Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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Swamp Their Inboxes

Overwhelm your congresscritters’ and state reps’ inboxes with calls to completely shut down the IRS and salt the legislative and bureaucrappic ground it rests on.

When you’re finished with that, besiege their inboxes with calls for special prosecutors for Fast and Furious, Benghazi and the NSA. Add links wherever possible. Here’s one for NSA crimes against humanity (and make no mistake: NSA’s “Boundless Informant” is just that):

epic.org

2013-Epic-Theme

Focusing public attention on emerging privacy and civil liberties issues

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ISP? Usually OK

Mediacom cable Internet is usually OK. . . until someone upstream decides to “improve” things, in which case things are usually SNAFUed beyond usability for a while and then level out.

Some time back, the company began capping usage. For my account “level” my usage caps at 250GB/month. *meh* It’s not bad, since our usage–even with more than a few streaming videos and LOADS of software downloads (I try out just about every OS I can load into a VM, for example, which usually run at 1GB or more/download)–is not really that heavy.

usage-report

Heck, last month we only used about half our allotted usage. Well, most of the Poirot videos we watched last month were just in SD (because the older shows weren’t offered in HD, of course), so that sort of thing kept usage down a bit.

Even with the occasional “Hey! Let’s fix somthing that ain’t broke. . . yet” downtimes, the reasonable usage allowance and generally workable D/L-U/L speeds make our cable service a better buy than local DSL (*gagamaggot*).

speedtest_060513b

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No, “Illiterate” Is NOT Too Strong a Term to Use

If one were to use “illiterate” to mean anyone who is not literate, then the morons I keep reading in print–morons who get paid for what they write!–are illiterate. “Literate” really should be reserved for folks who are well-read, and anyone who writes, “tye dyed” (or “tiedied” or “tie died”–all abortions I’ve seen in print) for “tie dyed” is illiterate. Anyone who writes “there’s” when the subject is plural is an illiterate. If someone says such a thing, then they’re at the very least innumerate. Such stupidities as “backyard” for “back yard” (or the equally stupid “backseat” for “back seat”) are gaining acceptance simply because so very many people have no clue about the useful distinctions between an adjective-noun combination and an adverb, or just DGARA, and a deluge of misuses finally swamps good usage.

In a reasonable society, complete, total and absolute morons who misuse “decimate” to mean “annihilate” or “extirpate” would be given 5,000 lashes with a dangling participle and then be staked out on a split infinitive somewhere in Death Valley. Let them be joined by empty-headed vegetables who’ve somehow been able to pay illiterate, lobotomized monkeys to type “it’s” for “its” and perhaps society would have a chance for survival. . .

BTW, I’m not averse to useful changes in usage, but misuse that destroys useful distinctions is utterly abhorrent to me.

There must be a circle of hell reserved for illiterate “editors” who hire even more illiterate “proofreaders” and who then foist such garbage off on a paying public. One can only hope that they all find their way to their ultimate destination soon.

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Ya Just Can’t Make This Shiite Up

“Journalism”–offering employment opportunities to the subliterate.

In addition to the obvious reason, this Foxnews article chaps my buns because the author (and editor?) got paid for spouting this kind of gibberish:

“A Staples spokesperson confirmed to Fox News that they do not allow businesses that deal in firearms from entering the contest.”

Will someone please buy a copy of “English for Dummies” for the author of that monstrosity? (In case the site changes it w/o a transparent acknowledgement of the error(s), I’ll just post a screencap, hmm? CLICK to embiggen)

illiterate-journalist-03

Would someone like to diagram that sentence for me?

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Root and Branch: Extirpate the IRS

Conservative group’s lawsuit targets IRS employees personally

Look, folks, let’s just say it openly and without reservation: The IRS is simply evil. Period. I’ll accept no qualifications about “good people” working in the IRS. No, if they were truly good people, they’d find a job not working for an evil organization. Period. End of story. No excuses.

The fish rots from the head and from its inception, the IRS has rotted and is nothing but a poisonous evil whose sole function is to do evil and enable further evil to be done. Any lame justifications that it collects revenue for legitimate purposes fall, because most “feddle gummint” functions nowadays are constitutionally illegitimate (hence, based on lies, evil). Nope. The IRS has to go. Now, how to get there. . .

Pressure–and never, never, never stop pressuring–congresscritters to abolish the IRS and the oppressive, tyrannical, capricious income tax system it administers. Get involved in local politics in order to gain influence on political parties’ selection of candidates, at ever higher levels of government. Join with other “outsiders” to invade and take over the political apparatus of whatever party or parties you may have a chance to “subvert” to bring them back in line with constitutional principles.

And never, never, NEVER stop pushing back–twice as hard, and harder. If you are attacked, as the person and her organization in the linked article above have been, push back as that organization has. Make it as personal as the bureaucraps themselves make it. Hold them PERSONALLY responsible.

Keep it in bounds–not their bounds, the law’s bounds–but make sure they know it IS personal, because that’s the central meaning of The Founders’ Constitution”–personal, individual liberty and responsibility is THE central reason the Constitution was written to SET BOUNDARIES BEYOND WHICH GOVERNMENT MUST NOT GO!

The “feddle gummint” needs to be told to sit down, shut up and LISTEN to the PEOPLE. . . and then sit down and shut up–PERIOD!–wherever the Constitution says they have no business going.

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Because That Makes Sooooo Much Sense

[N.B., I corrected the headline on the linked article to read as a more accurate reflection of the information in it.]

Obama Orders Fox to Investigate Hen House Guard

Yep. That’s right. The Zero thinks that no one will notice he’s directed Eric Holder to investigate his own performance as an enforcer of the rule of law. No news there, really. After all, recall the reports of an “independent State Department investigation” of. . . the State Department’s handling of the Benghazi consulate attack? “[I]ndependent,” MHWA. . .

Where is Torquemada when you really need him?

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No Brainer

No, seriously. Absolutely NO thought seems to have been put into this ad for the Hyundai IX35 hydrogen fuel cell powered car:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HueuiSLt-HI

“Edgy” huh? #dumbassery

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Ebook Problems

Well, not all that many, but. . .

I keep forgetting to return library books. Now that a majority of the books I read are eBooks, it’s just a pain to have to get in the car, schlep six miles and mosey on back.

Reading too many different books at the same time. No, not simultaneously. I’m not that fantastic. *heh* But a several open and “in process” on one computer (in browser, in Kindle app), another on my Kindle Fire and maybe another one or two on one or more other computers on top of a hardcopy book or two sometimes becomes a bit cumbersome. *meh* It’s a problem I can live with.

Buying too many books. Yeh, yeh, that bundle of seven eArcs is tempting. OK, bought. Free books? I’m in. What? Amazon’s running a deal with a few hundred eBooks at “up to 85% off”? Sign me up for the marathon shopping spree.

It’s too easy to buy more books. Too easy. What? I’m complaining? *heh*

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Anyone Notice. . .

. . .that politics have been (mostly) absent around twc for the last short bit? Yeh. Even evil gets a bit boring after a while when all it does is repeat itself: Lies, Damned Lies, MORE Damned Lies and yet MORE. . . with no evidence of any creativity or even the scantest attempt to make the lies anything but blatant, bald-faced yawners.

*shrugs* Maybe that’s the plan, make evil so yawningly, terminally boring that there’s just nothing left to say about it.

Anywho, at least I can watch yet another episode of Poirot via Amazon Instant Video. I never tire of the saxophone in the theme music, and the acting, settings, costuming, dialog and even, to some degree, the fairly predictable Agatha Cristie plots, are all just wonderfully enjoyable. And, of course, the incidental music–quite apart from the theme music–is extremely enjoyable.

There’s that, at least, when all the rest of the world has gone mad, mad, I say. . . *heh*