Cheap shot: Teach a governor to fish...

Welcome to the Goat Rodeo, Governor Walker!

Thought I'd rerun this piece from last December in his honor.

Meme via Inforoo. The Wisconsin Citizens Media Cooperative comments: "Walker the outdoorsman posing for cameras during the opening of the 2012 fishing season. Later that day he learned how to hold a fishing rod."

Governor Scott Walker is known for his mastery of all the angles, and for being hooked on pescatorial education. It came back to bite him last month at the Republican Governors' Association meeting:

“My reading of the Bible finds plenty of reminders that it’s better to teach someone to fish than to give them fish if they’re able. … Caring for the poor isn’t the same as taking money from the federal government to lock more people into Medicaid,” Walker said.

That's a pretty interesting reading of the Bible, which, as has been pointed out at the Madison blog Political Heat, features Jesus making a pretty big deal out of handing out free fish, as in Matthew 14.

The origin of the saying appears to be Chinese:

授人以鱼不如授人以渔
shòu rén yǐ yú bù rú shòu rén yǐ yú
giving a man fish is not like giving a man (skill in) fishing
(Wiktionary)

Though that source is not mentioned in its earliest appearance in English.

Speaking of Matthew, I like the idea of Scott Walker's Bible:

The Temptation of Jesus

1Then was Jesus led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

2And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward hungry.

3And when the tempter came to him, he said, If you are the Son of God, command that these stones be made fish.

4But he answered and said, No way and changed the stones into fishing instructors instead.