It's always nice to start a day smiling at a well-turned phrase.
Today's grin, about when worlds collude, comes courtesy of Roberta, who, by the way, is a dependably dab hand at the art.
The post is about screwy flying things, and you science fiction fans will like it. Me? The Piper Cub, the DC3, and the F-86. No other aircraft is required in reality or in fantasy.
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Jun 21, 2010
Fremont, Nebraska: Why Not a License to Breathe?
This giant step to toward an American SSR can be considered with only a little attention to the snake ball of immigration politics.
Fremont, Nebraska, citizens are angry at and/or fearful of a parade of Hispanics coming to town to work for Hormel and Fremont beef. They're voting today on a law to require a license to rent a place to live.
In Fremont-on-Volga you will go to city hall and fill out a form. Commissars will check to see if you're a legal U.S. resident. If they like your record, you give them a fee for the license and they give you a chit granting official permission to live inside, out of the rain. Otherwise, hasta la vista, bambino. Pitch a tent in the Sand Hills.
The wrongness of this is so appallingly clear I'm wondering how my friends and acquaintances in level-headed Nebraska came to lose their senses. Perhaps only an unreasoning fear can explain it.
Among other things, I have seen numerous comments that this will be a great way to screen all would-be Fremont dwellers for various sins which might make them undesirable. Warrants. Arrests. Convictions. Slowly paid bills. Firearms ownership. Even maybe one of those dastardly library cards.
Little Midwest towns -- like admirable southwest states -- don't do this sort of thing unless they have been badly screwed by a Higher Authority which is so frightened of irritating one constituency or another that it has found a way to live for years pretending its head is a colonoscopy camera.
Fremont, Nebraska, citizens are angry at and/or fearful of a parade of Hispanics coming to town to work for Hormel and Fremont beef. They're voting today on a law to require a license to rent a place to live.
In Fremont-on-Volga you will go to city hall and fill out a form. Commissars will check to see if you're a legal U.S. resident. If they like your record, you give them a fee for the license and they give you a chit granting official permission to live inside, out of the rain. Otherwise, hasta la vista, bambino. Pitch a tent in the Sand Hills.
The wrongness of this is so appallingly clear I'm wondering how my friends and acquaintances in level-headed Nebraska came to lose their senses. Perhaps only an unreasoning fear can explain it.
Among other things, I have seen numerous comments that this will be a great way to screen all would-be Fremont dwellers for various sins which might make them undesirable. Warrants. Arrests. Convictions. Slowly paid bills. Firearms ownership. Even maybe one of those dastardly library cards.
Little Midwest towns -- like admirable southwest states -- don't do this sort of thing unless they have been badly screwed by a Higher Authority which is so frightened of irritating one constituency or another that it has found a way to live for years pretending its head is a colonoscopy camera.
Jun 20, 2010
The Estwing Hatchet
The good people of Estwing still make this tool, and they make it in Illinois, which is the next best thing to making it in America.
It is a wonderful tool and you should buy one. I was reminded of this as I sharpened my ancient example this morning and wondered if anything so good could still be on the market.
(It will break auto safety glass. I mean, just in case you go motoring with Massachusetts politicians.)
It is a wonderful tool and you should buy one. I was reminded of this as I sharpened my ancient example this morning and wondered if anything so good could still be on the market.
(It will break auto safety glass. I mean, just in case you go motoring with Massachusetts politicians.)
You be Peter; It's my Turn to be Paul
We're hearing from His Obamaness and the Unicorns about the housing market recovery. Which turns out to have been a non-recovery.
Instead it was another exercise in extorting money from the frugal and productive and transferring it to the politically lucky. Yep -- the "tax credits," federal handouts for people fortunate enough to be in the market during that brief period when the government decided to deck the GDP with boughs of folly.
A slice of the evidence is reported in an article on the "recovery" as it exists in Corn Country's Golden Circle.
The lesson is that there's plenty of demand for houses by people who can get their neighbors to pay a hefty share of the cost. It isn't as though the neighbors really want to, of course. It's that if they refuse, His Obamaness will send the IRS around to confiscate their houses.
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If you have little else to do, you might care to spend a few minutes pondering the headline. :)
Economy has life, but it waits for consumers.
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Instead it was another exercise in extorting money from the frugal and productive and transferring it to the politically lucky. Yep -- the "tax credits," federal handouts for people fortunate enough to be in the market during that brief period when the government decided to deck the GDP with boughs of folly.
A slice of the evidence is reported in an article on the "recovery" as it exists in Corn Country's Golden Circle.
Stimulus spending, credits spurs building
...Rick Tollakson, chief executive of Hubbell Homes, said the West Des Moines developer is waiting to see how the market rebounds after the tax-credit falloff. The market "hasn't just died," but it has slowed.The lesson is that there's plenty of demand for houses by people who can get their neighbors to pay a hefty share of the cost. It isn't as though the neighbors really want to, of course. It's that if they refuse, His Obamaness will send the IRS around to confiscate their houses.
---
If you have little else to do, you might care to spend a few minutes pondering the headline. :)
Economy has life, but it waits for consumers.
.
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