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"Cheaters"
2 Comments - Show Original Blog
It's good to see you posting again. I always enjoyed everything you've written… especially about your trips to your Canadian retreat.
Don't be bothered by Jerry's comments. He's a closet liberal and hates himself for it. A young woman has just made a documentary of how her father changed into something she didn't recognize after listening to Rush Limbaugh. While talking on the phone to my brother who was raving about how good Rush was, I told him that I thought that Limbaugh was a “pompous ass.” Tim hung up on me. We still talk to one another, but he doesn't want to talk about anything “political.” His third wife is a postmaster who recently downgraded her status to “carrier” to retain her job. Maybe Tim's association to a government employee will change his mind about “survival of the richest.”
Back to Cheaters. Through high school we all knew the cheaters were and they were usually soundly and correctly punished. In those days, cheating in marriage was commonplace and accepted as a normal part of life. Cheating in business was also very common… My father had to step in several times when I was being cheated because I was young and naïve about all the bad people out there.
When I got to college I really discovered cheating… mostly among my underachieving, beer drinking, draft dodging, classmates. When the group stole my metal shop project and turned it in as some loser's work, I turned in the whole ring of nine guys and they got expelled from college. At Stanford, we were on the honor system where tests were not proctored. I wonder how many students cheated their way through school there because of that system. During my doctoral studies, one student manufactured is data and was sent packing.
The worst were the political types. Our sophomore class president was the guy who served as a lookout when they stole my project out of my locker (I saw him and turned him in). I confronted him in English class and he denied that he was the lookout, but he turned in the other guys to save his own skin. I had a student body president in one of my classes. He missed half the semester and I gave them an incomplete. Later, I saw him trying to smoosh his way into our doctoral program at WVU. I met a law student in NYC who was paying for his law school by playing poker. I caught him cheating while playing with us at my cousin's wedding. It seems that higher one gets in many professions, the more one cheats to get ahead.
You are absolutely right. We can use the election process, as expensive and cumbersome as it is (I like to see that reformed) to remove the thorns in our side. After Tom DeLay (my Congressman before he gerrymandered his way into including NASA in his district and me out of his district) got rich and was sent packing, only to be recently not convicted for shady money dealing, we now have Ted Cruz as a senator. Cruz got elected because of Delay's gerrymandering and the large Hispanic population in Texas who may have just “voted a name” rather than knowing about the candidate they were voting for. Now that everyone knows who he is, it will take another four years before we can boot him out.
It does look like that Wendy Davis has a good shot at bringing down Rick Perry's dynasty. However, Greg Abbott, who is in a wheelchair like me, but got rich by suing the guy whose tree fell on him, seems to be Perry's pick to continue his dynasty… I hope not.
Ron
It is always good to see a liberal kowtowing . . .
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