Art Imitating Preventing Life

So today at work, as usual, there was a crash, followed by snarky commentary:

Stuff: (crash)
RR: Safety first!
NP: Safety third!
VFD: Safety somewhere in the consideration, but let's not get carried away.

This sort of amusement happens more-or-less constantly at our company, so this one slipped into my personal /dev/null. Then to my surprise, I read a story from Skegness (in England, as you know) that illustrates the principle that we can, indeed, get carried away with safety considerations.

Skegness has a jolly fisherman for a mascot. There's an antique statue and everything. The statue has its arms out to the sides, all gay & skippin' around & whatnot. Well there are plans being laid for another statue. This replacement was to have its arms tight in by the body. This, of course, prevents children swinging on the outstretched arms, slipping off, getting hurt, and bringing lawsuits. The decision to be safer than reasonable so outraged the citizens that the plan to sissify the statue is being reconsidered.

Because [deleted] the kids. And safety. They'll figure it out after a couple of falls anyway.

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England used to be the power of the western world, and truly manly beards were in evidence everywhere. They barely decided not to have Awesome be part of their name but settled on Great instead. Now look. Look and point and laugh, and be sure to never, ever vote Democrat.

So, What About It, VFD?

Next February, if the Republicrats don't take the Senate and maintain the House (with decisive majorities in both) there will either be another Deem-and-Pass shenanigans sessions to un-pass Obamacare, or sometime between now and the end of 2015 somebody will die in the fight over who gets to say if individuals must buy insurance. In a gunfight. Perhaps with some of those 16,000 new IRS agents and their new sawn-off shotguns.

You can't force some people to buy bygod-ANYTHING. If you try to force them to do what they don't want to do, they will use their own force right back. Why do you think small arms have been selling better and better every year when the rest of the economy is in a Depression?

I don't want a bloody war in my United States. The way things are going, however, one can almost hear the whine of attack helicopter engines spinning up . . . to go kill some "loud people" who just refuse to pay their penalty taxes.

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Borepatch, a bit surprisingly, is giddy as a schoolgirl over how bad this decision is for the Democrats. We'll see.

Old Cars Let You Drive

New cars will prevent you driving.

Wait, what?

Your car has a brake and a throttle pedal. Pushing each of them does something different. Pushing both of them at the same time is advanced kung-fu and helps you win races on the track. The NHTSA also thinks that you suck at driving so much that you would never intentionally use the brake and throttle together, and they want to change your new cars. In the future, the idea is that using both controls together will prevent one of them from working.

Thinking like this leads to padded phone poles in London so you can TXT MSG on your phone without looking up and you don't get hurt by walking headlong into a steel post. Seriously, they do this.

Call me an angry white-hispanic male if you want, but I repeat: throttle should be a cable or a linkage, and brakes should be straight hydraulics. These systems should not be related in any way.

Hat tip: Instapundit

Coming Soon to a Government Near You?

Man arrested at his kid's school, jailed overnight, house searched for illegal weapons . . . because a 4 year-old girl thinks of her daddy as the hero who shoots bad guys and monsters, and drew a picture of a man with a gun. In Canada.

Man fined $200 for littering . . . for pouring out warm water from his water bottle onto the street. In Australia.

This is what happens when people let their governments get out of hand. What are YOU doing to check YOUR government?

THIS Is What Soft Tyranny Looks Like

• You move into a house
• The land nearby is covered with weeds and trash
• You can't even see around the corners when you drive
• Residents waiting at the bus stop are crowded by blackberry bushes
• So you clean it up
• And the local council says you are "Cultivating" and
• orders you to pay $100 for a retroactive license
• or you have to put the car suspension parts back on the land
• and plant weeds again.

In England, where the Nanny State is approaching its zenith, this is The Way Things Are. The slope from "no cell phones in school zones" to "no removing weeds without a license" is very steep and very slippery. Where do you draw the line? After all, all the regulations sound perfectly reeeeeeeasonable, don't they? You are not against people enjoying the land, are you? What kind of a person would object to licenses for cultivating public land?

The Good People did nothing in England and the Evil has prospered.

Don't be too amused - we are hard on their heels down this road. I know an arborist who had to pay $20,000 to have trees planted, after he cleared someone's private property of . . . unwanted trees.

But, surely, someone else will run for office where you live. Not because they want control, do they spend their time getting control. No, surely they are dedicated public seeeeervants writing the rules! Surely! I mean, otherwise you would have to GET OFF YOUR DUFF and look into your local government and maybe even (gasp) give up Friday night happy hour and attend City Council meetings!

Oh HELL No!

~wherein I use bad words~

The idiot box is on for background noise in the house and some fool left it on CSPAN2. They are talking about regulating prescription drugs. I know a lot of it is piss in the wind, but . . . when people are agreeing with each other that maybe we should limit the amount of pain killers to (e.g.) 3 days' worth after a wisdom tooth extraction with an option to refill the prescription, there is a problem. Of course it's D(imwit) Senator Blumenthal nodding his head along with this example as if it makes some kind of sense.

Let's be clear: This is fucking America, and if you think it is okay to not give enough pain killers to kill all my pain after a major surgery, you need to be shot so somebody can deny you all the pain killer you need. When I got all four of my wisdom teeth out, I spent a good solid week bombed out of my mind on whatever they gave me at the dispensary. I have no idea what happened that week but evidently I didn't starve to death. I for damn sure (I think? I dunno, I was high) was in no kind of shape to be driving out to the dispensary again three days later.

I could give a god-damn if you don't like that I should have excess drugs sitting unused in my medicine cabinet. Keep on with the DEA "takeback" days if you like, but limiting patients' necessary medication so as to prevent the maybe possibly hypothetically possibly maybe access of some unauthorized user to those drugs is asinine and anti-American.

Home = Castle, Idiot Judges To the Contrary Notwithstanding

If a COP comes into your house with no reason, you can't resist him. Because shut up. And git on der floor. And show your papers. SRSLY Indiana? Are you people going to tolerate this?

Hat tip: Sipsey Street Irregulars

I of course am no advocate of killing police officers and disappearing their bodies, and a COP with an on-body camera is a dead man who does indeed tell tales . . . but I can't help thinking that knives will go through most body armor with a determined thrust, and nobody wears neck armor on regular city patrols (yet). Hint for all policemen everywhere: if you don't have a damn good reason for being there, or at least a valid warrant, stand by to have your ass handed to you by a homeowner in the right, regardless of what the 4th circus has to say on the matter.

You Suck, Georgia.

The whole State. ALL of you. There is no other explanation for this idiocy than that Georgia, and Georgians, SUCK.

What assclown thinks pseudoephedrine should be a pharmacy-only drug? Why, that would be ALL of Georgia, in Congress assembled in the form of their Elected Heroes. Sudafed is necessary for life if you (like 96.9% of Central Texans) have or have had a cold, or allergies, or both at once and are teething as has happened to (to date) all of my children old enough to have teeth. For those who missed it, my first-and-longest rant on the topic of restricting sales of pseudoephedrine is here

Application for Waste Services! Film at 11:00!

Bad language alert. Turn back now lest thy delicate sensibilities be offended!

Nice. We just got a letter in the mails from the city (my the city) saying we have to use their trash service.

Hold on there.

We bought our house in 2003. It was in an unincorporated part of the county. When we got the house, we entered into individual private contracts with various companies to provide us with what we needed (electricity, water, etc) and asked nobody permission to do so. In Texas, you can even pick your electricity provider. But in Davesville, you get to use the company the city decides is best, when it comes to your trash. This was not an issue for us, as we were not a part of Davesville. Then in 2008, against our will and over the objections of a minority of the property owners around us, we were annexed into Davesville. We had, to date, used exactly zero city services at our house. Thanks very much citizen! You may continue to use zero city services, but we will now be charging you an additional $600+ per year in taxes for the privilege of living within the expanded boundaries of Davesville!

Thanks, asshole.

Anyways, back to the pain-in-my-ass at hand. Three years ago, my street had two flavors of trash cans on the street: bigass blue and bigass green. These were provided by two private companies that sent bigass trash trucks lumbering down the street twice a week to pick up the bigass trash cans the people would roll out to the curb. Then the city of Davesville came along and annexed us. Now once a week there are TWO BIGASS TRASH CANS at the curb in front of every house. There's a green one for trash and a blue one for recycling. The other six days of the week, there are two bigass trash cans cluttering up the front or side of every house. Well, not every house. OUR house and one across the street are the only two that still feature only the one bigass blue trash can. These are hauled to the curb as often as TWICE a week. Sometimes I even SKIP a trash day, because I get service twice a week BOOYAH!

Well, now we have this letter. It says (to paraphrase): "Our records indicate that you people have chosen to use a private company of your own choosing to collect your trash. This is unacceptable comerades! You vill use zee State-approved garbage company only!"

We now have the privilege of filling out an application for a Waste Utility Account with the City. We have the distinct honor of filing a $25 deposit with Davesville in case we (who have not missed a trash payment in going on eight years) turn out to be deadbeats. We also get to use this joyous occasion to provide Davesville officials with a "Copy of Valid Identification" along with our application for a solid waste account, to prove that we are not a bunch of godless heathen illegal aliens from France or whatnot.

So here I am venting my spleen at you (as usual) before I write up a nastygram to Davesville about what they can do with their bigass blue and green trash cans. Follows the letter I would like to send. It will be toned-down somewhat in the final draft.

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Dear faceless City of Davesville bureaucrat,

I am in receipt of an undated form letter from the City of Davesville informing me that I must desist using the company I have used for the last eight years for solid waste disposal, and begin using a company chosen by the City. This is a sack of horseshit and I'll tell you why:

Requiring me to pay my money to use the services of a company you choose is FASCISM. Google "sic semper tyrannis" to see what red-blooded freemen think of this sort of thing.

You can take your application for a waste utility account and shove it. If you to have your people send their bigass trash cans to my house and have their trucks pick up my trash, bring it. I'm not applying for shit. I live here. Send them here. I will pay them.

While you're shoving things, take your recycling bin and shove that, too. Like hell I'm going to presort my recyclables from my trash. It all goes into the same bin inside the house and it will all be going in the same bin outside the house.

If you want photo identification, you can call and set up an appointment and I'll show it to you. You're on the wrong track if you think I'm sending a copy of my drivers license to an unknown place with unknown ID security protocols to be shoved in an unlocked drawer in some office. Of course, this is a bullshit requirement anyway. I am a citizen both of Texas and of the United States and have been since birth. I have lived here for eight years and never missed paying a trash company bill. Send the bills and they will be paid.

The bill that won't be paid is the $25 deposit. See the foregoing paragraph and take my fucking word for it that I'm not going to welsh on my trash bills. I refuse to pay extra, up front, for the privilege of being forced to change my trash company. You want to change companies, fine I don't give a flying fuck but you can keep out of my wallet. Send bills, and send trash trucks. What is $25 going to get you? Nothing is what, because I'll still be here, paying trash bills, a year from now and you'll eventually refund my deposit to me if I pay it. Will I have interest coming to me? Are you going to give me $5 for the honor of holding my cash for a year? No? Then fuck off. Oh wait, you'll waive the deposit if I set up an automatic bank draft to pay the bill? How generous of you! How about you'll waive it anyway.

P.S. like hell am I giving you a work or cell phone number, and you'll have to start guessing if you want my email address. I'll be putting my trash bin out twice a week like I do currently, even though it will only be picked up once, just to piss everybody off. The recycle bin you will find beside the house with a potato plant growing in it. Please don't mess with it until the plant dies.

Here's hoping your office burns down.

Sincerely,

VFD.

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It's actually cheaper than the current service we use, but that's not the point. It's the principal of the thing.

No Blogging. Busy.

All evening I've been online, doing research. It's time to make a decision: stockpile incandescent lamps, or start using something else. My Darling Wife gets headaches and I get cranky from fluorescents and I'm not dishing out for a premium high-frequency-switched CFL to avoid the flickering. Plus the color rendering sucks. Like hell I'm spending $30 on ONE LED lamp. That leaves halogen or incandescent. Halogens are supposed to last 4x as long, and cost 4x as much if you shop around. Incandescents are the comfy, familiar, soon-to-be-illegal status quo.

So it looks like I'm off to the local Mega-Lo-Mart to buy either a GE Edison or a Philips Halogena, just to see what it's like for us in our house under a halogen bulb. Or else I'll just buy rough-duty bulbs for all the fixtures after we run out of our hoarded incandescents. Because it's not bad for the environment if a bulb is rated for harsher environments.

Wait, what?

That's right kiddies. My favorite exception to the law which was passed to please lobbyists for the expensive light bulb manufacturers: if it's a specialty bulb, you can still sell it after the ban. Need a 100W incandescent in 2012? Buy a ceiling fan vibration-resistant type and slap it in the stationary ceiling fixture. It still burns the same 100W for the same 1700 lumens, but because it is "Special" it does not kill Mother Earth as badly. So saith the United States Congress. What a load of [deleted].

I guess there was a little time to rant blog after all.

SRSLY Salad Bars?

Again?! The Department of Homeland Security is warning you about poisoned salad bars? As if they hadn't been cesspools of thank-god-for-sneeze-shields this whole time!

Obamacare Is/Is Not Constitutional. Depending.

There will be a circuit split or I'm a monkey's nephew. This is going to the supreme Court of the United States. The judges will look back to Wickard v. Filburn where the guy tried to grow wheat for his own private use and the Nine Black Robes said it did affect interstate commerce for him to not engage in interstate commerce. Judge Norman Moon's decision will stand.

It is up to YOU to elect Congressmen and Senators in the 2012 election that will repeal this law. Then they must also pass a law that says "we hereby declare that our power over interstate commerce does not extend to non-commerce." This may even have to be a Constitutional amendment. Otherwise the precedents will stand, and the government For, By, and Of the People can force you (at gunpoint) to buy literally anything for any reason they deem worthy. Individual liberty is dead. Long live Amerika.

Or am I wrong? I'll know within the next 23 months.

Welfare Agents

We need them. Specifically, we need them to apply "means testing" prior to handing out 'government benefits' to the moocher class.

Click here, look at the photo, and come back for my commentary.

I have a TV half that size. I got it third-hand and the $6 universal remote put the total outlay for the set up to $16. This woman probably bought it new, and is probably not watching VHS tapes on it, either. If you have a $50/month phone bill, a $90/month cable package, smoke a $5 pack of cigarrettes every two days, and are whinging about how hard it is to get the State to pay to heat the home in which you OBVIOUSLY CAN live with only one heated room, tough cookies. Get over yourself, and out of my pocketbook, freeloader.

Means testing: a good idea until we can get both that AND a law prohibiting voting in the same 12 month period as the receipt of any government aid.

Minor Victories In The (Losing?) War

I heard on the radio news a couple of days ago that there is now a federal BAN in place on the buying, selling, and reselling of drop-side cribs. A couple dozen children over a few decades were killed and I'm willing to bet a dollar almost all of them were from cribs which were not properly assembled or maintained. But, because you people are all dumb masses, you must be protected from something which has made life easier for millions of people for many, many years. The following is an edited transcript of an IM conversation I had with the guy who works in front of me, when the radio announced this farce:

VFD: Stupid people making life harder for everyone again
VFD: drop-side cribs now banned.
VFD: the kind that have a side that slides up/down? Yeah, you can't buy, sell, or resell one.
VFD: X-(
VFD: Good thing I gots mine
VFD: I outran the safety nazis great success
NP: so what happens if you're a "little person"
VFD: My Darling Wife is 5'2.5" and she sure likes her a drop-side crib
VFD: we've had TWO and nobody died
VFD: Not safe, not legal
VFD: like cars
VFD: and guns
VFD: and booze
VFD: and electricity
VFD: and fire
VFD: and rocks
VFD: and pencils
VFD: and water
VFD: you know how many babies died from dihydrogen monoxide ingestion?
VFD: ban that shit!
(NP asks out loud if this is water)
VFD: H2
VFD: O
VFD: let me go somewhere for a minute before I really get spun up

We're not as far down the road as England is, but we're headed that way.

"Don't Touch My Junk"

Don't you love it when another woman slips a probing finger into your warm, dry vagina? How about when it is a stranger? Isn't it just so exciting? You know how hot it makes you when a stranger carresses your plump, full busoms? Oh, just WOW.

What? You mean that's not the sort of thing you like to have done TO you by a government agent in front of a witness and a camera? Then what are you doing trying to go on an airplane without going through the look-at-you-naked full body backscatter imaging scanner? You silly goose! You are going to be naked or you are going to be naked and masturbated by a TSA "agent" with the authority to put you in jail if you refuse in the wrong way. No you don't get to know what the wrong way is in advance.

You know it's okay, because it's someone of your same sex touching your erogenous zones and fondling your reproductive organs. I mean, for me personally, it makes it all better that a dude is grabbing my scrotum and penis. Who wants a WOMAN doing that? Of COURSE it's just fine to be searched by someone of the same sex!

What? You're not a criminal? You just wanted to go visit your sick Aunt Janice in Peoria? No, you are mistaken. You are a criminal. You are a potential terrorist*. You fucking WILL be searched down to your skin, whether you like it or not. Or you can drive, like I do.

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*You are a terrorist, unless you're a muslim. THEN you can go in with a garment you could hide a bomb or rifle in, and they can't search you. Because that would be offensive. Also because your co-religionists murder people.

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Late breaking news:

If a girl starts kissing a boy, she has to let him fuck her up the anus, because she can't stop once a make-out session starts, even when you come to something along the line to which she objects. Oh, wait, I mean a man refused to allow a security screening to continue when it became clear his penis would be touched by a total stranger as a precondition for his flying on a vacation trip. This apparently is a violation of Federal law. Even though he was escorted out of the terminal by TSA "agents" they want to try to nail him for $11k. Nice.


This is not the way. Israel is a juicier and nearer target, and you know how they prevent airline terrorism? Face to face, and with profiling PLUS random screening. Grille people and see how they squirm as they are questioned by a Hard Person. You don't need to engage in sex acts with children to ensure proper airline security. I shake my head that this is even a question.

Well, That's It For England, Then.

When you can sue your boss for something a customer said at your business, when you were not there, and it was not directed at you, but sort-of was related to your third cousin (once removed), and win damages from your boss, your boss is sunk.

Welcome to the place where England used to be.

So, Britons, how's that whole "subjects" thing working out for you? Ever think about following our example, do you? No? Well, for heaven's sake don't joke about it at work!

Insurance Rate Increases: Too Early To Tell

The radio news, in typical leftist fashion, quoted without comment some idiot who said it is too early to tell if the changes being forced on your private health insurance plan will cause your rates to rise.

It was too early to tell before they started the debate about the law. Now, we are assured of a certainty that you will very likely drop your health insurance because the rates will go up so much. This, by the way, is intentional.

Let's see . . . effective tomorrow, you get:

No lifetime limits. You might cost a hundred million dollars, and it will be covered. No, that couldn't cost your insurer more.

No co-pay for preventive care. You might actually GO to the doctor twice a year like "they" say you should now, instead of your (my) habit of seeing a doctor once in a decade or so. No, that won't cost more, either.

Specialists may be designated as primary care providers. No, seeing a doctor with a $340 office visit fee vs. an $85 fee won't cost more either, especially if you go to see them more often because it's "free."

Your health care payment insurance plan is about to get A LOT more expensive. Then you will drop the plan. The insurance company will have less revenue. Then the guy in the next cubicle will get sick (because after all, disease only happens to "other" people) and come up with a fat medical bill. He dropped his insurance at the same time you did, but now his "pre-existing condition" won't prevent him from getting insurance. So he'll sign up for insurance at the hospital, juice the insurance company for a few thousand dollars, and drop his plan again. This is what the people who wrote Obamacare WANT to have happen.

Wait, what? Why would they want that?

Because this is a simple recipe for financial ruin for private health insurance companies. Your only resort when the last private plan goes under: The Government Option. They WANT to control your access to health care, so you will side with them at election time. "Those mean-ol' Republicrats want to take your health care away!!!" and then you will vote for the Demicans, who will care for you as a proper Nanny State should.

I Wouldn't Pay, Either.

The joker who called off his stunt to burn some paper is going to get a $150,000 bill from his local authorities for protecting him while he didn't burn it. He has said he will refuse to pay, and would have refused the security if he had known they intended to provide it.

Overreacting: It's what government does best.

200 police officers, including the SWAT team, showed up 'just in case' at the church where 50 people regularly attend. This, despite the public calling-off of the koran burning. What a bunch of maroons they have in Florida!

Hat tip: Moonbattery

Democrats Lose Pissing Amendment Contest

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell*" was to be repealed by an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill. It has gone down flaming in flames.

The nightmare "DREAM" Act** was to be crammed down our throats by a similar amendment. Anti-Americans and illegal immigrants (and their children) can keep dreaming.

The MSM reporting on this is of course pure demagoguery. They are not, strangely, blaming the Democrats, whose fault it is. The ______ Party (fill in the blank) has a majority of the seats in the US Senate. (hint: the answer begins with "D")

Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid refused to allow any Republican-endorsed amendments to the appropriations measure. This is partisan politics at its worst. In retaliation, the election-year-stalwart Republicans in the Senate stood together and refused to allow the bill to go forward. Democrats overplayed their hand, and it is to be hoped they have missed their last, best chance for a generation to get these two measures passed. May they all go home, campaign, and lose their election bids in peace.

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*I have made my own position on the DADT policy quite clear.

**As for the DREAM Act, if it were such a great bill, why would they have to amend it like a sore thumb to the normally must-pass Defense Appropriations bill? Hmmmmm? The Dream act is another Nanny State Communist policy. If you can get the means to come here, you can arrange a trip back. If you can't arrange a trip back to wherever you came from, you have intentionally stranded yourself with a newborn child in a foreign country where you have no job, no relatives, no home, and do not speak the language. This is a sign of an unfit parent but good luck getting THAT legislated. So you have just foisted off on the US American taxpayer a $10,000 hospital bill and given us +1 citizen. Fine. Now go home. And take your child with you. When they achieve majority, or when you can get from the back of the line to the front of the line, we will welcome them, or them and you, to our country the legal way. If you bring your illegal immigrant self with your illegal immigrant children here, and they come across all sorts of hardship because you broke the law, they should blame YOU, not me, for their hardships. In other words, don't come into my house through the window in the middle of the night uninvited and then complain about what we serve for breakfast.

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P.S. if you DO come into my house uninvited in the middle of the night, I may be giving you a lead pill instead of (e.g.) scrambled eggs with toast and orange juice.

When Should You Cash Out Your 401(k)?

November 3rd, 2010, if Democrats retain control of the House, or if they can patch together a 2/3 majority. Boortz predicted today that they will have seized your private retirement accounts (for your own good) within a year. Union pension plans will come later. Something tells me you won't be able to cash out after they rob you.

Yes, this is old news; I only mention it because the hearings were set for today and tomorrow, and that's got 'em buzzing again.