Walternatives

FBI agent says . . . My bad!. . . . .

2012-01-31T17:45:00.000-08:00

The premier investigative agency in the whole wide world investigated themselves right into the wrong apartment. With a chainsaw. And guns drawn.

They have a defense if the resident wants to file a tort claim. The defense is that they are the government and you can't sue them unless they damn well feel like being sued, oh, and they said they were the FBI after they got inside and then they said, "oopsies," right after learning they were in the wrong place about a half hour after getting in. And okay, so we'll buy you a new damn door 'cause we feel kinda bad about this.

Let's see, so they had an arrest warrant. Assume for a moment they were even in the right place -- which they weren't, dammit -- how long does it take to determine that the guy they are looking for isn't in the apartment, when the only people in there are a kid and a female?

On the other hand, if only there had been some kind of a clue, I'm pretty sure the premier investigative agency in the whole wide world coulda figured it out by the time the panel on the door with the apartment number on it was cut out of the door. But there evidently weren't any clues around anywhere.

Sometimes these things just happen in the never ending war against chemical happiness. In a world where some people refuse to accept unhappiness when they can afford to do something about it, it is up to the government to discourage unearned happiness at gunpoint and with chainsaws if necessary.

There's going to be hell to pay when it occurs to the government bozos how much enjoyment there is in chocolate.

Thinning the herd . . .

2012-01-31T08:13:00.000-08:00

Here's a woman who, for purposes of personal growth, health and wellness, let herself be "cooked to death." This was at a personal growth seminar. Ah, let's all jump onto the new age movement and free ourselves of the old prejudices of the dead past -- things like hygiene, and a sense that events can have predictable consequences. Wonder how much personal growth the other participants in the seminar experienced, the ones who abide with the knowledge that this procedure just killed somebody? I'm sure it was worth the price. Which I believe was $18,000.00.

When you read of things like this, how can you not mock these people?

The secret code of stubble . . .

2012-01-20T18:23:00.000-08:00

I think I'm noticing an increasing amount of two or three day whisker stubble on the male "leads" in commercials. You know. Shiney movie star teeth, a sweeet, sincere smile, charm out the wazoo, and stubble. We have a little advertising trend going on.

And I know that I'm seeing it more frequently on European pro golfers.

What's stubble? It means you've been too careless about your appearance to shave.

But what is stubble when you've shaved your neck? It means you want to look stubbly without the irritation of neck stubble scraping against your collar. In other words, this is stubble that is part of an intentionally selected message.

What's the message? The message is that the stubblee knows that you know he's a little bit of an airy spirit, and he hopes a little stubble will throw some confusion on the topic.

Does the stubble work as planned? No. It confirms the fey. Either grow a full on beard or mustache, or shave.

Oh, and cheek stubble with a shaved neck, plus a shaved head?

Bingo!

Well, Congressman Blumenauer . . .

2012-01-10T19:50:00.000-08:00

Congressman Earl Blumenauer sent me a little expensively printed flier under his franking privilege (free postage.) He claims Washington in broken, Wall Street gets all the breaks and the middle class is broke. I call B.S. I have to ask, well, just who should we hold responsible for breaking Washington if not our elected officials, the people who broke the damn thing in the first place?

I agree that our government is broken. I’m not so sure about the congressman’s other propositions. If the middle class is broke, well -- how can that be, if at the very same time Wall Street gets all the breaks, as Congressman Blumenauer asserts? Most of the investment in public corporations, dollar for dollar, comes from the middle class, which is invested in Wall Street, both directly and indirectly through retirement plans which have professional management to invest in stocks and bonds. And the middle class relies heavily on mutual funds, that is, stock investment managed by expert investment counsel, so it’s not as if the pros have a particularly large advantage over the middle class investor. The middle class investor buys into retirement plans and mutual funds managed by those self-same pros.

Nah, it’s not Wall Street getting all the breaks. It’s some of the corporate cronies who heavily support politicians who get the breaks. It’s not capitalism that’s the problem; it is insider Washington’s crony capitalists who are the problem.

And that leads in to another point Congressman Blumenauer made, that is, that Congress needs to be reformed, to prohibit Congressman from “trading stocks based on information obtained on the job.”

Let’s call this what it really is. Congressional investment “information obtained on the job” is of two kinds: either tips about what stock to buy and sell supplied by insiders who expect and get favors from Congress in return, or else the Congressmen know what the market must do in response to the laws that congress passes. In other words, a trading tip is a just a bribe, and passing legislation affecting the market to the profit of the voting Congressmen is basically market manipulation. Both of these practices are illegal, and I’m unaware of any principal, legal, ethical, or moral, that would argue that congressmen should be immune to prosecution for such conduct.

And I note that Congressman Blumenauer reports that “after recent news of lawmaker involved in insider trading, I feel passionate about Members of Congress . . . trading stocks based on information obtained on the job.” Congressman Blumenauer didn’t know about it before the news reports? If he did, how come he wants to do something about it only now, after news reports? He could have ratted out the bad guys at any time. On the other hand, if he didn’t know about it, well, where’s he been all this time?

Congressman Blumenauer also wants to end the “flood of unaccountable corporate campaign spending that threatens the integrity of our political system.” I agree that this is a problem, where a very few individuals have an outsized impact on the political process; corporate boards and officers have access to large funds that can be used to influence legislation and governance.

I suspect that this was a circumstance that could not have been anticipated by the writers of the U.S. Constitution, whose view of the world encompassed personal wealth which was largely in land, and therefore illiquid and unavailable to match anything like the impact of enormous cash campaign contributions currently feeding into our mass media information machine. But it seems to me that if the problem is that a few individuals who control large funds have an outsized political impact as compared to an individual voting citizen, then, we should muzzle all institutional campaign spending. Muzzle corporations, unions, non-profits, and all institutional campaigning and political activity. In other words, if “big money” is a problem, get rid of all the “big money,” not just the money from the current target for scapegoating, Wall Street. If large corporate political influence was not anticipated in the U. S. Constitution, neither was the political influence enjoyed by large employee unions, or large ‘non-profits” such as the A.A.R.P., which flat didn’t exist in 1786.

The constitution can be amended. How about, instead of “One man, one vote,” we make it “One man, one vote, one campaign contribution?”

When I started voting, over forty years ago, the normal situation was for a family to be supported by the job of one spouse. Now, couples are frequently hard pressed to maintain a family lifestyle using the earnings of both spouses, and are flat out desperate if one of those spouses becomes unemployed, which is currently frequently the case. And unemployment insurance is insufficient to make a lasting difference. The economy is simply no longer such that families can be supported by the earnings of one spouse, alone, without supplementation either by the other spouse or by government hand out.

Yet through these same forty years I’ve been voting, I’ve heard politicians saying that they are going to Washington to protect people like me, to fight for me, to represent me, to support me. Guess what? I think one could safely say that the evidence is largely to the contrary – that politicians are selfishly motivated, and nothing else explains the last forty years of politics and the economic mess the country has been caught in. Things got worse, not better over the last forty years.

And for every single troublesome campaign contribution or stock tip or corporate favor, there was always and unfailingly a smarmy, eager politician’s hand out to grasp it.

What’s necessary? First, our political masters need to acknowledge, to themselves at very least, that they have screwed up wonderfully in the last forty years, taking the country down a road which led to what we’ve got, now, massive debt and stagnation at best. Our government has overwhelmed the ability of the private sector to replace the energy and assets that government increasingly has gobbled up in programs owned by politicians who neither know nor want to know about the foreseeable consequences of their decisions. I wonder how many of ‘em are familiar with or could explain the tragedy of the commons? Yup. It was the political leadership. Nothing else will explain the current mess. Some of our most respected politicians have screwed up the mightiest, probably out of the best of motives and the emptiest of heads. Let’s acknowledge it and get on with rebuilding America.

I think that the next politician who can truly be a leader, irrespective of party or creed, is the politician who will first, trust that the American people can and will lead the way out of the current mess if provided a fair, stable, and predictable body of laws and legal outcomes to work with (and providing our government doesn’t screw it up with an overburden of clumsy management in the hands of civil service oafs, and worse) and second, will see to it that the people get such laws and outcomes. Such a politician would be able to lead a discussion to define exactly what is the proper role of government, what can and can’t the government do, and what should and shouldn’t a government do.

What’s government for? I can tell you what government is not for. Government is not something for politicians to use cynically to do anything they think might buy them a few more votes so that they and their cronies and fellow travelers can continue living large. If government tries to do things it can’t do, or shouldn’t do, the doing of those things constitutes either a failure of government or a misappropriation of the energies of the electorate, or both, simultaneously.

After all, it was the politicians who declared that certain industries and businesses were “too big to fail,” not the electorate. And it was government that handed out enormous amounts of cash to ventures that were “too big to fail,” not the people. But it wasn’t government that generated the cash to bail out those that were “too big to fail.” Government spent money made by the electorate, and worse, spent money that has yet to be made by the electorate. It wasn’t the voters who put us all in debt to pass out cash to the cronies running the outfits that were “too big to fail.”

Congressman Blumenauer, you say we should “prosecute the crooks who brought the economy down,” right? You’ll find a whole gaggle of ‘em in the congressional offices all around you.

The Mayans who predicted the end of the world in the year 2012 weren't as smart as all that, after all . . .

2012-01-05T20:59:00.000-08:00

Some people I know are concerned that we are now in the year 2012, which is the year that the Mayans predicted would be the end of the world. That's right. The Mayans were much advanced over all other stone-age cultures, ever, and so naturally they could predict the end of the world with precise reliability. (I wonder what ever happened to the Mayans, anyhow? All they left us is some riddles, some stone carvings, and the Mayan calendar of doom.) The Mayan prediction of the end has been corroborated; I've been given to understand that the end time, right around now, is likewise foreseen by other advanced thinkers unhampered by limitations of algebra or physics. So, don't make too many long range plans but let your heart be light. Think of it this way. When the catastrophe comes and goes next December, right after the election, you could say, "People said if I voted for Obama again, the world would be totally destroyed, and I did, and it was."

But seriously. Some people are actually worried about the imminence of the end of the world. They should be assured that there's something we can do about it.

Did you see where our president figured out a way to do what he pleases despite the fact that Congress doesn't want to do what he pleases, when it pleases him to do it? (He's decided that running on his record might be a problem, so he's going to run against a "do-nothing" Congress.)

The President wants one of his fellow travelers (look it up) to be kind of a consumer czar, but since Congress shows signs of not wanting to appoint his choice, the President made a "recess appointment" (look that up too), while the Senate is still technically not in recess. And then, and this is the really cool sweet spot, there was a concern that Congress wouldn't fund this scheme out of resentment over not being consulted as has traditionally and legally been required, thinking that without money, it wouldn't work. But Obama came up with a sweet work-around. Just have the Federal Reserve print more dollars to fund this dealio. Money is just words on paper, anyway, so why not just print what you want. It isn't as if there is a budget to bust, 'cause a do-nothing Congress hasn't got around to passing a budget for the last several years.

So. Let's use the same clever thinking to avoid the whole end of the world inconvenience. Let's just scrap the calendar. It doesn't have to be the the year 2012. We can just come up with a new beginning date. I say, let Congress pass a bill identifying the current year as year 1, O.E. (Obama Era).

Problem solved with a minimum of fuss and we can all get on with our lives without fearing the loss of anything other than our Constitutional liberties. It's not the year 2012, anymore, and the Mayans, if there are any left, are just going to have to get over themselves.

We call it a feature, not a bug, and you would too if you weren't a 20th century unenlightened throwback . . .

2011-12-28T12:33:00.000-08:00

Hey, Mazda people. Locking and unlocking the doors remotely is nice, but I seldom - okay, never - need to roll down the car windows remotely by pushing a button on the ignition key. But since you Mazda guys added that unneeded capability, I think at least one of you could have forecast that a paying customer might want the ability to roll the damn windows back up remotely, instead of running outside to get into the car to insert the damn ignition key into the damn steering column to put the damn windows back up, IN THE RAIN!!!, because the damn ignition key window-roll-down-button got pushed by a damned dime while the key was in my damn pocket with pocket change. Damn! Which wouldn't have been important if you hadn't rigged the thing to roll the windows down in the rain in the first place, around here, where it rains.

And hey, Portland Political Masters. I suppose that polyethelene grocery bags are things that pelicans might fatally eat, or polar bears might get their toes tangled in while doing whatever polars bears do when they aren't poking around being photographed for popular publications. So I can suppose that such bags might pose a threat to the environment, as the environment didn't evolve capability of dealing with poly bags. But I figure that pelicans will have to learn to deal with the challenges presented by the modern world, just as I do. I mean, like all of my tribe I'm an omnivore but if I eat a plastic bag and it kills me, I pretty much deserve what I get. Nothing I call food looks at all like a plastic grocery bag. And those baby-poop brown paper bags beloved by the green weenies for their supposed recyclability begin to recycle themselves disastrously when I try to carry the damn wet things filled with groceries from the car to the front door, through the rain. Oh, and for the record, poly gets recycled from and to water bottles, sporks, and carpet, kids' toys and even golf shirts. The portion of brown paper bags that gets recycled requires a lot of energy to get the job done, but mostly paper bags just go into landfills to dissolve into sludge that even the organisms which usually dispose of old natural fibrous material won't touch. Because brown paper doesn't resist moisture all that well. And did I mention that it rains a lot around here? Damn politicians. Too bad looking, too untalented, too uneducated, too dull, and too arrogant to succeed at a real job, so they go into politics where their shortcomings are considered virtues within their respective parties.

And hey! What's with toilets that cannot be relied upon to get the job done with only one flush? C'mon. Toilets were pretty much invented and perfected in the 1800's. We have had for years the know-how to make a flush toilet that flushes and we have the know-how to deal with the product of the flush. It all requires enough water, which we fortunately have in abundance as two-thirds of the surface of the earth is covered with water. So what did the bright boys and girls hanging around the plenipotentiary government agencies do? They decided that flush toilets used too much water per flush, so all new and replacement toilets must produce only miniature flushes. Think of them as exquisite, bonsai toilets. There must be a special politician/bureaucratic math that shows that two or three flushes to get the job done, uses less water than one sufficient flush. Okay, I grant that there are locales where water is in short supply, as in the desert Southwest. But throughout the rest of the counry we have water and here in the Northwest we have a too much. Water falls out the sky whether needed or not, around here, and we have ponds, lakes, and rivers of the stuff. The solution to the problem of insufficient water in desert lands to support working flush toilets isn't denying the rest of us toilets that work. The solution lies in getting the people who want to live in the desert to pay what it costs to furnish water there do what water can do, that is, flush their toilets. And if they don't want to pay to import water, let them just poop in the dust of their back yard. Hell, most of L.A. is so crappy already that dried up poop in the back yard probably wouldn't even be noticed. For that matter, if poop in the back yard is offensive, let them poop into brown paper grocery bags. Oh, and I bet there's more than one bidet in Los Angeles, located right next to a low flush toilet. I say, if there isn't enough water to flush the toilets they should be required to use brown paper bags to cleanse themselves as punishment for the hypocricy of a low-flush toilet paired with a bidet.

And I say, who put such people as these in charge, who peddle windows that go down but not up, or idealogues who decree using brown paper bags in the rain, or who require that everybody acccept less effective technology?

I won't lose sleep but . . .

2011-12-22T20:01:00.000-08:00

I've been troubled by a lot of little things for some time. Evidently, I miss some of the memos or I'm not in the circulation cue for the emails. But things constantly come up that everybody else seems to have come to understand based on access to key information that has eluded me. I've evidently arrived at that station in life where things pass me by. How come everybody else seems to know these things?

For example, just who the hell are the Kardashians?

Why does everybody seem to know who they are? I've become familiar with some of them. I know there is a Kim, and I think the rest of them are Kloe, Komet, Kupid, Donder and Blitzen, Dok, Sneezy and Dopey.

Was there an original Kardashian, a product of some kosmic mutation which provided the inherited trait for which all Kardashians are now famous, whatever the hell that is?

Does a Kardashian come out of hibernation every year, and if he sees his shadow we are going to have six more weeks of winter, so that we can plan for when to plant our spring crops?

If you are accepted as a Kardashian, do you have to pay annual dues, or is it a lifetime membership? Is there an entrance exam, and if so, is there any math involved?

If I come into contact with a Kardashian, is it infectious? Is simple handwashing enough or is there some more elaborate hygiene adviseable? Once a Kardashian, can it be cured?

If lost in the woods, can you improve your chances of survival by rubbing two Kardashians together to make a toasty fire?

Should the Kardashians be admitted into the European Union, or the North Atlantic Treato Organization?

Have you noticed that the rise of the Kardashians in the public popular media corresponds with the continuous decline of home prices? If the Kardashians stop doing whatever it is that they do, will the unemployment rate drop?

How much wood can a Kardashian chuck, if a Kardashian would chuck wood?

If I encounter a wild Kardashian, should I avoid making eye contact and slowly move to the side and away, or should I attempt to frighten the Kardashian by raising my harms up to appear as large as possible? How do Kardashians mark their territory in the brush? Who are these people?

I'll need a clue -- even just a few brief words, like, "ancient warlike tribe of gold diggers," or, "like cherubim and seraphim," or "your new masters in the age of fear to come," or "sculpted silicone."

2011-12-15T17:57:00.000-08:00

This is the prototypical WTF event! The recent National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 authorizes the military to indefinitely detain a person they label a terrorist, without a trial. No habeas corpus. Doesn't matter if they are a U.S. citizen entitled under the U.S. Consitution to 4th amendment protections and habeas corpus. The Senate has voted to screw that.

Was it just a few years ago that the professionally aggrieved were yelping about the detention of captured combatants being interrogated at Guatanamo? Couldn't have been. They wanted there to be trials in civil court. But that was then, and this is now and there are some folks who think it might be neat to be able to lock up people who might appear to be terrorists by reason of their being critical of the government.

Of course, I, for one, welcome the activities of our new overlords and masters in Washington.

Destiny and the Ninety-nine percent. . . .

2011-12-10T20:26:00.001-08:00

Saw a sign proclaiming membership in the 99%. Right. There's a way to distinguish yourself -- be exactly like everybody else, with no distinguishing features. Unexceptional. Common as dirt. Interchangeable, dispensible, forgettable and inconsequential. Like I said. Unexceptional.

Now, being part of the 1%. That would be something to talk about.

What happened to aspiration? People used to hope and work and plan to improve themselves, and wanted their kids to "have a better life." Observing that others were financially better off was seen as an indication of possibilities, not as evidence of injustice, as if somehow being wealthy was criminal, res ipsa loquitur.

The fact is, the social commentariat who've designed this "eat the rich", "the rich need to pay their fair share" nonsense, and this 99%/1% societal division are really telling you that any aspirations you may have are delusions, that in fact, you are fated to be -- nothing much. Don't aspire to improve your lot; it can't be done. Hope is not for such as us, because the rich have stolen it. Your destiny is fixed, and you are looking at it right now.

So. Your continued survival and safe membership in the 99% requires you to demand that more tax money be extracted from the people who still have it, so that it can be distributed to the corporations, unions, and cronies who fund election campaigns.

Hey folks. It wasn't your wealth that was stolen by the rich. What has been stolen is the belief that a person might become exceptional by application of the traditional middle class values - work, study, saving, planning, investing in the future. Because if you don't believe that, if you don't believe you can make a difference, then there is no hope for you and you might as well sell your vote in exchange for fine sounding words empty of meaning, and settle in to life of relentless envy and unrewarding bitterness that comes with the conviction that the rich get richer and the game is rigged to keep poor people poor.

Welcome to the proletariat.

BING News

2011-12-09T19:08:00.001-08:00

I noticed BING news posted a story and they labeled it "in depth." Cool. I wanted "in depth". What I got was an obvious opinion from somebody who was emotionally involved with the story but without any information beyond her feelings. I accept her feelings with some sympathy, but . . c'mon. That's not "in depth" to me; I thought "in depth" would provide more information than just headline information.

What was more interesting is that BING just republishes news from other sources, and the source of the opinion that BING labeled "in depth," had actually clearly labeled the piece as "opinion."

So the question is, are the unidentified and untouchable BING editors instigators and enablers of the dumbing down of America, or are they in fact the result?

How come Progressive Socialism hasn't actually progressed since the 1920's, anyway? . . .

2011-07-17T12:32:00.000-07:00

Jane Fonda is complaining that QVC has taken down her segment because of her politics.

Good.

Ain't it just dreadful when a soi disant heroine of the socialist movement is denied the financial benefits of capitalist marketing?

Pay no attention to that man behind the Social Security curtain . . .

2011-06-07T19:39:00.000-07:00

The current AARP Bulletin published an opinion piece by James Roosevelt, Jr., the grandson of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mr. Roosevelt is currently president of Tufts Associated Health Plans, Inc.

Mr. Roosevelt is of the opinion that worries that Social Security will run out of money are "utter distortions," the same sort of vicious foolishness that his grandfather had to endure when president. He says that Social Security pays back 99 cents for every dollar collected. He argues that Social Security is solvent because there is a positive balance of 2.6 trillion at the end of 2010, and a projected positive balance of 3.67 trillion at the end of 2022. Why? Because of interest to be earned.

Interest earned? That's because money in the social security balance sheet isn't money. It is debt, money that has been loaned to the federal government which is supposed to repay the money with interest.

And how is the federal government doing? It is currently spending $3.00 for every $2.00 it collects. The other $1.00 it borrows. The current federal debt, including money owed to Social Security, is 14 trillion and growing.

So where is the cash that Social Security is going to pay out in the future going to come from? It's going to come from future tax revenue. In other words, we all have been paying money into Social Security once. The government borrowed and spent it. We'll pay again at tax time so the federal government can repay Social Security so that Social Security can return our 99 cents on the dollar.

Why it almost sounds as if there's some spinning of the facts, particularly in light of the unmentioned fact that Tufts Associated Health Plans, Mr. Roosevelt's employer, sells Medicare Advantage plans.

Top ten tips for new lawyer mentoring . . .

2011-06-07T08:16:00.000-07:00

The Oregon State Bar, funded by generous and mandatory attorney dues and CLE purchases, has come up with yet another grand scheme.

It's new lawyer mentoring.

Since newly graduated attorneys can't seem to find that big-bucks job they always assumed would be waiting for them at the end of the bar exam, many are choosing to go into practice solo as rank beginners. But they don't quite know how to practice law because law school doesn't teach how to be a lawyer. It teaches how to pass tests on the law, stressing retention over application. (Except where the law school has a legal clinic intended to permit law professors to enjoy the illusion that they can practice real law.) So, experienced attorneys, who won't or can't hire beginning lawyers, will nevertheless teach rookies the ropes, as it were.

Yeah, that's what I would want to do if I were an experienced attorney who was still practicing law. I'd want to train up my competition for the same scarce client dollars.

I'm not in practice now and I won't be asked to mentor anybody. But if I was still in practice I'd want my new competition to keep the following top ten tips in mind. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Always address the judge by his first name. Clients love insiders.
No matter what, always pay your malpractice insurance premium unless you need to pay your bar bill instead.
Develop a network of people who can refer clients to you, like hair dressers and cab drivers. Pay them a cash "gift" for every paying sucker they send you.
Find a bar close to your office where you can spend three or four hours every afternoon and evening, developing client contacts. Run a tab if they let you.
Once you've got the retainer, don't be in too much of a hurry to close the case. You might screw things up and lots of times things just work themselves out if you let them.
Get a gimmick to develop recognition. Sure you'll look silly going to court in a batman costume, but client's love that sort of flash.
Go ahead and commit to the most expensive office space there is. The money will show up to pay for it.
Don't be afraid to lie. They expect it and will be disappointed if you don't.
Use double entry book-keeping. One book for you; the other for IRS
Ethics are for suckers.

Hopes this helps

How to avoid going over budget . . .

2011-06-02T16:03:00.000-07:00

The Democrats are in charge in the Senate. Surely, they could get a budget passed because they have the votes. But they haven't. For the last two years! They aren't even trying.

Note that in recent years it's been Senators running for the presidency: Gore, Kerry, McCain, Obama.

Really showing some leadership skills, there, guys. Way to round up that budget problem. What say you remind us of how you bravely resisted the urge to do your Constitutional duty to pass a budget the next time you need us to vote for you for anything. Both parties!

So, this sucks . . .

2011-06-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

So it looks like the much applauded, elusive mystery recovery isn't happening yet. We keep getting all sorts of news about the state of the economy, all of it bad and all of it "unexpected." Unemployment got worse, not better. Industrial orders fell lower, not higher. Confidence deflated, not grew. Maybe there wasn't a recovery on the horizon, after all,despite pronouncements that things had turned around. It's kind of like the Iraqi news spokesman for Saddam announcing that U.S. tanks were nowhere near Baghdad, as they were drag racing outside the ministry where he was.

Hope and change? I haven't seen any of the hope part, and the change part really blows backwards.

I don't know if the situation is the result of incompetence or deliberate sabotage. But I know it isn't simply bad luck. There's deliberately selected policies at work.

The next revolution . . .

2011-05-19T19:40:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me -- it's become a fairly commonplace and untested belief that we, here in the United States of America, have become too rich, too well-educated, too civilized, and just beyond that sort of thing, for there ever to be another civil war or revolutionary war or serious armed rebellion. Not now, in the 21st century. And certainly not with guns. There will be no fighting to the death over politics here. Our polity has grown beyond all that icky conflict. It's no longer a matter of whether there should be a social preference for the ballot over the bullet. The question now is whether it will be the ballot or the bribe that decides our collective situation.

And it occurs to me that if it is true that it is flat impossible to present a serious armed challenge to the government, then it is only a matter of when, and not if, the constitutional guaranteed limits on government becomes a mere historical fun fact, having no contemporary meaning at all.

Government is all about regulation, control, power, and the dependency of the governed on the government for whatever security the governed may get out of the deal. People being what they are and government agencies being what they are, government involvement in one's everyday life will necessarily increase right up to whatever limits on its growth might exist. Without at least the possible chance that government could be overthrown by force, there is no effective limit to the growth of government. The government busies will always find it necessary for yet another regulation, yet one more punishment, another license to be obtained and another agency to be consulted, all for the so called common good. They can't help themselves and it isn't reasonable to expect that they could ever resist the temptation, once the notion occurs to them. Most of them do their job sincerely intending to provide a benefit when passing a new law or making a new regulation. It's just that consequences are frequently unintended and unanticipated. There is no "too much" built into our system of government as things now stand, and mistakes can and do happen frequently.

So, am I advocating armed rebellion? Oh, for heavens sake of course not. That would be horrible. It's just that when armed rebellion truly becomes unthinkable -- then we've all lost the liberty that this country reached for in 1776.

I simply think it would be healthier if we decide that rebellion is far from necessary, for now, for the time being, and not that rebellion is totally unthinkable.

Oh, and once in a while tar and feathers should be applied, simply for purposes of improving the breed, so to speak.

Today's question . . .

2011-05-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

What kind and how good an education do you think you are going to get when your college instructors can't -- not won't but can't -- distinguish between ideology and information? It's all the same to them.

Illegal alien problem solved . . .

2011-05-15T18:06:00.000-07:00

A whole bunch of Tunisians are skipping out of Tunisia and ending up in Italy. Italy feels overwhelmed and is asking for help from the European Union -- you know, their federal government. The E.U. says that Italy may not deal with the problem on its own, and also, that there isn't going to be any help from the E.U. These are refugees fleeing violence and civil turmoil.

Sound familiar? A whole bunch of Mexicans are skipping out of Mexico and ending up in Arizona, which is forbidden by the federal government from doing much -- the feds are suing the state-- and the federal government isn't going to do anything effective about it.

But these Mexicans aren't refugees like Tunisians. They are undocumented immigrants. They used to be legally described as illegal aliens, but that hurt the delicate sensibilities of the college educators, assorted wannabes, pseudos, dipshits and undocumented journalists who objected to the terminology. So now they're immigrants, simply yearning for freedom, a place in the sun, and a chance to cut grass and do jobs Americans won't do, and also to sell drugs.

Anyhow, since we are already going to mess with the language with no sense of shame, why don't we just call the Mexicans who have arrived here without due process something else? They can be refugees. That makes them sound even more desperate, needy, and pitiful and less likely to be deported. You'd have to inhumane to deport a poor, wretched refugee, right?

You'd have to repatriate them.

Things you probably should never say to people. . .

2011-05-10T12:09:00.000-07:00

I'm curious. Are you a moron in real life, or is it that the demands of your job require you to behave like one at all times?

They like me, they really like me. . .

2011-05-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I'll just be dipped. It turns out that my call is really important to them, and they would like me to please stay on the line a little longer so that my call can be answered by an operator in the order in which it was received. It is a real comfort to know that I'm cared about, and I'm especially reassured when I hear that same message repeatedly while I wait interminably, like about forty times.

Without receiving that message about forty times before talking to a live person, I might have thought they didn't give frozen gilded moose turd about their customers one way or the other.

My bad.

Somebody needs a life script . . .

2011-05-10T11:21:00.000-07:00

Alicia Silverstone, a celebrity who I'm not sure I recognize, has named her baby "Bear Blu." Honestly, these people celebrated for their attractiveness and whose whole life is built around their appearance need to have a script written for them by somebody else, so as to avoid doing or saying anything stupid. Bear Blu! Good luck with middle school, kid.

She also said she was destined to be a mother. Yeah, that kinda comes with having ovaries and intimacy. But it's okay, Alicia, Sweetie. If you want your biological determination to be a destiny, you go right ahead. Just, maybe, check with your scriptwriter before saying things in public.

Oh, maybe I'm being a mite harsh. It's not as if she's doing a Lindsay Lohan or a Charlie Sheen, both of whom evidently could be much improved by having both scriptwriters and keepers.

Sunday reading confessional . . .

2011-05-08T14:18:00.000-07:00

Just finished Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth; Evidence for Evolution. Now half way through The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Part I, and just started Epstein's How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution. What are you reading?

If we can't screw our customers, well, who can we screw?

2011-05-03T19:51:00.000-07:00

I heard on the news this morning that a big-time national bank has scrapped its plans to raise its fee for using their ATMs by out of system customers from $3 to $5. They evidently did a test, and people stopped using their ATMs. For $5, people are willing to drive to an ATM in their own banking system -- the cost outweighs the convenience of using the nearer ATM for an out of system charge. Imagine that.

Of course, I remember when the banks were trying to encourage the use of ATMs. It was pretty obvious. If they only could get people to use ATMs, they could dispense with hiring tellers some of whom were actually paid more than minimum wage. Providing ATMs relieved the banks of the need to offer customer service.

Yeah, I can remember going into a bank and standing in a long line waiting for my turn at the teller's place, and while waiting having a bank employee come up and offer to show me how to use an ATM so I didn't have to stand in line so long. But I knew how to work the ATM; it was raining out there and the ATM was not sheltered. Thanks for your offer, lady, but this is Oregon and it rains, here. How about getting your sweet little banker butt behind the counter and serving customers instead of pushing them outdoors into the rain.

Now that the teller staffs have all been successfully reduced in favor of ATMs, the banks want to act as if the ATMs are extra special conveniences that the bank offers at great expense and difficulty. Accordingly, we should be grateful for ATMs and willing to pay extra to use an ATM services if we aren't one of their loyal customers.

Oh, bless you, bankers! If I couldn't do my bank business at a machine without human warmth or understanding, I just don't know what I would do.

Loyalty. Yeah, right. One of my banks reminds me from time to time about the great deal on a bank card they would like me to have. I would be charged 0% interest on charges for the first 6 months. Of course, if instead of borrowing, I loan the bank money by leaving it on deposit, what do they pay me? Maybe 1% annually. What do they do with my money? Lend it out to credit card holders for 0% interest for the first 6 months, and then 20+% on the unpaid balance thereafter. And they charge those credit card holders an ATM access fee on top of it, all using my money at 1%!

Yeah, I'm happy to accept their 1% on my deposits so that they can make 20%. That 1% they pay makes me feel like they really appreciate me and not like a sucker at all.

Sounds like a license for banks to print money, doesn't it? Laws have been passed to permit them to do business in this fashion. But then, even with this sort of advantage it's possible for banks to screw up. And when they do, what happens? The government bails them out, using guess-whose money.

I think they may be in cahoots.

Osama Bin Fishfood

2011-05-02T22:43:00.000-07:00

They say his body was buried at sea with appropriate wrappings to be respectful of Islamic custom, and so as not to give offense. Of course, they, when they have a body of one of ours, drag the body triumphantly and with cries of jubilation all around the town square for a few hours, so as to avoid giving us offense.

The cult of the pirate . . .

2011-04-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting take on piracy, going back to the Barbary pirates, and European colonialism. Worth thinking about.

Inappropriate content . . .

2011-04-10T20:22:00.000-07:00

Went to a store today and while there, my wife wanted to look in the book department to see if there were any interesting books. While looking around I saw that the store had posted a little note stuck on the bookshelf, titled "Inappropriate Content." It said something like the following:

Sometimes some publishers publish content that some people believe is inappropriate although others do not consider the content inappropriate. Our customers are always welcome to call to our attention content that they feel is inappropriate. We would never like for our customers to view content which they believed was inappropriate. We fully support the right of our customers to decline to purchase books that contain content they believe to be inappropriate.

I think that translates to if you don't want to see it, don't buy it, but if you think we are going to let perpetually offended dipsh*ts decide what others may or may not read, you can go pound sand and bark at the moon, for all we care.

So now we all know where we stand and I'm good with that.

This will work . . .

2011-04-07T20:34:00.001-07:00

President Obama has said that shutting down the government for absence of a budget would be inexcusable. He has also said that if the House passes a bill to keep the government open for another week to continue negotiations, and if the Democratically controlled Senate passed it too, he would veto the bill thus causing the shut down. Why? Because all this talk about trying to get a little extra time to work out budget details was a "distraction."

Kicking the Imam's butt . . .

2011-03-29T16:32:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this Pakistani actress kicking butt. The back story is that her accuser is a high member of the Taliban and had sent her a warning that she is going to be punished for making Pakistan look bad by going to India. You know what punishment that means. Remember, they made good on their threats to kill Indira within days after she returned to Pakistan, and she had already served as President of the country once and was an international figure. Of course, merely "punishing" this actress isn't enough. The purpose of her television "interview" was to scare the uppity out of any other women who saw the interview. She's in more danger than ever; she likely didn't change any minds who matter to her continued security.

Hope she makes it out.

Tsunami!

2011-03-28T20:18:00.000-07:00

Horrifying amateur video of Japan's tsunami.

Those poor people!

Choosing sides . . .

2011-03-27T11:25:00.000-07:00

What we saw in Wisconsin when the government wanted to cut back employee unions' influence over the budget looks a little bit like what we are now seeing in England, when the country is trying to bring some balance to the budget. Demonstrations, intimidation, and riots. In either case, the government has been handing out increasingly generous benefits which now appear to be unsustainable. Same thing all through the U.S. and Europe.

Western governments, state, federal, European, whatever, are powerfully committed to the status quo, troubled only by the need to raise ever-increasing amounts of cash to meet the ever-increasing commitments to government entitlements/handouts. For example, I read somewhere where our current administration is considering a tax based on how many miles you travel in addition to the already high taxes, state and federal, on fuel.

If you are on the "gimme" side of the government/citizen relationship, you are in favor of government as it now stands. If not, your opposition to government by handout could likely lead to threatened mass street action, intimidation and property destruction to accompany the massive disturbance of the peace such demonstrations require. Somebody had a line I read, I wish I could remember who so I could attribute it, where the left has given up on trying to convince based on the force of their logic, and is now working on developing conviction through the logic of their force.

So, here's the question. Are you in favor of increased government taxes to support government checks? Are you a member of a public employee union, getting government assistance, going to school and living on government student loan money, getting aid for your dependent children, sucking up Social Security? If it comes down to fighting in the streets, will you be in favor of increased taxation to support continuing your government checks? If so, I figure you are what is classically called. . . a loyalist. But if you think about the difference between what our constitution says, and what's going on presently, and figure we should return to the old, pre-Wilson notions of federal constitutional limits you are . . . guess what. . . a rebel.

Choose.

Internet Exploder 9 . . .

2011-03-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

This is just great. I updated Internet Exploder. So what's changed? Well, when I compose a post for the blog in blogger/blogspot, I can't post it. Either nothing happens, or up comes the print options. Everything else works just fine, except for the part where I put the post out on the web.

But blogger still works in Firefox. So I know what I must do, now.

Way to go, Microsoft. Did somebody say, "This isn't a bug; it's a feature?"

Virginity tests. . . .

2011-03-26T13:13:00.001-07:00

Yeah. Virginity tests. Because everybody knows that if you are a protester and not a virgin, the conclusion that you are a prostitute is inavoidable. And everybody knows that if you are a prostitute, you are in need of torture and humiliation.

What a fine people. Let's invite them to join the country club.

The Koran in flames . . .

2011-03-25T16:05:00.001-07:00

Yeah, I can see why Iran would want to have the United Nations condemn a U.S. church for burning a Koran.

Wonder how many Christian Bibles there are, left, in Iran. For that matter, I wonder how many Christians or Jews are left in Iran. Not that long ago, within my lifetime, Iran was actually fairly multi-cultural. Not any more.

I figure that the United Nations ought to condemn all ceremonial book burning. Also execution of homosexuals, female genital mutilation, stoning rape victims to death, honor killings, child brides, slavery, violent jihad, the jiz-yah, and public employee unions.

I threw the union thing at the last minute, Kinda adds a final completion to the rhythm of the sentence, doesn't it?

We need something to attract people to our attractive attraction, which isn't all that attractive enough, evidently, all by itself . . .

2011-03-22T19:35:00.001-07:00

I read in a recent Portland Mercury that some of our city rulers are considering, once again, building a hotel in or near the Rose Quarter. I don't know how believable or serious this is or if the local politicians thinking about this are officials of the city, or the county, or metro. Or all of them; they're pretty much in cahoots anyhow.

The idea is to attract more action to the Convention Center. Of course, the politicos who like this idea plan to be using our money, whether or not we think it's a dumb idea. Used to be, if a bunch of people agreed that constructing a building would be a good idea, they themselves would invest in it, to earn the benefits of their investment. Or not. Just as they pleased.

If they asked me, I'd say if you guys have extra money of ours to build a hotel I'd just as soon you use it to repair local roads. We are about at the point where many of the roads are more suited to ox carts and burros, than to cars. Even if the cars are hybrids. Roads deteriorate with use, and you can't patch up deteriorating roads by simply painting bicycle lane stripes and green boxes on the roads, or erecting signs announcing that Oregon is being put back to work.

When government wants to do a project, it isn't as if we citizens have much say in it. If they decide to go ahead, there's no way for the "non-interested" investers to pass on that particular investment so as to save their capital for the next idea that percolates up. Oh, we can vote for somebody else next time, but meanwhile we are still invested in whatever it was. Like light rail. Whose bright idea was it, anyhow, to use a 19th century response to transportation problems, applying 20th century technology, to meet the needs of the 21st. century? Doesn't matter; we've got us some light rail and are going to get more.

And as for the proposed Rose Quarter hotel, it doesn't matter what independent investors might decide. To politicans, a hotel in this area would be -- an Attraction. An Attraction can be named after a local dignitary and can provide income opportunities for cronies. And since the Attraction would bring outsiders into the city and they would leave some of their money behind, benefitting us all, it should be okay with us. Right?

Hey, waitaminit. Wasn't the Convention Center, itself, supposed to be an Attraction to bring action to the city? What does it say about our civic investments when you have to build another Attraction to attract people to your Attraction? Oh, and notice that the first Attraction is nicely located next to a light rail stop so that people can easily come to the Attraction from wherever they might be, without being required to seek out lodging close by.

Gah!

Just another oppressed Palestinian . . . . . .

2011-03-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

When they learned that a Palestinian person had snuck around in the dark of night, crept into a Jewish home, and stabbed the sleeping father, mother, children, and an infant to death, five in all, people in Gaza celebrated and passed out sweets.

What a fine culture.

Let's give them a country all their very own, and support it with lots of aid from American taxpayers.

I gotta get out of here . . .

2011-03-08T20:52:00.000-08:00

Jeez, what if being in Portland kind of wears off on you? I hope I don't catch any Portland -- I've been here so long.

Here's what I mean.

A man broke into somebody's house in Portland. The Portland owner came home and heard somebody showering and she knew there shouldn't be anybody showering, so she called 911. At the same time, the trespasser heard the homeowner come in, got scared, and he called 911 at the same time. He said he just broke into somebody's house and they came home on him, and he was scared the homeowner might have a gun.

I mentioned this is the kind of thing that has to happen only in Portland, didn't I?

Maybe she should have turned off the hot water at the tank. Right after she hollered "Chill out, Dude. I have a gun but I won't shoot if you stay in there 'til the cops come."

If they're so progressive, how come they keep trying to drag us all back into the dark ages?

2011-03-07T21:50:00.000-08:00

See this. Electricity when they want to give it to you. Only.

A Last Word on Obamacare.

2011-03-01T15:45:00.001-08:00

Here it is.

Like the man says. What could go wrong?

Curly bulbs, once again . . .

2011-03-01T14:36:00.000-08:00

Don't like curlybulbs. You know, compact florescents. Bad light. Expensive, unreliable. Supposed to last for years but don't. (I've already had four of 'em die in the last eleven months.)

Mostly I don't like outlawing the standard incandescent bulbs to force the curlies on us. Somebody is going to make a lot of money on this, and a big chunk of the Big Green Weenie Movement in politics is really about generating gobs of profits without being hampered by the lack of a market. (Vid Big Al and the Carbon Credit industry.)

So. This is fun. Be vewwy, vewwy afwaid?

I see my fate before me . . .

2011-02-24T13:11:00.000-08:00

I just looked over the last few posts here. Lately I've wanted to step up the blogging, so I wanted to see how I was doing. I noticed that I have been all about government lately, and I see my future.

I'm not going to be a greeter at a discount store after all. I'm going to become one of those smelly old geezers hanging around a McDonald's every morning, who's mission it is to tell everybody how screwed we are.

Hey, I'll follow you out to your car if I have to.

Washington's budget...

2011-02-24T13:07:00.000-08:00

This will fix things. A college student illustrates the contemplated budget cuts in a way that shows just how seriously the administration is taking budget worries.

Break out the tinfoil beanies . . .

2011-02-24T06:02:00.000-08:00

Here ya go! The commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gives the gummint the legal authority to regulate based on what you are thinking, according to Judge Kessler:

As previous Commerce Clause cases have all involved physical activity, as opposed to mental activity, i.e. decision-making, there is little judicial guidance on whether the latter falls within Congress's power . . . However, this Court finds the distinction, which Plaintiffs rely on heavily, to be of little significance. It is pure semantics to argue that an individual who makes a choice to forego health insurance is not "acting," especially given the serious economic and health-related consequences to every individual of that action. Making a choice is an affirmative action, whether one decides to do something or not do something.

Can't write any more. Have to quick change into my red gym shorts and hurry off for the mandatory morning mass calesthenic exercises. Healthy mind in a healthy body, you know. See, I'm gettin' my head right, boss.

She says Marx is dead . . .

2011-02-22T17:43:00.000-08:00

Once in a while I run into a person who asks, with their bare face hanging out all naked and innocent, why I'm against socialism. What's wrong with wanting to take care of everybody?

My short answer is that it has never worked any place it's been tried and it pretty much increases the sum total of misery wherever it's tried, except for a blessed few, and that the poor under socialism are poorer than the poor under capitalism. I don't bother with a long answer because I figure that if people won't accept my short answer, they are impervious to the logic of a long answer.

But that may be uncharitable of me. So if you want a long answer -- not too long, you can read it in less than three minutes, easy, even if you have to use your finger and mouth the words silently -- go here. The interesting thing is that you can see how Marxist thinking has infected our own body politic, to the point where people who should know better don't even realize that they are echoing Karl Marx.

Met any new friends online lately?

2011-02-19T16:29:00.000-08:00

This isn't funny.

Looks like the government wants to spread its message -- propaganda -- and figures you might not be all that trusting. Or gullible. So the government wants to pretend that it's just some guy. The government is soliciting for a contract to create fake people to be managed with "persona management" software. Through these persona, the government agents will be interacting with us on social networks. It can spread messages that appear to be part of a groundswell, and gather information about its "friends" -- that means us -- on the social nets.

This is repulsive and is certainly not what I thought they meant when they said government was going to be transparent.

I guessby the time they know all about us from being one of our "friends," they would already have advance information about who is most efffectively opposing government programs. They would then know whose house to go to first, when the "disappearancings" start.

Not that this is the intent of this program now, I don't think. But what would prevent it?

Today, I shut down 84,000 websites to keep the world safe from pornography and aren't you proud of me, Mommy?

2011-02-17T08:18:00.000-08:00

So, to shut down ten child pornography websites, our government shut down thousands of non pornographers, and called them pornographers? (See here.) These other eighty-three thousand nine hundred ninety were people were doing nothing illegal, presumably, but they were shut down and slapped with a badge of child pornography. It's defamatory. It's impairment of contract. It's also a violation of constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech -- it's government doing it.

Why do these people still have a job?

I think that the responsible individual or individuals in the vast government intellectual swamp (growing as we speak) should be publically identified, vilified, and fired in some suitable ceremony, all as a means of encouraging other bureaucrats to pay-effing-attention-to-what-you-are-doing! Make 'em wear a dunce cap while appearing on television.

Because this event is simply bright, shiny evidence that some our government employees are inept on a grand scale, and they are not accountable for the damage they do.

And we are going to look to this government to do something to increase employment, or literacy, or public health, or reduce obesity, drug-abuse, or homelessness, or shield us from an international politico-religious blood cult buried in a culture that accepts honor killings and female genital mutilation? No. We shouldn't expect good results. We should expect what we've been getting. Ineptitude. The government we have now? It's evidently not the same sort of people who planned the Normandy invation, or strung telephone cable across ocean floors, or put a man on the moon, or electrified a nation with four time zones in a generation or wiped out smallpox and polio. This is now a government that outlaws plastic bags and tobacco.

We are paying for a helluva lot better government then that which we are getting, and there should be some adjustments made.

Smothering anti-government demonstrations . . .

2011-02-15T21:50:00.000-08:00

shouldn't be all that tough. They always try to fill up a large square in the capitol city, right? Get rid of the large squares so there's no good place to assemble for more than about 20 people. Why do you need a square where thousands of people can gather anyhow? Yep. No doubt about it. Capitol squares are cause of the downfall of dictatorships, sooner or later.

I don't know how that got there. It's not mine, really. It must be my cousin's . . .

2011-02-15T14:56:00.000-08:00

Story here.

U.S. approves Russian state-controlled company's taking over two uranium mines in Wyoming . . .

2011-02-13T14:45:00.000-08:00

It's okay if a Russian company takes control of an existing and a proposed uranium mine in Wyoming, according to our government.

I have a couple of questions, beyond the obvious question of - -

What the hell are you thinking?

First, has anybody explained Obamacare and what it is going to cost to do business in the U.S. with all of the expensive social programs built in? Oh, wait a minute. They probably experienced that sort of thing as unwilling members of the Soviet. Nevermind.

But second, isn't this just another example of foreigners being willing to do jobs that Americans won't do?

If you want peace . . .

2011-02-11T15:39:00.000-08:00

make them scared of you. One good act of belligerence could go a long way towards gentling things down, internationally, I'm thinking.

Iranium . . .

2011-02-08T07:39:00.000-08:00

Got an hour or so? You can watch Iranium, here, for free. At least for a while. This shows what we are facing, and how it came to be.

No surprises in Egypt . . .

2011-02-05T15:48:00.000-08:00

We want the kind of democracy where everybody bows down to the mullahs.

Snow and ice . . .

2011-02-03T08:16:00.001-08:00

Take a look at this. Most of the entire northern hemisphere is covered by ice and snow. But not Portland.

Must be some slackers aren't doing their part to assure global warming.

Time to start reading up about glaciation, I think. I have read that the earth has been pretty much completely ice free at times, and at other times pretty much covered in permanent ice, and that major glaciation kind of scours the earth clean of the records of previous glaciations. I know that about two thirds of the earth is ocean, where people don't live, and I know that much of the land surface is relatively unpopulated, so that if the activities of people are contributing to climate change, it's probably only on a small fraction of the surface of the earth and consequently is probably only a small percentage of the cause of climate change.

So, are we entering a glacial age? Or leaving one?

Carbon footprints, and other lies . . .

2011-01-29T14:34:00.000-08:00

Oh, yeah. I'll believe that global warming is imminent, and government can't cut spending when I see the people in charge acting as if it were true. Until then, I'll remain skeptical.

Look at what Nancy was doing about global warming. She was flying around in air force jets - for free - and sucking up booze and treats. Over 90,000 miles in a jet, funded by tax payers, in less than a year. Now there's a carbon footprint for you.

What to know about your Student Loan . . .

2011-01-22T08:22:00.000-08:00

Pay attention to this.

Curly lights and the birth of nations . . .

2011-01-12T16:01:00.001-08:00

Coupla' years ago I started replacing regular light bulbs with CFLs. You know. The curly bulbs that sequester mercury to be leaked into the environment someplace, somehow, someday. But they use less electricity so less coal must be burned or less water must be dammed to make the electricity to light them up. For using less electricity is is good.

And we are going to need the electricity to run our cars. Or else we are going to grow food and use up lots of energy to turn food into alcohol and run our cars on that. And screw the people who might have been able to use a few extra calories and need the food.

Using less so-called fossil fuel (so called to imply that there is an exhaustible supply of oil left to us by our brothers, the dinosaurs, so we should be frugal as they are making no more oil, being extinct) using less will benefit the environment because we buy oil overseas from people who will screw up their own environment to get oil for us, and maybe fire-off a few suicide bombers with the cash they get from selling oil. For screwing their environment to help our own environment is good.

Anyhow, I stuck some of the curly bulbs in my bathroom about a year and a half ago. These were the bulbs that cost too much but would last six years.

Guess what? I've now got two of 'em sitting on my desk, all used up, as I type this epistle to posterity. Oh, and I didn't replace one of the "bad" incandescent bulbs in the bathroom at the time, thinking I'd put a curlycue in when it burnt out. And guess what. It's still working and I'm perturbed off. This is not good.

I figure there's a worldwide eco-hysteria going on, and only some of the concerns and solutions to eco problems are legitimate. But others are expensive solutions to imaginary problems, constituting commercial windfalls. But I'm okay with that. If you come to believe that wearing a daisy chain of beer can tops around you neck treats your hypothyroid condition -- go for it. If you become convinced that riding a bicycle to work twice a week will prevent male pattern baldness, peddle your silly ass off with my blessing. And if you want to buy curlycue light bulbs, you should be able to do that all you want. And maybe you're right; Mother Nature will love you and will give you a kiss on the cheek and a friendly little goose in gratitude for your use of curlycue light bulbs and a hybrid car to drive your bike around in a bike rack on the back. Wear a knit cap, so we can identify you as "one of those" from afar. For you are good.

And you are not being compelled to be good - you're doing it of your own free will. That's double good. Right?

But when I see that laws have to be passed to make all of us begin buying an expensive alternative to solve environmental concerns, I have to wonder. I particularly wonder when the testing to support the legislation avoids testing the value judgments implicit in the proposition, and tests only the performance efficiency of obtaining the goals implicit in the value judgments.

Hey, if it makes sense, we'll do it. You don't need a law.

But when a great deal of money is involved, like buying stuff like lightbulbs, electricity, and gasoline, I think we should be suspicious. Ordinarily I would say, follow the money. But in this case, there are politicians' sticky fingerprints all over the legislation that changes consumer buying choices, so I would say, you probably don't have to follow the money. Since politicians are involved and laws have been passed, that is enough for me to think we are being scammed again.

Because it is obviou$ly ea$ier to convince a few corrupt and venal politician$ that they ought to pass a law requiring all of us to do buy something then it would be to convince us that we ought to buy that thing. Being free to make our own decisions, we might otherwise conclude that the product is of doubtful utility when it is of doubtful utility. So our freedom to make such decisions must be eliminated. By law.

Car of the Year . . .

2011-01-10T07:26:00.001-08:00

Chevy Volt has just been named the Car of the Year. Seen any yet? Kind of like President Obama's Peace Prize. Seen any?

This is cool . . .

2011-01-08T23:25:00.000-08:00

A whole bunch of Muslims in Egypt have attended Christian Copt church ceremonies to serve as human shields to protect the Christians. A church service was bombed recently, and people worried it could happen again. One of the statements was that the attack was an attack against all Egyptians, not just the Copts. Wow. Just, wow.

Three fifths of a person . . .

2011-01-06T21:26:00.000-08:00

C'mon, people. Oh, I mean those of you over the age of 45. (Those under that age probably weren't provided this sort of an education, as self-esteem has replaced information in the acedemic schema, so it's not your fault.) But the rest of you. Did you skip history class that day?

The U.S. Constitution didn't say that a slave was only 3/5's of a person. It gave representative votes in the House to southern states at a reduced rate, so that the southern states weren't disproportionately over-represented in Congress based on the number of people in the state -- when some of them were disenfranchised by that state by reason of being treated as property.

In short, the writers of the U.S.Constitution used the 3/5 fraction to discriminate against slave holding states when it came to votes in Congress.

It was a compromise. The slave states wanted representation based on the number of people in their state, slave and free. The non-slave states wanted representation in Congress based only on the free population of the slave states. A deal was cut, because there wouldn't be a union if the north got their way altogether, because the slavery south just wouldn't ratify the constitution. And vice-versa.

Those of you who are still yelping about this after all these years are either cynically trying to drum up political enthusiasm, or you are showing your ignorance altogether. Or both.

Something is happening that I don't understand . . .

2011-01-06T17:56:00.000-08:00

A coupla times a month or more, my bride and I go to a local corporate mega fast burger location, 'cause it's really neat to get your meal freshly prepared and wrapped up in individual paper wrappings, except for frenchfries, which are served in a little carboard holster device. You know these places. They always have some sort of music playing, usually something I don't recognize which evidently appeals to the employees working there. But then one day they put some Country and Western stuff into the mix.

No problem -- it has melody and lyrics.

Of course, for Christas season, Christmas music was used.

Then, things got a little wierder. It was Christmas music with a country flavor. You know. Slide guitars. A banjo here and there. Some honky tonk undertones.

Okay, I said. This will be over in a few days.

Went there today. What was playing was stuff from the thirties and forties. Horns. Clarinets. I recognized some of the songs as stuff my parents had on the old wind-up record player, but these weren't the old stuff. These were old songs with old arrangements and bands, recorded in modern times. How can this be? I am greatly confused.

If I go back there and hear bagpipes, that's it. I'm turning vegetarian and buying a tricycle and a shotgun. And swimfins.

Politics 2011, version 1.0

2011-01-02T22:11:00.000-08:00

The Republicans are planning to open the next Congress by reading the U.S.Constitution out loud. Their theory is that this exercise is likely the first and only time some members of Congress will ever be required to consider the U. S. Constitution.

The New York Times plans to pronounce every word the reading as a collection of "to be expected" right wing lies, secure in the knowledge that conservatives make things up. Twenty-two percent of all Americans, sixty-four percent of all subscribers to the New York Times, and virtually the entire staff of NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, Harvard College, and CCNY will believe the New York Times. For they are the smart ones.

And not as much rain in Texas . . .

2010-12-22T14:16:00.000-08:00

What? people who earn a million will move to avoid taxes? How come? It's only a 2% increase. Let's see, on a million dollars that's merely $20,000 on top of the already high taxes, maybe $90,000, they were paying already, which were on top of the taxes they were paying to the federal government. Probably over half goes in taxes when it's all over.

The fatcats should stay and pay the taxes.

We voted!

Internet regulation update

2010-12-22T06:04:00.000-08:00

It's worse than I thought. We've nationalized car manufacturers, insurance companies, banks, and now communications is next in line. Dammit, the internet was pretty much the only thing that was working to encourage innovation and wealth creation. The rest of the economy pretty much seemed to be rent-seeking and zero sum balance sheet shifting.

Sticky-fingers on the internet . . .

2010-12-21T16:41:00.000-08:00

The sticky-fingered commisars of the FCC have been wanting to regulate the internet. We aren't sure how they propose to regulate it or what features of the internet they figure should be regulated. But they went and did it. Their scheme passed today, and pretty soon now, we might learn what it is that they did. But it is a secret for now.

I figure seeing as how they really don't want to talk about what they just did after they done already done it (that's how we used to talk in Kentucky), it's to give them some extra time to either get out of town or to get their stories right.

Maybe I could go along with regulating the internet. I could live with some sort of painful and bloody punishment for spammers, for instance.

But, really! WTF?

I guess its just a whole lot more satisfying and easy to run a democracy if you don't have to put up with a bunch of people yelping about whether or not the rule you are inflicting on the public is necessary, or wanted, or helpful, or even Constitutionally permitted. Next, somebody will say that government should govern with the consent of the governed, and I'm pretty sure, based on the evidence, that that can't be the case.

That's why I always counsel people to vote in every election. You get few enought chances to express yourself to our overlords as it is, so you should never pass up a chance if it comes your way. Because the alternative to voting involves bayonets, ropes, and sturdy tree branches.

Double dip for the holidays.

2010-12-16T07:27:00.000-08:00

Looks like Portland is experiencing yet another round of home price reductions. A double hit. I was just saying that it really is sad to drive around looking at Christmas lights, and seeing "For Sale" signs at Christmas. I'm doing just fine but there's a great deal of people suffering through no or low work opportunities out there, who wrapped up their families' lives in their homes and retirement plans, who are no longer able to afford either and are unable to liquidate either in any way that offers relief -- and they didn't do anything wrong or do anything to deserve being punished in this way. Except for the way they voted.

Our government, elected officials and civil service types, represent the fountainhead of the nation's miseries.

Bitter? Oh, no. P.O.d

Pirates have boarded the Ship of State

2010-12-14T21:53:00.000-08:00

The budget was due months ago. But at least one has finally been proposed. Finally.

One point one t-r-i-l-l-i-o-n dollars! 1,924 pages. 6,488 earmarks. And 40% of federal revenue is borrowed, at present, before we even get to this budget.

And when somebody objected that this isn't much time to review the budget proposal before voting on it, Senator Reid said we have until January 5 to vote on it and get it to the House. How much time is needed for people to just do as they are told by their elected betters?

Oh, my poor children and grandchildren, and great grandchildren to come if my grandchildren can even manage to have children when the time comes.

Peace be upon the holy business card . . .

2010-12-12T18:02:00.001-08:00

Here ya go. A doctor discarded a business card. The card identified a person named Mohomed, that is, he was named after the prophet. It's a common enough name; I've met several "Mo's" in my life so far.

What's the problem? The problem is that by throwing away the card, the doctor was basically disrespecting the prophet because his name was on the card, and Islam, which is a criminal offense requiring punishment.

It seems to me that if one is so insecure about one's religious beliefs that discarding a business card is a threat to one's sense of self, well, maybe the only cure is to just find a warm cave somewhere far from where people are, and spend your days squatting naked in the cave interacting with nobody, right up to the inevitable end. At least it would, anyhow, be better for the rest of us who are cool with throwing away business cards and mean no disrespect to anyone when we do.

Lions, and Tigers, and missiles, oh my. . .

2010-12-09T10:49:00.000-08:00

Just, dammit! Iranian missiles targeting us. How many workers' paradises do we have to contain to the south? Didn't the threat of atomic missiles die down after the end of the cold war and the strategy of Mutual Assured Distruction? Do we have to teach little kids, again, to duck under their school desk and cover their ears?

Kennedy scared the U.S.S.R. missiles out of Cuba but left Castro in place, to appropriate the labor and lives of generations of Cubans to come. Obama gives Chavez big wet kisses on the cheek.

For that matter, how long do we have to put up with Islamic expansionism? To them, we are infidels in a world which should be entirely under Sharia, and the best we should hope for is to be dhimmi.

Western civilization has been periodically plagued by Islamic predations necessitating taking up arms, as in the Crusades, among other things. Islamic incursions damn near made it to Paris, and to Vienna, and pretty much ran Spain before being beat back. Temporarily. President Jefferson read the Koran then went after the pirates of Tripoli. This sh8t isn't new.

Here's the deal. When faced with an implacable threat to your civilization, you either have to win, or you lose. You can't just contain and delay them, as has been the strategy of choice for 1100 years. You can't just beat them back. You have to beat them.

Oh, and by the way. Being dhimmi means becoming a member of a barely tolerated indigenous population eking out an existence on the margins of a dominant occupying population.

It's for the children . . .

2010-12-04T14:16:00.001-08:00

The federal government is now contemplating making back-up cameras mandatory on all new vehicles. Parents sometimes back their cars over their children who are permitted to run any damn place they want to, so as to avoid stifling their little emotional developments.

Well, you have to look, don't you? If you are backing up, you have to look in your mirrors, or swivel around and look out the back window, or something. Right? After all, the lady who backed her SUV into my car down in the basement parking lot had a back-up camera in her car. She didn't look at it.

Not everybody pays attention to what they are doing. Not everybody looks; they merely trust the way is clear.

For this reason the original proposal was that reverse gear just be eliminated from all passenger vehicles, altogether. And it would have passed, too, except that the bureaucrats couldn't figure out whether to make circular driveways or solar-panel powered roundtables required features in all urban areas, so they compromised. They'll revive the reverse-gear elimination proposal after all cars are finally equipped with back-up cameras.

It's for the children.

Jihad in Pioneer Square

2010-11-27T06:14:00.000-08:00

The enemy is among us. Surely this guy, thinking about violent jihad since he was fifteen, has associates, people he knows, contacts, who are similarly inclined. They just haven't done anything about it -- yet.

More homeland security on the way . . .

2010-11-26T17:00:00.000-08:00

No, that's not my arrest record. It's my resume; why do you ask? It shows job experience pertinent to this job. I'm from the government, and of course you can trust me.

If I can't be paranoid now, when can I be paranoid?

2010-11-26T16:39:00.000-08:00

Looks like feeling you up and taking nude pictures of everybody is just the beginning. We are starting to shut down web sites, now., under Homeland Security. Hey guys, there's a modicum of justification in either instance, and maybe a shred of law, too, but there is a whole lot more of WTF! in airport searches and taking down web sites. This could be the thin edge of the wedge.

Nah, that's just paranoia talking. Right?

Fix bayonets! . .

2010-11-23T20:45:00.000-08:00

Some people just won't compromise with people who won't compromise.

Department of Justice takes a dive.

2010-11-22T16:17:00.000-08:00

The DOJ needs to prosecute the law. But people in the DOJ don't necessary like all the laws that they are charged with enforcing. So, we get this:

West said Monday that DOJ was discharging its responsibility to the tradition of the Justice Department while making adjustments to the arguments in line with the administration's views.

"I think that the best example -- let me give you one -- in the Defense of Marriage Act -- you'll notice that we have not only discharged our responsibility to defend the constitutionality of a congressional statute, but we've done so in a way which reflects the policy values of this administration," West said.

"We disavowed some arguments that we believed had no basis in fact, and in fact we presented the court through our briefs with information which seemed to undermine some of the previous rationales that have been used defense of that statute," West added.

"We believe that's being an honest broker with the court, and that's the way we'll continue to discharge our responsibility," West said.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure he's talking about taking a dive. You know. Act like you are just boxing your heart out but making sure that all your best punches fall a little short, or land on the shoulder instead of the chin. And when the other guy finally gets one good punch in, well, lay down and take a little nap.

Wonder if there might be some sort of ethical rule about this sort of thing, like, oh, I don't know, maybe zealous representation.

On the other hand, this might be brilliant. I can just see the next administration saying to itself, "The corporate income tax sucks. Let's prosecute those corporate tax cheats, but not win, because we'll never get Congress to repeal the tax." Or better yet - selectively rolling over and playing dead. Tax the bejeezus out of Google, but lose the case against Halliburton.

Next time, invite the terrorist to mediation . . .

2010-11-18T21:09:00.000-08:00

How can this be? A terrorist who admits to killing a couple hundred people is found not guilty on all those homicide charges, and is convicted only on a single conspiracy charge?

As I understand it, the judge ruled that some available witness testimony was inadmissible because the identity of the witness came from an interview of the accused terrrorist, and the judge thought that interview was coercive. So available evidence was suppressed. Kind of like fruit of the poison tree. So the jury had to deal only with what remaining evidence was presented -- which was evidently insufficient to convict beyond a reasonable doubt.

Yeah, civilian trials affording civil rights to fanatic terrorists will work just fine. (Sarcasm). And the AGs office screwed up a case pretty badly all the while thinking they'd hand the left fringe a victorious show trial.

We are at war. The object of our enemy is to replace our civilisation and history with sharia. They've been at it for over a thousand years, and they'll keep at it for a thousand more if necessary and if we let them. -- until they win. And we are somehow under the protection of an executive branch run by people who seem to want to fight a war for the survival of our way of life with strategies that got them a good grade in moot court and maybe almost got them laid by humourless, intense political chicks.

The hell of it is, these guys think they are being serious.

News of 'toos . . .

2010-11-18T07:01:00.000-08:00

I now have my first tatoo. You can't see it and neither can I. A doctor put it there so he could remember and examine that location later.

So then there's this guy who has 98% of his skin, plus his tongue and the whites of his eyes !!!! tatooed. And not tatooed in pretty forest scenes or animals either. His face is a checkerboard, and the whites of his eyes are blue, and his tongue looks like something like maybe a rotten sea slug that has been washed up on the beach. Everything is inked, and inked, and inked. He did his eyes himself. He's been called the most tatooed guy in Portland.

I'm pretty sure no doctor was involved in his tatoos.

I'm pretty sure that this guy doesn't entertain any dreams of employment of any serious kind. Except maybe being used as a shock display in a human oddity show. Which he can continue to do after he dies, if his hide is properly preserved.

Wonder how much money it costs get 98% of your body tatooed.

Wonder if a need to tatoo everything to the point that you become unemployable -- through some extreme self-mutilation neurosis -- makes a person eligible for some kind of socialized disability payments for the remaining 50 years of life.

Yeah, because that's the kind of thing I can really get into as a taxpayer still contributing to the social security system.

Does she keep the plane? . . .

2010-11-17T15:52:00.000-08:00

I hear that Nancy Pelosi is going to stay on as leader of the Democrats in the House, although she will now be minority leader instead of majority leader, and she will no longer be next in line after the Vice President to take over if anything happens to the President.

This is a reward from the Democrats for her many contributions to the country and her party.

Hope and change? She got the change part -- the House Republicans changed from minority to majority. And she will continue to focus Republican energy on governing as a majority party.

Maybe she can give the Senate and the White House to Republicans, as well, if we let her keep the big Air Force plane to fly back and forth between California and D.C.

People who should neither vote nor procreate . . .

2010-11-16T04:36:00.000-08:00

I don't know if she's my girlfriend or not. I just have her name tatooed on my neck. She just happened to try to cut her name off my neck. She's crazy that way, but I'm okay with that, 'cause I have her name tatooed on my neck. And stuff.

Mid-term elections, gah! . . .

2010-11-03T23:50:00.000-07:00

I'm so-o-o-o glad the election is over. I'm so tired of hearing the haters on the left accusing the right of being negative. I'm really sick of the moral posturing on the right. All the politicians are all spending other people's money, campaign contributions, in an effort to get or keep a job -- where they will collect other people's money, taxes, and spend other people's money. Mooches, every one.

But there are some great questions that were raised in this election. What is the function of government? Is it even possible, using the tools of government, to create jobs, or tolerance, or virtue, or security?

I'm afraid that this election simply highlighted these questions, bringing them into intensely sharp relief. The questions raised in this election weren't answered by this election, even though the ideals espoused by the radical left Democratic National Committee took a "shellacking," according to President Obama. The questions abide. We see that too many of us still don't have jobs, or won't have jobs, and too many have jobs that should not be done. Mooches. Too many are intolerant, while preaching tolerance for their own conditions. Virtue is a joke, something to be mocked in computer video clips, and we are targets of politico-religious fanatics.

We'll not be able to go forward as a nation without finding resolutions to the great questions raised by this election.

The 2012 election season starts beginning now.

What's holding us together , , ,

2010-10-31T08:41:00.000-07:00

Mark Steyn has an interesting take on current affairs, the border wars, and ever-increasing centralized government. Worth a look.

Election relief is just around the corner . . .

2010-10-29T20:13:00.000-07:00

I'll be so glad when this election is over. Politicians will pretty much say or do anything to get power over the rest of us and most of it is blather and nonsense, and a large part of that is condescending and patronizing blather and nonsense.

But once in a while, something shows up that seems sensible to me. Take a look. Since one seldom hears anything like this from politicians, I believe we are engaged in a betrayal whenever we treat a politician with any courtesy or with the appearance of respect.

I accept the fact that they lie by habit and inclination. What I hate is, first, that they expect us to believe the bull and, second, so many do. The true believers, left and right, are called "the base." Politicians play to their reliably thick headed base instead of trying to represent all of us, and lots of them get rich doing so.

Any politician who has served in Washington the least little bit -- has served in Washington way too long. Time for a change.

Lock 'em up? Or what?

2010-10-26T07:33:00.000-07:00

The idea is becoming commonplace that we in the U.S. are locking up way too many people, when compared to most of the rest of the world.

Well, maybe. But what's the chances that a large portion of our population are just plain outlaws in the first place? It's not as if there isn't a strong cultural thread idealizing the young, charismatic outlaw on the run. It isn't as if we have any movies -- or video games -- stressing that decision making should go beyond a knee-jerk and contemplate the long-term consequences of an action.

Aren't we supposed to lock outlaws up?

Beats death or amputations.

I didn't like XP or Vista, and I don't like 7.

2010-10-24T13:56:00.000-07:00

My first operating system was DOS 1.1. My first iteration of Windows was 3.1. I have now spent hours of my life looking at a little graphic hourglass, as Microsoft churns the bits of my computers. Sometimes they are blinking hourglasses. It's almost like a rating system. Microsoft gives your request one hourglass out of five.

Oh, the computer is processing all right. It's sorting through all the files of little cartoon puppies, nutty professors and dancing swizzle sticks to pick just the right tone to inquire of me, one more time, am I absolutely -- last chance now -- really sure fershur? -- honest, now -- sure that I want to do what I just told my computer to do? And do I really want to link to that? 'Cause websites, such as the one hosted by my employer, may not be secure.

Gah! Making the interface different is not improving the product. Computers are not selected for the interface.

It's like they move the contents of your office and desk drawers around every few months. Oh, they hit upon the optimum arrangement years ago and now they are just moving stuff around to be able to provide a fresh new look, despite the fact that for now the television remote control must be stored in a bundt pan in the kitchen just when you got used to looking for it on the pantry next to the tuna, when it was originally, a long time ago, placed on the end table next to where you sit to watch television and it generally worked pretty well there. At least you didn't have to go looking for it.

I know the answer. The ever-increasing, incredible speed and processing power of computers transformed the computing tool into an incredibly effective communication device. Also, it's a toy. And it's really a toy for the Microsoft kids.

Howabout the Microsoft stable of elves start writing code pretty much to improve the computer experience, not the interface? For one, they could make available some simple commands to accomplish everyday tasks quickly and simply. You know, things like, "Copy files on C: to E:/oldstuff." And it would be done.

Oh I know Microsoft wants us to use a mouse. Microsoft believes a good computer experience must be a graphic experience. Well, in addition, you could just give us a list of such like commands and we'll point and click. No graphics; no sound effects. Just. Done. So we wouldn't need ever to see a message that says,

"Windows is hung up and non-responsive because all of your various commands are getting in each other's way because doing the stuff you want done is just way too complicated, doing it the wonderful ways we do it, with the figures of the dancing girls, and the music soundtrack and the countdown clock. And the eyes of the Phoenix fading into the background with a toolbar in his beak. Please try again tomorrow. Would you like to send this message to Microsoft where it can be ignored?"

Or if you really want to do something useful, how about an automatic Microsoft message that says something like,

"Your hard drive has just been trashed by Yuri Buttmunchikoff's computer, located at 27 Splotzplatz Square in Braunshtain, Dirtbagistan. He planted worms in 2 dozen computers located throughout Iran, Iraq, Syria and Djabouti, which in turn infected yours and about 75,000 others so that a little explosive program planted in a waterworks in Washington state will blow up on Halloween. Microsoft has its eye on him and has forwarded his name and address and that of all his wives and one first cousin directly to Interpol for arrest and prosecution, and Microsoft will pay $1000 to whomever can cut off an ear before he is captured by the authorities. And we just melted his computer. Just thought you'd want to know."

Now that would be an operating system, right there. Automatically tracking and busting the web desperadoes would be an awsome accomplishment. I would give it 5 hourglasses.

9-11 Ribbon of Grudge

2010-09-11T11:05:00.000-07:00

Look at the browsers. Bing, Ask, and Google. All have a remembrance of September 11. Google's may be characterized as a "Ribbon of Grudge."

Hey, they had to put something up or the rubes would be all worked up about it, but let's not get all carried away. /sarcasm.

Flaming Koran

2010-09-11T10:54:00.000-07:00

It's okay with me if we don't burn the koran. Read it first, and resolve doubt about the enemy.

Flamers with wheels.

2010-09-10T20:40:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I screwed up. I freely admit doing so. I should have anticipated that another citizen might prefer to run his red light to waiting politely for a green, while I was going through the intersection on a green light.

How fortunate for both of us that your vehicle was equipped with a horn to be used to instruct me in the finer points of driving. I took every honk to heart.

Flamer.

Yahoo Breach Alert.

2010-08-10T18:36:00.000-07:00

For the last eight years, I've been in contact with my students throught email. Many have used Yahoo email for years, and continue to do so. Nothing wrong with being a Yahooer. But recently I've been getting email messages appearing to be from old students whose names I recognize, with "no subject" and the message is some moocher website attempting to interest me in Viagra and such like. I'll get a couple dozen messages all alike, with slightly different URLs, all apparently from the same ex-student. I even got them from my daughter's Yahoo account and I'm real sure my daughter isn't trying to sell me Viagra. And I'm getting these phony emails from a lot of different students, at least a dozen and maybe two dozen different names, and multiple contacts from each name.

Hey people. Somebody has figured out a way to get into your Yahoo address books. For we who are getting all these messages, this is really annoying. But for you whose email addresses are being used, you have to wonder what else of your personal information is being compromised.

I wonder if Yahoo knows about this? And I don't know what you should do about it. I can tell you that blocking things at my end as spam or junk is not stopping the traffic.

And I can also say that whatever unspeakable douchbag has decided this is a good way to sell stuff deserves several pointed toe kicks in the cojones.

Surveys and Things that Suck Rant . . .

2010-08-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

Went to a restaurant -- it's a local chain. At the end of the meal we were handed a check and a little piece of paper asking us to telephone/log-in to take a brief survey. If we did, we'd get something the next time we came in. I won't be taking the survey, just like I haven't taken the survey on all the other times I went to eat there.

What's the chances that you give everybody this survey scam every time, and the little something given as a thank-you for taking the survey really is an incentive to return to mooch out on the little something you get when you return the next time. In otherwords, it isn't information the company seeks. It's return customers.

Oh, and how was it? The food was what we expected. That's why we went there. The new menu sucks, in that any information one might be seeking is cleverly hidden in and amongst the pretty pictures the marketers think must be necessary for the illits they serve, all of whom can presumably be trusted to salivate for the right psychological cues provided a smart marketer, such as the ones who designed the new menu, manipulates the emotional symbolism correctly. Our server never returned to our table with an inquiry about anything further we might require, and we had to ask for a check to leave, for fear of being left sitting there, forever. Our server was engaged in a tedious conversation with a different customer, explaining how our server could not possibly have been 50% responsible for the accident, as his own insurance company had concluded, because he is a safe driver and the other driver was driving a Ford Explorer. I listened to his story -- it couldn't be avoided -- and both he and his insurance company are wrong. He's 100% responsible, and his insurance company is attempting to screw the other driver out of half his claim by asserting our server was only 50% responsible.

But I don't judge. Certainly not. I just don't give my usual 20-25% tip.

Hey, restaurant. Want some real information about how you are doing? You don't need a survey. Just look at your monthly receipts, your head count, and your tips. And I know you know what the tip level is because it's information required for IRS.

If management of a company, any company, wants to improve its business, the strategy is easy. Give excellent service with excellent products at an excellent price, and continuously look for ways you can improve service, products, and price. Don't ask your customers what you could be doing to get better. You should know that already. It's your job. And if you can't tell what constitutes excellent service, product or price, then you are in the wrong job. You should know that. It's your job to know that.

And if you want to find out if your employees are delivering, get somebody to step into a pair of jeans and drive into your own establishment and act like a customer. Or do it yourself. It's your job to know these things. And if your employees are not delivering, don't bother to chew on them or on their supervisor. There's a 95% chance that your company has instituted some policy or procedure, or maybe whole bunches of them, that disincentivize your employees. (I don't think that's a word, but if not, it should be.)

You want a survey? Here's a good one. Only two questions offered to your employees who have direct customer contact.

a. Has the company done anything to piss you off lately?
b. If your answer to the above is "yes", what was it? List as many as apply.

Betcha you'll learn something. Betcha if you try to fix the stuff that bothers your employees, your business improves. Also, keep in mind that sometimes a business is successful in spite of itself. And sometimes a business is successful because of politics. Money coming in isn't necessarily a sign that you are doing something right. Contrarily, money not coming in is definitely a sign that you are doing or have done something wrong. Oh, let's see. Your disincentivised employees have contact with your remaining customers, and you don't.

That's a hint.

Oh, I know. This isn't what they taught you when your were earning your Masters of Business Administration. They were all into statistics and measurement, weren't they? They want you to survey your customers, and they want you to count up the number and type of responses so you can compare survey results over time, and draw charts and graphs. They want you to see what measurements you have that aren't so very good, so you can call those little failure events opportunities for improvement. Gah!

Let me tell you about your M.B.A. degree. I'm sure you worked hard and did all the case studies, and maybe came to be indoctrinated into the M.B.A priesthood and you wholeheartedly believe in everything you learned. Well, you should figure out what was sensible, and what was not. Consider this. The university that gave you an M.B.A. likely offered an undergraduate degree for academic credit -- in women's studies. Or womyn's studies. And paid their football coach more than you'll ever make with your M.B.A. That same university is the one standing for the proposition that you can be taught in few short years, with summers off, how to manage a business where you don't have to be directly in contact with the customers who pay you. That same university is the one that expects you to believe that measurements are superior to leadership, and that employees can be managed by directive and deception, and budgeteering. (Another word I made up. It's kinda like racketeering isn't it, 'cause it shares the same objectives and many of the same methods.)

If you can't figure out the likely cause and a useful solution to the problem of a declining revenue, or one that isn't rising at the rate some imbecile in a necktie budgeted for, then you shouldn't have the job. It's not your customer's job. Their job is to pay for the product and services you offer, if you offer them a better deal then they can get elsewhere.

Figure it out for yourself, sparky. Surveying the customers sucks.

But the worst surveying is the phony survey. There are two kinds. The first phony survey is the one where the surveyor is looking for specific responses it can use for future marketing. For example:

Would you rather shop at Walternatives or insert a rabid wolverine up your own fundamental aperture? a. shop, b. wolverine, c. how big is the wolverine d. what's a fundamental aperture

Marketing message: Sixty four percent of shoppers prefer shopping at Walternatives!

But the worst is the mooch survey. I get these from the Republican party all the time, both by mail and by phone. (I get mooch letters and calls from the Democrats, too. Both parties enjoy the fiction that I somehow must agree with them.) Mooch surveys ask questions that I presumably have responses to and that I'm all-a-tizzy at the thought that somebody cares to hear my response. The questions are all variations of the below:

How bad does Obama suck?
Would you like him to stop sucking?
How bad do Democrats suck?
Would you like them to stop sucking?
Aren't you glad Obama and the Democrats aren't Republicans like us?

But the last question is always something like;

How much money would you like to send us, the non-Obama non-Democrats?

They appear to expect me to put a check in an envelope and put a stamp on the envelope and mail it in. Good thing they don't us a postage prepaid envelope. A person could write "bite me" on the survey, stick it in the envolope, glue the envelope to a brick, and drop the brick into a mailbox. Not that I would do such a thing. I'm basically nice. But I would understand, if somebody did.

In conclusion, it is probably not a surprise that the company I work for likes to survey. The company periodically has a mandatory voluntary survey of employees. It's not a phony survey. The company even honorably publishes the results of the employee survey, to the employees. The survey always has a little place where one can comment by means of writing sentences to supplement marking the little computerized choice boxes. I always offer a few comments, kind of like I might as well as I'm already in the neighborhood, and I feel it is expected of me.

Survey comments are never published.

Basically, surveys suck.

Commercials in our times. . . .

2010-08-06T21:21:00.000-07:00

It struck me tonight. My wife and I were watching television, a thing we don't do often. When we do, it's usually one of just a few cable channels, as there are only a few that are bearable. We have been seeing the same commercial several weeks now, maybe a month. Several times an evening. Actually, too many times in an evening. My wife thought it was advertising a new movie we wouldn't be interested in watching.

I knew better. The commercial features some voluptuous yet firm female in a series of quick-cut female super-action-figure poses, ending with her flashing an insinuating smile. That's evidently what a female super-action-figure does right after overcoming the forces of sleaze and insobriety. Or something.

It was a commercial for lemon flavored vodka. I'm pretty sure.

The commercial had obviously cost considerable bucks to produce, so the ad people were going to get all the good out of it by showing it over and over and over again, all to maximize its influence. And cash registers were ka-chinging in advertising land and television city. I'm sure all the professionals involved in creating this little few seconds of commercial drama worked to the highest standards of their profession to produce a little commercial skit. So the company whose product was supposed to be showcased obvious spent and continues to spend a lot of money for this little commercial jewel.

And the commercial doesn't do a damn thing to make anybody interested in buying the product. It's possible, my wife illustrates the proposition, that intelligent people being exposed repeatedly to the commercial, would remain unclear exactly what product is being sold, here. There was so much art and artifice in putting the message out there, that the message itself was lost somewhere. Probably wasn't all that important to the commercial-making talent.

I would call that a failure. An expensive failure. I think the guys with the checkbook who want the buy a commercial product frequently find themselves unwittingly facilitating a bunch, dare I say it, of self-involved commercial artistes. In other words, the "talent" has the business guys charmed to the point where they've lost sight of the purpose of a commercial, which is to generate increased sales of the product.

You tell me. Does the sight of a hot, self-satisfied, hot woman in a hot, tight yellow hot skin suit engaged in the illusion of stylishly kicking the ass of an obnoxious sleaze with a toupee cause you to want vodka? Me neither. But she looks good, right?

And while she is pleasing to look at, that's not enough to sell a product, whether it's green beans, cell-phones, or liquid fertilizer. And it isn't just lemon vodka, it's all sorts of commercials. Hell, maybe even most of them.

Commercials should say, "Hey, look at this product which you should try because it is either enjoyable or provides some benefit to you." The commercial should not say, "Hey, look at me; I'm creative. I can make stuff you will see on television, paid for by some guys in suits. Hey, seriously, look at me."

Oh, I know. They want to make a commercial that will catch our attention without getting lost in all the many stimuli facing us. I"m just thinking that maybe they are going all out for the getting our attention part, but the selling a product part -- not so much.

In conclusion, first, I think the buyers of commercials should go for more than simply the assurance from the advertising company that it's responsible for increasing the number of eyes at the fairgrounds.. Hold out for a product that works.

And second, I'm getting really bored with the same useless commercials over and over. If there's gonna be bad commercials, can we at least get some new ads? They obviously have the money to spend on the current ad, and commercials pay the bills, right? I promise I'll watch 'em of you guys make new ones. I mean, I'm pretty sure I'll watch new ads. Really, I might watch your new commercials.

-Walt

Git Off'n Mah Proppity or Ah'l sue!

2010-07-24T16:59:00.000-07:00

Drug banditos have invaded and hold two ranches in Texas. An act of war? This is serious, but this cannot be reported on CNN and the U.S. government cannot respond. Would contradict the narrative, doncha know. We can't distract ourselves with this while all of our attention must be directed towards suing Arizona for invading the federal government's turf.

Hope the oil away, yeah, that will work!

2010-07-01T07:07:00.000-07:00

The well isn't the only thing broken. It appears that our government is broken when it comes to dealing with a little good sense. The old statement is that the perfect is the enemy of the good. In this case, good would be a helluva lot better than what we got.

If the Dutch oil skimmers available only get 90% of the oil, well, they aren't good enough. We won't settle for anything less than 99.44% pure unicorn dew. And buttercups.

Won't make a difference at all . . .

2010-06-29T18:10:00.001-07:00

See, A Smoking Gun in the Kagen case. It isn't about the issue. It's about honesty. There's the old test beloved by trial attorneys -- if the witness lies about something, how can you believe anything else they say because they could be lying again. If she says she will judge "impartially and modestly, " well, maybe she has her fingers crossed.

On the other hand, I doubt if this will make any difference. This hearing is just another show for the rubes.

Oh, and banning books is okay, too.

Married to the Congressional Mob.

2010-06-23T07:11:00.000-07:00

You guys have an overwhelming majority in both the House and Senate, and the White House, and you can't, or won't, pass the budget? You know. One of your most important constitutional obligations? Gah! It's bad enough that you can't stick to a budget when you pass it. But what the hell? You don't even have a budget? If we were married, I'd cut up the credit cards. If we were married, I'd want a divorce. You have been taking me and my vote for granted for too long. I want out.

Veteran's Day

2009-11-11T18:30:00.000-08:00

Hey. Google put up a Veteran's Day thingy. Way to go.

Thurpy dogs.

2009-10-25T19:02:00.000-07:00

So I'm standing in line at the grocery store and I looked around, hoping to find a shorter line. I saw a woman standing in line holding a leash and on the other end of the leash was one of those little, furry-all-over dogs with the juvenile facial features so beloved by little old ladies, adolescent princesses and spiritless husbands. It was jumping and running a few steps back and forth on the leash, wagging its dustmop of a tail to spread dog dander, allergens, and its scent all around -- and slobbering on the floor with doggy happiness. With an advanced canine sense of smell, for dogs probably all the odors and scents in a grocery store might be kind of like a hallucinogen drugs for people. (Oh, the colors! The colors!)

Anyhow, I was moved to make a polite comment, "HEY! THERE'S A DAMN DOG IN HERE!"

I forgot I was in Portland, Oregon. People can and do ride bicycles naked in Portland. Seldom are any of the naked bike riders people one would relish seeing naked, but we nevertheless must indulge them in their need to benude themselves. They have the right. The law won't touch them. (Nor would I.) People in Oregon can and do persuade doctors and pharmacists to give them life-ending drugs. The law teaches how to do it. They have a right. (I wonder what would happen if a terminally ill patient got suicide drugs legally, and then gave them to her husband instead of herself. Would she get the death penalty?)

So this being Portland, when I mentioned the dog in the grocery store I was informed that nobody much likes it but not much can be done about it because the definition of "therapy animal" is a unclear. Evidently, a therapy animal may be equivalent to a trained service dog, in Oregon law. So self-indulgent people can drag their pets into the grocery store. I was told there's a some kind of bill being considered in Salem on the subject. So, the store felt it had to look the other way, because it sure didn't want to deal with a novel civil-rights claim by some settlement hungry sue-monkey. And his client. This being Portland, and all.

Having a pet close by is thought to be necessary to the emotional well-being of emotionally broken people.

Okay. But all my life I've seen dogs tied outside the door of stores, waiting for owners to return. I've seen some stores have watering bowls for the comfort of pets who must wait outside. It isn't a problem for the pet, because nearly everybody walking by will speak to the animal. Outdoors. Not indoors.

Maybe we can get a test case going. We need to get a bearded Progressive to drag a dead, flea-encrusted possum on a stick all around Walgreen's, claiming the right based on his so-called great emotional needs, to chase customers out of the store in revulsion. He can claim the need to do so based on the sound advice offered by his emotional counselor, a Native American shaman known as Wah-Wah-Tippito, which means Solitary Coyote in his native language (and whose birth name was Donald Scheisskopf when first born in New Jersey.) That should do it.

Hey. If you don't have a specially trained animal to guide you through the dark, or to alert to the onset of an epileptic fit, or to bring things to you in your wheelchair, or some such, you don't have a service animal. You have a pet. And if you claim the right to bring your pet into the grocery store, you have an atitude.

And if you are given a legal right to bring a dog into the grocery store because it is a comfort to you, despite it being an annoyance to others, then I should be given the legal right to smoke a cigarette after coffee in a restaurant, if I want to.

(Oh, Walt. It isn't the same thing.) Yes. It is. It is exactly the same thing.

The Nobel prize? Really?

2009-10-09T14:10:00.000-07:00

When the French, yeah, the French, can see it, maybe there could be a chance for San Francisco after all.

Remember, it was the French president, of all people, who described our president as naive and narcisstic, when it comes to his approach to atomic threats from Iran. Yeah, the French president. (I may be wrong about this, but my impression is that the last time the French were seriously warlike was with Napoleon. Or maybe back in 1066.)

I don't think it's that the French have decided to "cowboy up." (I'm in Arizona right now, and I heard somebody say that.) I think it's that the French are thinking that they are closer to Iran than we are, and they are seeing Putin "cowboy up."

Could it be that the French are rightly concerned whether or not we could be trusted to come to the rescue, for a third time?

And that's a fair question, the answer to which I'm not at all certain I'm comfortable that I know how it should be answered, let alone how it would be answered when the time comes.

I'm back

2009-08-20T23:48:00.000-07:00

I"m back, but not in a big way. I haven't been blogging on either of my blogs. Politics. Bleagh!

I hear you knocking . . .

2006-06-25T16:59:00.000-07:00

Looking for me? Try here.

Memorial Day good bye to Google. . .

2006-05-29T19:17:00.000-07:00

Has anybody noticed that I've been mad at Google all day? Well, I still am.

Memorial Day Bye Bye to Google.

2006-05-29T18:38:00.000-07:00

Have we all noticed how Google likes to add little artistic changes to the Google logo to commemorate various days of note on the calendar? Just a cute little acknowledgement, a snowman, or something. They even commemorated something as pedestrian as Sherlock Holmes. So, what did Google do for Memorial Day?

Not a damn thing.

Hey, it wouldn't take much and the those sorry sacks at Google wouldn't even have to be sincere. They could just make some little gesture to acknowledge that today is the day set aside on the calendar to remember that many Americans have died in service to their country. Betcha they remembered to stay home from work today.

So, as of today I'm going to disengage from Google. There are other search engines. I can start using my other e-mail addresses other than Gmail. I can take my blog elsewhere.

This isn't about politics. This is about arrogance, and a flat, self-important inability to consider all those Americans who knew, or were related to, or were friends with, or loved somebody who died in their country's uniform -- those Americans who may take comfort in the thought that perhaps for a few moments this day, other Americans will remember and honor their dead.

So --Screwgle.

And I only wish I advertised, or paid for services or owned stock with Google, so I could register my disapproval a mite more effectively.

Bye-bye, Google Memorial Day

2006-05-29T13:11:00.000-07:00

Google may be one of the best search engines there is, but it isn't the only one and it isn't the only one I use.

As of now, I'm no longer using Google to search the web. As of now, I'm looking for another way to blog. As of now, I'm going to start favoring my non-Gmail e-mail addresses.

Here's why.

Google regularly puts up all sorts of little decorative devices on the opening page -- all sorts of little artistic variations on the Google logo to mark special days on the calendar. They can remember to do it for something as relatively trivial as Sherlock Holmes. So what do we have for Memorial Day?

Not a damn thing.

Hey, it's not as if the happy band of Googlers even had to be sincere in acknowledging that many Americans have died in uniform and today is marked down as a day to remember the sacrifices of friends and relatives who died in service of their country. This isn't about politics; it's about rude, self-centered arrogance. But I'll bet the whole sorry pack of Googlers took the day off as a holiday while nevertheless ignoring those for whom Memorial Day is meaningful.

I feel bad that I don't pay Google for their services, or run advertisements on Google or own stock in Google. If I did, I could communicate to Google in a more meaningful way.