Fish Fear Me

Reasonable Dave Or Unreasonable Dave?

I recently purchased and installed a different anti-virus program for my laptop called "Webroot AntiVirus with Spy Sweeper." The download and install appeared to go perfectly fine and the program began its first scan. After about 150,000 files it had found only a few cookies it didn't like, and then a windows error popped up and told me that Windows XP had to close the main scan engine process. 

After repeating the problem three times and double-checking my XP Pro operating system for problems, I opened a ticket with Webroot(Online...they estimated the wait to talk to a human at 40 minutes). To their credit, they responded with an email fairly quickly, but my jaw dropped a little when I read what they wanted me to do. I'll put it below the fold here, but take a look at that and then tell me if my response was out of line:

Jesus Christ, how much freakin' work do you expect me to do to get your product to run on an OS that has only been around for at least seven years? Do you people even test this shit? Just give me my money back at this point. 

I just looked at that again and thought that maybe it was too harsh, but then I pasted in here what they expected me to do and thought, no, no it wasn't. I'm an old IT troubleshooter and I understand the need to gather info, but it seems ridiculous to just casually expect your customer to go through all of that. We're dealing with a standard and up to date Windows XP Pro system. It shouldn't be rocket science to get it to work.

What do you think?

GOP Fails To Endorse Falsehoods, Moron Puzzled

Evan McMorris-Santoro is shocked, shocked, that House Republicans would not embrace his religion:

Thirty-one Republicans on the House Energy And Commerce Committee -- the entire Republican contingent on the panel -- declined on Tuesday to vote in support of the very idea that climate change exists.

That's not exactly true. What the GOP did was decline to accept the faith-based mantra that the science is settled and we must submit to a massive state-run reorganization of every aspect of our lives. Which dovetails nicely with hard-left totalitarian ideology.

Just a coincidence, I'm sure.

Then there's this:

The global scientific community is in near unanimous agreement that climate change is real, and that humans contribute to it.

That statement is completely false. When someone tries to shut down debate on climate change with that falsehood know that you are dealing with an idiot, a liar, or a religious fanatic. By all means try to reason with them, but don't be too disappointed if you fail to bring them around to the side of logic and reason.

The Accidental Truth Of The Weekend

I forgot to set my clock ahead on Saturday night so I woke up a bit late yesterday morning. Not so late though, that I missed the airing of the "Chris Mathews Show" and the host calling our current fearless leader "President Carter."

 

Okay, Mathews is a clown and I've said that on more than one occasion, but...stopped clock and all that.

(video clip via Newsbusters)

TGIF

There's some stunning and horrific video coming out of Japan right now. Major flooding from the tsunami and huge fires that in some areas are consuming block after block. My thoughts and prayers go out to our friends in Japan today.

I lost a friend earlier this week. I first met Steve when we expanded our fantasy football league from six to eight teams about 20 years ago. Steve and his best friend Marty came in at the recommendation of another team owner who was married to Steve's mom.

Truth be told I didn't really know Steve all that well outside of fantasy football. He lived in the far south suburbs of the Twin Cities a world away and outside of FFL we didn't visit or talk that much. But each year we would see each other when we all got together for the draft and then again at the end of the season poker party. A couple times a season we would shoot the breeze while exchanging lineups. Steve was one of those good guys that you just picked up with where you left off the last time. Always quick to laugh and slow to burn. In fact, I don't think I ever heard Steve utter a word in anger, unless you want to count when he made us all laugh by ripping on some player on his roster who turned out to be a bum.

The Monday before last Steve had a heart attack at work. Nobody knows how long he was unconscious before they found him. They were able to get his heart started again, but he remained in a coma for the next week. On Monday, with the doctors saying there was no hope for recovery, Steve was taken off of life support and he passed away, leaving his wife and four grown daughters. He was 52.

RIP, man.

Astounded

I realize it's a short clip, but can any additional context actually save this from eternal mockery?

 

Any? Any at all?

And I'm not talking about the "tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist” part, though you know what would have happened if Bush said that. No, I'm talking about government spending becoming so entrenched that even freakin' cowboy poetry has become a sacred budget line. 

If we can't cut that, can anything be cut?

Lies, Damn Lies, And Statistics

Your meaningless statistic of the day, brought to us courtesy of the author, one Ezra Klein:

And in the aggregate, of course, the business community spends much more than the unions — in 2010, business groups spent $1.3 billion, while unions spent $93 million.

This is one of those statistics we will see over and over and over that turns out to be just another myth of community-based reality. Why? Just follow the link directly above and see the prominently displayed disclaimer(emphasis mine):

The broadest categories that CRP uses to analyze the contributors of campaign cash are shown below. Business interests as a whole contribute far more money to candidates and political parties than do labor unions or ideological groups. Of course, business is a much bigger category than the others. However, business contributions tend to be overstated. Because CRP uses employer/occupation information to categorize donors, and because just about everyone works for a business, contributions from members of labor unions and ideological groups are often classified under business.

So, for example, a GM union worker's contribution gets classified as a business contribution. Then doesn't that sort of thing render that category somewhat meaningless as a measure of "business contributions"? 

Looking beyond bullshit artists and their meaningless statistics, further efforts at national campaign finance reform are doomed to fail because they are treating the symptom and not the disease. It's like giving a man with lung cancer a cough suppressant.

The problem is not money in politics, that's just the symptom. The disease is the enormous and growing power of the federal government to tax, spend, and increasingly regulate huge sectors of society. Of course people are going to want to influence those things, and they will spend money to do that. The more powerful the government, the more money that will be spent to influence that government. It's not rocket science. 

You want to reduce the influence of campaign contributions? First, reapply the 10th Amendment limits to the role of the federal government. Then dramatically simplify the tax code. Finally, end all payolasubsidies to industries and the pernicious market distortions that they create. Do those three things and we really would clean up government.

Hahaha...I know. It's almost like the politicians aren't sincere about that in the first place.

Enviro Mental

Via Memeorandum, the Los Angeles Times details a tale of clean energy stupidity in the Los Angeles Community College District that has to be read to be believed. This is the kind of waste and idiocy that will bankrupt our governments and drive our economy right into the ground.

This looks like the heart of the matter:

One thing was for sure: No matter how it was financed, the bill for all those solar panels and wind turbines would be huge. Eisenberg's cost estimates for taking the nine campuses off the grid ranged as high as $975 million — this for a college system that in 2010 spent less than $8 million on power bills.

Another consultant put the cost at $1.9 billion. Even at the lower cost the project is clearly insane. President Obama and friends talk about "green jobs" all of the time. I would like to know how many of those jobs are based on executing ridiculous projects like the one shown here. Kudos to the LA Times for this investigation, but what we really need is for them to take it to the next level.

The Day After

Interesting reactions to Lincoln's Inauguration can be found here. 

If you haven't seen the explanation of the format at that site, here it is in a nutshell:

We will use a modern form to present the daily news: our Civil War aggregator that combines a short daily summary of the news along with links to articles that a well-informed Civil War-era reader would have wanted to read.  Our goal is to allow readers today to get a feel for what it was like to experience the conflict in real time, to hear the many voices trying to make sense of the conflict, and to sift through sometimes confused and misleading news accounts to try to discern what was actually taking place.

 

 

You Know, It Could Happen

Haha:

BREAKING: Charlie Sheen To Be Northwestern U’s First Heidi Fleiss Chair Of Applied Public Debauchery Studies

Somebody had to link all of that together.

Our 16th President

On this day 150 years ago, Abraham Lincoln became President of the United States and began his quest to hold the union together. He made it clear that he would make no attempt to end slavery, but the union must be held together. Secession would not be allowed to stand.

Fellow-Citizens of the United States: 

IN compliance with a custom as old as the Government itself, I appear before you to address you briefly and to take in your presence the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States to be taken by the President "before he enters on the execution of this office."

I do not consider it necessary at present for me to discuss those matters of administration about which there is no special anxiety or excitement.

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that—

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:

Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

I now reiterate these sentiments, and in doing so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause—as cheerfully to one section as to another.

There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:

No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution—to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause "shall be delivered up" their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not with nearly equal unanimity frame and pass a law by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?

You can read the rest at bartleby.com.