Unwarranteed attention

It seems that Chuck Schumer is about to sic the whole United States Congress on the dweebs who've been trying to warranty my Metro.
Several times a month for the last several months I've been getting called by a machine with an urgent tone in it's voice cautioning me that my car's factory warranty is about to expire. Now let me assure you, I've been mighty pleased with the reliable performance of my 12-year-old Metro, but it did come as a surprise to me that GM was still backing a vehicle with well over 100,000 miles on it.
So, when the machine calls, I like to stay on the line. I'm sure to thank the caller profusely for their concern. I tell them all about how happy I am with my car and what good mileage it gets and how little it cost and so on and on and on and then I start asking them about their cars and how long they've had them and ... well I've never had a conversation go beyond finding out about their personal rides. Somehow we get disconnected ... but I always try to engage the next friendly young fellow in a cordial auto related discussion. It's the least I can do, considering how concerned they are about the soon-to-lapse warranty. If Schumer's bill passes I might almost miss those conversations ... who else is going to care about my poor old Metro

A taxing situation

Right now I feel pretty good about myself. I paid my taxes today and I'm not even up for a job with the Obama administration. For most of us, settling up with Uncle Sam is about as much of a patriotic sacrifice as we're called on to make - so much as I'd rather not sign that check, it does make me feel a bit Yankee Doodley to do it.
Which makes me wonder about the folks heading out to the latter-day tea parties today. I've been getting notices and invites to these affairs for weeks -- usually done up in star-spangled red, white and blue with an eagle or two tossed in for good measure. But all these folks are intending to do is gripe that their government -- and let me say that once again, their government -- has figured to be their fair share of the operating cost for their country. So, they want to hark back to the Boston Tea Party and throw a public fit.
Well, there's a difference between the folks mailing bags of Lipton to their Congresspeople and the guys who tossed British tea into Boston Harbor in the dark of the night. Two hundred thirty six years ago, those fellows didn't have Congresspeople to send tea to -- it was the lack of representation in levying it, not the tea tax per se, that they took radical issue with, and ultimately what the Spirit of '76, Valley Forge and Yorktown were meant to set aright.
It's fine with me if folks don't like paying taxes, fine with me if they make a fuss and complain, but it's not fine to bastardize history in the process.

The plot to wipe out Mr. Whipple?

All right, I'm as fond of Mother Earth as any of her children, but the Greener-Than-Thou crowd has finally gone where no one ought dare to go. Go ahead, tell me my choice of light bulb is none too bright; than only a fat-headed lard arse would hold up the Whopper as the apex of ground beef cuisine -- that only a fat-headed lard arse would entertain "ground beef" and "cuisine" in the same thought. I can take it ... I can take a lot ... I'm a pretty doggone thick skinned fellow -- save in one place -- so any man, woman or trans-gender who gets between me and my Charmin Ultra Soft will have gone where no one ought dare to go.
But what's the latest target of environmental outrage? American toilet paper. The same folks who advocate kale flakes and wheat grass juice for breakfast are pushing for folks to tidy up after their morning duty with a recycled Whole Earth Catalog. All in the name of saving a tree.
Y'see, the toilet paper that's made American johns the envy of the inhabited universe is made mostly of virgin fiber -- fiber straight from the tree that grew it rather than recycling the newspaper that soaked up your spilled breakfast coffee. In order to make TP that's 'squeezably soft' they need long, fluffy fibers that puff up thick and strong -- making TP that's strong enough, thick enough to stand up to whatever the American diet throws at it. To tidy up what needs tidying without abrading the most sensitive section of the human sitter.
Now I'll join with anyone demanding that parking tickets and the like be made of recycled fiber, we can recycle newsprint and pasteboard boxes -- but as for the paper that really starts my day -- if it takes a new tree, that's a good investment.
I'm sure Mr. Whipple would agree.

Barkley for Senate, redux

As the political bladder-emptying contest grinds on in the courts with no dignified or satisfactory resolution in sight, perhaps it's time to take another tack.
There's no doubt now that be it Al or be it Norm who is blessed by the three-judge panel, this judicial troika's ruling will be challenged by the candidate less favored ad infinitum or at least to the U.S. Supreme Court. An expensive and tedious exercise which bodes no redeeming result.
With this dismal outcome in sight, might I suggest a reasoned and decent way out of this sorry electoral dilemma.
We were blessed with at three-way race in November and clearly the Coleman and Franken partisans have little love for their opposite number. However, it is probably fair and accurate to say that for the vast majority who cast their ballot -- disputed or undisputed -- their second choice for U.S. Senate from Minnesota was Independence Party Candidate, former Senator Dean Barkley. Barkley, appointed by Gov. Ventura to fill out the last days of Paul Wellstone's term following his death, served with brief distinction and emerged with honor and little animosity. Let me suggest that the most satisfactory outcome of the current unseemly electoral deadlock would be for both Coleman and Franken to concede, withdraw and endorse the certification of Dean Barkley -- everyone's second choice for senator -- to fill the seat for the next six years. We'd be done with it and have a senator that most Minnesotans no only don't despise, but are pretty much indifferent to. After the current debacle, that would be a good thing.

A day with no television?

Unemployment hit a 16 year high. The shooting goes on in Gaza. The governor of Illinois is impeached for putting a U.S. Senate seat on his private version of E-Bay and now the greatest crisis of all ... some folks might miss an episode of The Biggest Loser if Congress doesn't act and act quickly.
The economy be hanged ... it seems a bunch of folks haven't gotten with the program -- the digital TV program, that is -- and on February 17 their old sets are going to have more snow than a North Dakota blizzard, and not much else. It seems that, despite a law passed in 2005 (that's going on four years ago folks) and well over a year of really tedious talk about getting the $40 off coupon for a digital converter an uncomfortable lot of people remain analog and unconverted and because they haven't yet seen fit to haul their hinders to Best Buy or the neighborhood Wal-Mart store we need an act of Congress to put the whole she-bang on hold so nobody misses an installment of Days of our Lives...
Phooey.
We're talking about TV, people -- nobody ever died from Wheel of Fortune deprivation. How is it Congress is more concerned about kids not seeing Sponge Bob Square Pants than about kids not seeing a doctor? It's more important to ensure access to the Food Channel than to adequate food?
I suppose there's no real harm in letting the old analog broadcasts continue past the announced drop-dead date ... house plants won't wither and die nor will small, cute children mutate into toads ... but that's not the point. If, as a nation, we can't deal with procuring and attaching a fairly simple widget between the rabbit ears and the TV set with over a year's lead time to accomplish the same ... how can we hope to avoid becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Beijing, Inc.?
Best start learning Mandarin.

Time to exit gracefully, Norm

I'm not sure Minnesota voters have really spoken in the race for the U.S. Senate, but they have managed a faint, hoarse whisper and that -- especially at this late date -- ought to be enough.
For two months the vote-counters have been counting and when they finally got to the bottom of the pile -- the pile as defined by the laws of the state of Minnesota as interpreted by the Minnesota Supreme Court -- Al Franken has come out 225 ahead. That, according to the rules, makes him the winner and a member of the U.S. Senate.
Congratulations Al.
And congratulations, Norm, on a hard fought campaign and thank you for your service.
That, should be that.
But it may not be. There are strong rumblings and grumblings that Coleman will take the whole thing to court -- prolonging the uncertainty until both sides either run out of money or avenues of appeal.
Please, don't do it, Norm.
Quite frankly, at this point, I really don't care which man claims the seat in Washington, but when the new Congress gets down to business, I want one of their butts sitting in it. Minnesota's interests deserve to be represented by two votes in the U.S. Senate -- not just one. The counters counted more votes for Franken -- it's time for Coleman to gracefully step aside, get on with his life and in six years, perhaps give those 225 voters the chance to reconsider.
It would be the classy thing to do.

Sweet Caroline

So Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg (funny how she's recently dropped the 'Schlossberg') ants to be the next U.S. Senator from New York. It seems a bit odd in this day and age to have someone lay claim to public office on the basis of hereditary right -- I thought that sort of thing went out of fashion when the Hapsburgs quit laying claim to every vacant throne in Europe.
Now I'll grant that Caroline was a cut kid -- sitting on her pony 'Macaroni' while it dropped road apples in the Rose Garden -- and her father's death is an American tragedy, but at 51 her life's most extraordinary feature is being rich and privileged -- something she has in common with a goodly number of Senators, but probably not what the Founders had in mind when they established the office. Somehow, it strikes me that somewhere in all of New York there dwells an individual with greater breadth of experience, depth of insight and profundity of understanding than a wealthy woman who wouldn't merit a moment's consideration if her last name were simply Schlossberg.
And if New York is really that hard pressed for Senate candidates -- might I suggest they appoint whichever New Yorker comes up short in the Minnesota recount. I'm sure that Norm from Brooklyn or Al from Manhattan will serve the Empire State quite as well as Ed Schlossberg's wife.

Hey, that's OUR president you're thowing shoes at!

Poor ol' George -- he just get's no respect.
Good heavens, the man went to all the trouble and expense it took to liberate Iraq and give those poor benighted folks a free press and all, and how does he get repaid -- one of the press guys he went to all the trouble to free goes and throws his shoes at him.
No respect.
And it doesn't help a bit that from reports coming out of Mesopotamia and the adjacent region that Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the 28-year-old Iraqi shoe chucker, has become an instant hero to many of the folks living there.
No respect at all.
As for George, well, after 8 years of shaping foreign policy and dealing with people who don't live around here and speak English with a funny accent (New Yorkers don't count), past experience helped the increasingly lame duck president understand the situation. "I saw his sole," he told reporters.

The slick, the gullible and the just plain dumb

There was another one in my in-box this morning -- this one from a Mr. Gary Kreep (I couldn't make that up)-- one more in a seemingly endless parade of email insisting that Barack Obama has been a liar since before the day he was born and, by the way, if I send Mr. Kreep some money he promises to do something about it.
This whole Obama-doesn't-have-a-birth-certificate BS is really getting old. I suppose the Kreeps of the world will keep milking the mouth-breathers for Godly and patriotic donation until the well runs dry -- it's what we ought to expect from that breed of political bottom feeder. What gets to me is that we have folks out there who are entrusted with jobs, credit cards and drivers licenses who actually believe there was a prenatal conspiracy to make a Kenya-born Obama the first Muslim president, thereby bringing down the wrath of an affronted almighty down upon this erstwhile Christian nation.
Lemme tell ya, if there's anything to this tale those conspirators have to be the most uncannily brilliant folks since the Learned Elders of Zion -- to be able to flawlessly predict in 1961, when miscegenation was a crime in 22 states, that the mixed race baby of an impulsive, ill-educated 18-year-old mother and a Kenyan daddy was destined to become president of a country that made it awfully hard for non-white folks to vote would have taken a mind of prescient power unparalleled since the Masons took clandestine control of Western Civilization.
These folks really demonstrated their demonic brilliance when they slipped that birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser on Aug. 13, 1961, for a son to Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama nine days earlier. Getting that kind of documentation for a kid born in Kenya took Romulan deviousness, Klingon ruthlessness and the amorality of a Ferengi.
Yeah, for 47 years, powerful forces have been at work ... Nostradamus predicted it, you know.
Either that, or it's all made up bunk -- more fodder for the yahoos from the Black Helicopter crowd.
After all, there is the inconvenient fact that Mr. Obama's birth certificate is very much in existence and has been examined by quite a number of reputable folks - and it is all ordinary and legitimate, standard documentation for a child born in Hawaii in 1961. Attested to by Snopes, FactCheck and most importantly, good ol' common sense.
Common sense. Has it ever been in such short supply?

Yo, ho ho and a bottle of rum?

Aaaargh ... Blackbeard must be dancin' a jig in hottest Hell. The old buccaneer must be splitting with pride to see the latter-day sons of the Jolly Roger thumbing their noses at every navy on God's blue seas. But what in the Name of Heaven, in the age of geo-positioning, laser-guided weaponry and satellite surveilance are we doing with pirates running amok on the high seas?
Good Lord, where's Errol Flynn when we need him. Across the globe nations, ours among them, dispatch submarines armed to destroy continents, carriers loaded with an air force apiece, cruise missiles, and the toughest, best trained fighting men on earth -- and all this might is helpless against a handful of ill-tempered swashbucklers armed with a stolen motorboat and nothing to lose.
And you know, it's hard not to have a grudging admiration for men who have the nerve to go out and steal a supertanker -- oil and all. Talk about the ultimate gas drive-off. And the thought of the Saudis and the world's shipping magnates literally dropping gunny sacks of cash from hovering helicopters to keep their captains and crews from walking the plank has a real David and Goliath-ness to it.
Pirates -- your kid can take a wrong turn and end up another Henry Morgan or Calico Jack Rackham, a Mary Read or Anne Bonney. Avast, me hearties and shiver me timbers -- there be pirates afloat and the king can't catch 'em.

No bail out for the MoTown dinos

I don't have to go any farther than the office parking lot for all the reason I need to tell the Big Three automakers "go fish." Parked in its usual spot is my 1998 Metro -- a car the likes of which our domestic car companies didn't see fit to sell after 2001.
Because I'm cheap, I bought it used five or six years ago. There's no mistaking it for a Mercedes, but it's yet to fail to start, and other than a blower switch I haven't done any thing but routine maintenance - plus tires and light bulbs to keep it on the road. It compares well with Gayle's '97 Prizm which is about to roll 200,000 miles and has yet to have a wrench on the engine. They haven't made those for years either.
Oh, and did I mention if I don't get better than 35 mpg on a road trip from either of them it's entirely due to a heavy, heavy foot. A really nice feature a couple of months ago when gas was better than double what it's costing me today ... and it will be a really nice feature in the very near future when we're back to paying that price again and more.
But for years Detroit hasn't seen fit to put solid little cars on the American market -- though anywhere beyond North America solid little cars are about all there are to see. Instead they marketed dinosaurs -- big, inefficient, expensive and, for them, profitable -- as long as they were selling. Trouble is, when it cost a Franklin to fill the tank and the tank needed filling twice a week -- the shine came off that Detroit steel and folks, not always being as dumb as we look, looked around and bought a Hyundai.
Now Ford, GM and Chrysler want Unka Sugar to dig deep and save their bacon ... sort of like he did for AIG and the Wall Street bankers who forgot how to add, subtract, and figure simple interest. Unfortunately, there are thousands of ordinary folks whose jobs are on the line here -- and it's not fair to folks who just build 'em to suffer because the hotshots in the corner office have proven themselves no brighter than sea cucumbers.
So, let me suggest Congress tells the guys from Detroit to go back to MoTown, clean out there desks, turn in their keys and put in for third shift closers at the nearest Mac & Don -- then put in a call to Honda, Hyundai, Toyota and VW to make them an offer their not likely to refuse -- with cash-back financing to boot.

What if we just have enough stuff?

The hand-wringers were working overtime again last week. Now it seems that Americans aren't hitting the stores hard enough to keep the Chinese gizmo factories humming and some are even daring to suggest they might only spend what they can afford on Christmas gifts this season. All of this, of course, is the latest harbinger of economic collapse to spoil the day of any American not in the Marine Corps, in prison or so spectacularly wealthy they don't have to worry about their next three hots and a cot are coming from. Of course, this bad news comes hot on the heels of the dire warnings that Americans were drowning in debt, couldn't get credit and the whole tottering economic edifice was about to collapse because we just couldn't exercise any self control at the checkout counter.
Y'know -- y'just can't please some people.
Now I realize that for decades millions of us have lived up to the consumer mantra: When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping -- and Americans have always made it a point to prove to the world that nobody's tougher than us. Through the years we've dutifully bought stuff and bought stuff -- putting up ever bigger houses complete with multiple car garages (with the multiple cars parked on the driveway) to hold it all. We just kept on hauling it home and stacking it up and now, I suspect, more and more of us are confronted with a reverse Mother Hubbard -- far from being bare, the cupboard doors barely close. After a half century buying binge -- might it just be that a whole lot of us have enough stuff and might just use all this recession talk as an excuse not to add on yet another room to hold another holiday's worth of gifts we'd really rather not get?
And if enough is finally enough, does that mean the inevitable collapse of commerce? Well, not necessarily. While a lot of us can't find room for one more thing, there are a whole lot of people elsewhere in the world who'd have no trouble finding room to walk into their walk-in closet -- if they only had a house to put a closet into. If we have enough stuff, maybe we could let them have some -- there are some long Christmas lists out there.

Two buck gas on Election Day?

Welly, welly, well -- two months ago, who'd a thunk it? Driving by the Kwik Trip on the corner I see gas selling for $2.149, just like back in the good old days when auto petrol was just too expensive, not ruinous.
Good lord, wasn't it just back in June when anyone with a wit about them consigned Sweet Shelly Bachmann to the ranks of the terminally dingy when she suggested that if we were to drill, baby ,drill the price of gas would drop back to two bucks. And all us pink-diapered lefty sympathizers know she would have been laughed out of office if sh had suggested that we might well be driving to the polls on $2 a gallon gas on Election Day ... and if it were to happen, we all had the dots connected and the conspiracy concocted linking Exxon Mobil, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, the Republican National Committee and all the Sheiks of Araby.
Well Michele is on the verge of being laughed out of office any way, gas or no gas, and the virtually the only drilling that's gone on since June has taken place in dentist's offices. It appears all it took to bring down the price at the pump was a world-wide economic collapse. You betcha, nothing like the prospect of a real life sequel to The Grapes of Wrath to take the fun out of international commerce.
So here we are with cheap(er) gas on every corner and nowhere to go.
Hey buddy, can you spare a dime?