- From the “There’s Always One” Department – A Marine, who was assigned to President Obama’s security detail during a recent trip to Europe, is in hot water after a night out on the town. Apparently his activities included drinking way too much way to close to being on duty, passing around his security badge, and bragging that he is a “bullet catcher” for the President. For those of you in government service who are being told that you are going to be sequestered to your quarters, ordered to stay away from the locals, and that the consumption of alcohol while on trips is verboten, you can thank Sergeant Schlipenschitz for that. The Marine is said to be a front-runner for this year’s Marine Corps Blue Falcon Award, with his only competition being the Lance Corporal from 1st MEF who has been bringing the Camp Pendleton base commander’s teenage daughter back to the barracks for some ‘personal time’.
- From the “Hobbies” Department – A man in Florida was recently arrested after residents of an apartment building reported that he was riding around on a child’s tricycle, naked, and chewing on glass and tobacco. To quote the late, great Rick James: Cocaine is a hell of a drug. When asked by this reporter as to his plans after finishing his latest engagement in state custody, the man was heard to say “I’m going to Disneyland!”. In unrelated news, officials of the Magic Kingdom have announced that tricycle rentals have been suspended until further notice.
- From the “Birth Control” Department – The North Korean People’s Glorious Committee on Personal Grooming and Beauty has announced that men in the DPRK are henceforth required to model their haircuts on that worn by Kim Jong Un. The “Business On The Side, Party Up On Top” cut, which was last popularized in the 1950’s by the cartoon character “Dagwood“, is a stylish throwback to that wonderful period when men were men, women were women, and dictators had better things to do with their time.
- From the “Business As Usual” Department – Covered California, a Obamacare program, has come under fire after it mailed thousands of voter registration cards out with the “Democrat” entry already circled. This brings up two troubling questions. First, why is an organization, which is ostensibly supposed to be getting people to buy health insurance, sending out voter registration cards at all? Second, is anyone actually surprised by this? Covered California is blaming the Secretary of State’s office, who they claim provided the cards. When asked about it by this reporter, a representative of the Secretary of State’s office replied with a shrug and a blank stare. In related news, the California Democratic party has announced that they have successfully recruited 225 million Californians as pledged and donating members. This includes every person currently living in the state, their dead parents and grandparents, who would vote Democrat if they were still alive, as well as their descendents in the next three generations. Voter turnout for the November elections is projected to be near 100%.
News Roundup
Posted by daddybear71 on March 31, 2014
https://daddybearsden.com/2014/03/31/news-roundup-215/
Movie Quotes – Day 90
There are two kinds of people – Greeks, and everyone else who wish they was Greek. — My Big Fat Greek Wedding
We are a nation of proud immigrants and their descendants. Each wave of new Americans brings with it people who love their home country, but love their new home as well. They add their skills, their values, and their strength to the melange that is “American”. We are founded on British and French Enlightenment values, but that steel has been tempered with the best that the rest of the world has to offer. We lose out when we insist that immigrants forget their origins, but they lose out when they refuse to take on what our country has to offer them.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 31, 2014
https://daddybearsden.com/2014/03/31/movie-quotes-day-90/
Thoughts on the Day
- It’s amazing how long a young boy can play with just a handsaw and a piece of scrap wood.
- Irish Woman spent her afternoon cleaning, thinning, and replanting the strawberry beds.
- She’s halfway done, and counts almost 200 plants.
- Going to be a lot of strawberry jam around here in a few months.
- Boo and I planted kale and snap peas today. On a later trip to the home center, I picked up broccoli, cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, and bib lettuce.
- It’s so nice to garden when all you have to do is move dirt and put in plants and seeds.
- The past three years I’ve had to do several weeks of construction before putting shovel to soil.
- There’s nothing like waking up at 4 AM from a bad dream and having no hope of falling asleep due to an extreme adrenaline dump.
- You know you’re funky from scooping last year’s compost pile into garden beds when you offend yourself while taking a shower.
- Two rounds of lather, rinse, repeat made me somewhat human again. Well, as human as I ever am.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 30, 2014
https://daddybearsden.com/2014/03/30/thoughts-on-the-day-223/
Movie Quotes – Day 89
When a loaf of bread looks like a banquet, I’ve no right buying tobacco. — Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
One of the things that always gets under my skin is when I see people with obvious signs of disposable wealth living on the public dime. If you must ask others to provide the necessities of life, then you have no business having a sumptuous life. And just to make sure I define my terms here, these things are what I consider the necessities of life:
- Nutritious food and clean water
- Shelter, with the ability to light and heat it
- Air conditioning in the home, although I will argue about this one on occasion
- Basic medical care, and I mean basic
- Seasonally appropriate clothing
The following things are not necessities of life:
- Tattoos, piercings, personal care products beyond basic soap, toothpaste, and shampoo, and cosmetics
- Cable television
- Telephones of any sort
- Internet access
- Clothing beyond necessity in either quantity or quality
- Transportation other than the kind that’s provided by your shoes
- Luxury foods, to include treats, sweets, soda, and alcohol
- Any food prepared in a restaurant
- Entertainment of any kind that costs money
- Anything not listed here, but isn’t listed in the list of necessities
In case you’re wondering who decides what is and what isn’t a necessity of life, that would be me. If you’re asking me to make sure you don’t fall down dead in the street, then I get a vote in where my money ought to go and for what.
Someone who is on assistance of any kind, with the exception of Social Security or VA benefits, has no business owning a nice car, dressing in anything approaching the latest fashion, having cable TV and high-speed Internet access in their home, or eating out. What money they do have ought to be used to either improve their ability to support themselves or be used to eliminate at least part of their reliance on the charity of others.
I know a sense of shame in such matters has largely been removed from the American psyche in the 50 years since President Johnson began using forced charity to retain voter blocks for his party, but I don’t have to like it. On a couple of occasions in my life, the charity of others has put food in my mouth and a roof over my head. However, the shame of having to depend on others, even as a teenager, was bad enough to make me promise myself that my children would never have to endure it. If only more people made that promise, we might be in a better position as a society.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 30, 2014
https://daddybearsden.com/2014/03/30/movie-quotes-day-89/
Thoughts on the Day
- Lego – Danish word for “caltrop”.
- Apparently there’s a new Lego store in town, and that’s where Boo is going to have his birthday party this year.
- You can hear the excitement in my voice, can’t you?
- Note to self – door knobs are right at forehead height for 5 year old boys who have been cooped up inside all day.
- I had to go downtown on Friday to go to the doctor and renew my concealed carry license.
- Has it been five years already?
- My doctor’s office is across the street from the convenience store that was hit with a mob on Saturday. I didn’t notice any additional security there or more police on the streets.
- Speaking of Saturday, we seem to have gotten through the University of Louisville versus University of Kentucky basketball game last night without any incidents, or at least without any reported incidents.
- The local fish-rag actually did a little reporting, and it appears that the police might be paying attention now.
- I wonder if the police would just give me a ticket for ‘menacing’ if I were to face off against uniformed police officers and ball my fists up.
- The map on the first article encompasses a lot more incidents than we knew about earlier in the week and in a much larger area.
- Going to the warehouse store late on a Saturday night went surprisingly smoothly today.
- The zombies lined up for their free samples didn’t block the aisles too badly, and we seem to have timed it so that we got there right after a large wave of customers had left.
- Irish Woman and I have spent the last day and a half trying to defunk the house. Between shedding dogs and cats, a long winter burning wood in the fireplace, and schmutz that seems to be continuously tracked in from outside, things were desperately in need of a good vacuuming and dusting.
- This was done in lieu of garden and yard work. 2 inches of cold rain and wind will tend to dampen your enthusiasm for digging in the dirt and building stuff.
- Irish Woman and I have begun our spring ritual of barking like seals as the pollen, mold, and whatall in the Kentucky atmosphere reasserts is dominance over our immune systems.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 29, 2014
https://daddybearsden.com/2014/03/29/thoughts-on-the-day-222/
Movie Quotes – Day 88
Garfield: You talk funny Nash. Where you from?
Nash: Lots of different places.
My accent is a mix-up of Kentucky/Northern Plains/West Coast/Whatever. A nomadic lifestyle for the first 30 years on the planet has made me a linguistic mishmash. Girlie Bear and Little Bear, on the other hand, have a pretty thick Kentucky accent. Boo, who was born here and learned to speak listening to University of Louisville fans argue with University of Kentucky fans about basketball has a full-on twang. Irish Woman has a bit of a drawl. That is, of course, until she starts drinking or someone pisses her off. Then the twang that she has spent decades trying to soften comes out in full force.
How we speak tells the world who we are, where we’re from, and where we’ve been. They are a roadmap to how we were raised and educated. Our words and our tone tell the world what we believe and what we know.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 29, 2014
https://daddybearsden.com/2014/03/29/movie-quotes-day-88/
Refutations and Insults
I’m always torn on whether to read the agitprop that lands in my inbox from the White House, but it’s usually good for a laugh. I got this today. My comments are in bold.
Good afternoon,
Howdy
I am a staunch Republican, a self-proclaimed Fox News addict, and I didn’t vote for the President. And I’m here to tell you that Obamacare works. I’m living proof.
Sure, Obamacare works, so long as someone else is paying for it.
I’m a chemotherapy patient, and was previously paying $428 a month for my health coverage. I was not thrilled when it was cancelled.
I’m a chronic auto-immune disease patient, who takes some really nifty-neato medications that cost an arm and a leg. But since they help to make sure I can keep using my arms and legs, I pay for them. I also make sure I keep my job and the good health insurance that comes from a lifetime of busting my ass. I’d be annoyed if that got cancelled, but I’d find some way to keep my self-respect and not go on the public dole if that happened.
Interesting that you don’t say why your health insurance was cancelled. Did you have a minimum-coverage plan that was made illegal by the ACA? Maybe your employer decided that it was cheaper to just pay the find, I’m sorry, tax and quit offering it?
Then I submitted an application at HealthCare.gov. I looked at my options. And I signed up for a plan for $62 a month.
Great. How much bread did you steal from the mouths of my children to get your premium down that low, if you don’t mind me asking?
It’s the best health care I have ever had.
Dude, if you had shitty healthcare for $428 a month, you should have done something about that years ago. Like, you know, changing jobs or buying your own. Just saying.
So right now, here’s what I want to tell anyone who still needs health insurance, or knows someone who does:
Sign up. Follow the instructions on the website. Apply, and look at your options. You still have time, and take it from me: This is something you want to do.
Here’s my advice to those who need insurance, or knows someone who does: Grow a sense of shame and quit trying to suckle from the great whore on the Potomac. Get off your ass and provide for yourself. Or don’t. Your choice. Just quit forcing the rest of us to provide for you.
I wrote a letter to President Obama this past February to tell him about my experience with the Health Insurance Marketplace. I hoped he’d read it, and he did.
Good for you. I wonder if he read that letter I sent him last spring telling him that I didn’t want him in my gun safe any more than he wanted me in his bedroom?
I may not be a supporter of the President. But now, I get mad when I see Obamacare dragged through the mud on television.
I get mad when I look at the almost 40% of my paycheck that is taken out to pay for the leeches that either work for the government or have figured out that Uncle Sugar will keep them drawing breath so long as they keep voting the way they want them to or at least pen spam for the Politburo.
And even though I regularly tune in to conservative pundits, I’d like to tell them they’re getting it wrong. Obamacare works.
If it works so well, why does every date slip in the President’s project plan? If I delayed things the way he did, I’d be shown the door. Successful plans tend to get implemented on time, or at least close to being on time.
So one more time: If you still need health insurance, you have just three days to get it. Do what I did. Go to HealthCare.gov, submit an application, and pick a plan that works for you.
Or, you can get off your ass, quit being a parasite, and take care of your own damned self.
It just might change your life.
Yeah, providing for your own needs without making the rest of us pay for it might change your life, too. Seriously, I hope your chemo goes well, and you wallow in shame in having to go to Obama with hat in hand to get it.
Mark D. Bearden, Ph.D.
Monroe, North Carolina
Posted by daddybear71 on March 28, 2014
https://daddybearsden.com/2014/03/28/refutations-and-insults-3/
Today’s Earworm
Posted by daddybear71 on March 28, 2014
https://daddybearsden.com/2014/03/28/todays-earworm-502/
Movie Quotes – Day 87
Every day above ground is a good day. — Scarface
I had a pretty crappy day today, but I got to come home to my family. Irish Woman got jerked around a lot by work, but she read Boo his bedtime story tonight. There are no guarantees that we will be able to repeat these things tomorrow. Tomorrow is not a promise, it’s just a possibility. Make sure that the people you love know it. Not tomorrow, right now.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 28, 2014
https://daddybearsden.com/2014/03/28/movie-quotes-day-87/
Thoughts on the Day
- My rheumatologist might not take it too well when I tell her that my prescription anti-inflammatory doesn’t do as good a job as three aspirin.
- I’m so glad I had something to drink when I was meeting with people today. It kept me from getting in trouble when the first thing that popped into my head was “Were you born this stupid, or did you have to work at it?”
- When we went to the store today, Boo asked for a treat. I told him we were going to have pizza for dinner, and that was good enough. Then he asked for a toy, and I told him he already had enough toys. Then he said we needed to get a puppy, so Moonshine would have something to take care of.
- The boy definitely has a future in either sales or union negotiations.
- No, we are not getting a new puppy.
- Today was “Cut across three lanes of traffic to get to my off ramp” day in Louisville.
- Is it just me, or does everyone freak out when people drive like idiots around their new truck?
- After the dog licks the slice of pizza, the slice of pizza belongs to the dog.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 27, 2014
https://daddybearsden.com/2014/03/27/thoughts-on-the-day-221/
DaddyBear
DaddyBear’s Den 