March Madness - SHUT UP!

Oh Lord, how long do I have to listen to this shit just to get my NHL highlights? It's not bad enough during football season, then post football free agency, then baseball training camp and Manny "I Can't Work for 42.5 mill, I Need 45" Ramirez and all that hype - now it's this time of year again. There's not enough beer to drown it all out...

"Contractually Obligated" Bonuses

Hey, here's an idea to anyone else crawling to the government for a loan or complete bailout - declare bankruptcy. Restructure all those contracts. "We can't keep top executives without this bonus structure..." There's a recession on - WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY GOING TO GO?!?!?!?!?!?

It was bad enough that the banks paid dividends and bought out small, weak competitors with their assistance money {and I will say shame on the Bush Administration, particularly Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke, for not putting "Thou Shalt Not..." rules on the money} but AIG is pulling the fastest fast one. And the really really sad part is the people who are getting bonuses ARE the people who planned the strategies that brought the company to the brink of failure in the first place.

And I say the same goes for Detroit. Anyone else remember when 'The Big Three' ignored the Japanese import market and the growing demand for higher gas mileage cars - right up until the 1979 oil embargo? That made them change their marketing strategy - A LITTLE. For the last ten years or so, it's been about SUVs and oversize trucks - things that have the largest profit margins. Guess what - now the playing field has shifted again and they're once again unprepared to play ball. They were all ready afraid of the new mileage rules that were coming, now there's one more thing on the plate.

It occurs that to streamline, you have to chop off the dead weight and a lot of dead weight is at the top. I'm not saying that sacrifices don't need to be made on the lines where people hang onto those jobs for 35 - 40 years. But Let's see some top brass and middle managers merged and downsized and humbled - maybe even put back on the lines, if they were ever there in the first place.

And airline pilots need to be paying attention, too. Yeah, not everyone can do it, but a slowing economy is lowering demand for your services, too. Yes, you made concessions to keep your jobs a while back - you still want those $ 130k / year jobs, right?

Tax My Health Care Benefits, Lose Your Job

One more thing - this talk about taxing the health care coverage my employer chooses to provide me as 'income' is a bunch of horse shit. I am lucky that my employer does choose to cover much of my health care. I pay my premiums - pre-tax. And this should all remain pre-tax if the government doesn't want every employer to drop health care coverage and put everyone on government heath care. Oh, but the government does want everyone on the government dole for their health care.

OH, I know a lot of other people who want everyone on the government train for our health care, too - poor misguided souls. The government can't run the government or the fucking post office and you want to trust them with your life and death decisions?

I promise, right here, right now - anyone representative, Republican or Democrat, who votes for this is not getting my vote.

You want to know how to stop that nonsense? MAKE IT APPLY TO CONGRESS TOO!

And finally - Having Their Cake and Eating It, Too.

There was a lot of talk about the 2009 Omnibus Spending Bill just passed - another 480 Billion Congress had to pass to keep the government running through September 31st - being loaded with pork and pet projects known as earmarks. And a lot of Republicans stood up for 'Fiscal Responsibility in Tough Economic Times" and didn't vote for the bill "On Principle" knowing full well that the Dems had enough votes to pass it along anyway.

What got overlooked is that a bunch of the Rs slipped their projects in with the 8570 [disclosed] earmarks - totalling $ 7.7 Billion reported Taxpayers for Common Sense on 3/13. Taken with the other spending bills passed last year for Fiscal 2009, you get $ 14.3 Billion total. Surprisingly, this is down $ 500 Million from Fiscal 2008, but this does not include the Obama "Economic Recovery" bill.

The Republicans stuck their hands out for $ 1.88 Billion - with their names on them. There's no telling how much they're getting of the $ 3.18 Billion earmarked by "Unknown". And isn't that a crock of shit? You want the money, you want credit for it in your district, right? But you don't want to be accountable?

How about Alabama Senator Richard Shelby voting for the spending bill and his $ 114 Million from the trough - including "$800,000 for oyster rehabilitation at the University of South Alabama to $380,000 to the city of Tarrant, Ala., for streetscaping and walkways" according to Conservative website Human Events. Other big spending Senators included Thad Cochran of Mississippi [$ 76 million], Kit Bond of Missouri [$ 86 million] and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska [$ 74 million - what the hell is there to spend $ 76 million dollars in Alaska???]. All crossed party lines and voted for the Omnibus bill. Of course the disappointing Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania disappoints again - why he doesn't just switch parties and get it over with I don't understand.

You can't say "I'm a Republican and a Conservative and I want less government and less government spending / waste" and then do this. Pat Buchanan often says the Republicans lost their gains of the 90s because they came to Washington on a mandate of change and instead got changed by Washington.

This is exactly why we need term limits - in spite of what Joe Barton thinks - yeah, he was one of those Reagan cot-tail rider who was all for term limits until he was there and his self set time limit was about up. We need to roll those clowns over every few years and get fresh ideas and keep the debates going. I say 12 years each - 12 in the House, 12 in the Senate. Run in the House for a while, move over to the Senate if you can. If you can't, tough shit, get a real job again. Politician and career are two words never meant to go together.

That's my big mouth rant for a while.

Years Roll By [Dedicated to the Class of '85]

Years at a time seemed to roll on by
Faces lost and names forgotten
Days we used to spend being young and carefree
Now just memories in my aging, failing mind
Laughter, drink and adventure no longer desired
We take it easy and make it home before midnight

We have become what we feared most
Married and parents and responsible citizens
Safe in our homes in safe neighborhoods with good schools nearby
Diseases hit us hard in our primes and strike fear in our friends
We still think we are so young and we are
But then again we're not.

Did we set out to change the world
Or to not get changed by the world?
Were we fooled by the man who said we could be the change
Or were we surprised when there was no man behind the curtain?


Finally!

If anyone had had told me that I would go 8 months without a radio in my car, let alone some type of CD or tape deck, I'd have laughed in their face and bet $ 50 on it. But it was almost 8 months [July 4th / 5th to March 2nd] I went without. Now granted, at any time, I could have whipped into Best Buy or Frye's, whipped out the plastic and had my unit replaced. But I took my tax rebate money over Monday, paid out of the ol' checking account and was in and out in an hour.

Why so long? I really think I got to use the drive home time in silence - well, relative silence since I really was always singing something or commenting on the poor / stupid assed driving going on around me - to really just take a few deep breaths and unwind. No, my job is not that stressful, but... well, it's hard to explain. But to plug in a real CD and hear real music from my collection again felt really good. [I didn't like the earbuds on my MP3 or the headset on my cassette walkman knockoff.]

Admission of Guilt

Much to the "I Told You So" pleasure on one Scott Downey, I bought the new Oasis, Dig Out Your Soul while I was in Best Buy [and a Muddy Waters collection]. The Oasis is a nice slab of rock and roll, some pyschedelic twists here and there, but a damn fine record. I was so impressed, I ordered their 2005 disc Don't Believe the Truth on Ebay. I found that I like Oasis last year., but this is my first purchase. If Scott were in my living room, I believe his comment would be something along the lines of:

"You name Who's Next best album of 1971, now you're buying Oasis CDs... there's hope for you yet, Chaz."