O.J.T. *

Think back to when you have begun new jobs. How much time elapsed before you felt pressure to be "up to speed?" At relatively simple jobs, like my short-lived career at a pizza parlor during college, it might have been only a day or so. In more complicated jobs, it might have been weeks.

So, think back to the more complicated jobs. How long could you get away with blaming your poor performance on the mess that your predecessor had left? Everyone gets a little bit of slack to start off with, so the first time you said, "Yeah, I would have had that nuclear reactor all engineered right up, if it hadn’t been for Mahmoud spilling his goats’ milk all over the plans and ruining them," your colleagues might have rolled their eyes at you behind your back and kept silent. The second time you blamed something on Mahmoud, you probably got a snide comment from the boldest, least polite person at the water cooler, Duncan, who had the social skills of a lizard, but somehow, miraculously, had entrenched himself so insidiously into the fabric of the company that he seemed invulnerable to normal office politics.

That was it. Game over. It was put-up-or-shut-up time, suckuh. You knew you didn’t have the political skills, or the mean streak, necessary to defeat the wondrously mediocre, mysteriously connected Duncan. So, you went home, told your significant other what a jerk that "Funkin’ Duncan" was, and then laid out your plan for survival, so that you would never again have to resort to blaming your own ineptitude on your predecessor. Because you knew that if you did, the tide would turn with the entire staff, which had been cutting you some slack up to that point because you were the newbie. They would all think back to Duncan’s comments, and even though they would secretly like to pee in Duncan’s coffee cup while he was in the boss’s office, kissing ass, they would be persuaded that, in this one instance, Duncan was right - the newbie was hopeless. After that, your requests for assistance would be met with distracted stares and improbable excuses. Sorry, the boss has me on a deadline to draft the roster for the fantasy football pool. As someone with at least a modicum of pride, you just couldn’t go there.

So you sucked it up, played the game on the field that had been laid out by the once-great patriarch of the company, Dr. Ruud-Gut, and achieved your equilibrium at the passable level of competency that would mark your entire career at the company. You KNEW that if you had ever again said, "Well, if Mahmoud hadn’t..." you would have been blasted with a chorus of groans to rival the reaction to the announcement of Miley Cyrus as a nominee for the Academy Award for Best Song. So, you never again uttered Mahmoud’s name. You took responsibility for your own output, from there on out.

UNFORTUNATELY, Barack Obama has apparently never worked in the private sector. I can assume that, in the world of "community organizers," blaming any and all of your own shortcomings on your predecessor is considered de rigueur. Because expectations for community organizers are so low; and because, despite that, everyone you work with is busily hiding their own inability to meet expectations; no one notices that you have no clue as to how to do your job.

Most people with any self-esteem treat this sort of situation as an unfortunate, temporary chapter in their careers - a learning experience, in which the crucial lesson is "aim higher." Okay, maybe not as high as President of the United States, but higher. Maybe get a little real, private sector work experience before you decide to run for President. Or the Senate. Or county dogcatcher.

So, finally, to my point: How long should the Chief Executive of the United States of America blame all of the problems he encounters on his predecessor? Do those of you old enough to remember the awesome presidency of Jimmy Carter remember Ronald Reagan ever blaming anything on him? NO! And, trust me, there was PLE-E-E-E-ENTY to blame on the celebrated peanut farmer from Georgia. If nothing else, we can blame the now viral mispronunciation, "nucular" on him, which should be enough to earn him at least the title of the biggest a$$hole in history. But did Ronald Reagan ever mention Carter’s commodious shortcomings (yes, I chose that adjective for its obvious similarity to the word, "commode")? Never. When Ronald Reagan was at the helm of the good ship, American Dream, there were no excuses! We didn’t need no stinking excuses!

Honestly, for a guy who supposedly held the collective consciousness of the entire country in his hands until about a year ago, President Obama’s is the most tone-deaf performance I have ever heard. This is not a country of excuses. Grow a pair, Barack. (Or borrow Michelle’s). Admit that the country is nothing like the Chicago neighborhood where you cut your political teeth. Admit that you don't have a clue, and then approach the job in the way you promised you would - by enlisting the assistance of people from both sides of the aisle.

* O.J.T. - Obama Job Training

Plant a tree for future generations

Today, I planted a tree. It’s a tree that I started from the pit of a particularly tasty avocado. While a grafted tree might bear fruit in only a few years, a tree started from a pit will probably take ten years to reach maturity and bear fruit.

To plant the tree here on the island of Hawaii, I had to invest considerable time and effort. Had I planted it just anywhere on our lot, I would have only needed to excavate a hole. Because the Hawaiian Islands are volcanoes, and because Hawaii is the youngest of them, many places on the island have very little soil on the surface, and a lot of lava rock. To dig a hole and plant something here is a commitment. In this case, it was even more of a commitment, because the place I wanted to plant my avocado tree had a large stump rooted through the rock. It took me two full afternoons to extricate the stump - which was about 18" in diameter at the cut, and weighed over 200 pounds - before I could begin digging the hole for the avocado.

I suppose some might think it odd that I would invest that much time and effort into planting and nurturing a tree that will not benefit me for ten years. I am betting, however, that none of those people would be farmers. Especially farmers whose livelihood depends upon crops from trees; peach farmers, orange farmers, almond farmers, etc. Those people understand the value of investing time and effort now, for a future payoff.

My daughter is now in her second year of college. She has committed herself to four years of hard work, to earn her bachelors degree. Though that’s not quite the commitment that I have made in planting my avocado tree (yes, I am joking), it is still effort expended for future benefits. At 19, she understands that.
Why, then, do our elected representatives refuse to understand? Ideally, we would elect the best and the brightest to represent us. Unfortunately, we elect the best self-promoters and the brightest hucksters. So, when gasoline prices rose to over $4 per gallon across the U.S., and citizens, tired of being dependent upon hostile foreign countries for fuel, were pushed to the edge, they screamed, "Drill here! Drill now!"

I was not surprised to hear prominent elected officials utter, as an excuse, "It will take ten years to realize any results from domestic oil exploration." Yeah?!? So? If we don’t do anything, the ten years won’t start ticking. Let’s start the process! In ten years, we will be so proud of our foresight!

What those low-life, lying, condescending, pandering scumbags (I mean, Congressional representatives) were really saying was, "We don’t want to discover more oil under American soil, because that would not fit in with our political agenda. So we are going to appeal to the basest instincts of the lowest common denominator of our constituents - the instant gratification generation - to obscure the truth and promote our agenda."

Now that gasoline prices are back down, we, the sheeple, have relaxed about energy independence. We are being led around by our noses, by a bunch of scheming, plotting idiots. Well, let’s wake back up before things get really out of hand!

The "green" jobs that President Obama promoted are already going overseas! And we have already saddled the next several generations with phenomenal, unconscionable debt. Let’s exhibit a little bit of the foresight and sacrifice for the future that previous generations so generously employed for our benefit. Sure, put up some windmills and solar panels, but drill! Drill here, and drill now!

Why Obama Doesn’t Care About Debt - Inflation by Design?

Okay, class, how much is half of zero?

Zero. Correct.

Stick with me, here. What’s half of, say, $100,000?

$50,000. Correct.

Why is this important math, you ask? Because of what has been laughingly called "economic stimulus." If a market is flooded with dollars printed out of thin air, with no real assets to back them, we will have the same amount of goods and services as we always had, but more dollars competing for those goods and services. The natural result will be that it will take more dollars to buy the goods and services than it did before all of the dollars were printed. If a loaf of bread used to cost $3, and now it costs $6, that means your dollar is worth half of what it used to be worth. This is inflation. Under the current circumstances, I assert that it is inflation by design.

Back to our math lesson: The people Barack Obama purportedly cares most about have the least. Most have nothing. If he floods the United States with enough Monopoly money to pay for social services for the poor, they will suffer no ill consequences from inflation; in fact, they will only benefit from the free services (if you consider becoming hopelessly dependent on a welfare state a benefit).

But those of us who have struggled to accumulate anything at all, while still paying the taxes that have always disproportionately benefitted those who do not struggle to accumulate anything, will see those accumulations dwindle away. So, without officially taxing anyone, he has very effectively redistributed the wealth from those who have, to those who have not. While he would not openly admit it during the campaign, this was part of his radical plan. Joe the Plumber paid the price for revealing it to those of us who were paying attention. We will all eventually pay the price, now.

Don’t blame me, I voted for McCain/Palin.

Tax Tea Party Protest - Hilo, HI

On April 15th, 2009, a group of "right-wing extremists" assembled to protest taxes in, among many other places in the United States, Hilo, Hawaii. The turnout of heartless, racist "teabagging rednecks," (as the brilliant sociologist, Janeane Garofalo referred to us), numbered around 100, according to the Hawaii Tribune Herald. This was a far bigger turnout than one might have expected, in this liberal outpost.

Contrary to what the mainstream media would have people believe, this was definitely not an assembly of the wealthy, nor was it organized or promoted by deep-pocketed Republican political action committees. This was a true, grassroots effort, organized by one middle-class, working man, who was wearing worn blue jeans at the protest. It was attended not by a blood-thirsty, racist rabble, but by a group of polite, thoughtful, hard-working people.

Liberals nationwide seem to dismiss these protests, and demean the protesters as ignorant ideologues. One of the many liberal advocates posing as journalists, Susan Roesgen, who works for (surprise!) CNN, berated one protester on the air with the assertion that he would be getting a several hundred dollar tax credit, and his home state would be getting 50 billion dollars in "stimulus" funds, implying that to protest taxes was therefore illogical.

What such liberals fail to credit the rest of us with is the intelligence to realize that there is no free lunch. SOMEONE has to pay for all of this spending. So, as much as a tax protest, this was a spending protest. Even if our taxes do not go up this year, some of us have the foresight to know that we will all pay, eventually, and our descendants will keep paying after we are gone. In the process, we will have lost everything that has made this country the greatest on Earth.

In the short term, our hard-earned savings will be devalued through inflation. With trillions more dollars printed to compete for the same goods and services that existed before, it will naturally take more dollars to buy those same goods and services.

In the long run, the free enterprise system; the engine that has driven this country to be the strongest in the world - the land of opportunity that people throughout the world still envy - will have been replaced with a "nanny state" that incentivizes mediocrity.

We won the Cold War (Ronald Reagan, R.I.P.), and we have served as the example for failed Communist states to revitalize their societies through increasing Capitalism. How sadly ironic, that the Russians and Chinese now think we are heading in the wrong direction - toward Socialism!

President Eloquent and First Lady Elegant?

As the President and his entourage attended the G20 London Summit, the media love affair with the Obamas, and the double-standard applied to presidents based upon their political parties, evidently extended across the Atlantic Ocean.

When "W" misspoke during a reception for Queen Elizabeth, and accidentally implied that the queen had been around since 1776, he corrected himself and winked at her. The British press eviscerated him. One apparently does not wink at the queen.

On another occasion, when some Australian official put his arm around the queen, he was treated similarly. However, just this week, when Michelle Obama put her arm around the queen, it was not an issue. For crying out loud, even I knew you aren’t supposed to touch the queen or treat her familiarly! But the queen was unfazed, as were the British press.

Let's not even get into the propriety of giving the queen an Ipod loaded with, among other things, audio of his own notable speeches. "Here, Queenie, listen up. Didja know I'm a celebrity?"

During President Obama's press conference at the G20 summit (the non-teleprompter portion, during which he answered questions from the members of the press), he made the following statements (emphasis added):

"So, overall, I'm pleased with the product. And I'll leave it to others to determine whether me and my team had anything to do with that. All right?"

"And that's good. But we want to make sure that there's mechanisms in place that holds people accountable and produces results. Okay?"

"I think the patient is stabilized; there's still wounds that have to heal and there's still emergencies that could arise, but I think that you've got some pretty good care being applied."

Nary a word from the press, about how bad his grammatical errors made him sound, yet Bush was reduced to the image of a blubbering moron by the media. Granted, President Bush made a lot of gaffes, but so far, President Obama is matching his pace.

While this manifestation of the mainstream media's double standard is annoying - maddening, even - what is really scary is that this refusal to criticize their anointed leader extends beyond the superficial to really important, substantive matters. It's like boarding a bus and averting your eyes while the driver slams tequila shots and starts careening into parked cars and fire hydrants. Something's gonna die, and I am afraid it is the United States of America, as we know it.

Taxation Without Representation

Time is often referred to by scientists as The Fourth Dimension. In finance, time is an important element -- the basis for much of the value of investment. A buffer of time between the commitment of an illegal act and its detrimental effects is no protection against prosecution in our legal system. Say, for example, I were to set a bomb now that is timed to go off in seven years. When the bomb later went off, would I be any less liable, legally or morally, for the damage that bomb did? I am no lawyer (thank goodness) but I doubt the statute of limitations would apply.

So why, then, should politicians be exempt from the consequences of their actions, or from the rules that govern their actions, by virtue of time? Generations in the future, because of the astronomical spending bill that Washington thieves have just passed, are effectively being taxed beyond all reason, or previous precedent. "No taxation without representation" was the battle cry that inspired an emerging, great nation to fight for independence.

Yet the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of that once-great nation are being taxed in the future, for our comfort and convenience, now. If only all of those who will pay those taxes were here to protest the lack of representation, there might be another revolution, of a slightly different kind.

The Town is Burning, All Right

To those who read nuance in things people say, President Obama's recent use of a metaphor to sell his gigantic spending bill was a telling one. While he was on his recent Bipartisan Support of My Trillion Dollar "Stimulus" Promotion Tour, he uttered the passionate statement, "When the town is burning, everybody needs to grab a hose!"

Well, as a practical sort of fellow, I would have thought to use a different word. I would have said, "...everyone needs to grab a bucket." There is an important distinction between a hose and a bucket. Use of the word, "hose," presupposes that there is an unlimited supply of water at the other end of any hose you grab. But, to carry the metaphor further, there isn't always an unlimited supply of water, when there is a fire; or real money, when there is a financial crisis. From literal experience, I can tell you, that assumption is a naive one. If you grab a bucket, you can see just how much water you can dip into, to put out the fire. If you grab a hose and expect unlimited water to be supplied to the nozzle, you can be severely disillusioned. I am afraid President Obama is going learn this lesson the hard way -- an even harder way than I did. And in the process, we are all going to get burned -- or hosed.

Happy Friday

Top Ten Disadvantages of Being an Atheist:

10. If you want to celebrate Christmas, you have to at least tacitly acknowledge a preposterous story about how one particular woman got pregnant, a long time ago.

9. When you are angry, you tell an imaginary power to damn something indeterminate. Pretty unsatisfying.

8. When you do something wrong, or bad, you have to take the blame for it yourself, and feel bad about it for as long as you remember.

7. You have only your parents to thank for the massive talent and/or good looks that allowed you to win that boxing match, football game, or beauty pageant.

6. You'll never "speak in tongues," unless you contract malaria, or go insane.

5. You have no ostensible, inherent goodness with which to misdirect gullible people from your evil nature.

4. You have at least one seemingly impenetrable barrier between you and the Republican Party.

3. You have to live your life knowing that it will end forever, in an alarmingly short time; and yet live it well, just for the sake of being a good person.

2. There's no good place to go and get free wine and wafers.

1. You don't really have a catchy, celebratory phrase to say on Fridays.

The Best Grammar Tip Most Remedial English Failures Will Ever Get, For Free!

I am no English expert, but compared to the average American citizen, I am apparently a freakin' genius. Forget my most recent annoyance, an epidemic of verb tenses that do not match their subjects ("There's students and teachers violating this rule."). That is not quite as easy-squeezy to solve. No, I am talking about a different epidemic of grammatical idiocy:

"Happy birthday, from Tom and I."

Okay, class, can anyone tell me what is wrong with this sentence? These are the most frequently spoken grammatical errors, and the most easily fixed. Just strike the proper noun from the statement, and say it to yourself in your mind, before you utter the sentence. Would you say, "Happy birthday, from I."? NO! You would say, "Happy birthday, from me." So, say, "Happy birthday, from Tom and me." That simple.

"Her and me went to the mall." Her went to the mall?? Me went to the mall? NO! She went to the mall. I went to the mall. She and I went to the mall.

It only takes a fraction of a second to say these things to yourself before you say them out loud. So, if you don't want to sound like an idiot, do just that.

Despite the simplicity of the solution, such ridiculous grammatical errors are memorialized forever in published works; mostly in popular music. I would hereby like to offer my services to any singers or songwriters who are confused or unsure. Please, ask me, or someone more knowledgeable than I, before you write a hit song that will remain in the public domain for the foreseeable future, perpetuating ignorance.

Examples? Well, I live in Hawaii, so I will offer up an "IZ" (the renowned, beloved, deceased Hawaiian artist, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole) song as my first example. In his song, Henehene Kou 'Aka, he ends every stanza with the expression, "...for you and I." Over and over and over, he sings, "...for you and I." Oh, except for the stanza in which he switches it up and sings, "...for I and you." While most of his songs are music to my ears, that one strikes a sour note. If someone gave you a present, would you ask, "For I?"

NO! You would ask, "For me?"

I hate to dump on Jessica Simpson while she seems to be going through a rough patch, but she sang a song, Between You & I. Need I write more?

I'm sure there are more examples, but I will stop there.

It makes my brain figuratively explode

Okay, how hard is this? Especially for people who use words to make a living??? When you say, "Literally," you mean, uh......literally. That is to say, according to wordnetweb.princeton.edu you mean, "in a literal sense; literally translated." Or, according to en.wiktionary.org you mean, "In the direct, word for word sense."


So why do idiotic talking heads say stupid things like, "I literally flew across the room to change channels," or, "My brain literally exploded"? Of course, neither of those things literally happened. Yet, too many imbeciles feel the need to emphasize their stories by throwing in the adverb, "literally." The proper adverb would be, "figuratively," but of course that wouldn't emphasize anything. "My brain figuratively exploded." Nope. No emphasis. Maybe the sentence doesn't need emphasis, after all.

A Personal Glimpse into Wealth Redistribution

I ordinarily try to ignore the little social and political injustices that happen every day, because I live in Hawaii, and I am outnumbered, by at least 3-to-1. Fiscally conservative Libertarians are a mighty small, lonely contingent here. But sometimes, things are just impossible to ignore.

Today, at Safeway, there was a woman with her son in the checkout line ahead of us. First off, the boy was a little 5#!+, grabbing gum, mints, and candy, and trying to add them to the conveyor belt. His mother kept telling him, "No," but her tone must not have been very convincing. He continued his shenanigans while she continued her ineffective refusals. (Hey, come to think of it, maybe this is why some guys never learn to take "No" for an answer, ladies.) In the meantime, he was blocking our way, so we could not begin placing the contents of our basket onto the belt behind his mother's groceries. But Momma wasn't concerned about anyone else.

When he finally got out of the way, we began unloading our basket. After we had gotten too far to change our minds and change checkout lanes, we realized that there was a delay. The woman had wanted to get frozen apple juice that was on sale, but it was sold out. So, she brought another brand to the register and tried to get the sale price on it. The checker told her that she was not allowed to do that. So, the woman said she would take the frozen orange juice that was on sale, instead, and then she just stood there. The very nice checker took the hint and hurried off to take the woman's apple juice back to the freezer section and get the sale orange juice; while we, and the line that had now formed behind us, all stood there and waited. Maybe I am just too damned considerate for my own good, but I would never have tried to pull that stunt in the first place; and if I had, I would have either just bought the non-sale-priced apple juice, or gone and gotten the OJ, myself, when my stunt failed.

While the checker was away, I noticed that the woman had her items segregated into two batches on the belt. The first batch included a gallon of milk, a bag of Lima beans, two boxes of cereal, and (eventually) the two cans of frozen orange juice. Among the items in the second group were two nice bottles of wine (approximately $12 and $16), a twelve-pack of premium, micro-brew beer (which, in Hawaii, goes for about $16 a twelve-pack), and some sort of fancy chocolates.

Behind the next divider on the belt were our items, which included a small jug of on-sale Carlo Rossi Burgundy. (You can hear this coming, I am sure.) Well, of course, it turned out that the woman was buying the first batch of real food with a welfare voucher, because those were the items legally allowed. She paid cold, hard, untraceable (and most probably untaxed and unreported) cash for the second batch.

So, while we, taxpaying citizens, bought necessities and a jug of inexpensive (yet eminently drinkable) wine with our own money, Welfare Momma was buying premium micro-brew, premium wines, and fancy chocolates. This experience (pardon the expression) distills the problem of wealth redistribution down to a personal level.

Now, before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, I am not blaming anyone who is having trouble and needs a hand up - a temporary hand up, if they are able-bodied. There are lots of honest, hardworking people who have had to seek assistance, I am sure. But to all of you who think that wealth redistribution is a good thing - even the answer to all of our country's woes - let me give you a little warning. The rest of us will not put up with this B.S. much longer.

When the incentive is to work less, pay fewer taxes, and have more, then that is the result more and more people will aim for. Eventually, the lazy cheaters will outnumber the working taxpayers, and then who will pay the bills? To quote Margaret Thatcher, “The trouble with Socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” That time is soon coming, leeches.