Pretty straightforward, right?

The definition of sacrifice is pretty clear to anyone. You’re giving up something that’s yours or something that matters to you and usually for the benefit of someone else. That’s why sacrifice is so noble; it’s usually selfless.  If you work five days a week and only spend time with your family on weekends, and one weekend you decide to spend Saturday at the blood bank volunteering instead of playing ball with your kids, you’ve sacrificed.  Have you sacrificed if you stood on line at a grocery store and paid for your shopping with someone else’s handout?  If you’re the beneficiary of a sacrifice? Is that still a sacrifice?

A lot of talk has been happening lately about sharing sacrifice. The Democrats in Congress are 100% on message with the idea that those pesky rich people have to give up their corporate jets and tax breaks so that everyone is sacrificing something for the greater good. I won’t even get into the fact that the tax breaks in place on the unanimously derided corporate jets were put in place by the very President now speaking out against them, and I won’t get into the fact that those corporate jets, if taxed, couldn’t make a drop in the bucket of the reckless spending this administration has engaged in.

What I want to know is who’s sacrificing?

We’ve heard so much about shared sacrifice that we don’t even question it anymore. We just accept that sharing sacrifice means some have to give more for the greater good, and that we’re all giving as much as we can. We accept that corporate jets are a luxury and they people using them are greedy monsters who obtained them through some evil means, but what is the shared part of the sacrifice?

By the IRS’s own numbers, a large portion of taxpaying units in the United States have zero tax burden. 47% of taxpaying units in the United States pay nothing in income taxes, and 18% pay nothing and get a refund check because of various credits and deductions. The remaining 53% of the taxpaying units in this country shoulder 100% of the tax burden, the top 10% paying nearly 40% of that while holding 20% of the wealth.  Those top tiers are now being asked to pay more.

Why?  So that they can share the sacrifice?

People who are having large chunks of their income taken away from them are being accused of not sharing in the collective sacrifice enough, but the folks who do nothing and collect from the fruits of their labor are heroines and role models for their struggling.

What kind of Marxist craziness bullshit is this?

Suffering is not sacrifice.  Period.  Saying so doesn’t make you a racist, evil, or heartless.  In fact, it makes you a realist who understands language, a commonality we all have.  Over the years the left has contorted suffering into some nobile thing while success is to be spurned and assaulted, unless of course it is to take what the successful have achieved to give it to someone who’s achieved nothing and contributes equally little.

Sacrifice also implies obligation on behalf of the person receiving the benefit of the sacrifice.  What is the obligation of the consumer class?  While living in their free housing, eating their free food, sending their kids to free school on free bus and train rides, and getting after-school tutoring because mommy can’t be bothered to learn her kid some maths, what is she sacrificing for the freebies she’s getting?

Absolutely nothing.

In fact go into a poor neighborhood and notice the garbage on the floor and the graffiti on the walls.  Notice the beer bottles in the gutter, the vandalism of the subway stations in their neighborhoods, the trashing of the new parks they get, and the overall crapiness of their neighborhood.  Then ask yourself, why is all this stuff being treated so badly?  Why is everything such a mess?

It’s because they don’t own it, that’s why.

Go into Greenwich Connecticut and find graffiti.  I dare you.  Find some.  Try real hard.  Cover the whole area.  You won’t.  Do you know why?  Because the people of Greenwich understand that they own their neighborhood and care about it.  The derelicts who let their neighborhood go to pot?  Just ask them why it happened and you’ll be regaled with stories about how the government doesn’t care, how the government doesn’t keep up the neighborhood and how the government isn’t taking care of the poor.  Ask them about the crime in the area and you’ll hear about the lack of police or how the police don’t care.  Well, how much crime is in “good” neighborhoods?  Very little.  Is it because the police in those neighborhoods work harder?  Or is it because the people in those areas aren’t scumbags?

You know the answer, you’ve just been conditioned to ignore it.

I don’t want to hear about shared sacrifice any more.  If you want to call it sacrifice, fine, but let’s drop the shared part because we know it isn’t shared.  This county is divided into two classes: the people who earn their living, and those that don’t, and as long as nothing is expected of those that don’t while those that do are continuously chided for not giving enough, the idea of shared sacrifice is a joke.

Shared sacrifice?  I’ll worry about how much more I should be giving when you start asking why such a large portion of the country gives nothing at all.  Let’s share, but before you take more from me, let’s take something from them and let’s see how well that goes.

Yeah.  I didn’t think so.

There. I said it. And fuck you if you don’t like it. Go away, leave me alone, and fuck off.

I was at Stew Leonard’s today, after a morning spent making sure I had enough cash in my account to buy our weekly supply of groceries. Turns out this week, the groceries were my bill as the rent hits and that’s Beth’s bill (yes, we divide bills, no we don’t have a joint account, and no, we never will). After rolling the numbers around for about an hour, we realized we had enough so we went out, did our thing, and our last stop was Stew’s.

We picked up our stuff, forgoing stuff we didn’t have the cash for, and then we went to the register. That’s when we met orangezilla, the fat vacuum of public money.

These two wildebeests are orangezilla and the backfat monster. Now you’re probably wondering what in the hell set me off on these two slobs? Well, they were online with a bunch of groceries, as is typical for Stew’s. You can do a whole grocery shopping there pretty easily (we do, we fill in at Trader Joe’s when Stew’s doesn’t have something). This woman had a $40 bill for her groceries, and one of the things in the “order” was 3 rotisserie chickens. Yeah, that’s right. Ole fatso needed her some rotisserie chickens at $5.00 a piece. So her first total was $38. Out comes the old EBT card (you know; what we used to call food stamps and be embarrassed to use? Yeah, those) and this slob wants to know why there was a balance left for her to shell out her own money for. See, fat-ass, rotisserie chickens aren’t included in your free food allowance from the government because they’re prepared food, so yeah, you have to shell out the $15 plus tax that it takes you to pay for your pre-made dinner. Incidentally, had orangezilla or backfat gone into the aisles, they sell chicken that you can cook yourself, and that’s covered by your handout, but god-forbid you squeeze cooking in between trips to get your nails done and trips to get your hair done. She was outraged, though, and challenged the cashier on why any of her balance wasn’t paid for. The cashier, to her credit, exhibited remarkable patience, explaining to this leech of a human being that prepared food isn’t covered by your EBT card. So sorry, you have to pay something to feed yourself.

Of course, if this is the end of the story, you wouldn’t be talking to me.

Apparently, that first order was for backfat, not orangezilla, even though orangezilla was paying for it. I don’t know if Orangezilla lives with Backfat, but as far as I know, it’s a crime to use your EBT card to pay for someone else’s food. Orangezilla’s order was next, including such niceties as sausage, biscuits, and a few other things. Not a vegetable, though. God forbid. Up came the total, out came the EBT card again, and another $40 was rung onto the card. Then came the straw that set me off. The last item on the register wasn’t food, it was…

Yep, an 18 pack of Bud which Stew’s sells for $18, which she happily and without the slightest bit of protest laid out $17 dollars, borrowing a few bucks from backfat to make up the difference. That was okay to pay for since she had already planned on laying out the $17 that it would cost. God forbid she put that toward her first order, a $16 tab that her $17 would’ve covred and paid for all of it, right? Hell’s no! Orangezilla wanted some beer!

That’s what set me off.

Here’s the problem. With leech pieces of trash like Backfat and Orangezilla, spending your money comes easily. They have no idea what money is because they get handouts. Need food? No problem. Need housing? No problem. Need anything? No problem. Hey baby, sosighohtee owes it to you. It doesn’t matter that you’ve never done a God-damned thing to earn it; it’s just handed out to you. Willingly. Joyfully. And God help you if you ever object; then you’re obviously a racist. If you ask this slob why she couldn’t afford her food but could afford $18 worth of beer, she’d tell you it’s none of your business as she walked out of the store with groceries purchased with your money.

And that’s the problem.

I sat there this morning and we pared our list down to next to nothing, getting as little as possible so as to be able to make ends meet this week. Orangezilla had no such concern because she knew that she didn’t have to worry about food. She could get her beer on this week because the government got her covered as she splurged on an 18 pack of Bud. This should outrage everyone, and yet we sit complacent as it happens because we’re scared of saying something.

No.

Fucking.

More.

We always hear about dignity and how important it is to not take dignity away from leeches like these two slobs who, as fat as they are, will tell you that they’re hungry and can’t afford to eat. We are the only country in the world with fat poor. How the hell does that happen? Even if you’re eating garbage, if you’re getting fat, you’re eating too much. If you’re eating too much, you don’t need me shelling it out for you, but then again, why shouldn’t they get fat? If they need medicine, we give them Medicaid!

Dignity doesn’t come from the ability to buy rotisserie chickens and beer while the government pays for your kid’s milk. Dignity is the pride you earn by working for something and achieving it. Dignity is the feeling you have when you’ve balanced off your budget and made ends meet even as you give a percentage of your income so that slobs like the two in front of me could live as they please without caring about their next bill.

I’m tired of hearing about shared sacrifice. As a third of my paycheck comes out every week so that these two leeches can eat their free food, I have to wonder what I’m giving up this week to make ends meet. To balance my checkbook. To pay my bills. To put clothes on my back, fix my truck, and so on. And while I do what I have to do to make ends meet, and how I’m not sacrificing enough, these fucks can spend money on beer but ask me to buy their food.

Why?

The word sacrifice isn’t the same as the word suffering. I don’t care how hungry you are and how many flies are buzzing around your demon-spawn child’s head. Fuck you and fuck your kids. Suffering is not sacrifice. Suffering is pain. Pain brought about by the fact that you didn’t have enough sense to not get knocked up and give birth to a kid you couldn’t afford. Sacrifice, however, is when you give something up and get nothing in return. When I give up part of my salary that would make my life better so you can feed your fat face and your dumb kid, that’s sacrifice, but on my part, not yours. On your part, it’s theft. You’re taking something you didn’t earn from someone who did.

There’s no other word for it.

I’m fucking tired of it. I’m tired of hearing about shared sacrifice and dignity and all this other bullshit. I’m tired of hearing about the poor, the downtrodden, and the unwashed masses. I’m tired of summer lunch programs to feed kids when school isn’t even in session because parents can’t be bothered feeding their own kids. I’m tired of giving some fat slob $40 worth of groceries so she can spend $40 on rotisserie chickens and beer at the same damned store she just bought the stupid groceries at with my money!

I’m tired of it.

I was talking to the cashier as the two slobs left in front of me. I said to her “I can’t believe it. She wanted to know why everything wasn’t covered, and had a cow over the chicken she had to pay for. What a dope.” “Happens all the time!” she said, with not even a hint of irony in her voice.

So not only do these fucks get free food (and God knows how much other free stuff), they’re not even nice about it when they have to lay out a few bucks and feed themselves.

There’s gratitude for ya, huh? As that cashier works her ass off for $8-$10 an hour, she has to tolerate some slob in an ill-fitting outfit and bad choice of bras telling her that her freebie isn’t generous enough.

If that doesn’t sum up the whole thing, nothing does.

Enough is enough. I’m not going to keep quiet about this shit any more. I’ve had it with biting my tongue.

And if you don’t like it, fuck off. Unfriend me. Go away. Don’t read. Chances are if you disagree with me here, you’re probably part of the problem, so fuck you too.

Good night.

I have issues with the broke-ass little trinkets rewarding involvement. When I was young, I used to get a certificate for my participation. Only, the first place teams (and occasionally a runner-up) received trophies. As it should be.

Go read the rest.  It’s pretty awesome stuff.  I’m glad to see parents, coaches, and sane-minded adults finally breaking free from the insanity that is presenteeism and participation-based rewards.

Random Thoughts: Trophies & Snacks | Tutto Persona

Here’s a lesson, morons. It’s not about you. I’ve sat by, not exactly idly, and watched my country contort and twist the first amendment so many ways that I have to wonder if any of the idiots defining it know what it really means any more.

In the same sequence of events, the United States government (at least a good portion of them) and a large portion of our spineless media have essentially told us that our First Amendment right to free speech and free exercise of religion are only as good as the people we might offend by practicing them. We have to allow a mosque at Ground Zero. Not doing so would inflame the Muslim world. Also, not doing so is unconstitutional. It’s plain as day. You can’t stop the mosque from being built, end of story. You also can’t protest it. Despite protest being the number one most important part of a free society, and the backbone on which every other freedom we have rests, we’re told that that part of the First Amendment, in practice makes us bigots if we use it to protest a mosque. Lord help us if we dare use that right to burn a Koran. As you all know, the right to burn things ends with Bush effigies and American flags.

The left wants you to prostrate yourself to Mecca, shut your mouth, and allow a mosque to be built. There’s no difference to them in the concept of being able to do something and that something being something you should do. Once you’re against this mosque, you’re a bigot, even if your position is that it can be built, it just shouldn’t be. Without the ever slightest touch of irony, the left will tell you that you must censor your right to free protest so that an Imam’s right to build a mosque can be employed.

And we’re okay with this.

We’re also okay with those same leftists who tell us that that same First Amendment, ever-so-clear on building mosques, is much vaguer about Koran burning because it might hurt people’s feelings. I even heard one dumbass say that since you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater because of the risk it would cause others, you can’t burn a Koran for fear of retaliation. The worst part? This idiot wasn’t kidding, was perfectly serious, and had no idea how un-American such a sentiment is. Essentially, the position was “if it angers Muslims, we shouldn’t do it.”

Welcome to America, 2010. The Koran and Allah now run the show.

I wouldn’t burn a Koran. I find it to be rude, obnoxious, and disrespectful. Just like I wouldn’t put on my favorite sneakers and tap-dance into a Shinto shrine or throw a pig roast at the synagogue (or Mosque for that matter) a few blocks from my house. I didn’t draw Mohammed a few months ago, either. I don’t participate in those activities because they’re obnoxious and designed to elicit a response.

What’s that you say? I’m exhibiting a double-standard here?

Complete thoughts make all the difference.

All that being said about why I wouldn’t do those things, I wholeheartedly endorse people’s right to do the same. Wanna burn a Koran? Go for it. Here’s a match. Wanna have a BLT at Temple Shalom? I have a packet of mayo that would go great on it. Not up for barefoot walking at a Shinto shrine? Borrow my sneakers; just bring ‘em back before tomorrow morning.

That’s what it means to live in a free society. People say stuff that might make you feel bad and you suck it up and you live with it. You protest back, if you want, but you don’t silence speech. Ever. The only thing that you are guaranteed in this country is a right to talk back, not a right to not being offended. Have you ever stopped to wonder why? Chances are you have, but if you’re smart you already know why.

You don’t have to protect popular speech. Popular speech by its very nature is that which is in line with the greater majority’s thinking of a society. That’s what “popular” means. What you have to protect is someone’s unpopular speech. You have to put aside the visceral anger you feel when some douche like Fred Phelps and his wacko wife and zombie kids go out and protest funerals with their “God Hates Fags” signs, and allow them to do what they do because that’s what it means to live in a free society.

You also have to learn to allow people to crap on your religion. For example, a few years ago, Catholics were told to sit idly by as New York City unveiled some insane art from a moron who thought putting elephant crap on the Virgin Mary was art. In a similar exhibit, an artist dropped a crucifix (notice, I didn’t say a cross; a crucifix has Jesus on it) into a jar of piss, called it “Piss Christ” and again, Catholics were supposed to shut up and accept the art. Bible burnings are a dime a dozen on YouTube and are often done with a giggle; like it’s a joke. Christians, shut your mouths; that’s free speech.

Yet, when the opportunity for a Koran burning comes up, we run from it because that’s hateful. There are a lot of reasons for it, but it usually boils down to one thing: fear of inflaming the Muslim world.

General David Petraeus lent a lot of credence to that idiocy when he implored Terry Jones to not burn a Koran. The effects on our troops would be devastating. These protestors were risking lives by burning a Koran. In other words, the angry Muslims might riot.

Similarly, when the Imam Faisal Raouf came back from his Islamic Apology Tour, a fine event sponsored by our ever-appeasing government, he told Larry King that the mosque had to be built. And not only did it have to be built, but it had to be built right there. Failure to do so would inflame the Muslim world. In other words, the angry Muslims might riot.

Following the logic to its conclusion, there is only one course of action. Don’t burn the Koran, and build the Mosque without protest. Failure to do both could set off the powder keg that is the tender Muslim world’s feelings. Noticing a pattern here? Let me spell it out: only through pleasing Allah can we consider ourselves safe.

Screw that.

Once we allow Allah, the Koran, and some backward 14-century Imams to decide what we will and won’t do lest we suffer the wrath of some crazy bastard in dirty pajamas, at that moment, the terrorists have won. Once we subjugate our freedoms so as not to offend a group of lunatics who sent a Seattle cartoonist into hiding with death threats, then we’ve let the terrorists win. Once we let the much-talked about separation of church and state fall and allow Islam (radical or otherwise) to influence our decision, we have officially lost.

We’re told that any actions we take are being watched around the world and anything we do is going to garner a reaction. What did we do in 1993? Radical Islam attacked us then, also. It tried to attack us numerous times since. The Lackawana 7? Remember those guys? How about the millenium bomb plot? The attack on Fort Hood by a man shouting “Allah Akbar?” Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber? Madrid? London? The fine young bastards that were just arrested for plotting to kill the Pope? How about Theo Van Gogh? How about the folks who threatened German Chancellor Angela Merkel for daring to pat Kirk Westergaard on the back?

We’re meant to believe that if we just let a mosque be built, stop drawing Mohammed, and stop burning Korans, all of a sudden the world will be a peaceful happy place.

If you buy into that, you’re an idiot. How do I know?

Because it doesn’t matter what you do; they hate you. The crazies who danced around the streets of Ramallah as the Twin Towers fell and 3,000 people died? They don’t care what you do. They hate you. They hate you because their terrorist sympathizing and massacre-enabling and often funding governments have programmed them to hate you. They can’t even allow a picture to appear in their “newspapers” where Hosni Mubarak isn’t ahead of the evil Jew and the infidel American. God, er, Allah forbid.

These are the people we expect to honestly deliver a message to the people of the Middle East when we do something good. As if somehow, if we’re just nicer to these people, it all goes away. If we don’t burn those Korans, Al Jazeera will broadcast to the Middle East how magnanimous and respectful we all are.

It’ll probably be right after the kid’s show where they talk about the pig Jew zionists.

I will never sacrifice my free speech for anything or anyone ever. Not for a lunatic in this country or for some martyr wannabe piece of shit who walks around in sand and ponders where he’s stealing his next goat from. I will never burn a Koran myself, but I will never allow someone else to stop someone from doing the same. It’s called freedom. We have it. It’s what makes us the greatest country in the world.

Once we stop realizing it, then, and only then, have the terrorists won.

Against my better judgment, I went to Curry Chevrolet on Sunday with my wife. We’re in the market for a new car and despite my discomfort with buying an American car, we did have relatively good luck with our eight year old Chevrolet Malibu. We figured we would go in, look around, and see what the new one was like.

A representative took us inside, showed us the car, and we fell in love with it. It was a beautiful color, had a leather interior, and had every option we wanted all in one car. There was nothing we could ask for that wasn’t in the car. He grabbed the keys from a similar car in inventory and took us up to take a test drive. “How willing are you to sign the papers today?” he asked me. “Very willing if the numbers work out.” My wife nodded at me. We hadn’t intended on buying right away, but why wait if the numbers looked good?

We took the test drive and I was in love. The car handled smoothly, had great acceleration, and just felt like a dream. Now that I work in Nanuet, I put about 60-70 miles a day on my car so I felt comfortable spending that much time in this car. We returned to the dealership, sat down to do the paperwork, and that beautiful blue Malibu on the showroom floor was going to be ours.

As we were sitting there, our sales rep asked around if that car had been sold. Everyone chimed in that it was not, and there was no tag on the vehicle (like there was on the other sold ones) saying it was sold. While we were signing the paperwork, our rep got a phone call and when he hung up, he informed us that it was a person looking to put a deposit down on the car so we had to hurry up and sign the papers (yeah, looking back on it, I don’t believe it either). We didn’t care; we were signing them anyway. We were going to trade in our car and add whatever we needed to to make the deal.

Paperwork done, car signed for, I called GEICO and added it to my insurance and added our sales rep as an authorized contact so he could finalize the insurance. The car was now ours. We had to go back on Monday to sign the paperwork, talk to the finance guy to finalize the deal, and get our tradein appraised. Even though there was a blizzard in NYC yesterday, we made it up on time for our appointment. Our sales rep wasn’t there, so we worked with another one. They started the appraisal and we started chatting. As we were talking to him, the Sales Manager came over to us and put a piece of paper down on the table we were sitting at. “I have good news and bad news,” she told us. “The good news is that we’re going to give you the $1500 for your tradein even though we don’t think the car is worth that much. We think the car is worth $1000, but we’re going to eat the difference.”

I was fine with that. “The problem is that the car you wanted isn’t available. The rep sold it to you but he didn’t know someone else had already bought it the night before.”

My wife and I were stunned. After signing the paperwork under the pressure of “sign it now sign it now sign it now,” there was no car. How the hell did that happen? “I do have another one for you to look at, though.” She showed us a similar car in “gold mist.” Now, I’m not a pimp and I’m not 50. A gold car? Really? “It’s the same color as your car.” Oh really? My car is galaxy silver, and obviously so.

I balked at the idea. My wife and I went back to her and asked her if they had any other colors available. The Sales Manager proceeded to come up with model after model of cars that weren’t similarly equipped to the one we thought we bought, or were 2-3000 more than what we were paying for the one we wanted.

One car didn’t have a sunroof. Another didn’t have the six cylinder engine. Another had a horrid two-tone leather interior. She sensed our skepticism and told us we should sign the paperwork and let her get the car detailed for us so we could look at it tonight. I was okay with giving it a shot, but I could see my wife’s displeasure with the whole process starting to shine through. We sat down to fill out the paperwork and I realized that I was about to spend $2000 more for a car I didn’t really want from people who had just screwed me over. I told the rep to stop writing and we were just going to go somewhere else.

Yes it was an upgraded model, and according to them we were getting a great deal (I’ll admit the deal wasn’t really that bad), but it still wasn’t what we wanted. No matter how many times my wife tried to explain that we’d be “settling,” we were informed no less than twenty times how “nice” it was and how “classy” the car was and so on. I was getting EXTREMELY annoyed. I told her I’d be back today to get my refund of my deposit because, I was informed, the cashier only works until 5:30. Isn’t that great for a dealership that’s open until 8?

We finally, after ten minutes of nagging, got her to just let us go. I was told that she was having the car we didn’t want detailed anyway and I could take a look at it and I’d fall in love with it and that would be the end of it. I resigned myself to the fact that I’d have to put up with one more trip to these people so I could get my $2000 back and move on with my life. I sucked it up, and left. On the car ride home, Beth and I lost our minds. We were so aggravated at the placating gladhanding treatment we got, and the fact that they sold the car out from under us. Not only that, but in trying to make it right, they weren’t even giving us the same car and were charging us, at minimum, $2000 more for it! Then, on the way home, it hit me. I had added that new car to our insurance policy. As far as GEICO was concerned, that car was insured by me! Someone drove the car off the lot with insurance coverage I was paying for!

I lost my mind. I came home and immediately called GEICO to have the car removed. This was at 8:50pm. I checked my e-mails and saw that we had gotten a voicemail at 8:40. It was from GEICO congratulating us on the purchase of our new car and wanting to confirm the details with us. I lost my mind. I ran into the bedroom to tell Beth. “Those sons of bitches called GEICO and had the car added to our policy!” Beth’s eyes widenened. “When?” “Ten minutes ago!” Essentially, half an hour after the deal was already dead, the dealership called GEICO to add a car we said we didn’t want to our policy.

I couldn’t believe it. Now I was furious. Then we got a voicemail from the Sales Manager. She had located a blue Malibu, exactly the same as the one we thought we bought and wanted us to come in and see it when she had it transferred over from another dealer. “I don’t want it, and I’m furious that you called my insurance company to add a car after you knew the deal was dead.” After some firm and angry scolding, I informed her that I would not be returning today to get my deposit and told her at 9:30, when her cashier gets in, I want my deposit back on my card. No questions asked. She was annoyed with me! As if I had wronged her by calling her out for effing with my insurance! Here she was doing me a favor, and here I was being ungrateful.

No joke. She actually hung up on me because I was “stressing her out.” Today, that refund better be on my card or I’m raising holy hell with those bastards.

This is what I had to put up with. Despite knowing better, and despite the relatively crappy experience I had the last time I bought a Chevrolet in 2001 (and again in 2004), I went to a Chevrolet dealer again. If Chevrolet wants to know why no one wants to buy American cars any more, maybe they should look at their dealers. The high pressure crap, the sneakiness, and the outright lies (you’re not marking the car up at all? Really? Then why are you so desperate to sell it to me?) convinced me to never deal with Chevrolet or any other car company (with one exception; my dad’s dealer who he got his Pontiac G6 from was awesome and I would give him a shot if the opportunity arose) under the GM umbrella again.

Curry Chevrolet is a disgrace, plain and simple. Chevrolet should be embarrassed that their name is on that awning.

Yeah, I know, it looks a little “soft.” There was a smudge on the lens that I didn’t see until it was all done. That being said, it’s still the best take because I tried 3 times to recapture the “thought” on this one and it never really came out as good as the original.

[tags]censorship, flickr[/tags]

Enough bullshit, already. We have a problem. Let’s stop denying it and try to solve it in some way.

Update: Call off the dogs folks. I should clarify. I’m not talking about specific people in this post. More about the concepts as Smorty and its first batch of bloggers seem to put them out there:
1. It is not the same as an ad in your sidebar which is separated from your content. PERIOD.
2. It is unethical to have a paid link in a post and not disclose it for the world to see. PERIOD.
3. Referring to point 1, I find the rationale that this is the same as a link block in your sidebar dumb, not the people saying it. PERIOD.
4. I think the whole process is completely unethical and Smorty is getting away with what PayPerPost was crucified and almost run out of business for as far as disclosure and ethics. In fact, I think Smorty is worse because they actually advise against doing negative posts.

To anyone I’ve offended, I’m sorry. If you think Smorty is a good thing and you can make a quick buck using them, go right ahead, but you should consider separating your Smorty posts out in some way so that people know what’s paid content and what’s your content. When I see a whole assload of posts extolling the virtues of a service in the same way, I see it as nothing more than linkspamming and search engine result bumping..

Though it’s never been actually written in any law, there is an understood separation of church and state in the United States of America. We don’t have Priests running the government, and we don’t have politicians running churches. It’s just the way it is. In publishing, there’s a similar church – state issue, and it’s usually between advertising and editorial content. Advertising is a separate department and should have no influence on editorial content whatsoever.

Recently, however, we’re seeing a change in that. Services are springing up like moles in a wack-a-mole game offering to pay bloggers for doing their linkspamming for them. Not content with spamming comments sections with ads for various erection enhancing drugs, they’ve now resorted to buying bloggers off to mention their links inside a post.

The first to offer such a service was PayPerPost. You’re paid per post for taking an “opportunity,” you write about a topic, and once your post is approved you make some coin. Originally, in full sleazy linkspamming fashion, PayPerPost didn’t require disclosure. It was optional to tell readers that you were being paid for writing on a topic or product; the presumption of course being that you could just slap it into your content, “forget” to mention that you’re being paid to write it, and call it a day. Money made, link spammed, and everyone is happy.

Luckily for the blogosphere, people like Jason Calacanis jumped all over this sleaze and helped create a backlash of people who saw this for exactly what it was: linkspamming.

Since then, of course, PayPerPost has began requiring participants to disclose that they’re being scummy linkspammers, but the bad taste and poor ethics of the company tarnished their reputation in a profound way that they may never recover from, and you know what? Good. I hope they do go out of business.

Then the folks that do ad buys for this site decided that they too would try their hands at the paid content model also with a venture called ReviewMe. You’re paid to write reviews of products or services and you must disclose the fact that the post is a paid post. I’m not particularly thrilled with this model either, as people do have a habit to write favorable reviews when paid. I for one do all reviews with review samples requested from the manufacturer or products I’ve purchased myself. In that way, I feel no obligation in any way to be “kind” to the company that makes the product or service I’m reviewing.

To their credit, ReviewMe did learn from PayPerPost’s mistake and required disclosure from day one.

Smorty, on the other hand, is infinitely more sleazy.

Smorty has a word limit on posts that you write and insert a paid link into. Your post must be between 150-400 words. You’re encouraged to post multiple versions of the same post to different blogs because that will earn you more money. One of my favorite parts of Smorty is this in the rules section:

You do not have to necessarily endorse the advertiser’s website products or services, just mention them in your blog. It is entirely your opinion to post, however, please keep in mind that the advertiser has the opportunity to dispute each individual post based only on our terms. If your post fits within Smorty’s terms then Smorty administrators will still approve your post so you get paid.

In other words, beware of the pissed of advertisers. They go a step further, of course, in their FAQ, advising you not to write something negative at all:

What are the rules of writing an opinion article?
Please refer to our blogger rules page for all rules, however here are a few points

* Each opinion must be unique and especially written for that campaign and must be relevant to the campaign subject.

* We advise you not to write negative opinions as these are more commonly disputed.

* Each post must include the anchor text with a direct link to the advertisers page provided.

* Each post must include only one (1) outbound link which must be the campaign owners provided URL.

* Posts should be a minimum of 150 words and not exceed 400 words

The funniest part of Smorty, for me, was doing some digging on the company and its procedures. Aside from a metric assload of posts announcing that the blog owner had sold out to linkspammers, I’ve yet to see any kind of disclosure on any blogs that work the program. I’ve seen a lot of similar links, though. In fact, just about every post that announced the blogger had joined Smorty had some variation of the search engine baiting text that appears on each page of Smorty’s website:

Advertise on blogs, the best online advertising method of all. Blog advertising builds quality relevant inbound links to increase search engine rankings. Make money from blogging, get paid to blog weekly. Get paid for blogging your opinions by writing articles.

Another funny aspect to Smorty, and I reckon PPP also, is how people try to wrench those links into their post. Typical Smorty posts looked something like this:

I was walking to the store the other day and I passed a BURGER KING, crossed the street, and walked into a grocery store.

Seriously. They’re that bad.

I’ve seen a lot of the same justifications / rationalizations for using Smorty, the main one being the absolutely ludicrous argument that doing sponsored linkspamming is no different than accepting text ads or banner ads on your site. No one can possibly be dumb enough to actually believe that. I’ll accept that people are just justifying a deal that’s somewhat shady as enough for me to not pursue that angle any further, but let me just say this. If you think throwing content onto your blog is the same as running a clearly marked ad in your sidebar, you seriously need to evaluate your content better.

People have every right to make money however they want on their blogs. I won’t fault anyone who can’t do this entirely as a hobby. Hell, I was always dead against running ads, but now run 2 or 3 links a month that I clearly define as sponsors in my upper right corner. I don’t write about sponsors. I don’t necessarily use their services (and if I do, I don’t pimp them), and I don’t let the fact that they’re sponsors reflect on my opinion on them.

I also don’t give them ink in my content. PERIOD.

To anyone thinking that this expands your horizons of blogging, seriously, you need to get a grip. You can expand your blogging horizons by flipping through a Sears catalog if that floats your boat, but don’t hand me a line about how writing about something you have no interest in just so you can place an irrelevant link in the middle is somehow making you a better blogger with wider appeal.

I’d just ask the people doing this crap one thing. If you saw comments that had some weird text surrounding a link for no exam life insurance, getting paid while blogging, or some other obscure and silly sales pitch, would you unspam it?

If you’re honest with yourself, you already know the answer.

Yep… Didn’t exist before ole W. took office.

No Child Left Behind has to shoulder some of the blame here. No Child Left Behind and standardized testing not only turns your child into a slave to her test-scores, but they can even affect your property values: a school with low test-scores brings down the neighborhood property values. That means that whatever your approach to your kids, the chances are that the other parents in your neighborhood are busting their asses to get their kids great test scores, drilling them, sending them to tutors, helping them with assignments that they were meant to complete themselves. If you don’t do the same, your kids will suffer by comparison.

The authors report on an elementary school in North Carolina where at least twenty standardized test books have to be replaced after their use because the stressed out elementary school kids working to them have vomited on them.

Pardon my french, but are you fucking kidding me?

When the fuck did schoolkids become such whiney little shitheads that something like a textbook could cause them to vomit? Holy shit, if schools are changing because of shit like this, they deserve to be six feet under a fucking avalanche.

Of course Mr. “I’m against all kinds of authority except money when it’s buying my books” Cory Doctorow who everyone keeps calling brilliant for some reason is all for abolishing homework because some anti-homework advocates have said it cuts into play and family time.

No shit? I mean hell, Cory, what the fuck did you do when you were in school? Oh right, you overcame all of that and no one else can because no one is as fucking strong as you are.

GOD I hate this touchy feely education bullshit. We have to throw more money at education, make classes smaller, abolish tests, abolish homework, teach sexuality to kindergartners, and all the while reading scores aren’t moving, math scores are non-existent, and for some reason girls still don’t bother trying to get into computer science type fields.

One thing Mr. “Smarter than the rest of the room” Doctorow didn’t take into account, or at least didn’t mention is his fellatio of this book is that education budgets were lower when I went to school, tests were harder and scores were much higher, graduation rates were higher, classes were bigger, and homework was much more demanding.

Somehow generation after generation of student went through that system and not only survived, but thrived. In fact, Mr. Professor of DRM Sucktitude is my wife’s age. My wife, who went through a system tougher than the one I went to, somehow managed to graduate Junior High, High School, earn a bachelor’s degree, and at the end of this year a Graduate degree. And no, she didn’t do it by memorization. She’s had multiple internships and externships, clinical hours, practical experience, and so on, and all of this related to her education.

That same system, including homework, that Doctorow says the pussified little shits of today just can’t compete in.

Cory Doctorow is full of shit. So are the authors of this book, and so is anyone who thinks the reason kids aren’t succeeding in school has anything to do with the work being too difficult. Maybe he should do more than teach some bullshit class on DRM and write alien and time travel books at a liberal California school loaded with slackers and potheads and familiarize himself with the educational system in this country like my wife, the teacher and graduate student has.

A wise man once said one should not comment on that which you know nothing about.

In other words, shut the fuck up Cory and stick to what you know about, whatever the fuck that is.

Source: Boing Boing; where the fuck else?

[tags]cory doctorow, know-nothing, homework, boing boing, fucking morons[/tags]

I read this with my mouth hanging open. I couldn’t believe the arrogance of someone claiming that censoring in the name of a TOS is not censoring.

Censoring is censoring, Heather. Period. I don’t care if you do it to save kittens from lightning strikes.

I’m not debating the rightness or wrongness of censoring at this point, but saying that it’s not what it is because it’s done to enforce a TOS is ludicrous.

Thomas Hawk (a friend of mine) is right as he usually is. If only the fanboys in his comments would realize it, they’d be a lot happier in life.

I can’t believe what Flickr has become. I just can’t.

No, I’m not shitting you. Apparently, XM in its infinite wisdom has suspended Opie and Anthony for 30 days, and there are rumors on the O&A fan sites that Opie and Anthony have indeed been fired from XM.

When I signed up for XM in March of 2006, it was only for Opie and Anthony. Everything else was gravy, and some of it wasn’t even good gravy. In the end, I was listening to an occasional hockey or baseball game, and a few of the music channels, but it was all about O&A for me.

Well, O&A are not going to be on for 30 days, so I called XM and told them they can turn my 2 radios off immediately and I would not be turning them back on unless O&A come back. I meant it.

In fact, I meant it so strongly that not only would I not get XM if O&A got fired, I’d go buy Sirius.

That’s right. I’d have Sirius in a minute. Oh sure I’d never listen to Hoo Hoo Howie, but I figure turning off one AND turning on the other is even better than just doing the turn off thing.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow. Ironically, FreeFM which fired JV and Elvis, and is owned by CBS who fired Don Imus, has enough balls to keep O&A on the air. Good on them. I’ll be listening to FM radio tomorrow morning because that’s where O&A are.

Where they go, I go, because that’s what it means to be a fan.

[tags]opie and anthony, o&a, xm, xm satellite radio, sirius[/tags]

But that being said, it is also their constitutional right to do so, and Mike Gallagher is doing nothing more than silencing the free speech rights of others here…

You may recall that when they were planning to protest outside the funerals of the slain Amish children in Pennsylvania, I offered an hour of airtime on my radio show to Westboro Baptist Church in exchange for their written promise to stay out of Pennsylvania and leave those grieving families alone. They accepted my offer and were guests on my show for an hour. When I found out that they were planning to hold protests outside the Virginia Tech victims funerals, I’ve made the decision to offer them more airtime. On Tuesday, April 24, Shirley Phelps-Roper and other members of Westboro Baptist Church will be my in-studio guests for the entire program. They have formally announced that they are cancelling all of their scheduled protests for the Virginia Tech shooting victims funerals as a result of receiving this invitation to be on my show.

Congratulations, Mike. I should also post his weak explanation:

I know that many people disagree with my decision. I have also received many notes and calls of support. Please allow me to state why I’m doing this: I truly feel called, on a spiritual level, to allow my radio show to be a tool that prevents these angry, hateful people the opportunity to hurt grieving families. I fully comprehend the arguments against doing this (“giving in to ‘terrorists’, “allowing them a national platform”, etc.) but my heart is telling me to do something positive here. If my radio show can prevent a circus atmosphere of protests, counter-protests, police protection, and media coverage from taking place in front of churches where grieving families are trying to say good-bye to their loved ones, then I think that’s a good thing. I feel with all of my heart that this is the right thing to do.

No it isn’t. It’s a self-aggrandizing load of crap.

No one is agreeing with what those pieces of trash have to say. Hell, Shirley Phelps Roper left a pretty scathing and incoherent comment on my last post about her proving that her education level is probably one step higher than that of a 7 year old, but even so, I never deleted her comment, and I invite people like her and her slimy family to post here any time they want because I believe that the only way to have an open honest discussion about ideas is to hear all of them. You can argue with them. You can call people names. You can spit at their feet if it makes you feel better.

In the end, however, you don’t protect speech by silencing it.

Over the years, anyone can tell you I’m a free speech absolutist. I believe people have a right to say whatever the hell they want, and you do not have a right to not be offended. I don’t care if people say the most hateful thing you’ve ever heard; that’s the penalty you pay for living in a free country.

I’m sure Gallagher got a lot of happy pats on the back from various people around the country. I’m sure this raised his profile from obscure to semi-obscure. I’m even sure that he probably made a few friends and admirers doing this.

But, when all is said and done, Mike Gallagher has done nothing to promote the ideals of this country; ideals he supposedly believes in above all else. At the top of that list is freedom of expression, and that right isn’t tied to who you are or what you’re saying.

Case closed.

For years I’ve been consistent on one thing. You have the right to say whatever you want and no one has a right to not be offended. For this stupid off-color remark to blow up into what it did proves only one thing: you can say what you want, just not about black people.

Doubt it?

Think about it for a second. Do you really think this is the first time a radio host made an off-color comment about a race? Or a religion? Or a sexual orientation? Hell, this wasn’t even a racist comment. It was, at worst, a comment about the players being from the ghetto. So fucking what?

Here’s a piece of advice for the losing non-national-champion Rutgers basketball team: Get some thicker skin. People aren’t going to like you and they aren’t going to have a lot of good things to say about you at every turn in your life. Hell, if you had actually won the tournament, he wouldn’t have said anything either, but you lost. You didn’t win second. You lost.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

One of the idiots on the Rutgers team actually had the stones to say that this “spoiled all their accomplishments.”

You lost.

I repeat.

You lost.

Apparently losing a national championship is nowhere near as bad as being called a nappy headed ho.

Talk about needing some perspective.

Don Imus made a stupid remark. He did not make a remark that required him to be fired. He certainly didn’t deserve to be lectured on racism by two of the biggest race baiters in the world, Al “White Interloper and Tawanna Brawley” Sharpton and Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson.

The good news is that Al Sharpton says this is only the beginning. I’m sure he’s going to go after the 3 urban stations in New York City where they fling around the word nigger, ho, pimp, slut, nappy-head, hooker, bitch, and so on. After all, they’re demeaning black women left and right.

I can’t wait to see that happen.

It’ll probably happen around the time a monkey flies out of my ass.

[tags]al sharpton, jesse jackson, rutgers, don imus[/tags]

A woman who killed her boyfriend’s cat by putting it in a clothes washing machine after an argument was given a four-month suspended prison sentence on Monday.

Diane Hannon, from north Wales, was looking after the white fluffy cat called Paws last summer while her friend Duncan Carthy was away.

She put the six-year-old cat, which was deaf, into the washing machine before switching it on. Paws died from a heart attack and suffered loss of hair and scalding.

Inspector Kevin Patin of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) said in a statement: “This is the worst act of deliberate cruelty I have ever seen.”

Hannon, who suffered from depression, told a Welsh court that she and Carthy had argued before he went away, causing her to feel wounded and angry.

Hannon, who admitted last December to causing unnecessary suffering to the animal, was banned from owning animals for life.

You should be wounded.

Inside a dryer.

Share and share alike!

Source: Yahoo! News

[tags]cat, cruelty, animal, horrible, drop dead[/tags]

What the hell, Forbes?

read more | digg story

Recently in New York City, an unarmed black man was shot to death by police officers who thought he might have a weapon. Why do you think incidents like this keep happening?

The police are addicted to a contagious need to expel rounds of deadly bullets. They cannot control themselves because they see their fellow companions do it. They don’t carry the same standard they would in more affluent communities. Race only plays a role because there are more blacks and Hispanics in poor communities.

It doesn’t happen in affluent neighborhoods because:

1. Most affluent neighborhoods don’t follow the ghetto mentality of “stop snitching” and actually respect the police.
2. Most affluent neighborhoods don’t shoot at cops for giggles.
3. Most affluent neighborhoods aren’t packed with gun-toting drug-dealing teens.
4. Most affluent neighborhoods don’t have gang problems.
5. Most affluent neighborhoods don’t have pieces of garbage like Charlie Rangel, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson pushing their “f**** the police” agenda.
6. Most affluent neighborhoods aren’t loaded with kids that worship thug pieces of garbage like Biggie and Tupac.
7. Most affluent neighborhoods aren’t filled with single mothers who can’t control their kids.
8. Most affluent neighborhoods aren’t in need of constant police presences just to exist.

That’s just a list for starters.

Charlie Rangel is a race-baiting and polarizing piece of garbage; plain and simple.

[tags]charlie rangel, time magazine, garbage, crap, trash[/tags]

During an election debate at the weekend in the outskirts of Chicago, Peter Roskam, the Republican candidate for Illinois’s sixth district, trotted out the familiar line that his Democratic opponent wanted America to “cut and run” from Iraq.

His opponent, Tammy Duckworth, a former National Guard pilot who lost both her legs in Iraq last year when her helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade, was visibly angry at the exchange. “I just could not believe he would say that to me,” said Ms Duckworth, who now walks on artificial legs with the help of a cane. “I have risked my life to serve my country and you cannot question my patriotism.”

This is the problem with Democrats. No one questioned her patriotism in that statement. He questioned her wanting to leave Iraq. If he did it in ads, no one here has seen the ads to tell otherwise.

Secondly, there’s this quote:

“I am sick and tired of the Republicans saying ‘Either you agree with us on national security or you are not patriotic’,” says Ms Duckworth, whose campaign has ignited the highest level of volunteer door-to-door support the Democrats can remember in this district. “It is total baloney – in fact I have a better army word, but I can’t use it. We must never forget that it is patriotic and it is American to question people in power.”

The typical Democrat talking point that everyone is allowed to question those in power, but no one is allowed to question the questioners. Ever. Period.

Cindy Sheehan cannot ever be questioned on anything because Casey died in Iraq.

Kristen Breitweiser (and her gaggle of 9/11 widows) cannot be questioned on her position on 9/11 because her husband was killed.

Max Cleland’s judgement on defense matters cannot be questioned because he lost his limbs in Vietnam.

John Kerry’s courage because he got some purple hearts that he still won’t release the records that explain the wounds that explain them.

And now, Tammy Duckworth cannot be questioned on her plan to leave Iraq and “cut and run” as her opponent calls it because she served there. Apparently, serving in Iraq makes you an expert on it who cannot be questioned for any reason whatsoever. Unless of course you’re pro-war, in which case serving in Iraq means only that you’re a puppet of the Bush administration.

Why this gets any more attention than any other political pissing contest is beyond me, except that Democrats have once again set themselves up as unquestionable on an issue. For all the talk about how people inside the Bush Administration will immediately call you unpatriotic, isn’t a war veteran holding up her war service as a shield against all criticisms of her war beliefs the same exact thing?

Of course it is. Anyone not looking at it through partisan glasses can see it.

Which basically means nobody.

[tags]tammy duckworth, peter roskam[/tags]

Such is the case with this spectacular example of human inconsideration.

1. She parked in a handicapped spot without a tag on her mirror or without the plates, either of which is required in New York State.
2. She parked well outside the boundaries of the actual spot she’s not supposed to be in, blocking at least partially the ramp for the handicapped people who need it for their wheelchair, etc.
3. She parked at least 3 feet from the curb and left the rear of her car sitting in the aisle where cars need to pass.

And most notably, as far as I can tell, she got up out of the car and walked into the store.

Why do people think it’s okay to do this kind of crap?

Anyway, it’s all well and good. Maybe a little internet shame will change this waste’s ways.

[tags]handicapped, disabilities, inconsiderate, inconsideration, disgrace[/tags]