Category: Rants

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500 Billion needed to maintain the Roads?

So California is talking about raising the gas tax to fix the roads?

Because the state is projecting a 500 billion shortfall by 2020.

WTF?

Maybe they shouldn’t have been raiding the DMV fees, and reallocating other highway maintenance funds to purposes that WERE NOT highway related.

Of course we will never find out what happened to all the funds “Borrowed” to fix other shortfalls.

Oh yeah… We’re not supposed to remember that… And we’re not supposed to mind paying some of the HIGHEST license fees in the country.

I’ve got a salvage title on my 13 year old truck and have an annual 120.00 bill, same on my 10 year old bike. But the real killer is the 600 dollar bill on my passenger car.

Add it all up and the state of California gets 840.00 a year just for me to license my vehicles.

Add to that the 50.5 cents per gallon of gas and long commutes and I end up paying… and I’m estimating here, about an additional 480 to 600 dollars in added taxes per year.

That’s a grand total of  around 1300.00 per year to the state. Don’t even think about the additional costs of repairs CAUSED by the bad roads, or the cost of vehicle insurance.

You’re telling me that’s not enough!?! How do other states have great roads?

Why is it that when you cross the Nevada or Arizona boarder magically the potholes are gone and the roads are smooth? Why is I-75 on the East coast clean and well maintained?

If you factor in fuel wasted sitting in traffic, sitting behind morons that drive like they’re driving pace cars at Indy, and the idiots that slam on their brakes when a bird flies overhead, it’s probably a safe bet that most folks are filling their tanks at least twice a week.

So multiply just half of what I’ve been paying, by the number of drivers in the LA area alone and that’s an OBSCENE amount of money.

Then do the same for all the cities in the state and you’ve got a crazy obscene amount. So Sacramento… tell us again how we don’t have enough cash to maintain the roads?

Here we are;

Rock… Us ….Hard Place.

Our roads are for shit and decaying more every day, that hurts the economy. On the OTHER side of the coin Sacramento RAISING the taxes on a critical item like gas screws the economy.

This is especially true of most cities in California because WE DON’T HAVE MASS TRANSIT.

With the exception of the San Francisco Bay area, cities in California opted for commuting instead of trains / buses that run on time. 

Yeah,  Yeah, The talking heads and politicians speak breathlessly about the success of the light rail in Los Angeles.  

I’ve ridden it folks… yep you can get from one point that’s 40 miles away from your home to another point that 10 miles away from your place of work as long as you’re in the LA basin.   

Oh and by the way it can take you an hour to go the same distance you can go in 15 minutes driving your car during rush hour. If you want to bicycle that last 10 miles to work…. TOO BAD, you’ll have to wait for a train that has one of 4 bicycle slots open.  

Since the trains run more or less  every 10 minutes well you could be on that platform for a while. So you put your bike back on your car and drive to work. So much for being green, getting some exercise, and saving some money. 

The Folks in the Valley and Orange County??? Uhhh well you’re screwed… have a nice day!

Again with one exception, there is no mass transit in California.

Which leads us back to the decaying infrastructure, and what to do about it.

As one article pointed out, construction costs have risen considerably since the last time the gas tax was raised. Really? I guess we in the middle class hadn’t noticed that or the rising cost of living and our more or less static wages!

I’ve mentioned it before, I’m going to repeat it again.

It’s a given that he largest cost of major projects isn’t the material… it’s the labor.

We have a standing labor force in prisons throughout the state.

Instead of feeding, clothing, housing, and providing HBO, & Gym facilities to
these folks, how about we feed & clothe them and let them pay their debt to society with real work?

Prisons wouldn’t be as crowded…

At least not during the day while the work crews were out, and at night… well folks are sleeping and then all they’re worried about is having a bunk.

I’d even be for incentivizing. For each year you work on a road crew without incident, it’s a year subtracted from the sentence. You have to admit it’s a very real way to teach someone that WORK is rewarding.

I personally think that’s a lesson worth teaching.

I also think that little Johnny or Susie riding with Mommy & Daddy in their Prius would see a prison work detail as a cautionary tale of the consequences of right vs wrong.

That might have a beneficial effect in the future, reducing prison overcrowding and the costs associated with our penal system.

After Sacramento implements my suggestion… then lets talk about raising taxes.

Until then…

Keep YOUR wasteful greedy hands out of my pocket!

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Penn State Molestation

I have been reading about the disturbing events in a variety of news sources. Today there was an article on one of the CNN sites that caught my attention.

Apparently, new laws are being called for in Pennsylvania that would deal with how and when sexual abuse is reported.

This raises a couple of questions for me.

Do we really need another law that says abuse should be reported?
We already have laws on the books that deal with this kind of thing, the failure here was that the police didn’t get called immediately.

Why aren’t the rules of common sense enough? Screw telling your boss you saw another boss fucking a boy in the locker room showers, walk to the nearest phone and dial 911 tell the operator you need the cops and at least two ambulances. (One for the child, and then other for the remains of the molester) then leave the phone off the hook so that 911 can record the soundtrack as a cautionary tale for other molesters.

No matter how strongly a law is written if it’s not enforced or enforceable then you’re wasting your time. In fact, you may be giving a scumbag lawyer yet another opportunity to 1) Get a perpetrator off on a technicality because an overly complex law wasn’t followed to the letter. 2) Allow someone with a grudge, or who was overly zealous to destroy some poor schmuck because they were seen naked where a child might have seen them. (There was a case like that in Huntington Beach, CA)

Odious and complicated laws seem to get us in more trouble than they prevent. I think we should let common sense prevail.

A section of the article really caught my attention.

Outside of the legal concerns, many question why McQueary did not stop what he allegedly saw happening in the showers in 2002.

“How does McQueary, a 28-year-old grad student, look in the showers of a facility and see a grown man raping a 10-year-old child and not instinctively grab a baseball bat and not protect this child? How does he live with himself?” asked Richard Hermann, legal analyst and criminal defense attorney.

Why didn’t McQueary instinctively grab a baseball bat?

REALLY?

Ok Let me explain it to you.

This is what comes from telling Men over and over again that they’re too violent, and testosterone poisoned.

This is what happens when you create law after law that protect, and allow criminals to sue and WIN cases against their victims.

This is what happens when you tell a Man he can’t defend himself, his family, or others because he’s supposed to be like a little schoolboy and go tell the authorities.

This is what happens when you create a culture where it is preferable to abdicate the responsibilities associated with being a Man because getting involved and taking a stand is simply too expensive financially, emotionally, and professionally.

I’d wager, that if McQueary had stepped into that shower, and said “Remove your dick from that boys ass” carrying a baseball bat, that the fine Attorney Richard Hermann would have been demanding McQuearys’ prosecution for threatening a superior with bodily harm in front of a child!

SO people… which do you want?

Pussy men who don’t take action?

OR

Men who take action, even though they might sometimes get it wrong? Are you willing to accept and PROTECT Men that take action, even though they might screw up?

You can’t have it both ways!

I’ll take the Men that take action ANY TIME, how about you?

Here’s another chilling fact. Even IF we as a society decide that we really want Men again it’s going to be 20 years at minimum. Because there are too few Men who remember the old rules, the old ways, and fewer still that are in any kind of position to teach those ways.

McQueary may have been a coward, he may have been in deep shock, he may have been simply confused about what to do, mixed signals from the society at large can do that. He will live with his conscience and the vile image of a 10 year old being raped while he did nothing for the rest of his life, and that may be punishment enough.

However, according to the Grand Jury findings McQueary wasn’t the ONLY man to witness improper events happening in that shower. Other maintenance / cleaning staff were aware of other events and they also did nothing.

To me the inaction of these men speaks volumes about how Men in general have been villainized and castrated in our society.

I’m proud to be one of the old fucks, I’ve still got a set of low hanging hairy ones.

I’d have been in that shower in two long strides and when I was done… well the man who was fucking the 10 year old wouldn’t be using his dick for anything except pissing ever again.

Sometimes you do what you know in your heart is RIGHT and you accept the consequences even when you’re punished for doing the right thing.

It’s thin comfort but you can sleep at night… As a Man.

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Will Kim Kardashian go down in flames? We can only hope…

Another train wreck.

On the plus side at least she’s not a train wreck because of drugs, alcohol, grand theft, or petty theft. She’s managed to demonstrate why the “Sanctity of Marriage” crowd has been sniffing a little too much incense in their weekly prayer meetings.

72 days in a “Committed” relationship is almost but not quite as long as some gay friends long term relationships.

I suppose that I should say thanks. You know, under that old line “The Enemy of my Enemy is my friend”. She has done a great job of weakening the “Marriage is Sacred” argument across the nation.

Clearly marriage is about material things. Goods, land, money, fame, and of course being able to legally & morally play with someone else’s genitalia, if only for a short time.

On the Down side, every fucking place you look there is Kim Kardashian!

She’s right up there with Brittney, Lindsay, Charlie, Michael, Chris & well you know the list….

Time for all of them to take their wrecks and exit the public stage.

I’m tossing my cookies right along with Christopher Titus in his comedy show “Neverlution”

Please make it stop, raaallllfffff!

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Another WTF?

I just saw a report about a couple that was needing to renegotiate their home mortgage.

They’re falling behind on their payments.

They’re New Yorkers and their house payment is about 3K a month. I know NY is expensive and I’ve heard of much higher payments on the left coast.

So while the house payment is higher than I’d be comfortable paying I don’t think it’s out of line for an average American Family these days.

If both people are working and they’re not extravagant about their expenditures, then this is a snap shot of “Normal Americans” these days.

The other way these folks are average is that the Husband has been layed off and hasn’t been able to find another job.

So they attended an event by invitation sponsored by the Federal Government that connects Americans in trouble with the banks and seeks to facilitate loan renegotiation under an Obama program.

They were denied a renegotiation.

Why?

Because the wife made too much money!

So let’s recap, Wife Employed, Husband unemployed, behind on bills, behind on mortgage.

The couple wants to honor their debts, & keep their house but they’re NOT eligible to take advantage of a Government sponsored program that would allow them to simply renegotiate their mortgage…

BECAUSE THEY MAKE TOO MUCH MONEY?


WTF?


Isn’t it enough that they’re in serious trouble?

I so totally don’t get it. The banks and the government would rather see a decent hard working couple who’s having a rough patch get foreclosed on, have their credit destroyed, and end up homeless than to take action….

Who does this serve? It sure as hell isn’t “We The People“

This is what Occupy Wall Street should be bitching about!

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"hi"

That is why I’m on fewer and fewer “adult oriented” social media sites.

“hi”

I hate that! I go to the trouble of creating a fairly complete profile, I specifically state who I am, my hobbies, interests, and a small bit of humorous information about me precisely so that the reader has enough to

a) Decide if they’d like to speak to me
b) Have something around which to start a conversation.

“‘sup?”

How about a complete sentence or better yet a whole thought?

Something like;

Hi there, I enjoyed reading your profile. You’re a SCUBA diver? I’m curious about it, but worry that it’s too expensive for my budget. Would you have time to give me a basic run down from your perspective?

At least there is a basis for a conversation.

Or how about a sender saying;

Dammn! you’re handsome… wanna fuck?


I could handle and respect that and at least it’s not wasting my time and burning through my patience with inane one word responses that pass as a conversation. Hell I could program my phone or computer to answer with one randomly chosen word in response to your one word “Conversation Starters”.

“what are you doing?”


This is another major time waster… how do I answer that? Would it be appropriate for me to say;

I’m taking a huge dump and wondering if I’ve got time to jerk off before I have to get dressed for that church service?


I’ve often thought about answering that way but frankly I fear the string of one or two word responses that I’d have to respond to.

I can picture something like;

“Cool”
“like to suck you.”
“ummm hot”


Of course if I look up the senders location it’s one extreme or the other. It’s always the sender is somewhere like Cambodia. Or the sender is 5 miles away and I when I say GREAT! Come on over I could use a blowjob. I’d like to see my cum dripping from your chin


Then suddenly, the conversation stops. Or there are endless excuses…

You know, if you’re going to say you’d like to suck my dick…

Put your mouth where my dick is!