It's a mad mad mad mad mad mad mad mad...: 01/01/2005

You like the Talking Heads?

Somebody down at the University of Arizona Drum Corps sure does.

Half time of the big bowl game and "Once in a Lifetime" trickles up from the fifty yard line.

Ok, my surreal-o-meter just blew up.

I am trying to track how many people are frequenting this site.

It's a little less conventional than a click-thru counter, but it seems to fit my personality a little better.

Oh, right.

I forgot these guys are hell-bent on creating our robotic overlords of the future.

You know, the Self-Regenerative Bio-Computational Real-World Reasoning Mobile Autonomous Robots that Learn.

But seriously, you may ask yourself what's it all USED FOR?

OH. MY. GOD.

Well, not my God, but still.

Invoking FDR to undermine Social Security is like naming an airport after the President who laid off all the striking air traffic control workers.

Oh.

By the way, guess who created that airport, pretty much on his own?

Him again?

The struggle continues.

And what would RR have to say on all this?

What do you mean, you've never heard of the NRA?

No, not that NRA.

This NRA.

You know those 40 hour work weeks and child labor laws labor unions are so proud of?

It turns out the government beat them to the punch.

Not that government, this government.

Oh, and here's a story with some names you may recognize.

What do you think would happen today if thousands of protesters moved into Washington D.C. for months and refused to leave?

I am just too durn sensitive.

Some anonymous poster compared me to a journalist with writer's block.

I wish it were as simple as writer's block.

Unfortunately, it looks like getting a job these days is more damn work than having one.

I actually spent almost 3 whole days just doing phone and onsite interviews for one job.

I miss the good ol' days.

Of course that was when we had a sex-fiend for a president.

At least he knew what the Medal of Freedom was for.

W gives 'em out too.

The contrast of who gets them from each president is pretty revealing, I think.

I mean Arnold Palmer (Rita Moreno, Bill Cosby, Placido Domingo???, Charlton "Cold Dead Hands" Heston)?

Good golfer, but is he on the same level as Ginetta Sagan?

Sigh.

He's back. He's bad.

He's blogging again.

Sweet.

Sometimes religious violence just brings out the best in people.

More in depth commentary?

A buddy of mine was ribbing me for basically just posting a list of links.

Well, it's true many of my blog posts have become more concise, if not terse of late.

Couple of reasons.

1) Sometimes the places I link to have writings and resources I could never hope to achieve in any timeframe, much less by posting daily. I have no real interest in becoming an expert on Bonobo Apes, but connecting you with the boinkinest damn primates on the planet immediately after appealing to your sense of reason and trying to get you to stop procreating, is just, you know, kinda funny.

2) I appreciate the fact that people often read blogs to get information, I can only assume if you follow a page linked to from here, you actually read what is on that page. Quoting from said page seems laborious, tedious and intellectually unchallenging. If you don't trust me as a filter for the entire damn internet, then honestly, why visit? Many of my posts make NO SENSE without the underlying context of the linked content. Many of them make little sense WITH the underlying context.

3) If a thought can be expressed in five words or fifty, I choose the five. Unless fifty is funnier. Then I'm all about the fifty.

4) I like the idea of leaving you a little on your guard as to why I would link to a site instead of explaining the premise. Is it me taking "ownership" of the ideas expressed and showing them as my own? Is it the opposite?

5) I dig the minimalist thang. Here is a style I emulate.

6) And of course, Dood, my kid is bugging me RIGHT NOW to stop typing and go play with him.

Phew.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.

The horniest apes on earth.

It ain't us.

You heard me.

You ain't got NOTHIN' on Bonobo Apes.

Could we all just please stop the rutting? Just for a minute?

Simple, subdued, poigniant.

Of course we might not need to stop, and just let nature take its course.

This is the argument that helped kick me into daddy mode.

Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel has fifty-eight cracker-ass-crackers, and I can't have ONE?

Fuck that.

Well at least my kid will have something to do while we think about it. Weird.

Wow. I like Patton Oswalt.

This is from his Jan 2005 mailbag.

"Just wanted to commend Patton for a great show on New Years Eve, and to thank him for a subtle, yet important, adjustment he made to one of his jokes. He was doing a joke where he was imitating a typical Bush supporter, and had adopted a southern accent and a manner of speaking that sounded like a drunk autistic schoolchild. After about half a sentence, he realized what he was doing, dropped the accent, and just continued the joke in his normal voice. Why is this important? It is important because I noticed a certain vibe from the other comics on the bill that portrayed California and the East Coast as the only places in the country that are worth living in, and even proclaimed everything in between as a "vast wasteland".

John H.

— I've never called the land between L.A. and New York a "vast wasteland". I use the more respectful, "Darwin's Cum Rag" . P.O."

I am going to go buy everything this man has ever done, ever.

I might even start watching "King of Queens".

Actually, probably not.

My Latin's a little rusty.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

(After this therefore because of this.)

It's a FALLACY of logic.

Which of these is your favorite right wing talking head guilty of the most?

The argumentum ad hominem attacks happen WAY often.

Or don't you remember?

I might turn this into a drinking game.

Everytime someone uses a straw man take a shot, bifurcation take two.

I'd be dead after half an hour of Fox "News".

Speaking of Fox "News", shouldn't this guy be in jail, not on TV?

Ugh.

Surprise, surprise.

Democrats are just as crony as the Repugnicans.

Who woulda thunk it?

Oh, me. Right.

Dark days ahead.

Ok, we got just four years to impeach him and his cronies.

Let's go people!

Need a reason? (Great links there, btw.)

Someone over at the CNN polling place is just being funny.

New poll states that the nation is split over whether Bush is a uniter or a divider.

Heh.

It's a base irony but I like it.

I wonder if people get emotional over this.

OOH! Maybe Tucker "the dick" Carlson will take on Paul Begala over it at Crossfire.

Tucker: "I can't believe you're not smart enough to see that the president is working to bring us all together!"

Begala: "I'm gonna bring my fist together with yer face, dip-s[*bleep*]!"

Oh wait, I guess they can't.

Oh and don't forget, everybody gets the day off tomorrow.

More.

One last note.

List of links.

List of links.

CHOOSE!

Speaking of being secure.

I was looking for an acronym website I could link to for the definition of VoIP, and I found this link to the Acronym Institute for Disarmament Diplomacy.

It has some REALLY cool stuff in it.

And they have a list of States that are current posessors of WMDs.

Reads like a who's who of countries the US is about to bomb.

Kinda makes me wonder, are we messing with them because they are on the list or are they on the list because we messed with them?

NORAD,

Has pages for kids.

Wow.

I love the idea of VoIP

But is it secure?

Skepticism. It used to be just a philosophy.

To some people, it still is.

Then some smart-aleck had to come along and prove that nothing could be proven.

Looks like the skeptics were right.

Still, people believe in some pretty outlandish shit.

I mean I've seen interviews with the guys who travel the world making crop circles. I've seen video of them doing it in broad daylight. Still, people out there claim they couldn't possibly be man made. Hard to believe they're trying to sell shit.

Thank god for this guy.

Cheap shot post.

George W. Bush.

Yeah, well.

They ain't all gems.

Oops, almost forgot I had a blog for a minute there.

Amnesia. Get it?

Any-who.

I wonder, is there such a thing as "Blogger Etiquette"?

Forgetting to post to one's own blog is hardly an Abu Ghraib-able offense I'm sure, but regardless, I'm sorry and you'll each be getting flowers.

I should mention that I also forgot about my addiction to violent science-fictiony first-person-shooter videogames for a minute there and actually played "Star Wars Battlefront" for the first time last night.

That was a bad idea.

3 hours of sleep.

Carpal tunnel.

Boy I'm dumb.

Of course the fact that I am a closeted Star Wars junkie didn't exactly help peel me away from the computer either.

Pour moi, Star Wars + videogame violence = SERIOUSLY gettin' nuttin' done.

At least when it comes to putting something off, I'm not alone.

Oh and as long as we're on the subject of videogame violence.

Yeah yeah Armstrong Williams.

So we're all in a panic about some right-wing pundit being paid by the government to push governement policy.

And of course the right shoots back with some lame example of how the left-wing guys are just as bad.

You know what I think?

Whooptie-shit.

I know it's illegal. I know it's pretty much the definition of propaganda.

It might even be just the tip of the iceberg.

I'm sorry, it's just hard for me to get that worked up about it.

So a guy gets a check from some governement agency 'cause he helps promote their agenda.

What really REALLY spooks me is who owns the entire friggin' media.

P.S. One thing's for sure: everything Armstrong says now has a particularly distinct aroma of cow turd to it. I mean if you're gonna argue about how the the black power establishment has become fat and lazy and that there is a new Jim Crow, you should probably NOT be sucking on the government teat of George Bush's executive branch at the time. Besides, isn't he one of those conservatives who should be worried about too much frivolous government spending? I guess this really drives the point home that "right-wing" is not necessarily "conservative".

P.P.S. AND if you're gonna complain about black people being called "Uncle Toms", it would also probably behoove you to NOT be a protege of one of the most infamous white supremacists of all time. WAIT A MINUTE. What was his daughter's last name again? In this article Armstrong refer to Strom as his "adoptive grandfather". Hmmmmmmm.

No post today.

Ok, one.

But that's it.

A left wing blog that is "exposing" the hypocrisy of the anti-establishment nature of other left wing blogs, and how they are all a bit to cliquish.

I find it a bit of stating the obvious, myself.

I mean how outside the beltway can you be when the word "wonk" is pretty much the title of your weblog?

And of course they all call each other by their first names.

That was another clue.

But on that note, let's not forget the incestuous nature of corporate america.

Rah rah capitalism.

I F'n love this site.

It's kind of like "The Smoking Gun", except for corporations.

And who said URLs can't have dirty words in 'em?

Look, just cause everyone and his dog has a blog...

...doesn't mean some of them don't kick serious ass.

And speaking of Social Security

Where's the AARP during all this?

Aren't they the most powerful and influential lobbying group in the country?

And don't they have the most to lose?

Oh, here they are.

And by the way, they don't like the way Big Pharma does things either.

Privatize social security?

Aside from being just the DUMBEST IDEA since No Child Left Behind or voucher programs, where the heck does the president get his numbers from?

You might want to look at what the Congressional Budget Office (the non-partisan entity responsible for tracking and projecting gov’t spending) has to say about the future of SS.

A few handy tidbits…

“The expected trust fund exhaustion date--the year in which the trust fund balance (and thus the trust fund ratio) falls to zero--is 2052 in CBO's projection. But as the uncertainty range in Figure 1-2 shows, there is a 10 percent chance that the exhaustion date will be 2034 or earlier and a 10 percent chance that it will be after 2085. Although the figure shows negative trust fund ratios after the exhaustion date, under current law the trust funds cannot be negative because the Social Security program does not have the legal authority to borrow money. Thus, those negative balances represent the cumulative amount that the federal government's general fund would have to provide to pay all scheduled Social Security benefits. “

What this “trust fund ratio” means is simply the amount coming in versus the amount being paid.

This does NOT MEAN it will run out of money.

This little snippet may help explain…

“Trust-fund-financed benefits equal scheduled benefits until the trust funds are exhausted (projected to occur in 2052) and Social Security revenues thereafter. In 2053, dedicated revenues are projected to equal only 81 percent of scheduled outlays, so trust-fund-financed benefits are 19 percent lower than scheduled benefits (see Figure 1-3). The difference grows: by 2100, projected revenues are only 71 percent of projected outlays. “

As for putting the SS trust money in the market, HAVE YOU SEEN THE F’N STOCK MARKET?!?!

Why not just bet it on a horse?!?!

Besides SS is a GREAT BARGAIN for retirement moneys…

Just look:

Estimated Administrative Costs of Pension Systems and Their Effect on Assets at Retirement

Pension System		Annual Administrative Cost	Percentage Reduction in Assets at Retirement

Social Security		$11 per participant	2
Federal Thrift Savings Plan		$25 per participant	5
Mutual Funds (Average)		1.09 percent of assets	23
Private Defined-Contribution Funds, by Analyst
	Pension Dynamics Corporation (Large plan)	$24 per account plus 0.8 percent of assets	21
	Pension Dynamics Corporation (Small plan)	$60 per account plus 1 percent of assets	30
	IRS Form 5500 Tabulation	$49 per account	9
	General Accounting Office	$103 per account	19

There’s lots more.

www.firstgov.gov really IS the best place to start when looking for anything government related.

Finally getting over my illness.

It's got me feeling spikey...

OK, here we go.

I call bullshit.

"I saw a vivid example of what bureaucratic medical care meant back in 1959, when I had a summer job at the headquarters of the U.S. Public Health Service in Washington. Around 5 o'clock one afternoon, a man had a heart attack on the street near our office.

He was taken to the nurse's room and asked if he was a federal employee. If he was, he could be sent to the large, modern medical facility there in the Public Health Service headquarters. But he was not a government employee, so an ambulance was summoned from a local hospital.

By the time this ambulance made its way through miles of downtown Washington rush-hour traffic, the man was dead. He died waiting for a doctor, in a building full of doctors. That is what bureaucracy means."

Right wing talking heads LOVE these goofy anecdotal arguments, but frankly I'm pretty sick of them.

Dude, what doctor is really gonna stand there and let you die because of some bullshit paper trail?

Have you ever talked to a doctor who would let this happen? Ever?

Ok, everybody bug Nathe...

My friend Nathe has a rather strangely upbeat and vaguely homo-erotic review of me on his blog.

Maybe if we all bug him he'll start blogging regularly for us.

He's REALLY busy these days, as he has ambitions of a political bent, and two kids at home with one more on the way.

I'll be bugging him regardless.

NO. WAY.

Nice. Just beautiful.

Evidentially the south doesn't have the market cornered on draconian domestic laws.

Think I'm too hard on the south?

I'm not.