Rachel Must DIE

Has Rachel called you?
Your number is on the Do Not Call list and yet Rachel is positive you need help with your credit card rate.
You have no credit card dept and yet Rachel is Still Positive you need help.
You've talked with actual human and told them - "Take me OFF YOUR LIST!"
And yet Rachel is right back at it.
Rachel MUST DIE!
**edit**   Do these people know they're breaking the law or are they just dupes for the asshole scammers (not scam artist please, there is no art in what they do).   And to those idiots that actually sign up with these asshats - will you get a CLUE if they weren't making money at this they'd stop calling!

And I thought my last vacation was expensive

Apparently in the realm of expensive vacations I'm a piker  - but then I have to pay for my own Michelle get's her's paid for - by well Me and You.

To Excel is EVIL

Apparently if your too good you just need to be removed - at least in New York. But it's a "Girls Sport" right?   How much trouble do you think they'd be in, if it were a girl attempting to play a "Boys Sport".

So if I understand this correctly:
 It's OK for a girl (or woman) to excel at a sport dominated by boys (men).  But not the other way around.
It's OK to be good if it's an individual sport but not if it's a team sport.
It's never OK to be too good until your 18 or over because it's bad for others self esteem.

So, if he sucked, it would be OK?  

You go Howard

Ok I'll admit it I'm a Starbucks guy, I've been drinking Starbucks since the mid 70's.   Although I really don't like most of their blends.   The Espresso blend is good - there  are a few others I like too.

First Starbucks comes out and tells the anti-gun people that it's not Starbucks job to tell people they can't do something which the state says is legal.   (WIN)

Now This attempt to get companies to stop feeding the machine.

You can get yours here

Student Loans

So there's Obama, talking up discount student loans to collage kids as if ANYONE was going to tank them in an election year - yeah sure.    Never mentioned just how beek the job market is for them - so how exactly are they going to pay those loans that are going to cost us something like 6 billion a year.

Obama's take?

"Anybody here can afford to pay an extra thousand dollars right now?" Obama asked to jeers from the crowd. "I don't think so."


OK, so don't spend the money?  NO - print some more money and we'll all pay extra for it later - much better. 

Baby Factory

It's occurred to me that the government seems to think they're a baby factory.   They seem hell bent on turning everyone into a dependent toddler in need of a nanny.

You'll notice it's not a race thing

Talk about a double standard in reporting.  Perhaps you'll notice that the guy that got assaulted was white, and all of the assaulters were black - and yet NO mention of race.   Yet we look at the Zimmerman case and they seem to forget that Zimmerman was part latino - they just keep talking about white people getting away with crimes against blacks.

Do you want to start a race war?   Really?   Do you think your position as a reporter is going to protect you if it comes down to mass riots?

I think at this point I hate the media more than I do lawyers - maybe there's not much difference - they both seek out human suffering in an attempt to make it worse and profit from it.

I god a cod in my nod

I'm sitting home trying to fight off a cold - not sure if I'm winning, but I don't feel as bad as I usually do at this stage so I'll call it that a good sign.

Much vitamin C, lots of water, and chicken soup (I like soup - and it can't hurt).  Lemon tea, Ginger tea, maybe a bit of honey.

I should be working on the storage cellar but I'll give it another couple of days to see if I'm getting better or worse.   I should be doing yard work, or oh god the list is too long to even think about.

Have you noticed as you get older time goes faster?

All Warm and Fuzzy

This article just leaves me feeling all warm and fuzzy.   What the heck, it's always better to ignore the big issues right?

We ignore the possible destruction of our civilization on a daily basis.  Mostly this is because we're evolved to look for the immediate threat and you have think and plan ahead for the big issues - we're not good at that.

• We've done next to nothing about possible asteroid / comet collisions after being told it's 100% going to happen sometime (probably not soon).
• We've done zip to protect against EMP from Solar prominence which has happened and will happen again.  We also haven't prepared for a Terrorist / China/Russia/? nuke airburst.   How hard do you think it would be to get 3+ small nuke tipped rockets on a container ship into the Gulf of Mexico, where they'd have plenty of range to blanket the entire US.   I'm guessing not that hard.  Although I do give credit to our black ops guys efforts to recapture nuclear materials stolen from Russia, Pakistan, well where ever.  But there is still some out there.  Not good.
• We happily ignore the three Super Volcano's we have in the US   - Yellowstone is the one everyone knows about and ignores, then there's Valles Caldera in New Mexico, and Long Valley in California -  they are inactive but to trust mother nature to treat us gently is perhaps a bit optimistic.  And those are just ours.   Talk about Climate Change. 
• We don't ignore the possibility of pandemic but we've done very little to prepare for it - how many people have a clue as to how to behave, or have done anything to prepare for the 100% chance that it will happen (probably in my lifetime) - 1%, 2% - probably less.
• We've sort of given up worrying about an Nuclear War - which I'd put as a pretty low probability - but still,  I'd be surprised if a fallout shelter has been built or restocked in 40 years.
• Can't do much about Earthquakes except build well - which we're doing, and prepare for long periods of almost no food, water, health services, transportation,  etc - which we have mostly ignored.
• Since Economic performance is partially based on consumer confidence and, based on various polls over 50% of U.S. residents polled think that the economy is gong to collapse, I think that's grounds for concern.   The economy and the stock markets are essentially self fulfilling prophecy - if everyone thinks it's going to collapse - it will - and we're better than 50% of the way there - Oh joy.
• Peak Oil leading to unaffordable gas, and a crippled transportation and power generation system - Maybe where close, maybe we're there.  Here at least our technological prowess might save our collective asses for a while.
• Climate change - ok maybe you don't believe in global warming but there is WAY too much evidence for it to make me comfortable.   It's one of those problems with a negative feedback loop - the worse it gets the faster it gets worse.    Maybe we can do something about it - maybe not but it seems short sighted to not try.   Is it possible that it's a hoax - No, just look at photographs of glaciers in Alaska and Greenland and you can see it's happening.  Is it as bad as the media wants us to think - I have NO idea.   Is it our fault? I suspect it's partially our fault and partially a natural swing - the timing was just bad. 
• Link to the Climate change thing is Deforestation - between desertification in Africa and the burning of the rain forests in South America, we definitely have a problem.   Both of which I think are still fixable if we just cared enough to actually do it. 

Are you feeling all warm and fuzzy now?

Splain it to me Lucy

How the hell did gas prices become a Presidential race issue?

Unless we're going to nationalize the oil companies, and give up foreign oil all together, how does anyone begin to think the President is going to lower gas prices?     There is NO historical precedent for the idea - it's a WORLD oil economy, we don't get to make anywhere near enough of the decision to radically lower prices.   Even if opening new drilling would lower the price (which it won't), it sure won't happen just because we said - yeah go ahead and drill - it takes time to bring that production on-line and have any effect on the U.S. production levels.

Frankly I'm in favor of opening ANWR and I'm more or less a environmental supporter - I like wilderness, I like parks, I like clean water, and clean air and I'm willing to pay for them.    The negative ANWR arguments are bogus from one end to the other - the wildlife take advantage of pipelines as access to feed during the winters, as a means of making travel easer - they don't care about the pipes.    Why the hell would anyone talk about running a pipeline from ANWR across Alaska to the south - when you can run a MUCH shorter one to Prudhoe Bay?  you wouldn't.  

We keep talking about dependance on foreign oil - but not doing anything about it.   Like most issues that are serious - we make noise and do nothing.

Yeah, what He said.

Wow I'm in agreement with someone, how weird is that.   Not Durbyshire - although most of his advice is practical - and can like most of these types of arguments - support noun substitution.    For example, replace black with white, and the primary elements (items 8-10), or hispanic or - well take your pick.

The point is - we don't all get along when we're acting as a tribe, as individuals - who know each other, it's different.    Tribbing is an instinctual behavior, part of our evolution - we make tribes of everything - Liberal vs Conservative, Yankees vs the Sox, White vs Black, Black vs Hispanic, American vs Chinese, Ford vs Chevy, Democracy vs Totalitarian.   We tribe, and tribes are design to support their own and fight with the non-tribe.

So for those of you (why do I bother, none of them read this shit), who think everyone who ventures an opinion that doesn't fit into the Progressive "We are the World" mythology should be silenced - I say:

Shut-up, suck it up, and get over it.    The world is not  your oyster and you don't get to make all the rules.   Take your politically correct pipe dreams and smoke them someplace else.  Plugging your ears and yelling NA-NA-NA-NA-NA is not a viable argument; it's just as annoyingly useless as it is when a 5 year old does it.

The problem is the Brain

After reading THIS post on Tam's blog, it required a

The problem is the Brain - it seems to atrophy as power and authority increase.

It might be unfair to compare TSA to the prison system - but then again, it's probably being very generous.

Prison guards know they're dealing with criminals, TSA just acts like they are.
Prison guards are suposed to keep the inmates under control, TSA just enjoys it.
Prison guards are required to search prisoners and their cells now and then, TSA just does it because they can.

Prison guards can't keep a cell phone out of the hands of Charlie Manson, with all their experience.  How the hell does anyone even begin to believe that the morons that TSA hires have a chance.   Those idiots not only don't know their own regulations, they've proven they're incapable of understanding them when they are presented in writing.

Oh sure we're MUCH safer - NOT.   TSA is a typical New Government bureaucracy - Control and Abuse of Power in the guise of Security.  At least the terrorists are upfront about wanting us to live in fear - the government has been working toward that goal for decades - and it's working.

Constitution - we don't need no stinking Constitution

At least that's what Obama seems to think - Warning the Supreme Court - no arrogance there...    Just absolute distain for the Constitution.