Breaking: Area Man Has Perfect Workday

Westchester, NY - Robert Smith was not expecting to have a good day at the office, and he was right.  Instead, it was perfect.

Smith, 24, became the 20th person to have a perfect day at work, retiring a disgruntled customer on the phone at 4:58 pm and successfully clocking out without a single complaint or error.

"He got into a zone and just wouldn't let up," said his division manager, Leslie Jones.  "Bobby's still young, but we've always believed in him."

Amalgamated Consolidated, Ltd., hired Smith fresh from USC in 2006, during the sixth round of interviews, to replace retiring veteran Steve Winkler.  "I didn't know much about the East Coast," said a jubilant Smith.  "I was expecting people to be jerks out here, but everyone's really been great."

One of his coworkers doused him with a shaving cream pie at that point.

Smith, who was born in Oakland, was involved in a minor controversy a few weeks ago when pro ballplayer Alex Rodriguez cut across his lawn while jogging one Saturday.  Smith was trying to mow it at the time.

"Yeah, I just moved, I haven't hired anyone yet, and here comes this dude just cutting through," said Smith, who owns a corner lot.  "I might have to plant some hedges or put up a fence."

"Who?" A-Rod said when told of Smith's perfect workday.

Smith dodged trouble early when his immediate supervisor, Oscar Ruiz, cancelled a budget meeting just minutes before it was scheduled.  Then Amalgamated scored bagels and coffee off of the Westchester Beverage Service's starting sales rep, Pat Miller, and Smith settled into a groove.  His perfect day was never seriously threatened after that.

Smith retired fourteen clients on emails, nine on phone calls, and only needed four face-to-face consultations.

Why I haven't watched Law & Order..

...in over 10 years.

Here's another reason. I started to figure out that when the perp pleads out early, that means it's time for Jack McCoy to prosecute Big Pharm, Big Gun, Big Tobacco, Dick Cheney. Leftist, but it's worse crime was predictability.

This is starting to become embarrassing

The "I never was a maverick" John McCain wants to build the fence. Three years ago he was calling people who made statements like this racists. But that was before he had to pretend to be a Republican for a contested primary.

Why would Senator McCain embarrass himself like this? For senators, 70 is the magic number. If your senator is 70 years old, the only way he is leaving is in a box. And if you have to change parties (80 yr-old Arlen Spector) or legislate from a nursing home (92-yr-old Robert "Sheets" Byrd) you will puke up whatever principles you had in order to save your spot in D.C.

Straight Talk Express. Puhleeeese!

Dear A-Rod, All is forgiven

If this is what happens to guys after Alex Rodriguez cuts across the pitching mound, nobody is going to whine about the "unwritten rules of baseball" and "respect for the game" any more.

Dallas Braden definitely owns the mound now.

Braden pitched the 19th perfect game in major league history on Sunday, shutting down the majors' hottest team and leading the Oakland Athletics to a 4-0 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays.
...
"Pretty cool," Braden said. "I don't know what to think about it just yet. There's definitely a select group. I'd like to have a career more than today."

Of the 17 who have thrown perfect games since 1900, Braden is one of the least accomplished, though he's got a shot at a decent career.  Unless things go very wrong for him, however, he will stay ahead of Charlie Robertson, who shut down Ty Cobb's Tigers in April of 1922, in just his fifth major-league pitching appearance.  The Tigers thought that he was doctoring the ball; he finished his career with some awful overall numbers, so they may have had a point, but '22 was clearly the best year he had as a pitcher.

Another fun fact - Braden's Mother's Day perfecto bookends with Jim Bunning of the Phillies, who retired all 27 New York Mets on Father's Day, 1964.  Less-than-fun fact - in the second game Rick Wise only gave up three hits himself, and both Met runs were unearned thanks to four Phillie errors.

I don't know how long I have left.

I'm managing my diabetes well, so I may last another ten years. This would be about the age that my fellow diabetic Waylon Jennings passed. If Jesus really likes me I may hang for another twenty years. (Of course, if Jesus really,really likes me He may take me home while the Rays are in first place.)

I have maybe ten to twenty Cinco de Mayos left. On every single one of those I will be wearing an American flag.

On a related front, I quit watching local news last week. It's sweeps month and the Tampa FOX affilliate decided they would rather pander to Hispanic viewers than accurately report on the AZ law. If the FOX affilliate is doing this God knows what the other stations are doing.

update from 'fly - first off, please don't scare your co-blogger and your readers!

Second, you quit watching just in time to miss what the Media Research Center has noticed.  The total so far is currently 37-3 - that's not the score of the last Eagles/Cowboys playoff game, but the ratio of media stories against the law vs. in favor.  This is a law, incidentally, that has 70% support among the citizens of Arizona.  We're told ad infinitum that if the proportion of a small subset of things (football coaches, lawyers, athletes, nuclear physicists) does not equal the proportion of people at large, then it's RACIST! and SEXIST! and EVILIST!  Well, then, what does this say about the media and their objective reporting of what they see?  How can they find such a large majority against such a popular measure?

Third - or, ok, first again - remember the old gag we used to have: Jesus doesn't just love us, He likes us, and does neat things for us.

Fifty-six years ago

3:59.4.

It wasn't a record for very long, but the number will stand forever.

Car Wars: the Phantom Motive

Ace takes the (mind) trick with this one:

It's amazing to me how the media is so confident in the accuracy of their speculations about right-wing motives-- racism, hatred, anger, etc. -- and yet never seems to be able to turn this talent for psychological profiling towards Islamic terrorists.
...
Seriously, it's scary how they so perfectly report to me my motivations and intent for every single thing I say and every single thing I do and even every single thing I merely hope for.

Yup. Last night I was at the rink, hanging in the lobby with a few teammates between games. The TV, for reasons man was not meant to know, had a commentary by professional idiot Bill Maher, saying, in so many words, that the recent Arizona law about illegal immigrants was passed solely to disciminate against "brown people." Since I'd just lost the prior game on two embarassing goals in the final 90 seconds, my temper was not at its best, and I basically cussed out the television. The counter guy - a good guy and all, but a reflexive leftie - snapped back, "Of course it's about race!"

There was no time to talk about it then - I had to go back down and lose the next game on two embarassing goals. (This time at least I spread them out.) But of course - race. All about race. Why shouldn't the Left think it's about race when one of their favoritest groups EVAR is quite literally "The Race"? La Raza is all about the racial grievances and hating Whitey. To a leftie, the natural reaction is simply to hate right back; though of course the leftie would say that it was Whitey who was hating first.

Once I tried to trace this labyrinth of contradictions and dead-ends with a leftie friend. If hate is wrong, I asked, then why is hating back suddenly all right? "It's like fighting back against a bully," he answered. That sounded reasonable to me, so I then asked why in schools, when facing actual bullies, those who fight back are punished equally to their aggressors. "That's different!" he said, shocked and saddened. "Those kids are learning that violence is OK. It is never OK." Again, reasonable, I thought - misguided but at least it sounds plausible. "But then, why are violent groups like La Raza never called to account publicly? Why are ecology protesters noble when they start burning stuff down? Why isn't that not OK?" My friend got exasperated at that point, as well he might in trying to follow that sort of rabbit-hole illogic. He gave up and said that I just didn't understand nuance.

Long ago I decided to simply give up the rabbit-hole. It's helped my sanity a great deal, though as we've seen, not always my temper.  Like in most rabbit holes, I imagine that sooner or later the cards will all come tumbling down, and we can wake up in the sunlight.

(The opening review of this sad tale can be found at the Coalition.)

Simple truths

Doc Zero is joining a little discussion about exactly how much time ought to be spent going over first principles when it comes to political discussions.

It's a good question because lately the debate has all been about the individual issues facing the country now: this or that bill or foriegn policy choice.  It's not unimportant, but I think that those debates are ultimately lost regardless of the outcome if we accept those as the thing to be discussing; it would mean that the assumptions leading up to those debates are already settled, and increasingly, settled against the liberty of the people.  Debating the size of some bailout assumes that the bailout is needed and valid; debating "health care reform" assumes that government has authority over health care in the first place.  We have to start earlier.

I always try to remind myself that the Constitution is remarkable for its simplicity and elegance. It was not a document written by intellectuals as an abstraction, just to prove a point or propose a theorem. The Founders wrote a library's worth of those sorts of documents - letters to and fro, arguing this or that point, and public essays, and outlines in their journals. Eventually they published the Federalist Papers and other documents to present those refined ideas to the general public. But when it came down to the actual construction of the government, they took all that theory and argument and burned it down to a plain and sparse document.

In some ways the Constitution is like the tip of an iceberg. The part above the water is the actual charter that governs our public affairs; the Federalist Papers and such are the part below that support it. It's good to know that part and it gives insight and understanding - but it is IN NO WAY REQUIRED to be a good citizen. The Constitution as written is enough. And here's the thing: it was always meant to be enough. These remarkable, towering giants who codified our freedoms did not write a Constitution as an exercise, or to prove their cleverness; they weren't writing for an audience of "scholars" and "Constitutional lawyers" and other experts. They wrote a plain document, meant to be easily understood, so that every citizen could know his rights and the limits of the authority the government could exercise over him. The simplest farmer or struggling merchant could know in five minutes what his government was and was not permitted to do, and where he stood in relation to it - and that standing was equal before the law with any other citizen, regardless of social standing, buying power, education, or rival creed.

Now, a certain amount of smaller laws naturally build upon this foundation.  Some of it is necessary; some of it is of debatable use.  But there are two things that are certain to be disastrous - first is to actually chop away at the foundation: to melt the iceberg bit by bit, right by right.  Second is to build so much upon it that it submerges entirely.  Either way, when it goes under all the construction goes with it, and we are all alike headed for the bottom.

That's why I don't trust "Constitutional scholars" when they tell me that the Congress has authority to do all sorts of enormous, intrusive (and costly) things based on the "commerce clause" or a "penumbra" or some case law precedent.  I rather trust what the document says, and it says very clearly that the Congress can do a certain number of limited things.  The writers didn't merely write a commerce clause, they spelled out the 18 specific things that Congress was permitted to do: Article I, Section 8. 

The first of these 18 things says, in part, "...to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States..." and that would seem to cover a lot more than just the rigid list.  This seeming is really a mirage.  Our Congress is dazzled by the lights coming off the iceberg, but what they think they see is not there.

First, they often neglect the common Defence and they certainly neglect paying the Debts; why then should they be trusted by what they say is our "general Welfare"?

Second, the general welfare of the country as a whole is NOT necessarily the individual welfare of the many citizens who live there.  There are 435 Representatives, 100 Senators, one President, and 9 Supreme Court Justices - 545 people.  Managing the affairs of the country as a whole - its foreign policy, its roads and mail and armed forces, its public debts, and its citizenship and immigration law - is enough of a job for them.  Managing the affairs of over 300 million individuals is preposterous.  There is no possible way it can be done, unless the numbers of such people are multiplied to an intolerable burden.

Third, the Constitution says that we the people establish it; it is not the government's statement to us of how they will operate, but ours to them.  It was not written just to promote the general Welfare, either:

establish Justice - equality of treatment and opportunity under the law
ensure domestic Tranquility - peace and safety on the streets; controlling crime and putting down mobs
provide for the common defence - treaties, alliances, fighting and discouraging enemies abroad
secure the Blessings of Liberty - the free exercise of the "inalienable rights" all citizens inherently posess

I've saved "general Welfare" until now because it is the point of dispute.  There are plenty of people who assume this means that the government is ultimately responsible for taking care of us in every respect, and that if when some are not as generally well-off as others, they have the right and obligation to correct it through force of law.  I think that's self-evidently false.  Any government that does that destroys the general Welfare, so it simply can't mean that.

Nor does the Constitution say that.  To quote the great saint Thomas More in A Man For All Seasons, "It will mean what the words say."  And the Constitution spends a lot of time spelling out exactly which things Congress and the rest of the Government are permitted to do.  It's plain that those things are what is meant by promoting the general welfare of the United States.  That's why that list of 18 items in Article I, Section 8 STARTS with "general welfare."  It's not meant as a catch-all for "whatever Congress damn well pleases, and shut up, that's why."  It's an idea that is then defined throughout the rest of the document: to promote the general welfare, Congress is permitted to do these certain and specific things; the President is permitted to do these things; the Courts will do this and this but NOT those, etc. etc.

The last of the list of 18 items is to make any necessary laws for executing the powers of the government as granted by the Constitution.  The highlighted phrase, again, reinforces this basic notion of a government restrained by law, subject to limits that it cannot ignore or alter at whim.

Then come the Amendments, and they are the clincher, especially numbers nine and ten:

9. The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
10. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

It's as clear as the words they wrote - the government's powers are strictly defined by the Constitution, but NOT the people's rights.  If it's not specified, then the government is not allowed to do it, and the people are - or the individual states they live in.

It's easy to see how that makes sense - a State is easier to change than a country.  If the people think that the government ought to step in to handle something, it's quicker to ask their home state to pass the law.  If it's a bad idea it's then easier to change the law back, and not be overridden by the interests of fifteen other states.  If it's a good idea then the other states are free to adopt it themselves.  And if all else fails, the people who don't like that law can move to another state.  In fact, people do it all the time.

Of course one could always leave America as a whole.  The lefties certainly threatened it enough over the past 25 years, depending on who was sitting in the Oval Office.  But nearly none of them did, and why should they?  They are citizens of a still-great nation.  It would be terrible to be forced from their own country.  It would be equally terrible if that country simply vanished out from underneath all of us.  That's unfortunately what threatens us now.  The government has long since stopped actually reading the Constitution and instead prefers to do whatever it pleases.  It so happens that a lot of it pleases a significant number of the people as well - but according to the Constitution, that doesn't matter.  Even a popular law can be unconstitutional and thus invalid.  Therein is a large part of our safety: it's easy to ride some popular opinion at the moment, but the law is a lasting thing and it can endure long after the people have wearied of its burden, because the few who profit from it defend it to the bitter end.

Thomas More:  He should go free, were he the devil himself, until he broke the law.
Roeper:  So you would give even the devil benefit of law?
More:  I would.
Roeper:  I would cut down every law in England to get the devil!
More:  Oh?  And when the devil turned round upon you, where would you hide once the law's gone flat?  I give the devil the benefit of law - for my own safety's sake.

Nobody thinks that things will suddenly turn upon them.  Cromwell didn't, and the very monster he loosed upon More came for him as well.  The Framers of the Constitution knew this.  These government intrustions will intrude upon everyone, including those so gladly endorsing them now.  That's why it's worth remembering the actual Constitution, and what it says, and sticking to it.

Hey, NYC!

Your mayor is an idiot.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg appeared on Katie Couric’s show Monday night to discuss the attempted car bombing in Times Square. Between reassuring viewers at home that New York was safe and praising the city’s resilient spirit, Bloomberg wondered aloud if the culprit behind the Times Square car bomb was “a mentally deranged person or somebody with a political agenda that doesn’t like the health-care bill or something.”

Now there is a chance that the Pakistani-American arrested at the airport trying to head out of the country may have been upset about Obamacare, but I think not. And before any of you teabaggers get any ideas, Nurse Bloomberg is warning you about any reprisals against poor Muslims.

This is wrong

It's just wrong.

Gratitude (Update)

update to this.

She goes to jail.

Listen, Darlin', you can whine all you want about the gummint getting into your business, but you let them into your business when you had them pay for your kids. No judge is asking me who visits my apartment because Hillsborough County isn't paying my rent.

The only gummint employee getting into my business is my VA doctor.

What offended me the most..

...about Charlie's speech.

"God my Father?" I don't like it when politicians who actually have Christ as their Savior get all Jesusy on the stump, so I really despise it when this pandering votewhore all of a sudden gets religion.

Notice the cheers when Charlie mentioned saving schools. A lot of teachers union hacks out there. Better to have them at a Crist speech than in the classroom raping their students.

Today is Cristmas Day!

Or St. Cristpian Day (We few, we happy few, we band of moderates). Today Charlie decides and according to FOX and others:

Fox News has learned that Charlie Crist has decided and plans to announce that he is running as an Independent for the U.S. Senate. The official announcement is scheduled at 5pm in St. Petersburg, Florida tomorrow.

Crist has said that under no circumstance would he drop out of the race, saying he will do what is best for the voters of Florida. Crist says Republicans in Washington want him to stay in the Republican party but voters in Florida have told him they want him to run as an Independent.

What voters, Charlie? Like everything else about you, the great demand for you to run as an indi is fake. As of yesterday you were trying to cut a deal with the White House.

Charlie Crist, soon to be independent Senate candidate from Florida, tried to reach White House chief of staff Emanuel through intermediates. WH refuses to take the call. Dems plan big talent/money blitz for Kendrick Meek. BTW: Obama's approval rating in FL is in high 40s, per internal Dem polling.

Marco already has a video up to remind us of what Charlie may have forgotten.

It is wrong for me to love this so much!

Gratitude...

...or lack thereof.

From the start, Angel Adams has blamed the system.

The government hasn't given her enough food or money to deal with her 15 children, she says. Last week, she and 12 of those children - ranging from 11 years to 6 months - were living in a motel room with little food and dirty clothes.

So the government helped even more.

The Department of Children & Families has arranged for temporary housing, rent-free, in a six-bedroom home. Hillsborough Kids Inc. paid the more than $6,000 she owes to the Tampa Housing Authority, and the authority cut short a five-year ban on Adams so she can move in to a new home. The kids have new clothes and shoes.


On Monday, Adams was told to quit complaining and start helping herself.

"The mother has been less than gracious in accepting any of the help that (Hillsborough Kids) has been providing," Nick Cox, regional director for DCF, said Monday. "In fact, I think there has been a certain level of anger that she has exhibited to them, not to mention the sheriff's office."

Let me tell you of the two areas in my life where I am receiving aid from the American taxpayer. First is my health care at the VA hospital. (Some of you will give me a pass because I am a vet; be advised that my health issues are not service-connected.) Doctors try to motivate patients to take better care of themselves. After going to a few Tea Parties, I am taking care of myself and watching what I eat so that I can lessen the burden my health care puts on my fellow citizens. (I know-I'm a rightwing nut.)

The second area of my life where I am being subsidized with gummint largess is my use of the local bus system. I know that my fare doesn't pay for the entire system, but I am at least being good to Mother Gaea.

The difference between me and the mother of 15 is that I know that the payroll for the VA health system isn't pooped out by unicorns. I am cared for because of the generosity of you folks out there, which is something of which I am very grateful and a little self-conscience.

So please accept my heartfelt thanks.

Thanks XKCD!

Randall Munroe is a funny guy, but his latest is kind of a kick in the head the day after finally going out and buying one of the darned things.

To answer his bafflement - LCD monitor notwithdtanding, an HDTV beats the stuffings out of the poor, pixelly look of our old box, especially when watching the Lord's Own Playoff Hockey.  And good luck gathering 25 people around your cell phone for the Super Bowl.

Having a gayer-than-thou attitude..

Update: I really need to get out more.

...in sports.

Three bisexual men filed a lawsuit in Seattle, Washington against the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance (NAGAAA) claiming they were discriminated against for not being gay enough to participate in the organization's Gay Softball World Series, The Seattle Times reported Tuesday evening.

The three men who filed the suit, Steven Apilado, LaRon Charles and Jon Russ, claim their softball team, D2, was disqualified from participating in the softball championship because the alliance ruled they were "nongay."

I don't even want to think about the kind of evaluations needed in order to determine if you are gay enough to play in the Gay Softball World Series.

But wait, there's more! In politics.

Veteran Rep. Babette Josephs (D., Phila.) last Thursday accused her primary opponent, Gregg Kravitz, of pretending to be bisexual in order to pander to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender voters, a powerful bloc in the district.

"I outed him as a straight person," Josephs said during a fund-raiser at the Black Sheep Pub & Restaurant, as some in the audience gasped or laughed, "and now he goes around telling people, quote, 'I swing both ways.' That's quite a respectful way to talk about sexuality. This guy's a gem."

Kravitz, 29, said that he is sexually attracted to both men and women and called Josephs' comments offensive.

A straight guy pretending to be bi? What would Rock Hudson think of that? Maybe I am a male lesbian, a woman attracted to other women, but trapped in a man's body.

I really need to get out more.

Happy Earth Day!

Just a reminder from a few years ago that a good way to love Mother Earth is to love the mother of your children.

The Lord's Own Hockey...

...in Liberia.

The booming and controversial used-clothes business in Africa means hockey jerseys can be found sprinkled throughout this war-torn West African nation.

Bizarrely, the authentic hockey jersey has become a status symbol among the poor for its "premium-grade" rating and high price tag ($4 CDN).

"It is tough, tough material," street vendor Evelyn Togbah raves. "If you buy it, you can wear it for 20 years."

The bright NHL sweaters outshine the dirty, ripped and torn T-shirts hanging off many struggling Liberians who are forced to repeatedly wear one or two shirts. More than half of Liberians live on less than $1 a day.

If only deputies were allowed to get married...

I'm not even Catholic and I'm having fun with this.


He was hired to protect the public. Instead, 51-year-old deputy Charles Bullock is accused of doing just the opposite.

A 15-year-old boy told Naples police Bullock sexually assaulted him three times in the food court bathroom while Bullock was on duty.

This story was buried down the memory hole. I was lucky enough to be listening to a Tampa talk radio station when this was mentioned in a news report. I had to do two searches on Google to find this. I can guaranty you that if this were Father Charles Bullock of Collier County FL it would be on all my local TV newscasts.

Please Come to Boston..

...and sweep the Bosox!

At 4-9, including 1-6 at home, the Red Sox are off to their worst start since 1996. Not since the 1932 team went 1-9 at Fenway has a Red Sox team started this poorly in Boston.

The Rays are en fuego, winning seven straight on the road include shaming the Sox in their own house. The starting pitching mowed down the beanbeaters. Big Papi may have to start taking steroids again.

I should enjoy it while it lasts. This team is made for this year alone. At least 4 guys (Carl Crawford, Carlos Pena, the closer Soriano and Pat the Bat) will be gone next year.