“Are they children of God or mindless animals?”
October 25, 2007
Great pickup by Mamacita, of the superb Weekly Scheiss.
There has been much controversy lately about middle schools in our country handing out birth control to their students, or considering doing it. Darren from RightOnTheLeftCoast (see blogroll) posted about it recently, and there was also a link on Drudge. Personally, I think giving birth control to middle school children - especially sans parental permission - is an absolutely horrible idea. As a teacher of middle schoolers, every day I watch this age-group make the absolute worst decisions one could ever contemplate. By and large, their emotional maturity has yet to even come close to catching up with their physical and cognitive capabilities. That is a dangerous combination of circumstances.
The common argument people make in order to defend the distribution of birth control to teens and preteens is that, “They are going to do it anyway, so we might as well make sure they are doing it safely.” Horsesqueeze! How easily people forget that once upon a time, teen pregnancy was not nearly as ubiquitous as it is today. Young people fifty years ago had the same exact urges as the young people of today; human nature is human nature. The difference is that through parental, societal, and yes, religious pressure, the young people of yesteryear were much better able to delay gratification and not catch the diseases and early pregnancies that plague our youth of today…
After hearing about middle schools handing out birth control, and after hearing about my story of the boyfriend/girlfriend at my middle school, I want you to ask yourself something: Did it make you feel any better that the 8th grade boyfriend was going to pick up condoms on the way to have sex with his 8th grade girlfriend? Or did you think that these two should live in a world where having sex at the age of 13 should simply not be an option whether they are using birth control or not? That world once existed, and I wish to God that it still did.
Not Hearing Voices?
October 25, 2007
Not hearing voices? Well, we have the fix for that.
The inaugural On The Couch With Sigmund, Carl and Alfred BlogTalk Radio podcast is up. Our very first guest was Fausta, with a mentally healthy side order of therapy, a la Dr Sanity.
We talked for a while about Fausta’s background. While she hails from the warm sands of Puerto Rico, there is more to her than sand in a bathing suit. She has family that hails from Europe and she herself traveled extensively in Spain and lived in Italy (where she trouble doing laundry). Her perspectives are different from that of most Americans. She sees more nuance and subtlety than most. Unlike most Americans she is multilingual- and that alone influences an already expansive world view. She can look in from the outside and look out from the inside.
With Dr Sanity, we talked about what it means to be an American- those who take that blessing for granted and those who don’t. The story she tells of her grandmother as a stowaway to get to this country is profound.
With Dr Sanity’s insights, an already good podcast gets even better. Her remarks on an ‘exceptional America’ are most striking.
Jane, Joe, Teddy And Karl
October 25, 2007
Jane Hamsher, the ‘Mistress Mandy’ at Firedog Puddle and author of Senator Joe Lieberman’s victory over Ned Lamont in the last Connecticut elections is reviving the whispered question once more.
Does she really work for Karl Rove?
In her post, Just Call Him Slummy Joe, Hamsher rails against Senator Lieberman, referring to him as a ’slumlord.’
You can add slumlord to Joe Lieberman’s list of job descriptions..
As it turns out, Senator Lieberman is the executor of his uncle’s estate, the owner of the property in question.
When his uncle died in 1995, Lieberman was named as co-executor of the estate with family attorney Harold Bernstein; he’s paid about $25,000 a year for his trusteeship duties…
Given Lieberman’s status and influence, it’s fair to ask some questions about not only the timing of the deal, but the overall context within which it was made. Even if Lieberman himself is not a beneficiary from this sale, his extended family is…
Of course, referring to the Senator from Connecticut as a ’slumlord’ does invite comparisons to other political figures favored by the folks at Firedog Puddle. Surely Ms Hamsher had to know this- and that can only lead to speculation that a) Hamsher is a complete idiot (and we know she not) or b) she really is a GOP operative who works for Karl Rove.
In looking at instances of Democrat ’slumlords’ or those who benefited from them, Andrew Cuomo comes to mind.
Cuomo wants to become the state’s highest law enforcement officer, but that hasn’t stopped him from attaching himself at the hip to a onetime scandal-scarred kingpin of a housing empire he denounced himself when he was Bill Clinton’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Never one to be far from the action, Hillary Clinton is closer to slumlords than she is to Chinese dishwashers. We won’t even get into the anti Union people she is cozy with. See this Village Voice expose.
Of course, Al Gore is the real deal slumlord. If it weren’t for Mistress Jane Hamsher we might have forgotten all about this.
Tracy Mayberry, who rents an apartment from the Man Who Gets An Oilcan Every Father’s Day, in Carthage, Tennessee, says he not only failed to fix overflowing toilets and backed up sinks, but also threatened to evict she and her disabled husband, mentally retarded daughter and another daughter with a seizure disorder. He then picked up her puppy and nailed its ears to a two by four, which he proceeded to fling over a bridge abutment. Okay, the last part was made up.
The Senior Senator from Massachusetts belongs to a family clan blessed with a net worth of nearly $500 million. Back in 1935, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr., purchased Merchandise Mart, a Chicago real estate company, and according to Schweizer:
“…in 1947, he divided its ownership among family members and put it in the form of a trust…. [it] was not set up in their home state of Massachusetts, New York, Florida, or even California. This trust wasn’t even domiciled in the United States. Instead the Kennedy trust was set up in … Fiji.”
Now why establish a trust on an island best known for headhunters? The Fiji-based trust allowed the Kennedy’s to avoid “…the possibility of scrutiny by the IRS and federal authorities,” according to Schweizer. Worse, the sanctimonious Kennedy clan that demands the rich pay their fair share has “an intricate web of trusts and private foundations” that helps the family avoid the IRS.
For example, the family paid only $134,330.90 in estate taxes despite a family fortune thought to be between $300 and $500 million at the time of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr.’s death in 1969. That was a tax bill of .04 percent, and Schweizer informs us that the figure is based on the lower end of the estimated family fortune.
According to Peter Schweizer,
“…the current (2005) inheritance tax rate is 49 percent on any money passed to your children after the first $2 million…a farmer or small businessman worth $2.26 million who didn’t have the benefit of Kennedy tax shelters and foreign-based trusts would pay the same amount in estate taxes as the Kennedys did on their entire half-billion-dollar fortune.
Amazing hypocrisy abounds. Imagine, a farmer or small businessman, with a net worth of $2 million, paying the same amount of taxes as a family clan worth a half-billion dollars. This is not the stuff of liberal “economic fairness.” It most certainly is not the kind of outcome Senator Kennedy would boast about to his so-called “progressive” liberal supporters.
The Kennedy clan maintains most of their fortune “in trusts today which are structured to keep the family from paying higher taxes… [Senator] Kennedy receives nice checks every year from trusts set up in 1926, 1936, 1978, 1987, and 1997,” says Schweizer.
Senator Kennedy and his family have adopted other means besides trusts to avoid paying higher taxes. In one particularly sordid case in 1980, Senator Kennedy benefited from a political connection to Cook County, Chicago’s Democratic tax assessor, Thomas Tully. Mr. Tully had assessed the Kennedy-owned Merchandise Mart’s property value at $22.8 million when in fact its true value was $35 million. The discrepancy meant the Kennedys saved an estimated $8 million over a two year period. It also meant that Cook County’s public schools were short-changed a few million dollars in property tax revenues. Given Senator Kennedy’s long-standing support for public education, one would expect this example of hypocrisy to have a sobering impact on his supporters.
For the record, the Senator from Massachusetts only visits Massachusetts. He spends most of his time and pays taxes in Jeb Bush’s tax friendly state of Florida.
Of course, assigning culpability to Joe Lieberman for the actions of his relatives begs the question- should Teddy’ I forgot to call the police‘ Kennedy be questioned for his relationship to other Kennedy’s with less than savory reputations?
Joe Kennedy’s fortune was built in no small measure by his bootlegging enterprises during prohibition.
Joe Kennedy orchestrated daughter Rosemary’s lobotomy because she was retatrded. This was done without Rose Kennedy’s knowledge. Rosemary is still alive close to the caring and loving Kennedy clan- warehoused in Wisconsin.
Joe Kennedy was a Nazi sympathizer who made money in dealing with the Hitler regime. It appears that some Nazi sympathizers are perfectly acceptable in mixed company- if they are the right kind of Nazi sympathizers.
After Teddy Kennedy drove a car off a bridge in Chappaquiddick, investigators said ‘he killed that girl as if he put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. Those who investigated the incident said that Mary Jo Kopechne may have lived as long as two hours after being trapped in the car.
Michael Kennedy had an affair with an underage babysitter.
William Kennedy Smith was accused of rape at the family’s Palm Beach, Florida, estate. He was acquitted. Other women have come forward alleging Smith assaulted them as well.
Joe II Kennedy, as the Catholic Church for an annulment to end his 12-year marriage. Initially granted the dispensation, the annulment was overturned after his former wife wrote a very unflattering tell book, “Shattered Faith” (which he did not serioulsy challenge).
There is much more, but time, space and bandwith are limited.
Thank you Jane, for inviting the comparison between Joe Lieberman and just a few of the Democrats you so admire. If you want to play some more, we’re game.
Please give Karl our best.
