My Beauty Best Teacher

One more example of resourcefulness amongst the informal, the BBC reports:

Courtesy of the BBC

Mucina, Boniface and Kama are among the motorbike boys of Dirt Island in Nairobi, Kenya - young men who have discovered a new way to improve slum life - a two-wheeled taxi service..."I bought a bike, an old motorbike," he says, "and set up at the (taxi) stage. At first people weren't comfortable with riding the motorcycles but after we became many, people got used to it."

In Postconsumption Niti Bhan commends the "business flair of Nigeria's slum dwellers"highlighted in 'Welcome to Lagos':

In three programmes, series producer Will Anderson assembles a number of hugely likeable, articulate and witty people who live on garbage heaps, in beachside shanty towns and slums on stilts in the city's lagoon. Their tales build an intimate portrait of a city brimming with entrepreneurial flair, resilience, tough-mindedness and hope. This is not the apocalyptic urban vision with which Lagos has become synonymous and about which development experts sweat as the population of 16m climbs steadily towards a forecast 25m.Instead, it is a hymn to humanity and to the capacity of Africans to find means and motive to survive in even the most adverse conditions.

Sometimes it is amusing to slum around and read liberal blogs and comments. One blog that pretends to be a rival of mine here in Michigan is called "Michigan Liberal." On this blog, people who attend tea parties are routinely called 'teabaggers' as an insult, and the headlines are witty and clever like "Putting the ass back in jackass" or "Granholm, Freep slam the attempted Cox Block" (for those of you who are not used to liberal intelligence, put your mind in the gutter and pretend you are a foul-mouthed ugly person- the author was trying to make a play on words using male genitalia).

Eric Baerren runs Michigan Liberal, and is a big supporter of Democrats and their policies, and proves his liberal credentials by engaging in foul-mouthed low-level thuggery whenever he gets a chance. You can contact him at ebaerren@michiganliberal.com and contact one of his employers, the Midland Daily News, to let them know what you think of their employee, at janderson@hearstnp.com.

Reading liberal blogs or reading their comments gives you some insight into the level of intellectual depth and intelligence that these people have when approaching issues. I was reading a recent story over at the Oakland Press about how Peters is all sad that his opponents are going to make an issue over him voting for Obamacare and how Peters isn't a left-wing super liberal like his voting record shows and instead is some sort of moderate that only votes liberal. The story itself was kind of lame- Peters being a big cry baby and his spokesman injecting talking points- but the comments under it were interesting.

Here are some typical liberal comments, demonstrating the type of voters who vote Democrat and the kinds of people who support the modern-day Democratic Party:

• Joe wrote "Gary Peters is going to win another term and he'll keep winning until he retires. All the teabaggers complaining about how "Gary Peters' doesn't listen to his constituents" is a load of bull. He does listen to the MAJORITY of his constituents, not the fringe, America-hating right who think having to buy private insurance makes us a totalitarian dictatorship and still wants to see Obama's birth certificate. "
• I heard... wrote "that Paul Welday was a birther. Does anyone know if it's true? " (Welday is running against Peters, and there is no evidence of him being a 'birther').
• Mary wrote " A majority now support health care reform. It will only get more popular."
• Drop the Cover wrote "Call it the Tea Party all you want. But I know the Klan when I see it! "
• G wrote " silly tea baggers.. think they shouldnt have to pay taxes. "
• timmmy wrote "the republicans have turned into the party of racist, homophobic,sexist, azzclowns unable to tell the truth if their mothers life depended on it. t-baggers they are. "
• Get over it conservatives you lost wrote " Whaa whaa whaa like little crybabies you conservatives act like. I'm lmao at you nut cases. The 9th district is becoming more and more progressive and you can't stop it. Peters will be re-elected and I hope it twists you guts. "
• To Get Over It Conservatives wrote " We're not the ones that lost......YOU ARE. You're just to dumb to realize it. Wait a couple of years. Maybe then you'll grow up and face reality. "
• Watcher wrote " Rubbing my eyes here. Did I see and read what I thought I did. Welllll, yes.An Oakland County idiot claiming that the Aryans of Oakland County have values????They do have value, they like a good value on pillow cases with slits for eyes.Peters is going nowhere. He will win in a landslide. Even an idiot like peters is a lesser evil then a fascist Republican. "
• Eyerock wrote " Where do all the tea partiers and right wing nuts live in Oakland County?All my neighbors and friends are far more liberal than most of those posting on the OP.We support our President, are for Health Care Reform, and are all for closing the gap in America between the haves and the have nots. And we like to burn one every now and then. "
• Tim T wrote " Thanks Gary for standing up for the People instead of the insurance industry. "

There you have it- just a selection of the kind of voters who supported health care and support Gary Peters, and a little bit of a window inside their heads. I hope you all enjoyed reading that!

UPDATE: Michigan Liberal responds to my post by mocking me and simply denying that he is foul-mouthed. Typical liberal- the evidence I provided above (Eric's casual use of cuss words and foul phrases like cock blocking and tea bagging) is just crazy right-wing hysteria. Eric Baerren is a foul-mouthed low level thug, and if he doesn't like it, perhaps he should not use such foul language or foul phrases in his posts. But he won't- as a liberal, he is unable to rise above the tendency to think above gutter-level, so will likely continue with foul phrases and crude sexual innuendo in his posts.

And if you want to let his employer know what you think about his journalism abilities or use of language to get his points across, his editor can be reached at janderson@hearstnp.com.

Texas Board of Education on Friday recently approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

But liberal blogs are going crazy, stating that it is totally wrong to put a conservative stamp on social studies curriculum and that the only allowable stamp allowed in education is a firmly liberal stamp. Blogs like the Daily Kos, which Obama reads often, suggest that it is better to homeschool your children now that the Texas Board has prohibited discussion of "transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else."

There are a lot of reasons to homeschool children- look at Detroit Public Schools, in the firm solid grip of liberal policies and an utter disaster- but suggesting that you pull your child out of public schools because they won't learn valuable important information about transvestites in social studies is disgusting. I mean, in Detroit (firmly controlled by Democrats), kids have an equal chance of being shot or graduating high school, but that's okay to liberals and readers of the Daily Kos, as long as those students learn in their history classes about transvestites and transsexuals, and that's wrong.

For fun sometime you need to slum it in blogs like the Daily Kos and read the comments that liberals and Democrats put on that blog. They're voters too, don't forget that, and some of you may have even voted with them last election (or voted third party, which is the same in reality as voting for the most communist person on the ticket).

It's fun to read things on the Daily Kos like "unlike with socialist governments, we don't get a vote" and "But, in Texas, it is not a democracy. Their governor (Bush) lost the popular vote; and then lost the electoral vote. And then was appointed by the Supreme Court. So, to Texans, this is not a democracy." Yup, that's why I went back to school to get my teaching degree, and why I am a conservative teacher- I really hope that I can catch these idiots in school before they are released into the wilds and teach them that socialist governments (like China or Soviet Union) are bad, and that Bush won the 2000 election according to the laws of our nation.

Hopefully, the more conservative we can make education, by changing curriculum and standards and textbooks and methods and teachers to conservative ones, the better educated our children will be, and there won't be Democrat voters out there who comment "I compare the Texas right wing to the Taliban."

Image via Wikipedia

...Slums have assets along with their obvious shortcomings. Their humming economic activity and proximity to city centers represent big advantages over the subsistence farming that many slum dwellers have fled. Numerous observers have noted the enterprising spirit of these places, evident not only in their countless tiny businesses, but also in the constant upgrading and expansion of homes. Longstanding slum communities tend to be much more tightknit than many prosperous parts of the developed world, where neighbors hardly know one another. Indeed, slums embody many of the principles frequently invoked by urban planners: They are walkable, high-density, and mixed-use, meaning that housing and commerce mingle...[continue reading]

From Slum Dwellers International:

Once Federations begin to negotiate with local governments around secure tenure and basic services, the next step is always to find the finance for the actual implementation and delivery. Very often the lack of access to funds delays projects and results in a loss of morale for the communities involved.
These constraints have prompted many SDI affiliates to build new institutions, called Urban Poor Funds(pdf), which monetize the social and political capital of savings groups to leverage additional resources from formal banking institutions, the State, and international donor agencies. By combining the savings of the poor with external contributions, Urban Poor Funds gear up capital for large-scale construction and infrastructure development...[continue reading]