THREE TIMES IN CHURCH; BREAKS DOWN
CRYIN' LIKE A BABY By Mark Ganzer
Ingleside, Illinois – At the 10:30 a.m. Service at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church here, your local correspondent for The Good News Times found himself so overwhelmed with emotions that he broke down, crying' like a baby for its mother's milk. Fortunately, for the emotional one, tears are God's healing gift to human kind, and these were tears of joy and great emotional release.
The first instance wasn't even a huge outpouring, just a little hanky-dabbing, as Mark watched the mother hold her daughter to her chest as the daughter drew in her comic book, pretty much oblivious to the service, other than to realize on some very elemental level, that this was a GOOD PLACE TO BE, what with the drawing, and the music, and the singing, and mama holding you so soft and gentle. And then the mother kissed her daughter ever oh so ever gently on the forehead: it was the mother and child union!
No I would not give you false hope
On this grand and glorious day
But the mother and daughter union
Is only one gentle kiss away
Seated next to Mark was a grandmother and her four grand children, two girls, including the one who was oh so silent, and oh so well behaved, and two boys. The boy nearest Mark, the eldest and the biggest, was cutting out a mustach and stringed goatee beard, and scoth-taping them to his mouth. Your dorrespondent could not help himself, as he found a pencil and wrote a short note: “You look like Bill Russell.”
The boy, as well behaved as any child you would ever want to take to church, but quite delighted in his disguise magic, would later return the note with one of his own: “You look like Bill Ghost.” We did not get a chance to interview the boy to discover just who Bill Ghost is.
The other boy was clearly the independent minded one. He sat one row up, in a world of his own, rambling up and down the otherwise empty church pew, and just having a grand time.
The older daughter caught her grand mother's attention, and was escorted, along with the youngest daughter, up the aisle and out of the sanctuary, leaving the two boys to amuse them selves, which they did, with much obvious delight and glee!
Then the children were called up front for the children's sermon. The youngest boy was able to seat himself atop the altar railing, which was pointed out to grand mother, who scooped up the grand daughters and made a strong move to the front of the altar to take down Deadelus from his, the most lofty of perches.
Pastor Janet put a collection plate on the floor, and asked if any of the children had any money to put in the plate. None had (or, if they did, they were NOT giving it up). So Pastor Janet gave them another option: how about if you were to put yourself in the collection plate? Do I have any volunteers? And Bill Russell's hand shot up, that enthusisatic smile still one his face. “Do I have any volunteers,” again asked Paster Janet, for her peripherial vision was not good enough to see “Bill Russel” sitting right next to her. Finally, one of the young girls took the plunge, stood up, and stepped into the offering plate. That's great, said the Pastor, who then told the following story:
A chicken and a pig were out walking one Sunday morning, when they came upon a church that was having a special Sunday breakfast. “We ought to contribute something to that breakfast,” said the pig. “I know what we can do,” said the chicken, “we can give them ham and eggs!” “Now wait a minute,” said the pig. “That's just an offering for you, but for me, it's a commitment!”
“So when you give your whole body to God, you are making a real commitment,” she said.
Any more volunteers? The Pastor asked, two more time, still not seeing the hand of Bill Russell, flying like the star spangled banner in the breeze, so enthusiastically, yet so calmly. And just when it looked like the pastor was going to end the call for volunteers, your local correspondent sprung to his feet, and walked up before God, the congretation, and eveyone, because if there was one thing he was NOT going to let happen, it was to have Bill Russell denied the opportunity to make the whole commitment. And as I neared the altar, Pastor did the most wonderful of things, saying, “If any more of you want to step in, please do so now,” knowing that these children are SO well trained, and so kind, and so sharing, that they would NOT in anyway cause chaos nor anarchy.
And in that moment, I cried again, for a 10-year old boy had taught me a most valuable lesson (which I was actually able to put to good use later that afternoon, while riding the train): that we reatin our enthusiasm for a project that we are not immediately called to partake in, and that we should respectfully and politely attempt to gain the attention of those with the power to let us undertake the project. Again, I cried, a few soft, damp, tears, for such an important lesson had not been brought to bear on me since that April first morning back in 1994 when my son, Adam James Ganzer showed me how important it is, when we see a hungry, homeless person that we do everything in our powers to at least relieve his hunger.
I had put a prayer request card in for Michelle Crabtree's back surgery, and had asked that my face book friends offer up prayers for Michelle's healing (and several of you did, many thanks to John Dodge, Sharon Schmidt, Joanna Dolder and Wanda Roberts for their prayers, and to all the rest of my face book friends who took the time to offer up an intercessory prayer for a stranger. The interecessory prayer from one stranger for another is, I believe, the most powerful prayer of all. I am pleased to report that Michelle's surgery was a success and she is recovering nicely. Thanks to all who prayed, or read, and gave her a second thought!
But here's where I really broke down. The first friend I made in Barrington was Luther Raymond Tourville, otherwise known by one and all in town simply as, “Ray the Barber.” A memorial service for Ray was held at Salem Methodist church on 30 March, 2010, and I attended with my folks. I was the first person to stand up and give a remembrance of Ray, which was the least I could do for my best friend ever in Barrington (and quite possibly, the best friend I ever had). Ray's brother was a theologian with a coupld of published books, which Ray had given to the pastor of Salem Methodist, saying, “I've read 'em both once and won't be needing them any more. Maybe you can find something you like in them. The Pastor read them both and remarked that only one page had any annotations, a page with this passage from John 10:14 I am the good shepherd. I know my sheep and they know me. And so I find myself trying to sing verse five of “Built on a Rock,” and when it comes to the line: “I know my own, my own know me,” I am leaking tears like a NASCAR race car with a blown fuel pipe leaks fuel. FINALLY, I cry for the best friend I ever had in Barrington! (Consdering it to me almost 14½ years before I cried for my beloved Uncle 1st Lt James Raymond Hockett, who was mortally wounded in Viet Nam, near Tay Ninh, 22 September, 1968, a mere 17 months before I cried for Ray seems like a very short time.)
Quick anectdote that I simply must relay to the Pastor at Salem Methodist – and it relates to the passage from John 10:14. One afternoon when I was visiting Ray's, just sitting in a chair, hanging out, which I frequently did, especially when I was depressed, because it was better to be around Ray, totally depressed than it was to remain hiding under the covers of my bed in my befroo, but I also hung out at Ray's when I was not depressed. I just liked haning out at Ray's; I liked being around the man, meeting his customers, listening to the conversations, and, BEST OF ALL, having a beer at the end of the day (Ray always had a sixer in his freezer; he was a gin drinker, so, he would have his gin). A woman approached the door to Ray's shop, and he LEAPED out of his chair ran towards the older broad and starts yelling, “get out of her, you get out of here and never come in; you, go away.” And while this was the most unusual thing I'd ever seen Ray do, because it WAS Ray doing it, and I always sensed that part of him which expressed so cogently, “I know my own, my own know me,” that I did not even CONSDIER asking for an explanation. If Ray behaved that way, this was one evil bitch, and GOOD RIDDANCE.
I'm ending this Ray the Barber tribute with one of his finest jokes (which I shall paraphrase, lest the politically correct police bring down to bear on me: What did the racoon say about having intimate relations with the skunk? Haven't had all I want; but I've had all I can stand. Those of you who didn't know Ray missed out on a LOT!
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Why Being a Caddie is Better Than Being and ACTUARY.
1. The phone rarely rings.
2. When the phone does ring, it's not for you.
3. You never work past sundown.
4. You never work before sunup.
5. Your astute clients recognize that your boss is a no-talent gladhanding, boot-licking back-stabber.
6. Your clients are mostly astute.
7. Your clients never ask for an itemized statement to verify your
charges.
8. Your answers are always positive numbers.
9. When you make a mistake, both you and your client know it, so
you don't have to, or even attempt to, pass the buck.
10. Your clients know that most of the disasters which befall them
are due to their own shortcomings, not you mistakes.
11. Vice presidents don't seek your counsel' they'd ignore it
anyway, and then blame you for being correct.
12. You'll never be a vice president.
13. Fortune 50 CEO's and CFO's seek your counsel, trust your
counsel, and make every effort to abide by it.
14. When an assignment takes longer than expected to complete,
it's at most a matter of two hours, and it was not your fault.
15. You don't need to invent jargon to convince your clients that
they need your services.
16. Both you and your clients know that although they don't need
your services, they will perform better with you than without you.
17. Even when your client needs your psychotherapeutic services,
they usually don't need your baby-sitting services.
18. When you client complains about your services, you know they
needed a baby-sitter.
19. When your client thanks you for doing a great job, you know
they mean it, and you know they are correct.
20. You never need to equivocate. If you're not sure, you say so,
and tell why.
21. If you do equivocate, you do so out of kindness – not for money.
22. Four is an acceptable score.
23. Three is a very good score.
24. Two is a great score.
25. One is the best score of all.
26. There are no zeroes.
27. There are no mid-life or existential crises; you've chosen your
profession because you enjoy it, not because you're paid more
than you're worth to book-lick and suck up.
28. You can chain smoke in the office.
29. You can urinate on the office floor with no reproach.
30. You don't have to count the sick and the dead.
31. You serve the living.
32. You never have to be told that your check is in the mail.
33. You can do your job even when the computer goes down.
34. On your worst day at the office, your client loses money and you
get struck dead by lightning.
35. On that worst day when you get struck dead by lightning, the
club establishes a scholarship fund for your progeny and awaits
with trepidation your personal injury attorney's lawsuit.
36. When you die and go to hell, those few jerks who never gave you the benefit of the doubt are chasing your car on Medinah #3, in 100° heat and all the water fountains are broken. You have ample cold beer, but you can't share with them, because the rule is, in hell as on earth, caddies cannot drink beer on the course.
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The Dream Deferred – Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
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DES MOINES REGISTER COLUMNIST RIGHTFULLY USES THE WORD “PISSER” IN AN ARTICLE! CALLING A THING BY ITS NAME!
Honorary toilets? You read that right.
Aug 22, 2011 | by Michael Morain |
So it’s come to this: Legion Arts is accepting donations for unusual naming rights at its newly renovated CSPS hall in Cedar Rapids. Here’s the latest from an e-newsletter that went out this weekend. (I’ve underlined the key paragraph for your convenience and/or delight.)
“Thanks to a $4.8 million I-JOBS grant from the state and incredibly generous support from throughout the community, we’ve not found it necessary to attract donors by offering to name various features of the building in their honor.
Until now, that is.
So here’s the deal. I think it’s safe to say that few improvements at CSPS are likely to be more appreciated than the new toilets. Now you can connect yourself to this conspicuous improvement in a tangible way, while helping Legion Arts raise some much-needed operating dollars.
All told we have six shiny new pissoirs (urinals) and 15 sparkling new commodes (toilets). We’re selling the naming rights to each one for $1,000 a pop.
Here’s your chance to honor a loved one, a colleague, a favorite artist or yourself. Use your imagination. You could join with your neighbors to salute a beloved legislator or council representative. Express your respect for a teacher or mentor. Or go in together with a couple of co-workers to surprise your boss. The possibilities are endless.
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BARRINGTON AREA LIBRARY REFUSES TO BLOOD SUCK ITS DEAD LIBRARY CARD HOLDER, DESPITE HER OVERDUE BOOK
Mark Ganzer – 22 August, 2011: Imagine my delight at locating one of my recently deceased mother's over due library books. Oh thank the Lord, I can return this and pay a nominal fine.
“Not so fast,” said the librarian. “Under the circumstances, there will be no fine.” And once again, I wept.
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OBERWEISS ICE CREAM DONATES FREE QUART OF
BLOOD TO HEARTLAND BLOOD DRIVE DONORS:
DAMN FINE DEAL – A QUART FOR A QUART
By Mark Ganzer | August 22, 2011
Imagine my delight in locating the receipt for one quart of Oberweiss ice cream, the reward for my having been a blood donor for the Heartland Blood Drive in McHenry, about a month ago! Oberweiss, y'all ROCK. My selection of Chocolate Caramel Chew was inspired by the Lord Himself. Um, Um, good; had no idea ice cream could taste so good!
AMERICA'S FINEST JOURNALIST, REKHA BASU of the DES MOINES REGISTER WRITES A COMPELLING STORY ABOUT A DIFFICLUT LIFE, BEING LIVED WELL!
Sadessa Hernandez and Tabitha Overton met as high school freshmen in Des Moines and have been best friends since. So after the unthinkable happened in February and Overton’s 7-year-old daughter was diagnosed with brain cancer, Hernandez went to support her friend in a Memphis hospital, spending her 30th birthday there.
But four months after Allison Overton’s diagnosis, came staggering news:
Hernandez’s own son Leland had a brain tumor. It had wrapped around his brain stem and sprouted five or six others, cutting off the blood supply to nerves behind his eyes, and causing him to be legally blind.Lee is only 4 years old. It’s slow moving but inoperable.
The first call Hernandez made was to Overton. She was screaming, and the two just screamed together. Then Overton went to her daughter’s doctor at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital and appealed to him to treat Lee, too. So they were back in Memphis in June, this time for Lee. Doctors removed a section of the tumor and drained a large cyst to relieve pressure they said could have, in another week, put Lee in a coma.
They were there for a month. Overton spent her 30th birthday with them.
This weekend, some people are holding a fundraiser at Big Creek State Park in support of four Des Moines children with cancer. Allison is the oldest. The youngest is 3½-year-old Nadia James, who has leukemia. So does 6-year-old Katie Wilkins. And then there’s Lee.
Last week, 7-year-old Zowie Kile of Des Moines died after battling leukemia since age 3. In trying to make sense of this, Sadessa Hernandez is up daily at 4:30 searching the internet. She says 27 Des Moines children have cancer. She finds that extreme. So the east-sider, who has three years of nurse’s training, finds herself wondering about the chemicals in the environment she grew up in near Four Mile Creek and in the drinking water. She wonders about flooding-related pollution and about corn additives in everything from food to drinks to gas.
Doctors have told her it’s not her fault, though Lee may have had the cancer since he was in the womb. “But it’s your child and how can you not feel guilty?” she asks.
Whatever she’s doing, her attention is never off her son. Even under the best of circumstances, it would be hard not to focus on Lee, and not just because he’s a whirlwind of energy. He is a beautiful little fellow with a wide grin and an irresistibly impish, affectionate and gleeful manner. Except for the long scar on the right side of his head, you might not know anything was wrong. But when he plays make believe, a little stuffed doll becomes a patient, getting five different drugs through a syringe.
For the next 18 months, he’ll get chemotherapy every Tuesday. One of the drugs makes him lethargic, one steals his appetite and one makes him nauseous. Every eight weeks, he must return to Memphis for eight days of scans and MRIs to see if the chemo is working. If not, there may be radiation.
If Lee’s normalcy seems remarkable in light of his struggles, Sadessa’s is incomprehensible. But though she comes across as in control, she confesses, “I’m completely shattered on the inside.”
The single mother of two is on medication for anxiety and to sleep. She searches frenetically for stories of children who beat the odds of an astrocytoma diagnosis, which accounts for 2 percent of childhood cancers.
She’s constantly cleaning to keep Lee’s environment germ-free. “It’s probably getting a bit obsessive,” she admits.
“It is, Mom,” replies her 13-year-old son, Randy, gently.
She talks to Overton daily and they give each other strength. She also gets support from Lee’s dad, Jesse Hernandez, and his mother, musician Janey Hooper — and her own family.
“I don’t blame God,” she says. “You can’t have faith in someone and blame them.”
But she wants answers to why so many children are getting cancer even before their permanent teeth. Someday, she says, she will dedicate herself to seeing that research is adequately funded to understand it, and stop it.
But that’s down the line. For now, “I just make every day count for my two boys.”
Monday, August 22, 2011
Preview: All that Clausewitz Jazz by Jeff Huber
Part two of “Post-Clausewitzean Bebop in the New American Century” reprises themes from some of my older foreign policy routines. Lamentably, if you’re old enough to read this, their pertinence will persist throughout your lifetime and probably your grandchildren’s as well.
If you think that what our generals and war wags and other military experts say in the media only sounds like gibberish to you because you have no military experience, you’re wrong. It sounds like gibberish because it is gibberish.
Contemporary American war scholars and military leaders alike agree on the importance of the Clausewitzean center of gravity concept, but nobody agrees on what a center of gravity is. An Air Force pilot will tell you the center of gravity is anything he can drop a bomb on, so you need to buy him a lot of $2 billion bombers so he can bomb all the centers of gravity. A naval aviator will tell you the center of gravity is always the aircraft carrier; a Navy SEAL will tell you the center of gravity is always him. A Marine major will tell you there can only be one center of gravity but that’s because Marine’s can only remember one thing at a time. An intelligence officer will tell you the center of gravity is a secret, and if you ask an Army general what a center of gravity is he’ll start breathing through his mouth.
The center of gravity concept is a lot simpler than war wags would like you to believe. “The point against which all our energies should be directed,” as Clausewitz described it, should be directly tied to our objective, the prime determinant of all acts of war. Without a clearly defined objective, war is loosely orchestrated but pointless violence—a description that, not surprisingly, precisely defines our present armed shenanigans in Libya, Iraq, the Bananastans and elsewhere.
Our center of gravity is the thing that can achieve our objective and the enemy’s center of gravity will be the thing that can thwart us from achieving it. The purpose of tying what we call centers of gravity to objectives is what keeps us focused on the objective. When we start prosecuting “centers of gravity” that don’t directly relate to our purpose, we get in big trouble.
Not surprisingly, “floating” centers of gravity, and a printer’s plethora of them, are practically a trademark of our Long War on Ism. Since 9/1, centers of gravity identified by America’s war wisenheimers have included Saddam Hussein, his Republican Guard, his air defense system, his command and control system, Baghdad, his sons (Hoodoo and Voodoo? I forget), his weapons of mass destruction that didn’t exist, his ties to al Qaeda that didn’t exist either, al Qaeda in Iraq, al Qaeda in Pakistan, al Qaeda in Yemen, al Qaeda in general, Shiite militias, Sunni militias, militia leaders, militia leaders’ followers, the Iraqi people, the Afghan people, the American people, the Pakistani people, the supply lines that run through Pakistan, Pakistan itself, Iran, the news media, world opinion, Congress and the poppy crop.
You don't need to know much about all that Clausewitz jazz to know that centers of gravity are like priorities; if everything is one there is no such thing, and the warfare wisenheimers who tell you otherwise are whistling out their fat dumb toot fruit chutes. A good 90 percent of the people you see pawning themselves off in the media as experts on the art of war don’t know a center of gravity from their elbows and, more horribly, the tank thinkers who actually cook up our war fighting doctrines don’t either. All any of these yahooligans know of Clausewitz consists of bite-size buzz phraseology passed down from generation after generation clueless combatants, and most of them think Sun Tzu’s prime directive is to “Baffle them with bull roar."
Our New American Century’s strategic brain trust has produced three major post-modern military doctrines: Shock and Awe, Network Centric Warfare and COIN (aka “counterinsurgency”). Shock and Awe and Network Centric Warfare are related military “transformation” dogmas that promise to scare and/or confuse the enemy into submission with a top dollar concoction of Buck Rogers gee-wizardry and magical mystery mantras like “full spectrum dominance” and “rapid dominance” and “information dominance” and “dominant battlefield awareness” and “dominant maneuvers” and a “network of networks” that constitutes a “net-centric collaboration” of “self-synchronized” and “shared situational awareness” as an intrinsic element of its “organizational behavior”...
Catch the rest Tuesday at noon Naval Air Force Atlantic time.
BOB SOMERSBY of THE DAILY HOWLER and his exceptional staff issue mordant chuckles as they deconstruct how the MSM (main stream media) LIES every day to your face. Even Somersby misses a key point; that the unemployment rate in Texas ain't even hardly 8.2%, no matter HOW often that statistic gets wrongly reported!
THEY JUST CAN’T DO IT! Clifford Krauss, a very slow child, affirms a jobs boom—and a miracle:
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
The reign of the very dumb anecdote: In the Outlook section of Sunday’s Washington Post, Paul Waldman wrote a fascinating piece about the reign of the very dumb anecdote.
Every four years, we’re ruled by these anecdotes, in much the way Waldman describes. But alas! As if to prove that we can’t escape them, Waldman himself advanced one such narrative, even as he scolded his colleagues for doing the same darn thing:
WALDMAN (8/14/11): In every campaign, candidates' verbal miscues draw plenty of attention, and the GOP primary race this year is no different. At a stop in Iowa on Thursday, Mitt Romney blurted out that "corporations are people" and engaged in a mini-debate on the issue with the crowd. In recent weeks, Newt Gingrich came under heavy criticism for describing Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's Medicare plan as "right-wing social engineering." Tim Pawlenty referred to the Affordable Care Act as "ObamneyCare,"then backed down when asked to repeat it to Romney's face in a nationally televised debate. And Michele Bachmann has been caught in a series of factual errors, such as placing the Battles of Lexington and Concord in New Hampshire rather than Massachusetts; claiming her birthplace of Waterloo, Iowa, as the home of John Wayne, when it was actually serial killer John Wayne Gacy who hailed from there; and asserting that the founding fathers "worked tirelessly" to eliminate slavery.
Bachmann was wrong about the shot heard round the world and about the founders’ tireless work. But when he dragged John Wayne Gacy in, Waldman was involved in the same practice he decries, or pretends to decry, in the rest of his piece.
Bachmann was wrong when she named Waterloo as the birthplace of John Wayne; Wayne was actually born in Winterset, many miles away. At the same time, “journalists” have enjoyed linking Wayne to Gacy as they’ve mocked Bachmann for this error. In this favored rendition of Bachmann’s mistake, “journalists” mention Gacy’s connection to Waterloo. They fail to note that John Wayne’s parents lived in Waterloo before they moved to Winterset (click here).
Why include the one fact while dropping the other? Obviously, this is done to create the latest of the brain-dead anecdotes Waldman decries, or pretends to decry, in the rest of his piece:
It sounds like Bachmann is reeeeaaally dumb if you include the fact about Gacy. It would undercut that impression if you included the fact about Wayne’s parents. But so it has gone, for many decades, as “journalists” invent, advance or improve preferred claims about disfavored candidates.
(By the way: Gacy was born in Chicago. A long string of journalists have said he was born in Waterloo, even as they “fact-check” Bachman. But so it goes when these subhuman creatures enjoy their very dumb anecdotes.)
Your “journalists” simply aren’t very smart. Beyond that, they aren’t very honest—and they like to work in packs. For that reason, they have dealt in such anecdotes about White House candidates for at least the past thirty-nine years, a number we choose for a reason.
In at least one case, and perhaps in two, they have changed the outcome of a White House campaign through the use of their very dumb, often mistaken, stories. At the start of his piece, Waldman takes us back to the winter of 72, to the foundational episode.
Just how dumb was that very first very dumb anecdote? Waldman avoids asking—and omits a key name. As we start our new White House campaign, we’ll be seeing other such crap—and we’ll be in the hands of other “journalists” who won’t tell you the truth about the way this game is played.
In our view, Waldman is telling the truth extremely slowly in Sunday’s piece. Tomorrow, we’ll return to the winter of 72—and we will recall some things he left out.
It’s a basic tenet of Hard Pundit Law: Major journalists won’t tell the truth about other major journalists. Rising journalists won’t even come close.
Tomorrow, we’ll review that foundational anecdote. As we do, we’ll include some facts a rising scribe left out.
Special report: There’s no surviving the Times!
PART 1—THEY JUST CAN’T DO IT: Sorry.
A modern nation simply can’t function if its “press corps” is as dumb as Clifford Krauss and/or his editors.
This morning, Krauss writes a front-page report, above the fold, in your nation’s best-known newspaper. Within his first four paragraphs, he adopts a set of remarkable claims. Sorry! A modern nation won’t survive when its smartest “newspapers” are willing to reason this way:
KRAUSS (8/16/11): In Texas Jobs Boom, Crediting a Leader, or Luck
Texas is home to at least one-third of the jobs created nationwide since the recession ended. The state's economy is growing about twice as fast as the national rate. Home prices have remained stable even as much of the country has seen sharp declines.
Is Texas lucky, or has the state benefited from exceptional leadership? As Gov. Rick Perry campaigned Monday in Iowa for the Republican presidential nomination—with the economy dominating the national political landscape—the answer to that question is central to his candidacy.
Even before he formally entered the race over the weekend, Mr. Perry and his allies set out to dictate an economic narrative on his terms. A radio spot last week in Iowa told voters that the governor ''has a proven record of controlling spending and creating jobs'' and suggested that he could replicate the success of Texas on a national scale. In a budget speech a few months ago, Mr. Perry, who declined through a spokesman to be interviewed for this article, boasted that Texas stood ''in stark contrast to states that choose to burden their residents with higher taxes and onerous regulatory mandates.''
But some economists as well as Perry skeptics suggest that Mr. Perry stumbled into the Texas miracle. They say that the governor has essentially put Texas on autopilot for 11 years, and it was the state's oil and gas boom—not his political leadership—that kept the state afloat. They also doubt that the Texas model, regardless of Mr. Perry's role in shaping it, could be effectively applied to the nation's far more complex economic problems.
Jesus Christ. That’s just dumbfoundingly stupid. And no, a nation will not survive with that sort of public IQ.
Let’s consider the things Krauss says in these opening paragraphs, which appear above the fold on the New York Times front page:
The Texas jobs boom: In the headline, Krauss—or his editor—asserts that a “jobs boom” has occurred in Texas. That seems to derive from the following statement: “Texas is home to at least one-third of the jobs created nationwide since the recession ended.”
The Texas miracle: By the time of his fourth paragraph, Krauss is saying, in his own voice, that a “Texas miracle” has occurred. He doesn’t say the miracle is alleged; he doesn’t put the phrase inside quotes. This creates a wonderful, if predictable, irony: Just this quickly, Krauss has agreed to adopt “an economic narrative on Perry’s terms”—the political goal he described right there in paragraph 3.
A jobs boom has occurred in Texas, helping define the Texas miracle! By paragraph 4, Krauss has made these assertions. In the rest of his piece, he attempts to determine how much of the credit should go to Governor Perry.
It’s almost impossible to get this dumb, unless you work for the New York Times. Let’s examine the oddness of these Perry-dictated claims.
About that alleged Texas jobs boom: Has a “jobs boom” occurred in the state of Texas? It says so right there in that New York Times headline! But inside the paper, on page A12, Krauss types this, in paragraph 12. Please read carefully:
KRAUSS: As the Republican race pits the Texas governor against a former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, the economies of the two states are bound to be contrasted. Texas has far outstripped Massachusetts in the number of jobs created over the last two years. But by other measures, the Massachusetts economy has been stronger, with a lower unemployment rate in June and economic growth of 4.2 percent last year, compared with 2.8 percent in Texas.
Say what? Massachusetts had “a lower unemployment rate in June?” By the use of that peculiar phrase, Krauss means the following: Massachusetts has a lower unemployment rate than Texas. (June’s numbers are the most recent available.) But then, a whole lot of states have lower unemployment rates than Governor Perry’s miraculous state! This was Christopher Hayes, hosting last night’s Last Word:
HAYES (8/16/11): Paul Krugman dismantled the “strongest economy in the nation” myth in the New York Times today.
Krugman says, "It`s true that Texas entered recession a bit later than the rest of America, mainly because the state`s still energy-heavy economy was buoyed by high oil prices through the first half of 2008. Also, Texas was spared the worst of the housing crisis partly because it turns out to have surprisingly strict regulation on mortgage lending. Despite all that, however, from mid-2008, unemployment soared in Texas, just as it did almost everywhere else."
The unemployment rate in Texas 8.2 percent. That’s slightly lower than the national average, but it’s worse than 25 other states, including—and I have not seen this noted anywhere today—including every single one of Texas’s neighboring states, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico.
In fact, if presiding over a local commodity boom is the best qualification for government, well, then, Jack Dalrymple, the governor of North Dakota with its 3 percent unemployment rate, should be your guy.
The official state-by-state data can be viewed here, supplied by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Question: How can a state with an 8.2 unemployment rate be said to be enjoying a “jobs boom?” We don’t know how to answer that question, but if Texas is enjoying such a boom, so are 25 other states! And according to official data, there are just fifty states in all!
Eventually, Krauss mentions the fact that some other states have unemployment rates lower than Texas. He does so in paragraph 24, in the following manner:
KRAUSS: This time around, the state has not escaped the downturn. The unemployment rate is 8.2 percent, a full percentage point below the national rate but still higher than other boom states like North Dakota and Wyoming, and Texas has one of the highest percentages of workers who are paid the minimum wage and receive no medical benefits.
At this late point in his pitiful piece, Krauss has no time to explain how a state with an 8.2 percent unemployment rate can be said to be in a “jobs boom.” Nor does he say that North Dakota has a three percent unemployment rate (3.0); a reader would have no idea that other states go that low. Nor does Krauss think to mention the fact that twenty-five states (out of fifty in all) have lower unemployment rates than the miracle state. For the record: Oklahoma’s unemployment rate is 5.3 percent; Nebraska stands at 4.1 percent. If the state of Texas is caught in a boom, what can be said about them?
You won’t find out in the New York Times, which persistently seems to be composed by the nation’s very slowest children. Or by grown-ups who can’t resist having their narratives dictated.
About that alleged Texas miracle: Is the state of Texas enjoying a miracle? Krauss seems to say so in paragraph 4. He spends the rest of his pitiful piece deciding how much credit Perry should be given.
But is Texas really caught in a miracle? Inside the Times, on page A12, a graphic is appended to Krauss’ report (just click here.) As part of the graphic’s good news about Texas, you will learn the following:
“Texas’ economy grew faster than the country’s as a whole last year.”
If you look at the numbers, you will see this: Texas grew at a rate of 2.8 percent, as compared to 2.6 percent for the nation. No, that isn’t a typo—and no, it isn’t a miracle.
Did named person Clifford Krauss write this report in good faith? His front-page report is so blindingly stupid that many people will assume that it can’t represent an honest effort. Krauss is a stooge, these people will say—Krauss and his posse of “editors.”
Amazingly, we don’t think that’s obvious. At the Times, the “journalists” really are this dumb, whatever else may be clouding their work. Tomorrow, we’ll look at three other examples just from today’s Times, including two pieces in which Times “journalists” are trying to savage Republican narratives.
In the case of these two pieces, we do not doubt what they’re trying to do. They trying to challenge Republican claims. But they aren’t smart enough to know how.
They just aren’t smart enough to do it! And no, your nation has no chance with very slow children like these in charge—and with a career liberal world too store-bought and dumb to react to this garbage.
Hayes should savage this piece tonight. Just a guess: He will not.
============================================================
EDITORIALS BEING A TRAITOR CAN BE MANDATORY
TRAITOR – Mark Ganzer
I am a traitor===============================================================
A traitor to my race
A traitor to my creed
A traitor to my gender
A traitor to my former corporate standing
A traitor to my former socio-economic status
A traitor to my cultural inculcations.
In my treachery to these, the circumstances
of the random and improbable mating of seed and egg,
of the accident of my birth, I am empowered,
and have become the most dangerous of all creatures.
walking cloaked like those, and speaking to language of
those who cleave unto their unfounded beliefs:
I am the creature which haunts their nightmares,
I am the born again human who has looked into the mirror
Seen his true self and been lain low by the painful realization
that my life's choices had corrupted me, and made me and turned me
upon my genuine self -- I had let creature comforts numb me
from what the universe first called me to be and called me to do.
I have rejected all that for which they stand; all that they worship.
Their unfounded beliefs and idols of worship revolve around these matters:
In the superiority of the white race over all other races,
In the superiority of christianity over all other faith traditions,
In the superiority of men over women,
In the wisdom of the corporate elites over the working class masses.
In the superiority of western "culture and civilization"
to all other cultures and civilizations.
They self-justify these beliefs by their material "blessings" that have accrued unto them resulting from the circumstances of the random and improbable mating of sperm and egg, of the accident of their births, and, at the upper echelons, by their celebrity.
The gospel of prosperity and the cult of personality
are sufficient self-justifications.
This gospel and this cult I reject out of hand,
and will oppose to my last breath.
Conversation amongst college students, in Macomb, IL, cira October, 1970:
Chaz: I'm not a virgin anymore!==================================================================
Kiff: That's because you fell into the sewer.
Chaz: I'm afraid that if I came now (while tripping on LSD) that's I'd shoot my head off, instead of my rocks. See how much fun and how interesting drugs are!
Some of you might not consider Dave Somersby's article a “good news” piece, but then consider this: Somersby criticizes the high and mighty; he names names to help explain why we cannot have an intelligent political discourse in this country at the present time. Somersby points out that we are being fed a steady diet of propaganda, lies, and trivia; there is no meat on the bones of the stories reported in the main stream press, and the U.S. TV news is FAR worse. Critical thinking is our best antidote to what passes for news, but, in actuality, is propaganda that serves the interests of the rich, the powerful, the politcial and even academic elites. If you want to know why our country is in the sorry shape it's in, then follow the story arcs that you are force fed on a daily basis. Truly, for an institution given specific protections under the U.S. Constitution, “the Press” has abdicated its role as a non-partisan reporter of facts.
===================================================================
Conversation amongst grade school students, circa 1993.
Adam: Oh there's that cute little lion! I used to want one of them.====================================================================
Scott: But it's just a symbol of marketing.
Adam: It's a shame when the truth is revealed to children.
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