Can you say "ersatz," boys and girls? . . .

I drink no-fat milk.  I use whole wheat spaghetti noodles and pizza dough.  I eat low fat cheese.  I use turkey sausage, not pork.  One morning, for breakfast, my wife made "pancakes" using grated apple, banana, and egg.  (They were good.)  I use artificial sweetener.  My hamburgers have no burger in them, so they have soy and nuts instead.  I think the little bits of bacon in my salad are really flavored bits of brown styrene.  My buttery popcorn involves no actual butter.

I could have teeth "whiter than white" by use of an inexpensive product.

My shirts don't need ironing after washing. 

My car shifts its own gears.  The gasoline in its tank comes partly from corn alcohol.  The fabric of my pants comes from an oil well.

So, it occurs to me that I am living an inauthentic life.  And I'm not alone in that.

Is it then any wonder that we can hear the pitchman on television say, "Get the facts, just try it for yourself," and not even hear the  clanking of the logic underneath that statement? 

All the phony we live with has nourished our stupid quotient.  (If you can have an intelligence quotient, I.Q., then you can have a stupid quotient.)

So, don't get me started on politicians.

Bad moon rising . . .

IRS is being sued for going far beyond the scope of a search warrant and seizing all sorts of patient treatment records, far in advance of 4th Amendment limits. 

Keep in mind that IRS is given enforcement obligations for Obamacare. 

If IRS won't "play by the rules," why are the citizens required to report honestly, on penalty of criminal punishment? 

Are we getting closer to when massive and pervasive civil disobedience is in order?

Freedom of speech . . .

The Homeowners Association said he couldn't have an American flag in his yard, so, as a good neighbor, he took the flag down and freshened the look of his home.  Take a look.

That'll show 'em who's boss . . .

So the acting head of IRS had turned in his notice that he was quitting in June.  in response to the IRS scandals - one of the four breaking out in Washington at the moment - the President fired him.  Two weeks before he was going to leave on his own.

The President wants us to know that sometimes doing the right thing means being a hard-ass.

Happy 21st Century Mothers Day

Mothers Day.  Once, 'twas an honored and harmless commercial tradition of coercing males to spend money on useless trinkets, flowers, and over-priced buffets.

Now, in the politics is everything age, it is a splendid opportunity to increase breast cancer "awareness," whateverthehell "awareness" is supposed to actually mean.  Also, a good time to celebrate and encourage abortion rights for reluctant breeders - they's kinda the same thing as mothers, right?

Fathers Day?  The kids spend five minutes crayoning a card. 

Increased awareness of prostate cancer?

Cue the sound of crickets.

Hey, make me a sammitch . . .

Washington State Senator Jeannie Kohl-Welles

is sponsoring a six year effort to go through all the laws of Washington and remove all mentions of men, males, and suchlike so as to make all official language gender neutral.  It's going to be a six year process to bugger the language so as to make men aware of their reduced status in a modern world run by women who are mighty.  Hear them roar.

So, instead of watchman, we'll have watchperson.  Also, there'll be firepersons on duty and people can make a living or just be fisherpersons for a hobby.  Instead of penmanship, we'll have something horrible like good write-itude.

I guess Senator Jeannie Kohl-Welles has checked around and satisfied herself that having a hyphenated name entitles her to a mandate.  I mean persondate.

And for manhood and womanhood, I guess we could go with "convexity" and "concavity" to refer to traits normally associated to distinguish gender behaviors.

One can make jokes about this endlessly, but I'm pretty sure Senator Jeannie Kohl-Welles would not "get" any of them. 

The sad thing is that this sort of effort to achieve gender neutrality in the language can only grow out of a sense of inferiority.  I suspect that women who are comfortable with themselves don't get their ears hurt when they hear the word "fireman." 

This can't be the new normal, can it? . . .

The report says that a young woman couldn't enter a stranger's home in the ordinary way, like, maybe ringing the doorbell or knocking on the door.  So the young woman, being unusually small, took off her black dress and crawled through the doggie door.  The homeowners, hearing odd noises, investigated, and found her sitting in the bathtub, no water, naked.  She was in due course arrested.  When being taken into custody, she told the cops she didn't think she was doing anything wrong, sitting naked in a bathtub in a home she entered through the doggie door.

What do you say to an unknown naked girl in your bathtub?

And what's going on between the ears when a young woman thinks it's okay to take off all her clothes and crawl through the doggie door into a stranger's home?

I know, nobody is ever actually told, specifically, that as you go through life you should never take off all your clothes and crawl through a doggie door and go sit naked in a strangers' bathtub. 

But we all pretty much agree that that's something not to do, without being told.  Right?

I know this must be true, because in all these years I've never met an unknown naked woman in my bathtub.  I have a camera for just in case.

Where do terrorists come from? . . .

Many observers of public affairs express fear that all of the many no-neck mouthbreathers who make up the political right will collectively rise up against poor, pitiful not-hurtin-nobody Muslims, because said mouthbreathers are ignorant Americans, "clinging to their guns and religion."

No sign of it yet.  Wonder here do we keep 'em?

Americans pretty much know that not all Muslims are terrorists, so there isn't any general persecution of Muslims forthcoming.  And that's the truth.

On the other hand, while not all Muslims are terrorists, the terrorists have all been Muslim.  Not one damn Buddhist in the lot.  And that's also the truth.

So, if anybody is looking to find a terrorist, I wouldn't spend a lot of time looking at the membership of, say, some Presbyterian church.

We need to do something . . .

It's far too easy for people to go to kitchen utensil conventions and to buy pressure cookers from unlicensed vendors there.  We need tougher laws governing selling of pressure cookers, licensing, and background checks.  Because if we can save one life, and because shut up.

Latest science news . . .

Some scientists have been studying vertebrate brain structure, and there are similarities, in all vertebrate nervous systems, no matter whether fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, or mammal.  After much brilliant work with that part of the brain that deals with hoots and calls and language in humans, scientists can now understand the meaning of sparrow bird calls.

It turns out that "tweet tweet twitter peep twitter," doesn't mean, "good morning to all the world!"

It means, "Back off or die, motherfuck!"

John Kerry be clowns himself again . . .

Kerry said that we are "all united," and North Korea will "never be accepted as a nuclear power."

Never be accepted!

He went to elite schools, was admitted into elite clubs, and has unwaveringly thought of himself as one of the superior, able to identify all who fail to measure up for membership in his exclusive digs.

Hey John.  You don't get to say who gets to be a nuclear power.  If the get ahold of a bomb, they're a nuclear power.  Q. E. D.

Doofus!

Just a little observation . . .

Have you noticed how frequently mouthbreathers and dropouts feel the need to instruct others?

The Supreme Court prepares to screw up gay marriage . . .

Everybody has a right to get married.  Nobody has the right to marry whoever or whatever they choose.  You can't marry somebody who doesn't want to marry you back.  You can't marry somebody who is only six years old. You can't marry somebody who is already married to somebody else.  You can't marry more than one at a time.  You can't marry your pet St. Bernard bitch, no matter how comely she may be.  You can't marry a unicorn.

The gummint gives specific legal rights to people who marry according to the gummint's specific marital prescriptions, like rights to consent, rights to pass on property, tax distinctions, etc.  Rights are legal conditions created by government.  Not all rights belong to everybody. If so-called rights to marry are extended beyond the boundaries of the specific marital prescriptions, they cease to be rights.  They become property.

 

The problem isn't that gay people are denied rights available to married, straight people. The problem is that special privilege has been granted to married people. Why should marriage, a public confession to strictly private behavior, be given any special privilege at all?

 Want more rights for gay people?  Consider that at the state level, citizens vote on issues of rights all the time, while also voting for representative candidates.  There are even referendum privileges where citizens can propose changes to laws granting or reducing rights.  But at the federal level, citizens only vote for representative or executive candidates, never issues.  We are stuck with the fact that Congress and the Executive can and will act only as they damn well please. 

 

But at the state level, we get to vote.  That's a hint that the right to marry is a state issue, not a federal issue.  Some states permit gay marriages; some don't

 The issue of marriage only seems to be of federal concern when it arises between the states, as when state A permits a couple to marry, where they would not have been permitted to marry in state B.  We've always relied on the theory of full faith and credit to resolve these matters, and that's why somebody came up with the cockamamie Defense of Marriage Act.  At the federal level!  Thereby putting the federal government and some state governments at odds, and creating a 10th amendment quandary to be ignored by the buttheads of the right who didn't like getting outvoted.

I don't see marriage as one of the enumerated powers of the U.S. Constitution and it sure as hell isn't covered under the interstate commerce dodge, where butthead progressive types seem to find justification for most of their pet notions. 

 So it seems to me that the DOMA is the problem and could be dumped for unconstitutionality. 

 

What to do if you are gay, in a committed, loving relationship, and your state of residence is not one of the states permitting gay marriage?  Move to a more congenial state, and marry, butthead.  (I suggest that anybody contemplating marriage, straight, gay, or just bent a little funny, should take a look at divorce law while looking at marriage law.) 

Thus Walt hath spoken, fully anticipating the Supreme Court to pay no attention whatsoever to the words of Walt.

Science question . . .

Tardigrades.  Okay, so I now know you can't drown them, freeze them, roast them, starve them, or dry them out, and they can survive in the cold vacuum of space.  They will survive.

Can you squash the little buggers?

Portland has an arts tax . . .

Portland, Oregon, has a permanent tax on everybody, for the arts.  Every resident of Portland over age 18, who has income, must pay $35.00.  Shut up and send the money in.

The revenue raised by the tax is going to be spent, half, to get more arts teachers in the schools.  the other half will be spent for "the arts".  I think that means for cronies, cuddle buddies and fellow travelers.

This tax was the result of a vote.  Voters approved it.  Wonder if the voters would be just as jazzed by the idea of a math tax, to hire more math teachers in the public schools, and the other half -- for math?  Hey, where are people most limited, in their ability to appreciate artistic expressions, or in their ability to understand and use basic number relationships?  What holds more people back in their prospects for a comfortable life, the inability to understand percentages or the inability to distinguish between crimson and scarlet?

How about this.  I'll pay the tax and they won't have any problem with me.  I like art and I can afford it.

But there is a whole 'nother issue.  If this law is later held to be a  head tax and therefore unconstitutional, as legally it ought to be, I'll expect my refund to be paid promptly without giving me any problems.  But deep down, I expect that that's 35 dollars I'll never see again. 

Because it truly isn't about the constitution or the arts; it's all about who gets to spend my money and what they choose to spend it on

Just sayin' . . .

Have you seen the car commercial showing the doofus in the white shirt and necktie trying to teach his kid how to play catch?  Doofus has to keep chasing the ball 'cause kid can't get the ball to him -- because the kid is throwing as awkwardly as his father.  Dude throws like an African-Indonesian with a Hawaiian birth certificate.

Mandatory Sequester comment . . .

Remember that around a year ago, President O said that he would veto any congressional attempt to avoid the sequester of funds, which he demanded?

Nah, they didn't think you would.

For the last six years (that includes Bush, doncha know, but doesn't exclude Obama) the American population has suffered continual erosion of their family budgets, both through price increases, like gasoline, and through loss of revenue, from job losses and income reductions.  And our federal rulers can't find a way to reduce expenses and are yelping about national disaster in the form of a mere 1 or 2 percent reduction in spending?  When spending already exceeds income by a hell of a lot more? 

The sequester would be a decent first step towards resolving the problem, even though insufficient in and of itself.  And it won't be a disaster, that is, it won't be a disaster unless it is implemented disastrously to punish the impertinence of people who don't think that increased government spending must be supported in any and all cases and by any means possible.

We have fallen in amongst bandits.

Should we start looking for cover? . . .

Last year our government bought, according to published information, 1.2 billion rounds of hollow point ammunition.  That's not our military; that's government civilian agencies like Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service.  Simple math tells us that there are multiple rounds for every man, woman and child in the U.S. 

And your little dog Toto, too.

Wonder if our government masters are planning to do something they expect will seriously arouse the citizen subjects?

State of the Union Speech . . .

Oh, this guy is go-o-od!  Slick can get it done, can't he?

I mean, when you watch and listen to the speech, it sounds really terrific.  There are points where you feel like standing up and cheering.

But then when you read the speech, and you are restricted to the cold, hard logic of English sentence structure --  he repeatedly contradicts himself, that is, when what he is saying isn't actually nonsense or false to fact. 

But it truly sounds so good, doesn't it?  'What we have, here, is a seamless blend of "finally, somebody who gets it,"  with "this guy just doesn't get it."

I guess that's why commentators have termed him, "magnetic."  He has a positive, attractive pole and a negative, repulsive pole.  All in one.

These people perturb me off . . . mightily . . .

The currently fashionable snark of the right hand side of the political spectrum is to refer to people on the left as "low-information voters." Well, guess what.  There's low information voters on both sides, and in far greater numbers than there should be. 

But that isn't the real problem.  An absence of information can be corrected.  It's bad information that is the problem.  And where does the bad information come from?  News media just publishes stuff.  It normally doesn't create the stuff it publishes.  (The key word is "normally.")

When it comes to politics, the news media gets the information from the political people  - the politicians and all their operatives, suckups, agents and cronies.  The truth isn't in them.  Right and left, blue and red, conservative and liberal, fat cats and wellfare pimps, bullies and whores, big and small government believers, all of them, with the constant 24/7/365 spin, "analysis", and polls, are responsible for the fantastic, bad information breathlessly published, also 24/7/365,  by the news media.

Is there anybody left who isn't convinced, by now, that except for the religious terrorists in the middle east, the source of all the problems and challenges facing us is Washington D.C., and all the state capitol buildings?

I hereby move that it be resolved that we relentlessly present all politicians with nothing but disrespect, sarcasm, mockery and contempt.  It shouldn't be hard to do and we get plenty of opportunity.

They've earned it.