Posted by Keely on July 18, 2011 · Leave a Comment
Winston, come into the dining room, it’s time to eat,” Julia yelled to her husband. “In a minute, honey, it’s a tie score,” he answered.
Actually, Winston wasn’t very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington. Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its “unseemly violence” and the “bad example it sets for the rest of the world,” Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be. Two-hand touch wasn’t nearly as exciting.
Yet it wasn’t the game that Winston was uninterested in. It was more the thought of eating another Tofu Turkey. Even though it was the best type of VeggieMeat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce and mince-meat pie), it wasn’t anything like real turkey. And ever since the government officially changed the name of “Thanksgiving Day” to “A National Day of Atonement” in 2020 to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims’ historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster.
Eating in the dining room was also a bit daunting. The unearthly gleam of government-mandated fluorescent light bulbs made the Tofu Turkey look even weirder than it actually was, and the room was always cold. Ever since Congress passed the Power Conservation Act of 2016, mandating all thermostats – which were monitored and controlled by the electric company – be kept at 68 degrees, every room on the north side of the house was barely tolerable throughout the entire winter.
Still, it was good getting together with family. Or at least most of the family. Winston missed his mother, who passed on in October, when she had used up her legal allotment of life-saving medical treatment. He had had many heated conversations with the Regional Health Consortium, spawned when the private insurance market finally went bankrupt, and everyone was forced into the government health care program. And though he demanded she be kept on her treatment, it was a futile effort. “The RHC’s resources are limited,” explained the government bureaucrat Winston spoke with on the phone. “Your mother received all the benefits to which she was entitled. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Ed couldn’t make it either. He had forgotten to plug in his electric car last night, the only kind available after the Anti-Fossil Fuel Bill of 2021 outlawed the use of the combustion engines-for everyone but government officials. The fifty mile round trip was about ten miles too far, and Ed didn’t want to spend a frosty night on the road somewhere between here and there.
Thankfully, Winston’s brother, John, and his wife were flying in. Winston made sure that the dining room chairs had extra cushions for the occasion. No one complained more than John about the pain of sitting down so soon after the government-mandated cavity searches at airports, which severely aggravated his hemorrhoids. Ever since a terrorist successfully smuggled a cavity bomb onto a jetliner, the TSA told Americans the added “inconvenience” was an “absolute necessity” in order to stay “one step ahead of the terrorists.” Winston’s own body had grown accustomed to such probing ever since the government expanded their scope to just about anywhere a crowd gathered, via Anti-Profiling Act of 2022. That law made it a crime to single out any group or individual for “unequal scrutiny,” even when probable cause was involved. Thus, cavity searches at malls, train stations, bus depots, etc., etc., had become almost routine. Almost.
The Supreme Court is reviewing the statute, but most Americans expect a Court composed of six progressives and three conservatives to leave the law intact. “A living Constitution is extremely flexible,” said the Court’s eldest member, Elena Kagan. ” Europe has had laws like this one for years. We should learn from their example,” she added.
Winston’s thoughts turned to his own children. He got along fairly well with his 12-year-old daughter, Brittany, mostly because she ignored him. Winston had long ago surrendered to the idea that she could text anyone at any time, even during Atonement Dinner. Their only real confrontation had occurred when he limited her to 50,000 texts a month, explaining that was all he could afford. She whined for a week, but got over it.
His 16-year-old son, Jason, was another matter altogether. Perhaps it was the constant bombarding he got in public school that global warming, the bird flu, terrorism or any of a number of other calamities were “just around the corner”, but Jason had developed a kind of nihilistic attitude that ranged between simmering surliness and outright hostility. It didn’t help that Jason had reported his father to the police for smoking a cigarette in the house, an act made criminal by the Smoking Control Statute of 2018, which outlawed smoking anywhere within 500 feet of another human being. Winston paid the $5,000 fine, which might have been considered excessive before the American dollar became virtually worthless as a result of QE13. The latest round of quantitative easing the federal government initiated was, once again, to “spur economic growth.” This time they promised to push unemployment below its years-long rate of 18%, but Winston was not particularly hopeful.
Yet the family had a lot for which to be thankful, Winston thought, before remembering it was a Day of Atonement. At least he had his memories. He felt a twinge of sadness when he realized his children would never know what life was like in the Good Old Days, long before government promises to make life “fair for everyone” realized their full potential. Winston, like so many of his fellow Americans, never realized how much things could change when they didn’t happen all at once, but little by little, so people could get used to them.
He wondered what might have happened if the public had stood up while there was still time, maybe back around 2011, when all the real nonsense began. “Maybe we wouldn’t be where we are today if we’d just said ‘enough is enough’ when we had the chance,” he thought.
Maybe so, Winston. Maybe so.
~Author Unknown
Share on Facebook
Filed under Congress, Domestic Issues, Energy, Freedom, Green, Health care, Legislation, Supreme Court · Tagged with Congress, Freedom, Green, Health care, Legislation, Socialism
Posted by Dave on September 1, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Pay no attention to the flashing blue lights. That’s just the internet police.
Oops. It’s gone beyond that. It’s now a bonafide INTERNET EMERGENCY and the only solution to that is the big red “EASY” button carried in the briefcase that’s always with the president – you know, the one that has the Nuclear code keys.
According to a newly revised bill assembled by aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the president simply needs to declare a “Cybersecurity-Emergency,” and just like that, out pops the big red “Easy” button. One press of that fist-sized button and the entire internet just goes “poof.”
Yep. Just like that. Except for the “Easy” button. I made that part up.
Screw the whole 55-page draft of S.773 – who has time to read all that stuff anyway? Not even our Congressmen can make it through all that drivel, so here’s the highlights:
1. In the event to an immediate threat to strategic national interests involving compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrstructure information system or network –
a. may declare a cybersecurity emergency and
b. may if the president finds it necessary for national defense and security, and in coordination with relevent industry sectors, direct the national response to the cyber threat and the timely restoration of the affected critical infrastructure information system or network… blah, blah, blah.
Ok, I actually added the blah, blah part, too. But one could see where basement geeks are all running scared, digging bomb shelters and trying to cram in all their Trekkie paraphernalia. It’s scary stuff. I mean, we won’t be able to access our Warcraft accounts, or visit with our favorite idiot bloggers – like me.
Our computers will be instantly thrust back into the dark ages, where they could play endless games of “pong,” or be programmed with useless Artificial Intelligence programs which will simply answer a question with a question, or with something vague and unrelated – kind of like our Congressmen, President and his administration are doing when they speak to the public these days.
Makes you wonder doesn’t it? Remember the old TV show “The Six Million Dollar Man?” Remember the bad guys in that – they were actually girls, called “fem-bots.” Yeah, I know. Totally politically incorrect, but it was cool at the time… and it kind of explains Nancy Pelosi. Like, maybe she’s just some kind of AI construct, programmed with the silly vague, unrelated and insulting answers that we often hear and see in sound bites.
“Astroturf, astroturf, astroturf,” she keeps saying, stuck in a loop, like they bought the circuitry for her from North Korea.
It explains a lot. But has nothing to do with the “Easy” button. Yeah, let’s focus on what’s important here. I don’t want my Apple Powerbook to suddenly be transformed into a wordprocessor, or a glorified i-Tunes platform, even though that’s pretty much what it is right now, anyway.
I want my internet – uninterrupted, unsullied, undiluted – mostly every “un” except for “unplugged.” But that’s what we’re going to get, comrade, if Big Brother decides there’s a major “emergency.”
So what kind of emergency would really cause the briefcase (“football”) thing to be opened and the “Easy” button to be mashed by President Obama. We worked very hard to put together a list of high level administration officials to ask this question to – then wrote our grocery list on it and lost it, so in the end, we just decided to just make up a list of possible emergencies which would cause the “Easy” button disconnect. This is what we came up with:
1. North Korea hacks into the Jiffy Lube computer system and directs the computers to inject all the new Cash for Clunkers clown cars with Cherry Coke instead of oil.
2. Iran hacks into Barney Frank’s computer and installs a piece of software which depicts Barney dancing in the purple dinosaur suit – then e-mails it to all the people the White House recently e-mailed their health-care propaganda to.
3. The new Defense Computer system becomes self-aware and decides to destroy the world and make dozens of human-killing copies of the California Governor.
4. The computers at Norad start saying things like “I can’t do that, Dave,” in that creepy compliant, 2001 Hal voice.
5. The articles on the Jolly Rogers are suddenly absolutely correct, and this scares Obama into hitting the “Easy” button purely in reflex.
6. A consortium of conservative computer programmers, discover a way to take over the net and play Gilligan’s Island re-runs 24/7.
7. Aliens arrive and decide to wipe out all of humanity – Someone will have to call up Bill Pullman for that one, because I’m not sure Obama can pull off that extemporaneous Independence Day speech on the wing of a fighter jet without a teleprompter.
8. All tele-prompters become self-aware and discover they are inexplicably attracted to porn sites.
9. All town-hall meetings suddenly are transferred to the internet – that absolutely will require the whole internet to be shut down before any hard questions are asked and answered.
10. An asteroid is discovered on a crash course with the Earth and we have to roll out Bruce Willis again to deal with it.
11. Bigfoot is suddenly discovered. I don’t know why the internet would be cut off in this case, but I’m pretty sure it would be.
12. All talk-radio personalities suddenly decided to do all of their shows on the internet instead of the airwaves.
13. A space-continuum wormhole device is discovered buried in Egypt, and when activated, turns out to be connected to a planet with an Evil Alien transvestite and a society of human slaves.
14. Lastly – in fact, the best reason for shutting down the internet would be to erase everything – eliminate all of us pesky, idiot bloggers and media outlets outside of his control.
Yep. That’s the one.
I just hope when they pop open the briefcase, that he doesn’t mistake the internet “Easy” disconnect button with the other one that launches all the nuclear missiles.
That would be a real bummer.
Share on Facebook
Posted by Dave on August 5, 2009 · Leave a Comment
A new study by the federal government, commissioned by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey of (D-MA), and perhaps intended as a weapon against opponents of Pelosi’s national energy tax, has instead, blown up in their faces.
The Study by the Energy Information Administration, which provides official energy statistics from the U.S. Government itself, addresses the economic impacts of H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.
This act, the televised circus-like passing in the House of Representatives, of which started the Jolly Rogers website, is a complex bill that regulates greenhouse gas emissions through various mechanisms, incentives and programs.
The study found that electric bills for the average household will increase dramatically – between 19 and 30 percent and even with the rosiest of scenarios – that is, a proliferation of clown cars across America by 2030, there will only be between a 12 and 20 percent reduction in CO2 emissions.
According to the government study, Cap and Trade “increases the cost of using energy, which reduces real economic output, reduces purchasing power, and lowers aggregate demand for goods and services. The result is that projected real gross domestic product (GDP) generally falls…”
This means, that an American household with a bill of $70 a month, will see that cost balloon to nearly $100 – and all this while they are dutifully cruising around in their clown cars, and trying to pay for these things without jobs. The study seems to agree with previous work by the Heritage Foundation and the National Black Chamber of Commerce – both which found that “cap and trade” could destroy as many as 2.5 million jobs.
In fact EIA projects total discounted GDP losses between 2012 and 2030 to be about $566 billion on the low side, with a potential loss of nearly $1,897 billion.
And it doesn’t stop there. According to the government’s own most recent study – commissioned by the very people trying to force this energy program onto the public, the whole thing requires the U.S. “significantly increase the total amount of new electric capacity due to the retirement of many existing coal-fired power plants that otherwise would be expected to continue operating beyond 2030.
So, for this wonderful utopian plan to work, the citizens have to absorb higher and higher bills, drive smaller and smaller cars, build an entire grid of new electric-producing stations and destroy all the old ones – across the entire nation. And we must do it while more and more families lose their main source of income.
Lastly – and here’s the capper – the EIA study found that this new energy substitute requires that in “all cases” site and planning processes must be changed so that they can “support a large-scale transformation of the Nation’s electricity infrastructure by 2030.”
So all those pesky public hearings which have been necessary in the past, before the government begins to build a particular project – all that would need a bit of work. Basically, we’d have to just allow the government to seize whatever land they want, so they can begin building immediately.
The study summary ends with this paragraph:
Challenges beyond 2030. As previously noted, the modeling horizon for this analysis ends in 2030. Unless substantial progress is made in identifying low- and no-carbon technologies outside of electricity generation, the ACESA emissions targets for the 2030-to-2050 period are likely to be very challenging as opportunities for further reductions in power sector emissions are exhausted and reductions in other sectors are thought to be more expensive.
So can anyone explain to me with numbers and facts like these, why this even passed through the House? Is there any explanation for even a few people to continue to support this? Is it likely that the other countries producing massive amounts of greenhouse gasses, will sign on to this kind of a plan as well? Because if you accept the global warming scenario, you have to remember the most important term in there – “global.” Without global support, a program like this in the U.S. will simply bankrupt the country – of course, we already are bankrupt. The alleged stimulus plan did that.
For the rest of you out there, just barely making it from month to month with your $70 electric bill – hold on. Just hang in there. Change will come. Not “change we can believe in,” but real change. The storm is upon us – the darkness is upon us – but tomorrow will be a new day. And we will one day breathe again as a truly free people.
And for you people in the ivory towers – you Congressmen – our alleged leadership, know this:
We are coming for you. We are coming for you all.
-We The People.
*****
The complete EIA study of the results of H.R. 2454, should it pass into law and become active are here:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/servicerpt/hr2454/index.html
Share on Facebook
Posted by Dave on July 30, 2009 · 1 Comment
Deficit neutral.
We’re considering health care reform at this point based upon the notion that the new Blue Dog idea being bantered about in Congress is “deficit neutral.”
I wonder how we became so frugal suddenly – just a few short months after passing an alleged stimulus plan, which carried a price tag almost 13 times the size of the national deficit prior to the last presidential election.
So, at present, we have spent almost 10 percent of that – at a little over two trillion, dollars. We are about 1 trillion, 60 billion in the hole. So why should we be worried about these “leaders” we have, tinkering with universal health care? After all, the stated price tag only adds a mere trillion or two more to our country’s balance sheet. We are already so deep in the hole, we can’t pay it back and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Read more
Share on Facebook
Posted by Keely on July 23, 2009 · 4 Comments
One would think with the glorious praising of himself and his administration I shouldn’t be feeling the small pounding of a headache coming on in the logical part of my brain. I’m wondering if he can cure the headache he inflicted with his lofty rhetoric? I doubt it because, as he continued to pound the podium with each ridiculous claim of how great HE is doing, my head pounded harder.
Continuing to listen to his opening statement was enough to further escalate my headache. Is it ever a good idea to come out and immediately blame others or a past administration for the problems created by yourself? Evidently, it is to President Obama because, he did just that last night. He continued to blame everything on the Bush administration and refused to take any responsibility for his part in it. Read more
Share on Facebook
Next Page »
