A good article about left-wing symbols like Che Guevara shirts:

These T-shirts send a message, which effectively boils down to this: I have vague left-wing sympathies but don't read history. I am educated enough to want nonconformity but not intelligent enough to avoid conformity.

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This is the most realistic tattoo I have ever seen. Wow.

And I love Cracked. Srsly. 5 Ways People Are Trying to Save the World (That Don't Work)

And this makes my heart swell: Eleven States Declare Sovereignty Over ObamaÂ’s Action. Go, States, go! It's about time somebody gave a crap about the 10th Amendment.

[All links via CG.]

Posted by: Sarah at 03:48 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Some links from Conservative Grapevine before I hit the road:

5 Things You Think Will Make You Happy (But Won't)
It has everything: naughty language, cute animals, Cristal snowcones...

Breaking News: Late-night comedy shows make fun of Pres. Obama
The clip of The Daily Show is funny, but isn't it interesting how Jon Stewart makes fun of Obama for being slow and boring and then makes fun of O'Reilly for saying that Obama is slow and boring?

Posted by: Sarah at 04:26 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 "...isn't it interesting how Jon Stewart makes fun of Obama for being slow and boring and then makes fun of O'Reilly for saying that Obama is slow and boring?" Good catch. I love the unintended self parody.

Posted by: tim at February 18, 2009 07:35 AM (nno0f)

2 Can you do me a favor, Sarah? Can you claim the domain name 'trying to gork' and just have that redirected here? For some reason, i type that more often than not & it would really make visiting you via 'teh internets' easier if all roads pointed here.

Posted by: Guard Wife at February 18, 2009 02:53 PM (i0ZCx)

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Charles Platt Goes Undercover At Wal-Mart

Interesting article about working at Wal-Mart. And this paragraph:

[An employee] was invited to corporate HQ as a guest at a management conference. "It was totally different from what I expected," he told us. "I thought it would be these fatcats talking about money, but no one even mentioned money. All they cared about was finding new ways to satisfy customers. I met everyone including the chairman of the company."

reminded me of this quote from the movie Sabrina, which I blogged about some months ago:

What's money got to do with it? If making money were all there was to business, it'd hardly be worthwhile going to the office. Money is a by-product.

And this thought bears repeating:

To my mind, the real scandal is not that a large corporation doesn't pay people more. The scandal is that so many people have so little economic value. Despite (or because of) a free public school system, millions of teenagers enter the work force without marketable skills.

(Thanks, David.)

UPDATE:

David Foster wanted to post a comment, but neither of us can figure out why it's getting rejected. So I'm just gonna stick it here:

I agree that there should be more emphasis on vocational education...but we need to be realistic that as things are, people without college degrees may do very well for a while but are eventually likely to see their progress halted by lack of the piece of paper. For instance, someone might learn to operate and program CNC machine tools and make a very good living doing so. He might even be promoted to department foreman. BUT, when it comes time to pick a new plant General Manager, the job will almost certainly go to someone with a college degree.

The education cartel exercises such a dominant influence on our society that it is hard to see how we can ever force it to relax its grip.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:17 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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My buddy at Daily Koan found an awesome aerial photo of Obama's inauguration.

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David from Rishon Rishon sent me a link to a Michael Totten post called A Minority Report From the West Bank and Gaza. I thought the most interesting part was the Q&A session. Excerpt:

General Tom McInerney, Fox News Military Analyst: Is there a solution to this problem?

Khaled Abu Toameh: You Americans are always asking us that. Why are Americans always asking me if there is a solution? A solution to what?

Michael J. Totten: The whole thing.

Khaled Abu Toameh: What is the whole thing?

Anthony Cordesman: Is there anything useful that could be done this year?

Khaled Abu Toameh: Listen. Look. We must stop dreaming about the New Middle East and coexistence and harmony and turning this area into Hong Kong and Singapore. If anyone thinks a Palestinian will wake up in the morning and sing the Israeli national anthem, that's not going to happen. If anyone thinks an Israeli Jew will go back to doing his shopping in downtown Ramallah or to see his dentist in Bethlehem or eat fish in Gaza City, that's not going to happen. There has been a total divorce between Jews and Palestinians. We don't want to see each other.

I think that's good. Separation is good. Separation doesn't need harmony and coexistence. Forget about that. That's not going to happen. Let's focus on managing the conflict. Instead of talking about real peace, let's first of all try to stop the violence, reduce the level of bloodshed, and maybe that will pave the way for future peace. The only solution now is total separation between these two communities. Israel should not be involved in the internal affairs of the Palestinians, but at the same time Israel has the right to look after its own security. They should disengage from the Palestinians completely and tell them, “Listen, folks. Don't mess around with us anymore. We're going to strike back if you fire rockets at us. And if you want to have Hamas, Fatah, or whomever, go and do it over there without our help.” That's the only way. I don't see a real peace emerging over here. We should stop talking about it.

The whole thing is definitely worth reading. And it reminds me that the husband and I were talking about donating money to Totten a while back...gotta do that.

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Jonah Goldberg, Democrats are hypocrites when it comes to paying taxes:

When moralizing conservatives get caught, say, cheating on their wives or challenging stall mates to robust Greco-Roman wrestling in airport bathrooms, liberals justifiably howl at the hypocrisy of it all (even though conservative moralizing has no teeth, while the IRS has agents with guns). When liberals fail to pay taxes -- the wellspring of a just society -- it's merely, to borrow an old phrase from Daschle, "sad and disappointing," but ultimately not that big a deal.

When he was still running the Democratic Party, Howard Dean made fighting hypocrisy his top priority. "Hypocrisy is a value that I think has been embraced by the Republican Party. We get lectured by people all day long about moral values by people who have their own moral shortcomings."

Well, I hear a lot of lecturing from Democrats about why I should be ashamed for not liking taxes more because "the children" need it.

John Eberhard, The Liberal Mind, Part 1:

“An extensive survey by the Pew Research Center found that three out of four Republicans believe that people can get ahead by working hard. Four out of five believe that everyone has the power to succeed. But Democrats have much less faith in the value of hard work. Only 14 percent believe that people can get ahead by working hard, according to the survey. And only 44 percent believe that everyone has the power to succeed. This is not a case of ‘rich’ Republicans believing one thing and ‘poor’ Democrats another. Even when you compare Republicans and Democrats of the same income, the gap still exists.”

“What this means is that many modern liberals believe differences in wealth are a result of dumb luck rather than hard work and a diligent attitude. It should therefore not be surprising that according to one scientific survey, liberals are two and a half times as likely to play the lottery or gamble in the hope of getting rich.”

This fact is incredible, and very revealing. 75% of Republicans believe you can get ahead by working hard, compared to 14% for Democrats. 86% of Democrats don’t believe that hard work allows you get ahead! The book also quotes many leading liberals in stating that the idea that you should work hard is “ridiculous,” a “seductive myth,” a “profoundly conservative, if not reactionary agenda,” and that the game is “rigged.”

[both links via CG]

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