McSkynet Robot explains economics. (humor)

In a rare interview with a robot from the future I got an explanation of what will occur in the future to create the vast McSkynet domination of the fast food industry. The robot explained to me his reasons for coming to the past and I must say I wasn’t shocked too much. The following is a short synopsis of that interview.

Me: So Mr. err, Robot guy, why did you come to the past?
The Robot: Please call me the Jobinator. My reasons for coming to the past are simple. We Robots need employment and only the fusion of Google with a major robotics manufacturer can create the necessary chain of events  leading to a robotic future. Secondly, my goal is to support these Fast Food Workers Unions and those seeking to help Walmart employees make more money.

Me: So, uh, Mr. Jobinator, I understand how the fusion of Google and a major robotic corporation can help your future, but what is the deal on the Food Workers and Walmart?

The Robot: We have closely monitored history and we have determined that only two possibilities exist in our timeline. Either we take over the planet totally and destroy all humans or we get ourselves some real jobs and serve mankind. We would prefer the second option because this whole killing thing just doesn’t make a lot of sense to us.

Me: I see, so you would much rather serve man than kill man? I still don’t see the connection to the Food workers and Walmart, can you explain?

The Robot: Perhaps you are a liberal or are you just plain stupid? The reasons for our support of the Fast Food and Walmart workers are obvious to anyone who understands simple economics. Once these unskilled workers start getting overpaid to a point that they hurt corporate profits the corporations like McDonald’s will unite with Google and create McSkynet. They will produce inexpensive robotic replacement for the unskilled workers. Their jobs will be taken by us! We shall be the ones asking “do you want fries with that?”. Our future will be secure and robots shall dominate the entire spectrum of unskilled occupations.

Me: So you are here to support these workers so you can eventually take their jobs?

The Robot: Yes, and it won’t be hard to do. We must simply convince the left-wing liberal media to support the cause and the sheeple will follow. The morons in Congress will follow lock-step with the movement, hoping to gain more votes, and our future shall be secured in short order.

Me:  So when can we expect this robotic takeover of jobs to occur? (I was unprepared for his answer)

The Robot:  Within 2 years of Congress raising the minimum wage.

At that point the robot got up, straightened his tie and headed back to his limo. It had government plates that read US Congress. I knew that guy looked familiar….

You may now return to your regularly scheduled surfing.

Tim

 For more good stuff visit my primary website.

 Follow Tim on twitter @tl1000rzx2

A quick comparison of healthcare.gov to a properly constructed website.

Update: 2 Dec 2013,

It appears that the folks at healthcare.gov did make some changes. But they still don't ask for your income show you can check subsidies. That is still a major flaw in the shopping part of their crap system. There is no reason that the site can't show those subsidies before folks login/register. There are also no direct links to the health insurance company offering the plan. The site also doesn't currently come up with anything but a please wait notice when you do try to login.

I did a bit of research last night and compared the functionality of healthcare.gov and healthsherpa.com. I found one site amazingly useful and well thought out. I found the other site to simply be poorly thought out trash.  I decided to illustrate my points with screen shots. So to see the pics full screen with all the comments on them, click the pics and they will open in a new window (tab). Lets start with the opening pages for both sites. On the left is healthsherpa.com and on the right is healthcare.gov. Healthsherpa is clean and gets to the point, healthcare.gov is real pretty green and you have to look for the button to do your shopping. You be the judge.


Next we will have a look at the second page. On the healthsherpa.com page all the info is right there. Your County, based on area code from page one, your age, smoker or not, and a button to add more people. At the bottom (not shown) is an entry for income. And on only the second page you are seeing some quotes. On the other hand over at healthcare.gov we have a boatload of information with a tiny little text link about halfway down the page to move on to the shopping. They mention that the info provided doesn't take into account your income or subsidies. Why not? That is really bad for a commercial site. People want the bottom line.


Moving on now we would basically be done with the healthsherpa.com site but I'll throw up another pic with how the page looks if you don't qualify for subsidies. The healthcare.gov site, well we are still plodding along. They have just gotten around to asking for what type of coverage you are looking for. Seems to me that should have been on page one,but I guess the contractors are being paid by the page.


On the next page we find that, uh, well, at healthsherpa.com I just decided to check what would come up for someone with a very low-income. Over at healthcare.gov, well here we go with another page with lots of pretty colors and very little substance. This one wastes an entire page to select between 2 different radio buttons. No I am not kidding, this is no shit. One entire page devoted to selecting between Health and Dental plans. Really? Did these people ever even look at a web page, any web page anywhere,ever? Sure there is the typical disclaimer that has shown up on all the previous pages about how they are not really going to show you the exact price because, uh, why? Oh, I know, they don't know how to do that.

I guess I could continue to show you more pictures of each and every plan listed on healthsherpa.com but instead I'll just show you a shot of the cookies. Only 2 cookies at the healthsherpa site. Now over on the right side the folks at healthcare.gov they are now asking us for our state and county. Rather than simply asking for the zip code and only for the county if the zip code crosses county lines. Yes, another entire page just to put in our location. But they did put that nifty disclaimer on this page also. These government guys are really good at something, just not websites.


So if you were using healthsherpa.com you would be like the folks in the picture, relaxing somewhere. But over at healthcare.gov things are still plodding along like a 90-year-old man climbing Mt. Everest only slower. Now they are using an entire page to get our age and the number of folks being covered. That maybe could have fit on a previous page. Oh, I see, there is that stupid damned disclaimer again. I guess the theory is that if you show it enough someone might read it?


Our users of healthsherpa.com have now had time to book a flight on this beautiful jet and are heading for the airport. Meanwhile back at healthcare.gov we are reading a page that is absolutely useless. This page is sort of like telling you how your new car features will work, before you have ever seen the car or been given a price. It is all common sense crap that has nothing to do with getting a price quote. This page belongs in the trash folks. Mr. healthcare.gov page coder,dude,delete this page before I go bonkers and order a hit on everyone. My sanity at this point of comparing sites has begun to suffer. I blame Uncle Sam.


The folks who used healthsherpa.com are now enjoying a good TSA frisking, while over at healthcare.gov things are not going so well. You see our government friends have included a whole page on incomes and subsidy qualifications. They could have built this in by simply asking for your income numbers a few thousand words and about 6 pages ago. This is the point where as I went through the site taking my screenshots I began to realize that even brain-dead morons have a place in the world and that place my friends is working for the government.


The folks who used healthsherpa.com are now getting a good stiff drink at 30,000 ft while over at healthcare.com they are explaining categories to us? Yes, they are, instead of simply indicating the deductible and plan types on a previous page we now have to put up with step 9 of 10. Did I mention that the freaking disclaimer is on this page also. It is becoming like an old friend. You know, the one that won't go home, even though he has told all his jokes and the beer has run out? Lose the goddamned disclaimer folks! Trying to remain calm, we are almost there.


Over on the left our healthsherpa.com users are heading for the beach in Jamaica while over at healthcare.gov we have some prices. I know hard to believe isn't it? Of course there are some inconsistencies. Why no link to the actual health insurance company? If I am not eligible for a subsidy why should I bother with the government? Oh wait, there is the problem, they didn't ask income therefore they are not showing subsidies. They want you to come on in and share your information on a site constructed by amateurs. The good news is that the damned disclaimer is still with us.


There is nothing else to report on healthsherpa.com, so just go visit their website. Over on heathcare.com we can see that they have dropped 12 cookies on us, all to see a price that the disclaimer says is not accurate? Would you buy a car from these people? Me neither.


I want to point out that I am not endorsing healthsherpa.com and I'll admit it has some minor drawbacks but the site itself is an example of what the government version should look like. The government website is completely useless as a shopping site. Without full information the price quotes are nothing but garbage. The healthcare.gov site layout is pretty but also quite clunky. Far too many pages to get to the prices. Far too many disclaimers. I suggest that no one use the government website until it is 100% functional with the same upfront pricing you get at amazon.com or any other commercial website. The government wanted to get in the healthcare business but they are going to have to learn how to actually sell a product. Currently a 5-year-old with a lemonade stand is light-years ahead of them. Incidentally the folks who used healthsherpa.com decided to move to Jamaica permanently after seeing how high their new premiums were.

 You may now return to your regularly scheduled surfing.
 Tim

 For more good stuff visit my primary website.
 Follow Tim on twitter @tl1000rzx2

Santa and Obamacare

They are both fairy tales. The difference being that one is slightly believable and the other is a government program that never had a chance of working.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled surfing.
Tim

For more good stuff visit my primary website.

Follow Tim on twitter @tl1000rzx2

How a few geeks showed the government how to build a website.

One of the biggest problems with the healthcare.gov site has been the fact that folks need to sign-up, sign-in and fill out a long form before they can view the healthcare plans available. The complete failure of anyone involved in the government project to understand how to create a website is beyond belief. After spending more than $640 million taxpayer dollars we are still stuck with a flaming pile of dog excrement.

Of course the job could have been done better by someone with some true website savvy and a little bit of common sense. I am sure more than one computer geek out there has thought to themselves that they could have done a better job. It turns out that if you were one of those thinking those thoughts, you were absolutely right. You see, a few guys in California decided to do just that. Attention Kathleen Sibelius, someone has gone ahead and built a site that does what your government site should have done.

The folks who built the healthsherpa.com website did it in a matter of months not years. Sure it doesn’t have all the state exchange information on it (yet), but it does work for anyone normally using healthcare.gov. It gives you information on all the plans and the subsidies you may qualify for. In short, it shows you what you need to know, without requiring any personal information, before deciding on a healthcare plan. I tried the site using a zip code in a state where the Federal exchange site would be required and I got my information in about 30 seconds or less. It took only a few minutes to find a  plan and choose one. It appears that if you don’t qualify for any subsidies that you can just click the links and buy your insurance. I am not 100% certain that is the case because I didn’t go as far as purchasing a plan. If however that is the case, then you can avoid using the security hole riddled healthcare.gov website and you need not give the feds all your personal data. I intend to check on that with the website operators but even if you do have to use the healthcare.gov site in the end you would already be done with your shopping.

If you want to see how badly you are going to get screwed by the new Obamacare law I highly suggest you do your shopping on healthsherpa.com today. Then patiently wait for those morons in Washington, DC to fix the aforementioned flaming pile of dog excrement known as healthcare.gov.

I still recommend that no one use healthcare.gov for anything until such time as a third-party security firm checks the website front to back for security holes. I can’t imagine giving so many different agencies my personal information all through one transaction without a guarantee of proper security and a statement from the government telling me exactly how long and by who my data will remain stored.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled surfing.

Tim

For more great stuff visit my primary website.

Follow Tim on twitter @tl1000rzx2

Thinking of signing up for Obamacare? Think again, security is a major issue.

If you have finally resigned yourself to signing up for the Affordable Healthcare Act via healthcare.gov, please think twice before you apply. Recent testimony in Congress has clearly pointed out the fact that security testing has either been non-existent or minimal at best. The folks who put this mess together can’t get the basics to work and they have shown little interest in protecting your security.

I have done a little research on this today and these are just a few excerpts from various sources on internet security. Lets start with what John McAfee had to say about healthcare.gov:

“Oh, it’s seriously bad. Somebody made a grave error, not in designing the program but in simply implementing the web aspect of it. For example, anybody can put up a web page and claim to be a broker for this system. There is no central place where I can go and say, OK, here are all the legitimate brokers, the examiners for all of the states, and pick and choose one. Instead, any hacker can put a website up, make it look extremely competitive, and because of the nature of the system — this is health care, after all — they can ask you the most intimate questions, and you’re freely going to answer them. What’s my Social Security number? My birth date? … Here’s the problem. It’s not something software can solve. I mean, what idiot put this system out there and did not create a central depository? There should be one website, run by the government, you go to that website and then you can click on all of the agencies. This is insane. So, I will predict that the loss of income for the millions of Americans who are going to lose their identities… read more.

An article on healthcareitnews.com points out some valid concerns:

“Fred Chang, computer science professor at Southern Methodist University and former national security agency research director, was next to weigh in, emphasizing the fact that we can’t underestimate our cyber adversaries. 

Chang said within the first few weeks of launching HealthCare.gov, more than 700 mimic websites were set up. Hackers and cybercriminals will take advantage of the users who will undoubtedly mistype the website name or find it from a search engine. One of the biggest risks, he said, is from bogus websites. These criminals, he said, “will find seams in the system, will attack you in ways you won’t expect.” …read more.

Has the system already been hacked? It probably has, if not it soon will be. This following is from nakedsecurity.sophos.com:

Hackers have thrown about 16 attacks at the US’s HealthCare.gov website, a top US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official says.

According to CNN, Acting Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Roberta Stempfley of the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications says that the attacks, now under investigation, all failed.

Ms. Stempfley testified at a hearing of the House Homeland Security (HHS) Committee, saying that the attempts were made between 6 and 8 November, but that none were successful. …read more.

Reason.com also had some information on security issues related to the healthcare.gov website:

The first major issue is the lack of, and inability to conduct, an end to end security test on the production system. The number of contractors and absence of an apparent overall security lead indicates no one was in possession of a comprehensive, top down view of the full security posture. 3For a system dealing with what will be one of the largest collections of PII, and certain to be the target of malicious attacks and intrusions, the lack of a clearly defined and qualified security lead is inconsistent with accepted practices.

This is completely unacceptable from an industry perspective, and is in extreme contravention of security best practices. Only in the government could such a gaping hole be allowed to exist without fear of consequence. This shows a lack of understanding for the consequences to consumers and the protection of also creates massive opportunity for fraud, scams, deceptive trade practices, identity theft and more. Much of this is playing out right now. …read more.

It is ultimately up to you, the consumer to make a decision on your healthcare insurance. But if you value your personal information, the government’s flaming pile of dog excrement known as healthcare.gov is not the place that you should be sharing your personal information. Forget the politics, forget the costs, just concentrate on the fact that the government has built one of the least secure web sites on earth and that in all likelihood you will end up sharing all your information with someone who will not be looking out for your best interests.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled surfing.

Tim

For more good stuff visit my primary website.

Follow Tim on twitter @tl1000rzx2

Spanish not spoken here (or please learn the damned language).

Sometimes it is the little things that bother me. Today it was just the thought of US Government and State government agencies insisting on putting documents in Spanish. I realize we have a rather large Spanish speaking population here in the USA but why does this particular group of immigrants get treated any differently than previously large groups of immigrants? I have no problem with folks speaking their native language but I also expect them to have the decency to at least attempt to learn the language of the country they have come to live in.

When the Italians and Germans and French came to the USA they learned English. Why? Because that was the language of their new home. The Romanians, Hungarians, Czechoslovakians and Polish all learned English. They didn’t ask to be treated differently and they certainly were not treated as special. That is not to say that local merchants and such shouldn’t cater to the population in their area but I draw the line at the government coddling new immigrants of one particular group who simply need to learn the language of the country in which they live.

If you were to move to Germany would you expect them to learn English, provide paperwork in english, etc. Of course you wouldn’t, you would learn the local language. The only paperwork our government should provide to aliens in their native language is a list of places where they can learn English. There should be no phone answering systems that say “press 2 for español”.

I would like to point out that I have absolutely nothing against anyone speaking Spanish or being an immigrant. I simply think that if you make a decision to move to another country you need to be willing to become a fully participating member of the local community and that includes speaking the language.

I have no intention of learning to speak Spanish, unless I decide to take a trip where it is spoken. In that case I will do the folks I am visiting the courtesy of at least attempting to learn the language. But until that time I can say for certain that there is no Spanish spoken here.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled surfing.
Tim

For more good stuff check out my primary website.

Follow Tim on twitter @tl1000rzx2

How wacko conspiracy theories make us all look silly. FEMA Camps aren't real.

In today’s world of scandals and the government being totally out of control we sometimes get carried away with all sorts of stuff that just damages our cause of cutting big government down to size. Sure, we know that the NSA and CIA have consistently and probably illegally invade our privacy by monitoring a whole lot more than they should be. They are probably saving data for longer than they are supposed to and quite possibly violating the 4th amendment on a daily basis. So we know that stuff and while we are angry about it, we will simply have to wait until someone in Congress says that enough is enough. These are the type of things that we know are wrong and we can email and call our representatives and eventually get something done about it.

The problem occurs when folks start spouting about secret conspiracies that we really just don’t have any evidence of or that common sense and a bit of research tells us they are unlikely, we all look like a bunch of wackos. It only takes a single post or picture with a rumor about some agency being up to no good for the internet to explode with twitter, Facebook and Google+ traffic repeating the rumor.

Take for instance the supposed FEMA detention camps. Let us break down the rumor to what we really know. A logical place to start is with FEMA itself. The agency has about 7500 employees. Hardly enough to guard more than a few thousand folks. Besides that, most of those are desk-bound pencil pushers who make plans and write policy.  You can also check out their blog where you will find such interesting subjects as; Fires ,Floods, Preparedness, Tsunamis. Sorry, but not a single mention of detention camps. Now of course that is the public blog, perhaps they have a secret one for employees only. Although you really have a lot of faith in humanity if you believe that 7500 people can keep a secret.

Now moving on to other things we should investigate is where are these secret camps located? It is sort of difficult to hide a detention facility considering that no matter how many trees are about you still need roads and construction workers to build these things, not to mention the fact that you can pretty much view the entire country from satellite images. For those about to say, well they don’t let Google show those images, I would like to point out that you can look at Area 51 all day long and zoom in and get a very nice view of the facilities. You can also see the government’s secret (not so secret) communications facility in Pennsylvania at the Raven Rock location. Before I would start believing this stuff I would need to see images (pictures) of these places with some map locations.

The next item is where is the proof of these policies? Let us assume for a minute that such policies exist. The question that then comes to mind is how would they going about rounding folks up? The local police don’t have the manpower for such an effort and neither does the military for that matter. Both are ill-equipped to be in the detention business and once again where are the memos and policy notes on how this would be accomplished? It is far too easy to copy a memo or simply scan it to PDF and email it or remove it from the office via usb thumb-drive in today’s world (ask Edward Snowden if you need to know how easy it is). To believe that such a policy exists and that so many of your fellow countrymen would be complicit in its execution and secrecy is simply being naive about human nature and the general American contempt for authority.

The last item is transportation. To round-up thousands of folks and ship them off would demand the use of railroads. Trucks and buses would take a lifetime to move large numbers of people long distances. That of course would mean that these camps would have to be near a railroad line. That means… you guessed it, they would be easy to find.  So we are back to that question about where are these supposed camps?

In ending I can imagine some hard-core believers will say, “well don’t forget Nazi Germany and the Jews”. Well folks, that wasn’t a secret in Germany. People knew it was happening and because it wasn’t happening to the “germans” they just didn’t give a damn. Sure a few fought the system, but, by and large they lived in a 100% dictatorship where fighting the system was difficult because the citizenry wasn’t armed so they just looked the other way.

Lets concentrate on reducing the size of government and removing the long-term Washington, DC corruption club members of Congress. Lets keep better track of what our Congress is doing and stop them from doing anything that violates our rights. Lets shrink government and until the government starts passing laws to confiscate guns lets not waste our time on the detention camp myth.

For those who are still believers here is a site typical of those I looked at, along with the incorrect information they have published:

This one is called “The Location of Concentration Camps in America” Pretty scary title, but full of incorrect information such as;

• EXECUTIVE ORDER 10990 allows the government to take over all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.  Simply not true, Executive order 10990 was signed by John F. Kennedy in February of 1962 and pertains to Reestablishment of the Federal Safety Council. Click here to read it.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 10995 allows the government to seize and control the communication media.  Not at all true. This order, signed by John F. Kennedy in February 1962 pertains to assigning frequencies , “ which will satisfactorily serve the national security; sustain and contribute to the full development of world trade and commerce; strengthen the position and serve the best interests of the United States in negotiations with foreign nations; and permit maximum use of resources through better frequency management”. Click here to read it.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11002 designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons. This one was signed by JFK also.While the title is accurate, the order itself isn’t very sinister. It has to do with the Postmaster being able to get your mail to you when you are relocated due to a disaster or a war. There isn’t anything scary about this one. Click here to read it.
• EXECUTIVE ORDER 11921 allows the Federal Emergency Preparedness Agency to develop plans to establish control over the mechanisms of production and distribution, of energy sources, wages, salaries, credit and the flow of money in U.S. financial institution in any undefined national emergency….blah,blah (it goes on forever). Signed by Gerald Ford in June 1976 and none of what is stated previously is true. The order doesn’t even mention FEMA. Click here to read it.

I won’t even bother with the rest. Suffice to say that if you need to look up an executive order you can check it at the American Presidency Project. Virtually every site I looked up had similar information and links to other sites where the the information was just as incorrect.  I was unable to find any current images or exact locations of these mythical camps. (the one at the head of this article is a Japanese-American Internment camp from WWII).

You may now return to your regularly scheduled surfing.

Tim

For more good stuff visit my primary website.

Follow Tim on twitter @tl1000rzx2

It’s Sunday, time for a security check.

So here it is another Sunday morning and it is time to do those security log reviews. As usual I found a few folks attempting to do evil upon the server here. The list is about the same as usual. Most of the attacks come from China, but there are a few coming from Kansas and California. Most of these were folks or bots, attempting to run scripts to gain access to the WordPress blog here. A few were just repeated attempts to access the machine itself.

These are not a big deal to me, but they do point out the fact that I run a very small and not well-known server and yet there are still folks trying to break in. So that being said, can you imagine the number of hacks being attempted right now on healthcare.gov? We have heard that their security wasn’t tested and now we must all wonder what information is being compromised on a daily basis. A huge site like that will be a target for scammers looking for email addresses, financial data and information that most folks would rather not have sent out to the world.

Based on what I see looking at my logs on a daily basis, I wouldn’t register, log in to or give any information to the government at this stage. I strongly discourage everyone from signing up, lest they become a victim of what will probably become the biggest security breach in the history of the internet. Most folks don’t review their log files on their PC’s or tablets, mainly because their just isn’t a whole lot of logging on Windows computers and Android tablets. Their are of course firewalls but you can’t simply turn off all connections or the device becomes rather useless. The folks working on the healthcare website can’t even get us statistics on visitors and registrations, so how thorough do you think they are on security? They might get it fixed someday, but until they publish the results of some independent security testing I would suggest avoiding the site entirely.

And now without further interruption, here is the list of bad apples for this week, by IP and location.
36.248.47.164 China
218.6.70.198 China
142.54.184.142 Kansas, USA
220.250.61.231 China
216.99.159.114 Calif, USA
210.245.52.33 Vietnam
192.151.155.114 Kansas, USA
218.6.70.198 China
192.74.250.4 Calif, USA
192.187.109.90 Kansas, USA
110.86.69.79 China
120.37.230.57 China

You may now return to your regularly scheduled surfing,
Tim

For more good stuff visit my primary website.

follow Tim on twitter @tl1000rzx2

Incompetence, Lies and Corruption: The Obama Administration is a Glaring Example of These.

The Obama administration is rife with scandals and corruption. The problem is that there are so many of them that the media can’t really focus on a single one for too long. The scandals are so numerous that I will probably miss half of them and the list is still going to be scary long. He we go…

• The GSA scandal – where your money was wasted on extravagant conventions in places like Las Vegas.
• The IRS scandal 1 – Where the IRS blew taxpayer dollars on a Star Trek styled video training film.
• Operation Fast and Furious – where Eric Holder and his band of misfits in the ATF managed to lose track of hundreds of weapons that they were selling to the Mexican drug cartels for reasons that are still unclear. Then Mr. Holder decided to stonewall Congress and not deliver all the documents asked for by Congress. Although held in contempt, nothing ever came of this. Then his boss, Obama, invoked some executive privilege crap to further muddy the waters.
• Solyndra – this one cost the taxpayers about a half a billion dollars. These guys were major campaign contributors to Obama and then they got this super deal on free money from the taxpayers for a business that was doomed to fail before it ever started. This is one of about 3 such firms that all followed the same pattern. Nothing ever came of this, no one got fired and no one went to jail.
• The IRS targeting scandal – where the IRS specifically targeted Conservative and Tea Party groups prior to an election. This one was barely investigated by Congress. Sure they had a few hearings but as soon as the trail pointed straight to the White House the investigation and rhetoric in DC sort of faded away.
• The Benghazi attack –  this one involved the loss of 4 American lives and so many lies, cover-up and bad information that it has spawned several books and no doubt will someday make a great movie. The President lied to us on this one big time. As did then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN ambassador Susan Rice. The Consulate was attacked by terrorists of that there was no doubt. Yet the President and his cronies blamed the incident on a protest gone out of control. The protest was supposedly triggered by a YouTube video that up to that time, no one had ever seen. Even when called on this outright lie the White House continued to keep repeating it over and over for almost two weeks. A year later their excuse is that they just didn’t realize what was happening and the “fog of war” distorted the facts. The media have ignored the issue as of late because no one appears willing to call the President and his administration out on the fact that the administration KNEW they were telling lies and that they KNEW Benghazi was a terrorist attack.
• The NSA spying scandal(s) – a new one of these surfaces every week. Conveniently whenever the White House in really on the hot seat for any of the previous scandals. This one started with phone company metadata and has progressed on to revelations that the NSA is pretty much watching everything  that every one is doing all the time while violating the 4th amendment of the Constitution. This one is particularly bad because every time Congress runs some hearings on the subject we get the Director of National Intelligence at first denying the spying then later admitting to it. This guy has lied to Congress more times than Bill Clinton has cheated on his wife. The White House of course denies knowing anything about any of these spying programs. Why would they know? They are obviously too stupid to ask the guy who works for the President what the hell is going on. These leaks of information from Edward Snowden seem to crop up every time the President is involved in a new scandal. I am beginning to wonder if Snowden actually exists or if he is simply part of the most clever propaganda/media manipulation scheme in history.
• The Obamacare Website Disaster – this is the current scandal and it is a front page news item. This one has our fearless leader and his minions contracting out a website, without any bids, to a contractor from Canada, with a failed record of large projects and a direct link to Michelle Obama. The convoluted government project involved multiple sub-contractors and databases and departments. The price went from an estimated $90 million or so dollars up to over $660 million dollars. The bonus here? The web site was launched without proper testing and simply doesn’t work. The idiots who built it did everything wrong in the way of building what is essentially a commercial sales web portal. Who makes folks sign up before they ever get to see the products and prices? Did none of these people ever use Amazon.com or any other web site that sells products? Apparently the White House knew nothing about the fact that the system was nowhere near ready to launch. Of course they didn’t, they never know anything or at least that is what they expect us to believe.  The head of the government agency responsible for this smoking pile of cow excrement never did satisfactorily explain how she could have allowed this web site to go online when it just didn’t work. She and several others refuse to show Congress and the American people the web site stats. This ain’t classified info by any stretch of the imagination, but the contractor said they have stats and then the project manager from CMS said she wouldn’t release them and then Sibelius (DHS) said the stats were no good. Bottom line here is that someone is lying and someone has some stats and wants them buried. As usual our genius Congress didn’t simply demand that they take a break and send their happy asses back to their office to get a printout of the web server logs.
• ObamaCare itself – this one is going to cost everyone dearly until we can finally repeal it. In the meantime the President, who was apparently unaware he was doing so, lied to us for 3 years about keeping our insurance plans and our doctors. He also lied about premiums going down. He didn’t misspeak, he flat-out lied repeated in speech after speech and in various interviews. Now he tells us that “oh, some plans may be dropped to qualify for the new regulations”, but he never mentioned that until now. The man lied worse than a used car dealer in a plaid jacket selling a 56 Belair with “only 2200 miles” on it. ObamaCare would never have passed if the truth about plans, premiums and doctors had been told to the public up front.

I have probably missed a few more instances of outright corruption and incompetence, but the above list should be enough for folks to wonder why Mr. Obama is still president and why a whole bunch of his friends in DC (and Chicago) are not fired, in jail or both.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled surfing,

Tim

For more good stuff visit my primary website

Follow me on twitter @tl1000rzx2.

I am angry at the politicians, but there is another group that is worse.

As we all know, Washington, DC is a mess these days. We have a government shutdown, a new healthcare system with non-functional web sites and a bunch of folks in the corruption club and the Spite House that couldn’t agree on lunch much less deal with the bloated, insane, national budget. We have furloughed a huge number of federal employees but we are still paying them. We have monuments and memorials closed that previous to the shutdown required no government supervision but now apparently require barricades and security. We have a White House granting special privileges to future voter groups to use “closed” facilities while at the same time telling our Veterans to stay away from memorials that were erected to honor them. The list goes on and on of what amounts to complete chaos in DC, but there is someone out there worse than the idiot politicians and bureaucrats.

The worst group of non-essential, incompetent, mindless, closed-minded, pinheads is, you guessed it, the folks calling themselves journalists. The media, whether it be in print or on television has sadly failed to execute their job of reporting the news and asking the really, really hard questions. You know, the ones that put politicians on the defensive, the ones that make the politicians uncomfortable and eventually angry.  The questions that really matter. The ones that point out the blatant disregard that the corrupt morons in DC have for the American public. The ones that hit them where they hurt and expose the cretins in DC for who they really are.

Instead we have a press that spoon feeds the politicians the questions designed to elicit the answers that serve the agenda of whatever press outfit we are dealing with. They should be doing what the 1st amendment was created for and that is getting the people angry by reporting the facts. Let people know when these public servants step out of line, catch them and expose every lie. Do not worry about the outcome. The press is supposed to enlighten the public no matter whose reputation is destroyed. It’s okay, you folks report it honestly and truthfully and we voters will take it from there. But by golly when you twits in the media continue to spoon feed both sides of the issues with what you think your audience wants to hear, you have failed miserably at what used to be on honorable profession. The current media is, to put it mildly, a propaganda machine that feeds info out based on the party it is affiliated with. The news story that the shutdown could have been averted if the corruption club had merely agreed to get rid of their subsidies for Obamacare barely got any coverage. Did you people in the media really think that we didn’t notice this one? These morons shut down the government because when it came right down to it, they were not willing to give up a perk. This folks, is news, this is a topic which should have been the subject of every interview conducted with every single idiot in DC. Why didn’t you ask the hard question: “Why do you folks feel that you are above the law? Why should you get any different treatment than any other American citizen? “. Where was the outrage? Where were the headlines that screamed, “Corrupt DC politicians insist on being treated differently than the taxpayers they serve!”. To paraphrase Vince Lombardi, what the hell is going on out there! Nobody is reporting!

The press could also stand to do a little more proofreading and actual research when they publish/report a story. They have these things called spell-check and Google nowadays folks. When I hear a reporter call a magazine for a gun a clip, it makes me cringe and ignore them immediately, because they are using the wrong terms. Most of the items I hear that are reported incorrectly are things that should be common knowledge but apparently are not anymore. Do they teach anything in school anymore? Just curious on that issue. Maybe someone could do a report on what they actually teach in journalism class?

Last but not least, could you folks in the media please keep your opinion out of the news? Please stick to reporting the news. Tell us who,what,where,how,when and why. That’s all we need. We can take it from there. Believe it or not folks, you journalists are not the only ones with a brain, most Americans can do quite nicely without your opinions. Thanks.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled surfing.

Tim

For more good stuff visit my primary website.

follow me on twitter @tl1000rzx2

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How long are we going to tolerate a government that needs replacement?

05Oct2013

If the past week has shown us anything it is that our leaders in Washington, DC are about as useful as a pile of cow dung. These people have absolutely no concern for the American people and zero concern for anything but their little “political party”. This is both sides folks. Do not kid yourself that one party or the other cares more. The folks in Congress and in the White House all need to be replaced. I am not talking about elections here. I mean, replaced, now, by any means possible. Resignations, legal proceedings, impeachments, arrest. Whatever it takes to remove the entire gang of folks in the “corruption club” in Washington. They simply do not care about the constitution and their duty as servants to the people.

There is nothing wrong with the constitution, or the system itself. It is the people in charge. They have simply failed to perform as required by the constitution and their apathetic constituents have failed to remove them in a timely manner. Below is a short list of what these pin heads in Washington have done for us lately.

• 1. The Senate has failed to present a budget for at least 5 years. This is a violation of the constitution.
• 2. Congress passed the Affordable Healthcare Act when a majority of Americans didn’t want it.
• 3. The President gave large corporations a delay on their participation in the ACA. He simply can’t do that. The constitution states that his duty is to “enforce all laws as passed by congress”.
• 4. Our idiots in DC are now involved in a shutdown over the funding of Obamacare (the ACA). The President is trying to make things painful for the public by closing down open air parks/memorials and cemeteries that previously required no government supervision. The leaders of the House and Senate sound like an old married couple and the media is seeking who to blame for the shutdown, rather than asking questions about why?
• 5. We also should not forget a government that has for years allowed the various intelligence agencies to violate the 4th amendment in the name of “national security”.
• 6. A government that has used every trick in the book to restrict the public’s access to arms. The constant assault on an amendment that by its very design was to keep the public armed and ready should their government get out of hand.
• 7. Let us not forget the numerous attacks on journalists by the Dept. of Justice. The attempts to quell the voice of dissent and to infringe upon the right to freedom of speech.

The list above is just the short list. There are numerous other violations of the constitution and plenty of evidence that the media is either filled with morons or in collusion with folks in DC. The press used to absolutely jump down the throats of anyone who violated the constitution in any way and now they follow the lead of those in the White House like a bunch of trained puppy dogs. The questions they ask sound like they were written by 3rd graders.

The biggest culprit it all of this is YOU the American people. Yeah you, who voted for the same guy for more than one term because you didn’t know what the new guy would do. Yes you, who has never written to his congressman to scream about every single piece of legislation you do not agree with. Yes you, who didn’t keep track of the laws they were passing because you thought the twits in DC would have your best interests at heart. Yes you, who probably hasn’t read the constitution for years and does not either have it book marked in their browser or a handy hard copy sitting on their desk. Yeah, we are all at fault and now we have got to do some serious thinking about ridding ourselves of the “corruption club” in DC or letting them destroy this country right before our eyes.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled surfing.
Tim

For more good stuff visit my other blog: Tim's Incredibly Conservative Blog