Random Thoughts on a Snowy Sunday

OK, the snow barely dusted the ground. But, it stayed all day.  Even the roads were snow-covered for a few hours this AM.  It made for a beatiful run today.

What an odd list (three pages!) of obituaries today!  So many of the names were alliterative.  "Bob Bean," "Bob Balfour Blanchard," "Betty Boguszewski," "Gene Gebala," "Guerino Giombetti," "James Jensen," "Harold Howell," "Ken Kosky," "Louis Loch," "Mary Meyers," "Stephen Sims," "Stanley Stepinski," and "Thomas Tarantine."  I didn't include first and middle names, such as "Betty Barry" and "Gary Bordon."  And one woman who died married a guy with the same last name as her maiden name.  Another was said to have the life ambition "of being James Bond."

Especially in the Free Press, but also among a lot of people, there are no bounds to the criticism of the leadership, past and present, in Detroit.  Fair enough.  But then many of these same people and the Free Press then support what Obama and his administration are doing in DC, to the US.  It all seems a little incongruent to me.

Of the "fiscal cliff," a lot of talk is centered on a balanced budget.  To balance the budget we need to cut spending and cut spending a lot.  Living on a budget means to live within one's means, that is, unless we have redefined "budget"/"budgeting."  Budgeting, as an op-ed piece correctly noted today, does not merely mean to increase the means by which one lives.  "The root cause" of our deficit predicament is spending--government borrows too much to spend more and government taxes too much to spend more.  The key is to spend less.

Imagine if some inhuman nut jobs started launching missiles, hundreds or thousands of them, into American cities from, say Mexico or Canada.  Then imagine that Mexico and Canada let them.  I wonder what the response from and within the US would be.  What would any other nation in the world do in response?  Yep, I think so, too.  So, as Nolan Finley suggests in an editorial, "Why shouldn't it [Israel] level Gaza, if necessary, to silence the rockets forever?  These same countries, which would react "with a terrible, swift sword" if they were being attacked for years, are the ones who sit by and watch this happen, with nary a word of protest.  Oh, when Israel is hit with wave upon wave of rockets, the international silence is deafening.  Then, when Israel responds--as any other nation in the world would respond--it is criticized for killing civilians.  Why wouldn't Hamas continue to bombard the Israelis??????

I don't know if there's a direct correlation or not, but....  It seems to me the schools and American education in general became worse and continued to get worse once the federal government (and, in Michigan, Lansing/the state government) became more involved.  Now, I do understand that many states, for instance, in the South, continued to teach the hatred and bigotry that marked far too many years.  Still....  Maybe it's just a coincidence.

Is the shoe on the other foot?  Back in the '60s and '70s, the right, ridiculously, told the left, "America--love it or leave it."  Now, equally ridiculously, some of the left are telling the right--those who I hope only jokingly talk about seceding--"Self-deport to any country of your choice."  Brilliance exhibited by both sides.

Interesting how some are critical of business anticipating the costly effects of ObamaCare.  Some national restaurant chains are already cutting work weeks to 29  hours, to avoid the mandating health insurance costs of the new law.  At least one college has cut professors' hours to avoid the same debilitating effects.  (Of course, to take care of the increased costs, I suppose the college could raise tuition.  But, no, we can't do that, can we?)  Others, small businesses, are cutting back to 49 workers, since the law applies only to those with 50 or more employees.  The hues and cries have started.  But it seems those protests are coming from people who have never run a business, never had to meet payrolls, never faced the prospects of bankruptcy/going out of business.  (My limited experience comes from having do dole out a limited amount of hours--a payroll of sorts--to workers in a dining hall.  It was often easy.  It was sometimes difficult.  But it had to be done.)  I wonder what some of these critics would do if they had to balance a budget, meet payroll, turn a profit--or face the dire consequences.  What they say and what they do might be two very different things.  They've shown their true colors in Massachusetts, where the wealthy, liberal elite don't check off the box to pay a voluntary higher state income tax, and in Michigan, where retired teachers have bitterly groused about paying pittance of state income tax on their pensions (which were untaxed before).

Out to back cookies with Ash....