No. More. Stupid.
Holy Crap on a Grape Flavored Ugly Stick!
Yeah, here it is…the second installment of No. More. Stupid.
Please read this! Help me help us all. Repeat after me.
NO. MORE. STUPID.
Can you see where this is going? This is where I continue on my little tryst down You-Have-Got-To-Be-F###ing-Kidding-Me Lane.
Israel needs to take their war to Hamas and not to the Palestinians.
(Just as important. People need to help each other not be like lemmings.)
Where to start? Well…first and foremost, I think a big round of jimmy-kicking needs to be given to the Israeli military and a few extra for the genius that authorized a stealth attack on a boat chuck full of scared-shitless people with nothing but sticks to defend themselves. These guys had the means and the power to easily take that flotilla without injuring a single passenger…instead…they killed 10 and wounded many many more. But I am soooo not going to leave the blame there. This blockade-running flotilla was organized and being led by a veritable army of very seasoned and rather well-known individuals that should have known better than to challenge a military force that is well-known for a zero-tolerance policy. I can say very clearly that there were people there that KNEW that challenging the military as they boarded would be a HUGE mistake….and they still did it.
Where does that leave me? Simple…I weep for the losses of all those families that day. Those responsible include more than just the man trained to pull a trigger. There were shepherds on that flotilla that I am pretty sure could have defused and managed the situation, just as there were military leaders that could have made this a lot safer. But I am not their judge. The rest of the world will happily place the blame somewhere without restraint, and further perpetuating what I refer to as…”the stupid”. Please don’t think I am sympathetic in the least to Israel…quite the opposite, but nothing good can come form deliberately impaling yourself on the spear. Hold yourself and those around you to the same respect for life so that you will not in action or by deliberate inaction cause harm. It’s not an easy path, but it’s insanely self-fulfilling…but unfortunately I don’t think anyone had that idea in mind when the flotilla tried to run the blockade.
I have linked a lot of decent articles related to this issue HERE, read to your hearts content.
How many ways, in how many days, can we let big business take a great big dump in our livelihood?
Next on my list of things I need to air out is (surprise surprise) BP and it’s shining example of why we need to get the hell away from the oil industry, and more importantly make that industry so unprofitable that the mere notion of drilling 2 miles below sea-level to get raw fuel so repulsive that they wont be allowed to drill anywhere…ever again. OH BUT WAIT! They already did it! I have some really good recommended viewing, strangely enough…the 60 Minutes show from May 16th was the best most realistic interview of both survivors and the initial investigator.
60 Minutes – The Blowout – Part One
60 Minutes – The Blowout – Part Two
60 Minutes – The Blowout – Part Three
Google News
Now these links are just the tip of the iceberg, but the videos give you some really clear and unbiased “what-the-F##-happened” without a month’s worth of political posturing to muddle it up. There are some worse things happening though.
Captain Obvious says:
“The spill might have worse effects than previously determined.”
I think this is about all the Captain Obvious we need right now. The rest of what we hear and read about this disaster needs to be factual. in bullshitting everyone, they become ill-prepared. Now, I am a far cry from a chemist, and I am quite obviously not an environmental scientist, but I am a bit of what you might want to call..”well-read”. I happen to know that with only one pint of raw crude you can destroy any plant life living in a square yard, and anything that cant protect itself and move away will die in it too. Now lets do the math:
There are 8 pints in a gallon.
There are 42 Gallons in a Barrel
There are estimates of over 15000 barrels a day leaking for over 49 days
This equates to 246960000 pints of oil.
Now if we only had to deal with the oil, we’d actually be more than able to handle this… it would only utterly decimate about 80 square miles of land. Unfortunately…the 30,870,000 gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico…is in the frickin Gulf of Mexico, where it is slowly diluting into the water, and thereby into everything in and of the Gulf. Now lets say Tony is a really nice guy, and says that the water only dilutes at a ratio of say…1 gallon of oil for every 10 of water.
The problem here, is that diluting the oil doesn’t lessen its potential damage to animals and plant life enough to keep them from getting too sick to live through. So now, if you are playing ball here, we have a true ecological disaster coming that we’re nowhere near prepared to deal with.
The end result is not a few hundred miles of coastline.
It’s 800+ square miles of destructive water that’s still growing and diluting.
..and yes…I am being very very modest about the impact, because I just read another 3rd party analysis that places the impact at about 7-8x larger than my dilution formula.
I hate to say it man…well actually I don’t…this is horrible. Unthinkable. When I go back and watch that 60 minutes video (which by the way is only now being treated with any credibility for some inexplicable reason) I get so incredibly angry. BP, you’re already making insane amounts of money, hows about making the world a little BETTER with all that clout instead of screwing with our childrens’ future.
Yeah, see that’s the other point of common sense that the media is only hinting at. BP isn’t going to speculate…I don’t blame them. It’s going to be years, and I am sooo not talking about 1 or 2 years. What does the worlds most powerful oil company working with the world’s most powerful military have to take this on?
Absolutely nothing. Who is going to reimburse the thousands of businesses that will be forced to close? How many families are being fed from that industry? I haven’t even touched on all the animals that are getting killed because of BP’s need to save a goddamn dollar.
Why I am mad? Because i think Dolphins are not “as” smart as we are, I think they are way way more intelligent, and we just totally ruined their homes in the gulf for a decade. Because The number of displaced families from the destroyed gulf industry is going to be a stresser on every other state those families are forced to relocate to, and most importantly because this was soo F###ING avoidable that I think that BP should be forced to profit share ALL their profits (not stocks..income) over the next ten years with the families that are displaced by their craptastic drilling practices.
Texas is a beautiful state filled with great people that carry guns and don’t have to pay a state income tax…dumping oil in our back yard isn’t a really great idea. Watch what happens when Texans start feeling the pinch on this. BP is going to have to answer to an entire state of pissed off armed people with half a mind to put their ass-kickin boots on.
On to my next piece of rantaholism…
Immigration.
More importantly, the insanity it is quickly creating in people of all nationalities, legally and illegally residing in the United States.
The quick and the dirty, our immigration system has failed to regulate the number of people crossing our borders illegally. Our cultural policy of “blame everything on the government” allowed us to completely destroy the pride nationalized citizens had in becoming American. Our society now thinks that even though it is wrong, we need a method either quickly removing illegal immigrants from the United States, or a method by which they can become citizens that would be acceptable to the United States citizenry as a whole.
What you know:
Arizona made it legal to check the ID of anyone a police officer thinks may be in the United States illegally.
What you don’t know:
These rights are already afforded to Border Patrol and all Federal Officers assigned to Immigration-related task forces. It’s already State Law in almost every state of the union that you provide valid state identification upon request by any law enforcement officer, Federal, State, or Local. All Arizona did was enabled their popo’s to help the border patrol.
My mom has told me this story many times. When my family immigrated to the U.S., my grandfather forbade anyone in the family to speak anything but English. Why, because this is America, the language of preference in almost every social and business demographic is English…yes…even in Texas and California. Up north it’s not Central-American Spanish, it’s Canadian-French. But the ideal is the same…everyone learns English, or they are at a severe disadvantage. Now I am not saying that my Grandfather was 100% right, but my family speaks English, and most fo them speak French still too…but there was NEVER any doubt about which language was to be prioritized. Unfortunately cultural complacency and apathy have led to an extreme of the exact opposite. In Texas, our public schools are forced to use curriculum necessitating the fluency of Spanish instead of English. This puts ALL children at a huge disadvantage.
I think that it should be mandatory that children learn at least one additional language before they are even out of elementary, but I do NOT think that the educational system should be force feeding Spanish to kids based on the decisions of the SBOE, who has of late proven very clearly that they are incapable to making experienced decisions.
So where are we? Simple. If you’re hoping that the Immigration Reform includes a nice little blanket amnesty grant (like Bush tried to do a few years ago)…you can forget it.
Too many people are feeling the economic pinch right now and Texas hospitals are being completely taken advantage of by people that aren’t in the country legally because they know the hospitals are (and have been for some time) obligated to treat them in any potentially life threatening situation.
If you are expecting the government to aggressively pursue illegal immigrants back across the border, you’ll be disappointed. Here’s why.
There is a very significant demographic in Texas that are legal, naturalized citizens of the U.S. that are from Mexico. These are voters, and politicians like voters. They like them so much that they are willing to ignore the polls that say 70% of America thinks that despite its potential for abuse, a law allowing law enforcement officers to verify a person’s resident status within the country.
My bottom line? Two changes need to occur. First, they NEED to change enable law enforcement to do their jobs. If someone is in the states illegally, they are here illegally. By that same token, I think people and families that work here and can prove they are making the effort to become AMERICANS should definitely be afforded the opportunity. A program then enables people to be proud of being here (legally) would turn public opinion into gold in this, and no one is willing to put in the work for it. Sad really. I know some awesome hard-workng families around my place that truly deserve to be here without the threat of being shipped off. At the same time, people move to other countries with criminal pretenses as well…
Okay so that it for now. Comment, Rant back at me, whatever, but whatever you do, care about it. 😉
-Tony
The illegal issue can be solved easily. Fines. Large and unwavering fines to ANY business that hires illegals or does not vet its employees properly. There is no reason to get rid of the public programs that are being “over used”. Most of these (re: Parkland etc) are good things that we as a society should have. If you take away the source of income, you take away the problem. No one will be jumping the border to enter the land of NO opportunity. This enforcement will have to be all encompassing (fruit pickers, day labor, roofers, Gardner, etc). This solution would have an initial cost that is less than hiring more border guards to keep hauling them back and forth and would actually create its own funding after it got rolling.
the real problem is blame. Illegals are like everything else – a red herring. They keep our minds off of what is really happening in this country. Before the illegal “crisis” there was morality, and gay marriage, and abortion, hell i will even throw in global warming. These are all weapons of mass distraction. Government workings are a lot like sausage making. It taste good, but if you ever saw it made, you would never eat it again. Our government and the political machine do everything in their power to keep our eyes of of the man in the funny suit by using these tactics. (sorry for the rant).
as for BP – corruption and corporate greed go together like peas and carrots.
as for Israel – I refuse to comment on Israel as I would like to keep my options open for getting elected in this country at some point/
Tony, this is epoch. Thanks for the breakdown on things that have been too overwhelming for me to broach and delve into at this time (I’m huddled in my happy place in the fetal position).
I want to add something about illegal immigration that so often gets missed especially in liberal circles (which I run in frequently enough)-what the situation does to the real human beings involved. We have a defacto slave state. If you think Texas is bad, go to New Mexico. You have a people who 1) do not know the language 2) therefore do not know their rights (and in fact, exist in some sort of nebulous quasi state of the labor force) 3) are scared to death of being deported so would never say boo about horrendous working conditions that Americans fought against and many times died from. Drive out to the chile fields of NM on any given harvest day and you will see children (children!) working with their parents. No bathrooms, no water except that which they bring in raging 100+ heat. Ranchers, farmers, construction bosses and an ever growing slew of companies desperate for cheap labor so they can keep their costs down do not trouble themselves with the well being of these people….not necessarily their fault – I mean if you don’t demand your rights, then a faceless money making organization is going to push the envelope. Take control. American labor organized and fought to ban dangerous work conditions (that is because a lot of us died in the industrial age), we banned child labor because we felt it was wrong.
It’s just a heartbreaking situation when you weigh the human cost.
There was a third change that I absolutely should have mentioned as necessary regarding Immigration Reform and that is the abolition of the banks ability to transfer funds to an outside country without proof of residency. This is one of the banking industry’s cash cows. Making it illegal for banks to continue exporting our cash to Mexico would force a significant percentage of illegal immigrants to either get legal or go home of their own volition. In addition, this would quickly stop the fed from being so completely hypocritical about addressing this issue.
Even more coming soon 😉 And thank you guys for commenting.
hi Tony! I’m at work, and I showed a coworker one paragraph of your post, and he immediately aske dif your site was ‘monetized’. He enjoyed it and thought you ought to try to make money from your fantastic blog. I agree. I love reading what you have to say – you write in a way that makes me feel as if you’re staning next to me, ranting away. It makes me smile, no matter the subject matter. Miss you…and my home state that BP seriously should NOT be messing with.
OOOOOh, Baby Boy! Your friend Lloyd up there really has raised my political wrath a notch. He started off with the opinion that our current political system would be unpalatable if we knew what actually “went into it”. That much I agree with. He is right. We need to change the back room antics of career politicians and bring our system back to a government of the people.
But then he blew it. I don’t think he realized that he made himself the main ingredient in the nasty sausage no one would want to eat. He said he is refusing comment on Israel because he wants to someday be an elected official. Well, Lloyd, you just told me and everyone else who reads this blog, that you are willing to lie about your opinion of Israel and their actions in order to be elected. You are willing to wait to see “how the wind is blowing” before you set your sails up for election. You are (or would be) the very kind of dishonest politician that is destroying our country.
Our elected officials personal opinions should be a moot point. Why? Because we are supposed to be electing the person who will honor and fight for what his constituents want, regardless of his personal feelings on the subject. If you are an elected official who believes in abortion rights, and your constituents do not, it is your duty as an elected official to vote the way of your constituents. Public office was never meant to be a citizens ticket to getting things their own way!
So, now, Llyod, tell us your opinion on Israel’s actions, because if you walk the walk you are talking, it won’t matter.
Now Totie, you need to think about what you said. Anyone who has entered this country illegally has no rights in this country. Our labor laws are meant to protect our citizens and legal visa holders. If they are being taking advantage of, the employer needs to be held accountable for his illegal action of hiring undocumented workers. The undocumented workers (men, women, children alike) need to be deported immediately upon discovery. Rigorous enforcement of our current immigration laws will lessen the social and financial burden this problem is causing. On immigration, my stand is simple. Don’t let them in unless they are coming through the front door with an invitation. If they manage to make their way in, send them back, pronto. No time in jail for free meals and medical care, just a ride home to the other side of the border. Children born to illegals should not be granted the automatic right of citizenship. This should only be a right granted to children of legal resident aliens. So sneaking in and getting yourself knocked up can’t be your ticket to our very generous public welfare system, which is meant to care for Americans in need, not the whole frickin world! Is this harsh? You betcha! But it is fair and just. These people who are looking for a better way of life have the same opportunities as my father did at nine years old. He worked in his country until he was old enough to enter the US as a documented worker. He did’nt move here right away. His mom, dad and brothers and sisters were still in Canada. But as they found permanent work in the US, most of them did come to this country, my dad included. All legally by the way. All were French speaking, all learned Engrlish before moving here. When my father married and brought his French-speaking bride here in 1932, she learned to speak English very quickly. My father would have it no other way, besides, she was a teacher and wouldn’t even be considered for a position until she was fluent.
So, anything other than the harsh reality of being sent back to where you came from is a slap in the face to all of our forefathers who worked so hard to make this country strong and prosperous. If we continue on this highway paved with entitlements instead of the more difficult path of hard work and consequences, our country will soon be unrecognizable as the great Republic it once was.
America, this is my Manifesto. Feel free to sign up:
America, learn what it is that you need and work for it. Learn what is is that you want and achieve it. But most of all, do not expect that any of what you need or what you want will be provided to you by any one else or any government agency.
America, believe or do not believe in God. Worship the way you believe you should, but do not under any circumstances tread on anyones right to do the same.
America, say what you want, but do not under any circumstances impede the right of others to do the same.
America, read the Constitution of the United States and understand it. Read the Bill of Rights and understand it. There is a reason it was not called the “Bill of Entitlements”. These inalienable rights were a statement of what our government could not take away from us, not what it owes us.
America, man up and do the right thing.
Tony’s Ever-loving Mom
That’s my mom! See, now I can chalk it all up to good genetics and totally get away with it. 😉
Liz, I absolutely agree with you! I should’ve been more clear. Whenever I talk to people who just want fluid borders and say there is no such thing as in “illegal” human being, I like to point out to them that we are not doing these people any favors – they live in squalid conditions, horrid working conditions that cheapen (if not threaten) the hard won rights that the American worker fought so hard and sometimes died for – so I’m pretty sure we’re in agreement. Illegal immigration threatens everything we’ve worked so hard for – because it is illegal. The fact that people circumvent the immigration laws sets them up for extreme abuse was my point. I am not against immigration but I am very much against Illegal immigration – it is the perfect recipe for quasi slavery, imo – slavery that people dance happily right into-then suffer along with their kids. Companies, as I pointed out, are not responsible because they are doing what they do – making as much profit as they possibly can – it’s economics. However, from a practical standpoint, if we’d just sue and fine the crap out of companies who are just doing what they do when they hire cheaper and cheaper labor, then it would be, imo, a very useful expedient tool for curbing – take away the source of why they come. Oh and I should’ve expounded about when people don’t demand their rights – my point is that one cannot demand their rights when they are not legal, go where you are legal and demand your rights there. America got where it’s at because people worked……hard! And we questioned ourselves and we changed things we didn’t like about ourselves (tyranny from a king, slavery, child labor, civil rights) by protests, court battles, real battles, wars, real blood – short cuts and flaunting those laws cheapens and threaten the very things that people come over here for. Now I have empathy and am not against legal immigration. But cut off the source was my not very well made point. I have seen first hand, living most of my life near the southern border of the United States, the human cost of illegal immigration (I am not against my fellow humans personally, I disagree with their means of coming here and I want them to stop and look at what they are doing to themselves, their children and their neighbors (us) by pooping on our laws which create the environment that draws them up here) …..don’t even get me started on what it’s doing to our education system.