|
< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 288 OF 751 ·
Later Kibitzing> |
Jan-09-14
 | | playground player: <optimal play> Thank you for your kind words about <Bell Mountain>. You and I disagree about a lot of things, so coming from you, a good review means a lot to me. It shows that I have succeeded in just telling the story and leaving myself out of it--not as easy as it looks! It's funny--just about every reader mentions Wytt as his favorite character. No. 6 in the series, <The Palace>, I expect to be released before this winter is over. No. 7, <The Glass Bridge>, has been written, but the editorial work on it has only just begun. I hope you enjoyed No. 1 enough to go on to No. 2, <The Cellar Beneath the Cellar>. Meanwhile, your mini-review here made my day. |
|
Jan-09-14
| | playground player: <jessicafischerqueen> I just can't stop picking at that <Rolling Stone> column: I've never read anything more ridiculous. So today I'll discuss what kind of "guaranteed work" this jackanapes proposes. http://leeduigon.com
How big a nincompoop do you have to be to write for Rolling Stone? Do they give you a test? |
|
| Jan-09-14 | | cormier: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings... |
|
Jan-09-14
 | | jessicafischerqueen: <Lee>
On a rare serious note, I would like to comment on your column here- http://leeduigon.com/. Like all true satirists, you are capable of being very funny about very unfunny topics, and this is surely one of them. In your column you write
<"What kinds of jobs would these guaranteed jobs be? Moving sand piles? Digging and filling in holes? Would you get to pick the kind of job you want, or would the government choose it for you?"> This kind of thinking isn't just flabby and trendy, it's dangerous because it is yet another example of Stalinist propensities among current "liberal" American "intellectuals" who should know better. There were of course plenty of "liberal" American intellectuals who supported Stalin back in the day- notably at the <Partisan Review>. But once the horror stories about the Gulags started flooding in, most did an about face of some sort. What scares me about the new statist left is that they don't even seem to realize that their dream has already come true at least once. Yes, in the past there was already guaranteed government work for all. In the Gulag. And yes, once in the Gulag, the government would surely choose your job for you. I put "liberal" in quotes because it is not liberal to champion Stalinist economic policies. I don't recall reading about the promise of guaranteed jobs in the works of John Locke or John Stuart Mill. I put "intellectuals" in quotes because the writer you critique is an idiot. Not a tough call there, either. |
|
Jan-09-14
| | playground player: Tut, tut, Jess--the government is going to give lazy sods jobs like painting murals and conducting symphony orchestras. (I mean, how hard can it be, just waving a little stick around?) I think tomorrow I'll get into this idiot's proposal of a "guaranteed income" for everybody, paid for by magic. He asks, in all seriousness, why should you have to work if you don't want to? Sit in bed playing video games while others work to support you. The road to Hell may be paved with good intentions, but it was mapped out by idiots. |
|
Jan-09-14
| | playground player: <Alien Math> Doh! Parent fined for not including Ritz crackers in her child's lunch! For failing to include everything listed in <The Canadian Food Guide>. And to add injury to injury, and insult to insult, the "education" provided in these schools only makes smart kids dumb and dumb kids dumber! At exorbitant prices, to boot. What do you call 20,000 "educators" at the bottom of the sea? A good start! |
|
| Jan-09-14 | | hms123: <pgp> I am glad your Governor is <not a bully>. What is he? |
|
| Jan-09-14 | | benjinathan: <pp> You know it was a daycare and not a school right? |
|
Jan-09-14
| | playground player: <benjinathan> I didn't see where the article mentioned a day care center, as opposed to a school. I went back and looked again, and still didn't see it. Was that info mentioned in the comments? Anyhow, it doesn't make a difference. Here in the US we've had any number of incidents just like the one in Manitoba, and they were in schools. Remember the one in which the lunchroom police confiscated the lunch a child's mother packed, tossed it into the garbage can, and made the kid eat the school lunch instead? <hms123> I don't know what your question refers to. Chris Christie spends most of his time pretending to be a Republican. I voted for him anyhow, because I once interviewed the Democrat who ran against him. Christie sometimes acts like a dope, but Barbara Buono doesn't have to act. |
|
Jan-09-14
 | | OhioChessFan: Not sure if it was a school sponsored day care or what, but both terms were used in the story. Maybe Canada uses the terms interchangably. Maybe the author was mistaken in word choice: <She sent her children to daycare with with (sic) lunches containing leftover homemade roast beef and potatoes, carrots, an orange and some milk. She did not send along any "grains".
As a consequence the school provided her children with, I kid you not, supplemental Ritz Crackers, and her with a $10 fine.> |
|
| Jan-09-14 | | benjinathan: It was a daycare.
<"I actually phoned my daycare director the next day and said, 'You know, can I get away with this? I thought of potatoes as a grain.'"She said the daycare dropped the fine.>
BTW, the gov't told the daycare they could not fine the parents. |
|
| Jan-10-14 | | hms123: <pgp>
I was just curious about your take on Christie after watching him all morning at his press conference. |
|
Jan-10-14
| | playground player: <hms123> I missed the press conference, and I haven't been closely following the flap over Christie ordering a mammoth traffic jam to be created, to punish the mayor of Fort Lee for not supporting his re-election. Oops, gotta go--be back later. |
|
| Jan-10-14 | | cormier: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings... |
|
Jan-10-14
| | playground player: <hms123> We elected Chris Christie to protect us from the excesses of the Democrats; but he seems to have lost interest in that mission, preferring instead to concentrate on his presidential prospects. As a lifelong Republican, I feel bound to ask: is there anyone the GOP could nominate who is ***not*** a schlemiel? <Steamed Colleagues> If you liked that idiotic proposal for guaranteed public-sector jobs for everyone, you're gonna love this--a "universal basic income" paid out by the government to lazy sods who sit around all day playing video games. http://leeduigon.com
What? You'll just keep working--when you could just stay in bed and get a nice fat check from Uncle Sam? Sucker! |
|
Jan-11-14
| | playground player: <Steamed Colleagues> For those interested in such things, I have tied my blog posts on "guaranteed jobs" and "guaranteed income" (without work) to Agatha Christie's novel, <Curtain>. http://leeduigon.com
<Curtain>, Hercule Poirot's last case, was written during the London blitz. Christie then stored it in a safe and didn't publish it until 1975, a few months before she died. It's sort of a time capsule of British popular thought circa 1940. They had more in common with the Nazis than they ever realized. |
|
| Jan-11-14 | | Jim Bartle: "Curtain" was outstanding, with a fascinating criminal. I know people like that, though they don't go to such extremes. However I disagree with your claim that Obamacare includes "death panels," if that term means panels which will decide when ill people should die. I saw leading Obamacare opponent Betsy McCaughey destroyed by Jon Stewart when she claimed they were included. He had the bill on the table in front of them, and he found every article which she claimed created a death panel and showed it ddidn't. |
|
| Jan-11-14 | | cormier: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings... |
|
Jan-11-14
| | playground player: <Jim Bartle> By "death panels" I mean "end-of-life care professionals" who "counsel" certain patients at regular intervals, and who may, subject to the approval of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, advise them to terminate medical procedures that may be prolonging their lives. This was definitely in the version of the law that I read, a few months after it was passed. If it has since been taken out or amended--well, I defy any member of Congress to tell me exactly what's in that law today. But then, as Nancy Pelosi said, "You have to pass it to find out what's in it (tee-hee)." And across the Atlantic, Baroness Warnock--I don't remember what position she held in the government, at the time: it was two or three years ago--publicly stated that patients with dementia and certain other conditions "ought to get on with it," and die, so as not to drain the resources of the National Health. My point is, they may have gotten rid of the label, <eugenics>, but the Statist Left is still very much wedded to the principles. |
|
| Jan-11-14 | | cormier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNQd... |
|
Jan-12-14
| | playground player: <Jim Bartle> I'm reading <Curtain> now, for the first time. Some weeks ago I saw the ITV production, with David Suchet as Poirot, on youtube; but it's since been removed. It was one of the best "Poirot" films ever, and it stuck very closely to the book. For some reason, ITV doesn't seem to want anybody to see it outside of the UK. You can't get an amazon Instant Rental. I find myself shaken by some of the things spoken by the characters in <Curtain>. I tend to think of culture rot as something new. But then I run into a book like this, written before I was born, and discover that Western Christendom has been in trouble for a long time--probably much longer even than Agatha Christie thought. It's a great book, though--a lot more meat to it than you find in Serious Mainstream Literature. |
|
| Jan-12-14 | | Jim Bartle: <By "death panels" I mean "end-of-life care professionals" who "counsel" certain patients at regular intervals, and who may, subject to the approval of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, advise them to terminate medical procedures that may be prolonging their lives.> Advising them to terminate the procedures is in the law? I don't think so. I think it's something good which has been twisted by creating the term "death panels," which is highly misleading. |
|
| Jan-12-14 | | Jim Bartle: I don't remember much of the dialogue from "Curtain." if I may discuss the plot, I love the idea that a man considered inconsequential by everyone can prod others to murder just by making casual remarks. Then Porot, knowing the man can't be convicted, takes the only action he can. |
|
| Jan-12-14 | | cormier: <<<<is 42:1-4, 6-7> Thus says the LORD:
Here is my servant whom I uphold,
my chosen one with whom I am pleased,
upon whom I have put my spirit;
he shall bring forth justice to the nations,
not crying out, not shouting,
not making his voice heard in the street.>
a bruised reed he shall not break,
and a smoldering wick he shall not quench,
until he establishes justice on the earth;
the coastlands will wait for his teaching.>I, the LORD, have called you for the victory of justice,
I have grasped you by the hand;
I formed you, and set you
as a covenant of the people,
a light for the nations,
to open the eyes of the blind,
to bring out prisoners from confinement,
and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.> |
|
| Jan-12-14 | | cormier: <<<<<acts 10:34-38>
Peter proceeded to speak to those gathered
in the house of Cornelius, saying:
“In truth, I see that God shows no partiality.>
Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly
is acceptable to him.>
You know the word that he sent to the Israelites
as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all,
what has happened all over Judea,
beginning in Galilee after the
that John preached,
how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth
with the Holy Spirit and power.>
He went about doing good
and healing all those oppressed by the devil,
for God was with him.”> |
|
 |
|
|
< Earlier Kibitzing · PAGE 288 OF 751 ·
Later Kibitzing> |
|
|
|
Kibitzing
