BP chief Tony Hayward was caught red handed attending a yacht race on Saturday, apparently in an effort to repair damage done by his previous PR blundering. BP had enough of Tony's PR wizardry and removed him from the duty of overseeing the gulf oil spill and it's subsequent clean-up effort, but that didn't stop him from doing his best to put an obsequious face on the worst environmental disaster to hit the earth since the dinosaurs were killed off by an Al Qaeda space rock. Allegedly.
Americans were aghast at the news that a rich guy would go to a yacht race to watch his own yacht sail around an island while decent poor folk were stuck at home with no good sporting events to watch on Saturday for themselves. The NASCAR race isn't on until tomorrow! The US Open is on today, but who watches golf?
Nope, bored, sport-less Americans are lining up at their keyboards by the tens of thousands to whine pointlessly about Tony's single day off in the last sixty days. I assume these are mostly unemployed people who are too busy cashing their government cheese to go look for jobs, or go walk outside with sponges and soak up a few gallons of oil. Realistically, I'm sure Tony could clean the whole spill up with his yacht by dragging Kevin Costner behind it, but reportedly, Costner wasn't available today.
Still, nobody cares about Tony's free time. From a PR standpoint any time a leader takes a day off during a crisis, it's symbolic of what a dick he is. Perhaps Tony should have gone bowling. At least that way he would have been hob-nobing with rednecks holding beers in their hands instead of millionaires with brie stains on their lapels. Bowling is far less self indulgent, and easier to clean up in a PR campaign. If only the spill were so cooperative.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
So BP, Obama and a schoolyard of kindergarteners are in a boat in the ocean...
This was actually a response I made to a post on Common Cents, and I liked my own response so damn much, I decided to recycle it here so nobody would see it.
http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2010/06/required-reading-if-you-read-only-one.html
I keep reading articles and blogs that are pages long that can all be summed up as follows;
"The oil spill is Obama's fault."
I fail to see how anyone with the intelligence to write three pages of words with multiple consonants can be so short sighted and biased towards an agenda, rather than seeing the much simpler truth.
Let me break it down kindergarten playground style. But this is a strange kindergarten so try to follow along.
Lets say that all the kids on the playground represent oil companies. All the kids want to build sand castles which represent oil wells. Let us also pretend that the students somehow get copious amounts of allowance money by building sand castles. And the teachers, in this twisted scenario, are all elected to be there by the parents.
But the parents were influenced as to who to hire by the children who spent all their allowance money to pimp teachers that would let them build sand castles whenever, wherever and however they wanted by, lets say by baking cookies with slogans on them to be served free of charge at the next PTA meeting.
The funding for the teachers campaigns who supported sand castle regulation paled in comparison since, I mean, c'mon! Who's going to fund a teacher who wants smaller, more regulated sand castles! Not you!
What do you think is going to happen here? There's going to be sand castles in the principles office, in the lunch room, on the playground, on the roof, in the pool, even off school property. The sand castles will be built to be profitable, but if one topples over and gets into the Jell-O, well we'll just deal with that then.
Many of the children may actually be concerned about possible Jell-O contamination, but there aren't enough of them, and it makes no economic sense for them to build smaller, safer sand castles, since they'll generate less allowance money to buy the Jell-O with in the first place.
Jell-O represents the gulf, in case you didn't figure that out.
It's up to the teachers to make them build smaller and safer sand castles. See, if they regulate it, then ALL the students will face the same handicap and will be competitive with each other, despite the added cost of the regulation. Regulation is required to even the playing field so the children can split the costs of developing the technology to build Jell-O safe sand castles.
But since all the teachers are essentially planted there by the children in the first place, thanks to parents too lazy to do anything other than eat the cookies at the PTA meeting and in the process not learning of the Jell-O safe teachers due to excessive cookie bombardment and limited budges of said Jell-O safe teachers.
So, bottom line is, the oil spill isn't Obama's fault, it isn't Bush's fault, and it's not the oil companies fault. Its your own damn fault for electing the clowns that cater to them. Shame on you!
http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2010/06/required-reading-if-you-read-only-one.html
I keep reading articles and blogs that are pages long that can all be summed up as follows;
"The oil spill is Obama's fault."
I fail to see how anyone with the intelligence to write three pages of words with multiple consonants can be so short sighted and biased towards an agenda, rather than seeing the much simpler truth.
Let me break it down kindergarten playground style. But this is a strange kindergarten so try to follow along.
Lets say that all the kids on the playground represent oil companies. All the kids want to build sand castles which represent oil wells. Let us also pretend that the students somehow get copious amounts of allowance money by building sand castles. And the teachers, in this twisted scenario, are all elected to be there by the parents.
But the parents were influenced as to who to hire by the children who spent all their allowance money to pimp teachers that would let them build sand castles whenever, wherever and however they wanted by, lets say by baking cookies with slogans on them to be served free of charge at the next PTA meeting.
The funding for the teachers campaigns who supported sand castle regulation paled in comparison since, I mean, c'mon! Who's going to fund a teacher who wants smaller, more regulated sand castles! Not you!
What do you think is going to happen here? There's going to be sand castles in the principles office, in the lunch room, on the playground, on the roof, in the pool, even off school property. The sand castles will be built to be profitable, but if one topples over and gets into the Jell-O, well we'll just deal with that then.
Many of the children may actually be concerned about possible Jell-O contamination, but there aren't enough of them, and it makes no economic sense for them to build smaller, safer sand castles, since they'll generate less allowance money to buy the Jell-O with in the first place.
Jell-O represents the gulf, in case you didn't figure that out.
It's up to the teachers to make them build smaller and safer sand castles. See, if they regulate it, then ALL the students will face the same handicap and will be competitive with each other, despite the added cost of the regulation. Regulation is required to even the playing field so the children can split the costs of developing the technology to build Jell-O safe sand castles.
But since all the teachers are essentially planted there by the children in the first place, thanks to parents too lazy to do anything other than eat the cookies at the PTA meeting and in the process not learning of the Jell-O safe teachers due to excessive cookie bombardment and limited budges of said Jell-O safe teachers.
So, bottom line is, the oil spill isn't Obama's fault, it isn't Bush's fault, and it's not the oil companies fault. Its your own damn fault for electing the clowns that cater to them. Shame on you!
Friday, June 18, 2010
Whale Wars, more laughs per minute than Caddyshack.
I must admit, Animal Planet's TV series Whale Wars utterly fascinates me. I mean, how the hell are self admitted pirates, brash enough to televise all their antics allowed to operate unabated? I mean, if I'm the operator of a commercial fleet being harassed by pirates, I imagine I would find some way to board them, arrest and detain the crew, and sink the ship. At least that is my dream scenario for the climax of this TV series. One can dream, and one of my dreams WILL come true this season.
The whale warriors have their own objective of course. They are out to stop whaling, not because Minkie whales are endangered, because they aren't, but because they simply don't like it. Whales are cute, cuddly, lovable, majestic...or whatever other superlatives you need to label them with to justify caring about them more than any other mammal, like say a cow or pig. But what is truly at work here is you have a group of impressionable and inadequate people being led by a man who doesn't care about them. Captain Paul Watson admits with stunning regularity that he doesn't care about human life, he's there to save the whales, at any cost. He frequently asks if his crew is willing to give their lives to save whales. I'm not sure when he's going to feed them to the whales, but I'm waiting for the moment.
But if this show doesn't make you laugh so hard your pants fall off, then you are clearly viewing it from the care-bear end of the looking glass, which means that we will not get along too well, you and I. I don't see how you can't laugh at the obvious folly of throwing stink bombs onto a ship that already smells like rotting whale corpses. I also laugh when they get sea sick, because after all, they are just a bunch of land loving tree huggers. You would think all the acid trips that made them used to screwed up perceptions of reality would possibly prepare them for a few waves.
Then there's the more disturbing attempts they make to actually do harm to people or disable the large ships of the Japanese whaling fleet. One tactic was to throw slimy goo all over the decks of the ship, apparently with the goal to make all the whalers fall off the boat or injure themselves. I mean, if that's not the intent, what is? Do they expect them to softly fall over, then just stay on the ground? I doubt it, not even Paul Watson can be that stupid, I mean he can operate a huge ship. The other option is prop foulers. They use long ropes in an attempt to foul or damage the propellers of the whaling ships. Now, if you know anything about ships and oceans, you might know that a ship that cant move can be sunk by waves. You don't have the attention span for me to explain how, look it up later. So either by injuring the crew, making them fall off the ship, or disabling it so mother nature will hopefully sink the ship, the crew of the Sea Shepherd clearly has no regard for human life, and this fact doesn't escape the whalers.
This season's Whale Wars is shaping up to be a great one. For the Japanese whalers that is. So far the Steve Irwin has been harassed by a harpoon ship for all 3 episodes so far and hasn't had a chance to find the actual whaling fleet. The Bob Barker, a brand spanking new, sixty year old pile of steaming garbage with an ice rating couldn't get out of dock because it didn't run. Then there's the Ady Gil. It's just Earthrace re-badged, painted black and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. You can see the impotence written all over Captain Watson's face as everything he tries...fails. If only he knew how much he made me laugh, maybe he'd feel better.
The whale warriors have their own objective of course. They are out to stop whaling, not because Minkie whales are endangered, because they aren't, but because they simply don't like it. Whales are cute, cuddly, lovable, majestic...or whatever other superlatives you need to label them with to justify caring about them more than any other mammal, like say a cow or pig. But what is truly at work here is you have a group of impressionable and inadequate people being led by a man who doesn't care about them. Captain Paul Watson admits with stunning regularity that he doesn't care about human life, he's there to save the whales, at any cost. He frequently asks if his crew is willing to give their lives to save whales. I'm not sure when he's going to feed them to the whales, but I'm waiting for the moment.
But if this show doesn't make you laugh so hard your pants fall off, then you are clearly viewing it from the care-bear end of the looking glass, which means that we will not get along too well, you and I. I don't see how you can't laugh at the obvious folly of throwing stink bombs onto a ship that already smells like rotting whale corpses. I also laugh when they get sea sick, because after all, they are just a bunch of land loving tree huggers. You would think all the acid trips that made them used to screwed up perceptions of reality would possibly prepare them for a few waves.
Then there's the more disturbing attempts they make to actually do harm to people or disable the large ships of the Japanese whaling fleet. One tactic was to throw slimy goo all over the decks of the ship, apparently with the goal to make all the whalers fall off the boat or injure themselves. I mean, if that's not the intent, what is? Do they expect them to softly fall over, then just stay on the ground? I doubt it, not even Paul Watson can be that stupid, I mean he can operate a huge ship. The other option is prop foulers. They use long ropes in an attempt to foul or damage the propellers of the whaling ships. Now, if you know anything about ships and oceans, you might know that a ship that cant move can be sunk by waves. You don't have the attention span for me to explain how, look it up later. So either by injuring the crew, making them fall off the ship, or disabling it so mother nature will hopefully sink the ship, the crew of the Sea Shepherd clearly has no regard for human life, and this fact doesn't escape the whalers.
This season's Whale Wars is shaping up to be a great one. For the Japanese whalers that is. So far the Steve Irwin has been harassed by a harpoon ship for all 3 episodes so far and hasn't had a chance to find the actual whaling fleet. The Bob Barker, a brand spanking new, sixty year old pile of steaming garbage with an ice rating couldn't get out of dock because it didn't run. Then there's the Ady Gil. It's just Earthrace re-badged, painted black and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. You can see the impotence written all over Captain Watson's face as everything he tries...fails. If only he knew how much he made me laugh, maybe he'd feel better.
Boy tapes plastic soldiers to head, gets promoted to General.
This story doesn't really mean anything, but it made me laugh. For a school hat project, some dorky kid named David made a hat with plastic Army men affixed to the top. It's a ridiculous looking hat and the kid should have been subject to much ridicule and bullying to make him aware of it. Apparently the school administrators, in an attempt to prevent having to clean up nose blood from the lockers, told the kid to lose the stupid hat, but the only reason they could come up with is because the hat violated the schools no-weapons policy. I've choosen to believe this version that I've made up because the thought that school administrators can't tell the difference between a real gun and a plastic gun the size of a grain of rice just frightens me in regards to how bad the education system in this country actually is. Not because I care about the education system, but because I'd be forced to write about it.
But as if that weren't enough, this story hit home to one retired Light General Reginald Centracchio of the Rhode Island National Guard. Now the news story says the kid was awarded a medal, but upon reading the story thoroughly, and having some military experience of my own, realized that he was awarded not a medal, but a challenge coin. Now for those of you not in the know, challenge coins have plenty of history, but now are primarily used for drinking games. So this general gives this kid a toy for drinking games and some piece of paper that allows him to call himself a Brigadier General, just one rank short of the awarder, Lieutenant General Centracchio.
The ole General was quoted as saying;
"You did nothing wrong, and you did an outstanding job. We can only hope that kids of your caliber will continue to defend this country."
Clearly suffering from dementia, the General apparently thought the guns were real as well, and possibly the soldiers too, unaware that there's no way a small child could cart around a half dozen live, armed soldiers atop his impressionable head which I'm sure still has the skullcap soft-spot which would limit the load carrying capabilities substantially. I assume he promoted the kid to General because the soldiers on his head were not listening to David's orders. Now he can run off and defend the borders of Rhode Island from insurgents invading from Connecticut, without having to worry about getting any lip from his insubordinate troops.
Not to be outdone, the ACLU got on board, full tilt, organizing a massive effort from hundreds of its members, to write a single letter and send it to the school district complaining that the schools no-weapons policy is a violation of his constitutional rights to free speech.
The only thing left to do here is palm my own face.
Link to story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100618/ap_on_re_us/us_army_hat_banned
Utah on the cutting edge of 17th century technology
A firing squad? Really? As if Polygamy and the Mormon faith in general weren't R-tarded enough, now Utah displays its on the cutting edge of 17th century technology by executing Ronnie Lee Gardner, a man convicted of murdering a lawyer, by firing squad. I'm not sure exactly why lawyer murdering warrants death, as opposed to a medal, but nonetheless, Utah sure strapped some much needed pizazz to what would normally be a less than prime time TV ready form of execution, lethal injection.
Fearing that one or two bullets wouldn't be enough, Utah used five marksmen, though one was armed with the ultra deadly "blank" round, so as to make it impossible to single out who actually killed Ronnie, though all 5 of them clearly had the will, knowing there was an 80% chance that they would have a live round in the chamber. If there is a god, I'm sure he'll be completely fooled. Utah convicted one killer, and created 5 more in the process. Which of the three Kingdoms of Glory do those who ignore the sanctity of life get into?
Not that I feel sorry for him. I couldn't care less if murderers die, just like I don't care if ants die, but the principle of holding human life as sacred should trump the emotional desire to kill murderers. The death penalty makes us just as callous as the people we are punishing. Our response to their lack of respect for life, is our own lack of respect for it. It amazes me that we manage to form and maintain societies at all. We must posses a center in the brain that allows a tremendous amount of resignation for our own hypocrisy. I blame the feminine side.
Link to story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100618/ap_on_re_us/us_utah_firing_squad
Fearing that one or two bullets wouldn't be enough, Utah used five marksmen, though one was armed with the ultra deadly "blank" round, so as to make it impossible to single out who actually killed Ronnie, though all 5 of them clearly had the will, knowing there was an 80% chance that they would have a live round in the chamber. If there is a god, I'm sure he'll be completely fooled. Utah convicted one killer, and created 5 more in the process. Which of the three Kingdoms of Glory do those who ignore the sanctity of life get into?
Not that I feel sorry for him. I couldn't care less if murderers die, just like I don't care if ants die, but the principle of holding human life as sacred should trump the emotional desire to kill murderers. The death penalty makes us just as callous as the people we are punishing. Our response to their lack of respect for life, is our own lack of respect for it. It amazes me that we manage to form and maintain societies at all. We must posses a center in the brain that allows a tremendous amount of resignation for our own hypocrisy. I blame the feminine side.
Link to story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100618/ap_on_re_us/us_utah_firing_squad
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