Death Of A Senator

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

I suppose this being an election year and all it would be remiss not to make some sort of comment on things political. I have to admit that I am not a great supporter of the democratic system as it currently exists.

I say this for a number of reasons. Here are four.

One, we never get to vote for the best candidate, only the candidates who can raise the most money, and who are selected by the party faithful.

Two, most people are so welded to the Republicans or Democrats that an independent candidate, even if he were by far the best of the bunch, has such an uphill struggle it is virtually impossible for him or her to get elected.

Three, our democracy does not require the voter (or the candidate I suppose) to be qualified in any way. The intellectual and the moron have an equal vote, even though the former has the ability to vote for the best qualified candidate with the most sensible policies, whilst the latter will vote for the one who wore the nicest tie in a TV debate.

And four, because whether we have Republicans or Democrats in power, or white men or colored men as President, they continue to allow the same sycophants and morons to populate all the important parts of government and crucial elements like the banking sector.  

“Yes we can?”

No we can’t.

Not with the present system. The current incumbent has proved that one beyond all reasonable doubt.

So what does all this mean? Well, it means probably that whoever gets elected, things will go on much the same.

But hopefully some people will actually think about who they are voting for and why. And try to cut through the electioneering promises and hype and think about what is practical and doable.

The following might help to clarify things a little.

Enjoy.

. 

Death Of A Senator 

A powerful senator dies after a prolonged illness.

His soul arrives in heaven and is met by St. Peter at the entrance.

"Welcome to Heaven," says St. Peter. "Before you settle in, it seems there is a problem. We seldom see a high official around these parts, you see, so we're not sure what to do with you."

"No problem, just let me in," says the senator.

"Well, I'd like to but I have orders from higher up. What we'll do is have you spend one day in Hell and one in Heaven. Then you can choose where to spend eternity."

"Really, I've made up my mind. I want to be in Heaven," says the senator.

"I'm sorry but we have our rules."

And with that, St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to Hell.

The doors open and he finds himself in the middle of a green golf course. In the distance is a club and standing in front of it are all his friends and other politicians who had worked with him, everyone is very happy and in evening attire.

They run to greet him, hug him, and reminisce about the good times they had while getting rich at the expense of the people.

They play a friendly game of golf and then dine on lobster and caviar.

Also present is the Devil, who really is a very friendly guy who has a good time dancing and telling jokes.

They are having such a good time that, before he realizes it, it is time to go.

Everyone gives him a big hug and waves while the elevator rises.

The elevator goes up, up, up and the door reopens on Heaven where St. Peter is waiting for him.

"Now it's time to visit Heaven."

So 24 hours pass with the senator joining a group of contented souls moving from cloud to cloud, playing the harp and singing.

They have a good time and, before he realizes it, the 24 hours have gone by and St. Peter returns.

"Well then, you've spent a day in Hell and another in Heaven. Now choose your eternity."

He reflects for a minute, then the senator answers, "Well, I would never have said it, I mean Heaven has been delightful, but I think I would be better off in Hell."

So St. Peter escorts him to the elevator and he goes down, down, down to Hell.

Now the doors of the elevator open and he is in the middle of a barren land covered with waste and garbage.

He sees all his friends, dressed in rags, picking up the trash and all sorts of other disgusting things and putting them in black bags.

The Devil comes over to him and lays his arm on his neck.

"I…I…I… don't understand," stammers the senator. "Yesterday I was here and there was a golf course and a club house, and we ate lobster and caviar, and danced and had a great time. Now all there is, is a wasteland full of garbage and awful stuff and my friends all look miserable.”

The Devil looks at him, smiles and says,

"Yesterday we were campaigning...

Today you voted for us!"

VOTE WISELY THIS COMING ELECTION!!

London 2012, Proof That When You Give Bureaucrats An Olympian Sized Task, They Will Make An Olympian Sized Mess Of It!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

The London Olympic Games 2012 will finish later today. I'm interested to see what they have in store for the closing ceremony, bearing in mind that the opening ceremony was good in parts, but confusing in others. 

As for the games themselves, after a shaky start I think you could say they were successful and very enjoyable for the public at large. I certainly enjoyed what I saw of them. 

But what the whole show did illustrate very well was the sheer stupidity and incompetence of the politicians and the bureaucrats. They took a large, but relatively simple event, and made a laughing stock out of themselves.

Why?

Simply because the politicians and bureaucrats thought they could run everything better than people who know about staging events like these. They can't! 

Right from the start the inefficiency was evident in the vast rows of empty seats at the various venues. 

It got a little better as the Games went on, but a friend of mine who was there on Thursday evening told me that even for the much heralded Men's 200 meters showdown featuring the extremely popular Jamaican runner Usain Bolt, there were at least 500 vacant seats in the stadium.

The problem was twofold.

First, a lot of tickets had been allocated to the corporate sector, far more than was necessary.

Second, for the rest of the people there was only one practical way to buy Olympic tickets, and that was through the 'official' government/bureaucrat controlled office.

These morons even tried to destroy normal commercial activity by making it a criminal offense for individuals to resell Olympic tickets.

But when you logged on to the government's official website to try to buy tickets legally, bewildered visitors quickly found out that they had to jump through all sorts of ridiculous hoops to get them.

A bit like an airport arrivals lounge, UK residents were directed to follow one set of procedures; residents of the EU, but not of the UK, had another set of rules; and residents of other countries, yet another set.

Of course, you couldn't just buy the tickets. First you had to set up an online profile, revealing all sorts of details about yourself that had not the slightest relevance to buying a ticket for the Games.

And when you'd finished all that you could print out your ticket, just like an electronic airline ticket or boarding pass.

Don't be daft, of course you couldn't. That would be far too efficient and sensible.

The bureaucrat way, despite the fact that they were directing everyone to use the online system, was to mail your tickets to you  -  hold on, let me repeat that  -  mail as in M-A-I-L, as in snail-mail NOT email - and they could only do that to the legal residency address you gave them in your profile.

Tough luck on "Johnny Foreigner" whose legal residency could have been on the other side of the world, in China, Australia, or New Zealand for example.

There was an alternative, if you could call it that. You could waste a few hours of your life going to one of the ticket offices, the locations of which the bureaucrats had ensured were in the most inconvenient places possible.

And when you eventually made it to the front of the queue you were confronted by a poorly trained and ever more poorly informed individual who had little idea what tickets were available at any given time.

The inefficiency of the availability of information was so staggering that an event that had been deemed 'sold out' at 10am, could turn out to have hundreds of seats available an hour or two later.

That was why there were thousands of empty seats. The bungling bureaucrats hadn't even the wit to assign them to the soldiers who had been drafted in at the last minute because of another foul-up in employing a private security firm who had not the manpower to do the job.

So could you get tickets by other "illegal" means?

Well, of course you could. The bureaucrats desire for total control is as inefficient as everything else they do. The ticket touts were doing business as usual, but as usual they were charging two or three times the face value of the tickets. Whether that practice is right or wrong is a question for another time. But they couldn't have done it had the idiots in charge not made such a hash of the whole thing.

I’m looking forward to see how they cope in Rio in 2016. My feeling is they should study what happened in London and do the complete opposite!

===================

The Silly Name Game, Part Two - Now It’s Political!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

You’d think if you had a daft or embarrassing name the last thing that you would want to do is hang it out in public for everyone to see and ridicule.

But as was noted yesterday people just do not seem to find anything wrong with their own surnames, no matter how funny, absurd or otherwise they appear to the rest of us.

Hence people stand for public office quite oblivious to their odd names.

Does it help or hinder them to get elected? Perhaps sometimes it does, after all some of the names would certainly tend to stick a voter’s mind. Perhaps sometimes it doesn’t, if they are stupid enough not to notice their own names, how fit are they for public office in the first place.

Who knows?

Who cares?

At least they’ve given us some entertainment even if they didn’t mean to.

Enjoy!!!

Are The Banksters Guilty Of Treason Against The Nation?

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

“Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?

Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

Ovid / Sir John Harrington

When I first though about this subject for a post on my blog, I had America mainly in my mind, I suppose because that is where the rot started to show. But when I though about it a little more I quickly realized that the same charge could equally be brought against banksters in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, France and in fact the entire European Union. 

They took money that was not theirs, that was placed in trust with them for safe and responsible stewardship, and they gambled it and lost it.

Then they used their influence on stupid and greedy politicians to steal the honest taxpayer’s money to fill up their coffers again. They were apparently too big to fail – what an utter load of nonsense!

They promised when they were stealing OUR money that they would use it to make loans to businesses and thereby stimulate and reactivate the economy that they themselves had brought to a standstill when they lost OUR original cash in stupid and foolhardy deals that no one with any brains or any sense of responsibility to their clients would have dared to go near.

They lied.

They took OUR money for the second time and kept it for themselves. A lot of it went on bonuses, sometimes in the tens of millions of dollars. A reward to themselves for staggering incompetence.

In any other industry, if you were so bad at your job as to bankrupt your company, you would not only be fired but stand a good chance of being charged with fraud or negligence or something. But if you are a banker and have successfully sold the lie that you are “too big to fail”, then you get away with it. It doesn’t hurt if you have a few politicians in your pocket either!

And, apart from paying yourself huge bonuses for losing OUR money the first time, what do you do with the proceeds of stealing OUR money the second time? Well, of course, first you give yourself another big pay rise, and then you gamble again and lose even more of OUR money.

Remember the J P Morgan $2billion loss – er, make that a $9billion loss would you. Just as Hillary Clinton “mis-spoke” when she lied to the public, J P Morgan “mis-counted” the first time they declared the extent of their incompetence! We probably have not heard the truth yet.

And President Obama has the gall to tell the world that these morons and liars are “the best we have”! Seriously? Do you really expect the people to believe that? I don’t think so. I certainly hope not.

But the J P Morgan $2billion loss turning out to be a $9billion loss is just the tip of a colossal  iceberg. This one is a hell of a lot bigger than the one that sank the Titanic  -  it’s threatening to sink entire countries.

The public and even the various governments have not been made aware of the full extent of the catastrophic losses these idiots (remember the best we have) have made. All the big banks, whether in the US, or Britain, or Spain or France or wherever are furiously cooking their books and have been for the last five years. Their companies are insolvent, they are bankrupt, but they are hiding the truth from everyone.  

This is fraud.

In fact, because of the power that they have, and the impact their stupidity inevitably has on the entire national economy, what they have done and are continuing to do is commit treason.

In a country run by Joe Stalin or Saddam Hussein (perhaps proving that not everyone is all bad all of the time) these treacherous bankers would have been put up against a wall and shot. That may be a bit extreme for us, but at the very least they should lose their jobs, have their stashes of personal wealth confiscated, and be thrown into jail. If it was good enough for a thief like ponzi king, Madoff, it should be good enough for thieves like them.

End rant, cue a few videos on the subject.

Enjoy!

A view from Britain

A view from Ireland

The best government money can buy

Understanding The Financial Crisis--For Kids and Grownups