Quick Hitts

Since it was formed The Theatrical Security Agency has been trying to figure out just how much crap Americans will tolerate before they say “screw it, I’m driving.”  They have heaped inconvenience upon stupidity upon insult upon indignantly, and still we keep flying.  But they may have finally achieved their goal with their full body scanners and the alternative pat down, which gives you a choice between being an amateur porn star or being or being sexually molested by a ham handed uniformed pervert.

People are finally saying “enough!”  At least, some people are.  (I just saw someone on Facebook cheering the new policy.  Where do these gutless drones breed?) There have been some protests and lawsuit threats, and there is a planed Opt Out day – the day before Thanksgiving.  But the guy promoting Opt-Out day says get the pat-down instead – which is a mistake.  We need to opt out of the nude photos AND the pat down, and gum the works up as much as possible.

But there may be better approaches.  Not surprisingly, I have a few suggestions.

One for men only: Consider that many of the TSA agents are wannabe cops who took the job to prove they’re tough manly men.  Refuse the pictures, then during the pat down go all Big Gay Al on them.  Twitch and moan with delight at each touch.  When he touches your privates fake a big, and very loud, orgasm.

One for Adolescents: Find a freedom loving police officer (they’re extremely rare, but are rumored to exist) and an adventurous friend your own age.  One of you goes through the scanner, the other goes for the pat down. Have the officer immediately arrest the scanner operator for kiddie porn and the TSA drone doing the pat down for molestation.

Neither of those are likely to be very effective, so here’s one for everybody:  Since the TSA wants to see us naked, let’s give them what they want.  Let’s pick a date, preferably a busy time.  Rather than muck up everyone’s travel on the day before Thanksgiving, do it on the Sunday afterward, when people are coming home.  Not only won’t they mind the inconvenience as much, but they’ll be tired and grumpy and stuffed and looking about as bad as they ever look, which is an important part of the plan.

On Sunday, November 28, everyone who steps in line for the check in should immediately remove every single piece of clothing.

If you think this might be titillating, the next time you’re in a crowd take a good look at the people around you.  How may would you honestly like to see naked – maybe 5%?  What about the remaining 95%?  How about that old guy with the man boobs (like me)?  How about that old lady whose breasts are peaking out under the hem of her skirt and whose legs look like a map of the NYC subway system?  What about that morbidly obese woman who’s entire body jiggles and ripples with each step, making it look like she’s smuggling a dozen enormous water balloons?  How much would you pay to avoid seeing any of them naked?

Now imagine a room full of people looking like that, all standing buck naked and demanding pat down’s instead of body scans.  Imagine the look on the face of the TSA agents as they run from the room, trying to keep their lunch down.

These government officials want theater?  Then let’s give them the nude scene from Hair, but instead of attractive young actors let them deal with an endless line of naked people who no one wants to see nude.

And then do it again the following Sunday.  And the Sunday after that.  And keep doing it until most of the agents decide that any job, even getting carts in the rain in the Target parking lot, is a better career choice.

Emily Ekins, a student at UCLA, conducted a study of the signs at a Tea Party rally.  She took pictures of about 250 signs and then categorized them.  She discovered that a quarter of them expressed anger at Obama, but only 5% mentioned his race or religion, and just 1% questioned his citizenship.

With the exception of a single article in the Washington Post   the mainstream media completely ignored her findings.  Bias?  Naw, not them.

The 5% number is telling.  A minimum of 10% of any group will be oddballs and misfits.  That goes for any organization, not just political ones.  I’ve served on the boards of two organizations that relied on volunteers, and about 10% of the people who showed up to help were creepy freaks you’d never choose to associate with.

In a recent interview with Bill O’Reilly, the president of the NAACP said they’d been monitoring Tea Party rallies for racist signs for the past six months.  They’d found one offensive t-shirt.  One.

As I’ve mentioned before, standard operating procedure for the left is slapping a “racist” tag on any groups, individuals, or even ideas they don’t agree with.  It makes it easy to ignore and dismiss them, which is soooo much easier than addressing the issues being raised.  They’ve been smearing the Tea Party since its inception.  Their “proof” consists of about two dozen tasteless signs they’ve found among the hundreds of thousands that have been displayed at rallies.  They post these pictures over and over again, at every opportunity.

This study isn’t definitive, and needs a follow-up.  It should include more signs, from different rallies, and several people with different political ideologies should rate them.  But this is a good start, and debunks the oft-repeated charges of TP racism.

I’ve got several problems with the Tea Party, which I’ll address in a later post, but it’s clear, from this study and the NAACPs inability to find racism at the rallies, despite their diligent search, that the most common smear on them is completely without merit.

I’m about to ruin a classic rock song for you, but I’ll give you a fair warning first.

If you click play, you will never be able to listen to this song again without thinking of this.

…is to make fun of them.

Or, perhaps, put them in a sack and hit them with sticks.

New York State, whose government has been completely dysfunctional for the past half-century, is looking to shrink its huge state work force.  Too few workers have taken an offer of early retirement, so the state is planning on laying off at least 2,000 of them.  That sounds like a lot until you discover they have about 131,000 official state workers and 163,000 other workers, including contractors who have often been hired to do the work state workers won’t.

It’s only a guess, but based on my direct observation it would be possible to fire at least 40% of them with no impact on state services.  Here’s a simple four step plan that will do it quickly and easily.

1. Grow some balls.  Great big ones.  This step is necessary to implement step 4.
2. Make unannounced visits to every office of every state agency.  Carefully note who is playing solitaire, doing crossword puzzles, reading the newspaper or Harlequin romances, playing lotto scratch-offs, etc.  Record their names.
3. Make a second unannounced visit on a different day, at a different time of the day, and repeat step 2.
4. Compare the two lists of names.  Call in everyone who is on both lists and fire them, immediately.

Step four is going to piss off the union, which is why step one is so vital.

I’ve worked as a contractor in state offices and seen, first hand, some of the most amazing goofing off.  Sure, everyone goofs off once in a while (which is why my plan incorporates two visits instead of one) but some of these people have raised it to an art form.  If they were eliminated from the work force the state would save a substantial amount of taxpayer money with no adverse effects.

The amount of goofing off varies widely from agency to agency and between departments in the same agency.  I’ve been places where there just about everyone was working (or at least looking busy) and others where half the staff were goofing off.  (Sadly, one of the busiest offices, where I observed virtually no goofing off, was the Department of Taxation.)  In general, in my very unscientific estimation, 25-50% of the people in most state offices are just using up oxygen.

Even in agencies with very high goof off rates there are still a lot of people working. They don’t have to, because the union makes it virtually impossible to get rid of anyone, but they want to, and do. Not excessively hard, because promotions are based on seniority and test taking ability instead of merit, but sill, they put in a good day’s work.  These are the first people to leave on their own, out of frustration, or get laid off, because of seniority.  The goof-offs, despite all their whining and bitching (yet another way they pass the time) know they’ve got a good thing going and are not about to leave.

In one instance I was hired as part of a team to image and install 50 computers, a job that should take two people two to three weeks.  The state hired four of us on a six month contract.  We were being paid about 50% more than the prevailing wage for that type of work, and were hired by an outside agency, which was also getting a substantial cut.

We worked as slowly as possible, but still got the job done in a week and a half.  Then we discovered the real reason we were hired.  We were there to do the help desk’s jobs.  The help desk was fully staffed, but very few people there were actually working.  At least, not for the state.   One was working on building his Amway down-line.  Another was concentrating on turning his band into The Next Big Thing.  One was trying to master Othello at the highest computer level. All were being paid by taxpayer dollars, and so were we.  NY was paying their “workers,” and us, and our agency, to do the job that their workers should have been doing in the first place.

One day I need to do some hardware repairs but had forgotten my tools at home.  I borrowed a set from someone at the help desk.  They were pristine, without the slightest bit of wear on any of them.

Because the number of actual workers varies dramatically among different agencies, and because I don’t know what all these people are being paid, I can’t say with any certainty just how much this will save.  But it’s a good bet that at least 25% of the work force in most agencies, and up to 50% in some, can be let go without anyone noticing except the nearby vendors who sell coffee, paperbacks and lotto tickets.  It would be at least several billion dollars, and that’s a yearly savings, not just a one shot deal.  And all it takes is for the state to grow big enough balls to stand up to the union.

Which means, of course, that it will never happen.

The debate is going well for you.  Your opponent is from the far left, so it’s pretty easy to counter all his canned talking points.  As you back him further into a corner he fires back, “Obviously, you don’t like brown people.”  Bam!  He’s trying to shut you down with the left’s favorite weapon: The Race Card.

It’s designed to derail the conversation.  If you deny it you’ll look defensive, and most denials resemble clichés that are used by real racists.  (“Some of my best friends are…”)  If you ignore it the lefty will just re-spew the accusation.  If you point out this is a common scummy trick, they’ve succeeded changing the subject.

It’s also designed to discount you as a worthless person. Real racists are rotten, ignorant people, so if they can smear you with the label, and believe it themselves, it’s easy to discount anything you say, because who cares about a racist’s opinion?

Do you disagree with any of Obama’s policies?  Racist!  Think illegal immigration is a problem?  Racist!  Dislike Islam?  Racist!  (It doesn’t matter how many times you smartenize them to the simple fact that Islam isn’t a race.)  Oppose any social programs?  Racist!  In the mind of a hard core lefty any opinion that disagrees with theirs is somehow racist.

But now you have a solution.  Just send them to this handy page.  Better yet, reply with the short URL (http://bit.ly/9KGwlS ).  If they keep repeating their nonsense, keep sending them there, and announce that their participation in the conversation is over since they’ve lost the debate.

This is an attempt to put an end to their tiresome, predicable, trite, deeply dishonest nonsense.  It won’t solve the problem, but it should help, at least a little.

You’re welcome.

It’s time to put the blame for the threatened Quran burning squarely where it belongs: on the media.

The “pastor” at the center of this nonsense has a congregation of about 50 people.  No one had paid much attention to him before this, although there is documentation proving he’s a worthless whack job.  The appropriate response would have been to ignore him and move on.

But August is a slow news month, and the hungry media picked up this guys torch, as it were, and gave him national, and then international, attention.  Even though he backed down, he inspired others to mimic his asshattery.  As of today three incidents of Quran burning have been reported, although not with nearly as much fanfare as was given to this schmuck.

The right wing media (Fox) and the left wing media (nearly everyone else) universally condemned him, as they should have, but a much better approach would have been to completely ignore him.  He’s the kind of clown who loves to be hated, and the media played right into his hands.

Here’s a suggested guideline for all the “news” organizations to follow the next time something like this happens.   If the attention whore driving the story doesn’t have enough followers to fill a T.G.I. Fridays, ignore him. Treat him as if he didn’t exist.  For the lefty media I’d add “treat it the way you treat Muslim honor killings in the US.”  No coverage, no mention, no nothin’.  Give clowns like this all the attention they deserve – absolutely none.