On with the crap!

     I have no idea what to write.  I had one before.  Seriously, I did, but through the intervening moments, hours really the thoughts, all of them, have one by one disappeared.  It is an annoyance, truth be told to have forgotten everything that I was going to write about.  But then again if I forgot it that easily, maybe it just wasn’t all that good to begin with.  After all if it wasn’t riveting enough to stay in mind in one form or another for a few hours it could not really have been all that much of a thought, now could it?

  I know what I wasn’t going to write about.  I wasn’t going to write more about the latest developments on the idiot hijacker who tried to blow up that airliner on Christmas morning.   I wasn’t going to write about the New York Giants imploding against the Carolina Panthers, and turning in  one of the worst performances in the history of Giants Stadium in their final game at that stadium.  I wasn’t going to write about the Colts throwing today’s game against the Jets, just so they could rest their players.   I wasn’t going to write about the Health care bill again, at least not today, that subject is one I’ll cover at great length when it gets to conference later. 

    Dammit, what was I going to write about?  A year end, or even decade end retrospective covering my life?  Politics? The world in general?  A scathing expose of SPAM and other types of luncheon meat? NO!

   Well, the meat thing, obviously not, but I am now thinking I will write a few things on life in the aughts.  And yes the decade ends next Thursday, I don’t want to hear it.  Cry to someone else if you think differently.

      On with the crap!

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    Most important event of the decade:  The first election of George W. Bush to the White House (and by extension the decision of Justice Kennedy ruling on the side of Dubya).  That is a “no brainer”. 

     

     What, what WHAT, you say?  What about 9/11?  The invasion of Iraq? The economic collapse of 2007/2008?  The election of Barack Obama?  I tell you that all of these things would either not have happened, or happened vastly differently had Al Gore won that election in 2000.  Iraq never gets invaded.  9/11 happens (perhaps) but the reaction would have been different.  The Bush tax cuts never would have come into effect, meaning smaller deficit and less owed by the government, less money owed to china, the crash of 2007/8 would have had less of an impact, and that recession may well have been over by now. 

    Maybe there would not have been a Barack Obama Presidency without a Bush Administration.  President Obama only came to power after the abuses and horribly unprofessional job done by the Bush White House came to pass made America so unhappy with their leadership that it became job one to toss the bums out and replace them with someone with a new vision.

    President Obama IS President because of George Bush.  Hate Obama? Bush is the reason he’s there.  All roads point to Dubya. And just because he is part of the most important event of the decade, doesn’t make it the best one.

     I think we can talk about other “Best of Decade” events later on.  

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     That’s about it from here.  Later!

Today’s nuggets, By George W. Bush, Via wikiquote:   If you want to kill the bill, if you don’t want to do what’s right for America, you can pick one little aspect out of it, you can use it to frighten people. Or you can show leadership and solve this problem once and for all…

We do not torture.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

Do you feel Secure…

   

    You had to know some schmuck would try this kinda crap.  You had to know he would claim to be Al-Qaeda.  But all the “you had to knows” doesn’t mean you can pinpoint when a loon with a grudge is gonna try to blow stuff up.  That is the needle in the haystack in dealing with this kind of insanity.  Umar Farouk Abdul Muttalab is only a kid, 23years old, and a rich man’s son at that.  

    This kid was apparently scary.  His own father, a former bank President, was uncomfortable with his sons extreme religious views, and in fact he reported his son to the Nigerian government and the U.S. embassy in Nigeria.  And this kid was on a no-fly list.  How the screaming f*** did he get on a plane if he was on a no-fly list?

    Security theatre, that’s how.  If there was actual security, they would have actually read his name on a list and stopped him, if his name was in fact on his ticket and boarding pass.  Even if we grant that he had the brains to go in under an assumed name, something I haven’t heard the full story one way or the other, if there had been actual security at Schiphol airport in The Netherlands, and not just actors playing security guards,  using all the tricks that they have at their disposal, would have sniffed out the explosive components before he got on the plane.

    European Security sucks, the issues in Italy with the pope almost being hugged to oblivion and P.M. Berlusconi having his face used like a baseball over the last few weeks bear that out, but maybe it’s ours that needs a Lil shoring up as well.   But I’m not sure they are necessarily doing it right.  The map above shows how widespread the actual problem is. 

     What I have heard is that all passengers on flights are being strip searched beforehand and not allowed to have anything on their laps, use electronic devices of any kind or get out of their seats for the last hour of any flight.  I heard the last two on a podcast I was listening to earlier today, and frankly it struck me as a bit silly. No electronic devices, no getting up for the last hour of the flight?  Does the flight crew have the capacity to pee for you, or will they be kind and let you piss in a cup?  Just how dangerous is the average passenger who is playing craps on his blackberry?

    Now I can understand having the passenger playing an active role in assisting authorities in reporting, stopping, or even apprehending criminals, but how does this make anyone safer?  Not pissing for the last hour of any flight won’t make any flight safer, and won’t take away any damage of any type done in this attack. 

    It’s security theatre, not actual security.  Had the guys who were supposed to do their jobs actually done their jobs (admittedly an extraordinarily tough and thankless one at the best of times) correctly, this incident would never have happened, or at least not on a plane coming in for a landing with 300 people on board.    So what happens as a result? Inconvenience passengers already inconvenienced to the NTH degree by security measures already in place and make THEM jump through extra hoops.

    Nnnnnaaaaaaaa….. dammit. Al-qaeda sucks. Northwest sucks. Security doesn’t suck, but could have handled this better.  How the hell does ANYONE sneak Pentrite onto an International flight coming to the United States?  And if you can sneak that on a plane, one wonders what else they may attempt to sneak on. 

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It's Da BOMB!

   LULZ…There calling this guy the “Underwear bomber” LOL.  Apparently the bomb didn’t go off properly because the “detonator” was too small … ROFL.  No doubt he fried his “small detonator”  That’s good news, no having to worry about lil “underwear bombers” after that lap full of stupid blew up in his… err… face.

   And how about a round of applause for Jasper Schuringa!

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   And now for something completely different…

 

    That’s it for me.  Later!

Today’s nuggets, from ancient classic texts, via wikiquote:  Who is there, my friend, can climb to the sky?  Only the gods dwell forever in sunlight.  As for man, his days are numbered, whatever he may do, it is but wind.  Epic of Gilgamesh

Incline not to arrogance, famous warrior! Now shall the fullness of thy strength last for a while. But soon after it shall be, that malady or sword shall cut thee off from power, or the embrace of fire or welling of a flood, or onset with the knife, or arrow’s flight, or hideous old age. Or brightness of eyes shall diminish and grow dim, and at length it shall be that death shall overpower thee, noble chieftain!   Beowulf

Ebenezer’s Return

     Hey!  I think something may have happened in the Senate today…I’m hearing they passed some kinda legislation.  Some Republican, whose last name rhymes with” Complainer”  called it bad names, which means it must be good for America. Good enough for me.  He said of it:

Not even Ebenezer Scrooge himself could devise a scheme as cruel and greedy as Democrats’ government takeover of health care

    I thought Ebenezer Scrooge ”knew how to keep Christmas well if any man alive possessed the knowledge.”   Well… by the end of the book he did anyway.  And isn’t how you end at least as important as how you begin?  And who is being the Humbug here?  Why do you Hate, Rep. Boehner?  You are lying about this bills adding to the debt when it doesn’t, talking about it being a takeover of health care when it doesn’t, and saying the rest of the bill will be “hammered out in secret” when that is clearly not the case.  Who’s the Ebenezer Scrooge here?

    John Boehner is in fact Rep. Bah Humbug from The Tanning Salon, and he’s the only one who doesn’t know it. Watch a viddy with George C. Scott in “A Christmas Carol”

   

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    Hugs aren’t always a good thing.  Proof?

     A crazy woman, who apparently wanted to “hug the Pope” was arrested, as she broke through a security barrier, rushed the pope and managed to pull the man to the ground, even with a security guard draped on her.   An 87 year old french cardinal broke his leg falling away from the melee,  although the good news here is that the Pontiff, unhurt, went on with the procession and said mass.  The woman is currently in the custody of Vatican police.  Maybe she was thinking about this?  Who knows…

      First Italian security lets through a man who flattens Prime Minister Berlusconi with a statuette, and now a woman attempts to hug the pontiff with such vigor that bones are broken. One wonders how much training their security officers get. 

      Silly humans.  People are strange, even on Christmas. 

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      I’m watching Santa on Norad’s Santa tracker.  Apparently at 10:00pm New York time, The big fat red bastard is currently flying over greenland.  Two minutes ago he was over Rio De Janeiro.  The man has some hella afterburners on that sleigh.  No wonder Norad follows him.  They wanna find out how he gets that sleigh flying that fast. 

    Maybe it’s all the blow those reindeer do.  Who knows? 

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    I’m done.  Later.

Today’s nuggets, from Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol”, Via wikiquote:  There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.

Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

All The Money In The World…

     …can’t buy happiness, but it can rent it.   No money however, definitely gets you heartache, not to mention stress, and anger, and most of the other negative emotional reactions you can have.  So when they say money can’t buy happiness, they’re talking out of their necks.  Yes it can, insofar as it confers both comfort and stability.  Or do you think that a lack of comfort and stability leaves room for a great deal of happiness? You can have moments of happiness, the joy of friends or the happiness being with the love of your life, but the lack of money, the discomfort that lack confers, slowly destroys domestic felicity.  So while money can’t buy happiness, it does make it easier to hold onto and maintain.

    I’m just saying…

  A Viddy, of the Prez speaking of the meeting he had with community bankers. 

    

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    More money stuff, less philosophical, more actual economic news.  The Government is…actually getting smaller, at least the amount of money it lends, spends and guarantees is shrinking.  The amount, according to Bloomberg news is at it’s lowest point in a year, down to $8.2 trillion dollars.  This is apparently taking place because the Obama white house and congress are shifting focus away from Central Bank lending, and moving more towards stimulus spending, according to the bloomberg report.

  And the big boys are making money again.  Goldman really Suchs has pulled in a record $27.3 Billion in trading revenue, doubling their previous record, and JP Morgan’s trade revenue went up 122%.  So, something must be working right. 

    But were still eyeball deep in debt.  That hasn’t changed.  Let’s hope the small goodness above makes for better news in future regarding that debt. 

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   Hey! More good money news!  We the people have MADE A PROFIT off of tarp!  Srsly!  $16,000,000,000 worth.  not too shabby, seeing how we were supposed to take a financial hit on this.  But that doesn’t mean it’s all happiness and light for us and tarp.  There are over 50 institutions that are late paying it off, mostly smaller banks, but the big issues is AIG.  We gave those schmucks $40,000,000,000 in tarp funds, according to this report ( There was at least $130,000,000,000 more but that wasn’t TARP money as I recall)

   So we haven’t heard the last from this beast of a story.  But at least there something happening that doesn’t entirely suck here.   

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    Off on a serious tangent:  The President says he never campaigned on the Public option.  But he did.  I remember it, and it was on Countdown tonight, showing a viddy of him doing just that.  Is it a disappointment? Ya, a bit, but at this point, you take what you can get, legislatively, and fix the inconvenient issues that arise from the legislation later on.  Despite all the hoopla of the election cycle, when push comes to shove, he’s a politician.  He does what he has to do to get what he thinks needs to be done done when he can do it.  It’s called political expediency, did you think it would never happen with him? No? srsly?

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   Off on a less than serious tangent:  A link which explains why the public option SUCKS, A link with a lawyer joke(that’s right, just one), and a most excellent site for the serious guitarist! srsly! Just found it and dammit, I like it.

    A curious viddy with Yul Brynner to close things out.  Before I saw this I didn’t know the man played guitar. Enjoy!

   

Today’s nuggets, via wikiquote(except that last one, I don’t remember where I got it) :  No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.   Luke 16:13

Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal – that there is no human relation between master and slave.  Leo Tolstoy

A fool and his money are soon partying.  Steven Wright

Minor fix 3:21 am 12/24.

The Good With The Bad

   

    YAY!  The Asshat isn’t running for anything!  Nice!   He’s even being nice enough to put the kiss of death on Rick Lazio!  Talk about being nice to the people of New York.  Thanks Rudy!  He hasn’t been this good to New York…well… EVER. 

    And I really do have to apologize to those who think Rudy is the shit because of 9/11.  Without 9/11 , Giuliani would have easily gone down as one of the worst mayors this city has ever had, and every time this weak piece of horse manure makes a decision that keeps him out of power, i can do naught but applaud. 

   The man said he cut taxes all over the place during his reign as mayor, but didn’t cut nearly as much as he claimed in public, those of us who followed the 2008 Presidential campaign should have no problem remembering him pulling that stunt, lying about his tax record.  He took credit for the drop in crime in  New York City during his tenure, but crime was going down nationwide in major cities during that time, so it wasn’t just him, and most of what he did was harass people with his petty little quality of life crime bullshit.  You really aren’t fighting crime by giving out tickets for having an open beer in public. 

   But Rudy always was about bullshit.  Good to see he’s done.  He was a great prosecutor, I wish him luck wherever he goes, so long as it isn’t in politics.

   And also…. LAZIO SUCKS.

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    A happy viddy/link here from two years ago, about cops as agent provocateurs at protests.  An even happier link from a few months ago, about the link between cursing and pain relief, with an important caveat at the end of the article.   A very interesting link here, a story from ode magazine about something called a “time bank”.  I’m going to do research into this, see what this curious concept can do for me, and the world around me.

    I’m a new member of Stumble Upon, after checking it out and looking at stuff from there on and off for a while.  This is just a sample of the stories I’ve been looking up while stumbling alternative news.  Found this weirdy stumbling through their chaos/complexity section.  Odd Japanese art, one guesses based in some way on fractal geometry.  The sound throws me off here though, maybe it’s there to heighten the artiness of it.   Tis excellent fun though.  Wish I knew Japanese so I could figure out what the hell the script on the page says.

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     Still looking for work, and I am, as I have for the last month or so, been looking at lawyers, getting read to file chapter 7 bankruptcy.  I am still poor and still happy to have a roof over my head.   I’m thankful and happy that I have the support system around me that I do. During this festive time that is the best gift I could receive.

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   OK.  Someone has to explain this one for me.  How are the Yankees a better team after losing 3 outfielders?  I’m glad to have Curtis Granderson.  I’m glad to have ANYONE in the outfield.  Nick Johnson? He’s good, but do we need Nick Johnson?  We have Mark Teixiera at first base, did we need a second first baseman? Or is the plan to MAKE him an outfielder?  I dunno if he was an outfielder in high school or something, but they really need to do something here. 

    And didn’t we already have Javier Vazquez on the Yankees? I remember him being less then great here in 2004, he is suddenly Walter Johnson? I don’t think so.  Unless something happens soon, you can kiss the dream of winning two World Series in a row goodbye.

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   That’s it from here.  Later.

Today’s nuggets, via wikiquote:  We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for thirty or forty or fifty years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don’t see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.  Rudy Giuliani