30 Rocks in His Head?

I’m sure most have heard of the case of Alec Baldwin versus American Airlines. Where Mr. Baldwin was removed from a flight for refusing to turn off his electronic game despite repeatedly being told it was against FAA regulations. Now, I’m not here to discuss the factual nature of the regulation and whether or not is does interfere with cockpit equipment or even the fact that a grown (?) man threw a hissy fit over a video game. Nor will I point out the possible hypocrisy of Mr. Baldwin visa-vie his well published scolding of his daughter for being rude. No, my thoughts go to the political position Mr. Baldwin has always espoused and the nature of regulations in general.

Mr. Baldwin is a proud liberal. Liberals in general appear to believe that if we just put enough rules in place we will all lead happy, safe, warm, comfortable lives. Rules, laws, and regulations are the hallmark of any liberal group. The occupy crowd wishes to have greater regulation over wall street. The recent democratic led congress believed we didn’t need to allow failing banks to fail, but to prop them up with a new bevy or rules and regulations. With any disaster, man-made or natural, the liberal solution is always a new set of rules.

So my question: why does Mr. Baldwin, who supports such rules and regulation to make life fair for all, not follow the rules immediately and without question? Doesn’t he realize these are Federal Regulations and were put in for our safety?

C to Shining C

I find it interesting that the sexual harassment charges against Herman Cain occurred during that brief window of history between the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings and Bill Clinton's la-affair Lewinsky. A time where noticing a woman’s new hair cut or commenting on her new purse could get a man fired and a company embroiled in a lawsuit. That brief moment in history when women were allowed to retreat behind the powder puff with a case of the vapors when a subject appeared that offended their delicate sensibilities. I won’t mention this time also coincided with women demanding equal acceptance in the work place, some oxymoron’s are just too difficult to comprehend without listing to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” for 24 straight hours while drinking tequila. I am just glad that famous liberal David Letterman didn’t fire a producer and give her job to a woman willing to have sex with him in this time frame; had that occurred we would have been denied all his “wonderful” attack humor on Sarah Palin.

Tax Loopholes

Two thing President Obama appears to believe: 1) That a donation being tax deductible has no bearing on the amount being donated 2) The taxes not paid on donations because they are tax deductible is tantamount to stealing from the Federal Treasury. I agree completely. To that ends I propose we stop making political donations tax deductible. With President Obama planning on spending $1 Billion on the next election that would be in the neighborhood of $250,000,000 more to the government coffers.

Obese Childrem

Harvard researchers are advocating the government must step in to help morbidly obese children due to health issues and hold parents criminally responsible for child abuse or neglect. Question: if a child is forced to eat vegetables and denied sugar at what point will this damage his self esteem and cause the parents to be held criminally responsible for child abuse or neglect? Question 2: What if the children completely refuse to eat grilled chicken, fresh vegetables, and fruit salad, would the parents be charged with child abuse for starving their children? Question 3: Would the Harvard researchers agree that people who knowingly engage in sexual activates that can lead to health issues also be held criminally responsible? After all, isn’t the issue criminal charges for behavior that can cause health issues?

Things are complicated

I have a "friend" on facebook called Chip. Chip's actually a guy I played in band with in high school, but who I haven't seen in decades, so he doesn't really qualify as a friend anymore, except in the facebook sense. Anyway, Chip runs a manufacturing company founded by his father that makes machines that have to do with making pipes. They make machines that make fintubes, whatever those are. (I get a vision of the offspring of a pipe bred with a 50s Cadillac, but I'm sure that's not right.) They also make equipment for fusing polyethylene pipe. As near as I can tell, they don't make polyethylene pipe or machines for making polyethylene pipe (unless fintubes are also polyethylene pipes), just the machines for fusing them. They seem to employ 100 or more people based on the company group photo on their website.

So what's the point? Chip's company strikes me as an outstanding example of how damn complicated our world is. Here's this company, employing dozens of people focusing on a really narrow portion of our industrial process: making machines to fuse pipes. There are pipes everywhere, of course, and fusing them is really important, if you don't want them to leak, but pipes are just devises to move fluids about. They're kind of dull. The really complicated stuff happens before or after the fluid goes into the pipe. Pipes aren't really central to anything people do with fluids, they're just a good way to get fluids from one place to another. Yet one small part of the process involved in creating these rather pedestrian devices is important enough to support a small industry. (I assume that Chip's company has competitors in the fusion machine and fintube-making machine markets.)

Multiple that by all of the other steps in the process of making pipes and you come to the the realization that the humble pipe implies a incomprehensibly complicated industrial infrastructure. I don't even want to think about the machines doing complicated things to the fluids at the end of the pipes.

I don't really have anywhere to go with this, except to say that it boggles my mind, and that anyone who claims to understand our economy is either lying or deluded.