Seems more interesting than corn syrup.
In the nature of the internet and youtube I started with Del Shannon an hour ago and ended up with this. Just thought I’d share
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wfamPW3Eaw&NR=1
Hush up with a glass of corn and enjoy it.
Some of the wealthy denizens of various towns around the San Francisco Bay area pay cash to Mexican day laborers for the onerous work (like weed-whacking in 100 degree heat) of maintaining their spreads, many of which include several acres for horses, vineyards or apricot orchards. The wealthy and mostly politically liberal white folks get a two-fer for hiring these workers: 1) they can enjoy the righteous feeling of helping the “less fortunate”, and 2) they get cheap labor.
It probably never occurs to these oh-so-politically-correct masters of the universe that California tax payers indirectly subsidize this labor by shelling-out for the health care, law enforcement, and family education costs that ultimately come with these workers—most of whom are surely illegal aliens.
in Hawaii, at a right-on-the-beach-house – and having survived the non-tsunami, thoughts turn to food this eve –
Kiawi charcoal grilled caught today fresh mahimahi – rice, tossed caesar salad, and long-board beer
and a bit-o-pinot grigio
luxury. – we give thanks for the simple pleasure, of Life.
Good friend down the street, from Chile – we are lucky, here, this day.
The pedantic adulterer when caught en flagrante delicto said to his wife “No no my dear I am surprised and You are astounded.”
America’s immigration laws were written by Ted Kennedy. Need I say more?
45 and 54
“And I’m sorry, but useless verbosity is an American habit – now being spread to the UK as so many other bad habits.”
“Like” is correct here; the original post was correct.
“So many other bad habits” lacks a verb, and is therefore not a clause; thus, only usage #4 in the rule below might apply, but it does not. (See also the examples where “as” leads to a noun phrase – they are also inapplicable.)
“An American habit” is being compared to “other bad habits” – noun to noun phrase.
Here is the rule:
For making comparisons (i.e., asserting that one thing is similar
to another), the prescribed choices are:
1. A is like B.
2. A behaves like B.
3. A behaves as B does.
4. A behaves as in an earlier situation.
where “A” and “B” are nouns …
In 1 and 2, “like” governs a noun (or a pronoun or a noun phrase).
In 3, “as” introduces a clause with a noun and a verb. In 4, “as”
introduces a prepositional phrase.
Sometimes, “as” introduces a noun phrase with no following verb.
When it does, it does not signify a qualitative comparison, but
rather may:
a) indicate a role being played. “They fell on the supplies as men
starving” means that they were actually starving men; in “They fell
on the supplies like men starving”, one is *comparing* them to
starving men. “You’re acting as a fool” might be appropriate if you
obtained the job of court jester.
b) introduce examples. (“Some animals, as the fox and the squirrel,
have bushy tails.”) But “such as” and “like” are more common in this use.
c) be short for “as … as”: “He’s deaf as a post” means “He’s as
deaf as a post”
Maybe if states like California, Arizona, New Mexico, Florida and Illinois, where most Mexican illegals wind up, would start acting and voting like they wanted it to stop, the Feds could act.-;70 Marty
Well, whaddyaknow Marty, California did just that and the Feds acted.
Jimmycrackcorn Michael Hoskins @ 58 “Why do we eat corn? Because we are constantly seeking protein, meat protein. Corn fed meat protein gets the best price. Farmers, 70 or 80 years ago, grew corn to use or sell as animal feed, and ate the balance to feed the family. Farmers chase the highest return, just like everyone else.”
Spoken like a true libertoid who’s never met anyone with a gall bladder disorder who can’t eat beef or beans every day.
Your faith in the pure free market driven ag policy of the United States is touching. Back in the real world, U.S. King Corn is suppressing competition, and there are a lot of corn-fed ladies that pay the price. Hell, even in Argentina where beef was king I don’t think the ladies are quite as big as in America, they seem leaner down there for a host of reasons. Now tell me why. You can feed almost as many people per acre on potatoes with less water usage. Buckwheat’s also good and replenishes the soil. Corn just isn’t as dominant in Europe or Russia as in America.
You probably also say the dominance of cheap Chinese crap in the clothing market is simple supply and demand – only weirdos would want higher quality American or European stuff. You know, weirdos who can’t get to Rodeo Drive or the boutiques that carry the stuff for hundreds of dollars per item. My whole point is there is no middle market right now, you only have the ‘choice’ of the highest or lowest end, and there damn well ought to be, and as a ‘market’ proponent you seem to have no problem with the Chinese imposing their monopoly on the U.S. No surely that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with them buying all our government debt, no quid pro quo there, just move on nothing to see here folks…
“It is not ‘medias’ fault or ‘corporate America’s’ fault, it is simply demand and supply.” I didn’t blame the media mostly, just a small slice of corporate agribusiness backed by Corn State Senators and the USDA.
Peterike your advice was more useful than just telling me to just shut up about the corn dominance and resulting impact on American pulchritude and waistlines. I will look for that store.
Utopia Parkway #71
“Man, there’s a lot of rednecks on here aren’t there (not there’r, hah). I don’t know why lot’s of people have food issues. I do know lot’s of relatives that prefer white bread and mayonnaise. I think they were raised by lazy parents who only fed them MickeyDees and ColSanders and they literally fear eating foods strange to them. Some kids have control issues where they don’t like their parents trying to make them eat weird foods like asparagus and broccoli and fish. Kids also have peer pressure issues. If their friends don’t like anything green or smelly they don’t either.”
Um, wanting to cook your own interesting food makes you a redneck?
If a kid has only been fed fast food her entire life that’s a shame. Why would that necessarily instill fear (not dislike, but actual FEAR, to use your word) of other foods?
Kids who use foods to try and exert control over their parents can be broken of that bad habit easily enough, if parents act like parents instead of trying to be their child’s friend.
Describing fish or broccoli as “weird” tells me more about you than the foods. “Weird” relative to what?
And letting your child’s school friends they see for only 20 minutes at lunch in school determine their diet just doesn’t sound like parenting to me.
Your response seems more like one written by someone trying to work out their own childhood issues regarding food than anything else.
I will give you credit, though, for pointing out the best use of corn. Perhaps in that regard, we’re both a little redneck.
ott/75; thanks for the comment –may i propose that there is no missing verb; that the verb ‘are’ is understood and silent per the context (toward the theme of) ‘cut as much as possible’?
Anyway, to make a clause wouldn’t ‘like’ also require a verb?
FWIW, there is is “.” in Dr Pepper. But feel free to make mistakes. I’ve made a host of them this week, enough for a year or two. My wife is still upset.
“For example, there are a strangely large number of sites devoted to Last Meals.”
Does anyone learn to diagram sentences anymore?
There should be subject/verb agreement. The subject, “there” is reflected by the object, number – therefore it is singular.
“of sites devoted to Last Meals” modifies number.
The correct sentence is “For example, there is a strangely large number of sites devoted to Last Meals.”
I think that “sites” is the subject of that sentence, not “there”.
My Mama loved us and she showed it
She cooked a fine meal and we loved it
She would tell us kids in China were starving
We would sneak a bite to the dog and say we were a caring (about the stupid Chinese)
She would tell us you better eat it like it was your last meal
We would try and understand but thought candy would be a better deal
She would say eat those vegetables they are good for you
But we would fight over the last piece of chicken or ham too.
I said the same to my kids long ago, now my kids say the same too.
My grand kids sneak a bite to the dog and fight over the ham and chicken too.
Times change but some things never do.
Papa Ray
(my apologies to writers and poets everywhere)
You know, whenever I’m wondering about the European economy, the person I turn to first is that famed historian of show tunes, Mark Steyn. Sure, he has absolutely no economic, much less demographic, training, but his obsession with Euros always makes for hilarity.
Is it really class envy to be annoyed that OJ got away with murder?
Is it really class envy to be annoyed that Amy Bishop was still out on the loose?
Is it really class envy to defend what is one’s own against criminals who are trying to take it away?
I’m American, yet I don’t live how Hollywood seems to think Americans are supposed to live. Likewise, most Californians are normal people. The problem is that the ruling class of California is spreading its habits throughout America in the name of the so-called “American Dream”. Its criminal behavior is subverting not only our laws but also what it is to be American.
When we have a criminal class that can get away with hiring illegal immigrants, they make life difficult for everybody else. It isn’t just the cost of industrial accidents. It isn’t just the cost of schools. It’s also about a criminal class of “growers” who use low labor costs to undercut small family farmers everywhere. It’s about a culture of business that forces employers to either hire illegal labor or shut their doors.
A culture of criminality has taken over the halls of power in America, to the point where the powers are apparently favoring illegal immigrants over everybody else. And now I’m being told that telling employers to obey the law is “class envy”? If there is any class envy, it comes from a class of rich criminals who think they are above obeying the law and think they are above hiring their fellow citizens to do they work they won’t do.
It is one thing to oppose class warfare in theory. It is yet another to oppose class warfare in fact. Illegal immigration is a form of class warfare perpetrated by an alliance of rich businessmen and leftist ideologues to replace their own fellow citizens with a supposedly more compliant class of foreigners – this is a systematic means to create class stratification based upon race, language, nationality, and culture. That class warfare must be put to an end.
Um, did you clear the Dr. Pepper references with Andrew Stuttaford, given his long campaign against Dr. Pepper and in favor of some dreck called “Coke”?
BTW, I find myself almost preferring cheap Diet Dr. Thunder from Wal-Mart these days. But the principle inheres.
Michael Elyi @ 76
Good point… maybe we all have to start acting like we care who the judges are, and voting for President and Senator in part on that basis instead of just giving the pols a free pass on the subject?
…and maybe pigs will start flying…
Maybe someone from California can explain how it is that a majority voted for Prop 187 and soon thereafter voted Democrat right down the line for statewide races, and most substate races as well. I mean, any reason other than stupid?
WRT the Last Meal aspect, were I on Death Row, my last meal request would be fugu. After all, what’s the worst that could happen?
A/88; what’s the worst that could happen? You realize you’ve fatally poisoned yourself with the fugu in the same instant the warden pokes his head in your cell to tell you that new evidence has come in and you’ve been pardoned and are free to leave.
Alexis #85
I would add to your last paragraph that the inevitable exposure of the American worker to global labor markets will cause displacements and problems regardless, but that a cowardly class of politicians have used illegal immigration as a means of handling it instead of dealing with the problems head-on.
Instead of being honest with the public about the toothpaste being out of the tube, and finding creative solutions that will deal with the displacements and the necessary diminishment of economic expectations associated with exposure of Americans to labor markets elswwhere, our political class has simply punted the issue and chosen a path of least resistance. Nobody in that group (with the possible exception of Tancredo) have proposed real-world solutions to the problem because all of them fear to inflame the public by telling them it will never be 1954 again. Both parties are at fault, and both for the same sick reason – they fear to lose their cushy public sector position, and will not risk doing it by telling the truth and incurring the wrath of a populace who feels that because they are above ground, breathing, and American, they deserve a long list of material and financial stuff and security “just because”.
Some day, some politicians are going to have to fall on their swords and be honest about this issue. Yes, the first and the second and the third and probably the tenth will be blown out of office. But at some point the entitled masses will have heard it often enough to see the truth of it. Global labor markets are here to stay, and the income stream security of the ’50s isn’t ever coming back – that was a unique time and place in human history. The longer we put off accepting that, the worse things will get here. But a political class that is cravenly selfish and lacks the courage and talent and creativity to craft a new way forward and instead relies on illegal immigration is no help.
Buddy Larson:
Yeah, the verb seems to be understood – but that’s always the case with the correct use of “like” in accordance with usage # 2.
Both of the following are correct.
1) The man acts like a dog.
2) The man acts as a dog does.
In sentence one, correct usage is “like” – even though “acts” seems to be understood. Go figure!
These are incorrect:
1) The man acts like a dog acts.
2) The man acts as a dog.
But number 2 is correct if the man is acting as a dog in a play.
Grammar police and food police all on one thread. Good grief, this isn’t a thesis, it is a blog comment section. People tend to think faster than they type and hence make grammatical/tense/spelling errors, so what?
And what is with the corn aversion. I rebelled last night and baked up a delicious batch of cornbread to go with a pot of 13 bean soup with Cajun seasoning. It was heavenly.
Sara (Pal2Pal),
cornbread to go with a pot of 13 bean soup with Cajun seasoning
If you open your door you will see me standing outside with a plate amd bowl.
Back in the Stone Age when Washington’s streets were paved with wooden planks called corduroy I occasionally got to visit the small company town. It was possible then to go into the basement of the Capital and eat in the employees cafeteria. It was the same food served upstairs in the Senate dining room. My favorite was the corn bread and navy bean soup, the perfect Union of North and South.
I am not a Southern Gal, but we were stationed in South Carolina for two years. I don’t know if you are familiar with Charleston, but there is/was an open air market with all kinds of goodies in the middle of town. One day while strolling through, I came to a table with an ancient black woman manning it and she had home packaged bags with 13 types of beans and a packet of her own spicy seasoning. I bought one of the bags and tried it at home for the first time.
Not long after, my boss had a party for all the employees of the Summerville Journal, where I worked. His wife served homemade cornbread that was to die for. I think this was the first time I had cornbread that didn’t come out of Jiffy Mix box. I got her recipe, stopped at the Charleston Market for more beans and fixed the two together for the first time. The meal was a huge hit with my family and every time I served it in the years that followed they would lean back and say it was the best thing we took away from our two years in SC. Our time there ended badly when our home and property were totally destroyed by Hurricane Hugo.
I appreciate the grammar lessons after having past quite a while on a weird blog (I reassure you, not here) where I learnt lots of slang and rude vocabulary words, it’s quite some refreshing air
Dolf Fenster, problem, MS is inducting you into error too, and he is making money in titilling your deceiption feelings, his intentions aren’t that you find out a clue, but that you keep on attending his performances
You gals better stay away from them low-down places –slippery slope –first you let your grammar slip and start hanging around bad company, next you’re torturing people with bean soup and thinking like a Frenchwoman!
oops forgot the
–(*whew*) –that was close !
buddy larsen,
Were you going to link to the bean scene from Blazing Saddles?
Clearing the air for all us Yankee sophisticates.
Ah, “Blazing Saddles” –for those who wander hoof-hearted….
uh, some revisited the monthy python’s !
though beans aren’t our favorite ressource for farting, cabbage soup is much smarter (
)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZyxeZtucqI
Thanks, MC, i’ll take a lookview, tout suite!
Grammar and spelling, perhaps like the Sabbath, are for Man rather than Man being for grammar. However, there is no excuse for useless verbosity or for unclear text. I specifically exclude speech because, as someone rightly said, speech is usually less precise (except when it really matters, as in formal speeches). Don’t take the exception too far, though.
There are also sometimes good reasons for not getting into the habit of blindly following grammatical rules; a habit satirised by Churchill as being “nonsense up with which I will not put”.
You know, I’ve always been a huge fan of that Crime Story series; to me it was one of the best shows ever on television. Also always loved that Del Shannon tune.
Until I saw that opening sequence with those images of “the things we [Americans] did together” while “our hearts were young”, like those terrific cars, the bustling city, the airfield, the tricycle-cops on parade – all of it — after reading this article, it had never struck me as a eulogy for America. But dayum, it sure did just now.
C/102; i know that feeling –it’s a jolt alright. I think maybe only half of it is for that receding old timey America tho –the other half (or maybe 9/10ths) is for our own selves as kids –with everything yet in front of us –at busy play inside it.
wws:
Wrong. It’s “there”.
Richard: you need one more “wah”.
“wah-wah-wah-wah-wonder”.