From Pine View Farm

April, 2014 archive

“It’s Only a Game” 0

After this, Philadelphia can no longer be charged with having the Worst Sports Fans in the World.

Sports radio hosts in New York City roundly criticized New York Mets’ second baseman Daniel Murphy for his decision to take paternity leave to attend the birth of his first child.

WFAN host Mike Francesa — who has been known to take entire months off — berated Murphy for taking three days of paternity leave to be with his wife after the birth.

“What are you going to do,” Francesa asked, “sit there and look at your wife in the hospital bed for three days? You’re a major-league baseball player. You can hire a nurse.”

More Worst Sports Fans in the World at the link.

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The Supreme Sell-Outs 0

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Carnage Candy 0

No doubt this will work out exactly as its adherents predict (details at the link).

The state Senate passed a bill Thursday that grants immunity to people with clean criminal records who fire a warning shot or threaten to use deadly force in self-defense. It also seals court records of those charged with firing a weapon, but later have those charges dropped.

All seriousness aside, this is more carnage candy for the diminutive phallus brigade, who will not rest until every city is Dodge City and every hill is Boot Hill.

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Facebook Frolics 0

Gabbing with gun nuts.

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QOTD 0

Jean Anouilh:

One cannot weep for the entire world, it is beyond human strength. One must choose.

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Birds of a Feather 0

Warning: Language

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Get a grip! Be polite.

The Manatee County Sheriff’s Office reported a 49-year-old man living in the 4500 block of Dover Street Circle East was home alone at 4:30 p.m. replacing the grip of his pistol when he accidentally pulled the trigger and shot himself on the hand.

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Theft of Services 0

Almost two thirds of charter schools are run by for-profit outfits. Public money that goes into those profits is not going to the students. And it is simply not true that for-profit companies will somehow magically do the right thing because of the fee hand of the market.

Public school:


Click for a larger image.

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Denial Is Not Just a River in Egypt 0

It’s the foundation of Republican policy on health care.

Dick Polman considers recent attempts by some conservative commentators to convince the Republican Party that health care reform of some sort–if not the Affordable Care Act, then an alternative Republican plan–was inevitable, and the failure of the Republican Party to face the challenge. Here’s a snippet (emphasis added):

Psychological impulse indeed. (Ramesh) Ponnuru (one of the columnists linked in the article–ed.) knows darn well that Republicans have never gotten their act together on health reform; either they’ve had nothing to say, or they’ve floated various ideas without bothering to agree on any of them. Helping the uninsured and taming insurance company abuses – that’s not what Republicans do. Coalescing around a positive plan to replace Obamacare – that’s not what Republicans do. In fact, when the Kaiser Family Foundation polled rank-and-file Republicans last month, only 27 percent said they wanted to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a Republican plan. Clearly, their aversion to affirmative governance is endemic.

Read the rest.

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News, Ripped from the Ticker 0

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Sign-Up Day 0

Brian Greenspun decided that, after a lifetime of paying into the system, it was time to sign up for his Social Security benefits. What he saw at the Social Security Office gave him pause (emphasis added).

And although many of us argue about the rightness and wrongness of government assistance for those in need, few of us ever have the opportunity to actually touch someone who is living the nightmare of not having enough. Of anything.

So before you argue the merits of smaller government — code for reducing the money set aside for people in real need — take a trip to the Social Security office.

I know looks can deceive, but I saw no one that day who didn’t appear so obviously in need of the few assistance dollars they would get from their visit to the office. Young, old, sick, challenged and generally lost and silent in our great society, they filled the room and waited for someone to help.

Remember, in GOP-speak, an “entitlement” is money that goes to someone who is not already rich.

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Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0

No significant change.

Jobless claims increased 16,000 in the period ended March 29 to a five-week high of 326,000, the Labor Department reported today in Washington. A revised 310,000 applications were filed in the previous week, the fewest since Sept. 7.

(snip)

The four-week average of claims, a less-volatile measure than the weekly figure, was little changed at 319,500 from 319,250 the week before.

The number of people continuing to receive jobless benefits rose by 22,000 to 2.84 million in the week ended March 22.

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Facebook Frolics 0

Shopped by Facebook.

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QOTD 0

Elbert Hubbard:

Never explain – your friends do not need it and your enemies won’t believe you anyway.

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Windows 8, Land of the Lost 3

Today, I helped an acquaintance set up her new Windows 8 computer.

I now have a first-hand understanding of why Windows 8 has failed in the marketplace.

It is a dog, a kludge, a monstrosity. Essential features, such as the command line (to do simple things like a ping command to test an internet connection) are hidden many fathoms deep.

I had to do a web search to find out how to reboot the computer, for Pete’s sake.

It is no surprise that Steve Ballmer is out of a job. Every decision he made was wrong.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Another mass shooting at another military base.

Politeness is a wonderful thing, is it not?

NRA Paradise nears fruition.

First son is stationed on a different military base. I think I shall be ill.

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Missing InAction 0

Newscaster:


Click for a larger image.

In other news, here’s the nearest thing Republicans have to a “health care plan.”

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The Galt and the Lamers 0

It appears that the price of human lives, as determined by the fee hand of the market, is 57 cents each.

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Theft You Can Vouch for 0

John Romano, in the Tampa Bay Times, has concerns about the Florida school voucher program. Here’s a nugget–follow the link for the rest:

Before going any further, let’s once again acknowledge there are valid reasons to support the concept of school vouchers. The tax credit scholarship program diverts public funds to low-income families so their children can attend private schools.

In theory, this is a commendable attempt to break the cycle of poverty. In practice, it falls short.

Why?

Because, after more than a decade of micromanaging public schools to ensure uniform accountability across the state, legislators are zealously pushing an agenda to hand over your tax dollars to private schools that are completely immune to accountability.

I will be charitable and consider that the first sentence in the excerpt above is a concession to his writing for an audience in Florida. Someone who knows the ancestry of school vouchers knows that there are no legitimate reasons for taxpayers to fund private schools directly or indirectly.

Consider the history of private schools in the South. Few existed prior to the 1960, and the ones that did tended to be boarding schools; they were the province of the well-heeled who could afford them. Then came the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and private schools sprang up all over the South; two appeared where I grew up (one still survives).

And, surprise! all their students were white. In the parlance of the day, these “private schools” were referred to as “seg academies.”

Contemporary efforts to divert public money to private schools are the descendants of the seg academies, all dressed up in Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. Today’s rhetoric is more sophisticated and the color-separation is not so obvious, but underlying the voucher movement is a desire on the part of some to resegregate the schools with as much segregation as they can manage without being noticed.

Regardless of the cover story, attempts to divert public money to private schools are always attempts to favor the privileged while subverting the education of the rest.

Everything else is smokescreen.

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How Stuff Works: Republican “Plan B” 0

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