If you can’t get rid of big government…

start small:

Maywood: A city that sacked its entire staff
The US city sacked all its staff to stave off bankruptcy – and its citizens think services are now better. Tom Leonard reports.
To the casual eye, nothing about Maywood looks unusual. Police cars patrol the city’s palm-tree lined streets a few miles south of downtown Los Angeles, red-shorted lifeguards watch over the public swimming pool and, inside the striking Art Deco city hall, clerks issue yard sale permits. The police cars, however, are from “out of town” and manned by deputies from the county sheriff’s department, while the lifeguards and clerks are on loan from the neighbouring city of Bell.
Maywood – working-class, respectable and 95 per cent Hispanic – has attempted something unheard of anywhere in local government. It sacked its entire workforce and staved off looming bankruptcy by outsourcing everything. More than 70 workers lost their jobs at the end of June. Others were re-employed contractually, losing key benefits. But the newly jobless may be the only people not smiling now…

H/t: Denise.

Simpering Morons

Sounds about Right:

While engaging in astonishing viciousness, vulgarity and violence toward Republicans, liberals accuse cheerful, law-abiding Tea Party activists of being violent racists.
Responding to these vile charges, conservative television pundits think it’s a great comeback to say:
“There is the fringe on both sides.”
Both sides? Really? How about: “That’s a complete lie”? Did that occur to you simpering morons as a possible reply to the slanderous claim that conservatives are fiery racists?

… keep reading.

A FOX in the Henhouse

Not all things are as they seem:

But at the British end of the Murdoch empire, there have recently been signs that this is far from being the case. For the past two years, for instance, its television arm, Sky, has been teamed up with the world’s richest enviromental lobby group WWF (income £400 million a year), in a bid to “help combat climate change” by saving the CO2-rich Amazon rainforest.
Then a few weeks back there was that curious episode when the Murdoch Sunday Times published a grovelling correction of a story familiar to reader of this blog which soon made headlines round the world as “Amazongate”.
This was the scandalous story, first dug out by the tireless researches of Richard North, of how the IPCC’s latest 2007 report had included a shock-horror claim that 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest was under threat from climate change. This had no scientific basis whatever. The only source given for this claim was a WWF propaganda sheet, which in turn had drawn its key sentence from the website of a small Brazilian environmental advocacy group set up by Dr Daniel Nepstad of the Woods Hole Research Center (in turn closely linked to the WWF).
[…]
Rather more shadowy still, however, are the Murdoch family’s links with Bill Clinton’s Climate Change Initiative. The head of strategy and communications for this influential and lavishly funded body is James Murdoch’s wife Kathryn.
The “Climate Initiative” is in turn part of the William J. Clinton Foundation, fast-becoming one of the richest foundations in the world. It is supported to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by the likes of Bill Gates of Microsoft. Thanks not least to its involvement with climate change, it likes to boast that it has recently been named as one of the world’s “Top 10 Green NGOs”.
Both Rupert Murdoch and his son are listed as among the Clinton Foundation’s leading donors. Rupert, along with Barbra Streisand, was one of the three sponsors of a project to reduce the “carbon footprint” of 20 major cities.

Reader Tips

Lieber and Stoller are one of the most prolific, talented and successful songwriting teams in history. Last Saturday’s amusement featured one of their lesser-known songs; tonight’s selection is their most unusual song, a definite singularity for the team that wrote Hound Dog and Stand By Me. Based on Disillusionment, a 19th century short story by German writer Thomas Mann, the song manages to take a narrator’s world-weary, almost apathetic outlook and metamorphose it into something resembling liberation and spiritual emancipation.
A brilliantly audacious song, and an improbable Top 40 hit. From 1969, here’s North Dakota Native Miss Peggy Lee singing Is That All There Is?
The comments are open for Reader Tips.

The thatchy-browed Count vs. the toothless proles

Team Ignatieff (the Liberals) have released a mocking “Voluntary Conservative Census Form” that includes the questions “Are there any rooms in your house where you keep books? If so, why?”, “Have you ever had an independent thought? If so, please describe in details, and say where they/it occurred”, and “Would you agree that giving women the right to vote was a mistake?”
For those who might think that the party of those-who-deserve-to-rule might be mocking the Conservative Party, and not conservative voters, here’s a “senior Ignatieff official,” as quoted by Jane Taber:

“I don’t think they’ll reverse their decision (on the census). Once you throw a bone at Canada’s version of the Tea Party crowd it is hard to take it back.”

Let’s hope they keep it up. Every time our status-seeking, condescending, self-considered betters in the Bureaucrat Party insult millions of Canadians who refuse to acknowledge the Liberals’ innate superiority, they demonstrate precisely why so many voters, including former Liberal voters, have left these vaunted natural rulers parked by the curb.
h/t Louise

Reader Tips

Every year in England during the May Bank Holiday a seven pound wheel of Double Gloucester cheese is sent rolling down Cooper’s Hill in Brockworth, just outside of Gloucestershire, while dozens of competitors run, leap, roll, flip, and faceplant their way down the steep slope in pursuit of the cheese; whoever crosses the finish line first wins the cheese.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. 33 people were injured in the 1997 running, leading to the cancellation of the following year’s event. Although this year’s event was canceled as well, this time due to concerns about the sheer number of spectators who have come to attend the event, a less-publicized unofficial rolling was held.
There’s nothing like the real thing, though. Said competitor Mike Smith of the cancellation,

Dreadfully disappointed with the news. As a cheese-roller of many years, I look forward to the chance to really injure myself each year. I have no idea how I’ll hurt myself this year…”

With any luck he’ll get the opportunity next spring. Until then, all we have are memories: here’s video footage of the 2007 Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake.
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.

“Meet Me in Manhattan”

John Hawkins;

The fine folks at The Society Of St. Vincent De Paul are holding an unbelievable raffle. In fact, this is, without a doubt, the best collection of raffle prizes I’ve ever seen in one place. […]
Now today, I’m going to give an opportunity to all the bloggers out there: Link this post, so we can help sell some more of these raffle tickets for charity, and then email me to let me know you’ve done so, and you may win a raffle ticket yourself.

Done!

Not Waiting For The Guillotine

I remember when they did this over Climategate.

The CBC has truly lost its collective mind over the WikiLeaks release of the Afghan war logs. Despite denials from the families involved, despite denials from military officials and readily available eyewitness accounts, CBC continues to pretend that perhaps, just maybe the government is lying and four Canadian soldiers were killed by an American bomb…

Christie Blatchford , via Mark Collins;

This mess is not a WikiLeaks problem, nor a Canadian military problem, nor a Canadian government problem. It is a problem with the Canadian media – Ottawa-centric, conspiracy-embracing, unquestioning and unskeptical so long as the information seems damaging to the government, too quick to publish and, of course, absolutely without a shred of accountability. Shame on us.

Indeed.

Blog Notes

I have an extremely heavy work/travel schedule in the coming month, so blogging here at SDA will be a little slower than usual (starting today). The guest bloggers are, as always, invited to stop by if the mood strikes.
Until my lottery ticket investments pay off, the bills must get paid. Thanks for your patience, and have a safe and happy long weekend.

Reader Tips

Several years ago Kate wrote an essay in the National Post suggesting that a good famine would cure our whiny nation, and teach us to be “grateful for what we have, accept our own burdens, and mourn quietly for what we lose.” Her prescription might have been half tongue-in-cheek, but when you watch Clara Cannucciari, the 94-year-old star of tonight’s video from the online series Great Depression Cooking, it’s hard not to think that the proposed cure would indeed pay such dividends. Growing up during the Great Depression, when a lot of food ingredients were unavailable or beyond reach financially, the young Clara and her parents and siblings had to make do with whatever was available; to this day she takes pleasure in preparing simple meals, using whatever ingredients are tastiest and cheapest. Tonight, using a recipe from chapter three (“It’s a Hot Meal, Stop Complaining“) of her new cookbook, the commonsensical, good-natured, self-reliant, and adorable Clara Cannucciari demonstrates how to prepare and cook The Poorman’s Meal. Is it any good? Well, why don’t you ask her grandson and his friends!
The comments are open for Reader Tips

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