Friday, December 31, 2010

Parody is the sincerest form of flattery...

Wait, or is that "imitation"?  I forget.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Didn't they do this on Futurama?

Or Total Recall?  Scientists watch way too much TV.
Apparently scientists are proposing sending old people away, out into space, never to return.
Scientists, worried Earth will become uninhabitable due to the left's favorite existential threat, global warming, are suggesting one-way trips to Mars to colonize the Red Planet. 
"'You would send a little bit older folks, around 60 or something like that'...  That's because the mission would undoubtedly reduce a person's lifespan, from a lack of medical care and exposure to radiation.  That radiation would also damage human reproductive organs, so sending people of childbearing age is not a good idea... 
Still, [scientists believe] many people would be willing to make the sacrifice.
The Mars base would offer humanity a 'lifeboat' in the event Earth becomes uninhabitable."
It would be pretty wild to visit Mars, though.

Scientists Propose One-Way Trips to Mars

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Government Spending?

And people wonder why we're freaked out about government spending...

Suppose your friends, Bob Frank and Larry Bean, started a business manufacturing sporting goods.  Your friends started out small and grew their operation through hard work and intelligent business practices such as not taking out too many loans to build a factory addition or hire more employees before they were ready.  They were smart.  They waited until their business was a thriving, successful sporting goods manufacturer.  They waited until their business had become profitable enough to reinvest those profits into building their business.  Only then, when they could afford it, did they hire new workers and build a new wing of their factory dedicated to manufacturing basketballs.
Imagine, then, how their business would fare if Bob and Larry decided to hire dozens of new employees to do nothing but paperwork?  Imagine how their business would fare if they decided to pay their dozens of new employees twice what the sporting goods manufacturer down the road pays their employees?  Imagine how their business would fare if they took out loans to build twelve new factories in twelve different states, before they even had enough orders to fill the capacity of their first factory?  And imagine your friends Bob and Larry ignored every single business consultant you referred to them and mocked every single piece of friendly advice you offered.
Common sense tells us your friends' ball company would fail.  Common sense also tells us Bob and Larry are stupid.
Yet our federal government is behaving in the same way.  USA Today reported today that federal salaries have skyrocketed.  According to the report, "The number of federal workers earning $150,000 or more a year has soared tenfold in the past five years and doubled since President Obama took office."  Yet while Social Security recipients are not receiving cost of living adjustment for the second straight year, the President plans a 1.4% pay increase for federal workers.
By comparison, private sector workers in comparable positions make half what federal workers are paid, according to a USA Today report from August.
And this is just one example.  Instances of unbelievably reckless government spending are legion.
The difference is the federal government can print money, inflate our currency and devalue the dollar.  Your friends Bob and Larry will be rewarded for their reckless stupidity by losing their company and possibly their fortune and putting their employees out of work.  The federal government's reckless stupidity will hurt the poor whose money is now worth less.
Politicians must have some cojones to look the American people in the eye with a straight face and tell us they are concerned about spending and deficits.  This is our tax dollars, our hard earned living, and our federal government gone off the rails.
This is one of the messages last week's election tried to convey.  Republicans seem to be listening, Democrats are not.  Democrats are like your stupid friends who screwed up so completely they had to sell their life long dream, Frank and Bean's Ball Company, to China.

Michelle Obama's going to be mad...

On the heels of First Lady Michelle Obama's recent campaigning to urge restaurants and food companies to offer healthier options and default menu items, fast food chain Wendy's announces new, better tasting, more sophisticated french fries. 
Apparently they didn't get the message from Mrs. Obama and her patriarchal food police.  Offer an apple or carrot sticks instead of french fries, she instructed them.  Make customers specifically ask for fries, she chided.  We're not telling you not to offer fries, she reassured the businesses whose business is to know what customers want, what customers will buy, and what will keep their businesses operating.  We just want you to offer the choices that we think are better, she admonished.  No, there's nothing wrong with a bit of gentle coercion, is there?  Of course not.  Consumers just don't know what's good for them.
Mrs. Obama's probably not going to be visiting Wendy's for her next double cheeseburger...
Wendy's sells new fries with potato skin, sea salt