My life has consisted of pretty much average experiences, punctuated with a few moments of spiritually inspired greatness where I knew that I had accomplished something far and above those around me. I’m not talking about the winning the Boston Marathon or finding a cure for Cancer here, just day to day stuff that I took a particular interest in.
Maybe I have selective memory, but it seems that every single time I have “raised the bar” and really excelled at something and selfishly looked forward to a nice pat on the back and some ego-stroking, I have ended up with a boot on my ass and a feeling of guilt for making others feel bad as a result of my own efforts. For instance…
When I was in the fifth grade, our class had a “dream house” competition. The contest in theory, involved the students designing and building a scale model of their own “dream house.”
I was excited about the contest. You see, since a very early age my dad and I had built model airplanes together. Flying model airplanes. By the time I was in the fifth grade I could take sheets and strips of balsa wood and glue together a tissue covered structure that would actually fly—without using a prefabricated kit. A house was going to be a no- brainer.
Instead of balsa wood (which was expensive) my dad suggested that we select and modify a floor plan I liked from a “Homes magazine” and build the walls of the house out of plain office file folders. The folder stock was rigid enough yet could be folded and painted and was cheep. And so we did.
Under his supervision I carefully drew the floor plan on one sheet of stock and each of the interior and exterior walls on stock with little “tabs” on each end that would allow them to be glued together. The whole process took four or five evenings, but the finished product was painted inside and out with different finishes and looked great. It even had little cardboard kitchen cabinets, interior colored felt carpeting, a contact paper kitchen floor and drive way, and a green felt lawn outside. The roof of the house was removable so that you could see the front porch, carport, and the interior rooms. I was really proud of my work.
The problems started when my mother and I delivered my “dream home” to the school library where all the homes were to be displayed. “A fifth grader couldn’t have built something that looked like that,” some teachers said. “He had too much help…blaa blaa blaa…” You see, the other kids had basically taken cardboard boxes and cut out doors and windows and colored bricks and shutters on the outside of their boxes. A few had interior partitions made of cardboard or construction paper, but nothing else built apparently at the last minute came close to what I had built in five evenings with my model building skills.
The contest quickly was converted to a display rather than a competition and the whole thing sorta just died away without any prizes or recognition. Oh well, it was a good learning experience…
Fast forward to the eighth grade and the science teacher announced a science fair. I was all over the opportunity. I again was interested in using my model building skills and interest in aviation to compete. I built a working, flying model hovercraft with two gas powered engines, of my own design, from scratch, and fly it did—about an inch off of the ground. I brought it to school with great pride to find that I was competing with the ordinary assortment of poster board displays of mundane “science fair” projects and vinegar and baking soda volcanoes, etc.
I flew my hovercraft in the parking lot in front of the gym. For some reason, the science fair was converted at the last minute into a “display” rather than a “competition.” Again people complained that I had built my hovercraft from a kit or that I had too much parental help. I even received a grade of “B” rather than an “A” over some technicality in my written paper. Oh well…a good learning experience.
In tenth grade we had the standard “term paper” assignment in English class. You know-- the dreaded stack of index cards and lists of “ibid” on the back of the minimum 2000 words? Again I figured if I was going to have to write a research paper, I should use my time researching something I was interested in. How about Hovercraft?
Having actually previously built a flying Hovercraft, it seemed to make sense to me. And so I did. Working for several weeks, I wrote a beautifully researched paper that also included my own knowledge gained previously and I did a nice color drawing for a cover sheet (for ten points extra credit.) I brought it in to school and turned it in to the teacher on the appointed day.
The paper came back graded “F.” “I was obviously guilty of plagiarism” said my teacher, “because every darn paragraph I had written didn’t have a reference.” How dare I actually produce original work in the process of developing a high school term paper?
My mom had to make an embarrassing (for me) visit to the school and bring my flying hovercraft in order to prove that I had original, personal knowledge of what I had written about. After much discussion and the involvement of the principal, I had my paper re-graded as a B+ and on my cover drawing my bitch of a teacher wrote “It wouldn’t be very pretty, would it…”
All in all a good learning experience…
As an adult I’m still subjecting myself to “good learning experiences.” The past ten months I’ve been involved with the local community theater company, first as an actor, and in the past four productions in various levels of responsibility in stage management and set construction.
I gave up trying to act because I’m not an experienced actor and I found the rehearsal schedule to be difficult to accommodate—particularly with the liberties many actors felt they could take in not attending. It’s hard to learn to act with someone reading the lines of a missing actor from the seating area. Somehow they seem to get the show together at the last minute, but I can’t stand the stress.
For the past two months I’ve been working as the Set Designer and Set Construction Chief for Agatha Christies play “The Mousetrap.” I have worked my ass off, putting in nearly two hundred and fifty hours, much of the time working by myself. I have also been able to produce, like my fifth grade dream home, a set that is several orders of magnitude above what has ever been produced here before. There have been a few hiccups in the schedule and the Christmas/New Years holidays prevented me from getting much assistance over the past two weeks. I also had a confrontation with the Director and producer last week when they cancelled our technical rehearsal (a rehearsal where the lighting, sound, and set building guys are supposed to get to see how everything works together) at the last minute last week, but I finished my planned work about 4:30 Thursday afternoon, just in time for the 8:00PM preview performance that evening and the opening show Friday night. I was dead tired, relieved to be finished, and excited to see my name in print in the program and for the public to see the results of my efforts.
Just like the earlier experiences that I just recounted, at 4:31 PM the shit hit the fan. The two thousand copies of the freshly printed programs arrived at the theater and guess what; there was no mention of my involvement as Set Designer and Set Construction Chief. They forgot…
What’s the big deal, you might ask? Well, in the theater business, being the set designer is a big deal, and getting mentioned in the program as such is basically the only recognition that you get, since the director and producer’s name are plastered all over the marquee and the cover of the program.
To make matters worse, when I pointed out that I wasn’t’ mentioned in the program, it set off a firestorm of arguments and infighting and blame placing and all of my hard work is now overshadowed by the ensuing political crappola. To add insult to injury, now the producer (who is guilty of being pretty much invisible to date during this production) IS MAD AT ME because the theater board made her print an “insert” listing my name and position to put in the program. I'm afraid that the insert, while accomplishing the task of identifying my involvment, makes me end up looking like an egotistical moron for complaining in the first place.
I just want to crawl under a rock somewhere. Is it just me, or does this kind of stuff happen to everybody?
Oh well, all in all, it’s been a good learning experience....
Saturday, January 08, 2005
With Liberty and Justice For All
In The Index of Economic Freedom just published by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, the US fell out of the listing of top ten freest economies in the world this year.
“The top 10: Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Estonia (yes, the former Soviet "republic"), Ireland, New Zealand, U.K., Denmark, Iceland and Australia, followed by Chile.”
Can you believe this?
The United States of by God America, the country that wrote the book on freedom and liberty, has allowed our stupid politicians and bureaucrats to take away one of the very freedoms that made us great in the first place?
Actually, I personally can believe this is so because I have some first hand experience with government regulation of business and the dis-incentives that exist as roadblocks into starting a new business.
For instance, there is the so called “Business license.” What a “Business license” really is is a tax on a new business, a TAX ON MONEY YOU HAVEN’T EVEN EARNED YET. The county wants their share of your profits UP FRONT.
Back in the 1990’s I owned and operated a company called Industrial Energy Systems, Inc. We built industrial air pollution control and energy recovery systems--very technical stuff (I told you I was a nerd.) IES operated out of Cobb County Georgia, but we never once sold a single thing to anyone in Cobb County and only a few times did we ever deliver a product within the borders of the state of Georgia.
This didn’t matter to Cobb County when it came to getting a business license. When I paid them for the license they based the license fee on the total income of the business, regardless of where the income came from. Since the license was mandatory, you had no choice but to pay the $200 or whatever and just shut up.
To add insult to injury, one year they changed the way they calculated the license fee to make everyone’s license due on January 1st rather than on the anniversary date of when you started your business. Mine had been in September. At the same time they also changed the “tiers” of license fees and the good news was my license fees went down—so much so that since I had just paid my fee a few months before the change, I HAD A REFUND COMING.
I gleefully spent a couple of additional hours of my time filling out the new license forms and providing copies of the income documentation and mailed the form away to Cobb County. I forgot about the process until six months later when, instead of a refund check, I got a bill from Cobb County for the license fee and a late fee for not filing.
After meeting with the Tax Commissioner personally and making calls to my County Commissioner, I was informed that due to the large quantity of filings they had been delayed in processing some applications and had misplaced a few forms, but since I had no proof that I had filed for my refund (I didn’t take the time to make a copy of my license application,) that I would have to pay the late filing fee. They admitted that they had more money than was required from me, that they probably lost my application because they had lost others requiring a refund, that they initially would have owed me a $75 refund, but since they were the government they couldn’t be bothered with details like RIGHT AND WRONG so instead I still owed them the additional twenty five bucks they needed to cover their $100 computer generated late fee. CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS CRAP?
I paid the late fee…if I didn’t I would be assessed a late fee on my late fee.
Then there is the little game called Workman’s compensation and Unemployment insurance. What a complete and total shell game. I had a business in the early 1990’s with a business partner. Since we had less than three employees, Georgia allowed us to write a letter to the Workman’s Compensation Board excluding ourselves as owners of the business from participation in their Workman’s Compensation Insurance program. We had our own health insurance, so we opted out.
I also wrote a letter to the State Unemployment Insurance office attempting to do the same thing for myself with their product. Well, it turns out that you can’t legally opt out of participation in so called “Unemployment Insurance,” but the State of Georgia, being the highly efficient government entity that it is, didn’t bother to tell me so. Three years later, when my partner and I decided to dissolve our business relationship and close the business, the State of Georgia woke up and decided that we should have been paying for Unemployment Insurance all along and THEY WANTED THEIR MONEY.
Do you hear what I am saying? We were closing the businesses. We had never hired or fired anyone and the state never collected any premiums nor paid any unemployment claims over the three years we were in business, but the State of Georgia wanted all of their insurance premiums, WITH INTEREST, AND WITH LATE PENALTIES. Fifteen hundred dollars worth.
We paid them so the state wouldn’t collect late fees on their late fees. What a ridiculous rip off that was.
See, I didn’t even mention corporate taxes, payroll taxes, and the need to hire an accountant to help you wade through our cumbersome tax laws, but is there any wonder why they say we’re not in the top ten when it comes to Economic Freedom?
HELL NO....
“The top 10: Hong Kong, Singapore, Luxembourg, Estonia (yes, the former Soviet "republic"), Ireland, New Zealand, U.K., Denmark, Iceland and Australia, followed by Chile.”
Can you believe this?
The United States of by God America, the country that wrote the book on freedom and liberty, has allowed our stupid politicians and bureaucrats to take away one of the very freedoms that made us great in the first place?
Actually, I personally can believe this is so because I have some first hand experience with government regulation of business and the dis-incentives that exist as roadblocks into starting a new business.
For instance, there is the so called “Business license.” What a “Business license” really is is a tax on a new business, a TAX ON MONEY YOU HAVEN’T EVEN EARNED YET. The county wants their share of your profits UP FRONT.
Back in the 1990’s I owned and operated a company called Industrial Energy Systems, Inc. We built industrial air pollution control and energy recovery systems--very technical stuff (I told you I was a nerd.) IES operated out of Cobb County Georgia, but we never once sold a single thing to anyone in Cobb County and only a few times did we ever deliver a product within the borders of the state of Georgia.
This didn’t matter to Cobb County when it came to getting a business license. When I paid them for the license they based the license fee on the total income of the business, regardless of where the income came from. Since the license was mandatory, you had no choice but to pay the $200 or whatever and just shut up.
To add insult to injury, one year they changed the way they calculated the license fee to make everyone’s license due on January 1st rather than on the anniversary date of when you started your business. Mine had been in September. At the same time they also changed the “tiers” of license fees and the good news was my license fees went down—so much so that since I had just paid my fee a few months before the change, I HAD A REFUND COMING.
I gleefully spent a couple of additional hours of my time filling out the new license forms and providing copies of the income documentation and mailed the form away to Cobb County. I forgot about the process until six months later when, instead of a refund check, I got a bill from Cobb County for the license fee and a late fee for not filing.
After meeting with the Tax Commissioner personally and making calls to my County Commissioner, I was informed that due to the large quantity of filings they had been delayed in processing some applications and had misplaced a few forms, but since I had no proof that I had filed for my refund (I didn’t take the time to make a copy of my license application,) that I would have to pay the late filing fee. They admitted that they had more money than was required from me, that they probably lost my application because they had lost others requiring a refund, that they initially would have owed me a $75 refund, but since they were the government they couldn’t be bothered with details like RIGHT AND WRONG so instead I still owed them the additional twenty five bucks they needed to cover their $100 computer generated late fee. CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS CRAP?
I paid the late fee…if I didn’t I would be assessed a late fee on my late fee.
Then there is the little game called Workman’s compensation and Unemployment insurance. What a complete and total shell game. I had a business in the early 1990’s with a business partner. Since we had less than three employees, Georgia allowed us to write a letter to the Workman’s Compensation Board excluding ourselves as owners of the business from participation in their Workman’s Compensation Insurance program. We had our own health insurance, so we opted out.
I also wrote a letter to the State Unemployment Insurance office attempting to do the same thing for myself with their product. Well, it turns out that you can’t legally opt out of participation in so called “Unemployment Insurance,” but the State of Georgia, being the highly efficient government entity that it is, didn’t bother to tell me so. Three years later, when my partner and I decided to dissolve our business relationship and close the business, the State of Georgia woke up and decided that we should have been paying for Unemployment Insurance all along and THEY WANTED THEIR MONEY.
Do you hear what I am saying? We were closing the businesses. We had never hired or fired anyone and the state never collected any premiums nor paid any unemployment claims over the three years we were in business, but the State of Georgia wanted all of their insurance premiums, WITH INTEREST, AND WITH LATE PENALTIES. Fifteen hundred dollars worth.
We paid them so the state wouldn’t collect late fees on their late fees. What a ridiculous rip off that was.
See, I didn’t even mention corporate taxes, payroll taxes, and the need to hire an accountant to help you wade through our cumbersome tax laws, but is there any wonder why they say we’re not in the top ten when it comes to Economic Freedom?
HELL NO....
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Miami, We Have A Problem
(But At Least It’s Not A Wardrobe Malfunction)
In the fall of 1976 I was a senior in high school and spent a great deal of time playing the trumpet in the “The Pride of the Wiregrass, The Carroll High School Marching Band.” One hundred and forty members strong-- could we ever make some noise (and occasionally play some pretty darn good music.)
Since our football team made a habit of winning about two football games a year, the main reason for anyone to come to our town’s elaborate concrete multi-thousand seat high school football stadium was to see the halftime show that our marching band put on for each game. All of us teenaged musicians considered ourselves to be in “high cotton” back then.
What I want to know is, what the hell happened in the past twenty-eight years? Was there some memo from the Pope or Executive Order from the President that said that a halftime show couldn’t be successful with just the marching bands from the two respective schools delivering a spirited rendition of a few Broadway show tunes or some 60’s rock tunes?
Of course there is the prescient set by the USC Trojan band when they got to record with and perform the song ”Tusk” with the band Fleetwood Mac back in the 1980’s. What a long way down things have sunk since then.
When did it become necessary for every televised college football bowl game to relegate the respective educational institutions hard working marching bands to the role of scrambling around on the sidelines like so many oversized ants while a few scantly clad or skin tight clad, so-called pop divas undulate seductively on a stage surrounded by a freak show of unisex dancers and exploding pyrotechnics?
Case in point, tonight’s FedEx Orangebowl featuring USC and Oklahoma. Luckily, my indifference lead me to tune in at the end of a one sided first half that had yielded a four touchdown lead for USC. I just hate lopsided football games unless it involves Georgia Tech on the winning side and that rarely happens.
I tuned in just in time to watch the event that is now considered a “football halftime show” featuring Kelly Clarkson, Trace Atkins, and, of all people…Ashlee Simpson A.K.A. Saturday Night Live’s candidate for the Milli Vanilli 2004 lip sync award.
I felt sorry for Trace Atkins being the serious hard working artist that he is, but at least we didn’t have to look at anyone’s private parts tonight (such that I noticed…)
Tonight's problem was a sound system malfunction instead of one of the wardrobe variety.
As soon as Miss Clarkson took the stage it was obvious that there was a problem with the lead vocal microphone. Her first verse and part of the first chorus featured her doing her best “mute mime” impression while the base guitar and drummer ruptured everyone’s eardrums with the rhythm lines of the song she was attempting to perform. This chick, being an “American Idol” winner for whatever that is worth, kept her composure pretty well and the technicians finally sorta-kinda got the mike mix figured out although it seemed to fade in and out for the rest of the song.
Trace Atkins was next and the vocals to his country song were fairly evenly muted and almost indiscernible if I hadn’t recognized the song he was doing.
Next came Ms. Simpson whom I am sure was already petrified at the possibility of having a repeat of her earlier SNL debacle where she was caught lip syncing when the sound technician played the wrong vocal track. Apparently she was attempting to actually sing this song and in spite of the volume irregularities she managed to writhe, wiggle, undulate, and pelvic thrust her way through the process without having a conniption fit and running off of the stage like she did on SNL.
Meanwhile, the Sooner and Trojan bands were relegated to running around the edges of the midfield pop/country performance like an army of ants and at no point in the process could you tell if a single trumpeter was trumpeting or tromboner was tromboning. Where are Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nix when you need them?
Personally, I would really rather hear a nice John Phillip Sousa march just for old times sake once in a while….you know what I mean?
In the fall of 1976 I was a senior in high school and spent a great deal of time playing the trumpet in the “The Pride of the Wiregrass, The Carroll High School Marching Band.” One hundred and forty members strong-- could we ever make some noise (and occasionally play some pretty darn good music.)
Since our football team made a habit of winning about two football games a year, the main reason for anyone to come to our town’s elaborate concrete multi-thousand seat high school football stadium was to see the halftime show that our marching band put on for each game. All of us teenaged musicians considered ourselves to be in “high cotton” back then.
What I want to know is, what the hell happened in the past twenty-eight years? Was there some memo from the Pope or Executive Order from the President that said that a halftime show couldn’t be successful with just the marching bands from the two respective schools delivering a spirited rendition of a few Broadway show tunes or some 60’s rock tunes?
Of course there is the prescient set by the USC Trojan band when they got to record with and perform the song ”Tusk” with the band Fleetwood Mac back in the 1980’s. What a long way down things have sunk since then.
When did it become necessary for every televised college football bowl game to relegate the respective educational institutions hard working marching bands to the role of scrambling around on the sidelines like so many oversized ants while a few scantly clad or skin tight clad, so-called pop divas undulate seductively on a stage surrounded by a freak show of unisex dancers and exploding pyrotechnics?
Case in point, tonight’s FedEx Orangebowl featuring USC and Oklahoma. Luckily, my indifference lead me to tune in at the end of a one sided first half that had yielded a four touchdown lead for USC. I just hate lopsided football games unless it involves Georgia Tech on the winning side and that rarely happens.
I tuned in just in time to watch the event that is now considered a “football halftime show” featuring Kelly Clarkson, Trace Atkins, and, of all people…Ashlee Simpson A.K.A. Saturday Night Live’s candidate for the Milli Vanilli 2004 lip sync award.
I felt sorry for Trace Atkins being the serious hard working artist that he is, but at least we didn’t have to look at anyone’s private parts tonight (such that I noticed…)
Tonight's problem was a sound system malfunction instead of one of the wardrobe variety.
As soon as Miss Clarkson took the stage it was obvious that there was a problem with the lead vocal microphone. Her first verse and part of the first chorus featured her doing her best “mute mime” impression while the base guitar and drummer ruptured everyone’s eardrums with the rhythm lines of the song she was attempting to perform. This chick, being an “American Idol” winner for whatever that is worth, kept her composure pretty well and the technicians finally sorta-kinda got the mike mix figured out although it seemed to fade in and out for the rest of the song.
Trace Atkins was next and the vocals to his country song were fairly evenly muted and almost indiscernible if I hadn’t recognized the song he was doing.
Next came Ms. Simpson whom I am sure was already petrified at the possibility of having a repeat of her earlier SNL debacle where she was caught lip syncing when the sound technician played the wrong vocal track. Apparently she was attempting to actually sing this song and in spite of the volume irregularities she managed to writhe, wiggle, undulate, and pelvic thrust her way through the process without having a conniption fit and running off of the stage like she did on SNL.
Meanwhile, the Sooner and Trojan bands were relegated to running around the edges of the midfield pop/country performance like an army of ants and at no point in the process could you tell if a single trumpeter was trumpeting or tromboner was tromboning. Where are Mick Fleetwood and Stevie Nix when you need them?
Personally, I would really rather hear a nice John Phillip Sousa march just for old times sake once in a while….you know what I mean?
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Off Our Radar Screens
If an airliner full of people crashes, your local and national media is right there to tell you about it with film of all of the gory details. Better not get on an airliner lest you die a horrible, premature death.
If there is a high speed car chase in LA and a news helicopter following the crack-head-idiot-car-thief drivers, Fox News is sure to break into regularly scheduled programming with live aerial footage of the suspects. Don't let a car thief run over you unless you want your relatives to collect on your insurance policy.
If a shark chews on the foot of a Ft. Lauderdale surfer, all the newspapers have front page stories the next day showing the bloody stump. For God's sake don't go to the beach unless you want to feed the sushi they tell us.
Then there are Tsunami. That’s right--Tsunami, not Tsunamis. (Octopus…Octopi…it’s the English language—I didn’t make up the spelling rules, I just try to adhere to them.)
My mother says she had never heard of a Tsunami before this recent international disaster. I admit that if it hadn’t been for the Professor on the TV show “Gilligan’s Island,” I wouldn’t have heard of the threat of Tsunami before the age of 21 or so. But, as it turns out, I had heard of “tidal waves” and Tsunami and I knew before Christmas that they were usually caused by earthquakes under and adjacent to the ocean floor. I worried that there could be a tsunami immediately after hearing of the earthquake Christmas weekend. I was right.
What I did not realize is that there were 796 tsunami observed in the Pacific Ocean between 1900 and 2001. According to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, 117 tsunami caused casualties and damage in that same period.
What I want to know is, where the heck has the mainstream media been over the past hundred years? I thought that it was the media’s self proclaimed job to hyperventilate over every single thing that could possibly cause a “boo boo” on your knee or potentially cause the loss of human life. Viaox, lightening bolts, children's car seats, air bags…most Americans should live their lives in wild eyed fear to hear the TV talking heads tell it, but Tsunami?
Off our radar screens…
UPDATE: Before I could even finish this post, I have to add "herd of cows" to present international threats.
It seems that the main airport in Sumatra was closed to relief flights when a cargo plane hit a herd of cows on landing.
Where is the Transportation Security Administration when you need them? Do they have a procedure to pat down a cow entering airport property?
Just Wondering...
If there is a high speed car chase in LA and a news helicopter following the crack-head-idiot-car-thief drivers, Fox News is sure to break into regularly scheduled programming with live aerial footage of the suspects. Don't let a car thief run over you unless you want your relatives to collect on your insurance policy.
If a shark chews on the foot of a Ft. Lauderdale surfer, all the newspapers have front page stories the next day showing the bloody stump. For God's sake don't go to the beach unless you want to feed the sushi they tell us.
Then there are Tsunami. That’s right--Tsunami, not Tsunamis. (Octopus…Octopi…it’s the English language—I didn’t make up the spelling rules, I just try to adhere to them.)
My mother says she had never heard of a Tsunami before this recent international disaster. I admit that if it hadn’t been for the Professor on the TV show “Gilligan’s Island,” I wouldn’t have heard of the threat of Tsunami before the age of 21 or so. But, as it turns out, I had heard of “tidal waves” and Tsunami and I knew before Christmas that they were usually caused by earthquakes under and adjacent to the ocean floor. I worried that there could be a tsunami immediately after hearing of the earthquake Christmas weekend. I was right.
What I did not realize is that there were 796 tsunami observed in the Pacific Ocean between 1900 and 2001. According to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, 117 tsunami caused casualties and damage in that same period.
What I want to know is, where the heck has the mainstream media been over the past hundred years? I thought that it was the media’s self proclaimed job to hyperventilate over every single thing that could possibly cause a “boo boo” on your knee or potentially cause the loss of human life. Viaox, lightening bolts, children's car seats, air bags…most Americans should live their lives in wild eyed fear to hear the TV talking heads tell it, but Tsunami?
Off our radar screens…
UPDATE: Before I could even finish this post, I have to add "herd of cows" to present international threats.
It seems that the main airport in Sumatra was closed to relief flights when a cargo plane hit a herd of cows on landing.
Where is the Transportation Security Administration when you need them? Do they have a procedure to pat down a cow entering airport property?
Just Wondering...
United We Stand
Three Bushes trump an entire flock of gold cufflink wearing UN diplomats and mindless yammering Euroweenies any day in my book.
I think that we are seeing a significant chapter of history in the making as George Sr., George W., and Jeb Bush all step forward to help tackle the massive logistical nightmare that is the Asian earthquake/tsunami disaster.
The situation also has eerie reflections of what might have been politically forty years ago had JFK and Robert Kennedy not been assassinated. How low the Kennedy family has sunk with the useless drunken sot Senator Ted Kennedy and a few woman abusing nephews left to speak for what once was a great American family—even if they were Democrats. I’m still waiting for Senator Ted to step forward and pony up a few million of his family’s vast holding to finance the relief effort. Instead, I’m sure he’s frantically working on legislation designed to increase the US’s share of the UN’s funding and raise our taxes. Go get ‘em Ted.
I will even give the president credit for including the pantyhose-commander-in-chief Bill Clinton in a bipartisan effort to raise money. Actually, I don’t mind seeing Clinton’s gigantic mouth and ego brought to bear to publicly ask all of the compassionate left wing liberal elite and the Hollywood misfits like Barbara Streisand to put their money where their mouths typically are.
I also expect Clinton to not pass up the opportunity to get a few digs in against his Bush/Republican benefactors and inevitably make the process all about him. He just can’t help himself.
And then there is the UN and Kofi Annan. What a waste of oxygen.
I think that we are seeing a significant chapter of history in the making as George Sr., George W., and Jeb Bush all step forward to help tackle the massive logistical nightmare that is the Asian earthquake/tsunami disaster.
The situation also has eerie reflections of what might have been politically forty years ago had JFK and Robert Kennedy not been assassinated. How low the Kennedy family has sunk with the useless drunken sot Senator Ted Kennedy and a few woman abusing nephews left to speak for what once was a great American family—even if they were Democrats. I’m still waiting for Senator Ted to step forward and pony up a few million of his family’s vast holding to finance the relief effort. Instead, I’m sure he’s frantically working on legislation designed to increase the US’s share of the UN’s funding and raise our taxes. Go get ‘em Ted.
I will even give the president credit for including the pantyhose-commander-in-chief Bill Clinton in a bipartisan effort to raise money. Actually, I don’t mind seeing Clinton’s gigantic mouth and ego brought to bear to publicly ask all of the compassionate left wing liberal elite and the Hollywood misfits like Barbara Streisand to put their money where their mouths typically are.
I also expect Clinton to not pass up the opportunity to get a few digs in against his Bush/Republican benefactors and inevitably make the process all about him. He just can’t help himself.
And then there is the UN and Kofi Annan. What a waste of oxygen.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Can't See The Forrest For The Trees
It continues to amaze me how we here in the US go about attempting to defend air travelers from the threat of terrorism. All 19 of the 9/11 hijackers were of Saudi or other native Arabic descent. Not one of them was a long haired, sun-tanned south Alabama redneck on vacation nor were they a 95 year old German grandmother in a wheelchair, yet that is exactly who the TSA screeners are assaulting with wands and pat downs at airport checkpoints while Abdul and Mohammed and Rashee breeze through the gates unfettered.
The solders of Allah’s success was not a result of the deadly threat of the “box cutter” knives they wielded, but rather the lemming-like mentality that air travelers had been taught dating back to the “take me to Cuba” hijacking craze of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Pilots and passengers alike had been led to believe that cooperation with the assailant’s demands was preferable to standing up and kicking the asses of anyone that started misbehaving on an airplane.
Not anymore. You get out of your seat and start yelling about Allah while I’m on a flight and you’re going to feel what is like to have my 6’3”, 235 pound carcass opening an industrial strength can of whoop-ass and delivering it to you personally. I don’t care what the legal consequences are. I’ll make bail and then sue what’s left of your stupid butt in court. I might just get re-arrested for assaulting you again when and if I ever see you again.
I believe that most every red-blooded American man feels the same way.
Instead of devoting our law enforcement resources to the task of looking for potential terrorists, we spend most of our time and energy passing new laws aimed at looking for items that could be in some ridiculous way considered weapons. The latest items banned in the latest government’s Intelligence Reform Bill’s new “no fly” list includes cigarette lighters.
Cigarette Lighters…For some reason I don’t feel much safer.
Now, in addition to not being able to clip your fingernails in flight (I bite mine—can they ban teeth?), we are all spared the risk of some rabid cigarette smoker loosing his mind in a nicotine starved fit of insanity and lighting up a cigar or cigarette in the restroom of a Delta 767. The really bad news is that the smokers in the crowd will potentially be prohibited the ability to run to one of those airport “smoker’s aquariums” (you know, the glass walled smoking areas often found in airport concourses) between flights after enduring a white knuckled, nicotine free, two hours on a flight between Atlanta and Chicago.
Some smokers I know may actually become terrorists if they are forced to go too long without a fix of nicotine as a result of this new hair-brained exclusion. In the future, expect to find large roaming herds of wild eyed smokers, feverishly lighting up entire packs of cigarettes outside the front door of an airport near you.
And I’ve got news for you. Nothing has changed relative to the basic security of commercial aviation, except that stupid, careless, or otherwise amateur terrorists like that moron “The Shoe Bomber” are excluded from the list of threats. If a smart guy like me or some of my friends (this means you, Tripp) wanted to assault a commercial airliner, none of the laws and bans we have passed to date would prevent us from doing it. The only thing that has changed is that the price of delivering the threat has gone up.
The Islamofascist terrorists don’t want to kill every single American. They don’t have the time and resources to accomplish that. What they do want to do is to scare us into changing our way of life. They want to cause us to stop supporting Israel. They want to get our military and our influence out of the middle east so that the kleptocrats and other little weird beard dictator wanna-be’s can dominate their people at will.
If we truly want to prevent a future terrorist attack, Al Qaeda or otherwise, we will start carefully screening the origin and background of everyone getting on an airplane—paying particular attention to anyone of middle-eastern descent.
To hell with political correctness. Profiling is not racism—it’s just common sense.
The solders of Allah’s success was not a result of the deadly threat of the “box cutter” knives they wielded, but rather the lemming-like mentality that air travelers had been taught dating back to the “take me to Cuba” hijacking craze of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Pilots and passengers alike had been led to believe that cooperation with the assailant’s demands was preferable to standing up and kicking the asses of anyone that started misbehaving on an airplane.
Not anymore. You get out of your seat and start yelling about Allah while I’m on a flight and you’re going to feel what is like to have my 6’3”, 235 pound carcass opening an industrial strength can of whoop-ass and delivering it to you personally. I don’t care what the legal consequences are. I’ll make bail and then sue what’s left of your stupid butt in court. I might just get re-arrested for assaulting you again when and if I ever see you again.
I believe that most every red-blooded American man feels the same way.
Instead of devoting our law enforcement resources to the task of looking for potential terrorists, we spend most of our time and energy passing new laws aimed at looking for items that could be in some ridiculous way considered weapons. The latest items banned in the latest government’s Intelligence Reform Bill’s new “no fly” list includes cigarette lighters.
Cigarette Lighters…For some reason I don’t feel much safer.
Now, in addition to not being able to clip your fingernails in flight (I bite mine—can they ban teeth?), we are all spared the risk of some rabid cigarette smoker loosing his mind in a nicotine starved fit of insanity and lighting up a cigar or cigarette in the restroom of a Delta 767. The really bad news is that the smokers in the crowd will potentially be prohibited the ability to run to one of those airport “smoker’s aquariums” (you know, the glass walled smoking areas often found in airport concourses) between flights after enduring a white knuckled, nicotine free, two hours on a flight between Atlanta and Chicago.
Some smokers I know may actually become terrorists if they are forced to go too long without a fix of nicotine as a result of this new hair-brained exclusion. In the future, expect to find large roaming herds of wild eyed smokers, feverishly lighting up entire packs of cigarettes outside the front door of an airport near you.
And I’ve got news for you. Nothing has changed relative to the basic security of commercial aviation, except that stupid, careless, or otherwise amateur terrorists like that moron “The Shoe Bomber” are excluded from the list of threats. If a smart guy like me or some of my friends (this means you, Tripp) wanted to assault a commercial airliner, none of the laws and bans we have passed to date would prevent us from doing it. The only thing that has changed is that the price of delivering the threat has gone up.
The Islamofascist terrorists don’t want to kill every single American. They don’t have the time and resources to accomplish that. What they do want to do is to scare us into changing our way of life. They want to cause us to stop supporting Israel. They want to get our military and our influence out of the middle east so that the kleptocrats and other little weird beard dictator wanna-be’s can dominate their people at will.
If we truly want to prevent a future terrorist attack, Al Qaeda or otherwise, we will start carefully screening the origin and background of everyone getting on an airplane—paying particular attention to anyone of middle-eastern descent.
To hell with political correctness. Profiling is not racism—it’s just common sense.
