Drink Heavily, Go Green

Nancy Pelosi could not resist the urge to blame the current mess on the Repuklicans and tout the greatness of Democrap demi-god Bill Clinton. As such, the bail out of the economy… bailed out and nothing got done. How can we put things in perspective?

If you had purchased $1,000 of Delta Air Lines (DAL) stock one year ago, you would have about $49 left. With Fannie Mae (FNM), you would have around $2.50 left of the original $1,000. With AIG, you would have much less than $15 left. But, if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drunk all of the beer, then turned in the cans for the aluminum recycling REFUND, you would have $214 cash. Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.

Another White Guy Dancing

For the love of God…

How Big Is The Bailout?

You’ve probably heard about this ginormous bailout thing that the gubbermint is tossing to the financial sector. Big numbers have been thrown about. You may have heard something like “$2,000 for every man, woman and child in the US”. $700 Billion. Here’s some relative terms for you:

• The Food Stamps program will cost $39 billion for 2008
• Medicaid is $202 billion
• The behemoth know as Social Security is $612 billion
• $186 billion for the Iran and Afghanistan wars
• Congressional “earmarks” or “pork” is a paltry $16.5 billion

Go ahead, read the chart. Have a drink…

Hurricane Head Scratcher

That’s a projected track of Hurricane Kyle. For those of you having trouble deciphering the map, Kyle, a Category 1 hurricane, is forecast to make landfall late Sunday or early Monday near the border between Maine and Canada. It’s rather difficult to associate Canada with anything “tropical”, yet this tropical storm is going to give the Canadian Maritimes a good soaking, for sure, eh. I’m ready for this storm season to be over.

There Be Pirates

There’s also a looming standoff of epic proportions. Follow along, if you will. a short time ago, the Ukrainian vessel MV Faina put to sea, destined for Kenya. Ukrainian Defence Minister Yury Yekhanurov confirmed that 33 Russian T-72 tanks and “a substantial quantity of ammunition” were aboard the MV Faina. And that vessel had to sail near Somalia to reach its destination. Those waters are not exactly known as peaceful.

Sure enough, Somai pirates captured the boat and have it held in the port of Hobyo. A Russian navy vessel has been dispatched to the scene. And now the USS Howard, a destroyer, is nearing the area. The pirates have warned France not to get involved, too. A diplomatic solution does not appear to be possible. Somalia has been without a functioning central government for 17 years and has suffered from continual civil strife.

Summing Up The Coming Election

I was browsing this post at Slashdot and saw this response from a contributor:

When provided with two shitty options, we’ll always end up with shit.

Yep. Exactly.

Police: Duty, Responsibility, Efficiency?

The court system in the US has ruled on many occasions that police, schools, the state, etc. have no duty to protect its constituents. This actually runs in direct opposition to what anti-gun folks would have you believe: that the police will save your hind quarters. They *can* do it, but they are under no obligation (other than their personal morals) to do so. Here are some legal citations for you:

• Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748
• Barillari v. City of Milwaukee 533 N.W.2d 759
• Bowers v. DeVito 686 F.2d 616
• DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services 489 U.S. 189
• Ford v. Town of Grafton 693 N.E.2d 1047
• Warren v. District of Columbia 444 A.2d 1 — “…a government and its agencies are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen…”
• Riss v. New York, 22 N.Y.2d 579,293 N.Y.S.2d 897, 240 N.E.2d 806
• Lynch v. N.C. Dept. of Justice, 376 S.E. 2nd 247 — “Law enforcement agencies and personnel have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others; instead their duty is to preserve the peace and arrest law breakers for the protection of the general public.”
• Zeling v. County of Los Angeles, 02 S.O.S. 2400

I’m sure that there are a lot of others. The reason that I mention this is that there is a large segment of the US population that believes that the cops are somehow legally bound to save your bacon. They are not. If they happen to get there in time to prevent something really bad from happening, good for them. However, their mandate is protecting the general welfare, not the individual version. In very basic terms, it also means that the individual is primarily responsible for themselves. The Palm Bay, Florida police department seems to have recognized this component. They have proposed a cost cutting policy that would suspend investigation of crimes involving victim’s stupidity.

If you leave your garage door open all day and somebody comes and steals your lawnmower or tools… you’ll get a case number, but no unit will roll to investigate. If you leave your car unlocked in your driveway and it gets vandalized or stolen… same deal. At some point, folks do need to participate in protecting themselves, right?

Shaft: You Damn Right

Probably not what you were expecting.

Coco Bongo

Maybe I should try, one more time, to learn how to do that Latin dance thing?

Mayor White Speaks to Congress

“Houston does not want to suffer a repeat of its experience after Hurricane Katrina, dammit, when the city took in an estimated 100,000 evacuees in 2005 but saw little federal reimbursement for its substantial costs”, Mayor Bill White told a Senate panel this morning.

Speaking to the disaster recovery subcommittee of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, White said the federal government poured $16 billion in emergency relief into Gulf Coast states, but Houston got screwed with barely $60 million to help offset the costs of taking in evacuees.

“Now we have been hit directly, and we need the federal government’s friggin’ help,” he said in prepared testimony.

White asked the subcommittee to help ”customize” the federal response for hurricane relief so that local officials in Houston and Harris County can speed assistance to needy residents.

“Unlike you dumb-asses, both the city and county have strong and cohesive local government entities who manage hands-on relief efforts,” White said.

The mayor said he wants Congress to give the Federal Emergency Management Agency authority to contract directly with the city of Houston and Harris County, rather than requiring local officials to work through the turd blossoms in the federal bureaucracy.

He noted that FEMA deals directly with ass hats New York City.

White said Houston is asking Congress to ”get your ass in gear and act expeditiously to both appropriate money to ensure quick recovery after Hurricane Ike and to streamline the process for payments.”

The emphasis was added by The Lone Star Times and based off an original report from the Houston Chronicle. There was no word on what flavor he preferred to name the city after. In other news, it seems as though Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue has got his panties in a twist. There, evidently, was a scene involving Houston’s Mayor White:

“You need to be getting these (expletive) trucks out of here.”

The mayor then began arguing with a Harris County sheriff’s deputy over whether trucks full of Federal Emergency Management Agency supplies had been delivered to a distribution site, the witness said. White told the deputy he had just been to the site and about 3,000 people were waiting for supplies.

White went on to say that if nothing was delivered soon, they were ”about to be in a (expletive) riot,” the witness said.

As a result of this, a formal complaint was lodged. The folks who were complaining were a few female volunteers from Georgia who though it was inappropriate to use such language. After receiving a complaint Friday from Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, Gov. Rick Perry (Texas) yesterday asked his staff to investigate comments White made to two Georgia Forestry Commission employees who came to Houston to help manage the distribution of federal and state supplies to area residents hit hard by Hurricane Ike. Perdue said in a letter to Perry that White had “verbally and profanely abused” the women.

Something about wasting time comes to mind…