fool us once, shame on you. fool us twice, shame on us.
and we've been fooled so many goddamned times already, we really deserve it.
Showing posts with label we are effed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label we are effed. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
ANNOUNCEMENT
to my three readers, be advised that Jay Leno will be taking over this blog at 11:35. not sure if its PM or AM.
Monday, March 30, 2009
your brain cells are sedentary
from today's CNN front page:
well, DUH. what else could he be? you mean, he could still be pumped for an Ironman Triathlon thereafter?
some Google ads (yes, they accept these kind of ads. its all about the money, baby!!)
"sexy Iranian photos"? ohhh ... i know where Ahmadinejad and the mullahs spend their free time (after fiery speeches denouncing Western decadence, of course).
from the venerable NYT:
hell, its not so-secret now, is it? those "commando trainees" are probably all dead by now, who knows?
and who would be stupid enough to click on this, much less believe that Hair Boy is really Mensa material?
well, DUH. what else could he be? you mean, he could still be pumped for an Ironman Triathlon thereafter?
some Google ads (yes, they accept these kind of ads. its all about the money, baby!!)
"sexy Iranian photos"? ohhh ... i know where Ahmadinejad and the mullahs spend their free time (after fiery speeches denouncing Western decadence, of course).
from the venerable NYT:
hell, its not so-secret now, is it? those "commando trainees" are probably all dead by now, who knows?
and who would be stupid enough to click on this, much less believe that Hair Boy is really Mensa material?
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Friday, December 26, 2008
and now a word from the Friedman
as my wife would say "America's not all its cracked up to be ..."
----
Time to Reboot America
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
I had a bad day last Friday, but it was an all-too-typical day for America.
It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend’s Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong’s ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train — with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop.
Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. The ugly, low-ceilinged arrival hall was cramped, and using a luggage cart cost $3. (Couldn’t we at least supply foreign visitors with a free luggage cart, like other major airports in the world?) As I looked around at this dingy room, it reminded of somewhere I had been before. Then I remembered: It was the luggage hall in the old Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport. It closed in 1998.
The next day I went to Penn Station, where the escalators down to the tracks are so narrow that they seem to have been designed before suitcases were invented. The disgusting track-side platforms apparently have not been cleaned since World War II. I took the Acela, America’s sorry excuse for a bullet train, from New York to Washington. Along the way, I tried to use my cellphone to conduct an interview and my conversation was interrupted by three dropped calls within one 15-minute span.
All I could think to myself was: If we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity? Back home, I was greeted by the news that General Motors was being bailed out — that’s the G.M. that Fortune magazine just noted “lost more than $72 billion in the past four years, and yet you can count on one hand the number of executives who have been reassigned or lost their job.”
My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.
To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.
For all these reasons, our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.
That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.
It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure — without building white elephants. Generally, I’d like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.
America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society — in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people’s imaginations. That’s really, really dumb. And that’s why for all our missteps, the 21st century is still up for grabs.
John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.
Merry Christmas!
----
Time to Reboot America
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
I had a bad day last Friday, but it was an all-too-typical day for America.
It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend’s Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong’s ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train — with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop.
Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. The ugly, low-ceilinged arrival hall was cramped, and using a luggage cart cost $3. (Couldn’t we at least supply foreign visitors with a free luggage cart, like other major airports in the world?) As I looked around at this dingy room, it reminded of somewhere I had been before. Then I remembered: It was the luggage hall in the old Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport. It closed in 1998.
The next day I went to Penn Station, where the escalators down to the tracks are so narrow that they seem to have been designed before suitcases were invented. The disgusting track-side platforms apparently have not been cleaned since World War II. I took the Acela, America’s sorry excuse for a bullet train, from New York to Washington. Along the way, I tried to use my cellphone to conduct an interview and my conversation was interrupted by three dropped calls within one 15-minute span.
All I could think to myself was: If we’re so smart, why are other people living so much better than us? What has become of our infrastructure, which is so crucial to productivity? Back home, I was greeted by the news that General Motors was being bailed out — that’s the G.M. that Fortune magazine just noted “lost more than $72 billion in the past four years, and yet you can count on one hand the number of executives who have been reassigned or lost their job.”
My fellow Americans, we can’t continue in this mode of “Dumb as we wanna be.” We’ve indulged ourselves for too long with tax cuts that we can’t afford, bailouts of auto companies that have become giant wealth-destruction machines, energy prices that do not encourage investment in 21st-century renewable power systems or efficient cars, public schools with no national standards to prevent illiterates from graduating and immigration policies that have our colleges educating the world’s best scientists and engineers and then, when these foreigners graduate, instead of stapling green cards to their diplomas, we order them to go home and start companies to compete against ours.
To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions.
For all these reasons, our present crisis is not just a financial meltdown crying out for a cash injection. We are in much deeper trouble. In fact, we as a country have become General Motors — as a result of our national drift. Look in the mirror: G.M. is us.
That’s why we don’t just need a bailout. We need a reboot. We need a build out. We need a buildup. We need a national makeover. That is why the next few months are among the most important in U.S. history. Because of the financial crisis, Barack Obama has the bipartisan support to spend $1 trillion in stimulus. But we must make certain that every bailout dollar, which we’re borrowing from our kids’ future, is spent wisely.
It has to go into training teachers, educating scientists and engineers, paying for research and building the most productivity-enhancing infrastructure — without building white elephants. Generally, I’d like to see fewer government dollars shoveled out and more creative tax incentives to stimulate the private sector to catalyze new industries and new markets. If we allow this money to be spent on pork, it will be the end of us.
America still has the right stuff to thrive. We still have the most creative, diverse, innovative culture and open society — in a world where the ability to imagine and generate new ideas with speed and to implement them through global collaboration is the most important competitive advantage. China may have great airports, but last week it went back to censoring The New York Times and other Western news sites. Censorship restricts your people’s imaginations. That’s really, really dumb. And that’s why for all our missteps, the 21st century is still up for grabs.
John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard.
Merry Christmas!
Monday, December 22, 2008
ads for stupid
well, obviously am not the target audience of these idiotic ads. could it be ... them?
ok, they really want you to win dinner for two at Chili's. suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.
ok, they really want you to win dinner for two at Chili's. suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure.
Monday, December 1, 2008
ok, i am officially a terrorist.
or something like that.
(ok, maybe the polite term is person of interest)
because i am on the Philippines' "Look Out List". i mean, seriously. doesn't it look like a prank? i'm on the LOL list.
let's have the backstory first.
a couple of weeks ago, i went to the Philippine Embassy to renew my passport. they issue this new fandangled machine-readable (a.k.a. swipe-able) passports and thus a few requirements changed. fine, i went through having my pics taken by a fly-by-night photo studio housed in a small 3rd floor room in one of those dingy suspicious-looking buildings in Avenida, all because the great Philippine Embassy couldn't swing a deal to allow "commercial photography business" in the basement of their building (which they used to), apparently due to the fact that their landlord didn't allow it.
after taking a number to fall in line in a queuing system (where eventually the numbering isn't followed anyway, which is par for the course for Filipinos), i was eventually accommodated by a staffer familiar to me by face. after looking at my papers, he reported to me that i was flagged by the computer and required some clearance. i was dumbfounded.
a little bit more backstory: i was a government scholar for my full 5 year university course, and the price of having free tuition would be to work in the Philippines for the same length of time. if the line of work necessitated having to travel abroad (which it did), i was required to ask permission and procure a clearance letter first. completing more than enough years, i secured a final clearance, which allowed me to travel to the U.S. for further employment, and permanently dismiss the temporary hold order on flying out of the Philippines.
i argued with the embassy staff that how could i be able to
(a) gain employment in the U.S.
(b) renew my passport in the years since
(c) fly home and back just three years ago
without clearance from the Motherland?
show us the letter of clearance, they said.
ok, fine, whatever.
having moved since the last time i renewed my passport, i didn't seem to have a copy of the clearance letter (which leads me to think i didn't need it when i had to renew since i. was. not. on. any. damn. list.). i got a scanned copy of the letter from my family, and returned to the embassy days ago.
and what do you know?
i can't decide on this, its not the original. you have to talk to an officer.
officer says, you're on the Look Out List. yes, like i didn't know that yet.
i posit the same arguments above. officer deftly avoids how the eff that happened and goes back to the point that i am on the list, and they can't do anything about it. they never even check who the heck i am, never look at my (allegedly) unblemished record. the only way out, i was told, is to tell the DFA that i'm not supposed to be on the list in the first place. of course, to do that, i have to ask someone physically back home to do the legwork for me. what happens to someone who has barely any family or acquaintances left?
i can only speculate as to how my name got (back) on the list, or if this is a totally different list. i registered here once to vote (back when they operated a photo studio in the basement) but i never actually voted. maybe they thought i was a fake because i was a no-show. or the latest list of people to watch out for got corrupted, and someone restored a backup copy from the last millennium. or someone has an axe to grind with me, and submitted my name for kicks.
until i get this ironed out, i am officially a man without a country. or a man on the run. going by how information gets distorted after a transfer of hands, i could be a terrorist.
so if i disappear past the publish date of this post, some people may have read it, and i have been 'taken for processing'.
(ok, maybe the polite term is person of interest)
because i am on the Philippines' "Look Out List". i mean, seriously. doesn't it look like a prank? i'm on the LOL list.
let's have the backstory first.
a couple of weeks ago, i went to the Philippine Embassy to renew my passport. they issue this new fandangled machine-readable (a.k.a. swipe-able) passports and thus a few requirements changed. fine, i went through having my pics taken by a fly-by-night photo studio housed in a small 3rd floor room in one of those dingy suspicious-looking buildings in Avenida, all because the great Philippine Embassy couldn't swing a deal to allow "commercial photography business" in the basement of their building (which they used to), apparently due to the fact that their landlord didn't allow it.
after taking a number to fall in line in a queuing system (where eventually the numbering isn't followed anyway, which is par for the course for Filipinos), i was eventually accommodated by a staffer familiar to me by face. after looking at my papers, he reported to me that i was flagged by the computer and required some clearance. i was dumbfounded.
a little bit more backstory: i was a government scholar for my full 5 year university course, and the price of having free tuition would be to work in the Philippines for the same length of time. if the line of work necessitated having to travel abroad (which it did), i was required to ask permission and procure a clearance letter first. completing more than enough years, i secured a final clearance, which allowed me to travel to the U.S. for further employment, and permanently dismiss the temporary hold order on flying out of the Philippines.
i argued with the embassy staff that how could i be able to
(a) gain employment in the U.S.
(b) renew my passport in the years since
(c) fly home and back just three years ago
without clearance from the Motherland?
show us the letter of clearance, they said.
ok, fine, whatever.
having moved since the last time i renewed my passport, i didn't seem to have a copy of the clearance letter (which leads me to think i didn't need it when i had to renew since i. was. not. on. any. damn. list.). i got a scanned copy of the letter from my family, and returned to the embassy days ago.
and what do you know?
i can't decide on this, its not the original. you have to talk to an officer.
officer says, you're on the Look Out List. yes, like i didn't know that yet.
i posit the same arguments above. officer deftly avoids how the eff that happened and goes back to the point that i am on the list, and they can't do anything about it. they never even check who the heck i am, never look at my (allegedly) unblemished record. the only way out, i was told, is to tell the DFA that i'm not supposed to be on the list in the first place. of course, to do that, i have to ask someone physically back home to do the legwork for me. what happens to someone who has barely any family or acquaintances left?
i can only speculate as to how my name got (back) on the list, or if this is a totally different list. i registered here once to vote (back when they operated a photo studio in the basement) but i never actually voted. maybe they thought i was a fake because i was a no-show. or the latest list of people to watch out for got corrupted, and someone restored a backup copy from the last millennium. or someone has an axe to grind with me, and submitted my name for kicks.
until i get this ironed out, i am officially a man without a country. or a man on the run. going by how information gets distorted after a transfer of hands, i could be a terrorist.
so if i disappear past the publish date of this post, some people may have read it, and i have been 'taken for processing'.
Monday, November 24, 2008
dumbo
well, its my highest priority that my children's generation (or at least my children) will be so much better than this one.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
freddie wants to finger
they haven't given me a mortgage yet, but potentially i could be paying their bills?!?
Sunday, November 9, 2008
originality, please.
yeah, sure. people will vote for you because of the color of your skin, not because you are competent.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
ve arr sinking, capten!!
WTF is this bitch doing?
Holy Shit!!! why bother to live, Sarah?? in fact, let's all bring about Armageddon right now. start World War III and save God the trouble.
Jesus freakin C. He must be laughing at us. Laughing hard.
... one would like to ask her whether, like some of her co-religionists, she is a "premillenial dispensationalist"—in other words, someone who believes that there is no point in protecting and preserving the natural world, since the end of days will soon be upon us.
Holy Shit!!! why bother to live, Sarah?? in fact, let's all bring about Armageddon right now. start World War III and save God the trouble.
Jesus freakin C. He must be laughing at us. Laughing hard.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
i loves the smell of money
hey, i could have used that 150K! i'm Joe (Not) SixPack, but i actually pay taxes, dammit!!! Alaska residents get an annual check of $2,400 because of their gas/oil and they don't pay state income tax. try living in New York, i dares ya.
Friday, October 10, 2008
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