Me: Frank Lynch. Bio These are my daily rants, mostly political. For something less spontaneous, I maintain The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page (over 1,800 Johnson quotes), perhaps your best online resource for insight into his thinking.
Current standings for our weekly Set competition (2010):
4 JL
4 Leslie
1 Me
0 weeks called.
JL won week 9.
Bio: Born 1957, raised in Florida, moved to New York area in 1982; now live in Brooklyn. Married, with one daughter. I work in marketing research for Abt SRBI. My opinions should not be construed as representing those of my employer.
An imploding public school system. In Kansas City (MO), only about a third of the shool age kids attend public schools, going to private and charter schools instead. They haven't been able to pass a school bond since 1969, and now they're closing half their campuses.
"If the majority of the people within our boundaries aren't patrons, it's more complicated to get support," said Airick West, a school board member.
Exacerbating the problem has been long-running turmoil within the district. A teachers' strike in the 1970s drove many parents away. In the 1980s, the district launched a building spree, erecting state-of-the-art schools with Olympic-size swimming pools to lure students back.
It didn't work.
Talk about your slippery slope; but I don't want anyone to try and tell me that people in the midwest have a strong sense of community when they don't support their public schools even in funding.
I am not, of course, suggesting that this is the sole factor in anyone's decision to carry a pregnancy to term. But currently the cost of an abortion is dwarfed by the costs of uninsured doctors' visits and delivery.
AND it cuts the deficit. I frankly never understood Obama's insistence that HCR not add to the deficit; at least, I never agreed with it. The country has pursued huge initiatives before without thatr equirement, why burden HCR? After all, who's going to say that saving the lives of 45,000 people annually is a bad thing? Who?
The Republicans may say HCR is a bad thing, or that (shudder) "Obamacare" is a bad thing, but they know better than to say saving 45,000 lives, annually, is a bad thing.
Obama's political rationale is clear: give the Republicans as few things to complain about as possible. But at the end of the day, since none of the Republicans are going to vote for it, why limit HCR to accommodate Republicans?
All to the better, or course, when the CBO released its score of the House bill, showing that it the House plan actually lowers the deficit while expanding health care.
And the Republican reaction? Well, there's Mike Pence, who is of small mind and can't conceive how a big plan actually saves money. (It has nothing to do with Milo Minderbender dealing in volume, Mike. It has to do with details. Read the bill.)
Bravo, a good first step. Looking forward to Sunday.
Irish-Americans against McCarthyism. Being against Joe McCarthy, and McCarthyism, isn't a bad thing. Lots of people are against it, and should be. Here, here for all those against McCarthyism!
Now get this: in the spirit of St. Patrick' Day, William Gavin (over at NRO's Corner), wants us to stop calling McCarthyism "McCarthyism." You see, "McCarthy" is an Irish surname! And calling McCarthy's abominable behavior "McCarthyism" is, by generalization, a slap to all the Irish.
That's what he wrote. If he's being sarcastic, I can't tell; I don't hear the same notes of irony you'd hear in Swift. I really do think he's serious.
It's like double secret probation, or something. Lindsay Graham warned that if health care reform goes through, Republicans might, you know, be even less cooperative than zero cooperative.
Woudn't want to make them angry, now, would we? Just imagine if they turn up the heat. It's not enough that real legislation is constantly being blocked, but they're going to block resolutions like statements that mothers are good!
Falling idol? It's amazing: Charlie Crist shows evidence that he might not be an extreme right winger, and shows intelligent gratitude to Obama for the stimulus. Never mind the fact that Florida's economy, so tied to housing and construction, was in the toilet; never mind that Obama was visiting Fort Pierce, an area where massive numbers of people were defaulting on their mortgages, under water, and weighing the pluses and minuses of declaring bankruptcy.
You'd have thought that Marco Rubio had rolled away some stone, or something, the way that conservatives in the GOP were flocking to him. And all of a sudden, Crist could do no right: everything he did, they found fault with. And Rubio was some shining beacon, and now is trouncing Crist in the polls.
And now it's turning out that Rubio has all sorts of problems with coloring within the lines when it comes to spending, separating spending on himself from the money that belonged to his party.
Will it stick? I hope so. As much as I'd like to see the seat go to a Democrat, seeing it go to a papier maché candidate like Rubio would be the worst.
