Monthly Archives: January 2025

Indeed There Is

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River Page, writing for The Free Press last Sunday, objected to any proliferation of “Tiger Moms.” However, she’s wholly misinterpreted the concept of and the goals of tiger moms.

There are more important things in life than making a six-figure salary and going to Yale goes her subheadline. She concluded her piece with this:

There’s no point in living in a prosperous country if you can’t enjoy it[.]

The one is not the aim of tiger moms, and the other isn’t possible without achieving their goal. Vivek Ramaswamy, of DOGE, has laid out the situation, using the H-1B visa debate as the backdrop.

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.

He added, as paraphrased by Page, that tech companies prefer to hire foreigners—and their offspring—because the children of native-born Americans don’t work hard enough.

That’s what tiger moms are working against, and we need more of them, not the coddled snowflakes of too many of our current offspring and their children.

That more important thing, toward which tiger moms try to raise their children, is a work ethic that prides work and that produces the overriding satisfaction of a job well done. The self respect that comes from that is what powers full enjoyment of leisure time and the full enjoyment of the plethora of leisures available in a prosperous country.

Indeed, there isn’t a prosperous country without the work required to produce, maintain, and defend it. Six-figure salaries fall out of all of that; they aren’t the goal of any of that. Neither is going to Yale instead of any other school. Students get out of their higher education institution—whichever it is, and it need not be a so-called elite school—what they put into it, and what they put into it is what they learn to put into it during their pre-school and K-12 years. That’s where tiger moms earn their stripes and the respect of us otherwise average Americans, their peers.

Pointless Resolution

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“Journalistic institutions” are being offered a New Year’s Resolution, by many of us average Americans, for how to execute their function in the coming year.

Americans across the country were united in their New Year’s resolution for the media: “Tell the truth.”

It won’t happen, though, not in any believable way, unless there’s a complete replacement of the current crop of editors and news writers. It’s the current crop that has been so blatantly biased and outright dishonest on their “news” pages and dishonest on what passes for their opinion pages. These incumbents have trashed their credibility far beyond repair with their determined and studied bias and dishonesty over the last decades.

And one more Critical Item criterion: the journalist guild must restore the erstwhile practice of at least two on-the-record sources to corroborate the anonymously sourced claims that news and opinion writers make. That was the original standard of journalistic integrity, and it’s instructive that the current crop of guild members have no concrete, publicly accessible and measurable standard in its place.

I, for one, am tired of those worthies masquerading the voices in their heads and their childhood imaginary friends as actual sources. I’ve had done with their “sources who were present” and “senior officials.” I’m especially fed up with these writers’ ubiquitous sources “who speak only with anonymity out of fear of blowback.” Such cowards—if they exist and aren’t just another set of imaginary sources—cannot ever be believed: they’re putting their personal welfare ahead of doing a right thing.

A Scenario

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Let’s assume the Chaos Caucus is successful in preventing the election of a Speaker of the House. We already have Congressman Thomas “Permanent No” Massie (R, KY) and Congresswoman Victoria “Toddler Tantrum” Spartz (R, IN) on record saying they’ll not vote for current Speaker Mike Johnson (R, LA) for Speaker when the new House convenes on 3 January 2025.

That’s enough, given the Republican’s tiny majority in the House, to prevent a Speaker from being chosen. If the Chaos Caucus persists, the Electoral College vote can’t occur on 6 January. If the Chaos Caucus ego-driven obstruction persists through 20 January 2025, who would become the Acting President?

Currently the line of succession is this:

President of the United States—don’t have one
Vice President of the United States —don’t have one
Speaker of the House—don’t have one
President Pro Tempore of the Senate—serves in place of the President of the Senate, that non-existent Vice President of the United States.

The President Pro Tempore is elected by the Senate at large—one of which we will have on 20 January. With the Republican majority of 53 Senators (52 until Senator-elect and current Governor Jim Justice (R, WV) is sworn in, which he has said he’d delay until his successor Governor is sworn in), it’s less likely that a President Pro Tempore would not be elected promptly.

I speculate that the Senate Majority Leader-to-be, John Thune (R, SD), would be elected President Pro Tempore.

Which would make John Thune the acting President.

Is this what the Chaos Caucus is aiming for? Seems unlikely since Thune isn’t, and never has been, far enough right to suit the Chaos Caucus.

Happy New Year

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Originally published in 2012, I repeat it here.

This blogger hopes for increasing prosperity for all in the new year just begun. Following are some additional thoughts, from those better than me.

Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.
–William Makepeace Thackeray

New Year’s Resolution: to tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.
–James Agate

Those who gave thee a body, furnished it with weakness; but He who gave thee Soul, armed thee with resolution. Employ it, and thou art wise; be wise, and thou art happy.
–Akhenaton

Character is the ability to carry out a good resolution long after the excitement of the moment has passed.
–Cavett Robert

And ye, who have met with Adversity’s blast,
And been bow’d to the earth by its fury;
To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently pass’d
Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury –
Still, fill to the Future! and join in our chime,
The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen.
–Thomas Hood

We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives…not looking for flaws, but for potential.
–Ellen Goodman

New Year’s Day: now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.
–Mark Twain

Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up late on New Year’s Eve. Middle age is when you’re forced to.
–Bill Vaughn

This bit of ’70s-style wisdom:

A year from now, you’re gonna weigh more or less than what you do right now.
–Phil McGraw

And finally,

Let our New Year’s resolution be this: we will be there for one another as fellow members of humanity, in the finest sense of the word.
–Goran Persson