Krauthammer: "Middle-Aged May Never Get Employed Again"

All I can say is that when you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. It was those middle-aged people who are most responsible for running up the various state and national debts.

Isn't there a way to block posts from a specific poster????

>30M illegals in this Country has a cost burden associated with it. <

Ya think?? This is a huge elephant that is in the middle of the room, has pooped on everything, and no one dares speak of it!

If illegal aliens would disappear from this country in the middle of the night, there would be millions of low level jobs for our American young people. It would be wonderful. We could start a temp seasonal worker program for agriculture only. The workforce would change like domi oes falling and even the older mid managers would have more opportunities.

Congrats. It’s so difficult. My DH started his own business because in his former field no one wanted to pay the higher cost of the experienced any more. You get so discouraged, but eventually with some creativity there is a new world out there.

It is true. The US was the world’s largest creditor until about 1980 or so, since that time it went from zero net debt to the 14 or 15 trillion dollar debt.

What age group was the single biggest voting block during that period?

That is the group most responsible for the debt.

‘Do you live in a state where it is illegal to smoke in a bar?’

In Texas, it’s up to the city.

Austin(Live Musical Capital of the World) has tons of bars yet the city leaders in their desire to save us from ourselves has implemented a no smoking ban on city bars.

This idiot law has even PO’d quite a few lefties I know.

The establishment that I used to go to had a fan and a stool just for me ... so I could smoke my cigars .... the patrons used to line up to puff my cigar just to show management that they will leave with me ... she has since been fired (management) too late ... the place is now for sale or lease ... had been in business for 60 years ... we left for friendlier establishments... (i’m a popular kind of guy)

TT

There is a very nice Argentinian restuarant called ‘El Gaucho’, which is one of the finest chop houses on the West Coast.

In this restaurant they had two spacious rooms equipped with effective ventilation equipment, overstuffed leather chairs and davenports, a cedar cabinet humidor that stood as tall as a grandfather clock, and was well-stocked with the best rolls of choice tobaccos that could be assembled, with price bearing no prominence as one of this establishments attributes for selection.

Some of these cigars were perhaps $4, purchased on the internet for as low as maybe $1.25. Some were Montecristo, or Cohiba, or other of the marquee names in the business.

The back wall of the place featured a honeycomb of humidors all sporting brass nameplates on them, with a rolling library ladder that allowed the tobacconist or the attendants in that room to access a patron’s holdings. Some of these patrons who rented these humidors had arrangements with the tobacconist to purchase their cigars through the restaurant at very competitive prices, if not at outright discounts, given the obvious logical conclusion that a stocked humidor within the restaurant called for an increased use of the same in order to deplete the stock.

There was a captain assigned to each of the two rooms, and both sported these humidors, which were incredibly reasonable to rent. All of the attendants were selected for their love and enthusiasm for cigars. Many boxes, no matter how high the reputation, sometimes have one or two that are rolled in a way that the cigar doesn’t burn well for whatever reason.

On those occasions, I have had my cigar confiscated from me without my prompting such that it could be replaced, at no additional expense, with another cigar that would burn as one would expect.

I have shown up with my laptop and requested a little table in the back with an electrical outlet, whereupon I would stay five or so hours to complete some work on a weekday night. I would munch a steak sandwich, or order a Caesar salad, which would at all times be made from scratch at my table, and drink Manhattans while consuming two to three Churchill-sized cigars per night.

The WA state passed one of the most draconian smoking laws in the country, making California’s look positively reasonable by comparison. Both of the rooms have been since converted to either banquet rooms or an annex of overflow tables.

The humidors remain perhaps for a day when the state decides a little less fascism would perhaps raise revenue, preserve some personal freedom, and maybe even regenerate the 15 jobs lost on account of the cigar rooms being shuttered.

In my recollection, these rooms constituted the only places local to me which resembled the sort of pub life atmosphere I found in England and Northern Europe, where strangers could come together with just a single point of common interest - a love for cigars - and find themselves to have far more in common than they ever imagined.

The reason why I know the end is near is because there are few left to passive, furtively, the advice that was so common less than 100 years ago about the sinless and philosophically edifying virtues of an unspoiled hour in the company of a cigar, whether alone or amongst others sympathetic to the venerable commodity’s customary usage.

Of course there are plenty of dolts that would characterize the cigar along with all other uses of tobacco as sinister and irresponsible, but they are the same crowd that might perhaps also characterize Chopin and Britney Spears as composers.

I have as my direct ancestor the abolotionist Carrie A Nation, and have read her biography a couple of times.

I have come to the conclusion that the 19th amendment perhaps did far more damage to our free society than it did good. Women have been stupid enough to trade away the very power they actually had over men. A line from a recent movie goes, “I knew that we’d won the war between the sexes when women started using stripper poles for exercise classes.”

The abolition of cigars is simple one of the casualties in that war, I believe.

Today, it’s illegal for me to smoke a cigar within 25 feet of any building entrance, but I can commit infanticide or choose to commit an act of buggery without the use of a prophylactic and be within legal, moral, and hygenical norms.

And thus, I believe the end approaches.