Shannon Love

Neat Product: Super Jiggler Siphon

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Growing up on the farm, I got more than my fair share of mouthfuls of gasoline, diesel, stock tank water and other liquids-I-don’t-like-to-think-about, all while sucking on a hose trying to start a siphon.

That is why I was pleased when I stumbled on an innovative siphon hose while web surfing for parts for my death ray.

The hose has a little one-way valve mechanism in one end. When you put that in the liquid you wish to siphon and jiggle it up and down, the one-way valve functions like a pump and lifts the liquid up the hose until it hits the tipping point that establishes the siphon and the liquid flows down hill as nature intended.

It’s great! No more sucking, wheezing, gagging and thinking, “Wait, that wasn’t diesel. What the hell did I just swallow?”

So, without further ado: The Super Jiggler Siphon Hose.

What are Those Incompetent Wimps Going to Do Anyway?

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Instapundit notes the trend towards leftists advocating or at least thinking of violence in response to their electoral failures. Professor Leiter:

At some point these acts of brazen viciousness are going to lead to a renewed philosophical interest in the question of when acts of political violence are morally justified, an issue that has, oddly, not been widely addressed in political philosophy since Locke.

But this raises a serious question in my mind: What kind of violence could those incompetent wimps get up to anyway?

After all, leftists don’t join the military anymore and have no military training, they don’t own guns and they get an attack of the vapors over the mere thought of fireworks. Meanwhile, non-leftists do join the military and are highly trained, do own guns and love to shoot off fireworks. If it did come down to a violent conflict who do you think will win?

Pick any nationally prominent lefty you can think of. Now, imagine that they physically attack Sarah Palin. Who do think is going to win? My money is on the one who shoots caribou.

What is the good professor quoted above going to do if he starts a brawl with a Texan Tea Party member? Will his erudite and devastating bon mots deflect a punch to the face?

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Free-Market Job Protection for Teachers

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Megan McArdle quotes E. D. Kain arguing for teachers’ unions by saying:

Teachers need protection from over-zealous bosses and ideological politicians. This is the same thinking behind seniority rules, which protect more expensive teachers (i.e. veterans) from being laid off due to budget cuts. Teaching is not a high-paying job compared to jobs in the private sector, and one of the benefits is some job security. Occasionally this means bad teachers take longer to fire.

Because of and not in spite of my free-market beliefs, I think Kain makes a valid point. Public-sector employees are not protected from arbitrary firings to the same degree that private-sector workers are and that does create a somewhat compelling argument for public-sector unions.

The free market actually protects workers from being fired for reasons unconnected to their job performance. This is not to say that such firings never occur but rather that the free market provides a built-in mechanism for punishing managers who don’t make personnel decisions based solely on merit. This immediate and powerful feedback means that private-sector worker have more built-in and systematic protection against managerial bias, incompetence and malice than do public-sector workers.

The best way to protect teachers and other public sector workers is to increase the exposure of their managers to market forces.

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Eff the FDA

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A few years ago I blew a gasket in my abdomen and after emergency surgery woke up in intensive care. The hospital was part of a local chain owned and managed by an order of physically tiny but frightfully efficient Catholic nuns. So, the first thing that catches my eye after I claw my way up to semi-consciousness is an old school Catholic crucifix up on the wall. We’re not talking a dry, Protestant two-pieces-of-crossed wood here but an anatomically detailed Jesus in agony nailed in place complete with a tiny crown of thorns.

As I blinked in disorientation at the cross, Jesus began dancing his torso from side-to-side in time with Monty Python’s Always Look at the Bright Side of Life which began playing loudly in my head. For my entire time in intensive care, I couldn’t understand anything anyone said to me because I couldn’t hear them over the endlessly looping song. Every time I looked at the crucifix, Jesus started dancing.

A couple of days later, after I had been moved to an ordinary room, I woke up from a fitful sleep and attempted to escape the hospital. I dragged myself out of bed trailing leads and IVs, screaming in pain and losing my gown in the process. It was quite a shock for the nurses. I even attempted to operate my cell phone and call 911. Why did I do that?

Simple: I thought I was a small Cajun piglet escaping the laboratory of a mad Nazi scientist operating out of a bordello in the French Quarter of New Orleans. True story.

Anyhow, long story short, that is how I began to suspect that morphine and I didn’t get along.

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Obviously, Leftists’ “Hate Mongering” Caused the Frankfurt Shooting

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A shooter has opened fire on a bus carrying US military personnel at the Frankfurt airport. It looks like he killed the civilian bus driver and one American soldier. The killer reportedly “shouted Islamic slogans” as he fired.

In the past, I would have thought only the shooter himself, and perhaps some radical clerics from the Islamic world, bore any moral responsibility for the crime. However, our intellectual betters on the Left have graciously condescended to explain to us all that even seemingly innocuous political speech can drive individuals to lash out violently, and that therefore we all must hold those who engage in violence-promoting political speech strictly responsible for the violence itself.

For example, prior to the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords on January 8th of this year, I would have naively assumed that merely using the common motif of a crosshair in a political graphic could not possibly influence anyone enough to actually cause them to commit murderous violence.

Boy, was I wrong. The Left were nobly quick to educate us.

No less a luminary than that Nobel Prize-winning engine of reason Paul Krugman leaped into action within a couple of hours of the shooting itself. Krugman tore himself away from his glorious work to eruditely link the deceptively innocent graphic, and other non-leftists’ criticisms of the Left,  to the motivations of the shooter. Who can forget his sage sermon admonishing us inferiors to accept moral responsibility and mind our tongues?

You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.

Krugman and the other leftists really opened my eyes. Who knew that political speech was so dangerous? I certainly didn’t but then I was educated in the sciences and not the liberal-arts, so my mind is obviously too puny to understand these things.

So, when I read about a European Muslim shooting at American soldiers, I immediately applied the lessons taught to me by the wise and benevolent Krugman.

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