If you thought there was a difference between our two local parties, you were wrong!

A reader reports seeing Democrat Third Selectman Drew Mazzili down in the dumps today introducing the two officially-approved Republican candidates Brian Paldunas and Peter Bernstein. When theDemocratic Town Committee sends out its highest office holder to support the “proper” Republican candidates, you know that both parties of the old guard are worried about Peter Sherr.

Bullet vote – that is, cast just one vote for just one of the Board of Education candidates: Peter Sherr. Anyone so feared by the Democrat and Republican leadership that they would conspire to get rid of him can only be good for the town.

Identity politics and health

Hate to burst your balloon but ….

The press is out with another hot flash: Women in Connecticut have the highest breast cancer incidence in the nation. Someone has to lead the way, I suppose, so why not Connecticut?  But here’s the interesting point to me: the incidence of and mortality rate from breast cancer  per 100,000 women is 123.1/22

The incidence of and mortality rate from prostate cancer per 100,000 men is 152/23

How about heart attack mortality? 225.1 per 100,000, men vs. 143.3, women (and in Connecticut, 194.7 /143.3)

Who would belittle the tragedy of breast cancer? Unlike prostate cancer, the median age of death from which is 80, breast cancer strikes young women, with horrible affects on families. So that’s not the issue. But it is annoying to see nationwide campaigns for one disease or another based on the particular sex of the victims. More bluntly, men’s health is deemed undeserving of attention while  NFL – the NFL! – players are being pretty in pink every Sunday.

Bah.

Here’s a novel deficit reduction program we can all get behind

 

Closed until further notice

Computer glitch crashes welfare EBT system nationwide. With luck, the technicians needed to fix this will be busy mending ObamaKare for the next twelve months, in which case what we save on not buying beer and cigarettes for these people may pay for the medical system.

And they’ll be healthier too.

It will come as no surprise to my business partner Fudrucker that these were influential in my education too

 

Required reading at the Tamm household?

The books and political philosophers that Margaret Thatcher read.

What books shaped late conservative British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher?

Nile Gardiner and Stephen Thompson, authors of the recently released “Margaret Thatcher on Leadership: Lessons for American Conservatives Today,” told The Daily Caller the former British Prime Minister, who passed away earlier this year, “was an avid reader throughout her life.”

“Books that had a major impact on shaping her worldview included Friedrich Hayek’s ‘The Road to Serfdom,’ Adam Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations,’ John Stuart Mill’s ‘On Liberty,’ and anything by Winston Churchill,” the authors said in an email. “She was also influenced by Edmund Burke.”

I’d add Atlas Shrugged and Dr.Seuss’s seminal work, “Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose”, which tells the entirely-satisfactory tale of what happens when freeloaders get what they deserve.

To the contrary, “I’m a fan of  ‘Why Mommy is a Democrat‘, Democrat Chairman Francis Fudrucker told FWIW, “and have been since Ramadamadingdong, ‘Squeaky’ Tamm recommended it. As the book’s jacket says, ‘It depicts Democratic principles of fairness, tolerance, peace and concern for the well-being of others.’ Is that beautiful, or what? – even today,  it continues to be the main intellectual force in my political thought – we read it aloud at all our Greenwich Democrat council meetings, and I swear there are tears in our eyes when we finish.”

Sounds like here

As the twig is bent, so grows the tree

Britain: students in selective grammar schools outperform their peers in open admission “comprehensive schools”.

Here’s a wikipedia article explaining the difference between the two types of schools and the history of their implementation in Europe and Great Britain, but this comment may sum up the difference in students and rests:

Robert McCartney, of the National Grammar Schools Association, said research about five years ago showed England’s grammar schools had produced as many A and B grades at A-level as 1,500 comprehensives.

‘We have had two polls since 2010 which showed overwhelming demand for grammar schools,’ he said.

‘I think Cameron has bought into the idea that they are bastions of middle-class elitism – to which there is some truth but only because the places are so limited and competition so fierce that aspirational parents by and large are the ones who get places.’ [emphasis added]

A child who grows up in a home where education is valued is more likely to succeed academically than one who does not. Doh.

Judging from her picture, she can afford it

Donna Smith “Where all de white bread at?”

Furloughed IRS worker goes on hunger strike to protest government shutdown. “I’ve written our congressman,” said  a rail-thin Bobby Sands, IRS zealot Donna Smith’s husband, “and encouraged him to resist reopening for at least three more weeks – the not-so-little lady’s got a ways to go.”