Disqualification for Public Office

There’s a lesson to be learned from the short parade of women making accusations against Arnold Schwarzenegger and the solemn judgment cast upon it by Gray Davis, who claims that some of the contact is in fact, criminal and anyone who would vote for Arnold Schwarzengovernor is voting for a potential (in case you missed it, I will bold, italicize, and CAPITALIZE) CRIMINAL. Also, by parade, I mean couple of people walking single file, so a passerby might confuse this parade of aggrieved and traumatized women with a normal bunch walking to lunch. But I digress.

The lesson to learn is that touching the breast of a female who doesn’t want her breast touched is criminal and a man who does such is not morally qualified to lead. To put it more succinctly:

Getting thrown out at second base should bar you from public office.

That’s right. Every guy who’s kissed a girl in high school and then thought, “Hey, we’ve been dating a week and a half, maybe I can touch her sweater….” is now a man beast incapable of leading. Because let’s face it, in our youth, we men have often tried to encourage persons of the opposite sex into sexual congress with varying styles of unspoken subtle nudging or overt, “Nice shoes, want to, er, fornicate?” and with varying degrees of success, which sometimes ended in unsuccess when male hand met female flesh and the female said no.

So that leaves the following people eligible for office:

  • Heterosexual women.
  • Ricky Martin (or other sexy from a young age celebrities) to whom the women have probably never said no.
  • Guys too dorky to ever consider sex as feasible.
  • Gay men, particularly gay men who were never in the closet in high school and didn’t date girls in confusion or as a cover.
  • Catholic priests or other religious or ascetics who have taken, and held, a vow of chastity.
  • Extremely cautious guys who insist upon consent forms signed in front of witnesses and insist upon videotaping the proceedings for evidence. A lot of my dates went fine until that point, let me tell you.
  • Guys who held out resolutely until marriage. I’m not sure we could elect a full Senate from this group.
  • Guys who only frequent prostitutes.

That’s a wider list of possible rulers than I thought when I first started compiling the list, and you know, I think you could draw a whole class of Platonic rulers out of there.

And as a rhetorical loaded question smear, I present:

Which of these categories does Gray Davis fit into?

I am going to use that as a clip if I ever get interviewed for a job as a professional journalist.

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Sorry I Didn’t Clear This Up in Time

My apologies to whomever searched for what is the difference between hasta luego and hasta la vista? and clicked through to find my review of Flappers 2 Rappers by Tom Dalzell.

Briefly, hasta luego directly translates into “Until then,” which is a casual farewell.

Hasta la vista, bebe directly translates into “Until the vision (or viewing),” which is a casual farewell. What is “the vision,” you might ask? The Rapture? Don’t ask me, Professor Michaels was too busy trying to knock the schwa out of our mouths and to make us understand that idiomatic expressions do not directly translate to explain the origin of Spanish idiom.

So there you have it. Both mean “Catch you later.” Except one’s “Take it easy” and the other is “Peace, out.”

Hope that clears it up for you.

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The E-Mails Were Right

I have increased the size of my unit by 4 inches!!!!

Well, I have finally replaced the 15″ monitor with a honking 19″ flat screen model. I’d promised myself one once I finished my novel, but it’s taken me a year to get around to it.

Not to channel Ravenwood or anything, but man, I remember when our color televisions grew to 19″.

And our mothers wouldn’t let us sit this close to them, much less for 10+ hours a day.

Ha, ma! Joke’s on you, huh?
Oh, sorry, ma’am, you looked like my mother until I got within six inches of you.

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Wait Till I Bring The Heat Gun Into The Office

A link via Instapundit leads me to this story. Although it’s about the fallilbility of voting machines, the author thinks the voting machines should be subject to the same sort of scrutiny as electronic slot machines:

One such outside auditor is Gaming Laboratories International (GLI). To certify a new device, or even a software upgrade, vendors send GLI all of the source code, all of the tools needed to build the code, maybe a development computer, and even an in-circuit emulator if that’s how you debugged your code. Expensive? You bet. Accurate? It sure seems to be.

GLI tears the design apart, digs into the guts, finds back doors impossible to isolate via testing and ensures the customer will lose by exactly the amount specified. Tests check both functionality and threat resistance. Technicians zap every square inch of the gaming machine with a 27 KV prod – because cheaters often try to rip off the devices using ESD to confuse the electronics. GLI jimmies the coin box, and generally simulates all of the attacks observed by those hidden cameras in the casino’s roof. That’s regression testing of a whole new order.

That’s the right way to conduct your quality assurance testing. I wonder if GLI is hiring? I figure the logical progression for my career is to cause actual physical damage. Maybe UL needs a thug.

Regardless, while my resume travels in the mail, I am inspired to bring in a heat gun to work tomorrow to see how the application works when I am flipping bits.

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Buy That Man a Guinness

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that Anheuser-Busch has decided not to contribute to Missouri Governor B. Holden’s re-election campaign because he vetoed the concealed carry bill. The legislature, of course, overrode that veto, but seems that August A. Busch III is a sportsman and a citizen concerned with his personal security and he’s in a punishing mood. Anheuser-Busch as a whole supports candidates like it sponsors sports teams, that is, it gives money to all of them. Except, now, B. Holden.

Title this lesson Beer Baron with Bling Bling Likes Bang Bang, Bye Bye Billy if you like.

Let it be said that I was so pleased with the story that I almost bought a sixer of Budweiser tonight to reward Anheuser-Busch for its stand, until I realized that I cannot drink it and that the other attendees of El Guapo’s mixer-sixer party this weekend would beat the bud out of me if I contributed an Anheuser-Busch product while drinking their ten-dollar-a-six-pack contributions. Skull Splitter, anyone? Not me, thanks!

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Nationalize the Groceries!

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports on the hardships caused by the closings of Kohl’s Food stores (not affiliated with the expanding Kohl’s Department stores, and neither of which are affiliated with Senator Herbert Kohl, but it’s a long story):

Fifteen years ago, Mary Brown sought out a senior housing apartment in a neighborhood where she could shop, offering stores she could reach by walking.

That option disappeared in August when South Milwaukee, a community of 21,000, lost its only major grocery store – the Kohl’s Food Store on S. Chicago Ave.

It’s bad enough that the closing, one of 23 Kohl’s supermarkets that were shut down, now means a trek to another city – Cudahy’s Pick ‘n Save or Potter’s Piggly Wiggly in Oak Creek – to fulfill a basic need for food. [Emphasis mine]

Insert klaxon sound here. So closing this grocery, which could not make money, has left seniors without the means to fulfill a basic human need, soon to be a basic human right, that is, a grocery store within two blocks of your home, whether it can survive as an ongoing concern or not.

The obvious answer is Foodicare, a new program designed to keep everyone well stocked, or at least give them the ability to fulfill their basic human need without crossing municipal borders and paying sales taxes somewhere else.

I may sound a little snarky, but I empathize, I really do. I mean, to get the really cool exotic beers, I cannot go the Casinport Schnucks. As a matter of fact, I have to go all the way to Creve Couer, to the Dierberg’s, a drive of ten minutes!

Once Foodicare becomes law, and I have given up work since taxation levels will have reached such heights that I will have to pay money out of my own pocket to hold down a job, there will be booze within walking distance, and I’ll never have to be sober again! Which will qualify my to serve in government, or at least to write violinic pieces in the paper about grocery stores closing and the hardship that presents the glitzing customers.

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Remember, They’re Men of the People

Not that I want to harbor grudges, but remember that Bill Clinton and Al Gore are champions of the working man and the middle class as opposed to the Republicans.

Bill “I never had a nickel until I left the White House.” Clinton, who obviously thinks that the $250,000 annual salary accruing while he lived, traveled, and ate free for eight years is a living wage.

Al “I think I will spend $70 million on a cable network” Gore.

Hell, you don’t even feel my upper middle class pain, much less the pain of my friends still working for $10 an hour in their thirties. So go smeg off, you class armchair generals.

(Gore post seen on Drudge.)

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