Spoilers Gone Wild XIV

I love the wavy action spoilers. I don't know if that actually provides some sort of benefit other than looking like you're trying to hard?

Trib Gets Ghetto, Yo

I saw this headline in the Salt Lake Tribune today: One injured as special needs bus T-bones car.
I didn't realize that the Trib had decided to use slang terminology in their headlines now. I suppose that we're not too far from "Crip Arrested After Capping Two Mofos In The Hood."

More Biden Crazytalk

Here's a great SNL bit that extrapolates a bit more on what Joe Biden has recently said about Barack Obama's upcoming tests. Add Jack Murtha's ignorant comments, and you've got comedy gold.

Some Friday Politics

First, according to this site, I should be allowed to vote.

You Should Be Allowed to Vote

You got 15/15 questions correct. Generally speaking, you're very well informed. If you vote this election, you'll know exactly who (and what) you'll be voting for. You're likely to have strong opinions, and you have the facts to back them up.

Should You Be Allowed to Vote?

Second, here's a 30 sec clip of John McCain's parody of John Ashcroft back in 2002. I wish I had the whole clip and even moreso, I wish that we could see more of this McCain rather than strangely ineffective McCain.

My E-Mail Conversation With John

Here are the first few installments of an ongoing email conversation I'm having with a John Birch society member (hereinafter referred to as John Birch). Take a read:
EDIT: This post is Pinter-play style...the newest is first, the oldest is last

Sorro,
The Founding Fathers set gold and silver coin as the money for this nation as they had already suffered through a paper-money inflation, that's where the term "not worth a continental" came from, so the Constitution only allowed the Federal government to "Coin" money, not to print paper, in fact it forbade the creation of such paper money. The Constituiton is the SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND, and the creation of a Federal Reserve Banking cartel by congress is not authorized to the Congress by that law. If we don't enforce the Constitution, the compact between the states, then we have no Constitution and the Federation they created has become unlawful, so I'm not being nitpicky.

The same goes for the power to "declare war" which was given only to Congress. Yes, Presidents fought at times without a declaration of war as a response to an act of piracy for example. Presidents can always respond defensively when we've been attacked, but Iraq DID NOT ATTACK US. Plus, we're talking about a limited defensive response, not a full-scale war with a nation. Also, just because some presidents actually have exceded their authority concerning war doesn't excuse future or present presidents in usurping that same authority from Congress nor does it excuse Congress for abdicating their Constitutionally assigned power over war.

John Birch

________________________________________
From: Two Guys from Quantico
Sent: Thu 10/16/2008 6:49 PM
To: John Birch
Subject: RE: Opportunities to help
John,
Sorry I haven’t responded until now, I was out of town on business. You’re right on the Constitution not giving authority to bail out private companies with federal funds, but I think that a situation like this is something the Founding Fathers never anticipated. You could also make the argument that the FDIC, the Fed, and even our national currency (being a fiat currency instead of one based on gold or silver reserves) are unconstitutional. I believe that the Constitution didn’t have much to do with our fiduciary system because it ultimately was something that wasn’t as important as the rest of the Constitution. At any rate Alexander Hamilton proceeded to change things around when he became the first Secretary of the Treasury anyway, creating a department that was the model for every other department in the future.
As far as the declaration of war issue, I feel that Congress’ authorization on the war is indeed in line with the Constitution as clarified by the War Powers Act of 1973. There is still Congressional oversight and it is actually more stringent a set of requirements than is laid forth in the Constitution. Whether the war should have happened or not is a completely different issue, as is whether we should finish mopping up after the war. I think that based on what we know now, the war shouldn’t have happened, nevertheless it did, and I think that our only responsible course of action is to continue to station our troops there until such a time as we can leave Iraq as a stable functioning nation. We have fought other nations without an official “Declaration of War” before, going all the way back to Thomas Jefferson’s and James Madison’s wars with the Barbary States in 1801 and 1815. If two of our founding fathers, including the principle writer of the document, thought that was enough, isn’t that at least enough of an endorsement from a Constitutionality perspective? You could even argue the constitutionality of the Civil War – if the states were supreme, didn’t they have a right to pull out of a union? What made them so subservient to a Federal government that suddenly was far more powerful than the Founders intended?
I absolutely agree with your belief that John McCain doesn’t interpret the Constitution exactly as I would have it interpreted, but few people do. At the same time, I can’t say that a man who endured 5 years of torture in Hoa La prison on behalf of this nation, it’s people, and it’s principles doesn’t revere the Constitution. If he didn’t, he would have sung like a bird to the NVA to allow him to be released. Instead, he stood up for this nation and suffered for it.

Sorro


From: John Birch
Sent: Sunday, October 12, 2008 8:31 PM
To: Two Guys From Quantico
Subject: RE: Opportunities to help

Sorro,
There's no authority in the Constitution to give bailouts to private companies using federal funds, yet McCain favors doing so, thus,he can't actually revere the Constitution. There was no declaration of war on Iraq, so the war is unconstitutional since a Congressional Declaration of war is required before a president executes a war, yet McCain favors the war and continuing this unconstitutional and thus illegal war. He can' revere the Constitution.

Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party Candidate for President does actually revere the Constitution and would bring our troops home from the middle east.

Sorro, actually some times we can't convince other of the truth about politics, but sometimes we can. Fact help people change their wrong opinons.

John

________________________________________
From: Two Guys from Quantico
Sent: Fri 10/10/2008 5:44 PM
To: John Birch
Subject: RE: Opportunities to help
John,
I appreciate your candor. While I certainly agree that Mr. McCain isn’t the perfect candidate, I have a bit of a philosophical difference in that I think that while he certainly may make mistakes and is not my ideal candidate, he’s certainly better than Mr. Obama. The big difference is on the issue of judges. I think that Mr. Obama would get us liberal judges who would make laws for a generation whereas Mr. McCain would give us solid conservative justices like Justice Roberts and Justice Alito who would help protect our constitution. I don’t agree with all of his interpretations of it, but I do know that Mr. McCain has a strong reverence and love for the Constitution and our nation as well. I also prefer his stance in Iraq to Mr. Obama’s because whether we like the war or not, our job is to get out of there with a stable Iraq as opposed to leaving it vulnerable and making things far worse than they have been there or even than they were under Saddam Hussein.

Nevertheless, if there’s one thing I have learned in politics it’s that I can’t convince people that my beliefs are right and vice-versa. We’ll just agree to respectfully disagree.

Once again, thanks for the email and telling me some of your thoughts.

Sorro

From: John Birch
Sent: Friday, October 10, 2008 3:43 PM
To: Two Guys from Quantico
Subject: RE: Opportunities to help

Thanks Sorro,
But, the Republican party has chosen a candidate I can't support, John McCain. McCain supported the socialistic and unconstitutional bailout of insolvent financial institutions, just like Obama,no difference. McCain is a member of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) that has worked for decades to bring about a new world order through the United Nations being empowered. McCain-Fiengold Finance Reform was the act that so injured freedom of speech and freedom of the press. McCain continues to support a war on Iraq that was begun unconstitutionally without a Congressional declaration of war, was fought under false pretenses, was an agression by our nation since Iraq had not attacked us, and was in support of United Nations Security Council Resolutions. I can never support such a man as John McCain who apparently cares nothing for the constitution, but favors the bailout, the war, and Democrat Fienstiens strippping of our essential Rights.

My Republican candidate for president, Congressman Ron Paul, lost the primary election, but, I can't support CFR operative John McCain any more than I would support Obama.

John Birch

McCain Roasts Obama

Here's John McCain sending up Barack and his campaigns last night at a white tie dinner in New York. It's refreshingly funny. It's in 2 parts. I imagine Obama's will come up after you see the McCain videos. Take a look, especially if you're sick of this election.

Picture of a Picture

Today we had Bill Clinton as our keynote speaker.  As you'd expect, the room was packed.  As you'd also expect, people were taking pictures of President Clinton.  As you wouldn't expect, they were taking pictures like this - Bill Clinton on a big screen.  My question is why don't they just take a picture of Clinton or other celebrities on their TVs?  Isn't this the same thing?

Just an Observation

If you're not paying enough attention that you don't just kind of trip over someone's computer cord, but you actually pull it out of their computer (this isn't a MacBook MagSafe plug here), then proceed to spend 30 seconds untangling it from your flip flops, you may want to, as a courtesy, give it back to the person you yoinked it from.  When you walk around mumbling what kind of jerk would plug into a wall instead, it makes you look like the jerk.

Great Minds Think Alike

I swear that I came up with this idea before Bill Kristol did in his editorial today in the New York Times.  I actually was talking with my wife about it back before the second McCain-Obama debate.  I still think it's a good idea.  McCain needs to go for broke, and the best way to do that is barnstorm the heck out of the nation and have it televised.  He should be buying half hour blocks, or even 2 minute commercial blocks and showing the best pieces of his last town hall meeting.  I'd like to see him get back to being the candidate McCain from New Hampshire who went for broke and got out there and barnstormed swing states and got his campaign back out there and turned things around.  Just disassemble most of the stuff and get out there and talk to people.  I wouldn't be surprised to see things swing back his way because I think that to some degree Americans are done with being coddled, and that's what this campaign has become is a coddle-fest.  Get the straight talk express out there and visible and that could change things for you.

The New American Dream

Apparently the American dream is to live in subsidized housing. I didn't know that...I always thought it was life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nevertheless, I just sat at a panel of 6 seniors who told me that that was the case. Does anyone want to edit the founding documents of the country to reflect that.

Fort Lauderdale Convention Center Carpet

I'm in Florida this week and I have to say it's hot and muggy and they make you show your ID to get into it.  That's all mental.  However, I think that Mickel will be quite happy with the "quality" of the carpet here:

This is their "ocean" motif.  I think it looks like a toddler's finger painting or a Van Gogh goghn wrong.

 

This is their palm motif in the rooms.  This looks like someone vomited blood over a forest floor.  Are you more happy with your theory now?

Why We Needed the Bailout

SNL hit the nail on the head with our current economic problems...too bad that we'll never hear that it's our fault for abdicating all responsibility and blaming banks and "predatory lenders" when times got tough. Nope, it can't be our fault, we're just doing what we're told and then feeling like victims when our schemes don't work out.

My Approximated Running Meeting Diary

10:00 AM: We gather. As a refresher, the members of the team are:
Sorro
Forro
Jorge Posada
Alex Rodriguez
Derek Jeter
Robinson Cano
Jason Giambi.
Giambi is out this week in another office. We're actually getting more and more on time, which is a HUGE deal for this group. We have a couple of the latest people in the world on our team.
10:10 AM: Forro foolishly walked into a trap. We've got a player in the minors (let's call him Phil Hughes) who Jeter is really pushing to bring up to the big leagues. Forro and I think that he's good, but we've got to hold on on it and let him earn his way up rather than just saying "there you go." Posada, in all his infinite yes-mannity, is going along with whatever Jeter says because Jeter said it. "Well, you're the team captain, so I'm going to plant my lips firmly on your rear end and it will take the Jaws of Life to remove them." Meanwhile, Cano is having a conversation on his phone. Because, you know, it's not like he should be actively engaged in our meeting or anything.
10:20 AM: Cano decides that his phone call is more important than everything else that we need to discuss in our meeting and he does this by putting the employee he was talking with on speakerphone and proceeding to hash out the issue of "what do we do, we have competitors!" with the help of the entire management team. It's at precisely this point I gave up on trying to stear the meeting in any sort of productive direction and instead I did some work and blogged.
11:15 AM: A-Rod decides to get our lawyer on the phone to hash out some more of this having competitors issue. Seriously, you'd think we were a monopoly or something. At any rate, he gets her on the phone and proceeds to give her the long and the short of the conversation (his words), which meant, of course, the long of the conversation along with some commentary, heresay, and conjecture.
11:30 AM: After a 15 minute (billable) conversation, we hang up with the lawyer, Cano calls back the hibbity-dibbity employee, and I finalize a trade in my fantasy football league. I think that the most productive thing that's happened so far in this meeting is indeed the finalization of that trade.
12:20 PM: We finally finish with all of this ridiculous time wastage and get back to business. At this point, we get back to the agenda and get back to Posada pretending that he's actually a valuable member of the team. He shows this value by saying that he will "help people with this" and/or regurgitating things that we talked about months ago and presenting them as fresh ideas that he somehow came up with.
12:40 PM: Posada pulls a rabbit out of his hat! He is talking about how some of his people are auditing things that my people should be auditing in a ridiculous attempt to get a leg up on me. I counter with the fact that we had a meeting 2 months ago wherein I talked specifically about that issue and he and his people said straight up that they had to audit that. They get first crack at the documents so I said that they could and we all told my people not to re-audit what his people were auditing. His parting line after I told him this? "Well, it would be good to go over that again with your people." What I wish I could have said? "How about you shut your big yapper!"
1:10 PM: We get out, and only about an hour late. Even though we've had longer meetings, time-wise, I can't think of any single meeting that has been as annoying as this one was. I think the reason is because we actually had good meetings there for a while.

Spoilers Gone Wild XIII

 

This was a spoiler that I loved enough to do 95 on the freeway to catch up to.   Normally an Acura NSX with a spoiler would be a non-issue, but a spoiler that is actually higher than the roof combined with the ghetto faux racing paint job made this a definite winner.

Off The Rails

I'm sitting here in our management meeting and you may notice that I haven't done a running meeting diary for a while.  The main reason for that is because I've been running them and also because they have gotten better.  At any rate, today it's spiraled completely out of control and there wasn't one thing I could do about it.  I should have known that it was too good to last forever.  Right now I'm anticipating a 5 pm end time based on the tangents/unnecessary addition of random people into the mix for absolutely no reason at all.

Quantico Basketball Association

Anyone up for some fantasy basketball? I'm going to set up a league this year, so if you're interested in smack talk and something to put on your resume, send me an email at sorrochorro-qba@yahoo.com to join the QBA! Let me know within the next week or so so we can get the draft set up and be ready on opening day.

The Opposite

My mom called me a few days ago to ask for some investment advice. Apparently someone told her that she should move into precious metals to hedge against an inflationary currency. Specifically the advice was to go buy silver coins. Not to move around actual money in the markets or anything, just go spend hard earned dollars on silver coins. At this point in the conversation, I immediately knew who it was.
I have an uncle who is seemingly behind the curve on every single investment. In the days after both September 11 and Hurricane Katrina he was leading the hysteria with his cries of $4.00/gallon gas. Of course, he ended up being right...but not in the time frame that he clearly meant (i.e. within a month). I asked her if that was the case and she said it was. I said that first of all, that was bad advice because the dollar is actually increasing in value right now (up to where 1€ buys $1.35 as of 8 am) and commodities are all feeling that pressure - oil is down from $150/barrel to $90/barrel, gold is down from over $1000/oz to $870/oz and silver is down from a high of nearly $20/oz to $12/oz.
I suppose that if you want to lose money, you'd go into silver, and I told her that if she was going to insist on buying precious metals to go to gold and to buy it on the market rather than through a coin dealer. Nevertheless, I don't know if she's going to listen to me because for some reason, even though he's been wrong so often, she listens to my uncle. I really just should do the opposite of what he does and I'd be fine as long as he's still investing.

Republicrats and Those Who Elect Them

1. Meet Republicrat Nominee Sean Masterson
I came across this thanks to the Wall Street Journal and isn't it the truth? A candidate can't tell you something you don't want to hear without paying the piper. Take for example the boondoggles that are promised every 4 years. Stop with the promising! Tell me that we're in trouble and the fact is that we have to cut Social Security for people my age because we just can't afford it. Tell me that it's the fault of the American people that we're getting foreclosed on. It's not lenders - it's us for not taking responsibility for our finances. Don't take away the principle payment or decrease it for people who bought way too much house - that's like going to a BMW dealership, buying the car, then having BMW come up and take that loan away. What happened to responsibility? When did we become a nation of shirkers? When did we become so sensitive that when Phil Gramm said we were a nation of whiners and suffering a mental recession, he was dead on. What happened? McCain had to call him on the carpet for speaking a harsh truth. The fact is that we are and we need to hear that once in a while. It's like the kids who get a trophy in Little League for showing up. How about some rewards for the winners and nothing for the losers? Otherwise, we end up being fat, happy, complacent, and utterly worthless.
That train-of-thought rant aside, take a look at the video.

VP Debate

I watched the Vice Presidential debates last night, and I fell asleep. I think that's as good a review as any from me. Neither candidate was bad, although I take offense that Biden doesn't think that increasing taxes on "the rich" isn't class warfare - it isn't fair, not that that matters, that someone who makes more money has to pay a higher percentage of that to the government. Nevertheless, neither candidate was so atrocious nor so enthralling that I didn't end up snoring away next to my wife.

What Part of NO Don't You Understand?

There is an office furniture salesman (we'll call him Lem) who has come around my office probably 15 times over the past two years. Every time, he's asked for me. Because of the vagaries of the fact that I have a job that keeps me pretty busy, I've never been able to meet with him. Every time that he's come, I've asked our secretary to tell him to give me a call or send me an email and I would be happy to set up an appointment to meet with him. He never has done that. Instead, like some sort of crazy person, he insists on stopping by again and again and again.
It finally got to the tipping point with Lem this past week. He stopped by Monday and I gave him the same spiel that I have every other time...I'm busy, call and I'll be happy to get an appointment with you (through the secretary, of course). So he finally did call, but I didn't listen to his message until he had already stopped by the day after he called. Then, he stopped by again that afternoon. Never have we talked or have I set up a time to talk with him. I'd still set something up with him, but it would be to ask him the following questions:
1. Do you really think that somehow this time is going to be different when the prior 15 times haven't been?
2. Do you think I'm actually going to buy anything from you when you don't care to listen to me when I tell you call for an appointment? It's not like you could have forgotten that, what with me telling you it over and over and over again. Write it on the business card that you picked up - "call for appointment." It's not hard to make a good first impression, but you've failed miserably before I've even met you.
3. What salesman school did you go to where they told you to keep stopping by and ignoring the customer's wishes?
4. Do you like wasting your time going someplace without that appointment when you could take a few minutes to call and then go over at the appointed time? I think that if you added up all the wasted time from stopping by and getting rejected over the past 2 years you could probably have seen a baseball game by now. It's certainly the cheaper option, what with gas prices being what they are.
5. Are you indeed mental, or do you just seem that way?