Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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Twit of the Day

Found while out and about, roaming The Nether Lands of Leftardism:

 

[From a] Facebook post by playwright-librettist-screenwriter Doug Wright addressed to Republican friends considering a vote for Mitt Romney:

“I wish my moderate Republican friends would simply be honest. They all say they’re voting for Romney because of his economic policies (tenuous and ill-formed as they are), and that they disagree with him on gay rights. Fine. Then look me in the eye, speak with a level clear voice, and say, ‘My taxes and take-home pay mean more than your fundamental civil rights, the sanctity of your marriage, your right to visit an ailing spouse in the hospital, your dignity as a citizen of this country, your healthcare, your right to inherit, the mental welfare and emotional well-being of your youth, and your very personhood.'”

 

No, but my taxes and take-home pay mean more to me than YOUR phony, trumped-up civil privileges, the ridiculous depravity of your claim to homosexual “marriage” or anything whatsoever to do with your mental welfare, emotional well-being or your very personhood, since you have already debased those yourself.

Have as nice a life as you can, goodball whiner. Don’t let the door hit ya where the Lord split ya.

Useless whining twit.

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A Break from Politics–One Shot

So, Lee Child’s “Jack Reacher” character is coming to the big screen. Sort of. In One Shot (trailer below), Tom Cruise is inexplicably cast as Jack Reacher. WTF?!?

No, seriously: WTF?!?

The Character, as established by Child in–I think–17 novels is 6’5″, 250 pounds of phlegmatic, unstoppable force. I can think of exactly NO “negotiation” (read, “Reacher utterly destroys the bad guys in hand-to-hand, or head-to-face-butt”) scene in any of the books that a guy Tom Cruise’s size could survive, let alone wreak the havoc the Reacher character does.

And then there’s personality. The quirky, birdlike Cruise twitching from one girly-voiced dialog delivery to another is hardly the image of the laconic, phegmatic Reacher portrayed in so many successful novels to date. Absolutely nothing in the trailer, for instance, seems congruent with the Reacher character in the books.

I imagine those who have never read any of the books and have a crush on Pretty Boy Cruise will enjoy the thing, but while I applaud the fact that Lee Child is going to make some big bucks off the thing, I kind of wish he’d played the part of Reacher himself. It’d have been at least a little more believable.

 

 

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The Verbal Intelligence of a Trained Parrot

While I appreciate the effort my health plan providers make to keep me informed of benefits, I do with they’d hire better-trained parrots to write the notices.

“Please note that all pharmacies may not be providing… “

Really? “[A]ll pharmacies” followed by “may not”? Nonsensical*, but if the parrot were better-trained, it might have pecked out,

“Please note that not all pharmacies may be providing… “

…although the passive voice construction in this case is an abomination. A better construction altogether would have helped clarity and, probably, have avoided mocking, but then,

“For additional information about this benefit, please see the frequently asked questions on the reverse side of this letter,” would have assured loud guffaws and raucous mocking anyway. The “reverse side of this letter” was, of course, blank.

Idiots.

*Semantics (meaning) is not as sensitive to syntax in English as in some languages, but this is one of a significant class of examples where it is.

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The economy, in one metric

When I bought my first car, with money earned from my first “real” job, I could purchase more than five gallons of gasoline with the proceeds of one hour’s minimum wage (not counting, of course the loss to taxes) .

In January of 2009, one hour of minimum wage could purchase a little over four gallons–a reduction in purchasing power of about 20%.

Now, one hour of minimum wage earnings can purchase–if one is fortunate to be in  an “average gasoline cost” area–a little less than 2 gallons, or more than a 50% loss in the minimum wage earner’s dollar value, more than doubling the cost for many low-income workers to simply get to and from their work, such as it is. If they can find a job.

That’s one metric, but an important one. Any time ANYONE tries to defend The Zero, simply point out how his own administration’s policies in making it even harder for refineries to be built or even have access to plenty of feed stock (killing the pipeline  from Canada to the Anadarko, OK refinery, for example), blocking American drilling in the Gulf of Mexico while sending YOUR tax dollars (and plenty of borrowed money, too) to Brazil to AID Brazil’s development of Gulf oil, and on and on and on have exacerbated fuel availability and costs, while allowing the Fed to engage in wholesale devaluing of the dollar by printing fiat money hand over fist have impacted everyone, but especially lower income people.

He and his ilk are uncaring, self-absorbed jerks at best, but I’ll not say what I really think.

Of course, diesel is much higher than gasoline, and diesel is a primary fuel for transport of, well, darned near everything, including food–another necessity that low income folks know is beating them up on prices.

Now, consider that the jackasses who manufacture the Consumer Price Index don’t think such costs as fuel and food should be included in figuring costs, because, well, they’re “gummint ‘workers'” and know they’ll be just fine, so they DGARA about real people. (Did I just imply that “gummint ‘workers'” aren’t “real people”? Yep. Most of ’em aren’t, IMO.)

Oh, well. <rant /off>

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On NOT Slandering the “Prophet” of Islam

(Just don’t do it. Nope. Don’t.)

During his UN speech when he once again asserted a causative link between a Youtube video and the murder of four Americans, The Zero uttered these infamous words,

 

 

The good thing about this is that one can point out that, according to Islam’s OWN so-called “holy” texts, their (mythical? Some serious scholars say so. *shrugs* Who knows… or cares?) “prophet” was a mass murderer, rapist, pedophile, liar, oath-breaker, torturer, slaver, and thief. And not only was he all those things, but he commanded his followers to emulate those behaviors.

Facts.

So, it’d be really, really hard to slander Mohamed, the Butcher of Medina, unless one were to say he was the offspring of a rabid dog raping a syphilitic sow.

(Do notice the subjunctive mood indicating that I did NOT say Mohamed was the offspring of a rabid dog raping a syphilitic sow, because the subjunctive mood construction indicates the citation of an event that did not occur–that NON-event being the uttering of a claim that Mohamed was the offspring of a rabid dog raping a syphilitic sow–a claim I did not make. Of course, if someone were to bring DNA evidence forward… )