The Rant from BigMike

Political Junk!

2011-12-31T01:29:00.000-05:00

Here's the part I don't understand.We been changing Republican candidates like they are underwear.It's making me a little crazy trying to keep up with it.

Well anyway this is crazy. One candidate is making fun of another. One of them is crying space and the fruitcake. Ron Paul thinks he is a viable candidate . I don't get it.Are we supposed to take any of these clowns seriously. The woman is a goofball. The pizza guy cannot keep it in his pants,one of them has a half $1 million credit line at Tiffany's,the other one created Obama care. He says he's a conservative,and were supposed to vote for him even though he doesn't believe in the same God that every body else believes in.

Newt Gingrich space says he's not good do negative political attack ads. However, all of his competition who are also Republican conservative politicians are spending all their time beating en up on each other. And then when all this is over. We are supposed to forget everything they've said and just focus on the candidate that is the last one left standing. It makes me nuts. It's no wonder the average American will not pay attention to politics and more. How can they? Space you can't take him serious. Space Herman Cain Herman Cain never met a brassiere that he couldn't tame. I told you it's making me loop. When is it going to stop?

I found out today that we had a Republican candidate that dropped out of the race and is now a Libertarian candidate, and I did not even know he was in the race. I used to be a student of politics loved it. I couldn't get enough. I would read about it all day, research it, blog about it, write about it, talk about it, e-mail about it, and generally pontificate until I can watch the eyes on the people that I was talking to start to roll back into their head as the drool come out of their mouth ever so gently and start to leak down their lips.

Now, not so much. I mean think about it was I supposed to vote for Bob Dole? Al Gore? John Kerry? John McCain? Sarah Palin (you have to be kidding right?) . People sit around and weep about how George W. Bush got elected, and the best they can do. Are these dried-up idiots or millionaires that think they deserve a shot at the presidency because they been there longer than anybody else.I'm a Republican.

I just want Obama to go. I don't think he has been good for America. I don't think he was qualified to be the president in the first place. He had no work experience, he had no life experience , he was an unknown state legislator,whose claim to fame was he married a good-looking woman and he had a law degree. He had also written a couple books.I'm still waiting to be impressed. Jimmy Carter has wrote way more than a dozen books and he was still a terrible president. He was a pretty good writer, though.

The point is, just because you're good public speaker that doesn't mean you're qualified to be someone that can make decisions of this magnitude. There are people that believe very strongly space that he was the right man for the job at the right time in history. I am proud of America for having the guts to stand up and say his race did not matter. Space I wish they also would've said "his race didn't matter because he was not qualified for the job. " But we were so head over heels in love with the guy space that we could see our way to the end of the election without destiny getting in the way.

I felt sort of the same way about Hillary Rodham Clinton. My objection to her was not because of her experience level, because I think she would've made a better president than Obama. My objection to her was because I think she's as crooked as her husband was. And I can never forget her famous vast right wing conspiracy speech,where she stood by her husband and blame the vast right wing conspiracy for this mere allegations in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Although if my choice was either Hillary or Obama, I think I would've picked Hillary even though I don't like her. She had at least been exposed to the operations of the White House and understood it and had been a politician most of her adult life. Space I never understood and still do not understand what people see space in the presidency of Barack Obama.

I will tell. I know people don't always agree with me and that's okay. You don't have to. Space we can agree just to disagree. I'm okay with that.

Let's take a little time this election cycle and may be asked to candidates are real important question. What qualifies you to be president. I still have not heard that one answered and I haven't been real impressed with any of the candidates. I have seen so far ..

Thank you for reading my rant.
Dictated with Dragon NaturallySpeaking space version 11.5–
Big Mike

Politicians are no Help and never have been

2011-10-26T11:06:00.000-04:00

Over the years I have had occasion to listen to a great many political speeches and to pay close attention to the descriptions of a lot of political promises. In the final analysis I don’t know why WE ALWAYS fall for the same tired old crap but we always do. Politicians promise us the moon and deliver a piece of green cheese.

It happens every single stinking time.

It just irritates me that a politician can blithely promise anything and it is written off as a “Campaign promise”, and if we were to do the EXACT SAME THING at work, it would be called a lie and we would get fired. See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya !

I’m not going to go back to the beginning of time; however I am sure you will recognize a few of these gems.

• We are going to mark a DMZ at the 38th parallel that will define the two countries so that we can train the local troops, which will allow Americans to come home. This was the idea in 1955 in Korea. We still have thousands of troops deployed there and hundreds of other places around the globe that have very little to do with the original reason we went there to begin with. If you don’t believe me, just answer what the hell we are still doing in Germany, decades after WWII, and have thousands of troops deployed there and Korea and Japan and etc.

• We are going to create “Enterprise zones”, which will encourage investment in poverty stricken areas, thereby preventing gentrification and the wholesale destruction of local neighborhoods. This was the idea behind one plan pushed by Ronald Reagan, and was the force which basically unleashed “Eminent Domain” actions by localities, thereby ensuring the wholesale destruction of local neighborhoods.

• Tax cuts will help those less fortunate to be able to “Insert latest lie”. Tax cuts do not help low income wage earners. It is no help to have your taxes cut $5 per paycheck. When you roll it up it allows a politician to say they have cut taxes by millions or billions of dollars, however the individual person isn‘t helped at all. Someone who has a billion dollars on the other hand? Well I guess it depends upon if you call a 20 million dollars reduction in tax liability “help”.

• The latest round of tax plans, Housing ideas, College tuition programs that all the candidates are blathering about have one thing in common. They are all so full of holes, tests, disqualifiers and so called “means testing” that they are more confusing than a tax form and when you get right down to it, a very low percentage of affected individuals are eligible for their “savior” programs and an even lower percentage will take advantage of it.

Here is why Its just another lie.

If you have to be 100 % caught up on your mortgage payments, have great credit, have “X” dollars in savings then your program is not designed to help people that are “underwater” or “in trouble” on their home mortgages. It is designed to help the doctor that lives next door to the Politician and owns a million dollar (or more) mansion. It certainly will help no one who is currently in foreclosure or bankruptcy , because by virtue of the fact that they have had to declare bankruptcy , it virtually ensures they will have no money, be behind on mortgage payments, and have ruined or wrecked credit.

Who do these idiots think they are fooling anyway? Why don't they just have Ron Popiel do all the political ads? Then at least they would be funny, memorable and you wouldn't mind being lied to so much because you would know it was a ridiculous boast to begin with.

I'd love to talk more about it but my pocket fisherman in the glove box is calling. We are having fish for dinner tonite and I'm gonna cook. Just put it in the Oven and "Set it, then Forget it!"

I see my wife on the corner over there. ":Hey Good Looking, I'll be back to pick you up later!!". 'Scuse me while I spray my hair on.......

So I was wondering if Its just me

2011-10-10T18:26:00.000-04:00

Seems like the more we talk about a recovery the longer it takes. If I remember right this has been going on since early 2007 in some sectors and tanked for sure about a month before the election that saw Obama swept into office. So under two Presidents, three different Congress's and getting ready to be three election cycles, nothing much has changed has it?

Lets see.

Banks are still foreclosing on people and charging stupid outrageous fees to use our money right ?

Jobs are still headed over seas and no one is hiring except Fast Food restaurants ?

Unemployment is still "Officially" over 10 %, reality is closer to 20 % right ?

We still have a war going in Afghanistan and whatever you call that mess in Iraq right ?

We are still TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in debt right ?

Bankruptcies are at an all time high still , right ?

Advertising dollars are still lower than they have been in years right ?

Meaningless statistics are still being touted as a useful measure of the Economy right ? (Housing starts for one)
Wholesale prices have began to rise triggering Inflation in some very important sectors including coffee , Right ?
Oil prices are still high, Auto sales are still low and not much over last year if at all, right ?
We are still fighting about the "debt ceiling" (14.9 trillion dollars) right ?
Access to credit is still tight , right ? Most credit cards are close to 20 % on average, even though large banks borrow money at close to 0 % right ?

OK, so I am obviously confused.
What is it that is better ?

Behold, the future is here

2011-09-19T05:33:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm not saying it will never happen again, but I think I am about done writing about politics. It seems as if I write for the benefit of myself and a couple of other people and that's about it. It is almost the same way when the subject comes up in conversation. I'll answer a political question from someone with more than the standard , often repeated answer and slowly but surely the eyes begin their travels. First its side to side, then add in the up and down motion, then a look of panic and I get amused and now I can't stop talking because you look scared and then the eyes begin their travels into the back of your head as you slowly begin to gurgle.

Similar when I write about it. 8 paragraphs with facts and research and opinion and hard hitting concise comments and it gets turned into somebody Else's comment that usually is two words and the last one is either "sucks" or is "You". As in "He sucks" or "F**k you".

So whats the point ?

Its not like I work for Newsweek. I just think about this stuff and thought others would like to share in the dialog.

Guess not.

So until I find an audience for it, in a place where we can be as full of crap as the politicians, I am gonna find other topics I think.

An Important Lesson in Political Math

2011-09-07T21:24:00.000-04:00

10 Steps to Bragging about what you are doing for the American Taxpayer

Or how politicians say they are saving you Money , therefore leading to their own re-election because of their historic voting , strong record and pro-business stance.

Propose a program that will lead to some dubious untested benefit that does not have to be quantified, qualified or proven. Do not worry about whether or not the program will work as the other party will bash it greatly no matter what you say nor what you do.
Come up with a final cost number in the Press release for the announcement of the Program something on the order of "Senator X says 60 Billion dollar jobs plan will help economy".
Also somewhere in the statement guess at the number of "jobs" (or other benefits) that will be created as a result of implementing your plan. "Senator X says his job plan will create 2500 jobs."
Ignore and do not count any jobs that are lost as a result of the plan and always count low paying non union jobs that replace high paying or unionized jobs as equal positions. For reference please see "NAFTA - What the hell happened to my job , by Dr. Suess"
Create rules for implementing the program that keep out the Riff Raff, meaning anyone who has no need for the money created by this program.
Add up the final expenses for the program and narrowly define as expenses only those items you really cannot blame on someone else. Assume this number is half of the original estimate no matter what the facts say.
Add up the final jobs you say were created for the program and narrowly define as a created job every item for which tips, wages or barter like trading was used to pay anyone like a paperboy, your babysitter or the morning wino you give spare change to on your way to work. Include the homeless bum who holds the "Will work for food sign at the Interstate". Assume this number is double the original estimate no matter what the facts say.
Form exploratory committee and PAC to advise you on important issues. Staff both organizations with your cronies. Loan both organizations your top speechwriters. Have everybody except you put out press releases and articles to newspapers etc, saying what a wonderful job your program did for the American People. Have both organizations distort the facts and further muddy the waters by claiming wild claims like for example Tell one of them to say Your program has cured AIDS.
Book several appearances on Sunday Morning Talk shows and talk to Important Newspaper writers, television news celebrities Like Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer. Make no public comments until you begin to speak out on the issues.
Announce you are running for President and then ask for time to set the record "straight" in order to counter claim some of the more wild things that have been said in the past few days. Announce that your program saved the American Public 30 Billion dollars (Even though you actually spent 30 Billion dollars) and that it created 5000 jobs and spent less money than was projected in order to do so. Call this productivity at its highest level and then spend some time being humble , admitting somebody got it wrong by saying your program was a cure for anything.

Cue American Flag.

Cue Pictures of Family.

Fade to black.

Ride to Elected office in big black limo smoking fat black stogie.

Life is good.

Obama's New Job Plan - DOA

2011-09-07T03:27:00.003-04:00

So the latest is that Obama has a new Jobs plan. Big whoopee. Another stupid political lie.

Supposedly it includes 300 Billion dollars and a lot of spending. Most of it I suspect is smoke and mirrors and a bunch of typical Washington DC Lies.

It will not be released until Thursday when in a speech before a joint session of Congress he will propose to lift the ailing economy through the familiar and tired yet useful litany of tax credits, job training for the unemployed , school renovations and a program to prevent teacher layoffs. Also somewhere muddled in this morass of jumbled items is a proposal to ask lawmakers to renew the 2% payroll tax cut and to once again extend jobless benefits to the unemployed. These details are fluid and could change as this is what is called “informed sources”; meaning leaked on purpose to gauge reaction and won’t be finalized until the Administration is ready to give the Speech.

That part pisses me off because what it says to me is that it really is not important enough to be a good plan as long as it looks like a good plan. That means you and me? We are not important as long as we don’t do enough to make the Administration look good. This is probably one of the biggest arguments for term limits in my opinion. They work for reelection and don’t work for us. Democrats and Republicans alike are more worried about what they say and how it plays out in the press than they ever are worried about doing the right thing and helping the country get back on its ”proverbial feet”.

They are more worried about how it looks than they are about what it does. Actions mean nothing to this crop of Politicians. I could not serve with this bunch. I would be arrested once a week from slugging a few of them in the mouth every time they said something stupid or told another in a long string of lies.

See here is the part they won’t tell you. It may be a “Quote 300 Billion Dollar Program”, but when you look at the overall picture and at the total number of unemployed as well as the impact made by the 2% tax credit continuance which is part of that big number and the other parts you realize it really isn’t all that much money being directed at a trillion dollar problem. It doesn't spend the money creating jobs and won't help you ar me one bit. Just like always.

They are all scared to tell the American public that it will take at least another Trillion dollars to fix this mess.

We have almost 10 % Unemployment in this country. Just using these numbers to calculate against that represents at least 30 million unemployed. This number does not take into account all the adjusting and the people who are not counted in this number like the chronically unemployed, the underemployed and so forth. The 2% tax credit renewal counts for about 1/3 of the 300 Billion (about 90 Billion dollars) and this is not money we will spend at all, it is money we will not collect.

Without even doing any serious math you can see the cost of the program starts out at 210 Billion and the politicians lie about the non collection of future income being counted as expenditure. The tax credits amount to the same kind of thing. Revenue we will not collect and never see is counted as an expense.

Here is why this is important. Let’s talk about it like it is paycheck money.

Let’s say I am your employer and I tell you I am giving you a 25 % raise in the form of a credit. In order to earn the credit you must drive a brand new car that burns Bio-Diesel fuel, seats 9 people, participates in a car pool and is available to the local police department as a loaner vehicle. Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it.? That’s no kind of raise at all is it? It’s not real money is it?

Well this is exactly how congress gives a tax cut and how it counts it as spending. When they project how much it will cost they say enormous sums like 45 billion dollars if it is fully utilized. Then reality sets in and people start to try to use the credit and they find out they do not qualify, because they do not meet the "reasonable conditions" of the program (sort of like the Loan Modification Programs in the housing loan mess huh ? ) .

It turns out that nationwide only 5% of employees can meet the requirements of the program and the entire program only costs 5 Billion dollars.

If you ask a politician to explain it he will tell you that the American taxpayer under his watch saved 40 Billion dollars and nowhere in his response will he mention that he spent 5 billion bucks to implement a silly ass program like this in the first place.

The next thing is they are going to renovate a bunch of schools. I am asking FOR WHAT PURPOSE?? You have already fired all the teachers. Do any of you numbskulls read the news? What are you going to do, build a bunch of classrooms, and not have any teachers to teach in them?

I can’t wait to see the real numbers associated with this bull**t.

Politicians are all Crooks and here is why

2011-09-06T20:44:00.003-04:00

My Dad used to say "Figures Lie and Liars Figure".

He was right I think because so far with all these Politicians all I have heard is a bunch of nonesense and lies.

So far I have heard them talking about a lot of things including the debt ceiling, the Economy in General, Growth, Unemployment (benefits mostly), what all of you are now terming as "ObamaCare" (which is stupid because both parties voted for it), and all the other cliche`d to death platform ideologies like abortion, Social Security, Medicare and Tax cuts.

Nothing has worked, we are still in a mess, nothing has any real traction they have not still ever addressed the real issue, and we get to watch them take several vacations, play golf and , drink beer, sail yachts and fly airplanes and la-te-freakin-da.

Surprise !! Rich people are still rich , Poor folk (like me) are still poor ! Not one damn thing has changed and nothing has gotten any better. Ooooh, wait I apologize, the one 2 lane bridge you rebuilt in my county is the best 2 lane country road bridge that money can buy. They say 17 million dollars was spent here, most of it towards schools, but you couldn't prove it buy looking. What a joke. What we have the most of is plywood windows. I wonder is the stimulus package paid for the wood?

You've talked about home mortgages like they were some kind of can on a grocery store shelf and introduced new programs which were supposed to be designed to help our struggling homeowners. Then you turned around and put the same jackasses in charge of the programs that created the problems in the first place. You bailed out the banks, told them their lending practices sucked and then put the banks in charge of helping the same struggling homeowners they were over charging and gouging to begin with. Oh yeah, that's gonna fix it. Good strategy, sorry I missed that meeting. What a bunch of dip shi**.

Now you idiots act all surprised like you didn't know they added an eighteen inch stack of paper and denied every single person who applied for help. You act like you didn't know they made the process so onerous and so complicated that no one normal person can understand it. You act like you didn't know that this was another boon for lawyers to scoop up the gravy on.

So if I understand the strategy and can analogize it, you spotted a theft, called the police, and arrested the cops. Smooth move !!

I mean, please. Quit lying.

That was the way it was designed in the first place. There was no way this was ever going to work, even I knew that. Hell, It is also why virtually no one has been able to use the so called "Loan Modification programs" why everyone in Bankruptcy was automatically excluded from participation and why now you want to Investigate and Prosecute the misdoers involved in the process. Please. What a load of crap.

Just tell the truth for once.

The Banks do not want to help us. They want to foreclose on us and sell the property to somebody else again. as they are protected against loss by their Insurance. Why the hell should they care, just cause you said so ? They are using the same tactic a Buy here - Pay here car lot uses. They don't give a damn if you keep the house, they want to sell it and collect fees on it as many times as they possibly can before somebody actually buys it and pays it off.

The Cashier will help you understand this government program.

I have also seen you throw money at the issues without a concern for what the affect was after the fact. You have made medical care more expensive, passed more laws in the past two years than ever before, spent over a trillion dollars on a so called stimulus package and passed some real loopy ding dong laws , not the least of which was your ignorant cash for clunkers program which just made used cars more expensive and put thousands of auto mechanics who could have used those parts out of business because of the stupid asinine restrictions you put on the programs.

All that program did was create and artificial bump in sales that they will not be able to reproduce next year, and destroy a lot of good used cars. It was and is a dumb ass program.

Tax cuts by the way, DO NOT WORK for the middle class. Rich folks love tax cuts, the middle class can't use them, because they don't have any money to begin with. What the heck good is a tax cut gonna do for somebody with 3 kids, a mortgage and a car payment. They don't have any investment money !! The only people you are helping are the idiots who don't need it like bankers and Investment gurus and Millionaires. Normal society doesn't benefit from most of the tax cuts.

I have yet to hear one single politician say anything about the real problem which is this

NOBODY CAN GET A FREAKING JOB !!

Another fine example of Government at work, while you are left hanging.

How about this huh ?

One of you guys stand up and say "The Problem is we need to figure out how to get the American Worker, working again. That is the problem.

Guess what idiots ?

If I had a job, I can pay for my mortgage. If I had a job I can buy a new car. If I had a job I don't need unemployment benefits. If I could get a job I would not file for bankruptcy or be foreclosed upon. I'd pay my credit card Bills, I'd take a vacation, you would not need to spend money on a non-working stimulus package, you would not be bailing out car companies and banks and watching the rest of America slowly close up shop because the banks will not lend any more money because NOBODY HAS A FREAKING JOB !!

I mean, come on. It is not that hard to figure out what is wrong and in my opinion none of you have the guts to stand up and say it and propose something that will actually work. Instead all of you are just interested in not having the blame assigned to you by the opposing party so you can get elected during the next election.

I could care less if any of you get elected again.

You left me hanging when I needed you so I figure whats good for me is good for you.

I just might sit this one out

2011-08-16T00:55:00.000-04:00

Okay. New political season and a lot of new players. Usually I am so interested and involved that I drive all the people around me nuts with the details and the strategies and the articles and etc. This season not so much. I know why and its sad but true. So far I have not been able to take one candidate from either party seriously. I just can't drink that much Kool-aid and also, they just don't seem to get it. None of them.

If you are a conservative you know Obama is in the White House and the objective ought to be to throw his but out and elect a conservative Republican candidate that will work on the Republican agenda. To elect one that will work to lower taxes, to make government smaller and to advocate spending less money on smaller government programs. The number one objective is to beat Obama for the Presidency however, lets not forget that. Instead we are worried about gay marriage, abortion (again) and the spending limit. None of those issues will help the economy directly, but hey Its about LOOKING GOOD not being good, right ?

If you are a liberal, your primary objective is to keep Obama in the White House, to continue to push his liberal agenda and to keep control of at least one of the houses of Congress, preferably the Senate, as it is now. Your secondary objective is to make Republican's look like they are trying to weaken America and make them look selfish and self centered so the average American sees Republicans and thinks "Elitist". The idea is to make the Democrat seem like he has the interest of the average American in mind and to paint the Republican as a very short sighted, pro big-business schmuck and the representative of the rich.

The thing that has me the most concerned is the Republicans don't seem to understand this. They don't seem to understand it and they are acting like it won't take anything special to beat Obama.

I mean maybe they do, but they sure are not acting like their number one issue is to remove Obama after one term. It seems to me that all they have done so far is to pander to the Tea Party crazies and fight amongst themselves and take nothing stands on nothing issues that do not matter in the first place. I don't know about you, but in my household, whether you are for or against Gay Marriage doesn't do a thing to help me pay the light bill. Being for or against some mythical standards (like birth control) does exactly NOTHING to help the average American. It does however make the politician look like they are taking a stand , when they really are not.

I can't take these idiots seriously. So far it seems like this race is The President (Obama) versus the bunch of no-names morons who are pitching new reality shows to the American Public. Most of them we haven't ever heard of and the ones we have are loony !! Give me a break ! They all look like red shirted security guards in a bad Star Trek episode.

One of these geniuses are going to beat a sitting President on the issues? I don't want to get into a point by point comparison of candidates (but you can if you look here http://2012.presidential-candidates.org/ ) but my point is this:

A) There is a ton of candidates , most of whom are unknown and
B) None of them really have the money or experience or organization it takes to unseat a sitting President.

The way I figure it the Republicans have decided to sacrifice this election , let Obama win again, then spend both terms opposing everything he does so when 2016 comes around they Democrats will be out of ideas and gas that they can not mount an effective campaign for the presidency for another 12 years. It looks like Muhammad Ali is writing their strategy and he came up with another version of the rope a dope. They are going to lay on the ropes and let the Democrats take all the blame for the next 6 years and then come back in 2016 and say "See, America, I told you how bad it would be. Now we are here to clean up, but don't expect too much, because it took them a long time to make it this bad.". You could almost call it the reverse Bush Strategy.

This seems true to me because they have no coordinated response to Obama, have left an old gasbag like Mitch McConnell to do all the talking and that guy looks like he's lying every time he opens his mouth.

Also the candidates they have put forward so far are pretty disappointing. For the first time in forever I am thinking about skipping election day because who gives a crap when it won't matter because there will not be one decent candidate in the whole lot of them? Who are we supposed to vote for in this group of lightweights anyway ? It makes me understand it when my wife tells me I am boring to talk to about politics because of this. I get it when I see the eyes start to roll back into someones head when I start a conversation about Politics.

If you have to be a Washington Insider or a lobbyist to know the candidates, then something is very wrong with not only how we pick candidates but is also wrong with how perverted we have allowed the process to become.

Here is the list (along with the links I got from Wikipedia and others)
Google it or look it up here for yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012
www.livefreeordiealliance.org/2012
www.politics1.com/p2012.htm

Democrat -
Barack Obama, incumbent President of the United States from Illinois
Randall Terry, pro-life activist from New York

Republican -
Michele Bachmann, U.S. Representative from Minnesota
Herman Cain, former Federal Reserve banker and businessman from Georgia
Newt Gingrich, former U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives from Georgia
Jon Huntsman, Jr., former U.S. Ambassador to China and former Governor of Utah
Gary Johnson, former Governor of New Mexico
Fred Karger, political consultant and gay rights activist from California
Andy Martin, perennial candidate from Illinois
Thaddeus McCotter, U.S. Representative from Michigan
Jimmy McMillan, perennial candidate from New York
Roy Moore, former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court of Alabama
Ron Paul, U.S. Representative from Texas
Rick Perry, Governor of Texas
Buddy Roemer, former Governor of Louisiana
Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts
Rick Santorum, former Senator from Pennsylvania
Jonathon Sharkey, perennial candidate from Florida

No kidding. Mitt friggin Romney is the best they could do ? I am supposed to actually vote for Rick Santorum ? You cannot be seriouis. That guy is a certified lunatic. Michelle Bachman ?, that's the person who wants to take away a VA pension and along with it their health care, if they get Soc Sec disability payments.

I look at that list and then think , people were actually pissed off that John McCain picked Sarah Palin ?

Its no wonder Obama won.

Shoot, before I would vote for any of these idiots, I would have voted for Palin.

I just can't believe any of these jackasses can stand up and compare themselves to Ronald Reagan .

Here is what it looks like to be well respected, well known and honored . Even if you don't agree with his politics, you can't seriously think the same way about the current crop of wanna be can you ?

What are we becoming ? Or maybe what have we became ?

2011-08-13T20:08:00.000-04:00

I Look around see things in the course of a normal day that makes me think "What the Heck was that ?" Things like :

We now fight "wars" against groups and ideologies and ideas, not other countries.
We have "Black Ops" going on in 70 or so countries around the world , fought by "special operators", who shoot and kill people on are behalf and are not called soldiers , at least not in the traditional sense of the word?
You can protest at the funeral of a soldier who has died in combat, but you have to stand in a fenced in designated area to protest the President or at political functions.
Things you "tweet", even stupid things, can get you arrested if other people do as you suggest.
We will pay $1.69 for 12 ounces of water in a plastic bottle and yet will yell our heads off if have to pay $3.50 for a gallon of gasoline.
It takes a billion dollars to get elected to the Presidency (give or take a few million dollars). The job only pays $400,000 a year. I'm supposed to tell my kid they can be president and somehow convince them that you should spend 200 times what the job pays, in order to get it? Is that Right ?
A Senator can serve as little as one term (6 years) and has a lifetime pension and health care. The same things for the average citizen if they can even get it, usually takes 20 plus years of service, and can be wiped out by one bad business decision by one ignorant executive?
Conservatives are getting excited about Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry. I'm just stunned. This the best we can do ? Really ? Seriously ? No joking ? Ahh man...
Instead of Shows and movies that have plots and make a point , reality TV is what people want to watch ? Are you joking me ?
California is considered the most liberal state, yet IOWA is the first one to allow gays to marry ? Huh?
And speaking of gays marrying, these fruitcakes now are calling for Bert and Ernie to come out of the closet and get married? On a kids show? What ?
Ashton Kucher will be the highest paid sitcom star once the new season of Two and 1/2 men starts showing. Ashton Kucher is a star ? The Highest paid Star? I hear the twilight zone music.
There are people who actually think that MMA and UFC fighting takes skill and talent? That think that watching people fall off of padded swinging turn styles into the water is entertainment ? That watching a fake competition about fake tribes on a fake set, in a fake jungle, has anything at all to do with Survival? Shows about crackheads and wino's and gang bangers and prostitutes being chased by the police and booked into jail actually have some sort of value ? People who have drug problems and are crazy are TV stars ?

C'mon and Do the Obama-Pokey with me !

2011-08-13T19:30:00.000-04:00

You put your Hope right in, you put your change right out
You wiggle at the flag and freedom and then you shake it all about
Do the Obama-Pokey and never have a doubt
Thats what its all about !!

You put your tax cut in, you put your tax cut out
Then they kill it and then they raise it and make you have a doubt
Do the Obama-Pokey and wallow in self doubt
Thats what its all about !!

You put your bail out in , you put your bail out out
The banks they get healthy and you have to go move out
Do the Obama-Pokey and then you go get the heck out !!
Thats what its all about !!

...and finally

You put your Marine Corps in, you take body bags back out
Fighting and dying in a rocky land that struggles with disease and drought
Do the Obama-Pokey and then you struggle to explain it and then blame it on the other side !!

Thats what its all about !!

Computers are not self sufficient (They should be !)

2011-07-23T08:01:00.000-04:00

As my friends can attest, I am a nerd, a geek, a computer electronics maven. You couldn't exactly call me an early adopter though, because I never buy tech in version 1.0, but If they make it I've probably had one or considered it anyway. I have closets full of junk I have not thrown away yet to prove it. Ask my wife. We don't have linen closets, we have electronics closets.

The myth is that you can buy a computer and it just works (insert I'm a PC commercial with Intel sound here) and the facts are that I have never found that to be true. Never. As a matter of fact, I've never had anything that was truly maintenance free and never had a computer or any electronics at all that did not require some level of care to keep it operating. Remember when car batteries had those tops you could remove in order to refill the water? Then along came "maintenance free" batteries. Still had to replace them every 4 years or so huh?

So no repairs and no keeping them full, just plan them to be obsolete on a twice as frequent scale?

The thing that kills me though is that NO ONE considers reliability or repair cost or expected life when buying electronics, televisions or computers. Some of the most studious people I know research TV prices and components until they could sell them, but when they buy a printer, laptop or a desktop computer, the only thing they look at it price. The only thing in the AD is price. The only thing looked at with any diligence is price. I get these phone calls and the only thing I hear is "...And I only paid $XXX for it". Who cares, but, Good for you.

Here's what I mean.

Look at your brand of Laptop or your brand of desktop. Chances are, in the next year you may need to replace a power supply on your desktop or the screen on your laptop. Why? Because on desktops, heat is never exhausted as fast as it should be because it always increases noise level unless you use a more expensive solution (like water cooling) they usually do not have enough fans and almost no one ever takes the back or side off their computer and vacuums the dog hairs out of it.

And the laptop screen, Why ? Because we lug the thing around like a women's purse, forget what it is and stop putting them away in their padded cases and sooner or later fat Uncle Bill will set on it. That's why.

With every new generation of products there is also a planned obsolescence factor and a planned discard/replace factor to consider as well. Yeah the printer was only $18.The ink is $175 a cartridge and you cannot find it 3 years from now, but hey, IT WAS CHEAP !!

Now , go to your computer manufacturer's website and price a power supply for your computer. Chances are you are like everybody else and you have one of 2 or 3 major brands of desktop (Compaq/HP, Dell, Gateway) or one of the top 5 laptops (IBM-Lenovo, Toshiba, Compaq/HP, Dell, ACER). Here is what you will find. Take a stress pill and price a new screen, if you can even figure out which one your system uses.

Parts are expensive. Putting them in is confusing. Having them serviced costs about twice as much as the parts do. Oh, and parts for one model do not fit parts for another model, or brand. HP and IBM used to be famous for using single brand power supplies that would not fit any other machine.Now you start thinking. Since you only paid $XXX for your computer in the first place, should you spend $XXX to fix it ? After all its a toaster isn't it ? A better non brand specific power supply is probably 50 % of what IBM or HP charges for the mediocre system you have, but hey, IT WAS CHEAP !! Don't worry about your files, your software you will have to re-buy and re-install, just throw it away and keep going. Think e-machines at Wal-Mart. Cheap and plentiful too !!

The sad fact is this.

Every Tech company has the ability to add sensors and to standardize parts and to simplify their replacement. Everything could be a plug in module if they wanted it to be that way. That would not keep you coming back to the supply chain to buy a new product though would it ? Every product made could be engineered to be simple to maintain. You ever looked at the back of any TV , Radio or virtually any electronics where it says "NO USER SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE? yeah, well right about there is where the door ought to be that allows you to open it and vacuum it out.

Ah well. I like getting paid.

Keep buying net books and tablets and touch screens.
Keep sitting on them. Keep ignoring the dog hairs.

It s a lucrative business.

Ahhh, the recession is almost over. (right?)

2011-07-14T16:39:00.000-04:00

I begin this remark with an understanding that not everyone shares my point of view and really I am OK with that. Many times I don't have my opinion fully formed as I write these blog entries, and like many people I may not know all the facts or my opinion may be colored by my personal circumstances. If this describes you and you don't want to read this , well I understand. I would however like to know one thing though,

How the hell is everybody else doing it? How is everyone else surviving? I just am stupid I guess, because I don't get it.

You see , ever since the economy turned south in about early 2006 I've been trying to figure out what in the hell I am doing wrong.

We'll be driving down the interstate and get passed by a big old decked out motor home or a huge pickup truck pulling a boat and I think "Where in the hell do these people get the money?" Friends of mine go on vacations every 6 months or at least once a year. I haven't been able to take a vacation in about 7 or 8 years. Haven't been able to find the money or a job for that matter to get a new car since 2003. We came about 7 days from having my house repossessed. I lost my position in 2007 and have been basically underemployed ever since. I am extremely grateful for the job I have and thankful my Boss saw some value in keeping me around, but I have to know "What the Hell am I doing wrong?".

On top of that, health issues get in the way of doing physical things. My brain works just fine, my back sucks, so I can't even cut lawns for money. Couple that with the price of EVERYTHING going up and I wonder how we are supposed to hold out and how much longer until and before we just collapse in upon ourselves and start forming the soup lines. Gas is 4 times as expensive as it was in 1999, Milk and Bread are both double or so what they used to be. All my utility Bills are higher than they were 3 years ago. We basically do not have any savings anymore. Its been wiped out slowly but surely , one drip at a time until all that's left is the memory of money. I've combed through expenses over and over again eliminating , reducing, doing away with and cancelling everything we don't absolutely have to have to live and It feels like I am just about out of options.

Jokingly I told my wife that we needed to buy a new refrigerator, just in case, so we would have a spare house, if worse comes to worse.

Now , its not that bad, but its dumb enough to piss me off, you know what I mean. ?

Then talking heads on TV, newspaper columnists and Internet reporting are all saying "Well its bad, but not that bad." , "Its getting better", "The end of the recession is in sight" and so forth and so on. I wonder in amazement where these guys are looking? I mean if you mean that the recession is almost over for the BANKERS and for the POLITICIANS , then I would have to agree.

The only thing I see at the end of this tunnel is an oncoming train.

Hell you can't use an ATM to check your balance without a fee being charged and just getting your own money out of one can be like getting charged 30 % interest to use your own money. Say you want to make a 30 $ ATM withdrawal. Your bank charges a fee if you use a "Foreign ATM", the "Foriegn ATM" charges a fee for not being a customer of their bank, and you have just paid $6 or more to get to your own money. When you say to your bank, "Why don't you guys have an ATM on my side of the county", they say the business isn't there to support it. Then I look at their balance sheets and see they made 38 MILLION dollars last year on fees and administrative services. Looks like they are doing just fine what with all that hard work they are doing printing receipts and cashiers checks and counting access charges and the like. Oh and don't get me started on "NSF charges". Lord knows it is real expensive to accidentally overpay 12 bucks. It has to be at least three times the value of the charge to make it worth 35 bucks a pop right ?

Personally I don't see how most of those greedy bastards sleep at night. I really don't. They are bleeding us dry like the mafia would and what they do is "legal". It shouldn't be, but heck, there isn't a Washington DC Politician, Attorney, Lobbyist, or Banker alive who understands what it is like to try and live on less than a quarter million dollars a year. They don't have a clue. It pisses me off that we are in such bad shape and they still don't get it. What has to happen to make them understand that we are dying out here, while they keep getting re-elected and keep collecting 30,000 dollars a speech?

There is over 10 % unemployment by the way Washington DC and the states measure it. That is millions of folks out of work, and barely getting by. What they do not tell you is that this statistic is designed to be misleading. It really only represents those folks who are currently drawing an unemployment check or have filed for it. It doesn't include anyone who is underemployed, unemployed but not filed for unemployment, self employed business owners who lost work or businesses, people that used to work two jobs to make ends meet that cannot find a suitable second job and it doesn't include students who don't work or anyone who has exhausted their unemployment benefits and still can't find a job. It also does not include anyone discharged from the military medically even if they have no other income, every retired person and every homeless person in America even if they don't have any other income and anyone scratching to survive in the underground economy like illegal aliens, the mentally ill, the mentally handicapped etc.

If I had to guess I would say we are actually closer to 20 % unemployed and its not getting any better. There could potentially be 60 Million people without income and under the gun tonight in America. Does this sound like it is getting any better to you ?

Will someone please tell me how the news coming out of Washington DC about our debt limit and John Boehner and Mitch McConnell fighting with President Obama is helping us right now? If I don't have a gallon of milk, a job, a loaf or bread, or money for gas to get any of it how does what these morons are doing help me? And then , if it doesn't help me , somebody please tell me how it takes care of Senior Citizens, the disabled or injured or disabled military veterans ? In the past 3 to 5 years, what benefit have we gotten by having higher prices for gasoline, food, natural gas, health care, credit, and everything else. What good have we gotten from a policy of billions of dollars spent on waging war overseas? What good have we gotten from sending hundreds of billions of dollars to foreign countries just to see our jobs and bonds and raw materials go there with them. What good has come of removing any of the price supports for farm products when the end result has been nothing more than higher prices?

So please, feel free, tell me, unload on me, make me feel stupid. "What the Hell are we doing wrong ?"

Getting Old SUCKS !!!

2011-07-11T12:54:00.000-04:00

Yeah , yeah , yeah 50 is the new 40. Whatever. I wasn't all that thrilled with 40 !

Man I gotta tell ya, getting Old sucks !

Nobody really prepares you for whats coming and whats coming , well it just ain't pretty. Pretty much after you turn 50 you can just forget about and lose a whole lot of words you used to use describing yourself to others. Words like smooth, fast, fit, tight, agile, mobile uh, none of those words apply. You will never be tight or fast at anything, ever, again. You have wrinkles where just a couple of years ago you didn't even realise it was possible to have wrinkles, everything hurts all the time and all of those bad decisions you made back in the day come back and bite you on the butt.

Tackle football without pads in the park ? No problem ! Right !

Nobody tells you that sleeping becomes a secondary issue. You never get enough, it never happens when you need it and when you want to sleep. forget it. Either a kid needs you to be awake, the place you are trying to sleep in is keeping you awake, its too loud or too quiet or you just lay there watching the headlights on the highway wondering if you will ever sleep again. Did I piss off the sleep gods ?

The best thing is the tendency to notice new symptoms and marvel at how fast things you used to be able to do just...go away. Poof - You don't play baseball no more. Poof- No more football with the kids. Kazaam - climbing ladders all day long is out of the question. Hundreds of things you used to do without a second thought now are major decisions. Go bike riding ? Are you mental ? Lets go play some basketball - Seriously? I gotta go take a nap. Where did this funny mole come from ? Wow - When did my elbows start hurting ? Stupid stuff like that.

It makes you insane because the changes come with frightening quickness and your body forgot to tell you about it. You just wake up one day and you are done with something else. Ha ha , very funny.

The worst part is how you feel on the inside versus how you look on the outside. How you look on the exterior determines how people treat you. How you feel on the inside determines how you think you should be treated. Hey ! Get that AARP mail crap outta here. WTF?

Here is a couple of examples -

A pretty good looking girl comes walking directly towards you and a doorway is in between you. Just as you think "I'll hold this door open for her", she grabs it and says "Here you go SIR I have the door, please go ahead." /deflation sound - ego disappears.
You are standing in a checkout line at a supermarket, the cashier greets you and says "Do you have one of our senior cards?" /ooooohhhhh let the cursing begin !
You are at a table in a restaurant. The server walks up and says "Do you need a senior menu ? / aww man , I didn't wanna kill anybody today !

The problem is nobody let me in on the joke. I woke up today with no prior knowledge of all these changes going on every day and let me tell ya, it ain't friggin funny ! I had an easier time with the whole "PaPaw" thing. Its like being buried alive and nobody can hear you screaming from inside the coffin. Like going into surgery and they think you are asleep but you can hear and feel everything going on all around you. Inside I still feel like the same person. I have the memories of playing with my kids, but my grand kids will never know how far I could hit a baseball. Inside I still feel like me, but I bear an uncanny likeness to some old dude I've never met that sorta looks like me. I look in the mirror and think "Why am I looking in the mirror?, Oh yeah. who is this old dude staring back at me ?

I'm sure the best is yet to come. I probably haven't even scratched the surface yet on all the crap that goes on. I haven't talked at all about prostrates, doctor visits or sex.

Trust me when I say , whatever you can imagine is about what happens to some degree. None of it is good and Hugh Hefner is a friggin liar ! I don't care how much Viagra that idiot is taking every day, he is in no way the same man sexually that he was even 20 years ago, let alone half a lifetime removed. Heck I'll bet he takes Viagra in a management sense only to keep it stiff enough so it doesn't dribble on his shoes. He probably sits down to pee.

Now I understand why all my older relatives sit around talking about aches and pains all the time.

It s all they have left.

Just Five minutes is all

2011-07-09T15:57:00.001-04:00

Hey, I'm not Nancy Grace or any of the talking heads that have been screaming for the head of Casey Anthony for the past 3 years. I don't get paid a big salary to sit around and think of cute phrases that will be used on my blog banner to describe this woman. Hell I've never came close to meeting her or any of her family and have only spoken with 2 or 3 celebrities in my life (Magic Johnson, Sam Kinnison, Vince Neil, a couple others), so I ain't nobody famous and I don't have any kind of vested interest in a book deal or movie rights or anything else.

I am sorta pissed off at everybody involved about this Casey Anthony crap though.

I just have a couple of questions? What a bunch of pathetic dumb asses. How do you lose a case like this?

How the hell do you take a woman , in this society, charged with this kind of crime, to trial without enough evidence to put her under the jail, for the rest of her miserable life ? How stupid were they ?
They still don't know 3 years later why it happened and never got to the point where they know what happened to the baby.
I'm sorry, you went to trial without a cause or manner of death? Are you frickin kidding me ? How could they have failed to obtain a conviction for something substantial.
If she didn't do it (and she might not have done it WHO KNOWS ?) Then I have a couple of questions. Who did it? How did it happen? How did the duct tape get on her mouth? Who put her in the grave? WHY AINT YOU LOSING YOUR MIND WITH GRIEF ? WHAT KIND OF MONSTER ARE YOU?
Casey if you didn't do it, you cannot be retried for it You are forever free of charges related to her death. Tell us WHO KILLED YOUR BABY ? I could not just let it go and think that getting out of jail next week was the end of it.
If it was one of my kids and I didn't do it, I would have to know. WHY isnt she asking these questions? I would do life or take the needle for one of my kids. I just can't understand this loser.

See here is the thing.

I don't think they (every lawyer involved) were interested in knowing what happened. I think the lawyers were just interested in winning. Anymore, that's all they care about. File the most charges, get the most wins, get a bigger desk with a bigger job, bill more hours, buy a bigger house, enjoy life. That's the problem with attorneys. It is rarely about the truth anymore. Read one story about one trial without someone mentioning what it costs to conduct the trial. It just doesn't happen because that cost is also all about what an attorney is paid to bring or defend the action. How in the hell did anyone make the decision to bring her to triual on evidence this weak? I imagine the conversation was sorta like Boss- "Whelp, yeah the baby is gone, must have been the mother right?, Underling -Right. Boss - Well arrest her and charge her and we'll figure it out later. Underling - Duhh, Um Okay Boss.

Put her in a locked room for 5 minutes with a couple of Marine Corps Drill Instructors or a couple of Navy Seals or a couple of Gangsters. We would know what happened to that baby. I'd beat her within an inch of her life to find out. No good lying piece of trash.

Me ? I couldn't care less what happens to her.I know that sounds cold hearted and cold blooded but as a father I cannot understand this , and do not want to.

It pisses me off. She is worthless and useless and the world be better off if she wasn't inhaling air.

The reason why is because of her actions.

Here is 5 reasons i think she knows what happened to her baby.

Did she yell and scream at the top of her lungs that her baby was missing, within minutes of discovering that she was?
Did you ever see her cry about her baby being gone? Ever? Especially in the first 30 days ? (Oh wait, thats right, she didn't let on the baby was missing for a month or so, I forgot)
Did she get a tattoo showing her love for her missing baby? ( or was it one that said "Glad that little paperweight is gone !")
Did anything she ever said about where the baby was make any sense at all to anyone? If she was innocent, then why make up the stories? Why change the details ? Why make up shit that had nothing to do with it ?
Does anything she said or did in the 3 years it took to get her through a trial look like the actions of someone that was totally innocent?

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

No More Fourth Ammendment to the Constitution -Say bye bye

2011-05-16T14:34:00.001-04:00

This really pisses me off !!

Indiana Supreme Court Guts the 4th Amendment

What a bunch of (expletive deleted) nonsense, bull crap and hooey. According to this decision by the Indiana Supreme Court, there is no 4th Amendment protection prohibiting illegal search and seizure. It only applies after the fact, once they have already torn up your house, beat you down into submission, torn up your car, handcuffed your sorry butt and thrown you in jail, waited 2 years to see a lawyer (a public defender), and if you are lucky got some liberal law organization like the ACLU involved and interested enough to file the paperwork needed to fight it, then and only then do you have any possibility of having the past 2 years erased. Oops, our bad, you can go home now.

Since this will in no way affect any person who can actually afford a lawyer (read "the rich and famous"), you better believe beatings of the Homeless, the Jobless , the Low Income, the Blue class and the stupid will increase immediately.

OK, maybe I am being a tad dramatic, but the point is that this is stupid.

Next thing you know this will be the form you get in the mail after they broke down your front door , only to discover it was the wrong house.

Are they serious ? Have they read the Constitution ? I mean our countries copy ?

The Constitution language says (regarding the 4th Amendment) : ARTICLE [IV.] The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Indiana Supreme Court today decided that : INDIANAPOLIS

Overturning a common law dating back to the English Magna Carta of 1215, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Hoosiers have no right to resist unlawful police entry into their homes.

First - Hogwash, Bull Spit and Balderdash, I say Balderdash..

Second - They didn't even need to make a ruling here, which I'm betting will be challenged and over turned anyway. The case in question gave them probable cause, they could have just declined to hear the appeal and nothing would have changed.

Third- This is what is meant by "Activist Judges", where they change settled frigging law from the bench. In affect, writing their own laws, overturning those they don't like.

This is settled law from the year 1215 and they think it should be overturned. I don't even CARE what the merits of the case were, this is settled law. You need either a warrant or probable cause. Now they are saying , nah you don't need a warrant. If we were wrong , sue us later. Have a nice day. Sorry bout your luck !!

What the Hell ?

Thankx for reading my rant !

-bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

Gasoline Prices ? WTF?

2011-05-16T11:42:00.001-04:00

Here is what I don't get.

In the 70's we had gas lines going down the street and around the block because Gas was supposedly in short supply, OPEC was going to cut off the flow of Gas into this country and the price was skyrocketing from 33 cents a gallon to 75 cents a gallon (or something like that , hell I don't exactly remember either). I was employed at a gas station as a pump attendant at the time and can remember coming to work and being amazed at how long the lines were and how long people waited, willingly or not, to put gas in their car. People were evil, E-V-I-L, concerning how long they waited, what the prices were and whether or not we are going to run out of gas. Gas stations made more money that summer, than ever before.

Also, at the same time, the industry and our gas station switched dramatically. Gone was the dingy interior of the station with its one vending machine, full of crap only the teenagers who worked there liked anyway. Gone were the 6 gas attendants plus the manager who would run to your car, turn on the pump, pump your gas, check your oil, wash your windows and in extreme cases, check your tire pressure for you. Gone were the pumps that has to be turned on and reset with the special key so more gas could be pumped. Gone were all the jobs they harassed us to get done every day, week and month like scrubbing the outside restrooms, painting the pump islands, buffing the office floor, hosing down the parking lot and cleaning the windows.

In its place, within 60 days of the gas lines of the 70's came the "Self-Service" station. 60 days ago I would talk to you at your car window. Now you could barely hear the muffled voice through the speaker of the Fat guy on the stool in the building, behind the locked door. Yesterday I would take your money, put it on my roll, put the rubber band back on it and put it back in my shirt pocket. Now you had to haul your butt outta your car, come up to the window and "Pay before you pumped." We were scared sh**less of the wrath of the buying public for a period of time.

Back then, to put it bluntly, PEOPLE WERE PISSED !!

Fast forward to today.

Since 2000, the price of gas has went from $1.35 to $4.00 (or more depending upon where you live) and no one has said a thing about it. It has risen over $1.00 a gallon in the past year and we haven't said jack!!

Here is the crappy BS full of horse turds explanation we always hear from the big oil compaies when somebody wakes up from their budweiser marijuana cocaine buzz long enough to realize we are paying too much for this product once again. "(...no they want an answer now, No it can't wait,Yes you have to say something to get them to go away....Ok here -) Oh, ahh, ummm, clearing throat, You see the uh, um, price of gas has been um, affected by pressure put on the available supply by an increase in the consumption of gas in China and because of the ummm (what's the word I am looking for ....OH wait I got it !) uncertainty of the continued availability of Gasoline from the middle East, as well as by production shortages caused by planned maintenence being performed at several refineries."

Are you buying these horse turds? Gimme a break.

If it had anything to do with supply and demand, then the price you pay would be dependant upon the cost of obtaining it and making it. We haven't built a new refinery with any substantial capacity in this country in more than 25 years. The price goes up way too high, and then settles back into place .50-.75 cents above where it was before the rise began and you want us to believe it has anything to do with the cost of producing fuel and nothing to do with manufactured pricing and big oil greed? Gas is stockpiled in several places in the US in various sectors for as much as a year. Yet , magically, the price on the street at every station is just about the same everywhere you go. It is not Supply and Demand as they would have you believe. It is however , Gouge and Exploit. Mostly because we believe this stupid crap.

Take a look at this . Basic Information about Gasoline this site will talk all about how the government and the EPA sees the issue. It doesn't say a thing about why pricing goes up and then settles back down (always) above where it started.

The problem is that every one of their reasons for why the price is up is bogus. Every single one of them.
Take a look at this : No Tension ? Big Supply glut ? Ooopsie !!

What do you think?

Thankx for reading my rant !

-bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

Yay! The new TV season is being announced this week !!

2011-05-16T00:44:00.009-04:00

By this time next week everybody will know whether or not their marginal network beloved show made it for another season or not. Shows will be added, cancelled and moved in record time. None of it will make any sense to average people. Most of us will not care one way or the other because the majority of the shows are crap to begin with and the planet will keep on revolving whether we like it or not.

Sigh. I should be sitting in the front room right now, like many of you, trying to figure out what to watch, if I didn't have a brain at all and couldn't entertain myself that is.

I have observations : (Check out http://TvByTheNumbers.zap2it.com/

Television production networks spend millions and millions of dollars every year trying to figure out how to have the best shows on television. None of them are ever successful for more than 4-5 years and then somebody figures out that some other type of show is better. Next thing you know, everybody is schlock-ing along making the next batch of TV goo for us to watch.

Its pathetic. First there was one good cop , forensic drama and then next thing you know there is 35 of them. What do ya think is going to happen to your content when you start boring me to death with something. You think that makes me want to watch more of it ?

The people who make decisions about TV shows really have no clue why those of us who were watching their crap aren't watching it any more. They are listening to all the wrong people for one. I'll bet none of them has went outside their comfort zones and asked real people questions in a dozen years or more. The reason why is they have been sold the lie about "Research" and statistics that have to do with demographics (age related analysis) and marketability, and sustainability. Problem is that has little to do with engaging content.

All these metrics tell you is that you figured out how to catch our attention for a few minutes in a virtual ocean of choices , and hardly any of your decision making has to do with content. How well you market a show has more to do with whether or not I'll give it a shot than the content does, as I have no idea what you are talking about before I watch it a few times. If I was able to "innately understand the characters" as I heard one of you idiots say this week, why bother marketing it? I can see it now "Hop on Pop - The TV Series".

The people who make TV shows have to bend to the will of dozens of other people in order to get a show on the air. It is a wonder anything ever gets made at all. (Network Exec - "Put a woman in it!! It has to sell product to women !! Flunky TV producer - "But sir Its a Gay prison drama!! ) Its one stupid decision, one cancellation and one more craze after another and real, thoughtful content or real funny content is never given a chance. If it doesn't sell to marketing folks who push their schlocky ads in the precious few minutes that there is in a show to tell the story line to begin with,then zip zam zowie am swoosh , its gone and to hell with it and good riddance. Until that is they start recycling the crap, over and over and over....

Marketing Folks , in turn have absolutely no clue what people like, they only know what we don't turn off. The whole entire TV industry is built around the concept of ratings, which is actually a system that measure the fact that "We didn't turn your crap off, we turned somebody Else's crap off." Is it any wonder we find other things to do ?

I'd just as soon hit my fingers with a hammer than watch some of the absolute crap you people put on and seriously think somebody will watch it. I'd much rather pay my best friend to tighten my testicles in a vice than to watch some of the tripe that you call "TV". "Medium", "V", "Outsourced" ? Seriously? This is the best you could come up with ? How about this. Whenever you have nothing but a snoozer loser to put on, first , send the producers back to the drawing board and tell them "This crap is not good enough". Then instead of subjecting us all to more of your choices made while on cocaine, put up a re-run of the best shows you ever made in the last ten years until they come up with something better.

We don't watch your crap because of a lot of reasons like maybe ; it is too narrowly focused (like on 8-13 year olds - like Hannah Montana), has too many themes going at once (a friendship/romance/action movie) or maybe, wait for it, because it was crap!

Really, there are hundreds of choices and you put a snoozer cheesy show up , nobody watches it and you think the answer is to spend less money, on worse shows, with lower budgets and this fixes the problem ? Jersey Shore is the frigging answer? Top Dog Chef of China next on the Food network. The food network ? Oooh, shows are too expensive to make , so if they are too expensive, we can't charge as much for marketing, which means the show has to cost less to make, which after all cheapens the show and its content, which means you are gonna stop watching it and you are gonna do it all over again with another batch of shows next year !!

You people are absolutely 100 % no kidding bat-shit crazy. Is Gary Busey is in charge of the TV Industry ?

I love the way they all sit around and moan about the loss of the attention span of the average viewer. Oh what a wad of baloney !! If only it were true.

See here is the problem. They all say they recognize that it is 1969 anymore and everybody all say they know that Wally and the Beav aren't plunked down in front of a 3 channel television anymore and that the landscape has changed dramatically. Then everything they do , regardless of what they say, is more of the same old hashed out tore up liquid logic from 1979.

Here are some truths they would be good to get in touch with :

We have more options now than we ever had before. When TV was a 3 channel deal, if we don't like what Dad was watching, playing outside on the step with a stick in the dirt was about the only option. How else do you explain playing cards clothes pinned to bicycle spokes ? or shooting each other in the eye with BB guns?

Now if your crappy show sucks, we can watch another TV in the house, probably a flat screen TV to boot. Or if we have a blue ray player or a DVD player (or even a CD or VCR) we can watch recorded content or make our own content and bore everybody else with it. Can you say YouTube? Or maybe if it is one of your kids they can yammer on the phone for hours or send text messages to 10 people at once. While they are driving. On their way to the library.

We also have phones that deliver content that is not as good as a TV, but the way TV has been going that ain't saying much.

Everybody has computers and i-Crap, and MP4G players and all the other cute little made up names for new gadgets. Oh and our phones, they are cameras, they play videos, they take pictures, they have Internet access, and when all else fails they have face book access as well. Angry Birds for cryin out loud, Angry Birds !!

Did I say Facebook? Ooh I'm selling cheesecake in my new shop and i need a baking pan can you get one for me. Jesus H. Christ on a crutch !!

We could watch out home theatre if we don't want to go to the movies (and apparently we don't like this activity anymore either), and there is all the various streaming content providers like Hula, Netflix, Flixter, etc. BTW-psssst If you didn't know, Sell your Blockbuster stock.

Normal options apply, we just can't go very far at $5 a gallon. So yeah, a road trip is in, but not more than 5 miles or so. The small percentage of us who don't spend all our leisure time stoned, drunk or naked have to do something to keep from going crazy trying to find something to watch in the wasteland of TV programming.

Did I say Porn ? There is more instant porn available today than ever before and its just getting bigger. Yes Mr. TV man you compete with porn. Get over it. If you didn't it wouldn't keep growing while all your stuff is dying. Well honey, there's nothing on TV, I'm going upstairs !!

Two Words. Massive Multi-player. go to google and look up MMORPG. - nuff said.

....and saving the best for last - VIDEO GAMES of all kinds , but especially online game communities. Toasty !! Finish Him !! COD Black Ops ! Halo, friggin Halo !!

So keep your head in the sand and keep thinking if you just make one more reality show or one more schlocky cheezey gag me with a spoon sitcom that everything will get better. While you are doing that Netflix and Nintendo and Sony are getting rich watching you sit on your sorry asses.

Did I say that out loud ?

Thankx for reading my Rant

- BigMike

Response to the Statement From the Family of Osama bin Laden Published: May 10, 2011

2011-05-14T13:39:00.001-04:00

In a statement published by the family of Osama Bin Laden on May 10^th, 2011, specifically by Omar Ossama Binladin and his brothers, they say they are not convinced that Osama Bin Laden (“OBL”) is dead. They are seeking conclusive evidence that OBL is dead by seeking to obtain pictures and videos made by the Special Ops soldiers after the raid of his compound.

Read the whole statement here : Bin Laden Family Statement or Google it here : http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&tab=nw#hl=en&sugexp=ldymls&xhr=t&q=statement+published+by+the+family+of+Osama+Bin+Laden&cp=53&qe=c3RhdGVtZW50IHB1Ymxpc2hlZCBieSB0aGUgZmFtaWx5IG9mIE9zYW1hIEJpbiBMYWRlbiA&qesig=v91RicWt-6kPmSgu2JA79w&pkc=AFgZ2tnJhtNbL5rJuAdR

They go on to assert several things, not specifically copied here, but such as:

· He was an unarmed man

· He should have been arrested and tried in a court of law.

· They assert he was assassinated contrary to US Law.

· That he had a right of the presumption of innocence, until proven guilty in a court of law.

· And other such assertions.

They were also concerned that their family was denied rights due to a Muslim man, by burying his body at sea, saying, in effect that his family was denied due process under American Law, and they want the operation investigated under International Law. They go on to say they did not agree with the ways of their father but also did not agree with the way his death was handled either as well as several other more salient political points I’ll not cover here.

My Response to that statement (Call it “An American Response”):

· First and Foremost. BITE ME, EAT ME AND BOO- FRIGGIN – HOO !!.

· Second - Your “father” was a cold blooded scum sucking worthless murdering bastard who killed more than 3, 000 people on September 11, 2001 in attacks he masterminded in the USA. He got way better treatment than he deserved and received much better treatment at the hands of our soldiers and politicians than he would have received had you dropped him off in any regular American neighborhood for disposition. Trust me.

· He provided his own proof of Guilt by taking credit for the attacks in video after video and in several audio tapes. Guilt and Innocence was not at stake here.

· He is and was a mass murderer and deserved to be treated worse than he was treated when he was killed in the raid by the US Navy Seals.

· He and his kind somehow find it to be natural and normal to kill innocent men, women and children in their zeal to follow their so called religion.

· To date he is one of the largest killers of Muslims that the world has ever known, and he has killed more Muslims than any other group. They have killed Thousands upon thousands of innocent men, women and children all over the world in more Muslim countries than anywhere else.

· Muslims do not support the wacko extremists and they don’t care what happened to this serial killer. We don’t care either.

· They demand special treatment and demand accommodation for their so called religion; however they show no mercy and no allowance for any who do not believe as they do.

· As to his specific burial treatment:

1. He received better burial treatment than anyone who died in Pennsylvania did.

2. He received better burial treatment than any of the 17 sailors who died on the USS Cole did.

3. He certainly got more humane treatment and a better burial ceremony than he deserved and much better than the Thousands of men, women, children, Police officers and Fire Fighters did when the buildings fell on them in New York City received.

4. He got better treatment than the people who were injured and killed in the two preceding attacks on the World Trade Center’s did in the 90’s

5. I am certain the 200 people who died in the attacks of our embassies in Nairobi Kenya and the more than 5,000 people he injured would agree that he got better treatment than they did.

6. I’ll bet if you could ask anyone who died in the Pentagon, whether the burial practice we observed for his death was gracious enough under international law and Muslim tradition, I’ll bet all of them would agree it was way better than the bath of flaming jet fuel and flying airliner parts that they got on that crisp fall morning.

7. The world hasn’t really heard one peep from you people concerning this man or his methods or how they buried others as they carried out their atrocious attacks. Where were you when Sept 11 happened? What about when he killed more than 200 in Bali in October 2001 or more than 50 in Istanbul in November 2003 ?

There have been more than 15 documented attacks worldwide since September 11th, 2001 and we haven’t heard a single word from you people!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_al-Qaeda_attacks

Where have you people been while everybody else was bleeding and dying? Once it’s all over you come crawling out of the woodwork like cockroaches and you expect us to give a rats ass what you think ? Be Serious for a second. Then go lay down and play Johnny go F**k yourself.

America doesn’t give a damn what you want.

We couldn’t care less what you demand.

He’s dead and that is a good thing.

Get over it.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

Spreading the stupidity

2011-05-02T11:50:00.001-04:00

Only in America ......do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.

Only in America .....do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke.

Only in America ......do banks leave vault doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.

Only in America ......do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.

Only in America ..........do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.

Only in America .....do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.

YOU EVER WONDER –
Why the sun lightens our hair, but darkens our skin?

Why can't women put on mascara with their mouth closed?

Why don't you ever see the headline 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?

Why is 'abbreviated' such a long word?

Why is it that doctors call what they do 'practice'?

Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor, and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?

Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?

Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?

Why isn't there mouse-flavored cat food?

Why didn't Noah swat those two mosquitoes?

Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal injections?

You know that indestructible black box that is used on airplanes? Why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff?

Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?

Why are they called apartments when they are all stuck together?

If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?

If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

Storms and such

2011-04-29T21:07:00.010-04:00

Hey everybody.

I'm blogging this message to let you all know we are okay and everything in Calhoun is peachy. I feel guilty saying that. You see we had big storms, huge storms and we got... well, nothing.

Some wind, some rain, but ho hum.

For those of you who know me, you know I live in Calhoun GA. My town is about halfway between Atlanta Georgia and Chattanooga TN, and sits about 35 miles from one of the hardest hit areas in Georgia , Ringgold GA. All of the devastation that occurred as a result of the tornado's and severe thunderstorms on April 27,2011 is geographically all around me.

I could drive to every one of these areas including Tuscaloosa AL in a very few hours. I have friends or former co-workers that live in all these areas. The damage is beyond accurate description except to compare it to something else. When you see all the trees that are down, you think WOW, this looks like when Mt. St. Helen blew up and flattened the forest around it or maybe , I saw something that looked like this once when I saw an active logging camp in the forest. The damage is so severe it really doesn't have words of its own to describe it. I watch video with others and the room turns seriously quiet, no one can talk it is so absorbing. It is surreal. The only other time in my life I have ever saw anything that approaches this level of scary is Hurricane Katrina. I'll bet we have more damage and more totalled cars. I've never seen so many flying cars. I've been in every one the areas that have been shown on the videos and in the pictures.

I really don't recognize much of anything I see.

The damage in Ringgold looks more like a war zone than a vibrant industrial neighborhood. I've ate at most of the fast food restaurants in that area and none of them , not one of them, are serving food today, nor will they be for quite some time to come. Some will be fixed however the damage is so extensive that most will have to be completely torn down and rebuilt.

Pretty much if it was at exit 348 on I-75 in Georgia, it ain't in business today, and neither is much of the historic 173 year old town. Taco Bell ? -Destroyed, 3 Story Super 8 motel ? - Flattened, cratered, destroyed. Every other business for about the next 2 miles ? - Flattened, crushed, imploded and thrown into the next state. Get outta here takes on a whole new meaning. You know those 125 foot tall highway signs that businesses have ? I saw one broke in half, on broke at the base on top of the restaurant it was advertising and another was wrapped double backwards against itself. The McDonald's sign? Well it just wasn't there any more and neither is the BP gas station, well technically the cement slab is still there, but that's all.

A good friend of mine lives one mile from ground zero in Ringgold. His truck got hit by a tree, his wife's arm was hurt, the power is out, he lost his food, they don't have water, but everything else survived without much damage. His kids school got destroyed, but his kids are fine. One mile away from ground zero, a quarter mile from some of the less severe damage and nothing. School however is cancelled, For the rest of the year, In every school, For about the next two years while they rebuild them. FW

Another one of my friends lost a window. One window. In the same town as completely flattened commercial buildings. At the tail end of another long run of another tornado, another friend lost power and had a tree come down in their front yard. Power is out for half a day. Yay !! One of my other friends lives in Bradley County TN and her son's home, cars, garage was destroyed , but the family was spared. Thank goodness !

The interstate highway is at a crawl if you can get through at all right now. Debris, before you ask. Enormous Mountains of debris. Hundreds of thousands of tons of debris. "Guardrails ripped from the ground , wrapped around the bridge pillars like bow tie pasta". FW (my favorite cursing words) . Forget going to Chattanooga right now.

Hundreds of thousands of others were not so lucky. And trust me, we all know we were lucky and dodged a bullet Wednesday night. Atlanta should be thanking God that it turned right and left and didn't carve a path through downtown. Can you imagine the number of dead if this thing had went into the heart of Atlanta ?

In Tennessee, (she'd be embarrassed and pissed off if I mentioned her by name so I won't) where my best friends lives, folks died right down the street from her, maybe even literally next door. She lived through the Movie Twister and somehow even though there was gargantuan destruction all around her, she was spared, and her house was spared. Thank God for that. I saw the weather map, and where it was hitting , and I know she had to have been scared cause I was praying to god she would be okay. She said "I feel lucky, but don't know why I am alive."

Me ? Hell, I'm just glad you are alive to wonder that.

I saw the footage.

I still can't believe it.

How many people would even want to tell anybody they lived through (probably) an F-5 tornado ? It was definitely an F-4 and they are saying it may have been an F-5 by the time it hit her area. And then have to deal with the survivors guilt and the amazing amount of stress it has to create ? I'm glad for her, and was overjoyed to finally hear her voice. Oh and by the way, her son should get a medal for being able to get to her and get her out of that hell on earth. Way to MR !! Every son would do what he did I think, but he actually did it !

In terms of getting through this, well, like a lot of things time and money will heal a lot of it. Nothing will replace the loved ones who died, but after a time we will grow to accept it and move to pick up the pieces of our lives and go about making our fortunes in this world once again.

In terms of perspective however, we have lived through History and my friend who lived through the F-5 tornado can now tell people she survived one of the most destructive storms and one of the highest wind speeds ever recorded in North America. In 1974 Hurricane Carmen struck the USA and was rated a Category 4 storm according to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane scale . The highest wind speeds were around 150 mph with gusts in the range of about 170-175 mph. The experts think this tornado has winds in excess of 190 mph.

We had hundreds of tornado's. F-1's through F-5's all in one day.

I've enclosed some links, YouTube links and a link to some pictures.
http://www.tornadoproject.com/fscale/fscale.htm

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150178317618469.330602.759223468

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdNVq5PPq5c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkhqFk_QA7s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6Se3es3l7o&sns=fb

Is it OK if we go back to normal now ?

- BigMike

Walking 45 Degrees to the earth- The Satelite view

2011-03-05T12:23:00.008-05:00

Getting a lot of airtime in the news but not a lot of real thought or reporting is the current drama in the Middle East. We hear the talking heads giving us the latest on what country is convulsing to throw off their tyrant-leader of the moment but do not really hear a lot of what this momentous change in the middle east is going to do to the rest of the world. Oh sure, you hear all about how it may affect gas prices or our relationships with them in the short term but curiously you don't hear much at all about the long term picture. I listen every day and haven't really heard anyone discussing this in any substantial or meaningful way.

This is the age of the 12 second sound bite. If you can't read it, write it or say it in 12 seconds, it don't matter because no one will pay attention long enough to read it or hear it anyway. Long term news reporting , which analyzes the ongoing prospect of a news story, has been pretty much relegated to policy papers and magazines. More Journalists are writing books every day. Less and Less of them are actually covering news.

Here are some of the stories they are not telling at the moment that you won't really hear because nobody is asking the questions. What I cannot for the life of me figure out is why we aren't asking them and why this stuff doesn't make the cut ? We'll watch American Idol until we know everyone's names and we've run the phone bill up $250 dollars voting on Dancing with the Stars, but could care less and pay no attention to real reality ? Do you really think that a reality TV show is actual reality ? I wonder how long any woman would actually date and then marry a schmuck who made them wade though 12 other women while he makes up his mind which one he wants?

It boggles the mind.

9 million paragraphs about Charlie (Loser Tiger Blood) Sheen.

Not one about the future reality of what is happening right now?? No news stories about the causalities of war and 28 half hour long interviews to say why he (Sheen) should make more money.

Something is wrong with this picture.

Why the hell would I care who wins the money at the end of the TV show called Survivor? Real life gets in the way. Its called "Make your mortgage payment" and "Keep your Job". There's a reality show for you. Wake up. Here's some stuff I'd kinda like to know.

What kind of governments will replace the ones being thrown out by their citizens? For the most part the governing systems being abandoned are dictatorships and Oligarchies, and also for the most part individuals or families are being replaced as the heads of state.
What is in our best interests to have as heads of states in those countries?
Will any of these people be allies once it is all said and done?
What countries are vulnerable to this kind of chaos? Will we see this in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia or Syria ?
Will this fervor extend out of the middle east into countries like Myanmar or North Korea?
Are the countries going through these changes currently at war with anybody else? If so what are their military capabilities?
Is it going to be necessary to involve the military in any of those conflicts? If so in what role? Policeman ? Peacekeeper ? Combatant ? Buffer Force? Why hasn't this been discussed in the media ?
What elements of this chaos spreading through the middle east are going to translate into change in the areas where we would like to see it? Will this affect China ? or Iran ?
What happens if demonstrations break out in China for example (or others) and they respond by using the military to squash it, in the process killing thousands of people? Is there a legitimate response ? What should we do ?
What good does it do to employ sanctions against a country like Iran or North Korea? Why do we do it?
Now that is has been declared a part of free speech to demonstrate at a military funeral when a burying a loved one who dies in service to his country, How long before somebody snaps and starts shooting at these idiots ? I can see "Uncle LeRoy" with his pistols, gun rack and long rifle just lose it and shoot some of these idiots. How wrong can we really be ? I cannot believe I actually sided with Samuel Alito on something. What is this world coming to ? Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. was the lone dissenter in a Supreme Court case last week that ruled the First Amendment protects hateful protests at military funerals. The case was brought by the family of a Marine killed in Iraq whose funeral was the target of protesters carrying signs with messages like“America is Doomed” and “God Hates Fags.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/06/weekinreview/06fightingwords.html)
The question is not "Will Jared Loughner get the death penalty?", the questions actually is "How long will it take us to Kill Jared Loughner, once his death penalty is affirmed?". Personally , I don't know. Only way to answer that would be to move the trial to Texas. Then the answer would be "Wednesday 6:30 pm, in the Express Lane."(http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/03/05/earlyshow/saturday/main20039634.shtml)
Gasoline is now over $3.50 per Gallon. Why aren't we raising holy hell about it ?

This is just things that come to mind.

Can anybody shed some light on this at all ?

Man I am pissed.

-Thankx - BigMike

Observations from a forty five degree angle

2011-03-03T17:06:00.005-05:00

Several things make me go whatever today and a few of them make me want to find the blathering idiots who propagate it and Gibbs-Smack them.

Like I care what happens or if this is read, but this is what I think.

Mostly is sorta like WTF dude?

Charlie Sheen sets new world record for Twitter ? And somehow he gets paid for his nonsense? Listen I don't begrudge any body any money for anything they have done to earn it, but being paid because you have a twitter account ? Are you serious? Yet another reason I'll probably never have a twitter account is because I can't stand the shorthand they use and I could care less what happens to (Insert Name - Famous Person) let alone Charlie Sheen. His TV show has always been a microcosm of him and somehow they found his recent behavior offensive? These guys must be idiots. Have you ever listened to him talk - at all ? He speaks just like every other over privileged, pampered , actor/singer/rock star/model does who has enough money to treat other people stupidly and act as immature as they want to without facing the consequences for his actions. Give me a break. Those TV guys are just pissed off because he is yakking about them . Who gives a rats ass ? Oh and John Stamos in his part on the show ? Can you say "cancelled" ? I knew that you could. And by the way - He is not in Rehab at home. He is at home being coddled by his entourage. He will never be in Rehab unless and until he is sentenced to it in a prison somewhere. Get over yourself.

A BYU athlete gets disciplined for having extra marital sex and then admitting it under the schools honor code? This is listed under a story about Charlie Sheen on a google list. I see the irony here, don't you? He is kicked off the basketball team, may not be able to remain in school and is under review because he admitted to sexual relations with his girlfriend. Sounds like he needed a big brother. One that can teach him to lie successfully. A good idea to have an honor code I guess, but I don't get the point of kicking him out of school or off the team. I wonder how it came up on conversation with school officials anyway....... "Say Brandon, you still a virgin, right?".

One friggin permit has been issued for drilling in the Gulf. One. How long must the workers suffer? Spare me the environmental nonsense. One year from now the same methods they use right now will be used to drill the next set of wells. Virtually nothing will change until the last spill is litigated, so nobody will demonstrate culpability because of change. The workers will not work and the economy will continue to suffer though. What the hell is the point ? One friggin permit. One. I can't believe they think we are this stupid.

Lou Dobbs is back on TV with a new FOX show (and I still don't care- MUTE BUTTON)

A new IPAD came out tod.......(Boring )

John Cryer got a new gig. (http://www.businessinsider.com/charlie-sheen-jon-cryer-cbs-ellen-degeneres-video-2011-3) This guy is the funny one. If you don't know he is the brother from Two and a half men.

Chuck Lorre is an idiot !! ( http://www.popeater.com/2011/03/01/chuck-lorre-i-am-so-outta-here/ ) What ? Are we twelve and have any of these morons ever heard of a PR department. And Charlie is crazy ? WTF Dude? This is just another rich TV dude who has more money than he does sense. Oh and BTW - he's the exec producer of Two and a Half men I think.

See ya'll later - Bigmike

God Versus Science

2011-02-01T18:23:00.001-05:00

At various points this has been attributed to a few famous scientists, even to Albert Einstein; however I have no idea whether this is true or if he actually said it.

You got to love the logic though. It’s kind of long, but read on!

Thankx to Jackie for this!

-Big Mike

GOD VERSUS SCIENCE:

Let me explain the problem science has with religion. The atheist professor of philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of his new students to stand.

You’re a Christian, aren’t you, son?

Yes sir, the student says.

So you believe in God?

Absolutely.

Is God good?

Sure, God’s good.

Is God all-powerful? Can God do anything?

Yes

Are you good or evil?

The Bible says I’m evil.

The professor grins knowingly.

Aha! The Bible!

He considers for a moment.

Here is one for you, let’s say there’s a sick person over here and you can cure him. You can do it. Would you help him? Would you try?

Yes sir, I would.

So you’re good...!

I wouldn’t say that.

But why not say that?

You’d help a sick and maimed person if you could. Most of us would if we could.

But God doesn’t.

The student does not answer, so the professor continues. He doesn’t, does he? My brother was a Christian who died of cancer, even though he prayed to Jesus to heal him.

How is this Jesus good? Can you answer that one?

The student remains silent.

No, you can’t, can you? the professor says. He takes a sip of water from a glass on his desk to give the student time to relax. Let’s start again, young fella. Is God good?

Er..yes, the student says.

Is Satan good?

The student doesn’t hesitate on this one.

No.

Then where does Satan come from?

The student falters.

From God

That’s right. God made Satan, didn’t he? Tell me, son. Is there evil in this world?

Yes, sir.

Evil is everywhere, isn’t it? And God did make everything, correct?

Yes

So who created evil? The professor continued, If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principle that our works define who we are, then God is evil.

Again, the student has no answer.

Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things, do they exist in this world?

The student squirms on his feet. Yes.

So who created them?

The student does not answer again, so the professor repeats his question.

Who created them? There is still no answer.

Suddenly the lecturer breaks away to pace in front of the classroom. The class is mesmerized. Tell me, he continues onto another student.

Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?

The student’s voice betrays him and cracks.

Yes, professor, I do.

The old man stops pacing.

Science says you have five senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Have you ever seen Jesus?

No sir, I’ve never seen Him.

Then tell us if you’ve ever heard your Jesus?

No, sir, I have not.

Have you ever felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus or smelt your Jesus? Have you ever had any sensory perception of Jesus Christ, or God for that matter?

No, sir, I’m afraid I haven’t.

Yet you still believe in him?

Yes

According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn’t exist... What do you say to that, son?

Nothing, the student replies. I only have my faith.

Yes, faith, the professor repeats. And that is the problem science has with God. There is no evidence, only faith.

The student stands quietly for a moment, before asking a question of His own.

Professor, is there such thing as heat?

Yes.

And is there such a thing as cold?

Yes, son, there’s cold too.

No sir, there isn’t.

The professor turns to face the student, obviously interested. The room suddenly becomes very quiet. The student begins to explain. You can have lots of heat, even more heat, super-heat, mega-heat, unlimited heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat, but we don’t have anything called cold. We can hit down to 458 degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold; otherwise we would be able to go colder than the lowest -458 degrees. Everybody or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-458 F) is the total absence of heat. You see, sir, cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.

Silence across the room. A pen drops somewhere in the classroom, sounding like a hammer.

What about darkness, professor. Is there such a thing as darkness?

Yes, the professor replies without hesitation. What is night if it isn’t darkness?

You’re wrong again, sir. Darkness is not something; it is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light, but if you have no light constantly you have nothing and it’s called darkness, isn’t it? That’s the meaning we use to define the word. In reality, darkness isn’t, If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?

The professor begins to smile at the student in front of him. This will be a good semester.

So what point are you making, young man?

Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical premise is flawed to start with, and so your conclusion must also be flawed. The professor’s face cannot hide his surprise this time.

Flawed? Can you explain how?

You are working on the premise of duality, the student explains. You argue that there is life and then there’s death; a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something Finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can’t even explain a thought.

It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the absence of it. Now tell me, professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?

If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, young man, yes, of course I do.

Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?

The professor begins to shake his head, still smiling, as he realizes where the argument is going, A very good semester, indeed.

Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir?

Are you now not a scientist, but a preacher?

The class is in uproar.

The student remains silent until the commotion has subsided.

To continue the point you were making earlier to the other student, let me give you an example of what I mean.

The student looks around the room.

Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor’s brain? The class breaks out into laughter. Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor’s brain, felt the professor’s brain, touched or smelt the professor’s brain? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, with all due respect, sir. So if science says you have no brain, how can we trust your lectures, sir?

Now the room is silent. The professor just stares at the student, his face unreadable. Finally, after what seems an eternity, the old man answers.

I guess you’ll have to take them on faith.

Now, you accept that there is faith, and, in fact, faith exists with life, the student continues.

Now, sir, is there such a thing as evil? Now uncertain, the professor responds,

Of course, there is. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man’s inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.

To this the student replied, Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have Gods love present in his heart. It’s like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light.

The professor sat down.

We went to a Carmike Cinema theatre last night

2010-12-05T15:31:00.004-05:00

My wife and I went to see the movie "Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole" last night. Loved the movie. I wonder however if things continue the way they have been how long you'll be able to go to a movie at a theatre in the future however. After I thought about it I sent the following novel/letter to Carmike Cinemas. They can read it or not. You can read it or not.

I just think they and their competition should do something different if they want to survive for the next ten years. If they continue operations the same way , I fear that movie theatres will soon go the way of drive In movies and 8 track tape players.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/
I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.
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Open letter to Carmike Cinemas :

Mr. Gary Krannacker, VP Operations
Carmike Cinemas, Inc.
Carmike Plaza
1301 First Avenue
Columbus, Georgia 31901
Telephone: (706)576-3400

Dear Mr. Krannacker,

According to what I could find, you are in charge of Operations at Carmike. I would like to relay some observations to you about our continuing experience in your theatres with one caveat. The reason I am writing you is to be certain that Carmike understands the impact in a general sense, of what we experience when visiting your theaters. I have no underlying agenda, other than an improved experience and I am not interested in compensation, contact, coupons, or movie passes. I’m not looking for a job or trying to convince you to let me see movies free. My motives here are about being able to go to your theaters, to be served in a reasonable time and be able to see a movie in pleasant surroundings. My wife and I attend screening at several of your locations on a regular basis. We travel to Dalton GA, Cartersville GA and occasionally see movies in our hometown of Calhoun Ga. I’ve also lived in four other states and have attended screenings in your theaters all over the country. We also enjoy your competition. In general, it is an enjoyable experience, or at least sometimes, it is, if I can ignore everything else.

Look, I know you are in a very competitive business. I’ve read all about how the public doesn’t go to the movies anymore and all the reason the experts give for that decline. I get it that the industry has changed. There is more competition now than ever before, that there are more sources for entertainment now than ever before and it is cut into smaller and smaller pieces by new processes every day, and that every day a new challenge comes up that wasn’t part of the competitive landscape 5 years ago.

I would counter all of that with one statement.
“So what! Are you just going to quit being a movie company?”

Silly statement I know and the answer is of course not. Without regard to your measurement metrics, cash margin statistics and RPP (revenue per patron) analysis, I say you have unlimited room for the potential to grow, to achieve unheard of year over year results and the potential to lead the market, instead of being in the middle of the pack of the so-called “Big Four”. Things got to change if that is ever to happen though.

Some of what I see is nothing more than basic business and it all seems like a no-brainer to me. Others are big ideas that take capital investment and radical thinking to combat the natural business tendency to manage the business from the profit line upwards. I’ll not lecture you about your own business, however on the next pages I would like to share some thoughts. Feel free to do with them whatever you like including ignoring them or shredding them. It is possible that I am completely wrong and this letter has no value whatsoever, but, then again, who knows?

As I said, I am a customer, one of your customers who have been going to movies on a regular basis for a long time. This letter may read like a complaint, however really it is a desperate plea to save your industry from itself.

I am afraid what I see is going to result in the managing of this business through a decline and into a crash landing, metrics be damned. If it were an airliner, the result is called “Controlled Flight into Terrain”, where the pilot is behind the yoke, flying the plane and flew it straight into the mountain anyway. I mean no disrespect, however it looks like to me that no one is flying this plane.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely Yours,

bigmike - (Actual letter is in the mail.)

How do you manage this business? From the Top Line down (revenues) or bottom line up (Profit)?

Everywhere I look in one of your facilities, I see expense (cut) decisions. Typically, those decisions are all about profit generation and budgetary expense control. I have no issue with that (Maximizing profit), if everything is already running right, the ship is tight and it is what it takes to return a fair profit to your shareholder.

What is the message you are sending to your patrons, associates and management however when: Marquees are damaged, floors are dirty, Sound systems don’t work properly, carpets are worn out, trim is missing, uniforms are dirty, the staff is slovenly, signage and lights are out, parking lot lights never get turned on, bathrooms are always filthy and it looks like the last time any paint was applied was when Ronald Reagan was president?
I’ll tell you what it says to me. It says, “We are Cheap, even if our items are not”. It also says you invest no money in inspecting your facilities and ensuring a high standard is met.

The mission ought to be how to get more people to come back more often. Instead, the mission is perceived as “Don’t spend any money on the theatres”. Tangible expense control is very important, however if you also do not demonstrate to me , your patron, that intangible Guest Good will is as important , I’ll stay home and watch Netflix on my big screen TV, with my home theatre system playing while my wife makes popcorn. You give me no reason to remember you as a destination, otherwise. You are leaving piles of money on the table by ignoring this important asset. If it looks like you value profit over me, I’ll see it and act accordingly. See the mountain in the way here?

How much you charge me for a ticket or on what day the special runs is only important the first time. After that, you have to execute and your staff has to perform. Even if you charge me $1.50 per ticket and I buy nothing else, how many times do you think I’ll come back when it takes 20-30 minutes to get them? Buy two drinks and one bag of popcorn and stand in line for 30 minutes? Really?

Force every purchase through the concession stand, including tickets, make us wait forever, force a parent to try to buy tickets, buy concessions, control 2 toddlers who are bored and screaming and ask yourself if this is the law of unintended consequences at work? Is this the way you want to to be? How many times will this aggravated mother of two, who could finally afford to take her kids to the movies because the prices dropped to $1.50, bother to come back after she is annoyed beyond consideration because the method of doing business changed? Should there be a sign that says, “Low staffing in place” or “The ticket seller called in sick”, on the front door? Do you think the ticket price will actually matter on any future purchase decision?

Realize that your business is really all about people and is not the movies, the concessions or expenses. Nobody and I mean nobody cares if anyone in your theatres is wearing a jacket. It may be part of your look, your ethos, how you distinguish management from associates or whatever but it doesn’t mean anything if that person in the jacket never says a word to a patron. It really has no value at all either when the jacket is stained with butter and soda either. I’d rather see clean T-Shirts than stained jackets.

No one talks to you and guess what? No one smiles either. I have literally stood in line with my wife for 20 minutes paying attention dozens of times, watched her order while I just stood there, and never saw anyone talk to a patron, ask a question, or smile one time. Your staff typically never talks to its customers anymore. They are more interested in filling the cup than in saying hello. The only things I ever hear are related to pricing, stocking and task orientation. Efficiency is good, watching five people do the Thorazine shuffle is not. Heads down, popcorn bins filled, cups brought up yes, but literally no guest interaction, beyond size and price conversations. It certainly isn’t a staffing problem. You’ve replaced the staff many times and Lord knows they change often enough. I’d say it might be a training problem or a selection problem, but not staffing. If this is how you intend it to be, just admit it, cut out the intermediary, and encourage patrons to bring their own snacks while buying their tickets through fandango, so you will never have to interact with them at all. Then, you could have a scanner at the theatre door let us in with our on line ticket bar code and cut the labor expense entirely.

Is the trend towards Self Serve theatres?

How long before your internal discussions begin to be about closing locations, if that hasn’t already begun?

If the trend is that movie Theatre’s are a dying breed, are you just waiting around for the end to come? I’m no operations or marketing genius. I don’t have all the answers. Hell for all I know I am completely wrong and I have no idea about this. It seems to me however, that if you struggle to fill theatres and attract more guests and the competition is stupid fierce, that you have to do things a bit differently in order to achieve desired results. Stimulus Tuesday is a good Idea. $1.50 Tickets are a great idea. It won’t bring me back a second time however to experience ice age service, with a bad sound system to a place ran by sullen no talking staff, to wait on pre-popped popcorn, in long lines , outside the front door surrounded by aggravated people in the wintertime.

Are you kidding?

The atmosphere in your facilities is depressing. I noticed when you started using a digital projection scheme. It is better picture quality and makes for a better movie. My opinion is the same for the upgraded sound systems. Great Idea. The problem is I didn’t notice either one of these things until I had to endure the soup lines from the great depression to get to them.

Here what it feels like sometimes:

You get out of your car in a parking lot at night that is not well marked, and are trapped in a lane that has no exit. There are no parking lot lights burning, so you couldn’t see that. You feel isolated and alone. After you figure out how to park your car, you walk up to the front doors (in the mall units this is where it starts), you then notice that the ticket booth is closed and they are selling tickets and concessions at the same time. You wait outside in line, in the cold, with a group of aggravated parents who are getting more and more agitated by the minute. Finally, the line moves a little and you open the doors to go inside and smell …nothing. The sounds you hear are crowd buzz, teen agers making noise talking to each other, mechanical background sounds like doors, people handling items, and the noise associated with a number of aggravated people standing around. No one talks to you, No one smiles at you, and no Music is in the air, there is no atmosphere. You wait. You shuffle forward. While waiting you may go to the bathroom, if there is one to use and it smells terrible. No one has looked at it in a while and there is a mess all around the sink and floors. When you finally make it up to the concession stand, that is selling the same items they’ve always sold since 1942, you are hurried though your purchase by a harried under manned staff whose interest seems to be to get you to go away, and the sooner the better. You have your hands full and you go to find your theatre. No one is taking tickets, no one is directing traffic, and still no one is talking to you. You find your theatre, open the door and find you seat. The screen starts to play coming attractions and now I notice you have a digital projector.

It feels like I had to walk through the swamp, to get to the junkyard in order to get into the museum in order to finally see the Mona Lisa. I’d bet a blind person would not be able to guess they were standing in line in a movie theater. I’ll bet you spent a literal TON of money on the projector and the sound upgrades. Then you hid them under the pile of construction debris and rocks before I found them.

None of this has anything at all to do with community support, unless you also consider that I’ll not let my teenaged daughter go to your theatre at night with her friends because the parking lot is a dark and potentially dangerous place. How safe do you think it is to see 20 kids gathered around the back of the building in the dark and what do you think they are doing? Yeah, I’d say not burning the parking lot lights is a brilliant strategy.

This feels like the mountain is coming and boy I am glad I’m not on the plane.

If you always do what you always did, then you always get what you always got.

Albert Einstein once said that the definition of Insanity is to do the same things repeatedly while expecting a different result. Thomas Edison said that he never failed in his quest to make a working incandescent lamp; he just found ten thousand ways not to make one. Babe Ruth struck out more times than anyone else. The point is that it looks like innovation is needed. Off the top of my head, I can think of several things that make sense to me; however, I’m no movie theatre genius.

Maybe it makes perfect sense to you to sell pre-popped cold popcorn in the name of efficiency. Instead of pre-popping the popcorn or buying, it pre-popped and storing it in the back room, I would have added more popcorn machines and put the smell of fresh popcorn in the air. Every person in line would see and smell popcorn being made. If three machines couldn’t keep up, I’d install three more. Cook less popcorn, but cook it more often. Make it part of the draw. I would never let a guest see me bringing popcorn up to the bin using a broken and cracked plastic tub with a dirty bottom.

You just lowered the value of the product by doing so and now I feel ripped off.

America loves Brand Names. We are land full of Brand name enthusiasts. Beyond Coca Cola, what brand names do you sell? You couldn’t prove it by me until I get to the counter to buy it and by that time, it just doesn’t matter. Looked at a Nascar race car lately ?

Why do you waste all that space around the front doors? Three old video games and one bench seat surrounded by dingy carpet is not appealing. Everything surrounding the entrance should be pristine, inviting and part of your marketing. Why cannot I buy trash and trinkets (shirts, cups, movie themed items etc) at a Carmike theatre, ala Cracker barrel? The ambience is part of the marketing. Staff uniforms are part of the marketing, the smell and the sound is part of the marketing. Alternatively, it should be anyway.

The job of marketing is to get me into your theatre one time, the first time. Operationally you have to execute to get me to come back. If I had to guess, I’d say that Stimulus Tuesday, $1.50 Tickets and other marketing ideas are all about the future of your company. You are trying to combat the rising competition, draw more patrons and get more people into movies and make more money. If you are, and I have read this correctly, then consider how it is executed as part of the plan and budget for it accordingly.

1. If you throw a bunch of money (reduced ticket prices for example) at the problem and then ask a slow motion reduced staff to execute it, how successful do you think it will be?
2. All you will have done is throw a bunch of money at the problem and you should have just set it on fire in the parking lot. Mission accomplished.

Radical serious innovation is needed.
1. Possibly some ideas centered on guest enjoyment, ambience, atmosphere, redesign and better service. It is possible that you need to think about how the product is delivered. It looks like the engine is blown on the car and you keep changing the carburetor in order to fix it. Try something new. These places should be cash cow casinos instead of piggy banks.
2. Get some pet projects to try in small markets, do some real satisfaction research. Find some different concessions, sell more products, put some music in the lobby just don’t do the same things repeatedly and expect it to be better magically, all on its own.
3. Maybe you need smaller theatres with more movies on smaller screens with a full service twist. Maybe you need to make a big fat hairy deal out of movie premiers with spotlights and exterior stimulus. Heck maybe you need to have flea markets in the parking lot when you’re not selling tickets, but doing the same thing and tweaking the ticket price is a recipe for failure if you do nothing else.
4. Is Chik-fil-A the only business in the world that understands that if you involve the community and support it that they will support you? When is the last time you seriously competed for local market and marketing share?

Lastly if the business has changed, then so must the business model. I sure don’t have the answers, but ..,.

If carpets wear out and are expensive to replace, then maybe you need a different floor surface, not a carpet cleaner. The point is it makes no sense to let the floor look like it is worn out. Replace it with tile or vinyl or plain concrete painted in movie themes, just don’t let it be painted with foot traffic, grease, gum and spilled soda. The entrance is a high traffic area and it needs to be designed with that in mind.

If five people cannot keep up with the lines behind one counter, then maybe you need three counters and six more popcorn machines. I question that a service standard even exists in your industry and there definitely should be one. How long will you wait for food to be delivered in a restaurant? If the standard at concession is to wait no more than 5 minutes to be served, then how long will I wait in line if I am 10 back in a line that takes 5 minutes per person? Even considering queuing it will take a lot more than 15 minutes won’t it? How does closing the ticket booth solve this problem?

If you cannot fill 500 seat rooms, then maybe you need smaller rooms and more theatres, centered on a different service model. Maybe you need to reconfigure them to be 50-100 seat rooms with full service, real food, beer sales, internet access, party rooms, or anything else that will utilize the space productively and profitably and fit within the movie theme. Maybe you need private rooms, box seats, video game rooms and tournaments, season tickets or something that adds to the draw and produces revenue. Maybe you need four pool tables, 20 video machines, a jukebox, Televisions or a place to watch sports. Leave everything the same except the ticket price and expect it to be different? I think every square foot should produce an enjoyable experience and revenue for your company.

Right now, it just seems like a high portion of the space just sits there gathering dust and it feels like we are waiting on you to finally close up shop and move on.

If you can only sell four dollars of add on concession purchases, possibly you need to sell more items, not less and certainly not the same items as everybody else. If I understand your metrics page on your investor’s web site, you are about the same as everyone else. Was that the goal and will that blow away the revenue projections? The goal is to be in the middle of the pack, to produce mediocrity and be like everybody else? Really?

If neon costs a ton to upkeep, then maybe you need to switch out to LED’s. If Parking lot lights are too expensive, then maybe the theater needs better lights on the building itself. If the Marquee is 25 years old, is it time to be replaced? Is there a new technology you could use instead? Lights and signs should work all the time. They should look great and should say, “Come on in”. When you allow them to be out, broke, dingy or out of date they say, “We don’t care if you come on in”. Everything in your physical plant should be looked at like this. It should be a big, fat, hairy deal for the surroundings to look worn out, and trust me; it is not currently looked at like that at all.

If placing ads in the newspaper doesn’t work as well as it used to then maybe you need direct mail or bigger full page 4 color ads, not just an elimination of the ad itself.

If the revenue stream from ticket purchases or concessions isn’t what you need it to be, maybe you need more streams of revenue instead of lower entrance fees. Maybe you need ten times the amount of products you have now and it is possible you don’t sell what I want either. Why can’t I get a hot dog at a theatre? Why is no food products sold at all? There are No chips, snacks, hot pretzels, taquitos, etc? Is it because you don’t want to pay to clean up the theatre? Is that a viable customer centered response?

Should there be three tiers of products for sale instead of one overpriced tier? Look at the convenience store industry. If they used your model, they would have one style of lighter and it would cost 5 bucks per lighter. They would sell ten lighters a day. Look at fast food, get a burger and it can be a single, double or a triple, etc. Instead of centering on various sizes of the same products, in over priced combos, maybe you need to think about how to sell more variety at different price points. I cannot imagine what you are doing is going to sustain your future, if nothing else changes.

When I go to the movies, I always have more money to spend than I actually spend. The reason I don’t spend more has nothing to with what you offer, it has everything to with what you don’t offer. We always spend that money after the fact, in another place of business and you don’t get a penny of it. I wonder why not?

I’m sure there is a lot more that can be said, however I’ve used up enough of your time already. Have a great day.

North Korea is at it again

2010-12-03T12:07:00.003-05:00

Well, here we go again. North Korea is at it again with military posturing and sword rattling. The amazing thing is we keep treating them like they are a "normal" country with all the diplomatic systems in place for communication and negotiation that we get from other countries.

The problem is this country is not a country so much as it is a land mass controlled by the largest personality cult in the world, along with the worlds 4th largest army that we know virtually nothing about how it actually runs or how its citizens will react if war breaks out.

There is a documentary I saw recently with Lisa Lin-(sic), (maybe Frontline? or Nova?) , that followed an eye doctor to North Korea while he operated on patients there for cataracts. There were patients there who had not been able to see for more than 20 years and needed surgery to correct their vision. In the "western" world , the surgery they needed was pretty much routine. Advanced equipment and medicines have made this the type of surgery pretty much routine, and one that doctors can be trained to do in a week or so and have an amazing success rate at making people being able to see again.

In North Korea it is so isolated from the so called "Western " world (read modern influence and free thought) that the doctors there didn't even know how to turn on the machines, let alone use them. More than 1000 people were operated by a western trained doctor and and in almost all of them their sight was restored. The medical part of the story was a pretty happy ending. I was perplexed by the sub-current exposed by the show however.

My point to make here, is that in order to see the relevance to my opening statement, you have to understand the patients reaction when their bandages were removed and their sight was restored.

Were they thankful ? Were they happy ? Did they express gratitude? The answer is yes they all did. Every last one of them expressed extreme thanks and heartfelt gratitude. But not to the doctor who made it possible for them to see. They all went directly to the nearest picture of the dictator and professed their thanks to him for giving their sight back. They cried and wept and said thanks to the "Dear Leader" for giving them the opportunity to see.

Not one patient thanked the doctor. It never even dawned on them to do so. In their eyes, the Dear Leader made it possible and it was only through his will that they were even allowed to be a patient.

This is how their entire country operates at every level. Pictures of the Dear Leader are everywhere, everybody in the country thinks he is a god, and they are all extremely afraid of what happens to themselves and every one of their family members if they get seen or are overheard being critical of the Dear leader or the government.

He is another Hitler. There are concentration camps where every generation of a family are sent to be worked to death if even one person in the family is suspected of being opposed to the leadership. If One person defects , everybody pays. Babies, old people, critically ill, whatever , it doesn't matter. Everybody pays for the "sins" of one person. We've known about these camps for years and have done nothing. We don't even talk about it. North Korea kills hundreds of their own citizens annually for suspected crimes. They cause the death of hundreds of thousands through their policies and we do not do anything except stand on the sidelines and wring our hands.

Is it any wonder then that with a certified madman at the helm that they would shell an island to get our attention? This country cannot be treated like a country. It is a very large version of the Jamestown cult and the nuttiest versions of David Koresh from Waco Texas and Jim Jones combined are at the helm. It is ruled by Odd Job from Goldfinger and Dr. No, with a little Dr. Mengele thrown in for good measure.

Is it any news at all that this lunatic who would cause the death of millions of his own people to stay in power by refusing aid from anywhere except China , in order to control the thoughts of his folks? That he would enforce a famine on his entire population just to control a political message no matter how many people died? Does it surprise anybody that we can't get through to this guy using any modern methodology at all? That we have to resort to yelling memos through a bullhorn at the DMZ , in order to make sure they can at least here what we have to say?

And we want to treat this guy normally ?

Its a damn good thing I am not President. I wouldn't be in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting wars I can't win.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

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We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

Made up Words

2010-10-30T10:44:00.002-04:00

It drives me crazy.

Day after day I watch television , read newspapers and articles and see it.

You’ve seen it too I would guess and it just creeps along like it has a life of its own.

What am I talking about ? Why made up words being used as commonplace nouns, verbs and etc. of course.

You know the kind of word I am talking about right?

Watch a few commercials on TV and you’ll see them, Ones like:

Fashionista (what the heck is an ista anyway)
Accuweather forecast (from the news and weather channels)
Also AccuTrack and anything with an- iffic at the end of it , like Wonder-iffic

Most of the time these come from the lunatics that are in charge of marketing products to us on the TV. They feel like if they don’t have a new word to describe something, we won’t pay attention to it.

Well I got news for them, we don’t pay attention to them anyway. These are the same maniacs that think it is a good idea to put a live shot of some talking head on the left hand side of the screen, a horizontal crawl at the bottom of the screen, a vertical talking points panel on the right hand side of the screen and also have a channel logo inserted at the bottom right hand corner, because they think they are utilizing the entire screen to get their message across. It just pisses me off and makes me want to change the channel or mute the station.

Yeah, those idiots.

Same nuts that would have you believe we should buy everything Billy Mayes used to yell about.

Same morons that think if we repeat the phone number 27 times in 30 seconds , more people will call it.

So we have three small examples : I’m sure you can think of many more.

One is the words that they make up in order to describe something that they are trying to sell you, whether its adverting or to market a product.

How did a chamois become a SHAM-WOW otherwise ?

i. Chamois - A very soft, oil-tanned, suede-finished, leather, originally made from Alpine antelope, but now made from sheepskin splits. Known for its' absorbency.

ii. SHAM-WOW – see chamois

Another are the words that are used to describe something that actually mean something else entirely

For example, think Segway (as in segue)

i. There’s a word that already existed in nature, but was modified to describe a 2 wheel transportation device

The last is the way they use a made up word and attach it to another useful word in order to come up with a third word

This is the category that Fashion- Ista, Max-Inista and everything else with –Ista on it, fits into.

Another whole sub-set of this irritation is how marketing folks will make up words to describe a set of numbers that actually could have been described with a normal word, but then they wouldn’t get to charge millions of dollars to present the findings if they didn’t somehow “sexy” it up.

Think for example , like Day-Part, a word they use to describe a specific time of day.
Drive-Time, Day Part, Meal Period all mean the same thing if you are talking about 8 am .

It’s called Breakfast time or Morning.

Don’t confuse this with Oxymoron’s however. (See (Oxymoron’s and the lies of Marketing)

FYI : An Oxymoron is a combination of contradictory or incongruous words, such as 'Cruel Kindness' or 'Jumbo Shrimp' (Jumbo means 'large' while Shrimp means 'small').

It is a literary figure of speech in which opposite or contradictory words, terms, phrases or ideas are combined to create a rhetorical effect by paradoxical means.

Try this : http://www.oxymoronix.com/

Some of my favorites are:

Military Intelligence
Unbiased Opinion
Microsoft Works
Exact Estimate
Virtual reality

I’m not even going to get into the medical ad issue , where they name a drug some archaic made up name in order to make you think it is something more powerful than it is and can cure everything from soft toenails to pimples.

One of my favorites in this class is Clopidogrel (also known as Plavix)
Clopidogrel is an oral, thienopyridine class antiplatelet agent used to inhibit blood clots in coronary artery disease, peripheral vascular disease, and cerebrovascular disease.
It is marketed by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Sanofi-Aventis under the trade name Plavix. The drug works by irreversibly inhibiting a receptor called P2Y, an adenosine diphosphate ADP chemoreceptor.

Ah well, I guess that’s how crusty old farts like me get to be crusty old farts.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

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We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

Random Rants and assorted other thoughts on headlines I saw today

2010-10-14T17:39:00.002-04:00

33 Miners get rescued from a deep mine shaft in Chile

My immediate reaction is “Yeah ! Alright!.” And then I think, I cannot begin to imagine or fathom what it must be like to be that far underground, for that long , and I have nothing but respect for those guys. I would never work a job like that, but then again , I am not them. I’m glad they made it out.
Miners make it out alive !

CVS to pay 77.6 Million dollars in Meth case

77.6 million dollar fine in Meth case
In a case from 2008 (and / or 2007 depending upon which version you read) CVS has been fined 75 million dollars and ordered to refund 2.5 million in profits because they did not adequately monitor pseudoephedrine, which is / was a major ingredient in the manufacture of meth.
The problem is that even though now you can’t buy this product in any substantial quantity (think Sudafed) , you can make meth without it. So this does nothing to stop or even slow down the production of meth.
The sad part of all this is that you can make it in as little as 6 hours or so and virtually anyone can do it. The recipe is on the internet and a simple google search is all you need.

Facebook introduces one time passwords to help with account hijacking etc

People figure out ways to get around anything that is in their way.
This won’t work, because this usually is not how your account gets hacked to begin with ! (Facebook one time passwords)
As long as some mutt is employing social engineering tactics on naïve unsuspecting folks, no measure that they take will prevent this.
Some old fashioned customer service would help though.
Talking to a live person at Facebook is seemingly against the rules, or they have deemed it to be cost-prohibitive.
Either way if your account gets hacked, your pretty much on your own to fix it.

Pentagon will abide by order banning “Don’t ask, Don’t Tell”

First, read my post from yesterday about this. (http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/2010/10/dont-ask-dont-tell-dont-know-dont-care.html)
Second, in its current from this order has almost no chance of succeeding. Politicians will muck this up, trust me. (/pentagon-will-abide-by-order-against-ban-on-gays)
Third, 4 letters. UCMJ (stands for Uniform Code of Military Justice). Nothing she says applies to the military rule of law, unless specifically suspended by the Supreme Court or changed by Executive Order unless the Congress also passes new rules, which changes the UCMJ. Her ruling does not address the UCMJ at all.
The Justice Department almost certainly will appeal this ruling , because they are constitutionally bound to uphold duly passed laws of the United States. Even if the Attorney General doesn’t like it, precedence says he has to appeal this ruling. This will end up in the supreme court several times before it is settled.

Christine Aguilera driven to divorce.

Uh, So what? This isn’t news.(christina-aguilera-divorce)
Neither is Miley Cyrus, Brittney Spears or anyone called a “celebrity” (cyrus-criticized-new-video-sexy)
Big Deal. 50 % of all marriages end in divorce.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post. Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

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Don't ask, Don't tell, Don't know , Don't care, Don't get it

2010-10-13T18:26:00.001-04:00

Disclaimer : I have no idea what it is like to be gay. Although from a military family, I also have no idea what it is like to serve in the Military. My point of view is myopic, WASPY and male and is entirely my own.

A Federal Judge has declared “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” to be unconstitutional. She has also now issued an injunction to the US Military that in effect say “Stop enforcing” Don’t ask, Don’t tell.

The net effect of her ruling applies to the worldwide conduct of all US Military forces and all active and all future investigations.

There are numerous arguments on all three sides of this issue. I say three sides because it is traditionally argued most vocally by Gay protest groups, the military establishment and the politicians. The rest of us have opinions that if polled would range from damn right to who cares and all points in between. The Gay groups (including both democratic and republican gay rights organizations , like the Log Cabin Republicans) argue that gays should be allowed to openly gay as a matter of practice in every situation. The military says that being openly gay “negatively affects unit cohesion and morale” , whatever that really means, to have openly serving gay service members, and the politicians come up with every loopy variation of that including that somehow being gay has anything at all to do with the traditional male/female relationship and the nuclear family. That’s another whole story, but I just don’t get that point of view at all.

The judge , Virginia Phillips, said that the 17 year old policy “"infringes the fundamental rights of United States service members and prospective service members" and violates their rights of due process and freedom of speech. I don’t know if you know anything at all about constitutional law, but even if it wasn’t, this is a constitutional issue now nonetheless, because this judge has said it is and there is no going back. The facts don’t change because you don’t like them, and there is now no chance this will be solved politically. Not that there ever really was in the first place.

I am a little bit confused.

Here is what the text of the constitution actually says on due process and freedom of speech:

ARTICLE [V.] No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
ARTICLE XIV. SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
ARTICLE [I.] OF THE BILL OF RIGHTS SAYS : Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Doesn’t say squat about being gay or serving in the military. So, while I have never supported the idea that being gay is in any way injurious to those of us who are not gay, and I have never served in the military, I have to tell you the message sent by this law and now by the injunction is both confusing and at the same time as absurd as the argument for the law in the first place. Personally ? You want to be Gay and carry a rifle and fight our enemies? OK with me. I could care less about your “gayness”, and care more about your ability to aim your rifle. (for example) Your being gay has no affect on me not being gay. Never has, never will. To say that you can serve if your Gay, as long as you don’t tell us your gay, which if you do, we are gonna act all surprised and kick your ass outta here makes as much sense to me as saying that you have a fundamental right to be gay in the first place. It was bad policy and is a stupid law as it was written and now this ruling comes along and attempts to make us think that it has anything at all to do with due process and freedom of speech.

The law is kind of like saying you can serve in the military if you are a space alien as long as you don’t tell us you are a space alien. The ruling says you have a fundamental right to a credit card as long as you only think about it, but never use it. Like anything ever exists in a vacuum. It is intellectually lazy to simply compartmentalize one subject over another and then draw conclusions from the individual compartments, supporting the other individualized compartments , except that they don’t know the other compartments exist. Makes me go “ Arooouggh?”

If you want to integrate a group into another group (gays into the military- for example) be aware that you do not integrate only a select portion of that group and get to ignore the other portions, because you don’t like the aspects in those portions. All things must be considered as a whole and as parts of that whole. That’s just the way it is. You want to integrate Blacks into the military ? Fine. Everything about being black gets in, you can’t stop it, no matter what your policy is. You want to allow certain types of criminals to serve openly ? Fine. Everything about being criminal gets in too. Just accept it. You cannot make a policy that turns off the mind and think that all is well just because you say it is. It just don’t work that way. See here’s the real problem that no one addresses. Gay people scare straight people. Black people scare white people. Young people scare old people. Men scare women. Dogs scare cats. We are all just afraid of our own shadows. If they didn’t nobody would give a rats ass if someone was gay or not.

I am not expressing an opinion on whether it is right or wrong to be gay. I’m not gay and I haven’t given the other point of view much consideration, if any. Whatever your anatomical equipment preference is makes no difference to me one way or the other. What I am saying is this. Be honest about what you are saying and quit hiding behind a compromised point of view. You want to make a law that says you cannot be gay and serve in the military. Research it, fund it, pass it and enforce it. Just be aware that your opponents are going to be as vocal about repealing it as you are about enforcing it. One side or the other has to lose. When you lose, shake hands, dust yourselves off and get over it, and move on. The policy should have been called “ No guts, No plan, Don’t want to deal with it”, because all it did was make the fight last another 20 years instead of being settled back when it first came up. You can be a gay cop, a gay firefighter, a gay politician, a gay anything else, but you can’t be a gay sergeant? A Senator ( think Barney Frank) , could have been kicked out of the military for being gay in 1990 and then potentially could have served the last 20 years as an openly gay senator with no repercussions?

And now they think the goofiest appeals court in the land , the Ninth Circuit, is going to say this judge is wrong?

Can you say “Supreme Court”? I knew that you could.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=292482513888. We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

How do you dispose of batteries?

2010-10-12T11:25:00.002-04:00

Smoke and mirrors baby, smoke and mirrors. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. It is not really a problem , what you actually experienced was a flame up of swamp gas , ignited by lighting and exploding weather balloons that created the illusion of a problem. Uh-huh. I must be an idiot as this is one I just can’t wrap my brain around, without subjecting everyone around me to a 15 minute diatribe and making my blood pressure spike through the roof.

Everything in the World today either does or can run on batteries. Well, everything is a fairly strong word, but in a general sense I just mean that a bunch of stuff is designed to have battery support or have batteries as the primary power supply. Cars, flashlights, computer accessories, laptops, watches, cell phones, smoke and CO2 detectors, laser pointers, power tools, wireless printers, radios, you name it , and they all can and do run on batteries. Many things are designed to be portable devices that can’t be hooked up to the power grid at all and must be powered by batteries. Literally millions of items, every year are designed and sold that run on batteries. On top of that, they are developing newer batteries every year that are bigger, stronger, faster and can be recharged more and have bigger amounts of the chemicals in them that everyone says is the problem, including the battery makers.

You understand my point ? Look around your house and go from room to room and think about all the things in your house that run on batteries. If you are anything like us, you have 3 or 4 items in just about every room .

So, not to belabor this introductory point, but ya know, batteries are everywhere, in virtually everything. I’ll bet just in my house and surroundings there are over 100 batteries in use in dozens of applications.

Now think about this.

Every social activist that has ever been in the media (television, newspapers, the Internet, anywhere) goes on and on blah, blah, blah until I just want to smack em with a ball peen hammer, about how electric cars and battery powered items are “Greener” and how they are better for the environment, because they “reduce dependence on fossil fuels”. In the same breath they smugly buy their little electric cars that get 300 miles to the charge and make their own energy while braking and use less “fossil fuels” and all sort of other assorted nonsense until you just get sick of hearing some blathering idiot go on and on about the subject.

Here’s what I don’t get. E’splain this one to me Lucy.

If electric cars are the answer and having things run on batteries (or have the capability to) is the answer, then why oh why do you also see television commercials that say “Don’t throw batteries in the trash.”?

To me this is not a mutually exclusive deal. You can’t have one without the other. If you use batteries, they eventually wear out and have to be disposed of. No-Brainer. If you think the answer to “Global Warming” (or at least part of the answer) is to have an electric car, that runs on batteries, then you also must acknowledge that having worn out batteries left over when they wear out is a smaller problem than the fossil fuel being used prior to the batteries was in the first place. Where do you think the batteries are gonna go when they have to be replaced in your “Greener car” and the literally MILLIONS of batteries produced and used in just this country alone, every year, wear out and have to be disposed of?. You can’t eat them, they don’t really degrade to harmless materials over time (like a biodegradable sack will) and they eventually always wear out and have to be replaced or thrown away. What happens to your greener car’s batteries when it is in a high speed accident or gets hit by a train?

How is a battery greener when it takes fossil fuels to produce it, fossil fuels to recharge it, fossil fuels to transport it to the assembly plants, fossil fuels to clean up after it and it creates an enormously problematic disposal problem when they wear out , have to be replaced or are damaged ? The next question is pretty simple too, Just how in the heck am I supposed to dispose of them, when no alternative is available ? Does anything in your DOGMA dialog have any kind of answer to that ? Sorry to rain on your parade and everything , but, everything has a lifecycle and no matter how shiny and new it is today, tomorrow it will wear out and be a candidate for the trash bin. I can’t eat them, burn them, bury them or throw them away, so what in god’s name do you propose I do with them when they are worn out? Stockpile the used ones until they start leaking into the groundwater? I could stick em up an activists butt, however they would then be toxic and the problem would still be there anyway. But I digress.

I live in a very small town, the landfill here doesn’t take batteries knowingly (especially car type batteries), the trash company provides 1 (one) disposal cart for all trash items, and there is no facility for recycling of batteries (let alone much of anything else) anywhere around my house, within 250 miles . Also, they do not look at the trash when it is being dumped into the truck by the one man claw machine so I suspect this is happening in just about every area of the country as well.

Every single store you walk into however has huge battery displays and we sell the crap out of batteries for every imaginable use in every imaginable size, shape color and for every possible purpose.

Nowhere on that display or any display the manufacturers provide tell you what to do with the batteries when they wear out though do they ? Their point of view is “You bought it, you figure it out.” They only make them, they are not responsible for them when they wear out.

If we aren’t supposed to throw them away in the trash, the manufactures can’t tell you what to do with them, and there is nowhere to dispose of them “properly “and we are encouraged to be responsible and help save the planet ,then here is the question : ” WHAT IN THE HECK WOULD YOU HAVE US DO WITH THEM INSTEAD ? (besides saying to ourselves “whatever” as we toss them into a trash bag?)

Answer that question and provide a solution that makes any sense at all and I’ll do it. Hell, I’ll bet everybody would do it.

Until them just shut up about your “Greener is better” philosophy because you don’t have a clue and haven’t thought about the entire problem in the first place. You are just repeating the marketing that is designed to sell more batteries. I don’t have windmill in my backyard and haven’t figured out a way to be able to afford the enormous costs of installing Solar energy either.

Of course If I did have a windmill or solar panels , the energy is ………stored for use…….. later in ,…..wait for it, wait for it….a BATTERY !

Imagine that.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=292482513888.

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Its a great day for America everybody !!

2010-07-05T00:10:00.001-04:00

Today, Not a rant. Just an observation.

Happy Fourth Of July.

Its a great day for America everybody.

If you only watch one youtube video this year, make this the one to watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdRVQ4xwwmQ

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.
Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

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We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

Finally, the Supreme Court gets one exactly right.

2010-07-04T23:32:00.001-04:00

The second ammendment of the Constitution says :

ARTICLE [II.]
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free
State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
infringed.

The supreme court just the other day said in effect, you know, thats right. This right extends to all the citizens of the USA in every territory and state, not just the Federal Government.

Duh. Seems simple enough to me.

I wonder why it took the eggheads 234 years to finally say this.

Oh, I forgot.

Lawyers. That explains it.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.
Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

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We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

The Tea Party ? Give me a break

2010-07-02T21:34:00.002-04:00

Why has every one who delves and dabbles in politics lost their mind ? Why has the average schmo, put so much effort into this so called "Tea Party" movement? Why does it get so much airplay, Sarah Palin notwithstanding.

Just what is this Tea Party anyway ?

Well for one, it's not a party. When they all get together, its really a rock concert where every person attending gets to bitch and moan and gripe a little bit about how bad things are. Then they all start drinking from the Jones town Kool-Aid, singing the same song about change and electing new members of Congress because the ones we have now suck. They also want to make a huge hairy deal about how the Tea Party is not about current affiliation, because they have members who are of every political persuasion. Didn't we just go through the other side of this sheet of music by electing Mr. Yes We Can ?

Well, huh? Is what I say . In affect they are saying "We are not the extreme right or the extreme left, we are the middle !". So to speak. Nothing real radical about that. It's how Reagan won, it's how Clinton won and it's why the current situation is going to be a footnote in a couple of years. Extremists never fare well because they do not represent the whole.

See, here's the problem with the whole ideology of the "Tea Party".

The so called “Tea parties” vision that this is a perfect time to start bashing the other side in an attempt to win votes and change control of the House and Senate, is actually a very good short term strategy. We , the masses yearning to breathe free, love a good slogan, "Yes we do", Yes we did, Oh my God !"

The problem is that even if they are successful in ousting every Democratic incumbent and succeed in defeating Obama in the next election, the day they take office all of the issues that exist today, still exist and you haven’t helped me or anybody else in the meantime one little bit by executing this strategy.

You won, so what? What changed for us? How did I get help right now? Even if you win, I still lose because you will take another 5-8 years to do anything at all and we (the tired and huddled masses) cannot wait that long.

In Ten Years my college senior will have been in the work force for ten years, be 32 years old, and all that will have happened as a result of this crap is that another bunch of clueless politician/lawyers will have been elected, sent to Congress to sit on their hands and worry about being elected in the next election.

Does this make sense to anyone ?

I feel like I am in the movie , where I woke up from a nap to an unearthly quiet, went outside my New York City apartment only to see nothing moving and no people and discovered that I am the last person alive. Everyone else drank the kool aid.

I don't know if I am right, but it is not time for change. We have had a belly full of change for changes sake and now we got the guy from the mail room in charge of the country. Its time for somebody to be brave enough to stand up and say "A politicians job is to represent, not to be re-elected."

Here is a radical idea.

How about Politicians who do the freaking job we elected them to do in the first place !!

Now there, is some change I can believe in.

I realize that I probably do not have a majority view on this subject, because the majority view is to only suggest those things that can be passed, not to act on those things that actually will make a difference.

This is what pisses me off.

Its why I bother to write these in the first place. I don't care if anybody read this or listens to it or even acts upon it, but , it pisses me off nonetheless. How about You ?

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.
Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

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We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

My Mercury Gran Marquis A/C

2010-07-02T16:35:00.002-04:00

After about 2 years of putting up with it I decided to finally try and figure out what was wrong with my air conditioning on my 2003 Mercury Gran Marquis. All it would do (Heat or Air) was blow through the defroster.

It had heat, through the defroster.

It had AC, through the defroster.

It was an equal opportunity pisser - offer. Wouldn't work well in summer or winter.

We live in Georgia, so both times of the year are bothersome, not too extreme in the Spring or Fall, and can put up with it in the winter, because it doesn't get too cold. In the summer though, different story. 90-100 degrees outside and the pathetic AC blowing through the AC was , well, pretty much worthless.

You got better cooling with the windows down.

Took it to the dealer. What a joke. "Well buddy, your EATC (Electronic Air Temperature Controller) is probably out or you need a new vacuum line." $100 to diagnosis it (that's a hundred bucks to see if a vacuum line is holding vacuum), which is a ridiculous price. "The part is around $600 new or you can get one on eBay for $200, costs about $100 to put it in." He said this with a serious face and didn't even crack a smile, or cough or look away like most con men do.

I said "HAH". Cya. Bye. I'll put up with it for $600-800 dollars to fix it. No friggin way.

Then me and my good friend Google looked upon the internets for salvation and behold a wise man told unto me, "Follow these direction and get the parts from McMaster-Carr (dot com) and do it yourself. Takes about 45 minutes, costs about $1.00 to fix and its no big deal.

Apparently Pretty much any 2002 - 2010 big body Ford, Lincoln, Mercury uses this part and has the same problems about 4 years after you buy the car.

So I took off a piece of trim, undid (4) - 7mm screws from the front, unsnapped (2) electrical connectors and screwed off (2) speed nuts and had the unit out of the car in 3 minutes. No kidding (3) THREE friggin minutes !!

Took the unit into my shop, followed the directions exactly, replaced (4) 7 mm o-rings. lubricated them and put it all back together and guess what. Factory air , just like new car at the showroom. Total time, 35 minutes. Most of that time was spent reading the directions.

So thank you to the internets for giving me this gift.

The directions came from ( http://www.mercurymarauder.net/forums/showthread.php?t=36922 ) and were posted by some guy with a handle of JACook Senior Member and he fixed my car.

$700 my aching ass.

Oh, same internets fixed my wife's dual zone AC problem on her Grand Prix. $39.95 for a new electronic vent controller and it will freeze you out. Dealer wanted $650 to fix that.

What a bargain , I used google (and using my wife's logic) I saved $1310.95 and fixed two auto AC's

Pretty Cool huh? Thankx Internets !!!!

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.
Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

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We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

BTW - IN case you need them the directions are at :
http://www.mercurymarauder.net/forums/showthread.php?t=36922

and are inserted below. Thankx Internets !!!!

**** Direction to Fix a Ford EATC Controller ****

Replacing the o-rings requires disassembly of the solenoids, but that's really not that hard to do, if onehas reasonably good mechanical aptitude. But first, make sure they hold vacuum when not energized. Connect a hose to the center vacuum port (where the black tube was connected) and suck it. It should hold vacuum. If it doesn't, the following fix probably isn't for you.The solenoid assembly comes off the EATC module by unscrewing the two T-20 Torx screws on the back side of the module. Pivot the rear of the assembly up, and disengage the tabs at the front of the module. Disconnect the solenoid connector.Lay the solenoid assembly on it's back, and remove the 10 screws holding the solenoids and plenum strap to the plastic frame. At the wiring end of each solenoid, you'll see two metal tabs folded over, that hold the solenoid coil and armature to the solenoid frame. Straighten these tabs and then carefully pull out the armature, while watching you don't lose the spring or plunger that are inside. Note the o-ring on the armature. That's what we're after.Next, slide the coil off the end of the plenum tube, and then pinch the ends of the solenoid frame together to release it from the plenum. Once the solenoid is all apart, fit the armature back into theend of the plenum tube to check that the o-ring has a good snug fit. If it does, clean the inside ofthe tube, and reassemble the solenoid. You can replace the o-ring if you like, but if it fits well, there'sno need.Make sure you pay attention to the screw flanges on the solenoid frame. Pinch the end of the frame together to fit it back onto the plenum. The spacer that goes at the plenum end of the solenoid has the inside diameter undercut, and four grooves. The undercut end goes toward the plenum, and you'll see four ribs at the base of the plenum tube that mate with the four grooves in the spacer. The armature slides back on next, followed by the plunger, and then the spring. (The flat end of the plunger goes into the hole first, if you missed how it came out.) Use a bit of dielectric grease on the o-ring, (I used Nylog) but do not use any oil or anything on the plunger. Make sure the tip of the armature where the plunger seals against it, is clean and shiny. Don't get any dielectric grease on the tip of the armature. Clean and dry is what you want here. Slide the armature back into the end of the solenoid, and while pressing everything back together, fold the metal tabs back over.Repeat this for each of the four solenoids. On mine, the one that was leaking was for the floor vent door (red hose). It was obvious when I got to that one. The armature came out much easier than the others, and when I test-fitted the armature back into the plenum tube,it was a much looser fit.You might be tempted to only replace the O-ring on the leaking solenoid, and leave it at that. Don't.(Guilty as charged, yer honor...) Do them all the first time, or you'll be back in there again.

The old man is glad Obama is out of the Whitehouse

2010-05-18T11:23:00.003-04:00

My brother sent this to me. I love it.

One sunny day in January, 2013 an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue , where he'd been sitting on a park bench.

He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, "I would like to go in and meet with President Obama."

The Marine looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr Obama is no longer president and no longer resides here." The old man said, "Okay", and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, "I would like to go in and meet with President Obama." The Marine again told the man, "Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Obama is no longer president and no longer resides here." The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U.S. Marine, saying "I would like to go in and meet with President Obama." The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Obama. I've told you already that Mr. Obama is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?"

The old man looked at the Marine and said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it."

The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, "See you tomorrow, Sir."

All I can say is ......Semper Fi !

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.
Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

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You are responsible for you

2010-05-12T13:22:00.002-04:00

A rock thrown from your hand, crashes through a window and breaks it. You threw it on purpose. There could be any number of reasons (even entirely legitimate ones) why you threw the rock, but the facts are the facts. You threw a rock, the window is now broke and you did it. You can blame it on error, the wind, and dumb luck or you can claim it to be an accident, however the facts do not change because you do not like them.

You threw the rock and it is your fault the window is now broken.

This is a negative example of the thanking God theory. It stands to reason that if the winning hit in a baseball game is due to Gods divine intervention, then the rock being thrown and the window being broken is because God did not intervene? Alternatively, is it because free will dictates the outcome?

I think it is more likely that the hitter practiced a lot and the pitcher threw a pitch that the hitter could hit. I don’t think it had a lot to do with intervention. God may have set him up for the hit by allowing his mind to be clear , by allowing his body to exercise, by keeping him focused and giving him good eyesight, but ultimately I think when he stepped into the batter’s box, God pretty much said “OK kid, let’s see what you’ve got”.

The hitter (or the rock thrower) is responsible for the outcome.

The CEO got a Hummer because he convinced a bunch of other rich people to allow him to have the money to get one.

A team wins, a CEO gets rich, a murderer kills and a rapist rapes because they choose at some level to do so. The same factors are in play in most every case, with very little exception. Mental illness may be one area where this does not apply as handily, but then you have to believe that it is our divine self-interest to have people wandering around committing mass murder.

Life is a series of choices. We come upon “T’s” in the road all the time. If we go left, we shoplift a candy bar. If we go right, we pay for it. Simple as that and inescapable at the same time. You are responsible for you. You win your fault. You lose your fault. You don’t play, again, your fault.

Easy – Peezy. Nothing to it.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.
Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

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We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

Headlines that Lie, Film at 11 pm.

2010-05-07T10:24:00.004-04:00

The latest news headlines (and why a lot of it is just a big FAT lie !) :

Economy adds 290,000 jobs, rate rises to 9.9 % (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/08/business/economy/08jobs.html) It is always easy to think about the country / economy as a whole and to report it that way. The problem is that we are not a national economy, we are a bunch of regional economies. What this headlines should say is "Economy adds 290,000 part time low paying jobs to replace full time higher paying jobs. Millions lose benefits as unemployment compensation finally run out." At least it would be accurate that way.

Regulators look to soothe market's raw nerves (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6463NP20100507) The financial reporters always talk about "the markets" like they are a single organic piece of a larger instrument. Realistically 2/3rds of all trading done in this country is automated and executed by computer. What the headline should actually say is "Rich people make tons of money by selling stocks when price is high, prices fall as stocks sell off." They come up with all these so called reasons for stock price variations and truthfully, the price wouldn't move a bit if every executive in every public company in the USA wouldn't run their companies based upon the short term share price.

Apple's iPad in short supply at companies' stores (http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-07/apple-ipad-in-short-supply-at-company-s-retail-stores-update1-.html) What this headline should say is "Strategy to keep iPad price artificially high is working." No , it isn't in short supply. This is a myth being foisted upon the public by Apple and the tech writers. Factually, they projected a demand well in excess of what they have actually sold. Then in order to keep the price high, they (Apple) managed the production capacity down to near short levels. This creates excitement and thus demand, which "DUH !" inflates prices. We have saw the exact same thing with the original X-Box, the X-Box 360, the iPod, the iPod player and every other game system and video device in the last ten years. Who they think they are fooling anyhow ?
BP lowers dome in effort to catch oil. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703338004575229864184350730.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird) What it should have said was "BP doesn't have a clue how to stop oil leak, they are now going to try the old rug on top of the stain trick." This may actually work who knows? It strikes me as very odd though that you can drop a 110 ton steel box on top of an oil leak, and the oil will not float the box upward because of hydrodynamics. I'm guessing they thought of that but does this seem uh, surreal to you?
Iron Man 2 rakes in 7.5 million on early Friday. (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3iea8f9cfddb155917db3f5d86f8183f6f) What it should have said was "Producers continue to release meaningless numbers in hopes of selling more tickets." Now in the interest of full disclosure, I saw the first Iron man and plan on seeing this one too. I like movies and watch a lot of them. The problem is that all of these "Sales records" they talk about with movies is a made up numbers with no standard for comparison to any other movie. Here's why. Suppose Movie "A" comes out and makes 100 Million dollars, Movie "B" comes out and makes 75 million dollars. Following the logic of the headlines of the story it only makes sense to say that movie "A" was a hit, sold more tickets, made more money whatever right ? The answer is , well, it depends. What if Movie "A" is released on 4000 theatre screens and Movie "B" is released on 2000 screens ? Movie "A" made an average of $25,000 per screen and Movie "B" made an average of $37,500 per screen. On this basis Movie "B" is doing better, isn't it? This doesn't even take into account cross merchandising, logo branding, video games, the cost of making or distributing the movie and a thousand other measurements. The total value of a release over a weekend (or whatever time frame) is meaningless unless you have some standard way of comparing it to other films.

I find this to be entirely appropriate

2010-05-05T09:54:00.006-04:00

Yesterday I posted an entry about the iPad and the iPhone.

Today I read an article that presents a different slant on the same story but probably expresses it much more eloquently than I did.

You can read it here at
http://seekingalpha.com/article/202777-why-the-ipad-won-t-change-anything?source=article_sb_popular

I love it when I feel validated !!

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

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No iPad or iPhone for me, Thankx but No thankx !

2010-05-04T11:41:00.006-04:00

I have never been an early adopter. The last time I bought anything as soon as it came out was about 1980 , and I bought a VCR that weighed about 50 lbs, had clunky noisy buttons and took forever to rewind a tape. It was way over priced and I learned my lesson with that experience.

Up until very recently I had a Sam sung flip phone that was about 6 years old. No camera, no video, no email, no web browsing, no touch screen, no music player, no ring tones and no texting, but it made a great telephone. Then, sadly, it died and had to be replaced. As I went through all the options with the phone store salesperson, I was struck by the oddity of some of the options available and thought to my self "How badly do I really want a device that does a bunch of stuff, but none of it very good?".

The salesman was gaa-gaa over the iPhone and couldn't wait to tell me all about its "features"., and how cool it was. She kept saying "...and it does this (insert feature) , isn't that cool?". The more I heard about it the less impressed I was. The music player option means I am tethered to the iTunes store. The apps options means I am tethered to the "Apps store". The more I saw the less I wanted to be tethered to one company for anything and the problem is I know I am not the demographic as well. I let her keep explaining things until I said "How is it as a phone ?". She seemed stunned by the question. But...You get widgets, you get widgets !!

So anyway, I learned a long time ago that if you are an early adopter of technology a few things are usually true. For one, you usually pay more than twice what it will sell for 12-18 months from now. Another thing that is pretty common is that the first versions of almost everything technology related, doesn't work as advertised. Not only that, the basic things it is supposed to do, it usually doesn't without an enhancement, a service pack or a new item. Lastly, there is always either the promise of things to come (which may or may not appear) or the glaringly obvious functions that it doesn't have, like the seriously ancient technology of 1993 called "multi-tasking".

As it turns out , I have pretty fat fingers and the touch screen is pretty sloppy. I hated it and hate their commercials and the sappy music that goes with it. Want to know where you parked your car? There's an app for that. Sheesh. You can't get it to respond to fat fingers and it ignores the input altogether if you hit the edge of two "keys", but somehow , that is better, because Steve Jobs said so. What ever.

I remember the roll out of Windows 95 , the big marketing commercials that Bill Gates sponsored when the first version of GUI windows came out , together with the midnight madness, the worldwide new coverage, the long lines of people waiting to buy their very own copy and then when the announcer starts to explain something to Bill and then "BSOD". Funny as hell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VILt5JS7Lk

So anyway , I opted for a Blackberry Bold. Been around forever, 8th or 9th version it, worked right out of the box, lots of cool features that all do pretty well and I'm pretty happy with it.

So why do I not want an iPad? I can't remember the last time I sat on a train, looking for a girl to share something with. I don't want to run down the street dancing to my shadow with white ear plugs in (full disclosure- I have an iPod shuffle, but don't use it all that much), It doesn't play any Flash enabled web sites, I read real books so I cannot figure out what I would do with it in the first place. Is it supposed to replace my Desktop ? or my network? or my laptop ? or my phone? Or is it just another example of market share being gobbled away by another conglomerate by selling us more stuff that there really isn't a defined purpose for. I mean it doesn't have a camera, you can't shoot video with it, there is basically no porting on it and not much storage so what is this thing good for? I can't figure it out, unless I am a college student or I want to read an e-book or fill out an electronic form. Maybe a doctor or an inspector of some kind could use it, but if it isn't rugged enough to put on a UPS truck, Whats the appeal? Really?

I just don't get the lots of devices in one package format anyway. We all have them, but truly, what works better? The dedicated digital camera or your phone camera? Which is easier to take the pictures off the device , phone or camera? Do you truly think the videos shot with a cell phone are superior to the ones shot with a hand held video camera? It is really all about convenience to be able to send an email with a phone or is it just easy to respond to them?

Of course, I sometimes still use a fax machine too, so go figure.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.
Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

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We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

Overstating the Politically Obvious , the Tea Party movement and Rush Limbaugh's point of view

2010-04-18T13:41:00.001-04:00

Recently in a separate blog post I suggested the following actions should be taken to help average Americans to get their financial feet back underneath them.

I think these things would help the economy more than anything that the Congress has done or is contemplating.

I’m not holding my breath because most Politicians know that if they propose any of these items, they can’t get re-elected and that is all they seem to be concerned with.

My strong opinion is none of them have any guts and won’t stand up for us anymore. I’ve been criticized because it isn’t “the American way”, to do these things. Personally I think those people do not understand the issues so I’ll attempt to explain it for them and others in a more comprehensive and functional way. I recently had two political candidates say to me that “Politics just don’t get done like this anymore , Mike.” Yes, I know and that , exactly is what the problem is. Politics is what gets done instead of representation.

Here is exactly what I said (in numbered order) , with a more complete explanation underneath each subject line. :

1. Realize that 80 % of us screwed up when we refinanced our homes and just pay down our principle on the overvalued portion of our homes or make the banks modify the loan terms and give them tax breaks to make up the difference. Don't bother giving me a tax break I can only use in April once per year. That is the ultimate in stupidity. How does it help to give me a break on next year’s taxes , when I can't afford gas for my car, my house or car payment and I don't have a job right now? How much sense does that make? Can someone please explain that to me? What if my mortgage company said to me "Beginning next month your payment goes down $500." Think that would help?

ü During the run up to the breakdown in the housing market, there was a commercial on TV every three minutes touting the benefits of refinancing your mortgage. Whole industries and new careers were created in the blink of an eye that basically created positions that only functioned as bird dogs for financial institutions in much the same way the realtor job model was created. Their job (these so called “brokers”), were to flush out new clients for mortgage companies to lend to . Their key function was to attract as many people as possible for some form of refinancing option on a home they already owned. The net effect was that every refinance loan they wrote took away equity from a homeowner. Equity equals leverage. As soon as equity$ falls below interest owed , the life of a loan is substantially increased. You will pay for the house over time and it will cost you more than you realized. They knew this, because they knew the market is always cyclical. The average person did not get it.

ü Because most of the people who opted into this system are not lawyers and probably don’t have business degrees, they were fooled into thinking that their variable rate low interest loan was a better deal than they currently had because the interest rate they were paying prior to refinancing was larger than the rate they were being offered. They didn’t understand the difference between a fixed rate loan and a interest only, variable rate or balloon payment loan. When the credit market started to dry up, and rates started to rise, payments did also and nobody was prepared for their home to cost 30 % more next month and for every credit card to increase its rates at the same time.

ü It is simple economics. I only have a fixed amount of earned income. If you increase my payments beyond my ability to pay, I don’t have the money, I lose the house, and you take a loss and it is actual money that you will pay to investors, lawyers and in your share price. If you help me to reduce my payments and educate me, I don’t make the same mistake again, I keep my house and you get a tax credit. Although you still take a loss, the loss is only based on a projected amount from the original loan value ,instead of real money and you lose much less than if I go into foreclosure.

2. Give the judge in a bankruptcy hearing the power to modify terms of a mortgage. Current laws almost make certain I lose my house if I am in bankruptcy because they cannot do this. Hell if I am in Bankruptcy and my house if my biggest expense per month, would I be bankrupt if my house was not as expensive as it is? Yeah, whomever borrowed the money is at fault. Whatever. 100 million foreclosures will make the great depression look like a lawn party, let me tell you. Put unemployment at 30 % and see how happy you are with your "Let em eat cake" attitude.

ü Many conservative pundits (like Rush Limbaugh , Shaun Hannity, and Glenn Beck etc) said essentially “Why should those people who didn’t participate in this madness pay into a system to help those people who did?”, like somehow it exists separately in a vacuum as a mutually exclusive item. The problem is that nothing is actually separate when every loan made by a financial system includes every person receiving funds. They are all connected. It is convenient to think that there are two separate groups in the mix, those who screwed up and those who didn’t, but really it is the same lifeboat with both groups in the boat , one at each end of the boat paddling in two different directions.

ü Whom do the conservatives think is more affected by 4 empty foreclosed home in a 10 house neighborhood ? The individual people who lost their homes or those (the group of folks) whose home values (read equity versus home value) are directly affected by the sudden appearance of 4 empty houses now owned by a bank , which are going to be sold for pennies on the dollar ? You cannot convince me that it wouldn’t be better for the homeowner and for the bank and for the neighborhood for those folks about to lose their homes to be able to stay in them. Somehow. The bank would continue to get paid (although less money) , home values would not drop because comparative values would not change, and foreclosures would be reduced to almost zero. If equity doesn’t disappear, then there is no housing bubble is there?

ü If a judge in a bankruptcy hearing could examine the facts and say “Lower the loan 30 % and move the rate to 6% from say 10.50 %”, it would do two things. One , it would keep a homeowner in his house and not affect the values of the homes around his house because it would not be sold at foreclosure. Two it would offer the bank a way to lower its taxes due by allowing them to claim the reductions in the loan value as an operating loss. If we didn’t manage companies based upon the share price today, that wouldn’t matter either. It is not that radical of an idea to help the American public when times are tough and the economy is reeling from a wall street meltdown. FDR figured it out, Reagan figured it out, and Obama could too if he had any vision at all.

ü The so called “Tea parties” vision that this is a perfect time to start bashing the other side in an attempt to win votes is actually a good short term strategy. The problem is that even if they are successful in ousting every Democratic incumbent and succeed in defeating Obama in the next election, the day they take office all of the issues that exist today, still exist and you haven’t helped me in the mean time one little bit by executing this strategy. Even if you win, I still lose because you will take another 5-8 years to do anything at all and we cannot wait that long.

3. Don't barely lower taxes. It doesn't help at all. Forget adjusting the tax rate. Don’t bother giving me a tax break. Most of us would be hard pressed to see much of a difference in teeny tiny tax numbers anyway. I know you (the politician) can stand around at big fancy dinner parties and talk about the 40 billion dollar tax cut you got passed for low income workers, but that extra $4 dollars on my individual paycheck doesn't mean squat. Eliminate taxes on people who make less than 25,000 dollars per year. Eliminate loopholes on people who make more than 250,000 dollars per year. Problem solved.

ü The idea of a tax break is pretty popular with politicians, because it allows them to talk about huge numbers when annualized for an entire population or a set of people. The problem is no matter how you think or talk about it on an annual basis, it doesn’t actually happen that way. Lets demonstrate this with a simple example.

ü Let’s say I qualify for a $2500 tax break and take full advantage of the break. Who – hoo I get $2500 right ? Wrong, usually. Usually, what I actually get is a $2500 deduction to earned income, which in theory reduces my taxes by adjusting my earned income, which in some cases reduces my taxes owed by shifting my income to a lower tax bracket. Even if a get a direct payment (like the Earned Income Credit), it really isn’t $2500, it is a reduction in the tax rate applied that equals to $2500 for the average wage earner, with a maximum cap of $2500.

ü Most will get a whole lot less, some will get none at all because the qualifications always contain an earnings limit which prevents payment if you make too much money. For the typical earner it may equal $2500 at the end of the year, which if you look at how most people get paid, equals to about $1 per hour worked (or so).

ü So a politician can truthfully yet disingenuously say “My bill provides 125 Million dollars in tax relief for the American taxpayer”, and at the same time it equal out to about $1 an hour worked for the average American worker and they can be telling the “truth” and it is still hogwash because you don’t get paid by the year, you get paid by the week or bi-weekly.

ü It also would not sound very much like an accomplishment to say “I saved BigMike enough money last payday to go the movies one time with his wife” or “My bill saved BigMike enough money last week with my tax bill, to dine out one time and buy a half of a tank of gas”. It just doesn’t have enough impact to do any freaking good.

I realize that I probably do not have a majority view on this subject, because the majority view is to only suggest those things that can be passed, not to act on those things that actually will make a difference. This is what pisses me off.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

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We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

A Perfect Storm is Brewing !

2010-03-26T13:01:00.005-04:00

Right up until the elections of 2004, you could have pigeonholed me into the "Conservative" category and you wouldn't have been wrong. I think I even thought of myself exclusively that way until recently. That definition changed for me when I took a good hard look at what either major political party had to say and how they were saying it and I realized that I really didn't fit comfortably into either party's dogma. There are things they both say and do that just piss me off they are so stupid.

I have always been somewhat of a political junkie and have been following politics since I was old enough to read. When other kids were groaning about the President being on all three channels, I would think "Cool", and then race to the TV to listen. My youngest brother used to think I was nuts, probably still does.

A storm has been brewing for the last several years, and we are starting to see the evidence of its arrival for the last 18 months or so. Individually, many events have occurred, which if not taken as a whole , don't seem like much to think about. My view is that we are fast approaching a "perfect storm" in America and if we don't understand it and recognize it and do something different than we are doing right now, then we are in for some very rough times ahead.

Right now is rough enough, what do you think it will be like if things get worse?

We are in the eye of the hurricane, the lull before the real storm. Enough platitudes. Enough generalizations. Here is our perfect storm and its gonna be painful and won't miss many of us because of the depth and breadth of the damage that is coming.

Where to start?

Frankly, it doesn't matter because the order in which it occurs doesn't really matter all that much, because all of it is so interconnected to begin with.

Any of these trends will start the decline.

When interest rates begin to rise once again the shock to the economy will be as devastating as the burst of the housing bubble was. Money is very fragile right now. Sooner or later the FED will have to raise rates, because the rates being so low is allowing inflation to rise ever so slightly. Credit becomes more expensive and more unavailable than it is right now. Credit payments go up, mortgage payments go up, profits will start to fall. Once that happens...
You think unemployment is high right now? Put any more pressure on business to maintain profits and/or share price and see where they begin to cut back. First thing to go will be new hires, then pay freezes, then plant and business closings, then layoffs. Once that happens....
The price of every day commodities goes up. Milk, bread, coffee , tea, gasoline, things made with plastic, natural gas, all rise to record levels, because companies and their stock prices that make these products are judged on how much their sales increase over time FIRST without regard to the profit made from current sales. Once that happens...
Consumers spend less and have less to spend. Hard purchases fall off to nothing (Appliances, cars, furniture etc) Once that happens....
More banks fail. Liquidity goes down (available bank assets decline) . Credit gets even tighter, and most businesses will not have access to credit. Once that happens....
More pressure is put on employment. More people are on unemployment. Once that happens...
Housing takes a huge hit (5 times bigger than now). Foreclosures rise to over 20 %, Bankruptcies rise to record levels (and that is more than now as well). While this is occurring, more and more pressure is put on the stability of the dollar. The value of the dollar falls. What that means is that when the value of the dollar falls, it is worth less and less against other currencies. The reason that is important is because we are very import heavy. When our money versus other currencies is worth less, every thing costs more. Once that happens...
That leads to inflation. See point number One, because we are now in a viscous deadlock where inflation rises , liquidity falls, the dollar falls, more people lose their jobs and their houses which then causes ? You guessed it. Inflation. Wash, rinse, repeat. Christmas is cancelled. Cut up the credit cards. Forget about new car sales, housing starts, economic indicators, plant closings etc. It will be more common to talk about who is still in business than it will be to talk about who isn't. Once that happens...
Stock prices start falling again. Once that happens....
The government (Congress and the President) and the Federal Reserve will feel tremendous pressure to "Act", to stop the crisis and to turn the economy around. It doesn't matter that they had little to do with the cause of the crisis because being a politician means doing things that will lead to being re-elected, not doing things that should be done. It hasn't meant that for a long time.

A lot more talk will ensue about "Stimulating the Economy", which means exactly what anyway ? Giving more money to banks? It will not matter by this time because the banks will not have any of our money anyhow as we have already spent it trying to pay for our houses and food. We the People are broke and in debt up to our eyeballs with no way out. How helped do you feel by the last round of car company and bank bailouts? Shouldn't Studebaker have gotten some of that money? How will the Government propose to "Act" anyway?

Well lets see.

One of the first things they always do is to extend unemployment pay. Sure, It helps short term, but is nowhere near enough. 25 % of what you are used to living on doesn't cure the problem. All it does is give you enough money to know you don't have enough money.
Congress will start to talk about and pass another "Jobs Bill". What the heck is a jobs bill anyway? Well friends what it is (and will always be) is a tax credit given to companies who hire the unemployed worker and a denial of sorts to those companies who do not. The end affect of this is to drive wages down. It has to. It has to be worth the companies investment in order to pay for itself or get a return on the investment. It gives a company a perfectly legitimate way to cut costs that is socially and politically acceptable. Never mind the fact that it is wrong.
More money will be thrown at projects and various "hard targets" because every one of these so called politicians want to be thought of as the next FDR. Every one of them wants a new catchy campaign slogan something like "The New Deal", "A chicken in every pot" or some such nonsense, because they see their job as to be reelected not to serve their constituencies. Think "Stimulus Package of 2009". That helped you a lot I am sure.
More money will be thrown at various entitlement programs (medicaid, medicare, SS) because this shows compassion for our helpless citizens who cannot defend themselves. Looks good come re-election time too.
Another well intended but meaningless "Home buyers" program will be introduced. There will be lots of rules and qualifiers and only a few million people will be eligible and fewer will wade through the red tape to use it, but, it looks good on paper and looks great and sounds great in a campaign speech.

What did all of this do? What is the answer?

(And never mind that there is more , much more because Congress can be very inventive when it comes to throwing away money.)

See here is the stupid part. They want our vote but do not trust us to do the right thing and we keep re-electing these bozo's. What they should have done was send every man , woman and child some money using some formula and said "Pay some bills" with this money. It would have been just as effective as the stimulus package was I think.

Or, maybe , just maybe, somebody could have realized that being upside down and under water over a hundred K is a "big freakin deal" when you are talking about a single family home.

I think it would have been cheaper in the long run, more effective and would have been a faster impact to do just three things

Realize that 80 % of us screwed up when we refinanced our homes and just pay down our principle on the overvalued portion of our homes or make the banks modify the loan terms and give them tax breaks to make up the difference. Don't bother giving me a tax break I can only use in April once per year. That is the ultimate in stupidity. How does it help to give me a break on next years taxes , when I can't afford gas for my car, my house or car payment and I don't have a job right now? How much sense does that make? Can someone please explain that to me? What if my mortgage company said to me "Beginning next month your payment goes down $500." Think that would help?
Give the judge in a bankruptcy hearing the power to modify terms of a mortgage. Current laws almost make certain I lose my house if I am in bankruptcy because they cannot do this. Hell if I am in Bankruptcy and my house if my biggest expense per month, would I be bankrupt if my house was not as expensive as it is? Yeah yeah, whomever borrowed the money is at fault. Whatever. 100 million foreclosures will make the great depression look like a lawn party, let me tell you. Put unemployment at 30 % and see how happy you are with your "Let em eat cake" attitude.
Don't barely lower taxes. It doesn't help at all. Screw adjusting the tax rate. Most of us would be hard pressed to see much of a difference in teeny tiny tax numbers anyway. I know you can stand around at big fancy dinner parties and talk about the 40 billion dollar tax cut you got passed for low income workers, but that extra $4 dollars on my individual paycheck doesn't mean squat. Eliminate taxes on people who make less than 25,000 dollars per year. Eliminate loopholes on people who make more than 250,000 dollars per year. Problem solved.

14 States sue to block Health Care law !

2010-03-24T10:51:00.005-04:00

Okay. Maybe I am not 100 % percent right. Maybe, just maybe, the supremacy clause of the constitution will be the way the health care law is decided. Read the constitution at http://answrtek.com/US%20Constitution.pdf.

But, you have to admit I called the next steps on this exactly right, without knowing what would be in the news today ! 14 states have filed suit to block the new law, claiming various constitutional difficulties with its implementation. 14 States! Lawsuits, hearings, depositions, document requests back and forth, jurisdictional issues, appeals and eventually the supreme court probably more than once and a decade or more will pass before any of this is a done deal.

Quoting from a CNN article "Officials from 14 states have gone to court to block the historic overhaul of the U.S. health care system that President Obama signed into law Tuesday, arguing the law's requirement that individuals buy health insurance violates the Constitution.
Thirteen of those officials filed suit in a federal court in Pensacola, Florida, minutes after Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The complaint calls the act an "unprecedented encroachment on the sovereignty of the states" and asks a judge to block its enforcement."

In 15 years when this is all resolved we will see how much of this law is left to enact. The next thing is probably going to be an ultra-conservative federal judge somewhere granting an injunction against the statute until the legal issues are settled. You watch !

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

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The Health Care Overhaul is unconstitutional

2010-03-24T00:49:00.005-04:00

Part of the language in the health care overhaul is unconstitutional. The Constitution states that no state shall impair the obligation of contracts. Subsequent Supreme Court decisions would likely apply this prohibition to the Federal government.

The constitution says (Article I, section 10) "..SECTION. 10. 1 No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility." This is an exact quote from it.

The new Democrat health care bill provides that uninsured people must buy insurance or face prosecution and penalties. It is no great stretch of the imagination to argue that if Congress cannot impair an existing contract, it cannot force individuals to enter into contracts, on the same basis that minors cannot be forced into binding contracts. They have no legal standing to do so.

The essence of the Constitutional provision is to prohibit the government from interfering into the private affairs of an individual.

On this basis a lawsuit to declare this new statute unconstitutional is inevitable, if not expected. Don't cheer too hard just yet liberals, this will be in court for the next 15 years before it is resolved.

Draconian measures are the harbinger of tyranny.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.
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The economic crisis, what caused it.

2010-03-21T03:20:00.002-04:00

This crisis started because we are allowing our companies to not pay taxes due to tax loopholes big enough to launch the space shuttle through.

It is because we are allowing our employers to grow their own bank accounts by merging with each other and then firing thousands of workers at once to manage their share price.

Its because we allow analysts to predict what a company's earnings "should be" and then a company is expected to react to that news.

It was caused because a company is allowed to have "Earnings Guidance calls" with reporters and analysts. Fannie mae and Freddie mac failed because the price of food went up, because ethanol increased the price of everything that is made with corn, oil and plastic by huge numbers.

They failed because we sat idly by and watched our auto makers pay workers almost 100$ per hour (averaged including retirement benefits based on the average price of a car) and then we wonder and fret about why they lost money and cannot sell cars.

They failed because the price of a gallon of gasoline doubled in 8-12 months and a fill up was 2-4 times as expensive at the end of the year as it was on the first day of the year.

They failed because electricity, natural gas, jet fuel, diesel fuel and heating oil rose to levels never seen before while we did nothing but wring our hands, if we reacted at all.

It failed because it was and is legal to raise the interest rate on your credit card to absurd rates and on your home loan to more than a 40% higher payment per month in less than one year.

It failed because we allowed insurance companies to price their policies based on your credit score.

This current crisis wasn't caused by a bank, it was caused by classic greed, and its name is Wall street greed and we stood idly by and let them do it.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.
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Some curious questions

2010-03-19T13:55:00.002-04:00

Here is some questions you should think about asking the next celebrity, rich person, politician or sports star you want to idolize , put on a pedestal or worship like they are gods. If you knew then answers to this and they didn’t would you think any differently about them or would you just be jealous because they have money and a lifestyle that you don’t ? I pose this to see if it makes any sense to anyone else. The ideal way to find this kind of stuff out would be to pose them directly to the other person, without their representatives, lawyers, servants, aides and no time to prepare.

Am I smarter than a fifth grader?

Maybe not, but based on these kinds of questions I’ll bet I’m smarter than a celebrity !!

I will wager that most if not all real, working , normal Americans can answer at least 90 % of these.

Can you?

Why do we idolize people who are so out of touch with what happens to real people ?

How much does a gallon of milk, a gallon of gas and a gallon of water cost?

Do you have a gardener? If so, how much does his assistant make per hour?

How many meals per month are prepared and consumed in your house exclusively by members of your family?

Name the last 5 parties you went to.

Name the amount and the last time you wrote the check for your mortgage payment. How much was it and when?

How much are the following 5 items available at any grocery store. (Diapers, Cereal, a can of soup, a loaf of bread, dog food)

Name the utility companies that serve your main home. How much was each bill last month?

How much is the co-pay at your doctor’s office?

What did it cost you the last time you hired a babysitter?

How much money is in your savings account right now?

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

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Jesse James is a Dead Man and an Idiot.

2010-03-18T08:28:00.003-04:00

I don't know if it is true, but, the rag papers and the internet is all abuzzin with the news that Jesse James has had an affair. His wife is actress Sandra Bullock. Supposedly their marriage is on the rocks.

If it is not true, then , well, oops! My bad. Sorry.

If true, then all I can say is "What an IDIOT".

How bad to you do you have to want to screw up to be an ugly mutt like him and screw up this bad with a wife like her? I am laughing he is such an idiot, if its true that is.

I cannot imagine. With my current wife, I've never even thought about it. If somebody were to say to me (and they won't , trust me, no one wants Fat, old and opinionated), "Do you want to do the nasty?, My answer has to be "Are you high?".

Why would I want to screw up the best thing that has ever happened to me ? Maybe I am fortunate, but , I cannot see an occasion where I could rationalize it and make it ok and then go do it. I would probably talk about it , but I would never do it. I don't think I am any exception to genetics, I think all guys are stupid enough to talk about it.

Good thing I am in charge of both heads huh?

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

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I am really sick of this "No Child left Behind BS"

2010-03-13T14:53:00.002-05:00

I am sick to death of listening to the politicians and the news reporters talk about this so called "No Child left Behind " crap. Its crap, its always been crap, it will always be crap. The name of it should have been the "More crap from the politicians act" or the "No child left behind except yours act".

Somehow these political PINHEADS think that by teaching a test or a series of tests, then by measuring various factors they can use some magical algorithm to say whether or not a school, a school system or a teacher is any good. What a load of stinky smelly useless crap.

It is drivel to the highest degree.

I would venture to say that this single act has done more harm than good and I would also say that I would be hard pressed to say anything good could ever come of it. How are you going to be doing things "better" by taking funds away and by not measuring the same things in every school system ?

Look, here are my concerns and this is not even everything that is wrong with this stupidity, not even 25 % of what is wrong with it.

First - There is no such thing as a standardized test. Not one state uses the exact same curriculum or test as any other. So if you don't use the same test, then how do you rank the results? The answer is you do it arbitrarily. You assign a value that projects how you think the test in one area measures over the test in another area. No value is given to what really matters , which is the rate of increase or decrease in knowledge gained by students. The only value that really counts is the rate of increase or decrease in your students versus my students. Anyone even competent with logic or math will tell you if the variables are not the same they are not directly comparable. Anyone with any sense will tell you that people who already have high test scores will have a much more difficult time raising their scores when measured against a school with already low scores. What are these idiots measuring ?

Second - This act was approved into law and signed by the President (GWB) and took affect a lot of years ago. The paperwork requirements to meet the stringent requirements of this law are staggering. Everything from accounting for each paper copy of each test to individual assessments of each student are required to be tracked by this law. There are hundreds of individual elements that all require attorneys to interpret and tons of manpower for each school district to be able to meet the onerous requirements of the act. So ? You ask? So what? Well one tiny detail wasn't attended to. Congress mandated the law and mandated the requirements, and then didn't actually fund the implementation. Each school district has to pay for this crap on their own basically. Where do you think the money came from to make this happen?

Third - As soon as this law went into effect guess what happened. Funding for all extra curricular activities dried up. To be a cheer leader your kid has to have a car wash or sell candy to pay for it. Teachers worried about losing their jobs started teaching the test, and that is the emphasis of their day. No more creativity, no more passion, only worry about pensions. School districts started seeing the writing on the wall and began to measure the variables. Guess what happened next ? That's right, schools actually for the first time in history started encouraging students to drop out of high school or were encouraged to switch to adult schools. Why ? Because the students that were encouraged to quit were those who have a lower chance of graduation (thereby hurting the graduation rates), had a greater chance of dropping out , without a school plan (and it doesn't count as a dropout if you checked the box that says "Going to Adult School"), and most importantly these kids were the ones scoring the lowest on the tests, thereby hurting the districts improvement rates. So if you eliminate the kids who are hurting your rate, you have increased your rate haven't you?

So do me and everybody else a favor and the next time you want to tell me about how great the "No Child left behind act" is , save it and just shut up. You are lying to me and everybody else if you think this piece of crap has done anything for our children except make teachers fearful of losing their jobs and drove our educational problems deep underground.

If you are dumb enough to think it has done one bit of good, then I feel pretty sorry for you.

I also think you probably have what it takes to be President.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.
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Some sayings I want to put on T-Shirts

2010-03-10T14:42:00.002-05:00

Hey, these probably won't sell, but here is what I want to put on a bunch of T-Shirts and sell them.

It would make me happy anyway....

"I see dumb people....."
"Yes, as a matter of Fact, I do own the sidewalk, why do you ask?"
"Your village just called, they want their idiot back"
"I can only please ONE person per day. Today is not your day !."
"Definition of stupidity. Look it up, you'll see your picture."
"First Ammendment Rules !"
"Sit down, shut up, Hold On.
"Aw NO, not you !"
"Don't go away mad, just go away !"
"Defecation Occurs"
"Life is just a bunch of Bovine Defecation"
"As a matter of Fact, the world does revolve around me. Thankx for asking."
"Hey Vanna, buy a vowel."
"Ron White was right. You can't fix stupidity."
"Do I look like a People person ?"
"Lets say I got smart with you. How would you know it?"
"Just because you keep looking, doesn't mean my brilliance will rub off."
"Why are you stupid?, not my area."
"Sorry, I don't know how to speak dumber, only slower."
"The human excrement is about to impact the high speed device"
"Dr. House is not amused with your B.S."
"Don't speak, you'll ruin the illusion."
"Hush ! Use your inside your head voice!"
"Is it possible that you are as dumb as you look?"
"Random selection is proven by your existence."
"Remember that weird kid in third grade? You grew up."
"Beauty goes skin deep. Ugly goes clear to the bone."
"Yeah, I'm fat. But your UGLY and I can lose weight."
"If you can read this, you can read."
"Hydrogen is abundant. So is stupidity."
"I looked up the definition of moron in the dictionary. It shows your picture."

Thankx for reading my rant.

-bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

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How to Defeat Terrorism in 2 easy steps

2010-03-09T11:41:00.003-05:00

OK, before everybody gets all prissy, know I am writing this tongue in cheek. This probably would not work, but it would be pretty fun to try.

I have a suggestion on how to defeat terrorism. I think it would be easy to wipe it out and it would never come back.

See we are approaching the problem all wrong. We are approaching this issue like it is a military struggle and it isn’t. Militaries fight wars against other nations or nations states that have opposing armies. Using military strategies to defeat an opponent who doesn’t use conventional command and control structures is doomed to fail. Who do you go after if no one is really in charge? How do you defeat an enemy who does not have a traditional structure, who doesn’t group soldiers on the battlefield and whom you cannot even identify by uniform?

Its nuts.

Then we cripple the effort we do provide by instituting so called “rules of engagement” which basically are the way a politician has their say in a process where they do not belong in the first place.

The military doesn’t need more rules, if anything I would argue they need less rules.

1. What would happen do you think, if we abandoned the traditional rules we fight under and just did to them , what they do to us only, make our response to their crap, a hundred fold in response?

Attack a building or a city in America, we fly a bunch of B-52’s and B1B Bombers to your home town once we figure out who you are and we just level it. Warn the residents if you like, but just make a pile of rubble out of anything connected to the terrorists. Then warn the rest of the world, you harbor terrorists or allow them to operate from your soil, sell them weapons, allow them safe haven, or assist them in any way and you are just as guilty as those bastards are.

How many cities would we have to just decimate until these buttholes got the message do you think?

2. If that doesn’t work, go ask the big city cops to identify the Crips, Bloods, MS-13 members, the Aryan nation, every serial killer, the Mexican mafia and the biker gangs in their home towns and prisons in their states. These idiots don’t want to live free in America anyway, they want to live in prison. Take all of the toughest SOB’s you can find in every prison and street gang, and put them all on planes and put them in the middle of this crap.

Give them whatever arms they need and tell them if they ever want to come back to America, they have to fight these buttholes into submission and earn their way back in.

Who is Muqtada_al-Sadr ?

How long before every idiot who thinks they can issue a fatwa is wondering how to get their kids off of crack or meth and they won’t have any more time to screw with us?

How long before Muqtada al-Sadr , gets sick of drive by shootings before he asks us for help do you think?

How long before you could answer the phone in the White House and a Mullah would be calling saying “Please Mr. Obama, come back and help us get rid of the Hells Angels?”. Too bad there isn’t an Al Qaeda city we could bomb into submission , huh?

Sometimes I am a maniac !

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=292482513888. We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

Sandra Bullocks' Oscar Win

2010-03-09T10:55:00.002-05:00

Watched the last 15 minutes of the Oscars the other night. Cannot watch the other 3 and ½ hours of this show as it is too long, too boring and who cares who gets an Oscar for best duct tape job by a southern camera man anyway? They give out so many technical awards it is painful to watch. I realize to the people who win these awards they are a big fat hairy deal that they have given a lot of their time , energy and effort to, but frankly, I could care less who gets the best use of colored sand award.

Best Movie ? Didn’t see it thanks to the town I live in and the surrounding area. Out of the ten movies, I think 3 or 4 of them were in release here. I did see Inglorious Basterds, The Blind Side, District 9 and Avatar. I would have been happy if any of them except District 9 won. It was OK, but not a best picture, not even close.

Best Actor in a leading Role? , Jeff Bridges? OK, he is a good to great actor. Loopy and Goofy acceptance speech, but whatever. Didn’t see any of those films anyway. I’m ok with that too.

Best Actress in a leading Role? Sandra Bullock. All I can say is it is about friggin time that an actress who understands that their job it to make movies that entertain us , is the winner in this category. I’ve been an SB fan for a number of years, even when she makes a crappy movie, it is entertaining. More than I could say about the other nominees this year. Who the hell was Carey Mulligan and Gabourey Sidibe anyway? NO offense but I’ve never heard of either of them, Thankx to Hollweird’s policy of actresses can’t be good after age 30, these people who look good, or are young keep getting pushed forward, and they have no idea how to act usually. Helen Mirren is a good actress but I haven’t really seen anything she has done either, mostly because she makes girl movies and I do everything I can to avoid those.

My fault I know, but… I hate ‘em.

Sandra Bullock however is a hard working, 45 year old woman who makes great movies, who makes stinky movies, who makes boring movies and who makes girly movies and gives every one of them everything she has and makes the roles shine. I Think she deserved the win.

To those of you who say she just takes roles that allow her to be herself and to act so that it matches her personality, I say “So what?”, play to your strengths, is what I say.

Congratulations Sandra. Hope you win a few more of them and ‘kudos on the Razzie appearance.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

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Celebrities and Politicians are both a bunch of clueless folks

2010-02-22T12:24:00.002-05:00

Celebrities, Politicians, big business Tycoons and Athletes are groups of people, in my opinion, who are so out of touch with what it is like to be a normal person scratching for living, trying to make a mortgage payment, raising children on not enough money, dealing with crap from big companies and general all around life itself, that it ain’t even funny. Yeah, I know. Pretty generalist and generally a bold statement to make and someone somewhere will say “You can make any kind of general statement and it fits because it is so general.”Yeah, I know that too. So what?

The news is full of all kinds of things being reported on that , to me, just indicate how out of touch these people really are. I’ll just give 4 examples even though there are literally hundreds more and dozens of goofy stories to consider. Let’s talk about Sean Penn, Dick Cheney, Bill Gates and Tiger Woods. I picked these names because they are topical , but you could really pick any one of hundreds of them and it would still apply. One is from Entertainment, one from Politics, one from Business, one from Sports and they are all so far out of touch with reality that it is comical. These people have no clue and haven’t had for a number of years how hard life really is.

· Sean Penn is a decent actor. I have watched most of his work, although I could care less about his politics, I have enjoyed some but not all of his acting. That’s normal I think. The thing that makes me lump him in this category of out of touch with normal is his ability to adopt a cause that has so called worldwide proportions to it, all the while ignoring what goes on in his own backyard. He has adopted a philanthropic strategy of helping the poor by taking direct action. Good for him. He delivered antibiotics to Haitian doctors to help with the sick and injured. Good for him. He helped rescue people in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, Good for him again. He has basically done nothing to help the poor , homeless and downtrodden where he lives at though. He lives in Marin county, across the Golden Gate from San Francisco in California. He played a great Harvey Milk in the movie, yet has basically done nothing to help people where he lives. Either it is not important enough because it doesn’t take a plane ride to do it, or maybe he is just unaware of the issues? Quite possibly , the PR value is not enough to drive across town and help where he lives. Who knows? When is the last time you read about him helping people anywhere in America though, that had nothing to do with natural tragedies or did not have an immense PR value? Don’t get me wrong, I am sure they appreciated the medicine in Haiti. I wonder though if the homeless in his own city would appreciate a meal just as much? If you are hungry in Haiti, he might help you, however starving in San Francisco is another story altogether.

· Dick Cheney is one old tough S.O.B. of a politician who runs off at the mouth and is an attack dog for the extreme right. If you are a liberal he is a right wing wacko nut job, If you are a conservative he is the voice of reason and the voice of what is the matter with America. Truth is he is just another politician, who is being used by one group as a mouthpiece to attack another group, and he carries no baggage for the Republicans because they can always say “Hey, we do not control Dick Cheney, he is retired for crying out loud.” The concept is called “plausible deniability”. You think he knows how much a gallon of milk costs? He has aides, secretaries, multiple offices, staff, secret service agents, handlers, publicists, and airplanes at his immediate disposal. When was the last time you think he wrote a check to pay for the mortgage on his home? How can you seriously think this guy and his opinions carry any weight for normal people when I’ll bet he hasn’t even taken the trash out in his own house for 35 years? The only people he is relevant to are other politicians. Not to you and me and certainly not to the average American.

Bill Gates made his money the old fashioned way. He printed it. The company he ran for 25 years , (you know who), has never released a single piece of software in their history that was fully finished , 100 % complete and was ready to go out of the box. What he did better than anybody else was get his stuff on the shelves and make killer deals to have his stuff as the one you would see on computers, first, before anybody else did. He never met a good idea he couldn’t copy, imitate, buy or steal. If you were a competitor he either imitated your work , bought your company and closed you down, or bought your company and renamed it after his brand. Now that he has a “zabagillion” dollars, he runs a foundation that is trying to help to solve some of the more weighty issues of our time. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does wonderful work all over the World. I have no dispute with that. It does great work, is a wonderful idea and is about time somebody with the money spent it doing things like this for folks who otherwise would not be able to make it without his help. I wonder what they are doing outside his own household in King County Washington? According to endhomeless.org there are about 24,000 homeless people in the state, and more than 11 % of the population is below the Federal poverty level. Most of their work in the USA though is in helping schools and in funds for Libraries. I’m homeless and I’m hungry, but I can read, thanks to him? Seems ridiculous to me. Their office is in Seattle WA. I am sure they do great things, however do you think he tries to figure out how to get kids back and forth from daycare and be able to work enough to pay the light bill?

· And finally Tiger Woods. Great golfer, great athlete. Can’t keep it in his pants, and screws more than a hardware store full of screwdrivers, but has all kinds of good works going on too. I’ll not say too much about him except to say, I’ll watch him play golf, and at the same time, whatever his other issues are they are his problems, not mine, and he is not a role model for me or for anyone I know. He is just a professional golfer and nothing more. Athletes in general make more money than they should in my opinion and I have never tried to model my life after an image created by some schmuck in a PR firm have you? He’s trying to keep his marriage together? Boo frickin hoo. Try working two jobs, paying a mortgage, raising 5 kids and have your wife work like a maniac on a different shift than you do just to make sure the lights stay on. So stupid its funny and you want me to care about his love life?

Here is what I think they should have to do. Come and spend one week in my shoes, or your shoes. Call it a special service requirement in order to be a rich clueless moron. Let’s say if your net worth is more than 5 million dollars, you have to do this or you forfeit your entire fortune and we give it to somebody else. I’ll bet you anything if all these rich clowns had to see what it is really like, they would do more to help what is right in front of them instead of hiding behind a PR firm or a foundation or a political party or a bunch of lawyers. Leave behind the aides and cars and Black American Express cards and just come and hang out with real people facing real problems. In order to be called a celebrity or be voted in office, don’t let one of these guys or people like them say stupid things like “We should all volunteer to serve America” unless one of the putzs has spent some time lately (or yearly) with real people. See how real people deal with real problems in the real world, when there is no plane, no lawyer, no accountant, no checkbook and no servant to do all the work. Maybe then they would appreciate what it means to be alive anywhere in today’s’ society. If they did, I wouldn’t feel so blasé` about how meaningless their problems really are and they could go on helping people in lower Gryzbeckia solve their zinc deficiency or some other such nonsense.

It will never happen because it is too much to ask and is way too radical a thought to ask rich people to spend 5 days managing their own life, but hey, If I am supposed to worry about somebody shaving their hair off, or whether some guy with a butt load of money is spending it correctly or whether some rich athlete is banging a hooker every night, then they can see what it takes to sell enough candy and have enough carwashes in order for my kid to be able to be on the cheerleading squad.

Seems like fair requirement if you ask me.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at

http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=292482513888.

We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

Schools use Peeping Tom technology ? WTF ?

2010-02-21T12:49:00.000-05:00

Lower Merion School District of Ardmore, Pa., has generated a lot of controversy lately with a story about the web cameras on school laptop computer being activated remotely, to in effect "spy" on unsuspecting students as they were using the laptops.

The laptops were issued by the school district and are the property of the school district. The main complaint it seems comes from a kid, whom was called into the assistant principals office and accused of drug use or sales, I am not sure which (maybe both), based on some still photographs. The kid says he was eating candy.

The story isn't clear what the actual complaint was other than saying the assistant principal accused the kid of "improper behavior in his home". Of course the parents are totally pissed off and pretty upset, they have retained counsel, filed motions, are either suing the school district or are contemplating a suit , I can't remember which.

The school district says the only time (42 times) they have activated the cameras was when the laptop was reported stolen, as it is part of some "security" software to help locate stolen laptops. They went on to further defend their actions saying that only two school employees had access to the software, that the assistant principal didn't actually turn the software on and the only thing he saw was a still snapshot taken of the behavior.

I think that about sums up the story as it is being reported today. Wow. I am stunned by the stupidity and think my dogs would make better decisions than these clueless losers are capable of making.

Peeping Tom Technology used to spy on students

My initial reaction is kind of like "WTF". "Are you all a bunch of morons?, Are you guys stupid ?, Were you high when you made this decision? I wonder whose bright idea this was? Were they smoking crack ?

Did no one in this school district do a worst case scenario assessment ?

Can you imagine this scenario ? A 13 year old girl leaves the laptop on her desk, lid up and laptop on. It is facing her closet. They turn on the camera, while coincidentally she is changing clothes and footage of her 13 year old naked body is taken and sent back to the school where someone reviews it to see what the footage contains. I know that is a little bit bizarre but it is entirely plausible don't you think?

Teenage girls (I've had three) change clothes about 12 times a day. They shut the doors to their rooms like they are guarding the Fort Knox gold. I'm not sure any of them would think twice about a laptop on their desk being capable of taking pictures of them without their knowledge though.

If this was my kid, I would be in jail right now. Somebody, maybe that assistant principal would have just gotten his butt kicked. He would have a hard time smiling for the next family photo because he would have had to do it without any friggin teeth.

Don't forget, these are the same kind of people whom are educating your kids. They suspend , discipline and expel children every day for drawing pictures of guns, for having a nail file because it could be a weapon, for having an asthma inhaler because it is a drug, for having Tylenol or Midol due to the cramps and for all other kinds of the goofiest crap you have ever heard of. One school system in Illinois tried to withhold diplomas a couple of years ago because at the graduation ceremonies, their families were too loud, by cheering for their children thereby causing a disruption. One of the kids was the valedictorian.

I hope this family cleans their clocks. These people had no right being in the home on camera, not to mention no legal standing to make any kind of accusation to begin with. What a bunch of arrogant idiots.I for one have had it with the stupidity exhibited by people with so much education that they are stupid.

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.

Join my facebook group "We are all tired of Bickering Politicians" at
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We would love to have your voice added to the noise !!

Why the Health Insurance debate doesn't really make a lot of sense to me

2010-02-19T17:56:00.004-05:00

My God.

You would have thought the earth was going to stand still in the last few months to hear our over the top politicians and their paid spokes-dogs going on and on about the health care debate.

Millions of people do not have jobs. Unemployment is at 10 % or better. Hundreds of thousands of people are losing their homes into bankruptcy and foreclosure and we are still fighting two wars in three countries (Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq). Some of our military is on their 6th deployments overseas. Hillary! Bill ! Obama ! Reid ! Pelosi ! (oh, that’s right, it is all the fault of the republicans isn’t it….I forgot).

Bernie Madoff and his ilk stole 50 Billion dollars. Enron cost the economy 100 Billion dollars. Retirement accounts are turning to dust everywhere and the stock market has plummeted to the tune of a loss in the trillions of dollars in the last 24 months.

Yep, now was exactly the time the American people were going to get behind a new debate on health care in this country.

We have over 36 million illegal , undocumented aliens in this country. Every county , state and parish has had to lay people off. The state of California, which by volume is the world’s 5^th largest economy, was some 23 BILLION dollars in the red on the next state budget. Teachers are being laid off left and right, schools are being closed all over and if you can find a Mall or a shopping center that isn’t at least 20 % unoccupied , you are very fortunate. Toyota’s and Honda’s are falling apart as you drive them. Whole brands of cars are just being discontinued. No more Pontiac, no more Saturn, poof all gone. Hundreds of dealerships are being closed all over America and now was the time to explain how we needed a mandatory cost for health care applied to those people who didn’t have health care.

Look, this is how stupid this debate is and how bad the timing is to pursue this right now.

I cannot drive a car legally in the USA without car insurance. If I do and I get caught, I will lose my license. If I have an accident, I’ll lose everything I have. In my state that is the law and they check it electronically and could care less if you have an Insurance card. Even though they are that insistent about it, some 36 million people drive everyday in this country without Car Insurance. They do it and you have to buy “Uninsured motorist” liability coverage to make sure your own car gets fixed if you have an accident with one of these goofs. I pay for car insurance for years and years and years without ever using it, and if I do have an accident , I am thinking of how to pay for the claim out of pocket because I don’t want my rates to go up. For a product I’ve owned for years, paid into with no claims, and to worry about my rates going up the one time I use it is the pinnacle of stupidity. There is no effective regulation barring this practice, not a real one anyway. The only people these laws benefit are those that can afford a $700 per hour lawyer to sue them if they break the law.

The same stupid logic applies to Health Insurance. Insurance companies have to be multi headed monsters in order to sell their products in the USA because there is no universal law which allows one set of USA regulations to cover the policies that are sold. Every State (and sometimes counties) have regulations that are different in every place they do business. So in order to maximize their take from the policies they sell, they write exclusions into policies that minimize their risk. 20 years old, out of school ? Sorry, your parents cannot cover you anymore (unless you are in school, in which case, never mind, unless you are older than 25 then, oh yeah No Insurance!). Go to work at a new job in another state 31 days after you left the old job ? Uh, you have to wait 90 days to join our insurance group, unless of course you just retired from the military or are age 55 or older in which case special regulations may apply to you. Unless you have any kind of drug conviction or have had any kind of surgery in the past 3 years. 40 million people can’t afford health insurance because of how stupidly these regulations have been allowed to become.

What is the difference between a 21 year old in college and a 21 year old not in college that makes them automatically uninsurable by their parents through their policy anyway? The answer? Nothing except CLAIMS FREQUENCY. Colleges have clinics that cost less and people not in college incur Billing that is the same as everyone else.

I don’t even want to get into groups, rate plans, experience allocation or pre-existing conditions, which is a whole bigger barrel of fish by itself.

It makes me think what we ought to do when we get sick enough to see a doctor and don’t have health insurance is to ask a Mexican if he can help us get some fake identity papers so we can lay the bill of on somebody else or maybe we should get sick, get in our cars, drive the car through the emergency rooms doors and then cough and say “What happened I must have passed out?”, when someone runs up to the car , so the friggin car insurance has to pay for it.

Its better insured than most people are anyway.

I created a group on Facebook called “We are all tired of Bickering Politicians” , click the link to see it and feel free to join up. I’d love for one of these do nothing politicians to get an earful of you too !

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

YouTube - America Rising Video - Open Letter to Democrats

2010-01-18T21:27:00.002-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3ad1Mlkrkw

Usually I don't just jump in and say "watch this", however today...

"Watch this".

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07:35:00

The Jokes have Started for Tiger

2009-12-15T06:25:00.001-05:00

The Jokes have started.

Let the fun begin…

1. Did you know Tiger isn’t a Tiger anymore? Yeah, now he’s a cheetah!

2. It was just reported that Phil Mickelson contacted Tiger's wife to pick up some tips on how to beat Tiger!

3. Apparently the police asked Tiger's wife how many times she hit him. She said "I don't know exactly… but put me down for a 5."

4. Tiger Woods is so rich that he owns lots of expensive cars. Now he has a hole-in-one.

5. What's the difference between a car and a golf ball? Tiger can drive a ball 400 yards…

6. What were Tiger Woods and his wife doing out at 2.30 in the morning? They went clubbing.

7. Tiger Woods crashed into a fire hydrant and a tree. He couldn't decide between a wood and an iron.

8. When asked if his wife struck him, he said " nah, she was just teed off and I was the tee.

And the beat goes on…..

Thankx for reading my rant !

bigmike

Visit my blog online at http://bigmikerant.blogspot.com/

I encourage you to leave your own comments or reactions to my rants (even if you don't agree with me) in the comments section on each post.