The Bureauacracy Rampant...

I had occasion to accompany Tess to the New York City Department of Vital Records, yesterday, in an effort to recover some very important and necessary documentation, and was treated to a first-hand experience of just how stupid and quite redundant most public union...ahem...workers...are.

That picture on the left? That's a Rube Goldberg. For those who were born under rocks -- or after X-box, which is sort of the same thing -- Rube Goldberg was a cartoonist who used to create images of the most outrageous machines that performed the simplest of everyday tasks.  The point was to go to an extreme to avoid doing something simple and mundane. This one shows a machine that wipes somebody's mouth without them having to dirty their hands. This fairly describes the Bureaucracy of the City of New York: why work efficiently when you can add so many complicated steps to the process? And employ a lot of seemingly useless people while you're at it?

After all, it's only TAXPAYER MONEY, right?

The Bureaucracy Strikes Back...

Sometimes, you just have to wonder what the fuck it is that we're getting for our tax dollars.

If you live in the State of New Yorkistan, I would say you're getting jack shit. And when I say this, I should clarify:

1. We are NOT getting a government that works smoothly and efficiently.

2. We ARE getting a government which is apparently run by rhesus monkeys who, on a good day, might be able to find their own asses with both hands and a flashlight..

The long, sordid, and all-too-sickening tale of this Lunatics battle with the mindless bureaucracy of the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles seemed to have the proverbial light at the end of that tunnel. But, alas!, the rhesus monkeys have found a way to annoy me yet again.

If you haven't heard this story before, then I suggest that you read this, this, and this, and then you'll be up to speed with this entire tale of woe.

And then you'll probably want to either laugh or vomit. Probably both.

Lunatic: 1, Bureaucracy: 0

Oh, happy day! It has finally happened! I have finally been able to prove to the knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing,  unionized high school dropouts at the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles that I, your humble correspondent, do exist!

I have just received my brand, spankin' new New York State Photo identification card. The one I've been seeking like it was the Holy Fuckin' Grail for five years now. If you're not familiar with my trials and tribulations on this subject, you can read about them here and here.

I'll wait until you're up to speed....

Just What Staten Island Needs...

...like a hole in the collective fuckin' head. Pictured here is an artist's rendition of the newest pile of steaming dogcrap to emerge from the fevered imaginations of New York City pols, and their sycophantic douchebag lapdogs, the real estate developers. 

Whenever there's this sort of stupidity proposed for New York City, you can bet your bottom dollar that a real estate developer came up with the idea, and he's spread enough money around the halls of power to get it taken seriously.

Only in this case, the real estate developer is shocked to discover that no matter how much money he's put into some politician's pocket, they somehow turn out to be the worst business partners one can imagine. Fuck him, serves him right.

Dear Government: Please Save Us...Not!

I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said, paraphrasing, "Those who would surrender their Liberty for Security, gain neither...". And he was right.

It's a lesson we seem to have forgotten in these here United States. I mean, after almost 80 years of New Dealism, Great Societism, and a host of Wars on everything from Drugs to Common Sense, Americans have become accustomed to creeping government -- empowered to 'do something' by it's own citizenry who keeps voting for complete self-interested douchebags -- taking a more active role in their lives, personal security, and nowadays, even their healthcare.

ObamaCare in One Sentence...

Video of a real-life doctor summing up ObamaCare in ONE FUCKING SENTENCE.

Pass it on!

The Government and Your Storm Door...

One of the loudest battle cries of the modern Republican is Get The Government Out of People's Lives. The logic behind this motto is that over several decades -- some would say as far back as the Woodrow Wilson administration, but in any case, at least as far back as FDR's tenure -- that government has taken it upon itself to "do things" that government, strictly speaking, has no Constitutional Right to do.

Typically, this slogan is applied to specific areas of American Life,  like the Social Welfare patchwork, the regulation of commerce and Environmental regulations, that are often onerous, nonsensical, contradictory, and sometimes just plain dumb. I happen to agree with much of this sentiment, but for the purposes of this screed, it will not be necessary to talk about the Cradle-to-grave aspirations of some sectors of Government at all levels. That's for another conversation.

What we're talking about  today is the questionable level of government interference in something as simple a putting a new goddamned storm door on your house.

The Metamorphosis, Part Two...

RE: My seemingly doomed quest to get myself a New York State-issued photo identification card.


I left this tale, oh gentle reader, in that most precarious of states; at a point where I had planned to pin my seemingly ever-fleeting hopes to the possibility that it would be possible to use the bureaucracy in order to fight the bureaucracy.

Here's what has transpired since.

Bloomberg Unhinged...

Apologies: I had meant to get to this earlier, but shit happens and all that.

Okay, so it would seem that New York City Mayor Micheal Boomdouche...errm...Bloomberg...has finally lost his last sodding marble, and has extended his food fetishes to baby Formula. It's bad enough the New York City school system won't educate the little tykes when they get old enough to attend, now Bloomberg wants to see them starving, too.

The Metamorphosis...

It has been years since I read Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, but damned if I don't feel as if I'm living it, these days.

If you've never read this classic tale of bureaucratic stupidity and the dehumanizing oppression often exerted by governments, I'll give you the going-from-memory-nutshell version:

The main character is continuously being told by members of the bureaucracy that he is guilty...they just never get around to telling him what he's guilty of, mostly because no one is quite sure, but the paperwork all seems to be in order.

Eventually our hero is stripped of his humanity, becoming smaller and smaller after each encounter with the mindless bureaucracy until he literally transforms into a cockroach.

I was reminded of the overriding theme of Kafka's masterpiece yesterday, when, for something like the fourth time in the last three years, I found myself standing in line at the NY State Department of Motor Vehicles in yet another futile attempt to prove that, yes, I do fucking exist, you Assholes!

Call It What It Is: Child Abuse...

...and poor parenting skills.

An article on the so-called Autism Epidemic.

This is exactly what happens when someone manages to evoke political action, and get excessive taxpayer funding, and mobilize it in the "fight" against a perceived-but-not-all-that-prevalent a problem: you suddenly get more of it.

25 Things The Next Republican President Must Do...

And when I say "must do", I really mean must. Like before anything else. Ten seconds after taking the oath of office and ensuring that the Obama's haven't stolen the White House silverware.

This list assumes two things:

a) Mitt Romney defeats Barack Odouchebag in November, and
b) The GOP retains it's majority in the House, and gets one in the Senate

Otherwise, this is all academic.

So, here's my list of the the Top 25 Things The Next Republican President Must Do (in no particular order):

Where's Jared Loughner When You Need Him?

Oh, right...he's already in jail for shooting a congresscritter.

Maybe we ought to be giving him a fucking medal, instead? He seems to have had the right idea, but maybe just picked the wrong target.

(Before I get an avalanche of faux-outraged e-mails from Libtards:  no, I'm not advocating that someone actually shoot a member of Congress, or making fun of Gabby Giffords and the other victims of that particular crime. I'm asking a rhetorical question in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. Get a fucking sense of humor, and unbunch your friggin' panties, you ninnies!)

The Washington Post identifies 35 Congressdouches who used their power to benefit themselves. And just in case that didn't make you sick, the Post then goes on to tell you how members of Congress use their power to benefit their relatives.

Unfounded Calls of Racism, Stupid City Government, and a Dead Child...

Today I’d like to tell you a tragic tale involving a dead 13-year old girl, a yellow school bus, a bad public transportation system, a tractor trailer, a school administration that is more concerned with appearances and political correctness than student safety, and a court system which city lawyers openly abuse. It will not end well, I promise you, and I can also guarantee that at the end of it all you’ll be shaking your head in stunned disbelief that so-called responsible adults could be this stupid, petty, and well, irresponsible.

Our story begins two years ago, when the New York City Board of Education (three lies for the price of one) began looking for ways to cut it’s budget without firing the 2,000 or so teachers currently held in so-called ‘rubber rooms’ awaiting termination or criminal prosecution, thus pissing off the local education unions, whilst still giving the appearance of being both fiscally responsible and fair to racial minorities.

Given that combination of political requirements, it’s not surprising that Educational Establishment (an oxymoron if ever there was one) came up with a politically-biased solution that cost a young girl her life.

It all has to do with appearances, and false accusations of racism, plain and simple.

You see, I live on Staten Island, the Forgotten Borough of New York City. It is a place that City Government tends to think of as a cash cow and a dumping ground for projects that no other borough -- with their decidedly greater populations and more vocal ‘community organizer’ types -- just won’t take, such as Landfills, Wind farms, prisons and infectious disease wards.

Wikipedia describes Staten Island as a ‘suburban community’, and it once was, but it is so no longer. What it has become is a 12-by-7 mile bonanza of property taxes for a City that can concern itself with your salt intake, but then not give a shit about whether or not your community has adequate sewers and storm drains, public transportation, hospitals, or schools. There are 500,000 people shoehorned onto this over-developed island which is always last on the City’s ‘To-Do’ list, but always first on ‘People We Can Raise Taxes On’ list.

City Officials just absolutely love the property and income taxes they can collect here (amongst the highest in all of the United States!), but they just can’t see their way to spending any of it here. Probably because the island typically votes republican, and most of us are gainfully employed. There’s far more money and political power in (created by politicians in the first place) poverty than there is in the catering to the needs of the Middle Class who pays for it all, you see.

Four consequences of this attitude are:

1) The Road System on this island is a joke. Many of the main arteries still follow their meandering, pre-Revolutionary War-era paths from days of yore – in some cases, they still follow the routes they took during the days of the Dutch Settlements (pre-1660!) and these are often narrow, crowded with vehicular traffic, and lacking in adequate safety features (traffic islands, traffic lights, stop signs, or crosswalks). You’ll find the roads in a perpetual extremely-poor state of repair (the 12’-long-by-three-foot-deep-pothole-full-of-frozen-water-on-every-corner capital of New York!), and many basic services – like sidewalks along busy streets – are simply missing, and no one in City Government gives a shit. I can’t tell you how many stories of ‘Person-struck-and-killed-by-car-in- neighborhood-without-sidewalks’ stories there are every year in the Staten Island Advance, the local newsrag. It’s easily in the double digits.

Remember, this is supposed to be 21st-Century New York City.

2) Public Transportation is seriously lacking, and what is available is often unreliable, hardly goes where it needs to (the Transportation Plans which brought it here dating to the 1960’s, and only begun in earnest in the 1980’s), and under-utilized since decades of abject neglect of the transportation system has created a cult of the automobile that would rival that to be found elsewhere in the United States. This may be the only place in all of New York City where your trip to the ‘Corner Store’ often requires a journey by car that will take you a mile or more from home, and take 30-40 minutes because of traffic.

3) Schools are in seriously short supply. Since most of the available land (even City-owned land) has been parceled off and sold to developers (we need more overpriced Mother-Daughter townhouse/condos on this island like we need a plague of locusts), or goes to more Parks and Nature Preserves (which we need like a hole in the head. 1/5 of Staten Island is State-or-Federally-protected Wetlands, bird sanctuaries, parks, national monuments, and so forth), less space is available to build schools. Especially middle schools. The last new High School, for example, built on Staten Island (in the early 1980’s) was originally designed as a minimum-security prison -- in a residential neighborhood -- that only became the ‘new’ New Dorp High School because of the near-violent outrage that sprang from a community that wasn’t even asked if it would want a prison in it’s backyard, nor told until the very last minute that one was even being built.

4) What schools we do have are generally placed far apart, and are poorly served by public transportation, requiring more yellow bus service than might be normal for children who live in the other boroughs where there are more schools and more transportation options available.

Yellow school bus service in this borough is a necessity if children are to get to and from school safely and in a timely fashion. In fact, Yellow School Bus service for Staten Island schoolchildren from kindergarten to Middle School had been a standard for over four decades, courtesy of a political class that once understood the unique nature of the problems here, and a federal judge who granted Staten Island a waiver when parents in the other boroughs claimed that Staten Island kids were receiving a benefit that children elsewhere weren’t getting. The majority of these complaints, incidentally, were based upon race. At the time, the majority of Staten Island public school kids were white.

And if anything ever screamed ‘Racism’ way back when, it was the idea of white, middle class kids being chauffeured to and from a school three miles away when minority children had to walk, often only just a few blocks. Go figure.

The accusations of racism in Bus Service have never completely gone away, and those who have yelled ‘Racist!” the loudest and most persistently, I can promise you, have never stepped foot upon this isle to see the truth for themselves. Then again, people who make their livings shouting ‘Racist!’ and extracting government money for it are very often never really concerned with truth, nor care about the consequences of their actions, so long as a politician scratches his particular itch.

To give you some idea, my nephew Mikey is one of those children who was eligible for Yellow Bus Service. Let me tell you what he has to do to get to and from school, and maybe this will illustrate the problem for you.

Mikey’s school is approximately 4.6 miles from his own front door. Without a school bus, Mikey has limited options. He could walk to and from school, having to cross at least three major arteries which local drivers treat like the Indianapolis Speedway, dodging distracted by text-messages or putting-on-their-makeup-in-the-rearview drivers for whom simple things like proper use of turning signals, red lights, traffic lanes, No Right on Red signs, and pedestrian traffic are crippling inconveniences which conspire to keep them from their quest to be the first to the next red light at 65-mph-in-a-35 zone. It’s like a for-real game of Frogger.

This is mostly a cultural problem, exacerbated by poor road planning, construction and maintenance. To illustrate these issues for you, it is not uncommon for private individuals around here to pool their OWN money to build their OWN speed bumps on their school-zoned streets, because the City won’t, citing the excuse of expense. The City, however, has absolutely no trouble finding the funds to remove those privately-financed speed bumps – often in the dead of night --just as soon as it discovers them.

Option Number Two is that Mikey can walk eight blocks to the Staten Island Railway Train (a misnomer which consists of two tracks travelling in opposite directions that serves approximately 1/6 of the island’s population on any given day), take it four stops, and then have to walk 10 blocks from the station to school, both ways crossing busy (sometimes blind because of the curves or overgrown park/wetland) intersections without crossing guards or responsible drivers.

Option Number Three is take a City Bus, requiring a three-block walk from home, a transfer, and then a six block walk from the nearest stop. This requires, incidentally, about 45-60 minutes, so that he’d have to leave home at 6:30 to ensure he got to school anywhere near 8:00, due to the numerous stops (buses here stop at nearly every block for some reason), traffic and irregularity/unreliability of service.

Option Number Four is to take another City Bus which leaves him closer to school (after a transfer to another route), but which goes two miles out of his way in order to get him there, and probably takes closer to 90 minutes, all told.

You can see the problem.

So, the Board of Education, in a cynical effort to have it both ways -- paying lip service to the concept of financial responsibility, while pandering to the louder elements of the “Everything in Creation is Racist!” brigade -- decided it was time to end Yellow School Bus service for Staten Island (White) Middle Schoolers. Two years ago, the City claimed that doing so would save an estimated $2 million per year, which is a joke when you consider the NYC Board of Education is capable of finding more ways to waste $2 million a week without even breaking a sweat.

Local government (our Borough President) went right to the courts to stop this plan and to have the waiver granted 40+ years ago guaranteeing school bus service upheld. The judge in that case let the waiver stand, and then asked the Board of Ed to turn over its internal documents and e-mails related to the decision to stop service. What he got was a mess of blank and/or redacted paper, and an injunction against his upholding of the original waiver issued by a judge in a different borough after the Board of Ed went judge-shopping in (more-liberal) Brooklyn. Another judge, a state appellate judge, told the Board to go and pound sand, upheld the waiver, and squashed the injunction, and bus service was restored.

However, the Board of Ed is nothing if not persistent – and willing to waste that potential $2 million savings on more lawyers – had the service stopped once again by yet another judge, claiming the Original Waiver violates the ‘spirit of’ the 14th Amendment, despite any practical considerations. The court fight continues to this day.

Which brings us to the tragedy that is 13-year-old Aniya Williams. You see, she was run over by a great, big, fucking tractor trailer on a busy thoroughfare in an industrial area as she crossed a street -- one without a City-provided school crossing guard, despite the fact that it’s in a fucking school zone, and it was the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL -- in an effort to catch a city bus home, and thus spare herself the 40-60 minute wait for the next one.

There are two ironies here:

1. This young lady was entitled to Yellow School Bus service under the Old Waiver, which would have picked her up in front of the school, and dropped her off mere yards from her own front door, if not for all the legal wrangling and false accusations of racism in bus service.


2. Aniya Williams happens to have been African-American.

For the sake of $2 million dollars (probably $10 million now after the legal fees are all counted up), and to quiet the uninformed noises that came from the full panoply of ‘advocates’, ‘community organizers’, ‘community groups’, ‘education watchdogs’, public unions and all the other busy-body organizations and individuals who typically speak out of their collective asses, a child is dead. The only saving grace here is that more children aren’t dead, because on any given day there are probably going to be 50 more Aniya’s, racing for a city bus that runs on an irregular schedule so that they won’t have to walk 4 miles home, and who are forced to do so because a City Government that can’t count, but which can pander to anyone with an uninformed complaint and wants to monitor your caloric intake, just doesn’t get it.

This post also appears at the Insane Asylum.

Your Children Are Still In Public Schools, Because...?

New York spends more per pupil, only manages to create more and bigger idiots than any state in America.

Here's a laugher: a good many of these doofuses will, eventually -- because it takes them six to eight years to finish their (remedial) 'education' at City College, where German Shepherds teach English and lack of involuntary muscle responses is no bar to admission -- become the next wave of overpaid teachers in this City. Only in New York could you accept the worst graduates, from the worst colleges, obtaining the easiest-to-get major, and then pay them to teach others.

It's a well-established fact that 'Education' majors are commonly drawn from the lowest echelon of academic achievers, and most of those will have switched majors at least once before settling on 'Education' because most other worthwhile degrees require work. Remember: those who can, do, those who can't, teach...

Nowhere is this more evident than in New York.

Without a cushy public sector union job to fall back on, many of those...ahem...City College graduates...would never be employed in an above-minimum-wage job.

Money Quote fromMichael Goodwin in yesteryday's NY Post:

MANY NYC GRADS CAN'T READ THIS

Responding to my Sunday argument that city schools deprive students of the freedom to fail by promoting too many who aren't ready, a professional aide in a Manhattan high school offers front-line evidence. Here is what she wrote:

"The increased graduation rates are being achieved by means that are absolutely fraudulent and are generally known as 'credit recovery programs.' In exchange for completing a minimal amount of work (and I do mean minimal ), students are granted credit for courses that they previously failed.

"In addition, teachers are 'encouraged' by the principal to pass 80 percent of the students in each of their classes. I can attest, with great confidence, that at least 80 percent of our graduates are functionally illiterate."

The writer, who asks to remain anonymous to protect her job, then quotes from student statements that are rife with errors: " . . . so they started hitting me and I felt to the floor." "I triped and fall with caused bleeding and my pants to torn."

Students say they are "dessie" (dizzy), hurt a "risk" (wrist), have a "hedick" (headache) or are "bruced" (bruised).

"Obviously," she adds, "social promotion is alive and well at all grade levels."

Sadly, her experience is not unique or even unusual. This is the real outrage of too many New York schools.

But then again, the priority is not education at NYC Schools. It can't be, not with all that money to be divvied up. And of course, where's there's taxpayer money to be passed out, there's Political Correctness and Corruption, too. Like these cases, from Andrea Peyser in today's NY Post

:High-school math teacher Rivky Love hounded a girl whom she called her "best friend and sister" with late-night texts signed, "Love you."

The married 36-year-old even offered to slip the Edward R. Murrow student an advance copy of a test. Love was suspended for six months without pay from the Brooklyn school. Then she's back as if nothing happened.

Meanwhile, a devout Christian elementary-school assistant teacher, Anita Wooten-Francis, 52, says she was ridiculed and fired by her principal because she prayed in an empty classroom at Brooklyn's PS 224. This, after more than 16 years of unblemished service.

Why can't Johnny read? At city schools, pervs are a protected class. And quiet devotion is punished.

It's supposed to be all about the chidlren, right? Apparently not in this state, where you have the highest property taxes in the nation and this is the sorry result. Tear thepublic school system down and replace it with private schools supported by tuition. If the dregs of this city can't afford it, then give 'em a voucher; it'll still be cheaper and more effective than continuing to warehouse kids in a state-run babysitting service, run by mouth-breathing retards.

Report: Half of Detroit Functionally Illiterate.

Only half? That sounds to me like maybe no one in Detroit can count, either.

Tell me again why the Public School system -- and the Unionized, tenured, over-paid, lowest-on-the-scale-of-academic-achievement 'teacher' who lords over it -- is a good thing?

Last week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Doofus-NY) was pilloried in the press for making a rather stupid remark that the Federal Government should turn Detroit into holding area for immigrants who should be "required" to live in there before they are granted full American Citizenship. Somehow, this plan is supposed to repopulate and rejuvenate one of America's worst cities, although true to form, the details of his 'plan' are very sketchy and probably involve a slew of Upper-East-Side-Solon-approved social experiments, huge tax increases, and an increase in government authority, because that's what people like Bloomberg always do -- when they're not busy changing political affiliations from week-to-week, depending upon which political party is for sale this month.

There are five demented ideas, never examined by the Press because that would mean, like, work, that run through Bloomdouche's ...I hesitate to call it a thought... process:

1. That left to their own devices, the people who already live in places like Detroit, Washington, D.C. or Cleveland are incapable of making life in their cities better for themselves. They require government to 'do' 'things' and direct (i.e. ruin) their lives because they're all knuckle-dragging apemen who see their IQ's drop every time they take a dump.  People like Bloomberg love stupid citizens because they're so much easier to control and take advantage of.

2. According to some political idiots, it is only Government action that is capable of making life better for anyone, and the more drastic that action, the better life is supposed to get. Except that we have tons of  undeniable evidence that this very formulation has made life in some places considerably worse, if not bordering on unbearable.

3. Government, suitably empowered to 'make life better', should then be able to create racial and ethnic ghettos as it sees fit, if Mike's ideas are taken to their logical conclusion. It's worked so fabulously well here in New York, you know. Oh wait, the government already does this...

4. The Government does things so spectacularly well, according to the Bloomberg set, but it's just that we're too stupid to appreciate all this fine work. We should never, ever think to hold government and it's policies accountable or responsible for the wasteland that is Detroit; it's always the people who live there who are to blame, so why not just replace those doofuses with a whole bunch of new, even bigger doofuses? (in fact, this may be at least half-right; after all, if Detroit is a shithole, the people and the politicians they elected help make it so).

5. What makes anyone think that filling Detroit with people who come from countries where concepts like individual rights, respect for the rule of law, constitutional government, the importance of an education, a work ethic, and tolerance are, literally, inconceivable, is going to save the city? Isn't that indicative of the sort of people they already have in Detroit? And contrary to all the politically correct mushiness out there; immigrants don't come here to 'make a better life for themselves' in the conventional sense, anymore; they don't come here for freedom and opportunity, like the immigrants of old, the New Breed comes here for the no-strings-attached social benefits, which we hand out like candy. The Ideal of the hard-working immigrant who wants nothing more than to become an American and be a contributing member of the greatest society on Earth was sooo last century. Now we attract immigrants who sneak across borders to use our hospitals, suck on the welfare teat, work off the books, use the schools, etc., who avoid contributing to American society (i.e. they don't pay income taxes) like they would bubonic plague.

If you doubt this, come to my neighborhood and watch the Mexican ladies buy groceries with food stamps while their husbands/boyfriends overrun the local (taxpayer-funded) playing fields waving Mexican flags, playing a game most Americans consider gayer than Tim Gunn.

Detroit, and cities like it, will never be 'saved' by an influx of more immigrants. If anything, the problems in those cities will become worse as they become government-sponsored ethnic enclaves full of people who are never encouraged (or made) to assimilate because that would offend everyone's multi-culti sensibilities, and deprive the democratic party of easily-manipulated voters. The solution to the problems of Detroit are not to be found in a mass migration from Afghanistan, Mexico, or Upper Volta; they are to be found in ordinary citizens, exercising their rights in a responsible fashion, auditing their public servants and demanding better services for their tax dollars. The Government -- at all levels -- should either respond to their will, or get the hell out of their way.

This would mean a wholesale rejection of 20th century 'liberalism' (a misnomer; it's really Libertine-ism, when it isn't outright Socialism), and electoral defeat of the entire Liberal establishment, including the parasites that cling to the democratic (small 'd' intentional) party like barnacles to a rusty hull; the poverty pimps, the racial hucksters, the unionized douchebags, the professional bureaucrats.

One of the hallmarks of the 2000 Presidential election (the one Al Gore lost, as he attempted to sue his way into the White House) was the incredible lack of literacy shown by many of the democratic voters in Florida (Al Sharpton and Je$$e Jackass called this stupidity-on-display 'disenfranchisement'); many, (according to the Press reports of the time) having been told to 'vote for Number 2'  on the now-infamous 'Butterfly Ballot' -- that would have been Gore, except that he was actually Number 3 -- didn't even bother to read the damn thing, even to make certain they punched out the right chad!

Naturally, Gore only demanded a recount in the districts where a large number of minority voters were present, i.e. where he knew all the illiterate folks were. Gore was, in effect, saying "check these districts because we know that's where all the stupid people are!"  Hence all the talk about scratches, and dents, and swinging chads, hanging chads, and 'divining the will of the voter, as if someone who punched out Number Two but left a scratch mark at Number 3 should have their vote overturned. Gore, the biggest pile of Number Two in History, had to find ways to turn all those Twos into Threes, even if it meant stealing an election on national television.

Literacy, or rather lack of it, has far-ranging consequences. Just ask Al Gore; he lost the White House because of it, and he's made billions off of fake environMENTALism on the backs of the illiterate, as well. People who can read would know that if you take away carbon dioxide, you kill plants, and thus, destroy the planet's oxygen supply, thereby, killing us.

If you want to know why Detroit is a toilet that rivals the open sewers of Yemen, Somalia or Tegucigalpa, here's your first clue. It's a pity no one in Detroit will ever read this, because if they did they might become embarrassed and do something about it.

And as for Micheal Bloomberg, he's the last person on Earth you should ever ask for advice on anything.

The Left Hand Know Not What The Right Doeth...

Mark Steyn on the Debt Ceiling thingy. Your government is run by ignoramuses,and it's your fault; you have voted for people who can't add or subtract, and who believe that giving money to poor and stupid people to waste on rims, gold teeth, and pork rinds is an enlightened social policy.

The First Step towards True  Economic Recovery is to cut up the Government credit cards. Call your Congresscritter and tell the bastard to vote 'No' on raising the debt ceiling. Second Step: get on him or her about the Budget-- no spending that isn't absolutely necessary.  Third Step: remember that there are these things called 'elections' that we hold every so often, and try to convince yourself to vote for the person who seems smarter than your cat -- the one that looks like he/she might be able to do basic math -- and forget the rest. Forget the One-Issue-Demogoging, the Interesting Personal Story, the Fascinating Racial Mix, the Good Speech, The Sun-the-Moon-and-the-Stars Promises That You Don't Have to Pay For.

Vote for competent people who can spell their own names without assistance. If you're incapable of doing that, for some reason, then do us all a favor, and don't vote at all. 

Reason #42,356 Why Your Government is Run By Retards...

Federal Government runs year-long sting operation to arrest Amish farmer for...selling milk.

Now I know why no one is catching illegal immigrants or shooting terrorists. Federal authorities apparently have nothing better to do than to feel up 6-year olds at the airport, and harass what is perhaps the last group of decent, civilized, unoffensive people left in the United States.

What? Slow day in the War on Drugs?

Don't have a Mafia Don to wiretap?

Can't find a child molester to roust?

Run out of the ready supply of Congressional Democrats with a Frigidaire full of ill-gotten greenbacks?

I would have thought those would be as common as dogshit, and seeing as how Irish-Setter stupid they are, exceedingly easy to catch.

Screw the 'Food Safety Issues': if some douchebag wants to drink raw milk, and take her (it's usually a Her) chances with all sorts of parasites and pathogens, then that's her problem. Just remind her that if she should get sick, and show up in an Emergency Room and demand ObamaCare, she ain't getting any. The government's job isn't to protect people from their own stupidity. If we simply let the people who would drink raw milk, inject heroin, engage in risky sexual behavior, hang-glide, ride motorcyles without helmets, climb mountains int he dead of winter, etc. die as a result of their stupidity, we'd have a much better country, and a smaller, less-expensive, and less-oppressive government.

And the Amish would be safe!

Eric Holder must be proud. I can't wait for the Press Conferrence in which he claims to have struck a blow against unsafe bovine products, and the evil Amish, who are white -- which makes them born criminals, in his book -- and undeserving of civil liberties and economic freedom, anyway.

In any other society a farmer or businessman who responded to the needs of the marketplace would get rich. In Modern America, it can get you arrested, unless you've managed to make enough campaign contributions, a nd since the Amish won't put up much of a fight, are an insignificant voting bloc, have no lobbyists, they're easy to push around -- not like the 15 million illegal aliens hiding in plain sight all over the country.

Personally, I believe these Whole Foods people are a bunch of whackos, anyway. Today they espouse the belief that raw milk 'is better for you'; given a few more months, they'll be telling you it's best to suck it straight from the udder. Mark my words.

Besides, isn't the First...ahem...Lady crusading for healthier food, spending millions of taxpayer dollars, leaving a massive Air-Force-One carbon footprint in the process, to get Americans to eat healthier? How to reconcile all the contradictions?

In a time of economic hardship, and when there are serious criminal issues to tackle with National Security implications (terrorism, drugs, illegal immigration) the Obama Administration's law enforcement arm spends a shitload of money -- and an entire year undercover -- to arrest a guy for engaging in productive economic activity that would be perfectly legal in even the worst Third World shithole. I guess because GE doesn't get a cut of his profits, and the Obamatard didn't get the Amish Vote, there's no Union Labor involved and he's not collecting sales tax as an agent of the State, this farmer has to suffer the consequences.

And really, did you need a year-long undercover operation to catch an Amish dude? Then again, the government can't keep inbred Taliban mountain folk in a prison inside a country where there's 140,000 American soldiers on duty, so I guess this is par for the course.

For all my libtard friends out there who say the government can't find any money to cut in the Federal Budget without those cuts leading to dire and catastrophic consequenes that probably include mass flooding, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, a raging cholera epidemic, a rain of brimstone, the Earth flying off it's axis, and, of course, 'starving children and homeless elderly', I say: maybe if the Government wasn't busy arresting and prosecuting people for selling a legal product -- milk -- we might be able to afford a few more cardboard boxes with which to warehouse the elderly, and the kids could drink all the fucking milk -- pasteurized or not --they wanted.

Well, They Needed Them to Go With the $30 Million of Unused Bike Lanes, Silly!

Something I wanted to write about last week, but never got around to;

City of New York wastes $60,000 on bike racks, along a street with no dedicated bike lane.

Such is life in Mike Bloomberg's New Yorkistan. The really surprising thing is that the project didn't cost $6 million, and have to be re-done three times by a union-dominated, Mob-connected contractor with no competitive bidding process allowed.

And when you stop to consider it's only $60,000, you realize it could have been far worse. After all, the City just demolished an entire skate park in Midland Beach that it only built a few years ago for a reason that no one has been able to yet adequately explain, and now there's a lot of talk about a solar and wind farm project at Fresh Kills (formerly the biggest garbage dump in the United States, rumored to have been visible from Earth Orbit) that will probably cost three times it's original estimate, and produce one-fifth the promised energy. All this at a time when the Bloomdouche Administration is crying poormouth -- in the richest city, with some of the highest property taxes, in all of America.

Perhaps if the City wasn't busy installing bike racks along major roads with no bike lanes that will mostly go unused -- along roads that are deteriorating something fierce, and which have become safety hazards in their own right --  building wind farms that are unnecessary (the land upon which they will be built on is perhaps one of the richest sources of methane gas known to Man; it will be built on the largest decomposing garbage dump, after all), making your personal eating habits it's primary focus, persecuting smokers to pay for insulin and neo-natal care for illegal immigrants,and handing out free needles to heroin addicts, there might be some tax money available for all those things it was originally intended for: running the city. You know, like for repaving streets, filling in potholes, keeping the streets clean, and the hospitals open. Maybe then the Public Schools wouldn't have to hold bi-monthly fundraisers just to buy toilet paper and pencils.

But Bloomberg didn't become Mayor to do something as insignificant and unfulfilling as running the City efficiently. Hell no: he became Mayor to impose his mentally-constipated-Upper-East-Side views upon us all. He's here to make sure we eat right, Go Green even if it kills us, encourage us to stay out of Manhattan on weekends so that the Upper Crust set should never have to rub elbows with the Outer-Borough Peasants ever again, and finding new and inventive ways to kill economic activity with rising tax rates and new taxes that often defy belief. All the while screaming "Budget cuts! Budget cuts!".

It makes you wonder how it was that this douchebag ever became a self-made billionaire.

Because someone who actually knew about Money would know that it isn't a lack of funding that causes City Budget shortfalls; it's the continuing and concerted campaign of waste and stupidity that comes out of City Hall and Albany that's to blame for that lack of revenues. Forethought, careful planning and auditing of public funds are words that are apparently not in any of our elected officials vocabularies.

Hence, $60,000 for bike racks in an area where riding a bike is akin to jumping from a perfectly-functioning airplane...without a parachute. But that should not matter to people like Blooomberg, who see public office as a means to an end -- in this case, catering to the needs of a select brand of total retards. This City is increasingly being run by the Stupid for the benefit of the Even Stupid-er, and the rest of us are just expected to shut up and pay for it, no matter how much it costs, how dubious the motivation, or how ridiculous the project.

And besides, bicyclists are fucking gay. It takes a special brand of effete faggot to be brave enough to negotiate our often narrow, crowded and following-the-same-routes-they-did-in-Revolutionary-War-times streets in a snugly form-fitting yellow spandex body condom, demand a little respect and then expect to be taken seriously. Frankly, I'm not surprised that you see so few cyclists on Staten Island streets, but am I surprised that the ones you DO see aren't run down just for being an annoying douchebag in public. We laugh at you. We question your sanity and lineage. I know more than a handful of drivers who will actually go out of their way to crowd you off the roads or open their car doors when they see you coming towards their parking spot.

You're lucky there aren't more of you being beaten up on a daily basis, because you're even more obnoxious people than those doofuses on Mob Wives and Jersey Shore.

No, you aren't better than the rest of us because you ride a bike instead of an Escalade; that's just something you tell yourself to make yourselves feel better about having such small penises. We know you have small ones because you wear so much neon-colored spandex that it's almost impossible for us not to notice.

And guess what? I don't drive anywhere, Mr.-I'm-Reducing-My-Carbon-Footprint. Haven't for 15 years, as it is terribly impractical in these parts. I walk everywhere, and where that isn't possible I take public transportation. That would make me superior to all of you, if we were ranked by your own environmentally-retarded criteria: building your bike required mined metals, rubber, energy to produce, transport to the bike store, petroleum-based paints and lubricants,and at some point, all of it will have to be replaced, either piecemeal or in total, as it wears out. My feet are greener than your bike (hmm, maybe I should bathe more often?), but I don't see the city spending $60k for a shoe rack outside my local supermarket -- and there's already a sidewalk there, unlike the complete dearth of bike lanes.

And what bike lanes there are in Staten Island often lead absolutely nowhere, and many terminate at blank walls and dead end streets. That's only to be expected given the propensity for the City of New York to plan it's projects and identify it's priorities so gosh-darned carefully.

UPDATE: The New York Post spends a week watching cyclists, concludes that they are mostly massive cunts.

I'm a State Assemblyman...and an Idiot...

Pine to be named Official Scent of New York?

I am officially beyond embarrassed now. If it wasn't bad enough to have to live in a state with the worst Congressional representation in all of America, it's especially mortifying to discover that your State and Local officials are, to be polite about it, dumber than dogshit, and wasting the public's time and money sponsoring ridiculous legislation which will have absolutely no impact upon people's lives, and which, somehow, someway, some future legislator will build and embellish upon, until it becomes a monstrosity that eats up tax dollars and destroys liberties.

Don't think I'm just engaging in unhinged hyperbole, either. This is New York, and even a 'Official Scent' law is probably intended to be used as a weapon against the people by our political overlords at some later date. Don't be surprised if five years from now Lemon-scented car air fresheners are outlawed, or anything-Lavender has a heavy tax placed upon it, because Pine is supposed to be the 'Official Scent', mostly because the Pine Scent Industry (is there one?) paid for the Law as a means of eliminating its competition.

Yes, our politicians ARE that stupid and malicious. And greedy.

I didn't vote for Assemblyman Titone -- because he's a democrat, which likely makes him a liar and a thief, and a dope as well, in my book -- but along with Congressman Weiner, he's probably one of the more aptly named politicians in America, today. I most certainly will never consider voting for him in future elections, especially if there were a more-qualified Irish Setter or brain-damaged Parakeet running against him, either of whom would probably be an infinitely better choice. Either would also have a much better work ethic and display far greater intelligence.

UPDATE: Naturally, a stupid legislative idea has spawned a Facebook page.