Anyway I must steal precious internet minutes whenevs I find them. And fill them with content.
I think the blogger's point is that there are good prices and bad prices. Often, prices behave well, but when they get too uppity, you've got to do what's necessary to bring them down.
Tomatoes are like racism.
This is basically three insults to Italian-Americans rolled into one.
Boxes of chocolate are like racism.
Tomatoes in Florida are grown by actual slaves. (No lie.) That really is like racism!
You know what's like racism*? Suggesting that Smith and Evans should have used the peace sign.
*Olympics version.
6: I only see two. "Tomatoes are-a like-a ra-chism" would be three.
In other news, he's officially no better than Tyler Cowen.
10: I assumed a simpler fractured grammar, or maybe I took the 'a's to be implicit.
Wait, I thought analogies were banned!!
Anyways, if inflation paranoia is like racism and the Germans are obsessed with...oh fuck it, I'm sure there's a witty comment in there somewhere.
If the like likes from Legend of Zelda refused to hire qualified wizzrobes, that would be like like racism.
Not thinking about the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is like Ray's -ism.
10b: Aaaaagh. The second paragraph simultaneously admits that nobody else has to pre-fund retiree benefits like this and dismisses it because, hey, the Post Office. Amazeballs.
17
Aaaaagh. The second paragraph simultaneously admits that nobody else has to pre-fund retiree benefits like this and dismisses it because, hey, the Post Office. Amazeballs.
Everybody else should have to properly fund such benefits also. If the Post Office can't afford to do so it shouldn't be offering them.
17 - I look forward to you explaining to every institution in America that offers retiree benefits why they have to fund them 75 years in advance, James. (Also, when you are a second-generation luchador in WWE, you are like Rey-ism.)
16: No, silly. Rays-ism is being a birther/rapist MLB player!
When you make fantasy/RPG references that trail off before completion because you're frankly sort of ashamed of yourself it's like Raistlin's um
19
I look forward to you explaining to every institution in America that offers retiree benefits why they have to fund them 75 years in advance, ...
The general rule should be you have to fund future obligations as they are incurred (earned by the employee in this case). There are rules requiring private companies to do this for pensions (although they are weaker than they should be). Similar rules should apply to retiree health benefits and government entities but generally don't. Without such rules there is a demonstrated tendency for organizations to get into financial difficulties by running up liabilities that they may not understand and which may be difficult or impossible for them to pay. And of course a generous pension isn't of any value to the worker if it isn't paid.
I have lived in and mailed from four countries, and I will stoutly avow the the USPS FUCKING ROOLZ. It is more reliable, cheap, and tenacious in delivering a letter or package than the French, German, or Swiss postal services. Until the bastards started cutting funds to the USPS, they would deliver books overseas in 60-pound bags for like $50! Shipping them back cost over $100.
Seriously, we have an awesome postal service, which gets used much, much more often and for more purposes than people in offices with assistants and FedEx accounts would understand. People with shitty credit can use cash to create the equivalent of bank checks there. You can apply for a passport--even a complicated one, with weird ID and personal affidavits.
The post office is an extraordinarily important foothold of the federal government in a million small towns and otherwise abandoned inner cities, and it would be worth subsidizing at a deficit.
I am a frothing fan of the USPS. Should I be writing to my congresspeople? Are there demonstrations planned? I would totally take a vacation day to march for the USPS.
The deal with the USPS pension, as I understand it, is that it is separate from the rest of the US governmental pension system. It is more generous and historically has been better funded.
The independent USPS pension has long been the subject of envy among government workers.
Divide and conquer.
Probably the same argument that's been made 10^6 times, but: Why the obsession with running it and Amtrak as stand alone businesses instead of government services? We don't say that the Army is going bankrupt or that the interstate highway system defaulted on a payment or that FEMA took a loss on the latest floods and now they'll have to cut retiree benefits. Post offices and trains are useful to have even if everyone has to chip in through taxes.
I will march beside you, sister. I love them. (And I did a really nutty passport thing there once that some shitheads in the public library begged off from, so USPS 4eva.)
Yay PO! It deserves to be subsidized.
The older retirees (e.g., my father) are under the civil service system. So no difference there. The ones who came on board since the early 1970s might have a more generous structure, but I'm not sure.
I can't quite make the usual joke but, you know, if you were having overly fond thoughts about Gore Vidal, you should stop and give the man some respect.
I don't get too upset about people who have lived a full life and die at the age of 86 as millionaires. But he'll be missed.
30: Yes, and not only did he succeed, but a gratifyingly large number of the rest of us failed.
The BBC appropriately celebrates him with a page of quotes. But not that one, oddly enough.
I am wondering if Vidal was the last American liberal. My memories of him go as far back as Visit to a Small Planet and The Best Man, the Kennedy administration. He unveiled Bill Buckley better than anyone. In the mid-60s, Messiah and Julian were important books for me. His art was always political. An aristocracy of care and outrage, noblesse oblige you could believe in.
I loved that man.
"Missed?" I stopped asking "What is Vidal doing?" twenty years ago. The nation declined his attention. He will be further under-appreciated.
The nation declined his attention.
Well, fuck the nation then. The rest of the world didn't.
28: Truly, Vidal would insist that you continue to masturbate.
I thought the quote in 31 was usually attributed to Ghengis Khan.
Count me as another big USPS fan.
32: The BBC appropriately celebrates him with a page of quotes. But not that one, oddly enough.
But it includes this close cousin which is another take on basically the same sentiment.
"Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies."
35: If we don't celebrate this proud man's life by watching Caligula, the terrorists have won.