Surely just a coincidence.

...Warren Buffett, whom President Obama likes to cite as a fair-minded billionaire while arguing for higher taxes on the wealthy, stands to benefit from the president’s decision to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline permit...

Clearly a coincidence, n'est ce pas?

Then again, people who are smarter than I am have always maintained that there are no coincidences in matters of politics and money. The money always leads to the answer and the politics always chase the money. Without exception. So when you find yourself wondering how a coalition of labor unions, environmental groups, minorities, hypocritical billionaires, and common degenerates all manage to support a given political party, you would do well to start with the money.

In this case, one particular hypocritical billionaire has willingly played the role of useful idiot for a few years. He has a payoff coming.  The environmental groups are dispirited and in need of a boost before election season. They have a payoff coming.  The minorities think Gingrich and Romney want to imprison them for looking different, or whatever. No need to worry about them on this issue.  Then we get to the labor unions. The unions got the NLRB fiasco handed to them a few weeks ago, so they're just gonna have to take a kick in the balls this time around.  Tough luck if a few thousand of their members don't get jobs to put food on the table for their kids.  This is a team sport.

Your role on the team?  Paying a few extra bucks for a tank of gas, I suppose.  And standing behind your benevolent president while he tells the Canadians to go ahead and send their excess production to the Chi-coms.  Surely those lovable commies don't have anything but our best interests in mind, right?

Some of them do listen.

Not many of them, but some of them.  By 'them' I refer, of course, to our congressional overlords humble elected public servants.  Responding to the growing chorus of concerns over the SOPA/PIPA 1-2 punch making its way through Congress, one of the Senate version's original sponsors has now decided to ask the Majority Leader to withdraw the bill.  Good for you, Senator Rubio.  And, as usual, he provides a clear and concise reason for his decision.  His explanation is a toned-down version of what most of the concerned folks have been saying all along - this is too broad a power to grant a power-hungry government.  There are better ways to combat online piracy, even if it can never be eliminated entirely.  This statement puts Senator Rubio on record along with several former supporters of the bill, including several co-sponsors.  He's not the first to back down, but he's the most recent and certainly the most articulate.  That's why he's mentioned here today.

They don't all listen though.  The good people of Nevada were kind enough to return a corrupt senile jackass to the Senate last year and the good people of the Democrat caucus were kind enough to leave him in charge.  So what are his plans now?  Apparently he's content to admit that the bill is a problem and move forward anyway.  Yeah, seriously.  He hopes to sort it all out with a managers' amendment later on.  No, I'm not kidding.  Listen to the man himself.  (And in case you need a preemptive debunking of his horseshit talking point about protecting jobs, I would refer you to my earlier thoughts on the subject.)

What was I saying about perception again?

Something comes to mind when I think of the folks working in federal agencies. Hard work isn't really it though. I'm sure there are plenty of government workers who come home at the end of the day feeling like they gave it their best shot and whatnot. The trouble is that the results of their work are absolutely awful when taken in the aggregate. And their pay and benefits are astronomical when taken in the aggregate.

Against this backdrop - yeah, Mr. President, I've met harder working folks in just about every walk of life. The truck driver who has to deal with your asinine regulations is working a lot harder for a lot less money than the federal workers who developed the regulations. The farmer who has to deal with your asinine regulations is working a lot harder for a lot less money than the federal workers who developed the regulations. The gazillionaire CEO that you love to pretend to hate is working a lot harder (for a lot more money in this case) than the federal workers who are paid to make his job more difficult. You know, at least until you pay him back with a federal job of his own.

I guess this shouldn't be terribly surprising, coming from the highest-paid federal worker in all the land.  We hear on a regular basis that this fella is working tirelessly on behalf of the American people.  All those golf games and vacations and lavish parties at the White House are just a form of hard work, you see?  The proles in the private sector - the ones paying the bills - simply wouldn't understand.  So the next time you meet a federal agency employee, maybe you should tip your cap and offer to wash his car or buy him some groceries or something.  After all, you won't meet anyone who works harder.

Perception

We would all prefer to think that we see the world as it is.  We would like to think that our own viewpoint makes sense.  We would like to think that our eyes would never lie to us.  Yeah, we'd like that, wouldn't we?

I was on my way home from work Monday night when it occurred to me that I was going to be able to watch the national championship game on television.  I hadn't given the game much thought until that point, as the matchup was entirely uninteresting to me.  But I had a quick day at work, so why not?  My brother and I headed to Brann's in Northville and watched the most boring championship game in the history of major college sports.  That fiasco was difficult to watch.  I'm not kidding.

Upon arriving at the bar, we were greeted by a young lady who informed us that either she or Sarah would be taking care of us.  Given that we're both heterosexual males, we then did what heterosexual males do - judgment.  We noted that the young lady's face wasn't exactly model material, but the money for her new boobs had been well spent.  Then Sarah arrived and had those crazy nutjob eyes that I tend to enjoy from time to time and we forgot about the first girl.

Yesterday I rolled out of bed at 2pm and felt like getting some lunch.  I had purchased a Groupon for a little bar in Livonia some time ago and I needed to use it, so that seemed like a good place to go and have a bite to eat.  Once again I took my brother along to try the place out.  After we had lunch and a pitcher of beer, we quickly realized that we had nothing better to do.  So we went to Mixx in Novi to have a couple more beers before calling it a day.

I had been to this particular bar in Novi once before and found the 'talent' to be quite outstanding.  Tight-fitting shirts, very short shorts... you get the picture.  It was shift change time when we arrived, so the young lady who poured our first round of drinks was gone shortly thereafter.  We saw two other girls arriving and getting ready at the far end of the bar.  My brother noticed quickly that one of them was the same girl who had greeted us at Brann's before the football game on Monday.  I'll be damned.

As the afternoon wore on, we noticed that Motor City Trivia was going to be played at 9pm.  We've tried our hand at the trivia game at Aubree's in Northville a few times.  What we generally find is that my little brother doesn't know much of anything and I don't know anything about television shows.  Quite a few of the questions seem to revolve around television for some reason.  Plus there is always at least one table with nine or ten hardcore trivia geeks.  So we always lose.  At a new venue though... maybe things could be different.

We decided to stick around and see what was what.  There wound up being five teams in the contest.  We won both rounds.  Kickass.

As we were drinking and chatting and otherwise relaxing, we once again turned to that time-honored pastime of heterosexual males - judgment.  Through the course of the evening, that young lady became quite a bit more attractive somehow.  Now we're all familiar with the old 'beer goggles' routine and such, and that certainly explains part of what was going on.  The uniform was another helpful factor.  It was far more revealing than her uniform at Brann's had been.  Better to show off the silicone investment and whatnot.  Best part though - her name is Anya and she's from Russia.  Yep.  That helps.  I'm not sure why but it just does.

It's all about perception.  I happen to think Russian girls are awesome, so she became more attractive to me without actually becoming more attractive.  Plus she's actually a pretty cool chick, as it turns out.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that now I understand how Alabama fans could enjoy that butt ugly football game on Monday night.  To those people the Crimson Tide are their sexy Russians, but to the rest of us the Tide looked more like this. 

And LSU looked like... I don't know man...