BengalBacker Posted November 18, 2012 Report Share Posted November 18, 2012 Got this in an email. "Winston, come into the dining room, it's time to eat," Julia yelled to her husband. "In a minute, honey, it's a tie score," he answered. Actually Winston wasn't very interested in the traditional holiday football game between Detroit and Washington .. Ever since the government passed the Civility in Sports Statute of 2017, outlawing tackle football for its "unseemly violence" and the "bad" example it sets for the rest of the world", Winston was far less of a football fan than he used to be. Two-hand touch wasn't nearly as exciting. Yet it wasn't the game that Winston was uninterested in. It was more the thought of eating another Tofu Turkey. Even though it was the best type of Veggie Meat available after the government revised the American Anti-Obesity Act of 2018, adding fowl to the list of federally-forbidden foods, (which already included potatoes, cranberry sauce, and mincemeat pie), it wasn't anything like real turkey. And ever since the government officially changed the name of "Thanksgiving Day" to "A National Day of Atonement" in 2020, to officially acknowledge the Pilgrims' historically brutal treatment of Native Americans, the holiday had lost a lot of its luster. Eating in the dining room was also a bit daunting. The unearthly gleam of government-mandated fluorescent light bulbs made the Tofu Turkey look even weirder than it actually was, and the room was always cold. Ever since Congress passed the Power Conservation Act of 2016, mandating all thermostats - which were monitored and controlled by the electric company - be kept at 68 degrees, every room on the north side of the house was barely tolerable throughout the entire winter. Still, it was good getting together with family. Or at least most of the family. Winston missed his mother, who passed on in October, when she had used up her legal allotment of life-saving medical treatment. He had had many heated conversations with the Regional Health Consortium, spawned when the private insurance market finally went bankrupt, and everyone was forced into the government health care program. And though he demanded she be kept on her treatment, it was a futile effort. "The RHC's resources are limited," explained the government bureaucrat Winston spoke with on the phone. "Your mother received all the benefits to which she was entitled. I'm sorry for your loss." Ed couldn't make it either. He had forgotten to plug in his electric car last night, the only kind available after the Anti-Fossil Fuel Bill of 2021 outlawed the use of the combustion engines - for everyone but government officials. The fifty mile round trip was about ten miles too far, and Ed didn't want to spend a frosty night on the road somewhere between here and there. Thankfully, Winston's brother, John, and his wife were flying in. Winston made sure that the dining room chairs had extra cushions for the occasion. No one complained more than John about the pain of sitting down so soon after the government-mandated cavity searches at airports, which severely aggravated his hemorrhoids. Ever since a terrorist successfully smuggled a cavity bomb onto a jetliner, the TSA told Americans the added "inconvenience" was an "absolute necessity" in order to stay "one step ahead of the terrorists." Winston's own body had grown accustomed to such probing ever since the government expanded their scope to just about anywhere a crowd gathered, via Anti-Profiling Act of 2022. That law made it a crime to single out any group or individual for "unequal scrutiny," even when probable cause was involved. Thus, cavity searches at malls, train stations, bus depots, etc., etc., had become almost routine. Almost. The Supreme Court is reviewing the statute, but most Americans expect a Court composed of six progressives and three conservatives to leave the law intact. "A living Constitution is extremely flexible", said the Court's eldest member, Elena Kagan. " Europe has had laws like this one for years. We should learn from their example," she added. Winston's thoughts turned to his own children. He got along fairly well with his 12-year-old daughter, Brittany, mostly because she ignored him. Winston had long ago surrendered to the idea that she could text anyone at any time, even during Atonement Dinner. Their only real confrontation had occurred when he limited her to 50,000 texts a month, explaining that was all he could afford. She whined for a week, but got over it. His 16-year-old son, Jason, was another matter altogether. Perhaps it was the constant bombarding he got in public school that global warming, the bird flu, terrorism, or any of a number of other calamities were "just around the corner", but Jason had developed a kind of nihilistic attitude that ranged between simmering surliness and outright hostility. It didn't help that Jason had reported his father to the police for smoking a cigarette in the house, an act made criminal by the Smoking Control Statute of 2018, which outlawed smoking anywhere within 500 feet of another human being. Winston paid the $5,000 fine, which might have been considered excessive before the American dollar became virtually worthless as a result of QE13. The latest round of quantitative easing the federal government initiated was, once again, to "spur economic growth." This time, they promised to push unemployment below its years-long rate of 18%, but Winston was not particularly hopeful. Yet the family had a lot for which to be thankful, Winston thought, before remembering it was a Day of Atonement. At least, he had his memories. He felt a twinge of sadness when he realized his children would never know what life was like in the Good Old Days, long before government promises to make life "fair for everyone" realized their full potential. Winston, like so many of his fellow Americans, never realized how much things could change when they didn't happen all at once, but little by little, so people could get used to them. He wondered what might have happened if the public had stood up while there was still time, maybe back around 2012, when all the real nonsense began. "Maybe we wouldn't be where we are today if we'd just said 'enough is enough' when we had the chance," he thought. Maybe so, Winston. Maybe so. Mark Twain once said: “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|Bunghole| Posted November 18, 2012 Report Share Posted November 18, 2012 Happy Day Of Atonement, everyone! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BengalBacker Posted November 18, 2012 Author Report Share Posted November 18, 2012 And soon it will be festivus! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Homer_Rice Posted November 19, 2012 Report Share Posted November 19, 2012 Lewdog must have written this. Wingnuttery at its finest. [quote]"Look at the tyranny of party -- at what is called party allegiance, party loyalty -- a snare invented by designing men for selfish purposes -- and which turns voters into chattels, slaves, rabbits, and all the while their masters, and they themselves are shouting rubbish about liberty, independence, freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, honestly unconscious of the fantastic contradiction; and forgetting or ignoring that their fathers and the churches shouted the same blasphemies a generation earlier when they were closing their doors against the hunted slave, beating his handful of humane defenders with Bible texts and billies, and pocketing the insults and licking the shoes of his Southern master." [url="http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/13/mark-twain-has-been-gone-100-years-but-his-political-wisdom-end/"]Mark Twain[/url][/quote] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|kennethmw| Posted November 19, 2012 Report Share Posted November 19, 2012 I'd have to say that that's pretty stupid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T-Dub Posted November 22, 2012 Report Share Posted November 22, 2012 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Khatmandude Posted November 23, 2012 Report Share Posted November 23, 2012 OMG I'm so scared! What Homer posted is so fitting.....unfortunately. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
|Lucid| Posted December 17, 2012 Report Share Posted December 17, 2012 [quote name='kennethmw' timestamp='1353342440' post='1182383'] I'd have to say that that's pretty stupid. [/quote] [quote name='T-Dub' timestamp='1353585736' post='1183275'] [/quote] [quote name='IKOTA' timestamp='1353694389' post='1183513'] OMG I'm so scared! What Homer posted is so fitting.....unfortunately. [/quote] Yep Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sois Posted December 17, 2012 Report Share Posted December 17, 2012 [quote name='kennethmw' timestamp='1353342440' post='1182383'] I'd have to say that that's pretty stupid. [/quote] Yup. Someone can easily write a stupid doomsday hypothetical story about the other side. It's just as gay as this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BengalBacker Posted January 28, 2013 Author Report Share Posted January 28, 2013 Wow, I forgot about this right after I posted it. You guys are right, it's stupid. [url="http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/8886528/president-barack-obama-not-sure-allow-son-play-football"]http://espn.go.com/n...n-play-football[/url] WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama says he's a football fan but that if he had a son, considering the impact the game has on its players, he would think long and hard before allowing his son to play. Obama tells The New Republic that football fans are going to have to wrestle with the fact that the game will probably change over time to try to reduce the violence. The president says that some of those changes might make football, in his words, "a bit less exciting" but that it will be much better for players. "And those of us who are fans maybe won't have to examine our consciences quite as much," he said. The interview appears in the Feb. 11 issue of The New Republic. Obama says he worries more about college players than those in the NFL because the pros have a union, are well-paid and are grown men. "They can make some of these decisions on their own, and most of them are well-compensated for the violence they do to their bodies," Obama said of NFL players. "You read some of these stories about college players who undergo some of these same problems with concussions and so forth and then have nothing to fall back on. That's something that I'd like to see the NCAA think about." NFL spokesman Greg Aiello responded Sunday: "We have no higher priority than player health and safety at all levels of the game." [url="http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/31/bloombergs-soda-ban-and-other-sweeping-health-measures-in-new-york-city/"]http://healthland.ti...-new-york-city/[/url][list] [*]2002: Bloomberg banned public smoking in the city’s bars and restaurants, following the lead of cities like Aspen, Colo., Beverly Hills and San Luis Obispo, Calif., which were the first to bar patrons from lighting up in restaurants and other enclosed public places [*]2005: At the mayor’s urging, New York became the first city to force restaurants and other food vendors to phase out the use of artificial [url="http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2F2007a%2Fpr091-07.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1"]trans fats[/url], which have been linked to obesity and heart disease. The initiative inspired other cities, including Philadelphia and San Francisco, to pass trans-fat bans of their own. Now entire counties and states are considering regulations that would take the fats out of their food. [*]2008: New York became the first city to pass a law requiring food service providers to post [url="http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pr2008/pr066-08.shtml"]calorie counts[/url] on menus. Seattle and other cities subsequently passed similar laws, and a federal law requiring any restaurant chain with more than 20 locations to publish calorie counts on their menus went into effect this year. [*]2010: In his first swipe at the soda industry, Bloomberg proposed barring people from using [url="http://healthland.time.com/2010/10/07/nyc-mayor-bloombergs-new-proposal-no-food-stamps-for-soda/"]food stamps to purchase sugary sodas[/url]. The U.S. Department of Agriculture rejected the proposal saying it would be too difficult to enforce. [*]2010: Bloomberg urged state legislators to pass a soda tax that would allow the state to collect an additional penny per ounce of sugared soda sold; it failed to pass. [*]2011: The mayor [url="http://healthland.time.com/2011/05/23/new-york-citys-outdoor-smoking-ban-takes-effect/"]banned smoking[/url] in most outdoor areas in the city, including public parks, plazas and beaches. San Jose, Calif., adopted a similar ban this year, and Boulder, Colo., policy makers are also considering limiting smoking outdoors. [*]Salt is also on the mayor’s hit list. He wants packaged food makers and restaurants to [url="http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2F2010a%2Fpr179-10.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1"]reduce sodium by 25%[/url] in an effort to lower rates of high blood pressure and heart disease. [/list] [url="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/27/light-bulb-ban-on-horizon/"]http://www.washingto...ban-on-horizon/[/url] The free market operates by offering incentives to consumers to change their behavior. Cutting prices, advertising and developing new products redirect the public’s impulses in a natural, painless way. The government, on the other hand, has no passion or patience for this sort of thing. Words like “must,” “shall,” and “mandate” pepper the texts of laws like Obamacare. The incandescent light-bulb ban, which goes into effect in March, is another case in point. The bulbs aren’t officially banned, just artificially obsolete. As part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, [url="http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/congress/"]Congress[/url] mandated that light bulbs have 25 percent greater efficiency, phased in starting in 2012 and continuing until 2014. The law also includes a slew of mandates on appliances and energy use in federal buildings. A 310-page masterpiece of micromanagement, the law was promoted heavily by then-House Speaker [url="http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/nancy-pelosi/"]Nancy Pelosi[/url], San Francisco Democrat, and signed by President [url="http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/george-bush/"]George W. Bush[/url]. The bill was driven by a consortium of manufacturers that stand to profit from forcing people to buy more expensive bulbs and fixtures, plus the environmental lobby, which likes to pretend government regulations can lower the planet’s temperature. Alarmed at the prospect of being forced by law to purchase expensive, squiggly compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs instead of cheap, warm incandescent bulbs, Americans complained loudly. In the face of a popular revolt, [url="http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/congress/"]Congress[/url] pushed the start date back to October 2012 and defunded enforcement of efficiency standards as part of the 2012 and 2013 appropriations bills. However, seeing the writing on the wall, manufacturers began phasing out incandescents. The last major [url="http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/general-electric-factory/"]General Electric factory[/url] that made them closed in Winchester, Va., in September 2010, putting 200 people out of work. One hundred-watt bulbs are already gone in some stores. Part of the resistance to the CFL bulbs, most of which are made in China, stems from the fact that they contain mercury. The [url="http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/environmental-protection-agency/"]Environmental Protection Agency[/url] had to create a suggested regimen to deal with the extreme hazard of broken fluorescents. The first step is to have people and pets leave the room, which then must be aired out for five to 10 minutes by opening a window or door to the outdoor environment. Next, any central-air heating or air-conditioning system must be shut down. Homeowners then must collect materials needed to clean up the broken bulb. [url="http://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/environmental-protection-agency/"]EPA[/url] warns, “Vacuuming is not recommended unless broken glass remains after all other cleanup steps have been taken. Vacuuming could spread mercury-containing powder or mercury vapor.” There’s much more, including recycling directions. A shattered incandescent bulb, by contrast, can just be tossed in a garbage bin without triggering an environmental calamity. Some consumers like the trendy fluorescent light bulbs despite the cited risks and expense. Others prefer the cheap, safe bulbs that don’t have to be recycled and were made in America. Forcing everyone to use only government-approved bulbs is classic overreach. Whose bright idea was that? [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV-05TLiiLU[/media] [url="http://www.epi.org/publication/green-energy-investments-fossil-fuel-subsidies/"]http://www.epi.org/p...fuel-subsidies/[/url] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSJT35pwqAE[/media] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvOL6JysNwk[/media] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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