Since the inception of this blog, and the three or four different versions of it that have existed, I have only taken short breaks to attend The Masters. This year, I’m probably going to attend The Masters, but, before that, I’m going to take an extended break. From now until the end of the month or so, I’m not going to blog. I’m going to concentrate, and think, and come up with brilliant ideas. I’m going to put the full weight of my considerable talents to thinking, which I haven’t done in years. Oh, that’s not as bad as it sounds. For long stretches of my life, I have subsisted on snap decisions and bald-faced rage, without any thinking being done at all. Thinking is overrated. Doing is underrated.

Now would be a good time to point out that my blogs are like beacons of hope in a world possessed by mediocrity and fear. I have a few things that I like to call The Best of the Blog. If you have stomach that, you can run with billy goats and feast on anything, sir. You can trip through Celebrity Disaster and then find yourself on a sports tangent with Talking Smack About Sports. I am a Gentleman Bounty Hunter, you know, and I do like my Safe For Work Hotties.

When I come back, I hope I’m not rusty and boring. If so, I’ll probably demand more of myself. I may search for scapegoats and look for a dingbat to take the fall, but I won’t tolerate boring. Not here or anywhere else.

Senator Lamar Alexander is still a poor excuse for a thinker and a politician:

On “Face the Nation”Sunday, Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said that Democrats poised to push through the health care reform bill with a 51-vote majority in the next several days are on a “kamikaze mission,” and are heading for a “political wipeout” in the upcoming November elections.

“No big piece of social legislation has been jammed through by a partisan vote,” Alexander told “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer. “Johnson had Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — all had 70 votes.”

It’s understandable that Alexander and the Republican Party aren’t happy with the Democratic bill and hope they can at least gain a political advantage if they can’t stop the president from signing it into law. 

What’s isn’t comprehensible is Alexander’s comment comparing President Obama’s quest to offer health insurance to 30 million more Americans, at an outsized cost of $1 trillion, with the Watergate years of President Nixon. 

“Through elections, through town meetings, through consistent public opinion surveys, Americans have said ‘Don’t pass this bill.’ And this is the most brazen act of political arrogance that I can remember since the Watergate years. Not in terms of breaking the law but in terms of thumbing your nose at the American people and saying ‘We know you don’t want it, we’re going to give it to you anyway,” Alexander said.

No, the American people want to see the health care issues fixed, but they don’t want to educate themselves as to what that entails and they have not become vested enough in it to counter the mad ravings of the minority of individuals who have shown up at town hall meetings to screech about what they think the legislation will or won’t do. It hasn’t been a case of informed commentary; it’s been about paid advocacy against legislation no one understands. The Democrat Party failed to use the mandate given to President Obama to make quick structural changes to the system in rapid fashion, which would have offset the ability of the insurance corporations to buy opposition to the changes. The failure of the Republican Party has been manifested in obstructionism, and, to a smaller degree, in the idiotic statements of Senator Alexander.

You don’t reference Watergate unless you actually are talking about breaking the law; when you try to compare reformist legislation with Watergate, you look like a fool, sir.

It’s no skin off my nose. The American people won’t get good government until they learn what that is and begin insisting on it on a daily basis. Until then, lesser men can pound all the sand they want. I shall sit back and marvel at a world where common sense, and the basic needs of a small businessman, are ignored in favor or lobbyists and hospital administrators.

Bajaj Scooter

It’s a sign that globalization is happening—once people can afford a better product, what they used to settle for becomes obsolete. That’s what has happened to the Bajaj scooter, once a transportation mainstay for India:

Later this month, Bajaj’s last scooter factory will roll out its last scooter, ending an era in India’s transition from dreary socialist behemoth into a consumerist powerhouse. And those one-time icons of middle-class achievement will be left to secondhand dealers and armies of sidewalk mechanics.

Because in modern India, modest dependability just isn’t enough.

“People have more money to spend today,” said Pradeep Tyagi. He sells used motorcycles in the New Delhi neighborhood of Karol Bagh, where dozens of used-car and motorcycle dealers — and a handful of scooter shops — are jammed into a few narrow lanes. “No one wants to spend that money on a scooter.”

Wander among the neighborhood’s tiny, dusty shops and it becomes clear how India’s aspirations have changed.

Because while India still has desperate poverty — more than one-third of the population lives on less than $1 per day — it has also become a nation of fierce consumers, its buying habits nurtured by a growing economy, easier loans and relentless advertising. In places like Karol Bagh, that means people who once would have aspired to scooters now want motorcycles. And everyone dreams of cars.

This is what I do not get about people who sneer at “green” technology and getting smarter about making things that are self-sustaining. How can you not see that there are people all over the world who want what we have here in the West? How can you not see that if you put fifty or sixty million cars on the roads of India in the span of a few years that it won’t have a tremendous impact on our environment? How can you not see that there’s money to be made here? Where is the car that gets seventy miles to the gallon and would be perfect for the Indian market? If Ford or GM had a car like that, wouldn’t it be smart to be at the top of that game?

Perhaps it is the traveler in me; I don’t know. I just don’t see how people can be so ignorant. The transition of India from a bicycle and scooter nation to a nation of cars and people owning two or more cars is happening. Shouldn’t we have cleaner, better cars to sell to them right now? Or should we just go back to thinking no one else should have it so good?

Way to go, dumbass:

Panic gripped Georgia on Saturday when a pro-government television station broadcast a fake report that Russian tanks had entered the capital and President Mikhail Saakashvili had been killed.

Imedi TV introduced the report as an “imitation of possible events,” but the warning was lost on many viewers as mobile phone networks crashed and residents of Tbilisi rushed into the streets.

The report thrust the ex-Soviet neighbors back to August 2008, when Russia crushed an assault by U.S. ally Georgia on the rebel region of South Ossetia in a five-day war and sent tanks to within 28 miles of Tbilisi.

Someone is hiding from the boss today; someone else is wondering where all of their bright ideas have led them. Still, others are wondering why they ever complained about Fox News. Do you think this goes on the resume? Or does it come off the resume? Does it go on the version of the resume that you send out when you don’t care if they hire you? It’s a conundrum, isn’t it?

This is a great case for the United States Supreme Court

I can proudly point to a lifetime of success and excitement because I have never, ever been to South Dakota.

Friends tell me the place is a canker sore on the ass end of the indecent part of the country. I have been to Minnesota, of course. Who hasn’t been to Minnesota? They have things to do there. South Dakota? Please. The only thing to do in South Dakota is to stare desperately at the end of your grasp on sanity as it seeps out the end of what was your beautiful soul after you’ve been driven batshit crazy by the boredom.

Another wonderful thing about never having been there is when you come across a story like this when you’re looking for news about how tough it is to find qualified mechanics and technical people in the military:

Jene Newsome played by the rules as an Air Force sergeant: She never told anyone in the military she was a lesbian.

The 28-year-old’s honorable discharge under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy came only after police officers in Rapid City, S.D., saw an Iowa marriage certificate in her home and told the nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base.

Newsome and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint against the western South Dakota police department, claiming the officers violated her privacy when they informed the military about her sexual orientation. The case also highlights concerns over the ability of third parties to “out” service members, especially as the Pentagon has started reviewing the 1993 “don’t ask, don’t tell” law.

Newsome says in the article that she respected and lived by the DADT regulations. That right there should tell you one thing: this person respects the military and isn’t looking for attention because her feelings are hurt or because she wants attention and a book deal and a chance to meet people who relish the chance to bash the military. From what I gather here, we have a genuine case of someone respecting good order and discipline. This isn’t the all-too-familiar story of a fresh young recruit plastered with glitter and goo who got caught having same-sex partners in the middle of an Ecstasy-fueled hump-fest at a dance club two weeks away from graduating from airborne school. This was a career-oriented professional who has been trained and educated to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and all of that was flushed down the toilet because Johnny Law felt like it.

Who is this young lady?

The Rapid City Police Department says Newsome, an aircraft armament system craftsman who spent nine years in the Air Force, was not cooperative when they showed up at her home in November with an arrest warrant for her partner, who was wanted on theft charges in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Newsome was at work at the base at the time and refused to immediately come home and assist the officers in finding her partner, whom she married in Iowa — where gay marriage is legal — in October.

Police officers, who said they spotted the marriage license on the kitchen table through a window of Newsome’s home, alerted the base, police Chief Steve Allender said in a statement sent to the AP. The license was relevant to the investigation because it showed both the relationship and residency of the two women, he said.

“It’s an emotional issue and it’s unfortunate that Newsome lost her job, but I disagree with the notion that our department might be expected to ignore the license, or not document the license, or withhold it from the Air Force once we did know about it,” Allender said Saturday. “It was a part of the case, part of the report and the Air Force was privileged to the information.”

Let’s just stop and puncture Johnny Law’s little statement with this one salient fact: Newsome was at work at the base at the time. This is a woman in the military who straps missiles and armaments onto an aircraft and ensures that these systems operate properly. She is a non-commissioned officer, and that means that she probably supervises, trains, and inspects the work of the airmen who work for her. She’s not a pencil pusher or a chair wrangler or a dog walker. She helps the pilots with the stuff that goes boom, sir. What, is she supposed to stop everything and come running when Johnny Law peeks through her windows?

Police officers, who said they spotted the marriage license on the kitchen table through a window of Newsome’s home, alerted the base, police Chief Steve Allender said in a statement sent to the AP. The license was relevant to the investigation because it showed both the relationship and residency of the two women, he said.

I’m highlighting that again because of how weird it reads to me. So what if her partner has a warrant for theft? A warrant is one thing; that’s between Johnny Law and that particular individual. It’s not for a violent crime and it’s a procedural thing. It’s not life or death, and it’s a basic and very understandable invasion of privacy to pursue said warrant to the point where Johnny Law is looking in a window and reading off the marriage license of two people legally married in Iowa. Hey, here’s an idea—let’s give the Johnny Laws in Rapid City a dozen or so drone aircraft so they can scour the city, looking sideways into windows onto kitchen tables, so that they can spot people who fail to pay their parking tickets.

Whose business is that, Johnny Law? Yes, you have the right home. You have a warrant in hand. You’re looking in the windows. Do you have the person you’re looking for? No? Does one spouse have to bend over backwards, leave the flight line, and hurry home so you can throw the other spouse in jail over some theft charges that are pending in another state? No.

Then, I guess, you’re done here, Johnny Law.

I hope this case goes all the way to the top, and I hope they take the wind out of little Johnny Law’s sails there in Rapid City. I shall laugh my fanny off when this young lady walks away with a big check and an appropriate apology.

Han Han

They say that Chinese blogger and pretty boy Han Han is the most popular writer in the world, but that’s only because they have a lot of computers in China. If China only had a few thousand computers, he wouldn’t be so popular. I want to be Han Han. He’s young, he races cars, he writes nasty things about the Chinese communists, and young women fall for brokers and flim-flam men who trick the ladies into thinking Han Han wants to be their lover.

Anyone can criticize a totalitarian government; few people have the celebrity to pull it off:

IT’S not so easy being Han Han, the heartthrob race car driver and pop novelist who just happens to be China’s most widely read blogger.

Traveling incognito is all but impossible. Local officials frequently vie for his endorsement of their latest architectural boondoggles. (He politely declines.) And love-lorn young women often approach him after races with letters bearing his name. (He says the women have been duped by impostors who have assumed his identity.)

But Mr. Han’s most vexing challenge comes from a more formidable nemesis: the unseen censors who delete blog posts they deem objectionable and the publishing police who have held up the release of his new magazine, “A Chorus of Solos,” a provocative collection of essays and photographs. “The government wants China to become a great cultural nation, but our leaders are so uncultured,” he said with a shrug, offering his characteristic Cheshire-cat grin. “If things continue like this, China will only be known for tea and pandas.”

Since he began blogging in 2006, Mr. Han has been delivering increasingly caustic attacks on China’s leadership and the policies he contends are creating misery for those unlucky enough to lack a powerful government post. With more than 300 million hits to his blog, he may be the most popular living writer in the world.

I happen to be good-looking enough to be a sort of Han Han for the over 60 crowd; many women in their forties and fifties stare at me in airports and I get propositioned all the time. I haven’t had to beat them off with a stick (broom handle, actually) since my one North American concert tour in 1984 as an International pop star. It’s a good thing the financial world drew me back in; I would hate to have become Han Han as a younger man; I’d be broke and lonely, and pathetic like Hugh Grant or Bob Saget right now. I’d rather have the fame and adulation (and the blog hits) now, when I can relax and enjoy my life.

Predator

I realize we sold our privacy rights down the river so that politicians could feel better about doing nothing to protect us, but I didn’t know we would reach this point. The point where the revelation that drones are flying over American citizens on a regular basis, trying to catch criminals and whatnot, would be met with indifference. I can predict the indifference. I can tell you, without hesitation, that the media won’t explain this and the American people won’t be told why this is not such a great idea and how it can lead to abuses of power. Is there anyone who will sit down and explain to you that the reason why we don’t let the cops listen to every phone call being made in the country is because, if they did, everyone in America would be in jail, including, of course, 99% of the cops?

When you apply technology to law enforcement, you cannot apply a level of technology greater than the need to stop only the most reprehensible of crimes. You have to have a threshold where technology cannot become overkill. Yes, the police would like to have helicopter gunships. Do they get helicopter gunships to help them solve problems with high speed chases and grannies with canes who run amok through miniature golf courses? No, they don’t. This is because, once you give Johnny Law a helicopter gunship and tell him to solve his problems with it, you end up with Johnny Law using a helicopter gunship to shut down illegal lemonade stands. Human beings naturally abuse their power; when you have limited government, you throw a monkey wrench into that whole sort of thing. And, for good reason. Helicopter gunships really aren’t good for anything, other than shooting and killing vast numbers of people. And, do we really want that in our back yards? Let’s hope that answer stays “no” until I finally pass away out of this crazy world.

Do you think it’s an accident that this sort of thing comes out just as American Idol kicks into high gear?

It’s a frigid, dark night in the mountainous border region of southeast Arizona. A group of 31 suspected illegal immigrants are walking up and down rocky ridges toward Tucson, Arizona. They’re wearing small backpacks and stop to rest every few minutes.

This isn’t a scene unfolding before the eyes of Border Patrol agents on the ground. It comes from a video image provided by a Predator B unmanned aircraft 19,000 feet overhead. In fact, the nearest Border Patrol agents are far away.

Jerry Kersey is the Customs and Border Protection agent in charge of this night’s Predator mission. He and his two-man crew relay the information to Border Patrol agents from a small trailer 40 miles from the scene.

Kersey directs the agents on the ground, who are wearing night-vision goggles.

“Stop! Stop! They’re to your right,” Kersey firmly dictates over a radio transmission. “They must see you. The group is running.”

Is this really where we want to go as a society and as a country? Are we really comfortable handing over such over-the-top technology to the border patrol?

You might very well agree with the idea of using drones in this manner; well, why not use them to catch speeders, then? Why not use them to catch jaywalkers and punks with spraypaint cans? Why not fly one over every home in America just to make sure everyone is doing what they’re supposed to do, and make it so that it can peek through walls so that we’re all comfortable with what’s going on inside?

Once you let them do what they will, getting that genie back in the bottle becomes a little more difficult. Once you give your consent to being tracked, searched, recorded, databased, datamined and retained for all eternity, you don’t get that back. You cannot say “stop!” and you cannot make the case that they’ve “gone too far” because, we, as a nation, crossed that threshold years ago.

Believe me when I tell you this—you don’t know how valuable your privacy is until you no longer have it.

Farmville

It only took me a few passes at it to realize that Farmville isn’t a game—it’s a marketing device. After being hit with SPAM and unwanted invitations to waste time doing something else, abandoning Farmville was easy as pie.

I encourage folks to walk away from it. Leave your Farmville farmstead up and running as if nothing happened so that it eats away at their bandwidth and server space. Don’t end up like this poor lady:

Cathy Hinz is really into “FarmVille.” But she swears she’s not obsessed. 

“I can, you know, walk away and say, ‘I’m not going to worry about it.’ I don’t worry about it, but I will plan my farm around my life,” she says.

Hinz, a 50-year old mom and grandmother, manages an apartment complex in Portland, Ore., so she has time to be online, fiddling with the farm simulation game as much as she wants. And she’s far from the only one.

Since its launch in June 2009, “FarmVille” has grown like an invasive weed, with 80 million players and countless annoying updates from said players about eggplant mastery, lost turtles and found mystery eggs. 

It’s absurdly easy to get started: Pick an avatar, plant some crops, harvest some crops, earn some “FarmVille” coins. Before you know it, you’ve got raspberries that need to be harvested RIGHT NOW, and your friends are trying to give you sheep. It’s no “World of Warcraft,” but for non-gamers like Hinz, that’s exactly the point.

“I have messed around with other games a bit but nothing that really held my interest. They were either too violent or too complicated or too ‘childish,’” she says.

The thing is, you have to use your own money to really have anything. You can start off like I did, selling wheat and corn, which is how real farmers started, but you’ll never get the $45,000 or whatever you need to buy a home and all that unless you kick in your own money. Meanwhile, you’re constantly being barraged with unwanted invitations and nonsense from other people or from the owners of the game itself.

I’m a “leave me alone” sort of fellow. As in, leave me alone. I’ve tried your game. It sucks. Now, go pound sand.

Anita Dark

Anita Dark can make a gloomy day better just by showing up.

Anita Dark

Anita Dark

Anita Dark

Anita Dark has a gallery here…

Howard County, Maryland

I don’t think that my wealth, which is estimated now to be quite a bit higher than I suspected but still far less than I deserve, makes that much difference in these rankings. For 2011, my not being in Howard County, Maryland might push the county down to fourth or fifth place:

Not far from D.C. lies another cluster of wealthy counties. Howard County, Md., a suburb of Baltimore, has a standout school system with standardized test scores that consistently beat out the national average, and median household incomes of $101,710. In nearby Montgomery County, where 59 percent of residents over 25 have an advanced degree, households bring in a median $93,999. Historic Calvert County, Md., has profited from its roots as a tobacco-rich farmland as well as its proximity to Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, and claims a median income of $89,049.

I certainly didn’t feel wealthy living there; in fact, I felt wealthier when I lived in New Hampshire. At least there you could have some semblance of a quality of life. When we fled Maryland, there was forty inches of snow on the ground and people were bartering for firewood and alcohol. It was absolute madness. I shall never live there again.

You probably don’t know this, but grown men tickle each other all the time. It’s called playful grabass. I tickle other men all the time. They don’t like it, but I do it anyway. I’m a powerful man; I’m allowed to tickle others. I don’t tickle women anymore; as soon as the year 1991 hit, I had to stop grabassing with women, and, by that I mean, yes, I had to stop grabbing asses, tickling, and playing honkedy-honk-honk and lefty-is-your-righty-on-opposite-day. Fortunately, I was never sued. Slapped, thrown down a flight of stairs, and pushed into the sides of buses and cabs, absolutely. But sued? Hells no.

Representative (former? reluctant? weird?) Eric Massa likes to tickle the fellows, and there’s nothing wrong with that:

A day after former Rep. Eric Massa acknowledged tickling a colleague but denied the intent was sexual, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer accused “some people” of seeking to politicize the situation of the New York lawmaker, who resigned amid accusations of sexual harassment.

Hoyer did not specify whom he was talking about in an interview on NBC’s TODAY show.

He was asked whether he thought Republicans were trying to politicize the situation involving the resigned Democrat to strengthen opposition to the health care overhaul bill.

You have to hand it to those Obama people. They knowhow to end a man’s career. And, you have to hand it to Massa. He knows how to hand the Obama people exactly what they need to end his career.

Amber Evans

Amber Evans knows how to tempt and how to look fabulous. Every time I think about how my life would be so radically different without her, I have an involuntary shudder.

Amber Evans

Amber Evans

Amber Evans

Amber Evans has a gallery here…

Nigerian Internet Cafe

Until someone figures out that the Internet needs to be completely disconnected from the country of Nigeria, this kind of thing is going to keep happening:

Internet con artists appear to be targeting victims of Bernard Madoff.

The Securities Investor Protection Corporation warned Tuesday that someone had set up a bogus Web sitein an attempt to trick Madoff victims into turning over confidential financial information.

The site mimics the legitimate one set up by the agency and purports to belong to the International Securities Investor Protection Corporation. It offers victims a chance to apply for $1.3 billion in cash recovered from a Madoff “hideout.”

The group claims to be based in Geneva, but records show the site to be registered to an address in Lagos, Nigeria.

I don’t think any of Madoff’s victims should get their money back. The only reason why they were investing with him in the first place was to get their unrealistic returns back on their investments; everyone knew he was running a Ponzi scheme. No one thought they would be left holding the bag. The whole Madoff thing will go down as the biggest criminal enterprise in the history of investing and the wrong people are in jail. Madoff doesn’t belong in jail. Madoff belongs in the office of a prosecutor, helping to identify each and every client who deserves to be prosecuted for helping him build out the pyramid of lies.

And, yes, I do think they should just snip the cable that runs the Internet in and out of Nigeria. If they can’t control this problem, why bother letting them on the Internet? Snip that cable and they may go somewhere else, but, for a few days at least, the amount of SPAM on the Internet would drop almost immediately. That has to be worth something, right?

Lars Vilks and a depiction of “Mohammad” with the body of a dog

A Swedish cartoonist tells the BBC that he has an axe in his home, should someone try to attack him for a cartoon that he drew several years ago:

Seven people have been arrested in the Irish Republic over an alleged plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist for depicting the Prophet Muhammad, police say.

The four men and three women are all Muslim immigrants, according to media reports, though a police statement did not confirm this.

Cartoonist Lars Vilks had depicted the Prophet Muhammad with the body of a dog in the Nerikes Allehanda newspaper.

Islamic militants put a $100,000 (£67,000) bounty on his head.

Mr Vilks was quoted as saying he was unfazed by the arrests, which he said he thought could be linked to two death threats he had received by telephone in January.

What a bunch of nonsense. If the basis of your religion can be shaken by what some Swede with pen and ink comes up with, your religion isn’t really based on anything except your own fundamentalist rage, now is it? The great religions cannot be threatened by cartoonists. Islam is a great religion; no cartoonist can make a “dent” in it with a half-clever scrawl.

If you take a look at what is depicted above, how can anyone be offended? I could understand annoyed—what a waste of time. But, offended? Please.

Is the Internet about to explode with massive new speeds and tremendous amounts of shared data, now possible because of a new evolution in technology?

Cisco unveiled a new Internet technology Tuesday that it says will provide the ultra-fast data speeds necessary to stay ahead of users’ rapidly growing online video demands.

The new technology, known as “CRS-3,” is a network routing system that will be able to offer downloads of up to 322 Terabits per second, according to the company.

Translation: Well in Cisco terms, the router will be able to provide download speeds of 1 Gigabit per second for everyone in San Francisco, download the entire printed collection of the Library of Congress in 1 second and stream every movie ever created in less than 4 minutes.

Cisco Chief Executive John Chambers acknowledged that many skeptics will say that those speeds and network capacity are not necessary, but he argued that the fast-growing media usage on mobile phones will ultimately demand it.

“I know this is not that exciting to the average consumer right now, but it is the foundation for future speeds,” Chambers said in a Web cast Tuesday. “When it comes to mobile devices, I want to get any video, anytime and be able to share that on any device in your living room. The foundation of that is the CRS-3.”

Someone is probably going to try to raise some money with this new information; someone else has to decide if they can afford it. Then, the assorted providers of Internet services will have to huddle and figure out what they can afford and what they can give consumers.

The disconnect between what they can get and what they can give you is where we start to see reality seeping in. They can get some fantastic technology right now, such as the Verizon FiOS that I used to have; they can’t give you that because they can’t make money building out huge networks so that every home can choose whether or not to hook up to it. The costs are too prohibitive. If CRS-3 is all that and more, then I hope it comes with a very low pricetag. If not, by the time they can afford to provide it, the rest of the world will probably be on to something else. All of that content that moves through the ultra-fast bandwidth they want everyone to use—that costs money, too. And the days of free content won’t go on forever. I can envision a time when there are people with great capability and great capacity who won’t bother with the service because the cost of subscribing to NBC, CBS, and whoever else are too high to justify what they’re getting, which is overpriced content of low quality with little interest.

Seriously, does anyone thing people will pay to watch the Evening News? Reality television? Half-witted comedies? In sufficient numbers to make money? So much for building a tool that can get us everything we want to see. By then, perhaps there won’t be anything worth watching, except the stuff we all already own.