Two kinds of people

El Cabrero is not a big monitor of right wing media, but I've been enjoying the flack Rush Limbaugh has been getting over his over the top comments last week. Those remarks, of course, weren't the first such to emerge from the Whackadoodle oracle. Here are some others.

There's been a lot of talk on the web about the right wing war on women. Whether such war talk is right on target or not--and it doesn't seem all that far off the mark to me--it does seem to be the case that some people on that end of the political spectrum seem to have an undue amount of anxiety over the thought that people who have uteri are inadequately supervised.

I manage to get through most days without worrying about things like that.

It reminds me of conversations I used to have with certain friends in which we concluded

1. that there are two kinds of people in the world, to wit, those who have enough real problems and those who do not;

2. that the latter group is the cause of many of the problems in the world.

A children's paradox

Image by William Blake.

I attended an event yesterday at which Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children's Zone spoke, along with WV Senator Jay Rockefeller and WV First Lady Gayle Manchin. Canada is a dynamic and entertaining speaker and he said something I wish I'd have written down exactly. Since I misplaced my pen, a not altogether infrequent event, I'll have to paraphrase.

The topic of the gathering was investing in children and it was noted that rhetoric about children (most speakers seem to be in favor of them) seldom matches action. He noted that when advocating that resources be put into early childhood education and development, people are often told that while this or that measure may be a good idea, there isn't any money available to do it.

He said, much better than I'm about to, that while we're often not willing to put more resources into quality education for children, as a society we seem to be more than willing to pay any price to cover the cost of not educating them. He noted that one seldom hears of a judge saying to a young person in trouble that while he'd like to lock him up for a really long time, there are no resources to do it.

More Okinawa pictures to come tomorrow.

THE POLITICS OF EDUCATION are starting to get interesting in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia.

YOU MUST SEE this New Yorker cartoon.

IS MARRIAGE GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH? The conventional wisdom is yes, but it kind of looks like the quality of the marriage is the main thing. In the interests of marital harmony, I will forgo the opportunity to make a snide remark.

MINER'S MEMORIAL. WV Governor Joe Manchin announced a memorial service for the 29 miners killed in the Massey disaster to be held in Beckley this Sunday. At last word, President Obama and Vice President Biden plan to attend.

NOT EXACTLY NEWSWORTHY. Rush Limbaugh tried to blame Massey's Upper Big Branch mine disaster on the United Mine Workers union. The fact that it was a non-union mine may limit the utility of this assertion, although true believers will no doubt keep the faith.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED