I knew there had to be something in that Curry

The 86 year old Governor of the state of Andhra Pradesh in India
has resigned after a tape surfaced of him and three women in bed



Here in the States we sit down to watch "It's a wonderful life"... coincidentally the title of the video he was in too.

More power to you sir! Even if it does kill you, you'll die smiling!

Ask Google Why

Not much going on today, it being Christmas and all.

To pass the time I was entering "why does" and "why is" questions into Google. Try it and see what people are asking!

Unelected former Commie Brit Prime Minister Gordon Brown...



POTUS...

Tiger Woods to take a break....

...from playing golf.

Now intends to focus on shagging women on a 24x7 basis

Into The Storm

One of the best films of this year you've never heard of is Into The Storm, which is about the great British wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill.

I was astounded that such a well balanced film could get made in the UK these days. If the BBC had done it they'd have made Churchill into a cross-dresser who flogged his servants to death. As it is we have a truly excellent film which packs the entire Second World War into 1 hour and 35 minutes.

Here Churchill responds to people in his cabinet who say Britain should negotiate a peace with Hitler.


And here, after the war, Churchill responds to the threat of Socialism, in a radio broadcast which strangely enough is not widely known compared to his other speeches. He sure was right, although they didn't need a Gestapo, as both parties in the UK were socialist anyway.

Asia Billboard Roundup

I've just got back from roughing it in a bunch of five-star hotels all over South East Asia.

Here's a selection of ads and billboards I found while there

If you drink enough essence of Chicken you could be just like this guy here


This ad enjoins you "don't be a tosser".



I checked and it's true, they really do have the entire internet in that traffic cone. Apparently the Chinese did it last year.



Bad news if you're a Durian






Here's the latest from DJ Mojo Jojo. I got to get me some of that!



Finally we were checking some bags in at Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila. One of our bags, apparently, was a Le Sport Sac. To me it just looked like a gaudy waste of cash. Anyway, the checkin guy's eyes lit up when he saw it. He asked were we sure we wanted to check it in, as it was the most popular bag among the baggage handlers! You can't fault the guy's honesty, can you? I said they were welcome to it.

For God's Sake DON'T OFFEND ANYONE

I feel sorry for the writers in newspapers. They must spend half the time second guessing themselves trying to avoid outraging any of the dozens of "victim" groups out there.

Occasionally this has hilarious results. In Chicago, an Alderman has ensured dozens of treatment centres for mentally ill, drug addicts, etc., are located in her ward, to create a ready-made block of supporters to keep her in office.

One of these guys has harrassed and scared locals for years

They talk about all the stuff this guy does, like live off the taxpayer, smoke crack, and beg aggressively.

And then the money quotation:

"Bellwood could not be reached for comment"

That's probably because he's somewhere between Edgewater and Pluto at the moment!

Back Rack

Consider the following which was spotted in a California Wal Mart



And now comes the following news from Peru




Four people have been arrested in Peru on suspicion of killing dozens of people in order to sell their fat and tissue for cosmetic uses in Europe.

The gang allegedly targeted people on remote roads, luring them with fake job offers before extracting their fat to sell it for $15,000 (£9,000) a litre.

Other suspected gang members, including two Italian nationals, remain at large.

Imagine the carnage if this lot managed to sneak across the border into the USA!

Update (from that Socialist paradise, the UK)



Why don't they just borrow a C130 Galaxy from the USAF and fly this fat git to Peru. Problem solved!

Truly Britain Leads the World

... in producing scum, like this couple



I'd sooner head down to Lincoln Park zoo and watch a couple of Orang-utans at it for half an hour

The End of History

Over in Europe, they are celebrating 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. (Pompous multimillionaire eco-rockers U2 outraged the locals when they held a concert to celebrate this... and erected a big wall to keep out those without tickets!)

And in an ironic twist the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, has signed the Treaty of Lisbon, so 20 years after his country threw off the shackles of Soviet Communism, it has once again ceased to be an independent country and is now a province of the EU empire instead.

The monstrous Healthcare bill just passed the house, I hear, so the upcoming National Health bureaucracy will soon be starting up. That should give hope to millions of unemployable numpties the length and breadth of the USA; their country will shortly be needing them, just as their ilk is needed by the British National Health Service, which is the third-largest employer in the world behind Indian Railways and the Chinese Army.

How do you make a political class or ruling elite? I'd say 1/5th fundamentally evil corrupt, backstabbing, double dealing two faced lying bastards and 4/5ths people who like the trappings of power and don't mind sucking up to them. Then below them a huge bureaucracy of people who can't get any other sort of work and enjoy doing a 3 day week on full pay with a decent pension. For that they'll be good little worker bees... handing out drivers licenses in the DMV, doling out welfare payments, building or liquor permits.... or herding people into gas chambers (depending on the requirements of the government of the day)

Anyway it's Sunday, so enough with the fantasies about emptying the statehouse, hanging the occupants from lamp posts and lighting bonfires under them!

Let's go back to a more hopeful time. 1968, to be precise. The Beatles played Madison Square Garden that year; the Soviet Army played Czechosolvakia; and in Italy, where the CIA kept the communists out of power for 40 years by paying off the local politicians, Lamborghini had been producing the lovely Miura for two years. 0-60 in 7 seconds might not sound much now, but back then you needed a calendar not a stopwatch to time your average family car's 0-60.

Enjoy watching this unbelievably cool looking dude pilot his supercar round some challenging hairpin bends in the Italian alps, pausing only to light a ciggie. Imagine that howling 4.0L V12 is 2 feet behind your head. Imagine some 22 year old redheaded cutie in the passenger seat looking at you invitingly. No road signs. No cops. No warnings. No speed cameras. No trucks. It sure ain't 2009!

Here's a Hybrid car I could live with

It's a Chevmobile - a 1968 Chevy Impala with an Oldsmobile 455 (7.4L) engine in it

Beautiful car!

Salivate More

Funny, That

mmm... commie high priest of the climate change hysteria... I'm going to go with "Yes".

Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiting from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.

read more

And in other news



Well you could have knocked me down with a feather when I read that

This certainly is not the Peoples' republic of Britain! Over there they'd have let him go already.

What to buy Aunt Maude this Christmas?

This isn't a joke. I actually used an earlier version of this in a hotel in Tokyo. Believe me the sight of a remote control peeking out from under the seat while you exercise your bowels is extremely disconcerting. The instructions were all in Japanese so I never felt brave enough to tinker about with the controls. Who knows what might have happened?

For people who want to take taking a dump to a whole new level go here

"Do you think we 'ave forgotten Agincourt?"

594 years ago today the English Army under Henry V delivered the latest in a long series of well-deserved thrashings to the French at Agincourt.

British schoolboys were always told the English were outnumbered 5 to 1 (at least when I was at school - now they are probably doing finger painting, talking about their feelings, or studying "climate change")

Anyway a bunch of leftie researchers have now discovered by consulting tax records (no way 600 year old tax records would be anything less than totally accurate) that in fact it wasn't such a victory after all.

Because the English were only outnumbered 2 to 1

When you're fighting the French, then, it's only a decent victory if they outnumber you 10 to 1 or more.

Alice in Wonderland

I'm reading my daughter Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. Written back in 1865 when the Civil War was still on, it's about a little girl who falls down a well into a strange land where nothing is as it seems.

Just like Illinois.

Today in the Sun-Times, and I had to read this a couple of times and check it wasn't April 1st, it says that the widow of mob enforcer Anthony Spilotro is working at the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. They "license everything from barbers to banks and architects to veterinarians. We also oversee most of the state’s financial institutions, which have combined assets in excess of $4 trillion."

It's great news they have people with such deep and relevant experience deciding who's a fit and proper person to do business in this great state of ours!

I'm tempted to apply for a business license and see if they ask if you've ever "whacked" anybody, or whether you've ever had a business dispute with somebody and did you solve it (a) through the courts (b) with a baseball bat (c) a garotte (d) a meat hook or (e) Joe Pesci

You couldn't make it up. Truly the Sun-Times can be funnier than The Onion, even if a typical front page now looks like this

News from the Ghetto

A bunch of people living in a housing project in the UK are distraught that an inspection has resulted in some of their most treasured possessions being removed as a fire risk

From our Religious Correspondent

"I was just administering extreme unction!"

"Is Kowalski A Midget?"

Just been rewatching a classic 1971 movie, "Vanishing Point". Anybody who enjoys films of this era, as I do, will be well aware that film crews at that time were more focused on mind expanding substances and adventurous sex than on their 401(k)s and audience demographics. As a result, their films often do not make a great deal of sense, but they definitely evoke a strong gut reaction from the audience - whereas todays' films either cause me to fall asleep (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), slap my head in frustration that it's been 3 hours and still the same old crap is going on over and over (Lord of the Rings) or throw up (anything with Sandra Bullock in it)

When I first came to the US and was picked up at the airport by the woman who would become my wife, I was subconsciously expecting her to turn up in a White 1970 Dodge Challenger. And now I know why. Of course, it turned out to be a Honda CRV.

Rent this film - or download it - listen to the insane howl of the V8 in that Challenger, and imagine it's you driving it, with a couple of Climate Change activists tied to the roof. Enjoy!

Playing at soldiers?

Recently in Chicago some big ass criminal gave the slip to a couple of Cook County investigators who were supposed to be minding him.

This picture came from the print version of the Sun-Times and appears to show that the cops hunting the man were possibly a little.... over-zealous.

Or maybe something more sinister is going on?

Here's a shot from the Daily Mail of a bunch of Iranian Soldiers on the march recently


So either the Iranians have invaded Arlington Heights... or they use the same tailor!

Windows 7

I've been very impressed with the new Windows 7. They've finally cracked the taskbar and window navigation - they've done such a good job it's worth the upgrade just for that. "Date Modified" is now back in all explorer windows. The accessories (Calc, Paint Brush, etc.) have received their first makeover in 10 years. There's a really great builtin utility for screen capturing. And the whole product feels more slick and well put together.

It takes around 20 minutes to do a fresh install of Win 7. I used the 64 bit version except on my home machine where I need to use a Cisco VPN. Don't install the 64 bit version unless you're sure there are drivers for all the applications you need. Of course even with the 32 bit version you may find your printer's not supported.

With Win7 installed, I then needed to install Visual Studio 2005, VS2005 SP1, Visual Studio 2008 and VS2008 SP1. Each one takes around 22 minutes.



I mean, what on earth can it be doing? And how can the service packs take as long to install as the original products?

Anyway as far as Windows 7 is concerned, I strongly recommend it!

Harlot's Ghost

Norman Mailer ... "donated his ego to the Harvard Medical School" (Woody Allen)

So I just waded through all 1,200 pages of Harlot's Ghost, Mailer's novel about the CIA which took the great man of letters 7 years to write.

It turned out to be absolutely excellent

With just one problem: the last line

"TO BE CONTINUED"

Thanks a bunch Norman!

(Norman Mailer 1923-2007)

These guys are on a hiding to nothing

In the home of socialism an 88 strong "bad behavior brigade" is tasked with preventing les citoyens de Paris urinating in the street. I don't think they will have much luck - public urination, together with cruelty to geese, are as close to the heart of your average Frenchman as gun ownership is to a Midwesterner.

And as for the "Brigade des Incivilites" I believe the French language has a word for them: Tosseurs!

How Times Change

Here is the Royal Navy, circa 1805



And here they are in 2009



The Navy of Nelson, Collingwood, Jervis, Cook and Cochrane has now lent its name to a tacky watch made in China

"I believe the mainstream Chicago media is tops right now"

Above is an example of their brilliant proofreading

Seriously though, what is she smoking?

If I wanted to know what was going on in Chicago the Sun Times and the TV is the last place I'd look.

Move over, Ben Bernanke

Her awesome money management skills make British woman Debra Wilson a shoo-in should the job of chairman of the US Federal Reserve become vacant

Truly the dead tree press has lost the plot. Thirty years ago the Daily Telegraph was a newspaper of substance and merit. Now it's more like US Magazine. And do their headline writers even read the headlines after they've written them?

It's been obvious to everybody that Jackson has been cracking up since the Reagan administration

I am shocked, shocked!

In the Trib today it says that Huron Consulting is restating 3 years of financial statements

The story doesn't mention that this firm was started by a bunch of ex-partners from Arthur Andersen after it folded in 2002 following the Enron bankruptcy.

Looks like a large network of contacts, shiny white shirts, gold cufflinks, Cartier watches and bouffant hair weren't the only things these guys brought with them!

Illinois Politics

In Illinois the Republican and Democratic parties work together to fill their boots with as much taxpayers' cash as possible. They see their job as enriching themselves and their buddies and hiring armies of otherwise unemployable patronage workers on the public dime.

The second to last governor went to jail; the last governor is going to jail after his trial next year; and the current governor is essentially a brain-dead plank of wood they wheel around to make speeches.

Currently the state is $11,500,000,000 in the red. The architect of this cluster-fuck, greasy turd and State Treasurer, Alex Giannoulias, is running for Senate where he'll be able to bring his great talent to bear on stretching the national debt even further.

After watching the movie Cool Hand Luke recently my personal manifesto for the State of Illinois is to take everybody in the state house, chain them together, and make the bone idle lying fuckers dig roads and sleep in tents for three years. In most cases this would be the only time in their lives they had actually done an honest job.

Truth is Stranger than Fiction

In 1973 Woody Allen made a wonderful science fiction movie called Sleeper

Set in 2173, it tells the story of a man (Allen) who wakes up after being in suspended animation for 200 years. At that time there is a totalitarian government operating in what used to be the United States. ["Resisters to mind reprogramming will be eliminated for the good of state!" "What kind of government ya got here? This is worse than California!"] The head of the government has been blown up by the resistance leaving only a trace behind - his nose. The government plans to clone a new leader from the old leader's nose and it's Allen's job to stop them.

Why do I bring this up? Because it turns out that somebody has stolen Michael Jackson's nose. Apparently somebody in the morgue says that there was only a small hole where his nose should have been.

So right now, are the highups at Jackson's record company trying to clone a whole new Michael Jackson?

So they get to cash in on his death - and his resurrection!

Read the Cliff's Notes

Now here is an excellent article

Since many of you do not have the time to read it in its entirety, permit me to paraphrase

"The taxpayers of the Western world can no longer afford to subsidise the greedy lazy useless nonproductive deadbeat parasitical portion of the population: namely welfare claimants and government workers".

Why is service so appalling in the UK?

One of the many areas in which the USA leads the world is food. At any time I can choose from a huge variety of great places to eat excellent food at reasonable prices served by polite, helpful and pleasant staff, whom my wife constantly complains that I tip too much.

Contrast that to the UK. If you don't fancy Indian, Chinese or Thai, which are mostly excellent, the equivalent of a hundred and fifty dollars gets a barely adequate meal for 4, with the courses arriving at different times, probably not even hot, badly cooked, with long waits, and surly service.

And now thanks to this post we have the reason.

So you have a choice when offered a job worth around £15,500 or less: take it, work hard, earn your own money or do nothing and get the same amount of money. What if you are offered a job for £16,000? You would be better off by £6.63 per week, not £9.61, due to tax. That's not a lot of money for a lot more work. £17,000 makes you £19.90 better off per week instead of £28.85 because of tax.

The State seemingly doesn't want people at the job centre to get jobs (or it would be making them do a lot more), and even if they are offered a job, unless they are offered a good wage (average in the UK is about £25,000) there is little incentive to take it.

If I decide to move into a flat on housing benefit, I will have a large incentive not to take a job unless it comes with a good. So, no bar jobs, no part time waiter work, etc. It just doesn't pay. The same goes for the other 2.38 million people.

And there you have it. Thanks to the caring socialists in charge, it just doesn't pay to do that kind of work. Hence the restaurants can't get enough staff, and those they do get are only there because they can't for some reason get enough benefits, which explains their attitude. No wonder eating out in the UK was always such a hit or miss proposition.

An utter travesty

I saw something in Target the other day which pulled me up short



That's right. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World in the bargain bucket for $4.75.

This film is based on the twenty-volume "Master and Commander" series by Patrick O'Brian (1914-2000). I've read the whole series several times, and I enjoy it more each time. The prose is the most beautiful I've ever read; the underlying research would provide material for a dozen PHd theses; I'm sure I will never read anything better in my lifetime; indeeed, the fervour of many devotees approaches religious levels of intensity.

Peter Weir and John Collee therefore had their hands full creating a 2 hour movie based on the canon. I would have said the books were not filmable. I would have expected Hollywood would have added a few sword-wielding pirate queens, for example. But they created a most excellent adaptation, preserving much of the feel of the books, with state of the art special effects, and a wonderful cast. There were very few false notes struck and overall I think the movie was a staggering achievement.

The movie also made me think Russell Crowe is probably the best actor working right now. I could not imagine anybody playing Jack Aubrey convincingly, but Crowe pulled it off.

So I was very sad to see it available at a knock-down price.

I despaired when I saw this on an adjacent shelf.



$4.75 for a cinematic masterpiece where the best acting talent in the world interprets the best work of one of the finest novelists in history;

or $13 to see a piece of furniture with legs spouting dreck written by a Hollywood hack likely off his head on drugs.

A difficult choice.

News Roundup

British Diplomat Filmed With Two Russian Prostitutes. As soon as I saw this the first thing I thought was "The KGB have done it again!". Torquil Leamington-Feltch, 29, a British Diplomat was caught on video with a couple of hookers. Now there's a guy who's never read any John Le Carre. I mean, how could you be so dense as to be a British private school boy in Sverdlovsk and think two lovelies who invited you back to their hotel room for some no strings attached nookie were on the up and up? All he had to do was insist on renting a new hotel room and they'd have disappeared in ten seconds flat. Mind you, he probably thought that Russian women all have the hots for Brits whose accent is so upper class they sound like they have a bunch of plums in their mouth when they talk, and whose mothers still stitch their names on to the lining of their undergarments.

And in other news, in the UK, there are one million people who've not worked since 1997. Actually 1,000,646 if you count members of Parliament.

Bernard Madoff Gets 150 Years

Bernie Madoff gets 150 years in Ponzi scheme

After the sentencing Madoff told his counsel that with good behaviour, he expects to cut that sentence in half.

Invest in Chinese Real Estate

I wonder if people who have put down deposits on the apartments in the two blocks which are still standing will now be entitled to their money back?

Tech Byte

I'm very impressed with the new IE 8.0 - so much so I've now dumped the Firefox 3.0.11 and made IE my default browser once more.

I surf with the default text size blown up to make it easier on my eyes. A recent Firefox update (not sure which one) introduced a bug which caused the text size of the page you're reading to suddenly reset to the default, which is annoying.

I've also noticed that the later versions of Firefox have slowed down considerably. While I'm reading a page, I'll open several links in tabs as I go so that I can have the pages ready in the background when I'm finished with the current one. Lately, it seems like something is hanging so that I frequently find that none of the pages in the other tabs have loaded at all. It happens on enough different sites to make me think the problem is in Firefox. Sometimes I've had to "PSKILL FIREFOX".

Now they've finally gotten round to adding a decent "find" function to IE, it seems to me there's no reason to go back.

Socialism Update

Time for a quick look at how caring Socialist governments are doing lately.

In Illinois the Chicago Tribune has broken a story showing how the University of Illinois was leaned on to accept unqualified candidates who had 'connected' relatives. Even to the Law School.

In return, as these candidates would have a heck of a time keeping up with and passing the course, the U of I had to insist that these people be found jobs in due course so as not to affect the U of I Law School's ranking. The money quote: "Yea I'm betting the Governorship will be open. One of them can have that job. Other jobs in Government are fine, since kids who don't pass the bar and can't think are close enough for Government work." No truer word ever written.

So what happens to lawyers who come up in this way? I have no idea, but it does shed some light on bizarre court decisions which you occasionally get here, like a 250LBS off duty drunken cop caught on video beating up a 125LB female bartender being let off with probation

Meanwhile in the UK it has been emerged that welfare payments will for the first time exceed all the revenue from the Income Tax

I wonder what's going to happen in the UK if productive, intelligent, professional people continue to leave at the present rate? The UK lost many of its best and brightest during two World Wars leaving us with a skewed population, a majority of people who thought Socialism was a good idea. It will be interesting to see if a Thatcher emerges which can reestablish the UK as an independent country with sound economics once again, or if it ends up as a poor province of the EU empire, rather like the poorer states in the USA.

New Shooter

So I finally did it. To the dismay of socialists everywhere I bought a very nice Heckler & Koch P30 9mm pistol. It's similar to the HK USP 30 which is the preferred sidearm of the British SAS (the only thing in Britain which still works). If it's good enough for the SAS, it's good enough for me, I thought.

It wasn't cheap, but it's wonderfully light and well made, and if properly maintained it should last a very long time.

There was a 72 hour waiting period. "But I'm mad now!" I joked to the cashier. I got the feeling it wasn't the first time he'd heard that.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

In other news Dalai Lama decks photographer in disco melee

World News Roundup from the BBC

Former South Korean President shows British Cabinet the way

The former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun has jumped to his death

Now for the love of God why can't the members of the British cabinet do the same?

Some Justice for a Change

This hideous lump of blubber is not a former member of the East German Politburo.

She is in fact Britain's Home Secretary - responsible for police, prisons, immigration, etc.

She just got her hat handed to her by the EU which said that It's an offence against human rights for police to retain DNA samples of innocent people

Now read that again. They're not saying police can't collect DNA samples. They're saying they can't keep DNA samples from innocent people who they come across in the course of their day.

This is amazing to me for the following reasons

- An unelected unaccountable court in the undemocratic corrupt EU has to tell the UK about human rights
- It actually feels like a victory to have this policy reversed when it's so plainly unjust those responsible for it should have been fired and jailed themselves.
- It shows that the Government the British people elected are not in control in their own country (a good thing - in this case)

Anyway, savor this all too rare victory against the forces of the state. It won't last long; when Miss Smith gets booted out by the British Electorate, she'll head to Europe for an extremely well paid unelected position and work away at getting this reversed.

And in other "justice" news, the man responsible for blanketing British roads with speed cameras - raising GBP100M a year in fines - pleaded guilty to doing 102MPH in a 70 limit

"It is free enterprise in a way"

From The Foundry

Previewing the Obama administration’s upcoming “sweeping” environmental regulatory agenda, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told NPR’s Michelle Norris yesterday: “The President has said, and I couldn’t agree more, that what this country needs is a one single national road map that tells automakers who are trying to become solvent again what kind of car it is they need to be designing and building for the American people.” Norris then asked: “Is that the role of Government though? That doesn’t sound like free enterprise.” Jackson responded: “Well it is free enterprise in a way.”

Here's some examples where governments have tried this


The 1980 Austin Allegro from the UK
Faults: Square steering wheel (really!), wheels would fall off, tended to bend when jacked up, and the rear window would fall out


Soviet ZIL with proud new owner


East German Trabant, manufactured not from steel but from recycled paper (really!) with a 602 CC 2-stroke engine

Be interesting to see what society they end up building in the USA considering a senior member of the administration like this lady appears to have never read any history at all.

Denis Leary

I've been a fan of Denis Leary for a long time. I still occasionally smile at Rescue Me

I think his short-lived series The Job was among the funniest things I've ever seen on TV

So I was slightly taken aback to see this in my local Whole Foods while stocking up on beer for the weekend



Way to go Denis!!!

UK Police Triumph

"Hand over your mother or we'll smash the door down!"

Hilarious

Latest PC Claptrap

Took the kids to the library this weekend and this caught my eye in the childrens' section.




Just the sort of PC nonsense libraries love to fill young minds with.

Let's not forget that since the CIA stopped backing Siad Barre as a bulwark against the Soviet backed Mengistu regime in neighboring Ethiopia back in 1991, Somalia has had no functioning government.

In 1993 18 US servicemen were killed by the locals which spawned the superb movie "Black Hawk Down".

And now Somalians focus mainly on piracy off the horn of Africa, although recently they made the mistake of taking on a US ship, the result being that snipers belonging to the Navy SEALS managed to end the careers of three of them from 75 feet away on the rolling deck of a ship, an awesome feat of marksmanship.

Of course, there are other careers open to the Somali people in the event they suffer from sea-sickness. Provided they can scrounge up enough for a plane ticket they can bring their rich culture to the UK where they can live comfortably on benefits while passing their days committing crime and smoking skunk with no danger of being shot by a sniper. Of course, they'd do well to watch out for any of Idi Amin's relatives

Death of Newspapers

They say newspapers are dying.

I agree, and here is Exhibit 1:





The Sun Times front page today.

- Oprah
- Burgers
- Cute baby contest
- Pictures of columnists _as_ cute babies

H1B L1 Brouhaha

Again and again in the media you hear CEOs complain that they can’t hire the overseas talent they need because of visa restrictions. Here’s a typical example.

What an utter crock.

They’d have us believe that in a country of 300 million, home to schools like Yale, Princeton, Harvard, MIT, and the rest, they just can’t find any smart people so they need to go overseas for them.

If you believe that then you also likely believe the Illinois legislature is filled with law abiding people who see public service as a calling.

The truth is far simpler. First off it’s primarily a money thing. They don’t bring computer programmers over from India and pay them minimum wage. But a continuous flow of overseas talent does serve to keep wage demand low.

The second reason is cultural. Managers in the big banks and consulting firms, and I speak from over 20 years experience of both, don’t get into those positions by being brilliant at engineering or having any ability to deliver anything whatsoever.

To become a manager on one of those places requires two key skills: first, the ability to think fast on your feet and say things that sound great right off the top of your head, and second, the ability to identify those with power and make them your friend, so you can hang on to their coat tails on the way up. Brown-nose and bull-shit. Forget all the nonsense they print in business books. Cancel the MBA. That’s really all there is to it.

Now put yourself in the shoes of one of these guys. You’ve got a choice of hiring:

- A US born and raised software developer who is smart, opinionated, articulate and knows how to deliver, wants to get ahead and expects a work environment which will enable him to do so.

- Somebody raised in the third world, where deference to authority is the biggest part of the culture, grateful to be here, mindful that if he loses this job, has a one-way ticket back to a land of bad plumbing?

No choice at all really, is there?

Sophisticated Hi Tech Anti Piracy Device Now Available for World Shipping

Instructions

1. Get a few of these about 200ft in size


2. Hang off the side of your ship

3. Sail up and down off the coast of Somalia in complete safety

GO SEALS!

NPR "This I Believe" comes to an end

Driving home today I heard on NPR that their series This I Believe is coming to an end.

Ordinary members of the public tell what they believe in.

A truly inspiring series which captured the viewpoints of a fully representative cross-section of American society

From gay to lesbian
From pacifist to conscientious objector
From Berkley professor to Brandeis professor
From left winger to slightly further left winger
From anti war activist to anti-nuclear protester
From disabled to handicapped
From federal worker to government employee
From civil rights activist to victim of police brutality
From big government advocate to large government advocate
From people who want to ban guns to people who think the second amendment is a bad idea


No viewpoint was omitted - we heard from them all.

This blog salutes you!

Tibet Opens!

Great news huh?

Here are the first of them queuing up at airport security...

How to fix our economic problems

There's one sure way to fix our economic problems.

Get the unemployed back to work.

Let's start with the politicians and their flunkies, cronies and hangers-on! It might be a nasty shock to them, most of whom have no idea what it is to do an actual day of work, and produce a good or a service, but society would benefit in two ways. Firstly, they would no longer be parasites living off the productivity of the rest of us, and secondly they would not be handicapping the productive segment of society with rules and regulations intended to benefit whoever their main campaign donors are!

Failing that, let's just speed up all the corruption investigations going on and get some speedy trials going. If they're locked in jail they're not robbing the rest of us. Much cheaper to pay room and board for a politician in chokey than their speeding fines or for their dirty films

Space News

From Reuters today some news that's totally out of this world.

NASA called a halt to tests when the astronauts, Budweiser drinkers to a man, all recognized the taste!

Ostalgie

Here's what looks like an interesting series from the UK Government's official mouthpiece, the BBC.

In the Lost World of Communism the BBC will be lamenting the passing of East Germany.

I was struck by the quote from East Germany's first president Walter Ulbricht.

"It has to look democratic but we must have everything under control."

That statement sums up perfectly the political situation in the UK, where two parties participate in a pretend-democracy, and also the EU which has been forced on the people of Europe whether they like it or not. When a referendum is occasionally taken, the result, which is always negative, is ignored, or the people are forced to vote again until they come up with the "right" answer.

So although the Berlin Wall and the East German regime did fall, and the last President of East Germany, Erich Honecker, like many Germans 45 years earlier, retired to Chile, what ended up happening was the primary idea behind the founding of that nation - all decisions taken by a small elite over the heads of the "great unwashed" - went on to be incorporated in how all the nations of Europe are now governed.

Ironic really!

Illinois Update

Illinois is a political cess-pool. It's so corrupt there's a good chance your elected representative will be in jail before their term ends. Go and see your congressman, and you'll probably be patted down by one of his flunkies to see if you're wearing a wire.

So with the Illinois economy in the toilet you'd expect these noble representatives of the people to be focused 100% on helping to find a solution the problem, right?

Are they hell.

Ken Dunkin is trying to sneak in a gun ban by - get this - forcing gun owners to have liability insurance like motorists

These guys don't have a clue about achieving anything in the real world, but they are sure devious when it comes to methods of sneaking gun bans in!

Bus Slogan Generator

I've been having a lot of fun with the Bus Slogan Generator