This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Dumbass Bullshit

  • Jealous much, Nicole Frazier?

    Robert sends us a link to the Rocky Mountain Collegian and a piece written by Nicole Frazier who says she’s an English and Spanish major, but apparently, she doesn’t like that 10% discount that you guys get at Lowes and Home Depot;

    First off, I believe when businesses, such as Banana Republic, Lowe’s, Apple and Disney World handout military discounts, they are doing two things. They are establishing an uncouth definition of what it means to serve this country and encouraging a hierarchy that discredits the work of other heroes in our country, treating military personnel better based on their willingness to volunteer.

    It isn’t that I am appreciative unappreciative (correction) of the risks they have taken. It’s that I recognize that the military is not the only group of people serving this nation.

    You’re right, Nichole, we’re not the only people who are serving this country, but if you were old enough to remember the post-Vietnam War era and if you could have seen how veterans of that war were treated like second class citizens, maybe you’d see how this discount thing makes up for that to some small measure. Veterans were ashamed to admit that they served because of mouthy little punks like you who demeaned them for their service to this country.

    I am advocating for reconstructing our definition of what it means to serve this country. I am thinking of the word ‘serve’ in the sense of yielding a service or product for others, not limiting it to just those who have enlisted in the military.

    I figure that if we were to think of it in those terms, we would discover that millions of people are serving their country; millions of Americans who are equally deserving of discounts as any soldier.

    How do you “reconstruct a definition”? A definition is what it is. There are indeed millions of people who serve the country and it’s citizens, but, how many of those you want to extend a discount, yank up their roots every two years like I did and move to some other part of the world, sometimes leaving their families behind and then spend a year or so getting shot at? Are you going to do that, Nichole. Of course you won’t.

    Personally, I believe that a collaboration of education, patience and an open mind is key to improving a lot of the world’s problems. I think by glorifying the military profession with discounts is reiterating the long-held notion in this country that a strong military presence is the way to go about encouraging change. To put it more simply, encouraging a forceful approach over what I believe to be a stronger and powerful, and perhaps more peaceful one.

    Go take that “collaboration of education, patience and an open mind” to Pakistan and start improving the lot of that part of the world, well, until they chop your head off or shoot you in the face. You’re known as a student, that’s because you’re still learning, that you don’t know everything yet. Even when you’re not a student any longer, you still won’t know how the world works until you’ve accomplished something. Most of our members of the military who are your age have already accomplished something. You’re far behind them, Nichole.

    By the way, your local merchants who give a student discount on their wares and services should really be questioning their practices when you haven’t done anything to deserve that which you would deny members of the military, given your conditions for deserving a discount.

  • Enter The Violence Tax

    This story intrigues me in so many ways that it’s worth a post just to see how YOU feel about it?

    Illinois county considers ‘violence tax’ on guns and ammo

    The crux:

    Officials in Illinois’ Cook County are eyeing a so-called “violence tax” on guns and ammo — a move aimed at curbing violence and closing the budget gap, but one that’s drawing a rebuke from the gun lobby.

    I reckon the actual  perpetrators of gun violence won’t be paying much.

    Of course it is yet another way to soak the law abiding citizen, but I think it rises to the level of Silly as a concept.

    What say you?

  • Well Now Isn’t This Special

    Seems as if the town of Clover, SC, wants to keep its streets and yards tidy and clean.  No real problem with that, I suppose.

    Even if it means a 79-year old Korean War vet living on a fixed income has to go to jail.

    I wish I was kidding.  But I’m not.

    His original crime?  Apparently it was not cleaning up his yard to the satisfaction of the town code enforcement officer.  No one else complained.

    So what if he collects items in order to supplement his income so he can pay for medicine for his disabled wife?  After all, he did violate the law – at least in the eyes of one local bureaucrat.  And he did fail to pay the $500 fine he was later assessed for not cleaning up his yard.

    He started serving 30 days in jail, on weekends, yesterday evening.

    Two millenia ago Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote:  “I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog.”   If I didn’t know better perhaps I’d wonder when Cicero visited Clover and met their code enforcement officer, or the town judge.

    Or maybe both.

    Contact information for Clover’s mayor and town council can be found at this link.

  • RU names their douche of the week

    RU Rob names his “Douche of the Week“, Mildred Muhammad, the estranged ex-wife of the famed DC Sniper who is currently serving his sentence in a grave in Virginia somewhere at tax payers’ expense. Apparently, while on her book tour, Mildred is telling the audiences that poor John suffered from PTS related to his military service. Yeah, he was a mechanic and never heard a shot fired in anger. So unless he caught the PTS from his drill sergeant or something, it’s not very likely. (By the way, for the record, I know that PTS isn’t contagious, but some of these clowns act like it is.)

    The media is always happy to trot the fact that he was an “expert” rifleman trained by the Army, and although the military does create good marksmen, there are also teenagers on biathlon teams who’ve never spent a day in the military. Mostly they train themselves to be good marksmen. You know, like John Malvo did, Muhammad’s teenage accomplice in the series of slayings. Malvo participated in some of those killings.

    Rob did a fine job of chopping up Ms. Muhammad, I just thought I needed to add a little more. Muhammad and McVeigh are two of my triggers for rants. Thanks to JP for sending us the link.

  • Federal Fiscal Follies, Part Va: Unemployment Compensation (Part I)

    We’ve all got our opinions about Federal entitlements.  But I think it’s safe to say that, without question, some of them desperately need overhauling.

    Take unemployment compensation, for example.  After all, what could be better justified than providing temporary help to folks who just lost their job?

    Well, you might want to take another, more in-depth look.  The devil is sometimes in the details.

    Like this detail:  Federally-funded unemployment compensation is not means tested.  And that means that 2,362 Americans living in households with taxable household incomes in excess of $1,000,000 received unemployment compensation.  Dig a little more, and you find out that over 956,000 people living in households with taxable income in excess of $100,000 in 2009 did the same.

    Where does that money come from?  It comes from payroll taxes levied on employers – who cover the cost by raising their prices, and pass the cost along to us.  These payroll taxes go into specified unemployment funds; compensation is paid from these funds.  And when these various funds set up to pay unemployment compensation runs short, Uncle Sam generally ponies up more to make up the shortfall – from Federal revenues.

    In short:  the money for unemployment compensation comes out of our pockets, one way or another.  We pay for it.

    Hey, I’m OK with helping out folks when they need a little temporary help for events outside their control.  But let’s not check common sense at the door when we do that, either.

    Someone getting unemployment compensation – or any other form of public “assistance” – while living in a household having a taxable income of $100,000 or more just doesn’t pass the common sense test.  At least in my book, it doesn’t.  IMO this program absolutely screams for a bona fide, no joke means test.

    More to follow on this subject in the future, as time allows.

  • 75% of American youths unfit for military

    A Stars & Stripes article reports that there are a number of retired generals who are a little miffed that a study by Mission: Readiness, an organization of more than 300 former military leaders which says that most Americans are ineligible for military service because they’re fat, stupid or criminals or a various combination of the three;

    “Many of our young adults cannot meet the military’s standards in math, reading and problem solving,” said [Retired Maj. Gen. Daniel] O’Neill, a member of Mission: Readiness. “The reality of our modern-day military is that young people in uniform must operate cutting-edge technology and possess critical thinking skills. So, just as in the civilian workforce, the military increasingly needs better-educated young men and women to run its weapons systems.”

    [Denise Cesare, president and CEO of Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania] expressed the same concerns about a rising skills gap among young people, which she said also has a negative impact on businesses.

    Yet, those precious young people are always coming to TAH and trying to school us on law and the other realities of the world as they perceive it, steeped in their fat, illiterate ignorance.

    Of course, these do-gooders, who are clearly outside their respective lanes, recommend more early learning programs…more union thugs earlier in our children’s lives. What we really need is to reform our education system. Toss the unions out along with bad teachers. Throw out the computers and get back to basic education and learning techniques. Teachers did a better job of teaching when they made less money than they make now. We certainly don’t need more union influence in our children’s lives. That’s how we got here. (Does it sound like I’m baiting a particular leftist here?)

    I’m sure the recruiters in the audience can add some anecdotal evidence to support the report, though.

  • Violating Your Probation Publicly Has Consequences

    Remember that Egyptian Coptic guy Nakoula Basseley Nakoula – the one who coordinated the making of Innocence of Muslims under an alias?  The film with the trailer on the internet that the Obama administration publicly and incorrectly blamed – apparently knowingly or with abject incompetence – for causing the recent unrest in the Islamic world that broke out last month on September 11?

    Well, he’s now in Federal custody.  And IMO, he deserves it.

    What?  Isn’t Nakoula being held as a political prisoner for exercise his right to free speech?

    In a word:  no.  Nakoula is being held because he thumbed his nose at the US justice system. Publicly.  Like a freaking idiot.

    Nakoula is NOT in jail because he made the film in question.  He is NOT a political prisoner.

    He’s in jail because he’s a convicted felon on probation who publicly and in a very “in your face” way violated the terms of his probation.  And he did that in two different ways.

    While making Innocence of Muslims under an alias and apparently posting the trailer to the Internet, Nakoula was on parole probation for a 2010 felony conviction for bank fraud.  He got parole probation apparently as part of a deal for cooperating with Federal authorities during that case.

    Two of the conditions of his parole probation were that Nakoula (1) not use an alias, and (2) not use computers or access the Internet for five years without the approval of his parole probation officer.

    Nakoula made Innocence of Muslims using an alias.  And it looks like he posted the trailer for the film to the Internet.  Did this tool really think no one would ever notice the alias or the film?

    So, regardless of freedom of speech issues – yeah, this tool deserves to be in jail.  Felons who knowingly violate the terms of their probation deserve jail time.

    Especially when they’re idiots.

  • Dinguses in your neighborhood

    Michael D. Turley was arrested this week for a stunt he pulled a few weeks back when he talked his obviously similarly-retarded nephew into dressing in a sheet and brandishing an RPG launcher in traffic in Phoenix, AZ. Turley, in the narration of his video of the incident, claimed he was testing the response time of police. The responding officer calmly had the youth place the launcher on the ground and asked for ID and left the scene when they told him they were making a movie. Then Dingus, the Senior, put the video on YouTube which resulted in his arrest;

    After interviewing people who called 911 and later seeing the video posted on YouTube, police arrested Turley.

    “It surprised us that he actually put that video on YouTube,” Holmes said.

    The police response took just over three minutes from the first call, and a helicopter and SWAT team was dispatched as backup, Holmes said.

    Well, putting their stupid acts on YouTube is what dinguses do, officer.

    Police said Turley was charged with creating a false impression of a terrorist act, endangerment, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and misconduct involving simulated explosives.