Got a spare million dollars?

CMBlake links to one of the coolest things I have seen in a while, and I know just where I'd put it.  I just need about a million and change.  Anyone out there feeling rich?

How not to write a judicial decision

Presented by one Judge Sumi, or as someone described her (and I don't know where, but it rocked), Delores Umbridge.

If Sumi expects to have her decisions upheld by the state Supreme Court, perhaps she should take care to write them properly in the first place.   She will have trouble explaining how she justified interfering with the publication of  law in defiance with Wisconsin precedent, and I doubt that the Supreme Court will give her three tries to get that right.  Furthermore, her commentary about the legislature’s ability to work around her won’t exactly be seen as uninterested jurisprudence, either.

Now, she's a judge, which means that she should have at least a partial grasp on the law, right?  Perhaps if she was actually worried about the law rather than enforcing a pure political action via judicial fiat, it wouldn't have taken her three tries to get it right.  But then, this is Dane County, the home of Madison WI, a hole in Wisconsin surrounded by common sense.

Manpower

Doing manpower studies at work, in order to justify our requests for more staffing up the chain.  Looking at my spreadsheet, I see that I've had a grand total of two days off this month.  Most my section isn't much better than I am.  A good amount of travel included in there.

Next month, about the same.

This is why the military is paid on a salary.  Were we to get paid time-and-a-half like the unions, we'd eat up our entire budget in the first few months of the fiscal year.  And this is all rear-eschelon stuff here.  This isn't combat ops, which is essentially 12-16 hour days.  I'm lucky to have 10 hour days back home.  Think about that the next time a public employee union member shrieks that they want more of my money for their cushy job.

MUST! WATCH! NOW!

Memorize this, and then use it to beat clueless Leftists like a baby harp seal.

How about we boycott them?

Public employee unions circulating boycott letters to businesses in Wisconsin.  Great.  "Nice business you got there.  It'd be a shame if anything happened to it!"

Members of Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24, have begun circulating letters to businesses in southeast Wisconsin, asking them to support workers’ rights by putting up a sign in their windows.

If businesses fail to comply, the letter says, “Failure to do so will leave us no choice but (to) do a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means 'no' to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members."

I'm really getting sick of the unions here in Wisconsin.  If anything, their actions have reinforced my opinions that modern-day unions are nothing more than a group of thugs waiting for an excuse to act out.

Obama's Speech

Why do I even bother reading it?  It's blather and hot air, spewed on command.  I bet I can even break down how it sounded:  "Last month.....     (pause, head-swivel to next teleprompter)  Gaddafi's grip of fear.......  (grip of fear?  WTF is a grip of fear?)  appeared to give way........  (pause, head-swivel to next teleprompter)    to the promise of freedom."

The man is a robot.  I expect to see a string coming out of his back, with one of his speechwriters reaching out from behind a curtain and yanking on it.  Oh, and this line is a real knee slapper!

And as President, I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action.

Oh really now, President Present?

Bah.  I'm done.  Tell me when the government shuts down.

The question that keeps rattling around in my head - what does Obama get out of this?  Why Libya, when he dithered as protesters were shot in the face in Iran?

"Anarchists"

I've remarked in the past that the irony of "anarchists" rioting for more government was a constant source of amusement for me.  Nice to see that I wasn't the first nor the last to think that people calling themselves anarchists who riot for more state power are a joke.

There' still basketball being played?

Can you tell how little I care?

Penmanship

Mine sucks.  A side-effect of all the typing vs. actual writing that I do.  My handwriting looks like the scratchings of a chicken on LSD.  Unless I'm writing with my fountain pen.  The Ragin' Mrs. got me a beautiful fountain pen for Christmas, and she remarked that the moment I started writing with it, my hand writing improved.  I had a fountain pen years ago, and used to write home when I was stationed in Korea.  My penmanship then was good, and using my fountain pen seems to bring back the muscle memory that led to that good penmanship.  There's something about writing with real ink on paper that forces you to take your time and write correctly.

The Cajun remembers the fountain pens of his youth, and how they used to make you practice penmanship in school.  I can tell you from having to take sworn statements back in my MP days that penmanship has gone straight down the tubes, even when compared to my chickenscratch handwriting.  Folks, if you have kids who use nothing but a computer to type out their correspondence, get them a good pen and force them to write and use decent penmanship.  As easy as it is to use a computer, everybody uses paper and pen on a daily basis in the real world, even if it's to write "while you were out" notes.  You MUST be able to communicate with the written word.  And you might as well do it properly.

Agnus Dei

or Lamb of God.  At mass this morning I was pleasantly surprised when my priest, instead of using the over-modernized, trite, hippy-dippy sounding liturgical music, chanted both the Kyrie and Agnus Dei.






Granted, what he chanted was less formal than this, but I can't find the exact versions of the chant we used on You Tube right now.  It was wonderful to have the traditional liturgical music sung once again.