Few years back I read a piece on the subject of "Women are finding that being independent and full-time workers has drawbacks", various quotes from news a women's magazine articles on the subject. His response was "So, after these years of striving, you've discovered what a lot of us told you a long time ago: for the most part, for most people, the working world kind of sucks. Deal with it." Which brings me to this piece that Insty pointed to. Points:
NOBODY 'has it all' in fact(there may be an occasional exception, damned rare), everything is some level of compromise, work and personal life and trying to get by; what clowns told these women otherwise? And I wonder if they'll ever be held to account for it?
“College is nothing more than a baby-sitting service. These students are totally unprepared for the real world..." Really? And who helped set THAT up? And why?
Also, while earlier generations may have opted out of the workforce through marriage or motherhood, these paths aren’t viable for these self-sufficient women, who either are still single or unwilling to be fully supported by men. A: Ever get tired of hearing motherhood described as if it's an Elysian life of joy? Damned hard work, but for some reason a lot of people have spent a lot of time degrading it. B: I'd bet, if you could hear the truth, a lot of these 'still single' women are because they've had so many people telling them, for years, that getting married is letting the feminist side down and all that crap; so they figured either they couldn't, or couldn't do it 'till they were 'successful' on their own. Except spending all that time on 'success' meant they couldn't meet someone, or did and they didn't measure up to the list of "The Kind Of Male A Successful Feminist Should Marry(If She Must)". C: "unwilling to be fully supported by men." Ignore all the possible things that could be done at home businesswise; ignore that starting a family is one hell of a lot easier if she CAN stay at home with the kids, and so forth. Yeah, that "You CAN have it ALL!!!" is really working out, isn't it?
And, just to throw in, remember all the bitching about husbands who 'Spends all his time at work! He's not here for 'X'!" and so forth? Guess what ladies? You're now living the reasons WHY he wasn't at home as much as he'd have liked to be; how does it feel?
Speaking of Insty, some stuff on toys that kids actually do things with. A very good thing. So is "Let's fix the lawnmower. Don't worry, the grease washes off." It does, and learning something about using your hands to fix things is always useful.
Speaking of 'using your hands', couple of years back I did a post on daughter getting a job in part because she could use a screwdriver and such; comments in that were mostly positive, with a very vocal few saying things like "If you're a surgeon or lawyer your time is better spent doing your job, not fixing little crap!" As if that negated the whole idea. This mess came to mind the other day, and that strawman argument still pisses me off. Learning to do things yourself, even little things, lets you take care of small stuff yourself instead of having to call, and pay, someone else to; knowing something about, say how the car works can also make it harder for someone to cheat you on work. Seem to be some people who just don't like the thought of people seeing 'Do it yourself, if you can' as a good thing.
In case you haven't heard, there's been a second bunch of Climategate e-mails released; it appears they're genuine, and really interesting. Separate post on this in a bit.
Son has used the M2 Heavy; he loved the heavy bastard, and gave him further reason not to think me nuts for my respect for that old designer. Ace pointed to this article on why it's still around, which includes
...The M2 has proved so effective, that it's become too good to replace.
Three years ago, the U.S. Army gave up on getting a replacement for the nearly century old M2 machine-gun, at least not anytime soon. However, many of the current ones were wearing out, so the army began replacing over 80 percent of its 36,600 M2 machine-guns, a process expected to take five years, with new M2s. Numerous efforts to develop a replacement for the M2 have failed so far.
I'll admit to liking shiny new stuff, but when you've got something this solid, that works this well, the didn't want to build new ones just doesn't make sense to me.
Mr. Browning did things right; so use them.
Those who can do. Those who can’t form a supercommittee. Those who can’t produce a majority vote in a supercommittee sequester. Those who can’t even sequester are telling the world something profound about American inertia.
As Veronique points out below, the “automatic” sequestration cuts would over the course of ten years reduce US public debt by only $153 billion. Which boils down to about a month’s worth of the current federal deficit.
Yet even slashing a pimple’s worth of borrowing out of the great oozing mountain of pustules will prove too much for Washington.
And on the current crop of people running for the Stupid Party nomination:
Forget the Supercommittee; the timidity of the GOP frontrunners is far more disturbing. In a sane polity, they would be competing over the abolition of departments, the rollback of regulatory tyranny, the shrinking of entitlements – not to mention flying commercial and making do with a mere 20-car motorcade. This close to the abyss, public discourse is nowhere near where it ought to be.
Just to lift a bit from the Barnhardt article the other day:
Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. … What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. … Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.
And Corzine, Thief Extraordinaire, is the guy Biden says is wonderful, and 'the first one they talked to'. Tells you a lot, doesn't it?
What was that about cartels not wanting to have things stirred up on this side of the border?
Instead, things spun out of control. Shortly before the marijuana delivery was to be made Monday, three SUVs carrying alleged Zetas Cartel gunmen seemingly came out of nowhere and cut off the tanker truck as it rumbled through northwestern Harris County, sources told the Houston Chronicle. They sprayed the cab with bullets, killing the civilian driver, who was secretly working with the government. ... Four suspects, all believed to be citizens of Mexico, were arrested and charged Monday with capital murder in connection with the shooting.
I used to think just that: they didn't want to stir things up, so the cartels kept the worst of activities out of the US. Two things changed that for me:
1. Things have been escalating; slowly, but growing. And I've wondered how many really nasty things have been hushed up.
2. Somebody had an article the other day basically saying "These aren't military units closely following orders, they're a bunch of criminals generally taking directions from the boss. So the only thing keeping us from finding more heads in streets and such is they haven't gotten around to it. Or haven't been drunk/stoned enough while killing someone." Probably correct.
And yeah, sounds like something that would come from these people:
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