Absolute Power Does Corrupt – Always!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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You know, sometimes you just have to laugh at the stupidity and short-sightedness of politicians.

The latest idiot to hit the headlines is US House Representative Jim Sensenbrenner. You might remember him, he was the one who wrote the supposed anti-terror law now known as the Patriot Act.

Now he has asked the European Parliament for help in controlling the obviously completely out of control NSA who have decided this piece of ill thought out legislation gives them carte blanch permission to snoop into everybody’s business, friend and foe.

Apparently Congressman Sensenbrenner has belatedly seen the error of his ways and wants Europe to put pressure on the US to change its legislation to stop the spy agency’s mass communications data collecting activities.

Today Sensenbrenner says that the NSA has abused the trust placed in it by the American people. Powers that were designed to protect them, but powers that have been used to spy on them instead. And the Brits are at it too!

Big surprise Jim?

I think not!

Then there is the damage they have done to America’s standing throughout the world. The Merklegate scandal, where the German Chancellor’s cell phone was found to be bugged, is just one of many instances where America has treated its allies like enemies, creating suspicion and distrust where there used to be friendship and cooperation.

And the poor judgment continues, because Sensenbrenner’s solution to the problem he helped to create is not to get rid of this bad legislation, but instead to create even more bad legislation that purports to curtail the excesses of the former.

Won’t work Jimmy.

No point fitting a new lock on the stable door after the horse is already out and galloping roughshod over the privacy of the American people and their friends.

All very well for Jim Sensenbrenner to say sorry now, but wasn’t it inevitable that the massive ill thought out powers handed to the spooks after 9-11 would be abused?

Absolute power does corrupt – always! That is why checks and balances are necessary, only they need to be put in place in time.

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“I Think” Said The Sweet Potato, “Therefore I Yam”

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The clue is in the title.

We’re playing with words again.

Yes, it’s pun day.

Enjoy!

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I had no idea there were so many different types of sandpaper.

Luckily the guy in the shop gave me a rough guide.

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My grandfather tried to start his own company building airplanes.

But he couldn’t get it off the ground.

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I’ve just started time travelling with an old friend of mine.

We go back a long way.

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I used to have a job drilling for oil.

It was boring.

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I had to start singing when I realized I didn’t have

enough money to get into the public toilets.

I was busking for a piss.

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Every summer, my dad would take me to the beach,

put me in a chest and bury me in the sand.

Treasured memories.

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I’m having difficulty creating saline water.

I can’t work out if salt is part of the problem or part of the solution.

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I only got it two weeks and already my

Chinese sound system is broken.

So stereotypical.

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You know you’re in red neck territory when the

girls think Timberland is a theme park for lumberjacks.

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You know what seems odd to me?

Numbers that aren’t divisible by two.

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I heard that Rapunzel used to be a real party animal.

She was always letting her hair down.

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After a hard day at work I thought it would be funny

to give my boss a big pat on the back.

That was my last day working on his farm.

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As I sat down to dinner with Gaius Marius, Julius Caesar

and my wife, she rolled her eyes and said

“No, I said I wanted more ROMANCE in our relationship”.

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I drink so much my liver is more like a dier.

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Monk: “What porn is acceptable?”

Archbishop: “Nun.”

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The banker said he could offer me a credit card with no interest.

I said, “Then why are you doing it?”

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I got sacked from NASA for falling asleep on the rocket.

It completely ruined the salad at their summer barbecue.

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Once on vacation my friend fell over a pyramid and hurt his mouth.

Egypt his tooth.

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The duck said to the bartender,

‘put it on my bill.’

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I was in a Chinese restaurant last night and I asked

the waiter if there were any Chinese Jews.

He walked off then came back a while later and said,

“No we only have apple juice, lemon juice or orange juice.”

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The Stupider People Are, The More They Complicate Things!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Time for a mid-week rant I think.

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You may have noticed from the tag line of this blog that its major theme is to expose stupidity and bureaucracy and hopefully to encourage people to fight against it, rather than meekly fall in line with every idiotic rule and regulation that the bureaucratic morons introduce to make our lives a misery.

It is one of those curious contradictions in life that the stupider people are, the more they complicate things and the more they try to regulate things that require no regulation.

They just don’t understand that simplicity can sometimes be the most effective solution to problems – if indeed the problems they perceive even exist in the first place.

On the other hand, things that do need regulating, like the banksters for example, are left largely without interference.

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The big question is, why do these idiot bureaucrats needlessly complicate our lives? 

Many years ago I figured it out.

They do it to try to enhance their own importance. It’s as easy as that.

Let’s face it, most bureaucratic jobs don’t take a rocket scientist’s brain to cope with them. They are easy and repetitive but if done correctly can be completed quickly and without upsetting anyone.

But the bureaucrats won’t have it that way. Complicate the task is their solution. If they do that they need more staff to help them. If they have more staff they get to be in charge of more people, which makes them more important. If they complicate it even more they might need a whole department. And on and on it goes.

In the business world there are empire builders in all large companies. People of mediocre ability, but with enough survival instinct to create a belief that what they do is useful to the company. 

As time goes on they are able to hide within their little empires inside a company and no one questions if what they are doing is really needed and certainly few realize how dumb they are. It is only once they leave this safe environment that the truth becomes clearer.

I have encountered several of these beasts out in the open and it is not a pretty sight. They are so dumb that they have forgotten how dumb they really are. Inflated with their artificially induced and undeserved stature within their former companies they imagine that out in the real world they are, not just ‘as good’ as everyone else, but ‘better’ than everyone else! Invariably they make a mess of things, but unfortunately they cause a lot of damage, sometimes irreparable, before they are caught on and fired. 

Obviously the same type of people are in public life too. In fact this is where they excel, because here it is much harder to pin down their accountability and fire them. In many cases the people who have the power to fire them are exactly the same types and the last thing they want to do is diminish the size of their own empires.

Have you ever noticed that an average town or city can function quite well and efficiently with a mayor and a handful of administrators.

Yet if you take the same town or city ten years later, while it probably hasn’t changed much as regards size, (only in exceptional circumstances would it have doubled or trebled its population or area), it’s local bureaucracy has more than doubled and trebled in size, probably a lot more. It probably also has an increasing number of by-laws and regulations and to pay for it all more and more property and other taxes are being demanded from the community. Clearly all this additional bureaucracy is not needed. But it is there and will continue to grow.

Why do we allow this? Why do we keep electing people whose only idea seems to be the provision of the same basic services at an ever increasing cost?

Big government, federal government, is even worse.

The European Parliament, for example, churns out regulation after regulation after regulation, about ridiculous things like how straight a cucumber should be or how bent a banana can be and still be called a banana! 

Washington has adopted the same strategy, sticking its nose in things that are none of its business and that only serve to hinder rather than help the people who elected them.

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It’s about time we tried to stop this spiral into disaster.

It’s time big brother and all his little administrators had their noses put out of joint. 

Remember, “Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”,  wherever and whenever you can!

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There Comes A Time When Zero Tolerance Is The Only Option

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Time for another rant, now known as the Sunday Sermon.

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For many years there has been an influx of Muslims into Western countries like, for example, America and Britain. And for years these people arrived and set to work to provide a better life for their families, which was reason they chose our countries in the first place.

Sometimes we treated them with respect. At other times their treatment was not so welcoming. But the vast majority accepted things as they were and worked hard, with the result that they did make a better life for themselves.

However, now all of a sudden, because of the rants of a few demented and evil clerics who have corrupted the words of Allah and the meaning of the Koran, some Muslims are now offended by everything, including the very presence of the citizens of the countries they have chosen to come and live among.

How absurd is that?

Worse, however, is that we are supposed to pander to this nonsense and tippy toe around them afraid to do or say anything in case it will be distorted and manufactured into something offensive.

And if we don’t?

Well then they will cut our head’s off in the middle of a street and stand bragging about it afterwards.

That is exactly what happened in London this week when Drummer Lee Rigby, a British soldier, was first knocked down by a car driven by two blood-thirsty killers and then decapitated as he lay helpless on the street.  

murdered soldier Drummer Lee Rigby

On any scale of things that are offensive, it just doesn’t get any more offensive than that.

Yet we are supposed to tolerate the intolerable and excuse the inexcusable!

Let’s get real folks.

Some things are unacceptable in western society. And if you choose to live in western society then you live by our rules, not yours.

When I visit a Muslim country where, for example, drinking alcohol is forbidden, I don’t put on the pretense of being offended, I don’t whine about my rights being denied, in fact I don’t complain at all. I am in their country, those are their rules, and while I am there I am happy to respect them and abide by them.

Why is there no reciprocal respect any more?

And even more to the point, why is that reciprocal respect not demanded?

We have allowed our politicians to cloud the issue by blundering about in foreign lands. They say they are doing it to fight terrorism and protect us, but in reality it has much more to do with securing commodities and distracting us from much more serious economic problems they have created at home.

Politicians manipulate their people by creating ‘bogey men’ and fomenting fear where none should really exist. They do it, not for the benefit of their constituents, but for their own self promotion and their attempt to cling on to power. It happens in every country, east or west, north or south, and it has been happening for centuries.

And what is happening to elements of the Muslim population today is no different. In their case the manipulation is made slightly easier because the evil clerics are able to deceive their largely uneducated and ignorant followers with the promise of seventy virgins and a place in heaven if they either kill themselves or other innocent people – preferably both at the same time. Strange, if the reward is so great, that you never see the clerics themselves pushing to the front of the queue to participate!  

There is a horrible trend nowadays that standards must be allowed to come down to the lowest level. Exams in schools and degrees at universities have to be made easier and easier to pass, lest some be deemed not to have qualified. Everyone has to be treated as a potential terrorist at airports in case selective targeting of possible suspects be labeled as racial or ethnic profiling. And every effort has to be made try to understand and excuse the criminals in our society who prey on the law-abiding.

We have completely lost our way. And the only solution is to take a stand on these important issues. Try to be nice, and understanding, and liked by everyone and you doom yourself and your society. There comes a time when the proverbial line has to be drawn in the sand. And there comes a time when zero tolerance is the only option.

That time is now!

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Forget That The Criminals Are The Problem – Let’s Attack The Decent Law-Abiding People

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Time for a bit of a rant today.

First one this year, I don’t know how I held out for so long.

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Since the horrible massacre of schoolchildren and their teachers by a mentally deranged moron in Connecticut the real debate has again been sidelined into the convenient ‘to-ban-or-not-to-ban’ guns.

I can’t make up my mind as to what proportion of the gun-banning side of this so-called debate are idiots repeating what other idiots have said, how many are malicious, or how many are people trying to grab a handy headline or two.

The first lot can be easily compared with a flock of sheep. Sheep aren’t noted for their intellectual prowess, nor their debating skills, but when one sheep goes “baaa” you can be sure a lot more will say the same thing.

The second lot, the malicious ones, are deliberately rather than unintentionally refocusing the debate on to their liberal/fascist agenda of increasing bureaucratic interference wherever they see an opening.

And the third group are people, usually politicians or those with a political agenda, using the misery of other people to publicize themselves and their cause, but primarily themselves. Never one to let a band wagon roll past him, President Obama has jumped on this one, all guns blazing as it were!

For all these groups the ‘to-ban-or-not-to-ban’ guns debate is a handy, and a welcome, distraction.

It gives the first group something to say without stopping to analyze the real problem in detail. It gives the second group more ammunition (no pun intended today) to curtail freedom. As for the later group, the politicians love this distraction because it gives the impression that they are compassionate and caring and trying to find a solution, even though they are addressing the wrong problem.

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On the face of it, Obama’s proposals can be dressed up as reasonable. If you haven’t seen them on the media (how could you avoid it?) they include:  

• asking Congress to reinstate and strengthen a ban on the sale and production of assault weapons that passed in 1994 and expired in 2004;
• a ban on the sale and production of magazines with more than 10 rounds, like those used in Newtown and other mass shootings;
• criminal background checks for all gun sales, closing the longstanding loophole that allows buyers to avoid screening by purchasing weapons from unlicensed sellers at gun shows or in private sales;
• banning the possession or transfer of armor-piercing bullets;
• and cracking down on “straw purchasers,” i.e., those who pass background checks and then forward guns to criminals or others forbidden from purchasing them.

As I said, on the face of it reasonable, but I suspect this is just the first salvo of a much more comprehensive agenda.

However, the question of the moment is simply this  –  would a gun ban, whether partial or comprehensive, work?

And the answer is categorically, NO!

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And the answer is ‘NO’, not because I am a champion of the 2nd Amendment – I’m not, it doesn’t even apply to me! The answer is ‘NO’ because taking guns away from law abiding people won’t stop the criminals or those with criminal intent.

It doesn’t take a genius to work that out, but no one in the gun-ban lobby is even asking that fundamental question. Nor do they want it to be asked!  

You see this is how gun bans work. I’ve seen them in operation in numerous countries.

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If gun ownership is banned, law-abiding Joe Public won’t be able to go to Walmart and buy a gun as before. And he won’t be able to buy his gun because all that gun-banning legislation does is to make sure that no law-abiding citizen can buy and hold a legal firearm.

Joe Public is buying his gun (99.99 percent of the time) because he uses it for sporting purposes, or because he is a collector, or because he feels he needs it for his protection and the protection of his family.

The criminals, on the other hand, who don’t shop at Walmart, but are more likely to deal out of the trunk of a car in some isolated spot well away from prying eyes, will still be able to buy their guns and use them how they please.

Why?

Because they buy illegal guns from illegal dealers. And illegal guns from illegal dealers are not part of these new proposals. As a matter of fact the illegal guns are already banned which in itself proves that banning does not work! 

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So what has to be the inevitable result of a ban on legally held weapons?

Simply this. When you ban law-abiding decent citizens from buying or owning guns all you can possibly end up with are armed criminals versus unarmed civilians, with the police (who would have been used by the politicians and bureaucrats to subjugate the law-abiding population and remove their protection) now being the only form of defense and they will be grossly inadequate in numbers to ever hope to do so effectively.

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As another example of just how far up their own asses some people can stick their heads and still think they are getting a tan, an idiot reporter named Dwight R Worley of the New York Journal News recently published the names and addresses, complete with an interactive map, of people in Westchester and Rockland Counties who owned legally held firearms.

Like all such journalistic crap it was parceled up in ‘caring for the community’ and ‘public interest’ wrappers, but all this article did was to point an accusing finger at law abiding citizens who had done nothing wrong.

Well, when I say “all it achieved” that’s not quite accurate, because it also gave the thieves, the home invaders, the rapists, the thugs, etc., a map of the homes that were protected BUT equally the homes that were not.  

Thanks to dickhead Dwight R Worley (who incidently owns a .357 Magnum himself adding the crime of hypocrisy to his stupidity), Mr. Thief and Mr. Mayhem now know which houses in Westchester and Rockland Counties they can attack with impunity and those that they should stay clear of.

As it turns out, the people who should be most upset by this article are the ones who don’t have a gun, not those who do!

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Zip this forward to a gun-ban country where all the law abiding people are defenseless targets for the criminals and there can only be one result. Not just an increase in violent crime but also a vast increase in petty crime. The detection rate for the latter is already minuscule, so think for a moment what it will be like when the criminals have little fear of their victims and even less fear of being caught.

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The truth is that legally held guns probably save many, many more lives than they harm, and in most cases they do so without ever being used. But there aren’t any statistics for that.

The truth is that banning legal weapons will not stop illegal gangland shootings, which constitute the vast majority of deaths by gunfire in the United States.

The truth is that banning legal weapons won’t decrease the number of illegal weapons in circulation.

And the truth is that banning legally held weapons won’t stop morons or mentally deranged individuals from going on a murder spree – a knife, a bow or a can of gasoline will get the same job done.

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The saddest thing of all is that the people and politicians who are calling for these bans know it. It would be nice to see them show a bit of backbone and integrity for once and attack the criminals and leave the law-abiding people alone. But don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen. 

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Have You Heard Of The Herd?

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Today was originally scheduled for the latest part in the short series about the curious and amusing phobias some people seem to have. But it’s a holiday week for most of us and I have put that post back until next week.

Instead I feel the urge to say something else. Two things actually.

First one is, have you heard of the herd? In particular the herd mentality, where people do something they have no need to do just because other people are doing it?

It happens a lot. Far too much in fact.

We witnessed it during the recent election campaign where people formed opinions not on the basis of their own analysis of the candidates and policies, but because of something someone else said or something they heard on tv.

We saw it again very recently after the dreadful murders in Connecticut where the unthinking herd ignored the real problem and  jumped on gun control as a solution to senseless attacks such as this. They might as well call for a ban on knives, axes, chainsaws, bows and arrows and gasoline when they are at it as any of these could do the same job in the hands of a mental defective.

And on December 24 we witnessed another example in grocery stores throughout the country (throughout the world even) as hoards of the unthinking joined the herd and bought up bread and food supplies like the shops would not be open again for at least a month. They are open again today you dummies!

These three examples have been going on for years and people never seem to learn, they just keep on following the herd without a thought in their heads.

And this leads me on to point two which is how little thought most of us give to what we are doing and what we are buying the already well off and pampered.

I know for a fact that Santa had orders for laptops and ipads and iphones and all sorts of other expensive playthings. And I also know that he hadn’t the sense to say no, but just bought them anyway. Mea culpa as much as anyone.

Then I got to thinking that life was a lot different when I was a kid. Yes we liked to get presents at Christmas, but they were a lot less sophisticated and a lot less expensive – even in relative terms. When I was eight, for example, I didn’t need a smart phone, or any phone come to think of it, nor was my social life so complicated and hectic that I had to have a chauffeur for all my must-do activities for every day of the week.

When I was a kid we had our toys, but we also had a thing called an imagination and we could make our own fun out of very little.

So what is the problem today? Why are kids so incapable of making their own entertainment? Why are they constantly “bored” without clicking a button on a computer consol or without someone else to do their thinking for them?

Like a lot of other things, it all boils down to money at the end of the day. Now I’m not advocating poverty as a solution to the world’s ills. Far from it. I like to make money, the more the better, and the thought of being, perhaps not rich, but comfortably well off is a very nice one. But if we had to we could all make do with a lot less. And I don’t think we would be any less happier in the process.

People in other countries seem to manage quite well. And they still seem to have the mental capacity to enjoy what little they have and make their fun out of next to nothing. In other words they are happy. If things do ever deteriorate to the extent that some of the doomsday preachers are telling us, there are a lot better prepared people in the world than there are in rich countries like America, or Britain, or Germany, etc.

Think about giving your kid or nephew or niece an old oil drum from the local garbage dump next Christmas instead of an ipod touch or some other overly expensive apple. I wonder how much music and entertainment they could get out of that?

Check out the video and you will see what I mean…

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Why Are Puns So Popular?

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I’ve been doing puns for a while now and it seems that a lot of other people like them too. I just can’t figure out the reason. I mean the jokes themselves are, to say the least, sometimes contrived and quite bad. Yet people groan, grimace and laugh and come back for more – me included, I’m just not sure why.

If you think you have the answer do let me know.

Meantime enjoy this week’s selection.

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The other day someone left a piece of silly putty in my house. I didn’t know what to make of it.

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My wife has left me because I am a compulsive gambler. I’d do anything to win her back.

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Some people are making Rapture jokes like there’s no tomorrow.

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Tea is for mugs.

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Did you hear about the physics student who couldn’t understand quantum theory? He was thicker than a Planck!

Max Planck (1858 – 1917), German physicist considered the founder of the quantum theory.

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A woman was attacked by a troupe of mime artists. They performed unspeakable acts on her.

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Wind turbines. I’m a big fan.

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NBC News: Two pedestrians die in collision. How fast must they have been walking?

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Don’t you just hate it when people think there clever but use the wrong grammar?

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Iraq drastically needs to reduce its car bomb footprint.

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A book just fell on my head. I’ve only got myshelf to blame.

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“So, how’s life in North Korea?”

“Well, I can’t complain.”

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How do you find a blind man in a nudist colony?  It’s not hard.

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Cocaine is never a solution. Unless, of course, you dissolve it in water.

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I got a phone call from electric company to say my bill was outstanding. I said, “Thanks!”

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I often say to myself, “I can’t believe that cloning machine worked!”

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When my girlfriend said she was leaving because of my obsession with The Monkees, I thought she was joking. And then I saw her face.

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I Suppose I Should Be Doing These On A Punday Not A Thursday

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I got an email recently from Paul Ryan (well, probably one of his little helpers) inviting me to some kind of election shin-dig they were having. How he got my email address I don’t know because I haven’t signed up for anything even resembling political.

Whoever wins, we get the same people really in charge. There can be no doubt about that after Obama’s four years of “no we can’t” and changing nothing of consequence.

And then there was the debate in Denver. By all accounts a win for Romney and a lackluster performance by Obama. A CBS News poll of “uncommitted voters”, gave Romney 46% as opposed to 22% for Obama (with 32% calling it a tie).

Not that performance in debates count for much in the long run, but this one has made an “unshakable” lead for Obama into a much closer competition – until the next debate anyway – which might turn what has been a relatively dull campaign into something more exciting. Don’t hold your breath, though.

 

Meantime we have much more important things to investigate and to lighten the mood.

Yes, from pundit to punday, another excuse for more bad jokes, using the clever ploy of the pun.

Can you take it?

If you can, then enjoy.

 

 

You feel stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.

 

 

Is the Local Area Network in Australia – the LAN down under?

 

 

Every calendar’s days are numbered.

 

 

A lot of money is tainted – taint yours and taint mine.

 

 

A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

 

 

He had a photographic memory that was never developed.

 

 

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.

 

 

Are Santa’s helpers subordinate clauses?

 

 

Acupuncture is a jab well done.

 

 

Show me a piano falling down a mineshaft and I’ll show you A-flat minor.

 

 

Seven days without a pun makes one weak.

 

 

When the actress saw her first strands of gray hair she thought she’d dye.

 

 

When a scientist was doing a large experiment with liquid chemicals to try to solve a problem he accidentally fell in and became part of the solution.

 

 

If you leave alphabet soup on the stove and go out, could it spell disaster?

 

 

After they bought a water bed, the couple started to drift apart.

 

 

To write with a broken pencil is pointless.

 

 

The best way to communicate with a fish is to drop them a line.

 

 

Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of defeat.

 

 

Rabbits like their beer brewed with a lot of hops.

 

 

Once you’ve seen one shopping center, you’ve seen a mall.

 

 

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