Vandals Deface Veteran’s Graves

97 veteran’s graves in Washington State were vandalized. Vandals replaced American flags on the graves of 14 veterans with swastika flags, removed 46 flags, and burned 33 other flags.

American Legion Post 93 doesn’t think it was just a prank, but an organized Nazi effort. The cops think it was just kids trying to “shock the community.”

In either case, I hope the perpetrators die in a fire.

Update:

Same thing happened near Philly, and Massachusetts.

Hillary Endorses Socialism … Lies About Household Income

We all knew she was at best a Socialist, and at worst a full blown Commie … it’s just nice to hear her actually say it.

AP:

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it’s time to replace an “on your own” society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.

Come on now … be honest with yourself … you know where this is going.

The Democratic senator said what the Bush administration touts as an ownership society really is an “on your own” society that has widened the gap between rich and poor.

“I prefer a ‘we’re all in it together’ society,” she said. “I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none.”

DING! First she endorsed ethnic cleansing in Iraq, and now she is endorsing Communism! You can’t ask for a better gift when you return from vacation than this.

“Special privileges for NONE.” That means she wants to take away money from those who work hard, and give it to those who don’t. A nice car, house, boat, clothes, vacations, etc. are all special privileges. She’s just told you point blank that she wants to take that away.

“We have sent a message to our young people that if you don’t go to college … that you’re thought less of in America. We have to stop this,” she said.

Not only that, but we’ve sent a message that if you hold degrees from two of the most prominent universities in the world … you’re a dunce. Hence the attacks on President Bush.

Clinton said she would open up CEO pay to greater public scrutiny.

Now this is funny. Is she going to allow people who are not invested in a company have a say over how much the CEO makes. There are already plenty of ways for a CEO’s pay to be scrutinized … by the shareholders, and that should never change.

Now here is a nasty spin/lie depending on how you see it.

In the last six years, productivity has increased, but family incomes have gone down, she said, leading to rising inequality and pessimism in the work force.

Now I get to beat her over the head with this one. You see, pay in the US has increased at a faster rate than productivity. That means we are getting paid more for doing less … period. That is a unanimous fact in the economics world people.

Martin Crutsinger (AP) wrote about this not too long ago in a piece titled “Productivity Growth Skids to Standstill” , and it refutes what Hillary is saying in her latest Communism is great speech.

Growth in productivity — the key ingredient for rising living standards — skidded to a standstill in the late summer while workers’ wages and benefits shot up at the fastest clip in more than two decades.

The combination of slowing productivity and rising wages was seen as a formula for inflation troubles down the road.

So our wages rose more than at any other time in the past 20 years while productivity remained stagnant. That’s not what Hillary was saying … was it?

Productivity, the amount of output per hour of work, showed no growth at all from July through September. Growth was just 1.3 percent over the past 12 months, the weakest showing in nine years.

The cost of wages and benefits measured by each unit of output grew at an annual rate of 3.8 percent in the third quarter.

Employee compensation climbed by 5.3 percent over the past year. That gain was the fastest since a 5.8 percent rise in the 12 months ending in the fourth quarter of 1982.

Technically, Hillary was right about productivity increasing, but she was way off on family income going down.

Higher wages and benefits are good news for workers. But such increases can trigger inflation if companies pass on the higher wage costs by making products more expensive.

Forget about the price of our goods going up for a minute. Let’s simply look at the companies. We all know for a fact that small business drives the US economy, or we all should. It’s not big business that drives it, but the little guy who is now paying his workers more money for doing less than they were doing (per dollar) a few years ago. Hardly seems fair. Companies are faced with two choices:

1. Pay the higher wages by having their workers produce more … thus created higher profit margins.
2. Pay the higher wages out of the profits from price increases without increasing productivity, and face scorn from shareholders.

Option 2 may ultimately lead to the company going overseas to get cheap labor, or folding altogether. You can’t have it both ways.

Maybe you don’t believe me. Fine. Hardly pro-big business Labor Radio says that the average income rose 8.6% from 2001-2006 (the same 6 years Hillary is talking about), but the average family income did decline from 2001-2004 by 3.6%.

You’ll notice that family income study is missing two years on it. That’s because household income has been growing the past two years as we recover from 9/11. The drop in household income is still easily explained without using 9/11 as an excuse.

You can’t have an 8% increase in individual pay, and still have a decline in family income unless you factor in another growing trend … women choosing to stay home with their kids is on the rise. While workers are earning more … the loss of a second income altogether would cause a decline. That’s the family’s choice, and is not a problem for government to rectify. Remember how I told you that household income has been on the rise the past two years? The US Census Bureau is the one saying the median household income is on the rise. Hillary didn’t mention that either.

Hillary also spoke of increases in education, universal health care, and more social programs in this same speech. All of this requires one thing … higher taxes. Something she neglected to mention as a cause of income problems. Not only has our personal income suffered due to increases in taxes the past 20 years, but she is proposing more tax hikes. Which will what? Take more money out of our paycheck. Meaning we will make less … not more.

We owe it to ourselves to be the type of society Hillary speaks of. We shouldn’t be selfish people. On that I agree with her, but what she is proposing is the ultimate in selfish. If we truly didn’t want to be a selfish society then we wouldn’t want those who make more money to give us handouts. To take from the haves and give to the have nots is selfish in its purest form.

Nor can we believe the words of someone who says they will raise taxes, and increase your pay. The bottom line is if Hillary gets the programs she desires … our taxes will go up, and more of our money will go directly to the government without us ever gazing upon it. It’s not the salary that counts … it’s the pay we take home that allows us to live our lives.

Mexicans Boo Miss USA

I guess Mexicans aren’t just content with shouting Osama, booing our national anthem, and booing our soccer team. Now they are booing Miss USA.

Miss USA (Rachel Smith) has been booed repeatedly while in Mexico for the Miss Universe pageant … simply for being an American. I guess Mexico proved they weren’t ready for the world stage, and showed themselves to be the worst kind of hosts.

Miss USA was booed at a parade last week, the crowd drowned out her pageant answers by shouting “Mexico! Mexico!” After the chants she spoke to the crowd in Spanish … further proving her superiority over those in attendance. Miss USA was then booed again when she stepped on her dress, and fell during the evening gown portion of the pageant.

Miss Japan went on to win the crown, Mexico was humiliated on the world stage, and Miss USA placed 4th runner up while Miss Mexico placed several slots lower. This has brewed into a conspiracy in Mexico. They are saying it is proof that the US is favored in everything. Perhaps the Mexican immaturity did ingratiate Miss USA in the eyes of the judges causing her to place higher in the standings, but I doubt it.

For the record … Miss USA is way more hot than Miss Mexico. Here’s your proof …

Miss USA (Rachel Smith)

Miss Mexico (Rosa Maria Ojeda Cuen)

The Rosie Cartoon: Part Deux

As everyone knows … my favorite subject is Rosie. I will talk about her antics for hours. Naturally, I go on vacation and the next big Rosie story explodes … leaving me sadly out of the loop. Well, I just couldn’t resist taking my own personal jab at Rosie on my first day back.

Most of you know my nickname for her (The Abominable Pumpkin Head), and many of you are fans of my first Rosie cartoon. The cartoons were a fun way for me to take cheap jabs at Rosie, and it gave me a chance to use my Photoshop while proving a point. I noticed that it would be extremely easy to make a strip comic of Rosie’s words, and it would be more entertaining than simply giving you a list of what she said. Please bare in mind that the Rosie cartoons are slightly humorous, but are simply meant to drive home a point.

Without further adew … I present The Rosie Cartoon: Part Deux

I hope you enjoyed it.

Dumbass Whales Still Lost … Let ‘Em Die

No one else has the guts to say this … so I will. These whales are too stupid to live.

Whether we like it or not natural selection has worked for billions of years. I was saying this before I went on vacation last Saturday, but they are still aimlessly lost even with our assistance. Yes it’s sad, but so is life. If the mother whale is this dumb then what hope of the future does her calf have? Whales have ways of finding food, and navigating over great migratory distances spanning hundreds … sometimes thousands of miles. The methods they use are still largely not understood by humans. Yet these two can’t pull off a u-turn, and find their way back to the ocean after 16 days and counting?

Now they are getting sores because of exposure to fresh water. Even when faced with illness and certain death the mother can’t lead her calf out to sea. As is always the case in the animal kingdom (of which we are a part) some creatures simply deserve to die.

Maybe there is a darker possibility we should consider. Perhaps this is a Humpback murder suicide. It is extremely ignorant to think that human mothers are the only mammals capable of killing their own kids.

Terrorism And A Loaf Of Bread

I’m officially back from my vacation, and the blog will be updated regularly once again.

My wife and I went to Disneyland for our vacation, and had an interesting experience one day while leaving the park. Disneyland has a security checkpoint on your way into the courtyard used to enter California Adventures and/or Disneyland, and you are checked once again as you leave the courtyard from the theme parks. There is also a security check when leaving Downtown Disney. Both on your entering, and leaving, security has you open all of your bags so they may view the items you are carrying. I have no problem with this whatsoever. What I do have a problem with is that overzealous security officer who gets off on harassing people. You know the one.

On the first morning of our trip my wife and I went to Downtown Disney to kill some time before the parks opened. Upon leaving Downtown Disney to go ride some rides we had to go through security. No biggy, we’ve done it a hundred times already. This time was a little different.

The family in front of me was a young Mexican couple with their baby in a stroller, and they spoke little English. The wife and baby went through security just fine, and were not stopped. The husband had a backpack that he needed to open in order to display the contents of the bag. He was prepared and had the bag open as he got to the security screener (an old fat lady). As the screener peered into the backpack she stopped the man, and reached into his bag. She pulled out a loaf of wheat bread, and the interrogation began.

“What are you doing with this bread,” she asked. He responded in barely understandable English that they were going make sandwiches with the bread. “You’re going to make sandwiches huh? Where’s the meat?” No joke, she asked him where the meat was for the sandwiches. He didn’t seem to understand the question. They then began speaking in Spanish, and I couldn’t understand what they were saying. However, she asked him if he was making sandwiches, and where the meat was about 10 times.

Keep in mind that this is all happening as the family is leaving Downtown Disney, and they were already allowed in through security when they entered Downtown Disney. Clearly the other screener didn’t feel threatened by a loaf of bread, but this lady was different. I also never heard him refer to what type of sandwich he was going to make, and she never asked about peanut butter or anything else … only meat.

As this is happening I was drawing on all of my training in explosives, terrorist tactics, and improvised weapons … I could not recall a single piece of information regarding a loaf of bread that would apply here. The only thing that would have made sense was if they were hiding something in the bread … which is reasonable, but the bread was sliced. All she had to do was separate the slices to see if anything had been hidden, and she never once attempted that. I was stumped.

Finally, after about 8 minutes (not an exaggeration) the wife came back to find out what was going on. She spoke much better English than her husband. She too was grilled about the lack of sandwich meat, but she wasn’t having any of this lunacy. After arguing for about 2 minutes she finally pointed out the obvious that they were LEAVING Downtown Disney, and they had been allowed to enter without any problems. She finally asked if they were allowed to leave Disney with their loaf of bread, or throw it away. The screener then allowed them to leave with the loaf of bread, and never offered an explanation.

Now you can use bread in certain explosive devices, but we are talking Macgyver stuff here. There would also have to be other components that would be blatantly obvious to anyone that they were a threat. None of that was evident, and I’ve already covered the smuggling/theft inside the bread. I figured I forgot some way of using bread as a weapon, and checked it out online. I haven’t been able to find anything else besides this, but a sandwich that lasts three years isn’t what I’d call a reasonable security threat.

In case you didn’t know … Disney sells bread inside their parks, but it’s special Disney bread. Perhaps that was the motivation for harassing this family … I don’t know. It’s good to know that if terrorists ever figure out how to use a loaf of bread against us … this woman is on the case. I just wish I had my 10 minutes back.