Much like the U.S., China is aiming to address a problematic demographic
that has recently emerged: a generation of jobless graduates. China’s
solution to that problem, however, has some in the country scratching
their heads.
China’s Ministry of Education announced [in late November] plans to phase out
majors producing unemployable graduates, according to state-run media
Xinhua. The government will soon start evaluating college majors by
their employment rates, downsizing or cutting those studies in which the
employment rate for graduates falls below 60% for two consecutive
years.
Separately, does this description resonate at all with the U.S. under the Obama administration?
State-controlled media portray China's leaders as living by the austere
Communist values they publicly espouse. But as scions of the political
aristocracy carve out lucrative roles in business and embrace the
trappings of wealth, their increasingly high profile is raising
uncomfortable questions for a party that justifies its monopoly on power
by pointing to its origins as a movement of workers and peasants.
Instead of securing the border and enforcing immigration law, the Obama administration would rather use its resources to file lawsuits against states that want to get serious about enforcement when the federal government won't do it's job. Similarly, rather than rooting out vote fraud, the U.S. Justice Department wants to make vote fraud easier.
Do you see a trend here?
It's almost as if DOJ lawyers decided to emulate Seinfeld's George Costanza by doing the opposite of what is rational--except that Costanza's reversal made sense in the context of the show!
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Arizona's appeal of the 9th Circuit ruling that blocked the state's immigration measure. Justice Kagan has recused herself from the case, as she should also do in the upcoming Obamacare appeal.
The expectation is that the High Court will allow at least part of the Arizona law to go into effect, but time will tell.
In the meantime, there are reports that the administration will draw down the token number of National Guard troops at the border.
In the 2008 presidential debates, Sen. John McCain inexplicably failed to inform the American people that Democrats--including then-Sen. Obama, former Sen. Chris Dodd, and Congressman Barney Frank--blocked any reforms to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the quasi-government agencies that helped bring about the subprime mortgage meltdown. While the economy cratered thanks in part to those corrupt government-sponsored enterprises, Democrats continued to use them as as a massive slush fund.
Frank was the genius that claimed that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac "are fundamentally sound, that they are not in danger of going under."
In the recent debates, Herman Cain appropriately remarked that the much ballyhooed Dodd-Frank financial reform statute still does not rein in either of these key agencies. (He also famously quipped that the other two problems with the bill were "Dodd and Frank.")
The former chair of the House Financial Services Committee, in late November Frank announced his retirement from Congress after serving 16 terms in office.
The Waterbury (Conn.) Republican-American summed up Frank's career as follows:
With his fellow Democrat, former Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, Rep.
Frank, D-Mass., shoulders much of the blame for today's economic
catastrophe and the fiscal crises plaguing governments at all levels.
They spent years pushing policies that ultimately required lenders,
under the threat of government retribution and political demagoguery, to
write mortgages, for borrowers with little or no down payment and no
hope of repaying.
To backstop trillions in reckless borrowing,
Rep. Frank and then-Sen. Dodd helped establish Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac as the No. 1 buyer of worthless mortgages and then blocked any
number of attempts to reform those government-sponsored enterprises to
keep them from failing.
All the while, they combined to rake many
tens of thousands in campaign contributions from Fannie and Freddie,
according to the Center for Responsive Politic
But though his private life spilled over into his public duties, it is
as a champion of a different kind of pay-for-play operation, Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac, that the congressman did the most damage to the
country. The government-backed mortgage giants were at the center of the
housing bubble and the subsequent financial crisis. Representative
Frank was a stalwart defender of the organizations, even after the
government uncovered “extensive” fraud at Fannie Mae and found that
Freddie Mac had illegally channeled funds to its political benefactors.
Again, Representative Frank’s personal life intruded into the story: He
was sexually involved with a Fannie Mae executive during a time when he
was voting on laws affecting the organization. The final cost of the
Fannie/Freddie bailouts will run into the hundreds of billions of
dollars, and the real damage that the organizations did to the U.S.
economy — and the world economy, for that matter — probably is
incalculable.
In response to a financial crisis in which he was a significant figure,
Representative Frank helped to craft a financial-reform law that bears
his name. The drafting of Dodd-Frank began as a punitive measure,
evolved into a dispensary of political favors, and in the end did little
or nothing to address the problems that led to the 2008–09 crisis or to
prevent similar crises in the future. Which means that we may have
Barney Frank partly to thank not only for the last financial crisis but
for the next one.
After 32 years in office advocating virtually every half-baked liberal policy, Frank finally got something right. He is apparently supporting the repeal of the Obamacare "death panels" (those same death panels that supposedly didn't exist in the socialized medicine scheme according to all the Palin bashers):
Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Barney Frank announced on [November 29] his
support for the repeal of the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a
significant portion of President Obama’s health care overhaul...IPAB is a 15-member board, appointed by the president, scheduled to
convene in 2014. In order to reduce per capita Medicare spending, the
board will recommend levels at which Medicare recipients, including
seniors, can be reimbursed for health care expenses.
He may yet implode as a presidential candidate, but "good on you" (as they say in Australia, at least according to one movie we just watched) Newt Gingrich for some candor about the Israeli-Palestinian situation.
Jerusalem Post columnist and Middle East expert Caroline Glick supports Gingrich's "invention" thesis:
His statement about the Palestinians was entirely accurate. At the end of 1920, the "Palestinian people" was artificially carved out of the Arab population of "Greater Syria." "Greater Syria" included present-day Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. That is, the Palestinian people were invented 91 years ago. Moreover, as Gingrich noted, the term "Palestinian people" only became widely accepted after 1977.
Ron Prosor, Israel's U.N. ambassador, recently stated the following:
“From 1948 until 1967, the West Bank was part of Jordan, and Gaza was part of Egypt.” Prosor stated. “The Arab world did not lift a finger to create a Palestinian state. And it sought Israel's annihilation when not a single settlement stood anywhere in the West Bank or Gaza.”
Despite recent anti-Israel remarks by Obama administration officials Howard Gutman and Leon Panetta, Obama vaingloriously praised himself (during yet another fundraiser) for protecting Israel's security. Given the actual track record, Charles Krauthammer says the president is delusional:
Prominent YouTube commentator and gadfly Pat Condell, apparently a former Israel basher (and an atheist) who has reversed course, discusses among other things in this video the "Palestinian public relations industry" otherwise known as the Western media:
Putting differing historical interpretations aside, lets say the two-state solution was implemented tomorrow. Does any reasonable person really believe that this would actually solve widespread Middle East turmoil?
How about a New Year's resolution to give trite or way overused expressions (that particularly pop up in the political season but really all year round) a rest?
As an aside, can we also please get rid of uptalk (a.k.a."high rising terminal")? That is the annoying tendency for the speaker to end a declarative sentence as if it is question.
Getting back to the worn-out or stale phrases, while in general they sometimes fit the situation, more often they often just create noise or doubt.
In no particular order, here are some of the prime offenders in the media or periodically in ordinary discourse:
"To be honest with you" "To tell you the truth" or "Honestly..." [big red flag--especially when the speaker is under oath]
"Absolutely" [What's wrong with just "Yes"?]
"Basically..."
"Exactly right" [why is "exactly" necessary?]
"At the end of the day..."
"It is what it is"
"singing Kumbaya"[this is NOT funny any more if it ever was]
"That being said..." [zinger follows]
"Throwing [someone] under the bus" [that bus is responsible for a huge body count]
"Comfortable in his own skin"
"Tax cuts for the rich"
"He's a good character guy," "he's a class act" -- variant "He's a good clubhouse guy" [from sports--but no longer used to describe the same player after the inevitable DUI or domestic violence arrest occurs]
"Thanks for taking my call" [from talk radio, where the whole idea is to take calls]
"How ya doin'" [this was old when The Sopranos was new]
"Existential threat" [Please let us not hear this in the presidential debates ever again.]
"I don't have a dog in the fight"
"I have your back" or "You have my back"
Sports fans who oddly use the word "we" to describe their favorite team even though they aren't employed by the team, have no family employed by the team, or own stock in the team.
"Beyond the pale"
"Politics ain't beanbag"
"I'm not gonna lie"
Starting a sentence with "I mean"
We may continue to add to this list "going forward"-- or is that now "moving forward"?
Please let us know your least favorites too!
Update: By coincidence, shortly after the above was posted, Marist College came out with its annual survey of the most annoying words or phrases in casual conversation based on a sample of about 1,000 adults. The Marist Poll results indicated that the top five most annoying words (in order) are:
whatever
like
you know
just sayin'
seriously
Further update:At year-end, Lake Superior State University (Michigan) released its list of banished words for 2012 as follows:
Amazing [yes, this overused word should have been on our list too]
Baby Bump
Shared Sacrifice
Occupy
Blowback
Man Cave
The New Normal
Pet Parent [haven't heard this one in common use at all]
Speaking of vote fraud, this report by Matthew Vadum from The American Spectator is guaranteed to make your blood boil:
Leaders of the resurrected radical group ACORN are lobbying the Obama administration in what appears to be a concerted effort to game the electoral system to help Democrats, new evidence suggests.
At least five Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now leaders have visited the White House this year alone. One of those ACORN officials has been involved in vetting Department of Justice hires who may help to enforce the voter fraud-enabling National Voting Rights Act (NVRA), also known as the Motor-Voter law. The Department has come under fire for refusing to enforce Section 8, which requires states to remove the names of ineligible felons, the dead, and non-residents from voter rolls, while zealously enforcing Section 7, which requires states to register voters at welfare offices.
Vadum adds that the ACORN-afilliated Project Vote "have filed a rash of
lawsuits recently in several states in an attempt to pressure state
officials into backing off investigations into voter fraud
allegations."
Bill Clinton signed the Motor-Voter legislation into law.
More fraud in the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall: You're only supposed to sign once under state law of course, but this guy claims he put his signature on Scott Walker recall petitions about 80 times. It's all fair game to "cheat to get Scott Walker out of here," he says.
Democrats say they are "discouraging" this practice and are weeding out duplicate signatures.
