Jim Bunning is senile, isn’t he? Or is he just crazy? What the hell is this guy’s problem?! Thanks to his zeal in obstructing the will of the other 99 senators two thousand federal employees are now on unpaid furlough, doctors will be reimbursed for Medicare fees twenty-one percent less, many road and construction projects across the country have been put on hold, and an estimated 1.2 million people on the unemployment rolls will cease to have unemployment checks and COBRA extensions. One senator has done this, and that one senator is Jim Bunning.

The Daily Show did a bit on it last night which is worth seeing, as Daily Show clips usually are. Though it’s really hard to laugh at anything about this situation.

Bunning’s fellow Republicans seem more than happy to have a fall guy to stand in front of cameras screaming “no” as loudly as he can, so they don’t have to do so. None of them have suggested that perhaps now is not the time or the place to insist the budget be balanced before any more spending is done to keep people from becoming unemployed or going hungry once they are. Not a one has had anything to say about his nonstop objections to something every one of them has agreed needs to be done. Now why would that be?

Most likely because the current crop of Republicans enjoy clogging up the works in some kind of vain attempt to make Obama look like the worst president the US has ever had. They seem to care very little about Americans. If they did, they would be pointing out to Mr. Bunning that every last one of them has agreed to passing this measure, to keep people employed and to keep the unemployed people on unemployment, and they would be putting pressure on him to pipe down and stop what he is doing. Yet, they don’t. Must be nice for them to be able to obstruct something they claim to support by pointing at the crazy guy and saying “Hey, it’s not us! It’s that guy over there!”

And no one senator should have so much power. No one person should ever have so much power. This seems to be a flaw in the process, and it needs to be fixed.

“No Wall Street executives should profit from taxpayer dollars … The senior leaders of any firm that is bailed out should not be making more than the highest paid government official.”
–McCain before TARP passed

“We were all misled. We were all misled. I mean, he said that they were going after the toxic assets. The toxic asset– for– is– were with the housing market. He testified– that. I mean, we were all misled. So, what did he do then? They started pumpin’ money into the financial institutions. Now, the financial institutions are fine. Wall Street’s doin’ great. Main Street is in deep trouble.”
–McCain now

McCain knew what TARP was going to do before he voted on it, but now he insists he didn’t know it was going to be money headed to the banks to keep them solvent. He’s either becoming senile or he’s lying in order to pander to his base.

The [Texas] Department of Public Safety said, as of Monday, applicants between the ages of 18 and 24 must complete an approved driver education course and a driving skills test to get a license.

I am opposed. You’d think I wouldn’t be opposed to this new law, considering how much I complain about bad drivers, but I have a very good reason to be opposed. These required courses aren’t free. I called the only three driving schools in all of Austin that are approved by the state, and the course is going to cost in the neighborhood of $100. They aren’t even free if one takes them while still in high school. Those courses cost anywhere from $100-$400.^† I can find no mention anywhere of waivers or subsidies to help persons with lower incomes (or no incomes). This is producing a barrier to getting a license to drive that seems like it’s going to be somewhat high.^††

This feels less like a good method to lower the rate of young people having accidents –they cause 20% of all accidents in Texas– and more like a giveaway to driver education schools. While there will likely be an uptick in the number of 18-24 years old persons signing up for these classes, I suspect there will also be an uptick in the number of persons driving without a license until they are 25 or if they are of the law-abiding sort, just not driving. I don’t see either of these things as being especially helpful to anyone.

The other question I have is what if one happens to live in a town where there isn’t an approved driver education school? I’ve looked at the list of approved schools. I assure you, there isn’t a school in every town in Texas. There are only three in Austin, and look at how large a city we are! That’s going to add even more expense and hassle to 18-24 year old persons living in small town out in the middle of nowhere. Now they will have to find a way to get to a town that has a course, which means someone will have to drive them as well, and these courses do not seem to be one day events, at least not at the schools I called.

So yes, I am opposed to making the cost associated with getting a drivers license higher. It’s hard enough for people on limited incomes to provide the requirements of life in the modern age for themselves and their kids, why add one more hidden tax to getting a license, which is almost necessary these days in order to be employed and is most definitely necessary if one doesn’t live somewhere that has decent public transportation?^††† Like small towns.

I’d like drivers to drive better too, but I don’t think this new law is really going to achieve that. After all, statistically speaking, many of the morons I encounter every time I get out on the streets did have driver education in high school, and they still can’t drive. Oh, I’m sure they have the knowledge in their heads, but they are usually too busy talking on their phones, putting on makeup, eating a burger, or generally just not paying attention, at least until they perceive someone has cut them off or in some other way slighted them, then they wake up and break out with the road rage.

If the State of Texas demands everyone must have a driver education course before getting a license, then the classes in high school need to be free as well as the ones offered to young adults. Or there at least need to be waivers or subsidies for low income persons. The system they have in place now just isn’t fair.

And does anyone actually believe that 6 hours of driver education is really going to make all that much difference in how well a young adult drives? I’m guessing not, but I suppose we shall just have to wait a year or two to see the statistics and if there’s been any improvement in that 20% accident stat. I personally don’t hold out much hope of it improving. In fact, it may get worse.

I keep up with all the political goings on in my state, and somehow this one was quietly passed without any mention of it anywhere. If I didn’t hear about it, considering I do try to keep up with things, how many other people who don’t visit the Texas Legislature web site regularly as I do won’t have heard about this until now? Or might not even hear about it until they go apply for a license? Something smells in Texas, as as usual, it’s the inhabitants of our state capitol.

1. † They do have a parent taught driver ed course available for teenagers they started in 1997, but it too costs $20 and is stringent enough that many parents find it difficult to help their teen complete, not to mention the time involved does, well, take up time in a working parent’s life. [↩]
2. †† Want to know why I didn’t get my license until I was an adult? I couldn’t afford the drivers education when I was a teenager. If you didn’t have the money to take drivers ed in school, you just didn’t get your license until you were over 18. I used the loophole they have now closed with this new law. [↩]
3. ††† I don’t even count Austin has having decent public transportation. It’s not the worst, and at least there is some, but the buses never seem to get close enough to the places a lot of people need to travel too. Always seems I end up walking almost a mile after getting off the excruciatingly long bus ride that has taken ten times longer than it would have taken had I driven. [↩]

“I took the picture on my phone and suddenly this security guard came up and told me it wasn’t allowed because I could be a paedophile.

“I told him Ben was my own son. But he said I couldn’t prove it. He said there is a real problem with paedophiles and that if I didn’t like it, he’d call the manager.

And then the situation escalated a bit more.

Funny that a guy is given all this grief for taking a photo of his son, which no one wants to believe is his son, but then he is allowed to take the kid’s hand and presumably leave with him to go home. I mean, if they were so insistent he shouldn’t even be allowed to photograph the child in a public location, because he might not be the guy’s son, then why did they let the two leave together?

Anyway, stupid people behaving stupidly. So unfortunate the stupid people in this case were security guards and police officers.

I hear whining from some sectors that new home sales are down. I say that isn’t a problem, because there’s really no reason to be building more new homes. There are a lot of perfectly good homes sitting around empty and for sale. It’s not like they are all being torn down and there’s some kind of house shortage. They aren’t even all older homes or fixer-uppers either. Some of them were new homes not all that long ago. Perfectly good slightly used homes sitting around empty, but people want to build all new homes. Ugh.

Anyway, just something I heard about more than once today, and it annoyed me. It’s been an annoying sort of day. I have been excessively annoyed all day about a great many things.

I should be in bed. Really. I should.

A belt can be put around any slab of flesh and it then be swung around. Seriously … what was up with the Russian ice dancing team? Excuuuuuse me? They did not really have on belts they were using to assist with lifts and such, did they?! Why, yes they did! Even worse, in my view, is that during the awards ceremony, they had removed the black belts from their waists, which means the belts were an apparatus and not an integral part of their costume.

Well, anyway, I thought the aboriginal routine by that one Russian couple did was awful, even in the new toned down version, and then tonight they pulled this thing with using belts to lift, sling, and carry each other. Color me and a bunch of other people totally unimpressed. I’m betting there will be some new rules by the next Olympics.

Don’t even get me started on Plushenko. He needs to put his ego back into its box.

So, are all Russian ice skaters so annoying?

The lawyer of one of Tiger Wood’s mistresses just said she was his girlfriend and lover and not a mistress. You’d think a lawyer might know the definition of “mistress” or at least know how to use a dictionary, but apparently not.

Mistress (noun): A married man’s mistress is a woman who is not his wife and with whom he is having a sexual relationship.

Yes, the girlfriend and lover of a married man is his mistress. Sorry if that sounds harsh to the women who were busy having sex with someone everyone on the planet knew was married, but that’s just too bad. They were mistresses.

Anyway, I’m waiting to hear from the spokesman of the family of the nutcase that flew the plane into the Eschelon Building. The other news channels are all covering either Obama or Woods exclusively, and at least Fox News has been checking in on how the gaggle of reporters with the spokesman are up to. Not that they have been up to anything other than grilling the guy on his career, who he is, and why he’d be helping the family. Seriously, grilling him. What does it matter who he used to work for or when he retired? What does it matter if he’s doing it as a favor for friends or if he was hired? He’s a spokesman. He’s there to tell us what the family wants us to know but isn’t up to saying in front of moronic reporters, and considering the idiotic questions they keep asking their spokesman about stuff that has no relevance to anything, I can’t say I blame them for not coming out of the house.

Hopefully everyone will eventually get their fill of asking stupid questions and let the guy read the prepared statement. I’d really like to hear what he has to say about the FAMILY and not his long career and what his relationship to the family is. I can only hope a reporter or two also decides that hearing about the relevent stuff is what they are there for.

I’ve got Fox News on this morning. Whenever there’s been something big happening, I like to turn it on to hear what the Fox News viewers might be ranting about later in the day and what their talking points are going to be.

While I was in the kitchen kneading my bread dough, I heard one of their chirpy female talking heads ask “Was there a plot to poison the food at Fort Jackson?” in that breathless way they do that always feels like so much sh*t-stirring. I went and paused the TV so I could finish up the bread kneading.

When I got back to the TV, I watched the little five or so minute report on whether or not there was a plot by students in the translator’s program to poison the food at Fort Jackson. End result? There have been no arrests, no one has been detained, the Army has investigated (and has been since December, so it’s actually old news anyway), and they found no credible evidence to suggest anyone was trying to poison the food at Fort Jackson.

So the answer to the chirpy talking head’s question is … NO.

They still managed to get excited about it anyway with a fair amount of hand-waving, raised eyebrows, and rhetorical questions that have no answers. They do love the rhetorical question method of modern journalism. I can play that game too. Do Fox News journalists have brains? Tune in later to find out!

And what they haven’t mentioned this morning is a freaking plane flying into a building in Austin while being piloted by an anti-tax, anti-religion, anti-union, pro-healthcare lunatic. Sort of odd, since the rest of the world does seem to be talking about it this morning. I guess they just don’t know how to label or pigeonhole him to suit their talking points. No, they’d rather babble on and on about Tiger Woods putting his penis in the vaginae of women who were not his wife.

If I read one more blog post or online comment describing the guy who flew the plane into the Eschelon Building as oppressed, I will have to write a screed of my own. Anyone who thinks someone doing well enough to move across the country, start his own business, buy a house in a very nice neighborhood, drive a nice car, own his own airplane, and can pay a CPA to sort out his independent-contractor tax forms for him is “oppressed” needs look out the window of their ivory tower every so often … maybe even travel the world a little without staying in five-star hotels. There’s a world full of true oppression out there, and this guy isn’t a poster child for it.

It’d be funny if they weren’t being serious, but they are. Sorry, but I’m having a hard time feeling any sympathy for this poor, oppressed white guy who decided that leaving his wife and kid homeless –not to mention his wife was teaching piano out of their home, so now she’s also unemployed– likely still with an expensive tax issue to sort out, and very likely no insurance payouts for any of it seeing as he destroyed his own house, crashed his own plane, and took his own life. That’s true love!

And as if taking his own life and destroying anything of worth his surviving family might have used to live on without him, he also decides to fly his plane into a building full of people who probably never did any damn thing to him other than suggest he pay taxes on his unreported income. As far as I am concerned, he was nothing more than a selfish asshole more concerned with money than anything else and with a decent dose of crazy on the side. No, not oppressed, and certainly not the beginning of a slave revolt (as I read on one journal I will no longer be reading). If this guy was an oppressed slave, then what the hell does that make the vast majority of the rest of us?

And since owning your own plane is apparently a middle-class thing, when do I get mine? Never you say?! Come see the oppression inherent in the system!

NOTE: I have just gotten some new information on this whole mess, and once I totally verify it and have the time to sit and rant, there will, in fact, be a standard Just Orb rant about it. All you need to know right now is that this guy was a LOSER and was in trouble with the IRS for pretty much his entire adult life, not because the IRS is evil, but because this guy was an asshole who just didn’t want to pay taxes. But yeah, more later on the poor oppressed tax-evading airplane owner.

The guy who flew the plane into the building was a software engineer originally from California, who snapped over continuing tax problems. What kind of tax problems? It seems he kept trying to not pay them.

I’m sure we’ll get plenty more information as this tale unfolds, but the screed he left behind is worth a read.

Pretty much, the dude was crazy. Maybe smart, but definitely crazy.