Where have all those "greedy bastards" gone?

I have been reading about how California is going bust and New York is having revenue probems and one thing leaps out. How much the so-called "greedy Wall Street bastards" and their investors were subsidizing these places. For example, in this tidbit linked on Drudge about Ca. needing to defer tax refunds, we find:

Chiang says his office must continue education and debt payments but will defer money for tax refunds, student aid, social services and mental health programs.

A severe drop in revenue has left the state's main bank account depleted. The state had been relying on borrowing from special funds and Wall Street investors; those options are no longer available.

Or in New York:

In past years, Wall Street accounted for as much as 12 percent of city tax revenue, the comptroller said. This year, most financial firms reported losses that the mayor has said they may carry forward, allowing them to avoid paying city tax for several years. By the comptroller’s estimate, city taxes from Wall Street-related activities could drop by $2 billion, or more than 40 percent, over two fiscal years.

So, next time your liberal friends start dissing those "greedy Wall Street guys"--just remind them that they are now in short supply and guess what? They were the ones paying for many of those social, mental health and other programs that you loved so much. Now it's somebody else's turn to pay. Maybe even yours.

John Hawkins at Right Wing News has an interesting interview up with Tony Blankley, author of American Grit: What It Will Take to Survive and Win in the 21st Century.

TigerHawk: Why do professors deplore enterprise? (via Newsalert).

“The reports of bird strikes come from eyewitnesses on the ground.”

It seems that a plane from LaGuardia Airport en route to Charlotte, N.C. crashed into the Hudson river this afternoon. I was relieved to see that (thus far) there were no fatalities or injuries reported. The reason given for the crash? Birds cut into the engine. I am slightly afraid of birds and have a flying phobia--so to see that somehow all the passengers made it through the crash is very reassuring. I can't imagine what an ordeal this must have been. However, I have to wonder, why can't an engine stand up to a few birds flying into it?

Peter G. Miller, author of The Common-Sense Mortgage discusses Why Suze Orman is Wrong.

The threat of "cultural para-stimuli"

Andrew Klavan, the author of such internationally bestselling crime novels as True Crime filmed by Clint Eastwood, and Don't Say a Word, filmed starring Michael Douglas has a very thought-provoking column up at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood blog. Klavan responds to some on the right who believe that the left sets the precedent for how people think in this country:

No, no, no, no. What the right is experiencing at the moment is a phenomenon called “cultural para-stimuli.” You can read all about it in Tom Wolfe’s wonderful novel I Am Charlotte Simmons.

It’s sort of like peer pressure on steroids. It was discovered by Nobel Laureate Victor Ransome Starling, who found that when he surrounded normal cats with cats whose behavior had been bizarrely altered by brain surgery, the normal cats began acting like the crazy cats all around them.

That’s us–surrounded by the mainstream media. So steeped are we now in their lies about our representatives, their ridicule of our commentators, their demonizing dismissal of the causes we know are just, that we’ve begun to adopt their attitudes toward ourselves! And perhaps chief among the lies they’ve sold us is the lie that they’ve won, that the media are theirs for good and all, and that Americans are going to be hoodwinked and brainwashed by their constant barrage of misinformation forever.

Well, only if we let them. And only if we in the media surrender first.

Cultural para-stimuli--now maybe that should be added as a diagnosis to the future DSM-V.

"Raccoon meat is some of the healthiest meat you can eat"....

Uh, okay. I was reading Drudge today and came across this article on the popularity of raccoon meat:

Raccoon, which made the first edition of The Joy of Cooking
in 1931, is labor-intensive but well worth the time, aficionados say.....

Those who dine on raccoon meat sound the same refrain: It's good eatin'.

As long as you can get past the "ick" factor that it's a varmint, more often seen flattened on asphalt than featured on a restaurant menu. (One exception: French restaurant Le Fou Frog served raccoon about a dozen years ago, a waiter said.)

Eating varmints is even in vogue these days, at least in Britain. The New York Times reported last week that Brits are eating squirrels with wild abandon.

Here in Kansas City, you won't see many, if any, squirrel ads in the papers. But that's where Brownsberger was advertising his raccoons last week.

The meat isn’t USDA-inspected, and few state regulations apply, same as with deer and other game. No laws prevent trappers from selling raccoon carcasses.

In Tennessee, it is legal to eat road kill, so I guess eating raccoons doesn't sound so far-fetched. I am not sure if I could stomach it, but then, I have eaten escargot in France and other foods that sound just as unusual.

What is the weirdest food you've ever eaten? Was it good?

Anti-semitism is mainstream

I find it ironic that so many people/the media are concerned with whether or not Prince Harry is a bigot for calling a Muslim comrade a "Paki" (in a video from years ago) and show so little concern when protesters in Florida called for Jews "to go back to the oven" and held signs stating "Nuke Israel."

So, Prince Harry is forced to apologize for his remarks while ANSWER's "apology" amounts to the following:

"She does not represent the opinions of the vast majority of people who were there," said Emmanuel Lopez, who helped plan the event, one of many sponsored nationwide on Dec. 30 by the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism ) Coalition.

Lopez, a state coordinator for ANSWER, admitted there is a problem with anti-Semitism within his organization's ranks. But then he went on to call the supporters of Israel across the street "barbaric, racist" Zionist terrorists.

"Zionism in general is a barbaric, racist movement that really is the cause of the situation in the entire Middle East," Lopez said.

I'm just glad that Joe the Plumber is on the job giving the MSM hell over in Israel about their bias. Lord knows, somebody needs to.

Why can't a lumberjack be happy?

I was reading CNBC this morning and they had a slideshow where they ranked the best and worst jobs in America. The best job? A mathematician. The worst? A lumberjack. You can see how your job stacks up here.

I read up on the methodology used to determine how jobs rank and it seemed that jobs requiring physical energy were determined to be more negative. That is, the more energy required the more likely the job was to be in the "worst" category. This methodology seems flawed to me. What if moving around is something you love. Some people would die in some of the less active jobs mentioned as "best" jobs. I think whether your job is the best or worst depends on how you perceive and feel about the work you are doing. I understand that some of the jobs described as "worst" are dangerous, but does that always mean that the person doing them is unhappy? What if they felt miserable as an accountant or statistician?

It seems to me that people would be better off choosing a job based on their strengths-- even if those strengths happen to be in one America's worst jobs. A book like What Color Is Your Parachute? 2009: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers would be a more helpful way of deciding on a career than ditching a job choice because CNBC or some study group called it "the worst job in America."