Wool ewe be mine, Wool ewe be mine? Won't you be my sheeple?

It is a Wool Wool World.

Sheeple (a portmanteau of "sheep" and "people") is a term that highlights the herd behavior of people by likening them to sheep, a herd animal. The term is used to describe those who voluntarily acquiesce to a suggestion without critical analysis or research.  (Thanks Wikipedia)

     At least three times over the past two days I have seen where people either posted cute little posters that portrayed or mentioned several times the above term.  (Oh contrary to a lot of popular opinion, this is not a new term, but has been around since the early 80s so please quit patting yourselves on the backs for being new age or trendy when you use it.)  The people posting go on and on and on ad nauseous (Yes I realize the correct line is spelled differently, but this one better describes how these people make me feel.) about how things are so horrible because so many Sheeple refuse to see the facts of any given situation and merely follow the Pablum being fed to them by the Media and their political affiliation of choice.  Screams of righteous indignation are heard from the rooftops about how no one wants to speak the truth or hear the facts.
     Course what strikes me as absolutely fricking highlarious is that 99% of the people crowing about Sheeple and Party lies happily and blindly refute these losers by shouting out their own party lies and delusions instead.  People rail on the blind folk being misled by the "Biased and Slanted" news reports being portrayed on the Communist News Network while happily regurgitating the BullShift they hear on Faux News.  ReBoobicans condemn the blind followers of Damnocrats while blissfully eating up the fetid slop being shoveled into their own troughs by their party.
     A big thing I have noticed is this insistent need a lot of people have to prove their arguments by posting "news sites" that support their beliefs and arguments while completely ignoring the fact that the news they are posting has absolutely no actual data, verifiable information or even substantiated rumors to back it up.  Pick any subject that you want ranging from Mitt Romney being a cult member to Barack Obama being an illegal alien and Google it.  You will find literally thousands of websites that "prove" the story is true.  However, if you actually check those sites, they are 99% "Loudmouth with a Blog" type sites and 99% of those are merely recycling lies and rumors that THEY have picked up from other sites.
     Despite what so many people claim, they don't want the truth.  They want the "truth" that matches their own beliefs and attitudes.  If the actual facts  (Sad that in the modern age, Fact has indeed become a four letter word.) disagree with what they believe is correct, they ignore them OR blame the conflicts on some (Insert favorite wing here) conspiracy.  Nothing you can say or do will ever convince them otherwise.  Such is the nature of Sheeple.
     Once upon a time, I tried to show when people were being morons.  I tried to point out that their views had about as much basis in reality as Unicorns.  I kept ramming my head into Cognitive Dissonance and realized that the majority of these Wooly People wouldn't recognize facts if the facts came up, hit them on the head and stole their wallet.  I am older now and a lot more tired.  So instead of fighting anymore, I usually just sit back and read the stupidity.  After I am done, I shake my head and move on with my life.
     People believe what they want/need to believe to make them more comfortable with the world they live in.  When anything conflicts with the world picture they have painted, they mutter about sheeple and "those people."  Sadly in an Era of unlimited access to facts and data, people prefer to still listen to the loudest voices and ignore the reality around them.  Still, the very fact that so many people do this is all the proof people need that Sheeple are indeed the problem.  Happy Grazing everyone.

End of Rant

Change da name of dat tune!

So there is a lot of talk over the past few years about Welfare, Welfare Fraud, Public Assistance and the so called Nanny State. Opponents of Welfare scream that it is not the role of the Government to make sure “Freeloaders” and “Baby Machines” get money or help with medicines and such. If you are to believe many of the pundits, 80% of all the people on Government Assistance are Beer Drinking, Candy Eating Loose Morals People driving down to the 7/11 in luxury cars to cash their lavish Welfare Checks.

Surprisingly enough, this little rant isn't about Who is right and Who is wrong in the above discussion. I leave that talk to people better in the know than me or morons who simply believe what they see on Faux News or the Communist News Network. Mine is simply a ponderification on how peoples' attitudes can and often do change when the tables are turned on them.

Before the Great Recession, I am certain (with all the certainty of someone who has not bothered to actually research the numbers. Ah the joy of being a loudmouth with a blog.) that there were a pretty hefty number of people who were, if not wealthy, pretty well off who probably shared the “Down with Welfare!” mindset of many others. After all, they lived in $500K houses, drove nice cars and made better than $100K a year. Their kids went to private schools and they probably had some creepy guy in a truck doing their yard work. They were living the life of Reilly and loving it.

Then comes the Great Recession also known euphemistically as an Economic Downturn. People with Great Jobs were suddenly out of work. People with great houses suddenly were faced with foreclosure. Wealthy became not so wealthy, Comfortable became Uncomfortable and the poor got even poorer. Because of the GR, the ranks of people receiving some sort of Government Assistance rose an impossibly huge number. People who had never considered needing help suddenly found themselves applying for SNAP, Welfare and various other forms of help.

So I have to wonder how many of these people who might have been adamantly against these systems stuck to their guns? How many of them kept their opposition to Welfare when their pantries were getting empty and their stomachs were grumbling? What grand number of these suddenly impoverished people kept saying, “Heck no, Welfare is wrong?” I am betting not a grand number.

See it is a fact of human nature that something is bad or unimportant as long as it only affects “those people.” A great example of this is the Bubonic Plague. (Yes I know I know, only I could draw a comparison between Welfare and the Black Death. I am talented that way.) Once upon a time, it was believed that the Black Death was a disease that only afflicted the poor people. Those of Noble Birth believed that their superior breeding made them better than the lesser folks so they didn't have to worry about the Death coming for them. It wasn't until the Plague started romping through the castles and such of Europe that the Nobles/Royalty got worried. Course their first reaction was to ban non nobles from their midst and then their second reaction when that didn't work was to burn down villages and kill people who might be spreading the plague. It became the Nobles problem ONLY when it started affecting them.

I am not speaking out for or against Welfare. I am not saying which side is right or which side is wrong. I am just pondering how many people who have no need for support right now and who are violently against said support would change their tunes if suddenly They were a part of “those people?” I am betting the number would be very huge.

No hidden messages this time. No great meanings attempted. Not even trying to start a fight. Just some random musings on a cold Sunday by a guy with too much time on his hands.

End of Rant

One thing leads to another and another and another.

     Now keep in mind that when I posted the below article about Mike Huckabee's remarkable tirade about Damnocrat VS Reboobican views and attitudes on women, I wasn't attempting to Tate on whether Boobs are actually waging a war on women or if Damns were distorting what the Boobs were saying to make them look bad.  I wasn't attempting some clever commentary on Health Care VS Birth Control or anything in depth.  My posting was purely about using words properly and making sure what you say is what you mean to say because "anything you say can and will be used against you."  My posting was purely on language and its proper use, not on the actual content or intent of the person speaking. 

As it so often does, my rather innocent (snigger) post prompted an incredibly long and interesting back and forth.  I'd post it in its entirety, but the website has storage limits.  Needless to say that the conversation bounced around multiple subjects and varying viewpoints before I finally bailed to do actual real work.  One of my dear friends of many many years and a regular Tater on these things made several insightful (Inciteful?) comments before leaving the thread for awhile.  She later posted the piece below the article link that I found incredibly intelligent and wise.  So I leave you with the link that started it all and MA's wise words.

The shout heard round the Interwebz. 

"The Definition of Respect

January 24, 2014 at 11:19am

Recent discussions about Mike Huckabee’s comments on how Democrats are disrespectful towards women have gotten me thinking.
      To quote Cool Hand Luke, what we have here is a failure to communicate. During discussions about the Huckabee matter, one “friend of a friend” defended Huckabee as being correct – that Democrats were disrespectful towards women. I was stunned. How could any thinking human being believe that Democrats are more disrespectful towards women than Republicans? It was like we were in a different universe, or speaking a different language. How do you respond to that?
      So I went for a walk. (I do my best thinking while walking.) And it occurred to me that we are speaking a different language.
      The problem is differing definitions of "respect". When Republicans use the word (as it pertains to women, anyway), they mean treating us poor, stupid, fragile vessels as if our heads would explode if we were forced to make hard decisions or be exposed to "ugly" things (like sex, for instance). This requires a big strong man (or government) to take our poor little selves in hand and protect us from the big baddies.
      It's the old "whore-Madonna" thing. There are only two choices. If we're not a Madonna, we must be whores. There is no in between. While the Democrats are far from perfect, they do seem to think that we're adult human beings who can make our own decisions without the help of a man or a politician.
      Someone who has the definition of respect that I described above (like Huckabee appears to) would think it's disrespectful to say that women need birth because it implies (gasp!) that women enjoy sex. Since madonnas don't enjoy sex, a woman who enjoys MUST be a whore. Therefore, Democrats are calling women "whores" and that's disrespectful. I can see his logic. I don't agree with it, but there is a logic chain involved.
      So when you’re having these discussion, remember to define your terms. If you’re not speaking the same language, you’ll never get anywhere."

End of Rant

Random Puzzlements and Confuzzlements, not to be taken too seriously.

So anyone that has known me for more than a few seconds knows I am prone to odd thoughts about even odder subjects and usually with very little if any prompting. My mind tends to ramble off without telling me and then come stumbling back a few hours later smelling of donuts and hot cocoa with a “You won't believe the Shift I have been thinking!” look on its nonexistent face. I have learned to take these times of confuzzlement and insanity with all of the grace of a grumpy hippo and moved on with my life. The following thoughts struck me about a day or so ago and I decided to share them with my readers since you all seem to really enjoy it when I lose my mind. The words and ideas portrayed are not a direct commentary on anyone, anything or any place even though I am sure some of you may take them that way.

Okay so what prompted this odd chain of thought was a “conversation” I read on a friend's Facebook page where they were talking about some of the “self drive” vehicle systems being tested in various places where the car is controlled from a computer that regulates speed, lane change etc while it is guided to your destination. One commentator made the suggestion that the speed regulating system could be installed in future vehicles to prevent people from speeding.

Now overlooking the enormous technical difficulties of the “Self Drive” systems are still facing and the incredible programming issues involved in making sure the auto drive functions could deal with problems such as accidents and weather conditions, the idea of an outside computer system keeping cars within the federally mandated speed limits seems like a good idea. I mean, how many times have you been buzzed by someone doing 85 in a 65 zone? People drive like bats out of heck and most really don't seem to care about other people on the road.

However, that wasn't what prompted my thoughts. What prompted it all was one person's reaction of “They can never do with that. That'd be infringing on my rights!” Huh, what right is that? The “right” to break the law just because you are in a hurry? The “right” to endanger the lives of others just because you don't feel like doing the speed limit? Cause that is the only “right” speed regulators would be breaking.

Course Americans love making arguments like this. We have heard similar ones where Speed Camera and Red Light Cameras are involved. People get honked off when they get a letter with a ticket and a picture showing them breaking the warp barrier or when they failed to time that yellow light just right and got caught halfway under the Red Light.

The latter one is the one that amuses me the most because people cry that the lights were rigged to change faster so they were caught unfairly. This argument completely ignores the fact that the yellow caution light was intended to give you warning that the light is about to change so that you can stop in time, Not so that you can floor the gas to try and get under the light before it changes.

The simple fact is that People seem to think that certain laws and such don't apply to them or that they aren't absolute. They whine that they got a speeding ticket even though they weren't really speeding because everyone knows that you can go 5-10 miles over the speed limit before you are really breaking the law. They see anything (Red Light Cameras, Speed limiters etc) that keeps them from breaking the law as an infringement on their rights. When they are caught, it is everything else at fault but never them. Well, I got news for you. If you get a ticket for doing 57 MPH in a 55 MPH zone, you broke the law and you deserve it. If you get a picture because you ran a red light in the middle of the night and a camera caught you, then you deserved it. Your rights have not been infringed upon in any way. You broke the law and you were punished.

End of Rant

Change We Can Make Believe In!

http://news.yahoo.com/little-changed-gop-39-planned-reboot-080653212--election.html 

     Okay, now I could go on and on about the GOP and their laughable attempts to "reboot" themselves (and gods know I often do).  I do find it absolutely freaking highlarious that the way the GOP wants to salvage their badly stained reputation is to essentially do a complete 180 of what they have preached about for decades so that they can attract more voters.  It is like they are surrendering their most fundamental beliefs so that they can win elections.  Wait that would make them Politicians right?

     Per examples, the GOP is against extensive Immigration Reform which not only peeves off illegal immigrants but also legal immigrants who see this as an attack on all Immigrants.  So their attempts to reach out to Immigrants is doomed to failure Unless they embrace some form of Immigration Reform.  

     The GOP wishes to lower spending on things such as SNAP and WIC which helps feed families and children who cannot necessarily afford  to feed themselves.  This is seen as an Attack on the Poor and Lower Class.  However with a growing Lower and Lower Middle Class population in America, they have to reach out to this population that they have inadvertently alienated.

     The GOP as a whole opposes Same Sex Marriage and LGBT rights, but this is an ever growing segment of the population and, unlike so many other groups, is highly energetic and motivated when it comes to campaigning since they see it as a Fundamental Rights Issue.   So to reach out to this very powerful group, the GOP is going to have to compromise on more of their beliefs.

     It is really a nasty death spiral and one I see no real victory for the GOP.  Historically the GOP has been made up of White folks.  In the bad old days before others enjoyed the same rights and privileges (You know, like voting?) and it seemed like the majority of the country shared their somewhat limited and White Male-centric POV, they didn't have to worry about challenges to their way of life.

     Now a days, the White Euro-style percentages that usually fed their successes are shrinking.  Minority races are an ever growing force who are necessarily voting in their own interests.  Suddenly (Okay not so suddenly cause this has been building for years), people are being faced with the idea that Immigrants, the Poor and Special Interests Groups will start doing what everyone else has been doing for decades.  Instead of voting for what is best for the White Christian "Majority," they'll vote for what they think is best for their own people.  

     Huh, I think somewhere along the line, I completely lost track of the intent of this blog so I will just leave all of you with this absolutely highlarious comment from the comments section after the article.

End of Rant

"Goof-Off Party addresses the most critical problems facing the country:
1. Rich people don't have enough money
2. Poor people have too much access to health care
3. It's too easy for certain people to vote
4. If gays went to church on Sunday they wouldn't be gay
5. Legalized pot means that the prison industry loses longstanding customers
6. With Afghanistan winding down we’re dangerously close to not having a war
7. The problem with Food Stamps is that without them WalMart would have to pay a living wage
8. If fetuses had guns they wouldn’t be aborted
9. NRA gun lobby needs something to sell the public other than fear. How about this sound bite?: "NRA defends the right of every child in America to grow up safe + protected from gun violence." Nah..., that won't work, let's stick with preventing imagined tyranny.
10. With global temperatures rising, Artic ice melting, and "storms of the century" occurring every few months, how do we continue to convince our constituents that climate change science is inaccurate so that oil interests fund our re-election campaigns?
11. Too many child-bearers in the Senate at historical high of 20% women... why can't they just stay at home, cook/clean/suck, and not vote? Score: 16 DEM and 4 GOP women Senators
12. Women contribute to their own raping... otherwise, their body would "just shut it down"...ya know, sperm can do a U-turn...... sluts on free contraceptives.
13. Schools must educate our children that Adam + Eve rode a dinosaur to church
14. Gravity is caused by the devil trying to suck us all into hell"

"DID NOT! DID TOO!" or Clean up on Aisle Oh Crap!

(As a side note before we start the main rant, let me state that I have officially given up arguing about Climate Change as a subject for Let. People ranting “See see it was all lies” just because it happens to get cold. Others claiming that the “Polar Vortex” is something made up by Climate Changers when the term and the effect have been in various text books and research tomes since the 1960s at least. People denying scientific evidence produced that supports Climate Change because it is being influenced by people out to make a buck or three while clinging to research that supports their dementia while ignoring the undeniable fact that 90% of their so called facts are bought and paid for by Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Industry. It is the best example of Cognitive Dissonance that I have ever seen and Brother, I have seen some beauts in my 50 years. So rail on and keep posting silly sound bites from Faux News or Good Old Rush Limbaugh. Keep getting your facts from “experts” like Donald Trump. I will snigger at you from not so behind your back and move on with my life. Okay now that we have that out of the way, onward and downward in a death dealing spiral!)

So ad oftentimes happens, there ensued on Facebook the past two days a rather lively that was prompted by this link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/01/07/260438987/50-years-after-landmark-warning-8-million-fewer-smoking-deaths? Like it often does, the talk spread widely out from the original subject and somehow meandered its way over the subject of Climate Change and Pollution. One Friend who we lovingly call Mac©T posted this comment.

“i don't think that we are "Causing" climate change, but I do think that we are playing a big part in it. We pump gazillions of tons of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the air every year and cut down thousands of acres of trees that would help filter it. People can argue that volcanoes pump out more and stuff like that but it doesn't matter if other things do More because we still do a lot. We don't want to take the blame for the damage we are doing so we point out fingers to other things to try and disguise the poop we are putting out. or even worse, we use the things other people are doing to justify us not doing anything. "China pumps out more poisons then we do so why should we have to do anything?" That is a dumb argument because even if we are number 10, we are still poisoning our world. We need to stop making excuses and start fixing things because we only have one planet right now and we have nowhere to go when it is a toilet. “

You can well see why we consider her a very clever and wise young woman who always livens up any thread she happens to participate in. Another friend of mine who we label as TC came back with his own rebuttal to Ma©T's statement.

“Nothing wrong with being responsible, but here in the US, we are only a few hundred million. There's another 5 or 6 billion folks on this world, most of which are doing little to nothing about their own carbon footprint. Meanwhile, ours gets smaller just about every year. Every year, we use less gas and less power as a nation, and less resources on ourselves, while expanding more resources toward feeding more people worldwide. I got no problem with responsibility, but the majority are not being held accountable. I do have a problem with that. If we are going down this road globally, we all need to go the same way, not just a few of us carrying the rest. All or nothing. Parity. I see precious little of that.
As to the whole global warming thing, Ma©T, we know for certain a few things. We know our planet has hot and cold cycles, and has for millions of years. There's plenty of geologic evidence of that. Can we make it worse? Good question. I'm suspicious when the folks who came up with the theory in the first place, folks way more knowledgeable than me, say that the whole thing's been blown out of proportion. I'm even more suspicious when the government tries to make money off it, and seize more power because of it.
Can we make a difference? IMHO, only if the other 70% of the planet does the same things we are doing. Otherwise, it's a wasted effort. Hopefully, I'm wrong. “

(Before I continue, let me state that I love TC like a brother and think he is a highly intelligent person so I am not mocking him in anyway. Well maybe just a little because he still has an incredible head of hair and I have long since lost the battle of the bald but that is just being petty.)

TC's comment, in a nutshell (and in many cases I do mean Nut.) is precisely what is wrong with our attitude about cleaning up our messes. The attitude towards cleaning up the air and the land/water is downright pre-school in mentality. It is overwhelmingly this, “Well China and India aren't doing enough to clean up the world so we shouldn't do it either.” Basically, the mindset is that if other developing nations are doing their utmost to curb pollution levels, then the US should get a free pass too. I mean, as TC points out there are only a few hundred million of us so we don't make much of a difference.

Course the problem with this mentality is that the US isn't alone. A lot of other countries are also doing everything they can to curb pollution. Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany are just a few of the nations working on cleaning up their acts. Efforts are being made world wide to finally stop treating our world like a toilet.

People who are against doing more to help the world clean up are like a small child who is playing in a pool with other kids. He sees little China taking a dump in the pool and little India taking a dump in the pool and feels satisfaction because the dump he just took in the pool is much smaller. Never mind that he is still crapping in the pool.

Every single bit of crap we pump into our environment does damage to it. Every bit of CO2 we pump into the air hurts us. Every bit of trash we dump into our oceans hurts us. Maybe we can't stop other countries from crapping in the pool, we can can darned well make sure we stop doing it. TC is right in that we are polluting far less today then we were even 20 years ago. Our air is cleaner and so is our water. This happened because people struggled for years to stop chemical waste from being pumped into our rivers by factories and massive amounts of Carbon Monoxide, CO2 and Sulfur from being pumped into the air. It happened because emission controls were placed on fuels to make polluters like old style Diesel cleaner. Our country is cleaner because a small group of people fought against the tide and made change happen.

We still have a long way to go. There are massive areas in our oceans and seas where absolutely no life exists because run off from massive industrial style farms have pump tons of herbicides and insecticides into the rivers which flowed to the sea. These Hypoxic areas can stretch 1000s of miles and within those zones no life exists. There are islands in the world that are literally covered by metric tons of trash washed there by currents after countries like the US dumped the garbage into the waters. There are massive zones of ocean and sea where garbage floats for hundreds of miles. So we still have a lot of work to do.

Talking about space travel or even dimensional doors is fine, but D-Doors are still the work of Science Fantasy and true space travel where you can move large numbers of people is still a long way in the future. If we don't keep working at cleaning up the only planet we currently have access to, then we won't be around when these things happen.

End of Rant

Cheese it! Wait no you can't

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kraft-faces-a-cheesy-meltdown-with-velveeta-shortage/

 

SAY IT AIN'T SO, MYRTLE!

Whelp folks, that's it. The party is quite literally over so everyone should just pack up and head home. Put down your corn chips and tater chips cause there ain't no use in having them in your hand any more. The urge to double dip will go unfulfilled and the caution against dripping hot, gooey cheese substitute onto your chin is no longer needed. In short, it is the end of the world as we know it. Get ready for the imminent Zombie Alpaca-Lips to sweep across the world.

Now, it bad enough that scientists are predicting a shortage of coffee beans in the years to come and even badder enough that they are also predicting a similar shortage of cocoa beans. (Recently gave up coffee and I am a Diabetic so chocolate doesn't have nearly the hold on me that it used to.) Now, the maker of all things yummy and also coincidentally all things bad for you, Kraft has announced that there may be a potential shortage of the one food...ish product that helps bind together various cultures and disparate believes. (You know like Football V Baseball fans, Soccer V Hockey Fans etc) into one unified, creamy melty group. Velveeta may soon be hard to come by just as the official Cheesy Goodness Season starts.

Well they said Merrica is the great melting pot.

Yes, yes I hear all of you running around screaming like little girls who's Teddy Bear was set fire by your evil half brother. I understand your fears. I mean how can we possibly live without easy access to that tummy filling, artery clogging pseudo cheese product which has become a staple of our sports induced diet? The food byproduct that has filled more emergency rooms than Al Capone and Genghis Khan put together. (Wait did they have emergency rooms back then?) Life without this greasy, gooey goodness just doesn't seem worth living.

But take heart, Cheese Believers! There is some suspicions that perhaps this is simply some EVIL plot by Kraft to make people think there is a shortage of this much needed food stuff to increase their sales during this peak time of Velveeta Usage or as I like to cal it Velveetage. The mind boggles over the idea that any group could be so harsh and so cruel as to make the High Cholesterol Crowd think that they might be unable to get their fix. If such a thing is true it could rival the dreaded Nutella Outtage in 1985 where literally hundreds of adults were driven insane when their kids no longer got the 35 grams of processed sugar they so desperately needed for breakfast.

Well, have no fear. We here at SIOTBAA Inc have set our best reporters investigating this cover up. Reporters Woodshed and Beerstein (Its a historical joke, look it up.) aided by my crack photographer Ben the Hog Baker will do a full investigation and find out the truth behind this terrifying news story. We will bring you further results as we get them. (Or until I make something completely up that sounds funny.) Stay tuned!

End of Rant

This one is prolly going to get me yelled at. Meh, oh well.

So many of these blogs are done with the express intent of peeving people off or making people go WTF is this man going on and on about. I tend to try to look at things that I think are silly, crazy or downright stupid and try to make people understand exactly how messed up things can be. I am rarely kind or gentle in my words so people tend to get annoyed if not downright angry with me. I make no apologies for this and will continue to do so in the future as I see fit. You don't name a blog, Sometimes Its Okay To Be An Ass with the goal of making sunshine and daisies.

Now having said that, what I am about to put in front of you all is not really intended to make you angry or mock other people. In no way am I expressing disdain for the Unemployed or those who have the misfortune to be on any sort of public assistance. This is just a blog to cover one of the many odd thoughts that often occur to me. Please do not take insult because, in the case anyway, no insult was meant.

Usually I preface these rants with “Well I just read an article about...” after which I go on (And on and on and on...) about how stupid the article was or about the sheer idiocy shown in the comments section. Gods I could do entire books on the ignorant comments shown after so many articles, but that is another story. This time, I was innocently fixing dinner for my wife and I (Pancake battered chicken, mixed veggies and corn bread for the foodies out there.) when a thought struck me. I struck it back and a lively fight ensued. Once we had exhausted each other, I decided to put the thoughts down for your perusal.

You hear a lot these days about Welfare and the So-Called Nanny State wherein loads and loads of people are receiving some form of assistance from the US Government (SNAP, WIC etc). The talks range from “Leeches sucking off the Government Teat” to “People who are down on their luck who just need a hand.” Please feel free to pick the one that best suits your temperament and continue the blog. Ready? Okay, on we go!

So my mind quickly snagged on this string of thought and ran with it like a kitten on steroids. (Wow now there is a disturbing image.) It asked in all innocence, “Well, what about extended unemployment benefits?” To which I answered “What the what?” However, after some long minutes of standing in the kitchen with drool hanging from my mouth, I actually stopped and pondered what the idea might actually mean.

During the Great Recession, millions upon millions of people lost their jobs due the massive economic downturn. During this period, these millions applied for Unemployment benefits as was their due. As time passed some were lucky enough to find new jobs and get off the Unemployment line and back to work. Many more remain to this day unable to find gainful unemployment. According to some figures, hundreds of thousands if not millions of people have simply given up looking for jobs that simply aren't there.

Since the very beginning, long after Standard Unemployment Benefits would have been exhausted, the Government has voted time and again to keep extending the benefits to the unemployed so that they can keep paying their bills and feeding their families. This is all well and good and I fully support it, but the question has to be asked, “How long do we keep doing it?”

One of the main, if somewhat inaccurate, arguments people make against Welfare is that it encourages people who are on it to simply allow the Government to take care of them. After all, if there is no real incentive to find work and earn your own money, then why do it. Why not keep sucking on that teat for all time? I mean hey when you are living high on the hog on SNAP and WIC (Insert sarcasm font here.) why actually work for a living? Old Uncle Sam will take care of you, right?

Well, if you can think that about Welfare, then how far do we go for the Unemployed? I mean, how long do we as a people and a Government keep handing out money to people just to keep them going? Especially given the huge number of people who have stopped looking for work at all, aren't we in danger of becoming a Nanny State for them too? Anti-Welfare Advocates argue that “Hey yeah it sucks that a family of four can't afford to feed themselves, but why should the government have to do it? Let the local charities take care of them!” (As a side note here, it should be noted that, despite what a lot of people believe, not every every Welfare recipient is a Crack Head with 14 children. A depressingly large number of Government Assistance recipients are actively serving in our Nation's Armed Forces.)

Unemployment benefits for those who lost their jobs during the GR have long since been exhausted. The US Government has kept funding flowing to the jobless from other sources for years. So how long do we keep giving them money? How long before the “Nanny State” grows and becomes permanent for those who cannot find work? As usual, I have no real answers and only have questions which have no real answers.

End of Rant

Labels are our friends

People are always ragging on boxes and such that have huge blatant labels that strike anyone who has even an ounce of common sense as completely obvious and even a bit stupid. Coffee cups labeled “Warning: Contents may be hot” and plastic bags with “Warning: Bag is not a toy” stenciled on it are just a few examples of this sort of thing. Most people look at these carefully worded warnings and go, “Well Duh!” and move on with their lives while pondering why some person/company took the time and money to put the words there in the first place.

Now everyone has heard the much repeated (Usually highly inaccurately) story of the little old lady who made millions because she “didn't know her coffee was hot.” (This story has reached the pinnacle of urban legend and has been somewhat distorted with the telling and retelling so I would advise people actually look up the exact facts of the story before passing judgment.) People hear these stories about how people who seem to lack any form of common sense have done stupid things which then prompted new labeling. They wonder if there are people out there who really are that dense.

I have never even once pondered the base stupidity of the human animal because I have seen so many shining examples of it in my 50 or so years (But enough about my family.) that stick with me to this day. During my brief stint working at a Harry and David Kiosk during the Xmas Holidays, I was served a very healthy helping of just how unobservant and stupid people can be.

I was in charge of receiving shipments, doing inventory and organizing the stock room so that the other employees could readily access the necessary stock when needed. One of these duties included unloading the delivery trucks, breaking down the pallets of product and transferring it to the stock room. One early and very cold morning, I was breaking down a pallet and on the very bottom of the massive pallet filled with pears, apples and other heavy objects was three or four layers of boxes labeled thus:

Wats it say, huh huh?!

(Side note: The little white specks are snow. Told you it was cold out there.)

Now please note two obvious labels. One states that the contents are glass and fragile. The other indicates the product cases should be stacked a specific way. Big bold black print that is kind of hard to miss right? Well, guess what? Not only were these fragile containers packed at the very bottom of a heavy pallet of goods, but every single one of them (50+ boxes) were stacked with the “This side up” label on the bottom. Yeah, you heard me all 50 boxes were stacked exactly opposite of how they were supposed to be.

So why do we need big ugly labels stating directions that most of us find stupid or at least silly? It is certainly not to stop people from doing stupid stuff because my above example proves that doesn't work. Stupid, unobservant people will keep doing the same stupid shift every time no matter how many times they are reminded not to. To quote a great philosopher, “You can't fix stupid.” No the labels aren't to help and protect the stupid. Instead they are there to protect the rest of us when stupid people do stupid stuff and wind up getting hurt or causing mass destruction.

In today's Lawsuit happy environment where people sue at the drop of a hat, companies are spending billions of dollars just to keep the stupid from coming back to bite them in the butt. So the next time someone suffocates their goldfish because they thought a plastic bag was a toy, the company that made the bag can say, “Whups, you can't sue us because we said on the bag that it wasn't a toy.” To people with any sort of sense, these steps seem silly, but as my Daddy always said, “Common sense Isn't.” (for those who have trouble following Redneck, add another “common” to the end of that sentence for it to make sense.)

So the next time you see a label on your favorite food or beverage that makes you shake your head in shame, take heart in the fact that somewhere out there someone read that same label about not drinking gasoline and took a swig anyways. Who knows, it might make you feel better about yourself.

End of Rant