Author: wasswasswass

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5 Surgeons

Five surgeons from big cities are discussing who makes the best
patients to operate on:

The first surgeon, from New York , says, ‘I like to see Accountants on my operating table; because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered.’

The second surgeon, from Chicago, responds, ‘Yeah, but you should try Electricians! Everything inside them is color coded.’

The third surgeon, from Dallas, says, ‘No, I really think Librarians are the best. Everything inside them is in alphabetical order.’

The fourth surgeon, from Los Angeles, chimes in, ‘You know, I like construction workers. Those guys always understand when you have a few parts left over.’

But the fifth surgeon, from Washington , DC , shut them all up when he observed,

‘You’re all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to operate on.
There’s no guts, no heart, no balls, no brains, and no spine; plus the head and the butt are interchangeable.

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Bush is at fault

I am tired of hearing how Bush is at fault for all of our country’s problem.

“Bush’s policies, Bush is stoopid, Bush this, Bush that.” Blah blah blah.

Yes, I agree Bush has been a terrible president. Anyone with half a luke warm cerebellum knows that. But how did he get there? Is Bush at fault or are all the people who voted for him at fault?

We are letting all those people who put him in office, who gave him the power to do what he has done, letting them off too easy. What about all those people who voted against Kerry because he was a flip-flopper? What about all those people who were so gung-ho for Bush and his accomplished missions?

Those people are the real causes of this deficit, this war, this financial crisis due to deregulation. Those folks got him into office. By blaming all this on Bush, we let ourselves off the hook. It absolves us of the real guilt. We all are at fault for the situation we are in – half of us for voting for him and the other half for not raising enough Hell, for all the shit he has pulled.

p.s.

everything is a Rorschach test

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Guess it runs in the family

Neil Bush was the most widely targeted member of the Bush family by the press in the S&L scandal. Neil became director of Silverado Savings and Loan at the age of 30 in 1985. Three years later the institution was belly up at a cost of $1.6 billion to tax payers to bail out.

The basic actions of Neil Bush in the S&L scandal are as follows:

Neil received a $100,000 “loan” from Ken Good, of Good International, with no obligation to pay any of the money back.
Good was a large shareholder in JNB Explorations, Neil Bush’s oil-exploration company.
Neil failed to disclose this conflict-of-interest when loans were given to Good from Silverado, because the money was to be used in joint venture with his own JNB. This was in essence giving himself a loan from Silverado through a third party.
Neil then helped Silverado S&L approve Good International for a $900,000 line of credit.
Good defaulted on a total $32 million in loans from Silverado.
During this time Neil Bush did not disclose that $3 million of the $32 million that Good was defaulting on was actually for investment in JNB, his own company.
Good subsequently raised Bush’s JNB salary from $75,000 to $125,000 and granted him a $22,500 bonus.
Neil Bush maintained that he did not see how this constituted a conflict of interest.
Neil approved $106 million in Silverado loans to another JNB investor, Bill Walters.
Neil also never formally disclosed his relationship with Walters and Walters also defaulted on his loans, all $106 million of them.
Neil Bush was charged with criminal wrongdoing in the case and ended up paying $50,000 to settle out of court. The chief of Silverado S&L was sentenced to 3.5 years in jail for pleading guilty to $8.7 million in theft. (Keep in mind that you can get more jail time for holding up a gas station for $50.)
Today Neil Bush is working on closing a deal in Florida, where his brother Jeb is governor, to sell a software package to schools with his startup company Ignite.

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Long live the Free Market ! (unless it hurts the wealthy)

Democrats maybe donkeys, but Republicans are dumbasses.

Free Market! Free Market! Free Market! Free Market!Free Market! Free Market!Free Market! Free Market!Free Market! Free Market!Free Market! Free Market!Free Market! Free Market!

Oh shit!

Save us! Give us Money! Save us! Give us Money! Save us! Give us Money! Save us! Give us Money! Save us! Give us Money! Save us! Give us Money! Save us! Give us Money! Save us! Give us Money! Save us! Give us Money! Save us! Give us Money! Save us! Give us Money!

Live by the free market, die by the free market, no?

Isn’t the bank bailout basically socialism?

Why doesn’t the federal government bail me out when I make bad business decisions?

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Race and Our Place in It

Is it an any wonder the USA has so many racial issues? We can’t even get the terms to identify each other right.

There are black people and white people. A color scheme, yes?

Okay, fine, but then to call an Asian person yellow is derogatory and to call a Native American person red is also offensive. But to describe someone as having olive colored skin is okay. Which kind of olive anyways – Kalamata or Graber’s? Nabali or Manzanillo? Mission or Pecholine?

Oriental is out and Occidental (its correspondent term) was never in.

To call a person a European is fine, but to call someone Oriental is frowned up. European cars and Oriental rugs, just fine. Granted no one under 75 calls Asia the Orient, but still…
And European styling? What the @#$@! is that? Italy and Sweden…same style?

Caucasian, or European. Are we using continents or mountain ranges to define ourselves? Hitler tried Aryan, but he probably would have put the real Aryans in his camps.

Are we using colors or names of countries, continents or geographical features? How about all of the above?

And then there’s hyphenating. Do we do it from the part of the world our ancestors came from? or just the country? Am I a European-American? Or a Northern-European American? Or an American of European descent? Or to be people first, a person living in American of European descent.

I think this inability for us to pick one spectrum of label ourselves is related to the affirmative action debate, also to the individual vs. group debate. What scale do we use to evaluate applicants for schools, jobs, contracts? When do we say that everyone is finally on the same playing field?

Who knows?
I certainly don’t.
I just know that I am a white Caucasian Occidental Polish-Czech-German-Irish-English-Scotch American.

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Carbon Footprint of music

As I write this post, I am listening to the melodius musical styling of Miles Davis et al. on Pandora.com. If you don’t know Pandora, get to know her!! Type in a musicians name, or a band or a song and the algorithm or small elves or whatever picks other songs to play based upon your voting yeah or nay on other songs.

But I digress…

As I sit here and listen to this music, I wonder about the environmental impact of listening to music on the internet. Does it take more juice than listening to a cd of the same music? How does that compare to a turntable? If all music in the future is only digital and no physical LPs or CDs are made, would that offset all the energy needed to run my computer, wireless router, DSL system and computers at Pandora’s end? No need to drive to a store to buy a plastic disc to then drive back home and stick into my computer to then rip and store on a harddrive that has to be on and using juice if I want to listen to the music.

Maybe the best way, least impactful method of listening to music would be just to make my own music on non electrified equipment…