From Mother Jones:

A Case of Romnesia
Mitt Romney’s long history of misremembering his past.
—By David Corn | Wed Jun. 20, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

If David Corn rings a bell, it may be because he’s often on MSNBC, a network that runs his Romney “47%” video on a non-stop loop.

Slightly earlier is the Daily Kos:

FRI MAY 18, 2012 AT 12:32 PM PDT
Another dazzling display of Romnesia: Mitch Daniels says we’re in ‘peacetime’
by Jed Lewison

Slightly earlier is Partisan Dawn:

I Invent A New Word: “Romnesia”
Posted by: Rick | May 16, 2012
rom·ne·sia [rom-nee-zhuh] noun. an apparent memory disorder exhibited by a person who apologizes for an egregious act of antisocial behavior while simultaneously claiming not to remember the act itself. [after Willard Mitt Romney (born 1947), American politician]

Slightly earlier still, from the Daily Kos:

FRI MAY 11, 2012 AT 11:06 AM PDT
The bully’s bully: Mitt Romney’s consigliere Eric Fehrnstrom
by Meteor Blades
Eric Fehrnstrom (The Shawmut Group) Mitt Romney’s credentials as a bully made a big splash Thursday. In a typical display of what Kossack AlyoshaKaramazov calls “Romnesia,” the all-but-official presidential nominee conveniently couldn’t remember the incident in which, aided by some of his pals, he attacked a gay student at his prep school and, while others held the boy to ground, whacked off his non-conformist long hair because “he can’t look like that.”

Ultimately, the origin for the term comes from exactly where you’d expect it to–The New York Times and its star columnist, Paul Krugman:

OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Amnesia Candidate
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: April 22, 2012
Just how stupid does Mitt Romney think we are? If you’ve been following his campaign from the beginning, that’s a question you have probably asked many times.
(…)
This is especially true if you focus on private-sector jobs. Overall employment in the Obama years has been held back by mass layoffs of schoolteachers and other state and local government employees. But private-sector employment has recovered almost all the ground lost in the administration’s early months.

Oh yes, private sector employment is doing just fine. Paul Krugman has declared that this is so, and President Obama recently said the same thing (only to say later that this wasn’t what he’d said).

SUMMARY
Romnesia? Obama thinks this is a winning term?

When you get your ideas from Mother Jones, Daily Kos and The New York Times, why should any conservative or independent voter trust you?

The premise of my last post is that we should POSSIBLY follow Canada and several other countries in eliminating the penny. With QE3 and the devaluation of the currency, expect price increases in gold, silver, copper, zinc, and the rest. Coins will cost far more than their value to make.

There is a group called Citizens to Retire the U.S. Penny that I didn’t mention in the previous post.

There’s also this article, from the New York Times:

August 28, 2012, 1:30 pm
Is a Penny Rounded a Penny Lost? Ask Chipotle
By ANN CARRNS
As The Consumerist pointed out, rounding to the nearest nickel isn’t really a big deal, as long as the restaurant is rounding down. But if it rounds up, you pay extra — even if it’s just a penny or two.

In one sense, this seems like a smart idea. Who wants excess change clogging up their pockets, anyway, especially if it means you’ll get your food faster?
(…)
But a few penny-pinchers (my description, not Mr. Arnold’s) did object. So as of August, he said, the chain is only rounding down. (Also, receipts should now have a line showing the impact of the rounding math.) He said he didn’t know of other outlets that round receipts.

Do you think rounding of meal receipts — up or down — to eliminate pennies is a reasonable policy for a busy restaurant?

The argument for eliminating the nickel seems just as strong, or even stronger. It costs 11.45 cents to make a nickel? From FITSNews:

The Nickel, Too?
By fitsnews • on September 4, 2012
(…)
Well guess what … it turns out that the cost of producing an American nickel is also more expensive than the coin is worth. According to data released by the U.S. Mint, the unit cost for producing a nickel is 11.48 cents. Meanwhile the unit cost for a producing a penny is 2.41 cents. In other words, it costs more than twice as much to make both of these coins as they’re worth – something to ponder as the national debt eclipses the $16 trillion mark.

How many pennies did the government make a year ago? Forty-nine billion.

(By comparison it costs 5.65 cents to mint a dime and 11.14 cents to make a quarter).

Producing the nickel and the penny has been a money losing proposition for the last six years – although the $116.7 million bath the taxpayers took during the fiscal year ending last September was roughly three times greater than the loss incurred the previous fiscal year.

Who would buy up a ton of coins? From CNBC:

Kyle Bass’s Nickel Collection
Published: Wednesday, 5 Oct 2011 | 1:22 PM ET
By: John Carney
Kyle Bass has a lot of spare change.

The founder of Hayman Capital, the Dallas-based hedge fund that profited from the collapse of the housing market, bought 20 million nickels, according to a new book from Michael Lewis.
(…)
The catch is that melting U.S. coins is illegal. In 2006, the U.S. Mint reacted to rising metal prices by passing an interim rule that banned melting coins. In 2007, that rule became permanent.

“The rising commodity prices of copper, nickel, and zinc have increased the value of the metal in both pennies and nickels so that the content of these coins now exceeds their face value,” the Mint explained. “There is concern that speculators could remove pennies and nickels from circulation, and sell them as scrap for profit.”

Here’s a Huffington Post article (and video) on the Vermont store that I mentioned in a comment on the previous post:

Vermont Store Bans Pennies
Posted: 09/14/2012 1:40 pm
(…)
Power Play Sports in Morrisville, Vt., put the new policy in place earlier this month. The sporting goods shop will still take customers’ “outdated, outmoded, overpriced nuisance of coinage” owner Caleb Magoon told ABC News. However, the store is no longer “actively using them,” he said.

Unlike Chipotle — which was caught rounding change down, cheating customers out of their pennies — the Vermont store will round customers’ change up to the nearest nickel. That means the store could lose a maximum of four cents on any cash transaction, Magoon tells NBC. No big, he implies.
(…)
Canada recently joined several countries that have already dropped pennies, or their equivalent, from their currency, including Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Israel and South Africa.

SUMMARY
The problem will only get worse as we continue to lose millions of dollars making pennies and nickels. We should at least look at what Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Israel and South Africa have done.

With the Fed’s “quantitative easing” policy of printing billions of dollars out of thin air every month, the penny is worthless. We’re losing money to coin it, so why are we still doing it?

The arguments against the penny have been made for years. This is from the New York Times of earlier this year:

Please, Finally, End the Penny
David Owen, a staff writer for The New Yorker, is the author of “Green Metropolis” and “The Conundrum.”
APRIL 4, 2012
Canada is eliminating pennies, and good riddance. The United States should do the same.

Pennies have virtually no buying power, yet they cost a lot to make, distribute and use, and many consumers simply throw them away. (Picking up a penny from a sidewalk and putting it in your pocket pays less than the Federal minimum wage, if you take more than 4.9 seconds to do it.) The U.S. Army stopped using pennies on its bases in Europe in 1980, to spare itself the cost of shipping them overseas. In 1996, the Government Accounting Office determined that most of the millions of shiny new pennies that leave the U. S. Mint each year simply disappear. What’s the point?

There is a Wikipedia page, Penny debate in the United States. See this:

Production at a loss — As of February 2011, it costs about 2.4 cents to mint a penny. In 2007, even the price of the raw materials it is made of exceeded the face value, so there was a risk that coins were illegally melted down for raw materials.

So if we keep making worthless pennies, maybe we should expect (even though it’s illegal) that people will buy them up and melt them down and make easy money? What country spends 2.4 cents to make a penny?

This is also symbolic. Maybe when the penny is gone forever, people will finally realize how worthless our currency has become and is soon to become.

Is there even a single good argument in defense to keep the penny and lose money making it?

Eliminating the penny will help business. See Penny Free Biz:

News Flash.. Canada to follow Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. They are discontinuing the use of their penny… The United States has to be next. (MORE 1, 2) March 2012

Spend four minutes and watch the YouTube video Death to Pennies. It states the argument very well.

All that’s left is to name the bill. The “Obama and Bernanke killed our Lincoln penny” bill needs a better name, but that’s why legislators have staff.

A penny for your thoughts, RedState readers.

From the New York Times:

Microsoft and NBC Complete Web Divorce
By BRIAN STELTER
Published: July 15, 2012
The site became NBCNews.com, signifying the end of a relationship between NBC and Microsoft that dates back to the earliest days of the commercial Web. Early next year, MSNBC.com will be reborn as a stand-alone site for the cable channel MSNBC, ending the brand confusion that has plagued the site in the past.

Say a sad goodbye to (in rough order of origination):

PMSNBC
MSNBS
MessNBC
MSDNC
MSLSD
MSLGBT
Moonbats Spouting Nothing But Crap

It’s now “Nothing But Crap,” the once and future nickname of NBC News.

MSNBC or NBCNews is such straight-from-Obama’s White House talking points all the time that it’s actually must viewing for opposition research. The current MSNBC scandal is that Mitt Romney lied–LIED! HE’S A LIAR!–about when he left Bain Capital. Meanwhile, the administration lies about everything (especially Obamacare) constantly. These are much bigger “lies” that actually mean something, but not to MSNBC.

Who can forget when NBC doctored audio to make George Zimmerman sound like a racist? Or the non-coverage of Fast & Furious? Or when Rachel Maddow told everyone that Fast & Furious was just a Fox News story with no real meaning, never mentioning Obama’s executive privilege, an attorney general lying under oath, or even the names of the dead bodies in the scandal.

The name shouldn’t be MSNBC or NBC News. It should be J-O-K-E.

Propagandize away, Nothing But Crap!

Does no one remember when Michelle Obama told graduates in 2009 that “you must give something back”? Before it goes into the Obama memory hole, I’d like to revisit the incredibly naive advice of “give something back” to an audience awash in student loan debt and unable to find jobs.

USA Today, on May 16, 2009, “Michelle Obama urges graduates to give back,” reported on Michelle Obama’s commencement speech at the University of California Merced:

“Remember that you are blessed. Remember that in exchange for those blessings, you must give something back. You must reach back and pull someone up. You must bend down and let someone else stand on your shoulders so that they can see a brighter future.”

You must? Why must you? To whom must you “give back”? Can’t you just get a job and save some money and repay your student loans and start your own family? That’s hard enough!

One of two college graduates will be either unemployed or underemployed in this economy. Many graduate with over $100,000 in debt. You are blessed!

The next year, Michelle Obama doubled down that graduates in this pitiful economy must “give back.” Also from USA Today:

Michelle Obama to G.W. graduates: ‘Keep giving’
Updated 5/18/2010 1:29 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) — First lady Michelle Obama challenged George Washington University graduates at their commencement Sunday to “keep giving” through community service work and to “keep engaging” with the world.

Obama spoke to some 5,000 graduates and their families at the ceremony on the National Mall. She agreed to be their speaker after students, faculty and staff met her challenge to complete 100,000 hours of community service.

“I have one more request to make of you, one more challenge,” Obama said during her speech. “Keep going. Keep giving. Keep engaging.”

Keep giving! Volunteer yourself and work for nothing! Don’t you dare be greedy and get a job and try to back your student loans! THAT’S THE MESSAGE TO GRADUATES?

Here are two sensible comments from the 2009 speech:

ikabod wrote: 5/20/2009 3:29:12 PM
The First Lady’s suggestions are a nice idea and make us feel all warm and fuzzy, but the reality is that the majority of graduates are coming out of school with massive students loans that will take decades to pay off. We do not have the luxury of taking low-paying, but socially beneficial, jobs. Unfortunately, we have to take what will pay the most. Besides the loans, there’s also rent, food, transportation, and other living expenses. How does Mrs. Obama propose we pay our bills? She is woefully out of touch with lower and middle-income graduates and their families.

free8765 wrote: 5/19/2009 4:30:44 PM
When my parents get old and I take care of them….that’s “giving back”. Otherwise….when I give I give….but I can’t “give back” because I’ve paid for everything I have ever received.

On the other hand, anything that the government gives us is “giving back” because everything the government has they took from us.

Exactly.

Here’s more Michelle Obama, from that 2009 commencement address:

As advocate and activist Marian Wright Edelman says, “Service is the rent we pay for living… it is the true measure, the only measure of our success.”

Service to whom? Does service to your children and your parents and other members of your family count for anything? That’s not a “true” measure or “any” measure of success?

SUMMARY:

How can any young American ever vote for Barack Obama?

We’re $16 trillion dollars in debt. The May jobs report was pitiful. College graduates are unemployed or underemployed and have crushing financial debts.

The Obamas say to “give back,” “keep giving” and “volunteer.” Remember, young people, you are blessed and you MUST do this!

Maybe Romney needs to hit harder on this message. This isn’t “hope and change.” This is misery!

Again, how does Obama get ANY of the youth vote?

FYI, I just added this detailed etymological entry on my website. If any one of you has a favorite “Simpsonism” that needs to be deciphered, please send it along.

“Buckle up your guts”

Alan K. Simpson, a Wyoming U.S. senator from 1979-1997, co-chaired President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform with Erskine Bowles (leading to the more familiar name of “Simpson-Bowles”). Speaking about the Commission’s work, Simpson said in May 2012:

“But Simpson-Bowles, all day long they talk about it in here and it’s like a stink bomb in a garden party, it isn’t going away. Every person that has spoken has mention it. I am not in it for fame and fortune, but there it is. I will not use an old phrase our football coach at the University of Wyoming, but buckle up your guts.”

Simpson graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1954, so “buckle up your guts” probably dates from at least this time. A 1982 book about University of Tennessee football mentioned that “you had to buckle up your guts.” A 1994 book about the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas has Senator Alan Simpson telling Thomas, “Buckle up your guts, pal, and get on the field and forget all the other stuff.”

“Buckle up your guts” appears to mean that one should prepare one’s self for difficult times. The saying remains little-used.

Wiktionary: buckle up
Verb
to buckle up
1.(intransitive, idiomatic) To fasten one’s seat belt or safety belt.

Google Books
Orange Lightning:
Inside University of Tennessee football
By Mike Siroky and Bob Bertucci
West Point, NY: Leisure Press
1982
Pg. 30:
As for the difference between life on a team then and now, Claxton says, “If you wanted to make it here, it was no easy matter. You had to buckle up your guts and come on. If you couldn’t take it, well, as I said, they got it on a platter over here now.”

Google Books
Resurrection:
The confirmation of Clarence Thomas
By John C. Danforth
New York, NY: Viking
1994
Pg. 76:
In that call, and in a call the following Thursday night, Simpson (Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming—ed.) adopted the style and verbiage he learned from a football coach while he was in college. He recalls telling Clarence, “Buckle up your guts, pal, and get on the field and forget all the other stuff.” Simpson’s locker-room-style pep talk was borne out of his own experience, not only as a former football player but as a person who in his youth had spent a couple of nights in the Laramie jail and had been on federal probation for shooting mailboxes.

The Memoirs of Aditya
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Life At NITW-A Bitter Sweet Experience: Diary Post dated August 15, 2007
(…)
Because you have to once again buckle-up your guts to stand in yet another tunnel-long line only to know what your room number is, and mind-you, no proxy’s allowed here.

Yahoo! Finance
Re: JOElongs…-buckle up your guts…
29-Nov-11 08:45 pm
Yentabeans is one of the few posters who get it…everyone here who is thinking that this “recession” will end just like the others doesn’t understand the magnitude of the crisis that we are entering. Boomers will see the best and worst of times before they are buried. The worst is coming…

Huffington Post
Alan Simpson: Paul Krugman’s Work ‘Borders On Hysteria’ (VIDEO)
Posted: 05/16/2012 12:27 am
Alan Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming who co-chaired President Barack Obama’s debt commission in 2010, took a swipe at one of his most fervent critics on Tuesday, saying that economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman’s work often “borders on hysteria.”
(…)
“It’s like a stink bomb in a garden party, it ain’t going away,” Simpson, who is known for his colorful turns of phrase, said. “Buckle up your guts.”

Zero Hedge
One Half Of Simpson-Bowles Goes There: “Krugman Borders On Hysteria”
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 05/16/2012 13:04 -0400
We have all thought it. We have all muttered it under our breaths (and some of us have even written about it on blogs) but the Keynesian Krusader’s borrow-and-spend-our-way-to-growth dogma was bazooka’d by former Senator Alan Simpson yesterday.
(…)
On Simpson-Bowles 2.0:
“All day around here they talk about Simpson-Bowles. They did not talk about Bowles-Simpson because the acronym there is too bad. It is BS. But Simpson-Bowles, all day long they talk about it in here and it’s like a stink bomb in a garden party, it isn’t going away. Every person that has spoken has mention it. I am not in it for fame and fortune, but there it is. I will not use an old phrase our football coach at the University of Wyoming, but buckle up your guts.”

OBAMA TO BARNARD GARDUATES — “PERSERVERE! PERSERVERE!”
There is video at this site (it’s at the 20-minute mark) and here’s the text:

My last piece of advice — this is simple, but perhaps most important: Persevere. Persevere. Nothing worthwhile is easy. No one of achievement has avoided failure — sometimes catastrophic failures. But they keep at it. They learn from mistakes. They don’t quit.

However, Obama actually said “Perservere. Perservere.” That’s clear to me, but you can listen for yourself.

It’s good our teleprompter reader wasn’t addressing the “corpsmen” again.

Question: If Sarah Palin had said this, don’t you think someone would have picked it up and put it on the news and blogs? That’s double standard, no?

RACHEL MADDOW INTERVIEWS ELIZABETH WARREN AND NEVER ADDRESSES THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM.
Meanwhile, on tonight’s The Rachel Maddow Show, Elizabeth Warren was interviewed. They discussed Wall Street, but I won’t get into how Warren’s Fed-controlled “consumer protection” division is an unregulated, unaccountable monster.

There’s an elephant in the room. Breitbart reporters discovered that Elizabeth Warren isn’t even 1/32nd Cherokee. She claimed a minority status that is not factually true and that she never ever practiced.

Maddow never asked Warren a single question about the controversy.

I would say “unbelievable,” but unfortunately, it’s all too believable at MSNBC.

What late night comedy bias, you say? I’ll show you.

When Barack Obama (D) goes on Jimmy Fallon’s show, he’s portrayed as Mr. Cool, with Fallon mouthing Democratic talking points.

When Michele Bachmann goes on Jimmy Fallon’s show, she’s greeted with the song “Lying Ass Bitch.”

Coincidence? Still not convinced that the late night “comedians” are all in the tank for Barack Obama?

Jonah Goldberg (Liberal Fascism) has a new book coming out, The Tyranny of Cliches. Even if you didn’t like the book (and no one’s read it yet), you’d want Jonah Goldberg on your show because it’s an election year, because he writes for The National Review, and because his opinion is of value.

Jon Stewart (Obama’s Mr. Brilliant) won’t have him on Stewart’s show. From Jonah Goldberg’s The Tyranny Blog at National Review Online:

No Rematch, Alas
By Jonah Goldberg
April 15, 2012 2:25 P.M.
Comments 13
Well, I got the word that “The Daily Show” has taken a pass on having me on to talk Tyranny of Cliches. The explanation that was passed on to me was that the book is too “one-sided” and that they don’t do books like that. As far as I can tell, that’s nonsense.

Of course, the show is free to have on whoever they want. I was just a little surprised. My last outing on the Daily Show was rather famous. Stewart went after me hammer and tongs for nearly 20 minutes and then they cut it down to five or six minutes, in ways — I’ve been told (I’ve never watched it) — that were quite friendly to Stewart (Here’s Mark Hemingway’s response at the time). I was hardly great, and I certainly should have prepared myself for such a hostile interview so early in the book tour. But Stewart was a mess.

Still not convinced that the late night “comedians” are all in the tank for Barack Obama?

Mark Levin has a popular radio show. Mark Levin is the bestselling author of Liberty and Tyranny and Ameritopia. As far as I can recall, Levin has not appeared on Jon Stewart’s show or Stephen Colbert’s show. Levin has also been banned or blacklisted by most every other MSM outlet that regularly features authors. There’s absolutely no excuse for that.

Still not convinced that the late night “comedians” are all in the tank for Barack Obama?

See Katie Pavlich Takes on Fast and Furious, Erick Erickson’s April 5th RedState article:

Katie Pavlich, Townhall’s News Editor, has a book out entitled Fast And Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up.

I think the media has spent more time doctoring 911 calls in the Trayvon Martin matter than focusing on what has happened along the border with Mexico. There has been some coverage and it probably would not have come to light except for CBS News’s initial reporting, but the scandal — and it is a scandal — has mostly flown under the radar.

In fact, the whole war on our Southern border, the kidnappings and killings spilling over into our country, etc. really have not made major, sustained national news.

I’ve been waiting for Katie Pavlich to be interviewed by Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert. It appears that she’s not been invited on either show. Because, really, why would you want to talk intelligently on an Obama administration scandal and destroy the late night Obama-is-wonderful narrative?

Several weeks ago, Stephen Colbert did interview conservative author Charles Murray, who has a new book called Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. The interview did not go well.

Colbert brought up ancient Media Matters talking points on The Bell Curve. Murray said that those were old, false talking points that had nothing to do with his writing. Colbert proudly declared that he hadn’t read any of Murray’s books.

Jonah Lehrer, for example, wrote the book Imagine: How Creativity Works and recently appeared on Stephen Colbert’s show, again using an alleged Albert Einstein quote on creavity that Einstein never said. There are 95 Google News hits for Lehrer and his book, compared to just 31 Google News hits for Katie Pavlich and her book on Fast & Furious. Clearly, a muddled book on “creativity” is at least three times more important to the MSM than a new book on an Obama administration scandal with at least one dead body.

The late night “comedians” told lazy Republican “jokes” all through primary season. There were nightly Rick Santorum sex “jokes.” There were “jokes” about Michele Bachmann’s husband appearing gay. There were “jokes” about Mitt Romney’s sons. (Hey, aren’t families supposed to be off limits?) There were lazy Newt-is-fat jokes. Every night, over and over, rinse and repeat the same jokes.

Now that the primary is over and it’s Mitt Romney against Barack Obama, the late night comedy shows appear to have lost all oxygen to breathe. They can’t and won’t make fun of Barack Obama. The Mitt Romney “jokes” are all super stale by now. There’s only the issues, such as the five trillion dollars that Obama has added to our national deficit. But there’s not one joke to be told there!

The GSA and Secret Service scandals should hae provided some fodder for comedy, but the late night comedians weren’t too interested in these Obama administration scandals.

I watched last night’s shows (Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel) and it was a sad sight to see of all filler material. It felt like they were dying for the next Amy Fisher-Joey Buttafuoco nonsense (my classic MSM example of media drivel) to occupy the news for the next seven months.

Here’s a challenge, my late night unbiased ones. Cover the issues in a fair manner. Discuss “Fast & Furious” and stop avoiding it. Discuss what a $16 trillion deficit means. Discuss the economic riots in Greece and Spain that soon might be coming here. Discuss the next round of terrorism planned by Van Jones and the “Occupy” crowd.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke today, but no late night comedian found anything funny to say about him. You know why? Because here’s a dirty little secret–the late night smart ones have no clue about our financial system to even prepare to make the jokes!

Social Security going bankrupt? Medicare going bankrupt? No jokes there!

Hey! Mitt Romney put a dog on the roof of his car thirty years ago!!!!

SUMMARY
We have Barack Obama saying he adores the late night comedians and we have Jimmy Fallon mouthing Democratic talking points. Conservative authors such as Mark Levin, Jonah Goldberg and Katie Pavlich have apparently been blacklisted.

The Mitt Romney “jokes” are already ancient and the late night comedians are scrambling for material.

However, if any of them would see the truth about America, there is plenty of material to talk about. There are issues that affect all of our lives and the very future of our country. USE IT!

That’s a great line, and it comes from actress Donna Reed (It’s a Wonderful Life) at least as early as 1963. Erma Bombeck, Joan Lunden and many others have used the line. Democratic operative Hilary Rosen has used quite the opposite.

You can put this one on bumper stickers if you like.

Here’s the entry on the saying that I added just last month for my etymology website of Americanisms:

Entry from March 18, 2012
“The phrase ‘working mother’ is redundant”

“The phrase ‘working mother’ is redundant” means that if a mother doesn’t have a job in the workplace, she still works doing cooking, cleaning, shopping, and many other tasks. The saying is most often attributed (since at least 1985) to Baltimore writer Jane Sellman, but Sellman wasn’t the first to use it. Erma Bombeck (1927-1996), a syndicated newspaper columnist who wrote humorous pieces about being a housewife, was also credited with the line in 1985.

The saying has been in circulation since at least 1963, when an ABC-TV press release stated that the actress Donna Reed (1921-1986) “thinks the term ‘working mother’ is ridiculously redundant.”

The Quote Garden
Quotations about Mothers
The phrase “working mother” is redundant. ~Jane Sellman

Zazzle.com
Jane Sellman Motherhood Quote Postcard

30 August 1963, Evening Times (Cumberland, MD), “TV Press Releases Odd” by Rick Du Brow, pg. 6, col. 3:
From ABC-TV: “Donna Reed, star of ABC-TV’s ‘The Donna Reed Show,’ thinks the term ‘working mother’ is ridiculously redundant. ‘Anyone ever hear of a non-working mother?’ she asks.”

Google Books
A Family Album:
Portraits of intimacy and kinship
By Thomas J. Cottle
New York, NY: Harper & Row
1974
Pg. 190:
Estelle Downey’s words remind me that the term “working mother” is redundant.

Google Books
Relating Work and Education
Edited by Dyckman W. Vermilye and William Ferris, American Association for Higher Education
San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers
1977
Pg. 88:
… work in our industrial society than our redundant term working mother.

Google Books
Back to Work:
How to re-enter the working world
By Nancy Schuman and William Lewis
Woodbury, NY: Barron’s
1985
Pg. 2:
On this note, humorist Erma Bombeck is quoted as saying, “The term working mother is redundant.”

Google Books
New Woman
Volume 15, Issues 4-6
1985
Pg. 116, col. 3:
The phrase “working mother” is redundant. — Jane Sellman

Google News Archive
22 February 1987, Toledo (OH) Blade, “‘Real’ Men Make Coffee” by Erma Bombeck, pg. P1, col. 3:
It became a status thing, signifying there were shared duties in the home and they were liberal enough to realize the term “working mother” was redundant.

28 August 1987, The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA), “Pot au Feu” by Myriam Guidroz, pg. F6, col. 3::
The French call redudancies in grammar “pleonasmes vicieux” or literally “vicious redundancies.” In my estimation, no redundancy is more vicious than the expression “working mother.”

All mothers work; some (perhaps the majority today) work for money in addition to taking care of their children.

Google News Archive
3 October 1987, Bryan (OH) Times, “People in the News” by William C. Trott (United Press International), pg. 6, col. 1:
JOKE’S ON ‘GOOD MORNING AMERICA’: Joan Lunden is getting funny. Lunden, who is on the verge of leaving “Good Morning America” to start her own daytime variety talk show, made her stand-up comedy debut Thursday night as New York’s Catch a Rising Star club.
(…)
“Working mother—isn’t that a redundancy?” said Lunden, who recently had her third child.

2 May 1991, Daily Herald (Chicago, IL), People, sec. 1, pg. 2, col. 6:
Today’s chuckle
Thursday, May 2, 1991: Repetitive redundancy of the year:
“Working mother.”

Google Books
The Quotable Mom
By Kate Rowinski
New York, NY: Main Street
2004
Pg. 171:
The phrase “working mother” is redundant.
JANE SELLMAN

How about a Glenn Beck-Mark Levin moderated Republican debate to that Texas winner-take-all?

This is the third post to attempt at least some relevance for Texas Republicans after Tuesday’s widespread declarations that the race is over. See:

1. I’m a Republican in Texas and I’d like to cast a meaningful vote in a presidential primary
2. BREAKING NEWS: Texas primary moves to winner-take-all?

Here’s the upcoming debate schedule, from 2012 Election Central:

There are no more Republican primary debates scheduled for 2012.

That’s great–no debate for Texas! We’re the biggest Republican state, and we don’t get anything?

On December 20, 2011, in Des Moines, Iowa, there was an ABC News debate.

On January 7, 2012, in Manchester, New Hampshire, there was another ABC News debate.

On January 8, 2012, in Concord, New Hampshire, there was an NBC News debate. That’s right–TWO debates for New Hampshire, ZERO debates for Texas!

On January 19, 2012, in Charleston, South Carolina, there was a CNN debate.

On January 23, 2012, in Tampa, Florida, There was a Tampa Bay Times-NBC News debate.

On January 26, 2012, in Jacksonville, Florida, there was a CNN debate.

On February 22, 2012, in Mesa, Arizona, there was a CNN debate.

There are a few Fox News/Huckabee events on the list, but basically, we’ve had debates controlled by CNN, ABC News and NBC News.

Glenn Beck is located in Texas. He has a popular national radio show and GBTV.

Mark Levin has a popular national radio show and is a bestselling author.

It’s often asked why MSM hacks control our debates, but not some of our leading conservative voices.

Mitt Romney has been invited, but he’s not yet accepted, an open invitation to talk with Mark Levin on his radio show. This is simply amazing to me for a supposedly inevitable Republican candidate for president.

SUMMARY
A conservative debate is a free advertisement for conservatism. Texas deserves a debate.

If you don’t think Glenn Beck and Mark Levin could do a good job, suggest others. Please send this suggestion to Glenn Beck and Mark Levin, if you can.

All I’m saying in these three posts is that Texas Republicans deserve meaningful participation in the selection of the Republican nomination for president.