An ultra-conservative's views on this and that

21 March 2010

Re: Health Care Reform

Attention to all liberal panty-waists who think federal regulation of one-sixth of the U.S. economy is a good idea.
Attention to all morons who think that health insurance companies are not entitled to a 2-3% profit margin.
Attention to all dimwits who believe it is a moral imperative for the government to decree that a for-profit company may not refuse to sell a policy to somebody with a pre-existing condition, or at the very least charge more money (Thus failing to grasp the concept of catastrophic insurance protection):

I'm sure we can negotiate reforms like reasonable people....


On second thought.....



Fuck you.


I'm going to suggest all conservatives cancel their health insurance at the soonest possible opportunity.  Why pay into the system now?  Just wait until you get sick, and then buy insurance.  That is, provided there are any private health insurers still around at that time.

If Uncle Sam is at that time the only one willing and able to play doctor, you can rest assured that failure to be insured will be a felony worthy of public stoning and forced re-education.

Show the mathematically-challenged tools in Congress and the White House why such a system will implode.  Factual arguments didn't seem to persuade them, so hopefully an empirical exercise will help them.  That, and bludgeoning them out of office with a ballot in November.

You know, in the Godfather Part II, we never see Fredo getting killed.  We know Michael ordered it (by inference initially and later confirmed in the Godfather Part III), we know Al took him out on the lake, and we saw a silhouette pointing what looked like a gun at the back of the head of another silhouette, presumably Fredo.

And then the camera cuts away to Michael, sitting pensively, and the audience hears the gunshot.

Tonight, a bunch of our elected officials betrayed the Family (the American people).  Tonight, they also willingly got into the boat to go out on the lake.  But the audience won't know for sure until November 2010 what really happened on the lake.

14 March 2010

Foreiture of one's Man card

I'll be brief on this:  If your accelerator sticks and you can't get it unstuck, throw the car into neutral.  You may blow the engine or transmission, but what's that next to the value of your life?

Granted, I understand the tension of the moment makes things less clear-cut.  I truly do understand:  When in college, the throttle cable on my car once stuck.  It was an attention-getting experience, but I had the presence of mind to use my clutch and a combination of high gears and slow speeds to keep the car under control.  I limped it the half-mile home.  Had I been driving an automatic, I would've dropped the car into neutral, pulled over, and turned the engine off.

This Prius driver, pardon my French, is a pussy.  Listening to him on the 911 audio, I heard a panicked, effeminate man.  Correction, an effeminate male.  A man would've simply grumbled an obligatory "Crap", thrown the car into neutral, and pulled over.  A real man would've taken it a step further and tried to diagnose and fix the problem on the side of the highway.  A real man would never speak to the press, especially to advertise helplessness against a piece of machinery.

UPDATE, 3/14:

It's now looking like this incident may have been a cry for attention.  Physical evidence from the car doesn't jibe with Mr. Sikes' version of events.  A cloudy past involving allegedly burned business partners is coming to light.  That doesn't affect Mr. Sikes' credibility, but it could indicate intent.

I've spent some time the last couple of days learning about the design of the Toyota Prius, specifically its incorporation of drive-by-wire technology, adapted from a proven technology known as fly-by-wire that's been used for quite some time in aircraft, both commercial and military.  I was unaware that the Prius uses drive-by-wire in place of mechanical linkages.  OK, I'll accept in Mr. Sikes' case that it's possible:  It's possible the Prius' Engine Control Unit (ECU) suddenly accelerated the car.  It's possible that inputs from the brake pedal were ignored in favor of the accelerator.  It's possible that the ECU rejected a transmission shift from Drive into Neutral.  It's possible that the input from the starter button to turn the car off was ignored in favor of the accelerator.  It's possible.  But it's unlikely.  It's a scenario called multiple simultaneous failure.  And armchair engineers are pointing the finger of blame at everybody's favorite whipping boy:  Software.

EDN, a publication I grew up seeing in stacks with my father's work-related stuff, had this gem of elitist snobbery:

The reason all this came to mind this morning was actually not the newspapers, but a panel I attended yesterday at DesignCon. The subject was achieving quality closure. But the issue of software sat like an elephant in the corner of the room, awaiting notice. One of the panelists—I believe it was Design Rivers president Camille Kokozaki—pointed out that perhaps the most serious quality problem in IC designs now is not quality closure on the hardware, but the integrity of the firmware and software that will run on the chip. There simply is no systematic approach to ensuring the quality of an integrated hardware/software system.

And this is a tragedy. Thirty years ago, work was well under way on the problem of formally proving software correctness. One company had designed a completely deterministic microprocessor—no interrupts, no indirect addressing—that made it possible to mathematically prove all of the possible trajectories of a code set. And computer scientists such as Edsger Dijkstra were making strides in methodology to create formally proven software. But along came C, UNIX, and the cult of the bemused hobby programmer, and the entire notion of formal correctness vanished under a smokescreen of hacking.


Excuse me?  What the hell does C, UNIX, and the "cult of the bemused hobby programmer" have to do with software correctness?  I worked at a defense contractor for over 10 years, spanning two DoD contracts.  The software for the projects was developed to run on a real-time OS based on UNIX.  The first project, per DoD requirements at the time, was developed in the software straight-jacket known as Ada.  When the second contract was started, the DoD had dropped the Ada-development requirement.  Ultimately the prime contractor chose C++.  I will concede that C would be a bad choice for an embedded system because of its inherent susceptibility to data corruption through pointers, be they uninitialized, dangling, or null.  But that's not the fault of the language, but the fault of the programmer.  Had the author criticized the abandonment of best software practices, I'd agree with him. 

08 March 2010

Politicizing the Census

I received a letter informing me that my census is on the way in a week.  The second paragraph of the letter uses a phrase I've heard in the TV and radio marketing blitz for the Census.  Setting aside the pointless waste of taxpayer money, especially in a deep recession, the phrase really bothers me:  "making sure we get our fair share."  Fair share of what?  Government funds for "highways, schools, health facilities, and many other programs you and your neighbors need."

Wait a minute, is that what the Census is for?

The Census was mandated to occur at least once every ten years by the Founding Fathers, the reason being the enumeration of citizens for the purposes of apportionment for representation in the House of Representatives.

05 March 2010

Liberal tools

So I'm listening to the FM talk radio station here in Des Moines.  Like the AM talk radio station, it's a passing effort to offer national conservative radio personalities in the DM area, often on time-delay.  The upshot is I get to listen to Sean Hannity in the evenings, whereas in Minneapolis, I was only able to follow him in the afternoons because I had joined the "job mobility program", courtesy of our President, whom never met spending he didn't like, except of course defense spending.

Anyway, I left work early today.  I listened to one of Des Moines' more liberal-- er, progressive radio personalities, Chris Bradshaw.  He goes solely by "Bradshaw", like he's Madonna or Cher or something.  Big thinking for a small, closed mind.

Bradshaw's guest today was a lady from the Iowa Atheists & Freethinkers (IAF) organization.  Talk about snark and elitism!  Her organization promotes what she called "non-confrontational" reminders that not every one believes in a supreme being or beings.  Well, thank you, Ms. Obvious!  One of the rah-rah cheerleader callers told a story of how when he was going through a rough patch in his life, and his boss said how he and his wife would pray for the troubled employee.  The caller said how he "politely" told his boss just to keep him in his thoughts, as he was an atheist.  He said his boss, a devout Catholic, was stunned.

I'll bet.  He was probably stunned that the guy would be such an anti-religious douchebag!

If a friend or colleague said they were going to offer a prayer for me to God or Allah or Kali or Buddha, I would simply say thanks.  There's no attempt by them to prosleytize to me, to get me to convert to their religion.  I regard it as a kindness of them and their religion that they're willing to pray for me.  It's an indication that some organized religions are more evolved than the anti-God folks would have people believe.  These religions can co-exist.  If an atheist told me they'd keep me in their thoughts, I'd say thanks.  I wouldn't demand that they make it a prayer.  That's being a jerk.

The IAF lady continued with her laying out her organization's viewpoints:  If you sneeze, you shouldn't say "God bless you" or "Bless you" because of the phrase's origins in the notion that the soul was thought to momentarily escape.  Give me a break!  These so-called free-thinkers must have a lot of free time on their hands to worry about shit like this.  I normally say Gesundheit to those around me when they sneeze, but I envision the following conversation with one of these anti-God acolytes:

THEM:  "Ach-hoo!"
ME:  "Bless you."
THEM:  "Thanks, but I'm an atheist."
ME:  "Oh.  Well, I take it back then.  Does 'screw you' work better?"
THEM:  "You don't have to be a jerk about it!"
ME: "You mean like you just did?"
THEM:  "I'm just politely reminding you that my beliefs don't reflect yours."
ME: "Do me a favor and pronounce 106 as a cardinal number."
THEM: "One hundred and six?"
ME: "You just made my point.  It's actually one hundred six.  The "and" is used to signify a decimal point.  The majority of people say it incorrectly, yet I typically refrain from correcting them."
THEM:  "How is that even the same thing?"
ME: "It shows how I can be tolerant of someone being wrong on the facts more than you can be tolerant on a matter of faith and opinion.  The majority of the people alive on this planet believe in some higher being or beings, yet you demand they conform to your minority viewpoint."


Bradshaw, to his credit, espoused a more go-with-the-flow attitude, hoping the guy with the "Darwin fish" and the guy with the "NASCAR sticker" could just co-exist without anybody getting their cars keyed.  The lady from IAF said how she actually is a Jeff Gordon fan, shattering Bradshaw's crude stereotype of the right versus the left.  As the interview concluded, Bradshaw made a remark about how Ms. IAF talking-head shouldn't hold out hope that Jeff Gordon would become her dream man, as he is already married with kids.  I think Mr. Bradshaw couldn't help himself with his parting remark:  "Wait a minute, is he a Republican?  Then you might have a shot."

Hmm, despite being an enlightened liberal-progressive-socialist-marxist-whatever, Mr. Bradshaw failed to learn from his very-recent lesson on the dangers of stereotypes.  Is it a learning disability?  Is he blind to the number of Democrats embroiled in sex scandals?  John Edwards fathered a bastard while on the campaign trail and while his wife simultaneously battled breast cancer and stood by her husband.  The facts of the scandal are slowly trickling out, but all indications are that this guy is the sleaze-ball ambulance-chaser I've always thought him to be. And how about Eliot Spitzer?  Though the woman he cheated on was a much better looker than most of these political mistresses are, the fact is she's a hooker.  She spreads her legs for money.  She's a common whore.  Then there's Mr. Woods, his line of "conquests", and his club-wielding wife.

The common thread between these individuals and scandal-ridden Republicans such as Mark Sanford and John Ensign is narcissism, and neither side holds the monopoly on that.  It's an unfortunate by-product of such ego-centric occupations as politicians, star athletes, and high-priced actors.

Back on topic:  In the evenings, there's an hour-long program called "The Fallon Forum", hosted by a husband-wife pair of "progressive" political activists.  Their advertisements talk about restoring civility to politics.  Haven't listened to them too much (just on the short car ride from my apartment to the fitness center when it's too cold to walk), but they're apparently not up on current events.  Ed Fallon commented on Michael Savage, whose time-slot follows the Fallon Forum, playing an undated clip from the host in which he told a "sodomite" that he hoped he "choked on it."  Fallon remarked with amazement how Savage still was on the air.

Like I said, the clip was undated, and that's important.  It was incendiary, to be sure, and Savage crossed the line.  But what Fallon either didn't know or misrepresented is that Savage made the remarks on his short-lived MSNBC show years ago, and he was fired for it.  Savage maintains he was set up, that unlike his radio program where he's got control over the callers, he was forced to sit and endure the taunting of a prankster caller.  Where the call screener was during all of this is unclear.

I occasionally listen to Savage, and I'll grant he's very conservative, but he has the facts on his side.  I've never had it explained to me how that's a bad thing. 

24 February 2010

Why I haven't missed apartment living

Two things about living in an apartment have recently started to bug me:  Parking spaces and the fitness room.

First, the fitness room:  It's a minor annoyance to me when I go to work out, but I've just become accustomed to holding my finger on the VOLUME down button until the decibel levels have dropped from something I could hear at my house back in Minnesota to what is a decent volume for a human being who hasn't subjected himself or herself to a lifetime of rock concerts, demolition, or working at the airport.  I've come to the conclusion that people don't understand that modern TVs come with support for closed-captioning so that you can simply read the dialogue rather than turn the volume up so you can hear it over a treadmill.

But I shouldn't be surprised. Other people at this apartment complex have some sort of learning disability.  For instance, there is the nimrod who is occupying 1-1/4 spaces in front of my building.  Apparently, it snowed here over the weekend while I was enjoying the benefits of my house's garage.  Apparently, the nimrod doesn't realize that three parking spaces could become the actual four that exist in front of the building if he would park a little closer to the snow bank.  I'm not saying he has to put his car right up next to it, but a little closer would be great.  Or he could let me park there, as I have no compunction about putting my vehicle right up against the snowbank.  Know why?  Because I back into the space.

UPDATE:  Someone else has taken the space.  And they backed in.  But they too are morons, as they left about a frickin' quarter mile on the passenger side of their car.  So now they are taking up even more of the adjacent parking space.  Not to disparage the town that's given me employment, but do Iowans learn to drive and park tractors and then assume everything else is the same size???

16 February 2010

Seemingly just another day for other people...

It was a year ago today, around 1:30 in the morning, when my girlfriend yelled to me from downstairs.  I'll never forget those words:  "Something's wrong with Cosmo!"

I have never run so fast in my life, nor skipped quite so many steps going down the stairs.  It didn't matter how fast I could have run:  It was too late to save him.

Cosmo was quite young when he died, only about two and a half years old.  He'd never had any problems with his health.  He once chewed up a plastic food dish, and it never bothered him.

Despite the cost, I had a necropsy done on Cosmo. I just had to know what had befallen him.  He was always in the best of health.  Bailey, by comparison, caused my girlfriend and me a few sleepless nights at the emergency vet in the first years we had her.  After shedding some unhealthy weight and bonding with Morgan, she's back to an ideal weight and she's learned to pace herself with food.  She has chosen a sedentary lifestyle.  She'll never be an agility star like Cosmo, but she'll always be a cuddler.

But the necropsy demonstrated how little is known of rabbit physiology.  As far as animals go, their bodies are built for breeding more than for individual resilience to disease and injury.  If there is a Heaven, and should I ignore the advice of many whom have suggested my final destination be a little bit warmer, I figure I'll find out what happened to 'mo someday.  Until then, I can only wonder.  And miss my agility star.

As this day draws to a close for me, I reflect on a sad year for Rabbit Agility.  Cosmo, Goldy, Chester, Josephina.  All gone.  And last night, I heard Daisy, one of my former students, has crossed the Rainbow Bridge.  So sad.  And yet, I smile as I think about Dell, the woman who started it all, teaching these former students in the Great Beyond.  No doubt about, Rabbit Agility is probably a big hit in Heaven.

05 February 2010

So as I drove home from work this afternoon, I listened to a local liberal-- excuse me, "progressive" talk radio host as he berated a caller.  I wasn't privy to the start of the conversation, but it devolved within seconds of my tuning in.  Both sides engaged in framing the other in the lowest of terms.  The show's host characterized the caller as being okay with torture, and the caller characterized the host as unwilling to do what must be done to keep the country safe.

It's spurred me to lay out my thoughts on the subject.

Torture is a subjective term, loaded with connotation and emotion.  But is it torture?  "Torture" is often gratuitous, with little interest in information.  And we're endlessly reminded of how "torture never produces reliable intel."  Well, yeah.  Duh!  But what we're talking about, I would postulate, is not torture, but what the Bush administration characterized as "enhanced interrogation techniques."  It's not done for sadistic purposes.  It's done to achieve our national security goals.  Now, as far as these techniques not producing reliable information, do these liberals think that we set foreign policy based on single data points?  No, corroboration is the cornerstone of intelligence work.  Do liberals think the portrayals of intelligence work by Hollywood is how it really works?

Moral discussions aside, I think it's time to set the record straight on the legal issues.  Many on the left want their pound of flesh.  They want to see Bush and Cheney frog-marched before the cameras.  They accuse them of war crimes.  So is what transpired at Gitmo such an egregious violation of the law?

First, consider that these enemy combatants were captured on a foreign battlefield trying to kill American soldiers and civilian contractors.  The knee-jerk reaction on the left is to treat them as POWs.  After all, it's war.  Not so fast.  The treatment of prisoners of war is something covered by the Geneva Conventions.  But lefties like to quote selectively from that list of rules.  As a non-uniformed combatant, your average scumbag Taliban fighter or Al-Qaeda terrorist has zero protection under the most-hallowed of war rules documents.  In truth, the Geneva Convention sought to protect civilian populations and uniformed soldiers from reprisals for actions of non-uniformed combatants.  Consider the following examples:

  • A member of the French Resistance during World War II bombs a Parisian eatery frequented by German soldiers.  The bomber is apprehended and summarily executed without trial.
  • A team of uniformed American infantry are trapped behind enemy lines and commit acts of sabotage to slow the enemy's advance.  They are captured and summarily executed without trial.
  • An air force pilot is shot down after bombing enemy cities.  He is detained in a POW camp, given three hots and a cot, and is treated with dignity and respect.  He manages to escape twice from the camp, but is re-captured and sent back to the camp.
Only the second bullet demonstrates a war crime.  Once the infantry were captured, they were entitled to Geneva Convention protections, provided the army which captured them was a signatory to the Convention.  What distinguishes the American personnel from the French Resistance member?  The American personnel were uniformed.  They were clearly identifiable as members of an opposing army.