Stupid Is My Middle Name

With my back, other than tossing 100lb bags of cement, one of the worst things I can do is vacuum. So have a guess what I did today?

Yeah - I vacuumed about 3/4 of the house before my back told me what an ass I was and directed me to the drugs and the supine position.

A wonderful way to end the year.

San Francisco - Don't Feed the Animals

About that tiger attack at the zoo - if there was enough time for police to show up and kill the tiger, there must have been time for vets with trank guns to show up.

No, I'm not a PETA Prick, but there are so few Siberian tigers left in the world - in the low hundreds spread over thousands of square miles - that there must have been a way to distract the cat while pumping it full of nighty nighty drugs.

Siberians are the largest cats in the world, and are being killed off so the Japanese can have (and this is no joke) Tiger Penis Soup. I hope they send this cat's scrotum over there so the Japanese can "tea bag" it in their noodles.

Now I Can Relax

For many years I have not done Christmas well. Of course, for the grandchildren I have to "put on a happy face", but once their gone I can revert to my actual mood.

She Who Must Be Obeyed took a picture of me after the kids left - actually a very good likeness:




Says it all, really!

A Normal Christmas - And A Quiz

True to form, the grand kids couldn't have raked in a bigger haul if they'd used a gun. It's been an unusual year - no feuds starting at either Thanksgiving or Christmas. We must no have been trying!

Now for the quiz:

A TV show started on this date in 1947 and ran until 1960. Some of the characters were Flub-A-Dub, Princess Summerfall Winterspring, Clarabelle and Buffalo Bob. All the kids lucky enough to attend the show sat in the Peanut Gallery.

Let's see how old you are - the show was named after the main character. What was it?

Here's A Real Shocker

This article was lifted from the Winston Salem Urinal:


Services cost more than taxes collected;
Illegal immigrants negatively affect budgets, study says
By Billy House
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON

State and local taxes paid by undocumented immigrants fail to offset the cost of public services that state and local governments provide, a new study done for Congress says.

The same report said that state and local officials can do little to avoid or minimize some of these costs because they are limited by rules governing federal programs, court decisions and state laws or constitutional requirements.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report does not estimate how much more money, exactly, is spent on public services for the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants than the amounts taken in through their tax dollars.

But it said that these costs are concentrated in programs that make up a large percentage of total state spending, particularly in the areas of education, health care and law enforcement.
“The result is probably a modest negative impact on state and local budgets,” said Peter Orszag,
the director of the Congressional Budget Office.

By most estimates, spending for unauthorized immigrants accounted for less than 5 percent of total state and local spending for those services, the study said.

The study was done at the request of GOP Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa.

Previous studies have found that the fiscal impact of both legal and unauthorized immigrants is slightly positive for state and local governments - that the tax revenues they generate exceed the cost of government services they use.

But this new study focuses strictly on the fiscal impact of undocumented immigrants only.
The study’s researchers acknowledged that their work was difficult and imprecise. Differences in benefit programs and mixes of sales taxes, personal property taxes, real property taxes and income taxes vary greatly.

Meanwhile, advocates for immigrants complain that such studies produce merely snapshots in time - they don’t account for immigrants who move up the socio-economic ladder over time and, therefore, eventually pay higher taxes.

“Over time, these same immigrants increase their earnings, succeed, marry, buy homes, create businesses and naturalize, like immigrants have done throughout the history of this country,” said Angela Kelley, the director of the Immigration Policy Center of the American Immigration law Foundation.

I love that last paragraph - I'm still giggling!

Merry Christmas!

It's that time of year - when the grand kids arms are too small for handcuffs, so I have to thigh-cuff them away from the tree.

To all of the usual suspects, who've stuck with me through thick and thin; and for all the occasional visitors to this poor excuse for a web site, may you all have a safe and peaceful Christmas, Kwanzaa or whatever you happen to not believe in.

And may next year be better than this year was!

GOC,
She Who Must Be Obeyed,
Boy Wonder,
Attitude With Legs
and the Devil Dog

She's Back!

After about 35 hours of fly, wait, fly, wait, etc, She Who Must Be Obeyed got home around midnight last night. Her luggage, of course, is on the virtual plane somewhere - and it has the Aussie gifts for the grand kids in it (and a bottle of Port for me!). Hopefully it'll turn up - somewhere, sometime.

The airline tried that "gate closed an hour before" trick again, and apparently it was touch and go whether she got on the flight or in the slammer for the night. Thankfully she got on the flight - she was not putting up with that shit again.

I got semi-domestic so that when she got home she could see the kitchen and the floor in most of the house. She house-trained me years ago so it doesn't take long. I just had to make sure I got the bimbos out in time!!

Anyway, she's home, I'm ecstatic, and Merry Christmas to all.

"God bless us everyone!"

On This Date

With She Who Must Be Obeyed being gone, I really don't feel like doing much of anything, so I thought I'd cheat and put this up:

• In 1621, the Pilgrims from the Mayflower came ashore for the first time.
• In 1945, General George S. Patton died.
• In 1937, the first full-length animated movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, premiered.
• And 19 years ago today, a PanAm jet exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland.

Now that I feel older I'm going to go have a lie down.

She's Going Nuclear

As I wrote yesterday, She Who Must Be Obeyed left yesterday to get home. Because of crossing the Date Line, she leaves Sunday and gets there Tuesday. Wrong.

Her flight last night got to Los Angeles at least 45 minutes in time, but some bitch from Qantas (who wasn't wearing a name tag) told her they closed the gate an hour before the flight. Even after explaining why she was flying, the Qantas response was basically "Tough Shit".

So, She Who Must Be Obeyed spent the night in tears, sleeping in the airport and now has to wait until about 9:00 tonight for the next flight. This means she'll get there Wednesday, and comes home Sunday. Needless to say, she is about to go ballistic if she hasn't already.

If her father doesn't last until she arrives, I wouldn't like to be associated with Qantas. You do not cross She Who Must Be Obeyed. The situation now is bad enough, but if that happens she'll more than likely own a large chunk of the airline before she's done. You piss her off and I'd rather kiss a pit bull!

And Then Depression Set In

Up to now, it's been a pretty good week. My baby girl, Attitude With Legs, celebrated a thirty-something birthday on Thursday and She Who Must Be Obeyed and I had our 34th anniversary yesterday.

Then it collapsed into a screaming pile of crap - She Who Must Be Obeyed has just left on a spur of the moment trip to Australia. Her Dad is in really bad shape - he may not even last until she gets there.

She'll be back in time for Christmas, but I hate it when she leaves, whatever the reason. Selfish, I know, but I always miss her and batching it for a week is a real pain in the ass - I'm out of practice. At least I have Boy Wonder and aforementioned Attitude to check up on me and help me out when needed.

Definitely not my idea of a Merry Christmas - She Who Must Be Obeyed comes from a very close family and this with her father - especially this time of year - is the last thing she needed.

I guess when God says I WANT YOU NOW, you go.

Wha' Happened?

There I was - the doc's had just boosted my drugs and I settled in to join the Great American Apathy - and two weeks went by! How time flies.

Ever since Pearl Harbor Day of 2002, I tend to get mildly annoyed. We as a nation haven't learned a damn thing from Dec 7th. It took less than six months for the Dems to start with their crap, and many of the Repub's aren't any better. Who realized that it was four years ago today that Saddam was pulled from his rat hole?

Before I forget - Happy Birthday, Uncle Ted! Ted Nugent turns 59 today - still lean, clean, kicking out seriously mean rock and using his bow to fill his pantry.

"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement." (Anon.)

Incommunicado

For the next three hours or so, I will be unavailable for anything but a death in the family.

The Army / Navy game is just starting - Go NAVY!

A Friendly Nation?

If you missed it, a little while ago I wrote in one of my S&G's the following:

"Also - to everyone who takes our way of life for granted and
assumes that it could never change, check out what's happened to Hong Kong in the last ten years."

Most people here take their freedom as a God-given right that will last forever.

Ten years ago, the British turned Hong Kong over to China, who promised that it would remain a free port and a center of capitalism. That lasted about two years, when the Chinese government and army moved in and decided to use Hong Kong as a political weapon.

Over the last three weeks or so, at least three U.S. ships, including two who were caught in a storm and were low on fuel, were denied access to the port facilities. The USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier was supposed to meet up with family members who has spent large sums to get passports, visas, transport and accommodation.

This was to be a Thanksgiving celebration, but at the last minute the Chinese denied the ship entry, leaving many families pretty much stranded depressed and outraged.

Prior to 1997, Hong Kong was a British colony enjoying all the freedoms that went with that. Those freedoms and rights are gone because the people quietly accepted their new status.

Freedom is never free, and what most people consider "rights" are actually privileges that can be taken away at a moment's notice if you aren't willing to fight to keep them.