DT
Tunes For Tuesday – Wednesday Edition
It completely slipped my mind that yesterday was Tuesday until I realized today is Wednesday ...
A sample of some obscure – and some maybe not obscure – tunes from my strange and off-the-wall collection.
Today’s selection: Mary Carter Stuart - "Going Back To Olive Hill"
Seems most everything ever recorded has made it to YouTube so it's hard to find "obscure" ...
But I think this one may be a challenge even for ghostsniper.
Olive Hill, KY is Tom T Halls' home town.
Continue reading →Empathy, Not Sympathy
I was reading another blog the other day discussing how Federal workers are beginning to panic about their futures. "What will I do?", "How will I pay my bills?", "Where will my next paycheck come from?"
I can empathize - I've been there; I've even been a GS employee at times. And I've been laid off before.
Well, welcome to the real world.
It's a bit of a shock when someone comes to you with a termination notice: "Project's been cancelled, we need to cut costs".
Said message usually brought by someone who knows they won't be laid off and whose main job is terminating others when not shuffling papers.
Sometimes you might get two weeks notice; seems these days you're more likely to be walked out the door right then and there.
A certain complacency sets in when you're assured of not being fired. You might get re-assigned, but you do continue to get a paycheck.
You know who've been the most assured of not getting fired from government jobs? The support staff - secretaries, HR, accounting, legal. Those that do the work are often subject to project funding - and those who "support" the work are often the least likely to be let go. All too often - in my experience - these are the DEI hires, the "affirmative action" hires, those who have "rights" but little responsibility and even less accountability.
So, yes, I have empathy for these workers - I've been in that position and at best, it sucks. Then it goes downhill from there. Their cocoon is bursting and they now find themselves in the same position Biden put the oil pipeline workers in when he first took office. Other examples abound.
Welcome to the world of the private sector ...
What was the government's advice to the oil workers when the pipeline was shut down putting 11,000 people out of work?
"Learn to code" as I recall.
I wonder how much sympathy these same Fed workers had for those workers, knowing that their jobs were "guaranteed?
Biggest trouble in this country now is not enough jobs for too many people.
It's going to take a while to shift things back to production. There will be undeserved suffering.
And there's no way out in the short-term.
I'm in favor of tariffs on principle. While costs will go up in the short run, the nation will be better off if we return to being a "producer nation" as opposed to being a "consumer nation", i.e., welfare state. Make money real again, bring production back to this nation, decrease the actual unemployment numbers, not just those unemployment numbers based on those who collect government welfare. The number of people without livable work right now far exceeds the official numbers - our economy is in very bad shape.
It's largely a tax code and regulatory issue. Out-sourcing is a tax deductible expense (or was when I was in that game); employees are an expense of a different sort. What would happen if the cost of employees was a deduction from gross revenue? What would happen if "labor-saving" equipment was taxed at a rate proportional to the number of "laborers" it replaces?
Someone would figure out a way to pay off the legislators that we allow to make those decisions to benefit the few at the expense of the many
...
What would happen if there weren't so many regulations discouraging small start-up businesses?
What the country now needs - especially in light of the current state of the educated public - is more jobs for ditch-diggers and porters.
And fewer jobs for HR, "administrators", "administrative assistants", and the like.
Rant over ... and I didn't even really get started.
Continue reading →Presidents Day
The "best" is subject to interpretation, but the worst?
In chronological order:
- Lincoln
- Wilson
- FDR
- LBJ
- Daddy Bush
- BillyJ
- Baby Bush
- Buck Ofama
- FJB
I can't be "Christian"; I believe some are born evil and beyond even Jesus' redemption. The last two are among those - they are so evil and have already sold their souls, they should both be hanged for treason and let the Devil collect.
Jimmy gets an honorable mention but I charge him more for incompetence than "badness".
No, I don't put Nixon's name on this list - not that I liked him ... but he was a far better choice than Humphrey or (gag) McGovern.
Other names could also be included for incompetence ...
One can hope, one can do
Ghostsniper submitted this as a comment but it appears to be copyrighted material. I'll provide the (dead) link but it's best if I don't publish material not mine or any particular commenter's.
GOLDEN AGE THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE by EKO
Feb 15, 2025
eko dot substack dot com/p/golden-age
Sorry ghostsniper - I trashed the comment but I thought it was worth letting people know where to go to read it.
As what's-his-name says: New Rule
Please don't submit copyrighted material that you don't own. I'll post a dead link to the material though.
Thanks