The saying goes “There is more than one way to skin a cat.” No, this isn’t a funny story about a cat. I know, I know, for all you cat lovers out there, maybe there will be one soon, but for now, this is not where to look.
Conan O’Brien once said “During last night’s debate…Kerry and Edwards were so friendly, President Bush accused them of planning a gay marriage.” It didn’t happen, of course. Edwards turned out to be even more heterosexual than we’d originally thought, but while this isn’t about sexual preference, it does fall into the category of spirited debate.
On Glossy News, only being permitted to debate the topic at hand, i.e. read a story and post a comment, sometimes leaves the commentators frustrated that their general thoughts have to fit within the confines of one of the stories, which most times general thoughts do not.
Take for instance a recent story on Glossy about a woman seeking attention by disfiguring her own face with acid. Although this writer was able to use that story as a platform to ask for a forum in which to discuss issues unrelated to either acid, disfigurement or insanity, ok strike insanity, it just didn’t have the same oomph as it could have if she’d been able to go to a general forum section and open a new topic with a title such as “Kudos to Fellow Writers for Not Acting Like Stupid Dodo Heads” or something to that effect.
Imogene Coca once said “The trouble with most comedians who try to do satire is that they are essentially brash, noisy and indelicate people who have to use a sledge hammer to smash a butterfly.” Really? I beg to differ. Contrary to popular belief, biting satire does not require a series of rabies shots. Besides, anyone who has been the victim of biting satire eventually develops a tough skin making it that much more impossible to even administer rabies shots.
So the point of all this? We need a general forum section to discuss issues that lie outside the purview of individual stories. To get the ball rolling, I suggest that this article be used as a surrogate until the real deal comes along.
If you have anything you want to talk about in general, or even just to comment on this article, although that does kind of defeat the purpose, just post it under this article. Borrowing a quote from John Krasinski from “The Office,” We breed smart-ass, quippy, funny people. Not that I’m one of them. I just sorta sneaked in under the radar.” And, I think I can honestly say the same thing about my fellow Glossy News writers.
This post and the following comments are one of the most hilarious things I’ve read lately.
Irony anyone?
I long for the days of real news, not news commentary, not opinioated news, not he said/she said news. Both sides are the same. They have their talking heads who make their talking points ad nauseam. Reminds me of when I was a small child and my mother would throw her hands up in despair when one of us kids (5 in my family) would tattle on the other. “Mom, mom, c’mere! Dave is hanging Stevie by his ankles out the second story window!” That kind of thing. No one got hurt except Dave who obviously got a spanking for putting his younger brother’s life in peril. Repeat after me, Christine O’Donnell is not a witch. President Obama is not a Socialist. Sarah Palin cannot see Russia from her front porch. The world is screwed because we are so busy trying to one-up each other instead of putting our heads together and coming up with solutions that will benefit all, not just the very poor, not just the very rich. It can be as simple as that.
Issues, discussed in an intelligent manner through televised debates, and reporters who report only on the facts and nothing extraneous. If I had a left nut, I’d give it for the sake of seeing just one more Chet Huntley/David Brinkley 1/2 hour news show at the dinner hour.
I think that’s a sign of genius. 🙂
To All Glossy News Writers: Somebody really thought one of MY articles was actual news story???? Sigh…
Was the DA’s name, ‘Kirk Shatner’ NOT enuf of a tipoff?
Perhaps it was the nearly Faulknerian cadence of my prose, or the gritty realism of a small town official exclaiming, “Shirley Temple’s Panties!” led some readers astray. That was never my intent.
Gotta go make fun of Johnny Depp now…
I can honestly say that your idea is solid and has much merit. why the hell don’t you run for office? Good, solid common sense and you think outside the box. While high schools do have technical programs, there’s something to be said for using existing space to get one ready for the higher academics in life instead of just pushing them in before they know what hit them. Bravo, Liberties. I like the way you think.
To Beckert and GN gang in general. I threatened to write some shocking things, it’s been a fun engineering day, so I’m in good mood so…
Fixing public Ed. Community College is a good starting place. My sources say only 1/4 of CC enrollees ever get AS, and that about 1/3 of CC students are taking remedial courses, any given time.
That’s a stupid way to do business. Bad for the College, bad for the student. Instead, go to local HS which has empty class room capacity in evenings, ask for space. Launch national campaign asking for volunteer instructors, two hrs a nite, two evenings a week.
Give them competency exam, background check, poof, you’re a volunteer instructor. Give them the remedial course materials currently taught at CC, along with the standardized tests. Student pays for textbook, and an administrative fee. Which me, being Conservative and a manufacturing guy, I’d back charge half that fee to whatever HS gave the kid a diploma he or she probably can barely read.
If you’re not ready to do Community College work, it’s not good for the College. It’s not good for u either because you’re paying $1000 per semester to learn HS stuff. We’ll make a way for you to get yourself ready to do CC work, if you’ll try hard. Meanwhile, keep your butt off the CC campus.
What I’d testify before Congress (though maybe not get as many laughs as Colbert testimony) is… lots of probs plaguing this nation are pretty easily fixed. You people aren’t much interested in fixing probs, you just want to get re-elected.
Oh I know Liberties. Makes my head spin all the back and forth; give but mostly take. We’ve become a country of “how do I get around it?” instead of “full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes.” I think the working class is on the same side but fighting a bigger battle that huge profits can create. I’m not very good at political debate. I just say what I feel. I do believe that education, getting our grades up, getting our kids back to academics, the real academics like science and mathematics is the key. Public education is in such poor shape but I really wonder if things would get worse with a privatization system that has always had a tendency to foster the rich. Congress needs a “dedication and hard work” speech. You sound like a man who could do it.
Beckert, I saw your headline on McDonalds getting a compliance pass. That’s what it’s really all about. Nobody I know wants sick people to die, though that Dem loon Grayson said so.
McDonalds is legally given a pass under Obamacare legislation wording. It says ‘at discretion of the Secretary.’
To people like me, that means opportunity for lobbyists, bribery and corruption. At my current job (have second interview tomorrow for a really sweet gig making components for LED billboards) am fighting to have every painter change paint booth filters at end of shift.
We publish standard work, we do training record, we do disciplinary action if painters don’t comply. That’s how we do it in the real world. In manufacturing work instructions, there’s NOTHING like ‘At the discretion of the painter.’
Well Beckert, like I said I’m a 20 year insider, and a lot of this junk is very complex. Mostly I wanted to get out a fact; percentage of US workforce employed in manufacturing is probably never again going to hit parity with 1970 levels. Union contracts, offshoring, they’re not even a significant contributory factor really.
And like I said, I could buy us some time; anybody with real manufacturing experience could tell Congress some shocking things and just maybe wake them up some.
Might say some of that junk later in the thread, I dunno. Why I would try to buy us some time Beckert, is what u already said. Educashun!!! Having at several points in my career been required to explain to newly hired HS grads that 1/16 is actually a smaller number than 1/8, I think I know a little about the quality levels of public Ed.
And I said I might say shocking things later, but here’s one now…
In business, we have to back up everything with hard numbers, and we face merciless peer review on every number. We’re used to doing that; we don’t make rash, unsupportable statements. I’d be glad to tell Congress, our biggest security threats are the national debt and the state of US education. And I can back that up with hard numbers.
P.S. Might I add one observation that will probably piss everyone off on both sides. This downturn has had a detrimental effect on us that we are just now really beginning to see. People are getting hooked more and more on waking up, going over to their computers and chit-chattering their lives away. It is a major distraction both in the workplace and especially at home. Not only laptops and PC’s but phones, blackberries, iPads, the whole nine yards. Honestly, even television is taking a back seat anymore, and that used to be the real demon. Now it’s gameboy and facebook. We are so linked in that we can’t go anywhere without talking to someone or texting someone or reading some e-mail or catching up or whatever and work is seriously suffering. Jobs don’t get applied for as quickly as they used to, dinner’s late to the table if it comes at all, appointments are being missed, bosses are getting tired of telling their employees to use the computers for company business only. It’s become a real mess.
Just my take. I’m not above all this, mind you, just mindful.
Sure, Bargis, new ideas are great and I agree 100%, but I do have to say that when my husband and I saw a report in the local Round Rock Business Impact paper this week saying that a new 60-megawatt solar farm was being built in this corridor in Pflugerville (this part of Texas is holding its own pretty well in spite of the recession), it was awesome news. The facility is expected to be the largest solar farm in the nation. Sure, there are tax credits and incentives up the wazoo but this country was built on tax credits and incentives. This particular solar project is expected to provide enough energy to every house in Pflugerville. At present, the population of the city is around 51,000.
Schools are going up in this area faster than anything I’ve ever seen, including a brand new higher education learning complex right here in Round Rock with manyworkforce/technical programs like HVAC for instance that will allow people to work and go to school at the same time. It takes hard work not just in the job sector but also in the education sector. We can’t afford to allow our schools to suffer even when times are this tough.
Gosh, I had more to say than I thought. thank goodness someone opened up this comment thread. (hee hee, I almost typed comment “threat”)
It’s good to have your input. I think about this stuff a lot too. I think that in some sense Unions are a necessary evil, while they also may have gone a bit overboard in getting as much as they could for the workers without regard for the bottom line. I just talk common sense, no real facts to back it up so excuse me. I think if this country would spend more on education and I don’t just mean primary, and secondary education, but I mean technical training, we’d be back on top in no time. Incentives for companies to put their people in classes to learn more about new energy technologies, computers, etc. would help to fill jobs that robots took away from the manufacturing sectors. And do away with cheap labor everywhere around the world. An uneven playing field played on the backs of people making less than it costs us to go to McDonald’s isn’t fair to them or us. Sure, we can’t totally dictate what happens in the world, but we can start by having our companies become responsible for who they are hiring to do their labor. I know, I sound like a real dodo head myself right now. Can’t find the right words but the sentiment is this: Everyone, regardless of who they are or where they live should make at least a decent living wage. They should have buying power and they should have dignity. And the ones at the top should not have so much that they can’t afford to help see that that happens. They, after all, are reaping the rewards of the hard work being done.
I’m glad you got your job back. You’re doing better than most then. I truly am happy to hear things like this cause it only tells me things are working…a little slow albeit, but they are turning a corner. We are all in this together.
Good points Libertie..I’ve always thought this way about unions..Unions want profits socialized-But want losses privatized.
What we need is a new technology that we own-build-market-and export. Not autos and washing machines any longer. Obama’s Green Industry move is nary a way to put millions back to work. China already has jumped on that bandwagon and can make wind/energy generation units and solar panels cheaper than we can. Besides, who are we going to sell them to? Joe next door that’s out of work?
We need to invent and sell to the world something like, well, flubber!
Well Beckert, about your Michigan story? My secret identity; Industrial Engineer w/ 20 yrs. experience. And grateful to be back working now, after 18 months of unemployment/underemployment.
I think about the mfg. sector about as often as Peyton Manning thinks football. Been everything from maintenance mgr to assistant Plant mgr, I’ve started up factories and shut them down. Closed one in Holland, MI in 2006 in fact.
I can tell what no elected official Dem or GOP, has the brains or guts to say. IF I could bring back every job from overseas and rip up every Union contract in US, all it would do is buy us some time. Sure it’d mean many thousands of American jobs, but it’s just buying some time. 2 things are at work, lots more fundamental than globalization or NAFTA.
First, the percentage of Americans working in manufacturing is resetting to pre-WW2 levels. Post-WW2 was an anomaly, in that US and Canada were about only two nations had any Industrial capacity that hadn’t been bombed. Unfortunately, all currently adult Americans grew up in a culture that presumed the anomaly was normalcy.
Second, Computer Numerical Control. Entered American mfg. early 70’s. Theoretically, CNC allows me to control processes in time & space, with a repeatability where process deviation is almost too small to measure. Technology allows me to make more parts, more precisely with less people.
When Mitt Romney in 2008 primary season told MI people he’d get their jobs back, he was talking out of his magic Mormon underwear. Guess he was planning to fire all the robotic welders, painters and assemblers.
There’s a lot more I could say; it’s all very complex stuff. China, India and S. Korea are cheating on trade deals; I could cite examples I’ve witnessed personally. And Union bosses are often just as rapacious as the CEO’s who get demonized. In 2010 US, Unions should be operating like guilds, requiring continuing education of membership and upholding highest performance standards.
But it’s really a fundamental change going on. The US is resetting to pre-WW2 percentage of manufacturing employment, and because of CNC it’s resetting to an even lower level. I know of some things to buy us some time to prepare, but that’s about it.
OK, sorry for talking shop, just wanted Beckert et al to know what elected dorks lack brains and/or courage to say. Will get back to writing satire now. Hmmm, I could work with Hugh Hefner topic some, he’s a hilarious person.
Yes, a place to vent like adults. It’s about time.
I am glad we are finally getting the chance to be serious here.
Nanner, nanner, nanner! You are all poopy heads!!!
Nanner, nanner, nanner!
Probably should lay one ground rule for this particular thread. discuss what you want, but preface your comment by placing the person you are replying to with their name first, as in, Liberty or PB or something to that effect. it will cut down on confusion and make things a bit more easy to follow.
carry on children, I mean former dodo heads.
Stop! Stop! You’re killing me! Hey! You’re really Cobert, right? C’mon tell us the truth.
Oh, it’s to be 100 metre freestyle than? I very much appreciate the fair treatment from the GN gang, given that I’m way to the Right of most writers.
That’s especially decent, since you’re all a bunch of Commie pinkos intent on destroying this nation.