No more "carnivals"

I have a mission now. Probably won't be able to hang the "Mission Accomplished" sign anytime soon, since I let the world of corporate blogging steal too long a march on me, but this mission has one goal:

Promote individualism in blogging.

Concomitantly, I will also work the reverse:

Fight corporate blogging.

Bear with me here.

The "blogosphere" works as the world's best information source because it is made up of millions of individuals, blogging individually. When bloggers assemble their work onto corporate blogging sites, for whatever reason, blogging suffers as the last resort of individual expression (and it really is, admit it).

I watched as individuals invited and searched out contributors to their blogs, and made up collective posts from these other bloggers, and gave those posts a generic nickname. Those posts became known as "carnivals". I don't object to them. I began to write one myself, right here, and cross-posted it on my main blog. "Carnivals" are a good way to get a lot of information in one place.

Then, along comes a blogger, naming himself Conservative Cat, who wants all the "carnivals" to be linked through his site. Offers "convenience", says the dude. It does, really. If you like the "carnival" format, he links to many of them, so all you have to have is his one URL, and you can find most of the "carnivals".

Most of them, not all of them. You won't find Carnival of The Curmudgeons there, because I refused to post it there. My "Carnival" was a vehicle for accumulating fine writing written by, or in the style of, Curmudgeons. It took me about 3-4 hours a week to compile, but I probably won't compile another, because the very idea of "carnivals" has been hijacked by Conservative Cat, who has a big enough ego to want the entire genre of writing to go through his site.

I was wrong to put the title of "Carnival" on my posts, because I didn't invent the term, and failed to research who did and then give proper due. I apologize for that.

Conservative Cat owes us an apology, too, unless HE INVENTED the term "Carnival" (a claim he has never made).

He has no moral claim for what he wants to do, and lacking such a claim, is just another corporate collectivist, improving his own fortunes by dint of the creative work of others, without offering adequate recompense.

If any of you "carnival" writers or even "carnival" readers come across this post, you might be as surprised at it as are the two good bloggers commenting in the last post.

If those two guys knew me AND my philosophy, they wouldn't be surprised.

There are two forces at work to obliterate individualism, which is the source of creativity. Those forces are the forces of collectivist government and collectivist corporate greed. Most consider corporate greed to be a necessary evil of capitalism, but that is the one point I disagree with Ayn Rand on. She writes of individualist giants in the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, but she fails to condemn the force that works hardest against individual creativity, corporate collectivism.

Many corporate leaders have tried to harness individual creativity to pull corporate wagons, and some have done better than others, but none have succeeded. None of the creative individuals in those corporations will tell you that they are as satisfied working for the corporation as they are when they are working for themselves.

Support of collectivism is why we are taxed. Support of collectivism should NEVER be the reason why we write creatively.

"Carnival" renamed

Since a wannabe corporate meglo has successfully seized most of the "Carnivals" (I didn't think that they were his to seize, so he's a pirate), I will be renaming "Carnival of the Curnudgeons" to something else.

There will be rant up shortly about these meglos and their insatiable urges to control everything.

Hoseheads.

Never surrender!

By now, you've guessed...

...that I'm not going to write a Carnival this week.

Apologies to the three people out there who actually read it. You now have an extra 15 or 20 minutes added to your week, so do something with the time.

Come back next week, when maybe the raging gout has subsided and I feel more in the mood to do something but lay in bed with my foot in the air on 3 pillows, and there might be a Carnival here.

Bleeeaaah!

Relative Attitude Check

Sir, my MOTHER reports that my attitude sucks...

(and she's been dead for 16 years).

Attitude Re-check

Checking, checking....

Sir, I found an attitude, but the report is still negative...

MY ATTITUDE SUCKS

Attitude check

Checking, checking, check negative, no attitude found.

Carnival of the Curmudgeons - Perfect Harmony

Perfect harmony.

Yep, I feel perfectly in tune with the curmudgeon world. I got in some good pistol practice this week, and some coaching for an old, dear friend who was starting to lose her pistol skills (in her yute, she was a steely-eyed killa). Then I picked up my B.A.G. Day purchase, a North American Arms Guardian in the wildcat-pistol caliber .32NAA. Then all my new killa carry ammo arrived, and after cleaning said carry guns, I am now ready for mortal combat with the BEST in high-velocity pistol ammo, Cor-Bon JHPs in 4 different calibers.

There's nothing like being well-armed to give a curmudgeon the desire to tell EVERYONE to Piss Up a Rope.

So yesterday I open my mailbox, and there's an envelope in there that has the "smell" of a solicitation, but it is marked official government business. Doesn't add up, since it has a commercial postage frank on it:



So, before opening the letter, I scan both sides, then open it and scan the contents. It is a solicitation, obviously designed to make a dumber version of retired military personnel think that the Federal Government now has low-cost nursing-home insurance. The solicitation refers to "The Federal Insurance" several times.

Down at the bottom is the logo of the company that is really behind the solicitation, MetLife.

I have a curmudgeonly question here: how the hell does the Feddle Gummint think it can hold our respect if it allows some sleazy (yep, SLEAZY, even if they bought rights to the image of Snoopy) insurance scammers to impersonate the gummint? Does anyone in the government care that the entire operation has been sold to fraud artists and scammers?

I think I am going to call up the Attorney General for this Judicial District and see if she wants to prosecute Met Life. I'll promise to be a star witness, having lots of experience testifying in Federal Court, and all the time in the world to get on the train and go downtown each morning of the trial. I may also try to get one of the local TV stations involved. One of them, KATU-TV2, the local ABC affilliate, prides itself on having a scammer-killer reporter, Ed Teachout, who makes a very good living exposing scams to the viewers (just stopped blogging and sent him an email).

As we get into old age, we curmudgeons have a lot more on our plate. Some of us lose mobility due to various diseases (gout, arthritis). Some of us lose cognitive ability due to losing too many brain cells (to Scotch?). ALL OF US develop a healthy skepticism of the younger world around us, their fads and their wastes of their precious time, which we can all see is going to be a problem for them, but they can't see it.

Why do individuals and corporate scammers take us for fools? Most of us have been through at least one war, either in combat or waiting for someone near and dear who was. Most of us have had children, and the children have given us grandchildren. We've been there, done that, seen it all. Why do these scammers take us all for fools?

A.A.R.P. is really the worst offender. A corporation set up for the sole purpose to sell older folk insurance of dubious value, it had to adopt a "political wing" when it got a little too obvious that it really wasn't the "Grey Panther" it made itself out to be. Of course, it adopted a strong liberal slant in it's political machine, dispite the fact that most of it's members are conservative. That came to a head last Presidential election when AARP claimed to be able to deliver beaucoup votes for John Kerry, and certain conservative dissidents within the membership pointed out that Kerry was unlikely to get 40% of the AARP membership. The dissidents were correct, and the geezers voted for Bush by a large margin.

Then there are the phone solicitations, but I have a handle on them now with the "gizmo". The Federal (and State) "Do not Call" lists have proven to be a failure, as there is no penalty consistently applied for violations. My gizmo never fails, and I bet some boiler rooms have spent repair money on their phone equipment because of it. You see, I have programmed it to have the "unknown caller from unknown number" calls dropped. It just drops the calls. The phone doesn't even ring, and to the boiler-room scammer, it seems as if his phone has gone dead. Other scammers calling from identifiable numbers get dropped into my "dumpster" list, and when they call back, they get the same blanking treatment. Since only solicitors use outward-WATS, I have also programmed all incoming WATS (800 #s) calls into the dumpster. Best $100 I ever spent.

If only I could get the trash company to agree to pick up recycling from the community mail boxes across the street, I wouldn't even have to bring the junk mail in anymore. Why doesn't the Post Office have some sort of an "opt-out" of solicitation mail like you (supposedly) can get for phone solicitations? They could even charge for it. I would pay the Post Office a monthly fee to ditch all solicitation mail, in fact, all mail that is not sent first class. The USPS is working on computer sorting of mail, and when they get it up and running, it should be programmable to do this. I'll even let the USPS keep the bux for the recycled paper.

Old age and scam attempts. They go together. They wouldn't if we each picked out a scammer and made a project out of dogging his scumbag ass severely. Curmudgeon Power! Yeah!

On to the fine selection of curmudgeonly goodness this week.

Let's start with Grouchy Old Cripple in Atlanta, one of the "regulars" (actually, he's quite irregular, that Denny). Here's his take on Tax Time. Last couple of weeks, I pretty much beat the Immigration issue down, but Denny never took a break. Here's his take this week.

Then, the Acidman points out the folly of Democrats trying to upbraid the GOP for party corruption. Something about if you live in a glass house, you shouldn't throw stones. A-man also does a book report on State of Fear by Michael Crichton, a new book that bemoans the loss of scientific integrity to political expediency.

PawPaw had a look at a passle of reports on WMDs found in Iraq, and concludes that there is no basis for saying we haven't found any, since the reports all detail such weapons. PawPaw also has a delightful story of bamboozling a crook into ratting out a burglary ring.

Oops, I found another Immigration post I just HAVE to link, from none other than the Chief Curmudgeon of Plano, TX, Kim DuToit. Kim also senses the "great disturbance in the force" that conservative are expressing over this vital issue. Listen up, POTUS Bush: your Immigration stance is about to lose the next two elections for your party, and history WILL stick that LOSER label on you because of it. Be my guest, have a flip-flop, we'll forgive you, just as all those (D)onks forgave John Kerry all HIS flip-flops.

Mr. Completely knows that curmudgeonly trait of taking a saber to a hot-air balloon party. Here he tells of a fancy-schmancy IT "focus group" and how he participated in it.

For those who think I don't put enough in from curmudgeonettes, here's Hostagirl, with an intriguing story of "invasion" (has nothing to do with Immigration however).

Also on the distaff side, here's Mel, Anarchangel's better half with another of her takes on fashion faux-pas.

And fellow NorthWest grump Analog Kid, a curmudgeon in training, has a take on public reaction to the Immigration protests.

Last but not least, your grumpy Rivrdog has had a few rants this week. Here's a selection:

• On the "random", but strangely concerted call by various retired (Clintonian) Generals for Donald Rumsfeld's scalp.
• On the hammer-murders in Pennsylvania.
• How to end the Invasion from Mexico by having the invaders VOLUNTARILY return.

No joke this week. Nothing funny happened.

Enjoy your Easter weekend. Wait, one final rant: How about the nerve of the print media, newspaper division: for one week, prior to Easter, they give some ink to various things Christian. for 51 weeks, they indulge in the most anti-Christian tripe imaginable, but they trumpet Christianity for one week, so they want us to think they are Christian. What a hoot! for that, they are my Peeve Of The Week.

Grumble on!

Newspapers, here's a dead fish. You know what to do with it. Get busy.

Curmudgeon's Syndrome

You KNOW you are a curmudgeon if you have this syndrome:

A.A.A.D. DISORDER

I'm sure some of you can relate, and those that can't, well, this might
explain why we are the way we are. Recently, I was diagnosed with A. A. A. D.
- Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.

This is how it manifests:

I decide to wash my car.

As I start toward the garage, I notice that there is mail on
the hall table.

I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.

I lay my car keys down on the table, put the junk mail in the
trash can under the table, and notice that the trash can is
full.

So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out
the trash first.

But then I think, since I'm going to be near the mailbox when I
take out the trash anyway, I may as well pay the bills first.

I take my checkbook off the table, and see that there is only
one check left

My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go to my desk
where I find the can of Coke that I had been drinking.

I'm going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the
Coke aside so that I don't accidentally knock it over


I see that the Coke is getting warm, and I decide I should put
it in the refrigerator to keep it cold.

As I head toward the kitchen with the coke a vase of flowers on
the counter catches my eye--they need to be watered.

I set the Coke down on the counter, and I discover my reading
glasses that I've been searching for all morning.


I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I'm going
to water the flowers.

I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container
with water and suddenly I spot the TV remote.

Someone left it on the kitchen table.

I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I will be
looking for the remote, but I won't remember that it's on
the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where
it belongs, but first I'll water the flowers.

I splash some water on the flowers, but most of it spills on
the floor.

So, I set the remote back down on the table, get some towels
and wipe up the spill.

Then I head down the hall trying to remember what I was
planning to do.

At the end of the day: the car isn't washed, the bills aren't
paid, there is a warm can of Coke sitting on the counter, the
flowers aren't watered, there is still only one check in my
checkbook, I can't find the remote, I can't find my glasses,
and I don't remember what I did with the car keys.

Then when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I'm
really baffled because I know I was busy all day long, and I'm
really tired.

Carnival of the Curmudgeons - Mark Thirteen

Thirteen, supposed to be an unlucky number. Maybe that's why I'm a couple of days late posting it.

Pour youself another mug of what you need to read serious stuff, and come on back.

This is about immigration, again. Topic de jour.

Might as well get the pet peeves out of the way first. Why is Ted (the Swimmer) Kennedy getting all these props for being such a statesman? He was in the lead of things to keep the poison pill in the immigration bill.

Long story, but 10 days ago, the GOP tripped on their dick, and proposed an amendment making remaining in the country after illegal entry a second felony. They talked among themselves, and decided that the bill to be debated could do without this provision, which would seem harsh, so they decided to let the (D)onks excise it when the amendments got voted on.

Surprise! The (D)onks left it in, in fact refused, en bloc, to have the GOP remove it. Sort of a "gotcha", but the GOP did propose it, so they were stuck with it. This caused a split in the GOP ranks, with the RINOs considering the bill now too harsh, and the conservatives not having enough votes to do anything, so the (D)onks had a field day with a fillibuster for a couple of days.

Did I mention that I hate the very idea of fillibustering? Later on that.

The end result was that the bill, purposely harshed up by the (D)onks, failed. The MSM spins the whole message by saying that the Swimmer tried oh-so-hard to bring a good bill through, but couldn't because the bill just had too many flaws.

Fuck him. It was probably his idea to hoist the GOP on their own petard. That is a good political maneuver, but it certainly doesn't alter the fact that the (D)onks killed the bill.

Let's get serious about Immigration. Getting serious doesn't involve any kind of new law, it only involves enforcing the laws already on the books. That might require some healthy doses of enforcement money, but no new regulations or Federal Laws. Well, maybe one: any state or local jurisdiction that does not wholeheartedly assist the Feds when they begin their roundup of illegals (it's coming, folks) gets their Federal pork-money cut off immediately. All of it. Forever. Those that do assist will be paid generously for their assistance. OK, one more law: give all local and state law enforcement limited Federal Commissions to arrest under the immigration laws and place Federal holds on the arrestees.

As a retired LEO, I don't think we need huge new numbers of Federal ICE agents and Border Patrol. We have plenty of LEOs on duty now. If they added enforcement of Immigration laws to their duties, it probably wouldn't overstress many departments, and help could be given to the ones that WERE overstressed. What might get overstressed is holding facilities, so a VERY FAST system of deporting illegals will have to be developed, one that acts in days, not months as is the case now.

What is the downside? The Pew Hispanic Center, which has a dog in the fight and might have inflated these stats, says that 4.9% of the workforce is illegals. Let's take them at their word for now. OK, we are going to lose one out of twenty workers in this country. Does anyone think for a moment that our economy is going to collapse because of one in twenty workers leaving the workforce? The performance of certain businesses that use a large percentage of illegals will be impacted, but some lettuce rotting in the fields isn't going to crash the Market, it will just raise lettuce prices. If you can't grow your own lettuce, you're a dummy. Buy a 20# bag of potting soil, lay it on it's flat side in the sun, cut two rows of "X" slits in the top side of it, each 6" from the next, and push in seeds from your favorite kind of lettuce. Water moderately. In about 4 weeks you will have plenty of lettuce. Repeat as long as the growing season holds out.

No, the economy isn't going to collapse. In fact, your State welfare agencies wil suddenly find themselves not having spend all their budgeted funds, and will have a surplus. Many folks who would normally have to work for minimum wage, or not at all, now will have a chance to work for more than the minimum wage, sometimes quite a bit more.

There might be some inflation from rising wages, but there will also be a boosting of the economy from the spending of all those wages HERE IN THIS COUNTRY. Of course, you knew that most of the illegals send most of their money back home, didn't you? The largest single source of positive foreign exchange in Mexico is the dollars that the illegals here send back there.

Now imagine that two hundred billion a year, multiplied by a factor of rising wages, being spent here at home instead of going south. Imagine the lower welfare budgets, and increased tax receipts, which in turn might result in lower taxes, which results in more consumer spending, etc.

I find it hard to see a downside to deporting 12-20 million illegals. It doesn't have to be done at once, we just need to get a start on it. Getting local law enforcement involved, and ending the opposition of the La Raza pimps will open the door. Indicting a few business owners for employing illegals will keep the process going.

Mexico will be unhappy, but they will deal with it, and with us, when those dollars are at stake.

The monkey-wrench in these gears is the ACLU specifically and the American attitude about identification papers in general.

How do you tell a legal Hispanic worker from an illegal one? Right now, you can't. You can't because we have no form of proper identity cards, either for the workers or for anyone else.

If real US citizens and bona-fide LEGAL aliens don't have proper identification, how are we to tell ourselves from non-citizens and illegal aliens?

We brought this entire mess of 12-20 million illegals on oursleves, by our pig-headed attitude on properly-recorded identity. I'm going to hear from some conservative brother curmudgeons on this one, because many equate lack of identity documents to freedom, but they are wrong. It's not the existance of an identity card that subtracts from your freedom, it's what the government does or forces you to do to either obtain it or maintain it that subtracts from your freedom.

It's just like guns. They have a great potential to be used for either evil or good, but intrinsically, they are neither good nor evil. They are just a machine. An identity card has a great potential to save us from evil (identity theft comes to mind), but it could also be used for great evil (requiring them for everything and jailing upon lack of papers). It's just a paper. Actually it will be a high-tech device with a biometrics chip in it, so it's also a machine. There will be a need to closely monitor the government's issue and use of the identity card, but I'm here to tell you that without standardized proof of national status, we will not solve this issue, ever. We just won't be able to tell who's legal and who's not.

Enough on that.

Time for the Peeve of The Week (POTW).

The candidates are: my gimpy feet. Arthur-Write-us has been visiting me too regularily, both in the osteo form and the gouty form, and I'm getting more and more limited as to what I can do. Severe pain in the patoot. Speaking of pains in the patoot, my patoot came back in fine shape, according to the rubber-hose doctor. No cancer.

Candidate Two: Political Correctness: PeeCee is ALWAYS a candidate, but this permanent peeve actually had to swim in a shark-pool of it's own making this week. The PeeCee Police Chief of Portland, Derrick Foxworth, a man of color, ran into a little trouble. His troubles were BADLY compounded yesterday by the black community from whence he came. On the 5 o'clock news, there were a bunch of black residents of NorthEast gathered, and they had invited the press. They were there to lend support to the embattled Chief. They hung themselves out to dry. This gal speaks, in a very level, non-Eubonic voice, and calmly explains that the black community doesn't hold the dalliance of the Chief with a white female employee against him, because in their eyes, THAT'S NOT A SIN! I'm going to be presumptious here and refer to that concept as the Pimp/Ho relationship. Actually, I'm not all that presumptious. As a prison bus driver/guard for 7 years, I heard countless hours of that talk from the bus riders.

Candidate Three is the auto industry. If you've been following my comment threads in Random Nuclear Strikes and Dad's Garage, you will know that I'm NOT a fan of the high-tech, gizmo dependent engines the industry powers consumer vehicles with these days. I maintain that a low tech vehicle could be built that will have the emissions signature required, and would not be dependent on computer chips and twenty different sensors to balance the output of. Actually, the industry could resolve this matter with present technology. Put a reliable thumper V-8, updated only with non-variable fuel injection instead of a carburettor, into a half-ton pickup. Make the pickup light and rigid with carbon-fiber composite technology. Take the outrageous emissions from the thumper engine and run them through SEVERAL sets of catalytic converters, MADE TO BE CONSUMER-REPLACEABLE. Make it run on E85 alcohol fuel. The result is a vehicle with a low-revving engine, not particularily good with fuel, but on alcohol, who cares? The low-speed engine means that the vehicle will go where you want it to and you can control your traction without resort to anything more than a GEARED 4WD unit (as opposed to the electronic traction control units on high-end 4WD vehicles of today). In other words, a 1965 Chevvy, with it's act cleaned up a bit with just a bit of technology.

And the Peeve of the Week is....My @#$%^(*&^%$ feet! It's hell to have a young mind and an old body.

Curmudgeon Ranting: yes, there has been some, although this has been a quiet week amongst the ranters for the most part.

PawPaw has been working extra hours on a manhunt for an escaped murderer in his neck of the woods. The whole area is a little uptight, and this is what it looks like.

The new curmudgeon this week is NHS Blog Doctor, a curmudgeonly general practitioner in England whose blog rails at the ineffectiveness and general inadequacies of the National Health Service, Great Britain's version of socialized medicine that Hellary Clinton wants to bring Over Here. He gets medical-technical in most of his posts, but he also gets quite political. He doesn't support socialized medicine. 'Nuff said.

Retired Geezer at Blog Idaho links to the moonbat decision of Yale to allow a high-ranking member of the former Taliban ruling party of Afganistan (which the Tenth Mountain Division, together with a few B-52s, dispatched fairly easily) to matriculate at Yale. I think Ivy League schools may have invented Moonbattism.

GuyK at Charming, Just Charming has a proposal for elections: add a voting quorum. If not enough voters turned out, the election would be invalid. Actually, Guy, this was seriously proposed in Oregon a few years back, for Initiatives. There would be Yes, No, and None of the Above. If None of the Above won, the initiative would be withdrawn, and couldn't be refiled for two years. That would cure the problem with Initiatives. We see the same crap year after year, as there is no limit on how many times a thing may be voted on. For example, there have been three votes on Death With Dignity, the physician-assisted euthanasia law that conservatives love to hate (but would always reconsider if THEY were dying a painful, slow death). All of them were resounding wins for the law, but that didn't stop first the Catholic Church and then the US Attorney General from trying to end the law.

Curmudgeon Kim DuToit, owner of The Other Side of Kim blog, offers us this excellent post on what should be in your gun collection if you have one or contemplate one. Very comprehensive, as is everything Kim does.

The final curmudgeon ranter is a Dead President, Ronald Reagan, thanx to Mr. Completely.

Now we get to the Post Funny. This is double-cute, because it is both a Chamber of Commerce joke (you could tell it at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast) and a YouPee joke (about the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where I once lived):

Subject: Holy bear

A priest, a Pentecostal preacher and a Rabbi all served as
chaplains to the students of Northern Michigan University in
Marquette.

They would get together two or three times a week for coffee and
to talk shop. One day, someone made the comment that preaching to
people isn't really all that hard. A real challenge would be to preach
to a bear.

One thing led to another and they decided to do an experiment.
They would all go out into the woods, find a bear, preach to it, and
attempt to convert it.

Seven days later, they're all together to discuss their
experiences. Father Flannery, who has his arm in a sling, is on
crutches, and has various bandages, goes first.


"Well," he says, "I went into the woods to find me a bear. And
when I found him I began to read to him from the Catechism. Well,
that bear wanted nothing to do with me and began to slap me around.
So I quickly grabbed my holy water, sprinkled him and, Holy Mary
Mother of God, he became as gentle a lamb. The bishop is coming out
next week to give him first communion and confirmation."


Reverend Billy Bob spoke next. He was in a wheelchair, with an
arm and both legs in casts, and an IV drip. In his best fire and
brimstone oratory he claimed, "WELL brothers, you KNOW that we don't
sprinkle! I went out and I FOUND me a bear. And then I began to read
to my bear from God's HOLY WORD! But that bear wanted nothing to do
with me. So I took HOLD of him and we began to wrestle. We wrestled
down one hill, UP another and DOWN another until we came to a creek.
So I quick DUNKED him and BAPTIZED his hairy soul. And just like you
said, he became as gentle as a lamb. We spent the rest of the week in
Fellowship, feasting on God's Holy Word, and praising Jesus."


They both looked down at the rabbi, who was lying in a hospital
bed. He was in a body cast and traction with IV's and monitors
running in and out of him. He was in bad shape. The rabbi looks up and
says, "Looking back on it, circumcision may not have been the best way
to start..."

That's all folks...