Mine...mine...IT'S ALL MINE! *cue the scary music*

Did you see the roll-out of the new Trump Tax Reform Plan yesterday?  Have you actually read it?  If you have, it probably didn't take you more than a minute or so as it's really not a "plan", but just a few bullet points.  Here it is if you're interested:

That's it.  This is what The Prez and his Team have been working on for the past 98 days.  Honestly, it looks like something I might have whipped out at 2am the night before a college paper topic outline was due.  I give it a half hour effort, max.

In short, it's insulting.  It seems at first glance to give a break to the middle class by increasing the Standard Deduction, but also seems to take away some possible deductions, too, most notably property TAX deductions.  Property INTEREST deductions appear to be left intact.  What will the middle-class bottom line look like?  Probably either "revenue neutral" (Gubment speak for "no change") or maybe a slight tax cut, just enough to give the incumbent Congressman a good shot at re-election, which is all he cares about.

On the other side, corporations, notably including privately held corporations like Trump, Inc, will make out like absolute bandits!  It will result in tax cuts, on paper at least, to small businesses like mine, but it will be a drop in the bucket compared to what the ultra-wealthy will get.  Let's face it, this is simply another wealth transfer to the rich.  They haven't even made much of an effort to disguise it.  We reportedly already have approx $1.7 TRILLION +/- parked in short term investments looking for a better place.  Another trillion dollars isn't needed....there is NO shortage of investment capital.

The bean counters say the tax cut will leave the Treasury short by approx one TRILLION dollars, to be offset by the ever popular "future growth" somewhere in the future.  Maybe.  Hopefully.

The one possible good thing in there:  The one-time opportunity for corporations to bring back earnings from overseas that they haven't before now because of the higher taxes that would be due here.  This has been done before (so much for "one-time") with minimal success, as it didn't create the new jobs it promised.  Instead companies used their windfall for stock buy-backs and dividends, which *big surprise* went primarily to the already wealthy.

Those who read my protestations will again probably accuse me of being a pinko anti-capitalist, but nothing could be further from the truth.  I am an ARDENT capitalist, one who understands it is the middle class that is truly the goose that laid America's golden egg, and who is trying to see to it it isn't slaughtered.  Right now, in Washington at least, words like mine are like a lonely voice in the forest.

When you stiff the middle class and concentrate too much wealth in the hands of too few, you get Czarist Russia 1917 (revolution), America 1929 (Great Depression), TWA under Carl Icahn, (bankrupt), Eastern Airlines under Frank Lorenzo (kaput), etc.  When companies share their wealth, you get wildly successful stories like The Staubach Companies (Roger Staubach), Broadcast.com (Mark Cuban), Ford (after Henry Ford doubled employee wages), Southwest Airlines, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and more.  The owners actually made MORE money thanks to the efforts of their grateful employees than they EVER made before. Come on people....this ain't rocket surgery!

*sigh*

Rough landing ahead.  Hold on.

S

You live by technology, you die by technology

Technology really kicked my ass yesterday.  My business email just vanished.  Pffffft!  I can't access my business website, and my email can't forward (link?) over to my personal email account.  I used to log in to my personal Yahoo account, then I could skip back and forth between the two emails....been doing it that way for years.

And I use my biz email as my "paper trail".  I have thousands of emails saved, available to refer back to if needed.  Where'd they go?  

K says they're on a cloud somewhere, but I have no idea which one.  So what am I supposed to do?  Call Google, Yahoo, Apple, Amazon, the NSA, etc and ask 'em if they have my stuff?  And if they do, I'm sure they're gonna want a password.  

"Sure, here's 50....let's try 'em all and see if one of them works."  I'll be "locked out" after the first 3 and have the FBI after me for suspicion of hacking.  DUH!

And on a non-technology matter, even dinner kicked my ass, too.  The little jingle on TV said, "Any footlong Subway sandwich....$5 all month long."  So I went to get K and me a footlong Chicken Bacon Ranch Melt for dinner last night.  They made it, toasted it, put on my toppings, wrapped it up, and then said, "That will be $7.75."  

"Umm....what happened to $5?"

She pointed to the small print on the bottom of the menu 15 feet up in the air, 30 feet behind the counter.  It said, "Any footlong except the Chicken Bacon Ranch Melt".  Those bastards!

Then back home I pulled up my ATT Uverse app on my iPad to check the TV schedule and it said I had no favorites saved.  Bullshit!  

It wants me to look through 800 channels just to find the 10 or so I actually watch?  I've been looking at it every evening for months.  I know I have them saved.  Where'd they go?  

Then I tried to log out and then back in, and it said it couldn't find the server.  It...couldn't...find...the...server?  How do you lose an entire $%^& server?  Aren't they the size of a refrigerator?

Is there some weird sunspot activity going on?  I mean, why me?  Why couldn't it smite Iran or North Korea or Cleveland?

*sigh*

S

A betrayal of the highest magnitude....

I stayed awake half the night thinking of how I would address the media this morning when I was announced as the Mega-Millions Lottery winner.  Then after just a few hours sleep, I went straight to my computer this morning only to find that some a$$holes in Georgia and California ripped me off!  Forget The Italian Job or The Great Train Robbery.   THIS is the crime of the century!  ;)

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From the highest of high tech....

This was on the BBC news this morning, and for someone technologically challenged like myself, it's just science fiction at its freakiest.  Have you heard of Google Glass?  I had to look it up, and this is what I found:

"Google Glass is a wearable computer with an optical head-mounted display (OHMD) that is being developed by Google in the Project Glass research and development project.  It displays information in a smartphone-like hands-free format that can communicate with the internet via natural language voice commands." 

And it's here, now.  And the new, improved version goes beyond voice commands and can react to simple commands via a wink.

"Imagine a day where you're riding in the back of a cab and you just wink at the meter to pay....or you wink at a pair of shoes in a shop window and your size is shipped to your door," Google said in a blog post.

So here's what I want to know:  What do you do when you suddenly develop a twitch in your eye?  I don't know why/how those things happen, but they do.  So you're walking through Macy's, or maybe through the Ajax Liquor Store or Monique's Sex Toy Emporium one day and you have a sudden twitch, or you sneeze or hiccup, and the next thing you know a crate shows up at your door and your bank starts calling to say you're overdrawn.  What then?

I wonder if those brainiacs at Google ever think of things like that?

....to the lowest of low tech

So you're not exactly a mental giant, you've spent all your money on tattoos and dew rags, it's late at night, and you're thirsty.  What do you do?

You take your pet alligator down to the corner beer barn and barter.  "Hey, buddy, you wanna trade a 12 pack for a 'gator?"

No joke....I really couldn't make this up.

Happy Hump Day everyone.  :)

S

It's International "Talk Like A Pirate" Day

So a pirate walks into a bar and says, "Aargh....gimme a rum."

The bartender says, "Yes sir, coming right up."  But then he notices the pirate has a ships wheel stuck in the front of his pants, sticking out over his belt.

So the bartender says, "Umm, excuse me Mr. Pirate, sir, but did you know you have a ships wheel stuck in the front of your pants?"

The pirate replied, "Aargh....it's drivin' me nuts!"

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Have you wiped your tech-savvy smile off your face yet?  Are you still giddy?  Were you too excited to sleep last night?

Me either.

Apple's long anticipated iOS7 system is finally here.  I think K was the first person in line to update her phone to eye-ohs 7.  She was floating on cloud 9 when she ran in to show it to me.

"Look...look!  Watch this.  The home screen....the background color is changed, and the icons have different designs.  It's SO much more colorful!"

"Yeah, and did you notice I'm wearing a new colored T-shirt?  Slick, huh?"

"Don't be a smart ass.  Check this....when you look in 'my photos', they're arranged BY DATE!"  *orgasmic shudder*

"Gee, you're right.  This is great!  I never realized how miserable I was when all my photos were just lumped in together."

Then she updated my phone with eye-ohs 7, too.

"Hey honey....how do you delete an email?  I swipe it to the right and it's still there."

"Try swiping it to the left."

"But my right thumb only swipes right.  It doesn't do left."

"Then use your left thumb, moron."

"But I'm hopelessly right handed.  My left thumb is sorta like my appendix....it just hangs there."

"It'll learn.  Maybe you can send it to one of those 'boot camps'."

I should Google that.

S

Someone....STOP THE MADNESS!

Where will this all end?  Technology is running rampant.  I guess that isn't exactly a "stop the presses"*  news story, but things get more and more outlandish by the day.  Have you heard about this one....Galaxy Gear?

Earlier this week Samsung introduced their smart watch, in reality a computer with a 1.63" touchscreen, a camera, runs 70 different apps, and who knows what else.  Sony has one, too, and it's rumored Apple will have one out shortly also.  Shades of Dick Tracy!*

This thing wouldn't work for me.  First of all, clumsy as I am, I'd trip over the extension cord.  Second, can you imagine how tiny the keyboard is?  With my fat fingers the keyboard on an iPhone is barely manageable.  A 1.63" screen....no way!

I hadn't noticed, frankly, but according to the article I read many / most kids today don't even own a watch.  You walk up to a kid on a college campus and tap on your wrist, the universal symbol for "what time is it?", and the kid will just give you a blank stare.  Now you'll be able to tap on your wrist, and they can Google "what time is it?" for you.  I suppose that's progress.  :)

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Some watch trivia for you:  One of the Queens Elizabeth from centuries ago was once seen wearing a watch on her wrist.   Fashion conscious women mimicked her, but not men.  Men preferred to carry pocket watches on chains.

One of the early European aviation pioneers, Alberto Santos Dumont, changed all that.  Back in the early 20th Century successful aviation flights were measured in seconds or minutes.  It was difficult for an early aviator, with all hands and feet working rudders and throttles and sticks, to fly his machine and still be able to reach into a pocket and pull out a watch. 

Being the most daring, dashing man in all of Paris at the time, welcomed in all the most fashionable places, Alberto's friend Louis Cartier specially designed for him a watch that could be worn on the wrist with a leather strap, making it easier for him to record the duration of his flights and still keep his "hands on the wheel".  Before long everyone wanted one, and the wrist watch became the norm for all well-dressed men.  Until now, apparently.

If you enjoy aviation history, I suggest you read Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos Dumont and the Invention of Flight.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Guess what day it is?  Guess...what...day...it...is?  Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike....guess what day it is?  IT'S FRIDAY!  :)

S

* Does anyone even remember what "stop the presses" means, or who Dick Tracy was?

I've got all the answers. It's the questions that trip me up.

So now leaked information has come out that says the NSA has paid $278M to media companies (Google? Yahoo? etc) for access to their customer's data.  What a waste!  They could have just come straight to me in the first place and for a whole lot less than that I would have "cc'd" them on all my emails from the get-go.  We could have cut out the middle men and saved the taxpayers a bundle.

I don't quite understand what's fixing to happen in Syria.  With the aid of maybe France....the Germans and Brits have opted out....the US stands ready to strike Syria in retaliation for their use of chemical weapons.

We've announced probable targets are their Ministry of Defense building, their Secret Police HQ, their Republican Guard barracks, certain military warehouses, etc, ALL OF WHICH ARE BY NOW UNDOUBTEDLY EMPTY.  And we've said we have no desire to target Bashar Assad personally....we're not looking for "regime change".  And we have no idea how to measure whether or not we're successful.

Yeah boy, that's a well thought out plan.  Can't we just hit a few keystrokes and cyber-fry all their computers and be done with this?  Yes, I know....they can retaliate and maybe fry ours, too.  Feces occurs.  I'll chance it.  (Which just reinforces my case for good 'ol yellow pads and #2 pencils.  :)

IMO we should either kick the ever-lovin' shit out of them or stay home and let's watch football.  And since cruise missiles cost more than we have left in petty cash, I say "pass the nachos".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hereby declare the long Labor Day weekend begins the second I click "Publish".  (The boss won't mind.  Go ahead and mention my name.)

Y'all have fun and stay safe.  ;)

S

The opening salvo of World (cyber) War I

Cyber Command Central, located in a secure underground location in Montana.

It began with an excited, almost hysterical call from a Miz Kelly Park of Frisco, Tx.  She reported that the internet was down.  Not just Facebook, but Google, Pintrest and all the rest were black, too.  An immediate check with CNN, Fox News, and the Home Shopping Network mentioned nothing about the attack, leading Miz Park to believe re-runs had been inserted to make it appear all was normal.  

"It's started", said Air Force Maj. Gen. Ralphie Jordan, head of Cyber Command.

"The Event" had been widely anticipated for quite some time.  China's Peoples Liberation Army Unit 61398, their crack unit of government sanctioned hackers, was immediately suspect.  In past bank hacking incidents the origin had been traced back to a non-descript office building in Bejing, and this is where Cyber Warriors loyal to President Brick O'Bama immediately focused their attention.

Efforts were made to inform the President who is currently traveling in Africa, but nobody in Washington could find the area code for Senegal, and the only State Department official who actually knows where Senegal is was with the President, acting as his guide and food and water taster.  Using Constitutional protocol, Vice President Biden assumed command in Washington during the crisis.

Cyber-nerd reservists were immediately activated and ordered to report to their mother's basements and man their computers.  Auxiliary internet channel 6 was powered up, which fortunately was found to be unfazed by the hostilities.

It was assumed there was chaos in the streets all across America, and perhaps even Europe and Australia, too, but as Twitter was knocked off the broadband no one could be sure.  The fear now is that in 9 months there will be one or more babies born to nerd couples who were so bored without their internet they actually tried sex.

One hour and 38 minutes after it began, Reserve Cyber Officer Sheldon Sakowitz phoned Miz Park and asked her to try tightening the coaxial cable connection to her router.  She did, and the internet surged back to life.  

The investigation continues this morning with forensic cyber-scientists trying to figure out how Chinese infiltrators made it across the border and on to Frisco, TX where they Beta tested their newest internet-crashing technology.

Miz Park is currently negotiating a book deal with the Kindle division of Amazon to digitize her riveting, near-disastrous brush with internet death.   You can pre-order your copy now for WiFi delivery on July 8, 2013.

S

*Under duress (by Miz Park) I must report portions of this re-creation were slightly enhanced for effect.  But only "slightly". ;)