The Lunatics And The Asylum

It would be funny, if it weren't so sad, that so many stupid people here in the US believe that it's the Government that will solve the problems of the economy and lead us all to a bright financial future. Let's leave aside for a moment the oft-repeated assertion that governments can't create economic growth, they can only facilitate it by creating the right environment for the market to work. More often, of course, they fuck it up most comprehensively by waggling all sorts of economic levers which they don't understand and following a set of dogmatic principles that have nothing to do with growth and everything to do with wealth redistribution or social policy.

It was Winston Churchill, one of the greatest men ever to have lived, who pointed out that "The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." You could see that immediately in the Obastardization of the so-called stimulus package and the idiot's subsequent tax policy - never mind about creating more wealth, let's just make sure we grab from those who earned and give to those who didn't.

But regardless of your politics, left or right, I simply don't understand how people can possibly believe that the government is effective at anything. This applies to governments of either party here in the States - after all, it's mostly the same cast of characters in Congress, and the same millions of useless bureaucrats who administer policy, no matter who's in office.

Just take something simple like the switch to digital TV. The February 17 date for the switch was set years ago. Since then TV stations have been required by statute to devote endless hours to reminding us that all our aerial TVs would stop working on that date if we didn't have a digital one, or buy a converter box. Everything was rolling to this date, and then what happened? A twat got elected and decided to postpone the change, ostensibly because people weren't ready. Weren't ready? Are you shitting me? Having been prodded and reminded of this for literally years, having put up with inane and repetitive commercials on TV, endless discussion on the radio and reminders at every turn, some people aren't ready. Well fuck 'em.

There's only two types of people not ready - those who couldn't be bothered and those who couldn't afford a converter box. The government already spent millions in free vouchers for the converters; what's next? Are we going to impose a new TV tax on anyone earning over $100k per year so we can buy a new flat screen for every lazy tosser out there who devotes their welfare check to methamphetamine and cheap beer? The point is, though, that there will always be people not ready; delaying the switch won't change a single thing, other than fucking up everyone's plans for the changeover. It's like having Y2K and then deciding it should be in March because some people didn't pay attention.

This is the big difference between businesses and government. Both are capable of fucking up. When a business fucks up it loses money, or goes bust. When government fucks up it just takes more of our money away from us. When a business encounters hard times it reduces costs; government just looks to increase taxes or borrow more. Check out California - they've run out of other people's money but they won't cut any of their "sacred cow" excessive spending. When businesses treat their customers like shit they go somewhere else; governments routinely treat people like shit, providing a level of service that would be laughable in the private sector. (Just head down to your local DMV office if you are in any doubt.) But customers don't have a choice.

In the real world businesses dismiss employees who don't work hard, who steal or who treat customers badly. What do you think the turnover in the public sector is? How many lazy, failing teachers get dismissed every year do you think? How many rude and incompetent DMV administrators? How many corrupt local officials? The very thing that makes businesses deal with their problems (the knowledge that someone else is trying hard to make their customers leave them) is the discipline missing from government. Nothing gets better because no-one's arse is on the line if it doesn't.

Amazon managed to build a world-class supply chain infrastructure that can get you just about anything you want to your door tomorrow. The government spends billions and can't even get a digital TV switch to happen on time.

So why can't the government run anything efficiently? Could it be because so few people in government ever had to run anything in the real world? People were surprised at the chaos in post-hurricane New Orleans but what do you expect of the leadership at the top of every government organization is a political appointee whose major qualifications probably come down to the quantity of political dick they've sucked over the years. Out in the real world, real people in businesses make a living providing a product or service that people want, with the discipline of knowing that customers can leave. That means you have to manage costs aggressively, innovate, invest wisely and provide the kind of service that makes people want to buy from you again.

There are millions of managers and directors who have learned how to do this. But who do we see running the country? Wankers like Obama who never ran anything in their lives, who couldn't be trusted to run a fucking lemonade stand. If you walk around Congress and peek inside the offices of the elected representatives you will see that most of their staff are about twenty three years old, straight out of college, never worked a day in the real world, and are immediately immersed in the bizarre parallel universe of politics, where letting people keep more of the money they earned is considered a "gift" by the government, and taking my money simply to give to people who didn't earn it is somehow not seen as "expropriation" or "theft".

Yet people persist in expecting this cast of clowns, from both parties, to magically fix the economy. Would you trust a surgeon who never trained but spent their entire life working backroom deals and making speeches to remove your appendix? I think not. The very best we can hope for from government is that they create the conditions for economic growth, and that means incentives for private investment and tax policies that encourage success. What we're seeing instead is Obastard's paymasters on the left rifling the pockets of the economy while it's flat on its back, shamelessly taking money they didn't earn to hand out to those who didn't work hard enough or behave prudently enough, along with a sickening cast of left wing interest groups.

Stimulus package my arse.


Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

More From Whitey

I was definitely planning to write something lavatorial or vaguely penis-related, and definitely humorous, as an antidote to yesterday's more serious post, but I saw that our new attorney general, Eric Holder, (did he cheat on his taxes too?) gave a speech on the subject of race today and I just couldn't let it pass. First he took the opportunity to call us a nation of cowards. Then the gist of what he said was that we're still basically a self-segregated society, and that "we must feel comfortable enough with one another and tolerant enough of each other to have frank conversations about the racial matters that continue to divide us".

Really? A frank conversation? Apparently yes, because he went on to say "If we're going to ever make progress, we're going to have to have the guts, we have to have the determination, to be honest with each other. It also means we have to be able to accept criticism where that is justified."

Yeah, right. I know how this process of race politics works in real life here - the criticism is fine so long as it's leveled at whitey, but you so much as hint at any failings in the so-called black community and you may as well just check yourself into Racists Anonymous and be done with it.

Let's peel this racial onion a little bit, though, just in case Mr Holder is serious. His point seems to be that we're not the "melting pot" that we're supposed to be. White people largely hang out with other white people and the same for blacks. He didn't mention Indians, Chinese or Mexicans, which is not a surprise because in the world of racial politics these "not white but not African" people are an unfortunate distraction, but I'm sure the same is true for them. This isn't good enough for Mr Holder though - we should all be living in mixed race neighborhoods like those smiling pictures in adverts where the random group always contains at least one black/woman/hispanic, and probably a token gay as well.

This would make perfect sense if the idea that we're all the same apart from our skin color was actually true, but it is, in fact, utter bollocks. Sure it's true for some of us - the black colleagues I've had were basically the same kind of person as me. They were professionals, family men, lived in suburbia, dressed smartly and had a lot of the same experiences growing up (such as going to college). But in spite of the fact that they have everything in common with people like me and fuck-all in common with some hip-hop, drug using, pants round his arse, ghetto pimp, they get labeled together as part of the "black community". And who does this? It's the fucking black community themselves, or at least a very vocal section of it.

If Holder really wants a color-blind society where we all mix in, one of the prerequisites is that we don't pay attention to skin color and use it as a badge of commonality. People like him need to stop labeling all black people as part of one group, and implying that we should see them all as "the same". It's noticeable that Holder gave his speech to mark Black History Month, which is exactly the kind of useless, racially charged, divisive bullshit that reinforces differences and the black/white divide. If we can't even talk about our history as one thing, without segregating it, how the fuck does he expect that we're going to forget about race and live together in a color-blind nation?

Meanwhile the NAACP has its Image Awards, which, like every single awards ceremony up to and including the Oscars, is a sickening display of mutual fawning and backslapping, the main difference being that it's by and for blacks. Or, to be more accurate, everyone but whitey. And probably the Chinese too, because they aren't brown enough. Just attempt to substitute "White" for "Black" in all these events and you're back on the fast track to Racists Anonymous, but apparently racial exclusion is OK when blacks do it. And yet this dickhead Holder wonders aloud why it is that we tend to self-segregate, when the whole mission of the supposed vanguard of the black community seems to be to reinforce differences, create a separate black identity and opt out of a mainstream multi-racial society in favor of a new range of cultural ghettos.

If he really wants to have a "frank conversation" let's start by asking when he's going to stop perpetually looking backwards. At what point do we stop taking a month out of the year so everyone can wallow in the civil rights past. Do we have a Jewish History month where we remember the Holocaust? I think that was a pretty big event too, but we don't have so much as a day set aside for that. What about the rich history of the Chinese, or Indians, civilizations with an enormous amount to teach us. Do we have a month for them? What about all the different European histories? Where's British History Month, for fuck's sake?

Until we stop using the civil rights past as a catch-all excuse and people start taking accountability for raising their children, looking after their neighborhoods, improving their schools, working hard to put food on the table and kids through college, nothing's going to change. When Holder says he wants a discussion, what he really wants is for whitey to feel bad that there's not enough black people in his street and for this to translate into yet more redistribution of money, as though if we wave the magic dollar wand we'll all live happily ever after in a multi-racial nirvana. Bollocks.


Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Court Order

It's that dead time of winter - February is only half over and Spring is nowhere close, but football (by which I mean the NFL, American football) is over for the season. Fortunately baseball season hasn't started - I have to say that I find this the most pointless of all games - steroidy bloaters play 162 games of rounders and each team wins and loses almost exactly half their games. As if that unending succession of individually meaningless games wasn't enough to bore everyone rigid it's only a prelude to a long, drawn-out playoff process, culminating in the so-called World Series, where one American team plays another American team. Although each team is mostly made up of people from the Dominican Republic.

So in the meantime we have basketball. What a fucking waste of time that is. Each team of seven-foot, baggy-shorted, tattooed role-models takes it in turns to bounce the ball down the court and score, before running back to watch the other team bounce the ball and score. Again and again and again, until one team wins 116-112 or something like that.

On the few occasions I watched basketball I couldn't help noticing that most of the NBA players are black. Something must be wrong here, surely?

Colleges and law schools in the US routinely go out of their way to increase the numbers of black students above that which would result from a strictly merit-based admissions policy, such as would result from considering exam results, test scores, etc. This "affirmative action" approach effectively results in racial quotas, even though these have been found to be unconstitutional. (Quotas are supposed to be illegal but race may be considered as a factor in admissions, and we know what that means.) This results in black students attending colleges that they would otherwise not be able to attend, and the thinking seems to be based on a fundamental precept: blacks and whites are equally intelligent, so if the white kids are better qualified it must result from some bias in the education process, which must be remedied by setting the bar lower for the black kids.

Hmmm. So far so good, but why are there so many black kids on the basketball court? I have to assume that black and white kids are equally sporting, otherwise I'm perpetuating a terrible stereotype. Therefore the imbalance must result from a lack of opportunity for white kids to develop their basketball skills growing up. I would therefore suggest we introduce a system of racial quotas (sorry, "consideration of racial origin in hiring") to get more whites into the professional game.

Yeah, I know the purists might be concerned that the talent would suffer, but that's the price we pay for racial equality; just ask the white kids with higher test scores who couldn't get into Harvard.

I'm assuming equality between races here, but maybe this is one of those selective equality things, like gender equality. This seems to hold that anything a man can do can be done equally well by a woman (firefighter, welder, boxer) but that many of the things a woman can do can't be done nearly as well by a man (raising children, for instance - just ask any man fighting for custody in a divorce). Maybe blacks are as good as whites at most things and better at all the rest. Sort of like a master race, right?

Of course, back in the real world we let coaches pick their own teams (although we do have special rules to encourage the appointment of black coaches) but we can't let that degree of Darwinism apply to the world of business can we? This in spite of evidence put forward by Richard Sander at UCLA, a left-wing supporter of racial preferences, that the process of preferences in law school admissions actually hurts minority students by placing them in tougher academic environments than their qualifications justify, resulting in half of them ending up in the bottom 10% of their class, with twice the drop-out rate of white students.

Never mind the unfairness, this is like sending a bunch of pasty white kids to the NBA under a system of racial preferences and then looking the other way as they get their arses kicked on the court.

Meanwhile I can take an objective view of the issue. For a start, I regard basketball as a complete fucking waste of time. And on top of that I regard most lawyers as a complete fucking waste of oxygen. So it really doesn't matter much to me whether each group is black or white, but I would like to see all those lawyers we don't need working to get white kids on basketball teams we don't care about. At least until football season starts again...


Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Turn Your Head And Cough

Today I managed to take an hour out of my fun-packed work schedule and get a physical. It's not that I felt I needed one, nor did I have any strange symptoms that made me suddenly reassess my mortality. No, my trip to Belgium had used up the last of my sleeping tablets and for some unaccountable reason the quack likes to see me periodically (like every year or so) if he's going to keep writing me a script for narcotics. So, since I had some money left in my health savings account I thought I might as well get the 30,000 mile service, have my oil checked and make sure I wasn't one step from the breaker's yard.

For some reason I couldn't get to see an actual physician until March (obviously being ill is very popular right now) so I saw the Physician's Assistant. After all the obligatory weighing, blood pressure taking and answering of questions on a form (such as "Have you ever had sex with a man?") I was ready for the fun part. Something important changed since I was last at the doctor's office. Something very important. I turned forty. This means I qualify for a prostate exam (although, thank fuck, it's another ten years until I'm due to have a Dyno-rod up my anus for the full colon exam).

The build up was very subtle - first she lulled me into a false sense of security with an ear exam. Then she tested my reflexes, of which I apparently possess none, and checked my breathing. Next thing you know it's down with the pants and time to turn my head and cough for the hernia check. Nice warm hands, but no time to relax because the next step was "Turn around and bend over". Apparently I'm not bending over far enough, and I'm requested to bend over further; meanwhile I'm murmuring "There's no place like home. There's no place like home."

At this point she tries to relax me by telling me that she's not going to do anything without telling me what she's about to do. I'm sorry, but do you think that makes it better? Do you really think I want to hear you tell me what's going to happen in advance? So I can visualize it? Trust me, some things are easier to handle when they come as a complete surprise.

"OK, first I'm just going to look."

Oh right, just in case I wasn't self-conscious before, I'm now having my ringpiece examined by an expert. What's she checking for? To see if it looks healthy? Or maybe she doubted my answer to the question about sex with men. Nah, probably just taking aim. I don't know what she said next but it had something to do with lubricant.

"Now I'm going to shove my entire hand in your anus and do rock-paper-scissors."

Well that's not exactly what she said, but it may as well have been. I now know how the turkey feels. All I needed was a light basting and I was oven-ready. Apparently there are men out there who actively enjoy having their prostate gland manipulated during sex - it's supposed to be terrific. Well, file me under "Not Going To Try That" because I cannot for the life of me imagine how anyone stays focused on the task at hand with someone shoving a middle digit up their khyber pass. And what happens when they get their prostate exam? I don't even want to think...

The good news is that I'm healthy. At least for now - perhaps the blood work they ordered will reveal some hideous ailment in a week or two. But tomorrow I'll return to work an older, wiser man. I'll have that look in my eye. You know - the flinty "I've experienced a few things in life" look of the range-hardened cowboy. Kind of like John Wayne. I'll probably be walking like him too...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison

Day Trip To Brussels

I happened to look in the mirror today and notice that I still look like crap, a fact confirmed by my family back in the UK when I spoke to them via Skype. I didn't think the picture resolution was that detailed, but apparently I look every bit as knackered as I feel. This in spite of the fact that the "Day Trip to Brussels" that was probably responsible for much of my haggard demeanor happened more than a week ago.

The plan was simple: throw a change of clothes in a bag and buy a ticket Tuesday morning (last minute - when I say "plan" I don't mean "in advance"). Leave Tuesday afternoon, fly overnight and arrive Brussels airport 7:30am Wednesday. Be at the office by 8:30am, shower and start work by 9:00. Fuck up a couple of people's days and then have dinner with a colleague and his wife Wednesday evening before crashing at a hotel. Head back to the airport Thursday morning and catch the 10:40am flight back through Chicago. Simple, right?

It worked fine right up to the part where I got to the airport on Thursday and found the flight was delayed. Mechanical problems. The airline wanted to route me back via New York but then send me on a five hour misery journey via Raleigh Durham (where the fuck is that?) on a tiny runt of a regional jet. Since my arse falls asleep after thirty minutes stuck in one of those things, and given that my delayed flight through Chicago was still showing an earlier arrival in St.Louis than the alternative, I rolled the dice that the plane would be repaired.

Turns out that it couldn't, but of course we didn't get to hear that until after the departure time had been repeatedly put back for an hour at a time. The airline rep, a half-Asian woman who apparently possessed half a brain, was so clearly not in the loop that any conversation with her was pointless. Initially the delays were met with good humor but eventually I gave up and pointed out that she had no information of any use and that she was clearly not being informed by her airline about what was really happening. She argued that she was being kept very well informed, at which point a fellow passenger interrupted to tell us that the flight had just been canceled, thus rather neatly proving my assertion and causing her to scurry off.

We got 13 Euros worth of food vouchers but since I stuffed myself with sandwiches in the British Airways lounge I used them instead to buy Mars bars to take home to Mrs Bison. Chocolate over there just shits all over the stuff we get here, even when the brand name is the same.

So we all got marched over to a nearby hotel for the night. By this time I had got talking to the fellow passenger, a woman also heading back to the US who was conveniently plain enough to banish any "readers' letters" fantasies from my mind, but good company under the circumstances compared to the rest of the sheep with whom we were surrounded.

They checked us into the hotel, but since it was being paid for by the airline we weren't "real" customers, and so they'd turned off access to any "pay" features in the room. No high speed internet, no phone calls (even to free numbers) and no soft pornographic movies. You'd think after fucking up the whole day the least they could do would be to let their customers rub one out in the comfort of their hotel room, but apparently not. I had work to do so I ordered a room service burger (shouldn't have been able to do that either, but I don't think their system can block it) and tried to get the internet working by giving a credit card at the front desk. The people at the hotel (are you reading this, Sheraton?) were completely and utterly fucking useless, and couldn't figure out how to take the "block" off my room, so I had to go down to the lobby and use the free wireless. All I needed to do was enter my name and room number, but when I tried I got an error. "Incorrect name".

Fucking morons had entered my name wrong when I checked in, but I had no way of knowing what they'd put instead. How fucking hard can it be to enter five letters when they're written down in front of you in capitals? And now there was a line of people checking in half way to the door, so I had to cut in and ask the useless Belgian motherfucker at the desk exactly what fucking absurd spelling of my name he'd used so I could get online. It had been a long day.

The following day we were supposed to be at the check-in desk at 8:40am, not a significant challenge since the hotel is right at the airport and walking over takes about sixty seconds. I booked a wake-up call but the airline also booked calls for all of us. Obviously they have problems with the sheep getting ready on time because I got seven wake-up calls before I could finish showering and get downstairs. On the last one I asked them how many fucking calls they thought I needed and they apologized. After breakfast I went back to my room and got another wake-up call. I asked why - the response was that I didn't answer when they'd called earlier I pointed out that this was because I had been eating breakfast downstairs after the previous seven wake-up calls. Jesus! Some people shouldn't be allowed to leave their house unsupervised, let alone work in the hospitality industry, where they have to have contact with the rest of us.

At the check-in desk the bad news was that our plane was still not repaired; on the plus side they'd canceled the New York flight instead and given us that plane, so we left on time and arrived in Chicago, where I discovered that as a permanent resident I now have to stand in the Visitors line at immigration, a line which move about a foot every hour and which is filled with Indians, all holding documents which the immigration officials have clearly never seen before, with about eight mistakes in, and all attempting to import eleven relatives spanning three generations. And a water buffalo.

So no, global travel isn't glamorous. In fact it sucks arse, and will probably be responsible for me dying early, with more wrinkles and less hair than I deserve. And if I didn't live a worthy life, I'm sure my time in hell will be reassuringly familiar - seven wake-up calls every day, an endless queue and absolutely no porn. Can't fucking wait...


Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison

Bear-Faced Cheek

Happy Valentine's Day everyone. Hands up if you bought roses or chocolate-covered strawberries? All you lot with your hands up, you're twats: Valentine's Day is the biggest rip off, load of old bollocks known to man. When I was a kid it was still a fun day. You'd wait to see if you had a Valentine's card from a mystery admirer, always anonymous (which was the tradition, and also what made it fun). You could also send one to that girl you fancied, the cloak of anonymity providing cover against looking like a saddo if she wasn't interested. I don't know what grown-ups did back then, but it seemed to me that Valentine's Day was for people who wanted to get together, not for people who were already a couple.

Fast forward thirty years, and the Hallmark crowd has turned the whole event into one massive excuse to make you part with your money. Firstly they have created this whole imperative that couples give each other cards and gifts. Peer pressure and relentless advertising combine to make Mrs Average feel neglected if Mr Average doesn't come home with at least a dozen red roses, and possibly something with a diamond in it, too. Poor old Mr Average daren't show up empty-handed and incur the wrath of his spouse; and Mrs Average wouldn't dare tell her harpy friends that she only got a box of chocolates for Valentine's Day, in case they looked down at her with smug fake pity. Meanwhile the chocolate, diamond and flower merchants are raking in your money as you subserviently feed the myth of the "romantic day". Tonight, even crap restaurants will be full of couples going through the motions of a dinner, simply because the calendar says Feb 14. Baaaa!

Of course, if you do give in and buy roses you'll end up paying three times the normal price. The flower industry pretty much makes all its money on Valentine's Day and Mothers Day. But buying flowers is at least understandable; what I cannot comprehend is how a whole fucking industry has grown up around people sending each other Teddy Bears. The Vermont Teddy Bear Company offers the Loverboy Bear, which sports jeans, a t-shirt and shades, and in fact more resembles Homoerotic Bear. Or there's the Love Bandit, which comes dressed in a black shirt, with a black mask, and should possibly be renamed the Arse Bandit. And here's the hilarious bit - each one comes in a "Fun & colorful gift box with air hole". An air hole? Are you shitting me? What, in case the poor thing suffocates? Jesus H Christ! The world has gone completely fucking monkey bollocks arse-backwards retarded! Small wonder that we're disappearing up our own economic arse when people like that are allowed to take out mortgages. I'm just amazed they don't drool all over the forms.

Here, let me spell it out for you: If you send someone a romantic Teddy Bear, you are a twat. T.W.A.T. But there must be a sod of a lot of you, because Vermont Teddy Bear's stock of dumbass romantic bears is listed as "sold out".

Meanwhile, back at the kids, all the fun has gone out of Valentine's Day. At Bison Daughter's Elementary School they had a class party yesterday. That's a pretty tenuous excuse to interrupt education. Here's a thought, fucking dickhead teachers: how about you spend your time educating my child, like I pay you to, and leave the "having fun" part to us, rather than wasting half the time they're in school dicking around with bullshit "class parties" and then sending them home with a ton of fucking homework so that we never have any time together. Wankers! The really stupid thing is that they couldn't call it a Valentine's Party. Oh no, it had to be a "Friendship Party". What the fuck? If you don't like Valentine's Day don't have the stupid party at all. And don't make the kids give cards to every other kid in the class, boys and girls alike. How fucking retarded is that? Typical politically correct lefty educational bullshit - reduce everything to the level that it becomes utterly meaningless, just in case we offend someone.

Hallmark and their friends have completely neutered Valentine's Day, just so they can sell more crap. It used to be about sending a card to someone you fancied, but now they're twisted it (at least in the States) so that parents give Valentine's gifts to their kids. Now that's just wrong. (Except in parts of Arkansas, but they mostly can't write in the cards anyway.) The whole day has been hijacked to make us all buy stuff we would otherwise never buy, to assuage the guilt they'll pile on us by proxy if we don't comply.

Fortunately Mrs Bison can also spot bollocks a mile off, and much prefers that I buy her flowers on a day she's not expecting it, because it means more that way. Which is perfect by me except for one small detail. I'm not that good at remembering to buy them when there isn't a billion dollar multi-media advertising blitz to remind me...


Copyright © 2009 Edward Bison