Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain

Since the failed terrorist attach on Christmas day, travelers have been bracing themselves for the virtual anal probe that is coming to airport security in the form of full body scanners. On Fox News tonight, Ann Coulter, whose body scan image would likely fetch a fair amount on Ebay and one for which I would join in the bidding, joined ranks with the ACLU in decrying another ineffective government intrusion in the form of safety.

I've long complained about the inane and outright ludicrous security procedures in place at our nation's airports. We sheeple continue to flock to and through security turnstiles on our way to meetings and reunions because we've little alternative when faced with needing to be across our great continent in a short period of time. As TSA officials ogle our nearly nude images, saying they've got us by the short hair is appropriate when discussing our alternatives for transportation.

Instead of focusing on more likely terrorist subjects through profiling, all of us will have our "secrets" laid bare before the almighty agents of national security.

I only wish our leaders in our government's legislative body would be as forthcoming in their transparency. Despite several campaign promises of openness in debate, the health care bill will be finalized in secret, behind doors so thick that no scanner can penetrate.

CSPAN, the network The ONE promised to let host this debate has pledged to provide any resources needed to fully and unbiasedly cover this debate over nearly a quarter of our national expenditures. This pledge has fallen on the deaf, or more likely uncaring, ears cradling the heads of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Not only will the debate be held in secret, these bastions of open debate are looking to suspend long held congressional traditions to protect their fellow party members from having to openly support this travesty.

So as you empty your pockets, take off your shoes and belts and jackets and socks and under-wire bras in order to sit in a too small seat and pay $7 for a beer, you can take solace in the fact your representatives in Washington will be secure, behind closed doors, making deals and hiding pork in thousands of pages of drivel designed to wrench control over the health of our nation.

S2

Maps, Apps and fine print

If you have been watching television in general or any one of the seemingly thousands of college bowl games specifically, you have most likely seen one of the competing ads for Verizon or AT&T focusing on maps of their coverage, etc. While I find ads from both companies marginally entertaining, I can't help wishing for a pause button to read the fine print that flashes briefly on the screen during the 30 second plea for business.

For, you see, it is in this fine print that the truth is told. We all know it. The FCC dictates the size, length of visualization and content of much of this fine print and it is done in order to protect us, the ignorant consumer, from being taken advantage of by evil corporations. This same regulation has brought us the super fast voice over in radio commercials and the laundry list of potential side effects (nausea, vomiting, anal bleeding, erectile dysfunction, increased ear hair or audible flatulence) for every drug currently marketed on television, radio or in print.

I've often wondered why any drug company would pay for an ad where over half of their media purchased time is spent pointing out potential problems from usage of their product instead of the benefits of the same. Imagine if Pizza Hut had to warn you of weight gain, stained shirts and lactose intolerance in every one of their ads.

The fact most people aren't even aware of the fine print in commercials is yet another example of the ineffectiveness of this type of government intrusion in to capitalist endeavors. Marketers have found ways to minimize their exposure in these disclaimers and ads often make outright fun of them.

So why is it that our lawmakers feel the need to impose regulations that serve little purpose, produce no results and frustrate both the producers and consumers of advertisements? I wish I knew but....I think of this type of ineffectiveness often when considering the increased regulations sure to appear with Health Care reform and new laws around supposed climate change.

Next time you are watching a show from your DVR or, in the old school case, VCR, take a pause from skipping a commercial to pause the commercial and read the fine print. Better yet, take a pause from the boob tube altogether and read the fine print in the health care bill. I think you will find that, instead of protecting us from evil corporations, we should find ways to protect ourselves from evil government instead.

S2

The check is in the mail

I have this propensity to keep the pens from my hotel rooms and bring them home. Mrs. Bald Man has demanded that I cease the practice as our drawers are overflowing with them. With this stated fact I must beg your forgiveness for not taking notes during the first press conference from the first African American President of the United States.

Like most press conferences there was a lot of nothing said but much of it deserves to be commented on. Unfortunately, being flush with pens but sans paper, I must rely on the many thoughts flying around my scattered brain like so many kernels of popcorn exploding in one of Mr. Redenbacher's bags in the microwave. The hard part is, like this type of corn, my ideas are finished popping in about three minutes so I best type fast.

If you didn't watch this press conference in which the press didn't press much, you might not catch the relevance of some of these comments but press on through and I will try to provide you some things to watch for in the news.

The ONE's denial of the existence of "pork" in this stimulus bill was truly an outright lie. Call me an anti-semantic but just because the spending here isn't directly targeted by a specific office holder doesn't mean it is not an earmark. If it isn't pork by definition it still comes from a pig. Millions for a Frisbee golf course squeals more than Ned Beatty in Deliverance. The poke is further populated by sending a check to individuals who don't pay taxes and calling it a tax cut.

Much ado was made by the President about his having inherited this crisis and that, going forward, he wasn't going to make the same mistakes and follow the same failed policies of the past eight years. He commented that these past policies doubled the deficit in recent years. Well, Mr. President, if one of the problems of the last eight years was the doubling of our deficit, how will spending an amount equal to about two thirds of everything produced in the country last year help? Running up a deficit didn't work so let's run up an even bigger one.

About a year ago, checks were sent out to the majority of people in this country. These checks were going to help stimulate the economy and stop the economic skid. It didn't work. Our new plan is to send out bigger checks to the majority of the people in this country to help stimulate the economy and stop the economic skid.

I will let pundits and others with bigger brains than me wax eloquently about the inaccuracies in Obama's statements regarding the biggest crisis since the depression and Japan's lost decade. In neither of these situations did government spending work to solve the problems and turn around the economic slides. The ONE is happy to use his clever little quip about how a stimulus package "by definition" spends money. I'm not a Harvard grad but my dictionary defines stimulus this way:

n., pl. -li (-lī').

1. Something causing or regarded as causing a response.
2. An agent, action, or condition that elicits or accelerates a physiological or psychological activity or response.
3. Something that incites or rouses to action; an incentive

I don't see mandatory spending hinted at. Do you?

The lap dogs in the press corps tossed a few softball to the President about Iran, Afghanistan and A Rod's steroid use. In way of answering, Obama blabbered about how it would be somewhat of a bad kind of thing if somehow Iran were to become a member nation in the Nuclear weapon club. This milk toast answer is in stark contrast to the definitive "Iran can not be allowed to acquire or develop Nucular (sic) arms" statement by George W Bush. Regarding the A-Roid question, I have to wonder if it is any surprise the Washington Post is failing. In the midst of a press conference about the supposed worst economic crisis since Ceasar needed Jesus Christ to convince the taxpayers to render unto him what was his, their White House correspondent asks a baseball question? It should be strikes one two and three he is out of there!

Helen "I hate George Bush and I am a liberal" Thomas proved her significance ended sometime in the Nixon years by asking if "so-called terrorists" were in Pakistan. Huh? I think in addition to being in the bag for Obama she is one of those women thinking of him in the sack. Ewwww.....I need a bag just thinking about that.


Other than the fact that Nurses find it hard to read Doctors' handwriting I don't know that anything new was revealed during this press conference. However, read between the lines of Obama's reference to "electronic advancements in health care" and you will see the road to Nationalized Health Care is being paved with stimulus funds.

Money for nothing but Rock Chips are free

There is not much better than taking a deep breath of cool, clean mountain air on a fall morning. There’s something magical about the thin, lower oxygenated gas that, despite making it sometimes difficult to catch your breath on the long trudge to the end of the driveway to check the mail, fills you with energy. The thinness of the air also lets objects fly farther. Frisbees, golf balls, midgets and rocks kicked up by semi tractor trailers seem to stay aloft for much greater distances than at sea level. I guess that is why I seem to be replacing my windshield every year. Fortunately for me, a new windshield is free.

That’s right, I go down to the windshield shop drop off my vehicle and about 45 minutes later I drive away with a freshly installed, sparkling clean, temporarily bug free pigeon target and I didn’t have to fork over a cent. Of course we know there’s no such thing as a free lunch or, in this case, windshield. Somebody has to pay for it and they aren’t cheap. The glass installers bill my auto insurance company and they aren’t cheap. The companies that install them are selling brand spanking new ones and it isn’t likely they offer them an “it fell off the back of a truck” discount. I mean for some things that might be a way to get a discount but in the world of automotive glass the practice has some flaws. Knowing this, I don’t go out and immediately get a new windshield at the first sign of a chip. Why should my insurance company have to pay frequently because I have a tendency to tailgate dump trucks? Others, though, seem to have no compulsion against this? If it is transparent to me that this isn’t a free service, what keeps everyone else from seeing the light through the glass?

I guess it is because people will do just about anything if they think there’s an opportunity to get something free; or even if it is just discounted. The news yesterday showed people lined up outside department stores in some of our larger, overwhelmingly liberal voting metropolitan areas waiting for two and three days to be first in line for the amazing deals on Black Friday. One guy was asked what the big sale item was that he was waiting for and he said, “I don’t know but I am sure it will be worth the wait”. Huh? Did this Scarecrow just admit he was spending three days perched outside, in the rain, peeing in a porta-potty and sleeping in a lawn chair for the sole purpose of being first in line to receive a gift from the great and powerful OZ-Mart. Oh, if he only had a brain?

UPDATED: 11/28 - Unfortunately, I saw this headline during this morning's required reading. Items on sale at the Wal-Mart store included a $798 Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV, a Bissel Compact Upright Vaccum for $28, a Samsung 10.2 megapixel digital camera for $69 and DVDs such as "The Incredible Hulk" for $9 END UPDATE

The lure of getting “something for nothing” is extremely strong. It is what drives people to buy lottery tickets, go to Las Vegas, cheat on their taxes and buy houses they can’t afford because the magic of “equity” will kick in before they have to pay for it.

I’ve had more fights with the IRS than Michael Vick has dogs. In most of them I came out ahead because I keep meticulous, some would say anal, records and I pay what I am supposed to. It just seems the IRS trains their agents with the same consistency as crunchy peanut butter and their opinions are about as easy to swallow. So when I see these ads on late night TV, and vampire want to be that I am I see a ton of late night TV, advertising how you can get out of your IRS debt, I want bite someone’s head off. Sure the IRS is a blood sucking leach but companies like Tax Masters advertise they will get you out of your debt. Now wait a minute. If you owe $50,000 to the Federal Government; you should pay $50,000 to the Federal Government. How is it that they get away with paying less? I tried giving the nice lady at Albertson’s $1.20 for my jar of Jiffy yesterday because I was a bit short of the $3.95 she wanted and the only thing I got was escorted to the parking lot. I called the Freedom Financial Network and American Tax Relief for help but they both hung up on me.

Taxes are too high and I am guessing they will soon be going higher. That said, lemming that I am, I will pay what I owe and bitch the whole way to the post office at 11:59 on April 15th just to keep my money as long as I can. It irks me to learn others are treating the IRS like the guy selling goods from a parked truck in an alley and making cut rate deals. And it irks me even more to learn the IRS is letting them. In an act as compassionate as removing one’s tonsils via, umm, the “other end” the government reached in to my bank account and took $1500 they said I owed them. Now I puckered up the sphincter and took in my neatly typed, alphabetized and neatly folded records which proved they were wrong and got my money back but what’s with folks who admit they actually owe the moeny getting off for pennies on the dollar? Something doesn’t smell right here.

We aren’t supposed to blame the poor naïve home owner who was taken advantage of by unscrupulous lenders and now can’t afford their homes for getting us in to the financial dire straits we are in. We aren’t supposed to but I do. These Hansel and Gretel borrowers had to know they bit off a bigger bite of the peanut butter and ginger bread house and now that it is time to pay the Pied Piper, they go crying to Mother Government. It is unfortunate that they are being bailed out. I will admit it might be the Hans Christian Anderson thing to do in helping our neighbor. Except for the fact that right after the Tax Master ad last night was one for a mortgage lender who said, “With the influx of government money, we can now make loans to an even broader group of lenders. Don’t delay, apply today”. What was that old saying about fool me once shame on you fool me twice I must be an elected official?

Low Book Deals is a used car seller here in Utah. They announce they can approve you for a loan even if you’ve been turned down by everyone else. I am sure wherever you are there are similar companies. We had names in high school for girls who would give approval to anyone. Is there an equivalent for a business?

The days of personal responsibility are gone. We will soon have everything taken care of for us. Nationalized healthcare, government run 401K accounts and more free money are on the way with GPS directed accuracy. Just don’t ask who is going to pay for all of it. It might be my auto insurance company.


The only free lunches are those at soup kitchens and even they demand you say prayers before you eat the free peanut butter sandwiches that Hans' cousin Pam is handing out. Looking at the long lines of leeches outside the department store of government awaiting any kind of handout they can get I think a prayer might just be in order.

S2