Right-wing women rock

A little something for my friends, 'cause girls, you do rock.

http://www.calgarysun.com/comment/columnists/ian_robinson/2009/10/25/11518221-sun.html

The recent election of Danielle Smith as leader of the Wildrose Alliance reminded me that among the many things I love about the libertarian/right wing are the women.

Could be our slogan: Come for the culture war ... stay for the chicks.

Right-wing women rock.

Not for us the sturdy, honest calves of the New Democrat/Green Party female, honed on eco-tourist rainforest hikes.

Those legs are often on unfortunate display, extending from a knee-length tweed skirt as hairy as the legs themselves, and end in a pair of Birkenstocks.

I have yet to see a pair of Birkenstock women's shoes that didn't look like part of the required uniform for police SWAT teams. Sensible shoes are one thing ... quite another to don a pair that look like they're meant for rappelling down the sides of buildings with a Heckler & Koch sniper rifle slung over your shoulder.

The primary reason our womenfolk are at war with the looming spectre of the nanny state is because you can't buy Jimmy Choos in a socialist paradise.

The only sensible footwear you'll find in a right-wing woman's closet are the Nike cross-trainers that go with her gym membership.

Everything else has a three-inch heel. Minimum.

Left-wing drabs recycle. Right-wing women shop -- and the government measures how much they shop every month to find out whether we're still in a recession. Basically, the world economy depends on right-wing women buying shoes.

You never hear a right-wing woman break out statistics pointing out that only 25% of elected offices in Canada are held by women, and then whining about it.

No. A right-wing woman wants to get elected, she runs for office.

If she wins, great. If she loses ... well, there's always more shoe shopping.

Left-wing women burn enormous quantities of fossil fuels to drive across the city to a farmer's market to purchase virtually the same carrot you can get at the neighbourhood Sobey's a couple of blocks from your house for half the price, all in the name of making the environment happy.

A right-wing woman hits the gym, swings past Sobey's and has dinner on the table by the time you get home ... while her left-wing counterpart is still stuck in traffic listening to Sarah McLachlan on her iPod and feeling morally superior about her carrot choices.

And when that plate of food is put in front of you by the right-wing hottie you had the good sense to marry, it will be 100% tofu-free. If you're lucky, she just remembered to buy steak and forgot about the carrot entirely.

Right-wing women have traditional families, so they want to raise them themselves ... or at the very least by a nanny they've vetted, rather than abdicating that responsibility to the state.

They know that the good life costs money ... so they're not sure why the average Canadian is handing -- on average! -- half their income to smarmy government apparatchiks who spend it mostly on stupid crap.

Our women are a genuine asset when they enter politics because they've spent their lives figuring out how to live within their family's means ... while still affording a couple of pairs of those Jimmy Choos.

Because most of them have careers and work hard, they understand the value of a dollar, allowing you a steak lifestyle on a hamburger income ... and they know they can spend their family's money more intelligently than some faceless bureaucrat with a passion for public art or totalitarian city planning.

Right-wing women are essentially libertarians ... they don't take well to being bossed around and they don't like bossing other people around unless it's to tell them they can't spend money.

If they can tell their kid he can't have the newest Xbox upgrade and make it stick ... if they can make a husband understand it makes more sense to put money in an RRSP than going to the Super Bowl with the guys every year ... if they can pull all that off, then fixing health care shouldn't be too big a stretch.

And in case you're not convinced, to indicate the utter superiority of the right-wing woman over the left-wing variant ... just turn on The View.

The left has Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg.

We've got Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

Checkmate.

Let’s ask Frank Herbert what he thinks, ay?

I saw this today on the web:

“President Barack Obama is considering a scaled-down version of the war plan advanced by his top Afghanistan commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, U.S. officials say.

Such a narrowed military mission would increase American forces to accomplish the commander's broadest goals of protecting Afghan cities and key infrastructure. But with fewer troops, the strategy likely would cut back on McChrystal's ambitious objectives, amounting to what one official described as "McChrystal Light."

So I thought, “Hey, let’s see what Frank Herbert’s novel Dune has to say about this”

“What’s the talk of Rabban in the sinks and villages?” Paul Asked
“They say they’ve fortified the graben villages to the point where you cannot harm them. They say they need only sit inside their defenses while you wear yourselves out in futile attack”
“In a word,” Paul Said, “they’re immobilized.”
“While you can go where you will,” Gurney said
“It’s a tactic I learned from you,” Paul Said. “They’ve lost the initiative, which means they’ve lost the war.”
Gurney smiled, a slow, knowing expression.
“Our enemy is exactly where I want him to be,” Paul Said

Dune was written in 1965 by Frank Hebert. The part of the book that this quote is from is called “Prophet”. Appropriate, wouldn’t you say?

Actually, what my post is about has less to do than how we got here, or shoulda/coulda/woulda, or the reality that someone who voted "present" more often than voting a straight up yes/no can't seem to make a decision, than the fact that tactically, and strategically, it's a mistake to think that we can protect certain "hard points", give up the rest of the countryside to the enemy, and think that we can secure a victory by dropping bombs from 30K feet.

Can anyone say Vietnam?

My point here is that we need to be out in the countryside, engaging the enemy in his house, taking away his sanctuaries, and eliminating his safe areas. Gee, does this sound like any other recent military actions that have been wildly successful for us? Hmmmm, let me see....How short our memory is.

Obama is running so hard from Bush, and blaming him for everything under the sun, that he and all of his Rhodes scholars can't see the lesson plan to victory right in front of them.

I thought that the key to being s successful politician was stealing other people's good ideas, calling them your own, and taking all of the credit for them. Maybe that's not how they do it in Chicago. Too bad. I may not be a smart man, but I know a smart idea when I see it.

In any event, back in 1965, as the Vietnam war was ramping up, Herbert wrote a story, and part of the story included a successful guerrilla campaign. We ignored the lesson then, and we're about to ignore it again. BTW, what's that old line about history repeating itself?

The medical experts say

That to make sure your hands are clean after going to the bathroom, you should wash with soap and water for the length of time it takes to sing Happy Birthday to yourself.

Well, after getting stared at for the last three days in our corporate bathroom, I’ve decided to screw that bullshit and go back to living with bacteria.

And I won’t even tell you what the gay guy said to me…

Afghanistan

Here’s my two cents on this issue, in case any of you were sitting around with baited breath, wondering where I stand.

If the POTUS actually takes advice from VP Biden, then, in my humble opinion, a) Obama truly is a stupendous, craven idiot, and b) we’re fucked. Joe Biden is an idiot and most of what spews forth from his pie hole should make reasonable men and women blanch.

National Security Advisor James Jones is covering his ass and his boss’s ass by criticizing McChrystal over the weekend. The quote attributed to him “Ideally, it’s better for military advice to come up through the chain of command” completely ignores the fact that McChrystal’s report was delivered weeks ago, but the White House has pushed it back and kept it tied up at the Pentagon. At least Bush had the decency to meet face to face with Petraeus when he “delivered” his report. Obama would do well to stop listening to his advisers, who are more concerned with politics and Obama’s popularity in the polls, then actually winning in AF.

Michael Yon, who I respect, speaks highly of SecDef Gates, so I’ve come to listen to what Gates has to say. When he says that advisers need to speak “candidly but privately” on strategy, hopefully that’s what happened on Air Force One when Obama and McChrystal spoke last weekend.

Why can the Obama’s jet over to Europe to try to get the Olympics for us, but he can’t get his ass over to AF to see what’s going on over there? Why, during the last week, was there more emphasis place on getting an over-priced sporting event for the US, when our men and women are dying in foreign lands and 300,000 +/- people lost their jobs in September? At least Clinton understood “it’s the economy, stupid”. I guess Obama’s too nuanced to boil anything down to such simplistic terms.

I really like this statistic that people are so fond of tossing around now “..violence levels up to 60 percent from a year ago”. Did anyone happen to adjust for the fact that we have about twice as many people in country now as we did last year? Or the fact that we’ve been taking a more aggressive approach to the enemy, moving into enemy controlled areas and engaging them on their turf? Oh no, nobody would want to actually put that much though into what’s driving the numbers. It’s like turning up the heat in your house, and then complaining that it’s hotter inside. Duh. And you guys are supposed to be the scholars running the place now? Right.

On that same line of reasoning, did anyone take into account that, quite possibly, the enemy, knowing our plans, and our weak, yellow belly underside, has taken a more aggressive approach themselves this past summer? Trying to turn our own public opinion against us? Hmmm, did anyone think that though?

What I read about coming from the administration makes me want to puke. Here’s the difference between the two administrations. Obama is having “a series of meeting to consider options for the eight-year-old war, in the face of rising casualties and souring public opinion”. Two years ago, the public pressure on the White House was so much more intense than it is now, and you couldn’t find anyone that thought we should send more troops into Iraq. Except Bush and Petraeus. Bush had two options, cut & run, or double down and send in more troops.

As the saying goes “the rest is history”. What history is Obama going to write? And how will history view the differences between these two men, and who will eventually be viewed as the better leader and President?

How to bribe auditors in 2009

We had our internal auditors in this week.

During their visit, they told me that during a spasm of cost cutting, Corporate IT took away all of the desktop printers that were scattered around in the office, and forced everyone to print to three central machines.

There’s 60 people in our corporate office. In order to save money on toner, some idiot thought it was more efficient to make everyone get up and walk to some central printing station, than to have 20 printers scattered around the office that you have to purchase toner for.

They also pulled the printers for our COO, CFO, US President and corporate counsel. I’d like to see the cost benefit analysis for that one, personally.

In any event, back to the story. I get along well with the auditors. We have everything organized for them when they arrive, we take them to lunch & dinner and we actually treat them like humans.

So after they left, I sent them this e-mail:

Hey Guys:

It was great having you up here.

Not to influence the outcome of the audit, but let’s just say that if the audit report is “favorable”, a certain something (see attached), could “show up” at your desk, with some back-door IT support to get it hooked up.

Just saying, you know? Just, ah, discussing “hypothetical scenarios” and all that.

Mike

It’s a sad, sad day when the target of your audit isn’t trying to bribe you with sex, booze, money or drugs, but instead with desktop printers. What has this mad world come to?