HAVE A HAPPY AND SAFE INDEPENDENCE DAY

You might want to take a few minutes to listen to Scott Ott (Yes, of Scrappleface fame) do an excellent, straight-up reading of the Declaration. It’s well worth your time.

After receiving many well wishes for a “Happy Fourth,” I got to wondering if “the Fourth” has just become a date; a date on the calendar that signifies a day off from work, fireworks, barbecues and general merriment. Don’t get me wrong, all of that is wonderful and it’s wonderfully American. I wouldn’t want to dampen any of that spirit.

I am, however, a tad concerned that some people, (particularly the younger peeps who have spent years in the public school system), may not keep in mind what the holiday is all about.

It marked a day when men from the thirteen fledgling colonies assembled and decided to risk their “lives … fortunes … and sacred honor” to break loose from the grip of England and declare independence. Indeed, it ended up costing many of them, their lives and fortunes, but they maintained their sacred honor.

For that reason, tomorrow and in future years I shall no longer wish people a “Happy Fourth,” but rather I shall wish them a “Happy Independence Day!”

Swiped from SondraK

LeeAnn wrote a post about the death of someone who apparently will not be missed much by many.

It reminded me of a wake I attended many years ago. It was held Down Neck in Newark in Rucki Funeral Home (known by everyone as “Rucki’s” — pronounced “Rookie’s”), which was The Place to be laid out back then. You could always count on a couple old Polish ladies from the neighborhood coming in off the street to view the body and cry, even though they didn’t know the person in the casket.

Anyway, the deceased in this case was a guy who was one of my uncle’s buddies, and he was sort of a Soprano’s type fellow (although he died of natural causes). I only vaguely knew him, but I went because he was my uncle’s friend. The funeral home was packed with flowers and people, and all the friends of the deceased lined up to console the widow, “Yo, if you need anything, you just call. Anything at all – just call.”

Based on the outpouring of affection being displayed in the room where the body was, I figured the guy had been a friend to everyone and had been the salt of the earth, so to speak.

After a while, it was time to retreat to the smoking room for a break. My uncle was there along with several of the men who had offered solace to the grieving widow. I figured that I would join in with the deceased’s friends in some light repartee about what a fine fellow he was and how much he would be missed.

We stood in a small circle making small talk until one of dead guy’s friends said, “F**k, this funeral shit: they should have backed up the garbage truck to take the c**ksucker the f**k away.”

I think lots of wakes at Rucki’s were like that.

It’s a Jersey thing.

I have nothing interesting or humorous to say, so I will direct you to an excellent, informative and fun-to-watch video called the National Debt Road Trip.

via Doug Ross, who should be read every day.

You know what? I am still seething over what happened in the House of Representatives on Friday.

Today, I was thinking about all of the 219 Congressmen who voted for the bill, without a single one of them having read it.

Let’s take a brief flight of fancy and assume that a handful of them actually read the original 1,000 pages (Remember, I said this was a flight of fancy). They certainly couldn’t have read the 310-page amendment that was proffered at 3:00 a.m. of the day of the vote. And they damned sure didn’t read the entire bill, as amended, because no one had a copy of the final bill, which would integrated the 300+ page amendment into the 1,000 + page text.

Just think about that for one minute. Really, think about that.

219 Congressmen voted for a bill that would affect virtually every American citizen and every American business and would create a monitoring and enforcement agency that would have to be the size of the IRS. And they didn’t read it! Look, even if, in concept, they believed in stated goals of the bill, how could they vote for it without knowing what was in it? Is that what we send these people to Washington to do?

Simple. If you don’t want to read the goddamned bills you vote on, don’t run for Congress.

Every goddamned one of them positively sickens me.

P.S. The One’s Energy Czar hasn’t read it either. You can’t make this shit up.

By now you know (assuming some news broke through the Pop Curtain) that eight House Republicans voted for the Crap and Tax bill that was the subject of the previous post. I am saddened furious that three of the eight are representatives from New Jersey. (New Jersey has 13 seats in the House: 8 Democrat and 5 Republican).
Here are their names:

Frank LoBiondo, 2nd District, elected in 1994

Chris Smith, 4th District, elected in 1980

Leonard Lance, 7th District, elected in 2008

LoBiondo and Lance stated the reasons for their votes here and here. In both cases, their stated reasons are taken directly from Democrat talking points. As for Smith, one can speculate that his reasons may well include a promise to increase the existing promise of $500 Million to his district for a non-profit corporation boondoggle involving solar power.

Memo to Congressmen LoBiondo, Smith and Lance:

As representatives of New Jersey citizens, surely you are aware that New Jersey citizens and businesses are already being crushed under federal and state regulations and taxes. Add to that the scandalous amounts of property tax people and businesses pay to municipalities, with the result being that people and businesses cannot afford to stay here and are fleeing the state.

Surely you are also aware that the Cap and Trade Bill that each of you voted for will result in yet more bureaucracy, more regulations and an army of enforcement agents invading communities, businesses and (yes – if not immediately, in the future) people’s homes. I have no doubt that you know this having most carefully read all 1,200 pages of bill and having weaved in all the provisions of the 310-page amendment that was proposed at 3:00 a.m. on the day the bill was to be voted on.

You seem oblivious (or dismissive) of the inescapable reality that this bill amounts to a tax on energy, which will result in increases in prices in everything that involves, directly or indirectly, energy, which is … well … just about everything. Your burdening the already-tax battered people of the state with yet another tax is disgraceful, particularly at this time, and even more particularly, based the highly questionable (if not downright false) premise that carbon dioxide is somehow warming (or is it cooling?) the planet.

It apparently doesn’t concern you that similar measures have been tried in Europe and have failed miserably. They have resulted in huge tax increases and increased unemployment, without having any discernable effect on global temperatures.

You gentlemen are now in my radar and that of many, many others throughout this state. Next year I will do my very best, including using this little corner of the internet, to see that each of you will have to pack up your Washington operation and get a real job somewhere.

Maybe you can each get one of those millions of “green” jobs.

I am so pissed that my eyes won’t completely focus.

If you’ve paid attention to what little news there is about the Cap and Trade Bill that was being considered by the House of Representatives, you would know that it’s a twelve-hundred page cornucopia of opaque statutory language, the goal of which is to create a massive energy tax scheme and an invitation to the federal government into your town, your home, your home owners association, your car, your workplace, your supermarket and God knows what else. It creates a derivative market (Can you say Fannie Mae?) in “energy credits” to be run by the morons in Congress and nameless federal bureaucrats. What could go wrong?

Twelve hundred pages! Keep in mind that interspersed throughout the twelve-hundred pages of turgid legislative language are numerous references tying the Cap and Trade statute into other federal statutes, each one being complicated in its own right.

OK, if that wasn’t bad enough, at the eleventh hour the detestable Henry Waxman parachuted a three-hundred and ten page amendment into the already huge bill.

I have not read the 1,200 page bill (although I know what its sponsors have in mind), but for the hell of it I spent fifteen minutes scrolling through the 300+ page amendment. There was plenty in there, which reflects the dogged work of “Green” lobbyists that would make Joe American’s hair stand on end.

You have to understand that when an amendment is offered, it is not done in the form of a redlined document (e.g. Word “track changes”), which is the way that people in the twenty-first century would do things. That would make things more transparent. No, the amendment says things like, “Section 25, subparagraph B, fourth line, insert the following ….” What that means is that in order to understand how the amendment changes the statute, one has to hold the amendment up next to the 1,200 page bill and essentially hand-mark the bill.

There is no way under the sun that anyone in Congress – ANYONE in Congress — managed to go through that exercise to in order to understand what the final bill really says. And yet, these bastards voted on it and passed it today.

Let me say, as goofy as this blog might be, I have some pretty fancy credentials when it comes to reading and sorting out the content of federal statutes. I figure it would take me at least an full working week to work through the entire statute to know what the hell is in there, and I’m to believe that the collection of fools who managed to get themselves elected to Congress digested all this in a matter of a day or two?

BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT!

I’m not even going to get into what I (and legions of climatology experts) believe to be the extremely questionable premise on which this legislative pile of crap is based, because the existence of genuine scientific debate doesn’t matter. This has nothing to do with “Climate Change,” but has everything to do with tax and overarching federal power.

I would love to give every son of a bitch in Congress who voted for this mess a quiz on the content of the bill. Not one of them would score higher than twenty percent, and you can take that to the goddamned bank.

You voted for change? Welcome to it.

Yes, at Jimbo’s Deli, we pride ourselves on maintaining an innovative menu, and we believe that every great sandwich deserves a name. Our prior offerings are here and here. Behold our latest additions:

ENJOY!

The Cap and Trade Wrap
Limburger cheese, drizzled with a fetid brown sauce and wrapped in baloney. As a special feature, we don’t tell you the price until you’ve eaten it!

The Hope and Change
This is a popular menu item with our younger customers. For $15.00, you place your order for a sandwich and hope you get it. Don’t expect any change. It’s fun!

The Stimulus Sandwich
This belly-buster contains nothing but a full pound of hot, steaming pork. Most people skip the bread with this deli delight.

The Health Care Special
For a modest price of $25.00 we’ll serve you what we think you should eat. The food itself is free! Note: People over 65 with chronic health conditions may not be served anything.

The Climate Change Coprophagia Supreme
This is hugely popular with our customers who are avid followers of the Gospel of Al Gore. This truly unique offering consists of a man-sized portion of prime, fresh bullshit piled between two slices of bread made from wheat that is organically grown in a hand-tilled, carbon emission-free field. Note: We hope you understand that we can only serve this sandwich “to go.”

Many peeps I know, at the first sign of a cold, smear the inside of their nose with Zicam Gel swabs, in the belief that it will prevent the cold from taking hold, or lessen its severity. While this may or may not be true, the FDA has issued a warning stating that the use of Zicam nasal swabs may be associated with a loss of sense of smell, which could be of long-lasting or permanent. The FDA Notice is here.

This could be a bummer, given that most of our sense of taste relies on olfaction. In addition, as the FDA notes, the loss of sense of smell could prevent one from detecting the smell of gas, smoke or other dangerous stuff.

The flip side is that this could be a good thing if you find yourself surrounded by people with world class B.O., or you are in regular close contact with a person who has dramatic bowel windage issues.

PRS reports, you decide.