Don't Tread On Me

Call It What It Is

Sometimes we have to look carefully for the subtle signs of evil. In this particular case evil may seem like too strong a word, but the situation points to a trend; the end result of which is evil. Keep that in mind as you read on.

I do all the bookkeeping in my business and home, so the goddess just drops receipts on my desk and I take it from there. My wife is as frugal as they come so I seldom ever question her spending. One particular receipt got me to thinking, and then it made me angry. Not at the goddess, but at the restaurant where she dined with colleagues.

The initial check amount was for $19.21. The next line item read: " + Included Gratuity: $3.46" Then there was a line below that: "+ Additional Tip __________", then a line to write the total.

WHAT?!?!

My wife left the additional tip line empty, and paid the total of $22.67. Now here is what I would have done:

I would have called the waiter or waitress over. Not the "server." A server is a computer CPU that handles internet traffic. If you are offended by the terms waiter or waitress, take your sorry politically fashionable ass out of here. Let's continue.

I would have called the waiter over and said, "You just lost some money. You're employer decided to insult me by taking choice away from me. I almost always leave a five dollar tip for anything between $10 - $25 dollars. After that it's $5 + 15%. If the service is really good I make it %20."

Not only does it insult a thinking person to not give them their rightful choice, it insult them to use this Orwellian newspeak. To call that $3.48 a gratuity is asinine. A gratuity is something freely given without obligation. It is used as a synonym for tip. The moment it ceases to be voluntary, it becomes an add on fee.

Worse than that, it serves a more insidious purpose. It kills incentive. Why should the waiter be concerned with how well he handles your order, or pays attention to your needs, or trying to be pleasant. He's got a guaranteed add on.

I've had waitresses so good that they got a tip equal to half the check. Not only were they on top of everything, but they were practically entertaining as well. Talent deserves to be rewarded. But maybe two or three times in my life I can recall leaving a dollar or some coins. After having to remind the guy 3 times that I needed a refill on my drink and getting frustrated watching him flirt with his coworker at the kitchen door.

I would not work as a waiter in a restaurant that had an "Included Gratuity" policy. And if somebody tried to get one established, I would raise some hell in the meeting. I would tell the substandard waiters, "Look, if you aren't satisfied with amount of tips you're getting, then maybe you need to improve your service or work on your charm skills, but don't cause me to lose money due to the resentment you create with the clientele."

The same thing goes for pooling tips. If I owned the restaurant, I would want waiters who try hard to make customers love the atmosphere of my place. Good waiters deserve to keep all the tips they earn and to tip their bussers according to their quality of work. Pooling tips tells the good waiters there is no reason to work harder than "slacker Sally" or "Inept Earl." Conversely, the bad waiters have no need to stop and ask themselves, "Hey, how come Frank and Julie are always getting almost double the tips I do?"

I worked for tips as a sportfishing deckhand. I was 19, but in retrospect I can recall times when I let my pride and attitude cost me anywhere from $80 to $160 in a single day. But it only happened a couple of times.

So the next time you see that line on a restaurant check: "Included Gratuity" or some such nonsense, speak up. Tell the waitress what it cost her to have her little bit of "secured income." And if they start copping an attitude, you can really blow their mind by saying, "Look, I'm profit and you're overhead."

Frugality

I take care of the bookkeeping in my own business and in my household. The reason may shock some of you. My wife is extremely tight with money, not ridiculously so, mind you, but let's just say that she has never made an impulse buy in her life. She's the one who taught me to be more careful at spending, but it's just not in my nature as it is in her. Let me illustrate.

When my wife's maternal grandmother fell deathly ill, the family needed to rush to Nashville from Tampa. My wife's dad didn't have any cash on hand, so my wife lent him $500 to take the family up there. You see, this was back when there were no ATMs. My wife was only 13 at the time, and the money was part of her stash of $1,600 earned from babysitting.

She is not, however, a ridiculous miser. When we do need to buy something, it has to really good quality or even the best. "You get what you pay for." The point is; I don't have to worry about her spending any money. I keep track of all the spending because I need to be constantly reminded of the necessity of staying on budget. If you don't monitor carefully where your money is going, you can get into trouble. Which explains a lot about that inane disaster called government (public) education,

An Iraqi Perspective

There is no better refutation of the assnugget liberals than to hear from the formerly oppressed Iraqi people.

You need to go read this and then meditate on this quote:

"For those who have had to defend it, liberty has a flavor that the protected will never know."

Go read this now.

What If?

Hopefully, the best minds in government are at the Pentagon and CIA, constantly reviewing SIGINT* and HUMINT** and constantly asking themselves, “What if . . . .”

I think about this a lot, because of an upcoming election and the fear of “What if there really are enough morons to elect Dean?”

You see, I hate the fact that Bush is spending worse than a drunken sailor. I hate his pandering to the center and moderate Left. I would love to have nothing to fear in seeing exit poles that show that Dean won because angry conservatives went to the polls and voted for Libertarians or Constitution party candidates in a split that was worse than what happened in 1992 with Ross Perot. I want to be able to write a letter to the RNC saying, “See, you damned idiots! Dean appealed to his tinfoil asshat base and they came out in droves. You decided to piss-off your base of supporters in favor of non-passionate, non-committed, middle-of-the-road know-nothings, and you lost!”

But I can’t do that. There is a very real and very deadly war going on right now. Which brings up the next “what if . . . .”

Shhhh! Don't Tell Anybody!

Quite honestly, before I read what I'm about to share with you, I had not a qualm in the world about going to the grocery store and buying some beef real soon. For two especially good reasons.

First, as soon as the news about Molly Ivans, oops, er, that Mad Cow up in Washington came out, I knew that the price of beef was going to fall. Second, A cow clear that far away from North Georgia is not going get shipped to a slaughter house in my State when Texas and Florida are so much closer, just to name two examples. Never mind Georgia is full of beef cattle. I was already snickering about the dumb-masses of people who would immediately react by swearing off any beef.

But Jay Bryant at Townhall.com gives me more reason to guffaw at the stupidity of the majority of Americans. Bryant writes:

"Crats?"

As if the story wasn't funny enough by itself, Emperor Misha has to add commentary like this:

(drink alert!)

...have become so daring they have even infiltrated military barracks and bitten at least two heavily armed combat soldiers - one in the ear and the other on the lip, the Israeli newspaper Maariv reported.

The rodents have grown so large that soldiers are calling them the Hebrew equivalent of "crats" due to their increasing similarity to the stray cats, Maariv reported.

Misha: Over here, we call them Democrats.

Thermodynamics

The Imperial Curmudgeon undertook an analysis (dated 12/30/03) of my post on The Imperial Firearms Advisor's post. I'm not that great at expediting links so if I made a mistake on this issue, pardon me.

I take issue with this part of Professor Poretto's post:

Unfortunately, the foundation of Will's argument, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, doesn't say what he thinks it does. (Trust a former astrophysicist to be picky about such things.) It applies solely to the aggregate entropy of a closed system. [UPDATE: I believe that is a bullshit argument because it is an attempt to get around the problem of increasing order. I discuss it in the comment section below. - Will] It dictates nothing for an open system -- a system capable of importing net non-heat energy from "outside" and expelling heat and wastes to "outside." Zones within a closed system may exhibit decreasing entropy for indefinitely long periods of time; else, life could not maintain itself at all. Moving from theory to practice, laboratory researchers have demonstrated the spontaneous formation of amino acids in primordial-Earth conditions, so there's no real objection to the evolutionary thesis on the basis of practical implausibility.

Cognitive Dissonance

When I finally got around to reading my email this morning, I got to this snippet in the Dec. 29 edition of Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web by James Taranto:

"And what was God thinking when the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to reveal the sacred Quran to the prophet Muhammad?"--Christmas sermon, the Right Rev. John Bryson Chane, Episcopal bishop of Washington, Dec. 25

So, it's more than official now. The episcopal religion is fully and completely apostate. Don't comment about not capitalizing. From now on, they don't warrant enough respect for that. They've thrown out the Bible. They wouldn't understand the identity of Jesus Christ if he raised dead people right in front of them.

Departing from the clear teaching of Scripture on the homosexual issue was bad enough, but this is the icing on the coffin lid.

To say that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob sent the Quran to Mohammad is at minimum terribly insulting, but worse than that it is just plain stupid. To contend that the one True God would establish his authority through a history of 4000 years, many miraculous events, culminating in the incarnation of Himself and proving His identity by fulfilling hundreds of prophecies given hundreds and thousands of years prior, performing hundreds, if not thousands, of miracles, then 600 years later give a book to an illiterate epileptic child molester, with no corroborating evidence is (signs, wonders, witnesses, miracles), at the least, moronic.

Really Scary

This proves that there is a segment of America that needs to be taken to the woodshed.

A Liberal said to me this weekend while I was in Maine: "I'll vote for anyone they put up against Bush. I hate him that much". That's judgement without reason. That's scary.

Go here and read the whole post. This is the ultimate example of feelings overriding thought.

The Bush Doctrine

As I've stated in some past posts, I have a lot to gripe about, domestically with George W. Bush. His spending is worse than a drunken sailor's because, at least drunken sailors are spending their own money.

But this post at http://econopundit.com is just delicious. I don't expect any trolls to comprehend it.

Can we paraphrase George Patton maybe? It might go something like this:

No jerk of a leader ever made a country safer by seeking a diplomatic solution. The jerk of a leader makes the country safer by getting the other country to seek a diplomatic solution.

Seriously, do you think Mo'hammer Qa'Daffy just woke up several days ago and said, "Ya know, I just don't like being thought of badly by the U.N. I think I'll just make it clear to everybody that I don't have any WMDs and don't intend to pursue them any more, yeah, that's the ticket."

Atheism?

This is such a worthy area of thought. I know that I will have to devote several posts to this issue. A caveat is warranted. Any opinions submitted from this point on are not intended to attack anyone unless they become a troll. As long as you stick to the issues and avoid ad hominem attacks, you will be permitted to argue on this thread.

I suggest you go and read the complete text of the Imperial Firearms Advisor’s post, before you comment here. I choose to deal with certain portions of Kim’s post, but you should be fully informed before considering my opinion.

Du Toit:
“But Kim, you ask, you're a devout atheist. How can you preach religion as a code of behavior? And doesn't observance of religious behavior lead to a theocracy?”

Comment: "devout atheist" I find that funny, and only definition 3 saves Kim from embarrassment.

1. Devoted to religion or to the fulfillment of religious obligations. See Synonyms at religious.
2. Displaying reverence or piety.
3. Sincere; earnest: devout wishes for their success.

But never mind all that. The question is, which society would we rather live in? Do you want to live in a world where people all around you believe that there is no higher power that they will ever have to answer to, or do you want the people all around you to believe that whatever they do is going to be judged and that they ought to keep this in mind when dealing with others around them?

Things I Believe

These are in no particular order. The first one is no more important than the last one. If you think you can state it better, leave a comment. If you disagree, leave a comment. If you have a contribution to make and I deem it worthy, I will amend the list and re-publish.

1. The only thing a degree from Harvard proves is that your family spent a lot of money for a piece of paper.

2. Having grown old in the United States after WWII simply means you are lucky and is no indication alone that you have a shred of wisdom.

3. Men with strong sex drives and women with weak sex drives tend to marry each other and vice versa.

4. Hoplophobes (Gun Fearing Wussies) not only can't stand being around weapons, but they want to deny everybody else from being around them as well.

5. Hoplophobes in the United States walk around oblivious to the fact that they enjoy relative safety because people like me are trained, ready, and able to put bullets into a bad guy in less than two seconds.

6. Anyone who buys supermarket tabloids such as the STAR, et al, should be required to surrender their voter registration cards, on the spot, to the cashier. Only after passing an intelligence test and a test on the constitution, would such a person be allowed to vote again.

7. Anyone who does not know the names of both of their Senators and the name of their Representative in the U.S. Congress, must immediately surrender their right to vote until they pass the requirements of item #6.

8. No person receiving welfare, in any form, including: food stamps, medicaid, medicare, social security, or the evil "earned income tax credit," should be allowed to vote.

9. Any person who actually has a few thousand dollars withheld from his paycheck and then believes that the IRS "gave" him money after April 15th, should be slapped and denied the right to vote for at least two years.

10. If you think that medical treatment, housing, and a living wage are "rights," you should immediately be put aboard a C-5 and airdropped over the nearest communist country, where they think like you do. You will have to provide for your own parachute, since they are not listed as a right.

11. Public education is when you take your own home-schooled child on a field trip to a museum or zoo or factory, etc. Government education is that catastrophe that the taxpayers are funding to propagandize children into socialism.

12. "One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain." -- Thomas Sowell

13. In a free society, 95% employment is the absolute optimum, because only in a communist society is everyone guaranteed a job.

14. Only in a free market economy can things be so good that at least 5% of the population is between a job and a better job.

15. Considering how many laws are currently on the books; if you hear someone utter the words, "There oughtta be a law," just beat the hell out of them.

16. The Supreme Court of the United States is now the most dangerous oligarchy the world has ever seen. What part of "Congress shall make no law" (1st Amendment) and "Shall not be infringed" (2nd Amendment) do you not understand? You arrogant freakin' tyrants!

This is by no means the last you'll see of this post. Get crackin' people!

Merry Christmas

. . . and Happy Hannukah.

Regardless of the pagan roots of some of the pomp and circumstance that is associated with this holiday, this is a great time to be with family and friends and to reflect on the Incarnation. I actually prefer the historical accuracy of the Festival of Lights, but I find it more than a coincidence that celebrating the coming of LIGHT is celebrated by Hebrews and Goyim at almost the same time.

Pretty cool.

I'll get back to ranting after the weekend.

For now, I just want to revel in the fact that I married into an incredibly loving family. I don't think it's just luck that an orphan from a terribly abusive childhood married into a family that deeply believes in trying, no matter how imperfectly, living by the teachings of Christ. God knows, I don't deserve near the forgiveness and love that these people have shown me for nearly 20 years. My in-laws (such an inappropriately cold term) have come to my aid in crises and difficulties and have overlooked my selfish moments to amazing lengths.

My "blood" relatives, save two, have never expressed a single concern whether I was alive or dead. And the "two" were so abused by my real mother, that I can't blame them for the distance they must feel for me.

But I digress. The important thing is here and now. I will spend Christmas Day surrounded by people I love and who love me. And when the Mrs. and I come home late in the day, I'm going to play my "It's A Wonderful Life" DVD and laugh and cry. I'm going to remember that people with good hearts and good intentions want so much to make tremendous contributions to humanity, that they often can't see how their day to day existence makes eternal impacts on the lives of those around them.

If you can find "It's A Wonderful Life" on your TV set in the next 48 hours, watch it. And think hard about the fact that we may never fulfill all of our dreams, but along the way, the effect we have on other people's lives may be more than we can imagine.

I say think HARD, because Karl Marx was a spoiled, aristocratic college student who thought that his ideas would liberate the working class. His ideas resulted in the deaths of over 150 million people. Mother Teresa was humble beyond description and we can't count how many lives she saved.

Whoever you are, I wish you the best. In the spirit of that Christmas event in World War One, when Germans and Englishmen ceased fire and crossed lines to celebrate Christmas, I express the same sentiment to you. I don't know who you are, but because God Himself came down to Earth to live among us and pay the ultimate price to redeem us, I humbly bow to the greatest act of love and selflessness ever recorded, and say, I love you.

There are plenty of jaded and calloused people out there, who no doubt have departed this post by now, but that's okay. Hope springs eternal. Especially in the heart of someone like me who has seriously contemplated suicide on too many occasions. But I've seen God at work in too many lives to discount him. You skeptics can snicker all you want, but I've seen things that can't be put in a mass spectrometer. Human relationships can't be shoved into a test tube and subjected to litmus paper.

Whatever your level of understanding of physics or truth, have a Merry Christmas. If you're an atheist or agnostic or whatever, just rejoice in the people you love and care about and enjoy this time.

Personal Responsibility

This article really got my juices flowing.

A few years ago, I decided to get into shape. I started using a Navy SEAL workout video. Damn.

Damn. You know how a parent gives you what you need in spite of what you think will feel good?

Dealing With Ignorance

You know, it is very difficult to deal with rumors. I feel confident that anybody intelligent enough to surf to this blog has lived enough life to understand what I'm talking about.

Perception is reality. Especially in the political world.

I go from link to link, blog to blog, and I keep running into this moronic myth. It doesn't seem to matter if it is a conservative or liberal blog, but this most damnable concept keeps getting promulgated by the most well meaning souls.

As an aside, let me just say that George Orwell was a prophet, par excellance because he understood the nature of language and its affect on people. If you redefine terms in a slow and subtle way, you really can influence people. He was trying to warn us of the danger of how those who seek and seize power would convince us that it was all for our own good.

First of all, no individual, no citizen has a right to vote on who the president of the USA is going to be. Ah, Ah, Ah, . . . before you start fussing and fuming, pull out your copy of the constitution and read it thoroughly.

Pay attention boys and girls, the president is elected by an electoral college of delegates. An ingenious method to make sure that popular vote by more populated urban centers could not dominate and squelch the rights and the voice of more agrarian and rural areas and states.

The constitution was written to allow States to choose their own method of selecting delegates to represent their own best interests in selecting a federal president. Any state legislature could pass a law that deemed the selection of their delegates to the electoral college in any manner they see fit.

Let's dispense with another awful, horrible, nightmarish idea. This country was not designed to be a democracy.

Don't just parrot the stupid crap you were told in the government propaganda centers ("Public Schools"), show me one mention of "democracy" in the founding documents. Read the Federalist Papers. Nothing good said about democracy. My favorite line from Mel Gibson's "The Patriot": "Why would I trade one tyrant 2000 miles away for 2000 tyrants one mile away?"

"Certain unalienable rights" can only be assured with a CONSTITUTIONAL republic. A democracy is a sure way to tyranny of mob rule.

The founders, by their own writings, envisioned a weak federal government that only served to protect the interests of several states when necessary, in the affairs of international issues and in settling minor disputes between the several states.

Look, It's Christmas

You know, all of us who post to these blogs are extremely grateful for thos of you who come to read them. But, we're people too, and some of us have families, we may even be going out of town. For some of us, the idea of worrying about posting and keeping up readership is taking a backseat to just being with our loved ones. Hope you can understand that.

So, barring any special news or events; don't complain that we aren't posting enough. On the positive side, go out and do something incredibly generous and unexpected for someone who both needs it and will be very appreciative of it.

God Bless, Commander Will

As If Things Couldn't Get Worse

Before 1800 hours EST, POTUS went on the air to reveal that Libya will now cower and submit to weapons inspections, etc.

This can only mean that the leftist Demmings will now be going into meltdown.

More to post later, when the Demmings start offering up hysteria over the hegemony of the U.S. imperialistic aggression under King George the 43rd.

How Patriotic Are You?

Now this is a GOOD CAUSE.

I think everyone who reads this blog should take this challenge. Let's really find out who really believes what.

Jesus said, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

And don't let the size of your contribution keep you from giving. And if nothing else, send letters.

Wright v. Langley

I've been watching the History Channel because today is the centennial celebration of flight.

One of the most illustrative aspects of the competition in conquering flight is often overlooked. Is it about the science, or the perseverance? No. It is the lesson that keeps repeating itself over and over throughout history. Private Sector (Individuals, Corporations, Voluntary alliances) versus government.

If you subject your children to the abuse known as "Public" (read government) school, don't expect your kids to learn anything about this most important lesson.

The Wright brothers were a couple of high school drop-outs who ran a bicycle shop. They got the crazy idea that they could build a flying machine. The dream of flying was nothing new, it's just that they were living during the industrial revolution and had seen all the rapidly developing technology and thought, "why not?"

At the same time a distinguished, very educated Professor Langley was working on his flying machine. On his great international reputation as a top scientist, he procured funds from the U.S. government to do his experimentation to build a flying machine. There were others in the modern world trying to accomplish the same thing, but Langley's reputation made him the overwhelming favorite.

The Wrights worked in as much secrecy as possible. They knew that if word got out that two bicycle mechanics were working on a flying machine, the ridicule would be monstrous. The two geniuses did some of the most amazing genuine research, unlike Langley. The Wrights built the first wind tunnel; so well designed that modern ones are not much different. They found discovered serious flaws in previous research by other credentialed scientists. Did I mention they were high school drop-outs?

Not long after Langley's launch of his aerodrome off a house-boat, in which the rear wings collapsed, causing him to be a laughingstock in the press, the Wright brothers succeeded in three consecutive flights.

So, what does this have to do with "Private sector versus government?" Langley got to waste $70,000 dollars of taxpayer money; something like $2 million today. The Wright brothers spent $1,200 ($24,000) of their own money to leave Langley in the dust.

Sure, we've come a long way since then. But, that is still the most important lesson of the breakthrough. Most all of the greatest leaps of science and technology happen in spite of government, not because of it.

Pushing The Envelope

Those of you who are aviation buffs, like myself, will appreciate the title.

Here we are on the 100th Anniversary of the invention of powered flight and we must be visited with extreme asshattedness from the London Guardian in this "op-ed" piece.

Is it just a coincidence that this guy's name is George Monbiot? Could that be the transliteration of our word, "Moonbat"? If so, we need to refer to Chirac and Villepin, from this day forward as Chirac de Monbiot and Villepin de Monbiot.

(We await Emperor Misha's declaration in the comments section. Quiet . . . I think I hear him coming.)