So THAT'S How They Help Save the Pandas?

OK, so after reading this Yahoo News story, I am just brimming with questions here. So someone put on a panda wedding ceremony...so who catered it and what was served? What did they wear, and did they seek the bears' input before selecting their wardrobe? Was there music? What about the reception? Then after the "marriage", was there marriage counseling before the trial separation? Did the same person who arranged the "wedding" somehow sense problems in panda land and think this would be a good way to arrange some "makeup" panda sex? Last but not least, the adult panda videos they showed...um, just wow. Besides National Geographic, who thinks of filming something like that? Is there a market or industry of these kinds of videos? Was there music there too, and exactly what type of music brings back that lovin' feeling for pandas? Are there panda fluffers? Last but not least, who on earth thought up and performed the research that purports to show that pandas didn't learn or benefit from watching such videos, and what variables were measured to determine whether or not the pandas liked the videos or put them to good use? These are the things I think of when I read stories like this...like George Carlin says, I didn't ask for this, I'm just a vessel. :)

"Cutting out carbs is only the latest tactic used by the zoo in the hope of giving Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui a more loving feeling.

The two have been separated since December, in the hope absence will make their hearts grow fonder, Kannika said.

A plan to show them "panda porn" videos to coach them in mating techniques has been put on hold after research indicated that not all pandas learn from such videos.

Chiang Mai held an elaborate, traditional Chinese wedding for the couple in 2005 in the hope of encouraging them to procreate, and is considering bringing in a snow machine to help recreate a mountainous habitat.

But with the annual panda mating season due to begin within weeks, the zoo is preparing to try artificial insemination if the natural method does not work, Kannika said."

Why Raising the Minimum Wage is Not A Panacea

I've read lots of dry, dull economist drivel regarding why raising the minimum wage isn't the cure-all many folks (mostly Democrats) make it out to be, and how it ultimately ends up hurting most the people it purports to "help" (i.e., lower-class low-wage earners). Mrs. DuToit has said it easily and in understandable English in a single post better than any economist I've seen, so enjoy her Minimum Wage chapter of Economics 101.

"So, say the Democrats, Let’s give them more money!

The minimum wage is raised to $7.50 an hour, which increases the family’s net income to $28,000 a year, or $630 a month.

That $2.00 an hour increase represents a 26% increase.

Great! They can buy more stuff!

Except, of course, that every business owner just had a 26% increase in their costs of minimum wage labor. The businesses that have the lowest wage workers are also the businesses that make the categories of items that the family already had very little wiggle room (housing, food, clothing, and transportation). Since a business owner, especially in something like grocery or food, doesn’t have the profit margins to absorb that, they have to make some changes in their prices.

The other way the business owner will respond to the increase will be to reduce his labor costs by cutting staff, or reducing hours. Across the board, that will represent about a 5% reduction in hours. So our minimum wage worker, who was working full time (2,080 hours a year), was just reduced to 1,976 hours.

That means that the family’s $639 a month increase, just got cut to $520, a net increase of 24%.

But his costs went up by 25%, a net loss of 1%.

And the death spiral begins.

In spending power then, the minimum wage earner is the one who experiences the greatest loss.

But they got a raise! We forced those greedy business owners to give them more money, and they’ll remember that come election day!

And the Evil Party retains power."

About a Dozen Corrupt Lawmakers Too Late

Via Yahoo News, we get some news in the better late than never category. I can't believe the jackals and weasels in the halls of power actually decided that some of the laws that apply to the plebes they represent should apply to them too...and the fact that John Kerry is the author of such a fine amendment is enough to make me go outside to check and see if the sky is still blue. Any regular Joe caught embezzling, stealing, or committing similar crimes in violation of the trust placed in him by his employer would definitely lose his pension and benefits in addition to being sent to jail. Losing pensions is a step in the right direction, but I think anyone in Congress convicted of these kinds of offenses should have their sentences doubled. They hold great power and are entrusted with much, so much more should be expected of them.

"Members of Congress convicted of serious crimes would lose their taxpayer-paid pensions, sometimes totaling more than $100,000 a year, under a measure unanimously approved by the Senate Friday. The 87-0 vote to deprive lawbreaking lawmakers of their retirement benefits was part of a comprehensive ethics and lobbying bill that the Senate has taken up as its first piece of legislation in the new Democratic-controlled Congress.

"There's something that really grates in the notion that you can put the public's trust and the public's business up for sale and then walk away and have the people that you betrayed turn around and pay for you to be able to have a fat pension," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., author of the amendment. Currently, a lawmaker can lose his or her pension only if convicted of crimes such as treason or espionage. The Kerry provision would extend that to cases of bribery, conspiracy to defraud the United States and perjury."

The Letter Every Border Patrol Agent Should Submit a Week From Now

Many bloggers, including myself, have chronicled the travesty of justice regarding Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. For simply doing their jobs, they were both sentenced to over a decade in prison while the drug smuggling, illegal immigrant criminal they were attepting to apprehend gets taxpayer-funded medical care, immunity from prosecutiion in return for testifying against the agents, and likely a multimillion dollar verdict from some mouth-breathing federal jury for violating his "civil rights". A reader of Emperor Misha pens a fine letter that should be submitted by every active Border Patrol agent on January 18th (the day Ramos and Compean are scheduled to report to prison). I certainly wouldn't go to work if I had to live in daily fear of a decade in the federal pen for doing the job I was hired to do, but that's just me.

There are nearly 30,000 border patrol agents, officers and employees
currently out there, doing a very necessary but very hard job.

Now I, as an American, am going to ask you to do something very, very
hard.

I’m asking all of you, on January 17, 2006, to quit your jobs.

No two-weeks notice, no nice words. Just 30,000 letters of
resignation, handed in all at the same time. Something to the tune of —

—————————–
Dear President Bush,

Due to the incarceration of two of my colleagues in the Border Patrol,
Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, I no longer believe that I can perform my
lawful duties without fear of prosecution by your own federal attorneys and
federal judges. Therefore, I hereby resign my position in the United States
Border Patrol, effective immediately.

Turn in your guns, badges, vehicles, keys, uniforms, and any other
U.S. government property with your letter, so you don’t get wrongly accused
of stealing and end up in the slammer for that.

I am not talking about a PATCO-type strike. I am seriously and
honestly asking you to lay down tools and walk away. Permanently. You
won’t be breaking any anti-strike laws by doing that. You’ll just be
exercising your right as a free individual to end your employment. If
you’ve got a contract with the government people, break it. They could try
to sue, but I doubt they’re going to flood their already overloaded courts
with suits they’ll never collect a penny from. And if they try to force you
back to work, may I suggest you invite a couple of Minutemen over to your
house? Since Janet Reno’s no longer in a position of power, I doubt very
much that there’ll be any early morning closet raids in any event.

Now, why should you give up your jobs? It’s an honest question.
Here’s a brutally honest answer. Because paid or not, you’ll never be able
to do your job properly. Your own employer is royally boning two of your
fellow colleagues, and if you remain in the Border Patrol, you’re in the
same position (bent over, ankles gripped firmly in hands).

The President of the United States, the chief law enforcement officer
of the nation, is unwilling to override this travesty of justice. This
should worry you. I know it worries me!

Dubya doesn’t even talk a good game anymore when it comes to border
protection. Sure, he has nominally expanded your ranks. However, he’s also
put into place a system that emasculates your ability to enforce the laws
that are already on the books. The U.S. prosecutor and the federal judge
who presided over this charade are both Bush appointees.

I support George W. Bush on the War on Terrorism. In other areas, I
also find him to be a good president. However, he’s dead wrong on the
idiotic non-protection protection of our nation’s boundaries. Protecting
our borders is a necessary element in the War on Terrorism. Why Dubya
doesn’t see that is frankly beyond my ken.

Unemployment rates right now are at historical lows. That means that
you’ve got an excellent chance of finding new jobs quickly. There are a lot
of communities in the country who would gladly pay top dollar for your
training, your expertise, and your dedication to service. Without putting
you in the position of threatening you with imprisonment for actually doing
your job.

Now, those of you who stay on (because I’m certain that some always
do) should remember one very important thing. You may continue to draw a
paycheck. However, you’ll always be at risk of prosecution from your own
employer, for the simple act of doing the job you swore an oath to do.
Think about that. You can keep a job where you have to violate an oath, a
promise before God, to protect American citizens.

Could you really sleep at night, knowing that? I couldn’t.

I suspect that a lot of people who live near the border wouldn’t sleep
too well either, knowing that you weren’t able to do your job to the best of
your ability. Moreover, I don’t think you could either. Because you took this job
not to protect politicians or protect corruption, but to protect America.
If you are not permitted to do that, if you’re under threat of imprisonment
by your own boss for doing your job, well, I’d say you’re already in the
wrong job.

Time to find a new one.

Yours respectfully,
Doc Farmer

Where the Enemy Operates

Usually, when something sets me to thinking, I will try to improve or expound further on what I've heard if possible. Sometimes though, what's said is so spot-on correct, that improvement is difficult, if not impossible to come by...so it was with a sermon I heard not too long ago.

The pastor speaking told us that, in the arena of personal temptation, Satan works most often through our thoughts. People have thoughts all the time, and as long as whatever a person thinks is just that, a thought, it can be taken or left, processed or discarded, acted on or not. The example he used is a spouse cheating on the other spouse. Let's say there's a thought that it might be fun to act on the sexual attraction a spouse has to a co-worker. At the thought level, the spouse can quickly and easily get rid of that thought, thereby heading off any possibility of acting on that attraction and messing up the marriage on the front end. But what happens when the thoughts sticks there, when it gains a foothold?

The thought then graduates to the imagination stage. Once the thought metastasizes (like cancer) into imagination, it is much harder to get rid of. Now it's to the point where instead of a "Oh this person is attractive." thought, it's become "What might they look like with no clothes? How might it be to touch them?" And once they've gotten here, it's easier to go down the bunny trail of magnifying the shortcomings of their spouse, minimizing the pitfalls of being with the person to whom they are now attracted, and possibly even rationalizing that having feelings for this co-worker is OK in spite of being married...very dangerous stuff.

After that, at some point comes action...now you've started spending time with this person, confiding in them, maybe it's even graduated to physical infidelity. The marriage is now in trouble, if not destroyed, and all because thoughts were not properly controlled. What was once only a thought has now become a stronghold, immune from the effects of mere willpower alone. At this point, some heavy duty spiritual lifting/warfare is required to tear it down, but obviously it's much easier if we never let it get there in the first place.

In the arena of relationships, friends or otherwise, I think the Enemy operates primarily from a place of fault. If there's a disagreement, it might occur to me that the other person is at fault, and if it does, that presents me two choices, to forgive them, or to meditate on the disagreement, allowing anger and resenment to breed. If I choose the latter, soon those negative feelings escalate into preparation, trying to figure out how to win the fight, how to prevail in the argument, what cutting words might I say to make my point. Finally, if I persist long enough in assigning fault and failing to forgive, eventually there will be a grudge or sustained unhappiness, either of which could doom the relationship.

The best we can do as humans is to lean on God, to ask Him to help us keep around only helpful and productive thoughts and to discard the rest...and in relationships, ask Him to help us be strong enough to forgive freely and fully and let the chips fall where they may.

Words of Wisdom from Nelson Mandela

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

--Nelson Mandela

When Your Name Becomes a Verb

This is when you know you have really screwed the pooch...when your name becomes a verb. Via Urban Dictionary and Michelle Malkin, we learn that to "Nifong" someone means to zealously and unjustly prosecute them based on motives far less noble than seeking justice. Sometimes, the Internet is a very cool thing, and I hope this is yet another nail in the coffin of Durham, N.C. District Attorney Mike Nifong's career. Someone should have told Mr. Nifong that while fame lasts 15 minutes if we are lucky, infamy lasts much, much longer. :)

Nifonged describes the railroading or harming of a person with no justifiable cause, except for one's own gain. It is someone being taken advantage of unfairly by someone without scruples or morals. It is created more in disdain of North Carolina/Durham District Attorney Michael Nifong, and his screwing of 3 Duke University Lacrosse Team members and helping to inflame a tense racial situation for his own glory, ego, and political gain.

Being Nifonged, Getting Nifonged, Nifonged
-examples
1. We knew we were BEING NIFONGED when we were forced to pay an extra $50 duty to the customs agent for bringing foreign magazines into Mexico under the threat of jail time.
2. When I saw that the rebate on my new DVD player was not honored by the company I'd bought it from, I had the distinct feeling I was GETTING NIFONGED.
3. "When we noticed that our belongings were missing from our room, we had the distinct feeling we had been NIFONGED by the locals.