My 2 Cents

I recently canceled my subscription to what has become the inordinate and tedious " the sky is falling" News Brief emails that I was getting from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

When asked why I was unsuscribing, I clicked the box "information is not relevant to me" and in the comments section I said this:

I am tired of reading news items that clearly indicate that the engineering profession is helping hand-in-hand to bring about the rise of the STATE. If it was 1939, ASCE would be running articles about the pressing need for rail infrastructure improvement and the shortage of transport boxcars (for human cargo). All this degradation of my once noble profession by a bunch of jackals because that fits the government agenda and fits the rush for the green ($$$$).

Makes me want to vomit

Some Fun With Bush

McChrystal, McChrystal Burning Bright

General McChrystal, the dude that is leading the charge in the wasteland called Afghanistan is recently quoted  as saying

"It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened"

Is he talking about his vote for Obama?

When my 3 nephews get killed in Omaba's War will it have been worth it?

Do you really think that even if we "win" in Afghanistan that we will not eventually have to have the showdown with Islam?

For more on poor judgment see this.

HOW TO SELL ... TOOTHBRUSHES

The kids filed back into class Monday morning. They were very excited.  Their weekend assignment was to sell something, then give a talk on productive salesmanship.


Little Sally led off: "I sold girl scout cookies and I made $30," she said  proudly, "My sales approach was to appeal to the customer's civil spirit and I credit that approach for my obvious success."

"Very good," said the teacher.

Little Jenny was next:

"I sold magazines," she said, "I made $45 and I explained to everyone that  magazines would keep them up on current events."

"Very good, Jenny," said the teacher..


Eventually, it was Little Johnny's turn.

The teacher held her breath ...


Little Johnny walked to the front of the classroom and dumped a box full of  cash on the teacher's desk. "$2,467," he said.

"$2,467!" cried the teacher, "What in the world were you selling"

"Toothbrushes," said Little Johnny.

"Toothbrushes," echoed the teacher, "How could you possibly sell enough tooth brushes to make that much money?"


"I found the busiest corner in town," said Little Johnny, "I set up a Dip &  Chip stand, I gave everybody who walked by a free sample."  They all said the same thing, "Hey, this tastes like dog shit!"

Then I would say,"It is dog shit. Wanna buy a toothbrush?"

"I used the governmental approach of giving you something shitty that they say is good, and then making you pay to get the shitty taste out of your mouth."

The teacher was speechless. . . . . . . .

Pot Calls the Kettle Black

6/21/2010 - Correction - The 2.5 million gallons/day is a cube that is about... wait for it .... 70 x 70 x70 ... feet. Amazing what some simple napkin math reveals.

Today's headline reads

As oil spews in Gulf, BP chief at UK yacht race

Now, I for one, don't see why anybody would have a problem with this, because after all, that sort of thing is what Obama would have done. Remember when he and his ilk were telling us about how the country was melting down that he and his wife flew off to have their private night on the town costing us taxpayers millions of dollars?

I remember, and I do not recall any of the state run media getting their panties in a wad over that Obama display of bad form.

BTW all the daily oil "gushing" out of that well can fit into a cube measuring about ...... 150' x 150' x 150' - peanuts I say, the proof of which can be seen as the news commentator intones with saddened face  how he walked along the oil coated beach and saw, wait for it ...... 10 pelicans coated in oil!

Not to put too fine a point on things, there are more people killed in car crashes every day in practically any state in the union than there are dead freaking birds because of the BP oil spill - no big daily news story  over that.

Every day there  are more cats run over by cars on residential streets than there are dead pelicans for the BP oil spill - no big daily news story over that.

Lunacy - the entire world seems to have become mired in the greasy slick of simply unsustainable political correctness ... at least so says this heartless bastard.

6/21/2010 Update
Latest Blog Photo showing enviromental balance and health of marsh grasses that have a damage ratio of oil stained to unaffected of approximately .0000000000000000000000000000000000000001%

Call out the National Guard

Photo showing seagulls communicating with each other to stay the hell away from that black stuff and telling each other that there is 18,000,0000,0000,000,000,000 acres of green stuff to nest and fly over.

Good Grief - Give Me a Break - So Says Heartless Bastard

Freedom's Complications

Another Open Message to ASFE - Association of Socialist Federated Engineers?

This morning, I got an email from one of the professional associations that I belong to - ASFE - and this email animated me to write up this post.

From my understanding of things, in the beginning of this association's life it was all about bringing the owners of geotechnical firms (dirt engineering & testing companies)  together so that they could figure out ways to reduce risk and exposure on geotechnical engineering projects. At that time, insurance was very difficult to obtain and these owners saw that if they did not band together and implement industry-wide voluntary practices of "good engineering" that their firms would soon be sued out of existence.

With that initial goal, the association proceeded to develop the best liability and practice guidelines and protocols in the engineering industry and from these initial beginnings, the association has expanded into helping with business practice and management techniques, as these things greatly affect the liability exposure of the firm.

It was at this stage that I directed that my firm join  the association, for I wanted to confer with other business owners about problems and solutions that we all  - as business owners -faced. This was a good thing for my firm for many years, however, as is common with all associations, this one too has entered a stage of its life-cycle where it seems the purpose of the association is the association, and that the members are used as income units to fund the association and to fund agendas of the ruling politburo that are vastly different than the agenda of sound business practice and liability reduction and which are vastly different than what any individual engineer would privately agree to in his own right mind.

Thus it is that we now have the association sending out emails like the one that I received this morning, an email that is making George Orwell and Ayn Rand either turn over in their graves or roll their eyes as if to say " I told you so".

Here is the text:

Brownfields [Oh such a nice cuddly name - for a chemical waste containing site] 2011 Call for Session Ideas Is Open!



The U.S. EPA is seeking proposals for educational sessions at the 14th National Brownfields Conference, scheduled for April 3-5, 2011 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. ASFE is a sponsor of the event, [you have to be kidding] the nation's largest, most comprehensive conference focused on issues facing brownfields practitioners, policy makers, and communities.

This year, conference organizers are particularly interested in ideas related to green jobs, community engagement and environmental justice, the business of brownfields, green technology and emerging solutions, planning for community revitalization, and sustainability.

[Note that nowhere in the email is it stated that they are interested in cleaning up chemicals in the dirt. ]


This is the email that I sent back [OK maybe with a few edits]:

Got your earlier message about the Brownfields Conference. I note the do-gooder feel good language of the prospectus and wanted to know if you will you please explain to me what "environmental justice" is? I have never taken an engineering or other course in this. I have taken many courses in rationality justice, capitalism justice, personal justice, societal justice, farm animal justice, auto repair justice etc. These were usually styled under the heading LAW. Indeed, the entire purpose of the LAW IS justice, so we do not need "environmental justice".

While you are making up the platitudes to justify the introduction of such Orwellian terms like "environmental justice", terms deliberately introduced so as to engender the collective, be on the lookout for the FedEx package of Kool-Aid that I have sent up to you.

Have you all gone stark raving mad buying into this pathological liberal collectivist mindset and using my dues money to further it - a mindset that is unsustainable for our culture and civilization as a whole?

Art Koenig, PE

Call to Action - If any of you other engineers out there are fed up with your engineering associations using your dues money to engage in acts like this and to do things such as bringing in speakers trying to push the collectivist socialist green communist save the earth and feed the whales agendas, then kick and scream about it - or just do like John Galt . I did.

BP Spoof

This is a funny clip. Too bad they didn't put in a bit about the administration refusing proffered/requested aid -- booms, sweepers, ship, berms -- becuse of the Jones act and bureaucratic bungling.

US to Step Up Presence in Afghanistan

From a news story

The New York Times reported the $1 trillion figure in Monday's edition and quoted senior American officials as saying untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan are far beyond any previously known reserves and were enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself.




Americans discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, including iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium, according to the report. The Times quoted a Pentagon memo as saying Afghanistan could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium," a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and cell phones.



"There is stunning potential here," the newspaper quoted Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command as saying. "There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant."

Guess we are going to be in Afghanistan for a long long time.

Question: What happens if a goat-herding society simply choses to not want to exploit or allow exploitation of the resources. Hint : Think American Indians - They were not all that much into exploitation of the resources of the Americas. Do you think that the European powers would have stood for that?? Did they stand for that?

Will they [and the US] stand for that now or will this become a struggle for the resources regardless of the desires of the Afghani people.

The Beauty of Multiculturalism

From a news story

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan – Kyrgyz mobs burned Uzbek villages, slaughtered their residents and looted police stations Sunday in the worst ethnic rioting this Central Asian nation has seen in 20 years, sending more than 75,000 Uzbek refugees fleeing across the border into Uzbekistan.

Ahh Yes - The beauty of multiculturalism.

Peace comes thru unity NOT diversity. It is said that people die for their beliefs. The flip side of this is that people also kill for theirs and here are a bunch of people dying and killing for theirs. That is why we have nations .... this [area]  is for you,  this [area] is for me.

The King Calleth

From News Headline

BP chairman summoned to Obama meeting over oil spill (AFP)

Summoned?????
OOOOOOOO  ---- As in I'm really scarrrreeeddd.

What chutzpa. Well, I'll say one thing for him, he has indeed fundamentally transformed Amerika. It will never be the same. This guy has shown how far the power of the presidency can be extended, and make no mistake, when the next posse of  Republican "rulers" usher into power in 2012, they will surely do nothing to pare back on the inroads that this president has made. Mark my words.

Finally, Immigration Reform

From a a news story

Arizona’s hard-hitting immigration law is driving Hispanics out of the state weeks before the controversial law goes into effect. Although concrete figures are not available, anecdotal evidence suggests Hispanics, both legal residents and illegal immigrants, are starting to flee.

Gee, Imagine That

Boo Hoo

About Time

Who Cares?

Republican Women Have Misguided View of the Proper Role of Government

From a recent news story about how Republican women have been picked in the primaries.

"Career politicians in Sacramento and Washington, D.C., be warned: You now face your worst nightmare — two businesswomen from the real world who know how to create jobs, balance budgets and get things done," said Whitman, the billionaire former eBay chief executive,

You just don't get it do you  Meg,( and all you other "conservatives" out there). Here is the IT that you all need to get.

It is not the government's job to create jobs. It is the government's job to get the hell out of the way so that businessmen like ME want to and then DO create the jobs.

Again, job creation is NOT the job of government ... Unless you are in the planned economy .... like duh  ... socialism.

Argggg! Ask for the panties to settle for the bra. Even the Republicans are drinking the Kool-Aid. Kool-Aid Lite but Kool-Aid nonetheless.

Hope Springs Eternal in the Mind of a Collectivist

~Cato

The perfect illustration of the Utopian liberal mindset, which cannot deal with the real world, but thrills merely to the sound of noble words: From American Thinker

"Behold the words of Donald Berwick -- doctor, Harvard professor, and Obama's nominee to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), arguably the most powerful position in U.S. medicine, directing the flow of almost one trillion dollars a year …

“The only sentiment that exceeds my admiration ... is my hope for the NHS. I hope that you will never, never give up on what you have begun. I hope that you realize and reaffirm how badly you need, how badly the world needs, an example at scale of a health system that is universal, accessible, excellent, and free at the point of care-a health system that is, at its core, like the world we wish we had: generous, hopeful, confident, joyous, and just.”

See, like the world we wish we had – where unicorns frolic and every girl has a pony. Unfortunately, the health care system has to exist in the world we do have – using the resources of reality. We’ll let you figure out how fantasy can be generous, hopeful, confident, joyous and just.

Seneca's Comment ..
H O P E ??? You gotta be freaking kidding me.

Quick somebody get Cato a copy of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" . She spoke to these very things over 50 years ago, but of course she was a kook right? Kook because she actually thought that which was hers was hers.

You see, the Elsworth Tooheys of the world brand me a kook too because I state that mantra, which they see as "Oh so harsh and cold and unfeeling",  and they work like subterranean sappers to try and undermine this archetypal statement of the reality of things - the only statement of moral position that does not lead to the very things that the world is experiencing right now.

Take heed all you conservatives out there, so smug in you non-Obamaness and in your hatred of a man with such a black heart directed against America, for you too are just as culpable until you too embrace the creed that:

What's mine is Mine; What's yours is Yours ...and, most important of all ... What's Mine is Not Yours - regardless of how much better a place/use you think you can find for my money than I can.

But NO you will not embrace THAT creed because deep down in the place in you heart where even you are afraid to go - you know that you too are "on the take" and at the trough of government subsidy.

student loan - subsidy
FHA Fannie Mae loan - subsidy
energy tax credit for the new insulation you put in - Subsidy
Scholarship/Pell Grant = Subsidy
Aid to Dependent Children - Subsidy
Habitat for Humanity - Subsidy
Farm Credits - Subsidy
Milk Producers Credits - Subsidy

All stolen from your neighbor, so as to flow to the multitude of pockets just like yours where you can tell yourself that your subsidy is "different", and protesting so loudly when people like me refuse to ratify the sanctity of your "need".

May you all burn in hell and that hell will be right here. Dante's Inferno is not some mythical place  - we are staring at its mouth even as I write this.

Obama At Bat