So, young man, you've been awful quiet lately...

That's right, no Sunday message (God had nothing for me to say as yet Sunday... but something IS brewing), and no Martin World News yesterday because it was just too damn cold to go looking ( at least that's my excuse).  On the bright side, I did get around to replying to three posts worth of comments I had zoned about, as well as finishing (for the moment) my online Christmas shopping.  But today, I'll bring up some things on my mind.

The last news I looked at last night was the story that the Governor of Missouri is calling in the National Guard just in case the cop that shot that idiot du jure is declared cleared and the natives decide to riot.  You know, I am done with idiots that think every case, every judgment, every law that goes against a black man, whether lowlife or not, deserves to be celebrated by "righteous" mayhem.  I am sick of people who can't look in the mirror and say, "the person who failed that young man is ME."  Mom, dad (if you were around), you raised Michael Brown- or so the story goes.  Maybe you shouldn't have let the streets raise him.  Hey you, with the brick in your hand, tell me how "sticking it to the Man" by looting some uninvolved shopkeepers's livelihood does anything other than paint you as a sub-intelligent, sub-human douche canoe who likes to wrap "out for #1" in social issues you could give a crap about.


The first story I heard when I got home today was the murder in the synagogue of 4 worshippers by two Palestinian scumbags with meat cleavers.  And now, the neighborhood is celebrating this wonderful offering to their god of butchers by passing out candy as if it's Halloween.  So, anti-Israeli mouthpieces, tell me again how the Israelis are the savages, how any "repression" they use in Gaza and the West Bank doesn't have a justification.  Tell me again, Sweden, how the Palestinians showed us today how they deserve that independant state you want them to have.  (I guess I shouldn't be so hard on the Swedes.  Anyone who thinks putrified canned fish is a delicacy has MANY issues.)

Then I go around the blogosphere, and I see stories like this one (Thanks, DC), and follow it up with this one .  (Thanks, JDay.)  For those disinclined to click on links, one is a blog post about the shitstorm that hit Kurt Warner for having the effrontery to suggest that "solid science" hadn't shown him proof of evolution causing the procession from one species to another.  The other is a post about NoCal residents who think that water is a precious resource that shouldn't be wasted, "except by me."

You know, one day I'm going to bow to the evidence and admit that Carlin knew what he was talking about.

And then you have our leaders.  Let me not spend time on bashing Obama (who's really drifted into the realm of "self-bashing" by now) or Putin (who got pissed at the G20 summit that everyone wanted to talk about the Ukraine and nobody signed on to the "sperm-by-mail" plan from last week and left early), but rather, let us look at the magnificent achievements made by the "Party at Brisbane" bunch.  There were six main initiatives that came out of the G20:

1- In order to stimulate the growth of World GDP (which I find amusing in itself, because if GDP means Gross Domestic Product, what is World GDP- the trade and products we ship to other PLANETS?), they came up with (an in an amazingly short time) a THOUSAND policy measures ( and assure us that at least 800 are NEW ones) that they hope will add $2 trillion to WGDP.  Questions:

- A thousand?  Really?  And if 200 have already been done before, why do them again?

- One I have asked before: is there really that much more value to the world economy than say, ten years ago?

- How about the analysts, who say most of the initiatives, while better than earlier ones (presumably the 200 recycled ones), are still "insufficiently precise"?  Big surprise there.  I mean, kinda hard to be precise when you are coming up with one new idea every three minutes over two days.

2- A goal of increasing the number of women working by 100 million.  Because it's more important to have a broader payroll tax base than to see that children are properly raised- er, I mean, because we want to break down the barriers keeping women out of the workforce.

Did you want fries with.. oh, crap!  Fatima's sleeve caught fire on the grill again!

3- What should be called the Burger King Law- an agreement to "exchange information" to stamp out tax evasion by moving from one country to another with a lower rate.  I would have thought the first step in stopping tax evasion would have been to eliminate secret Cayman Island and Swiss bank accounts, but wadda I know?

4- Working with the world banks to raise their loans for infrastructure improvements around the world.  Two things on this:

- The Asian Development Bank estimates that from 2010-2020 -which, you might note is a ten-year period- in Asia ALONE, $8 TRILLION is needed just to keep from going backwards.  How do you feel about that $.60 gas per gallon tax now?

- The group working with the bank has a 4-year mandate.  Which means they've got to find that $220 million a day over ten years in loans in just four years.  Good luck with that.

5-  One of the six great problems according to the G 20 in the world economy is the cost incurred by migrants trying to send money back home.  Because Western Union must charge way too much to wire that tax-free dough the illegals living 20 to a house are sending home to ma and pa.  They say it costs 8% of what they make, and G 20 wants to drop it to 5%.  My payroll tax is 8% .  My heart bleeds.

6- And we must, repeat, MUST do something about corruption.  Burt what?  I know- we'll "agree to share in writing what steps (each nation is) taking to prevent abuse of shell companies " that hide the identity of the real owner.


Ooooooooooh... that's tough...

But we did make some valuable steps at the summit.  We now know that you shouldn't chew gum in public as a delegate, and you should let Chinese ladies freeze unless frozen to.  And you should smile at photo-ops even if the hand you are shaking is attached to a big horse's ass...

So what this post boils down to is, there are just days where I'd as soon hear the Lord call me home and leave this place to the idiots.  Let them do their thing, and see where it gets them, without my involvement.  But.... unless I get electrocuted in the bathroom in the next few minutes, or Scrappy kills me for giving him his dinner late, I guess I'll have to sit back and shake my head.

I don't like the way that sounds, mister...