A man’s girlfriend spent two years sitting on the can… and he just got around to thinking that something might be wrong… She’d been there so long that her ass was growing to the toilet… That’s right. Growing. To. The. Toilet. All I can say is, WTF?
Category Archives: News & Media
The world around us… and the stupid things that are happening in it…
Communist News Network…
Last week I was watching CNN, which is not something I usually do, but the hospital is too cheap to get a decent cable package apparently, although they do charge $10/day for using the TV. Lou Dobbs, who once upon a time was their financial guru, has been running a series of “special reports” under the headline “War on the Middle Class.” Now aside from the obvious political slant of the headline (Fox isn’t the only news channel with an agenda, people), the issue that I have with this particular episode was that it was decrying the lack of a federal response to the “home loan crisis” and calling for a government bailout of people about to go into foreclosure.
As someone who did my homework, read every page of my loan origination documents, asked questions, and bought a house that I could actually afford to make payments on, I am absolutely livid at the suggestion that the US government should subsidize people who either through stupidity or negligence saddled themselves with a mortgage that they could not afford. I used logic and financial analysis to make my decisions on how, when, and where to buy, so I am having a hard time digesting the idea that because I made good decisions, money should come out of my pocket to pick up the tab for those who made bad ones.
This isn’t a war on the middle class in America. This isn’t even the government offering aid to people who found themselves in harm’s way during a natural disaster or terrorist event. This is about people being kicked in the teeth by the free market because they chose poorly. It’s not my responsibility or yours to compensate them for their own bad decisions. Government interference in the market always has unintended consequences and the inevitable bailout of these people sets a dangerous and damning precedent.
God Save the King…
I’m a little late to the party, but wanted to send kudos to the King of Spain for telling the loud-mouth of a Venezuelan dictator to shut up. I would love to see more leaders apply this type of simple and easy to understand diplomacy. It’s the kind of foreign policy I can get behind.
Farewell to an American Hero
It’s no secret that the generation that came of age in the Depression and were tempered on the anvil of World War II are dying. The youngest of them are now in their 80s. Within the next 20 years, the war will have passed out of living memory to become the sole province of the historians.
I was once privileged to meet an American hero is the truest sense of the word. Slight in build and clearly feeling his years, I was able to spend a few moments simply talking with Paul Tibbets, who piloted Enola Gay on August 6, 1945. Even when we talked, some 60 years after the event, Mr. Tibbets made no apologies for leading his mission that day. His body was bent with age, but looking in his eyes, you simply knew this was a man who was at peace with himself and who was assured of the rightness of his actions and his cause.
Paul Tibbets was a man who answered his nation’s call, did is duty, and returned home to help remake a global system shattered by war. The Director of the National Aviation Hall of Fame best eulogizes him in saying, “There are few in the history of mankind that have been called to figuratively carry as much weight on their shoulders as Paul Tibbets… Even fewer were able to do so with a sense of honor and duty to their countrymen as did Paul.”
Global War…
Anyone who thinks we are not in the midst of a truly global war against terrorism should take a long look at this minute-by-minute map of events going on around the world. Terrorism doesn’t just mean Islamo-Facist extremists shooting up the streets of Baghdad; It’s home grown pipe-bombers, the covert movement of radioactive material, and kidnappings in the name of one political sect or another. The world has been and remains a dangerous place, my friends. The web only shows us those items that are common knowledge… Want to guess what’s going on that no one has discovered yet?
Boo-friggin-hoo…
The USA Today is the ash heap of American print journalism. Unfortunately, it’s a large ash heap and nearly unavoidable if you spend any time in a hotel. Yesterday’s business section dedicated a good portion of the front page and the entire second page feature to the “plight” of workaholics in the United States. According to the article, “about 60% of high-earning individuals work more than 50 hours a week…” Let’s stop right here and do some quick analysis… I mean, is anyone surprised that those individuals between the ages of 25-34 making more than $75,000/year and those over 35 and up making more than $100,000 per year spend more than 50 hours a week at work? Maybe I’m the only one who noticed the general trend that the more I work, the more I make. That was true when I was flipping burgers at McDonald’s and it’s true now that I have a nice cushy desk job. My point, I suppose, is how the hell can anyone be surprised that income is related to how much someone works? Is this really news to anyone who has spent any time thinking about ways to make more money?
The other aspect of the article that raised my hackles was the “high-earning individuals” complaining that they have had to sacrifice personal time and relationships because of work or that they don’t get enough sleep. Know what? That’s a choice you made in order to become a high-income individual, my friend. No one is making you work 60 billable hours per week. If it’s too much for you to deal with, step off the fast track so you can spend more time at the kid’s soccer games. Bottom line is that you make the choice to work in a high pressure workplace. The trade off is that maybe you will get passed over for that next promotion or maybe you’ll have to adjust your lifestyle to meet your new income. Bitch and complain about long hours all you want, I know I do. But don’t try to pass it off as some big, bad employer tethering you to your desk with wireless chains. Take some responsibility for your own actions and make the change if you don’t think you can hack it with the big boys.
The world turned upside down…
The French went to the polls today (and there’s no real reason anyone other than me would know this) and, wonder of wonders, elected a pro-American conservative president. Nicolas Sarkozy ran on a platform that promised to “loosen the 35-hour work week by offering tax breaks on overtime and to trim fat from the public service, cut taxes and wage war on unemployment.” I’ve read a few articles this evening that compare him to a Thatcher and or a Reagan for the French people.
I’m a little stunned by all of this. Being annoyed by the French is something I’ve come to expect. It’s like the sun coming up in the morning. I’m not at all sure what I think of a France that isn’t wandering around looking for an eye that needs a thumb stuck in it.
So tonight, for one time only you’ll hear me say it: Viva la France!
News of the world tonight…
I just did a quick check of the headlines a few minutes ago and as expected, most of the major outlets are still running something about pot-smoking kids as the lead story. Another link on CNN was a story about a baby whose nose was chewed off by rats. I can’t help but think that if there these are stories that make the news, there are probably more examples of similar experiences out there that have simply never made it to tape. These stories appear to be the latest confirmation of my pet theory that the collapse of a civilization occurs exponentially more quickly than its rise. Using the year 1900 as a baseline for the start of the “American Century,” the rise took approximately 125 years. With parents who allow their young to have appendages removed by rodents and get stoned with the family (while the mother was apparently cranked out on pain killers according to the report I heard on news radio), I’m guessing we have maybe 25-30 relatively good years left before the scale is completely tipped and the inmates have achieved the critical mass needed to take over the asylum.
Middle Class in Crisis…
While I was sitting in what passes for a traffic back up here in suburban Memphis, I was flipping through the news channels on XM and landed briefly on CNN (in case you’re wondering, FoxNews had just gone to commercial so CNN was the best I could do on short notice). A teaser they were running at the moment was decrying the difficulty “middle class” families have making ends meet in America “these days.”
Looking around me, I noticed what I could only assume were predominately middle class folks sitting in traffic along side me. The vast majority were sitting in $35-45,000 SUVs, $25-30,000 mini-vans, and a few in relatively “inexpensive” sedans. Many had pulled out of their relatively new suburban homes, with three or four bedrooms and two car garages. Although I couldn’t tell from my vantage point, I suspect most of the kids in those vehicles were wearing what passes as the latest fashion in clothing.
You’re probably wondering, by this point, what I’m trying to say, so I’ll be blunt: The middle class in this country has such a hard time making ends meet because they spend too damned much money. But wait, you say, people have a right to drive the car they want, to wear the clothes they want, and to do any damned thing that suits them. You know what? No one said you had to have any of these things to be “middle class.”
Stop taking all your guidance from the damned television, from musicians, and from sports stars. These people make more for one appearance on television, by singing one song, or by taking one at bat than we do in a year. Guess what? No matter how much you spend, they’re always going to have and be able to do more. That’s life.
Sometimes you just have to say that you can’t afford it. I’ve never been accused a being tight fisted when it comes to money, but just because I want a Corvette doesn’t mean that I can afford one. I do have a little red sports car. I do have a house in my “first choice” neighborhood. But I don’t have kids to support. That’s my choice and the trade off I’m willing to make. If I had a family to support my choices would necessarily be different.
As long as Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class are walking around in hock up to their necks, with three cars in the driveway, and kids wearing $200 sneakers, I don’t have much sympathy. When they get their priorities squared away and their financial house in order and still can’t make ends meet, then I’m willing to concede that we’re at a crisis point. Until then, get a damned grip.
So we may always be free…
I could post a diatribe about the significance of today’s date and the implications of what we’ve done right and what we’ve done wrong since the morning of September 11, 2001, but I suspect most of you know how I feel, and we all know how I hate repeating myself when it isn’t necessary.
In some ways we are safer than we were on that day and in others we are more at risk. I seriously doubt that we can ever really secure our society against those who value death more than life. Yet today, five years on, we still walk freely down our streets, still eat at the corner restaurants, and order our latte’s without abject fear of being blown to kingdom come for our trouble. Can it happen? Of course it can. It happens in Israel. It happened in England and Northern Ireland during the worst of the troubles. It happened in dozens of two-bit dictatorships over the years, too. But today, we are still free. We are still brave. And despite the best efforts of a madman bent on our destruction, we are still here.
To borrow a quote from President Reagan speaking at the 40th anniversary of the D-Day invasion: “We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.”
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