Author: Fuzzy Curmudgeon

Ben Stein on the conspiracy to ban SUVs (among other things) and how using Jesus and God arguments against them is, well, somewhat pharisaical.
Ben doesn’t write nearly enough to make me happy. (And he’s a fellow fan of the beautiful and apparently pregnant Linda Vester, so he has good taste as well as great intellect.)

…how the world’s Jews don’t descend on Saudi Arabia and stuff the Holy Kaaba up King Fahd’s butt sideways after reading shit like this.
Fatwa this, you boy-buggering walking tea towels.

I’m really getting sick and tired of people who bitch and moan about two things, usually at the same time:

1. Homeland Security is a clear and present danger to our precious civil rights; and
2. Homeland Security is woefully inept at just about anything it tries to do. How will we ever protect ourselves from terrorist activities?

The Professor, whom I normally think is a fairly smart cookie, links today to Brock Yates, who talks about how confiscating nail files and cuticle scissors from airline travellers doesn’t protect us from people crossing our undefended borders (well, that’s simplistic, but read Yates’s piece and you’ll see that he really doesn’t have a whole lot else to say).
Think about this for just a moment: How does a country with a tradition of liberal democratic civil rights, fairly open borders, and ease of access, overturn all that in just over a year to a system that is so tightly-regulated that nobody gets in or out? How do we build a Berlin Wall across 2000 miles of undefended and unsecured Canadian border? We can’t even build a six-foot-high fence along the Mexican border, or station troops along it to guard it, for crying out loud, because our wimpy libs and the Mexicans cry boo-hoo every time we talk about it.
What really makes you think that “the gummint” is going to turn the United States into the People’s Republic of North America? Have you read the Patriot Act and realized that it isn’t the fascist, jackbooted Hitlerian/Soviet manifesto people said it was when it was going through Congress? Do you have any idea how much information swampage is going to be involved in TIA? (Those people are going to be lucky to see the forest for the trees if they plan to use that database to try to predict terrorist activity.)
God damn it, people. Wake up and smell the fucking coffee. Our civil liberties are only in danger from the people who hate us and would do us ill. And I think our president, legislators, and courts are smart enough to realize that (well, maybe not the 9th Circuit, but the exception usually proves the rule).

A fairly competent article about the ADA in respect to cyberspace is written today over on NRO by James L. Gattuso. While I agree with his points with regard to commercial websites, I have to take exception to one of his points:

The Manhattan Institute’s Walter Olson warns, for instance, that web-design creativity and spontaneity could be stunted, as publishers feel constrained to use only officially accepted tools. Amateur websites would be winnowed as legal and technical rules limit the art to professionals. So much for “blogs.”

I kind of think he’s missed the point. I’m not bound by the ADA and neither is anyone else who runs a blog (unless maybe they run one on a pay site). If I charged money to read these pearls of whatever they are that I write, it might be a different matter. As it is, I have absolutely no responsibility to make my blog accessible to the blind, the deaf, or the mentally-impaired (although I am not 100% certain if Democrats fit that last mold or not — not that I care).
It would be nice if people would think before they write. (Full disclosure: I fit that mold myself sometimes.)

to Strom Thurmond. 100 years old today and the longest-serving Senator in US history.
I will avoid my usual cant of “term limits for everyone, Republicans included” just this once.

The Venezuelans got it right the first time, and it’s a damn shame our president made them put their president back on his throne. Sr. Chavez is a very dangerous man if he’s going to be this way about perceived threats to his regime.
Time to remove another banana dictator, I guess.

Via LGF: The IDF takes out the trash once more. Three missiles, one window, no waiting. Damn.

Lawyers, of course:

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Attorneys who won a federal court order for Alabama’s chief justice to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state’s judicial building have asked for $704,000 in legal fees and expenses.

Disgusting.
There should be an immediate killing of all greedy lawyers. I can’t say “all lawyers indiscriminately” because one of my wife’s best friends is an international tax attorney, and she’s a sweetie. I also know several judges who through no fault of their own 🙂 happen to be attorneys, and I rather like them.
I’m reminded though, when I see things like this, of the Heinlein quote from The Number of the Beast:

Some aspects of history seem to be taboo. I’ve given up trying to find out what happened in 1965: “The Year They Hanged the Lawyers.” When I asked a librarian for a book on that year and decade, he wanted to know why I needed access to records in locked vaults. I left without giving my name. . . .
But there is no category “Lawyers” in the telephone book.

Sounds like a worthy cause to me.

Steven Den Beste has a great story that, as he says, is one of those stories that if it isn’t true, it ought to be.
But you have to read the whole thing to get the belly laugh.

I just went to the doctor and got three prescriptions filled at CVS afterward. I was reflecting on the price of drugs and how querulous both young and old people get when they are told how much a drug is going to cost. It so happens that I watched two women deal with their prescriptions while I waited.
First woman walks up and asks for her prescription. She looks to be between 70 and 80 years old, fairly well dressed (no worse than anyone else in the store in this upper-middle-class neighborhood), got a cart full of stuff and so forth. Immediately upon being handed the prescription she complains about the price.
Now look. I have a 75-year-old widowed mother who is on a limited income (although it’s not a horrible income since she was a teacher for over 30 years, and she’s still got insurance), so I understand the concept of pinching pennies and stomping with both feet on every lost 25-cent-off coupon. (My wife is no slouch at that either and she’s nowhere near 75.) So I figure right off the bat that this prescription must be $50 or $60, or even more. Then I hear:
“It’s nine dollars and fifty-three cents, ma’am.”
“That’s more than it used to be, isn’t it?”
(Now I’m thinking: What? How much more could it be? Did it used to be five bucks, or practically free?)
“Yes, ma’am, it is. I can check to see what you paid for it last month if you’d like.” (She does. Understand that this entire conversation is friendly, there’s nobody upset here at all.) “It was $8.99 last month.”
“So it did go up.”
“Yes, and in fact it was supposed to go up last month, but we made a mistake and charged you the old price.”
Now I’m really staring wide-eyed. The whole price of the prescription went up 54 cents and she’s complaining? Less than two cents a day?
Man. Let’s get a senior prescription entitlement going right away. I’d hate like hell to see someone miss out on a couple of quarter gumballs a week because they had to pay for prescription drugs.
Now let’s face it; I know that’s not the norm. Dad was getting most of his drugs at the VA because they were practically free compared to getting them at CVS, and he had an expensive little pharmacopia before he died. But please. There are drug discount programs left and right even if you don’t have insurance that covers prescriptions. The drug companies even have their own programs for people who can’t otherwise afford expensive drugs. Naturally these programs are not ballyhooed; the pharmaceutical companies always end up as the heavy because they are trying to make those evil profits so they can … can … well … invent new drugs that will save people’s lives, I guess.
The second woman (remember her?) was probably my age, well-dressed, drove a nice car (I assume from her ring of keys), married, nice expensive rock on her finger, etc. Her prescription was $50.
“It’s $50. Do you want it?”
“No, take it back. Not at that price.”
This woman could probably buy and sell me. (Well…if I weren’t married she could buy me. Might be harder to sell me.)
“Your insurance has been doing this a lot lately. Maybe you need to call them and ask about alternatives that they may have in their formulary for this particular drug.”
“Yes, I think I’ll do that.”
I don’t know what the prescription was but given that she didn’t want it at $50, I wonder if she really needed it at all. Personally when I get sick and I need a drug to make it better, $50 is a drop in the bucket, and I’m not rich by any stretch of the imagination. But it did get me thinking about whether or not we really need a prescription drug entitlement. Like most entitlements, I suspect we could get along without it.
My three prescriptions were $31 total, for what it’s worth, after BC/BS paid their share.