Before it gets scrubbed from his website...

You've heard about Congressman Weiner in recent days, obviously, whether you wanted to or not.  It started as a rumor and then, until the shocking revelation that Sarah Palin was excited to be named as McCain's running mate, apparently it was the only newsworthy story in America.  Hour after hour, day after day, unfunny wiener jokes were the order of business. 

Stock market tanking for six straight weeks and it ain't done yet?  Irrelevant.  MORE WEINER!  "Days, not weeks" actually means months and months, while "protecting civilians" really means "trying to kill a dictator."  Who gives a shit?  MORE WEINER!  The housing market is collapsing again, despite billions of wasted dollars in taxpayer-funded handouts designed to avert such an outcome?  Hey... you know what would really help home prices?  MORE WEINER!  Unemployment?  WEINER!  Iranian nukes?  WEINER!  Our president follows up his stating of a position that will never happen (Israel's 1967 borders) by taking a position with no strategic or factual basis behind it (Argentina's claim to the Falklands)?  WEINER WEINER WEINER!  Thank God we'll have endless discussions of Sarah Palin's tanning bed to knock this shit off the front pages in days to come.

So of course it turned out that the dude was a bona fide pervert.  A married bona fide pervert.  Well, at least he picked the right career then.  [Side note:  What would lead a beautiful and apparently successful woman to marry an unrepentant douchebag?  All I can come up with are three possibilities - (1) blind naiveté, (2) unbridled political ambition, or (3) a need to hide something.  Is there a better explanation?  You know, in case I... err... I mean... some other douchebag ever wants to know how to pull off such an arrangement...]  I'm no paragon of virtue and I exercise nothing remotely resembling good judgment in my life, but I sure as hell know better than to send pictures of my cock to random strangers.  That kind of behavior is the sole dominion of a world-class idiot.  Well, at least he picked the right career then.  But hey, let's ask him to tell us how to reform entitlements and so forth.  I trust his judgment.

If you know what I know of the internet, and it's a safe bet that you do, you probably know where this story is bound to lead.  I make no secret of the fact that Twitter and Facebook hold no appeal for me, so I don't have accounts with either outfit.  I can't really understand why people find that stuff so intriguing, but que sera sera.  I'm not well versed in how that social media stuff works, but regarding the internet in general - I do spend plenty of time killing time.  I've seen some shit on the internet.  I have very few friends, I don't watch television, and I don't sleep much.  As long as I'm not working too many hours, I have time to kill.  I've seen some shit.  I feel perfectly comfortable in speculating that this creep was sending his junk to underage girls somewhere along the way - perfectly comfortable.  As in - I'd bet fifty bucks on it right now.

I'm often told by my liberal friends that a Republican who cheats on his wife is inherently worse than a Democrat who cheats on his wife, since Republicans are the party of family values or whatever.  'Hypocrisy' is the line back to which they always fall.  I, for one, love hypocrisy.  I embrace it.  When I find myself guilty of it, I generally type one of these posts and tell you about it.  My own cases tend to be rather mundane though, so I also try to point out the more egregious cases whenever I spot them among our "betters."  You know, good for the gander and so forth.  I fully understand the charge of hypocrisy.  I'm not sure that it always holds water in those 'family values' discussions. (Is one side really suggesting that abortion, infidelity, unwed mothers, and broken families should be a goal of society?  That's pretty weird, if so.)  I do appreciate the political expediency in using the charge, however.  Nobody prefers to vote for a hypocrite (even though we all do, over and over and over...).  Politics is about winning.  The loser with the great positive message doesn't end up enacting a single solitary policy, once all the votes are counted, if we're being completely honest here.  The best lying hypocrite does - right or left, no matter.

Hypocrisy is fun to point out when you don't like the hypocrite in question.  I guess that's all I'm really trying to say.  Therefore, since I most likely wont feel like typing a post when the time comes, I'm doing it now.  I don't like Anthony Weiner.  I think he's a pompous dickhead who really has nothing to offer society.  So let's go ahead and point out some of that sweet, sweet hypocrisy.

If it turns out that this guy's creepiness hasn't run afoul of the law in any way, then I guess this post will end up worthy of being ignored.  It won't be my first post to earn such a distinction, I'm sure.

Otherwise...

(The image is too large for this column.  Click to open.)

What was Captain Stiffdick's "venue of choice," since we're on the topic? Oh snap! Hypocrisy?  But hey, maybe we really should let these people decide what belongs on the internet and what doesn't.

I'm guessing that this page won't last forever in its current form.  Hence the screen cap.  Time will tell...

Nevermind the obvious part.

I've long since made my peace with this screwball.  What qualified her to be our Homeland Security Secretary, I have quite literally no idea.  How she still has a job after some rather egregious missteps during her brief tenure, again I have no idea.  Maybe she has some of those Breitbart photos of a certain lightworker or something.  I don't know.  As with most political hacks masquerading as serious people though, my opinion is consistent (or at least as consistent as it can be, all things considered).  To wit - she may be a dipshit, but she's our dipshit, by golly.

So don't focus on her monotone delivery.  That's too obvious.

Don't focus on the pathetic flow of her sentences.  Of course she makes Sarah Palin sound like William Shakespeare, but that's too obvious.

And above all, don't focus on the absurd notion that young Muslim men shouldn't be subject to more scrutiny when it comes to homeland security, based strictly on actual real-life experiences of the last thirty years.  Way too obvious.

Nevermind all that.  There was something in the following video that annoyed the living hell out of me.  Watch the brief clip and see if you can guess.





Click here and drag your mouse downward to see if you correctly identified the source of your don's angst this evening.

WHO IN THE HELL HOLDS A MICROPHONE LIKE THAT WHILE ANSWERING A QUESTION?  THIS WAS A PUBLIC EVENT.  GET SOME CLASS, FOR FUCK'S SAKE.  YOU MAY BE IN OVER YOUR HEAD, BUT AT LEAST TRY TO LOOK THE PART.  RIDICULOUS.

The more you know...

If you're familiar with any of my sparring matches with our friend from Virginia - (He generally comments as Anonymous but, to his credit, doesn't try to hide his identity.  We all seem to know each other around here.) - then you know where I stand on the ObamaCare debate.  I'm certainly not fer.  I'm agin'.  That's all well and good.  We all have our views and our philosophies.  If you're not familiar with these discussions... I don't know.  Whatever.  Trust me, I guess.  I'm agin'.

Anyhow...  Maybe you love ObamaCare.  Maybe you hate it.  Maybe you - like me - think a complete move AWAY from insurance for commonly experienced ailments would be the right reform to lower costs and improve efficiency.  Or maybe you - like me - think a full-blown socialist model would be far better than what we're about to experience.  (If you think there's a contradiction in the preceding two sentences, then I suggest that you re-examine your premise.)

Whichever way you see the debate, you might as well know what lies before you.  This is a somewhat speculative thing to say, I'll concede, since the whole issue has yet to face a Supreme Court decision or the 2012 elections, but for now it's the law of the land.  I see no point in guessing about whether or not the Court will, for the first time in recorded history, deny that the Commerce Clause is anything short of a blank check for Congressional power.  There's a 4-4-1 split in ideological terms right now, but far more conservative courts in the past have declined to rein in Congress.  I won't hold my breath.

I'll proceed on the basis that both houses of Congress passed (in a technical sense) the law.  The president signed it.  The law is what it is.  Certain things have already taken place according to a given schedule.  (Over-budget and under-enrolled high risk pools, accelerated premium hikes to compensate for mandated coverages, etc.)  Certain other things are set to take place according to a given schedule.  If you harbor dreams about a full repeal or perhaps a court rebuke, then I guess you're not on the same page as I am.  No harm in that, but it's my blog.  So we'll be dealing with the reality of the day.

So what happens when the schedule runs its course?  Will all your ailments be cured and cost you next to nothing or will Van Jones and Cass Sunstein pull the plug on your grandmother while they drink cocktails and sing hosannas to Karl Marx?  I don't know.  Somewhere between the two, I would guess, although most likely not squarely in the middle.  One side or the other must be right, I suspect, even if some hyperbole has managed to find its way into the debate.  (The IPAB really is part of the deal though, lest you wonder which way I think the story will tilt.  I'm not hiding my view on the topic.  Just acknowledging that it's not the only view in town.)

If you're like me, you have excellent insurance coverage.  "Cadillac plans," as the Democrats say.  Of course, it's coverage for which you're being raped (fiscally speaking) by your labor union in order to subsidize the more "needy" among your union brethren.  (Translation - I don't use much any health care.  I pay a shit-ton of money for my insurance though, required by my contract, as does my employer.  Other "brothers" and their families use a shit-ton of health care and pay the exact same amount for their insurance.)  That's fine.  I can afford it.  My day will come, perhaps, assuming that I don't manage to check out before then.  Or maybe it won't.  Whatever.  I don't sweat it.

If you're not like me, but rather like a growing majority of Americans, you pay more than you would like for coverage that provides less than you would like.  This is the squeeze that provided the impetus for the 2010 law.  Truth be told - quite a few of you might even be better off under a single-payer system where the government could deny you cancer treatment, but at least you would get the basics as part of your taxpayer-funded "free" health care.  Certainly the cost squeeze and the coverage concerns were at the root of the final push for ObamaCare, in any event.

It's all a matter of mathematics.  Unless you live in Lake Wobegon, there's no place where everyone is above average.  Some people win under any given system.  Some lose.  Survey after survey showed, leading up to the final passage of the law, that a majority of us were fine with our own health care.  The cost was always the issue.  It wasn't the 30 million without insurance, the vast majority of which were illegal aliens, people already eligible for government assistance, or those who simply preferred to spend their money elsewhere.  It was the cost.

Costs will go down now, we've been told.  Well then - AWESOME!  What's not to like?  Skipping past the obligatory 'If you believe X... I have a bridge to sell in Y...' line about costs, I guess we're all pretty interested in knowing whether or not we'll be able to keep our current coverage.  That's the part that we already liked, after all.  But we were sold on an unequivocal YES last year, weren't we?  I mean, that was the quote of the day/week/month/year.  "If you like your plan, you can keep it."  Only - 30% of your employers may disagree.  Are you one of the three or one of the seven?

Is the Journal editorial board inherently conservative?  Yep.  So dismiss their reporting of the survey if you like, but at least know what it says.  That's the topic of this post, after all.  "The more you know..."

My employer has no opinion on the matter, given that I'm insured by my union with a pre-defined employer contribution to the cost.  Your employer... I don't know.  Ask 'em.  I do know that my last monthly Teamsters newsletter explained how awesome ObamaCare is.  Then, in the same article, it explained why we were fortunate enough to have been given an exemption.  (Just let that one percolate for a minute.)  Pretty amusing to me.  Probably less amusing to someone who has a chronic and/or terminal ailment and gets screwed by the exemption as his benefits run out.  Fenian Godfather's Axiom #129 - If you really like a regulation, you probably won't wish you were exempt from its consequences.

In my view, the whole charade is a stalking horse for a single-payer system.  The post-2014 penalty for opting out is cheaper than anyone's current premiums.  The post-2014 world is one where you can get insurance after you're already sick or injured.  Why in the hell would you buy insurance beforehand then?  They might as well do away with the pretense and get on with it.  Copy the NHS and let the chips fall where they may.  Once we know the rules on whose survival is cost-effective and whose isn't, my friends who remain in the financial planning business can go ahead and reap the rewards.  Estate planning is a lucrative line of work, after all.  Maybe those guys can be the ones to buy the beers at our next get-together.  I'm always the one to say it's my shout.  It's high time for a change.

Seriously though, keep an eye on any cryptic or amibiguous communications from your employers.  That's how this stuff tends to unfold.  Don't let it catch you off guard.

Hot Stock Tip

My financial licenses have long since expired and I'm under no legal obligation to hedge what I say, so here's some unauthorized free information for you.  Maybe you were hit particularly hard by the recession.  Or maybe you're being hit particularly hard by the "recovery."  Or maybe you're just sick of working for The Man and you want some nice and easy work-free income to help you out later in life.

Here's the trick.  Take whatever savings you have left.  Empty the kids' college funds.  Borrow some money from your neighbors.  Grab every last crashing dollar that you can find.

Then, whatever it takes, find a way to invest in whatever company makes these fucking things...

You'll have a first class seat on the gravy train.

As the kids on the interwebs are fond of saying - FML.