Regarding public service

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

I’m not sure the context for this quote by Kurt Vonnegut.  I mean, I have no reason to believe he was referring to those of us who have spent our working life in civil service.  I certainly am not saying it even remotely applies to me.  But still, I must admit to having had occasional encounters with individuals in positions of power and authority far beyond their level of skill and competence.  I mean, I’m pretty sure that Peter Principle was a government employee.  And so is the President.
Just sayin’.

“What we’ve got here is–failure to communicate”

Coincidentally, I happened to watch the classic 1967 Paul Newman film Cool Hand Luke the other night.

I’m sure y’all will recall this classic scene.

Well, it looks like it’s gonna be deja vu all over again on 60 Minutes Sunday.

“Making an argument that people can understand,” Mr. Obama continued, “I think that we haven’t always been successful at that. And I take personal responsibility for that. And it’s something that I’ve got to examine carefully … as I go forward.”

President Obama may be many things.  But one thing he is most assuredly not is Strother Martin.

From the police files

Reader Kevin passes along this gem outta West Virginia:

According to investigators, Williams–who lives four doors down from her estranged husband at the 77 Motor Inn–showed up at his door and asked Danny Williams and another man to “eat my pussy.” At this point, Williams, pictured in the mug shot at right, “commenced to undress herself,” reported Deputy Ross Mellinger.

While Danny Williams “declined said invitation,” the other man, Adam Watson, told cops that he “agreed to perform at her request.” However, as Watson approached Williams, “he became overwhelmed by horrible vaginal odor emitting from Melissa Williams.” Watson, understandably, “declined to proceed any further.”

This is when Melissa Williams allegedly “produced a lock-back folding knife,” opened it, and pointed the weapon at her estranged husband. She then reportedly uttered a line never before memorialized in a police report: “Somebody is going to eat my pussy or I’m going to cut your fucking throat.”

Actually, after viewing the mug shot I think I’d cut my own throat first…

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And for the record, West Virginia was one of the few places that bucked the trend and elected Democrats.

Just sayin’.

“Corrupt bastards”

No wonder they hate Fox News–because Fox isn’t on the hunt for child molesters.

And it doesn’t “forget” to air Republican campaign ads.

But mostly it’s because us “rubes” are seeing behind the curtain.

But maybe if the ruling elite and their left wing media toadies occasionally took a look at what’s happening outside the beltway, this wouldn’t be such a surprise:

Heading into what appears to be a disastrous midterm election, the Obama Democrats profess to be puzzled. The president’s record, they insist, is moderate, accommodating, if anything overcautious. So why do most American voters seem to be angrily rejecting it?

That’s one way of looking at it. Another way is to say that the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress have increased government’s share of gross domestic product from 21 percent, where it’s hovered for the last several decades, to about 25 percent and have put the national debt on a trajectory to increase from 40 percent to 90 percent of GDP.

Voters have noticed — and don’t like it.

It’s time to throw the bums out.  Today!  Vote early, vote often!
UPDATE:  And then there is this from ABCNews.

Let’s play doctor!

Oops, not so fast.

Commenter James says everything is peachy keen-o with Obamacare, notwithstanding reports that low paid workers such as those employed by McDonald’s may have their policies canceled.  The basis for his optimism?  I cited the “Fox News of print” aka The Wall Street Journal as my source.  My bad.

How about this from Reuters (which normally makes the NY Times seem conservative):

“While previous projections showed a baseline shortage of 39,600 doctors in 2015, current estimates bring that number closer to 63,000, with a worsening of shortages through 2025,” the group said in a statement.

“The United States already was struggling with a critical physician shortage and the problem will only be exacerbated as 32 million Americans acquire health care coverage, and an additional 36 million people enter Medicare.”

Ha Ha!  Now I get the joke!  Sure, you all have insurance now.  Just try and use it!  bwahahahahahaha…(that is supposed to be the evil laugh of our leftwing overlords…)

UPDATE:  I almost missed this:

There’s a reason President Obama tries so hard to convince Americans not to watch Fox News. He keeps shamelessly lying about easily verifiable facts. Evidently he figures that left-leaning media outlets won’t call him on it, so if he can only convince people not to watch FOX, he’ll be OK. Unfortunately for the president, the American people simply have to look around them to see that he isn’t being honest with them.

Campaigning in Des Moines, Iowa, yesterday, the President repeated his biggest health care reform whopper: You can keep your current health insurance. Here is what he said:

“There’s nothing in the bill that says you have to change the health insurance you’ve got right now. If you were already getting health insurance on your job, then that doesn’t change.”

Yet hours before he uttered that line, the Boston Globe reported that Harvard Pilgrim Health Care was canceling its Medicare Advantage coverage specifically because of new regulations imposed by Obama’s health care law.

The decision “was prompted by a freeze in federal reimbursements and a new requirement that insurers offering the kind of product sold by Harvard Pilgrim — a Medicare Advantage private fee for service plan — form a contracted network of doctors who agree to participate for a negotiated amount of money. Under current rules, patients can seek care from any doctor,” the Globe reported.

How’s that Obamacare working out for you?

Tough enough to be employed by McDonald’s.  But this is adding insult to injury.  Er, skip the injury part because without healthcare, whatcha gonna do?

McDonald’s Corp. has warned federal regulators that it could drop its health insurance plan for nearly 30,000 hourly restaurant workers unless regulators waive a new requirement of the U.S. health overhaul.

The move is one of the clearest indications that new rules may disrupt workers’ health plans as the law ripples through the real world. [emphasis added].

Trade groups representing restaurants and retailers say low-wage employers might halt their coverage if the government doesn’t loosen a requirement for “mini-med” plans, which offer limited benefits to some 1.4 million Americans.

The requirement concerns the percentage of premiums that must be spent on benefits.

While many restaurants don’t offer health coverage, McDonald’s provides mini-med plans for workers at 10,500 U.S. locations, most of them franchised. A single worker can pay $14 a week for a plan that caps annual benefits at $2,000, or about $32 a week to get coverage up to $10,000 a year.

McDonald’s and trade groups say the percentage, called a medical loss ratio, is unrealistic for mini-med plans because of high administrative costs owing to frequent worker turnover, combined with relatively low spending on claims.

Send in the clowns.  Oh wait, they’re already here.

Tea Partiers gone wild!

Not.

The much-analyzed speeches at the Glenn Beck Lincoln Memorial rally weren’t as notable as what the estimated 300,000 attendees did: follow instructions, listen quietly to hours of speeches, and throw out their trash.

Just as stunning as the tableaux of the massive throngs lining the reflecting pool were the images of the spotless grounds afterward. If someone had told attendees they were expected to mow the grass before they left, surely some of them would have hitched flatbed trailers to their vehicles for the trip to Washington and gladly brought mowers along with them.

This was the revolt of the bourgeois, of the responsible, of the orderly, of people profoundly at peace with the traditional mores of American society. The spark that lit the tea-party movement was the rant by CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who inveighed in early 2009 against an Obama-administration program to subsidize “the losers’ mortgages.” He was speaking for people who hadn’t borrowed beyond their means or tried to get rich quick by flipping houses, for the people who, in their thrift and enterprise, “carry the water instead of drink the water.”

 

The tea party’s detractors want to paint it as radical, when at bottom it represents the self-reliant, industrious heart of American life. New York Times columnist David Brooks compares the tea partiers to the New Left. But there weren’t any orgiastic displays at the Beck rally, nor any attempts to levitate the Lincoln Memorial — just speeches on God and country. It was as radical as a Lee Greenwood song.

A New York Times survey earlier this year occasioned shock when it found that “Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class.” We’re so accustomed to the notion of a revolt of the dispossessed that a revolt of the possessed (in the non-demonic sense, of course) strikes us as a strange offense against the nature of things. But it’s threatening to wash away the Democratic congressional majorities in a historic wipeout.

You can read the rest here if you are so inclined.

The truth about the so-called “oil spill” in the Gulf

From Glen Reynolds:

Actually, the reason the oil cleanup is so slow is that there’s no oil spill at all. Oil’s just a cover story. It’s really aliens on the seafloor. That’s why the press is being kept away, and that’s why they’re preparing the public by floating stories about the possibility of nuking the site. Those skimmer ships aren’t cleaning things up, they are actually releasing oil to support the cover story. That’s why they’ve found lame excuses to keep volunteers and foreign assistance away. It’s all obvious once you think about it! Wake up, sheeple!

And if you want to argue about it, read this first…

Spy vs. Spy

Well the Russian spy scandal has certainly captured the imagination of the media and brought back memories of those long ago Cold War superpower struggles.  Not to mention Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Still, I’ve got to say that the overall quality of the 21st century spies appears to be much improved. 

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1960s–Natasha Fatale

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2010–Anna Chapman

You know, I’ve spied more than a few Russian women here in Itaewon.  Although it is no secret what they are up to.

For a price.