A manager in another department brought in pizza for the IT team today. Someday I’ll be telling my grandkids, “Of course I remember the Obama inauguration. I got free pizza that day! Unfortunately, that was pretty much the highlight of his entire presidency.” Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Politics
EppsNet Interview Tips
Willingness I been warped by the rain, driven by the snow I’m drunk and dirty don’t ya know, and I’m still willin’ — Little Feat, “Willin’” If you’re a genius like Mozart and you’ve got a 1000 IQ in music or whatever your specialty is, then you can distinguish yourself by doing things that other people are simply not capable of doing. Lucky you! On the other hand, if you’re a person of moderate intelligence like me, you’re going to have to distinguish yourself by doing more than other people are willing to do — not more than they’re capable of doing, but more than they’re willing to do. We were interviewing candidates this week for a web editor position. One of the candidates brought in some mockups he had made to illustrate how we could incorporate social networking elements into our web site. Were the ideas groundbreaking in any… Read more →
Blago’s Football
This guy is beyond satire: [Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich] rarely turns up for work at his official state office in Chicago, former employees say, is unapologetically late to almost everything, and can treat employees with disdain, cursing and erupting in fury for failings as mundane as neglecting to have at hand at all times his preferred black Paul Mitchell hairbrush. He calls the brush “the football,” an allusion to the “nuclear football,” or the bomb codes never to be out of reach of a president. — International Herald Tribune Read more →
Best 10-Word Explanation of Why the Big 3 Bailout Should Die
We simply cannot ask the American taxpayer to subsidize failure. — Mitch McConnell Read more →
Prop 8 Ramifications
My son asks how I’m voting on Proposition 8, so I tell him, “I’m not sure I really care that much one way or the other. The amazing thing to me is that same-sex couples actually want to get married. If I hadn’t been allowed to get married, I could have avoided a lot of problems. “On the other hand, if we get rid of the ‘one man, one woman’ requirement, I’m planning to turn the house into a polygamy compound with Lucy Liu and Scarlett Johanssen as my new wives. “Bad choices,” he says. “Who would you pick?” “Jessica Biel.” “Okay, we’ll get her too.” Read more →
Proposition 8
On Nov. 4, my fellow Californians and I will vote on Proposition 8, an initiative to ban same-sex marriages, which were made legal by a state Supreme Court ruling in May. I know a guy — let’s call him Trog . . . Trog seems to have emerged from the mists of time untouched by human evolution. Not surprisingly, Trog supports Proposition 8 and he feels strongly enough about it that if you stop by his office, you’ll see a fair amount of Yes on 8 campaign material. Now I have to say that the idea of two people of the same sex getting married and making out with each other — provided they’re female and hot — does far less to tarnish my view on the sanctity of marriage than does the thought of some woman allowing this mouth-breathing ape to clamber on top of her and deposit his… Read more →
Sarah Palin
As Warner Baxter said to Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street: You’re going out there a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star! Finally, a breath of fresh Alaskan air! Not yet another Ivy League lawyer, yet another warmed-over political hack, yet another condescending, posturing, preening, pandering, pontificating blowhard who’s lost sight of the fact that politicians are employees. We hire them, we pay them, we give them trillions of dollars to spend any way they want to . . . if we didn’t hold them to such ridiculously low standards of accountability, it might be easier to remember who works for whom. And hockey moms are hot! Why? Because hockey’s an expensive sport, so hockey dads have to knock down a pretty good income, which in our materialistic society allows them to be more selective in the spouse department. My wife is sort of a hockey mom, in… Read more →
How I Met Your Mother
From Michelle “There is no safety net for anybody” Obama’s DNC speech: You know, what struck me when I first met Barack was that even though he had this funny name, even though he’d grown up all the way across the continent in Hawaii, his family was so much like mine. He was raised by grandparents who were working class folks just like my parents, and by a single mother who struggled to pay the bills just like we did. Well . . . if you take all that at face value — and why wouldn’t you? — it only goes to show how shallow I am, because what struck me when I first met my wife was what a nice ass she had. Read more →
Thoughts on the DNC
I never have been able to buy into the whole liberal worldview — as expressed by Michelle “Our souls are broken in this nation” Obama and James “We are an 80 percent wrong-track country” Carville — where nobody ever has a nice day, everything is always wrong, vote for us and we’ll fix it all immediately . . . then not only do they not fix anything, they actually make everything worse, taking away another batch of precious freedoms and hard-earned dollars in the process . . . Read more →
Worst Book Ever Written?
Apparently this is the worst book ever written . . . I looked at the Amazon page for the book . . . out of 76 reviews, 70 give the book one star. And they’re coming in so fast, you can actually refresh the page and watch the one-star reviews arrive in real time! Hang on a sec — ok, I just checked again . . . there are now nine more reviews posted — all one-star — so we’re up to 79 out of 85. That’s even worse than the abysmal 9 percent approval rating currently enjoyed by the U.S. Congress. Read more →
Depression 2.0
Mr. Obama is proposing to raise taxes on capital gains and dividends by a staggering two-thirds, moving the rate up 10 percentage points to 25%, which could curtail investment and business on Wall Street, a backbone of the city’s and state’s economy. — New York Sun OK, let me get this straight . . . the stock market’s dropping, banks are failing from lack of liquidity, no one wants to invest in American companies, and Obama’s solution is to raise the capital gains tax?! In the event of an Obama presidency, I will taking a long position in blankets, canned goods and shotgun shells . . . Read more →
The Forgotten Man, Ted Kennedy and Warren Buffett
As Ted Kennedy has spent virtually all of his personal wealth on personal consumption of mansions, private jets, women, booze, etc., any help that he has provided to Americans has come at the expense of the “forgotten man” paying taxes. Ted’s own contributions to charity have been minimal (source). Let’s compare to Warren Buffett. . . . Buffett has spent a negligible portion of his $60+ billion in personal wealth on personal consumption, giving almost all of it away to charity. Perhaps Buffet is “the forgotten man.” He creates jobs by the thousands. He pays taxes by the $billions. He consumes very modestly considering his means. Yet Buffett is not considered a hero here in Massachusetts, at least. — Philip Greenspun Read more →
Political Analysis from a 9th Grader
“It’s too bad Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name isn’t Hillary Rodman Clinton,” my son says. “Maybe she could rebound from her current situation.” Read more →
Political Season
How small of all that human hearts endure That part which laws or kings can cause or cure. — Samuel Johnson Read more →
California Enacts a Cell Phone Law
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed legislation that prohibits the use of handheld mobile phones while driving in the state. Effective July 1, 2008, the legislation prohibits drivers from using a wireless telephone while operating a motor vehicle unless the driver uses a hands-free device. Drivers who violate the law will face a base fine of $20 for a first offense and $50 for each subsequent offense. I can’t talk on my cell phone while I’m driving? What a dopey law! Can I still eat a chili dog while I’m driving? Can I drink a beverage? Can I try to find my favorite song on the CD player? Can I perform any number of activities that require the use of at least one hand and are at least as distracting as a phone call? Has anyone else noticed that we have too many laws? And that every new one takes… Read more →
William F Buckley Jr: 1925-2008
Once upon a time there was a political observer who was thoughtful, intelligent, witty and polite, not an angry demagogue. I know, it sounds like a fairy tale . . . Read more →
President Obama
In December 2009 we will suffer a massive nationwide psychological depression. People assume that all of their problems can be blamed on George W. Bush personally. When the hated King Bush II has been back to Texas for a year and the beloved Obama has been in office for a year, people will look around for a quick status check. They will still be stuck in horrific traffic. They will still be paying insane prices for crummy housing in bleak, lonely communities. Their children will be getting a terrible education at the local public school, perhaps developing to about 15 percent of their potential. If in a hip urban area, criminals will still be smashing their car windows and taking their GPS. They will realize that virtually none of the things that are unpleasant about their life have anything to do with the federal government, except for the war in… Read more →
Have We Lost Perspective?
I get very, very frustrated when I . . . hear certain Americans talk about how difficult the problems we face are, how overwhelming they are, what a dangerous era we live in. I think we’ve lost perspective. We’ve always had difficult problems, we’ve always had great challenges, and we’ve always lived in danger. Do we think our parents and our grandparents and our great grandparents didn’t live in danger and didn’t have difficult problems? Do we think the Second World War was less difficult that our struggle with Islamic terrorism? Do we think that the Great Depression was a less difficult economic struggle for people to face than the struggles we’re facing now? Have we entirely lost perspective of the great challenges America has faced in the past and has been able to overcome and overcome brilliantly? I think sometimes we have lost that perspective. — Rudy Giuliani Read more →
Gore Wins Nobel Prize, High Court Gives It to Bush
Although former Vice President Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize this week for his work as a global-warming performance artist, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled early today that President George Bush would receive the gold medal, the diploma and the $750,000. — ScrappleFace Read more →
Marcus Aurelius on Sean Penn
The dictator and the useful idiot Keep before you the swift onset of oblivion, and the abysses of eternity before us and behind; mark how hollow are the echoes of applause, how fickle and undiscerning the judgements of professed admirers, and how puny the arena of human fame. For the entire earth is but a point, and the place of our own habitation but a minute corner in it; and how many are therein who will praise you, and what sort of men are they? — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV.3 Read more →