I’ve come to the conclusion that there is absolutely no way to talk to people who can seriously hold an opinion like this:

jeff Joke-oby, you are a racist buffoon. You and your sick rich cohorts run our economy into the ground and make an absolute mega fortune, it all goes bust (as it had to) and then you turn around and blame….Minorities????!!!?? You must be kidding me! The depths of your unreason know no bounds. You should be ashamed of yourself, You Rush Limbaugh clone…perhaps the Mexican laborers who built your McMansion brought a mutated strain of bubonic plague over the border and infected the entire financial system with evil immigrant nefarious virus stuff. Whatever Jeff, face it. YOU LOST. REAGAN LOST. THE FREE MARKET LOST. Your days of sucking the peoples blood to make your points and those of your corporate masters are OVER. Now go get a real job. (IF you can find one). 

That bit of sparkling commentary was in response to Boston Globe writer Jacoby’s column on the actual cause of the current “financial crisis,” namely the subprime mortgage boom as pushed by left-wingers dating back to the Carter administration.

Clearly nothing Jacoby cited in his article is actually true, according to the above commenter, and it’s actually those of us who have been successful over the past few decades that are at fault here.  For being successful, yes. 

Note the key phrases, “sucking the people’s blood” and “corporate masters.”  

I have friends who espouse the ideals of socialism, and the only way we stay friends is if we refrain from talking politics….but how long is that going to work, when our ideologies are diametrically opposed?  I simply Can Not Understand why someone would subject themselves to the State on anything, but then I was always mortally offended by seat belt laws.  The State has no right to tell me if I may die or not, goddammit.

What do you suppose it is about the regimes of Lenin, Mao Zedong, Castro, Hussein and Chavez that inspire emulation?  Could it be the widespread poverty?  Or maybe the decrease in personal freedoms has some appeal?   

“It won’t be the same, here, we’ll be DIFFERENT!” 

Yeah, in centuries of experimentation it has not been different.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  End of story.

Fill out your Census form and … win an iPod? A Starbucks gift certificate? Cash?

Doing your civic duty would literally pay off if the Commerce Department and Congress decide to dangle prizes to get people to answer Census questionnaires in 2010.

The Census Bureau is looking at ways to increase responses, including the use of prizes as an incentive, says spokesman Stephen Buckner.

If by “special” you mean “completely abandoning the concept of civic duty for a kindergarten-esque performance-for-gold-stars scenario.”

Does it please you people to be treated like trained monkeys?  Or can you think of nothing other than the personal material gain?  Gods forbid you should participate because the ultimate benefit…in the appropriate allocation of federal funding for those of you not paying attention…is to your neighborhoods.  Far better to ask “what’s in it for me?”

Patrick Dostie, the state’s nuclear safety inspector, has been coming to work every day to a job he’s held since 1989 even though the position was eliminated in 2005 by the Legislature.

Lawmakers were set again this year to eliminate the job, along with the position of nuclear safety adviser, a post currently held by former Senate President Charles Pray.

The thinking was that with the Maine Yankee nuclear power plant closed and officially decommissioned, the two jobs and the $276,000 budget that supports them, aren’t necessary.

But Dostie, or at least his post, has been resurrected again thanks to late-night maneuvering by Sen. John Martin, D-Aroostook, who put the position back in through an amendment to the supplemental budget.

Shining the light of publicity on self-entitled government cockroaches, so voters can whack them with the rolled-up newspaper of their displeasure.

Man, I LOVE metaphors.

Big whoop, right?

Each coin will sell for $10, with all of the proceeds going directly to the US Boy Scouts. This, I have a problem with.

Now before I get flamed, let me explain. First off, I was a Boy Scout, way back when, made it to Life Scout, got lots of Merit Badges and Skill Awards, and was the Camp Cook. I loved being in the Scouts and had a blast. Of course, this was also before the Religious Nuts got a hold of the Scouts and decided that politicizing the Scouts for God and Heterosexuality was more important than just giving boys a place to be boys and burn off all their youthful energy.

However, my disappointment with the direction the Scouts have taken aside, using an act of congress to spend money to mint coins, coins that are legal tender, for public sale in order to raise money for a private organization is not what I pay those idiots to do! And that is not even taking into account the attitude that the Scouts are now a defacto religious organization. Even that aside, why is our government asking the Treasury to act as a fund raiser for the US Boy Scouts? Why not the Girl Scouts, or the Boys & Girls Clubs, or Big Brothers & Big Sisters, or etc?

Are the US Boy Scouts that hard up for cash? Do the Girl Scouts get overlooked because Cookie Sales are a better fund raiser than Popcorn and Pizza (or is it because the Girl Scouts got smart and stayed away from politicizing themselves and damaging their public image)? Does an organization serving children need to make it to their first centennial before they get a coin and the millions of dollars it will generate?

What Say You All?

Let’s see where the bus takes us today…

In San Diego:

Helicopters kept searching for signs of the shark that killed triathlete David Martin, Solana Beach Lifeguard Capt. Craig Miller said.

Er, why? To arrest it for unlawful biting? Misdemeanor leg chompery? Ridiculous waste of time, money and resources.

In Tunisia:

A Tunisian family alleges their daughter was raped during a telephone conversation with a man, a lawyer for the family said.

The 30-year-old man said he never touched the young woman. But he acknowledged he heard her scream while they were “totally into” an erotic telephone conversation — and that she reported bleeding, Al Arabiya reported.

*blink* Who is falling for this, seriously? If this ends anywhere other than with that chick in a mental institution, we need to reconsider Tunisia’s “country” status.

In North Carolina:

More than 9,000 North Carolina license plates have been recalled because they begin with “XXX” — a common symbol for sexually explicit material.

Marge Howell, communications officer for the Department of Motor Vehicles, said DMV Commissioner William C. Gore Jr. made the call Thursday morning after receiving complaints from people who found the letters offensive.

Note to people offended by letters on a license plate: Get. Over. It. If this is the most upsetting thing you’ve seen today then you and I need to Have A Talk.

In Virginia:

City school administrators want to loosen academic requirements for ninth-grade athletes to keep them engaged in school and out of trouble.

They worry that freshmen banned from sports might turn to neighborhood gangs or other negative influences.

Last school year, three of every 10 rising ninth-graders in Norfolk – or 715 students – did not have the minimum 2.0 grade-point average required to play sports, according to division records.

Yes, that sends a positive message doesn’t it? Failing in school? No problem, we’ll lower our standards! You’re basically telling those kids that they’re too stupid to make it, so here’s a handout. You’re doing it WRONG.

And finally, from our state, Florida, a state that so often does it so very wrong that they rate their own Fark tag, someone doing it right for a change:

Osceola county school board member Jay Wheeler isn’t making any apology for his email I told the truth! Wheeler said. We asked, “Did you at all think that might be insulting to some? Wheeler replied, “I thought it might be a wake up call and I think it’s something people want to say but were afraid too.’

A little more than a week ago, the Osceola County School District decided to implement school uniforms. Since then, he says parents have complained saying they can’t afford the new clothing. He disagreed with parents and fired off an email to them saying:

“Everyone can afford Wal-Mart and if they cant they need to think about turning of their cable TV or stop buying alcohol or cigarettes and spend their money on their children.”

Oh no he di’int. Oh yes he did, and that makes him our Hero of the Day.

As we the taxpayers get ready to pony up yet another bailout to cover the destruction of wealth caused by careless and criminal individuals, I propose, in the spirit of Ted’s new rules, that we need a new business regulation.

In addition to bringing back some sense of oversight, we need a set of penalties to befall those who mismanage the wealth of our nation. I propose that if a company hides debt or does any shady business practice that prevent investors from seeing the truth of a companies performance, then any and all employees who are responsible (from the guy who did it to everyone above him since they are responsible for those under them), including former employees who were employed during the time (unless they blew the whistle or turn states evidence) can have their wealth seized to cover the losses. Criminal convictions are nice, but I propose that this be a civil suit, not a criminal one (is it possible for the government to bring a civil suit?), or that once such malfeasance is exposed, everyone’s assets are frozen until such a time as culpability can be sorted out. If the seized assets are insufficient to the task, no one goes to jail, instead they will have a government garnishment on any and all wages and investments until they have paid back their share of the loss.

Why do I say current and former employees? Because the former boss of Bear Stearns was running the show when they were hiding debt, then left with a tidy sum, enough to buy a $2.8 million house.

Either way, the idea is that any person or organization (company, union, etc.) that destroys wealth through fraud, neglect, or deception is responsible for building that wealth back, and putting a person in prison does not allow for the creation of wealth. Also, fraud does not carry heavy prison terms and does not have much of a deterrent effect. If a money manager was risking a near lifetime of debt for himself and everyone above him, he might not be so eager to be stupid, and his bosses might not be so careless about what their people are doing.

We need to make the punishment fit the crime, and we need to make these people pay us back, since the wealth they destroy is not their own.

In this post, we heard about a little old lady and a silly cop. Regardless of the fact that the little old lady was a complete biddy, I stand by my statement that the cop was a jackass who needs to be held up for public ridicule because a little old lady got the best of him. Turns out the cop gets away with no disciplinary action being levied against him, even though the mayor of the town even called the GiQ to apologize for the cop’s actions. Good golly, I would love to have seen the discussion at the precinct house while Officer Parco was being Internally Affaired.

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Here we discussed what has got to be the biggest load of vote buying pandering since the last time they did it. Since then, the Senate has indeed tried to add to the package. Gods above and below, how stupid do they really think we are

Lobbyists for the elderly, labor unions and homebuilders — among other politically potent groups — were blanketing Capitol Hill in search of votes for the Senate plan.

Saints add preservatives to us: pork, pork, pork, porkety, pork. Davey had it right back then, and it is still right today. The Federal government is out of bounds on this.

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In relation to Robb’s post earlier today, I have this to show just how bad the situation really is. The FCC has decided that they are going to fine ABC for something that happened in 2003, the showing a of nekked lady’s butt.

“We find that the programming at issue is within the scope of our indecency definition because it depicts sexual organs and excretory organs — specifically an adult woman’s buttocks,” the FCC wrote. “Although ABC argues, without citing any authority, that the buttocks are not a sexual organ, we reject this argument, which runs counter to both case law and common sense.”

First of all, this aired in 2003, and the FCC is fining according the Broadcast Decency of 2005 so that they can increase the fine by tenfold. Further, unless ABC actually showed the lady’s ANUS, not her buttocks there is no logical reason to say they showed either an excretory or sexual organ. If buttocks are excretory, so are eyes because they cry, noses because they run, and mouths because they spit. If buttocks are sexual, then so are rock hard abs, square shoulders, long clean hair, and healthy skin since they also are all secondary beauty characteristics.

Oh, and here’s the funny… Key West(Fox) did it ten years earlier.

On a personal note about Virginia Beach:

I spent seven years in in the Navy, stationed in and around Norfolk, Va. My buddies and I would take off after work and head to the beach, or the mall, or the bars, depending on how far away from payday we were. The A&F store in Lynnhaven Mall (or as we called it Skin Haven Mall) should have been the least worrisome business in Va Beach. The dang Spencer’s store alone probably has posters more risque, and they never stopped anyone from coming in that I could tell. Or how ’bout the not one but TWO porno stores within walking distance from the beach itself? And I cannot begin to count the number of times we would see scantily clad or unclad wimmins rolling out of the beach bars on any given summer evening. Va Beach is the same town that outlawed thong bikinis on the beach, but allowed them on waitresses. With Pat Robertsons’ school in their midst, the entire Va Beach area is a study in the dichotomy of hypocrisy.

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In other news, the city council of New York City (for those who may have forgotten, that’s the site of the single largest terrorist strike in American history) doesn’t want you, or me, or even that nice little grad student with the cute butt that comes around on Tuesdays to check air quality for her doctoral thesis on urban pollutants to actually be allowed to check the air…without a license. (two takes on the story, take your pick) That just boils down to one more damn thing, one more sodding piece of paper, one more limit, one more re-damn-diculous “crime” that the cops are going to have to deal with. One more thing to make sure that you can’t check up on the government’s reported “facts.” One more thing that can get you arrested. Readers, if any of you still live in “The City,” please write in and tell me why.

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Can someone tell me why this, please forgive me for saying this because I hesitate to use the word, person is still wasting my oxygen? Or this one? The people we entrust to help the ones who need it the most should be above reproach, yes? I think for folks like these, you assign a suicide watch at the jail. I know I would give up a night of sleep to watch these two shining stars dim themselves. I would sit outside their cells with a twelve inch length of yarn, a white board, and a dry erase marker and give them helpful hints, diagrams, and examples until they got it right. At least this jackass had the sack to do himself and save the taxpayers the trouble of keeping him fed for the next whatever number of years.

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That, friends and neighbors, is all I can freaking stomach tonight.

Whichever version comes to fruition, whoever gets their name on the header, please realize that it won’t make a damn bit of difference unless we, as a nation, get our act together.

Flashback with me to the year 1979:

“Ted, sit down and watch this. It’s important. ”

“What is it?”

“The convention.”

I had as much interest in the convention as any other eleven year old boy: that is to say zero. But Dad said something I will never forget.

“Ted, that man is going to be our next President. I knew that back when he was governor and I worked crowd control for him. You are going to want to see this man’s speech.”

So I sat, more because it was cool that my dad the cop had met someone famous more than anything else. And this speech changed my life.

Go read it, especially if you never have. Three thousand, six hundred and sixty eight words. They changed the entire direction our country was headed. This speech, and I mean this in every sense of the word, changed the world.

This old man had the balls to stand up there on my television and tell me that my country was not what Nixon and Ford and Carter had made it through corruption and ineptitude and malaise, but rather was a beacon. It was the shining city on the hill.

Reagan stood there and told me the facts about the economy. He taught me about taxation and spending, federal versus state government, the rights of the people and the responsibilities of government. Not in intimate details, but in broad strokes that resonated with truth. The government wasn’t there to do it for me, it was there to protect me while I learned to do it myself…whatever “it” happened to be. And by protect, he didn’t mean to give me a handout if I failed, or worse, give me incentives to not even try, but to give me the best possible atmosphere to succeed on my own.

Reagan told me that the best government policy for growth was to step the hell aside.

You know the speech. You know that he went on to discuss foreign policy issues, energy issues, and commerce in general.

He didn’t say a damn word about handouts. In fact it was just the opposite.

He spoke of American exceptionalism and taking our rightful place in the world and in history. Not a failed experiment at all, but the first rays of light from a new dawn.

We–today’s living Americans–have in our lifetime fought harder, paid a higher price for freedom and done more to advance the dignity of man than any people who have ever lived on this Earth. The citizens of this great nation want leadership–yes–but not a “man on a white horse” demanding obedience to his commands. They want someone who believes they can “begin the world over again.” A leader who will unleash their great strength and remove the roadblocks government has put in their way. I want to do that more than anything I’ve ever wanted. And it’s something that I believe with God’s help I can do.

I believe this nation hungers for a spiritual revival; hungers to once again see honor placed above political expediency; to see government once again the protector of our liberties, not the distributor of gifts and privilege. Government should uphold and not undermine those institutions which are custodians of the very values upon which civilization is founded–religion, education and, above all, family. Government cannot be clergyman, teacher and patriot. It is our servant, beholden to us.

We who are privileged to be Americans have had a rendezvous with destiny since the moment in 1630 when John Winthrop, standing on the deck of the tiny Arbella off the coast of Massachusetts, told the little band of Pilgrims, “We shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world.”

A troubled and afflicted mankind looks to us, pleading for us to keep our rendezvous with destiny; that we will uphold the principles of self-reliance, self-discipline, morality, and–above all–responsible liberty for every individual that we will become that shining city on a hill.

I believe that you and I together can keep this rendezvous with destiny.

Flash forward to 1989:

I was sitting in a ready room on board the U.S.S. John F. Kennedy a few days after what is now called the Second Gulf of Sidra Incident (we just called it the MiG shootdown) when my President congratulated our nation and again called upon our nation to be a beacon of hope. We were saddened by the idea of losing the man who didn’t give us back our prestige, but let us find it again. We were hopeful that the man who told the Soviets to “tear down this wall” had a legacy that would propel our nation forward in spite of the the tarnishing controversies of the past few months. President Reagan reminded us that it was hard work to run a country, but that we were doing a fine job of it. Funny how he never mentioned giving handouts to folks then either.

Present day:

Everyone seems to be concerned that we are in the clutches of a recession. False. I won’t even insult your intelligence by repeating the textbook definition and relating that to our present economic status. But we are in exactly the same place we were in the Seventies. Our government is spending too much of our money, spending it poorly, and trying to simultaneously get more from us and give us more programs that not only do not stand up to a strict constructionist scrutiny of the Constitution but require bigger chunks of our money.

Yet at least two branches of or government seem more than willing to drive the bus right over a cliff.

So I have a plan.

When you get your check, whether it be for $300 or $1800 I want you to take it to your local hardware store, garden center, tackle shop, or gun store. I want you to buy things you might need to see yourself through a cold winter if you live up north, or seeds if you are down here in the warm states. I want you to buy books, or boots, or bullets, or whatever else you can think of to make sure that you can take care of yourself in case times do indeed get tough. Knowing how to plot, plant, and process a garden could mean the difference between going hungry or not. Having an extra pair of boots, or gloves, or even a good hammer could be the difference between security from the elements or being at the mercy of them.

Your purchases will indeed give the economy a boost. However, you will be doing something for yourself in return. Scared, hungry people do not make good decisions.

We are doing some of that right now, in fact. Every time we go to the grocery store, we buy one or two things extra that we can squirrel away for later need. Canned meats, canned fruits and veggies, bottled water, dry goods like rice and oats, plenty of hygiene products, etc. Get things that you will eat but that have a long shelf life. If you never need them, fine; all you did was spend an extra two or three dollars at the store and you can just rotate them back into your regular cooking at will. But if you do need them someday because a hurricane knocks out your power for a week and the fridge stops working, your cans and jars and bottles may keep your family healthy. We try to make sure that the clothes we buy our eldest are of good enough quality that our youngest (and for that matter our nieces and nephews) could wear the hand-me-downs. This works out pretty well since our daughter is just devilishly cute in her big brother’s old leather jacket and boots, but your family will have to make things work out the best you can.

One other thing we are doing, and I have been doing since the day I enlisted, is buying small quantities of silver and gold every month. When I started doing this, silver was down at the three dollar and change price level. Quite a change in value over the last twenty plus years, eh?

The best stimulus I could hope for would be for would be to harken back to the days when taxes were lower, and hope that we can get the government to listen to us when we tell them “the line is here!” Stop with the out of control spending and programs, knock it off with the crazy regulations that make it damn near impossible for many businesses to expand, and let me give my wealth to my kids without trying to tax it AGAIN. It worked with the amnesty crap they tried to put over on us, maybe it could work here too.

I was reading this article aloud to Ted tonight, and we were discussing the various points of the new ID cards, and it really just boils down to one thing:

They’re absolutely doing it wrong. New, expensive, inconvenient ID cards are not the answer.

Detaining and searching a five-year old child because he has the same name as a suspected terrorist is not the answer.

Mile long lists of banned items are not the answer.

These things just piss off the populace, you know, the ones who are going to help should anyone decide to get frisky with a sodding box cutter again.

With the level of “security” one has to go through to fly these days, there is no way anyone is trying to fly a plane into anything in the near future. So aren’t these continue restrictions and invasive policies just a case of shutting the barn door after the horse has already escaped? We’re wasting entire GNPs worth of money on the attempted prevention of something that’s already happened. And now new ID cards? Oh, but Baby Boomers are exempt?

You guys do know they have old terrorists, too, right?

MRS appropriately quotes Heinlein:

When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere.

Hey, Scaled Composites…faster, please.

And the jumper survived.

The lack of freedom to end your own life is surely one of the biggest infringements possible on personal liberty. Suicide is declared a “sin” by organized religion. The less cynical part of me understands that’s because they believe we only have the one life, and shouldn’t waste it. The more cynical part of me is much bigger, however, and puts the less cynical part in a painful armlock while explaining that churches really only care about how many tithers they have.

Secularly, public services (police/fire) routinely go to very great (read: expensive) lengths to prevent suiciders from following through. “It’s WRONG to take your own life!” we’re told. And we allow this perception to continue because to declaim otherwise somehow makes us less compassionate, less human. Well, some people really want to be dead, don’t they? They’re so miserable that death seems preferrable to crawling out of bed one more lousy day. Sure, sometimes the miserable feelings stem from bad chemicals but that’s a genetic flaw that might not be worth keeping in the gene pool. And if there’s one thing that never changes it’s that Nature is a bitch, and while WE may think survival of the fittest no longer applies to us, just open any newspaper to see otherwise.