Monday, August 31, 2009
Can we tax stupidity?
I don’t mean things like sugaring your coffee twice or forgetting an umbrella on stormy days, I mean the kind of “weapons of mass destruction"-quality stupid that makes you wonder how the person can actually remember how to breathe. I mean comments like this one from noted subatomic mental fissionist Natalie “Padme” Portman:
“I think it’s kind of an exciting time. I mean, everyone is cutting back. It’s happening in every industry - including our own. All of a sudden, people are doing jobs that they hate and they’re not making as much money as they thought they would or they’ve lost their jobs entirely. I’ve started to see people looking more toward their own passions and what really excites them.”
A few more can be found here.
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I say we have a 100% estate tax on such stupidity. Hollywood alone could pay off the National Debt.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
A Personal Connection
There are - as is the “norm” here in SoCal during late summer - several large forest fires going on. The personal connection is a new development. Some of you may remember that one of our grandsons got married (and that his wife was run off the road).
Well, another one just graduated from the Fire Academy this last Spring, and he is a member of the “Hot Shot” crews. They are the first ones sent into a fire zone, digging fire breaks and setting back fires in an attempt to contain the fires before they grow too big. (Others of you may remember that five firefighters doing precisely the same thing died during a fire not far from here a year or two back.)
He has been working 120-hour weeks the last month or so in truly miserable conditions, and is expecting to be sent into the big fire north of LA this week if things don’t change there.
I’ve done that kind of job once or twice while on active duty in central Florida, so I know exactly how miserable he is. (Did you know that some types of pine trees need fires every now and then? The cones will not open except through exposure to high temperatures, thus, without a fire every few years to spawn the new generation, the trees will die out. Plus, it is a neat trick by Mother Nature to have whatever kills the parent actually bring about the “birth” of the children.)
He’s in our prayers, so I ask that you keep him in yours, too. Thanks.
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Un-be-fucking-lievable
"This used to be America!”
“It ain’t no more, okay?”
Obama Thugocracy at work. His administration has dropped all of the charges against the Black Panthers who had already pled guilty in a voter intimidation case. It has intervened in charges against New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in a “Pay for Play” corruption scandal. Four white SEIU members beating up a black man selling “Don’t Tread On Me” flags outside a town hall meeting in St. Louis, yet neither Obama nor any of his race-baiting cronies (Jeremiah “Two Wrongs Make a” Wright, Jesse Jackasson, and Al “Pay Up Sucka” Sharpton, not to mention Shiela Jackson-Lee, Cynthia McKinney, and all the rest) have said a word, because those white men were simply doing Der Won’s bidding ("Get in their faces” and “hit back twice as hard").
He has pissed off the Brits, pissed off the Israelis (only 4% of Israeli Jews think Obama supports Israel), pissed off the Honduran Government, pissed off the Aussies, sucked up to Iranian terrorists, bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, sucked up to Baby Hugo Chavez and Castro and Kim Jong Il and all the rest, and then tried to blame his policy failures on everyone else (especially Bush).
And now his thugs are deliberately ignoring the Constitution for no other reason than because it suits them to do so?
I’ll tell you this much, though - if he blames ANYTHING on Bush after September 11 of this year, that means that the attacks of 9-11-01 are Clinton’s fault, plain and simple. “Sauce for the Goose” and all that.
“When the politicians ignore the First Amendment, it is time for the People to remember the Second Amendment.”
“The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.”—Justice Alex Kozinski, Ninth Circuit Court, in his dissent to Silveria v Locker
Buck Ofama.
The Public Sector
Where do they find these people?
As most you know, I’m a government employee. I’m a Deputy for the largest Sheriff’s Department in the nation. Go ahead and do your own research if you want to know more.
I’ve been a hard-charging government employee for a few years now. Long enough to earn a decent retirement, a few weeks of vacation, and a nice paycheck. But as I said, I earned it. I know the value of hard work because I spent ten years in the cutthroat private sector before I went to the public sector. As I’ve reflected on this for the past few days, I believe working in the private sector, as well as an evaluation of job performance, should be a requirement for anyone seeking employment at a government agency.
“Why Helo, why do you say this!? Government employment is an integral part of our infrastructure and our economy!” Yes it is, and hopefully you’ll understand why I say this by the time you’re done reading.
In the private sector you are required to perform. If you’re a line worker or a staffer, you work your fingers to the bone to make sure you are operating close to one-hundred perfect efficiency. If you don’t, your boss will fire you and hire someone else who is not dead weight. Time is money, and money doesn’t come easy. And there is no way a boss is going to throw away money.
In the public sector, your employment is practically guaranteed so long as you pass the initial one-year probationary period. After that, you can be a bump on a log, and you can be a bump that is nearly impossible to fire---save you murder someone, commit intergalactic war, or say someone politically incorrect. We’ll discuss that in further detail in another post.
California is a prime example of everything that is wrong with government. We have a legislature that cannot agree on a budget, and in doing so, they are forced to work over and after their normally allotted hours to come to a conclusion about whether or not taxes will be raised to the highest rates in the nation to save failing government programs. If this were the private sector, every politician in Sacramento would be fired for being completely inept, which they are.
In the public sector, your ability to promote and your assumed knowledge comes from the amount of time you have on the job, which many refer to as your seniority. While a resume might get a glance, a worker who sat around for fifteen years will be looked at favorably over the worker with five years and a ton of experience on the job. In turn, the fifteen year slug will get the promotion and rise through the ranks by simply avoiding work and avoiding negative comments or write-ups.
In the private sector, you are promoted based on merit, ability, and experience. I wish I could quantify it from there, but those three qualities explain it all.
The public sector needs to take a few tips and hints from the private sector and start applying the same values, hiring standards, and work ethic. If we can get that built into the “system,” we will have a streamlined government all the way from the smallest city to the White House.
Friday, August 28, 2009
An easy way to tell
which businesses deserve my custom - whether they are flying their flag at half-staff for Teddy the Swimmer or not.
So Carls, Jr. can go fuck themselves, and I have started eating at Arby’s instead.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
A Cute Story
My wife was on the phone with one of our customers, arranging an appointment for a warranty check on a job we had done last year. The customer, for whatever reason, decided that he didn’t want us to come out, and explained - rather pompously - that he had had “the owner of the company himself come out to check a few months ago, and he said I was doing just fine. So check with the owner - he and I are on a first-name basis...”. (I don’t recall the specific visit, but I am always talking with people whose names I can never remember - I remember faces, not names.)
My wife is a paragon of patience. She simply replied, “Oh, I wasn’t aware that you knew the owner, sir. Please accept my apologies for disturbing you.” (For the record, she owns 51% of the company, since she is the one with the business training, while I’m just a former Beeper Bunny who knows a lot of shit.)
More advertising stupidity
I just saw this on-line ad for a sleep aid (I won’t say which one, because I don’t want the spammers to invade), and the copy read “Trouble falling asleep is an indicator of insomnia”.
Whuh?
Maybe it’s only obvious to people who can think, but the word “insomnia” breaks down into two parts - “in-”, meaning “not” or “anti-” (such as “invisible” or “inopportune") and “-somnia”, from the Latin ”somnus”, which means “sleep”. So first of all, having trouble falling asleep is not an “indicator” of insomnia, it is the very definition.
Second, insomnia is NOT a diagnosis unto itself, and if it is the only problem that your doctor can find, maybe you should switch doctors while you still can. (Under ChappaquiddiCare, you’ll be told to drink a cup of warm milk laced with brandy, and a open-faced turkey sandwich for the incorrigible cases.)
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Traitor goes to his deserved fate
Teddy “The Swimmer” Kennedy has apparently passed away, and all I can say is that my deepest condolences go out to the family…
of Mary Jo Kopechne.
I do not use the word “traitor” lightly, but since Teddy was eager to work with the KGB in order to defeat Reagan, during the very height of the Cold War, it fits. (For those of you too young to remember, the KGB were the “enemy” meant in the Constitutional definition of treason.)
So rest in shame, Teddy, and may the legend of Camelot (as regards American political families) die in shame with you.
Of course, the MSM will outdo itself to deify him, just like they did at the Wellstone funeral. And of course, the Administration will use every ounce of “legacy leverage” to pass that craptastic health care bill.
In case anyone misunderstands how much of a scumbag Teddy the Swimmer was, let me remind you of some of the things he did during his life. He let a woman drown because he was too busy working on an alibi to bother calling for an ambulance (walking past several houses and a fire station on the way back to his home). He was expelled from Harvard - TWICE - for cheating (in one incident, he hired another student to write a paper for him). After one such expulsion, his father pulled strings to have his Army enlistment shortened from four years to two (because Teddy never bothered reading the paperwork), and having him serve in Paris, but despite the connections, Teddy never made rank higher than Private. Cited for reckless driving on not less than four occasions while attending law school in Virginia (including the one where he was driving at 90mph through a residential neighborhood at night with his headlights off), yet never had his license revoked. He cheated on his first wife many times (including that one time where he was caught having sex with a waitress on the floor of the restaurant), finally dropping her for a younger woman. And in an openly partisan move, he fought hard in 2004 to get a law passed in Massachusetts so that then-Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, would not have been allowed to appoint the replacement in the event that John Kerry won, but that “the people should decide”, yet now that it is his own seat up for replacement, he was fighting to have his own law reversed so that the current Governor (Deval Patrick, a Democrat) can replace him instead of a plebiscite.
That doesn’t include his flat-out treason, of course.
So fuck him with the barbed cock of Satan, and I can only hope that there is some chance of repairing the damage he did to my beloved country.
Update: I found this ad through a link over at Ragin’ Dave’s place. Below the fold to save space on the front page
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Let’s piss off some Liberals, shall we?
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Friday, August 21, 2009
Have you heard about this Whole Foods boycott?
Seems that the CEO of Whole Foods wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal as to several ways that the Federal Government could save money on health care, and offered several suggestions, based on his experience and practices at Whole Foods. As a whole, most of his ideas would be worth trying, but he dared to disagree with Duh Won, and his liberal customers have sworn to hold a boycott of the overpriced stuff offered at Whole Foods.
I wonder whether liberals are actually capable of rational thought…
First of all, this protest isn’t going to hurt the CEO, who is already so rich that he has not only voluntarily lowered his personal income to a measly $1 per year, he is donating the entirety of his stock dividends to charity. It will hurt the workers at the individual stores.
Second, let’s suppose that the boycott actually were working. That op-ed piece showed that the workers were already part of a REALLY GOOD private health insurance plan. Why shouldn’t the CEO say something like, “You have shown me the error of my ways, and I will henceforth be transferring all of our employees onto the single payer option you are demanding that I support. Message received. In totally unrelated news, Whole Foods will soon be paying me a whopping bonus for finding a way to save 8% of our health-care overhead costs at a single stroke.”
This is what happens when you grow up shielded from criticism and the real-world consequences of your decisions.
King Canute would have been proud
Thrill makes a good point in the comments of my previous post, in that we should stop electing lawyers who seem to think that “a law is a law” and, therefore, every law you run into is something that is easily subject to the whims of elected officials. After all, they pump out hundreds of laws every year, and they don’t apply to Congress, anyway.
However, there are laws, and then there are Laws.
A law against speeding doesn’t suddenly stop everyone from going faster than the legislators think they ought to be going, but no amount of legislative expostulation is suddenly going to overcome the Law of Gravity (even if hot air rises). Similarly, they can pass a law that says that everyone must suddenly start sending in their income tax payments in those special yellow envelopes included with their tax forms mailer, yet they will never be able to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand, no matter how many clever arguments the lobbyists will be able to make (or how many zeroes they put after those arguments).
No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his virtually unlimited authority. If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead - and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple.—Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers
No amount of legislating is going to suddenly make 150,000 doctors appear out of thin air. (And medicine is a profession that you have to want to get into, rather than something that can be forced on someone, because it is physically difficult, technically demanding, and subject to litigation if anything goes wrong - which it always does. After all, it is possible to do absolutely nothing wrong, and still end up with a bad outcome, just because that is the way the events play themselves out.)
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
I’d love to see a counter-example
So if you can think of one (I can’t, and I tried), please feel free to refute this general statement: Every time government has interfered with the free market, it has done so to the detriment of the society it works for, and, in the long run, has done almost exactly the opposite of what it intended to do.
War on Poverty? Still around, and more people on welfare now than ever before in history.
War on Drugs? Look at any city of more than about 20-25K, and I’ll bet you can find at least three sources of whatever your particular brand of poison is. Smaller towns have fewer options, obviously.
Farm Subsidies? Fewer farmers and more expensive food, not to mention higher taxes.
Tariffs? Higher cost of good for everyone on anything that might have been cheaper if it were allowed to have been imported at its actual cost.
Rent caps? Decreased availability of housing in general, and a lower standard of living among those rent-controlled buildings
Price caps? Immediate shortages and long lines, plus decreased quality of what few goods get through.
Give me one, just one, counter-example, and I will take a closer look at my assumptions…
(Side note, isn’t it funny how Dems want governments out of our bedrooms and off our phones, but doesn’t mind it snooping in our medicine chest and telling us what medical treatments we will be allowed to have?)
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
UM……can we say that the guy is at least borderline incompetent?
First they are backing off on the public option, then they aren’t.....? Is this two parts of the Admin not communicating properly, or is/was it a trial balloon to see if the nutroots would split their crotches over it?
And, in other news, my representative is too much of a leftist coward to have a town hall meeting. So brave, so sure of their beliefs! These pantywaists are so worthless that they won’t face their own constituents. And why? Because they know they are going to be challenged and exposed for the hacks they are.
She’s such a statesperson, isn’t she?
Makes me wanna PUKE!!
This is just the first step
The main argument in favor of government-run health care is that health care is important and shouldn’t be left to the distributive greed of a privileged few who control access to expensive procedures. I mean, after all, everybody needs to see a doctor every now and then, right?
It is almost exactly the same argument being used against the “greedy” oil companies, and the “greedy” banking industry, and even the “greedy” automotive companies. Now two of those have been effectively nationalized, and the third is so hamstrung by laws and regulations as to not even be allowed to drill on land that they own.
Well, why not then apply those same arguments to “food”? Let’s face it, food is much more of a necessity than health care, and if it weren’t for the “greed” of those kajillionnaires who own the big supermarket chains, no one would ever go hungry. There are people here in this country who go to bed hungry each night, so why not give our entire agri-business industry over to the Federal Government to run? It’s a large chunk of our economy, so is at least as important as health care, and so why not?
Or how about water? Or housing?
If a government were put in charge of the Sahara desert, within five years, they would have a shortage of sand.—Dr. Milton Friedman
This is where we are heading, folks - the government is already telling private citizens what they are going to be “allowed” to earn for what they do. The next step is to tell them where they will be allowed to work, and then what they must do for a living.
Therein lies slavery.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Couldna have said it better myself
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Bonus LOLs
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