Say Anything Blog

There are some very clever automated pothole machines on the market. I have seen them operate. They come on top of the hole, a tooth goes in and clears out the hole and high powered air blows the debris and water out, the hole is sprayed with molten tar which drys the hole and hot asphalt is measured into the hole, rolled and vibrated down until it is as smooth as the surrounding pavement.

It’s fast, it’s efficient, it’s effective and it works. The machines aren’t terribly expensive comparatively. And we always have potholes.

BUT we don’t do it that way. We do it like was done 70 years ago. A crew drives to the pothole chips out the junk, sweeps it out, blows air in it, a little tar and a couple shovels of hot asphalt. Then, a guy with a hand tamper comes along behind and tamps. That’s it. Bad and expensive fix.

Why? Unions and political patronage jobs. In Chicago and Cook County pothole repair crew members are paid 28 per hour plus overtime. I know men with PhD’s who do this. It’s good money. And the work isn’t hard.

These PhDs could be inventing better automated pothole repair machines but they don’t because they are on the payoff. It’s better money to just suck on the political machine teat.

This is what is wrong with unions, political machines and politicians.

It costs money to elect democrats.

I was proud of Mike Huckabee last night as the end came.  He was gracious and inspiring.  I’m not excited about McCain but I’ll vote as I said I would.

We deserve better than we got as a candidate.  Mike was a good one.  I hope he runs again.  Even with the end of the end in sight in Texas he gets 38% of the vote and McCain just cracks 50%. 

It’s my opinion that Mike Huckabee represents more what America is like than any of the other three people left in the race.  He represents more of what the readers of Say Anything are like.

Ok, I get the idea that he believes in Jesus and that’s a hang up.  Sad.  We live in a country where having overt faith somehow is a disqualifier for public office. I know his fair tax program and social spending policies are not what you thought they should be. The reality is Mike Huckabee is that right of Center decent moral patriotic voter that makes up the bulk of the population, democrat or republican.  They are not like the wild eyed left or the jackboot right.  They are people who want to see us do better, all of us.

I will miss him.  What’s really funny is in my circles of friends nearly all of them are or were Huckabee supporters.  But then that’s why I am in that circle I guess.  We didn’t have a conclave.  We just naturally gravitated to the ideas he proclaimed.

If the Republican party wants to win in the fall, it will have to talk to the 38% that voted for Mike in Texas and those who voted in various percentages in other states.  If this race gave christian social conservatives a louder voice, it was worth it. 

We are here and we vote, hear us.

No matter the vote count from last night, the fix is in.  The corruption of Chicago politics which manifests itself in vote rigging and fixed elections has now invaded the Il named democratic party.  The democratic party in function operates just like the crooks in Chicago do things.  Power brokers pretend to have elections and the fools in Chicago pretend to vote.  Then the votes are discarded and the power brokers do what they want.

Hillary won the popular vote last night in 3 primaries.  She does NOT however win the delegate counts that should have produced. Shades of 2000.  Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the election.  Winning in democrat party politics means nothing.

I guess if you are a democrat it doesn’t matter that your vote doesn’t count.  You just go to the polls and pretend that it does.

Some votes are more equal than others.  The superdelegates are the powerbrokers who are going to go in their smoke free rooms and behind a closed door make this decision.

Why bother even having any more primaries?  The fix is in.

And, in case you forgot how they all governed at the end of the 20th century, the fix was always in.  Get ready for the real democrat party in power.  Democracy in inaction.

I think they should just call it what it is, machine politics Chicago Style.  At least in Chicago when our politicos cheat, graft and crook we know it’s company policy.

Today’s WSJ had a very disturbing story about the Muslim culture of death. Alan Dershowitz wrote it. It’s disturbing:

Zahra Maladan is an educated woman who edits a women’s magazine in Lebanon. She is also a mother, who undoubtedly loves her son. She has ambitions for him, but they are different from those of most mothers in the West. She wants her son to become a suicide bomber.

Read the whole thing.

Everywhere I look I see Liberals in positions of power screwing things up.  Everywhere.  How did anyone ever come to the conclusions Liberals Could Lead.  Competent Liberal Leadership is Oxymoronic.

I live in IL.  I live in a conservative area but I am surrounded by graft infested liberals leading the city, county and state.  We don’t have enough prosecutors to put people in jail fast enough to keep up with the supply.

Starting with the Democratic controlled city.  Daley has planted a lot of trees and flowers and has presided over some of the most corrupt political machinism ever conceived by man until you get to Cook County Government led by a legacy son of a county machine boss that refused to take his mafiosa type minions off the county payroll and just raised taxes to make the county and city the highest taxed in the nation. And at the same time county government doesn’t work.

All democrats - all corrupt - all incompetent.

THEN there is the State of Illinois.  We have an Obama like Governor who was a great young promiser of vision who has nearly taken the state into bankruptcy.  It can’t pay it’s bills, it can’t balance it’s books.  And the Governor wants to tear down the hall where the shootings took place and spend 40 mil to replace it.  How dumb can you get and still breath.

This governor tries to raise taxes and spends like a madman.  He’ll go to jail next. It’s Illinois policy that after being Governor you go immediately to jail (mostly).  Obama’s buddy Rezco is in court right now being prosecuted for corruption.  The governor is named as his prime corruptee.  Just like Obama.  This hasn’t come out yet.  Obama is a corrupt as the rest of them.

I know there is corruption on the conservative side, but just look at what happens when young rookies try to run a state.  They raise taxes on the poor and drive jobs out of town.  Nearly every state governed by Liberals is in near collapse.  At least John Corzine of New Jersey recognizes it and is doing something about it.  Of course the rest of the liberals in NJ are having a cat.
They are so stupid.

This is my fear of Obama.  We will export from the epicenter of corruption in Illinois the Obama Machine with Daley, Stroger and Blagojevich to Washington DC.

You have never seen anything like it.  But never fear my conservative Brothers and Sisters.  We have John McCain as the answer.

We are so screwed.

I hope she wins - Tomorrow.  The alternative is terrifying.

I have appreciated George W Bush more than most.  I identify with him a great deal.

Clumsy and inarticulate at times and at others insightful and wise.  Passionate yet tender.  Able to blow Mullahs off the planet with a predator missile without a second thought and able to stand in the place of being accused without shame for things that should not have been laid at his feet.  He’s a man’s man. 

This article by Bob Geldof having spent a few days with Bush is moving and gives a picture of why GWB will be remembered as one of the Greatest Presidents ever.  I know that’s hard to believe today.  He spent too much money. But he’s a man of great principle.  History will reward his steadfastness.

I wish he could have another term.

I have a Friend.  He’s smart.  Bill.

He’s not from Finland, he’s from Northern Minnesota.  But he is smart.

The Wall Street Journal today has an article that asks the question “Why are Finlander Kids so Smart”.  They are consistently the smartest kids on the planet.  American kids don’t even make the top ten.  If world kids graded on a curve we Americans are barely c students.  Read that Obama voters.  The article is really interesting.

Here are my observations:

• Homogeneity.  Diversity is our enemy in American Education.
• No Pre School or Kindergarten.  Kids shouldn’t start school till 7 (for girls) and 10 for boys.
• Libraries are in shopping malls.
• Movies are not dubbed but have subtitles.  Learn to read watching 90210.
• All teachers to even start teaching must have a Masters Degree. 
• Teaching is a merit position, no unions.
• No standardized testing.  No School Sports.  No Proms.  Little homework.  Informal teaching environment ie: kids fall asleep in class and address each other by first names (teacher included).
• Teachers build their own teaching plans.
• Little technology other than computers (the Internet is unfiltered). No power point, Chalkboards not whiteboards.
• Most tests are essay not multiple choice (means the teacher has to do actual work)

Read the whole article.  We could take a lesson in America.  But we won’t.  Liberals couldn’t be elected if people were smart.  (sorry I can’t help myself).

One other thing, when working in Japan I discovered Japanese literature that claimed a common language link of Japanese and Finnish.  Laplanders from northern Finland may have migrated across the frozen north to Japan eons ago.  They look alike.  The language has many similar words.  Is it true?  I don’t know but it’s worth thinking about the similarities.  Maybe they just have better genes.

One Night long ago Al Gore ate a Domino’s Pizza with double pepperoni.  I’ve done this.  I get heartburn and have nightmares.  Evidently so did he.

His nightmare was that we would all bake in the heat and that it was our fault.  One of those little pepperonis told him to call it “GLOBAL WARMING”.  Scary stuff that.

Being a liberal his first volley of blame was vaulted at America.  They hate this country and it’s prosperity driven by productive conservative (and a few liberal) people.  His second was government controls on the economy (run by liberals of course) and higher taxes. 

His nightmare also manifested itself in a book and a power point slide show 187 people have seen to date.

For this the global world doofeses gave him a Nobel Prize. But then they will give it to anyone who is a liberal and kisses global liberal butt. 

Now it turns out Gore would have been better to taken a Pepsid AC and spared the world all this torment.  At the very least I think we should ask him to be the man and UPS that Nobel statue thingy back to Stockholm or wherever the liberals hang out that gave it to him.  He can keep the money.  He need it to pay for that big house he’s heating this winter.

I’m freezing my global arse here in IL.  Gore’s an idiot. 

That’s just my humble opinion.

I run a small business.  Nursery stock brokerage.  I could use an additional $20,000 on my credit line because it looks like I will do more business if I have it.  If I don’t get it I’ll be OK.  Last spring my bank was begging me to take out a higher credit line.  I didn’t need it.  I still don’t.  I paid down last years line.

Then the housing crash came.  Credit crunch.

When I went to the bank to get my credit line expanded they declined.  Terrified is what I would describe them as.  I have decent credit.  785.  Not perfect.  Not horrid.

But, I’m self employed.  I don’t bring home a steady paycheck.  I’m seasonal.  It’s worked up till now.

If you lend me money I will hire, I will buy, I will sell, I will allow others to sell, I will allow others to buy who will sell.  I will add to the economic engine.  Lowering the Interest rate is insignificant even if it went to zero if banks are terrified to lend money.

Lending folks to buy a house generates some jobs but is pretty temporary.  Lending some babe money to spend on baubles and bangles at the bauble store in the mall (baubles that come from China does nothing for the economy).  The rebate was right up there with terminal stupid.

If the folks in Washington want to fire up the economy in one easy stroke: make money for business expansion, business formation and creation available in spades. 

Consumerism is far less important than economic expansion.  Help people grow and expand business at the fundamental level and the rest will work.

What’s funny is in the rest of the world most economic development focuses on micro loans.  But in the USA there is nearly zero emphasis on such things.  We concentrate on trying to encourage behemoth corporations to grow.  Oil Company Incentives, Ethanol Subsidies.

Why not find the guy who wants to risk it all to build a better mousetrap and incent him or her.  Then watch things take off.

Head firmly placed well up the anal cavity policies from the Washington dopes on all sides of Every Aisle.  Kerry’s proposal is silly. SBA doesn’t lend anyone any money at all. 

Loosen credit for small business formation and the economy WILL recover.

a listener who stated that when listening to Barack Obama speak, “it harkens back to when I was younger and I used to watch those deals with Hitler, how he would excite the crowd and they’d come to their feet and scream and yell.” Sullivan then played a “side-by-side comparison” of a Hitler speech and an Obama speech. Sullivan mimicked the crowd during both speeches, yelling, “Yay! Yay!” When a later caller complained that Sullivan was “denigrating” Obama with the comparison, Sullivan said he wouldn’t play it again
Do effective speakers make effective presidents?
Public speaking skills have long been a chief determinant of whom Americans elect as president. But should they be?

With the presidential primary season clomping toward its close, voters readying themselves for the general election must ask: Do effective communicators necessarily make effective commanders in chief?

This story tells why people vote Democratic.  Doesn’t mean there aren’t culturally aware liberals.  Just not many.  I know some.  Mostly I know people who vote democrat who historically can’t find their rear with both hands.

Here is an excerpt from the article that shows this syndrome:

Among 1,200 students surveyed:

•43% knew the Civil War was fought between 1850 and 1900.

•52% could identify the theme of 1984.

•51% knew that the controversy surrounding Sen. Joseph McCarthy focused on communism.

In all, students earned a C in history and an F in literature, though the survey suggests students do well on topics schools cover. For instance, 88% knew the bombing of Pearl Harbor led the USA into World War II, and 97% could identify Martin Luther King Jr. as author of the “I Have a Dream” speech.

Fewer (77%) knew Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped end slavery a century earlier.

“School has emphasized Martin Luther King, and everybody teaches it, and people are learning it,” says Chester Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank. “What a better thing it would be if people also had the Civil War part and the civil rights part, and the Harriet Tubman part and the Uncle Tom’s Cabin part.”

Not all liberals are ignorant, but most Ignorant people are liberal.  I live in Chicagoland.  The depth of ignorance is phenomenal.  So is the liberal bent.

If you do nothing else, you must watch this video.  Since this is an excerpt from an Oprah TV show with way too many closeups of Oprah, I’m always suspect. (I’m not an Oprah fan).

This is a redux of the last lecture given by a dying cancer patient who happened to be a College Professor. His attitude is one I want to cultivate.  When my brother John was dying many years ago he exhibited an attitude very much like this almost to the last.  You will be happy you invested the next 10 minutes of your time.  It’s not weepy.  It’s inspiring.  Be a Tigger not an Eor.

Tip of the hat to Joy.

I thought this was a great explanation of the tax rebate program just passed.  I got this today from a friend and don’t THINK I saw it before.  If it’s already been posted.  Apologies.  Thought it was cute.

If you don’t understand maybe this will help explain it:

50,000 people went to a baseball game, but the game was rained out. A refund was then due.

The team was about to mail refunds when a group of Congressional Democrats stopped them and suggested that they send out the ticket refunds based on the Democrat National Committee’s interpretation of fairness.

Originally the refunds were to be paid based on the price each person had paid for the tickets. Unfortunately that meant most of the refund money would be going to the ticket holders that had purchased the most expensive tickets. This, according to the DNC, is considered totally unfair. A decision was then made to pay out the refunds in this manner:

People in the $10 seats will get back $15. After all, they have less money to spend on tickets to begin with. Call it an “Earned Income Ticket Credit.” Persons “earn” it by having few skills, poor work habits, and low ambition, thus keeping them at entry-level wages.

People in the $25 seats will get back $25, because it “seems fair.”

People in the $50 seats will get back $1, because they already make a lot of money and don’t need a refund. After all, if they can afford a $50 ticket, they must not be paying enough taxes.

People in the $75 luxury box seats will each have to pay an additional $25 because it’s the “right thing to do”.

People walking past the stadium that couldn’t afford to buy a ticket for the game each will get a $10 refund, even though they didn’t pay anything for the tickets. They need the most help. Sometimes this is known as Affirmative Action.

Now do you understand?