LTE: Tipping etiquette

Regarding "My client gave to me" (Page D1, Tuesday), I got a few good laughs from your article about proper tipping for various service providers, but you forgot one of the most important ones: the waitress who serves you breakfast at your favorite morning dive.

"Tilly" gives you more service than a waitperson at any fancy dinner joint, but her tip is based on a meal that costs only $7 or $8.

 

Be sure to tip her the value of the meal during the holidays, and 25 to 50 percent of the cost of a meal every other time.

Pete Smith, Cypress

http://www.chron.com/default/article/Letters-Dynamo-deal-skepticism-1716732.php

Alan Simpson, Male Prostitute

So OffHisMeds is reading his newspaper a few days ago after an extended absence from home on a travelling work assignment, and is assaulted by a variety of post-election articles, editorials and opinion pieces all touting "Republican Obstructionism" and the importance of "bi-partisan cooperation" on deficit reduction, nuclear disarmament treaties and any number of other of the critical issues of our day. Or at least as those issues are defined by the Democrat Party and Barack Obama on the occasion of getting their asses kicked in the mid-term elections, and their prospects for recovering in time for the elections in 2012.

It's an axiom that the best Defense is a good Offense, so you can't fault the Dems for spinning their defeat by continuing to fault Republicans for all of their failures whilst simultaneously demanding bi-partisanship from Republicans. What is incomprehensible is the number of Useful Idiots in the Republican Party that provide them political cover. Co-opting a significant percentage of Republican turn-coats has been a staple of their political strategy for three generations now and a win-win-win for Dems: they appear reasonable and progressively dumb down the public's perception of their truly despicable policies; they retain control of the agenda; they continue to define Republicans as obstructionist until the next election cycle; and they stiff the Repubs' efforts for any substantive change. This is all so obvious as to hardly be worth stating, which is why the thing that struck OHM about the expansion of the Obama agenda in the face of the Tea Party revolution was the number of prominent Republicans who jumped on board before, during and even after the thrashing Dems took at the polls just one month ago.

Which brings us to Obama's Deficit Reduction Commission, co-chaired by Respected Fossils Erskine Bowles (former Clinton chief of staff) and Alan Simpson (former Repub senator and Clinton persecutor). They came out Dec. 3rd with their report and recommendations on reducing the national deficit, and to nobody's surprise it's long on tax increases and short on actual spending cuts, with implementation of even the modest cuts they recommend structured in such a way that future congresses can ignore them without consequence.

In other words, we're screwed once again, and once again, Repubs have their fingerprints all over the process, lending it the very "bi-partisan" support so essential to Democrats so that they can continue to steal with both hands, buy a few more election cycles, further accelerate the destruction of America - or at least any reasonable ideal of what it's supposed to be, and still blame Republicans for the mess.

Should anybody be surprised by the outcome of the Deficit Reduction Commission? Just consider that Bowles and Simpson share so ever-much more in common than they have differences. Both are the sons of prominent politicians, both are frat boys, both managed "low risk" military service, and both are life-long sucklers at the Public Teat - either directly as gummint employees or nursing for extended periods of time in the capacity of college professor, as members of one or another public sector foundations and similar make-work endeavors. Even their so-called private sector jobs all reek of the privileges bestowed by powerful fathers who grease the skids for their upward trajectory and by government on the special few who carry Establishment water.

Now, Bowles we can understand. He's not diverging from the Dem Party line a whit by being where he is and saying the things he says. Simpson is another matter, as are the dozens of Repub Establishment types making favorable noises about the content of Obama's Deficit Reduction Plan, such as Sen Judd Gregg (R-N. Hampshire) and Kevin Brady (R-Texas).

Couldn't find out what Mitch "Earmarks" O'Connell thinks of the report, which is ominous in its own right. As the Tea Parties have shown us, any Repub politician that isn't shouting his concerns from the rooftop is - with virtually no exceptions - going to turn out to be a triangulating, back-stabbing son of a bitch, angling for his place at the Dem's table in his post-electoral career, and his fair piece of the Goodies Bag reserved for Republican Turncoats, including but not limited to appointment to some future Commission that advances the Democrat's agenda.

The fact that this sad cycle of "Democrats Spend, Republicans Enable, Economy Tanks and Media demands Bi-Partisan cooperation when the wheels come off" is lost on so many Repubs is all the more a confirmation to OffHisMeds that Republican Establishment types are indistinguishable from Democrats, and share the same view of conservative Republicans and Tea Partiers as their Dem counterparts.

Alan Simpson provided a telling validation of this point when he proclaimed that, with the Commission's Debt Reduction Plan: "we took a big banana and threw it into the gorilla cage, and the gorilla has picked it up; they'll peel it, mash it, play with it, but they will eat some". Given the results of the recent elections, it's clear that the "Gorilla" that Simpson is referring to is Congressional Republicans. His regard for the people that currently occupy the job he once had notwithstanding, if Simpson had ever visited a zoo, he would know that Gorillas routinely and even enthusiastically eat their own shit, usually catching the steamy turds directly out of their buttholes and gobbling them down with relish. I wonder if he of all people would appreciate the irony of Congressmen - himself included - being forced to eat their own crap, inclusive as that is of virtually all of the legislative output of the modern Democrat Party, not to mention the so-called "bipartisan" commissions that Democrats so love and inclusive - with a tiring regularity - of Republican turncoats and intellectual and moral lightweights like himself?

It's all of a piece. Guys like this desire a place at the table. They've done the math and concluded - correctly - that Dem's have controlled access to the power, influence and wealth of this nation for the last 75 years and likely will continue to do so. They have also concluded that they can act this way within their own party and not pay any price for it, and in so doing they have contorted any notions of principled opposition by Republicans to fit the Dem's definition, with themselves as the beneficiaries.

OHM realizes he is in the minority in regarding the beloved Simpson as a person with all the character - not to mention nutritional value - of Gorilla Dookie, but he does not hold this opinion without reason. Recall that the first and only time Simpson made an impression nationally prior to this was almost twenty years ago as one of handful of grandstanding politicians who enthusiastically dragged the Clinton impeachment out for years. During one of the innumerable hearings, Simpson was accusing Clinton and his associates of various improprieties and dramatically pulled a sheaf of papers out of his coat pocket that he claimed proved it. The papers were bogus, and Simpson was quickly exposed for the fraud. With that stunt, he seriously compromised Republican efforts to pursue the various and credibly documented crimes that Clinton probably did commit, and Clinton got off essentially scot-free.

Strange to think that Simpson himself survived what was essentially an impeachable offense to some decades later co-chair a committee with Erskine Bowles, Clinton's former chief of staff. Draw of that what conclusions you will, but with that incident and his most recent sellout of Conservatives as bookends, Simpson maintains his lifelong practice of enabling Democrats, and handing America the "offal" results.

World's Worst Concession Speech

"And in conclusion, I need only ten more Dalmatian puppies".

Tales From The Road I

Left Houston Sunday, July 18th and convoyed to Gravette-by-god Arkansas with three other techs (two to a car) to work for an IT contractor that had hired me about this time last year to work on a Wal-Mart project. This go-round though I won’t be working as a project manager, but as a Network Technician. “What’s the job description?”, I asked of my recruiter. “Don’t worry”, she said, “you’re perfect for it”. And off we went. More about that in a future installment.

My car-mate for the ride up was a 6’ 3” Jamaican I’ll call Nathan, and he was good company. It took us ten hours to get up there and we talked at least six of it about politics and the world. Nathan was amazingly well informed, neither liberal or conservative. I’m always impressed when somebody knows as much about political events as me, a sure sign of political junkiness, not to mention the fact that he’s been in the country only ten years, and has an over-arching political philosophy to boot.

That said, you would not be surprised to hear that Nathan failed his blood test for THC, the active chemical in Marijuana, which is the stuff of legend in the popular portrayal of Jamaican culture. As Nathan put it: “I follow the Rastafarian teachings of Bob Marley. To Bob Marley, Ganja was a sacrament”. Fair enough, but it’s a deal killer too, at least for some employers. I and two other techs dropped him at a bus station on our way out of town, and he smiled and waved as if he had not a care in the world. The two guys I was riding with to St. Augustine, FL turned out not to be near as interesting conversationalists.

Reminds me of another Marijuana incident two weeks later. One of our Techs was trying to get his son hired, and called him to advise that he would have to pass a drug test. “How long has it been since you smoked any weed?”, he asked his son. “A couple weeks” was the answer. Another Tech advised him to go to GNC and get an herbal supplement that would mask THC, which stays in your system for several weeks otherwise. Yet another member of our group from Fayetteville, AR advised that before the test, he should drink a gallon of pickle juice. “It is 100% fool proof”, he announced, with the casual authority of a man raised in the hills of Ozarka, and the passer of many a drug test.

The rest of the group then compared notes on how long it takes to get various drugs out of your system, favored ways to defeat a drug test. Near as I can remember, the consensus was: cocaine: 4-7 days; Ecstasy: 2 days; Meth: 2 weeks; marijuana: 1 month. And everybody agreed that there were home remedies to block all of them from showing up on a drug test. I asked how long before the test you needed to drink the gallon of pickle juice to mask THC, and the pickle juice guy said at least one hour. Everybody agreed that Marijuana stayed in your bloodstream longer than anything else.

“That Weed will screw you every time”, said one guy, “and it ain’t nearly the high of those other things”. Did I mention Contract Techs are a diverse lot?

That reminds me of another story: As I mentioned earlier, last year I did a stint as a Project Manager for the same company, which involved me living in Northwest Arkansas for about 3 and 1/2 months. For most of that time I lived in a company-rented home with the company’s Senior Project Manager, a guy I’ll call Bob. Bob was a font of wisdom on the ins-and-outs of company politics, Project Management methodology, and living for extended periods of time on the road. He also had very strong opinions about the character, usefulness and reliability of Contract Technicians, which is pretty much all this company hires. Bob treated all of his Techs like crap, and I asked him why. He replied: “There’s not a one of them worth a damn”, says Bob. “If they were, they’d have regular jobs. None of them can get regular jobs because none of them is worth a damn".

Bob was himself a contract employee, and not a keen appreciator of irony.

Democrats Build More Pyramids, Call It Economic Activity

Show OffHisMeds a Democrat, and he’ll show you somebody who thinks all government employment and all government spending – regardless of how wasteful and pointless – is a good thing. This pathology takes many different forms: constantly reducing class size so as to hire more teachers; endless “infrastructure” projects; giving money to the states to subsidize Medicaid; outright transfer payments (known as Revenue Sharing) to states to help them meet payroll; the endless expansion of the bureaucracy.

The list goes on.

OffHisMeds calls this activity “Pyramid Building”. Like the ancient pyramids of old, the enterprise serves no practical purpose, it consumes vast amounts of wealth, and virtually nobody benefits from it other than the people involved in building, servicing and maintaining the pyramids. They are also monuments to the egos of their builders, who see in themselves a god-like stature not apparent to everybody else, although “everybody else” is picking up the tab.

There are a couple of important differences, though, between Modern pyramids and those of, say, ancient Egypt. For one thing, nothing tangible comes of Democrat pyramid building. Egypt built hundreds of towering structures made of stone and marble. Democrats built Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the National Institute of the Arts, AARP, as well as the departments of Energy, Education, Interior, Justice and Commerce, to name but a few.

Democrats also co-opt and render pointless other once functional institutions such as our military and NASA, making them havens for terrorists or bastions of entropy and political correctness, their primary functions long-abandoned, their sole purpose to build yet more pyramids, however insubstantial, and including (but not limited to) such follies as neighborhood outreach programs in Afghanistan, and building up the esteem of Islamists.

And unlike ancient pyramids of old, these modern pyramids aren’t impressive, will not stand the test of time, serve no useful purpose, and will never pay off; not even as tourist attractions some thousands of years in the future. In fact, virtually none of them have any physical substance at all.

For today’s example in Democrat pyramid building, I give you the National Transportation and Safety Board. As federal agencies go, the NTSB is particularly worthless, as this story will illustrate. The story is straightforward, and the causes painfully apparent to anybody who saw a picture of the destruction: A semi was stopped on a highway by an accident; a pickup truck crashed into it, despite there being no obstructions to the view of the driver; a school bus crashed into and rolled over the pickup; a second school bus crashed into the rear of the first. The pickup driver and a female student were killed.

After seeing the picture, I opined to a co-worker that all three vehicles involved in the chain reaction collision with the Semi clearly hadn’t been paying attention, and that the bus drivers in particular had lapsed into “herd” mode, blindly following the movement of the vehicle in front of them. Particularly inexplicable was the failure of the first bus driver to see the stopped Semi ahead over the pickup truck in front of her.

The Missouri State Highway Patrol concluded within hours that “the 75-year-old driver of the first bus was "inattentive," and the 38-year-old driver of the second was "following too closely." Enter the NTSB. When OffHisMeds heard that the NTSB had insinuated itself into the investigation, he wondered if he would hear what he always hears whenever the NTSB is involved in an accident: “the investigation will take 12 to 18 months”. As any follower of government folly knows, this little bit of Democrat-speak is a catch-all justification for endless government dithering, consumption of tax dollars, unaccountability and pointless employment.

Sure enough, NTSB Vice Chairman Christopher Hart said "people, vehicles and the environment at the crash scene will be evaluated by the team of 14 investigators, though a final report could take up to 18 months”.

OHM waits with bated breath to hear of the location where the NTSB will transport the damaged vehicles so as to reconstruct them in their entirety, employing CSI-like technology (including but not limited to lasers, infrared and all manner of exotic chemicals) to the wreckage and the expenditure of millions of dollars so as to reach the same conclusion as the Missouri State Highway Patrol and Yours Truly, who essentially did it for free.

OHM just wishes the NTSB jerk-offs would get on the same page as the rest of humanity and conclude their investigation in the same timeframe as the Missou SHP, content that the obvious answer is the answer, and requires neither a fourteen month investigation, or their continued presence.

Fat chance.

Do Government Employees Pay Taxes?

President Obama's Stimulus bill - among many other nefarious things - has allowed him to triumphantly declare that his policies have "saved or created" blabbedy blah number of jobs. I use the all-purpose "blabbedy blah" in lieu of a hard number, mostly because his declarations on this question have been all over the map. One day it's 2 million, the next day, 3.5 million. Much has been written about the weasel-wordiness of the "saved or created" qualifier he uses, but what would you expect? OffHisMeds would only point out that the association with Obama is likely to do harm to the reputation of weasels.

The Stimulus has sown its Trillion Dollar largesse almost exclusively across the Public Sector, including hundreds of billions to the States to help them make payroll for Teachers, Cops, Fireman, regulators, fussbudgets and the millions of others who enjoy full-time pay and Bennies for their part-time, generally pointless jobs. But is this subsidy of Public Sector jobs a good thing? From OffHisMeds' perspective, it depends on how you answer the following questions: 1) Is Public Sector employment wealth-creating economic activity? 2) Do Government Employees pay taxes?

Is Public Sector employment wealth-creating economic activity?

In a word, No. Putting aside all of the arguments from the Usual Suspects who harangue us poor souls in the Private Sector about the virtues of "Public Service", you can reach this conclusion simply by observing that the bulk of what is produced in terms of services by the Public Sector is not exportable, nor are they services that rational consumers would willingly pay for. Government services by their very nature are a) regulatory, b) immune to the market pressures that would make them better and less expensive, and c) imposed on the people. That is not to say that some level of government employment is not necessary; after all, somebody's got to provide for the Common Defense, polish up the Lincoln Memorial, staff the 15% of classrooms that actually provide an education or drive the one profitable bus route in Houston, TX.

It is to say, though, that close to 100% of Public Sector employment is a net drain on our real economy. A necessary evil, if you will. The Private Sector represents goods and services that people actually demand and willingly pay for, and are subject to the competition that makes them a good value. Thus, they represent economic activity that produces wealth. Since Government generates little in terms of services people actually want - much less at competitive prices - they can't be said to generate wealth.

Do Government Employees pay taxes?

In a word, No. Since we have established previously that Government doesn't generate wealth, if you don't generate wealth, it's a physical impossibility to generate tax revenues. To the extent that government employees pay taxes, they are paying with somebody else's tax dollars, or they are paying with the debt that governments incur to cover payroll. All government employees - be they city, county, state, federal or school district - are paid by tax dollars from the Private Sector, so in the Best Case, you could only say that they pay their taxes with other people's tax dollars, depreciated since that money is at least once removed from its origins.

This situation is exacerbated by the fact that there are entirely too many government employees as a percentage of the economy, and that - across the national spectrum - they are grossly overpaid for their jobs. This has the dually perverse effect of a) pushing up their income brackets, forcing people and businesses in the dwindling Private Sector to surrender evermore of their useful dollars to cover not just payroll but the "taxes" paid by Public Sector employees, and b) Inflating the available tax revenues available to government. The triple irony of this situation is that government at all levels justifies endless rounds of extraordinary spending by the federal government based - at least partly - on the hyperinflated government payrolls that already exist. One need only look at the effect of government revenue sharing for education and Medicaid - the spending levels of which become a federal mandate, even if the feds stop sending the money - to understand what I'm talking about. For another example, look at Obama's $23 Billion emergency spending bill to "prevent thousands of teachers, firemen and policemen from losing their jobs".

It gets worse. In addition to the roughly 25 million government employees who roam the land, another 25 to 30 million allegedly Private Sector jobs are actually an extension of Federal, State, County and Local government, in the form of the thousands of businesses who provide products and services to those governments for everything from copier paper to computer systems to school buildings to utilities to road construction: and all paid for by your tax dollars.

Which makes you wonder why Obama has been so modest in his declarations of jobs "saved or created". He's pissed away $1.2 Trillion in the past year. Were you to divide that by $60,000.00 (the average pay package including Bennies enjoyed by government worker across America), he could triumphantly claim to have "saved or created" 20 million jobs, very close to the number currently employed by government.

The only problem is that - as we have demonstrated - there is not a lick of real money coming from any government worker in terms of tax revenues, and catastrophically less tax revenue coming from the decimated Private Sector.

So no, government employees do not pay taxes, and more's the pity, since there's not 50 million taxpaying jobs left in the Private Sector to offset the 50 million in the Public Sector.

Barack Obama, Ugly American

Interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal detailing civil and criminal penalties imposed by the US government against an Italian company for paying $180 million in bribes to Nigerian government officials for a contract to build a natural gas plant in that country. If like me you're wondering why this matter was adjudicated in America's courts instead of Italy or Nigeria - much less why the Italians must pay fines to America - I doubt that you're alone in your confusion.

The settlement calls for Italian oil and gas company Eni SpA and its former Dutch unit Snamprogetti Netherlands BV to pay $365 million in fines to America for their misdeeds.

First off, OffHisMeds must ask what is up with the Numerologists in federal government and their obsession with relevant numbers? For example, this fine works out to a tidy $1 million penalty for every calendar day in the year. Makes you want to be a fly on the wall when they decided what the fine would be. Why not a different number? Wouldn't it make sense to make the fine the same amount as the original bribe? And what of prosecution of the corrupt Nigerian government officials? Do they get a free pass from Obama's Justice Department?

Numerology is a driving force behind everything the Obama administration does. Take the $20 billion they extorted from BP for remediation of the financial impact of the Gulf Oil Spill for example. Whatever your opinion on BP's obligation, there was no reason for the US government to force the payoff, seeing as how that's what our courts are for. What is of interest is the even number: $20 billion. Strange that such an even number should be precisely the amount needed to compensate the thousands of fisherman, retailers, tourist venues, strippers and others who have been affected. How did they arrive at that number? And what do you suppose the likelihood is that - regardless of the economic impact on these businesses - that the actual payout will be: $20 billion?

Nor should we forget that Obama has named the execrable Kenneth Feinberg - Democrat operative extraordinaire - to administer the $20 billion. Feinberg is, of course, the tireless Apparatchik who oversaw the payout of $7 Billion of taxpayer dollars to the victims of 911, averaging around $2 mil per victim. Call me crazy, but it's more than a little creepy that such an individual should exist, much less have regular employment. I'm also more than a little concerned that he'll use the same back-of-the-napkin math he used for 911 to calculate compensation for Gulf Oil victims. It doesn't take a Math Major to conclude that there's going to be hundreds of thousands of "victims" with their hands out. Given a free hand, Feinberg will not only spend it all, but blow his budget out of the water, just as he did for 911.

And OffHisMeds will go on record and predict that - if he does bankrupt BP - that American taxpayers will be on the hook for the remainder.

This is all of a piece for Obama and his minions. Seeing as how he has milked all that he can from American corporations, he is now confiscating the assets of foreign corporations, foreign stock holders, and, well, foreigners. And they're starting to get pissed. His popularity in Great Britain has plummeted since he implemented his extra-legal Money Grab against BP. Watch for a similar reaction in Italy and the Netherlands.

Anybody with an ounce of sense can see where this capricious behavior will lead us. OffHisMeds predicts that foreign governments will retaliate, criminalizing American behavior and confiscating American assets in far larger amounts and with far less justification, and America will be helpless to do anything about it.

Yet another legacy left us by this colossal Dunderhead, who will enjoy a post-presidential life comparable to that of Al Gore, enriched by many tens of millions, albeit with the consolation for the rest of us that he will be politically neutered well prior to the end of his first and only term in office.

My one other consolation is that Foreigners will finally understand that the true face of Ugly Americanism is now, and always has been, the Democrat Party, and it's probably only fitting that America-Haters the world over should get a tiny taste of what average Americans have had to put up with for the past fifty years.

Obama & The Neutering Of NASA

"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.......I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

- President John F. Kennedy

"President Obama has ordered me to pursue three new objectives: to re-inspire children to study science and math, to expand our international relationships, and to reach out to the Muslim world........Of those three goals the mission to reach out to Muslims is perhaps foremost, because it will help Islamic nations feel good about their scientific accomplishments."

"The United States is no longer capable of reaching beyond low earth orbit without help from other nations."

- NASA administrator Charles Bolden in a recent interview with al-Jazeera

Two Democrat presidents; two entirely different world-views. That's no accident. In a previous post, I had remarked over a year ago that President Obama - after having gutted the manned spaceflight components of NASA's mission - was on track to make this once great agency a mere extension of the Environmental Protection Agency. Now, apparently, he wants to make it an extension of The Peace Corps. According to Obama lackey Charles Bolden, NASA's three primary objectives have absolutely nothing to do with the exploration of space. And thus, we should not be surprised by Bolden's other statements, particularly that we lack the ability to get beyond low earth orbit without help from other nations.

Now, I wouldn't entirely dispute that, but for different reasons than Bolden. See, it's mighty hard to get beyond Earth orbit when you cancel the very programs designed to get you beyond Earth orbit. And there's also the question of funding. NASA - along with the military - has been the Democrat's favorite program to starve so as to create more welfare funding. As a current reminder, this is the administration that has already spent $75 billion in the past year just helping the states meet payroll for the Education Guild. That's three times NASA's annual budget, pissed away so our bloated Education bureaucracy can maintain their full time pay for part time jobs. Is it any wonder Obama doesn't think NASA is up to fulfilling its primary mission?

This is the guy whose vision is so small, whose objectives so infantile, whose world-view so constipated, that the notion of doing in 2019 what we had already done in 1969 is beyond his ability to conceive. Kind of makes you wonder what else is likely beyond Obama's vision? What else does he suppose America is incapable of doing that it has done before? The mind boggles at the prospects, but OffHisMeds offers a few anyway:

- Defeating the Soviet Union. Ronald Reagan - when asked about his strategy for dealing with the Soviet Union - famously declared "simple: we win, they lose". Such an economy of words to define an ultimately winning strategy, as Reagan then methodically and almost single-handedly went about the task of dismantling - peacefully - the most dangerous empire in the history of the world.

- USA's Olympic hockey victory of 1980. Unheralded, untested, underequipped, undersized and completely inexperienced at hockey as it is played internationally, the "Miracle On Ice" nonetheless is very much a part of our nation's athletic lore. It's not hard to imagine that Obama's reaction to that victory would be to bemoan American Exceptionalism, and agonize about the overt displays of patriotism, much less the effect it would have on our relations with other countries.

- Building the Panama Canal. This one is a no-brainer. Obama would have apologized for it, much as Jimmie Carter did when he gave it away. And prior to being built, he would have declared that it was futile, given that France had failed in a previous attempt to create a canal connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. He would also have worried that our success at doing so might have an adverse impact on our relations with France, and would then, undoubtedly, have blathered on about the effect on their self-esteem were we to succeed.

- Victory in World War II. FDR declared December 7th "a day which shall live in infamy"; then he declared war on the Japanese. No such straight rhetorical lines could exist from Obama's narrow perspective. The guy who is incapable of conceiving that Radical Islam is at war with freedom and democracy is also the guy who could feel some empathy for the Japanese empire, and would likely have equivocated for months after the attack, as he did about the Afghanistan surge. The guy who prostrated himself before our enemies and confessed America's sins is likely the guy that would have agonized over how America might have provoked The Empire Of The Rising Sun.

- The Marshall Plan. Now, this one Obama would have been all over, as it involved giving Trillions of dollars to other countries, which just happens to be one of his favorite past-times. Whether it's Liquidity Swaps to rescue the Euro, subsidies to the IMF for the bailout of Greece and the rest of Europe, military subsidies, the hyper-production of greenbacks or outright cash payments, nothing warms the heart of a Democrat like enslaving the American Taxpayer to a bunch of self-righteous Elitist humps with their hands out. Obama's spin, however, would have been to let the Euros, the Democrat Party and some version of the United Nations manage the spending, a mistake that Marshall most emphatically did not make.

- The 1969 New York Mets. They were proclaimed the "Miracle Mets", having won the 1969 World Series after having posted their first winning season in team history. Ironically, this group of hardy over-achievers reached this fabulous milestone the same year that NASA sent a man to the moon. Talk about symmetry; talk about common angels; talk about a reaffirmation of the Stuff that makes America great. The Mets and NASA weren't just metaphors for the Can-Do, pull yourself up by your bootstraps ethic that defined America; they were the living embodiment of it. By comparison, has Obama ever once exhorted his fellow Americans to Entrepreneurialism, self-sufficiency or fabulous achievement? Hardly. Could not fair-minded people all agree that his every exhortation has called on America to settle for mediocrity?

Obama, after all, is constantly talking about the things that America cannot do, whether it's space travel, defeating the Taliban or safely drilling for oil in the Gulf. He is Jimmie Carter's "Malaise" speech on steroids. As is so amply reflected with his policies for NASA, with his every proclamation and policy, President Obama projects his own insecurity, self-doubt and moral ambiguity onto his adopted nation and his fellow citizens. Is it too much to ask that he works out these issues sometime other than regular business hours, and concentrate on his day job?

Providing NASA a mission other than Muslim outreach might be a good start.

Just Another Day Of Presidential Finger-Pointing

Based on his behavior in the past few months, it's hard to think of Barack Obama as anything but a petulant child. Start with the Gulf Oil Spill and his insistence - after fiddling like Nero for six weeks - that he was going to "kick some ass" at BP. Move on to his serial accusations of George W. Bush, most recently when he defended the complete failure of the federal bureaucracy to respond to the BP oil spill as the result of "the past ten years of neglect" in the Minerals and Management Service, never mind that those self-same bureaucrats are virtually all Democrats, and have been for the past 40 years. We are also supposed to ignore the fact that his administration had not only been in control of the approval process for 15 months, but that his administration had awarded BP a Safety Award for the aforementioned and now infamous "Deepwater Horizon".

Never mind the facts, it's all somebody else's fault, and mostly Bush's fault.

Fast forward to Obama's recent snivel that "the past 18 months have been the most difficult" in the past century of the presidency. Oh woe is him. I wonder how many rounds of golf and number of pickup basketball games Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush played whilst they were handling - successively - World War I, The Great Depression, World War II, The first Atomic Bomb, The Cuban Missile Crisis, The Viet Nam War, The Cold War and 911, much less how many times they were getting their freak on with the First Lady at taxpayer expense in an apparently endless variety of upscale and international venues, including but not limited to Washington DC, New York City, San Francisco, London, Prague and Moscow? All combined, not as many rounds, games, freak-ons or other forms of entertainment our Indulger-In-Chief has allotted himself in these past 18 oh so burdensome months.

But then, it's been a tough year for the President. His initiatives are universally unpopular, the economy goes deeper in the tank every time he touches it, his groveling to our enemies has only emboldened them, and for the entire interval of the Gulf Oil Spill he's been taking it on the chin for doing, well, nothing about the Gulf Oil Spill. Despite the terrible political beating, OffHisMeds has still not been able to verify if Obama actually said: "I want my life back", although his remark that his Presidency has been the worst since - well - whenever, might well qualify as the equivalent. Ironic to note that his demonstrated incompetence, self-pitying remarks and stupefying inaction are vaguely reminiscent of BP CEO Tony Hayword.

Which brings us to this past week.

Unhappy that failure in the Afghanistan theatre is mounting, mostly due to his feckless and cowardly leadership, Barack Obama was spoiling for a Fall Guy and thus leapt at the opportunity to throw his supreme commander in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, under the bus after an article was published in Rolling Stone wherein McChrystal and his staff had been reported to have said things critical of President Thin Skin and sundry of his lackeys. Quick as you can say "The Previous Decade Of Neglect", McChrystal was recalled, shipped to the White House, very publicly fired and subject to the ritualized degradation that Obama and his minions had previously reserved for Arizona, Arizonans, Gulf Oil Spill victims, Fox News, the chairmen of BP and General Motors, former Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Bill Gates - and of course - taxpayers.

You can mark your Scorecards in ink on this one, Sports Fans. OffHisMeds contends that it will only be a matter of time before Obama blames the whole McChrystal episode on George W. Bush, despite Obama having hand-picked McChrystal. Now, don't get OHM wrong: George W has a lot to answer for, including having laid the groundwork for this insufferable Boob to become president in the first place, but he is not responsible for Barack Hussein Obama's actions.

B.O. automatically dealt McCrystal a losing hand last year with his very public proclamation that after the Surge he would begin the troop drawdown from Afghanistan by "July 2011". Obama inflicted Karl Eikenberry and Richard Holbrooke on him as his civilian counterparts (and nominal superiors), and both worked tirelessly to undermine the war effort. As Obama's strategy failed, he very predictably sacked McChrystal, and grandstanded General David Patreus back into the theatre. Amazingly,Obama's SpinMeisters actually got the majority of the Main Stream Media and even some conservative commentators to parrot his line that the reason we were failing in Afghanistan was that McChrystal employed overly strict Rules Of Engagement coupled with a "hearts and minds" strategy to win over civilians in Afghan, in the process endangering his troops, demoralizing them and emboldening our enemies. As the Narrative goes, this was McChrystal's baby, and his alone, as if our civilian leaders up to and including the President himself had no say in the strategy.

And Obama not only bought off on that narrative, but enthusiastically embraced it. What a towering hypocrite. What a self-absorbed, mindless Hump. What a finger-pointing, womanish excuse for a man.

And what a shame that OffHisMeds will have to recycle this Riff in two year's time, substituting the name "McChrystal" with "Patreus", and listening to Obama blame somebody else for his failures, yet again.

Double Dippers, A Bipartisan Outrage

One of OffHisMeds favorite anecdotes regarding Double Dippers involves an out of state work assignment he had last year. Double Dipping is, of course, the practice of acquiring multiple salaries and/or pensions through government employment. Double Dippers are the people who methodically - and one might even say pathologically - pursue government employment for the sole purpose of acquiring paychecks, pensions and other undeserved taxpayer-subsidized Goodies as early as possible so as to live the life of Riley at somebody else's expense.

OffHisMeds encountered this phenomenon relatively early in life. In the late 60s, a family acquaintance was retiring on two pensions after a hitch in the military, followed by twenty years working for the city. I recall my mother explaining this to me, and at a very tender age, me asking her why he needed more than one? I also expressed concern that if this guy had two pensions, was he taking one away from some other person? Finally I asked what he was going to do with himself? My mother offered no explanation, but only smiled.

And thus, in my extreme youth did I show a particular sharpness of mind.

Fast forward 48 or so years, and I'm in Arkansas, working as a Project Manager for an IT services company. I end up sharing a house with another guy who was the senior Project Manager in the company. I'll call him George. George was a staunch conservative, and watched Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and even Greta Van Susteren religiously, for cripes sake. He also worked 70-80 hours per week, as did I, so we rarely saw each other except in the hallways at work and for about an hour around 7:00 pm.

During one of the rare occasions we were both home at the same time, we went out to dinner and talked politics. George shared the same concern about the direction of the country as I, distressed that the Democrats under Barack Obama were determined to turn the USA into a Socialist paradise, and with barely a peep out of a complacent electorate. We couldn't have agreed more. George went on to explain that things had gotten so bad that he was considering retiring and moving out of the country; that he wouldn't be part of a nation that had so departed from American values, and couldn't stand to watch as everything he believed in was dismantled before his very eyes.

He then went on to describe that his brother had already taken this step, having moved to Costa Rica, and was living a life of luxury in that low-cost country. "Really", I replied. "What did he do for a living"? George explained that his brother had done a twenty year combined stint in the military and reserve, and then did twenty years as a teacher, with his reserve tenure overlapping with his teaching job. "I'm proud of him", George said. "He finally got his bellyful, took his two pensions and moved out".

"Two pensions", I said. "Yep", says George proudly. "So let me see if I've got this right", I says; "your brother worked exclusively in government for around 30 years, got two pensions funded by American taxpayers, retired in his 50s in good health, and then when he didn't like the direction the country was going, he high-tailed it to Costa Rica"? George looked stunned, as if the conversation had taken a turn he had not expected. "So people like yourself who continue to work in the private sector are paying his pensions, right"? George changed the subject, and was grumpy for the rest of the meal.

Suffice to say, I never got anymore work with that company.

My point here is that even many conservatives not only think that Double Dipping is OK, but that government retirement after as little as twenty years is OK. It's not. In fact, it's shameful. Just as it is shameful to purposely work a job that you know has no purpose, that requires little effort and pays you vastly more than what the work is worth, it is shameful to blithely end your useful work life twenty years sooner than everybody else, even when you're the brother of a so-called Conservative.

The fact that virtually every government employee and the tens of millions of government retirees are also clueless to the fact that they are riding on the backs of their fellow citizens tells you Barack Obama - or Enablers like him - are going to have a constituency for a very long time.

I wonder if George's brother is still engaged enough in his former country's goings-on to submit an absentee ballot? Talk about heaping insult on top of injury.

Free Credit Report Dot Com And Other Democrat Boondoggles

Ever wonder why it is that lately, every other television commercial is from a credit rating service touting their ability to improve your credit score? Let's face it, it's either that or the local "attorney du moment" enjoining you to call him if you think you've ever come in contact with asbestos, any number of prescription drugs, the IRS or an insurance agent that didn't drop his drawers and bend over when you called about a dislodged shingle during the last perturbance in the Gulf of Mexico. OffHisMeds cynically assumes that the credit rating agency advertising boom is all a scam; after all, you've either got good credit or you don't, and there's not a damn thing a third party should be able to do to improve it.

More to the question, what is driving this business such that it can afford a bigger advertising budget than the Big Three and Proctor & Gamble combined? OffHisMeds believes it is similar to other phenomena that only crop up when the economy is seriously and profoundly in the tank, and politicians start prescribing solutions with the same discrimination Charlie Sheen uses in his romantic liaisons'. For example:

1. Historically low interest rates followed by yet more historically low interest rates. Of all the things that politicians do that ought to be causing you to stuff the miserable remnants of your IRA into a coffee can and hide it under a floorboard (along with gaming the unemployment numbers or declaring that the Trillions they're stealing from you are "investments"), enticing you to refinance your mortgage has got to be near the top of the list.

On what other planet can you triumphantly declare that the hundreds of billions in mortgage refi's that have taken place during our so-called "recovery" are legitimate business activity, when the net of that activity is to take previously profitable mortgages and turn them into taxpayer subsidized money-losers? The answer to that question would be: Planet Obama. Sure, it's good for you the homeowner in the short term, but did we learn nothing from the last decade of Mortgage Orgy?

It's one thing for these knuckleheads to take mortgage contracts from the pocket of one banker and put them into the pocket of another and declare it "economic activity" when it clearly is not; it's yet another thing for them to declare these refi's profitable when they clearly are not; and it's yet another thing for them to continue to Feed The Monster by underwriting all this loan activity with many additional hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. It's quite another thing for you the Citizen to accept that all of this is true. Let's face it: these jackasses never learn anything until we teach them, which is never going to happen unless we learn our lesson first.

2. The proliferation of branch banks. Is it just me, or does it seem like there's a new one on every corner? That's not necessarily a bad thing considering the number of fast food franchises the banks likely displace, along with the nail salons, Mexican restaurants, dry cleaners, pawn shops, discount auto parts franchises, check cashing joints and dollar stores that propagate like weeds in Suburbia.

Ironically, the explosion of branch banks has mostly upside for OffHisMeds, in that: a) he won't have to pay for them until they inevitably fail, and b) they provide that many fewer opportunities for him to die prematurely from heart disease, since they've gobbled up valuable real estate from the aforementioned fast food joints, for which OHM has a weakness. It is simply worth noting, however, that the Tribbling* of banks goes hand-in-hand with the Tribbling of mortgage refi's and the Tribbling of the credit rating agencies currently clogging up the air waves. The three are inextricably linked to the frantic effort to re-leverage the American consumer and to get him hyper-consuming again. After all, that Trillion dollar Euro bailout the U.S. just underwrote isn't going to last forever.

3. Hospital construction. Scratch a Recession and you'll find a hospital building boom. Just look back over the past 40 years as Health Care went from 6% of a $1 Trillion pie to almost 20% of a $14 Trillion dollar pie, and you'll see what I'm talking about. Hospital construction and the growth of the health care sector are portrayed as an unambiguously good thing, and yet a further sign of robust economic activity.

After all, who doesn't want health care?

Well, me for one. I'm perfectly content to remain healthy and out of the hospital, but seem to be in the extreme minority in the assumption that it is the natural tendency of the human body to remain healthy, ward off infection and disease, that kind of stuff. What good is a million year's of evolution otherwise? Why did my parents go to all the trouble of endowing me with an immune system and the good sense not to run into traffic if they didn't expect these efforts to keep me healthy?

Common sense says that the less you need to pay on health care, the more money you've got to spend on other things that make life enjoyable. My point here is that health care is not legitimate economic activity. What it is, is one of the reliable sectors that the government will inflate whenever true Private Sector economic activity falters. It simulates the real thing, which keeps the populace from freaking out. It also has a calming effect on our Pols, makes them feel useful, and sustains the illusion that they can actually have an impact on the Big Picture.

What all these things have in common is that none of them are on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the one infallible means by which to differentiate meaningful economic growth from the phony government-inspired kind. You remember Maslow from college, or 10th grade if you went to a Catholic High School prior to 1980. His pyramid laid out the things that rational people willingly seek out to sustain and improve their lives. Things like shelter, food, sex, safety, acceptance and enlightenment. Nowhere in there will you find that these things are achieved or even implied to be achieved by an overabundance of branch banks, mortgage loans, credit scoring agencies or hospital buildings, which means that none of them are rational activities. The same is true of Stimulus Plans, Health Care reform bills, Democrat subsidies for Planned Parenthood, AARP and Acorn, and so-called "investments" in Infrastructure.

If you have a single, healthy, unleveraged, cynical bone in your body - and one attuned to self-preservation - you already knew that, and you're asking yourself the questions Maslow would have enjoined you to ask: 1) Does an oversupply of these things contribute in the slightest to your happiness and overall welfare? Will they ever allow you to achieve the highest point of the pyramid - what Maslow calls "self actualization"?

Not likely, but they do put a smile on the face of Barack Obama and his apparatchiks.

* Tribbling - Mindless, uncontrolled and ultimately destructive growth or reproduction (See Season Two, Episode 15 of Star Trek, "The Trouble With Tribbles"; See also: the 111th Congress).

Of Europe, American Taxpayers and the Bailout of Greece

The ink is barely dry on a Trillion dollar "bailout" that Europe has constructed to contain the uncontainable: the berserk European social spending that even Europeans couldn't help but characterize as "PIIGs". That acronym stands for Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Greece, the four true basket cases of the EEU, and the ones in immediate need of a bailout.

OffHisMeds gives them credit for a sense of humor, if not a particularly keen sense of irony. It is one thing for a Frenchman to haughtily dismiss his less fortunate brethren; quite another for him not to acknowledge that the only thing that separates the PIIGs from France is a matter of timing.

Europe has been living off America's dime for several decades now. Our direct subsidies include contributions to the World Bank and the IMF, military expenditures, liquidity swaps, tolerance of the Mercantilist policies of Euros, and OHM's current favorite: the manipulation of America's stock markets.

All of these things unambiguously transfer American dollars into the pockets of Europe's senile democracies. As a particular case in point, much of the Trillion dollar bailout is financed by the IMF. The US contributes 18% of IMF funding. So $100 billion was transferred from American taxpayers to Europe without so much as a vote in Congress. All this took was a stroke of Barack Obama's pen.

Ask yourself if any IMF money has ever benefitted America. Ask yourself how pathetic a nation we have become when Europe can write themselves a $100 Billion dollar check drawn on our Treasury any time they want to.

The sadly predictable part is that this will all be for naught. OHM is going to go on record and predict that the so-called "reforms" Greece committed to in reining in social spending will not happen. People will continue to retire at age 53; Greeks will continue to enjoy ten weeks of vacation; workweeks will stay at 30 hours; government employment will continue to be the only game in town.

And America will not have a leg to stand on in criticizing Greece. Take their cushy make-work society and tell me how it is different from government employment anywhere in America?

It's exactly the same.

Foreign vs. Domestic, Pt IV - The Greedy Incompetent Americans Myth

It has always struck OffHisMeds as more than passing strange that Americans have spent so much time demonizing "greedy short-sighted American corporations" and "corrupt unions" as not only the source of all ills with American cars but as a justification for purchasing a foreign car. Granted, neither has done everything right, and the UAW in particular had a sordid history in the 70's and 80's of subsidizing laziness and incompetence, but so what? Can anybody plausibly argue that Toyota and Volkswagen - or the Unions that represent their workers - are less greedy, less corrupt? Particularly in light of the recent news that America would be contributing hundreds of billions to bail out the Euro and the hundreds of billions we spend yearly defending Japan, Inc. and Europe, Inc., it's clear that "virtue" is relative.

Common Sense would dictate that corporations the world over have at minimum the same regard (or disregard) for ethical conduct, and in countries less open than America (which is all of them) it is arguably worse. I give you Toyota's decade long fraud on the problem with Sudden Acceleration as a case in point.

But it's as if in America none of that is even contemplated, much less matters. American consumers give foreign car companies a big thumbs up in the Virtue department every time they enthusiastically turn tens of thousands of their hard-earned dollars over to buy a Corolla, Jetta, Civic or Sonata. Voting with their pocketbook, they not only give foreign companies a Hall Pass when it comes to corporate virtue, they actually invest them with a virtue greater than our own. It is the Thinking Man's lament: but that we viewed as critically the conduct of foreigners and their corporations as we do our own. The fact that we don't speaks volumes about the Democrat Party's decades-long demonization of American business, the demonization by Republicans of Unions, and an endemic intellectual and moral laziness on the part of many American consumers. It's strange to think Liberals with their agenda and Conservatives with theirs are both milking our Consumerist ethic so diligently towards a common goal: the destruction of manufacturing in America.

Can you imagine the Germans or Japanese tolerating such self-destructive behavior? That said, the politicization of manufacturing has contributed to popular numerous misperceptions about the quality of domestically manufactured goods, and these have tended to focus most particularly on the automobile, the icon of manufacturing. Sure, they may be other mechanized things with more pizzazz than a car - yachts, Apache helicopter gunships, space shuttles, etc. - but those tend to be out of price range of most folks, and thus we must settle for automobiles in probing the psyche of the American consumer.

Many car buyers in America have some sense of loyalty to their fellow citizens; unfortunately, most do not. They go for "value" as it is portrayed in the media (predictably skewed against American car companies); they go for trends, and foreign cars are certainly trendy; and finally, they make no allowance for even the slightest of differences in Quality Ratings between domestic and foreign cars, regardless of whether the criteria are faulty or not. So, for example, if Consumer Reports gives Toyota a quality rating of 92 on a particular model and GM gets a score of 89 on a comparable model, most folks would make no allowance for the statistical insignificance. And if the GM car was projected to cost over its lifetime an extra ten cents per day, these same consumers would make no allowance, even if the end result was keeping Americans employed and generating taxes for the mortgage deductions, Social Security and Medicare benefits that they no doubt feel they are entitled to.

I wonder if anybody contemplates the irony of purchasing foreign cars at the expense of our own economy, only to discover that that wasn't quite enough, and that now we as taxpayers will have to further mortgage our children's future spending untold Trillions every decade to subsidize a Greek's right to retire at age 53; a German's right to 10 weeks of paid vacation; Japanese, German or Korean car company's ability to dump the retirement costs of their employees on their government, or the monstrous welfare states they have all constructed, which are then directly subsidized by American taxpayers' - and car purchasers' - dollars.

Try explaining that one to your kids when the bill comes due.

2Fast 2Early 2Slow 2Late - Program Trading In The Age Of Obama

The wild gyrations of the stock market Thursday - at one point down 1000 points - should remind us all to follow the money when things like this happen. OffHisMeds has been of the opinion that the Stock Market has been consistently rigged since at least 1999, although the first large-scale fiscal piracy of the modern era took place as early as 1987.

You will recall that the problem with the market on Black Monday in 1987 was so-called "Program Trading", a computerized trigger that dumps stocks automatically when they lose a certain percentage of their value within a certain time-span. The whole concept is idiocy, of course. Since when can inert computer programs substitute for expert judgment and the ability of human beings to analyze information and events? That is why it is all the more ironic that the market was yet again plundered through this glitch - allegedly by a trader who hit the wrong key on his computer - some 23 years later.

Meanwhile, computers have advanced orders of magnitude in their power, as have the programs that drive them, but Program Trading is just as problematic as ever.

Which brings us to OHM's First Law of Economics: Instability benefits Predators.

At one point, the Dow Jones average lost 1,000 points, or 9% of its total value. NASDAQ and other markets suffered similar losses. If you assume these losses were perpetuated throughout all publicly traded stocks in America, the momentary loss was approximately $1.25 Trillion. This is yet another classic example of the "milking" that occurs routinely in our Stock Markets, where the wealth contained in the conservatively managed Mutual Funds of folks invested in IRAs and 401Ks is siphoned into the accounts of fast-acting and predatory traders the world over.

You have but to look at the performance of Mutual Funds since 1999 versus the overall market to see what I'm talking about. Looking strictly at large-scale swings in market performance (at least 5% in any given fiscal quarter), you find that when the Market fell, Mutual Fund losses as a percentage were nearly twice as high as that of the Stock Market overall. Likewise, when the Market experienced a significant uptick, Mutual Funds would experience roughly half of that increase.

So, assuming that the defensive posture of Mutual Fund Program Trading simultaneously causes them to sell too fast too early, and then buy too slow too late, it's reasonable to assume that this was one of the largest single day thefts in world history. After all the wild gyrations, if only half of that wealth was transferred from ordinary investors to Traders, and only half of that money belonged to Mutual Funds that supported retirement accounts, that would still be almost $300 Billion picked from the pockets of Savers nationwide.

Who benefits? For sure it was the Day Traders and other carrion pickers who swept in and bought up Procter & Gamble, for one example, when its price plunged from $60 to $33. The other beneficiaries were the Usual Suspects: George Soros, Warren Buffett, Chinese Communist Overlords, Arab Dictators, Russian Mafias and anybody else flush with US dollars at the moment the market plunged.

So, what does all of this have to do with Barack Obama? Simple: for all his anti-Wall Street rhetoric, Obama's SEC is not going to find that anything like the scenario I describe above ever happened, small investors are not going to be recompensed, and nobody will be punished. As the largest recipient of political contributions from Wall Street, Obama is not going to bite the hand that feeds him, or holds his leash.

MS-150 Chronicles 2010 - Part 4

Sunday Morning

Picking up from the Start on Sunday morning, the rain stopped mere minutes before packs of Riders began to depart from LaGrange. I was in the third shift, and was soon rolling down an extended decline out of town. When I hit around 23 mph, the front wheel started shimmying violently. I hollered "stopping!", dropped both feet on the ground whilst simultaneously applying handbrakes (try that sometime) and brought the bike to a stop along the side of the road without managing to take anybody else out. Thinking the shimmy was a fluke, I tried rolling again, but the symptoms re-occurred. I could find nothing wrong, so I flagged a SAG wagon, we threw my bike in back, and I was now rolling towards the first rest stop, knocking about 10-12 miles off my Ride, not to mention my weary backside.

A mechanic at the Rest Stop could find nothing wrong, but tightened the inset screw at the base of the handlebars, and I was soon on my way. That symptom was a new one on me, but I experienced no other breakdowns, and not a single flat tire. That was a lucky break because the ride this year seemed plagued with many more flats than in years' past.

While the mechanic was working on my bike, I took the opportunity to try to call and text some folks to update them on my whereabouts. No luck. See, my beloved Motorola Razor is on its last legs, steadily losing functionality more or less in direct proportion to the frequency with which I drop it on the ground. In fact, after so much abuse, it's hilarious when I do drop it. Whereas before it would simply bounce around, picking up yet another ding on the surface, it now explodes into four different pieces, and some reassembly is required. Intermittent failures are now total, such as the inability to scroll through menus or use the phone book. I also can't get the number 9 on the keypad to work except intermittently, and it has a tendency to insert a 6 instead, causing me to dial quite a few wrong numbers. All of the folks I mis-called were polite, and several seemed thankful for the call, like they didn't get too many. It's strange to think that in our communication saturated society that too few calls would be an issue, but there it is. It's also strange how you don't realize how dependent you are on your celly until it starts losing features.

So in a nutshell, my cell phone essentially allows me to do three things: receive phone calls, make calls to friends as long as they don't have any 9's in their number, and read text messages sent to me as long as nobody is expecting a response. So, sorry John Holmes and John Breland if you haven't heard from me: y'all having 9's in your number is a deal killer as far as the Razor was concerned.

Just for grins, I purposely dropped it on the ground at the rest stop prior to lunch to see if that would shake things up a bit and improve performance. I reinserted the SIM card, battery, backplate and faceplate, but no luck. Note to self: get new cell phone next week.

The rest of the trip into Bastrop for lunch was a chill, wet and slightly claustrophobic experience, not the least because the skies were overcast and everybody was a little goosey about the wet ground and the considerable speed you could accumulate on the downhills. I actually applied handbrakes all the way down the 500 yard long downhill you hit just before the Buescher State Park split, foregoing the thrill of hitting 45 mph so as not to discover whether that shimmy might decide to do an encore. At 45 mph, I was going to have precious fewer options than at half that speed, and none of them involving a happy outcome.

I also blew off Buescher State Park and its scenic hills, opting for the more gradual incline of the surface roads outside of it, and within about an hour was into lunch. Soon enough, I'm back out on the road, and the miles are coming harder now, no doubt due to the combination of a lack of hill training and, of course, the never-ending hills and damnable headwinds that comprised most of the Sunday ride. I couldn't fault the hills; they were there first. The headwinds we started hitting around Mile 20 were another matter altogether. I make a mental note to ask the Ride Committee if they maybe can't do something about this for next year.

With 36 miles to go, I started doing a countdown. The winds had dropped, and I managed to lurk onto a reasonable Pace Line going about 18 mph. Sweet, I say to myself. At this rate, I'll be done in two hours. Shortly thereafter, the Pace Line sped up, and I was unable to keep up with them. I've now slowed down to 16 mph, but at least I covered four miles. Some quick math reveals that if I can just sustain that speed, I'll be into Austin in two hours. Soon enough, the winds return, and every Rider is slowed, some more than others. I covered another 4 miles, but now down to 14 mph. At this pace, I will be done in two hours.

You can see where this is going. Each successive loss of just 2 mph in speed every four miles left me an unchanging two hours away from the Austin Finish, and sure enough, the winds picked up with a vengeance, slowing me to 12, then 10, then 8 mph. It was like I was in an episode of Twilight Zone, where you can not only contemplate Infinity, but actually effing experience it! Suddenly, declaring to myself - "I've only got two hours to go!" - as I had twenty miles back was no longer a cheerful and good thing, but an acknowledgment of the distinct possibility that my speed would slow relative to the remaining distance until time and space themselves ceased to have any meaning. My "progress" in the previous 20 miles left looming in my mind the ignominy of having the last SAG wagon haul my butt to the end, just ahead of the 92 year old guy from New Jersey that comes out and completes the entire ride every year.

Not exactly the scenario Einstein had postulated, but close enough.

Gloomy, I pulled into the Next-To-Last rest stop, mostly because it is gleefully advertised as such by the volunteers who man it, several of whom hold up big cardboard signs proclaiming "Only 16 miles to go!" I wanted to smack them. Instead, I picked up on their cheerful vibe, downed one last handful of cookies, and decided to go for broke. I had been nursing a twinge that felt like a cramp in my right calf for the previous hour, but decided to hammer it until it locked up or let me go, determined not to cover the next 8 miles at an average speed of 4 mph, and still theoretically a depressing two hours from the finish.

For what it's worth, the last 16 miles were relatively easy. I stood in the stirrups on every uphill without cramping, and I was within two miles of the finish in about an hour, the Austin cops cheering us on with one shouting out "nearly there, nearly there", and high-fiving Riders stopped at an intersection. The Pack resumed on the green light, heading down a hill, and just like that we were at a full stop again. A Rider was down, but this was no leisurely exercise as had been the others. There were at least two paramedics and two Rider parameds working on the Rider, and there was a definite urgency about their movements. The cops diverted us around the ambulance, everybody made an effort not to gawk, and a thousand silent prayers went up simultaneously.

Within minutes I was rolling down the long entry chute at the end, lined with hundreds of cheering folks. Edging over to the left, I stuck out my hand and did a continuous High-Five with a couple dozen folks along the fence as I rolled to the finish, managing this safely until I came to the inevitable road-block of Bright Room photographers occupying the entire left half of the Finish Line, stacked three wide, four deep, and clicking away like crazy.

I clipped out one last time and zipped directly to the vans prepped to take our bikes back to the Starting Points in Houston. Once again, a cheerful 16 year old grabbed my bike, reminded me to take all my valuables, and bundled my bike on board. I moseyed over to the Continental tent for one last sign-in and trooped directly to the showers, intent on catching the first available bus so as to get home at a decent hour.

While in line for a shower, a handful of us circled one of the Top Fundraisers - his Rider Number identifying him as such - hoping to catch some tips on elevating contributions from, say, "Decent" (my current status) to Club 300, which is $3,500 or more. The Top Fundraisers are deep into five figures territory. The conversation, though, is all about the just-completed Ride, and pretty soon I'm into and out of the showers, seeking my last beer before the Bus Ride, and looking around the Continental and St. Arnold's tents for anybody I know. No such luck, so I gimped on down to the bus line, my luggage stuffed with extra Continental T-Shirts that our organizer Beth was pressing on everybody, along with a couple packs of Continental playing cards that might be a collector's item one day, assuming they consummate a proposed merger with United Airlines.

Don't do it Continental. A little belt-tightening and innovation is the sure path to future profits, and need I remind you that Chicago is not exactly a bastion of free enterprise.

The bus pulls out of Austin around 4:00 pm, and the ride back to Houston is accompanied by a free movie that is so awful that I can't even remember what it was. I turn to my seatmate, and we strike up a conversation that lasts maybe a half hour, after which time I'm prepared to sack out for the rest of the bus ride home, along with 80% of the folks I was riding with. Three hours later, we roll into the Omni Hotel, Sharon is waiting for me, and I head on home.

Life is good.

White Man Blows Up Times Square!

They Mainstream Media just can't help themselves, can they? Regarding the attempted terrorist attack in Times Square, today the New York Times reported that "Arrest made in Times Square bomb case". Yet, only yesterday in the article "Motive sought for car bomb", they showed no scruples to report that the prime suspect was a "white man", reporting of "surveillance footage that showed a white man who appeared to be in his 40s walking away from the area as he looked over his shoulder and removed a layer of clothing", and "images of the white man leaving the scene of the SUV that were shot by a tourist in Times Square".

Frankly, I would question the judgment of anybody of any race who didn't look over their shoulder after pulling a layer of clothing over their head in Times Square, much less a New York City alley, since it would be at exactly that moment that a mugger would knock you over the head. Or it could be that the guy was simply hot.

The article also reported that the white suspect was "was seen in Shubert Alley". He wasn't. The video clearly shows him removing his shirt on the same street as the parked SUV and walking down that street, but we all know how much more plausible his guilt would be if he were to be reported sneaking down an alley.

So why the rush to identify the culprit as a white man? Since when does taking off a sweatshirt make one a suspect? It's not much of a stretch to presume that the authors of the article wanted it to be a white man, and preferably a member of a Tea Party. Either way, it sounds like racial profiling to me.

One final note: it isn't just the Mainstream Media that fanned the Guilty Whitey theory; local, state and federal government investigators all fed this bogus story for two days, or roughly the length of time it took them to determine that a Pakistani American - Faisal Shahzad - had just recently returned from Pakistan, purchased the car, and was arrested at JFK airport today attempting to flee the country to Dubai, where he ran not the slightest risk of being racially profiled.

Let That Be A Lesson To You

The remarkable part of a recent story about use of the "N" word in a Houston school was not that it was allegedly done by a Teacher's Aide, nor that the student and his parents were so offended that they demanded that the Aide be fired, nor that the school district inevitably complied. The remarkable part of this story was not even the fact that the Teacher's Aide involved was Black.

No, the remarkable part was the letter of dismissal sent by the Houston Independent School District to the employee, portions of which were shown on TV (around the 2:10 mark of the video link above). In addition to recognizable phrases like "your contract will not be renewed", was the following declaration: "....use a racial epitaph while addressing......"

Racial epitaph?

Without knowing or caring about the age, race or gender of the letter writer, of one thing I am absolutely certain: they were a product of HISD or its thousands of clones nationwide: obsessed for two generations now with political correctness, self-esteem, fairness and opportunity, and not at all concerned about syntax, grammar, spelling - or the limitations of Spellcheck when composing a letter in Microsoft Word.

MS-150 Chronicles 2010 - Part 3

SUNDAY MORNING:

It's 4:30 a.m., and just as promised, Continental rolls out their version of Reveille, turning the lights on at the service end of their huge tent, accompanied by the Volunteers (who had been up since 2:30 a.m. prepping breakfast), moving into the tent, mixing Gatorade and doing the dozen other things Volunteers do to make the Riders' lives easier. Progressively, the lights rolled on throughout the Tent, with a dozen or so folks covering their heads or burying them into their sleeping bags, determined to forestall the inevitable approach of dawn.

From the great height of his velour-covered Luxaire Power Inflatable Air Mattress (with 144 individual air pockets to ensure a good night's sleep), my Bunk Mate to the left with the earplugs (apparently designed to block out the sound of his own snoring) complained that he "slept like crap", a sentiment echoed by my Bunk Mate to the right, also from the lofty heights of his cushy air mattress. I offered to check under their mattresses for a pea, but neither of them got the cultural reference. In two minutes flat I had my sleeping bag rolled up and stowed in my luggage, as the whine of a dozen small electric motors being used to deflate air mattresses filled the tent, no doubt to the great distress of those doggedly trying to sleep in, not to mention the sensibilities of those who worry about the carbon footprint of a device as controversial as an air mattress deflator motor.

Maybe the government could come up with a wind-powered version, with the appropriate subsidies, of course.

In quick order I threw on my bike togs, brushed my teeth and prepped my bike. The temperature felt like it was in the mid-fifties, but that could have been the 100% humidity. Suffice to say it was chill, and with the exception of the roads, the campground was a muddy bog.

Over the years I have enjoyed the traditional MS-150 pancake orgy early Sunday morning, where local volunteers turn out a Google of pancakes, producing the batter in containers that - I kid you not - look exactly like small cement mixers. The cooks are an interesting mix of young and old: hulking high school boys to muscle the 50 lb sacks of flour, the older folks flipping flapjacks and filling the trays, and teenage girls taking the trays out to the serving area. It is a machine of efficiency, and I'd guess they serve close to half of the 11,000 or so Riders. And what a treat it is to step inside the kitchen. There's just nothing like walking through a building with the smell of hundreds of pancakes cooking to make you forget about your own aches and pains.

I was always a little concerned about those cement mixers, though. I mean, assuming they're dual use, how clean could they really get them? Reminds me of another disturbing aspect of MS-150's past, where the huge tankers that supplied water to the mobile showers had "Roto-Rooter" emblazoned on the side. As to the cement mixers at Breakfast, I was prepared to rationalize whatever amount of concrete I was ingesting, having recently read that cigarette manufacturers now include concrete in my Marlboro Lights. Bizarre but true, per the anti-smoking Fascisti, who assure me it's so mostly because they say so, the same indisputable argument they use to document the 470 other known hazardous chemicals and carcinogens that Big Cig supposedly pumps into my Smokes along with the concrete, purely out of spite. I suspect this is more of the same rationale that allows people to be absolutely certain that Global Warming exists and is caused by people, but most particularly cigarette smokers.

Not that I'm saying that cigarettes are not harmful, mind you, but I fully expect to read in the coming months that cigarettes will also be discovered to contain the effluent from chemical plants, waste dump methane, depleted uranium, that silvery scratch-off lottery ticket coating and Soylent Green, whereafter somebody who looks like Charleston Heston will run through the streets shouting: "People!........cigarettes are made from peeeeople!"

But I digress.

Either way, if I can endure a little concrete in my cigarette, I guess I can handle a little bit in my pancakes, and the pancake line is always open by 4:30 a.m. so I can get in line early. As I finish stowing my gear, though, I discover that Continental has breakfast ready by 4:45 a.m., so I won't even need to hazard the LaGrange breakfast line. Mere steps away is a veritable banquet, including Taquitos with all the trimmings, great coffee, orange juice and Danish. I'm third in line and chow down. There doesn't appear to be any organized plan for the Team to assemble en masse for Sunday's start, so I mosey over to the Starting Gate around 5:15 in my Road Runner bike jersey, and there's already about 100 people in line.

Within minutes it starts to rain, and for the next hour it varies from a downpour to a drizzle, the Riders either rolling up the collars of their rain gear, running for shelter, or simply hunkering in place and getting thoroughly soaked, knowing full well that this too shall pass. When it really started coming down, one guy rushed into the single Port-a-John conveniently located at the start. After about five minutes, the coffee started working on me, so I walked over to wait my turn to use the facilities. A few more minutes passed, and I saw that a line had formed behind me, with a few of the Riders shifting their weight from one foot to the other, a sure sign of their urgency. After a few more minutes, I knocked on the door. It immediately popped open and the first guy asks "do you need to use this?".

He was using the single toilet available to 500 Riders as his personal rain shelter. You can't make this stuff up.

In several past posts, I have complained about the Sunday Morning Line Cutters; you know who I'm talking about: the people (almost all men) who sleep in until just before the Start, and then try to force their way to the front of the line on some bullshit premise or another, such as "my team is up front, we have to start together". I am proud to report that not one of them has ever gotten past me, but this year, I encountered a whole new scam. Around 6:45 a.m., one slightly overweight guy came blustering up on the right shoulder, demanding that all the riders that had been sitting there patiently since 5:15 a.m. "shove over on the left, dammit, shove over on the left!". "Why?", somebody asked. "Because the right two lanes are reserved for riders taking the Express Lunch Route, and the left two lanes are reserved for riders taking the Challenge Route! We need to make room for the Express Lunch Route!". This time I didn't even need to raise my voice. Several dozen heads of the people around him who had endured 50 degree temperatures and steady rain for the prior 1.75 hours swung in his direction, looked at him briefly, then ignored him.

He grumbled over to the right shoulder, looking sullen, and no doubt composing a sharp memo to the Ride Committee, or whatever portion of the MS-150 bureaucracy that was devoted to the special needs of self-appointed Entitlement Scrounges. Not that I'm besmirching Express Lunch Route Riders. Truth be told, any route that promises to limit your saddle time whilst simultaneously getting you to Lunch early looks mighty attractive at Dark Thirty Sunday morning, the day after riding 100 miles.

This reminds me that a handful of our friends went Cowboy and did the entire Houston to Austin route on Saturday, with another friend leapfrogging in a car to provide support, food and fluids along the 75 mile second leg from LaGrange to Austin. I wonder how they did? I also wonder what ten kinds of crazy you have to be to venture 175 miles in one day, with no traffic cops to separate you from the traffic? The relentlessly cheerful MC at the Start Line interrupted my meditation, announcing over the PA system that we were ready to go. As we moved forward, I thought: it takes all kinds to make this Ride the unique thing it is, and maybe they're not so crazy.

After all, they avoided standing in the cold and wet for 2 hours on Sunday morning.

MS-150 Chronicles 2010 - Part 2

Part 2, Saturday.

THE START

So after fighting through the traffic mess leading up to the start of the Ride, my lovely wife Sharon dropped me off a quarter mile from the start, and I made it to the starting gate incident free, with the exception of the excruciating rendition of our National Anthem I mentioned previously. Within minutes of getting there, the Teams were already starting to take off North on Eldridge, with thousands of Riders snaking their way in a generally northwesterly direction, strung out ahead of and behind me for as far as I could see. The ground was damp, and we soon came on our first accident, a female rider flat on her back, but not apparently much the worse for wear. We drove past this scene two more times in the first hour, but to all appearances the injuries were minor, or so we all hoped. Strange to think that falling off your bike could be less painful than riding the entire 175 miles over two days, but small consolation to the Riders who went over their handlebars.

As usual, the Ride Marshalls were everywhere, motivating people to stay in their lanes of traffic, ride safe, and rendering aid to dozens of Riders in the first several miles. The Ride Marshalls are an interesting combination of Cyclist, Cop, Cheerleader, Mentor and EMT, and there is no way an event of this magnitude keeps from coming unraveled without their constant attention. They were relentlessly cheerful, but they could bite when they needed to, such as the time I ventured into the opposite lane of traffic to pass a gaggle of four-abreast socializers. To paraphrase, they are the Sticky Goo that holds everything together.

The first 35 miles were otherwise uneventful, then about ten miles before the Bellville lunch stop, I saw a truly strange and wonderful sight: A 1977 two-tone Ford F-150 Pickup towing an exact duplicate 1977 two-tone Ford F-150 Pickup. They're even the same color combination: brown and white, their paint jobs are equally faded, with exactly the same amount of dirt on both. Now what - I'm thinking to myself - could cause a person in this day and age to own two 23 year old pickups of exactly the same type? Did this guy not get the memo about the Cash For Clunkers program? Was this Citizen thumbing his nose at his generous government's offer to simultaneously improve the environment, fuel economy and the Flyness of his Ride?

I'm thinking with that gun rack, he's probably a Tea Partier, and his name surely must go on a list. Not saying that he'll be harassed, mind you. Let's just say that he might get some extra attention come tax time, or at the 10,000 security checkpoints our government has established throughout the land to guard against people who "get bitter, cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations".

Or so sayeth the 44th president of the land.

On the other hand, if one assumes that the working 74 Ford F-150 got 17 miles per gallon by it's ownself, and, say, 14 miles per gallon towing its twin, then those two vehicles collectively were getting 28 miles per gallon. And per capita fuel economy is off the charts if both trucks are occupied, with a maximum safe occupancy of 11 people per vehicle, plus dogs, which gives him a better fuel-to-passenger ratio than Houston Metro by a factor of about ten to one, and all without a dime of taxpayer subsidy.

Anyway, this guy is my hero. May his trucks last another 50 years each.

With this little meditation completed, we're just shy of Bellville at this point, and your correspondent pushes it up to 22 mph in the hopes of getting to lunch that much sooner. Within minutes, I ride up on the "FMC Twins", two Hotties on the FMC team riding side by side, with exactly the same body shape (pleasing), matching jerseys, bike shorts, helmets and socks, their long red hair streaming in the wind. Were they actually twins? Sorry to say that safety prevented any closer examination, much less conversation, and within minutes, thousands of hungry riders were turning into the campground.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON:

Lunch in Bellville is uneventful. I meet up with Shawn again, but we lose each other along the way. Continental has these wonderful tortilla wraps for lunch, along with sundry other goodies. Let's just say that airline passengers don't eat this good. I hit the road after lunch, refreshed and searching for the elusive Bluebonnet, which has been scarce at best for the first 50 miles. The rest of the ride into LaGrange is strangely devoid of the State flower, their season having apparently peaked the week before. There is, however, a ton of Indian Paintbrush, the official flower of the Kinky Freidman For Governor campaign. I wonder if this is auspicious?

That reminds me that Kinky promised in his last campaign to make Willie Nelson his State Energy Czar, and if memory serves, Willie had advocated Hemp in lieu of Wind turbines to solve our energy problems. Never did understand how one could be the replacement for another, but Hemp sure would be a lot kinder to migratory birds.

I get some starch in my legs, and with a slight tailwind, I'm able to sustain 20 mph for the last 25 miles. I'm finally into LaGrange, those cheering crowds once again bringing a huge smile to my face, and the ubiquitous professional photographers once again clogging the finish line. Two of them are actually sitting in chairs directly in the path of the Riders, and I wonder how much of a piece of this action MS actually gets. Oh well, it wouldn't be the first time Commerce trumped common sense.

Sharon manages to get a snapshot of me at the finish, and I save $51.99 the Brightroom photogs would have charged me for a CD, notwithstanding that they got some fairly cool action shots of me on the Ride, generally with a smile on my face, and looking right sharp in my Continental jersey. I gimp over to the Continental tent, get the bike parked, sign in, and sit down with Sharon, gratefully, with a Shiner Blonde and a ciggy, waiting my turn for a massage. Life is good.

Sharon takes off a couple hour's later, and it's off to the showers. The lines are moving slower than year's past, despite a massive increase in the number of buses that ship Riders offsite to the high school showers across town. I see Shawn pile out of the trailer I'm in line for, and we exchange some pleasantries. He's none the worse for wear despite the hundred miles and some mechanical difficulties. Way to go, Shawn.

Once I get into the trailer, I see the reason for the delays. It seems they've replaced the Locker Room style trailers of old with the kind where each shower stall now has its own little changing room. Unfortunately, this has the effect of increasing the wait-time on each shower from five minutes to ten minutes. WTF is going on? Since when did men need private changing rooms attached to their own personal shower stalls? Since 1998 (my first year on the Ride), it was a simple routine: walk into shower trailer; hang up your crap, strip, get into shower and clean yourself; get out, dry yourself off, put your change of clothes on and make room for the next Rider.

Why the change, I wonder? Nobody seemed to mind the old system, cramped though the changing area was. At least everybody got in and out quickly, which I would think was the objective. Once I get in the shower, however, I catch a clue: the rack hanging off the shower head is loaded with half-empty bottles of Axe Body Wash, moisturizers and conditioners. Now, like it or not, we are all Metrosexuals. Anyway, I finished my Toilet and slogged on back to the Continental tent. When I got there, they had just started the Wine & Cheese party, as well as the drawing for various Continental prizes, and this went on for some time. The prizes included:

- Two standby round trip airfares* good anywhere in the continental United States except during holidays, weekends and other blackout periods as designated by Continental airlines.

- A voucher good for one piece of checked luggage* on any domestic flight with purchase of two non-refundable round trip tickets, a $50 value.

- Free headset, pillow, blanket and unlimited bathroom privileges* on any Continental flight with the purchase of a full price non-refundable airfare.

- Free meal upgrade* from "Sandwichette and crackers" to "Salisbury Steak and Carrots" meal on any flight greater than 2,000 miles.

- "Divorcee's Special" Unaccompanied Minors discount voucher* of $50 per travel segment, with a minimum of two segments. Good for children 12 or younger; booster seat cost not included.

* Certain conditions and restrictions may apply.

Ha, ha, ha. Of course, your correspondent is having a little fun at Continental's expense, probably because he didn't win anything. The prizes were actually much cooler than that, and there were at least 15 of them.

For the first time, I've left my tent at home and opted to sleep under the big tent. Pretty soon, I'm off to my sleeping bag, one of the very few without an air mattress. Strange as it might seem, I like sleeping on the ground. You merely perfect the art of pounding out all of the dirt clogs and other irregularities under your bedroll, and Mother Earth makes an excellent mattress. Since I snore, for the sake of my fellow riders, I've brought my Breathe-Right Nasal Strips, and loan one to the guy on my right. Seems the guy on my left also came prepared, and had earplugs to fend off the noise, the irony of this being that he turned out to be the loudest snorer in the entire tent. It didn't matter. I was so tired, Keith Olbermann couldn't have kept me awake.

It's lights out around 9:00 pm, and just as predicted, the rain starts directly thereafter and keeps it up until around midnight. Nothing more soothing than the sound of rain on a tent. One last thing: over the course of the night, folks would get up - no doubt for bathroom breaks - and walk carefully down the narrow aisles that separated the sleeping bags. When they got close to my spot, I would hear most of them stop, and hear a pronounced "thump". Curious, I waited for the next one, and sure enough, a leg reached out to kick the air mattress of the Chronic Snorer next to me.

Funny.

Government Employment Ripoff - Overtime

It's a shock when the folks that are supposed to be paragons of ethical conduct act for years like they don't know the meaning of the word. I am referring to overtime abuse by the police and fire departments documented in the Houston Chronicle Wednesday front page article "Mayor has police, fire overtime on agenda".

- Police officers and their spokesmen have been silent on the abuse of overtime, no doubt due to the fact that overtime averaged over $10,000 per officer. At what point is such conduct abusive? Have they even asked themselves this question?

- The overtime is partiallly justified because of "excessive absenteeism" and mismanagement of "holiday time" by police and fire commanders and the rank and file, but in another portion of the article it is documented that most police officers and firemen "banked sick and vacation time that can result in a hefty check" upon retiring. Banking sick/vacation pay while racking up unconscionable OT is a classic double-dip, and it's depressing that so many officers and firemen are participating in the scam.

- Per the article, police officers, firefighters and their spokesmen seem to feel that overtime is an Entitlement. The closest they come to wanting to bring it under control is their agreement with Mayor Parker that it "needs to be spread more equitably".

- Surprisingly, the article failed to make any mention that this abuse happened throughout the White administration, and he did nothing about it. For one example, he presided over a 50% increase in HPD funding during his six years without putting a single additional cop on the streets. Did he simply bury his head in the sand?

- It's ironic that just half of the $50 million in yearly OT for HPD could have been used to hire another 600 policemen, greatly reducing crime, human misery, and not coincidentally, the burden on taxpayers, since every crime avoided saves at least $100,000 on the costs of investigation, apprehension, prosecution and incarceration. The Overtime scam keeps our police force artificially small, enables more crime - and not coincidentally - is then used as justification for more Overtime.

It's disappointing that apparently most of Houston's Finest and those who govern them prefer the status quo, with nary a concern for overburdened taxpayers, many of whom will have to postpone their own retirement so as to pay the excessive wages and retirement benefits for a generation of cops and firefighters, virtually all of whom will retire between the ages 45 and 55, living large and apparently guilt-free on the taxpayer dime.

It's a crying shame, is what it is. But do you suppose any of them feel that way?