Nightly Ramble: The Great…. Something….

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere…The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

• A SECOND PLACE at OTB’s Caption Contest. Been a while since I’ve done anything with that, so It’s nice to see I still have the touch.
• NO KIDDING? Slobberin’  Barney Frank (D-MA)  says Democrats are “trying on every front to increase the role of government.” (BBCT: Dave Hatter at Facebook) Gee, Barney, I’d have never jolly well known that. Nice to see you admit it though. And by the way, Barney… Pravda agrees.
• CNN IN LAST PLACE IN PRIME: A richly deserved honor. Gee, guys do you suppose the tilt you guys have been placing on the news might be the problem? That’s one reason that the White House attempt to de-legitimize  Fox News is so incredibly stupid a move.  Clearly, the viewers given a choice of all the channels going, choose the one that the president and his minions go well out of their way to destroy…  Fox…. And of course, they love CNN at the White House, these days.    I wonder if it’s occurred to anyone that this is a clear indication of how far out of step the Democrats … particularly this administration… are with the American mainstream?
• CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY CONVICTED OF FRAUD IN FRANCE: While my first reaction to this story is one of quiet satisfaction, I have to wonder on what grounds other religions will be brought up before the bar.  Most of the offenses appear to be financial , and what group activities there were in the secular, business, world.  But we’ve all seen government use a case like this as a foothold.  I am, therefore, reluctantly skeptical of what on the face of it seems a  logical and prudent move on the part of the French government.
• BARNUM AND PELOSI: It seems that Nancy Pelosi has figured out that the so called “government option ” which, in fact, is not an “option” at all, but is in fact a forced government takeover of our Health care system, is it going over all that well with the voters .
  

  Nancy Pelosi

  It’s not even going over all that well with the Democrats in Congress, truth to tell.  It seems, that someone let leak the meaning of “public corruption”.  But Nancy needs this to go through.  The fact is, she needs government to HAVE that power.  So what does she do?   Well, when something is totally unpalatable, you simply change the name.  Again. This time , the euphemism that Nancy would prefer to apply is “The Consumer Option” . The object of the name being that it’s tries to spread the idea that it’s the best option for consumers.

  The Democrats have been trying this nonsense for some time, now. Buzz words, focus groups, etc. But the people are not buying it anymore.

  There’s an old story about PT Barnum (1810 – 1891), that you may have heard of.  One of his shows was wildly successful.  So much so that crowds were becoming a serious danger.  People were so packed in Barnum was afraid that folks were going to get trampled.

  

  Phineas Taylor Barnum

  So he responded by having his people open up some of the gates shouting “This Way to the Great Egress!!” Now, of course, most people don’t know just what an “Egress” is. Thinking that it was some kind of wonderful, strange, or beautiful animal that Barnum made his name on,  the crowds started moving in that direction.  Egress means ‘Exit”.  Barnum made it sound attractive by his choice of wording, because nobody knew what the word meant.  Barnum you may recall, also was quoted as saying “There’s a sucker born every minute”. This apparently is the rule that Nancy Pelosi lives by these days.  One can only hope that she is not far from the “Great Egress”, and work toward that goal.

• PEOPLE DRAIN: Billy Beck makes a great point today, and one I’ve been on the verge of making the last week or so, as I watch the numbers trickling on on jobs here in the land of Taxes, otherwise known as New York State:
  

  “The Empire State is being drained of an invaluable resource — people.”

  .(Empire Center for New York State Policy, quoted in The New York Post)

  Try to understand this elementary principle of collectivist politics: you are not yours.  Your life does not belong to you. You are a “resource” to be employed at the discretion of others, and if you don’t think so, then your only alternative is to uproot your life, leave your home and become a refugee in search of freedom. This is precisely the condition of those Europeans who abandoned their homes when America was once the only light of freedom in the world.

  I tend to agree, Billy.  I’ve watched it going on for twenty years, both here and in California , and I’m here to tell you that it’s nothing short of heartbreaking.  The businesses are the ones to leave first as the tax and regulatory burden gets to be too much .  What’s left behind at that point is people scrambling to find work.

  I live near Rochester, New York.  Our big industries 30 years ago were Xerox, Bausch and Lomb and Kodak.  All three of these are a mere shell of their former selves.  The reason?  To some degree this is due to technology changing…. But to the largest of degrees, it is also due to taxes and regulatory structures that make it impossible to maintain any sizable business in the area.  As it stands right now, the largest employer in our neighborhood is the University of Rochester medical center.  A government entity.  Ponder that for a moment. Ponder the impact of that on the lives of people who have lived and worked in around this area for generations.  All of that happening because they couldn’t control the rise of government, and couldn’t see that by demanding more and more of government they were killing off their own lives , their own livelihood.

  And so it is; The lack of work has people reluctantly leaving.  The question is, as Billy points out, where can they go? Moving to another state, another part of the country, instead amount is standing on a chair to get yourself out of the flood water for a few minutes, knowing full well that the water is eventually going to rise enough to make the chair uninhabitable as well.

• BITSBLOG BUMPERSTICKER OF THE DAY: comes to us by way of Shona Darress, from Ben Sley at Facebook. Now, yes, I know it’s not strictly speaking a bumper sticker…. but the laugh will be the excuse for the excess: