Set it to music and call it "VA Follies." . . .

So, now the administration has to find a new head of the Veteran Administration, now that the current leader has fallen on his own sword on publication of the incompetence -- and worse -- of health care for vets.

The main qualification of the next appointee? Why, nothing less than the willingness to be the designated scapegoat, later, should it again become politically necessary to protect the administration if and when the quality of care vets once again becomes an issue.

The incompetence of the VA is built in. Most of the employees are protected through collective bargaining and the "employer" has no real competitors to set a "market" price for provided services, and no motivation on the part of management to make a profit by controlling expense. Further, compensation bonuses for management are based on numbers.

Thus VA employees get paid if they report good numbers, whether true or not, and with little bad consequence if not.

We just have to kick the can down the road past the next election by arguing that the cure is in the works.

It's all politics based on the healthcare provided to vets.

Why would we expect anything else?

Cyber dreams in Google land . . .

Google technocrats have been in love with the idea of driverless cars for a while now. The idea is that there should be a car which drives itself to the destination you select, without the need for any human intervention. Using Google maps, and a GPS signal, Google figures they can get you anywhere, with enough proximity detectors on the cars to avoid bumping.

Oh, say. Has anyone ever been misled by Google maps, like, when the roads were changed, or closed? Does Google know where all the bike lanes are, when new ones are added? How about all the new little projections into what were usable vehicle lanes, to stick little nasty, grassy spots to collect water runoff and Starbucks cups? They didn't used to be there. In other words, maps need to change with changes to the roads, and the maps can't always keep up.

Of course, Google is concerned with safety, so they are going to put extra bump padding on the outer surfaces of the vehicles.

And here's the best part. Top speed will be 25 mph. Google says that even if there is an accident, with that speed, nobody should be hurt very bad. Oh, and it will be great if you want to get flaming drunk some night; your car will be your designated driver.

I can't wait. Just the thing to eliminate the stress of rush hour. Just sit in your car; let it drive you home while you play games, or text your friends, or read lies on your I-phone.

And there is always a rush hour stress as everybody is trying to get home and drivers must be hyper alert while driving in rush hour traffic. But, Google says no driving, no stress.

On the other hand, wonder how much the stress of rush hour will be increased when you are stuck following a driverless vehicle which refuses to go faster than 25 mph?

I suspect that it would take no more than a dozen self-satisfied, smug dipshits with Google smart/slow cars, strategically distributed, to make an entire city unlivable.

On the other, other hand, where's my flying car I was promised by Popular Science magazine, back in the fifties?

My power of sarcasm grows weak in the face of overwhelming stupid . . .

Here's a story about a university dropping its gender studies program and replacing it with a course on the United States Constitution. The usual suspects, morons, professionally outraged, and blinkered feminist uglies are outraged. The program being dropped once provided information on how to become a lesbian in a mere 10 days. Of course, we can all see how such a course is needed in our troubled times, and how a course on the U. S. Constitution would be dumb and stupid seeing as how it is no longer of any importance or in any way pertinent to the needs of politicians to be elected and re-elected in pursuit of their expectations of wealth, based on their obviously superior knowledge of pretty much anything.

Boil your water, Portland . . .

Portland Water Board issued a warning to everybody using Portland water, to boil it, not ingest it, this morning. I also got a robocall from the City advising the same. On the 20th of this month they found E. coli in the water, and every day including today.

So. Did I drink water on the 20th? Yes I did. Did I do it again on the 21st? Yup. How about the 22nd? You betcha! And this morning? Why, yes again.

I sure am glad I was warned not to drink Portland water, cook with it, brush my teeth in it, or use any ice cubes made any time since the 20th.

And aren't you glad you voted no on the issue proposal to get water out of city hall politics, because unnamed "corporate polluters". -- unnamed so as to avoid defamation lawsuits -- were supporting the proposed change of administrative responsibility? Oh, and who were the cronies who paid for all the vote no campaign material?

Did I say crony? I meant to say "interested citizen with special access to local ambitious politicians." Yeah, that's what I meant.

Sucker Lists and the suckers who are on them . . .

Just got a phone call from a local charity we've given to in the past. No big surprise. They are running short of funds for their current programs and they need more money to keep on keeping on.

But in addition, they've just started an exciting new program to serve an additional population segment, and they need money for that, as well.

Why would you start a new program you couldn't pay for, when you already are doubtful of taking care of the existing needs?

Oh, well. I shouldn't be so critical.

At least the phone caller wasn't trying to convince me that they are from Microsoft and my computer has a scary problem they can fix with the simple disclosure of credit card information. Had two of those calls today, alone, despite the fact that Microsoft publishes that it never telephones people to alert them to problems they didn't know they had. And Microsoft certainly never initiates phone calls from Mumbai.

Oh, no. When Microsoft needs more money, it issues a wonderful, new version of Windows and stops supporting old versions.

I must be on a list of some kind.

The Clipper hugga-muggah

Oh, Lordy, Lordy. Turns out that the owner of a basketball team made a racist comment. Punishment must be swift and painful. Take his team away from him! Magic Johnson might want to buy it, and the owner doesn't want his girlfriend hanging around with such people.

Except that it isn't illegal to be a racist. Yet.

Even if the fact of his racism means you would be perfectly entitled to decline to shake hands with him, turning your back to him and holding him in open and obvious contempt

It is, however, illegal to discriminate unlawfully based on race.

So far as I've heard, the owner is okay with whatever racial characteristics basketball players have provided they have talent, and he pays them appropriately to their value to the team and in proportion to the pay of other basketball players in the league. And probably all out of proportion to their real contributions to society and western civilization

And we don't have thought crimes punishable by Big Brother.

Yet.

The difference between men and women . . .

Nailed it.

The Great Nevada tortoise standoff

It's been not so widely reported that a Nevada rancher pissed off the federal Bureau of Land Management so much, that there were as many as 200 armed agents surrounding the area, with helicopters and hired cowboys who were going to round up and confiscate the rancher's cattle and kick the rancher off the land. It was also reported, even less widely, that the action was motivated to aid the desire of a powerful majority leader in the Senate, to make a deal to let a Chinese outfit set up some sort of operation on the lands. The BLM says it is necessary to get the cattle off the land to protect a coupla dozen land tortoises.

I'm not certain how much of the reports to believe, but there certainly were hundreds of armed agents focusing on one American rancher family. The feds set up a little fenced in "first amendment" area, where, if somebody wanted to say something covered by the first amendment, they had to go to the little first amendment area, or else risk arrest for obstruction.

Anyhow, quite a few citizens from several states, near and far, showed up with guns and megaphones and arranged themselves in opposition to the federal agents. Nobody wanted to take the first shot, but . . .

No shots were fired, but blog speculation had considered the event to be a possible beginning of a civil war and tossed around speculations about Ruby Ridge, and Waco. The backdown happened coincidentally almost immediately after the reports of the Chinese desl were published.

So what happened? The feds backed down and went away. Cattle have been released, except for some that the BLM says it intends to sell, and pay something to the rancher who owns the cattle. The government announced that it was abandoning the operation in Nevada, but it intended to continue to pursue the issues "legally;" presumably that means in the courts.

Here's my question. If the government intends to pursue the matter in the courts, well, why wasn't that the first plan, not the backup plan? Oh, and if the government now plans to pursue the issue "legally", isn't that an admission that their coercive actions up to this time have been extra-legal, or illegal?

Just sayin'

I used to be a skeptic, but now I'm just cynical . . .

I've frequently pointed out that all government and law is, at bottom, a prediction or warning of the application of force, or the actual application of force. The only difference between force applied by the government and the thug who threatens your life if don't hand over your cash or belongings, is that government claims a moral right, and the governed generally concede that the government's application of force is moral. Otherwise, force is force, and it doesn't feel good if you are on the wrong end of it.

Danfromsquirrelhill supplies a list of 634 instances of immoral government.

If the source of immoral force is your enemy, then -- our government is our enemy. The only distinguishing factor is whether or not you, in particular, have been singled out for government action.

Multnomah County, Oregon,Tax Suckers . . .

Once again, we have to deal with the Multnomah County, Oregon, Arts tax. We are assured that this tax is permanent, and that this tax is not an unconstitutional head tax.

The tax is to hire extra arts teachers in the public schools, because there isn't enough money for teachers after first supporting a bloated, over-staffed administration. That's half for teachers. The other half if for "the arts."

Oh, we are also assured that this tax was approved by voters, many of whom earn little or no money and therefore won't pay the tax, because of the unemployment circumstance here, or because their college degree is in stuff like Phony Studies, or Communications, or -- Art, none of which degrees are known for an abundance of employment opportunity. You can't get a job in a Phony Studies company, for example. All such degrees are not really intended to increase the information available to the student, or to increase their fitness for the world they will face after graduation. The purpose of such degrees is to make the student feel good about themselves.

I guess if you have such a degree, your only hope is to get a job with some outfit that doesn't have to bring anything valuable to the marketplace -- such as government, where revenue is all taxes.

As you know, taxes are primarily intended to support the pet project of politicians -- that is, that portion of tax revenue left over after taking care of political cronies.

Last year, at about this same time, I suggested we should have a similar "math" tax, which would hire math teachers. Soon thereafter, there appeared a thunderous lack of interest in such an idea.

Because culture belongs to everyone . . .

So the government moved in and seized a collection of artifacts from a 91 year old Indiana man. Read about it. The motive is to catalog the stuff. one by one, and find out where the owner got them, in hopes that they may find out it's something he shouldn't have, even if it was legal to acquire it when he acquired it. Or some such.

Did they amend the constitution to eliminate the Fourth Amendment sometime while I was out of town, and nobody told me? Shouldn't there be a search warrant involved in this mess, somehow, which would indicate what probable cause exists to think a crime had been committed?

Or is it just that goons are exempt from constitutional limits and anything they do will be blessed by judicial authority on the assumption that everything the government does must be reasonable, somehow, by definition?

What can we learn, here?

Better not own any stuff that has some cultural significance, whateverthehell that means. Cultural stuff is collective property because it is cultural, meaning that it belongs to the collective and government has the right to say who gets and who can't have what.

I just want to say that I, for one, am glad that our government masters are monitoring all communications, including this one, and that I'm glad our government overlords are looking out for the collective good of all when it comes to private collections of cultural artifacts. Everybody knows that private ownership of property deprives all the non-owners of the use of that property and is therefor unfair.

Poor Baby!

Have you seen that ad where the actors complain that they could only afford to travel on one vacation a year?

Aw. Poor baby! lots of people can't afford to do even one, even if they get a vacation, and lots of people don't have jobs to take a vacation from, let alone rent hotel rooms and buy airline tickets. And these people, aided by their travel company, exult because they vacay twice a year.

Hey! They aren't even politicians, let alone the politician-in-chief.

And now, on top of everything else, the Ukraine is a challenge to . . .

The presidential response to the Russian incursion into the Ukraine is basically, that there's nothing we can do about it, now. Before the incursion, we had that fine, time-tested strategy of endlessly talking about it. This administration calls that diplomacy. Just keep talking until both sides in conflict come to some sort of agreement, the terms of which are immaterial. For example, we talked and talked with the masters of Iran about our sanctions imposed to impede Iranian nuclear bomb development, until we finally mutually agreed to end the sanction in return for the Iranians continuing to pursue nuclear erasure of Israel. Ain't diplomacy cool?

But as for the Russian armed entry into the Ukraine, like the Islamist armed entry into Begahzi diplomatic offices, we couldn't do anything, so we did nothing -- except to try to minimize the perception that the combination of a basic ineptitude with a big head leads to one bad event after another. But ultimately, as Hillary said, what difference would it make? The one trying to make a difference is the same person with the same character that made the mess more likely in the first place.

So, we can abandon the Ukraine with our sense of self intact, because, basically there's nothing we can do about it, now that we've downsized our military (look it up) because we weren't going to use it anyhow. Our modern diplomacy (see Iran) is, after all, so much less muscle headed.

We used to have nations that were our friends, and we used to have nations whose friendship could be relied upon because it was bought and paid for. Now, what nation feels it could rely on our friendship, or our promises? After all, the Ukraine gave up its atomic bombs in return for our promise that it wouldn't need them because we would protect them from being re-absorbed into the Russian hegemony to come.

But, there's nothing we can do about it.

A question comes to mind. Exactly why is it there's nothing we can do about it, and who is to blame for our current impotence in world affairs?

Hint: the source resides in the halls of government and academia, and in the newsrooms, and is supported by a large number of unelected tools, and under-informed stooges.

But at least I don't have a moment to spare to reflect on our sad, dangerous, out of touch and corrupt government ,. , ,

Okay, so I've been away from home, and will continue to be so until the end of March. Very little time available to think of anything consequential, midst all of the child care going on. I think child care used to be easier forty years ago -- I don't remember it being this tiring.

As for the rest, well, the first part of February about the most exciting thing we did was watch the snow fall. Now, the most exciting thing I'm doing is watching the snow melt.

I have become quite good at putting a little four month old baby to sleep, thus earning the name, "Mr. Excitement."

The only problem now, is that I cannot either stand or sit without quietly rocking back and forth at the exact best rhythm to put a baby to sleep. Of course, I now resemble one of those poor wretches who sit and rock all day by reason of a brain injury.

I worry about becoming a head banger.

Hooray for Hollywood . . .

my bride and I watched Gone with the Wind a few days ago. It's a great old movie, made, I think, in 1942, maybe 1941. More importantly, compare it to nearly anything coming out from the movie industry in the last few years and I think it's clear that the industry has basically lost its way.

It's a matter of values.

Some people are irony impaired . . .

Some people in North Carolina intend to protest the requirement that voters show photo identification to vote. Showing ID = bad. Might suppress votes.

Of course, that is exactly what the id requirement is intended to do, suppress votes, that is, votes cast by people who are not eligible to be registered to vote, including "duplicate" votes of voters registered in more than one jurisdiction, disenfranchised voters because of felonies, and fraudulently cast voters of dead people, etc.

And that's why requiring I.D. is thought to be bad -- because no one knows what might happen or who might win, if the traditional ways of rigging election returns are eliminated. Why, if you allowed elections to be decided by only those citizens who took the trouble to properly register and vote, and you counted only those votes and reported the total accurately, well, that would be like telling citizens that their vote mattered. And politicians benefit from the cynical conclusion that votes don't matter. A citizen needn't bother to research the issues or character of the candidate, if his vote won't matter anyway. And if he does vote, since his vote probably doesn't matter anyhow he can do so confidently with little thought, because if it turns out his vote was foolish, it doesn't matter anyway, right?

Anyhow, here's the good part. To participate in the march to protest requiring photo identification to vote, protesters have to show photo identification!

You can't make this stuff up. Makes you real likely to think highly of the political thinkers who thunk up this stuff.

In other words, they really thunk up the place.

"The mother of mediocrity is the university." . . .

A plague of ambitious mediocrities -

It's worth reading and thinking about.

The State of the Union cotillion . . .

A little bit ago I heard Ex-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi say in an interview that the Republicans should take their party back from all the extremists who are ruining it for everybody. Said extremists hate government, hate science, and hate Obama. So Republicans should take their party back. She probably should have thrown in "hate women" and it would have improved the rhythm of her rhetoric without in any way blotting the essential silliness of the statement, nor added any element of truthfulness to it. So I'm going to assume she left women out of the hate equation inadvertently, and give her credit for it

And by the way, the "Ex" part of Pelosi's title ought to suggest to her what the mood of the electorate is, seeing as how the Democrats remain the minority party in the House even after President Obama's re-election. But maybe she missed that.

Anyhow, she was being interviewed on the eve of the Presidential State of the Union report. Hey, he could have just put it in writing and had it delivered to Congress, as was done for many years. But if he had done that, he would have deprived all of our political masters of the satisfaction to be gained by assembling the entirety of government, legislative, executive, judicial, together in one large room for them to congratulate themselves and preen before television cameras as the President pranced into room, hyped up in knowledge that these weighty political lords and barons intended to stand and applaud each presidential utterance, burp, and pose.

Maybe Mrs. Pelosi is right in a way. I don't myself consider myself a Republican and haven't done so for easy fifteen years. But I think the Republicans would certainly benefit by taking their party back, as Pelosi suggests. I just don't think the people running the Party are all that wrapped up in hating government, science, women, and Obama.

I know I don't hate government, being of Social Security age, and I don't hate science, and I'm really sure I don't hate women. I've never met anybody who plain hated government in general, even if they hated this particular government in this moment. I've never met anybody who hated science, even if they thought certain scientists were roaring, raging, flaming, gaping assholes. I've met people who hated women but they didn't start out that way. It kinda crept up on them. And I don't think all that many, if any, people hate Obama. Despise him, sure. Loathe him, maybe. Fear him, probably. But not hate. Hey, nobody has even tried to shoot him yet, and remember, Reagan got shot, Kennedy, Jack and Bobbie, got shot. There's precedent, in other words, and when somebody shoots, that's hate.

For that matter maybe the Democrats should try to take their party back from the redistributers, and the regulators, and the race pimps, and the cronies, and the Marxists, and all the fellow-traveling mouthbreathers infected with excessive self-esteem earned by claiming to care about social issues and sciency stuff, and who demonstrate the same by attending the required demonstrations and sporting caring bumper stickers, many of which nearly make sense but even if they don't, entitle the bearer to a warm, smug feeling of superiority.

On the other hand, why should Republicans, in particular, bother? They're pretty much against most of the stuff President Obama wants to do to the country, good and hard, but it really doesn't matter who is in charge of the party. Why? President Obama has stated that he intends to go it alone, without lawful legislation of Congress, and with or without the approval, advice and consent of Congress. He is going to rule by executive order and doesn't need any stinkin' legal restrictions imposed on him by so-called constitutional limitations. It doesn't matter what the Republicans and Democrats in Congress do, or don't do.

Deadlocked? Who cares? Not President Obama? Doesn't need 'em.

It occurs to me that President Obama's stated intention to institute his agenda by bypassing constitutional procedures makes the votes of Congressmen, Republican and Democrat alike, meaningless, and in turn, makes the votes of the citizens who elected Congressmen to represent them in Congress, likewise, meaningless. We are, essentially, deprived of legislative representation when the executive legislates through executive order.

In that connection, I seem to recall that some years ago a group of upset Americans gathered together one night in Boston to communicate objection to being deprived of effective representation in their legislature of the time -- Parliament.

Just a stray thought, probably means nothing.

State of the Union address . . . Snore! . . .

Blah blah, income equality . . . All Americans . . . War on women . . . The environment . . . Fair share . . . Protecting privacy . . .

Any surprises are sure to be inadvertent and every solution to every problem, real, imagined, or invented, will be at least 75 years stale and a proven failure, at best, and lethal, at worst.

But I'd watch it if there were any chance he'd be heckled. "A consummation devoutly to be wished."

Really? Give me a break . . .

Those who know me know I'm really into golf. So it shouldn't be a surprise that I'm interested in pro golf tournaments. I like to watch the LPGA because the ladies frequently show better fundamentals than the men, and I can learn from that, and I have a better chance of driving the ball as far as the women.

This summer the ladies are having a major event at Pinehurst a week after the PGA will have a tournament on the exact same course. That should really be interesting, to see what the women can do in comparison to the men.

But I heard that some of the ladies are worried that the course will be beat up from the men playing on it just a week before.

Give me a break. It's Pinehurst for heavens sake, and you can bet your grandmother that the course will have pretty much nothing but maintenance for the intervening few days between the tournaments. No golf course is perfect but tournament golf course preparation is a far cry from what most of us see -- even club golfers.

And public courses? The ladies are worried about three and four day old divots? You go to public courses and you'll even find divots on the driving tees where some poor hacker has taken a divot with his driver, four inches behind the ball and two inches deep -- after having done the same thing with a practice swing. Then he does it again, fifteen yards ahead, because that's as far as the ball dribbled after he hacked up the tee box. Then, eventually, he slams his putter into the green leaving a small trench, because he missed his fourth putt that was only eight feet away from the hole.

So what do everyday golfers do in such conditions? Play it as it lies and accept what the course gives you. That's what golf asks.

Give me a break. Top pro golfers are a coddled bunch. Watch one of 'em throw a small tantrum because a camera clicked or a mosquito farted in the next county, as he was making a backswing. Compare that to competitive gymnastics where a little fifteen year old girl will do a cartwheel into a front flip and land in perfect balance with her little feet on a four inch balance beam, all while music is playing elsewhere in the gym for floor exercises while the spectators are cheering and hooting for some other little girl in a different location flying around the uneven parallel bars. And pro golfers want silence as they hit a ball.

No golfer ever risked a concussion or broken collarbone or a shredded knee while competing.

Well, one thing. Pro golfers, men and women, don't get paid for just showing up. Sure, they live a coddled life compared to most of us, but their comfort is nothing to pro basketball players, who get a million or two for dogging it up and down the court, whether the team wins or loses, after having been exempted from all the normal expectations and rules of civilized human social behavior from the age of fourteen on, because they reached the height of six foot three in the eighth grade.

Give me a break.