Tag: Amusing

There is a great amount of interest in this year’s presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates — a woman and an African-American — while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party’s nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain.

Each candidate is carefully pandering to a smorgasbord of special-interest groups, ranging from gay, lesbian and transgender people to children of illegal immigrants to working mothers to evangelical Christians.

There is one group no one has recognized, and it is the group that will decide the election: the Angry White Man. The Angry White Man comes from all economic backgrounds, from dirt-poor to filthy rich. He represents all geographic areas in America, from urban sophisticate to rural redneck, deep South to mountain West, left Coast to Eastern Seaboard.

His common traits are that he isn’t looking for anything from anyone — just the promise to be able to make his own way on a level playing field. In many cases, he is an independent businessman and employs several people. He pays more than his share of taxes and works hard.

The victimhood syndrome buzzwords — “disenfranchised,” “marginalized” and “voiceless” — don’t resonate with him. “Press ‘one’ for English” is a curse-word to him. He’s used to picking up the tab, whether it’s the company Christmas party, three sets of braces, three college educations or a beautiful wedding.

He believes the Constitution is to be interpreted literally, not as a “living document” open to the whims and vagaries of a panel of judges who have never worked an honest day in their lives.

The Angry White Man owns firearms, and he’s willing to pick up a gun to defend his home and his country. He is willing to lay down his life to defend the freedom and safety of others, and the thought of killing someone who needs killing really doesn’t bother him.

The Angry White Man is not a metrosexual, a homosexual or a victim. Nobody like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina — he got his people together and got the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a volunteer firefighter.

His last name and religion don’t matter. His background might be Italian, English, Polish, German, Slavic, Irish, or Russian, and he might have Cherokee, Mexican, or Puerto Rican mixed in, but he considers himself a white American.

He’s a man’s man, the kind of guy who likes to play poker, watch football, hunt white-tailed deer, call turkeys, play golf, spend a few bucks at a strip club once in a blue moon, change his own oil and build things. He coaches baseball, soccer and football teams and doesn’t ask for a penny. He’s the kind of guy who can put an addition on his house with a couple of friends, drill an oil well, weld a new bumper for his truck, design a factory and publish books. He can fill a train with 100,000 tons of coal and get it to the power plant on time so that you keep the lights on and never know what it took to flip that light switch.

Women either love him or hate him, but they know he’s a man, not a dishrag. If they’re looking for someone to walk all over, they’ve got the wrong guy. He stands up straight, opens doors for women and says “Yes, sir” and “No, ma’am.”

He might be a Republican and he might be a Democrat; he might be a Libertarian or a Green. He knows that his wife is more emotional than rational, and he guides the family in a rational manner.

He’s not a racist, but he is annoyed and disappointed when people of certain backgrounds exhibit behavior that typifies the worst stereotypes of their race. He’s willing to give everybody a fair chance if they work hard, play by the rules and learn English.

Most important, the Angry White Man is pissed off. When his job site becomes flooded with illegal workers who don’t pay taxes and his wages drop like a stone, he gets righteously angry. When his job gets shipped overseas, and he has to speak to some incomprehensible idiot in India for tech support, he simmers. When Al Sharpton comes on TV, leading some rally for reparations for slavery or some such nonsense, he bites his tongue and he remembers. When a child gets charged with carrying a concealed weapon for mistakenly bringing a penknife to school, he takes note of who the local idiots are in education and law enforcement.

He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is who she is. It’s the liberal victim groups she panders to, the “poor me” attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who refuse to do anything for themselves.

There are many millions of Angry White Men. Four million Angry White Men are members of the National Rifle Association, and all of them will vote against Hillary Clinton, just as the great majority of them voted for George Bush.

He hopes that she will be the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, and he will make sure that she gets beaten like a drum.

Original Artical

Back in my school days, February was an important month not just because it included the eagerly-anticipated Valentine’s Day, but because even though it was the shortest month of the year, it contained two (count ’em: two) holidays for which schools were closed: Lincoln’s Birthday (February 12) and Washington’s Birthday (February 22). Two school-free days for the kids, two days off for working parents, and terrific bargains on bedding, linen, and towels at department store white sales. What wasn’t to like about February?

Nowadays, though, many of us, whether we be employees or students, don’t get any weekdays off at all in February, or we’re offered a single holiday that falls on the third Monday in February and is neither Lincoln’s nor Washington’s Birthday but some hybrid known as “Presidents’ Day.” What happened to our traditional February holidays? And just what the heck are we commemorating on “Presidents’ Day”?

Some of us think we’re observing George Washington’s Birthday (perpetually moved to more convenient Monday dates since 1971), some of us think we’re celebrating the combined birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln (two formerly separate holidays smushed into one), and some of us think we’re honoring the memory of all U.S. presidents past and present. Which is it?

Throughout the 19th century, George Washington was the towering figure of U.S. history to the American public. In honor of the man who commanded the Continental Army and led the American colonies to victory in the Revolutionary War, served as first President of the United States of America, and earned the sobriquet “The Father of Our Country,” Washington’s Birthday, February 22, was celebrated with more patriotic fervor than any holiday save the Fourth of July. Accordingly, the observance of Washington’s Birthday was made official in 1885 when President Chester Alan Arthur signed a bill establishing it as a federal holiday. (Washington was actually born on February 11, 1732, under the Julian calendar in effect at the time he was born, but his birth date is reckoned as February 22 under the Gregorian calendar which was adopted in 1752.)

However, the seeds of confusion were sown in 1968 with the passage of a piece of legislation known as Uniform Holidays Bill, intended to create more three-day weekends for federal employees by moving the observance of three federal holidays (Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, and Veterans Day) from fixed calendar dates to designated Mondays, and by establishing Columbus Day (also to be observed on a Monday) as a new federal holiday. Under this act, from 1971 onwards the observance date of Washington’s Birthday would be relocated from February 22 to the third Monday in February. (Oddly enough, this change guaranteed that Washington’s Birthday would never again be celebrated on his “actual” birthday of February 22, as the third Monday in February cannot fall any later than February 21.)

So far, so good. The date of observance of Washington’s Birthday might have been tinkered with a bit, but the holiday was still undeniably “Washington’s Birthday.” So what happened to Lincoln’s Birthday? And whence came “Presidents’ Day”?

The concept of combining Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays into one holiday called “President’s Day” was floated as far back as the early 1950s, as the New York Times noted in 1968:

The first uniform Monday holiday plan was promulgated by NATO [the National Association of Travel Organizations] in the early 1950’s. It called for combining Washington’s and Lincoln’s Birthdays into a single President’s Day, to be celebrated the third Monday in February, and shifting Memorial Day to the fourth Monday in May, Independence Day to the first Monday in July and Veterans Day to the second Monday in November.

This initial effort met with sporadic success in a few states. But after several years of attempting to get the individual states to adopt uniform Monday holidays, it became apparent that a Federal bill was needed to serve as an example for state action.

Although early efforts to implement a Uniform Holidays Bill in 1968 also proposed moving the observance of Washington’s Birthday to the third Monday in February and renaming the holiday “President’s Day,” the passed version of the bill provided only for the former. The official designation of the federal holiday observed on the third Monday of February is, and always has been, Washington’s Birthday.

President Nixon is frequently identified as the party responsible for changing Washington’s Birthday into President’s Day and fostering the notion that it is a day for commemorating all U.S. Presidents, a feat he supposedly achieved by issuing a proclamation on 21 February 1971 which declared the third Monday in February to be a “holiday set aside to honor all presidents, even myself.” This claim stems not from fact, however, but from a newspaper spoof. Actually, presidential records indicate that Nixon merely issued an Executive Order (11582) on 11 February 1971 defining the third Monday of February as a holiday, and the announcement of that Executive Order identified the day as “Washington’s Birthday.”

Washington’s Birthday has become Presidents’ Day (or President’s Day, or even Presidents Day; the usage is inconsistent) for many of us because federal holidays technically apply only to persons employed by the federal government (and the District of Columbia). Individual state governments do not have to observe federal holidays — most of them generally do (and most private employers and school districts follow suit), but federal and state holiday observances can differ. For example, former Confederate states have observed several holidays not recognized at a federal level (such as June 3, Jefferson Davis Day), and controversial Arizona governor Ev Mecham drew headlines in 1987 when one of his first official acts upon inauguration was to rescind an Executive Order issued by the previous governor that had established the Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. (a federal holiday) as an Arizona state holiday.

Although Lincoln’s Birthday had never been designated as a federal holiday, it was observed as a state holiday in many parts of the country. However, after additional federal holidays were created for Columbus Day and the Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. (in 1971 and 1986, respectively), some states dropped the observance of Lincoln’s Birthday as a separate holiday in order to maintain a fixed number of paid holidays per year. (And, of course, some states never observed Lincoln’s Birthday in the first place.) As a result, we now have a hodgepodge of state holiday schedules in the USA: some states still observe Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays as separate holidays, some states observe only Washington’s Birthday, some states commemorate both with a single Presidents’ Day (or Lincoln-Washington Day), and some states celebrate neither. And there are odd exceptions such as Alabama, which has designated the third Monday in February as a day commemorating both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, even though Jefferson was born in April. (A few states have even moved their observances of Washington’s Birthday, Lincoln’s Birthday, and Presidents’ Day to November or December in order to lengthen the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday periods without creating additional paid holidays.)

An attempt to clear up some of this confusion at the federal level was made through the introduction of the ‘Washington-Lincoln Recognition Act of 2001’ (HR 420) to Congress in 2001. The bill proposed that “the legal public holiday known as Washington’s Birthday shall be referred to by that name and no other by all entities and officials of the United States Government” and requested “that the President issue a proclamation each year recognizing the anniversary of the birth of President Abraham Lincoln and calling upon the people of the United States to observe such anniversary with appropriate ceremonies and activities,” but it failed to clear subcommittee and died without ever being voted upon.

Original Artical

The ship is the first of its kind in the Navy and is a standing legacy to President Bill Clinton “for his foresight in military budget cuts” and his conduct while president. The ship is constructed nearly entirely from recycled aluminum and is completely solar powered with a top speed of 5 knots. It boasts an arsenal comprised of one (unarmed) F14 Tomcat or one (unarmed) F18 Hornet aircraft which, although they cannot be launched or captured on the 100 foot flight deck, form a very menacing presence.

As a standing order there are no firearms allowed on board. The 20 person crew is completely diversified, including members of all races, creeds, sex, and sexual orientation. This crew, like the crew aboard the USS Jimmy Carter, is specially trained to avoid conflicts and appease any and all enemies of the United States at all costs!

An onboard Type One DNC Universal Translator can send out messages of apology in any language to anyone who may find America offensive. The number of apologies are limitless and though some may sound hollow and disingenuous, the Navy advises that all apologies will sound very sincere.

The ship’s purpose is not defined so much as a unit of national defense, but instead in times of conflict the USS Clinton has orders to seek refuge in Canada. The ship may be positioned near the Democratic National Party Headquarters for photo-ops and can be used extensively for social experimentation and whatever other worthless jobs the ex-commander-in-chief and his wife can think of.

It is largely rumored that the ship will also be the set for the upcoming season of MTV’s “The Real World.”

The ship was renamed and commissioned USS William J Clinton when someone realized the USS Blowfish was already taken.

Hillary Clinton gets elected President and is spending her first night in the White House. She has waited so long……….