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Category: Sign of the Times

Palin, semi-hot on Newsweek cover, racks up book sales

Sarah Palin must be laughing all the way to the bank.

She's on the cover of Newsweek in a photo posed for a sports magazine. Cheap shot, she says of the magazine's photo pick.

Her book is No. 1 on Amazon.

And Palin's appearance on "Oprah" gave the talk show its highest rating in two years.

Here for story.

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Category: Sign of the Times

$4 tip to serve one drink?

The Ritz-Carlton hotel chain is starting to believe its own hype, that it's something special, and not just overpriced.

In a USA Today story, the chain recommends tipping a hotel bartender up to $4 for serving one drink.

Omni Hotels, on the other hand, recommend a reasonable $1, presumably even for a Laphroaig-class drink, or higher.

Here for story.

Category: Sign of the Times

Biden goes for laughs

This should be worth watching.

Veep Biden will be on the "Daily Show," Tuesday night on Comedy Central, 11 pm.

Category: Government at work

Nanny state takes another shot at booze

The FDA is questioning alcoholic drinks that contain caffeine.

Do-gooders are at it again.

Here's some logic: One drink with caffeine is hardly worse than one drink without caffeine. Ten rapid drinks, different story. You're drunk whether you imbibed caffeine or not.

And of course, its ritual for folks to have a few drinks and later stop for coffee. Ban stopping at Starbucks, too? Your federal government at work.

The key is personal responsibility. Not some broad federal action based on, so far, not much. The feds didn't announce any proof that alcohol-caffeine are unsafe. It's just time on somebody's calendar to harass another job-producing American industry.

Silly move because there's nothing stopping anyone from dropping a NoDoz in their beer. I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere along the line the federal government decided it wanted to me our mama. Shame on us if we let it.

The drinks in question, e.g. Joose, were already approved by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau -- and the FDA action suggests the federal government doesn't know what its doing, which isn't a bad surmise if you've been following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Can't wait for the feds to run health care, too. While you're waiting for help, one agency says, yes; another agency says, no.

Here for story.

Category: Punditry

A little seltzer down your pants

RIP David Lloyd.

He wrote the funniest ever sitcom episode, "Chuckles Bites the Dust" for the "Mary Tyler Moore Show."

"A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants."

Here for story.

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Category: Dumbing down America

Whip the teacher when students misbehave

Yet another feckless school story.

Cops were called in to a Chicago middle school after a food fight started.

Twenty-five arrests of kids being kids.

Of course school officials would never want to take responsibility and have a plan for stopping a fight. And perhaps hand out detentions and the like. Or at least insist cops, after arriving, not arrest kids.

Now these kids have criminal records. Officials who criminalize rambunctious behavior -- usually through zero tolerance rules -- should be fired. Harsh, but the country has to regain its senses somehow.

Imagine, arresting a kid for throwing an apple while real criminals roam the slums of Chicago.

Kids are going to fight and scrap -- it's part of growing up. Smack 'em, yell at them, give them extra homework. But don't send them to the slammer.

And this quote attributed to Diogenes of Sinope: "Why not whip the teacher when the pupil misbehaves?" After all, a food fight suggests educators have failed somewhere along the line.

Here for other examples of same.

And here for the food fight.

Here for an editorial on how stupid the rules of "zero tolerance."

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Category: Punditry

Ft. Hood shooter: Army and jihad didn't mix

Despite all the politically-correct tiptoeing around, it looks as if the Ft. Hood shooter, Nidal Hasan, dipped his toe in the waters of radical Islam. He exchanged emails with a U.S.-hating imam, Anwar al-Awlaki, a wannabe Osama bin Laden. And authorities are almost certain Hasan defended suicide bombings against American troops, an indication he was off his rocker.

Hasan was upset, among other things, about going to war.

Here's a tip: If you don't want to go to war, don't join the Army.

Anyway, I believe the analysts who say Hasan's kind of terror will be around 50 years or so before it plays out, and the West is no longer seen as Satan. Long wait.

Here for Hasan.

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Category: Just asking

Blondes have more fun,
documentary declares

Blondes have more fun, according to the documentary "Blonde Mystique." Three women were staged along roads faking car repairs. One blonde, two brunettes. The idea was to see how many men stopped to help. The scored: Blonde 7, Brunette 2, Brunette 2.

Age guessing: passersby judged the blonde to be younger. And at a bar, the blonde was the only one to get seriously ogled.

Anyway, Hugh Hefner was aboard for commentary. It's going to be hard to underestimate his influence on American culture. Back then, hardly a kid around didn't get into his dad's collection of Playboy, or some other source.

Hef defended the First Amendment when government confused paper and ink, arranged intom Playboy issues, with lawbreaking. He beat an obscenity rap for publishing certain photos of Jayne Mansfield, blonde stereotype second only to Marilyn Monroe. Not sure why this country is so puritanical, except for the obvious: the Puritans brough their hangups with them. But you'd think we'd be over it by now.

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Category: Sign of the Times

Health care:
Fat people strike back

Re critics who say fat people should be excluded from universal health care, assuming they'd be a liability.

The Big Ones are fighting back, saying fat doesn't necessarily mean you're not healthy.

Plus a lot of skinny people are sickly.

The book, "Fat!So?" details the basic creed of heavier folks.

Here for story.

Category: Whither Michigan?

Public education:
the scam continues

So now there are a few more government/foundation initiatives to make education work for Detroit kids.

Great.

Yet more proof that the job is not getting done, else why the need for a change in strategy? The state poured uncounted billions into public education over the years. How come the money didn't buy better results? If the job was getting done, we wouldn't fix-it programs.

The new effort, to train teachers, suggests that teachers-now-working don't know how to do the job. True in too-many cases. Schools of education, especially those in Michigan, are basically a scam. Teaching pedagogy and handing out degrees, even if the newly-minted teacher knows little about the subject she is to teach.

Michigan taxpayers are spending plenty on education. But they're not getting their money's worth, thanks in part to cowed administrators and teacher unions that protect incompetents.

One of the new program is aimed at teaching math. Why bother? The state is working to dumb down math standards. So here we are: spending more money to teach to dumber standards.

Here for story.