Expert Supervision

As previously mentioned, I'm owned by the 4-legged nuisance known as Elf.

Being a cat, she (of course) owns me and everything in my apartment -- and is the single most important thing in the Universe. For example, her food dish is in the kitchen; that means (from her perspective) that if I go into the kitchen, it can obviously be only for the sole purpose of feeding her -- regardless of the amount of (dry) food already in her dish. Should I happen to fail in my primary obligation of tending to her every want and desire, Elf will contrive to 'remind' me of my duties. Here's a photo of her holding down a spot roughly in the middle of the kitchen floor, where it's necessary for me to step over/around her, regardless of what I might otherwise be doing:

"Dogs have owners. Cats have staff."

Skewed priorities?

Oh, hot diggety.

Our esteemed Senator Tester (and, perhaps, Senator Baucus) has convinced the HMFIC of the Veterans Administration -- Mr. Peake -- to pay our humble state a little visit. First, he'll be here in Billings at least long enough to hold a meeting; following that, he'll be heading out to our one-and-only VA hospital (where we can get such exotic treatments as eye exams, actual hospital care, and the like) at Fort Harrison (which is located 'in' Helena), a mere 230 miles from Billings. That's fairly close, by Montana standards, but still makes for a bothersome trip if the care one needs is relatively minor or brief.

Here in Billings, Mr. Peake will be facing us vets in a conference room at the Billings Hilton. I readily admit that I don't know what process is involved in getting a meeting room from a hotel, but I'd be highly surprised if it didn't involve financial considerations. So the thing that comes to my mind is to wonder: couldn't the VA have found a cheaper venue? Or (as I suspect) is Mr. Peake actually staying at the Hilton, and perhaps getting the use of the meeting room for 'free'? If either of those is the case, I figure that pretty much demonstrates where the real priorities are in the VA: funding that could (should!) be going toward taking care of veterans is being pissed away.

By way of illustration, I have an appointment at Ft. Harrison for an eye exam. The last such exam I had lasted all of half an hour, as I recall. So here's the situation: I'm supposed to drive the 230 miles to Ft. Harrison (possibly being reimbursed travel expenses at the princely rate of 28.5 cents/mile) -- that's 3 hours travel each way for something that's going to take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. Curiously, if Mr. Peake were to stay in a Holiday Inn, I'm fairly confident that the price difference would be more than sufficient to pay a local optometrist to do the exam and (say) fax the results to Ft. Harrison -- something that I daresay would be more cost- and time-efficient all the way around. Or is it asking too much for gummit officials to put their supposed 'clients' ahead of their own perquisites and 'needs'?

Votination

I done it.

Went to my local polling place (an elementary school not a block away from my apartment) and did my thing.

Indicating what I thought was the least offensive of a bad lot, I marked the little spot for Huckabee (the only one that seems to have stayed on track, the way I see it).

Having been to places where 'voting' consisted of Joe Citizen being allowed to see the ballot boxes the HMFIC was stuffing, or 'freedom' meant getting to choose between saying "Yes, Sir!" or "Right away, Sir!" when told to do something by the powers-that-be, I figured it was an obligation on my part to do the whole Democracy thing.

Anyone not thinking that our form of government is one of the better ideas to pop into a Human Beans' head is cordially invited to live for a while in someplace like China, North Korea, Iran, Kenya, or someplace similar. Anyone not willing to exert the effort to pay attention to -- and be involved in -- the political process is going to end up with exactly the kind of government they deserve. I just wish such assclowns weren't taking all the rest of us down with them...

Blather

I'm watching This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and ol' George has asked Hitlary three times if she would garnish wages to force people to participate in her Universal Healthcare program, and it wasn't until the third time that she even vaguely answered the question by saying that she would have 'an enforcement mechanism'. Even then, the reference was only in passing on her way to launching a barrage of bullshit.

As far as I'm concerned, Hitlary exemplifies the the saying "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with bullshit."

An Apology

I would like to express my regrets that it is a Montana Senator that has
monkey-wrenched the federal rebate program:

Rather than accepting a (possibly) less-than-perfect deal that gets
checks into the hands of Americans in a somewhat timely manner, Senator
Max Baucus found it appropriate to delay the whole process by insisting
on including a number of changes that must necessarily be resolved
before the program can continue.

Again, my apologies.

Political Perspectives

This political season, here (in no particular order) are some of the things that I think about a variety of subjects:

• Immigration: I think it needs major reform. The country has (roughly) a half-million new entry-level new jobs each year, as well as a large number of labor-intensive jobs (think construction and farm), but only a tiny fraction of people willing to work those jobs. Immigrants (primarily from Mexico) are willing to work those jobs, but are unable to get the paperwork needed to do so legally. What I think should be done is to create a class of seasonal worker visas that allow migrants to work in the U.S. for a period of (say) 6 months, then have to leave again for an equal period. Similarly, a class of visa for those coming to take an entry-level job should be creaated -- one that would allow them to (optionally) apply for citizenship. Simultaneously, I think it would be entirely appropriate to lock down the U.S. border -- I mean, as in anyone crossing it except at an official checkpoint being subject to summary execution as a possible criminal/terrorist/what-have-you. If you want to 'secure the border', then by-god SECURE it.

• Economy: If our elected officials want the American economy to grow, and our citizens to do well, get the fuck out of the way. Government has never, ever managed anything with any degree of efficiency, timeliness, or competency. Phase out such things as farm subsidies, price supports, and all of that kind of nonsense. Either eliminate the income tax by going to a national sales tax, or reduce the income tax to something along the lines of "Send us X% of all your income." Along with that, make a matter of LAW that the federal budget MUST be balanced, and that no program may be implemented without clearly specifying how it will be financed.
• Politics: How 'bout our elected officials knock the crap off? I'd like to see our elected officials have to live by the same rules that the rest of us do: no special subsidies for their health insurance, no special medical care, no special nothin'. If some Congresscritter wants to send fifty million bucks to his home district, it should be done in the open, and the funding source (and recipients!) plainly identified.
• Civil liberties: If Congress is obliged to operate out in the open, so should the White House. If Dubya (or whatever gonzo gets elected) wants to start tapping phones, (s)he should be obliged to state so publicly. Ditto anything else that bumps up against the Constitution or Bill of Rights -- if anyone in the administration has to ask "can we do that?", they should be obliged to publicize it.
• Military: Our military is supposed to be there to protect us from outside aggression. Military manning and budgeting should be one of the highest priority items, with full accounting -- I'm not sure how or why a hammer from Sears or Snap-On or somesuch is inherently inferior to one made by a government contractor. I mean, Sears Craftsman tools have a lifetime warranty - take a broken screwdriver in, and it gets replaced on the spot, f'cryin out loud, so why isn't that good enough for the military? Similarly, if one of the armed services decides they don't need/want some weapon system (think "Osprey"), Congress shouldn't foist it on them anyway. Our military should be the best-trained, bestt-paid, biggest bad-asses on the planet -- people should be genuinely afraid of pissing us off.
• Foreign policy: Why, in God's name, does this country riccochet all over the place in our dealings with other countries? I'd like to see even ONE of the candidates come out and say "The USA stands for ____; consistent with that principle, our policy toward countries/leaders that ______ will be _____". F'rinstance, we have a trade deficit with China (they're getting more of our money than we are of theirs - partly through the governments manipulation of their currency), and we're afraid of pissing THEM off?
• Size of Government: I've noted before that the number of Federal employees as a percentage of the U.S. population has increased over the last half century (50 citizens per Fed employee in 1944 to 20:1 now). Maybe it's time to limit -- by law -- how many "civil servants" (they seldom seem to be either) we allow?

I mean, that's what I think...

Raising kids

For those that might be interested, here are some useful Do's and Don'ts for taking care of your infant.

Of course, if you need this kind of help, you might want to give some thought to putting off child-rearing for a while -- say, forever...

A different approach to politics

While watching the PBS News Hour, and the coverage of assorted debates, my two brain cells accidentally bumped into each other and produced A Thought:

Instead of the conventional process of asking one of the candidates a question, and then letting the rest of them respond (after having more time to think about it), how about if one of the debates was set up so that the candidates all had the same amount of time to provide a written response, and all the responses were displayed next to each other?

That way, none of them gets any advantage over any other on any given question, we get to find out how well they can think on their feet (no time for polls during a national emergency, for example), we get to see how they express themselves, and -- most important -- they have to express THEIR position(s), versus comparing themselves to someone else.

For me, the ideal would be to have each of them type their response into something like a web page (where they could be limited to some number of characters), but transcriptions of their handwritten or printed responses would work, too.

I mean, it's an idea...

Variability of time

Einstein asserted that time isn't a constant value -- that it varies according to external events.

I've just gotten confirmation of that in the form of a voicemail left for me.

I do the odd bit of computer service for folks, and get a fair number of referrals from the folks that I've helped; one of those referrals was a gentleman that called to see if I could help him get his computer functioning again. Except that he couldn't just call and leave a message giving his name, a message to the effect of 'my computer is broken, can you help me?', and a phone number to reach him at. He felt obliged to leave me a message that lasted just short of three minutes: it started with him telling me a bit about himself (i.e. his medical and financial problems), then the life story of the computer, a history of the problems he's had with it, and ending with an explanation of just how badly he needs the computer working. It was only as an apparent afterthought that he gave me a phone number. From the sound of his voice, I figured he was an 'older' gentleman, so that it took a while for him to get to the point really didn't surprise me; it was how LONG it took that shocked me.

After I dealt with the problem (his computer is complaining it can't find an operating system, which tells me he's got a dead hard drive; I don't 'stock' hardware, so he has to get the replacement himself), I started thinking about the conversation I had with him and realized that (it seems to me, anyway) that a high percentage of older people often have a tendency to make a short story long: dwelling on irrelevant details, going off on conversational detours, dawdling in the telling, and so forth. What could have been a 10- or 15-second message by this fellow ended up going 2:57 (I couldn't resist listening to it again to time it).

Still, I can't help wonder if this is just a case of selective memory on my part (that is, remembering the few long-winded instead of the many to-the-point), or an actual phenomenon - and if the latter, why it happens.

Not so bad

Contrary to the image (possibly/probably) presented by the results of the previous online quizzes I took, I do have my good points:

What's Your Best Quality? Your Result: Intelligence   Your best quality is intelligence! People like you because you are smart and always make the right decision. Your intelligence also helps you handle tough situations.
Personality
Out-Going
Loving
Ambitious
Sense of Humor
What's Your Best Quality? Take More Quizzes