If You're Not Outraged, You Don't Understand

There is more real pleasure to be gotten out of a malicious act, where your heart is in it, than out of thirty acts of a nobler sort.
- Mark Twain in Eruption

The Financial Times reports that about 1/3 of the funds collected by the United Nations for tsunami relief has been spent by that organization on "overhead"--about $350 million. Sweet!

That's probably not out of line for the United Nations though. The UN workers need adequate housing at the site. None of them actually stay at the site of course, they will be living (on full expenses plus a juicy per diem) in the nearest metropolitan area. For tsunami operations, that would probably be Singapore or Bangkok. You won't lose much if you bet that the majority of UN employees who travel to tsunami areas (always, always, always first class), never actually visit the site. There are important meetings and dinners to attend in the cities. They could explain it to you but you wouldn't understand.

And how would you expect them to get around once in Singapore or Bangkok? Take a Taxi maybe? Bus? You must be joking! They need cars, people. And drivers. I've never seen a UN logo on anything except a Mercedes or a Land Rover. New ones. And they need clothing suited for the operation, all new.

A successful (successful = makes money, grows, retains and trains, etc) American enterprise that actually builds products or provides useful services that people pay actual money that they've earned for, generally establish 7% of revenues as a good target for overhead. It depends on the industry, of course but that's a fair number. (Oh, and the percentage doesn't go up with more revenues, the percentage remains the same.) A good BS artist will manage to get away with spending 9% for a while. Spend more and his bonus gets impacted. Edge up over 12% and he can expect to get moved off the line and into staff where he'll be teed up for that next "reorganization" rightsizing exercise.

But we're talking about the UN here which is the best example of how diversity works in this "Can't We All Just Get Along" politically- correct world we have. Africans have been in charge of the corner office at the UN since 1992. Outside of Africa (with the possible exception of the UN), corruption and graft are in their infancy. Not one African country is excepted. Every single one is managed by thugs, crooks, incompetents and criminals. No exception.

So where bettter to look for a manager for the world body that we want to put up as an example of how a diverse world should manage itself but Africa! And lets not expect the same performance from Africans as we do from anyone else. Lets excuse their excesses, their inabilities and their incompetence. Even their criminality. After all, they are Africans and as such, require a helping hand. Because they are not as developed as we are and it is our burden to tolerate inadequacy. Isn't it? If we treat them as competent and honest, maybe they will become that way. Through osmosis. There will be a quantum leap in ability if we only say its so. If we feeeeeeel hard enough.

I hope that if questions raised by the high expenses of tsunami relief are ever put to the UN formally and in a public forum, that the United Nations' official response is given by Mr. Jan Egeland, the UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator.

The same Jan Egeland who said that Americans were a stingy people for not giving up more for tsunami relief.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRosett/?id=110007736

As Niels Bohr famously said about quantum theory: anyone who is not outraged by it clearly doesn't understand it.

I Used To Get Mad at My School

I do not like work even when someone else does it.
-Mark Twain "The Lost Napoleon"

President Bush's recent decision to bitch-slap Harry Reid and the braying Democrats in public has resulted in an impressive increase in his popularity among registered voters. Evidently we like a stand-up guy and the rope-a-dope strategy wasn't working. While he had not sunk to the depths that President Lovetrousers had at a similar point in his tenure, he was flailing around somewhere in the lower thirties. The latest ABC poll shows him at 47% approval and moving up.

In a recent New York Times/CNN poll, a survey of registered mid- and top-level al Queda members who are still among the living, shows a job approval rating for Democrats at 91%, with 8% saying that Senate Democrats could improve, and one percent "not sure".

On Yer Bikes !

Of all the kinds of sexual intercourse, this has least to recommend it. As an amusement it is too fleeting, as an occupation it is too wearing; as a public exhibition there is no money in it.

It has, in our last day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence--among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged only in private--though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo upon the fundamental sigh.
- Mark Twain, Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism speech, 1879


The New York Transit Workers and their Labor Union are edging towards a strike in The City. And well they should. Somebody needs to speak truth to power, Right On!

Starting salaries for operators is an insulting $53,000/year. Before overtime. Cops and firefighters start at about $25 grand, but they don't have to work underground in those inhumane, cavelike conditions, deal with the surly public, or spend their working hours buzzed on dope and running over small children.

In the week following the firing of the Air Traffic Controllers by President Reagan, there were 45,000 applications for 11,000 openings. But that was under Reagan. Not a Bloomenegger RINO.

Power to the Correct People!

Beating The Rush

I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot and kill him.
- Autobiography of Mark Twain

The current price of $1.97 for gasoline notwithstanding, I would like to be among the first to get my licks in at the vicious and criminal oil companies who are planning to raise the prices of home heating oil this winter.

I don't wish to save my complaint until the last minute when every little grouch without a propane space heater will have piled on the bandwagon, moaning and cursing the loathsome Exxon-Mobil, because by then, gripe inflation will have set in and the value of my crankiness will have devalued by some amount. Dissatisfaction also has a net present value and I am a value investor.

Pop Quiz : Using what you've learned from your readings this semester, and in fifty words or less, answer this question:

Why don't the oil companies just raise the price of heating oil in the summer when it won't be so noticeable? And don't be boring and say "greed". Greed is not a factor in this equation. Actually it is a factor of course, but (speaking from experience), greed is a constant with the oil companies. They are not more greedy today than they were last year or even last summer. Greed is a net wash.

Keep your eyes on your own paper and do your own work.

I Vote

I have no race prejudices, and I think I have no color prejudices or caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is that a man is a human being--that is enough for me; he can't be any worse.
- Mark Twain "Concerning the Jews"

The New York Times today reports that America ranks sixth in the world in the number of journalists jailed. This is disgraceful. There is no excuse for it. Not one excuse.

Of the 227 countries, we are the third largest in terms of population. Not sixth.

We spend huge amounts of our tax and treasure to ensure we are well policed from sea to felonious sea. We spare nothing for our boys in blue. We have law enforcement agencies ranked first in the world for technology, equipment and training. Not sixth. First.

And we have, by far, the most media outlets. The Texas Media Index lists sixty pages of media outlets for the city of Houston alone. We have the most newspapers and the most newspapers per capita than any other country in the world. We are number one in this regard. Not number six. Number one.

And the best we can do in terms of journalists jailed is sixth? It makes me want to vomit. The Ronnie Earles of this world would much rather spend their time indicting Congressmen and shaking down little old blue haired ladies at the airport for their knitting needles than to invest in the tough police work which results in getting journalists out of the city room.

I'll be voting.

Por Todo el Mundo, ...y Parte de Bolivia

Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.
- Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Wonderful news from the Southern hemisphere greets us this beautiful morning: Evo Morales has won the election in Bolivia! There are a number of reasons this is good news for us here but off the top of my head, here are just a few:

1. Morales campaigned on the promise that he would make
Bolivia "America's worst nightmare." So no longer must we worry about nuclear devices being smuggled into our cities through our porous ports. Gone are the logistical and cultural problems dealing with the hordes of underprivileged streaming across our southern borders or lashing themselves to inner tubes to wash up on our shores...about a million a year apparently. No more foreign entanglements with primitives. Maintaining economic growth will be a worry we won't have. Our very worst scenario will be dealing (or not!) with a tin pot lefty from a two bit country. Now that's a hell of a Christmas present.

2. And there are immediate financial incentives too. No need to look further for savings to fund the tax cuts for the most wealthy of us here. About ten billion is suddenly on the table. Talk about windfall profits!
http://www.iisec.ucb.edu.bo/papers/2001-2005/iisec-dt-2003-10.htm

3. Every few years, the stoned denizens of the fantasy world of the latino left need a new cautionary tale and why not Bolivia? It's fresh, it's got the Indian piece for color, and Bolivia is exotic enough to be amusing for fifteen minutes. Fidel took Cuba from highest GDP in Latin America to last. Argentina had the sixth highest standard of living in the world before Peron. Allende and Danny are a big snooze. We need a new drug and Evo is going to legalize the cultivation of coca.

I find it dryly humorous whenever the strutting poseur of day,
Hugito, Lula or this new clown, threaten to use oil as a weapon against us. I wish they would, just once, make my day and refuse to sell us any oil. OH please...oh please!

Look, like 99% of all Americans, I couldn't care less who the
president of Bolivia (or any other country, for that matter) is or what his agenda might be. If he wants to drag his people back to the stone age (they're pretty close already), if he wants to govern with voudou, if he wants the women there to dress up like batman or to wear plants for clothing, or if he just wants to create headlines in order to make a name for himself, just dial 1-800-I-DON'T-CARE. Just so long as he keeps the miserable little world he builds over there and doesn't attempt to export it to me.

People get the government they deserve. Good luck to them.