Entries Tagged 'Rants' ↓

As many of you probably know, for some reason Orange County, CA is a haven for skinheads and other types of intolerant folks. Of course, OC has its share of fine people, but there’s a plethora of religious freaks and intolerant assholes too.

So last night my wife and I were driving to get some ice cream. As we were leaving the parking lot, a late-90’s model Toyota RAV-4 comes screaming into the parking lot. As it passes us, we can’t help but notice that it’s flying an enormous Confederate flag, and is filled with high school aged skinheads.

Now I know that me being intolerant of people expressing themselves is intolerant in itself. And I acknowledge that. But racists are some of the worst scum of the earth, especially the ones who pride themselves on it.

But here’s the funny thing. Didn’t these assholes understand that they were driving a Japanese car? Stupid idiots.

It’s amazing what the CSU system gets away with. It’s like pulling fucking teeth to get our dear Chancellor to give up any sort of employee compensation at all, despite the pile of new requirements and responsibilities that get heaped on CSU staff every year.

There’s a lot of history behind this, but because the state of California didn’t fund an extra 1% increase in funding for the CSU system, the union was forced to re-bargain. The Chancellor’s officce hass once again proven themselves a pain in the ass, and has rejected the union’s very fair proposal.

It’s like this every fucking year, and has been for every year that I have been a staff member. I have been here eight years, and am still at the very bottom of the pay scale for my classification. It really is a bunch of crap.

But what am I going to do? I’m here at work, and all I can do is bitch about it. Oh well, I guess that’s part of the delight of a nice secure state job…or something like that.

Sorry, just had to bitch.

In an unconfirmed story originally broken by George Packer of The New Yorker, and commented on and clarified by Another Day in the Empire, Cheney’s minions have sent instructions to major media outlets to sell the war against Iran this week.

According to the report, the American Enterprise Institute is the brainchild behind this assault on the psyche of American citizens. It’s yet another fearmongering grab for money and control.

Let’s just think about this rationally by pondering some basic questions:

Q: Why would Iran ever attack the United States?

A: They wouldn’t. We have proven ourselves to be a violent country that will attack lesser countries without sufficient proof or provocation, and I have no doubt that Iran is pretty scared right now and has no interest in pissing us off.

Q: More importantly, how would Iran attack us?

A: Iran neither has the means, or technological prowess to attack the United States. First of all, they would have to travel across half the world, which would obviously be picked up by American surveillance. Second, to launch a successful attack, Iran would need to establish a nearby stronghold. Neither Canada nor Mexico would ever provide Iran with a safe haven from which to attack (for fear of being stricken down by America themselves), so there’s no way Iran could establish a nearby base of operations.

Q: Third, and most importantly, would it really be all that bad if Iran attacked the United States?

A: No, it really wouldn’t. If you bothered to read President Ahmadinejad’s letter to the American People of November 29, 2006, you would know that Iran has no intentions of harming American citizens. If anything, Iran wants to break the American People free of the tyranny of the Bush Administration, and sympathizes with their plight. The way I see it, if Pelosi isn’t going to push for impeachment, and the American People aren’t going to rise up themselves, then why not invite a third party in to break down our fucked up government?

Yeah yeah, I know this is radical thinking and all that. But seriously, does anyone truly believe that Iran is going to attack us? Not even Bush and Cheney thinks that Iran is a threat. Iran is just another excuse to shove their friends’ pockets full of cold, hard, worthless, American cash.

Forgive me if I sound pissy, but I slept like shit last night. It was fucking hot and my power was out, which makes sleeping pretty damn difficult. I don’t need air conditioning (which is good since my house doesn’t have it anyway), but I do need a fan blowing on me to keep the hot air from getting stagnant. Turns out that when the power is out, it’s a little difficult to run a fan.

Now don’te get me wrong. I understand electrical equipment for the most part, and understand that electrical equipment hates heat, and frequently fails due to heat. But I also know for a fact that there are hotter places in the United States, and in the world, who suffer hotter temperatures than we did over the weekend on a daily basis, and they don’t suffer the same equipment failures that we do. Why is this, you may ask? Is is maybe…just maybe…the same shit that we’re seeing throughout the United States lately?

In the past few years, we have seen abhorrent infrastructure problems here in the US. It started with Katrina, and the levees breaking and killing a huge amount of people. There had been warnings that it was a potential risk, but no one bothered to pump any money into the area, which resulted in massive deaths of United States citizens.

Next came the bridge collapse just last month. When ever in the modern history of the United States have you heard of a bridge spontaneously collapsing? That’s right, never.

And now here I am in California, suffering through the heat without power, again because of infrastructure problems.

But here our government is, running up a huge national debt and giving out no-bid contracts to their rich friends like candy at Halloween, spending money half way across the globe to rebuild shit that WE blew up. Fuck the US citizens, right? Fuck our needs here at home, that’s not what we should be spending money on. Things are working OK, so why fix what’s not completely broken?

Are these United States actually crumbling…or is it your imagination?

I was just thinking about it, and wonder if any other President in the history of the United States has presided over the mass slaughter of as many civilians as George W. Bush?

To start it all off, 2,819 civilians were killed in the attacks of 9/11/2001. Following that, 1,400 people were killed when Katrina hit the gulf states. That’s a total of 4,219 civilians so far. And that’s not counting the thousands of 9/11 rescue workers who have been plagued and killed by lung problems after the fact.

Of course we have had tragedies in our past. The death toll for the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was estimated at 3,000. And obviously murder rates fluctuate and people die, but I’m talking about mass casualties, not overall casualties.

So I really think that George takes the cake. Congratulations George W. Bush, you’re the winner of the “Which President Can Kill the Most Citizens Award”! Nice work.

As I mentioned in a previous post, California is still operating without a budget. Apparently the senators were in session yesterday, and were dangerously close to actually agreeing on a deal. Somehow though, it fell through due to a minority of GOP senators not approving the deal.

As embarrassing as this is that one of the largest states in the Union has been budgetless for almost two months, it hadn’t affected me personally yet. It just did though. Since the state doesn’t have a budget, the CSU doesn’t have a budget, and since the CSU doesn’t have a budget, we can’t renew some of our software site licenses.

In short, that means that we can’t install certain essential software on our lab machines, which means that classes dedicated to certain pieces of software will be pointless until the state senate can get their shit together and pass a budget.

Like I have said before, it is time to clean house. Let’s fire all these asshole career politicians and make this government for the people by the people like it was meant to be originally, instead of relying on jackhole fuckoffs who apparently have better things to do than pass a state budget.

Have you ever felt guilty about taking a vacation at a time that was inconvenient for your employer? Or, even worse, have you ever been denied a vacation request for the same reason? Not if you’re part of the California State Legislature.

Turns out that, almost two months after the constitutionally mandated state budget deadline, the California Legislature is on their summer recess. And once they come back on August 20th, they only have four weeks left to get things done before the end of the session.

Why do I care, you may ask. Well, not only am I a California resident whose hard earned tax dollars go to pay these jackholes, but I am also a state employee whose pending raise hinges on these idiots getting the budget passed. Technically, I shouldn’t even be receiving a paycheck until the budget passes, but that fortunately isn’t going to happen.

It’s just sad to me that an entire state can operate without a bedget for two months while the idiots in charge of making decisions are on vacation. But once again it’s a matter of our government telling the citizens to do what they say, and not what they do. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds, so let’s clean house and fire the assholes the next chance we get.

Yesterday morning when every news pimp in the United States was covering Paris Hilton’s triumphant escape from jail, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski refused multiple times to report the story. Her producer had positioned the story as the lead, and she flat out refused to talk about it. For this, I strongly applaud her. There were many way more important events to report other than some rich bitch getting released from jail, and Ms. Brzezinski’s efforts to report those stories is commendable.

The sad part about this display of rationality and strength to fight for what she thought was right is that her two male co-anchors mocked her incessantly, and didn’t lend her completely logical point any credibility at all. More often than not, when a person voices their opinion against what is obviously wrong as Ms. Brzezinski did, their peers mock them instead of supporting them.

It is truly pathetic when so called respected journalists mock their counterpart for actually reporting the real news. Or trying to anyway. Mika Brzezinski did not give up though, and other than some brief footage of Paris leaving jail, the story did not get any coverage.

See the video here:

http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=e771e428-bc1a-4ba7-8715-b871d757ccce&f=00&fg=email

I know that everyone is on a Ron Paul kick, especially 9/11 truthers. I have to admit that I do agree with a lot of what the guy says, and I wouldn’t be devastated if he won the election. But I wouldn’t necessarily be happy either.

I completely understand that there’s a huge difference between Ron Paul’s brand of Republicanism and George Bush’s (or any other neocon’s for that matter). But even Ron Paul’s brand of traditional Republicanism is something I can’t get down with. Some parts, like smaller government and less government spending, I completely agree with. But I also perceive that many of Dr. Paul’s beliefs are driven by his religion, which I don’t think has any place in the United States government. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s my perception of him.

Honestly, Ron Paul seems like a good guy to me. I have nothing against him personally, and like I said, I wouldn’t be devastated if he won. In my lifetime we, the American People, have given the Republicans a hell of a chance to do better for this country, and they have consistently disappointed us. Sure Clinton was no angel, and made some stupid mistakes, but he didn’t do nearly the harm that Bush I or Bush II did.

Maybe that’s the wrong attitude, but I’m not voting for a Republican candidate this time around, or possibly ever.

I really try my best to stay away from celebrity news, but every once in a while I need to weigh in. Does anyone else feel like this Paris Hilton thing is a complete bastardization and mockery of our justice system? Seriously, people are locked up for a long time for stupid drug related offenses, which are arguably less dangerous to society that this idiot drunk driving heiress.

So what does this mean? Does it mean that Scooter Libby will get put under house arrest after only a few days in the slammer because he’s an old crotchety fuck? Of course, I’m only talking about the time between surrendering to the authorities and when Bush signs the pardon papers, but still, are we going to send every rich inmate home?

It’s like my friend Wes said though: What’s the point in getting pissed about this when people go free for much more heinous crimes (cough…OJ Simpson…cough cough)? Our justice system is obviously fucked.

Shit I’m vulgar today. Oh well.