January 22, 2006

December 30, 2005

Horror In Hollywood

Wesley Pruden’s got some good ideas on why Hollywood isn’t doing as well at the box office these days.

…the idea is dawning on the little minds of Hollywood that maybe the great gullible moviegoing public is fed up with junk — the endless car chases, the mechanical sex, the gore and guts, the mindless plots and maybe even the relentless sneering at red-state values. Hollywood has forgotten how to tell a story, or to recognize one. One screenwriter who must remain anonymous so he can continue to lunch in this town says that’s why there are so many remakes.
“No one has any confidence in what they’re doing. So if someone suggests remaking ‘Titanic’ for the fourth time, everyone says, ‘Yeah, great, that one always makes money.’ Or they’ll pay a lot of money for a book and only use the title, because they figure if someone in New York thinks the story was good enough to put in a book it must be OK.”

I can’t say as I feel all that bad about Hollywood’s misfortunes, seeing as the film industry’s taken such an adversarial position towards everything even remotely patriotic, or anything at all construable as American for that matter.

by @ 6:11 am. Filed under General

December 20, 2005

Unionized Critical Infrastructure vs Responsibility

This is what can happen when the public transportation system of a highly populated major city is permitted to be unionized.

NEW YORK - Commuters trudged through the freezing cold, rode bicycles and shared cabs Tuesday as New York’s bus and subway workers went on strike for the first time in more than 25 years and stranded millions of riders at the height of the Christmas rush. A judge slapped the union with a $1 million-a-day fine.

Certain jobs entail a higher degree of responsibility than others, one of these keeping an entity like the Metropolitan Transit Authority(MTA), the vast system of subways and buses that keeps the City of New York up and running, well, up and running. When you go to work for such a concern it is a lot different from selling clothes, running a machine in a factory, building cabinets, plumbing or repairing computers. It is an occupational field in which millions of people are depending upon you to get to and from work, including thousands of employees of other city agencies that are essential to the day-to-day operation of the giant machine that is the city government. You know this going in, and you know, just from years of residing in the city, that there will occasionally be differences with the agency that employs you.

You also know, given the profound necessity of your city agency as vital infrastructure, that going on strike is against the law…

If you have a problem with that, don’t take the job.

Now we know, of course, that union members have to do as their leaders tell them, which puts them in the middle of a management-to-management dispute. They belong to the union, but they work, in this case, for the MTA. For the City of New York. For the millions of taxpayers in the five boroughs of New York. But they owe their allegience to the union.

So maybe critical infrastructure shouldn’t even have the option of being unionized, as the Armed Forces don’t have the option of same, and for good reason — in some situations, for the good of the public, certain organizations should only serve one master.

The $1,000,000.00 per day fine imposed against the transit workers’ union for striking, in my opinion, is well justified, just as Ronald Reagan was justified in firing the air traffic controllers during his term as President. Their strike is not only costing the city hundreds of millions of dollars, but it is negatively affecting some 7 million citizens every day it continues.

The strike over wages and pensions came just five days before Christmas, at a time when the city is especially busy with shoppers and tourists.

The heavy penalty could force the union off the picket lines and back on the job. Under the law, the union’s 33,000 members will also lose two days’ pay for every day they are on strike, and they could also be thrown in jail.

Go for it!

There are a lot of unemployed workers who would love New York City jobs but can’t get them because of long waiting lists. Maybe this is a good time to create some vacancies, pass a law prohibiting union involvement in the city government’s critical infrastructure venues and rebuild the transit system’s employee roster from the sizeable pool of men and women on those waiting lists.

by @ 5:34 pm. Filed under General

December 12, 2005

Testing, Testing, 1,2,3…

It is 4:17 on a partly cloudy, thirty two degree morning here in Charlotte, North Carolina and I have just been assured by the third technical support weenie I’ve talked to in the last 14 hours that my Internet access from the hotel in which I’m presently ensconced is now in good working order.

According to said representative of the outsourced contractor, the problem had something to do with an online “disclaimer” of some sort that is not made available to individual recipients of the service to access and diddle with, and he said he accessed and diddled with it{my terms, not his}, setting it so that I would have no further trouble for the duration of my thirty day stay here at the Staybridge Suites “by Holiday Inn.”

That is, he said, and I quote, “I have set it up so you will have no problems with your Internet access for the next thirty days.”

As I said in my reply in the last thread to a comment by Michael, “Once in a blue moon, you get the 1% of tech support people who hasn’t yet moved on to a job that pays more than coolie wages, and the problem is solved, more often from their end than not.”

I can but hope that the above mentioned master of tech support is indeed in that 1%, and not just another professore of the brush-off as are most of his esteemed colleagues.

The proof, as they say, will be in the proverbial “pudding”.

by @ 1:17 am. Filed under General

October 31, 2005

One Approach To Addressing Illegal Alien Affairs

In view of the government’s apparent determination not to guard our borders against illegal aliens nor enforce very many statutes regarding their deportation, it seems one Law Enforcement official has found a way to recoup the expenses of picking up Uncle Sam’s slack, and I’m behind him 100%.

Sheriff bills Immigration $71K for ‘illegals’ in jail
HAMILTON — The federal government will soon receive the first of several hefty bills from Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones for the housing of suspected illegal aliens in the county jail.

Following through on a threat made last week, Jones on Wednesday mailed a bill totaling $71,610 to the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the cost of housing 15 “undocumented” people, some of whom have been in the jail since June.

Last week, Jones, County Commissioner Michael Fox and state Rep. Courtney Combs announced a multi-tiered initiative to eliminate illegal aliens living in the county and throughout the state.

Among the initiatives was the implementation, on Monday, of a new booking process to include the signing of declarations of citizenship by jail inmates.

Those in jail for misdemeanor offenses who falsify their information, or are found to be illegal aliens, will be reported to ICE — the enforcement arm of the Federal Department of Immigration and Naturalization Services — for possible immediate deportation.

Those who are jailed for a felony offense, will first stand trial for their crimes and then face possible deportation.

To force the issue, Jones is billing the federal government $70 a day for every illegal alien housed at the jail — $10 above the average daily cost of housing an inmate.

In sending the first bill to ICE, which represents 1,023 billable days of housing illegal aliens, Jones said he’s hoping other sheriff’s offices throughout the country start following suit.

“We want to put extreme pressure on ICE to do its job with regard to illegal aliens,” Jones said. “This isn’t just a local issue. This is a national problem.”

While Jones acknowledged that ICE is not under obligation to pay the bill, he said his next step will be to load the questionable inmates into buses and deliver them to immigration offices in Cincinnati.

“Why should Butler County taxpayers have to pay for jail costs associated with people we don’t believe should ever have been in this country, let alone this state or county?” Jones said.

“These prisoners appear to be undocumented, in that they have no Social Security numbers,” Jones said. “They are in my jail because they have committed crimes here. It’s time the federal government should at least pay for the criminals they let stay here. If they don’t want to pay for them, then they can deport them.”

A message left with Greg Palmore, of the ICE Regional Office in Detroit, was not returned Wednesday.

Since announcing the local initiative last week, Jones said he has been inundated with e-mails and telephone calls, mostly from people expressing support for the measures.

Jones has also sent letters to sheriffs in Ohio’s 87 other counties urging them to implement similar measures in their jails.

“If ICE is having so much trouble locating illegal aliens, heck, I’ll help them out — I’ll send them 20 a day from our county jail,” Jones said.

Meanwhile, Combs is drafting new state legislation that will make it a state offense for illegal aliens to cross over Ohio’s borders and Fox is working on initiatives to discourage employers from hiring illegal aliens.

Contact Mary Lolli at (513) 820-2192, or e-mail her at mlolli@coxohio.com.

Please bear in mind that I’m a limited government, states’ rights kind of guy, to the max. Certain issues belong to the Fed, others are the property of the private sector.

Border/frontier security issues are the property of the federal government. They have a job to do that they are not doing. The only thing that will fix that will be an onslaught of email from the general public to the human weevils that ultimately decide what makes it into the newspapers and on to TV news programs.

My source for the article posted above is the website produced by Tom Tancredo and Bay Buchanan, from the headquarters of Team America.

These are an issue and an organization we, as Americans, need to support.

by @ 6:17 am. Filed under General

October 29, 2005

Cruisin’

Cruising around the blogosphere, I’ve run into some spot-on posts I’d like to share.

For the “feminists” among us who bash the War on Terror as a way of bashing Bush, yet also purport to champion the cause of fellow women, RomeoCat at Cathouse Chat has a “right to the point” post about what these feminists and other liberals really support when they oppose the battle against the Muslim fundamentalists who are at war with us. Good read!

At GM’s Corner is a reality based look at “our friends,” the Saudis.

And Rightly So’s Raven’s got a great “pop quiz” up that explores the hypocrisy of a number of wealthy lefties who do the very same things they accuse the right of doing and condemn us for it.

Happy reading.

by @ 11:17 am. Filed under General

October 24, 2005

A Couple Of Good Columns

During today’s read of Jewish World Review online, I ran into a couple of columns I thought I’d share.

Mark Steyn writes that Bush was right:Sometimes war is worth it, and John Leo tells us that — no kidding, John! — The ACLU is crossing the line.

by @ 1:49 pm. Filed under General

October 22, 2005

He Got That Right!

Brian Carney’s New York experience in yesterday’s Opinion Journal talks about something I, too, have recently encountered.

I was in New York for several days last month, and man, has the city of my birth become expensive in the last few years. I mean, here’s a place where people have become so accustomed to being robbed at the cash register that they don’t bat an eye when forking over $8.00 for a pack of cigarettes or $4.50 for a coffee and a bagel “with a schmear” to go.

I am preparing to move back to the east coast soon and buy a house, and have studied real estate prices from Maine to the Carolinas and New York… well, let’s say you’re single and you badly want to live in Manhattan, where you are willing to buy a condo or co-op{personally, I wouldn’t even consider a co-op, because then you’re subject to a “board of directors” whose decisions can in many ways decide upon how you can live in your own “home”). If you search very hard and are blessed, beat the multitudes of competitors for the property and win the day(strike up the band!) you may get really, truly lucky and be able to buy your own tiny studio condo for a mere $350,000.00 plus monthly maintenance fees. Woo, at least you won’t have to spend a lot of money on furniture, since there’d be noplace to put it. Add a couple of hundred thousand dollars or considerably more if you’re looking to buy a small or medium sized house or a multiroom condo. On the even brighter side, you would have the opportunity to pay the city’s high property tax, a gift to the people of New York from mayor and “former” Democrat, billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

The other four boroughs, especially Brooklyn and Queens, with the exception of New York’s few remaining enclaves of “live here and die, whitey!”, are fast catching up on the inflated property gravy train.

Brian Carney, looking to buy a home for himself and his family, searched high and low for a property that was affordable, without success:

But even Brooklyn has gone real-estate crazy, especially if you limit your search to neighborhoods with decent public schools. After seriously considering a two-bedroom basement apartment in Brooklyn Heights going for far more than we could afford, the reality hit home. New York might be great–greater than ever in many ways–but it was beyond our financial grasp. We regrouped and started to look in the suburbs. Which is where we ended up.

And he’s got a family in tow, jeez! It’s enough that prices in New York repelled me, intending to live by myself, from its real estate market.

There’s this bubble thing, you see, in many large cities, among them New York, Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle and Washington, DC, that has real estate prices titanically overvalued, and in my opinion as well as those of acquaintances in the business, this bubble will burst in the not-too-distant future, transforming current sellers’ markets into big time buyers’ markets, and that $500,000.00 house you buy today might suddenly enjoy a market price of only $300,000.00 three or four years down the road, if that.

So, like the author of the linked article, I, too, am looking elsewhere for my house.

by @ 12:51 am. Filed under General

October 8, 2005

“Tagged”

A couple of days ago, Michael at Flight Pundit tagged three people, including Romeocat, Mad Dog Vinnie and yours truly, to fill in the questionnaire below. Thank you, Michael, and may the bluebird of happiness….

Well, here are my responses:

5 things I plan to do before I die:
1. Own a cabin cruiser, 25 feet +
2. Spend at least 6 months in Israel
3. Get a few books published
4. Figure out how to use my digital camera
5. Make it to at least 1 Carnival in Rio

5 things I can do:
1. Successfully manage a business
2. Design an all-faceted, customized physical security environment
3. Professionally train physical security people
4. Royally irritate liberals(a habit I find difficult to break)
5. Shoot accurately with a rifle or pistol

5 things I cannot do:
1. Figure out all the little settings and doohickies on my digital camera{see “things to do,” above, #4}
2. Anything overly technical on a computer
3. Eat yogurt
4. Fly an airplane
5. Do the Macarena

5 things that attract me to the opposite sex:
1. Self confidence
2. Sexy eyes
3. Sexy lips
4. Real intelligence
5. Passionate about hobbies, interests, work

5 things I say most often:
1. Another day in Paradise!
2. La misma mierde, diferente dia (keeping in mind that I live in California)
3. What’s up?
4. Let’s talk about it over {lunch or} dinner at your favorite restaurant
5. But that’s NOT Uncle Sam’s JOB!

by @ 2:52 am. Filed under General

July 4, 2005

A Mistake Pays Off

I hope this guy’s luck holds to the end, screwups that work out like this one are truly a rare gift.

Goof Puts Man in Major Poker Tourney


 


Killeen, Texas - A computer Goof has Robert Guinther headed for a seat at the World Series of Poker tournament in Las Vegas later this week.


 


Guinther, 65, entered what he thought was a $10 online poker tournament, but midway through he realized that he had accidentally clicked on a World Series of Poker satellite tournament with a $100 entry fee and it was too late to back out. He went on to win, defeating 180 other competitors and earning a spot in the WSOP $10,000 no-limit championship.


 


The tournament, which begins Thursday, will involve more than 6,600 players who either qualified by winning a satellite tournament or paid the $10,000 entry fee.  


 


“This is the dream of a lifetime,” Guinther said. “I watch these guys on television all the time, and I’m excited about the chance to sit down and play with them.”


 

by @ 9:33 am. Filed under General