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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (77323)	2/6/2010 6:22:37 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

The Weather Outside By: Jonah Goldberg The Corner Okay, so I just got back from the store (56 minutes on line). D.C. is close to a full-blown panic about the storm heading our way. There's an interesting race-to-the-bottom dynamic that overtakes D.C. when it snows. People hie to the supermarket as if a billion Chinese zombies with frickn' lasers strapped to their heads were about to invade from outer space and nobody knows the correct translation of "Klaatu burada nikto." When I lived in Adams Morgan (the most New York City-ish D.C. neighborhood) I was amazed at how people would buy not just canned goods and, say, chili-fixings, but gallons and gallons of bottled water. I mean, when was the last time a snowstorm actually caused residents of apartment buildings in a major American city to be trapped inside for weeks at a time? The problem, however, is that when everyone knows that this is what happens to D.C.ers when it snows, there's pressure to behave the same way. If you know you might need something for dinner on Sunday and you know the locusts will pick the bones of the Safeway until they are bleached white, then you, too, have to race and get those things before they run out. It's like in college when there are more guys in the room than slices of pizza available. I was standing with some folks for the better part of the hour while on line (BTW, native New Yorkers say "on line" not "in line") and we were all discussing how stupid it was to be putting up with the chaos and hassle, and yet we waited. Everyone was super polite, too. I watched one lady's cart and saved her place in line while she ran out to the liquor store next door, and vice versa. Whenever a shopper needed to get by to find something on the shelf, we were very accommodating. And when a young man accidentally cut in front of us in line, not knowing that it stretched all the way up the aisle to the deli counter, everyone was very helpful, holding him down while I savagely beat him with a can of chickpeas. corner.nationalreview.com

To: Sully- who wrote (77323)	2/6/2010 6:27:47 AM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

Is Greece Our Future? By: Victor Davis Hanson The Corner I lived in Greece for more than two years, and one of my best memories is of a small hotelier at a seaside resort. He checked you in; he cooked; he did the landscaping at night; he did all the maintenance during the day. I asked him why he didn't hire more help, since his hotel wasn't all that small and he seemed to be going 24/7. What followed was a harangue about the cost of hiring a permanent worker in Greece, the difficulty of ever firing him if he proved worthless, and why he preferred to do everything himself rather than fill out all sorts of forms and hire unmotivated but tenured employees. Besides, he said, almost everyone was on some sort of pension, disability, or government benefit, and was unwilling to work, so his choices were either illegal immigrants or broke foreign students. Then he launched into a blast against socialism, and explained how he was forced to become an expert tax dodger, how he would barter for all the transactions he could, and why he hated the government. He finished by sighing that in Greece, the people spend their time either devising ways to get government money or scheming to avoid the tax collectors -- or, preferably, both. I think the medicine for Greece's current crisis will prove more unpalatable than the wasting disease. corner.nationalreview.com