Random Thoughts for April, 2012
I expect to be tied up with Medical Appointments on Tuesday, April 10, so will leave this to post on Wednesday, April 11. ~Bob
“Justice for Christopher Cervini! Justice for Christopher Cervini!” Wait, where’s the crowd?
Norm Thompson, a wise selectman in Lunenburg , MA
People who circulate racist jokes about Obama are helping his supporters discredit the opposition to him as being based on race, not policy. People who circulate forged documents like Kenyan birth certificates or bogus student IDs help Obama by discrediting the integrity of the opposition, just as the Dan Rather-circulated forgeries helped reelect Bush in 2004. So they are unethical and stupid at the same time. Nice combo.
Folks who are willing to create forged documents to discredit a hated political opponent, Bush, Palin or Obama, are unethical slimeballs. As are media types who edit footage or audio to create the impression of things like racism where it doesn’t exist. Looking at you NBC.
What’s beyond totally Broke? Baroke!
Wonder what the price of gas would be today if we’d started an aggressive US
Remember the old western movies, where the lynch mob shows up at the jail, demanding the sheriff turn over the prisoner for hanging without trial? They are now called “community organizers” or “activists.”
I hope the hoards of ‘tweens and teens who flocked to see The Hunger Games drew the right lesson: a government strong enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to do anything it wants.
This “guest worker” thing in Europe has gone too far, when they have to import them to murder Jewish children instead of doing it themselves as in the old days.
I’m still hopeful that if in 2013, if Barack Obama wants to send his family to Spain , take them to Hawaii or send the 13-year-old to Mexico
If you can’t afford to send your 13-year-old, 12 friends, 25 guards and two jets to Mexico
Tee shirt suggestion: “The Rapture happened, and I was left behind. You too, huh?”
Race Baiters: Putting the “Hood” in hoodie for thirty years.
Did you notice that after three soldiers, a Rabbi and three Jewish kids were slaughtered by a Muslim in France, the Professional Left and their Multicultural Media Mongers started fretting about…a mythical backlash against Muslims. Muslims are very often victims, indeed, but usually of Allahmurder from other Muslims. Rarely if ever of any “backlash” because of Muslim murders.
You didn’t know who Christopher Cervini was in the first item above? But I bet you know who Trayvon Martin was.
My wife is excellent at hiding in stores. I think she crouches behind displays and creeps from aisle to aisle giggling as I wonder around looking for her.
If you like ObamaCare, you think it’s constitutional. If you think it’s a bad law, you think it’s unconstitutional.
The “civilized” west no longer has the will to use the harsh measures necessary to prevent the barbarians from destroying civilization, though such harsh measures would prevent vastly more suffering, bloodshed and death in the long run. Therefore, civilization will collapse and fear, hunger, deprivation and violence will stalk the land. Won’t impact me—I have a terminal illness. But I weep for my granddaughter, so I’m doing what I can to drag out the remaining days of civilization for her sake.
Once upon a time, long ago, liberals hated anti-Semitism. But, having embraced Islamists as a necessary part of their dream of multiculturalism, anti-Semitism is now a natural part of non-Jewish liberal's worldview.
Arrogance has ruined more people than stupidity.
It’s easy to close the border and cheap too. Establish a ten-mile-wide free fire zone and use drones. Painful at first, but after the first week, there’d be no more attempts. I know, I’m terrible. So is what the illegal colonizers are doing to your children’s future.
Oh, puny man. The Priests have spoken. The Great God Global Warming demands that you heat your homes only from the sun and power them only from the wind, that you lay at his feet the sacrifice of hunger and poverty and that you drive--if you must--in a Volt! (Of course, the GGGW wants his priests to ride in limos and private jets, to eat at 5-star restaurants and to live in comfort in well-heated and cooled 50,000 square foot mansions. Only right, you know.)
Now that the Democrats have announced that we Republicans are at war with women, I'm trying to convince my wife that I need to do my part and take a few prisoners down at Hooters.
The Vast Leftwing Conspiracy: Academics, the media, green fanatics, government employees, trial lawyers, crony capitalists on Wall Street and at green companies, CAIR, feminists, people who want free stuff from the government, unions, guilty rich liberals and people on the dole.
Justice Antonin Scalia is 76. Anyone who doesn’t vote for the GOP nominee in 2012, whoever he is, is voting for an Obama-controlled court doing irreparable damage to our country for a decade or more.
Hard to believe it’s 2012. Forty-eight years ago this August, I arrived at Parris Island, SC to let my DIs earn their pay by turning me into a Marine and, I hope, a good man. Forty years ago this November, I was elected to the Massachusetts State Senate, defeating an incumbent Democrat in a 4-1 Democrat district by nine votes out of 60,000+ cast. It all seems like yesterday. Time flies.
Wouldn’t it be cheaper for insurance companies to give out oral sex guides than to require them to provide birth control and abortions? Just asking. And if liberals practice birth control and abortion, and conservatives don’t, are there not some offsetting future benefits? Or do they count on the universities to indoctrinate all kids into the progressive religion?
If you think Andrew Breitbart deserved to die, but believe that it's barbaric to execute a child rapist/murderer, you might be a liberal.
Social Justice (n.) Someone else pays for the stuff I want.
Fair’s fair. I think we should be as open to Muslim immigrants as Muslim-majority countries are to having Jews and Christians settle there and build places to worship.
You think Muslims are discriminated against in the West? Try to open a church in Saudi Arabia
Toast for the new baby: “May this child grow up free from want, free from oppression and free from the old hatreds.”
When the waiter serves the wine in a restaurant, I like to ask incredulously, “Wine comes in bottles too?” I’m a Scotch-Single Malt snob. Wine not so much.
If Shari’a Law is ever established in America
See if I understand Sen. Snowe’s recent decision: The senate is not operating as the founders envisioned, so she is going to improve it by retiring. Do I have that right?
Please don’t improve the computer programs I use again.
Each year, there is more truth one dares not speak for fear of being not politically correct.
My title for most of my professional career has been Executive Director, or "E.D." for short. As in, "The E.D. will send out the report." This didn't bother me at all until the cheerful commercials of men dealing with E.D.—Erectile Dysfunction—started flooding the TV.
Saw an ad asking if I wanted to know the day of Jesus' return. Yes, indeed, as I'd like to skip work that week. I’ll enjoy seeing all the stunned people, especially those who talk about him a lot but don’t really expect him to pop up. But I hope he doesn’t come back in the Middle East —still not safe there for a Jew turned Christian.
Publications need a computer program like “Spell Check,” call it “PC Check” to find words that might be non-PC in some capacity.
I didn't want to get into the debate about Sandra Fluke, the college student who felt that the cost of her birth control in college, which she estimated at $3,000, should be paid by all the people who buy insurance through their premiums, not by her alone. But, frankly, if we chipped in and bought her a vibrator for her sexual health, it would be cheap, convenient, disease free and 100% effective in preventing her from "being punished with a child," in Obama's words. In my view, the right response to her was: Thank you for sharing the details of your sex life and desire for others to pay for it. Next witness.
Obama called to support Sandra Fluke when Rush called her a “slut,” but took $1M in contributions from Bill Maher, who called Sarah Palin a “c—t.” (A word so disreputable I flinch from using it on the blog.) Apparently, incivility and misogyny is okay on the left, but wrong on the right. But I too think Rush was wrong. We err when we stoop to their level, even if not as far, thus changing the debate. Of course, if Obama wasn’t a hypocrite, he’d have called Palin too. And If I had some ham, I could have a ham and cheese sandwich, if I had some cheese and some bread.
And I condemn Republicans for constantly talking about Sandra Fluke’s sex life. Every day I see them fretting about “Fast and Furious,” clearly a coded reference.
Turns out she could already get free or very low cost birth control. Makes one wonder if she was just being used? And she was fairly attractive—wouldn’t some guy spring for it?
Who says Obama can’t compromise? He’s has taken credit for the state decision to build part of the Keystone Pipeline. If it works out, he’ll consider building the part that connects to the oil. In return, I say we agree to build part of a windmill.
People say the airport screeners are getting too intrusive. I dunno, but the last time I flew, the TSA agent asked me to turn my head and cough.
I lived with my Grandmother when I was in high school. She died in 1977, but I feel she isn't really gone as long as I can write, "Please excuse Robert from school on Tuesday as he was ill. Mildred L. Hall." in her handwriting.
Remember TQM? Every field--education, medicine, business, politics, science--has fads. Don't jump too quick.
There are a couple of pretty easy-to-use decision-making filters. One is, "Is the best possible reward of the action I'm thinking about taking worth the risk of the worst possible outcome?" That would stop almost all shop lifting, many affairs and much voting. The second is, "If I was to take this action, and it was published on the front page of the local paper, how would I and my family feel?" These might have stopped Bill Clinton, John Edwards and a host of other politicians from making fools or criminals of themselves.
Two years ago, the organization I manage was presented with a future forced change in location. The correct decision was immediately apparent to me. One might call that intuitive decision making, but I think it is just being thoroughly immersed in the organizational details and having long professional experience, so that deep analysis wasn't needed, or, perhaps, was almost instantaneous. I presented this to the board a year ago, and they voted their agreement. Then, three weeks before the deadline, there was a sudden flutter of concern from other organizations faced with the same decision, producing conference calls, memos, site inspections, spreadsheets and the consumption of vast amounts of time, compensated for me, but not for the more valuable time of the board members, who are highly-skilled professionals. The result was to reaffirm the decision that was obvious to me two years ago. But the volunteers whose highly-valuable time was expended to reach the same conclusion seem happy that they did due diligence.
In my experience, most people who are easily offended enjoy the drama of being offended.
I get the feeling that some people really regret that “swooning” went out of fashion.
There's not much of a "placebo effect" when your oxygen tank runs out of gas.
I've reached the age where the idea of an older "cougar" being interested in me is downright frightening.
No one who doesn’t have an understanding of basic economic principles can justly claim to be an educated person. No one without a fair grasp of American history can claim to be a patriot or a good citizen.
People confuse “conceivable” with “probable” or “possible.” I can conceive of Bill Gates sharing his fortune with me, but it’s not remotely probable. I can conceive of lots of things that are not remotely possible, like living forever. The purveyors of sunshine and fairy dust philosophy love to say things like, “If you can dream it, it can happen.” As my Brit pals say, “Not bloody likely, mate.”
I suppose being able to wish away unpleasant facts gets one through the day, though as a Scots friend once said to me, “Facts are chiels that winna ding!’
Americans seem to be getting stupider. Every day, fewer are able to recognize how wonderful Obama is, or the value of big government buying them shiny things with their grandchildren’s money, while controlling ever greater parts of their lives.
Politics has always been theater, but today so much of it is such bad theater. Still, the public and media seem to lap it up.
Joke going around: “I’m so out of it. I thought Red Bull was the name of Obama’s next book. Turns out to be a drink.”
Every Obama statement should have an expiration date, like milk: “Best if believed before….”
I’m thinking of a new career as a “life coach.” Or a “con artist”—whichever.
I don’t mind getting old. But too many of my friends are getting dead. Often for the first time, without so much as a “by-your-leave.”
Cable News (Fox, CNN or MSNBC, doesn’t matter) has become more like pro-wrestling and less like real news. Too often it’s people shouting at and attacking each other to entertain the viewers. Like fighting in hockey, I suppose it drives ratings. I prefer to read news on line and spend my free time with books.
To paraphrase the excellent P. G. Wodehouse, Obama seems to have a hideous ingenuity for finding new paths to ruin for the country.
Things I learned from Obama that I didn’t know: You can establish a “no-fly” zone over a country that hasn’t attacked us and posed no threat to us without Congressional approval. And a “no-fly” zone allows you to bomb the snot out of anything that moves on the ground or in the air.
Obama knows higher taxes will kill employment and the stock market, thus hurting his reelection. But he’s counting on the GOP to be responsible and defeat them so he can use being for them in his campaign with economically-ignorant voters.
When someone is hot on an idea and eager to “boil the ocean,” bringing up practical considerations will get you labeled as a negative nay-sayer and obstructionist. This is not good when they are above you in the hierarchy. There is a penalty for being the “voice of reason.” Often it is to somehow get the blame when the great idea comes a cropper. Yes, I have the scars.
The progressives ideal of a perfect society is a cemetery. All incomes and all results are equal. No one works and no one cares. Plus they all vote Democrat.
If President Obama can force Catholics to pay for birth control and abortions, President Romney can force everyone to be baptized Mormon after death.
A government that has the right to force you to buy health insurance for your health has the right to force you to buy and carry a gun for public safety.
I doubt the Illuminati exist. But if so, I’m willing to join for power and money. Do they have a website?
At both the Democrat and Republican conventions, the person with the Tin Foil Hat concession stands to make a lot of money.
Twitter is useful for picking up links to information for my blog, but one has to put up with people using it to whine over trivia, from what they had for lunch to daylight savings time.
I tried to buy a gun and ammo last week. Racist bastards didn’t know it’s wrong to ask for photo IDs.
New rule: Anything I think is a “right,” you have to buy for me.
Saw a great Tweet: “Obama is the first president of the ‘everyone gets a trophy’ generation.” Too sadly true.
Eternity (n.) The time you spend staring at the screen, waiting for your computer to open a slow-loading website.
When Barack Obama was campaigning in 2008, he told Ohio Chicago
I got a pitch for a seminar headed, “Robert, do you dread conflict?” I was going to write back and say, “Why no, I thrive on conflict. I love to crush my opponents and see them shrouded in tears.” But knowing how things live forever on the Internet, I was afraid the joke would fall into the wrong hands and be used to fustigate me.
People who smugly proclaim that, “No two snowflakes are exactly alike” never looked at even 1% of them. For all they know, there might have been three identical flakes in my yard last year.
Good rule: “In God we trust. All others bring data.”
One military technique is to set up a “false position,” to encourage the enemy to waste their ammo and energy attacking it, much as the left cannot resist savaging and slandering Sarah Palin, though she is not a candidate.
Am I the only one who thinks a singer putting vibrato and flourishes into patriotic songs ruins them?
So minorities can’t get ID? If you walked through a minority neighborhood and offered $1 to everyone who showed an ID, you’d go broke in a block.
I think the 2012 election will turn on events yet to happen, so all polls taken now are worthless.
Liberal woman went on a “sex strike” to demand free birth control. I fully support their efforts. The longer they are on strike, the less of their birth control I’ll need to help pay for. Hang tough, women! “No more ‘til 2024! No more ‘til 2024!”
If you look at debt and spending at every level of government, you realize that progressives are at war with mathematics. And you know that, relentlessly, math will win. It has no pity, no sense of “Social Justice.” But the defeat will be very painful for all of us.
I notice that the poorest cities in America
Obama says his kids should be off limits in the campaign. I agree, as far off limits as Bristol
If I understand correctly, Obama believes we can’t drill our way out of the energy crisis, but we can tax, borrow and spend our way out of the economics crisis. Based, I guess, on all the times massive debt and printing fiat money has produced prosperity for countries, from Weimar to Zimbabwe
When I joined the Marines and volunteered for Vietnam
Obama’s Chevy Volt is starting to make the Edsel look like a success story.
We all need to be reminded from time to time that being an expert in one field doesn’t not make you expert, or even competent, in others.
Do you think if the German Jews had only had “Coexist” bumper stickers in 1934, they’d have been fine?
Obama is a Teflon president only because the media keeps slapping on the Teflon.
When atheists and secularists have a meeting, does someone give an invocation? To whom—Global Warming?
How about a law cutting off aid to any country where more than 50% of their girl children have their genitals mutilated? Stop the real “War on Women!”
I like when people soliciting money make it clear on the envelope, so I don’t waste time opening it.
While millions of Muslims celebrate attacks on Christians and Jews, from the conquest of Christian lands in north Africa and the Middle East, to endless Muslim assaults, slave raids and invasions of Europe over a thousand years, to 9/11, Christians and Jews are expected to apologize for any effort to defend themselves and fight back, from the Crusades to Afghanistan.
In 2008, Obama called the deficits under Bush irresponsible and unpatriotic. He calls his much higher deficits investments in the future. Guess it’s in the eye of the beholder. In my view, The Hunger Games may be the future.
Whenever Obama talks about “investing in alternative energy,” you should hear, “giving your money to my supporters.”
Do you think, when the meek finally inherit the Earth, there will be much left worth inheriting?
You can help reduce Spam and scams if, when you forward e-mails, you delete all the previous e-mail addresses, and you put yours in the BCC line.
It seems perfectly reasonable to me that a boss should expect a subordinate to make coffee for the office, thus conserving the boss’s time. But I know that it has taken on a negative symbolism, especially if the boss is male and the subordinate female. Asking people to “make the coffee” has been poison for years. So usually the first person in makes the coffee in my office. If that’s me, or it hasn’t been made when I come in, I make the coffee. And if I do my lunch dishes, and there are other employees’ dishes in the sink, I usually do them too. It makes zero sense to expend energy and create negativity over little stuff. There’s too much big stuff bearing down on everyone.
If you’ve always wanted to visit Greece
Let’s see if I understand. Democrats are against “pink slime” in school lunches, but in favor of “green slime” in gas tanks, right?
It’s not good that when ordering on line, I don’t have to get out my credit card. I have the number, expiration date and security code memorized.
Muslims majority countries seem to usually have only two choices: Secular despots or Islamist despots. Secular despots will kill people to maintain power. Islamist despots will kill them to enforce increasingly strict/sick Shari’a law, and will get them killed in wars for Allah—and to maintain power. On the whole, we and they are better with secular despots. Alas, they are all trending toward ever-stricter Islamism. Even those with some semblance of democracy, like Turkey and Indonesia
Go ahead, call me racist. I think Rap Music is to real music as a crack dealer is to real commerce.
MFGlobal and Jon Corzine are the perfect metaphor for statist government, spending the customers’ savings to try to stave off collapse a bit longer.
Ask a leftist to name a non-capitalist country where they would prefer to live. Don’t expect a definitive answer.
I wish conservatives were as good at explaining what they believe as liberals were in hiding what they believe.
If you are a conservative, you must resign yourself to knowing the left will assume you are stupid, evil or both. They believe they are so smart, that anyone who disagrees with them must be one or both.
When Obama promised “change,” people unfamiliar with his record or Chicago politics thought he was going to change Washington Washington —or Europe .
Liberals: Eating the seed corn of prosperity since 1932. Almost gone, now.
I suggest we all pledge to give the GOP nominee $10 for every day Obama spends on vacation or playing golf?
Interest groups and politicians world wide aren’t trying to solve the fiscal and debt problems. They are frantically circling ever-fewer chairs, hoping when the music stops they can grab a seat at the trough for awhile.
Teen boys think all girls should start having sex by 14. Adult males raise this to 16 or 18. When they become fathers of girls, the age goes up to 30. When they become grandfathers of girls, it goes up to “never.”
Forget gold. Given what is happening to our country and economy, I’m investing in lead.
If McCain had been elected President, and the GOP had won both houses n 2008, the deficit would still have gone up. But not nearly as much. And the Democrats would be raising hell about reckless spending.
If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t have been born so long ago.
In the old days, the gene pool eliminated slow runners. Now it eliminates the genes of people who are so dumb they text while driving.
When Whitney Houston drowned from using cocaine, “fans” ran out and bought her albums. They were incensed that the companies had raised the price, thus gouging them. I’m incensed that the ghouls hadn’t bought her music before she died. Some “fans.”
Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s not fraudulent, corrupt or dishonest. Politicians often use the law to defraud the public. Which is why we have retired union officials in Chicago
Almost every day, I get gifts in the mail: address labels, greeting cards, dollar bills and tote bags. All from people who want me to send them money. I don’t. They’d have a better chance of tapping my limited charitable giving if they didn’t try to guilt trip me. But I use the gifts anyway.
I have no idea who some of the folks I’m now linked to on Linked In are, maybe axe murderers. I only have an account to link to people who bug me. I’ve found no other use for it.
Nowhere more than in politics does the urge to say something nasty about your enemy so often come back to bite you.
You might get seven years bad luck if you break a mirror, but you can get us all four years terrible luck just by voting to reelect Obama.
The liberal platform: “Everything bad that has ever happened to you is the fault of the rich and powerful. Vote for me to get rich and powerful and I’ll punish them!”
Once a person is wise enough to make a good president, he’s wise enough not to want to be president.
Wind turbines: eagle choppers!
Polls showing how unpopular Congress is are meaningless. The only polls that matter are those showing how popular each Senator or Representative is with his or her constituents.
My wife saved my life. I was doing so much wrong before I was married that I didn’t know about, I’d have been lucky to last another six months.
If you wanted to see real racism in this country, all the GOP would have to do was nominate Alan west for VP. It would be off the charts.
I’ve noticed that rich liberals think being rich doesn’t count as long as you are liberal.
Most people who claim to be Marxists could discuss the foundations of Marxism coherently for two minutes.
There will come a time when liberals will bitterly regret the broad expansion of presidential power they have accorded Barack Obama.
Heard a great line recently. “The hug-a-thug left….” Have to steal that one.
The Obama administration should declare November “Free Shit Month.” Vote for Obama, he’ll give you free shit and make future generations pay for it.
When I won my senate seat by nine votes in 1972, lots of people told me they were afraid they “wasted” their vote by supporting me. It’s disturbing how many people think your vote is wasted if you don’t vote for the winner.
I see that Hanoi Jane Fonda will play Nancy Reagan in an upcoming movie. Since liberals won’t be much interested in a Reagan movie and conservative will not go see Fonda, it should be a big hit. What next? Sandra Fluke playing the Virgin Mary?
At 66, not only are a lot of good people I know no longer around, but a lot of places I know aren’t there anymore.
Our universities now teach students to regurgitate propaganda that fits the overwhelming bias of the faculty, and call it "thinking."
Politicians are always saying they “were humbled” by this or that. Most of them don’t seem very humble. That would include me, both as a state senator and now.
The US Marines—when bowing and apologizing doesn’t get the job done.
*****
For a free PDF of the book, e-mail him at tartanmarine(at)gmail.com
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As always I find much of what you write very funny, often scary, but always insightful. I do hope you and yours are well.
ReplyDeleteRobin