- When it finally dawns on the social-justice pecksniffs just how many things in every culture are “appropriated” from some other culture, they’re gonna be in a world of hurt.
- Randall Munroe gives Time an interview as only the creator of xkcd could give it. (H/T jed in comments)
- “Who turned my blue state red?” Talk about blowback. That’s blowback.
- Odd couple: Black Lives Matter and Bloomberg.
- Half of me hopes he takes those officious overreacting officials for every dime — and thinks it’s too bad any judgment won’t come out of their own pockets. The other half of me is beginning to feel a whole lot less sympathy for “clock boy.” (Nicki goes even farther.)
Clock boy used his 15 minutes of fame to publicize to the world that he is a jerk.
This university/college thing is truly going outerlimits. And I thought my Adventist university had weird rules and customs. On reflection, no smoking and no meat seem imminently reasonable. 🙂
Nicki has it exactly right about Ahmed. And Claire, I trust the one half of you will soon catch up to the ‘other half’ of you. It seemed obvious to me from the start that this was an attempt to exploit our PCness for personal gain. The ‘clock’ was not quite enough to get in real trouble, but just enough to get some real attention and publicity.
The irony hangs in the air.
The temptation for coastal liberals is to shake their heads over those godforsaken white-working-class provincials who are voting against their own interests.
As opposed to wondering if the “working-class provincials” in the middle of the situation know something the coastal liberals looking down from their ivory towers don’t.
And it also keeps us from fully grasping what’s going on in communities where conditions have deteriorated to the point where researchers have detected alarming trends in their mortality rates.
As opposed to asking why blue communities are deteriorating.
Rather, they are not voting, period. They have, as voting data, surveys and my own reporting suggest, become profoundly disconnected from the political process.
People who use welfare subsidies to disconnect from social and economic processes have also disconnected from political processes. Who can understand that?
But on another level, these voters are consciously opting against a Democratic economic agenda that they see as bad for them and good for other people — specifically, those undeserving benefit-recipients who live nearby.
As opposed to they’re thinking that the Democratic economic agenda is even worse for the “undeserving” than for those who use it to better themselves.
Meanwhile, researchers such as Kathryn Edin, of Johns Hopkins University, found a tendency by many Americans in the second lowest quintile of the income ladder — the working or lower-middle class — to dissociate themselves from those at the bottom, where many once resided.
Uh, no kidding.
Republicans, of course, would argue that the shift in their direction among voters slightly higher up the ladder is the natural progression of things — people recognize that government programs are prolonging the economic doldrums and that Republicans have a better economic program.
And that can’t be right, right?
Ms. Edin, the Hopkins researcher, suggests going further and making it easier for those collecting disability to do part-time work over the table, not just to make them seem less shiftless in the eyes of their neighbors, but to reduce the recipients’ own sense of social isolation.
Because instead of making it easier for everyone to “work over the table,” we should target those programs toward those who aren’t even motivated enough to vote.
The best way to reduce resentment, though, would be to bring about true economic growth in the areas where the use of government benefits is on the rise…
Because it couldn’t be those government welfare policies that are standing in the way of economic growth in the first place.
Why aren’t more people pointing out that the clock that clock boy “invented” is nothing more than an off-the-shelf alarm clock that was removed from its case and placed in the pencil box ?
He didn’t invent anything. He is getting a grand education on just how gullible people are when they are told what they want to hear.
He’ll go far, than one.
Motivated to vote? What could possibly motivate me to participate in the selection of a professional liar to lord over a criminal extortion racket? I’d much prefer to leave my neighbors free to keep every penny of their hard-earned money, to keep and bear whichever weapons they find desirable, and to ingest whatever vegetables they like.
Is it blowback when the recipients of bread and circuses forget to vote for more? Or is it evolution in action?
The pols screwed the pooch. They thought they were buying votes, but instead they were raising multiple generations of entitled layabouts.
If you go back and check the threads at the time, I never had much sympathy for “clock boy”. My skepticism has been thoroughly vindicated.
LarryA fisked the Times article brilliantly. I second every word of his comment.
“LarryA fisked the Times article brilliantly. I second every word of his comment.”
Agreed. He nailed it.
But then, damnit, LarryA does everything brilliantly. And with wit. It’s kind of annoying. 😉
“Is it blowback when the recipients of bread and circuses forget to vote for more? Or is it evolution in action?”
Definitely evolution in action. The blowback I perceived comes from the working folks who v*te “anti-blue” when they see the blues favoring their entitled layabout neighbors.
I have to disagree, my sympathies have gone up since the family made a demand of that size. Why? Look at the disparity in police power and cultural legitimacy between the institution of public school and the child. Any less of an award positions the child as being a flea-sized supplicant begging for scraps in front of the mighty school system, which is positioned as having made an oversight rather than a fundamental, foundational error. The award needs to draw blood on the size scale of the perpetrator, not the victim. I would be happiest if the school system and their tax-paying co-conspirators were all bankrupted and the schools closed, liberating all the students.
[basking]
Well, I am a Mensan. (Mensa being an organization for people intelligent enough to score very high on tests they aren’t smart enough to get out of taking.)
LarryA, me too. And the test I took was the Army entrance exam. Go figure.
“Republicans have a better economic program”
Yeah, socialist-flavored fascism is always better than fascist-flavored socialism. [eyes rolling]