Where does the time go?

In a little less than a month we've had one cop gunned down on Halloween night. Friday a drunk driver ran into a patrol car injuring the officer and today someone guns down four police officers killing them all. I know as the economy gets worse we'll be seeing more situations like this. There's been cuts in mental health and they even wanted to close Western State hospital at one point, one of our local mental institutions. As things get worse people will do very irrational things. One woman just the other week was about to jump from a bridge as she had just lost her home to forclosure and car to repo. She was lucky enough to have a driver on the bridge see the sight and stopped her. I hate to get political about this particular situation but much of this started when Raygun opened the doors to mental hospitals and let most of the inmates out. Just so that he could have his tax cuts. I've seen several of these people on the streets of Seattle when I worked down there and I know it's getting worse.

Update: From what I'm hearing now they have a 'person of interest' A man who just got out of jail this past week known to be paranoid. He owns a pressure washing business but appears to have some serious mental problems. That is if he's the one. But then you know this country you're guilty unless you've got an iron clad alliby. Gee wasn't that what Russia used to be like?

Well that about all I have to say for this week. But I'll be back for the Friday pussy. What would Friday be without the pussys?

Time for the Friday pussy

I was going to use one of Billy's pussy pics until I found this one. More fitting considering my last post. I'll be out next week for instruction but have no fear I'll be back when I have no class. :-)

Bank failures: Didn't check them this week but as this was a short week with the holiday I don't think there were any. If I get motivated I'll check into business failures. Saw an ad for commercial property auctions. No, not in the market for one just watching the melt down continue.

Call me what?!!

The shadow knows.

A few of you out there were disheartened that I haven't posted an email address. The story behind that goes back some years when the innertubes were first getting started. I had one of those free internet connections for a while. You know the one. They had disks all over the place with 2000 hours of free connection after which they'd tie you to a subscription for the rest of your life if they could. This was back in the dial up days so getting on line was a hastle. Well one night I sat down to do some late night surfing only to have the connection denied. A call to the customer no service and the nice young geek determined that someone had stolen my password and was using my account. He threw them off and I was able to get back on to discover that it was some young kids from a chatroom that had done the dirty deed. All went well after a change in passwords until about 6 months later the same thing happened. This time customer no service was not as nice. They told me that I would have to wait until the thief was finished using my account. I told them to cancel my account if I couldn't use it. Since that time I've remained pretty much a non person on the net and only give personnal info on very rare occasions. You may contact me by one email account that I keep for such purposes but I'll tell you right now the name given is not me. The address is dsentor yahoo. I'm sure you can figure it out but don't expect any immediate responses as I only check it about once a month. Sorry for any inconvience but there are too many braty little assholes out there who'd be more than happy to throw their latest virus creation on your computer. And since going underground this way I've had no problems of any kind in well over 10 years.

So I remain your friendly enigma.

Thanksgiving

The holiday has lost much of it's luster. I think the relatives who used to get along fairly well in my younger years have gotten old and grumpy. You know the 'get off my lawn' attitude. Even that fake sense of decorum is gone so now we pretty much celebrate from the safe distance of our own homes. Such a gathering would not be a pretty picture these days as about half the family are republicans and the other half democrats which doesn't make for happy gatherings as almost everyone in the family is out of work at the moment.

So what's to be thankful for in these trying economic times? I guess I am thankful that I was smart enough to pay off and own my own home. Thankful that I'm not living in a tent at a homeless camp. Thankful that nothing lasts forever and maybe some day things will get better.

So in the true spirit of the holiday season "LET US CONSUME MASS QUANTITIES"!

And how about those indians. They knew how to party.

A thought came to me

We're slowly becoming part of the Borg or is it the Matrix? I'm not quite sure. Think about it for a sec. How much time do you waste surfing the innertubes with relationships from one end of the country to the other? Or is it world wide now? Like a human lump sitting in a chair staring emotionless at a screen, that window to the outside world. Think were obese now just wait another generation when the spawn are bigger than Jabba the Hut. Then there's Twitter. Sounds like some form of masterbation to me. The teacher caught Johnny twittering in the cloak room. "Johnny cut that out! You want to go blind?" And with the size of phone screens getting smaller he just might.
So here we sit wondering about things and looking for things we wouldn't have thought about in years past. Where does this all get us? Is this just some fools' errand? The new TV of the 21st century. What was once the lure of vast quantities of higher learning now seems to be reduced to a time waste of watching a cat chase a lazer dot on Youtube. You just have to watch this latest video of yet another bumpkin making a fool out of himself as he falls from the roof or drives the family car through the livingroom wall.
Nay this is not life. If I'd have wanted this I would have taken some strong meds and gone back to bed and had weird dreams. Something that even the best writers on TV couldn't have thought of. No. It's time to get up from this chair because for all the rain we've had here I'm liable to start growing moss. Or I could just sit here and listen to my arteries harden between keystrokes. No, better to get up and get moving lest I get blood clots in my legs. But then again there was that blogger I found from outer Sillystan that I've been meaning to get back to.

Oh well see you tomorrow.. same time ... same place.

This one's for Dana

A man a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He lowered his altitude and spotted a woman in a boat on a lake below him.


"Excuse me, can you help me?” he shouted down to the woman. "I promised a friend I would meet her an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The woman consulted her portable GPS and replied: "You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude at an elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level."

The man rolled his eyes and said, “You must be an Obama Democrat.”

"I am," the woman replied. "How did you know?"

"Well," answered the balloonist, "ask a simple question and you give me this left wing liberal gobbledy gook to show off your college education. I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The woman smiled. "You must be a Republican," she said.

"I am," the man replied. "How did you know?"

"Well, you don't know where you are or where you are going,” the woman said. “You obviously have no qualifications for what you are doing and have risen to your current position because of a large quantity of hot air. You have made a promise you have no idea how to keep. You're in exactly the same position you were in before, but somehow it’s now my fault and you expect me to solve your problem and save your a$$.”

Well the ole man here just turned 5*

No I won't give my exact age because I've been holding at 39 for many years now and just don't want to think about it anymore. The mind keeps telling me I'm 30 but the body has other ideas. More like 80. Well what do you expect after nearly 20 years of heavy labor? The mind wrote a check and the body cashed it but I think it bounced.

The Friday pussies - this one's for Watertiger

A funny from the Blog Fodder:
Wife: Whenever I am down in the dumps I buy a new outfit.
Husband: I wondered where you got them.

Must have forgot last week to post the bank failures there were three more last week two in Fla and one in Ca. Nothing so far this week.

Keep the greasy side down... Later...

And now for the contest

The rules are simple and only one applys - Come up with a good use for Sarah Palin's book 'Going Rogue". Extra points for the most creative ideas. I'll post the best answers and the winner later and as a bonus you get to copy and paste the award to your blog.



Okay pencils down. Looks like we have all entries in and the winner is (drum roll please)

A toss up: S.W. Anderson said...
Glue them together into building blocks, to be used creating shelters for the homeless.
and
Lockwood said...
I'd like to find out how far they'd extend from the Aleutians toward Australia, if you took every copy and laid them side-by-side starting from, oh, maybe a mile offshore.

Some fine use of such wonderful verbage, paper and glue. Now we could find out just how far it is to Australia in book distance or put them to better use to house the homeless.

Misc.

For all those out there who got their panties in a bunch over Obama bowing here's a shot of Raygun meeting with Al Qaeda before they became that organization and are now our enemies.

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U.S. threatens Iran if they don't quit their nuclear program. What are we going to do throw spitballs at them? Our military is stretched to the max and they know it. If we or anyone else attacks they'll start shooting missles at Israel in retaliation.

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Health care is slowly moving forward. Normally I wouldn't care that much one way or another but when you're out of work you lose your coverage. A whole lot of us have done just that. And that 46 million figure they talk about with no coverage is bull because every month another couple hundred thousand have lost coverage. When you're on unemployment you can't afford to buy a COBRA. There's a snake that would devour your bank account in short order. I'm still leaning towards a national sales tax to pay to cover everyone. Slap a 4% federal tax on all non food items then you could lower the state sales tax since it would get a bunch of money off the states' back as well as businesses. And this way you don't need any penalties for people who don't sign up. Everybody gets covered and it would keep Medicare and Medicade solvent.

Stay tuned for my Sarah Palin contest (I'm surprised nobody thought of this one sooner)

Sarah's Thankgiving dinner

Sarah Palin is having a reunion of sorts in Richland, Wa. that's right near the Hanford nuclear reservation. Maybe she can go turkey hunting the night before and bag one of our glowing birds. Easier to hunt at night don't cha know. But Sarah why are you putting on those hipwaders to go hunting?

For a truly funny thanksgiving dinner story pop over to Dcap's for some really good photoshop work. The comments aren't bad either.

Busted!

Looks like the IRS is going to be flush with cash by Jan 1 if this program keeps going. The Swiss were about to turn over some 4500 names of people who have cash stashed overseas to evade taxes. This is in the billions of dollars. And the republicans keep telling us there isn't enough money for health care. There would be if their buddys didn't have it hidden away. Now I hope they'll go after all the companies that have phoney off shore front companies. You know one small building that houses 23,000 companies. Give me a break. And notice how only one guy went to jail and that was only because he told the SEC he did it. It's like the Wall Street police are too busy eating dougnuts drinking coffee and reading the paper to be bothered. Oh! is something wrong? (as the economy collapses)

The party's over

Hanford cleanup?

People around here are angry about the delays at the Hanford nuclear reservation. They don't seem to understand the problem. This isn't about digging up a bunch of contaminated soil and moving it somewhere else. This is about merely containing a very large amount of contaminated water, some 80 square miles to be exact. The photo above shows how they used to get rid of radioactive wastes back in the 40s although the photo looks more like the 50s or 60s. They never thought a thing about digging a hole and burying anything contaminated whether it be tools or even an entire truck. Out of sight out of mind was the order of the day. The biggest fear right now is whether the contaminated water will make it's way to the Columbia river if it hasn't already. Clean up? Not going to happen. Containment? Maybe.

Hanford

Friday beaver on hiatus

As we all know beavers go into hibernation about this time of year so while they're busy getting their dens ready I thought I'd post some pussies instead for your viewing pleasure. Fear not the beavers will be back in the spring.

It's Friday the 13th

But it has nothing to do with this guy. I never saw why this guy was so scary anyway. Now if you're looking for scary you might try this guy

This would be one Tony Alamo who was sentenced to 175 years for sex crimes with minors. He took on underage girls for his 'wives'.
But enough of the scary stuff. I don't go for all the superstious stuff anyway. As the story goes my one brother was born on Friday the 13th in room 1313 and mom just happened to have 13 cents in her purse or so she said. My brother made it through Vietnam and continued to fly as a pilot for many years and he considers 13 as his lucky number.

Jim over at Major Conflict has a very good article about our current political situation. It is rather long but pretty much sums things up nicely.
Dog Eat Dog

Only Darkblack could do this type of work

Captioned: I'm ready for my close up Mr. Demint

Veterans Day

What a disservice we've done for our veterans. They do a tour or two or three in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have a day to honor their service and what do we do? Go to the cemetary for some quiet ceremoney for fifteen or twenty minutes then it's business as usual. The banks and post offices close. Government offices are closed and buses are on holiday schedule. Furniture stores and car dealers have their Veterans day maddness sales. The focus shifts from it's intended purpose to an odd holiday that most people don't get off anyway. Here they've fought and risked their lives only to come home to be kicked to the side. I hear that 25% of homeless people are veterans. I've heard the figure of 1.4 million. Nothing like coming home from a war to be jobless, homeless and have no healthcare.
They get lured in by promises of education benefits but I'd venture to say that they can't use them unless they have a job and with the job market being what it is those chances are slim to none.
Now for the real kicker, it looks like the health care bill won't do much to help them either. It doesn't cover many in their situation.

Sometimes the news just gets too depressing

In the past few weeks there seems to have been more arsons more shootings and more fires and floods then any time I can remember. Then there was the earthquakes and tsunamis on the other side of the world. There's been so much that after a while it all seems to run together in a jumble of bad news. And the stresses of all of it are starting to take its' toll.

Typhoon in Samoa
Fires in California
Floods in El Slavador
Police officer assasinated in Seattle
Mass murder at Fort Hood
Business owner shoots his partner
Gunman kills two at drug testing facility in Portland
Restaurant fires
School fires
Business fires
Arson

And now the health care bill moves to the senate

Where if you thought the first act of the circus was something then you ain't seen nothin yet. With billions (make that trillions) of dollars in profits at stake the insurance industry which has been shoveling greenbacks at our senators will now resort to using dump trucks fulll of loot. They did after all make some 146 billion in profits. A few million doled out here or there won't make much difference at this point. And like Let's Make a Deal the comittee making up this hodge podge of legislation will have the choice of what's in the large bulging envelope or what's behind the curtain which just might be... Why yes... it's the senators' entire voting district ready to tar and feather them for taking the envelope and leaving them with no health care! But don't worry too much senators because you also get what's behind the door, a book deal while you wait to get into your very own lobbying business set up by your insurance buds.

The Friday beaver

A sad day for police beavers. A Seattle poilce officer was gunned down here last weekend. The memorial service was held today. As the service was ending police were surrounding the suspects apartment. He ran and was shot. That's about the fifth or sixth incident in the last week around the nation involving the military or police. And then the guy in Orlando who shot up his former place of work. As things implode it will get worse before it gets better. I just wonder when people will realize that you can only do so much and what's happening now is not their fault. Suck it up, hunker down and things will eventually turn around. Look at our friendly beaver up there. He's got nothing other than what he can get by on in nature and he does okay.

NEW FRIDAY ITEM - BANK FAILURES - Five more banks in various states failed today. I'll expand on this as I get motivated.

Nothing like speaking too soon

Unemployment figures come in at 10.2% today as the president signs the unemployment extension bill. Guess I spoke too soon when I said I had some work lined up. Seems that is on hold. But such is the nature of the beast when you're dealing with anything associated with construction. So for now I'll be doing some classes and expand yet again my extensive resume. With the exception of radioactive materials there isn't anything I haven't dealt with over the years.
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It makes me wonder with the current shootings what makes up the last straw. What is it that pushes someone over the edge? I've been in plenty of extreme stressful situations at work and yet we all made jokes about it later. War stories we call them. And yes we've even lost a few good guys over the years and there's been times some disagreements nearly came to fisticuffs but never to the point of going postal.

A reprieve and other things

I guess I get a temporary pardon from having to face bankruptcy. The Senate voted yesterday to extend the unemployment. The republicans just couldn't help but get their mitts on the bill and slid a nice biscuit in for business. They get to avoid taxes by spreading out what they owe in 08 and 09 over the last five years. Then there's yet another loop hole for companies that do business over seas. I didn't read all of that but weren't we supposed to be going after all the tax money they owed that was stashed in the Caymans? And let's get something straight. The republicans whine about all the borrowed money and yet they were the ones to shoot loans to their friends on Wall Street and it now looks like CIT won't be paying us back. If that was you or me the IRS would make us pay it back even after your house was gone to foreclosure.

So of all TARP and the stimulus money that has been shoveled around nearly all of it went to business and state and a tiny bit to local governments. The banks are back to playing the games that got them into the mess. State governments are still hurting and have cut most of their payrolls and put in hiring freezes. They've looked for ways to increase state coffers with increased fees and taxes. When the money did trickle down it was for just band aid jobs that took few workers for a short period. There was no major push to rebuild the infrastructure. There's no major work on bridges and roads or the electrical grid but lip service of a smart grid in Hawaii and a few solar projects here and there. The bulk of the money is scheduled to get out there next year so I am hopeful that something will break. At present I'm working on getting a few small jobs from a very small company that does government work.

The health care bill is moving along and may be voted on this Saturday. Republicans scream that the bill is too big 1900 pages and was put together too fast. Yet if they had their way they'd stall this bill for another year. Imagine how big the bill would be if they had their way with another six or nine months to play with it.

To Hoffman and the Neocons in NY

That'll teach you to mess with peoples' local politics. You just keep moving the party farther right and this is what you'll get. Contrary to what you think this country is not made up of a bunch of old racest white guys who hold your values. It's moving more to the left and if you don't change your ways you'll end up like the Whig party just a footnote of forgotten political parties.

Bye Bye Rethugs

One burger hold the Rico

The Blog Fodder mentioned in a comment that some years back he found out from an RCMP friend that some gangsters showed up in burgers at the Montreal Expo. How crude. In the U.S. rat gansters become either Brizilian dog food or key components of our highrise office buildings. They're not considered palatable enough for our American burgers. Although McDonalds some years back was known to import a large quantity of kangaroo meat. What they did with this is still a mystery.
Is Solent Green in our future? Or how about a big box of Ganster Helper to stretch that family food budget in these hard economic times. Gad I need to quit hanging out at Randal Graves. He's such a bad influence.

Here there insanity everywhere

First thought was how nice they took the steel from the WTC and made it into a battleship the USS New York. Then that feeling of conscience took over. You know the one. After an initial gut reaction that part of brain looks at the overall picture and reacts. Looking far down the road at what may happen. We were attacked on 911. That's a fact that will live forever. Nothing will change it. And the first response, that knee jerk reaction is to kill everything that crawls the earth that so much as resembles those responsible. But then the light of sanity takes over. To go after anyone the even looks remotely like the perp is foolish or should I say childish. What should be a police action has now become a world obsession and god help those that stand in our way.
No, better use for this material would have been a hospital or homeless shelter or anything that would save lives. Alright call me a bleeding heart but before you do consider the future. Ask how many more will die at the hand of this warship? How many women and children will fall from the missles of this ship? How much more hate will be bred by its' actions?

A Seattle police officer was killed on the job in an unprevoked attack while sitting in his patrol car discussing a police matter with a trainee. My initial guess is that this was some type of gang initiation. It had been the gangs were fighting amongst themselves with shoot outs. And again the knee jerk reaction would be to round up all the members and throw them in jail or worse, but that would never really work. Where or when will this all end? Last time the leaders were rounded up and given long jail times only to get out and start all over again about 15 years later.

Company recalls over 500,000lbs of beef with e-coli. I'd say that will be the end of that company. It may well be that to get ground beef you'll have to grind your own. So I see our system of food checks is still broken even though much was started with additional manpower and resources.

Largest bank in the country went belly up. CIT filed bankruptcy on Friday. They get the elevator and we got the shaft. U.S. taxpayers will lose around $2 billion in this. If that wasn't bad enough 9 other banks took a dive. Hey weren't they supposed to put some safeguards in place to protect our assets in this deal?

Report says economy turning around. The market jumps 100+ points. Ha don't believe it, it's just money chasing itself. An illusion of the cruelest kind. You think your stock is really worth what they say? Just stop to remember what your house was worth three years ago. Then you have companies lying about the earnings estimates. Oh and keep an eye on those bank fee and interest rates. They're all looking to jack up rates before the credit laws change next year.

So where am I going with all this blathering? Hell I don't know I'm nucking futz you know.... later.

Flash is???

I always thought I was somewhat up on the latest trends. I may not do facebook or twitter or any other "in" things but pride myself on knowing what they are. Flash seems a puzzlement to me. Dirty old men flash in ankle length raincoats. Girls in New Orleans flash for beads. Flash Fridays was made popular by a radio guy. And now I find it all over the net with no real definition to be found. Urban dictionary has dozens of definitions but none that fit. Is it a rant? Is it a rave? Can it be true or is it just fiction? Randal Grave that esoteric wordsmith of evil thoughts always gets me to thinking about the dark recesses of my mind. So I'll give it a shot.

It was a plan. A truly evil plan. On a large planet somewhere out by Alpha Centori the creatures there where having problems of their own. Much on the scale of global warming of earth they were running out of food. Being a far advanced society they were smart enough to look at problems in centuries rather than years. They did after all live to be 300 of our earth years. So their overlord and his minions hatched a plan. Having received the first broadcasts of "I love Lucy" they thought what a wonderful food source the earth would make. They captured Judge Crater and found him to be quite delicious but not much meat for the effort. What to do?
It was a simple effort for them to infiltrate our advertising and food companies. A charge to fatten up the population. First they started with kids cereal. Sugar coat everything was the order of the day. Then they set about studying what graced our tables and how farm animals ate. They realized that most of our food was fattened up with corn. So king corn it would be. Have it put in everything from cookies, cakes, ice cream and hot dogs. They started with the kids first. Put corn syrup and starch in everything imaginable to fatten up the kiddies and get them hooked. But blast those kids sure did run off all those empty calories. What to do?
Make the TVs bigger and the furniture bigger and overstuffed was the order of the day. Increase the number of channels with movies more than could be watched in a lifetime. Close the playgrounds and discourage sports execpt for watching. And the next wave the increase of fast foods. Sodas that were once 8oz. then 12oz. then 16. Higher and higher to 1 litre then 2. and don't forget the chips once 1oz and now 6. And the killer of all fast food restaurants with McDonalds that sold millions to billions of first single then doubles and triples and quads. With cheeses and sauces and sides of super size fries but don't forget the ice cream dessert or fried apple turnovers.
Now their plan was going quite well but why stop there? They'd throw round 2 of their plan at us with video games and the internet where you can sit with a mouse in one hand and a burger in the other. For hours on end sitting and eating the butts they did grow big. With 1/4 of the kids now obese their plan is going well. They have us just like cattle at the trough. So I just have to wonder when it's harvest time for these higher beings. Is it halftime yet on their planet?