Friday evening Christmas parties involving co-workers, tend to obliterate a good part of the subsequent twelve hours.
Little lazy notes:
The UK made the Foreign Policy List of The Worlds Worst Places to be a Kid. Listing Britain as the worst of the worst of economically advanced nations for kids, due in part to a U.N. report which found Britain has the most kiddie smokers, drinkers of alcohol and users of drugs, sexually risky behavior, early pregnancies and are not particularly ambitious. The country also boasts 3.8 million children living in poverty.
Iraq tops the list in good part due to malnutrition, all thanks to another economically advanced country…the U.S.
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No one really expects anything of their elected representatives any longer. Unless they are naive or they’ve sent a huge lobby to Capital Hill.
Senate Defeats Effort to Cut Subsidies
EWG direct payment analysis: EWG Direct Payment Projections 2008 – 2012
Full Disclosure: Who really benefits from federal farm subsidies
Not to mention our larger subsidies also continue to prevent smaller farmers all around the world, not just in this country, from suffering prosperity.
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Republicans block energy bill, GOP fights for Big Oil tax breaks
We need to pay more attention to the legislative bodies than we do to Oprah. They are again sneaking nothing past anyone, and accomplishing very little. Let’s be sure to empty all the seats next time around. Let us start anew — a rebirth. Regardless of their votes no one is working hard enough, in most cases they are doing what they want not what we want. Elect your neighbor, your brother or your grandfather to the Congressional and Senate seats, but for god sake get these jokers out.
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Other things:
If you haven’t read Kim, you should, but if you want a chance to win one of her portraits you have until the 21st of December to enter and do so. I’m going to have to do this soon. I’d love to win one of her portraits.
Happy almost belated Bill of Rights Day for U.S. Readers.
Please check them out before they are gone.
Leena gives us the real Santa Story.
Though my Santa still comes with dark hair, dark eyes and a couple of stringed instruments.
I’m going to make my gingerbread men now.
Peace
having lived in London for 2 years I can understand the problems with kids…
the weather is atrocious…and there are very few outdoor activities…
thanks for the PR on the comp.….I’m doing all the organisation through my site now as Santa has had problems posting the entries.…which makes it a simpler process now.…soooo Cooper you have 5 days to put an entry in and make a choice for your portrait.…..too easy
good luck with your gingerbread
Couldn’t there be an upside to drugging the children?
I’ve never been to England, that surprises me. OK, let them keep Madonna then.
You read very depressing things, no wonder you didn’t make party girl of the year.
If that story is going to tell me that Santa is not real I don’t want to read it. I’ve heard those rumors. I ingore them.
Let’s be sure to empty all the seats next time around.
I sympathize. I would love for there to be a constitutional amendment fixing a date for the passage of a national budget and compelling all elected officials in the legislative and executive branches of government to resign on the spot if they don’t get it done — and Our Government hasn’t gotten it done on time any time in the last twelve years.
But I don’t think your brother or mine would do any better. Because practically every issue is a minefield. Nothing meaningful can be done without raising taxes or cutting spending. And any new taxes or spending cuts, if hung on your record, will cost you the ire of enough of your constituents to lose you the next election. Unless you have high entertainment value (see Chappaquiddick).
This takes the blame for the current mess away from the elected officials, and puts it where it belongs. On those who elected them.
It also explains how come, throughout history, democracies have turned into tyrannies. A despot can do what needs to be done, without having to please anyone (so long, as Bierce once wrote, as the despot pleases the assassins). Nota bene.
my Santa still comes with dark hair, dark eyes and a couple of stringed instruments.
I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. Will he be playing you a Concerto di Amore?
The results are what we have come to expect, we should expect more.
Totally on spot about Britain. They should get rid of the Royal Family I say.
Speaking of subsidies, take a look at Britain’s agriculture subsidies.
You get love concerts of love? If they only knew how many dark haired musician hearts had been mashed.Talk about should be famous, you could take that one.
Why do I always comment on Doug’s comments here? Answer: it’s one place he can be his true charming self
Welcome to the world of office Christmas parties. There are some so memorable you might find your discussing at another Christmas party 30 years later– a good post line I guess
This is one of my favorite Cooper lines:
Though my Santa still comes with dark hair, dark eyes and a couple of stringed instruments
I found myself making up an expression Cooperlike in an email to a blogger
That’s when you know somebody has invented/perfected a genre
Our farm subsidises have always been a joke and a tax write-off. Texas has been a big horse farm write-off state for a long time.. Or was. I’m not sure a winning horse has ever come out of Texas. that was the point of course
We have long paid people not to farm. Have we ever paid a small manufacturer not to make shirts?
The intent might have been noble once, the reality way different.
I have often wondered why America romanticizes the notion of farms yet people who toiled in cities have always been expendable
Subsidies to big business shows how truly unfree our free trade and free markets really are. I live in farmland but most farmers here — primarily family farms of mennonite or amish heritage — get nothing in subsidies. Nor should they unless a natural disaster unfolds. And don’t even get me started on paying farmers to not grow anything. That is money better used to feed the hungry within our own country instead of building up the bottom line of ADM or ConAgra.
I missed Bill of Rights Day again. Shoot.
I can’t stand knowing where our money goes, it’s too painful. It’s inexcusable too and i’d like to find a way to stop it. Your guess is as good as mine.
The farm lobbies are huge I suppose.
Hope this goes out before my electricity goes off for good.
Cooper this is a wonderful post, as dreadful as a lot of the facts are. I want to seed this article on my Newsvine page, is that okay?
Where the hell did we go wrong with our representatives? We can’t even impose term-limits because none of them would vote for the bill
laketrees: I was there for six weeks freshman year of college and going to the pubs was pretty popular.
I am going to make it over tomorrow for sure. I’ve been writing papers like crazy and hope to be free of them then.
Doug: If they were mine probably yes.
Casey: What do you mean I didn’t make party girl of the year???
Sheila: You may do as you wish. I’m on newsvine too. “nowickedwitch” what is your name there?
Coyote: We haven’t put up enough of a fight.
OC: There is no way you will convince me there isn’t an abundance of pork fat which could easily be cut to the detriment of no one except maybe a the pockets of a friend of a Senator’s friend.
John: Yet we expect so little and accept it, usually lying down.
Pia: when you figure it out let me know? Doug or Snata as we know him this week, never lets his hair down, even here. Believe me this party was not that memorable but it was a diversion. I only wish for the experiences to tell stories like yours.
SK: Well that doesn’t make me feel any better.
Cooper, I won’t try. I’ll leave that job to Our Elected Representatives themselves. I can’t believe that you haven’t “job shadowed” one sometime in your illustrious career. I did it, not all that long ago either, the experience was eye-opening. Even though it was a state, not the Federal, legislature. Yes, there’s a pile of pork out there. Yes, the pork’s easy to purge, when an economist’s talking. Politically speaking? Not so much. Crede expertum.
OC: I worked as an intern for a congressman .….from my district, two summers ago. A Republican as a matter of fact.
I know. It is the “politically speaking” thing which bothers me to no end. Maybe surgery, to cut the politics out of it all.
let’s start with the Top Seat & Impeach Bush! Give Everybody around the World a Great Xmas Present!!
)
I’m shocked at the 3.8M Kids in Britain living in Poverty* It’s often overlooked in the Developed countries of the West just how much Hunger exists in our own Backyards*
Peace*
I always thought Canada would be a great place to grow up as a kid. Universal health care, stricter gun control, lots of wonderful scenery, pretty damn nice people – what’s not to like? Also, I would think that they’re all an ambitious lot. I’m always hearing about Canadians who are real overachievers.
Except for the Manitobans, of course.
I worked in the East End of London for three years with teenage kids…The girls openly told me they could earn as much as me (as a foreign teacher) by getting pregnant at sixteen and never working. Life is hard for these girls, no matter which way you look at it and Britain, like Oz, is still a very patriarchal and chauvinistic country…A lot of our so-called civilised countries could do with more effective government and community programs to help those without a voice and limited choice.
My first office party courtesy of my new part time J.O.B. was last Thursday and I don’t work on Fridays. How cool is that?
And I had no idea that GB was that sad of a place to be a kid. Funny how the “face” of poverty isn’t depicted as such. Big business there, too, unfortunately. I always wonder where the money donated actually goes.
Hope your gingerpeople are perfect, Cooper. Photos?
mojo” Australia wasn’t bad either. I spent my younger years there, though not as an Australian, just as an American who had a father building things there temporarily.
Oh I got you a Manitoban for Christmas, I hope you don’t mind the Nova Scotian’s were too expensive.
Simone: It’s funny to think of such a small country with such bleak statistics.
kellypea: It isn’t work if you get the primo day off is it?
Oh the money goes to maintain Prince Edward’s farms and Windsor Castle.
We made sugar cookies because my gingerbread cutter was malformed. I purchased a new one today so the gingerbread is my next task.
I have a friend in Australia. That too would be a good place to grow up… except, of course, for the horrible koala infestations in your hotel room.
“Come back, koala. Let me hold you…” LOL
Oh, and I’m liable to shoot any Manitobans on sight. No good sneaky bastards.