Correction Time

I just completed a post complimenting a business exec on the opinions expressed in a letter to her customers. Since I had a few minutes, I did a little background research on the company. Not good. The family strongly supports both Wisconsin Teabaggin Governor Scott Walker and the John Birch Society. Googling the company name revealed several forums full of disgruntled ex-employees, among other things.

When I saw that, I realized I had been had.

I deleted the post.

Oh, Puh-Leeeeeze...

[Update: corrected an error - should have been manly, not many.]

Just saw a commercial for Dr Pepper Ten... Pair of overly-macho adventurers talking about their shoot-em-up and the fact that Dr Pepper Ten has "only ten manly calories." They go on to disparage "girly" drinks and chick flicks.

Yeah, like guys like that are gonna worry about calories.  Remember Gablinger's Beer?

Professional-Strength Time Waster

I've been doing some cleaning around the house today, and I left the TV on for some noise. Turns out Spike TV is running a marathon of one of the most bizarre programs I've ever seen: 1000 Ways to Die. It's a series of mini-clips of really unusual deaths... swallowing an M-80 with a lit fuse, dumping a smoke into a toilet filled with gasoline.. all those good things.

I haven't gotten much done the last couple of hours...

Happy New Year. Whatever.

Today's Maine Telegram has an interesting article on some of the new laws taking effect in Maine. One law requires the state's business ombudsman to establish a "central permitting program for retail businesses." This is in keeping with Fat Ass Paul LePage's promise to make Maine big-mega-business friendly. 

The idea is to make it easier to apply for and receive annual permits required for eating and lodging establishments, and for businesses that sell liquor, wine and beer, tobacco, food, beverages, lottery tickets and gas.

Individuals applying for public assistance will also face new procedures: they will have to provide notarized affidavits from all eight great-grandparents, a celebrity chef, a Heisman Trophy winner, and a draft pick to be named later.

Looking Back. Way Back. Yet Looking Ahead, Too...

I was reading the usual blogs this morning, when one brought to mind a good memory.  I'd like to share it with you.

Back in 2006, I was conducting a First Aid/CPR/AED course for my employer. The company -- amazingly -- allowed each of its almost 1000 employees to sponsor a non-employee for First Aid/CPR/AED training, at the employer's expense.

Part of my lecture was along these lines:

We do not go into emergency services because of the fantastic schedules. We know that for the first twenty years, we will miss every holiday, every birthday, every wedding anniversary, every school play, every PTA meeting. We do not go into emergency services for the fancy uniforms. The uniforms are polyester: they are hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and they always look horrible. We do not go into emergency services for the money. There is no money in emergency services: most of us are volunteers, or at best, paid-on-call.  We do not go into emergency services for fame, fortune, glory, or greed. Do you know the name of even one police officer, firefighter, or paramedic in your town? Or do you know only the Johnnie Gages and Roy DeSotos, the Barney Millers, the Tommy Gavins? We may not admit this, especially when we're sober, but we go into emergency services because we want to make a difference. We want to keep our friends and families, our neighbors, even strangers, safe and healthy. We want people to go home to their families, their spouses, their children, in the same condition as when they left in the morning. We don't want to see tears, we don't want to hear anguished crying, we don't want to tell people their loved ones are never coming home. We want people to stay alive, to go on vacation, to see their children marry, to bounce grandchildren on their knees...

Well, the wife of one of our staff members was in that class, and she listened to what I said. No, she more than listened, she heard, she understood, for the following year when it was time to recertify her CPR, she told me she was back in school, going for a paramedic certificate to pay her way through nursing school... to become a trauma nurse and eventually, a flight crew member of the local air ambulance.

What brought that memory to mind?

This:




Via Mustang Bobby

Yeah, I guess I made a difference, too.

TSA Strikes Yet Again: They Stole My Cupcake!

A woman flying from Las Vegas to Boston learned the hard way that "what comes from Vegas, stays in Vegas." Well, sorta, at least. The woman attempted to pass through the TSA screening with a frosted cupcake.  A cupcake. The TSA officer (shown below) thought the frosting could be a security risk, so he seized it.

 

Bubba consumed the cupcake to keep 'murrica safe.

Seriously, though, this is just another instance of TSA using its obscene power and authority for the sole purpose of oppressing the American public in the name of security. It was bad enough when Richard Reid tried to light his shoe, and caused the American public to shuffle through the local Checkpoint Charlie barefoot. Then we had last year's infamous "UndieBomber" and the rigamarole about water and shampoo. Now, frosting is considered a possible terrorist threat.

C'mon, people, get real.

Frosting?  A threat?

Maybe to the Jenny Craig crowd, but fergawdsake, give me a break.

FatAss Paul LePage Chronicles

FatAss Paul LePage has decided that people who receive taxpayer's money should be drug-tested.

Wonder if that includes himself and his fatass daughter... both of whom receive taxpayer money in their state salaries.

Bet it doesn't.

Glass Houses Department

A while back, I mentioned that one of the medical bloggers I read got caught up in the Massachussetts EMS scandal, where more than 200 EMS personnel got caught falsifying recertification training records. This guy now has a post up criticizing private-sector EMS providers, and says he's embarrassed when the best excuse he can make for them is lack of training.

This coming from someone who fraudulently submitted records claiming he had attended mandated in-service training.

To use his own phrase, "Sorry, guy, I am not impressed."

If you want to bitch about someone else's training, maybe you should have made sure your own was in order.

Oh, yeah, that's right, you were too busy skipping training but claiming the credit anyway.


And he no longer allowing commenting on his blog.  Maybe he got tired of being called a hypocrite.

RIP Hal Bruno

Hal Bruno, the long-time political director for ABC News, and life-long volunteer fire fighter, has died at the age of 83.

He was the commanding general of ABC's political coverage in the 80s and 90s, but more important to me, he was a dedicated firefighter, rising to the rank of Chief in his department, and a tireless campaigner for fire safety:

In what amounted almost to a second career, Mr. Bruno was a volunteer firefighter for much of his life and became an authority on fire safety. He wrote a monthly column for Firehouse magazine.

When he retired from ABC in 1999, he was appointed chairman of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, which honors firefighters who have lost their lives in the line of duty and provides assistance to their families, a position he held until 2008.

Mr. Westin recalled that on Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bruno was among the first to phone in details of the attack on the Pentagon. He had got word of a fire there and had rushed to the scene to help.

Chief Bruno won just about every award there was in the world of fire suppression.  His voice, his expertise, and his experience will be missed.

[And now, the Block Quote function has decided not to work. Don't know if it's Blogger or Microsoft or both.]

Perry: At Least He (Usually) Speaks English...

Goodhair's YouTube moment, when he forgot the third Federal agency he would eliminate as President, drew its share of humor, from Dependable Renegade all the way to Goodhair's own campaign committee.

As Tengrain might have put it, "'Hey, he's from Texas, jes lahk gee-dubya. Y'all oughta be happy he's talkin in English, and makin' full sentences,' his campaign committee didn't add."

Betting around here at 618Rants World HQ is more or less evenly split among the Department of Health & Human Services, EPA, National Endowment for the Arts, IRS, ATF, and of course GAO (Government Accountability Office)... basically, all the agencies that keep the Teabaggin wingnuts from doing whatever the hell they want.  My money is on CPB, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (stopping to make sure I put the "L" in "public"), which isn't really a government agency per se, but the Teabaggin wingnuts hate them some CPB.