Standard Mischief

Is there anything that can save us from Obama’s, “free”, all-you-care-to-consume-until-we-need-to-ration-it universal healthcare for everyone plan? Perhaps, because days ago, I heard of a birth of octuplets. Now it comes out that the mother wishes to became a public person.

I’m not going to bash her for being single, but when you are a self-described “professional student”, without a job, living in a house paid for by your parents, with six kids, and you chose to deliberately have additional embryos implanted which you damn well know you cannot support without sucking on the government’s teat, don’t expect me to not call you a professional leech.

Nadya Suleman, 33, plans a career as a television media whore or something, hoping to raise a few million. She wants to be famous. Let’s make it so. I hear the first wave of socialized medicine has been tucked in to the “stimulus plan” [1] which now goes to the Senate. I think I have an idea for an expert witness for the next dog-and-pony show up on Capital Hill.

[1] H.R. 1: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Jeez, is it so fscking hard to cite a bill number, people?)

from Linoage, what is “neighborhood stabilization activities”? (link is google-fu) How does it differ from pork?

My best guess is that this is a scheme to use taxpayer dollars to buy up abandoned properties and create an artificial scarcity in order to make private ownership less affordable. Inflate the deflated bubble a bit with federal money we don’t have and can’t afford to borrow.

Lest you think I’ve started splogging, let me assure you that is not the case. This is a “cranky consumer” post.

I use copper scrubbers to clean gasket surfaces on engines and surface rust on steel because they’re softer than the surface I want to clean. Unless of course you buy copper plated steel scrubbies. Yes, I did look, and no, there is not any fine print anywhere on the package that states that these “copper scourers” will both rust and stick to your fridge magnets. Good thing I didn’t ruin anything expensive or irreplaceable.

I’d call that fraud. It also looks like I’ll have to go shopping with a magnet from now on.

Zero replies from an email sent ten days ago shows that http://quickie.com/ cares about how they are perceived in the marketplace.

Although we’ve had a bitter cold snap, winter has been lax on the slick stuff this year until a few days ago. That’s changed now because we got an inch of snow that sticked and then a glazing of freezing rain last night.

All you readers from the hearty north can feel free to puff out your chest and say “An inch!? That’s nothing!”,  and normally I’d agree, but here in the DC metro area we have more than our fair share of idiots from elsewhere (government staffers, diplomats from warm semi-tropical nations across the sea, and so on), who’ve never seen the stuff before and are out there on the roads being a hazard to themselves and others.

Mix that in with the now frozen rain and you have a recipe for disaster. Barring the illegal-in-this-area studded tires, chains, or sand, you’re just not going anywhere on ice unless it’s flat. That is, in fact, why I’m up early. Some idiot with all-wheel drive desperately wants to get back up the hill he just slid down, and he apparently doesn’t mind revving his engine and spinning tires loudly.

photo of bread, TP, and powdered milk.

I’ve been pre-prepared since Katrina, and here you see the stereotyped basics. Everything is shelf stable except the bread, which freezes nicely. I don’t normally drink milk, but it comes in handy if I need to cook something (no measuring, just three heaping spoonfuls for every cup needed and add water instead).

My good-intentioned neighbors, (who, every week in the summer, I mow their 5 foot by 4 foot yard for them), decided to do me the “favor” of shoveling my driveway. That’s nice, but the frozen rain is now sticking to my pavement instead of that inch of snow. I guess I’ll have to melt the ice off now as a shovel will get me nowhere.

I guess I’ll be telecommuting this morning. It wasn’t even that bad on the toll-road last night (before the ice came) and there was some idiot that lost control in his SUV, spun out, crossed four lanes of traffic and slammed into the jersey barrier on the left-hand shoulder, facing the wrong way. I’d like to avoid people like this if at all possible.

…but at 12:01 yesterday, before he had even finished swearing his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution, whitehouse.gov was changed to reflect His Most Obamanesses’ good old-fashion gun banning ways. That’s a side of Barry we haven’t seen since his “bitter and clingy” remarks.

Meanwhile, the media this morning is reporting the boom in personal coffee makers, presumably to replace discretionary spending on lattes. No word from the MSM on whether or not the unprecedented sales in firearms continues unabated.

Oh yea, it’s on.