So Rush Limbaugh is on Golf Channel these days. He's world class instructor Hank Haney's latest *project*. Watch the preview clip.
I caught about 10 seconds of it the other night...
Hank said he was having trouble trying to get Rush to do some *exercise*. Hank wanted Rush to spend some time at the driving range beating balls but it was wearing Limbaugh out.
Rush not only asserted that he never goes to the driving range, EVER, but also that supposedly *never exercises*.
Say what?!
NEVER EXERCISES?
I don't care what anyone else might think - in my book only a complete Moron would *never exercise*.
Years ago I once heard Limbaugh pontificating on the radio about weight loss. He, fresh off (temporarily) losing a few lbs. was asserting that *diet* was the only way to lose weight; that one couldn't exercise enough to burn the necessary calories.
Over the years I'd say he's hardly the first overweight person I've heard promulgate that BS.
Fat AND lazy....a lethal, self-perpetuating combo!
My first wife finally made it to Naples - she rented a car and drove over from Miami today.
I hadn't seen her in 12 full days - the longest stretch I'll bet in the 12.5 years since we started dating!
So it was her first real vacation from me in ages....I'm sure IT was enjoyable.
I believe the space has been very healthy for our marriage. If familiarity breeds contempt then the corollary must hold true, no?
Recall my MIL moved out of the house recently. I am strongly considering *separate bedrooms* for me and my beloved going forward. Everyone who's tried it tells me it's been a blessing to their marriage. As a night owl, I think most importantly it would amp up my productivity a couple notches. I'm doing my best to channel Tim Ferriss here. Don't think for a moment he'd *waste his nighttime* making small talk with a woman over Law & Order...
I don't follow the *political noise* much - that's why I have more chi than y'all! - but I have heard recently about some goings on.
It was only a year ago that I wrote - Pathological Partisanship - which highlighted the Boston Globe completely ignoring upstart *Tea Party* activists.
But apparently now that these activists have gained steam....tactics have changed.
Now it's all but an official strategy to stigmatize them, well, just as the sign says. E.g. Why is that?
Consider what Mary Frances Berry, former chairwoman, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said:
Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans and, indeed, many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.
So who is this woman anyway? Check out Google for a visual, Wikipedia for a mental:
...she wrote in 1984 that "civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them."
Personally, I think the worst thing any politically-minded group can do is organize and label themselves. In this country we need to ELIMINATE the party system, not just form another mercenary, rational, self-preserving faction.
I'm curious as to what Rush Limbaugh is saying now about the ascendant Tea Party. Recall from my previous post - In Favor Of Threesomes - that he was dead-set against anyone trying to work outside of the party that has been exploiting him and his listeners for 20+ years.
Actually I don't really care at all what he thinks on the matter. Writing this post wasted waaaaay too much of my time, energy, and chi on contemporary politics!
For another example of strategic political demonization, see my previous post - Aborting Morons And Thugs.
RUSH: While I have your attention: third party. This third-party stuff has got to stop, folks, unless you are for a third party for the Democrats. I'm all for Ralph Nader running again. I'd love for Howard Dean to get fed up or some other Democrat to get fed up with Obama and I'd love for a third party of Democrats and liberals to establish itself. I want all kinds of liberals to line and up run in third parties. That's how we weaken their side. As for our side, the focus must be to take back the Republican Party. That's the way you win. You can draw attention to yourself by denouncing both parties at the same time, and you can think that you're relating to a whole lot of people or being disabused and forgotten about, but you do a grave disservice in doing so because you're never going to win anything. You're going to guarantee Democrat victory in perpetuity. We need a strong conservative movement that takes back the Republican Party and then we have a strong Republican Party. It's hard work but it is happening.
There is a conservative ascendancy here. Why in the world waste what is happening here with this new conservative ascendance and weaken it and split it up by forming a third party? So far, not a single Republican is going to vote for government-run health care. If the parties were the same the vote would be unanimous, would it not? If the parties were the same, all the Republicans would be on board for this, in the House and the Senate, and they're not. I think one Republican in the House voted for government-run health care. When cap and trade came up, eight Republicans voted for it. The rest voted against it. In the Senate, all but a couple of Republicans voted against the stimulus bill. If the parties were the same, sweeping majorities, health care would already be the law of the land if the Republican Party was the same as the Democrat Party. There wouldn't have been any tea parties. We wouldn't be having to mess around with all these various bills and CBO scores. But, folks, it's all out in front of your face. It's right in the middle of your face, right in front of your eyes. The parties are not the same. We need more of this, and you don't get more of this by insisting that there's no difference between the parties.
Now, I'm the first to tell you, and I'm the first to agree that the Republican Party has screwed up and it needs to continue to find its legs, and with our help, it will have no choice but to become a traditional conservative party. We don't have Marxists in our party. We don't have Maoists leading the charge in our party. Those people have found a home in Obama's party and government but not in the Republican Party. The problem is that there are people trying to confuse the issue. They're saying, "Well, the Republicans spent too much and they did this and they gave us new entitlements, they spend just like the Democrats, they all spend, they all spend the same." I get that. I fought them on those things. I was deeply upset and opposed to a lot of this spending. I had emissaries from the White House sent down here to try to get my mind right on these things. But they are not, as a matter of ideology, the Republicans are not seeking the destruction of capitalism and the private sector. They are not trying to hollow out the military. They are not undermining our intelligence services and so forth.
The Republican Party has lost its way because of one issue: Abortion. The Ivy League Republican-in-name-only so-called moderate Republicans who are truly liberal Republicans do not like the social issue of abortion and other social issues like family values and morality and all that having a role in the party platform. It's as simple as that. They didn't like it when Reagan ran the show and was winning big landslides. But they are not Marxists. They are not Maoists. They do not hate the US military. They are not apologizing for the United States of America around the world. Snap out of this! There's no difference between the two parties. The Republican Party right now has lost its way. This conservative ascendancy can help it find its way. The Democrat Party has found its way, and it's the radical left way, and that's who they are now, and they have to be stopped. And they will not be stopped if a third party ends up being the result of this little internecine war in the Republican Party. They will be in power, the Democrats will be in perpetuity if a third party emerges out of our party.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Look, the truth is, folks, that most of us know that the two parties are not the same. We're hearing a lot from the same people, or thinking that surrounded the Ross Perot effort or the Reform Party effort, more generally. It seems that some people are trying to tap into this group and then claim it represents most conservatives, Libertarians, Republicans, when in fact it doesn't. Now, we always had populist movements in this country on the left and the right. But we are not populists, we're constitutionalists, we are conservatives. And when a majority of us are in control of the Republican Party, the Republican Party wins. But it's not gonna win if there's a third party.
Rush is off-base on many points here. Just to give one example, at the end there he tried to paint what can only be libertarian dissent as a *populist movement*. That's a load of bull, if not complete truth inversion. The libertarians that I know are all geeked up to tell the public, "No more entitlements, no more government jobs, no unemployment insurance, no Social Security, no Medicare, no student loans, etc."
Sorry Rush, but that ain't *populism*.
Again, there's plenty of anti-sense in there but I haven't the time or the inclination to fisk it all.
At root, I believe Rush is ignorant about what a political *party* essentially is and the reality of what even the most well-intentioned ones degenerate into.
Rush's fear is playing out on a small, but potentially pivotal, stage here in Massachusetts. The regnant party has nominated a most typical, empty-skulled Marxist....and the other party has nominated a typical bun-duster, *lite* representative.
However, a libertarian by the name of Joseph Kennedy has garnered 10,000 signatures and will be crashing the ballot for Ted Kennedy's empty Senatorial seat:
LYNN -- US Senate candidate Martha Coakley suggested today that she would not agree to debates unless long-shot candidate Joseph L. Kennedy is included, a strategy that appears to be an effort to make the contest a three-person affair.
"I think it's very important at this stage in the game that everybody on the ballot be involved in these debates," she said this afternoon. "The campaigns are in the process of talking about that now, but there are three candidates and everybody who?s going to cast a ballot on Jan. 19 should know that."
On Tuesday, Coakley won the Democratic nomination and state Senator Scott Brown won the Republican nomination.
Having a three-way debate would help Coakley, the front-runner in the race, and would make it harder for Brown to clearly differentiate himself from Coakley. As a libertarian, Kennedy is also more likely to pull votes from Brown than he is from Coakley, so giving him broad exposure on a televised debate could hurt Brown's chances.
Hmmmm.....very interesting, no?
This has just GOT TO BE making Rush Limbaugh's blood boil because....
Because if somehow the Republican were to win, and Scott Brown gets to vote on Obamacare....it might not pass. (Though I'm sure they'll just ram it in the day before he gets into office.)
And obviously, the Coakley camp has made the calculation that the libertarian renegade will only hurt Scott Brown when it's all said and done - JUST AS RUSH HAS PREDICTED.
All of this conjecture may or may not be true. But the trilemma remains, what should Joseph Kennedy do if given the chance for a three-way debate.
Should he admit practical defeat and bow out - in an effort to hurt perhaps a greater evil?
Should he, in the course of a debate, go hard at both opponents?
Or should he partake but *gang up* on the greater evil?
I'll tell you this, if it were me, I'd come out with guns ablazing in both directions!
Genuine civic virtue isn't about *practicality*, *triangulation*, or gaining office.
No, it's beholden to the naked truth. Go incite a ruckus and however it turns out, it turns out. Democracy, like life anyway, is and should remain *messy*.
Personally, I think the Republican party should disband.
THAT would hurt Big Government and its apparatchiks worse than anything.
And it just might send the bane of *party politics* into a toilet spiral.
Rush Limbaugh recently tried to become a minority investor in an NFL franchise. Everyone got all hot and bothered....and he was booting out of the bidding process.
The problem with Rush is that its his job to take on all of life’s partisan issues and problems. Not only is it his job to take on these issues and problems, its key to his success that he be very opinionated about whichever issues he feels are important to him and/or will cause his very large audience to tune in. Given that we will never know what the "next big issue" in this world that Rush will be discussing on his show is, its impossible for the NFL to even try to predict or gauge the impact on the NFL’s business if something controversial, or even worse yet, something nationally polarizing happens. There is an unquantifiable risk that comes with the size of Rush’s audience. The wrong thing said on the show, even if its not spoken by Rush himself, about a sensitive national or world issue could turn into a Black Swan event for the NFL.
Rush Limbaugh is going to SAY SOMETHING that will develop into a BLACK SWAN EVENT for the NFL?
A minority owner, for one team, will have the power to economically devastate the NFL with mere a movement of his lips?
Let's see...
NFL stars run dog-fighting rings (Michael Vick), they use steroids, they are aparty to murders (e.g. Ray Lewis), they can blow Super Bowls (Donovan McNabb with his 6 minute version of the 2 minute offense)....and yet the lumpen masses are out there the very next week, in the freezing cold, paying nosebleed prices, for the opportunity to cheer on their pagan heroes!
I think Cuban is waxing a bit hyperbolic here, if not outright lunatic.
And I won't even get into the delicious irony of the most colorful sports franchise owner we have seen in quite some time, pontificating on....well, you get the idea. Here's Sports Illustrated:
"The NFL isn't interested in having its own Mark Cuban situation, where [the Dallas Mavericks owner] is fined for something he said, but then pays the fine, moves on and doesn't care what he says the next time either. The league wants the focus to always be on the game, not the opinions of any particular owner."
I've written a few posts on the intellectually-incontinent Mark Cuban - click here.
It was interesting, humorous AND tragic to follow this whole Rush Limbaugh/NFL sideshow this past week.
The trivial battlegrounds Morons choose speak volumes on their character, or, I should say lack thereof.
There were a few things I strongly disliked about Rush Limbaugh's Wall Street Journal editorial on the current Big Government *stimulus*:
Fifty-three percent of American voters voted for Barack Obama; 46% voted for John McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Give that 1% to President Obama. Let's say the vote was 54% to 46%. As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009: 54% of the $900 billion -- $486 billion -- will be spent on infrastructure and pork as defined by Mr. Obama and the Democrats; 46% -- $414 billion -- will be directed toward tax cuts, as determined by me.
Then we compare. We see which stimulus actually works. This is bipartisanship! It would satisfy the American people's wishes, as polls currently note; and it would also serve as a measurable test as to which approach best stimulates job growth.
This is hardly a situation where we can cut the baby in half to determine its true mother. There's simply no way that the consequences from such a hybrid bill could or WOULD ever be parsed accurately.
But the main thing I really disliked about this editorial is the false dichotomy it accepts. Our choices are not by any means limited to either *government spending* or *temporary income tax cuts*.
We could let bad companies fail, we could halve the size of Big Government; we could do away with entitlements; we could flatten or eliminate the income tax; there's a whole lot of things that could be done to effectively restructure and re-stimulate the economy.
Furthermore, I detest, even if it is tongue-in-cheek, Rush's deprecation of the 1% who did not vote for either Obama or McCain as *wackos*.
You'd think that right after a presidential election where the public had to decide between two pathetic leaders of a *9% approval rating* Congress that Rush would be more understanding of *wackos* who reject both parties.
In order for this to be an appropriate product for a borrower, they need to have a considerable cash cushion. They need to have enough rainy-day money where in the event of a housing or mortgage market collapse, they're capable of dipping into their pockets to put the additional money needed down to secure a fixed rate mortgage.
For example, consider the $400,000 adjustable mortgage borrower. Assume they put a *healthy* 10% down on a $440,000 house.
Since then the market has corrected; their house is now worth $350,000. To lock in a new 10% down, fixed rate loan, that buyer would need to pony up $85,000.
Quite frankly, people that buy $440,000 homes do not generally have $85,000 extra sitting around in the bank. Nor do people that buy $220,000 houses usually have $42,500 of rainy-day money either.
I do know one guy who has about a 500k adjustable mortgage on a 700k house. Though he has plenty of cash. In fact, he probably earns 500k in annual income. But other than him, the number of people financially fit enough to borrow on an adjustable basis is almost nil.
Ergo, it follows that the adjustable mortgage is a trap, a con, and snake oil all at once.
I'd only recommend adjustables to my sworn enemies.
On the other hand, Rush Limbaugh has been bombarding his listeners with ads for Quicken Loans and their exotic, non-fixed rate mortgages for years now.
So he's in a profit (obscene?) sharing plan with financial hucksters.
By carrying these ads on his show, he's legitimized a toxic product; he's harmed who knows how many of his listeners naive enough to swallow *you GET to refinance*.
Here would be Rush's defense:
HypotheticalRush - Well, these products saved a lot of money for people as interest rates were trending down....and house prices were rising.
and
HypotheticalRush - I am not into paternalism. I believe my viewers are smart enough to look out for their own best interests.
Plausible arguments? Well that would be a subjective judgment.
I would never take these ads without, minimally, constantly lecturing my audience about the risks. Even with simultaneous warning, I'm still not sure that I'd take the payola to broadcast such outright hucksterism.
Me? I feel horrible if someone buys a stock or commodity I recommended and loses a few grand.
HypotheticalRush - It's the radio network that chooses advertising. They are a business intent on maximizing profits.
Ah, there's nothing like morality sustained by a couple of *degrees of separation*. Yet they have to maximize profits to pay the host his $400 million contract.
Rush's best defense is probably ignorance. Old, wealthy guys have almost categorically missed the housing bubble.
Meanwhile the marginal buyers, young renters who can afford to buy, who've crunched the numbers and seen a historical chart or two, we've been far more lucid on this matter.
I understand that any media business would have great difficulty turning down the highest bidding advertisers.
But still, they might ask, "How can this exotic mortgage company afford to spend so much on ads?"
And they might do well to remember that snake oil is one of the highest margin products ever invented.
Apparently Bill O'Reilly is *for the bailout* and isn't tolerant of rich guys on "right wing conservative talk radio" who dare stand against it. According to him they are "Kool-Aid drinking idiots", "liars", "right wing liars", and "they're not looking out for you".
Okay.
Then Mark Levin comes on and fires back, "Moron", "you jerk", "you paid more in hush money for your little phone sex than I've ever earned.", "the Non-Factor who doesn't know crapola about economics, history, or law", "another mainstream Moron phony journalist", and "jealous like hell of Rush Limbaugh".
Levin's final shots: "Your ratings suck" and "you'll be gone soon".
Okay, he can bust on the guy's radio ratings, but c'mon, Bill O'Reilly has knocked the cover off the ball on television.
Anyway, I wanted to point out what's really going on here. Yeah, Bill O'Reilly may genuinely think his opinion on the *bailout* is unimpeachable gospel; and there may be more than a little bit of professional jealousy.
BUT, anyone who's ever studied Bill's tack would know that he considers himself, or markets himself a populist - a basher of the elites on *both sides*. Frankly, I can't stand this dichotomized construct but admit that is does have a rough basis in fact - if only because so few people today can think for themselves that everyone has decided to self-pigeonhole. For years Bill has been exposing so-called left wing loons on his show: would-be marijuana legalizers, San Francisco inverts, *restorative justice* advocates, etc. But he's always strained to find marketable wackos from the other *constructed* pole. Usually he's been reduced to bringing in some obscure Protestant clergymen; or non-orthodox Catholic priests in favor of Amnesty for illegal immigrants; and making very much ado about them. The fact is, in this country, 90% of the clowns are on one side; and that's because that side dominates our culture: the media, the courts, government, education, etc. These *LLL* Morons are allowed to act out with absolute impunity; heck they're encouraged.
In other periods of history - say when a hidebound Catholic Church reigned supreme - the polar balance of wackos was completely reversed. It is simply empirical history that:
Cuius regio ejus religio - "whose region, his or her religion" or "the religion of the ruled must be that of the ruler."
Bill HAS to blow up at *right wingers* on any particular issue he can in order to keep (transparently) chiseling his image as a moderate, as an independent. This is his MO and he's sticking to it!
Now, to speak more generally on this *bailout* that everyone and their mother has a fanatical opinion of:
A friend of mine yesterday tried to frame his *pro bailout* perspective thusly - he said that "when the extreme right and the extreme left are against it....you know it's the correct, practical thing to do."
"Okay," I said conceding that specious premise, "but will it in fact 'work'??? Will it stimulate the economy in any meaningful, sustainable fashion???"
Of course it won't. The government has already spent $700 billion to date on ailing financial institutions and various real estate bubble-exposed entities. Home prices have kept dropping and will continue to do so for another 20%-30% - until they equalize with personal incomes. Look at that chart again from my recent post - and the other one where I put the bailout cost of higher gasoline alone at $109.5 billion already.
Now again, I don't care for the puerile dichotomized framing of issues; and I haven't done any real research on which *categories* of people voted for or against the DOA *bailout*. BUT, I will say this:
If it's the diehard communists and the diehard libertarians who voted against a taxpayer funded extension of this Ponzi scheme, I have to say, IMNSHO, they are both correct and true to their ideologies.
This bailout is a complete boondoggle, a complete *bailout* of Wall Street, of wealthy investors, and of foreign governments. Any clear-headed, consistent socialist could see that. Hardly a soul on Wall Street has had to return a bonus or been charged with a crime. Not a single official from the SEC or from government has had to resign or admit blame. Apparently this tide of bankruptcies following a tremendous (if fleeting) boom is absolutely no one's fault - at least in the quadrants of finance and a government (which seems perpetually staffed by Goldman Sachs partners). If it weren't for bogeymen, there'd be hardly a soul to blame. Heck, Fannie Mae's head crooks are paid advisers to the frontrunning presidential candidate!
Furthermore, there is no way that anyone with a bona fide understanding of and appreciation for the free exchange of goods and services could ever endorse the overnight nationalization of the banking industry (and housing, and insurance). This *bailout* is the culmination of decades of statist economic meddling, of voter apathy, and the nationwide epidemic of econo-illiteracy. Even supposed capitalists like Steve Forbes and Don Luskin have forsaken their principles for the fantasy of hope; for the pipe dream that even though government can't teach kids to read, manage the retirement money of Americans, efficiently build roads, deliver universal healthcare, enforce the law, protect us from terrorists and hurricanes...that this fumbling entity can indefinitely suspend *prices* above *economic value*. You see, as the air departs this credit bubble, reality is torturing the souls of perma-optimsts and paper-wealth tigers. The fact that extremely wealthy people losing a mere 15% of their net-worth are going ape-sh*t is a frank admission of ignorance and impiety; it's proof they have an unhealthy, idolatrous lust for a currency *they can't take with them*.
True believers in free-market capitalism would be relishing this *buying opportunity*; they'd be celebrating the pruning of weak industry; and would be unshakably confident in the economy's ability innovate and regenerate its way back to prosperity.
But no. People with soft assets - real estate (YES), stocks, and bonds - are petrified because deep-down inside (since apparently not upstairs) they know they've built their livelihood upon a house of cards,
THEY'VE TAKEN AN ADJUSTABLE MORTGAGE ON IT, AND ALL OF A SUDDEN THEIR BONUS AND THEIR WAGE SLAVE PAY ISN'T SO SECURE...
The idea that a bunch of bought-and-sold, ignorant lawyers in Washington can wave a wand and convert popular self-delusion into reality, well...
In that case the *bailout* bill may as well commence:
Devil's Advocate - You just want the market to tank and the bailout to fail so you can profit from your shorts and perhaps scoop up a house on the cheap...You're as biased as anyone.
Wrong. I made my bets AFTER assessing the future. The others placed theirs BEFOREHAND. Go read my last 700 or so posts!
By the way, I'll NEVER buy a house - if I can. I would say that based on the flux in my wife's firm, there's at least a 20% chance now we'll have to move, AGAIN, back to the NYC/NJ area. Notwithstanding the six month winter I happen to really like this oasis of Boston's South Shore. Regardless, I've grown too BIG to ever be defined or confined by geography.
Sorry to have condescended to *politics*; but I was taking heat from Taylor for too much "social commentary". This anti-social post was for him.
Contemporary politics is usually not covered on my high-minded blog. Today will be a brief detour, er, a brief descent.
It nauseates me to hear people tooting Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin's horn. I don't care what she's done or who she is. As a Vice President, she'll be powerless. John McCain remains a complete scumbag and a thundering Moron. All Sarah Palin can possibly do in the next 2 months (potentially plus four years) is dupe some dopes into forgetting who's heading the ticket.
I fully understand that many of her defenders/apologists have, well, complicated agendas. They may be more interested in attacking her attackers (e.g. Big Media) or in defending "working mothers" or whatever.
The fact is, in my book, the praise that she's getting is a joke.
I'd reserve that level of adulation for a person who TURNED DOWN John McCain, not for someone who agrees to be his token stooge.
One example of note is Rush Limbaugh. He's a to-the-bone John McCain hater who's been out there everyday defending Sarah Palin - or so he thinks. He's actually doing McCain's dirty work; he's doing McCain's *damage control*. Whether or not this tack helps Rush's larger anti-Big Media crusade or not, in my opinion, John McCain should be left out to dry on this one, alone.
Most ironically, even before John McIdiot won the nomination, Rush had accused McCain with his *triangulation* and New York Times brown-nosing as naive. He hypothesized that McCain thought HE was using the organs of agitprop to further his political ambition. Meanwhile, obviously, Big Media felt like THEY were wagging McCain (and Lindsey Graham, Tom Daschle, et alia) to weaken the GOP. Rush paternally warned McCain that when push came to shove, if and when the question was McCain or Hillary Clinton, that McCain's media *friends* would turn on him. Of course that's exactly how it played out.
Now, I don't care how Rush Limbaugh or Michelle Malkin spin it, right now they are the ones are being unwittingly *used*.
By my estimation, a pure socialist is far less dangerous than this complete j*rkoff. At least the former is predictable.
Defending John McCain for anything, as far as I am concerned, is like propping up or bailing out an investment bank that should be *allowed to fail*.
That's actually quite a good analogy if I do say so myself. Furthermore, anyone abetting McCain's rise forfeits the right to complain about him later on.
I want to reiterate. If Sarah Palin had half the probity her fans are proclaiming, she'd have told John McCain that he was an unmitigated ButtHead and that she would be dishonored to share the ticket with him.
Clearly she's a terrible judge of character and has at least the rudiments of an ego problem.
And there's nary a soul on this planet who knows more about *ego problems* than myself!
I took my family down to balmy Florida last week to visit friends.
We were talking about illegal immigration briefly and my wife proclaimed that she wouldn't want to have a business that was levered to illegal labor because obviously, any crackdown would imperil the business. A friend of ours responded,
I wouldn't worry about that ever happening in this country...
[his company employs around 150 people]
When our supervisor hands out the paychecks, he'll yell out "JOSE RODRIGUEZ",
They'll be no answer.
"JOSE RODRIGUEZ"
[no answer]
"JOSE RODRIGUEZ"
[no answer]
"JOSE RODRIGUEZ!!!"
And finally some guy will remember that is his alias and come up and grab the check.
Furthermore, this is what the government does. They notify us that we are employing too many illegals. We ask, who are they? Which ones? We'll get rid of them all. But they won't even tell us the names. Apparently, there's some vague quota system on how many you can employ.
I also ran into some guy on the beach, a loosely connected friend-of-a-friend.
CaptiousNut - What do you do down here?
Guy - I am a prosecutor for the Palm Beach County District Attorney.
CaptiousNut - So was that you guys that hassled Rush Limbaugh over his Viagra?
Guy - Yeah. [giggle, giggle] That was us. That was a lot of fun. [giggle, giggle]
CaptiousNut - I don't know. You guys don't check the pills of every rock star and celebrity that flies down here. What you did to Limbaugh is prosecutorial abuse.
Guy - [silence]
If you don't know the background on Limbaugh and Viagra, click here. The crux is that Palm Beach politicians (read: District Attorney's office) harassed Limbaugh at the airport and leaked it immediately to the press to embarrass the guy - simply because they don't like him. Palm Beach County is, let's just say, by no means a bastion of conservative Republicans. I could be wrong, but it seems more like a locus of extremely wealthy, Democrats from New York. Every single person we met was a displaced or vacationing New Yorker.
I really hate talking about what others refer to as "politics" but it's become increasingly clear to me that today's Democratic Party is really anchored by the richest people around. Just list all of the wealth centers of the country: Manhattan, Boston, Malibu, Beverly Hills, the Hamptons, Palm Beach County, etc - they are all Democratic enclaves.
Forget the BS politics. In this Rush Limbaugh incident, I am not defending a thrice-divorced, drug-addicted, pervert; I am defending the rule of law. This is what I should have said to the giggling Palm Beach prosecutor,
"How would you like it if one day you drive through some rural town, grapple with a local, and then have some corrupt sheriff or prosecutor hold your feet to the coals on a contrived or trumped up charge?"
I didn't say it, because I had just met the guy not five minutes beforehand; also because I was on vacation. Anyway, that is the type of line I save for more opportune moments. I would ideally unleash it on him in a larger group of mixed company to maximize his embarrassment. I don't believe in the persuasion of willful idiots; I opt to Marginalize them both for sport and to enhance society.
In another, more virtuous world, selective application of the law would make prosecutors shudder, not giggle.
