Ole Ted and political deals....

Mencken on the New Deal

This alert came from a listener. He was reading "The Bad Boy of Baltimore" a biography of H.L. Mencken by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers. On page 409 of that book he finds the following"

"By the mid-1930's, thanks to the New Deal, all that self-reliance had changed, prompting Mencken to declare: 'There is no genuine justice in any scheme of feeding and coddling the loafer whose only ponderable energies are devoted wholly to reproduction. Nine-tenths of the rights he bellows for are really privileges and he does nothing to deserve them.' Despite the billions spent on an individual, 'he can be lifted transiently but always slips back again.' Thus, the New Deal had been 'the most stupendous digenetic enterprise ever undertaken by man.... We not only acquired a vast population of morons, we have inculcated all morons, old or young, with the doctrine that the decent and industrious people of the country are bound to support them for all time. The effects of that doctrine are bound to be disastrous soon or late.'

When someone asked, "And what, Mr. Mencken, would you do about the unemployed?" He looked up with a bland expression. "We could start by taking away their vote," he said, deadpan. Mencken was not surprised when the majority disagreed. "There can be nothing even remotely approaching a rational solution of the fundamental national problems until we face them in a realistic spirit," he later reflected, and that was impossible so long as educated Americans remained responsive "to the Roosevelt buncombe."

"Buncombe," by the way, means a county in North Carolina, a city in Illinois or another word for "nonsense."

(from boortz.com)

Just for the art of it....

Sneaky little bastard Dept.

Short story: Dwarves in suitcases rifling bus travelers' bags

From London's Telegraph comes this nominee for the Annals of Weird Crime:

Criminal gangs are using dwarves in a ruse to steal from the luggage holds of long-distance coaches, by hiding them inside suitcases, according to police.

The bizarre crime is on the rise in Sweden and officers say thieves have got away with thousands of pounds in cash, jewellery and other valuables in recent months. Gangs are said to sneak the dwarves into the luggage hold, hidden inside baggage. Then, once the journey has begun, the stowaways are free to rifle through the bags of other passengers without fear of being apprehended.

Before the coach arrives at its destination the dwarves take their loot back into their suitcase, zip themselves inside and wait to be collected by their partners in crime. ...

This sounds too weird to be true, but there are multiple sources with much the same story, including a Spiegel report that quotes a spokeswoman for the bus line. "We think it is a short, young person," Ingvar Ryggasjo, sales manager for Swebus, tells Spiegel. "We are taking extra security measures and are thinking of installing video surveillance cameras."

The Local, a Swedish publication, quotes a victim. "It is not known whether the thief in this case was a bantam adult or a child," The Local reports.

Posted by Michael Winter at 04:56 PM/ET, January 31, 2008 in Crime, Europe, Offbeat | Permalink

(
Afterthought: What if all the bags are piled on top of him and he can't get out)