Just Stop Eating The Crayons

Throughout my life it’s been an established fact that I don’t mix well or tolerate people of the fucktard classification. As well, I’ve made it no secret here on this blog. From an outsider’s point of view it may appear I interact with more than my fair share of fucktards and the more I look into that sad little fact it seems to be more true than I’m willing to admit at the moment. Eventhough I’ve never, that means not even once in my life, claimed to be smart, educated, or well versed in any one particular area which I could be considered an expert, with one exception, I have common sense. I have learned over the years, and pointed it out often, that every situation and/or conversation should have a basis in common sense but often skips that particular rational part and heads straight down the rabbit hole. Which is where I usually stop, so I can grab my shovel and fill in the fucking hole so the ignorance can’t get back out. It’s a beautiful process I use because most people cannot handle my version of blunt sarcasm and don’t know how to react. However, last night I met a young man who was more challenging to me than I could have ever easily imagined possible.

Strangely enough I was at Walmart, getting some Crayons, watercolor paints, brushes, and a large pad of art paper to box up to send to my granddaughter for her 4th birthday which is coming up. Crayons were what I was on the hunt for because the school supplies have yet to recover from being picked over since the start of school this past Monday. Anyway, I spotted what looked like the last big box of Crayons and this younger guy, late 20s, reached in and grabbed it before me. He had the look of victory on his face, as if by mere inches he had beaten me in his imaginary race, while lipping to me in silence “eat shit you fucker” as he smiles to walk away. Meanwhile, an older lady in her probably late 70s asked him where he had found that box of Crayons because she has been looking for the better part of 25 minutes with no luck. He got real close to her and, while talking extremely loud, I guess he assumed she was deaf, began by telling her, “sorry you old bitch, you and that other motherfucker there are shit out of luck so you two slow losers should just move the fuck on and get out of the way”. In my head it took me a minute to process what this douchebag just said to her, the lady now who looks very scared. As he walked away I put my hand on his shoulder and told this piece of shit, in my most civil tone, that he owed this woman an apology immediately. With this cockeyed look he asked me ” and what the fuck would I want to do that!” Which is where my sarcasm came flying out when I told him that “I’d love to explain it to you but I don’t have any Crayons”. I further explained to him what a grand gesture it would be if he were to just hand her the box of Crayons and then walk away. By this time we have sparked the interest of a Walmart manager who asked if there was something she could help with. The dickhead barked off to her the she could kindly fuck off. C’mon man, its just Crayons is all I can think to myself.

And then this man opens the box of Crayons and begins shoveling them into his mouth, chewing them up with his mouth open and slobbery pieces falling out when he tells me ” if y’all want these Crayons so bad y’all can pick the nuggets out of my shit later tonight. ” I know I was just staring at him in amazement as I watched him walk to the line to check out. By this time he was greeted by our friendly boys in blue who kindly helped him find his way outside the store. Well, shit, I guess I’m done here, I checked out, and was waiting on my son in the restroom when the older lady came up to me asked if I minded if she hugged me as she was hugging me. My son caught the end of the hug and then she told him he was lucky he didn’t have a violent dad, and he replied to her saying “my dad isn’t violent but he hates Crayon eating crazies.” She cracked a smile and walked off. As we walked out we see the Crayon eater in the back seat of the patrol car, I wonder how he plans on explaining his behavior to the judge.

On the way home my 14 year old son, now a freshman in high school, explained to how surprised and disappointed he was in the man’s behavior, and while shaking his head he says “some people’s children”. Of course as soon as we get home he started telling his mother about the Crayon eater, who stood there with her jaw dropped in amazement. She explained the ONLY reason his dad didn’t kick this piece of shit’s ass is because he knows he’s too old to be someone’s girlfriend in jail. I guess that does cross my mind. As I think back on this whole thing I’m still left wondering what would posses an individual to eat Crayons to show his victory. I’m reminded that he has already reproduced, I would assume, or maybe the Crayons were for personal use. Fortunately I will NEVER have the displeasure of knowing. Now I get to add him to the growing list of fantastic fucktards I have met in my lifetime. If it matters, I did find some Crayons for my granddaughter, one day I will have to tell her this story if her mother doesn’t beat me to it.

When Mike Rowe Speaks Out

After seeing the blip on my radar for this story on Mike Rowe’s Facebook page as well as on The Blaze I knew it was going to be an interesting story for sure, and I was right. If you don’t know who Mike Rowe is then you just might want to come out from under your rock today. Yes, I know, we are not all fans of Mike Rowe, the rest of us won’t hold that against you. I saw the truth and humor in what was said therefore its time to share. Everything below, text and pictures, was borrowed from The Blaze in its original form without anyone’s permission to repost it, please enjoy.

“After Mike Rowe Had a Disagreement With a Lawyer at a Liquor Store, He Went Home and Did This Just to Spite the Attorney.

Mike Rowe, the former “Dirty Jobs” TV host and current head of Mike Rowe Works, has shown he’s not afraid to say what he thinks. Monday, he proved it once again — and took on a lawyer in doing so. It all started when Rowe decided to hit a local liquor store recently and noticed a picture near the front of the shop. That picture was of a man in a white shirt that the store was identifying as a shoplifter.

“Good for you,” Rowe says he told the owner whilerecalling the encounter on Facebook. “I wish every store in the country did this.”

That’s when things got a little awkward. Someone behind Rowe in line disagreed, saying that it wasn’t right to publicly shame someone who may be innocent.

That started getting Rowe a little fired up. The conversation continued with Rowe’s response as well as the store owner’s:

[Rowe continued:] “If I were falsely accused I would feel angry. But why would the owner put my face in his window and identify me as a shoplifter if he didn’t have proof that I was in fact a shoplifter?”

“Mistakes happen,” said the guy in line.

I looked at the manager and said, “Frank, have you ever made a mistake or falsely accused someone of shoplifting from your store?”

“Of course not,” said Frank. “I have the proof on the video. I put up a new photo every week. I have hundreds of these scumballs on tape.”

“Really? So has this strategy helped cut down on theft?”

“Big time,” said Frank. I used to get ripped off every day. Now it’s more like once a week.”

And that’s when the lawyer got involved. According to the lawyer, Frank the storeowner could technically be sued for posting the photo and shaming the man. That’s when Rowe became “incredulous” and even had some blunt words for the attorney:

Then a third guy chimed in. He identified himself as a lawyer, and said that even if Frank had proof of the crime, the guy in the photo could sue him and very likely win. I was incredulous.

“On what grounds?” Telling the truth in a storefront window?”

The lawyer shrugged. “I could argue that the man in that photo – were he my client – suffered irreparable harm to his reputation and public standing. I’d argue that Frank here was the proximate cause of that damage. Moreover, the level of potential harm caused by this photo goes far beyond the punishment typically handed down for this kind of petty crime.”

“Are you that good a lawyer,” I asked? Or does our country really have it’s head that far up it’s own ass?”

For the next ten minutes, we discussed the law, public shaming, petty theft, and the rights of the accused. I expressed my belief that stocks should be brought back to the public square. Frank concurred. The first guy in line called me a “modern day Torquemada,” which I took as a compliment. The lawyer was in favor of stocks, but only because they’d be good for business. The whole thing made me very thirsty for the Whistle Pig, waiting patiently in my brown paper bag.

Finally I asked, “What would happen if I posted this photo on my Facebook page? Could the shoplifter then sue me?”

“Alleged shoplifter,” said the guy in line.

“Sure,” said the lawyer. “Anybody can sue anybody for anything.”

“Yeah, but would you take the case?”

The lawyer looked at me with something I’ll call recognition. “If I thought there were a decent chance at a recovery, sure.”

“So if I post this image on my Facebook page, and the guy in the photo comes to you and says I’ve ruined his reputation by telling the world he’s guilty of shoplifting, you’d sue me? Even if the guy is proven guilty on tape?”

“Suing celebrities is fun,” said the lawyer. They usually settle, just to avoid the headache. But just to be clear – I’d sue Frank here as well.”

So what did Rowe do? He decided to stick it to the lawyer. He posted the picture of the crook (although he redacted the face):

“After careful consideration and deliberation with Frank, I’ve decided to post the photo in his front window,” Rowe concluded. “But upon the advice of my own attorney, I’ve concealed the identity of the no-good shoplifting scumbag in the white tee-shirt and jeans. I realize this defeats the purpose, but that’s what things have come to in my world.”

So far the post has over 55,000 likes and over 10,000 shares.

Originally posted: Jun. 24, 2014 10:09am Jonathon M. Seidl on The Blaze.”

Posted From Scorpion Sting’s Motorola Droid Maxx!

Ever Been In This Situation Before?

I was barely sitting down when I heard a voice from the other stall saying “ Hi, how are you?”

I’m not the type to strike up conversation in the men’s restroom so I don’t know what got into me, so I answered, “Doin’ just fine.”

And the other guy says “So what are you up to?”

What kind of question is that? At this point I’m thinking this is very bizarre so I say “Uhhh, doing the same as you I would guess.”

At this point I’m just trying to get out as fast as I can when I hear another question. “Can I come over?”

Okay, this question is just to weird for even me but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to remain polite and just end the conversation. I tell him “No………. I’m just a little busy right now.”

Then I hear this guy say, very nervously, ” Listen, I’ll have to call you back. There is an idiot in the next stall who keeps answering all my questions.”

The Coolest Public Beach Shower Ever!

So Its Cold, Suck It Up Princess!

This will probably be the one and only time y’all will ever hear me talking shit about the people in the great state of Texas. But, since I live northeast of Houston Texas I think I will take this opportunity to say my piece. Correct, snow and ice this far south is not a common sight and when Texans see it they absolutely freak out. Texans close public places, government places, roads, airports, bridges, and businesses. Why? Well, they claim we are not “equipped” to drive or be outside in these conditions. In other words, many Texans get cold and they let their pussies hang out for the world to see. When these weather conditions happen I just want to yell “Suck it up princess” because 99.9% of the time it isn’t quite as bad as they make it out to be. The sky isn’t falling or anything. Tell y’all the truth, it’s a bit embarrassing for me, because nobody knows how to act here in inclimate weather. Is it cold outside, depends on what one knows as cold. For people here tho, where this kind of shit isn’t normal, they freak out. For me, I really don’t care because the conditions are still tolerable. I don’t know, it’s strange how people act around here with a little snow and ice. Perhaps that is why we don’t see many Texans moving up north because mentally we are not equipped to handle below freezing temperatures. Who knows.

On the flip side, my year round ducks don’t seem to be minding it too much as they tool around the pond this morning. Perhaps they know that the “wintery mix” will pass sometime in the next few hours and we will get back to normal. I was up this morning bright and early to be into work by 6:30am and I will admit the roads were a little slick. I didn’t see any ice personally but I did see a few accidents on the way to work. The further north a person gets from where I live saw more than we did, one has to get up past the frost line to really be impacted, which they did, I saw on the news they had got 4″ of snow. What are we to do? Don’t these people know that life must go on, that life must press forward, and that living here we all know that we will be in the mid-70s again in a day or so. In my entire life I have never understood why people freak out and get their panties in such a twist when it gets a little chilly. I still wore shorts in to work today, although I did slip on a hoody to keep my core warm. Okay, I’m done. My fellow Texans frustrate me a bit because they freak out and start acting like giant pussies when it drops below freezing but we all know this isn’t shit compared to what the yankees up north deal with for way longer periods of time.

Speaking Of Googling It……….

One federal agency is charging other offices and taxpayers to provide government reports that are largely available free of charge on the Internet. It is essentially the “let me Google that for you” office of the federal government. Home to more than three million records, the Department of Commerce’s National Technical Information Service (NTIS) collects “government-funded scientific, technical, engineering, and business-related information” and reports and sells them to other federal agencies. Only it turns out most of what it sells can also be found for free on the Internet with little effort. Established more than 60 years ago, NTIS is a vestige of the pre-Internet era when a lot of the reports the agency collects were not widely available; however, as times have changed agency has not.

Required by law to be largely self-sustaining, NTIS charges other federal agencies to access its collection of reports. However, a November 2012 review of the office by GAO uncovered that about three-quarters of the reports in the NTIS archives were available from other public sources. Specifically, GAO estimated that approximately 621,917, or about 74 percent, of the 841,502 reports were readily available from one of the other four publicly available sources GAO searched. The GAO explains, that the source that most often had the reports GAO was searching for was located at Google. In addition, reports could be found on the website of the issuing federal department, the Government Printing Office’s website, or USA.gov.

Yet, federal departments continue to send taxpayer dollars to NTIS for reports they could get for free with a simple web search. NTIS notes that one of its best-sellers is the Armed Forces Recipe Service, available on CD-ROM for $79. However, the Armed Forces Recipe Service recipe index is also available online and can be downloaded for free directly from the Quartermaster Corps Website. Further, a recipe index that offers 1,700 convenient recipes for groups of 100 that can be easily adjusted up or down, likely falls outside the scope of technical, scientific, and engineering reports the office should be collecting.

Another report sold by NTIS is the 2009 Public Health Service Food Code produced by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is available for $69. Alternatively, the report is available for free on the Food and Drug Administration’s website. Moreover, GAO found much of the work outdated because NTIS has focused largely on growing its repertoire of older reports. Specifically, NTIS added approximately 841,500 reports to its repository during fiscal years 1990 through 2011, and approximately 62 percent of these had publication dates of 2000 or earlier. While the office worked to accumulate reports older than those dated 2000, GAO reports that only 21 percent of the reports distributed from 2001 to 2011 were dated older than 1989. Meanwhile, nearly 100 percent of the reports from 2009-2011 were distributed. However, these are also the most likely to be available online elsewhere.

More than 12 years ago, GAO issued two different reports explaining NTIS would need to soon reconsider its function and fee-based model, as the Internet made of the reports it sold available for free. Shuttering the NTIS entirely was first suggested in 1999, by the Clinton administration’s Secretary of Commerce William Daley, who contended declining sales revenues soon would not be sufficient to recover all of NTIS’ operating costs. The Secretary attributed this decline to other agencies’ practice of making their research results available to the public for free through the Web.

According to GAO, the decline in revenue for its products continues to call into question whether NTIS’s basic statutory function of acting as a self-financing repository and disseminator of scientific and technical information is still viable. As the actual “let me Google that for you” website explains, this is for all of those people who find it more convenient to bother you with their question than Google it for themselves. But when NTIS is doing the Googling, the search response comes with a price tag for taxpayers. Federal agencies pay NTIS millions of dollars each year to provide government reports that are available for free online and can be found with a simple Google search. They need to start paying me because I Google everything!

Information found for this “Your Tax Dollars @ Work” post was done by using a Google search. Information compiled from multiple public websites & media outlets.

Being A Number On A List

I write quite a bit about the United States Air Force, the AMMO careerfield, the places in the world I have traveled, and the people I have met because my time in the Air Force consumed just shy of 15 years of my life. I write quite a bit about being a United States Air Force Disabled Veteran as well since this “status” was given to me and has been a part of my life for the last 13 years. In a way, my “status” is no more than being a number in a system and a monthly disbursement of funds. Fortunately for me, I did not have the struggles that we hear over time about how people get denied benefits. I was fortunate to receive a 100% disabled rating from the start. One of the “benefits”, if it can be considered a benefit, is that my vehicles bear Texas DV permanent license plates. I’m one of those people you will see out in the actual parking lot and not in the designated handicap parking spaces. Why? Good question. Perhaps because I intend on confusing people who notice. It really matters not to me where I park, most days, as I get older, being closer to the entrance is nice, but not required. I can get there from anywhere, might take me a little longer, but I will get there eventually.

Why do I bring all of this up? I had an interesting interaction with a young lady at our local Big Box supercenter, insert the name you know belongs, who afterwords really got my son to thinking and asking questions he had never asked before. First, she asked to take a picture of my H1 Alpha where the license plate is visible to help her in her project she is putting together showing disabled parking placard fraud. When I asked why she responded with an interesting observation she made while watching me and others. She pointed out that each entrance to the Big Box supercenter has 21 handicap parking spaces yet there are 40+ vehicles out in general parking that have disabled plates. She continued to explain that there are only two vehicles with actual disabled plates using handicap parking spaces, the rest are using disabled placards of different varieties. He points out that half of them are expired, some of them have had the dates obscured some way, and a small percentage actually look proper. I still don’t see my place in this conversation yet. She continued by saying that the two vehicles that had actual disabled plates had people in them which were using the assistance of motorized chair, where all the placarded vehicles moved under self locomotion. Okay, so what is the issue or problem with me. She says she has noticed before as she has been doing her “study” for a few months that there are times I park is handicap parking when it is available. I was waiting for her to ask me why, but it never happened.

I soon walked off because I actually was there for a reason beyond looking who is parking where. As I walked off I made a call to a friend of my in the county sheriffs office and asked if what she was doing was legal. He said he would roll out there and see if he could talk with her. Why did I call? I called for 2 reasons, first of all her stalking people in the parking lot enough to recognize people who frequent this store (which is mega-creepy) and secondly because she was taking pictures of people, vehicles, and license plates. Is she doing anything illegal? We’ll talk about that here in a bit. This whole thing prompted my son to start asking a few questions of his own. We will talk about a few of them. First he asked why the police don’t tow, boot, or ticket vehicle in disabled parking with expired credentials. I actually know this answer, it is because disabled parking violations on private property is not exactly a high priority with the police department. Now this same problem in a public setting or at government facilities is swiftly handled. Why? My guess is money, logistics, and manning. Second he asked what were the requirements for getting a disabled plate or placard. Personally I don’t know what others needed to do, I had to fill out forms and be examined before being given my prescription to take to the DMV. I would only expect that this would be the same process for everyone. But, I don’t often assume things, so I leave this one as unknown.

Thirdly he asked don’t I wish that I could closer to the entrance all the time. Sure, it would be nice, but I don’t mind the longer walk. Last, he asked me a question which he shouldn’t be worrying about which was are most of the people who have handicap parking privileges frauds. Good question. People have their reasons for doing everything. Most people who know they are doing something wrong have already weighed the odds of getting caught and are willing to accept the consequences. Sure, I see people getting in the car and out their car and wonder to myself what the reason for their disabled plate/placard is. But then I would imagine that people ask the same about me. What they see is a man in his mid-40s who gets out or gets in his vehicles a little slower than others. They see a man who walks a little bit slower than most. Other than a modest limp, nobody would think nothing to be any different about me. I don’t where my medical history on my shirt for the world to read nor is it available at your request to review. I personally don’t know other people are doing or why they are doing it. In the end if I ever get to the point where my mobility is really shitty I can always have my wife do the annoying thing I see allot, which is to stop right in front of the front doors and drop me off.

Now, getting back to the young lady in the parking lot. She claims to be a college student here locally and a while back handicap parking fraud caught her attention and through some research she found it was a large problem that is mostly ignored. So, she has become an “advocate” for the disabled driver, she uses her website to get out her word and findings, I guess like an investigative reporter of sorts. She also does petitions and writes lawmakers in Austin to try to get the laws changed so the fraud will disappear. As well, she feels she is at least a little bit partially responsible for the fines increasing in Texas for violators. I look like at it like this, karma truly is a bitch. Everything has a way of catching up with you in one way or another. I know that I’m not the one who is a fraud, I’m not the one doing something illegal, I’m not the one who needs a lesson in morality, and I’m not the person who will get shot confronting someone over a parking space. Life is too short to let the little things ruin your day. It may seem that I don’t actually care, which is isn’t altogether true, I do care, I care that I have myself in-line, what someone else does with their life is their choice. Too many assholes have frauded the disabled parking system that Joe Public looks at all of us with scrutiny and in-turn sees no harm in the handicap space being mis-used. Not everyone is a thief and a liar, not everyone is a fraud, not everyone is lazy, and not everyone who has disabled plates needs to be in disabled parking. It would be nice however, if people did follow the law and that the laws are enforced. In a perfect world maybe, but not in the world I live in.

Overall I guess the actual point of this post is to show people that not everyone feels “privileged” with what they believe to be their undisputable right to park in a handicap spot. And yes, I am a person who could go either way. Most days my body decides to be cooperative with me living my life, other days not so much, but life must still carry forward. I think the only problem I have with people, in general, is the ones that admit they borrow a vehicle or a placard so they can park closer, because that is just lazy, and lazy isn’t a handicap, it’s a choice people make everyday.

Did You Get Your Twitter Stock?

Under normal circumstances I cannot be considered a stock trader or stock investor. However, my dad approached me and asked if I wanted to go in 1/2 with him on one hundred shares of the brand spanking new Twitter stock. I took the bait eventhough I had seen that when Facebook and LinkedIn went public they didn’t do so hot at first. He set it up to buy 100 shares at the first open opportunity, he ended up getting in @ $28,90 each. I looked this morning and it closed @ $44.90 last night. I hope this is the trend, but I expect that it will fall before it levels out overall. Anyway, I was just curious if anyone of y’all got in on the stock on opening day or not. If so, and if you don’t mind, how much did you buy at what price. Thanks for sharing.

Your Tax Dollars Are Hard At Work

I have been holding this discussion on the back burning for a few months now, but it is time the see how fucked up the spending of the United States Government actually is and how it would appear there is no stopping the irrational spending anytime in the near future. I’m fairly confident when I say I do not think I will see reductions in idiotic spending in my lifetime. For decades, people have heard tales of the crazy government-funded scientific research that our tax dollars get spent on. Seemingly insane studies are often conducted in these research situations and, to the naked eye, they seem like useless wastes of money. But just how useless are these crazy research situations? While a study may look silly or useless on the surface, it’s always a good idea to take a further look at the impacts of the study and its results. In our ever-changing social, physical and technological world, there is so much left to explore that it might just take a few seemingly unorthodox measures to get us to a place of understanding. Listed below (in red) are four (4) of (out of 100,000+) my personal favorites for idiotic government funded research paid for by my tax dollars. Information was grabbed from a few lists that show only partial lists with an average assumed cost of $2,000,000,000,000 and were continuously funded during the recent government shutdown.

• How long can a shrimp run on a treadmill?
  Really? Do we need to spend $3 million just to watch shrimps run on a treadmill? Actually, yes, if we want to begin to understand the effects of bacteria on mobility, according to National Science Foundation spokeswoman Maria Zacharias. The National Science Foundation’s page on the study explains that these tests help us better understand the effects of pollution and a crustacean’s natural immune defense system have on the survival of the species. Since the survival of the species can not only affect the environment but also the fishing and seafood industry, the study of a shrimp’s ability to run away from predators and survive when its health is compromised by human influence through pollution, is pretty important.
• Does playing FarmVille on Facebook help people to make friends and keep them?
  FarmVille is a simulation game on Facebook that allows users to create a virtual farm, grow and harvest crops, trade and exchange seeds with other farmers. At first glance it seems ludicrous that $315,000 would be spent on attempting to study the real social aspects of an online game, but is it really? With more and more time being spent online with friends, the impact of these activities on our health, happiness and attitudes is an important concept to explore. This study happened to show that relationships that would otherwise have been “left stale” were actually built up through the game. Imagine how this information can transform the lives of people with physical and mental disabilities preventing them from taking part in real-life interaction.
• How do you ride a bike?
  According to the Senator’s report, $300,000 was spent in 2009 helping scientists study how humans ride bicycles. Since the velocipede has been around in many forms for well over 100 years, you might think this a completely useless study. But, how often has the design of the bicycle changed over the course of that 150 or so years? The NSF report on the study notes that spending the time to study how humans ride and handle bicycles will give designers insight into ways they may improve bicycle design. This could result in bicycles that are more comfortable, encouraging increased usage, and more accessible, allowing a wider variety of individuals (including those with certain physical disabilities) the ability to utilize this healthier form of transportation. The future impact this could have on life spans, health and healthcare costs as more and more people are able to ride and get the benefits of exercise from improved bicycle engineering, can have a powerful affect on many industries and socio-economic classes.
• Can Twitter predict the stock market?
  Twitter, an online social networking and micro blogging site allowing users to converse in 140 character blocks, has almost become a household name. Its trending topics are discussed on CNN and famous actors like Ashton Kutcher have been known to use the site to reach out to fans and spread the word about upcoming projects and events. Recently, the air maneuvers that were part of the attack which resulted in the death of Osama Bin Laden were narrated live on the Twitter account of an individual who had no idea what he was witnessing. Since market movement is all about public perception of economic and news events, it makes sense then that the tweets of this vast network of relatively connected individuals might give some insight into market movement. The NSF spent $25,000 to find that in fact, “measuring the collective public mood by analyzing millions of tweets can predict the rise and fall of the stock market up to a week in advance with up to 90% accuracy.” It’s hard to argue the value in that statement.

But the money isn’t just thrown at stupid research, they spread your wealth everywhere as if it were fertilizer to promote and stimulate growth in areas which are otherwise meant to remain barren. If you want to get paid for doing something stupid, just turn to the U.S. government.  The U.S. government is paying researchers to play video games, it is paying researchers to study the effects of cocaine on Japanese quail and it has spent millions of dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.  The amount of money that the government wastes is absolutely horrifying.  Do you remember all of that political wrangling over the debt ceiling deal?  Do you remember how our politicians told us that there were cutting spending as much as they possibly could?  Well, it was all a giant lie.  As you will see below, the U.S. government is spending money on some of the most stupid things imaginable.  What makes all of this even worse is that we are going into enormous amounts of debt in order to pay for all of this.  We are borrowing billions of dollars a day in order to pay for stupid stuff that no government on earth should ever be paying for.  Trust me, you are going to find it hard to believe some of the stuff in this list.  It is almost inconceivable what our politicians are doing with our tax dollars. This list isn’t in a particular order of importance, it is, however, a cross-section of how the U.S. Government pisses my money facing into the wind. Follow the imbedded links to the entire event of spending our money.

1. The U.S. government is spent $750,000 on a new soccer field for detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.
2.  The Obama administration plans to spend between 16 and 20 million dollars helping students from Indonesia get master’s degrees.
3.  If you can believe it, the U.S. government has spent $175,587 “to determine if cocaine makes Japanese quail engage in sexually risky behavior”.
4.  The U.S. government spent $200,000 on “a tattoo removal program” in Mission Hills, California.
5.  The federal government has shelled out $3 million to researchers at the University of California at Irvine to fund their research on video games such as World of Warcraft.  Wouldn’t we all love to have a “research job” like that?
6. Fannie Mae is about to ask the federal government for another $4.6 billion bailout, and it will almost certainly get it.
7. The U.S. Department of Agriculture once gave researchers at the University of New Hampshire $700,000 to study methane gas emissions from dairy cows.
8. According to USA Today, 13 different government agencies “fund 209 different science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education programs — and 173 of those programs overlap with at least one other program.”
9. A total of $615,000 was given to the University of California at Santa Cruz to digitize photos, T-shirts and concert tickets belonging to the Grateful Dead.
10. China lends us more money than any other foreign nation, but that didn’t stop our government from spending 17.8 million dollars on social and environmental programs for China.
11. The U.S. government once spent 2.6 million dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly.
12. One professor at Stanford University was given $239,100 to study how Americans use the Internet to find love.
13. The U.S. Postal Service spent $13,500 on a single dinner at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.
14. The National Science Foundation once spent $216,000 to study whether or not politicians “gain or lose support by taking ambiguous positions”.
15. A total of $1.8 million was spent on a “museum of neon signs” in Las Vegas, Nevada.
16. The federal government spends 25 billion dollars a year maintaining federal buildings that are either unused or totally vacant.
17. U.S. farmers are given a total of $2 billion each year for not farming their land.
18. The U.S. government handed one Tennessee library $5,000 for the purpose of hosting a series of video game parties.
19. One professor at Dartmouth University was given $137,530 to create a “recession-themed” video game entitled “Layoff”.
20. According to the Heritage Foundation, the U.S. military spent “$998,798 shipping two 19-cent washers from South Carolina to Texas and $293,451 sending an 89-cent washer from South Carolina to Florida”.
21. The U.S. Department of Agriculture once shelled out $30,000 to a group of farmers to develop a tourist-friendly database of farms that host guests for overnight “haycations”.
22. The National Institutes of Health paid researchers $400,000 to find out why gay men in Argentina engage in risky sexual behavior when they are drunk.
23. The National Institutes of Health also once spent $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.
24. The National Institutes of Health loves to spend our tax money on really bizarre things.  The NIH once spent $800,000 in “stimulus funds” to study the impact of a “genital-washing program” on men in South Africa.
25. The U.S. government spent $100,000 on a “Celebrity Chef Fruit Promotion Road Show in Indonesia”.

Any politician, government employee, or any other ass-hat that claims that there is not a lot of irrisponsible spending that can be cut out of the federal budget is lying to you. But this shouldn’t alarm the American public since we already know that the U.S. Government thinks the people of the United States of America or too stupid to see through all the deceit. The U.S. Government has accumulated the biggest debt in the history of the world and they are adding to it at a rate of about 150 million dollars an hour. Our politicians strut around as if they are the smartest and wisest leaders in the history of the world, but the truth is that someday people will look back in horror at the decline of our once great society. The federal government needs to stop spending so much money on stupid things and needs to stop pushing our national debt to nightmarish new levels. Unfortunately, the corruption in Washington D.C. is so deep and so pervasive that it is going to be almost impossible to turn it around.

Need more to digest? In 2012 a top 10 list of ways the U.S. Government wastes money, here is a regurgitation of that insightful list of waste.

• 1. There’s an app for that 
  So many wasteful programs, I hardly know where to begin! How about with $100,000 in prizes offered by the Department of Energy to develop an energy app that would help users track their energy usage in their home. It’s a novel idea as our energy resources are finite and the DOE has pushed both consumers and businesses to utilize the available green energy subsidies available to them. However, there’s just one slight problem with the DOE contest: Apps that do this already exist — at least five of them to be exact. Perhaps someone should invest in an app that tracks apps for the DOE?
• 2. Alms for the rich 
  Just because you made $66 billion in net revenue doesn’t mean you won’t take a handout when one is offered… right PepsiCo.  (NYSE: PEP  ) ? According to Coburn’s report, Pepsi and Theo Muller Group are teaming up to open a yogurt manufacturing facility at the Genesee Valley Agri-Business Park in New York. Unable to use the supplied municipal water in the yogurt-making process, or the $4.2 billion in cash on its balance sheet, Pepsi gladly accepted slightly more than $1.3 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce to build a new aquifer-direct water supply system, a new road leading to the plant, and to improve the parks’ wastewater capacity.
• 3. RoboSquirrel 
  Researchers at San Diego State University and the University of California Davis spent a portion of a $325,000 National Science Foundation grant to construct a robot squirrel to answer the question of why rattlesnakes rarely attack squirrels that wag their tails. Using a taxidermied squirrel that is housed with other squirrels so as to smell realistic, and coupled with heating wires in its tail and body, researches marched RoboSquirrel into the lion’s den, or should I say snakes’ garden, and determined that a heated and wagging tail does indeed play into their defense mechanism. According to researchers, RoboSquirrel 2.0 and RoboKangaroo are in the works. As for me, I can’t wait for RobotChicken!
• 4. From arts and crafts to World of Warcraft 
  For those of you that thought your grandparents spent the entire day quilting or quietly reading, think again. A research team in North Carolina used $1.2 million from a National Science Foundation grant to study 39 individuals, aged 60 to 77, to see how their cognitive function responded after playing Activision Blizzard‘s  (Nasdaq: ATVI  )  World of Warcraft for two hours every day for two straight weeks. The results showed no improvement for those who tested with high levels of cognitive function prior to the test, however some improvement was noted for those who tested with lower cognitive function. I guess we can tell Eli Lilly  (NYSE: LLY  )  to move over as we no longer will be needing solanezumab or any of its other Alzheimer’s treatments for further testing as long as we have World of Warcraft.
• 5. Red planet pâté  
  Don’t let the small fact that NASA has absolutely no manned fleet at the moment stop you from thinking that it isn’t actively spending money on potentially fruitless programs. Take for instance the nearly $1 million spent annually on developing a so-called “Mars menu.” In order to stave off food monotony, researchers spend roughly $1 million each year to have test subjects simulate space conditions and rate the food being tested based on taste, their overall health, and the mood it puts them in. The only problem is that the first manned mission to Mars is likely two decades away at the earliest.
• 6. Because I’m the wiz! 
  Michigan State Police, in an effort to deter drunk drivers from getting behind the wheel of a car, apportioned $10,000 in federal funds to purchase 400 talking urinal cakes from a Maryland-based company called Wizmark. The urinal cakes, when activated by a motion sensor, would encourage users at local bars to consider getting a cab if intoxicated and, of course, remind them to wash their hands! As Sen. Coburn’s report points out, for around $100 on Amazon.com  (Nasdaq: AMZN  )  Michigan State Police could have acquired breathalyzers that they could have instead passed out to local bar owners instead of the urinal cakes. When will people learn that everything is cheaper on Amazon?
• 7. Shoot first and ask questions later 
  The Missile Defense Agency really, really likes to build things. According to Waste Book, the MDA has not once, but twice, begun the build-out of interceptor missiles without first finishing the research and testing that should have been completed prior to their construction. Not surprisingly, delays, failures, and system upgrades were needed to both generations of missiles, which have cost taxpayers at least $1 billion and caused costs on the project to soar fourfold.
• 8. Miniature golf yields a maximum confidence boost 
  Not to be outdone by RoboSquirrel, researchers at Purdue University in Indiana used part of a $350,000 National Science Foundation grant to examine the benefit golfers might gain if they used their imagination better. Researchers placed 36 participants in front of two different-sized golf holes and used optical illusions to make them appear bigger or smaller than they actually were. The findings showed that those who putted toward the smaller hole but perceived it to be bigger were more successful than those who perceived it to be smaller than its actual size.
• 9. Ship mates? 
  It’s a great thing that our Navy is manned by some fantastic men and women overseas, because its leaders in Washington aren’t making it easy for future generations. In late 2010, the U.S. Navy split what could amount to $37 billion in contracts to build 55 new littoral (near-shore) combat ships between two companies, Lockheed Martin  (NYSE: LMT  )  and Austal USA. While the thinking here is that two companies could build these ships twice as fast, they somehow failed to grasp that the defense systems, design, and software used on each ship would be different; meaning that crewmembers can’t simply be transferred from one ship to another without being retrained. This “boo-boo” is slated to cost taxpayers a minimum of $148 million.
• 10. What’s the buzz about? 
  Let’s end on a strong note, like a $939,771 experiment funded by the National Institutes of Health in Michigan and Texas that tested fruit flies to discover that male fruit flies are more attracted to younger female fruit flies than older ones. According to researchers, a hormone that female fruit flies produce wanes over time, which makes male fruit flies less attracted to them despite researchers’ countless efforts to test this theory even in the dark. The scary news is that this testing may soon be expanded beyond just fruit flies.

So, there y’all go. And, I only scratched the surface here. Makes me want to look into other public information for other countries in the world. I wonder where the United States ranks in wasting taxpayer money. It’s easy to find defense budget spending but I am wondering if there is a comparative list globally on frivelless spending. For fun, visit U,S, Debt Clock to see how out of control the pending is.

Kuwait Uses “Gaydar” To Keep Out LGBT

If you have been keeping up with international news you just might have seen the little tidbits offered about Kuwait implementing “gaydar” to keep LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexual, and Transgender) out of their country. Other countries in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Countries) that include Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates already deem homosexual acts as unlawful. Health centers conduct the routine medical check to assess the health of the  expatriates when they come into the GCC countries. However, they are taking  stricter measures that will help them detect gays who will be then barred from  entering Kuwait or any of the GCC member states. And did you know that It’s illegal to be gay in 78 countries, with  lesbianism banned in 49. Five countries mete out the death penalty to gay people, those being Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and Mauritania.

• Iran:  Since 1979, the government has executed more than 4,000 people charged with  homosexual acts. A non-adult who engages in consensual sodomy is subject to a  punishment of 74 lashes.
• Saudi  Arabia: Although the maximum punishment for homosexuality is execution,  the government tends to use other punishments – such as fines, prison sentences,  and whipping – unless it feels that homosexuals have challenged state authority  by engaging in social movements.
• Sudan: For homosexual men, lashes are given  for the first offence, with the death penalty following the third offence. 100  lashes are given to unmarried women who engage in homosexual acts. For lesbian  women, stoning and thousands of lashes are the penalty for the first offence.
• Yemen: Homosexuality is still illegal in Yemen  in accordance to the country’s Shari’a legal system. Punishment ranges from  flogging to death.
• Mauritania: The Shari’a law applies in  Mauritania. The penal code states that, since 1983, any adult Muslim caught engaging in an ‘unnatural act’ with a member of the same sex is punishable with  the death sentence by public stoning.

This warped plan comes from Kuwait’s director of public health, Yousuf Mindkar. The clinical screens are meant to make sure the foreigners entering the Arab countries are healthy. But Mindkar wants to use them as an opportunity to crack down harder on what’s been seen as a troublesome rise in the country’s gay population. Theoretically, the health officials in Kuwait could distil this practice and other similar research findings into a science-inspired gay detection screening process. But the accuracy rate would be far from proficient, and leaps and bounds away from the level of proof sufficient to ban someone from entering the country. We don’t even have to look to the East for examples of homophobic immigration law. For 22 years the United States tried to screen out HIV-positive foreigners which could be considered a form of gay discrimination. Meanwhile, Kuwait’s gaydar plan is set to be debated at the Gulf Cooperation Countries committee meeting next month. It will be interesting to see if the committee gives the proposal the green light, and even more interesting to find out how Mindkar proposes to pull it off. Unfortunately, wherever the gay detector falls in the spectrum between asking someone if they like sports or analyzing their facial width-to-height ratio, it won’t be the first time history has used soft science to justify a kind of witch hunt rooted in fear and hatred. And those never ended very well in the past.

Everything I have read about or seen on the television about Kuwait and the GCC using supposed scientific tests to ban people from entering one of the countries has sent red flags right up my WTF flag pole. As a serving member of the United States Air Force (active duty) I was stationed in the Gulf region in the country of Kuwait as well as visiting Bahrain for r & r. As an American, used to American culture, I witness first hand, what appeared to me, as unethical treatment to human beings. That’s not seeing things as only a foreigner to the county but as a human being. Who gives a flying fuck what a person’s sexual orientation or their sexual preference is. I wonder why we haven’t seen any WBC (Westboro Baptist Church) support for Kuwait and the GCC. Maybe the WBC has been banned from those countries as well. Neither here nor there, it just seems like there are countries who wish to alienate themselves from others in the world. I would think this would affect their income from international travels no matter their orientation. Anyway, just wanted to pass on some international bullshit news that struck me as worthy to put here.

As a housekeeping note, the 3, count them 3, pictures were borrowed from 3 different sources found publicly on the world-wide web using a Google search. They don’t belong to me or this blog and were, at the time of posting, considered to be free to use in the public domain. If 1 or all of the pictures belong to you or your organization just inform me and I will remove them with haste.