Tweets from the downhearted
When you follow people of a different political persuasion - by which I mean people who cannot be persuaded they are wrong about anything - you get the cream of the conversation from the other side. Someone retweeted Naomi Klein:
What Obama refuses to get: There is no escape from furious enemies. The only protection is passionate and motivated friends.
Useful advice. Crystal-clear, too. Yes, that’s what the Administration should have relied on: friends. Maybe super-friends. Pity they just relied on pals, or good buds. Should America be attacked again by terrorists - who might qualify as “furious enemies” in the literal sense - we must send passionate friends to Yemen to protect the country.
Snark retweeted by someone, either because he approved or thought it tiresomely typical:
Since a robust economy demands a highly trained workforce, I’m assuming the cons are going to pour record corp $$$ into Higher Ed.
So much in so few characters. A robust economy indeed requires people with skills, but they’re usually not the sort of skills you get with Higher Ed. Quick! We’re opening up a factory next week. Get me as many English majors and sociologists as you can find! Also, lawyers! Higher Ed can impart a useful skill set, if one goes into science, engineering, or medicine. Liberal arts: pffft. (Says the English major.)
Second: corp money? Yes. Apparently it is the intention of the Republicans - I’m sorry, the teabagging Repukes, to use the technical term - to put CORP MONEY into the college system. Cons are just aslosh with CORP MONEY; bags are dropped off every morning along with the milk and newspapers. They’ll have to do something with it. But of course they won’t! They’ll hang on to the CORP MONEY so they can fund another election, where they will run on grinding the poor and the sick into a grey, nutritious slurry that will be fed to genetically modified pigs.
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Comments:
May '10
Re: Tweets from the downhearted
James Lileks: Someone retweeted Naomi Klein:
She's quite correct. There really is no escaping furious enemies. And "passionate and motivated friends" are one's best protection. Since Obama's friends are neither (and under his leadership neither are America's) he's in deep trouble. And yes, this is what he "refuses to get."
Oct '10
Re: Tweets from the downhearted
James Lileks:
Second: corp money? Yes. Apparently it is the intention of the Republicans - I’m sorry, the teabagging Repukes, to use the technical term - to put CORP MONEY into the college system. Cons are just aslosh with CORP MONEY; bags are dropped off every morning along with the milk and newspapers. They’ll have to do something with it. But of course they won’t! They’ll hang on to the CORP MONEY so they can fund another election, where they will run on grinding the poor and the sick into a grey, nutritious slurry that will be fed to genetically modified pigs. ·
Don't quit when you're on a roll....
Jun '10
Re: Tweets from the downhearted
Will we be getting any advanced notice for the IPO?
Re: Tweets from the downhearted
I'm running low on Soylent Green this evening. Does anyone have any spare CORP MONEY around? I need to grind up a few more sick, poor people for dinner.
Aug '10
Re: Tweets from the downhearted
Forget training. A robust economy demands a highly creative workforce. And if you think universities are the source of creativity today, you haven't set foot in a campus classroom recently.
(Economically useful creativity, that is. The post-modern deconstructionist humanities departments are awash with another kind of creativity, but nothing any sane consumer would pay for.)
I can't speak for non-IT industries, but where I work, we would rather have an "untrained" hacker who pieced together a solid webserver from scratch in his spare time, than a cookie-cutter degree waving college graduate who took the minimum 5 computer science classes because the government told him it was a good idea.
Well, if what we're looking for are jobs... why wouldn't those madcap cons pour corp money into the institutions that actually hire people, i.e. corporations themselves? Is cutting out the middleman a "conservative" principle?
(Actually, maybe it is. After all, the liberal tendency to impose government between your paycheck and your federal handout is entirely dependant on that middleman.)
Jul '10
Re: Tweets from the downhearted
James Lileks:
After We eliminate the Department of Education.
May '10
Re: Tweets from the downhearted
James - You obviously have never seen this unretouched photo from the campaign.
Oct '10
Re: Tweets from the downhearted
The US leads the world in having over 90% of the Ph.Ds in Education. Our education systems spends among the top three in the world per pupil on Education when you add in all the money spent and divide by the pupils. The Ph.Ds in education have given us the 25th best students in the world in Mathematics and the 23rd best students in the world in Science.
California had to lower it standards in Mathematics and Science to get a new government grant from Obama that would save teachers' jobs.
US native born people produce less than 10% of the technical Ph.Ds in the world. I can just see the meetings in Berlin, Bejing, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo - "We need to lower our mathematics and science standards."
Russia produces as many Ph.D scientists and engineers as does India with a fifth of the population.
Eduction in America is a Trade Unionist activity. Like with the miners in Britain, some one has to break the Education Trade Union.
May '10
Re: Tweets from the downhearted
He didn't need the super-friends, he needed the wonder-twins. Also Gleek. (and eer you ask, I have no idea what that meant either).
Jul '10
Re: Tweets from the downhearted
Anyone else getting hungry?
Jun '10
Re: Tweets from the downhearted
Another kind of factory worker you probably don't want, in general, is a longterm government employee, but minus multiple felony convictions, longterm government employees rarely need to find new employment...so, bad example.
Oct '10
Re: Tweets from the downhearted
Mmmmm. I love bacon. It doesn't get any better than the daily delivery of CORP MONEY and the promise of BACON.
May '10
Re: Tweets from the downhearted
But James, who will employ those skilled graduates of University of Minnesota's course:
GWSS 3409W Asian American Women's Cultural Production
Description(meets Lib Ed req of Diversity and Soc. Justice in the U.S. (was Cultural Diversity); meets Lib Ed req of Arts/Humanities (was Other Humanities); meets Lib Ed req of Writing Intensive)
Surely there is some Federal stimulus dollars left over somewhere?
Edited on November 4, 2010 at 5:03pmJul '10
Re: Tweets from the downhearted
So un-follow them! Epistemic closure is the path to success!
I'd really like to see more focus on trade schools. The lack of young workers entering the trades is a significant problem for our country. Which is why my HVAC contractor wants to charge me $637.00 to install a $105.00 controller board in my 16 year old HVAC system - I'll be installing it tomorrow when it arrives from an Ebay Vendor. I can build custom servers, so I can install a controller board. So now the HVAC Contractor might have to cut back on hiring additional Technicians.... I'm killing the Recovery!
May '10
Re: Tweets from the downhearted
You tricked me. I thought I was going to see a photo of Obama standing in front of a statue of Jesus.