Airport security

What would have stopped the Nigerian Undiebomber is a whole body imager. But if we were proactive and used them, everyone would cry about invasion of privacy. But when we're reactive, and institute policies based on incidents, people cry about us not being proactive. Ya just can't win.

Guess it ain't Camelot after all...

The president doesn't smile quite so much any more. Looks like the pressure's getting to him.

Dear Senators Snowe and Collins:

I have a simple question. How can you call this legislation "health care reform", when it addresses not a single issue regarding why health care is so expensive? Regardless of how many government middlemen you insert in the process (those paragons of fiscal efficiency), and how many different hands you shift the money between, it's still going to cost thousands per day to stay in a hospital, an MRI is still going to cost $8000, drugs are still going to cost much more here than they do in Canada and elsewhere, and malpractice insurance is still going to be expensive enough to make doctors think twice about continuing in practice. So where is the reform? And where is tort reform?

Using insurance to pay for medical care was a bad idea when it was invented, and still is. The principle behind insurance is to spread a small risk among many insured. One of the first insurance policies in this country was written by a group of farmers who got together to insure each other's barns against fire, on the premise that maybe one or two barns might burn, but not so many that the rest couldn't pay for it. But when it comes to health care, EVERYONE'S barn burns down eventually. Everyone has a 100% of eventually needing more medical care than a lifetime of premiums can pay for. The only choice health insurance companies have to stay in business is to get rid of high risk people. It has always been that way, and will always be that way, until medical costs are low enough that a person's premiums have some chance of covering the costs. It is simple mathematics.

Therefore, as my representatives in the Senate, I direct you to vote against this legislation. Thank you for your time.

If you were eating here tomorrow...

...you could have a piece of pie.

How can Maine be...

...59% stoners and 53% bigots at the same time?

It's hard to credit that people can be that greedy

Pay "czar" Feinberg (does the fact that every damn government adviser has to be a "czar" irritate everyone as much as it does me?) got to cut some incompetent bankers' and car makers' pay packages today, and I bet it felt really good. But "Recent news that Goldman Sachs Group Inc (sic) had set aside $16.8 billion for compensation, so soon after repaying $10 billion in taxpayer money, fueled concerns that Wall Street was already returning to the lavish pay practices that were commonplace before the financial crisis struck."

"Feinberg hinted the bailed-out firms did not seem to get the message adding that without exception, all of the pay plans that they submitted were inconsistent with the public interest."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091022/bs_nm/us_financial_pay_5

I was in a Bank of America branch a couple of weeks ago, waiting for my boss to withdraw cash to pay me, and some manager leech actually walked out of her office, came over to me and said "People hanging around in sunglasses make us nervous. Are you with (my boss)?" I was pissed, so I answered "yes, but I have my passport if you'd like to see it." She proceeded to ask me what I did for him etc., with seemingly no idea what a rude idiot she was being. I was so taken aback that I couldn't think of anything to say, so I gave her minimal answers. This is the same bank which charges me $6 to cash my own paycheck, unless I start an account there. Highly friggin' unlikely. These people are incredibly oblivious to the image they project. They just don't get it, do they? If I had any assets in any of those companies, I would be yanking them out sooooo fast... It pisses me off to no end that my money goes to save these supercilious, smug, greedy bastards, just to watch them hand out bonuses and act like there was never any crisis, and that they earn every penny, even though without your and my help they'd all go under. "Too big to fail"? Bullshit. Let 'em go under.

R.I.P. Soupy Sales

One of the classy ones.