Good or Bad for the Jews

"Good or Bad for the Jews"

Many years ago, and for many years, I would travel to Morocco to visit uncles, cousins, and my paternal grandmother. Some lived in Tangiers;...

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

A Mishmash of Modern Disasters, or Things I Really, Really Hate!

As the nine regular readers can attest, this blogger has been in a dark and pessimistic mood for several days. That mood continues. To prove it, I list, in no particular order and with no particular rhyme or reason, SOME, only some of the things I consider the modern world's greatest disasters (and I won't even mention Islam . . or I might . . . don't know yet.)

1) The Telephone Answering Machine: This horrid device and its subsequent even more horrid offspring have ruined my life. As a career bureaucrat, for years and years, prior to this devil's device I could pretend not to have received calls or pretend to have made them. With the advent of that machine that evasion became virtually impossible. This invention is one of the greatest contributors to the decline of Western civilization. It has destroyed one of the great and useful white lies, "I tried calling you . . . "

2) Twenty-four Hour News: The arrival of CNN and its imitators helped create the atmosphere of perennial crisis in which we live. These news services run the same story over and over and over all day long, to such an extent that one cannot after a bit tell whether it is a new story or the old "tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury. . ." It has led to a couple of generations of news anchors who have become masters at filling dead air.

3) Universal University Education: How many people really need a university education? Better asked, how many people really need a budget-busting indoctrination "noneducation" which is what most universities now provide? Do we need hundreds, nay, thousands of these institutions producing millions of half-literate and arrogant idiots indoctrinated in the liberal orthodoxy and possessing no discernible skills? You know the answer . . .

4) Tax Withholding: Allowing the government to take its "taste" of our income before we even see it has helped produce the disastrous growth of government and the spiral of ever-increasing taxes. It has produced workers "grateful" every year when they get tax refunds, and made them almost oblivious to tax increases. Imagine how people would react if they had to save up the money and on December 31, write a check to the government for the full amount of taxes owed. The 1773 Boston tea party would be nothing in comparison to what would happen.

5) School Districts: Why should tax paying parents have to send their kids to schools in their "district"? Why not allow free competition so parents can send their kids to good schools, and force the bad ones to shutter or improve?

6) Texting: I remain convinced that horrid devices such as cellphones and "tablets" were designed by opticians and chiropractors. We are developing a generation of children who are going blind, hunchback, and bonkers staring at their hands even at the dinner table, not to mention while driving or even while "talking" with each other. I never see them with books, just IPhones.

7) Global Warming AKA Climate Change: Stop. Please, stop. To those die hard believers in this nonsense it is time to go back to believing in the power of triangles, chariots of the gods, and the peaceful, Gaia-loving essence of native American societies. Or better, just go away. As Einstein has shown us it is never wise to claim that "the science is settled" but it is just about as settled as it can be. The evidence is not there for the belief, and note I use that word deliberately, that human activity causes global warming or the even more vague and dishonest "climate change." Amazing ain't it? Finally, finally, scientists are breaking through the wall of censorship and grant terror to note that, well, ahem, it seems the sun, you know that big yellow hot ball in the sky, might, just might have more to do with changes in climate than does my SUV. This climate nonsense made Al Gore and others very rich; they should now just take their money and go away.

Sigh, there are so many other things out there that make a person sad and depressed. Can't possibly list them all . . . soon I will be back to my old self and ranting about jihadis and liberals . . . give me a day or so . . . where's my oatmeal?

23 comments:

  1. Bicycle lanes! An abomination of this earth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They do make it easier to squish the cyclists, however. They're all lined up . . .

      Delete
    2. Quite right, all in one place for your ease of disposal!

      Delete
    3. Bicycle lanes are a part of Agenda 21, aren't they? They are popping up all over.

      Delete
  2. The Toyota Pious (and all other Hybrids). If your car can't get up to 70mph by the time you need to merge onto the freeway, then it should not be legal in the US.

    And no, its not a mis-spellins...it is the PIOUS!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. How could I have missed that one?

      Delete
    2. Oh, come on. The hybrids are a way to recuperate braking and coasting energy. They work, the Toyota at least has proven to be reliable and durable, and they are efficient. Do they make economic sense? Not any more than the Cayman S that I blast past them in. The pious are the smug drivers inside, the car is not. D\OTOH, don't get me started on true electric cars. In large parts of the country, you get to 'save' the environment by burning coal....

      Delete
    3. When I see a Pious going by the driver reminds me of the rich burgher on his little ass in Daffy Duck's Robbing Hood cartoon.

      Delete
  3. A good list. You'll get no argument from me.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I like your #4. Overnight the size of government and its social spending would fall dramatically! I'm continually amazed by how many people get excited when they get back the loan they gave to the gov't without interest!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've always thought the "withholding" method was the most evil thing ever perpetrated on the American people. Sensible people always thought "buying on credit" was for the foolish, and yep, "buying our government on credit" is even more monumentally foolish.

    Thanks for a lighthearted (?) break from the gruesome news swamp that we swim in these days.

    Enjoy your oatmeal (at least it's good for you).

    Blessings and best wishes to all who haunt this site!

    LibertyGrace'sGrandma

    ReplyDelete
  6. Agree with ALL of your points. I would add to telephone answering machine (whose use some say is in decline) both e-mail and cell phones. They are incessantly intrusive to a degree that even answering machines cannot match. I like them fine for my use at my convenience, but I resent them mightily when others insist on using them to reach me and don't like it when I don't respond.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Climate change - did you know the oceans have been rising an average of 1 meter every century? Of course almost all that happened in one century about 99 centuries ago. Gotta love the Warmists - five unknowns, three equations, two hunches, a government begging bowl, an insufferable attitude and a willingness to commit Lysenko levels of fraud. They have a veritable digital orrery, but reality sure ain't in it.

    ReplyDelete
  8. One suggested change for #4: Instead of Jan. 1 how about the Monday before the second Tuesday in November....

    ReplyDelete
  9. I had lunch yesterday with two former colleagues who had their smart phones on the table. Our conversation was constantly interrupted by their chosen noise indicating that a text message had come in. They had to instantly drop out of the conversation, read the text about things like dog poop on the carpet, and send off an answer indicating that the dog poop needed to be cleaned off the carpet.

    My phone was in my truck seat, switched off, as per usual.

    "I know I called and invited you to the party a month ago! I left you a message!" one friend told me.

    "I did not get the message. Did you leave it on my home phone?"

    "No! Your cell phone!"

    "Do I EVER turn my cell phone on unless my truck is on fire or I've run over a bicyclist?"

    "No."

    *sigh*



    ReplyDelete
  10. 24/7 "News" really really, well sorry nice folks, the onlyest word readily leaps to the ol' cortex is "sucks" - yep, that's it - 24/7 News sucks.

    One "just for instance" - recall after the fall of Baghdad when the looting of the museum occurred?

    I've never witnessed before or since (I don't watch nearly as much TV as once upon a time) pure, unadulterated, plain ol' EXASPERATION as when Rumsfeld asked,

    How many jars can the Baghdad Museum possibly have?!!

    First and last time I actually felt sorry for Donald Rumsfeld.

    Arkie

    ReplyDelete
  11. I have found my people! I knew there was a reason I bookmarked this site.

    One friend when she learned I was never reachable by cell phone asked, “How does your husband tell you what to do?” This caused me to throw my head back in laughter. She thought about it a few minutes and said, “You’re free!” Ding, ding ding, we have a winner.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I put it right up front on my voice mail message: You can leave a message, but I'm not going to listen to it.

      Delete
    2. When I read your comment about your lunch I was left with a desire to up vote you.

      Delete
  12. My footrpint is bigger than Al Gore's--alas, it's only because I wear a bigger shoe.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I agree wholeheartedly with #3. My dad used to complain about dealing with college educated idiots. I thought he was jealous because he had to drop out after the eighth grade to work. Once I got out in the real world I discovered he was right, you can lead an idiot to education but you can't make him think.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Kepha,

    As a nurse who has put in several thousand male urinary catheters, and understanding how one thing correlates with another, you are BRAGGING, Bubba!

    Michael

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ouch, Michael. Ouch! But I do wear a size 12.

      My comment was prompted by (1)our host's pet peeves and (2) a bumper sticker reading "I'm proud of my carbon footprint" on a smart car I passed on my way home. As a professional swindler of the young--oops, public high school social studies teacher--there's no way my footprint, other than the literal one, could be larger than Gore's.

      Delete