Monthly Archives: August 2013

Gender Inequality

Gender Inequality

There has been a ton of talk about the “fact” that women earn less than men in the market place.

Let’s forget that men die more on the job than women.

Let’s forget that men work more hours than women.

Let’s forget that men travel more than women.

Let’s forget all that.

Let’s ask women:

Denied Promotion

When women were asked if they EVER have felt that they have been passed up for promotion because of gender, the answer is “No”.

There is no group o f women that even comes close to even 20% that feel they have been discriminated against based on gender.

Except one:

Denied Promotion.Liberl.Conservative

Yes.

Liberal women feel that they have been denied promotion more than twice the rate that conservative women do.

Why am I not shocked?

Voter ID

So it just occurred to me.

Why is it that the poor don’t have ID?

Is it an institutional barrier or is it that the same things that result in poverty also cause people not to keep ID on them?

Fix THAT!

The Single Most Depressing Chart I’ve Seen In At Least 10 Years

Playoff chart

For those who have poor eyesight and are not Vikings fans, the data shows that we have the 2nd most playoff appearances in football.

Zero Super Bowls.

Gawd.

When You Act Like A Clown….

Obama Clown

Who is surprised when a man who allows himself to be referred to as “The Barackness Monster” is caricatured as a clown?

The event featured a man wearing an Obama mask with an upside down broomstick attached to his backside who was positioned on the arena’s dirt floor as if he were a dummy. Another clown drew cheers from the audience as he asked if they wanted to see “Obama run down by a bull.”

Clown is as clown does.

 

Self Identification

I’m a mutt.  I am born to a German mother and a Swedish father.  Both are pure descendants of their nationalities.  Dad has passed so I can’t ask him, but I recently asked my mother about her German heritage.

In her case, she was first generation American.  Her father, my grandpa, got off the boat from Germany.  Until he died, he spoke heavily accented English and his wife, my grandmother passed long before I was born, never truly spoke English.  Further, my grandpa fought in World War ONE!  For the Germans!

And so I asked my mother, when she grew up, who was “we” and who was “they”.  Her answer was that she grew up identifying America as “we”.  Watching the Olympics “we” was the USA.  “They” was Germany; West or East.

I don’t think she spoke any German, perhaps understood some, but it was English that was the household language.  And it was small town America that was the context, not German.

With a father born and raised in Germany, having fought for the Germans in The Great War, why would she grow up identifying as American?  Why not German-American?

Why do people, generations removed from African decent, refer to themselves as African-American?  At what point do people who descend from African nationals who have been in America for generations simply refer to themselves as Americans?

 

Climate Modeling vs Climate Reality

Climate Model Predictions

The next time you are faced with a Global Warming Alarmist – dare I say I repeat myself- you may ask them if they have evidence that would suggest their models are accurately reflecting reality.

The chart above from Dr. Roy Spencer via CoyoteBlog suggests that the models are off.

As Coyote mentions:

The warming from manmade CO2 without positive feedbacks would be about 1.3C per doubling of CO2 concentrations, a fraction of the 3-10C predicted by these climate models.  If the climate, like most other long-term stable natural systems, is dominated by negative feedbacks, the sensitivity would be likely less than 1C.  Either way, the resulting predicted warming from manmade CO2 over the rest of this century would likely be less than 1 degree C.

Don’t fall for the trap the Left will try to spring on you – namely accusing you of denying climate change.  Certainly the climate is changing.  And certainly:

  1. Green house gases cause warming that might not otherwise have taken place
  2. CO2 is a green house gas
  3. Man has added to the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere
  4. It is reasonable to assume that man has warmed the earth to a level that it might not otherwise have been at

It’s not global warming that I deny, it’s the Alarmist nature of the disciples of the religion that I disagree with.

Opportunity

Ashton Kutcher on “opportunity”

I believe that opportunity looks a lot like hard work.  When I was 13 I had my first job with my dad carrying shingles up to the roof.  And then I got a job washing dishes at a restaurant.   And then I got a job in a grocery store deli.  And then I got a job in a factory sweeping Cheerio dust off the ground.

And I’ve never had a job in my that I was better than.  I was always just lucky to have a job.  And every job I had was a stepping stone to my next job.  And I never quit my job until I had my next job.

And so opportunities look a lot like work.

Today there is much gnashing of teeth and rending of clothing over the minimum wage and the ability to raise a family.

Here’s the cold hard truth.  That minimum wage job?  It isn’t MEANT to live on or raise a family.  A clue for those folks – if they are can’t have  a puppy because they can’t afford the dog food….they can’t afford to have a family.

That job paying minimum wage?  It isn’t meant to provide a living.  It’s meant to serve as training for your next job, which in turn is training for the next job.

Until you get the job that is meant to be the job you raise a family with.

Incentives

Money

Life is about the incentive.  For instance:

Philkeram Johnson declared bankruptcy in 2011. VIO.ME’s 70 employees stopped getting paychecks the same year. But they still came to work and continued making glue and tile-cleaning products. For a time, they also received unemployment checks, Mokas says.

“Unemployment benefits finished last September,” he says. “We said, ‘what can we do now? Stay only here and be guards here? We have to eat, we have to do something.’ Because we want to have work.”

Indeed.  Benefits ended some time ago and so now they wonder, “What can we do now?”

Don’t get me wrong, I wish the Greek workers luck.  But I wonder why they didn’t look for this life sooner.

Why We Profile

Because we are a society:

Horseback riders who encountered a missing California teen and her abductor said Sunday that “red flags” went up for them because the pair seemed out of place in the rugged Idaho back country, refusing to give many details on where they were heading or what they were doing.

At a news conference in Boise, the four riders – two men and two women – said they came across 16-year-old Hannah Anderson and 40-year-old James Lee DiMaggio on Wednesday morning.

“I’ve spent a lot of time in the backcountry and usually you don’t run into somebody wearing pajamas,” Mike Young, a 62-year-old resident from Sweet, said about Anderson’s attire.

Young said he had a “gut feeling that they didn’t belong” in the area and when trying to talk to Anderson, she “kind of had a scared look on her face” and kept trying to look away.

“They didn’t fit,” said 71-year-old Mike John, who is a former sheriff’s deputy from Gem County. “He might have been an outdoorsman in California but he was not an outdoorsman in Idaho … Red flags kind of went up.”

John described how he saw DiMaggio sitting on the side of a trail petting a gray cat. He feared that the cat would attract wolves to the area.

“All of their gear [also] looked like it was brand new — that was another flag that this wasn’t normal or natural,” John added.

Because we know where we live and who lives among us.

ABC News Defense Of Gun Rights

Guns

A little old to be sure.  And maybe beside the point now that the moment has passed, but I found this defense of gun rights by ABC News to be very interesting:

  • Few prosecutions of denied gun buyers.

  • There are already enough gun laws.

  • They’re an invasion of privacy.

  • They might be too broad.

  • Criminals don’t submit to background checks.

Go read.