Though deeply entrenched in the digital world, there remains an enigmatic appeal to holding a book or magazine in our hands and turning pages. This explains why the arrival of the conservative Weekly Standard in the mailbox each week is such a pleasure.
The magazine runs the gamut from serious commentary, analysis of the news to dashes of humor. Today we bring you the humor, which we all so richly deserve after the antics that dominated the news this past week. This selection is from The Scrapbook:
Hero or Goat?
The latest threat to the American workforce has arrived, and it’s on four hooves.
A public-employee union is up in arms over a team of blue-collar billy-goats employed to clear brush on a college campus. The union claims that by using the animals, Western Michigan University is snatching jobs away from union workers. They’re not kidding around, either—the union has filed a grievance against the university. Their complaint is a sort of inversion of Orwell’s Animal Farm motto: Two legs good, four legs ba-a-a-a-ad.
What’s particularly delightful about this conflict is how it pits two key leftist enterprises—public-employee unions and college environmentalists—against one another. After all, the reason Western Michigan University chose goat grazers in the first place was concern for the environment. Eschewing chemicals, the college instead opted for the green solution, hiring a team of 20 goats to clear 10 acres of rough bramble and poison ivy. Last year a trip of 10 goats proved efficient and sustainable, and the current flock is ahead of schedule.
Alas, such environmental considerations weren’t enough to pacify the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union was quick to leap to the defense of its members in the face of the ruminant menace.
And just how great is that menace? The Washington Post did the math and found that in one month, one person with a tractor can do the work of 3,600 goats. Even if all 2.5 million goats in the United States were employed, they would only threaten 347 full-time human jobs nationwide.
Small as that number may be (and it’s nothing compared with the threat posed by automated robot goats), it’s not nonexistent, which leaves leftists with a dilemma. It seems to The Scrapbook that there is an obvious compromise that would satisfy all parties: The goats should unionize.
Seeing Red AZ 
Unions are outdated and harm far more than they help. Many company workers have voted them out and others have refused to join. Unions like UAWs have retaliated against them by publicly posting their names in an effort to coerce them back into the fold. One guy in this article said he felt like he had a target on his back.
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/chrysler/2016/01/01/uaw-unit-publishes-names-workers-opting-union/78161726/
No difference than state university teachers who don’t teach and have major benefits and university presidents with 1 million dollar paychecks.
At some point states and cities will be able to declare bankruptcy and do so to get out of the ridiculous pay/benefit packages that public service employees are receiving.
WW2 was won by a citizen army of non professionals called up and then discharged when the war was won. That is the best example for America….not the public trough of today.
You seem to have forgotten there was a draft in place during WWII, although Americans also enlisted in droves when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in a sneak early morning attack killing thousands and sinking ships including the USS Arizona, which still remains a tomb. Unlike the liberal Hollywood elites today who hate our military, patriotic movie stars and other celebrities proudly enlisted. How dare you refer to our military as a public trough. It is the protectorate of our freedoms.
Click on the photo to see more.
I haven’t forgotten anything. Kirk and others served honorably and then went back to his career. He probably made $40 a month. The pay and benefits today are so enticing today that most would stay in. That is not what our founding fathers had in mind.
Patrick, I’ve been reading your antagonistic anti-military comments and have noticed you sound an awful lot like “Westnash” who was finally banned from this website. Our military is not feeding at the public trough. We owe them our gratitude for protecting our freedoms.
I hope the moderator of these comments checks you out.
Our Founders could never have envisioned a Muslim jihad being waged against the United States, now numbering 50, which they also couldn’t have envisioned. They could not have envisioned the mammoth skyscrapers known as the Twin Towers, having commercial airliners, which they could not have envisioned, filled with passengers, being commandeered by terrorists and intentionally flown into the buildings, creating a hell-like inferno.. The did have experience with loudmouth non patriots, immortalized by Gen.Benedict Arnold, whose name has become synonymous with the word “traitor.”
The article from the Weekly Standard states that “The Washington Post did the math. . . .”
The WaPo is strictly about opposing Trump (and the GOP if they get out of hand) and facts, let alone math, never gets in their way.
WaPo’s owner, Jeff Bezos, should be investigated for his actions.
The owner of Amazon has recently bought up Whole Foods, which may not seem like a problem, but it is.
Whole Foods contracts with specific vendors (farmers, ranchers, bee keepers, flower growers, etc). Those people will now be working solely for him.
This affects our food supply.
He also has full access now to the computerized data that reveals Whole Foods shoppers’ buying habits and credit card data.
As for the goats—–their keepers should hire security.
I envision dirty tactics directed towards the health and well-being of the goats.
Maybe Black LIves Matters, which is currently, with regularity, conducting organized riots on the streets of London will be recalled by Soros to protest goats.
Moslems love to eat goat; security, for sure.
Off topic but interesting:
Exactly who does he expect to vote for him. His hatred for Trump will only get him some Democrats and the GOPe in AZ.
GOP Sen Flake: Under Trump GOP ‘Lost Its Way,’ Given in to ‘Nativism,’ ‘Xenophobia
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2017/07/30/gop-sen-flake-under-trump-gop-lost-its-way-given-in-to-nativism-xenophobia/
HERO OR GOAT? Guess who’s got a book coming out?
July 29, 2017, the Oregon newspaper known as The Bulletin published a column written by none other than David Brooks of the NYT about his latest man-crush, Jeff the Flake.
Columnist Mr. Brooks writes that Trump, Bannon, and Scaramucci have destroyed the rules of decency in the public arena and then gets to his object of affection, the big Flake:
“. . . Some senators are passing the test of conscience — Ben Sasse, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, Mike Lee and John McCain. And to that list we can certainly add Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake. In a few days, he comes out with a book called “Conscience of a Conservative,” which is a thoughtful defense of traditional conservatism and a thorough assault on the way Donald Trump is betraying it.”
“Flake grew up in rural Arizona. “Cattle ranching is the hardest work I’ve ever known and the best people I have ever known have been cattle ranchers,” he writes. He was one of 11 children, and his family did not dine out, even once, while he was young. He lost part of a finger and learned frontier self-reliance on the ranch. As a Mormon, he learned to be wary of the government, and especially the way it can persecute minorities.”
“He came to Congress in 2001 and earned a reputation as a scourge against federal spending and earmarks and as a champion of tax cuts. But he walked into a Republican Party that was descending from Goldwater and Reagan, his heroes, to Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay. When I had coffee with Flake this week, he spoke about the philosophical and political corruption of the DeLay era with uncharacteristic contempt. . . .”
(what’s wrong with this picture?
Flake writing about having a conscience; being a conservative, and being wary of government??????)