Our Tax Dollars At Work (And Play)

Well what do you know? Rather than sitting home and watching their flat screen TV's we have many of "the poor" in Georgia hitting strip clubs They're also hitting Six Flags and liquor stores. What do you expect? After a hard day of getting up at the crack of noon and watching TV, people do get stressed out and need to blow off steam.

REPORTER: $50 million handed out to needy Georgians last year—that is federal money administered by the state. But when you see what we uncovered, you may think no one is keeping an eye on it—but we are.

REPORTER: From strip joints… to casinos… to liquor stores, places where your tax dollars meant to help needy families are being pulled out of ATMs and purchases are being made. How? On a card like this. It works like an ATM or debit car; the money comes from the federal government but the state administers the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, handing out as much as $568 a month on each card.

I left out casinos. "Needy folks" are hitting the casinos as well. We really treat "the poor" well in this country, don't we?

ANN CARTER: Providing for basic assistance—their food, clothing, housing.

Flat screen TVs, cellphones, expensive sneakers, booze, casinos. Those count as "basic assistance", right?

REPORTER: You see the signs everywhere, where EBT cards are accepted, and after spending weeks analyzing 852,000 transactions, the numbers really added up: $148,948.36 redeemed in liquor stores, more than $4,500 at tobacco shops, $920 at out-of-state casinos like Harrah’s in North Carolina, and more than $5,600 was even redeemed at Six Flags here in Georgia. Getting access to the cash is important and the cards can be used at ATMs. Why would they come to places like this to redeem their cards? The $140 redeemed at this Atlanta strip club, Club Wax, we couldn’t follow the people around to see how they were spending the cash, so we tried to verify some of the transactions. $97,609.08 redeemed at Jaxx’s Beer in Albany.

ROBERT: No cameras.

REPORTER: Robert is the manager and at first, didn’t want us here, but started to answer our questions.

ROBERT: These people don’t buy anything. They come in, we charge them $2, they get EBT and leave.

REPORTER: There’s an ATM on-site but you can’t get change out of an ATM, so what about these EBT card transactions at Jaxx: $78.41 and $48.29, to name a few. Clearly, these weren’t ATM transactions. He’s adamant alcohol is not purchased. He takes us to the back to verify the transactions on the computer system. The very first one he checks? $16.97 from Feb. 2 of last year.

ROBERT: EBT, that’s the one.

REPORTER: Vodka.

ROBERT: That’s unusual.

"Gambling going on? I'm shocked!"

"Here's your winnings, Captain."

That's unusual? It's been going on for years. When I first hired on at IBM, one of my coworkers owned a liquor store in the ghetto. He had a nice little sideline of buying food stamps at a discount so his customers could purchase booze. Then he turned around and sold the food stamps to other people at a profit. So he was able to sell booze and make money on the food stamps as well. This was back in 1973. Now they just use the EBT cards to sell the booze directly. They miss out on the black market in food stamps.

REPORTER: Vodka. He has to go, but promises to check a couple more pages of transactions for us.

ROBERT: I’m going to look up some of them and I’ll call you.

REPORTER: We never heard back from him.

I'm shocked!

REPORTER: An internal investigation is now underway into what we found, Karyn.

ANCHOR: How could this possibly happen with that much money and no one at the Dept. of Health noticed it?

Maybe because no one at the Dept. of Health gives a shit.

REPORTER: That’s the million-dollar question that we’re asking. This is information that is in the database, so we’re wondering why their auditors missed it.

As I stated previously, no one gives a shit. This is gummint. Do you expect there to be any oversight? Do you expect there to be any accountability? "Basic needs" now includes cellphones, Air Jordans, booze, strip clubs, and casinos. Out in California, they discovered that people are using their EBT cards on cruises. Do our poor have it rough or not? And Jug Hussein Ears sez we need to raise taxes on the evil, stinking rich so the moochers, leeches, and parasites can live it up on the taxes paid by hard working Americans. Suckers!

Evolution Or Two Faced

Ron wrote a comment on my post last week about Oblamebush's "evolution" on gay marriage. Evolution is another one of those focus group tested words Dimocrats like to use to confuse the electorate. Yannow words like "investment" rather than "spending". We're gonna "invest" more money in poverty programs so we can put more poor people on the dole so they can stay at home and watch their flat screen TV's rather than busting their ass to make a living like the rest of the suckers who work and pay taxes. We're gonna "invest" in food stamps so more "starving" poor people can eat junk food and become obese. In California they're flat broke but they're gonna "invest" in a high speed rail line that will cost more than they estimated and will require massive gummint investments (subsidies) because no one will ride it. Think Amtrak on steroids. Here in Atlanta we're gonna go retro and "invest" in a street car line going from Centennial Olympic Park to the King Center. After a few years, we'll find out that this was a stupid "investment" that will never pay for itself. In other words, it will be a total waste of taxpayer dollars.

Since some of Ron's comments run a little long, he often sends them to me in emails rather than posting in the comments and I often post them on the front page to give me some time off omn days when I am busy or too lazy to write anything. Here's the one he sent me last week on Obungler's "evolution".

A lang, lang time ago, a Chinese philosopher (no, not Confucius -- Lao Tsze) made an observation that modern politicians can’t seem to grasp. His advice for governing a great nation was the same as for cooking a small fish: Don’t Overdo It.

Alas, politicians of both parties are guilty of this. Dimocrats are socialists. Republicans are socialist lite. An example? Medicare Part D. Many Dimocrats are screaming about the cost of this plan, conveniently forgetting that they had a competing plan at that time that was considerably more expensive. I remember them saying that the Bush plan was not comprehensive enough. Now they're planning on the voters forgetting that they even had a competing plan and that it was more expensive. Fortunately for them, the LSM will run interference and will not point this out.

More recently, Reagan observed that government is not the solution to our problems because most of the time government IS the problem. Strange how great men have said basic, fundamental yet profound truths to us but we can’t remember them longer than the time it takes to cook that small fish.

After you’ve read all the books and studied all the philosophers, you begin to suspect that only a dozen or so basic truths exist and that human life is the process of rediscovering them over and over and over and over but never really quite understanding them.

A man who would be king sits today at a desk in what has often been called the most powerful office on the planet. He has absolutely no clue what’s going on and no interest in learning how to govern, only in making speeches and campaigning for office to hold on to the power for which he is ineligible and unprepared.

He has repeatedly boasted of his experience as a Constitutional scholar who has taught university-level classes on the US Constitution, but what has become clear during his reign is that he considers that document merely a historical reference which has become archaic and needs either thorough revision or wholesale replacement.

I am not a practicing Christian, but when teaching college and high-school students about literature I make frequent reference to the Bible. I do that because the Bible is not only historically important, but filled with superb exempla, allegories, guidance, wisdom, and common sense.

The Constitution isn’t perfect, but it’s considerably better than the mountain of conflicting, confusing, self-reproducing laws we have today. Apparently everyone who becomes part of the federal government suffers from the same occupational hazards of amnesia, which causes them to completely forget about states’ rights, and over-regulation, which causes them to completely forget about common sense.

What’s happened to America is that our supply of government has immensely exceeded the demand for it. I forget where I read it (Heinlein, I think), but an elephant is a mouse built to government specifications. Any attempt to make large organizations, such as the TSA or the EPA, function effectively and within budget is like trying to teach an outside dog not to scratch.

P.J. O’Rourke observed that giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. Will Rogers noted that there is no distinctly American criminal class . . . except Congress. I say let’s get rid of about ¾ of the government we’ve allowed to develop, drink the whiskey ourselves, and drive the car someplace where people remember what it used to be like to be American.

When I was a little kid and my grandfather saw me moping around because of something someone else had and I wanted, he’d tell me to shit in one hand and wish in the other and see which one got filled the faster. Mom, his wife, liked to say that we have the power to make our wishes come true. But it may require a little work.

When this country began, a bunch of guys in weskits and knee stockings analyzed all the things that made previous kingdoms and governments fail. They organized a simple set of rules along with some ingenious checks and balances to ensure that selfish or corrupt or mean-spirited men could not consolidate power and enslave the citizenry.

Their experiment does not provide a healthy environment for slackers and whiners and parasites and is considered flawed and pointless by those who believe that the purpose of government is not to protect but to provide. In fact, the beautiful simplicity of their guidelines, their process, their paradigm has pissed off large numbers of gainsayers and challengers who, like spiteful teenagers jealous of someone else’s better car, decide the solution is to sabotage it so that the misery can be shared.

I remember reading that our great Constitutional Scholar, Jug Hussein Ears Downgrade, said that the Founders should have put sumpin' in there about wealth redistribution. Maybe our "wise Latina" that he appointed will conjure sumpin' like that out of thin air just like liberals on the Court conjured abortion rights out of thin air. I cannot find "abortion" anywhere in the Constitution. Likewise I cannot find "health care" or forcing that every citizen be required to purchase a product like health insurance.

Yesterday the impostor who would be king executed an expert slip-slide flip-flop and re-reversed his reversal of his position on same-sex marriage. Another case of an election-year Janus politician trying to save both his faces by smiling out of each of them in different directions.

Barack Hussein Obama has proven the old adage that anyone from any society, even an external one, can grow up to be President, whether he’s eligible or not, qualified or not, ready or not. And Joe Biden is working on proving that anyone who does NOT grow up can become Vice President.

Hard sometimes to distinguish between marrons, maroons, and morons.

Captain Ray's Dream

Charlie B sent me this picture of his friend Ray's dream.

And before any of you libtard asshats go crazy and chide me for lack of respect, it was the dream of many of you barking moonbats that Chimpy McHalliburton Bushitler would be assassinated. Someone even made a movie about it. Ray just dreams about these two bozos, and some of their companions, going to jail. Is that Eric Holder third in line? We know he belongs for Fast and Furious and if Oblamebush knew and authorized it, he definitely belongs in the slammer as well.

Smart Flight Attendant

My friend Pres claims this is a true story. Unfortunately, it isn't.

A 50-something year old Muslim man arrived at his seat on a crowded flight and immediately didn't want the seat. The seat was next to an elderly white woman reading her Bible.

Disgusted, the Muslim man immediately summoned the flight attendant and demanded a new seat. The man said "I cannot sit here next to this infidel." The flight attendant said "Let me see if I can find another seat."

After checking, the flight attendant returned and stated "There are no more seats in economy, but I will check with the captain and see if there is something in first class."

About 10 minutes went by and the flight attendant returned and stated "The captain has confirmed that there are no more seats in economy, but there is one in first class. It is our company policy to never move a person from economy to first class, but being that it would be some sort of scandal to
force a person to sit next to an UNPLEASANT person, the captain agreed to make the switch to first class."

Before the irate Muslim man could say anything, the attendant gestured to the elderly woman and said, "Therefore, ma-am, if you would so kindly retrieve your personal items, we would like to move you to the comfort of first class as the captain doesn't want you to sit next to an unpleasant person."

Passengers in the seats nearby began to applaud while some gave a standing ovation.

It sounds true because I can easily image a Moo-slime man acting this way. Remember, they want us to be tolerant of their religion, but refuse to reciprocate. It is illegal to have a Bible in Saudi Arabia. Imagine their outrage if we outlawed Korans in the US. They call Jews "apes" and "monkeys" but take umbrage if we make fun of them and draw cartoons of their insane pedophile founder, Mohamed (piss be upon him).

Snopes says it is false. Yeah, I know, Snopes is run by rat bastard commies and they're not totally reliable anymore, but as I told Pres, think this through. If this did happen, the Moo-slime assholes at CAIR would have called for the boycott of the airline involved in this. They would also have sued the airline by now.

The LSM would have covered this and lectured us on our lack of tolerance for Islam which, as we all know by now because we have been told this over and over again, Islam is a "religion of peace".

We would have also been told that the flight attendant and the captain had been sent to sensitivity and diversity training.

Jug Hussein Ears Downgrade would have told us that the flight attendant and the captain "acted stupidly". He would also have given another Moo-slime outreach speech where he would once again talk about how Moo-slimes contributed to the United States throughout our history like he said in his "historic speech" to the Moo-slime world that he gave in Cairo.

Since none of the above happened, this story is obviously false. It does have a nice happy ending though, doesn't it?

Ask Mooch-elle

So the geniuses at the White House (I'll bet Mooch-elle hates that name since she seems to hate things associated with white like, yannow, white people), have created a Twitter hashtag, #AskMichelle and it seems to be doing about as well as all of their other forays into the Twitterverse.

Yeah, she's butt ugly, but watch the video anyway and don't drink any liquids while doing so. I am not responsible for any destroyed keyboards or displays.

Monday Pun 5-14-2012

From Richard, who's still on a road trip with his dad.

A young man had been working as a bag boy in a supermarket for several years. One day the supermarket got new orange juice machines.

The bag boy was excited and asked the manager if he could work the juice machines. But the manager turned him down.

The bag boy complained, "But I've been working here for five years! Why can't I run the juice machine?"

The manager said, "I'm sorry, ...

Hitler's Pissed Again

Yep! He's pissed that Oblamebush's poll numbers have dropped after the George Clooney fund raiser. This was sent to me by someone who wishes to remain anonymous.

Sunday Metal

Wade sent me this Navy Tribute.

I pretty much hated my time in the Navy. I have never dealt well with authority. Not a good fit for the military. It's prolly a good thing I wound up in the Gator Navy so I could get away with a lot of bullshit, which I did. Also, being on a small ship, I worked on everything from radar to comm gear, even though I was an ETN which is communications. Had I been on a carrier, I would have prolly specialized and only worked on one or two products. I do wish I could have seen flight ops on a carrier. Being there is a lot different than seeing it on a video.

That being said, the Navy was good for me. After I got out of ET school, I spent all my time in Westpac. As such, I did get to visit a lot of places like Hong Kong, Bangkok, Japan (Yokosuka and Sasebo), Subic Bay (Ron told me that Subic is now a big tourist area), Hawaii, Korea, Okinawa, and, of course, Viet Nam. From the sparkling beaches of Vung Tau (with the huge pile of garbage nearby) to beautiful Cua Viet and places in between. We even got to take two cruises up the beautiful Bassac River where we took supplies up to the station ships that supported PBR's. The dudes on the PBR's were crazy! That was nice with the concussion grenades thrown in the river every 20 minutes to discourage divers from planting mines. Our sister ship had a mine go off under the compartment where the Operations Division slept. That meant when we went up the river, we went into battle berthing, so I got to move from Ops over to the deck apes compartment. Nothing like experiencing a little diversity.

The Navy gave me valuable experience in troubleshooting electronics gear of all types. Then, after I got out, I got to go to college on the GI Bill. All of that helped me get a job with IBM. Worked there for 31.5 years. I took advantage of every savings program IBM offered. I was in the stock program for my entire career and I contributed the maximum amount of 10% of my pay. Bought stock at a 15% discount. For every $85 I put in, IBM essentially put in $15. That's an ROI of 17.6%. I often asked coworkers why they weren't in the stock plan. The answer was that they couldn't afford it. WTF? Can't afford free money? That's one of the reasons I'm a SRF and they aren't.

That's enough from me. Enjoy the video.

Saturday Guitar

A little Bizet today.

Saturday Blonde Joke

This one is from Rick, a new reader from Illinois.

Two blondes were walking through the woods when they came upon some tracks. They stopped and the first blonde says, ”Oh, look! Deer tracks!” The second blonde says, “No, silly. Those are bear tracks!” While they stood there arguing, a train came along and ran them over.

Saturday Boobage 5-12-2012

Went way back into the boobage files and stumbled upon this girl.

AOTW 5-11-2012

It would be easy to use my fall back choice and give it to Jug Hussein Ears Downgrade for his "evolution" on gay marriage that I think he was forced into by Smokin Joe Gaffmeister Biden who blurted out that he was for it, but he's the default selection every week. If I can't find a bigger asshole he's waiting on deck for the inevitable award. Once again, someone stepped up to take the award from him. Who you might ask? Well, howza 'bout Hollywood limousine liberal George Clooney who held a fundraiser in his home for Oblamebush.

Yep. A bunch of clueless Hollywood celebs paid $40K to attend a fundraiser in Clooney's home, or, to be more precise, in a tend at George's home. Robin Williams once said that cocaine was God's way of saying you make too much money. I would disagree. Paying $40K to attend a fundraiser for the SCoaMF and listening to him drone on about how great he and his policies are is a way of proving you have too much money.

Turns out the monetary results were a bit misleading.

The truth is about half of the $15 million publicly attributed to the Clooney event came from the online raffle that saw two female donors end up in the back of the tent Thursday night with their husbands.

Congrats George. I think this is your first AOTW Award.

Obungler's Evolution

Well isn't that special? Jug Hussein Ears Downgrades position on gay marriage has evolved. Just to make this clear. Republicans flip-flop. Dimocrats evolve. Are we clear on that?

Yannow, I don't really give a flying evolution. This is just another distraction (Hey look! There's Elvis!) to take our minds off what a miserable failure this guy is.

The economy sucks. People are out of work. Gas prices are still double what they were when this Oblamebush took office. Yeah. If I were he, I would like to change the subject and talk about gay marriage, especially when it makes the LSM swoon over how brave he is that his beliefs have evolved and he now supports gay marriage.

So now he thinks Lance and Larry can get married. That's gonna bring in that coveted gay vote. He better hope that Lance and Larry (or their female equivalents) aren't gonna vote their wallets (or purses) since gays are suffering from the bum economy as well as straight people.

The Arab Spring is slowly growing into a Winter of discontent as the Moo-slime Brotherhood appears to be the winner. Jimmah Carter watched and did nothing as the mad mullahs took over Iran and further showed his impotence in the Iran hostage crises. It looks like Obummer is down with that. But that doesn't really matter anyway since his evolution is complete and he now supports gay marriage.

Hoo-rah! The Republic has been saved! All our problems are over. Low GDP growth? No problem. Obozo supports gay marriage. Massive deficits? Who cares? Oboner supports gay marriage. High unemployment? Nah. No problemo! He supports gay marriage.

I know that I'll sleep better tonight. We're saved! All is well. His evolution is complete.