Category Archives: Stupidity plain and simple

Politics, Stupidity plain and simple

The citizen of France who would be king

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Canadian politics and the Parliamentary system can be quite amusing.

Presently, following an October election, Canada has a newly chosen minority government in Ottawa. Not happy to have been left out of the proceedings, two parties who were not elected to form the government have chosen to get together in erstwhile “band of brothers” mode and defeat the government elected by the people. Not having enough seats in Parliament to do this on their own, the two parties have chosen to include a Québec separatist party in the agreement to support their merry band.

The leader of the “coup” will be a man who is a citizen of France. If that isn’t enough to gall anyone – sorry, Charles – the man who would be king was soundly defeated in the recent election. Having had his ass handed to him, this doofus has previously announced his intent to resign as the loser leader of his loser party in May of 2009.

Allow me to summarize, if you will. The governing party defeated all others to form a minority government. Those who were defeated have chosen to oust the newly elected government and thus take over governing themselves, with a leader who is a citizen of France. They will do this with the support of a Québec-only separatist party.

Most Canadians are upset with the proceedings as they have been occurring, so it should be interesting to see if there will be much interest in the House during the next roll call of votes. Personally, I can’t see the erstwhile band of brothers doing anything more than making fools of themselves, but I’ll just have to wait and see. Were this just about anywhere else in the world, Canada would now be in the midst of a bloody revolution, but fortunately for all, that’s not the case.

In the meantime, it’s business as usual for everything else, while the Canadian MSM gnashes its teeth and tries to convince us all how everything is going to hell in a handbasket. Good luck with that.

Politics, Stupidity plain and simple

The blame game

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Author’s note: I once read a study that pointedly admitted that only 10 percent of Americans know the name of the country on their northern border. You can see the country from Alaska. Any guesses as to what that country might be? (Unfortunately, I can’t find a link to the study.)

Canada has become a haven for terrorism, according to Bert Tussing at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania:

“The threat along the northern border, while far less publicized, is nevertheless cause for concern – perhaps equal concern, perhaps greater.”

Mr. Tussing’s concern for the Canadian border is even greater than the concern he has for the Mexican border. I don’t see how that’s possible, given that the illegal immigrant sieve, known to America as the Mexican border, is impossible to plug, no matter what America pretends to do in its continued feeble attempts at stemming the tide.

To America, illegal immigrants cannot be terrorists. Those illegals entering the U.S. from Mexico come for a better life, not to plan and execute terror attacks. Perhaps the Army War College should launch – if you’ll pardon the pun – an inquiry into determining how many of those millions of Mexicans are terrorists from somewhere else. Does anyone, anywhere, actually know?

* crickets chirp *

I didn’t think so.

Canada’s immigration and refugee policy is cause celebre for the concern, according to Mr. Tussing, and other, more well-known ignoramuses in America. There are still Americans who believe that Canada was the source of the 9/11 terrorists. How in God’s name that became a truth is entirely unknown, but given the American media’s constant parroting of Administration talking points and lies, I suppose its not unusual.

For the ignoramuses among us, the terrorists were mostly Saudi – you know, from Saudi Arabia – and three other Arab countries. Fifteen hijackers obtained their visas for travel to America in Saudi Arabia, no questions asked. That’s why America invaded Iraq, remember?

No mention is ever made of who lets these terrorists into America from wherever they might launch themselves. It does occur to me that all of the blame just might rest with the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service, the U.S. Border Patrol, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (long live Der Homeland!), and various and sundry other American agencies and councils that operate in secret and are paid trillions of dollars to prevent such incursions.

Touched as I am by America’s concern for who Canada lets into its own country, I think America should take a long and hard look within its own borders first. I’m not optimistic that will happen anytime soon, given America’s penchant to blame almost any other country first for its problems around the world.

The greater concern for the border-watchers should be for the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who enter into the U.S. for the sole purpose of spending money whilst escaping something known as the extreme Canadian winter. There’s no telling what those mostly white, Canadian-born, winter-escaping extremists might foment. (They’re called snowbirds, by the way.)

Can anyone give me the name of any country that has secure borders? I mean really, immigrants washing up on Florida soil from Cuba probably pose just as great a threat, but no one makes headlines over an insecure Florida border.

Perhaps they come for the waters.

Blog tribulations, Stupidity plain and simple

WordPress is getting a tad tiresome

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I had a new implementation of WordPress installed on a motorcycle site, which was previously written in html. I wasn’t aware of any problems with the WordPress visual editor until I encountered it on the new site. I did a search and was able to come up with quite a few solutions, but none of the solutions worked for me — or for many others, it seems. No big deal. Find a thread, post a question, and someone will eventually come up with something that works.

It would appear that some of us have touched a WordPress nerve, thus we have this:

and here’s a general rant to those of you that are whining that your threads arent getting replied to (ive seen like 7-8 in the last 4 hours) — its a fucking holiday in the US (where 90% of us live), and some people dont spend them online. Im ONLY here because Im working. Get a grip — your dumb little “i cant get my adsense to show up” or your “i want an archives page” crap isnt more important than someone spending a damn holiday with their family, and away from a bunch ingrates that cant use a search box. FFS, most of you dont even say please, or thank you.

Go here if you want to see the thread. I’m the guy with the palm tree in my avatar.

As a result of this, I have decided to leave my site in html and remove WordPress. It looks much better the way it is, and editing the html is a breeze for me.

Thanks, but no thanks, WordPress.

Link to site here.

Furthermore, I get absolutely no spam on the site since it’s in html. It’s not a high-traffic site, but it does get three to four hundred hits a month, purely for the technical articles.

And whooami, male or female WordPress goowill ambassador that you are, you’ll find sympathy in the dictionary, somewhere between shit and syphilis.

Now for the history lesson

You knew it was coming, right?

The “it’s a fucking holiday in the U.S. of A.” that whooami makes reference to is called Thanksgiving. It’s celebrated in the U.S. as a time when invading religious zealots gave thanks to the native North American population for letting them come ashore, bringing religious fervor, pestilence, slaughter, mass displacement and ownership to an otherwise pretty satisfied people as a whole.

Outside of North America, I can’t think of one other country or nation that celebrates Thanksgiving. Certainly not Mexico or Central America, where visitors from Europe (for you geography-challenged Americans, that’s a continent, not a country) brought disease, more pestilence, religion-induced slaughter, and conquest to a civilization that was more than a little advanced. Obviously, Europeans (people living on a continent, not a country) don’t celebrate Thanksgiving.

South America (another continent, consisting of many countries) doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Nor does Asia, Australia, Africa, the Middle East and on and on and on. So basically, we have a country of 330 million people, far outnumbered by the remainder of the known world, completely in ignorance of the other six billion scattered here and there on the globe.

Oh well, it was ever thus.

Disappointments, Politics, Stupidity plain and simple

Motorcycle riding blues downside

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Harley dealerships are starting to drop like flies. Santa Cruz. Wilwert in Debuque. And in Cranbrook, the authorized dealer there refused to finance a multi-million dollar hole-in-the-ground boutique to sell dog leashes, suspenders, doo-rags and t-shirts, thus the mother company declined to renew their franchise. That was a smart move on the part of the now-former franchise owners, given present economic times.

I’d say the more pressing problem is a lack of short term funding available for these dealerships to maintain access to cash flow. With sales down 60 to 70 per cent, cash flow is a dominating factor in a dealer’s viability. No cash flow, no business. Oh, and did you finance one of those fancy new boutiques to sell trinkets? You know, the ones the mother company forced you to build beside a major access point on a freeway or lose your franchise? Kiss that idea good-bye.

Second, I suspect that over the past ten to twelve years Harley’s aging market share took a lot of cash out of their homes to purchase those expensive toys and branded clothes because they wanted to look like a bunch of bad-ass boys. Well, it’s crunch time, folks, and with the housing market in the dumpster courtesy of the BushCo fools and their deregulation, you can kiss your motorcycle on the fender and wave goodbye when it’s repo’d.

I’m hoping the management at H-D still has a faint memory of their takeover of the troubled AMF brand in the early ’80s and has some idea of how to survive the current economic downturn. I’m not holding my breath, given that a new authorized dealership in Cranbrook has appeared in an appropriately shiny and new edifice, and is fully stocked with suspenders, doo-rags and dog leashes.

Good luck with that.

Baja, Long trips, On the road, Stupidity plain and simple

Mexico bullshit, the true grit way

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Author’s note: I tagged this with the Baja, but it’s about travel on mainland Mexico. Same dif, just a more diverse part of the country. And yes, I’ve ridden the mainland too – in fact, those very same roads that this guy whines and snivels about.

While I recognize the need for some to embellish their tales of motorcycle derring-do, it disappoints me greatly the length to which some will go to provide false and misleading information. Over the years I have ridden to Mexico many times, and have never encountered one problem. However, that’s not to say that there aren’t any.

For a most enjoyable read on wintering in Mexico, fast forward to this post.

*     *     *     *

I’ve been reading about a bike trip some clown on a bagger took from Victoria, Canada to Mexico. It’s titled “Mexico Standoff”. Apparently this guy had been planning his ride to Ixtapa for years, but when he finally started his online research, everyone he contacted cautioned him against making the trip by motorcycle “with a lot of negative and scary reports”.

Oh mommy, don’t make me go.

By the third picture of his motorcycle, and the eighth paragraph of his sad tale, somewhere by Ely, Nevada, he’s complaining about strong wind threatening to throw him off of “his steed”, and rain showers. You pussy. Why not take the opportunity to vist one of the whorehouses in Ely – say, the Stardust – and relax with a beer while talking up the girls? You don’t have to sample the wares; you can just sit there and bullshit. But I digress.

By Nogales, he’s gotten himself checked into a sleazy motel right by the border. Yeah, shure. I’ve been through Nogales a time or two, and let me tell you, there are no sleazy motels right beside the border, chum. The border is completely denuded of anything for quite a distance. Those pesky coyotes and the illegals have seen to that.

While crossing into Mexico at a major port of entry can be a bit of an adventure, it usually entails riding on past the marker and watching the light. If it stays green, you keep right on going. Only when it turns red do you pull over for an inspection. Nogales is one of the more benign ports, believe me. It’s pretty much devoid of the traffic hassles that you can get riding into Mexicali or Tj. There’s not much chance you’ll get run over by an impatient truck or taxi at Nogales.

Naturally, once across the border, this guy’s paranoia factor is wound up to 10 because the poverty-stricken are watching him on his Harley-Davidson. Well shit, that’s a given. You get people staring at you in Bumfuck, America when you ride through town. Take a valium, dumbass, because almost everyone wants to look and listen when you ride by. It’s human nature for the great unwashed to want to fantasize about being out on the road and on their way to nowhere while riding a motorcycle loaded to the gills. Furthermore, in Mexico your fat ass is sitting on more dollars than most of those people will get their hands on in a lifetime.

Before I conclude my whining about this loser’s life, let me explain one more thing that he goes negative on, and that’s the military checkpoints. He makes a point of disparaging the young soldiers and their commanding officers that man these checkpoints by suggesting that they might want bribes. In my entire riding life down Mexico way, never — and I repeat, never! — have I ever been asked for money from anyone at these checkpoints. That is complete and utter bullshit, and to even suggest that it might occur is beyond the pale, in my opinion.

There’s much crying about bad roads, bad roadblocks, bad policia, bad military checkpoints ad nauseam. To top it all off, a day and a half from this guy’s destination, the dumbass turns tail and rides back home.

Oh mommy, I miss you.

Now that’s true grit.

Politics, Stupidity plain and simple

Congratulations President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama

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Here’s hoping the good will generated by his election continues well into the future.

UPDATE May 24, 2012: Good luck with that so far. Continued imprisonment without benefit of trial for its own citizens and those of other countries; ongoing aerial nightmares in the form of drone attacks on its own citizens in other countries and around the world in Pakistan, Yemen and others; the stupidity of ongoing and continuous wars in Afghanistan and other countries; a meaningless constitution that has been shredded and will continue to be downgraded to a “nice piece of paper”; and on and on.

Nice.