July 4, 2009
A Most Undivine Comedy
If hell isn’t real, this will do:
Parents banned from taking pictures of their own children at sports day
Parents of children at a primary school have been banned from taking pictures of their own children at the annual sports day.
Mrs Ethelston’s Church of England Primary School, in Uplyme, Devon, prohibited photos and video filming, claiming it was due to changes in child protection and images legislation.
Separately (if you can believe it):
Parents were banned from attending an inter-school sports day to protect pupils from kidnappers and paedophiles.
Parents couldn’t even ATTEND?
If it weren’t stupid England, I’d wonder there weren’t riots.
Unbelievable.
Via: Protein Wisdom
July 3, 2009
The meaning of “Independence Day”
According to Hillary Rodham:
For Americans, the 4th of July is a day to reconnect with loved ones, to remember our history, and to renew our commitment to democracy, tolerance, and justice.
And that’s all it is, according to the Secretary of the Department of State of the United States of America.
Be sure to watch the video to see how good she can read, too.
The word "Independence" is not uttered. No reference to "Freedom" is made. Those ideals are now subsumed to the greater good of meaningless populist flatulence uttered in 178 words that no one will ever remember.
What a complete and utter disgrace. In a thousand ways. It’s as if she could barely be troubled to bother.
In the words of a wise and kind man:
Fuck the lot of you who cheered this thing on. Stupid bastards.
July 2, 2009
Kremlinology for Dummies
You’d have to be Michael Jackson not to see something strange in this:
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has cancelled plans to visit Moscow with President Barack Obama and will send someone in her place, a State Department official said Wednesday.
"Secretary Clinton is not going to go to Moscow. She is going to designate a State Department official to go," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
He did not give a reason but Clinton cancelled a trip to Greece and Italy last week because she is recovering from a broken elbow.
What, her cracked elbow won’t allow her to press the big red "Reset" button? No, there are bigger fingers pulling the strings of this muddled performance. Whether the flung dung is coming from On High or the Wicked Witch is playing melting tricks of her own is anyone’s guess, but the palace is full of intrigue and none of it is the slightest bit encouraging.
One tends to wonder if the recent surfacing of Sidney Slimenthal…
Longtime journalist and former Clinton White House advisor Sidney Blumenthal will become a special advisor without portfolio to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, The Cable has learned. Blumenthal refused to comment.
… is in any way meaningful in said regards.
But, of course, everything is meaningful these days.
June 17, 2009
Berry berry good
I’m so far behind… The strawberries were a month ago, and so good. Sitting around that night it occurred to us that there were possibilities. After some in-depth experimentation, we settled on:
Fill blender jar loosely with beautiful strawberries. Add cheap white rum up to a little over half way. Blend the fruit gently down to make room for cracked ice. Add a big huzzah of lime juice, and four or five soup spoons of sugar. Blend as preferred. Be amazed at how often you have to do all that.
More on Tidwell’s farm with interesting strawberry facts here. The line was into the parking lot when we were there, and they were sold out that day (and every day that we’ve seen) by around noon. Don’t be late or you’ll miss it.
Cheers
Lloyds Banking Group is ditching American customers based in Britain pending a crackdown on international tax evasion planned by President Barack Obama.
If only U.S. banks were able to exercise the same freedom.
He might be Idiot
Yeah. Glenn Reynolds:
BOOSTING THE ECONOMY WITH High-Speed Fiber Internet? Well, I like the idea better than auto bailouts . . . .
Well, that’s taking a stand against profligate government spending, I’ll say.
But wait, there’s Medicare! Let’s *FIX* it!:
Glenn on Medicare: Fix it. Fix it. Fix it. Fix it. Etc.
Medicare isn’t fixable, Glenn. Medicare IS the FUCKING PROBLEM. Do you understand libertarianism or economics at all?
Something about shoes
Wouldn’t you like to follow her around for a week or two?
I count my lucky stars when I comtemplate all those animals who spend their wholes lives… out there. Outside. Rain. Winter. All of it. It wasn’t too long ago that we (or reasonable facsimiles) were out there, too. Without proper sandals, even.
Which reminds me, the other day the dog went nuts, and we slowly clued in to heavy scrapes and thumps against the door between the carport and the yard. Circling around into the carport, I discovered an energetic turtle, of all things, very intent on making its way through that door. How it even knew there was a door there, no one knows. The neighbor said he had turtles scratching at his doors, too.
Ours made it through, and then onward, but to where, who knows?
Huge nonsense
The L.A. Times:
Among the proposed policy changes outlined by the president are:
* Reductions in payments to providers to reflect increased efficiencies in the system, which the White House estimates could save $110 billion over the next decade.
What’s the incentive for "increased efficiencies"? "Reductions in payments"? That ought to go over well.
* Cuts in federal subsidies to hospitals that treat large populations of uninsured patients, estimated to save $106 billion over the next decade.
Fuck those poor people.
* Cuts in how much the federal government pays pharmaceutical companies to provide prescription drugs to seniors and others, estimated to save $75 billion over the next decade.
Fuck those "seniors and others".
The president described the proposals as "common sense changes" that could make the system more efficient.
"could". But won’t.
In briefing reporters, Peter R. Orszag, Obama’s budget director and a leading architect of the president’s healthcare policy, downplayed the potential lost revenue for healthcare providers, pointing to the millions of additional people who would get insurance under the plans being advanced by congressional Democrats.
Yeah, don’t worry about your smaller income. Think about having to work harder!
"This money is dedicated to financing, in a fiscally responsible way, expanded coverage," Orszag said. "That expanded coverage will generate benefits for some of those industry groups, including for hospitals."
Hur. Hur.
The government ought to get out of the health care business, local, state, and federal.
The price of Fascism has gone up!
From the New York Times:
The F.D.A. will set up a new tobacco regulatory office financed by industry fees, which are expected to be $85 million in the first year and as much as $700 million annually within 10 years.
You know, because stomping on people’s necks is expensive!
Venlet
John has been playing his blog with alacrity lately, and a few days ago, amidst sundry comments on marriage, he pointed back to a post he made in ‘04.
That’s beautiful, man, though back then I probably wouldn’t have quite appreciated it the way I do today. I didn’t meet Sweet Cheeks until early ‘05.
If you don’t mind, since I haven’t sent her a poem lately…
Hey, click the link! (with affection)
And further happy anniversaries out to Michigan (and to anyones else who can count themselves amongst the happily compatible).
Vandam
Unbelieveable. I didn’t make the cut again!
Between writer’s block, endless political depression, ennui, possible ague, disinterest, deep rooted anti-social tendencies, mediocre intellect (documented!), and a predilection to disappoint, I still can’t get cut from the blogroll.
Bless you, man.
And keep up the good work.
Beck
He may be halfway to halfway across the world, but he’s still left a trail of open windows on my desktop.
Agree, sorta: Flip flops, nooooooooooooooooo. But I do love my Zzzzzs. I thought I’d never wear sandals, but I put on a pair of Chaco Z1s back in ‘01 and haven’t taken them off since, except for bed, random social engagements, winter, and to mow the lawn (and only then because I figure not that the boots will save my toes, but that at least I won’t have to waste time crawling around the yard looking for the bloody things). I’m about ready to track down a new (third) pair.
Et. al.: What Schneider said.
du Toit: I’ve never understood the alleged popularity of the guy (or of his "bovinity" — a word which Sweet Cheeks says ought to brood duels or the like). Beck links to the bogus:
What Bill undoubtedly is, and Beck is not, is a wonderful wordsmith [...]
‘Scuse me? Beck is as good with words as anyone I’ve ever read, and these old eyes have swept across the pages of more than a few books. Beck invariably says exactly what he means, and means exactly what he says, no small feat considering the areas into which Beck projects his intellect. I think du Toit just doesn’t like what Beck has to say.
I tried reading Kim back in the day, but between his heavily stylized (but boring in their repetitiveness) ejaculations (known as "RCOB"s, or "Red Curtains Of Blood", wherein Kim allegedly "spew[s] hatred, break[s] coffee mugs and windows, and [has] to be restrained from emptying [his] .45 into the TV" (that’s so cute the first five times!), and his seemingly never ending need for cold showers (that bovinity, again?), and, last but not leastways least, his inability to come to grips with his own deep desire to have that du Toit-friendly government (if only!) there to keep those du Toit-friendly laws pumping with non-du Toit-friendly money, I just couldn’t justify even the few minutes of my day that it took. He shoulda been a cop, is the way I see it, and he undoubtedly would have been a good one, but one could have wished for more.
And finally, more agree: Glenn Reynolds is an idiot. (Hell, I’ve got my own links saying so around here, somewhere.) But his presence is instructive. (Everything is instructive, of course.) His popularity is undoubtedly attributable to the sheer number of links he provides — to me, he’s a Drudge Report with blandishments — but one suspects that for most people the blandishments are just another encouragement to stay asleep. That, and he’s a fucking statist at heart, too. More on that later, if I get to it. Yeah.
Happy Lumpur, dude.
June 16, 2009
“Put the lime in the coconut”
Cannibal action at the PhD level:
If the doctors are too aggressive in fighting the public plan, they risk alienating Democrats whose support they need for legislation to increase their Medicare fees.
Must be tough when you don’t know if you’re standing inside or outside the pot.
Remember when a doctor could just be a doctor?
Relatedly, "auto shop owner Brian England":
"I’m in the business to do auto repair," England said. "I’m not in the business of trying to find out how to provide health coverage and how to get the right sort of plan…. And it’s not easy."
That’s where the government has driven him, vis a vis its stupid tax and health policies (about to be made multiple times worse).
In a free country Brian could give his employees the money (and the value of the time) he spends trying to figure out what they’d like, according them the freedom (and responsibility) of apportioning it to suit their own needs and wants.
In your face
Yeah, I’m closing old windows…
From the Washington Post:
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said yesterday that the administration is not interested in "capping pay" or "setting forth precise prescriptions for how companies should set compensation." Instead, he said, the government wants to rein in pay practices that motivated executives to take excessive risks in pursuit of profit.
That’s beautiful, innit? It is even somewhat honest, at least as a statement of intent. Obama’s "government" wishes to regulate without "precise prescriptions", ie., it wishes to regulate arbitrarily, even politically.
The only thing unusual about it, though, is the lack of shame in the expression of it. All government regulation can be parsed down to its arbitrary, political roots. And while ObamaCo rushes to embrace and impose the arbitrary, even if they were to manage to set "forth precise prescriptions" they would still of essence be imposing precise prescriptions arbitrarily and politically.
Either way, welcome back to pre-America.
Freedom: Multiple stab wounds
I’ve only peeked into the allegations of new prohibitions on knives sought by the anti-freedom loving folks at ObamaCo (et. al.) as related here, and while I’m not entirely sure that my particular everyday knife is about to become illegal (I do love to flick it open), a perusal of the proposed re-regulations (PDF) will give a good indication of just how far up everybody’s ass the dear old government has its nose stuck.
Murder/Suicide
It’s the oft-told tale of the irresistable stupidity-force of J. Q. Nobody meeting the immovable blockhead-object of ye olde government entity.
Twice in three weeks, fishermen in their boats ignored the big warning signs on the backside of Watts Bar Dam, heard the sirens scream that the generators were about to kick on, but failed to clear the area until it was too late, suffering varyingly, but, fortunately, short of death.
Incident number one involved a party of three boats, caught in the turbulence for fourteen or fifteen hours. In the second incident, three people were rescued by a brave fellow who risked his own life in plucking them off their sinking craft.
Both stories are reported by one Michael Reneau in the online Herald-News, serving Dayton and Rhea County since God knows when. Both stories relate that the sirens sounded and that the boaters tried to vacate the danger zone, but were unable to do so before the big waters began to churn around them. Neither story describes in any way the length of time between the siren’s sounding and the rush of water through the generators, and I would contend that that tiny bit of information is critical to judging the matter.
Granted, when signs boldly proclaim that people are to keep out, they ought to keep out, especially in a location that doesn’t really need a SIGN to proclaim danger, but if the TVA is blowing its warning sirens mere seconds before releasing its power generating deluge then those sirens aren’t really "warning" sirens in the sense that most people might assume.
We’ve eyeballed the geography of the dam installation and have noted that there does not appear to be a direct line of sight from the generator offices to the area of water directly below the dam, so whoever blows the siren and then kicks open the sluices does so blindly. However, in this modern age of technological near-miracles, we wonder what it would cost to set up a camera and feed. Is the TVA too bankrupt for it?
Also, across the river, at the other end of the big dam is the charming Watts Bar Lock (staffed at all hours (we believe), and by the TVA, no less), with direct line of sight view over toward the power generating side of things, including the dangerous waters in question. We wonder how much fucking trouble it might be for the TVA lockmaster or one of his TVA underlings to cast an eye across the water every once in a while to see if people are in danger of having their lives swept away by the blind actions of the lockworker’s TVA associates.
And, of course, we continue to marvel at the stupidity of people who cruise up underneath the concrete montrosity with their children blithely in tow, trusting the government entity.
