Via Paul Tingley, who writes;
On a personal note: I went to a mutual fund (sustainable or green funds) seminar this spring put on by TD Brokerage. A young man beside me said that the highly intelligent people from the US coasts were going to lead America to a brighter future now that the red-neck knuckle-dragger states were no longer in power. I suggested that a more likely scenario would be that some of those un-intellectual states, led by Texas, would probably secede after the geniuses in NY and California go bankrupt.
Thanks, Kate – on a gloomy, rainy Saturday, that gave me a good laugh!
When the Intellectual Elite in New York and California demand that Texas pay for their self-inflicted lifestyle, there will be hell to pay.
Texans aren’t ones to put up with crap from the effete, latte liberal, champagne socialist set.
Maybe the morons in California can get the legends-in-their-own-minds from New York to accept their IOU’s.
I’ve lived in Silicon Valley for thirty-three of the past thirty-seven years. The fact that Texas’s state government doesn’t try to punish people who create wealth is, not surprisingly, a reflection of the values of the people of Texas, which is probably why I feel more at home in Texas when I visit friends there than I ever have in Silicon Valley, even though I’ve never lived in Texas.
Brokerages make big money charging fees to invest in those funds, they don’t put their own money there. Keep that in mind.
Brokerages make big money charging fees to invest in those funds, they don’t put their own money there. Keep that in mind.
Iowahawk , on the state of California .
Re: Iowahawk satire piece, both ouch and priceless at the same time.
Hmm… secession was mentioned.
Listen, folks, until now, I was staunchly against separation in all circumstances, but now…
The Left is becoming so destructive and tyrannical these days that one cannot help but consider separation as a serious option.
Either the Left gets put in its place by fed-up normal folks in a massive, quiet, nonviolent, unstoppable, unopposable, wrenchingly-transformative revolution… or separation will have to happen, unilaterally if necessary.
Unilaterally? Isn’t that unconstitutional, as the Left would say? I’d say, “But you guys don’t care about the Constitution; it doesn’t matter when you don’t want to care about it, so why should we care about it? You guys are just using it as a weapon against us whilst you aren’t being constrained by it. This cannot continue, cannot stand.”
In other words, if the Left is too powerful and tyrannical and appears set to be in power sufficiently frequently to make a union or a confederation unworkable, impossible to govern when the Right is in power, and in constant decline, becoming more debilitatingly decadent all the time… then separation must occur if sane people living in sane states/provinces are to get their rights back and control their own lives and destines.
No wonder separatist sentiment surges when the Left is in power and falls dormant when the Right rules, eh?
The fun part of ethical funds is that, by definition, they are not ethical. The purpose of any fund is to maximize the return for the investor, By limiting the return by selecting only those funds the politically biased ‘financial advisor’ feels are ethical, violates the moral contract with the investor.
I was just in Paris for a few days. Noticed that at all the newsstands there were magazines with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mug on the front (lighting a cigar) with the captions: “Arnold, visionary or impostor?” I think we all know the answer to that question.
Separation both north and south of the 49th begs the question “would the sum of the parts be greater than the whole?”
As long as there was free trade between the independent entities it is concievable that the above would indeed be the case. The more capitalist minded parts Texas Alberta etc would float upwards like an air balloon relieved if some if it’s sand bags. The socialists wold certianly have a nasty period of reckoning thier debtloads would require massive government cuts and sweetheart deals like supply management in dairy equalization and defense spnding would be lost. But intime they would pull out if the dive – their people are just as creative and able to compete – even more so once they have a government that is held more to account.
Nothing is permanent in the world – not even the USA.
Fred, in Western Canada we have been dealing with this same crap for decades.
Great job, Kate.
I live in a north Dallas suburb, and I think that there are more Fortune 500 companies based within a 10-mile radius of my home than there are in at least 40 entire states.
Summers are horrible, but the recession and the housing crisis has mostly passed us by.
-Mike
Clearly, people in Texas aren’t very smart, because Gary Doer tells us that Friendly Manitoba is the cheapest place in North America to live, the friendliest business climate and the most stable economy. And we have very low crime, racial harmony and mild winters. Our mosquitoes have been eliminated by red light cameras and we aren’t dependent on Federal transfer payments or payments by arms buyers from Saudi Arabia.
I hate to be a curmudgeon, but many native Texans regard these developments to be a mixed blessing.
All of the cities in the so-called Texaplex are simply our versions of big international cities. If you actually want to see Texas you have to leave the cities and go to places where Texas can still be found.
Frankly, many of us are not crazy about having all these Yankees move down to our state. They bring all of the same crap that they left behind into their new environment.
Taxes will go up, crime will escalate, power politics will become de rigueur. This already exists in a lot of places.
Anyway, we have about another year, and then we will leave the big city for good, and it can’t happen a moment too soon.
There has to be some kind of a tipping point between growth and the erosion of all of the qualities that made the location desirable in the first place. Even in places like Santa Fe, New Mexico, you now find traffic jams.
(On a positive note, Governors Rick Perry and Sarah Palin are old buddies, and Sarah will be coming to Texas to help our Rick’s campaign.)
Saw an interview with Governor Rick Perry. Man that guy is good. Doesn’t sound at all like the whinning, sniveling, mealy mouthed politicians that we are usually treated too.
PJTV did a interview with him hear. How sweet a reasonable, honest intelligent man.
http://www.pjtv.com/video/InstaVision_With_Glenn_Reynolds/Texas_Gov_Rick_Perry%3A_Running_a_State_the_Right_Way/2096/
I’m thinkin Palin, Perry or Perry, Palin. Something like that anyway.
I think you left out another state that is doing very well:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/06/us/06dakota.html
Greg in Dallas, the West has the same problem, we get the eastern carpet baggers and baggage. There like immigrants that bring their country with them.
“Western” Canadian:
Do they bring their grammar and correct spelling with them? God forbid you would actually want to be understood in educated company.
Sorry you picky two bit asshole, it’s late, but you fit the bill.
I love it when you prove my point.
KevinB,
If you proved a point, it is this: Lefties don’t care about ideas, they care about being conformists. Only a lefty seems to think that a misspelling is a logic error.
As for Texas education being ranked low, my guess is that that is because Texas schools teach the kinds of things that a productive workforce needs to know, instead of the kind of things that apparently fill the clueless head of Obama, for example.
Hi Tim,
Our family cottage is on Missiquoi bay, and we visit Vermont frequently. Where are you?
First, if you’ve visited here with any frequency, you’d know I’m not a “lefty”. And, frankly, I don’t give a damn whether your politics are right, left, or centre – if you can’t spell or write correctly, I’m going to mark you down. See, in the “school of me”, spelling counts. Are you advocating one of those “touchy-feely” schools where spelling is irrelevant?
if it looks like a…
and it smells like a…
and it sounds like a…
chances are…
you sure sound like a leftie.
if it looks like a…
and it smells like a…
and it sounds like a…
chances are…
you sure sound like a leftie.
I love it when you prove my point.
KevinB:
I know what you are, but what am I?
Your rapier-like wit disarms us all.
I know what you are, but what am I? ROTFLMAO
Your rapier-like wit disarms us all.
I love it when you prove my point.
“if you can’t spell or write correctly”
Sorry, but orthodoxy is orthodoxy, whether it is ideological or orthographic. I just don’t buy it. I don’t judge people by their spelling, grammar is harder, because a lot of time poor grammar reveals sloppy thinking, but if somebody slips into phonetic spelling of “there”, or “too”, or something while dashing off a comment, I can’t see how it proves anything.
Yes I am very close to Missisquoi Bay (by the way, you misspelled it 🙂 ). I shop at the Lacole IGA sometimes, or the cheese factory, when we want stuff that the local stores don’t carry. I looked at a house in Alburg Springs, and another one in Highgate, but we ended up on the Inland Sea.
Jeff, that’s an interesting ticket that you speculate on. I wouldn’t be surprised if our governor ultimately had presidential aspirations. You know, he was president Bush’s Lt. Gov. bac when Bush was governor.
Tim, I appreciate your thoughts. Actually, a lot of our educational dilemma is involved with the huge number of illegal aliens from Mexico that live in the state.
All the border states have similar problems. And in the educational arena not only do we have a huge number of students who don’t speak English at all, but we have a lot of parents who are agricultural laborers from across the border who have no cognizance that education for their children should be given some kind of priority.
It’s almost a matter of kids being allowed to go to school when there is not a more pressing migratoy need to be filled by the family. And even then, some of our first generation Mexican-Americans still have, more or less, the same ethic as if they were illegal. Needless to say, this bends the educational numbers in a dramatically unfortunate direction.
Hi Tim,
My apologies for misspelling “Missisquoi”. When you say “cheese factory”, do you mean the “fromagerie Fritz Kaiser”? We go there often, and think it’s great. And the Lacolle IGA – for a small suburban grocery, the selection of cheese and charcuterie is outstanding.
There might be a more beautiful drive from Quebec to Burlington along I-89, but I haven’t found it.
“There might be a more beautiful drive from Quebec to Burlington along I-89, but I haven’t found it”
I can’t tell what what you mean here, but if you mean, “*than* along I-89”, I suggest you drive down US Route 2 through the Champlain Islands from 15 south out of Montreal. Lake on both sides, Green Mountains on one side, Adirondacks on the other. If you are there during a full moon and it is a clear night, you should treat yourself to the ride.
BTW, we just call it the “Cheese Factory” here, but that is the place.
kevinB
“My apologies for misspelling “Missisquoi.”
I guess you love it when you prove your own point…..LOL
As the sun rises yet again, and I find myself here in East Texas, I look back at some of the other places that I’ve lived, and think about how things have turned out. I’m a small plumber who has had the chance to work in a number of states, and have seen perhaps more than some of the others. When you live somewhere, say, southern California, the local culture becomes apparent after a while. I remember reading in a local newspaper about the insane property rulings(well, to a fatboy from Texas, anyways)such as having to pull a building permit to put up a tarp over a doorway. And, enviromental impact statements, etc. As I watched the benefits increase for the illegals, well, guess who showed up for dinner? I’m bilingual, by the way, and was raised around mexicans, and have the habit of eating menudo every weekend.
What Texas does that is different is that the state ain’t gonna protect you from bad decisions. I can’t imagine why they should. We have a highly popular right to carry law here, and quite a few people do so.
As for Secession, well, Civil Wars happen when there isn’t anything left to say. Think of it as an insanely nasty divorce. Unless Obama is stopped somehow, and our economy is given a rest from his “hope and change”, then I can see it happening. We live out in the country here in east Texas, and ALL my neighbors are heavily armed. You see, Texans are expected to protect themselves until the deputy sherrifs get there. What generally happens is that the bad guys get shot repeatedly, and aren’t alive when the law shows up. Grand Juries around here don’t really have much use for criminal types, so, well, there ya go.
Most folks around here like to work, and haven’t been ruined by welfare. So, when Fortune 500 companies come looking at Texas, well, we have a can do spirit that hasn’t been “socialised”, and , really, since we want to work, isn’t that what these big companies need?
Insofar as yankee carpet baggers go, well, our weather is just too hot and humid here, and as my dad said years ago, A/C madem it possible for yankees to live here.