California Budget Busters

Look, there are a lot of great things about living in the People's Gay-Public of Drugifornia (also known as California), but I've gotta tell you, there are a lot of not so great things about living here. It's really borderline sucky to live here if you're asking me. And I'm doing just fine. The walled off compound protects me from the morons of society quite nicely, thank you. Employment isn't an issue and neither is revenue. But unfortunately, employment and revenue are an issue for the state.

The current unemployment rate in California is hovering somewhere around 12.3% and the state is also expected to be running a deficit which is somewhere right around $15 billion. (Yep, billion. With a B.) And that's "deficit". As in "not enough money". So with that knowledge, what has the California Senate decided to do? Well, according to the SF Gate they "...passed a measure to create a state-run, single-payer health system." Wait. They what now?

Correct. The California Senate voted 22-14 to pass this thing. Only one Democrat had the sanity to vote against this measure. That Democrat would be a one Sen. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana. You can vote for him next time. The rest of the Democrats? Yeah, you're going to want to be NOT voting for them. The Republicans? They can stay. Lou can stay. Everyone else? Out. Out!

Now, this might not sound like such a big deal. I mean, after all, a state-run, single-payer health system sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? Sure it does. And when you get back from Xanadu, let me know how it works there because it certainly isn't a viable option in this utopia that the Senators appear to be trying to create.

Let's just run over the basic basics of the state of California's fiscal issues, shall we? I'll be brief. That will be easy to do because there really isn't a lot to talk about, seeing as how the state is running that deficit of about $15 billion (still with a B). According to the Legislative Analyst's Office (the ol' LAO) California stands to make in revenue somewhere in the neighborhood of $82.5 billion. Sure, that sounds like a lot, but when you consider that it's around $5 billion less than a couple of years ago, you're going to kind of get the idea that revenue, well, it ain't what it used to be.

But here's the kicker: This utopian health care plan "All state residents would be provided health care and people could buy private health care to cover services not offered through the state plan." Um....what?

Everyone gets health care?! Score! Oh, wait. Maybe not. After all, this has just passed through the California Senate. The Governator has vetoed things like this before, so can I take it to mean that he's going to veto this as well? I should certainly hope so because, again according to the SF Gate, "It is anticipated to cost about $200 billion a year."

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It's going to cost what? $200 billion? A YEAR?! But...but....the state only takes IN about $82 billion a year. See....see....that....that....that's NOT ENOUGH! What in the world is wrong with those morons?!

I want an explanation from every single one of those morons who voted for this. What could their rationale possibly be?! Oh, that it sounds good?! It's because of all of the "sound good" and "feel good" programs that they're constantly passing legislation on that the state is in the fiscal toilet that it swirls around in daily! This isn't news! The state handed out IOUs last summer, for cryin' out loud! They're not kidding! The state is broke!!

You people in the California Senate have a lot of nerve, I'll tell you that. Every single one of you who voted for this garbage clearly have about as many brains as the state has surplus cash. That is to say NONE! Nice waste of time. Nice job wasting everyone's time and money to pass something that the Governator is sure to veto. Nice job accomplishing nothing. You morons.

It's $200 billion dollars! And that's just for this health care fantasy that they passed! It's not like there isn't the rest of the budget to continue to fund! You remember the rest of the budget, don't you? It's that thing that isn't fully funded as it is! Now just tack on another $200 billion to that. Oh, sure. Let me know how that works out, will you? I'll be over here, making the walls on my walled off compound even higher. After this show of stupidity, I'm considering adding a dome. We're so doomed.

Define "Dictionary"

We have really come off the rails this time. I mean really. Really really. Really.

Let's go down to southern California to the Menifee Union School District in southwest Riverside County. And while we're there, let's stop by the fourth grade and fifth grade classrooms at Oak Meadows Elementary School. And while we're there, let's look up some words in Merriam Webster's 10th Collegiate Edition Dictionary. Oh, wait. We can't. They've been removed from the classrooms because A parent complained. Wait. What?

Correct. It would seem that, according to the LA Times, "...a parent complained to the school principal about what she believed was explicit sexual content in the dictionary." Explicit sexual content? Let's break that down, shall we? The dictionary defines words. It doesn't beat around the bush. Therefore, it tends to be explicit. Whether it be a definition of a duck (a duck) or a rock (a rock) or a tree (a tree), it tends to be explicit. And explicit or not, if it's a word, it needs to be defined. Hence it's inclusion in the dictionary.

"The books were ordered off the shelves until a committee could determine if they were "age appropriate" for fourth- and fifth-graders." If they were age appropriate? For people who...read? What age does one have to be before their language is deemed to be appropriate? What the heck is that all about? ONE parent complains and ALL of the dictionaries get removed?! When did that start happening? When did the opinion of ONE person suddenly have the potential to affect EVERYONE around them? (And in this case, apparently only one completely asinine person to boot!)

"The move immediately set off cries of censorship among many, including the president of the local school board, who warned that banning one book would inevitably lead to the banning of more and more." Let's forget about censorship for a moment because censorship is really the last thing that I'm worried about at the moment. What I'm concerned about is stupidity and this is one of the stupidest things that I've ever heard. Let's forget about censorship for a moment and let's instead focus on how ridiculous it is to remove a freaking dictionary because there are words in there that are explicit! Focusing? Are you?! Good! Then you see my point! Now, what was the problem exactly?

The word and the definition of said word that is in question here is "oral sex". Now, I don't know about you, but I don't know how you're going to define "oral sex" without it containing a fair amount of explicit detail. See, that's because you're going to have to use the word "genitals" or an acceptable substitute. (And by "acceptable" I mean something that you could put in the dictionary and allow said dictionary to retain it's credibility. Therefore, terms like cootchie, hoo-ha, and wee-wee would be immediately disqualified from consideration.) And technically, the term "oral sex" in and of itself is rather explicit. You've got the "sex" part of it which could be considered explicit and you've got all of the oralling going on with it which makes it even more explicit. It's hard for me to see a way around that one, frankly. And you know, you're also going to have to include some sort of reference to the oral portions of the human anatomy making contact with said genitalia without a funny nickname. Tell me how that's going to happen without explicit detail. Oh, that's right. It's not.

Now, I thought I had a hard copy of the "devil's book" (aka Merriam-Webster's Dictionary), but I was wrong, so I've had to rely on the online version in order to further assess this lunacy. If you check Merriam Webster's online and look up the definition of "oral sex", this is the definition you'll see: "oral stimulation of the genitals". Yes, we know. (Theoretically.)

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That's IT?!?! THAT is the explicit definition that A parent wigged out about and demanded that the dictionary be pulled from the classrooms?! Is this parent aware of some of the other words that are in said dictionary?! What about penis? I'm pretty sure that vagina is included in there! You know, the words that were referenced by the "oral sex" definition? You know, words that you could look up to get a clearer view of what we're talking about, though I doubt that from the oral sex position that you're really going to have a very clear view of anything, really. (Yes, that was a joke. Carry on.) They cross reference cunnilingus (not one who is clever with words) and fellatio (not an off shoot of the word "fellow") for crying out loud!

For the love of anything that is sane in this world, if someone could explain to me how society got to the point where if one person is annoyed by the slightest little thing that the entire system is thrown out of whack whilst that moron is accommodated? How?! How did it come to this?!

Look, the purpose of a dictionary is so that all of the words can be included. It's not a give and a take quite so much. It's pretty much an all or nothing thing here. You can have all of the words and call it a dictionary or you can have some of the words and call it a pile of words. Your choice. Actually, no. Wait a minute. It isn't your choice. It's no one's choice! It's a damned dictionary and that's all there is to it! You can't go changing the dictionary! It's not POSSIBLE! What is wrong with people (person)?

I cannot believe that because one fringe lunatic couldn't handle the term "oral sex" in a dictionary (not in their Bible, though that would be news!) for God's sake, that now (and I'm quoting) "The school is now promising to begin a thorough scouring of the dictionary for other offensive entries." Because of course they have nothing better to do, seeing as how all of the children are learning the most that they can and are getting the best education possible already.

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Good Lord, we're doomed.

"It's hard to sit and read the dictionary (Why, yes! It is! That's why people don't do it! You moron.), but we'll be looking to find other things of graphic nature." Let me save them some time! You're going to find other things of graphic nature! You don't have to READ very much! You can just flip right to them! Let me help you! Penis is probably in there. Don't forget vagina. Amygdala should go just because it sounds hilarious. (The same goes for urethra.) Get rid of vulva (the body part, not the car. Oh, wait, that's Volvo, never mind). And while you're at it, axe the prostate, will you? You should find some testicles in there (not literally, for cryin' out loud!). Breasts must definitely go (and I will miss them). Anus? Gone! Uterus? I'm not using mine, get rid of it too! Clitoris? Until we can agree on a pronunciation, it's gone as well! (Man, if whomever that parent was is reading this right now, I'm guessing that they probably had a heart attack somewhere right around 'anus'. But again, not literally.)

Did this parent never look up words when they were younger just so that they could laugh? If not, then I'm guessing that they were not part of a very large group known as "freaking everyone!" And after the school gets done reading the dictionary, then what? Are they going to black out those entries? Good luck. Ever read a dictionary? They're printed on that paper that's just a step up from the thickness that they use for the Bible. It's very thin. There's no way that you can just run a Sharpie over your penis (not many reasons why you'd want to, really) without it blacking out the other side as well.

So do you want to know what they came up with? You know, what to do after all of the scouring? Here's the solution: "The dictionary will go back to the classroom but the parents will be given the option to determine if they want their kids to have access to that dictionary...Students will take permission slips home and parents who don't want them to use Webster's 10th Collegiate Edition can opt for alternative dictionaries." What now?

An alternative dictionary? What the heck is that? An incomplete list of words? Why yes! Yes! That's exactly what it is! There is no word on what this alternative dictionary will consist of or which one will be used. But are they serious? They're going to send home permission slips in case parents don't want their children to have access to the dictionary? I'm pretty sure that if that sort of permission slip was sent home with me when I was in school that my parents would have pulled me out of that school. They would have assumed that the lunatics are running the asylum and they would have yanked me out of there before having to read through any more inanity. (Man, I wish that they had done that when I was in high school and with my chemistry class. You know, sent home a note asking if I was allowed access to my chemistry book. I would have forged that sucker so fast. I hated chemistry.) By the way, if you're wondering what the California Department of Education (you know, the department that funds the blasted schools) had to say about it, they "...said it had no authority over what Menifee does with its dictionaries because they are not considered instructional materials." I want to cry.

It's not an instructional material? It's a dictionary! It's a reference material! How is a reference material not an instructional material? Ever remember asking your teacher how you spell something or what something means when you were in school? What did your teacher tell you? That's right. She/He told you to look it up in the dictionary. I don't know how that is not an instructional material, but apparently it isn't.

I cannot believe that this got any farther than the individual who took the complaint. Oh, how I wish I had been that individual. I think my response would have gone something along the lines of, "Uh-huh. I see. Well, Mr. or Mrs. Jackass, the point of the dictionary is that is has all of the words in it. See, because otherwise it would just be called Merriam-Webster's Partial List of Words. And who is going to want to read that, really. No one. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have non-lunatics to see. Thank you for stopping by."

Look, I'll work my way up to something that could actually be said, all right? In the meantime can you crazy people please get over yourselves? And if you can't, will you at least accept some help from the sane? Good Lord, things are off the rails these days.

Deals With the Devil

Today....Haiti!

First of all, there's nothing to mock about disaster. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere and to put it bluntly, they're effed. If you feel the need to donate to help these folks out, I've placed a banner over there on the right hand side of this here blog. The banner was downloaded straight from the American Red Cross website, so you know that any donations will go to the place where they are intended to go. The last thing anyone needs is to be sending money that is intended to go towards aiding those people in Haiti and have it instead going into the pocket of some shady blogger or worse...a Tweeter. Please don't be giving away your hard earned money blindly and just sending it off with every official looking email that you receive (unless it's from President Barry, as he seems like a pretty good guy). Make sure you know where your donation is going.

Now that I'm done reprimanding you for money that you may or may not be giving, let's move on to some people who really need reprimanding in regard to this situation. First up...newsholes!

Shortly after this earthquake hit, I began hearing reports of the "estimated" numbers of potential casualties. (If you're new to the newshole business, "casualties" means "deaths".) At first, I was hearing "thousands". Then I began hearing "tens of thousands". When I first heard "hundreds of thousands", that's when I lost it.

Hundreds of thousands? Really? I don't think so. And I, apparently unlike the irresponsible newsholes who are reporting such garbage, do not get some sort of orgasmic thrill when I hear a ridiculously high number of casualties being bandied about. Do you people really want there to be that many casualties? I don't think that you do. But let's look at what we can probably expect here, since the newsholes are unwilling to do that for us.

Haiti is an island nation. That means you're going to have a hell of a lot of people all compacted into certain areas and you're not going to have anywhere else to go. Hence the term "island". But while it is an island, that doesn't mean that people can't be spread apart. People can be spread apart. And while Port au Prince is the capital and the most populous region of Haiti, it's not like there aren't other places on the island to live. But if you're a newshole, you'd report casualty figures as if Port au Prince was the ONLY place to live.

The population of Haiti is around 9 million. The population of Port au Prince is somewhere in the neighborhood of 704,776 if you're going to believe Wikipedia. And for some inexplicable reason, let's say that we do believe Wikipedia (please don't make a habit of it). And let's also say that we believe The Telegraph that went with the headline: "Haiti earthquake: hundreds of thousands feared dead". Plural? Really? Hundreds?

Let's do a conservative estimate of that wildly speculative and highly irresponsible headline. Let's go with the lowest of all the plurals, the number two. Let's say two hundred thousand perished. That's over a quarter of the population of the city. And while I understand how that could happen (there IS a reason for an international building code), what I'm saying is that it's unlikely that it DID happen. And just doing the simple, basic, speculative guesstimating math would have told the newsholes the same thing: that it's unlikely there are that many casualties. But yet they go ahead and report it anyway under the guise of saying things like "We've heard there could be up to or possibly more than one hundred thousand casualties." So, what if I just said that I think there are a million casualties? I've said it and you've heard it so now you can report it?! I don't think you can I know for certain that you shouldn't. (By the way, the Red Cross is estimating somewhere in the area of 45,000 -50,000 deaths "based on information from the Haitian Red Cross". What a novel idea! Asking the Haitian Red Cross what they think the numbers might be! Fascinating. Wait. Let me write that down so I can shoot off an email to those newsholes who are just pulling numbers out of their newsholes to report. Morons.

Speaking of morons, let's move on to Pat Robertson, shall we? It won't take long. Pat Robertson is the Grand Poobah of something called the 700 Club. I don't know what that is supposed to reference, but it certainly isn't his IQ. He's a religious guy with a TV show. Enough said? I thought so. Anyway, he summed up what has happened down there in Haiti. Rather, he has summed up why the earthquake happened. Did people need to be told why? Shifting of the tectonic plates and all? Release of built up energy? Don't we know that? What's that? Oh, it wasn't because of the tectonic plates? I see. It was because...of...the devil, of course. Wait. What?

Correct. This jackass Pat Robertson has said that the reason that there was an earthquake in Haiti is because "Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal....ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other"

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What the what? I'm pretty sure that those folks that were over there in that earthquake did not make a pact with the devil. And even if they did, what kind of a pact would that be? You free us from that shrimpy little Napoleon dude and in exchange, we'll let you devastate our capital in 2010? What kind of a dumbass pact would that be (provided that you even believe in the whole "making deals with the devil" theory in the first place)?

Robertson goes on to explain why this is clearly the case by stating: "That island of Hispaniola is one island. It is cut down the middle; on the one side is Haiti on the other is the Dominican Republic. (He does have a firm grasp of the geography of the situation, I'll give him that.) Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island." Um, might I make a comparison? The United States and Mexico. The United States is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts like Dollywood and Graceland, etc. Mexico is...well...Mexico is not. Same island. Er, continent. Same continent. (Sorry, Canada/America's Hat. I suppose I could have put you in the equation with you being on the US side of things, but if someone is going to be as simple minded as Mr. Robertson or to consider what Mr. Robertson had said, I felt it best to keep things as simple as I could. We still love ya, but I just couldn't fit you into my rebuke against pacts with the devil to explain Haitian earthquakes. Sorry.)

Did Mexico make a pact with the devil? See, I don't know much about this sort of thing, so as you can imagine, I have a myriad of questions. Where exactly does one go to find this devil character in order to make said pacts? Can you just come up with your own terms or are there pre-written pacts to choose from? Can anyone make a pact? Do you need good pact credit? Is there a three day window in case of buyers remorse if I decide to go with a pact? Can you only make one pact? How many people can be included in said pact? I could go on, but as you can see, I bring up some valid questions about how all of this works.

Fortunately, he did manage to include at the end of his idiotic explanation "But right now we are helping the suffering people and the suffering is unimaginable." (Please don't send that man any money. Ever.) I think the only thing that I find more reprehensible than his comments is the reaction of the person sitting next to him. Who is that nitwit? How on earth can you sit there and just nod your head and utter "Mmm-hmm" when he's spouting off something like that? How?! How can you just sit there and act as if those are words being spoken by a sane individual? You can't! Unless you're equally insane, which I'm going to have to assume that she is.

Speaking of equally insane, let me wrap this up with Rush Limbaugh. Rush is a doughhead at best. He has an act and he's good at what he does. And unfortunately, around 20 million people listen to this windbag regularly. This man makes a gazillion dollars a year. (For those of you unclear on the monetary denomination of a gazillion, it's right around $38 million a year for 8 years plus a $100 million signing bonus. Yep. That's a gazillion all right.) And because he's been so fortunate in his lifetime, he's going to be more sympathetic to the plight of others, especially in times of disaster, correct? Um, not...not so much.

Rush Limbaugh told a caller to his show "...that all helping out will do is get someone on Obama's campaign email list" according to Swamp Politics (they're a blog over at the Chicago Tribune). I highly doubt that's all a donation is going to do, but just in case people weren't swayed by that logic, Limbaugh went for the ol' one-two punch by adding "We've already donated to Haiti,. It's called the U.S. income tax." Oh, for God's sake. Shut up.

You know, the donations that are being asked for en masse are in amount of five bucks and ten bucks. The a-hole that is Rush Limbaugh makes $38 million a year in salary (and I'm sure that he endorses some piece of crap or sells gold bars or something in his spare time to earn more). The average annual income in Haiti is around $400. That's about $1.10 per day. And Limbaugh is trying to discourage people from helping out. Why couldn't he have made a pact with the devil?