Altered by Dan

Post of the Day

Note from Dan: Ever since Monday, when I posted a letter to Gov. Bob McDonnell from two pro-uranium mining lawmakers, a reader named Kathy has been trying (without success) to post the comment below. She reached out to me via e-mail to men. Here are her 4 cents.

“Virginia Uranium Inc. continues to bully its way into our lives in attempts to pollute our air, water and future economic development of Southside and Virginia. Watkins and Kilgore are their lackeys, hell-bent to see us prostrate before VUI.

Some observations re: the attached letter:

1. Sen. Watkins & Del. Kilgore claim to have supported legislation while others opposed or took no position . . . bogus. Watkins pulled both bills and it is unknown what a vote may have yielded.

2, The majority of the people, especially those in Southside whom Watkins wants to target for uranium mining and milling, are not supportive of this industrial complex. Nor do we want to become a radioactive waste repository. No one wants to pour taxpayer money into a regulatory program that will result in radioactive wastes disposal that taxpayers will have to support until the end of time. Read more »

Lewis Hine | Wikimedia Commons

Note from Dan: Regular J.M. White weighed in with this satiric screed against raising the minimum wage on the Wednesday OPEN thread. It’s too good to let it get lost there.

“Our own independent studies have shown that 20-hour shifts at $1.25 per hour with no breaks, no health benefits and no days off coupled with the dumping of all waste products from production into a giant pit behind the factory is the best way for our company to turn a profit. Our employees are an important part of our production-line fodder, but they should be cost-minimized just as any other expense. We’ve worked hard at deciding what we feel is a fair wage with our workers.

Should any of them fall on tight financial times, we offer them a line of credit through our credit union that will help ease their burden. Our interest rates are comparable with many other lending institutions, as well, and we can deduct payment directly from the employees’ paychecks. All for their convenience, of course.

In our drive to show the world how conscientious of our employees we are, we’ve added a full-time medical examiner, morgue and cemetery on all of our production sites. We no longer have to ship the negligent employees who get mangled in our machinery out to the local hospital; we can write up a death certificate and bury them right there on the factory grounds. Our reasonable rates can be settled up on the balance of the employees’ company account. Read more »

Grafic by Dan

Note from Dan: The missive below was posted over the weekend by the feisty 13 Suns, a regular on this blog who’s in her 80s. The grandson she’s referencing is now an adult.

“When my grandson was a little boy, he had slow onset asthma. This means he never had a sudden asthma attack; rather, if he got a cold, flu, or any respiratory ailment, his asthma would more than likely act up.

When he was in second grade in the late 90s at a Roanoke elementary school, he missed 9 days of school due to illness. He was an A/B student, never in trouble, respectful, engaged, read several grade levels above second grade.

His mother was called to a mandatory meeting at the school to discuss my grandson’s absences. That meeting included the principal, my grandson’s teacher, and the school nurse. My daughter explained that she kept her son at home those days because he was sick, had asthma, and that she had only taken her son to the doctor on three of the nine days he was absent.

The teacher began lecturing my daughter on how difficult it was for students to make up work from being absent and how terrible it was for absent students to miss classroom lectures, projects, etc. The principal told my daughter that if my grandson missed two more days of school without seeing a doctor and without a note to the school from the doctor, they would ‘have no choice but to contact Child Protective Services with concerns of educational and medical neglect.

The school nurse and the principal wanted my daughter to sign a release of information form allowing the school all access to my grandson’s medical information.

My daughter refused to sign the release, told them all that SHE was the parent, left the meeting, and homeschooled her son for the rest of that year. By third grade, they had moved and my grandson was able to attend Salem schools until he graduated, with honors, and with no school nannies sticking their noses where they didn’t belong.”

Grafic by Dan

Note from Dan: Today’s thigh-slapper is from Awood, the self-professed “Reality King,” a right-winger who’s made more bizarre and unreal statements here so far this year than just about any other poster. (To a certain extent this is because of the Lenten season.) Below is his 2-part declaration from earlier today, followed by a few (but by no means all) of Awwod’s ‘greatest hits.’

“Reality is just a constant with me, Dan…I live with it day-in and day-out. You ought to try it sometime. I`ll grant you one thing, its not always easy, but I can handle it, unlike you obviously. The `ol “Spend more than you bring in“ comes to mind. Now that, my friends, is just good `ol down-home completely `out of touch with reality` camp. Anyone for a chorus of Kum beh yah before we braid our daisies?

Oh, and Dan ??? While we wait, would you please list ALL of the `misinformation` that you speak of in post #31 ? You see, I`m a perfectionist and would feel much better about myself if I could correct the `misinformation`….would certainly hate to misinform anyone. Also, `espouse` would have been much more pallatable than `spout` coming from the `Prince of the paper`. We`re waiting.”

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1.20.13
“Those who hammer their guns into plows, will plow for those who do not“. Thomas Jeffreson Note: Thomas Jefferson never said nor wrote this.

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1.20.13
Kristen…your post #4 …Given the fact that this came from the Huffington post, it is surely a lie. The left-stream media will do and say anything to get their way…“The ends justify the means“. Saul Alinsky(Dead) Note: The statement was by Machievelli. Read more »

By Dan

Post of the Day

Note from Dan: This comes courtesy of Wayne Goodman, who was responding to Frank’s comment, re: Dodd-Frank, that “I might have been more favorable to the Dodd-Frank bill if it were anybody else but Dodd, and Frank.” It raises the question: Should the Democrats name the legislation to raise the minimum wage Rubio Cruz Gohmert?

“Heyfrank finally tells the truth and illustrates perfectly what the problem has been for the past four years in this country. He might have agreed with the Dodd/Frank bill except for the names attached to it. For the Republicons, led by McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, Rove, etc. , no matter what the actual provisions were of any bill or any program or proposal made by President Obama (or Barney Frank or Chris Dodd or Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi) they were automatically against it.

Health care as proposed by their think tank at Heritage and enacted at the suggestion of their nominee Romney in Mass.? — they were against it because it came from Obama.

Funding for infrastructure development and upgrades — historically a slam dunk with Republicans? Nah Obama proposed it.

The jobs act which contained provisions for enhancing job opportunities for returning veterans and tax breaks for small business owners who created new jobs, things which Republicons have advocated forever? Nope, Obama proposed it. Read more »

Note from Dan: In the past, certain posters here have ardently defended the practice of drug-testing folks on public assistance, under the theory (they claimed) that government should spare no expense in ferreting out welfare recipients with hidden addictions, and helping them move past those. A couple of states have actually done this, and Ron May presents some results.

“To date Arizona has tested approximately 87,000 potential welfare recipients for drugs. 1 potential welfare recipient tested positive.

To date Florida has tested approximately 51,000 potential welfare recipients for drugs. 21 potential welfare recipents tested positive.

Each drug test costs $42. Thus those two states have paid approximately $5.8 million in order to prevent 22 people from collecting less than $300,000 in welfare aid.

I guess that unless you live in Arizona or Florida you needn’t worry about wasting taxpayers’ money.”

Wikimedia Commons

Note from Dan: This little nugget from Ron May emerged on the Wednesday OPEN thread.  It deserves its own.

“As has been my practice for the years I have served here I have a monthly breakfast with some of the retired nuns who live on the grounds of the Ministry Center. This morning I sat next to Sr. Mary who spent her life as a Poor Handmaid teaching in and leading Catholic schools.

Toward the end of her career the school she led was faced with a unique problem. A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom. That was fine provided it was of a natural or neutral skin tone, but after they put on their lipstick, they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.

Every night the maintenance man would remove them; and the next day the girls would put them back. Finally, the principal, Sr. Mary, decided that something had to be done. She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man. She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian, who had to clean the mirrors every night (you can just imagine the yawns from the little princesses).

To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, Sister Mary asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required. He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.

There were no lip prints on the mirror after that.

There are teachers…… And then there are educators!

We need a few more Sr. Mary’s in our schools today.”

Oregon DOT | Wikimedia Commons

Note from Dan: The Post of the Day is by J.M. White, an ardent gunner and expert identifier of horse manure. He’s taking on a comment by (who else?) Suzie, who wrote: “This is unbelievable. In four years, their guy has spent more than any president in U.S. History, yet they can only talk about Bush.”

Okay, kids. Obviously, some of our remedial students are struggling with history (and reality, apparently), so we’ll review this chapter once more for their benefit. I know the rest of us would like to move on to more important and exciting issues, but thanks to No Child Left Behind (who came up that again?), we can’t just plop ‘em in Special Ed. and carry on like we used to.

About half of Obama’s spending wouldn’t have been necessary if Bush hadn’t wrapped the Maserati that was our economy around a tree and ran back to Texas to cower and hide on his ranch. Never mind the $2 trillion that he left off of the books, too. The fact that Bush was a virtual ghost during the election campaigns tells you all you need to know about his culpability and guilt. The fact that most of the candidates wouldn’t have wanted his endorsement in the first place should tell you what a debacle his administration was.

The man has become a virtual pariah in his own party. You guys don’t even want his name mentioned. The mess he left us in is the main reason you guys have lost the last two presidential elections. You could realize this and turn the party around, but no, loyalty to the brand is what it’s all about and you guys aren’t very adept at admitting your mistakes, anyway. Read more »

Grafic by Dan

Note from Dan: Earlier today, I asked Another Chuck to provide 3 examples of what he considers divisive behavior by President Obama, and what Obama could do, in AC’s opinion, to be more of a “uniter.” We will take AC’s examples of divisiveness one by one, offer rebuttals, and then we’ll deal with his “uniting” suggestions.

AC’s Divisive behavior 1. Obama has targeted the rich from day one. His recent stunt of increasing taxes on the wealthy solves nothing in terms of deficit spending, in the big picture. It was a punitive and spiteful move only. As he told Joe the Plumber, “I’m all for redistributing the wealth.”

Rebuttal: The federal government needs more revenue, and it needs to cut spending. With respect to more revenue, the Republicans wanted to raise income taxes on the poor, AC. Obama wanted to allow tax cuts to expire for the rich. Between 60 and 65 percent of the nation agreed with allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on people who earned over $250k — some poll were even higher than that.  Obama A) first agreed to a 2-year extension of the tax cuts, which was an olive branch to the GOP, and then, he compromised with Senate Republicans on the income level above which the tax cuts would expire (to $450k). So he compromised twice on these measures. Yet you call him divisive. What do you call the Tea Party Republicans in the, who wouldn’t even agree to atax increase on people with more than $1 million in income? You don’t call them anything. You’re saying Obama is divisive and they’re not. That’s skewed thinking. Read more »

Dave Matthews 10 | Wikimedia Commons

Note from Dan: This fine rant from the Sunday column thread is directed at the regular “Frank,” and his phony, selective outrage at Obama for allowing FICA taxes to rise back to their 2010 level this month after a temporary, 2-year cut that was never intended to be permanent. It’s by another regular, J.M. White.

“Frank: It’s your mentality and those like you that have driven people like me away from the Republican Party in droves. Your willingness to continue a convoluted stream of the illogical reeks of insanity. You like to point out that liberals are feeding at the trough of their masters, yet you fail to see the irony of the fallow feed-lot in which you are imprisoned. The horn sounds and you take your place on the feeding line. You feast on that poison with an almost religious fervor and then rush out to attempt to regurgitate it to people who already know it’s rancid, bitter taste and want nothing to do with it.

Anyone with common sense knew from the beginning that the FICA reduction was temporary. It was an idiotic idea in the first place and we all got duped by our respective representatives, both (R) and (D). We’ve known for years that Social Security was in trouble. Again, it’s more of this untenable BS of taking specifically allocated funds into the general fund so they can be raped and pillaged for pet projects. Read more »