The Day’s News

2005 tornado in Oklahoma

Over 100 dead in Joplin, Missouri. Over 1000 missing.  8,000 buildings destroyed.  More storms moving through the area.  It is  looking like this year will be among the worst tornado season’s this nation has ever seen. The average year has about 1,275 tornadoes, at least during the last decade.  We’ve hit 1000 and it isn’t even Memorial day yet.

More tornadoes around today, killing several more in Oklahoma and Kansas.  More expected tomorrow.

Might not be the apocalypse, but I’m sure the people in Joplin might argue with you about that.

If you would like to help, donate to the red cross.  Those people need help.

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Viddy of the day:  Joplin, Mo. damage estimated at $3 billion

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Then the wind struck the school. The walls seemed to fall in, all around us. Then the floor at one end of the building gave way. We all slipped or slid in that direction. If it hadn’t been for the seats it would have been like sliding down a cellar door.

I can’t tell you what happened then. I can’t describe it. I can’t bear to think about it. Children all around me were cut and bleeding. They cried and screamed. It was something awful. I had to close my eyes…

Gorham school student, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 20th, 1925

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Now for something completely different…

With 89% of the vote in as of 11:00pm, in NY 26, a district in northeastern New York state, Democrat Kathy Hochul defeated Republican Jane Corwin by a 48% – 42% margin.  The race was very much about, according to the news that I have read, Jane Corwin’s backing of Paul Ryan’s budget, and more importantly his decimation of medicare, turning it into a voucher program. I don’t know that that is 100% accurate.

If Mrs. Hochul was not the candidate saying the things that the people needed to hear, the people would not have voted for her.  If she did not have a platform that the people believed in, the people would not have voted for her.  Her stand against Corwin’s seemingly standing up for the destruction of medicare as we currently know it was a part of it, no doubt, but to listen to the press, you’d think that the people of Batavia, New York and the surrounding region voted for no other reason than medicare, and frankly that thought is just plain silly.

There might be single issue voters, but I don’t know that this is offhand a single issue election.

I could be wrong though.

Still, it’s good news for the Democrats.  They won a seat that the Democrats haven’t held since the district was gerrymandered by George Pataki back in 2000.  Feels good.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

Does It Matter Who Wins, Really?

When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It’s a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it.

John Kenneth Galbraith

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I’m looking at the field of Republican candidates for the presidency in 2012.  They do have some potential winners there.

That doesn’t mean there are candidates there that are offhand worth a damn.  When I say potential winners, what I mean is that there are candidates out there that can bring a significant percentage of voters out to the polls.  Note I don’t say enough to win it all.  But then again with politics as they exist in this nation, just about anyone with the word “Republican” attached to them in a national election can bring about 45% of the electorate with them. Much the same as just about any Democrat can bring the same percentage of people with them.

The show is usually about the 8 – 10% who aren’t sure which way to go.

Think I’m off?  How much of the electorate did John McCain get in 2008? Do you remember the actual amount of people who voted for McCain? The actual percentage?

45.7%

Almost 60,000,000 people.  In an election cycle that had easy Democratic winner written all over it.  So basically anyone with the word Republican should be able to draw a hefty percentage of the population with them.

I say that to say this.

The actual person who the Republicans actually put forward really doesn’t matter, offhand.  What these run-ups to the primaries do, generally, is to show off the platform of the party and the people who want to be the name on the ticket, and to make sure that they have the right stuff to get the additional few percent of the populace that will make sure that the Republican ideology will run the nation for the next few years.

Which is why guys like Gingrich and Santorum aren’t really viable candidates.  They distract from the narrative, rather than illuminate what the republicans really want to show, and what they want to do, which is show that their small government vision is the right one for the country.

That said, my money is on John Huntsman, or if he doesn’t work out, Mitt Romney.

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Viddy of the day:  Newt Gingrich on 2012: I’m the ‘Change’ Candidate

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I don’t remember what exactly I was listening to this morning, but I was listening to the news, and I heard this curious tidbit that no Republican who has won Iowa in the last 7 (or was it 8, I don’t exactly recall) Republican primaries has gone on to win the republican nomination.  I don’t know that that is true, but if it is, would you want to be the one stumping in Iowa?

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Danger invites rescue. … The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.

Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo

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If the Republicans want to turn this election into a referendum on the economic ideology of the President and the democrats, it would, I believe, behoove them to not allow the debt ceiling to become much more of a bone of contention than it already is.  They would only be inviting additional scrutiny into the actions of the previous Republican administration, who very much kicked the can down the road, adding over $5,000,000,000,000 to the national debt.

“So what?” the Republicans say, look at what this president has done to our deficit?

Yes.  Let’s.

He has had to spend money hand over fist just to keep the nation afloat.  Trillions.  Spending just to make sure that capitalism as we know it would not utterly collapse.  Which was a realistic danger when he took office.  Without the spending he did, unemployment, and every other financial issue this nation currently faces would be significantly worse.

And let us remember where those issues came from.

Without President Bush Jr. and his wild spending spree, and his millionaire tax cuts, and his disastrously wasteful war in Iraq, that spent hundreds of billions, and costs thousands of lives, ostensibly for nothing but conquest in the name of cheap oil, which never materialized, President Obama would not have had to spend like he did to get us out of the mess he was handed.

If you blame the Democrats for the financial state of our nation, you need to do 2 things.  One is look in the mirror, and the other is remember how Obama got to be where he is.  Without Republicans acting as they did from 2000 – 2008, there would be no Democrat in power now, and the deficit would be nowhere near what it is now.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

I <3 The Apocalypse

WOOOOO!!!!! PARTAAAAAAAAAAY!

Well, earthquakes were supposed to rip across the planet, waking the dead, sending the elect straight to heaven, and leaving the rest of us poor bastards here on earth. Twas supposed to be the apocalypse!   Well, there were a few earthquakes.  One near Honshu, Japan, a 5.8 on the Richter scale.  One near New Zealand, a 6.1, and another one, a 5.0 earthquake, happened about 800 miles off of the Azores archipelago in the Atlantic.  And there was a  major eruption of a volcano on Iceland.

One wonders… was Camping right?  Was he only off on one detail, that the elect would go to heaven?  Or did he goof up by being too much of an optimist, by thinking there is ANYONE on this clearly god-forsaken planet who would actually be taken directly to heaven?  Maybe the elect would have been taken, but there wasn’t anyone good enough to actually go?

Nah…

It was a good joke for a minute.  Everything this afternoon was good for a “Oh screw it, it’s the end of the world” line.  Run today? On the last day EVER?  No way! The race is over, babe! I won, gonna rest and eat like a pig on Apocalypse Saturday, which one presumes will turn into a liquid saturday for everyone who took this crap serious.  Trust me on this one, those poor sods need a drink at this point.  If you see some poor bastard at a bar looking like he’s bummed, carrying an “I ❤ the Apocalypse” shirt, buy him a beer, he prolly needs one.

Gotta tell ya though, I wouldn’t mind having one of those “I ❤ the Apocalypse” shirts.  There’s an I don’t give a damn fashion statement that fits any occasion!  If you see one, send it to me!

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David Letterman – Top Ten Ways To Make the  Apocalypse more fun!

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Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of Saint John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comp.

Heinrich Henne

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Now that we have the bullshitocalypse out of the way, I feel cleansed.   Srsly.  There aren’t any more earthquakes happening today than normal, and they are happening in places where there are usually lots of temblors anyway.

The dead didn’t rise from their graves, the elect weren’t taken directly to heaven.  The CDC did put out a warning about the “Zombie apocalypse” though.  Mind you it was more to draw attention to actual disaster preparedness.  They got 10 times the hits on their website due to the Zombie thing than they normally do, so ya know, i’m happy to see the CDC do this.

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One last thought.  Harold Camping, the man behind the moron-athon that was the bullshitocalypse, looks like the biggest idiot on earth right now.  Before all he did was talk to a few of his closest allies and a few radio listeners the last time he predicted this weak-kneed crap.  With all the hype this got this time around, world-wide, he needed the world to end, to cover his ass, just to not look like a complete imbecile.

Can’t say it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, in that sarcastic way of mine though.  Never met the man. maybe he’s a nice guy, who is just a little delusional.

OK, A lot delusional.

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That’s it from here, America!  G’night!

It’s Not Like It’s The End Of The World Or Anything….

I like this guy Camping.  He’s made millions banking on the weak and stupid, selling this end of the world crap, he’s gotten gullible people to toss hundred’s of thousands of their own dollars into trying to advertise the end of the world.  He’s got a net worth of, I believe, $72 million dollars?  Something like that.  So he’s set, especially when the world doesn’t end at 6:00pm tomorrow.

A hint to all the soon to disappointed apocalypidiots, who have thrown all their money into advertising an event that did not happen.  Class action lawsuit.  Sounds like a winner to me.  After losing the way these ignorant people clearly are going to, the least they could do is help themselves by suing this charlatan into the poorhouse.

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The end of the world isn’t happening anytime soon, as far as I can tell. A simple thought that I have on this subject, which I don’t have unless some idiot talks about this subject, is that anyone who thinks the apocalypse will happen while they are around is incredibly self absorbed.

Do you really think that, if the almighty exists, and he created the universe and everyone and everything in it, that somehow he was waiting for you to pop up to bring the party to a conclusion?  After it being around for as long as it has been? Seriously?

Maybe I think about it like that because I’m as self-absorbed as I am.  Nothing wrong with being self-absorbed, so long as it doesn’t hamper anyone else’s life, I say.  If this old goat were a harmless old crack I wouldn’t mind, no else would either.  But he’s got 72,000,000 dollars worth of harmful that he brings to bear, creating this monster of a lie that does nothing but harm the people he thinks of as his “elect”, and gives us more stupidity to live with and deal with, making the world a worse place than it has to be.

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Life’s road isn’t so bad, the future is murky but it always is, that never worries me.  My financial life is in turmoil once again, but since when is that NOT an issue?  That’s been a  mess since at least…. I want to say the day I sobered up for real back in 2002, but the real date is probably years before that, might go back to my first job.  I’ve never had luck with money, but I’ve had a good enough life.

Trade-offs.  my life is full of them.  Talent, but no luck.  Peace and happiness, but no money or way to spread that to people, most of whom tend to think of joy as something you can buy, or can get with the help of something you can buy.  Smart, but no way to turn that into anything this world calls meaningful.

Makes me wonder about the world, about what lessons I never learned.

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But after thinking that kind of thought, I pick up my guitar and play.  I go run.  I do something, something I do better than most people.  Now if I could only sell those skills…  If only I could convince myself that that is a good thing to do, that the basis of the concept of “sales” is nothing more than corrupt evil people doing wrong to get ahead themselves at the expense of the people they are surrounded with and selling to, making everyone lesser than they have to be as part of the bargain.

But I can’t.  My life, my world, simplistic and dumb as it is, is a gift, and what little I have I give freely, to those few who would readily receive it.

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Hell, it ain’t the end of the world.  No worries.  I just need a job, a real job, then I’ll feel better.  Time to go look for one, before I go to sleep.  G’night America.

Fired? So What!

I’ve had better days.  I’ve had worse days.  But it is another one of those days which throws my future into much confusion.  I have, for the last month worked as an employee of a company that will not be named, as a copy operator.

Until today.  Today I was fired.

It’s always something with me isn’t it?

This time I found a new wrinkle to add to the concept “fired”  When I was fired, 2 other people got fired along with me.

The circumstances matter little here.  What this does is takes that copy center, and depletes it of 3/4 of it’s personnel.  There were 4 people who worked there, and three were fired.  Geniuses run THAT place., tell ya that.  Why do I say that?  Besides the general problem that exists when you toss 75% of you staff, while the busy season is coming, is that the one person who wasn’t fired is leaving the company next week, for 3 months, on maternity leave.

She has 6 days to train all the personnel in the minutiae of working in the copy center, including delivery of all documents and the like to all the floors to all personnel. When she can’t get around herself.  Oof.

This gives me lulz, to be honest.  The last time I was fired, back in March 2009, it was a heart rending experience.  It hurt.  Those people were like my family, I knew them, all of them.  This?  This was a several week long experiment to see if I could handle getting back into working doing this benightedly evil crap for a pittance of a salary.   A clearly failed experiment at that.  It’s a pity that it cut off several weeks shorter than I had anticipated, but nothing more than that, really.

Plus, unemployment paid about as much as this job, and going back on unemployment, while not good, will at least keep me afloat long enough to find another job.

The questions I am now asking myself are of this general kind.

What line of work should I try to break into?

Where should I look?

Should I push far afield?  Try as far and as much as possible to make sure I NEVER end up in an office again?

I’ll answer what I can now, and leave those I cannot to the future.

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What line of work should I try to break into?  Well, I’ll be trying to get back into art handling initially.  A job a man can do with his hands, strong hard work.  Mover is another job I am going to look into, though with  that job you usually do need a drivers license, and I don’t have one.  Construction work would be nice, and sanitation work doesn’t sound too bad, not for someone with a (non-working) nose like mine, who likes throwing crap around.  Pun intended, btw.

Where should I look? Wherever the work is.  Simple answer there.

Should I push far afield?  Damn straight I should.  After working for 2 decades in a copy center, the first job I worked where I wasn’t in one was about the most refreshing change of pace,m job wise that I could have imagined, and I want that feeling once again.  Will I find it?  Maybe, maybe not, I don’t know the future (except to say that the world won’t end on Saturday) but I know that I will try to.  Worst that happens is that I try and fail.  Millions before have blazed that path.  No worries.

One final statement.  NO MORE COPY WORK.  NEVER AGAIN.

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That’s it from here, America.  Wish me luck, and have a Good night.