pyroguysr's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I DON'T WRITE FOR A WEEK OK, there are a couple items of note this week. There was an earthquake in Western North Carolina yesterday. Anybody notice? Oh, you all thought it was just the Pentacostals and Baptists having a revival and jumping up and down in unison? I see! *Pouts* I'm missing opening weekend of Maryland Renaissance Festival. Bah! The NC State legislature failed to pass the bill that would authorize the Lottery in this state. No big deal to me, but I hate the way they package it by saying that �the money raised with it will benefit �da children� and that it will go to �scholarship funds.� No it won�t. It never has in any other state. Why would NC be any different? What actually happens is that, for every dollar raised by lottery proceeds, the legislature removes it dollar-for-dollar in the annual budget, so the schools never see that optimistic �increase� in funding. Also, spending on the lottery usually declines after 2 or 3 years, so it�s a losing proposition there. That�s what's happened in Texas, California, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio and Illinois, just to name a few states. In Virginia, they don�t even make a pretense of it anymore. All funds generated go directly into the general revenue fund for the state. The schools get a paltry 1% of the unclaimed winnings! Also, when the legislature sees the initial (and substantial) revenues, they begin to salivate and usually start siphoning the money off in one way or another to pay for their increased and bloated out-of-control spending because they are incapable of actually reducing or eliminating unnecessary programs that benefit a tiny minority of "well-deserving individuals," who are usually campaign contributors, buddies and cronies. And I say that whether they are Democrat or Republican. Career politicians have no real party affiliation except at election time. Solution? Impose strict term limits. No more professional legislators! Make it so that they are truly citizen politicians. (Those that govern least, govern best!). And don�t feed me that bullshit about how they are �just getting things going� when their terms have ended. If it's a worthy pursuit, the Pol can pass that ball on to the successor and then we will truly have �party platforms� that are embraced. That said, I like playing the lottery and I fantasize about winning it. I consider it a voluntary tax. I can choose each week if I wish to play or not. But don�t give me that teary-eyed look and tell me about how classrooms are �doing without� unless I call my legislator and demand that he vote for the lottery. I won�t listen. Talk to me about a flat, fair tax instead (blatant plug here for Neal Bortz�s new �FAIR TAX� book). Or, you can allow me to take each dollar I put into the lottery as a credit on my state income tax or on my property taxes! Do that and you�ll see a pretty consistent revenue! (Well, from ME at least!) IN OTHER NEWS A hurry-cane hit Florida today� specifically, it hit Ft. Lauderdale. Looks like it�s gonna hit Louisiana as well. That probably means we won�t be going to Florida for FLARF. May also mean we won�t be heading to LARF either. But we�ve some weekend shows and conventions that look a little more promising (and a lot less expensive - We lost money on both those shows this past season). I recently read a study that about 60% of the voting age public in the U.S. is apathetic and apolitical. For all you foaming-at-the-mouth, evangelical political types, that means they generally don�t give a damn, usually don�t vote and could care less about who is saying what in the news. They are more concerned about paying their bills, worried about layoffs, heading home to escape and wondering if their favorite TV show will get cancelled or who's going to be "in concert" locally rather than who is getting appointed to the Supreme Court. The other 40% is fairly evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans with about 2 or 3% in the middle that either vote 3rd Party or are the elusive �swing voter� that we hear so much about at election time. It is to the 60% though, that I apologize for the following: The first being that Pat Robertson has put his foot so deeply in his mouth that shoe polish is coming out of his ass. I�ve heard and seen the video where he comments on something said by El Presidente, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela (and, as repulsive as his politics are, he is the duly elected President of that country). Then again, Chavez started it. President Chavez seems to think that he is soooo important and sooooo much a PITA* to the United States that he�s paranoid we�ve sent hit squads down there to assassinate him. Robertson, when he heard that, said that maybe it wouldn�t be such a bad thing. Not that the Democrats are any different. I seem to remember a George Stephanopolopolapolis article in Time Magazine about a half dozen years back that suggested the same thing, except the person HE recommended assassinating was� oh, what�s his name� some fucking dictator in the middle east� Oh yeah! Saddam Hussein! But Pat, Pat, Pat! YOU are a man of the cloth! You are a man that is supposed to epitomize the ideals of �Christian Charity.� You are a man that highlights everything that is wrong, Wrong, WRONG with the extreme right of my party, just like the neo-communists - Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton - are what's wrong with the Democrats. Stick to saving souls, Pat. Oh wait� you were never about that anyway - Nor was Jerry Falwell. But then again, who watches either of your programs? W(OUR President) gave the left a bit of a black eye two weeks ago by appointing Bolton as the "interim Ambassador" to that cancerous center of world corruption in NYC... Yes, I'm talking about the UN. I chuckled over that one. And who says there has to be "balance" on the supreme court and why is it only "balanced" when it has a decided liberal slant? What was "balancing" about the court when that wart, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, was appointed? Bite me, Liberals! Now I need to go slap around a few wimpy Republicans in Washington and let them know WE FUCKIN' WON - START ACTING LIKE IT and confirm our nominee for the Supreme Court! *SIGHS* Then there is the media frenzy over that overblown, self-important, brainless kewpie-doll mom. One squeaky wheel out of 1800 mothers that lost their sons or daughters �over there.� Would somebody please tell Cindy Sheehan to shut the fuck up and go home? She�s looking more and more foolish every day with that �airy-fairy� sing-song voice and sounding like a neo-hippie, peace-love-and-granola flower child California FLAKE. You�re disgracing the memory of your son. He wasn�t drafted, he volunteered. You don�t join the Marine Corps to �learn a trade.� That�s what the Army and Navy are for. Marines do one thing and they do it exceedingly well. They are trained to go where the President sends them and invoke maximum havoc/casualties on the enemy with a minimum to themselves. You haven�t spoken to ONE Marine that served with your son� then again, maybe you�re afraid to because they�d laugh in your face and tell you what a hypocrite you are. If you really supported the troops, you�d quit trying to undermine their mission over there with your bullshit on the Communist News Network. Cindy, really now! Freedom fighters? The terrorists that are blowing each other up, along with an assortment of Iraqi / Afghani civilians and a few of our servicemen are not �freedom fighters.� The Taliban, muslim extremists and Al Queda, these outsiders flowing into Iraq from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan, have nothing to do with freedom, they are about repression. Calling them �freedom fighters� is tantamount to supporting our ultra-right white supremacist militia's on a terror campaign in the deep south. They are thugs. They are gangsters. They are the religious �Al Capone�s� of their country that no one on the Left in their right mind (an oxymoron, I know) would support if it were happening in THIS country. The Taliban, evangelical muslim extremeists and Al Queda are everything the Left accuses the Bush Administration of being - which, of course, makes the Left nothing more than laughable hypocrites. These Taliban, these al queda, these fanatic muslim fascists, need to be put away. The Iraqi people / police / military are not yet capable of doing that alone. We will fuckin� pull out when we believe they are and no sooner. Now go home and tell �MoveOn.org�, PETA, and George Souros to go back to hugging trees and getting Lyme�s disease from tick bites while trying to embrace �Bambi.� *PITA = Pain In The Ass KEY TO ABBREVIATIONS I USED: NC = North Carolina, the place I now call home 8:06 p.m. - 2005-08-26 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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