When people check out

Posted on by

Many many moons ago, I was in the United States Air Force. I fixed navigation equipment on F-4s and F-105s. Our squadron had different shops that fixed different things. Across the 35th Component Repair Squadron, was another shop that fixed instruments. A friend of mine in Instruments decided he wanted out of the Air Force, for reasons I don’t recall, and just announced that he quit. Predictably they told him he couldn’t quit, as if that reason alone meant he couldn’t quit.

“Watch me,” he said.

Well, instead of going into the shop during working hours, he just stayed in the barracks. He didn’t go AWOL or desert, he just quit going into the squadron building to work. It took a while, but they eventually discharged him. Honorable or General discharge, I don’t recall. There is much I don’t recall since it was many many moons ago and memories fade with time. To give you an indication of how many many moons ago it was, most of the equipment I worked on had vacuum tubes in it. It was already old at the time, of course.

So it was possible to quit the Air Force, just as it’s possible to quit the presidency before the president’s term is over. We’re seeing that now. When was the last time Obama was in a large room with generals and cabinet members and various advisers, serious people with suits and ties, answering questions the president posed to them so he could formulate a plan of action that would best serve our nation? Really can’t picture that one, right? At least the guy who quit the Air Force had actually been in it at one time and done stuff, so it’s not a perfect comparison by a long shot.

The difference is that Obama has never done presidential stuff like that. He’s gotten away with it largely because things were relatively stable when President Bush passed the torch. He did nothing during Benghazi, but he got away with it because the media had no interest in asking him where he had been or what he’d done. The low info types probably still think a YouTube video was to blame.

Now people are starting to notice that Obama isn’t exactly like Captain Kirk in the captain’s chair when Klingon ships are on the screen. If Captain Kirk was somewhere else on the Enterprise, practicing his putt, people would think something was dreadfully wrong. That’s where we’re at now.

A language redefinition the left hasn’t thought of yet

Posted on by

It’s been nearly impossible to satirize the left for a while now, and it’s not smart to try because you’ll do their thinking for them and they’ll steal the idea and implement it. So this is probably not a good blog entry. But they’ll think of it themselves anyway.

Why hasn’t the left done away with the term “home invasion”? Think about it. If there is anything in the news that makes a person want to jump into his or her SUV and drive down to the local gun store, it’s reading about a “home invasion.” Calling the cops doesn’t do much good because it’s happening real time. It’s not as useless as calling the White House about a consulate attack, but then not much is. A Michelle Obama-approved school lunch comes close.

The left doesn’t want private citizens to have guns. So why hasn’t some pointy headed leftist decreed that “home invasion” is offensive or racist and demanded it be replaced by something more innocuous? Like residential shoplifter, perhaps. As soon as one does, the media will dutifully comply as they always do.

So I predict they’ll do just that. When, I don’t know. But all I know is that the plagiaristic left won’t give this blog credit.

How would they market Obamacare to normal people?

Posted on by

Are they capable of it? Probably not. So far they’ve marketed it guys who hang out in pajamas, and girls who wonder if a guy’s as easy to get as birth control. And we mustn’t forget the reindeer boys. Well, maybe we should forget that one.

This shows what the left thinks America is. But what about the millions of normal people? People who are married and have a couple of kids, and they eat dinner together at least some of the time. And their next door neighbors, who are also married and have a couple of kids. (Married means male and female by default, no matter what the left says. There goes my show on A&E.) And these people go to church some of the time, and maybe they have a gun in a closet, and maybe they smoke and drive SUVs. People who live their lives conservatively and try to instill traditional values in their offspring.

The left understands such people exist, but not that they count. So they don’t market Obamacare to them. Indeed, they probably couldn’t market Obamacare to them because they don’t understand them at all. Marketing requires understanding the target demographic.

Ask an administration official why they don’t market Obamacare to normal people and they’ll undoubtedly retort that it wouldn’t be “inclusive,” that not everybody is in that demographic. Not everyone is in their demographics either, but that would go straight over their heads.

They came for our…

Posted on by

They came for our “assault weapons,” and you said good, why do you need an “assault weapon,” anyway?

They came for our incandescent bulbs, and you said fine, “I use the others.”

Now they’ve come for your health insurance policies, and you say, “What? I like my policy. It serves my needs and it’s cheaper.” But it’s substandard. The people you elected have legislated it, while you trashed those in opposition. You called them “tea baggers” and heaped ridicule and contempt upon them. Pelosi said they needed to pass it so you can see what’s in it. Now you’re getting a peek, while Pelosi giggles.

Live with it.

Presidents, then and now

Posted on by

The sixties were amazing times. We had the Cold War and the resultant space race. Kennedy announced we should go to the Moon in 1961, and a little over eight years later, we did it. Eight years from the first suborbital space flight to landing on the Moon and returning. We had an attitude of being able to accomplish amazing things, and expectations of an amazing future. Now we have a president with no cold war to deal with, who talks BS all the time and generally avoids responsibility for all the stuff going wrong around him by saying he didn’t know anything about it, that he learned about it in the papers. All the time, he’s touted as being brilliant. Remove his teleprompter and we’re lucky to get a coherent string of sentences out of him.

When Kennedy was president, presidents had to be serious because of the Soviets. Now our president is serious about putting crap over on us for his own political fortune. He cares more about his legacy than the country. In fifty years, we went from being able to go to the Moon in eight years of effort, to spending three years on a website and messing that up. Amazing future, indeed. This might be why the libs think we should STFU about Kennedy. It draws attention to the contrast. People might look back and go WTF has happened? What kind of president have we elected? Was he really the best available?

A Tale of Two Teams

Posted on by

This is a tale of two football teams, the blue team and the red team. These teams are constantly playing ball, it never ends. The red team plays a clean game. Not perfect, but they try to play the game by the rules. But the blue team plays dirty. They’re constantly violating the rules of the game. Encroachment, false starts, holding, pass interference, grabbing facemasks… You name it, the blue team does it.

Now the officials, they love the blue team and hate the red team. So they seldom throw down a penalty flag for the blue team. Instead, the blue team tells the officials that the red team is committing penalties and officials throw down the flags for things the red team didn’t even do. Sometimes the officials throw down flags on the red team when the blue team actually did it.

Over time, the red team has learned they get the most penalties when they try to win, so they’ve essentially given up. Instead, if they think the blue team will win by forty points, they’ll try to limit it to thirty. They’ve found they won’t get penalties for that; in fact, they’ll even be praised for a game well played.

Then there are the fans. Both the red team and the blue team have fans that stick with them, no matter what. But there are a vast amount of low information fans out there, who end up liking the blue team. If you ask a low information fan what he thinks of the team, he’ll get a thoughtful look on his face that on the surface makes him look wise. He’ll say, “Well, that red team is always getting penalties, so I root for the blue team.”

Well, one day the red team got a new player, and he went all out trying to win. His name was Cruz. Cruz put everything he had into the game. Obviously, nobody had explained to him that wasn’t how the game is played. Predictably, Cruz was constantly buried in penalty flags, and the entire team was blamed. Not only did the blue team hate Cruz and fear him, many on the red team hated Cruz as well. They blamed Cruz for losing games for them. The fact they’d been losing along didn’t matter to them. They only cared what the officials and the low information fans thought. As long as they were praised for losing, all was well.

Driven to madness

Posted on by

Democrats.

People hear one soundbite on the radio, they get pissed. A full minute with one, and they push the button for another station. Eight minutes on a Sunday morning TV show, and people want to hurl ashtrays at the screen. Thinking people, that is.

A full hour of C-Span is too much to endure for most. Life’s too short to spend a lot of time listening to Democrats. But most people can push the radio button or use the TV remote. Nobody in their right mind would watch a Democrat spew their nonsense for a full hour, and if they did, they wouldn’t be in their right mind for long. They’d go nuts. Now think about what it would be like to watch C-Span for a full day, every day, with no escape. Think would it would be like to have to watch it. Which is why we should have profound compassion for the unfortunate house stenographer who went nuts on the house floor during a vote.

Dianne Reidy grabbed a microphone and went into a spiel about freemasons and Jesus. Now try to imagine what her life was like. Unlike most people who can switch off Democrats, she had to listen to them for hours at a time, all week long. And to make it worse, she had to stenographize it. She had to hear Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, and Maxine Waters spew crap all day.

Heartfelt wishes for a speedy recovery, Dianne. But get a job away from Democrat party politics, for your own sake.

Do you know who I am?

Posted on by

I don’t know if that was Hillary’s actual words when she was issued a parking ticket in London, but surely it was her sentiment. She was illegally parked for 45 minutes, then her security people got irate when a hard working and honest traffic warden who was just doing his job ticketed her limousine.

Okay, just what job does she have? None. She doesn’t hold any office, isn’t gainfully unemployed, has no special status other than what she imagines she has, and runs around acting as if she has diplomatic immunity. If she had any class, she’d apologize to the traffic warden and graciously accept and pay the ticket. The rest of us would have to. Pay the ticket, that is.

Making this especially cool is the fact that people supported the traffic warden. But they were also helpful to Mrs. Clinton.

Cllr Daniel Astaire, Westminster City Council cabinet member for business had this to say:

For future reference, Mrs Clinton can now also download a parking app for her iPhone which will tell her in real time where a parking space is in the City of Westminster.

LOL

(For the record, I don’t know what a “Cllr” is. I copied it from the article.)

Update:

Baghdad Bob informs me it’s Chancellor. Thanks, Bob.

Obama creates a senior statesman role

Posted on by

Not for himself, it’s beyond his capability. But he is capable of setting it up for somebody else who is smart enough to see an opening and step into it. Enter Vladimir Putin, formerly of the KGB. Thanks to our young president’s inept handling of his Syria mess, Putin has assumed the role of an international grownup.

First BHO drew a red line in the sand. Then he claimed it wasn’t his red line, meaning he recognized he couldn’t take credit for anything at that point. Or more likely somebody else told him. Or somebody else told him to draw a red line in the first place. Regardless, he’s the president and owns it. Then Kerry answered a reporter’s question and said bombing could be averted if Syria gave up their nerve gas. Then Kerry said it was just hypothetical, but by then Putin seized upon it. So between a reporter’s question, Kerry’s answer that was really a gaffe, and Putin recognizing the wonderful opportunity it gave him, our foreign policy was shaped.

This is what passes for leadership these days.

The ineptitude is a direct result of electing a showboat. Twice. And showboats tend to sink when placed in the water for real. We have a real problem on our hands. We have a president who after five years is behaving like a rookie who has been on the job for two months, and we’re stuck with him for another three years. Fortunately, we have Putin to bail us out. We’ll have to endure Putin lecturing us on our non-exceptionalsm, but thanks to Obama he kind of has a point.

Democrat party delivers affordable housing

Posted on by

Yes, indeed. Courtesy of the Democrat party, you can buy a house in Detroit for one dollar. Now I challenge you to find a Republican run city where you can buy a house that cheap. You won’t be able to. It will cost you a lot of money, like thousands of dollars. Who would want to live in a place like that, where you have to make payments for thirty years just to own it? With deals like houses for a dollar, people will be flocking to Detroit just to get in on it. So get in on the deal now.