"Learn How It's Done."

“…I think if you mention the name Ted Cruz to other Senators, you just get titanic oceans of eye-rolling, because you’re a freshman, you don’t go in and take over hearings. You, like, hang around and learn how it’s done.”
-  New York Times Columnist David Brooks, 4/21/13

The way this reads might sound reasonable to some; but given the actual context, it's clear that Mr. Brooks is really saying something more like this:

"Voters who are foolish enough to vote for someone who is not an incumbent don't deserve to be represented in the Senate."

As my friend, Lewis Cannon, might well say, "This fellow needs a good thrashing."

Posted by Pygmalion 56

Knives don't kill people, people do.

I have to believe that I'm not the only one who heard about the mass stabbing in Texas and thought, "Oh great, now they're going to come for our cutlery."

I'm just waiting for the first story telling how this maniac bought his knife at an unregulated knife show where there was no background check and no waiting period before he could take his knife home, or that he failed to register the knife with his local sheriff, or something insane like that.

I find it totally unconscionable that our rulers elected representatives have yet to propose a new raft of knife regulations. Don't they care? What about the children?

Posted by Lewis Cannon

Related Posts:
Securing the Border
Raise Taxes Or The Old Lady Gets It!
They Know What's Good For Us?!?!?
Nosy Eurocrats
The FBI Wants Your Kids' Vitals
Think of the Children
Won't Someone Think Of The Families?!
Not Fast, But Furious!
Facing The Ugly Truth
The Straw That Turns The Camel's Stomach?
Ponzi Schmonzi
Won't Someone Think of the Voters!?

Copping an Attitude 
Another Slippery Slope (there, I said it!)  
Suppose You Were An Idiot 
Congress Is In Recess When I Say It's In Recess 
Remember - I Told You So! 
At Least We Still Have Strong And Close Allies!
The Man's A Tool
How Dare They?

They Backed Down, but So What?

Wisconsin And Tocqueville    
Color Me Bloviated
Oh, That Was Choice! 
Eleven Years On  
Eleven Years and a Day 

Tales from the Senate

Senior Senator from Michigan, Carl Levin, has announced that he won't be running for re-election when his term is up in two years.

“I love representing the people of Michigan in the U.S. Senate and fighting for the things that I believe are important to them,” he said. “As Barbara and I struggled with the question of whether I should run again, we focused on our belief that our country is at a crossroads that will determine our economic health and security for decades to come. We decided that I can best serve my state and nation by concentrating in the next two years on the challenging issues before us that I am in a position to help address; in other words, by doing my job without the distraction of campaigning for re-election.”

Perhaps many of us took that to mean that it's a distraction to campaign for re-election, despite the fact that that appears to be exactly the job to which these folks believe themselves to have been elected.
In fact, the most likely "translation" or parsing of that phrase would be:

"I want to do all the things I've wanted to do, but couldn't get a vote from my constituents because they don't want me to do it."

This fellow will bear watching. He seems to have some obfuscatory skills.

Posted by Pygmalion 56

Why Is Anyone Surprised?

I don't know about you - OK, I probably really do know about you, but let's leave that for another post, shall we? - right, I don't know about you, but I'm totally stunned and amazed that other people who should know better are stunned and amazed that Huawei and ZTE might not be good guys just selling knockoff products cheaper than we can make them here in the USA or even in Japan or Mexico or something.

Why is it a surprise to think that the Chinese government is using the companies they control to get access to the computer systems of other countries' companies? Isn't that exactly what all the tracking of hacking has told us? that it's all coming from China or Russia or Iran? Good grief, folks, use your brains once in a while instead of just your credit cards. Remember when we used to say that you get what you pay for? Now you're finding out what that might mean in an interconnected, always-on, internet-dependent society, and it means that the ones who sell you something for less than it's worth are probably making up for that apparent loss somewhere else - not like the old "we lose a little bit on each sale, but we make up for it with volume" kind of scam; this is more like the we'll sell you a magazine for less than it costs us to make because you have to take some advertising in there along with the "articles" and such, only where you didn't know the ads were going to borrow your computer to dig up your personal details for auction on the open black market or steal your company's plans and designs to make it easier to create knockoffs and counterfeits of your products before you can get them out the door and for less money because they're going to do the same thing to the next suckers who become customers.

Get a grip on reality and realize that Chinese companies may be owned by those rich Chinese guys you deal with, but those guys and the companies and their customers are pwned by the Chinese government, and that's the way they play the game, bub!

If you don't want to look like a total chump, you'd better wake up and smell the oolong tea and start buying equipment from reputable manufacturers who don't have a business model of sell stuff to chumps for less than its worth, but steal everything that's not nailed down to turn a profit for your commie masters.

Sheesh!

Posted by Gyro Gearloose

Related Posts:

IP v6 is on the way - with Big Brother

Another Agency to Police the Internet?

That's NOT Hacking!

IPv6 May Not Be Necessary

The Great Steve Jobs
We Didn't Start the Fire!
It's Ba-ack .... 
RIP Dennis Ritchie
I Like Pi
The Countdown To IPv6 Has Started!
IPv6 Is Back!!!

Digging For Hoffa? Not Likely!

UPDATED!
We're still waiting for confirmation that what was found was not extraterrestrial, but what we do know is that Michigan State University anthropologists found no traces of human DNA or bone fragments in soil samples taken from a driveway in a suburban Detroit backyard.

1. Police in the Detroit, Michigan area are digging up "remains" under a residential driveway based on the claim that Jimmy Hoffa was buried there in 1975.
2. Apparently someone just came forward to say he remembered seeing a body being buried there then and a driveway was poured on top of the grave.
3. Many other sites have been excavated in recent years for just the same purported reason.

How reasonable is it to believe that someone has suddenly remembered something as huge as seeing a body being buried in a residential area -  over 35 years later?
Hoffa's body has been reported in at least as many places as the live Elvis has been sighted.

When will the authorities release the results of the tests done on the soil samples?
Why don't they explicitly rule out the possibility that they didn't merely not find Hoffa, but that they did find something else?
When will they come clean about the possibility that it was actually non-human remains that they have found - and not merely animals, but rather extra-terrestrials?

Our rulers have no faith in the ability of the populace to handle the thought that we are not alone in this universe, and they do everything in their power to keep us in the dark.

We'll continue to monitor this situation, and report back when we have more information.



Posted by Listener 43

Related Posts:

The Colonel and Area 51
SETI and Timing
Pyramids and Satellites
Dynamite and Denial
Who Is Using All That Water?
Radiation and Crop Circles
Nazca Lines and Antimatter
SETI @ Home Is Back
Russians, Asteroids, and Mars
Water, Mars, Saturn, and Technocrats
Are Russian Space Troubles From Beyond Mars?
More Mars-Related Deception
Mars and Water - Again!
Ages In Chaos?
Successful SETI Experiment!
Mutant Monkey Flowers And Triffids
NASA, Mars, and Nazca Lines

Eleven Years and a Day

You probably saw my post yesterday, and then you probably saw the news reports of the violence at the various US embassies and consulates across jihadistan.

Rather than ramble on here until I froth at the mouth like a rabid dog - which our State Department would consider a hate crime, since our friends are offended by the sight or thought of dogs - I'm just going to encourage you to go watch that video linked in yesterday's post.

Good grief, the world has gone mad.

Posted by Lewis Cannon

Related Posts:
Eleven Years On

Eleven Years On

No long screed today, just a plea to remember who it was who killed all the Americans (and others) in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center eleven years ago.

An interesting and informative survey of 1,400 years of history can be found here - Why We Are Afraid: A 1400-Year Secret - it's worth watching or reading the transcript.

Posted by Lewis Cannon

Related Posts: