Calvin Coolidge and Chickens

Everyone knows that I'm obsessed with chickens these days. I really want to have some chickens for fresh eggs every day. That being said, I came across this entry in wikipedia about "the Coolidge Effect" when reading up about the President:

The term comes from an old joke, according to which President Calvin Coolidge and his wife allegedly visited a poultry farm. During the tour, Mrs. Coolidge inquired of the farmer how his farm managed to produce so many fertile eggs with such a small number of roosters. The farmer proudly explained that his roosters performed their duty dozens of times each day.

"Perhaps you could point that out to Mr. Coolidge," pointedly replied the First Lady.

The President, overhearing the remark, asked the farmer, "Does each rooster service the same hen each time?"

"No," replied the farmer, "there are many hens for each rooster."

"Perhaps you could point that out to Mrs. Coolidge," replied the President.

Amazing.

Illegal Immigration

Today I got a forward from a relative of mine. I believe this relative was well meaning, but there was such malice and fear behind the forward, I could not help but to respond. The forward read something like this:

You think the war in Iraq is to blame for our budget problems (and hence our economic problems)? No, it's the fault of illegal immigrants. We're spending billions of tax payer dollars on them. Here's a list of 14 items proving it. Contact your legislators so we can kick them out!

Now, I agree that there are a lot of problems with illegal immigration in this country, but my relative's forward did nothing but vilify the immigrants. So I responded with a list of my own. Here it is:

1. Calling people "illegal immigrants" hides their humanity. You forget they are also human beings, people like you and me. I am going to refer to them as people, not illegal immigrants.
   
2. We did have a push for immigration reform a few years back. Unfortunately many (but not all) Republicans blocked its passing.
3. A lot of people are leaving the horrible economic conditions in their home communities with the hope and promise that there are jobs here in America.
4. Many (not all) of these horrible economic conditions are caused by political instability and policies of globalization. It is now widely understood that much of the political instability in developing nations during the past century came from US government backing dictators and coups. (Read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" or "Shock Doctrine" if you don't believe me)
   
5. These people would not have jobs here in America in the first place if legal Americans didn't hire them.
6. Legal Americans are hiring them because, as employers, they don't have to pay taxes on them (hence the tax burden gets shifted onto the rest of us - ie, the cause of some of those figures the forward lists).
7. To not vilify only the employers, I'd like to point out that many legal Americans would not WANT these jobs, working incredibly (and possibly illegally) long hours at pesticide laden fields, multinational big box warehouses, or in meat processing facilities.
8. Horrible, unsanitary and dangerous jobs like these would not exist at all if consumers cared about more than buying the cheapest item on the shelf. Think about that next time you bite into a beautiful, store-bought strawberry. Try to imagine who picked it.
   
9. Finally, as much as it sucks that our government spends a lot of money on illegal immigration, I would rather have my government spending money within the country to try and fix our internal problems, than spending it halfway across to world to kill people.

We are all connected in this globalized world. Think about the consequences of your actions and the consequences of your spending choices. And in the worlds on one wise man, "Cast not the first stone."

Why I love Kunstler

I have a man-crush on James Howard Kunstler. There. I said it.

Of all the pundits and analysts I've read (and I read a lot) his comments are the only ones that seem to transcend the current hegemony of thought. To a lot of people he seems like some fringe wacko but to me he seem like a modern day Cassandra. (I told you I have a man-crush on him!) Look at his predictions for 2008 and tell me he was wrong. Here is his 2009 post by the way.

So what prompted this post? His blog posting this week focused on our out-going president. I think his concluding paragraph does an amazing job at summarizing the past 8 years:

To me, GWB will remain the perfect representative of his time, place, and culture. During his years in Washington, America became a nation of clowns posturing in cowboy hats, bethinking ourselves righteous agents of Jesus in a Las Vegas of the spirit, where wishing was enough to get something for nothing, where "mistakes were made," but everybody was excused from the consequences of bad choices. ...

Sheer poetry. This guy does not pull any punches. A lot of his conclusion are unsettling and I do hope they are wrong. But I honestly believe he's got his finger on the pulse.