The American Dream, RIP

 I think the death got started in the 70's. The Carter economy was almost as bad as Bush 1 and 2's economy.
While the economy improved under Reagan, during the 80's the country began to hemorrhage manufacturing jobs. Then job loss part deux during the 90's and 2000's, as a lot of office people wound up out of work when their jobs got outsourced. The media was very blase and repeated ad nauseum "They'll just have to go back to school and learn a new skill". As if it's easy for someone who already went through 4 years of college and was then supporting a family to shit out that kind of money for another 4 year degree.
 Recently the media has gotten its comeuppance. People have been leaving #learntocode comments on media people who have been laid off's social media pages, as now it is their turn to feel some hard times.
 So during this time period where manufacturing pretty much died in the U.S. and office jobs got outsourced, housing prices went up, and up, and up, and up and up, WAY beyond the inflation rate.

  As you see from the chart, rents also rose concurrently so everyone has taken the hit. Other than CEO's, no ones salary has kept up with housing cost increases.
 A HUGE part of the american dream was owning a house. Up to the mid 70's even someone with a high school diploma could eventually realize that dream, as there were decent paying manufacturing jobs. You know, the ones the politicians told us we don't need anymore. Some still do realize that dream, but a lot of people won't.

Fuck off Google and E.U.

So I went to my blogger page and saw this...

European Union laws require you to give European Union visitors information about cookies used and data collected on your blog. In many cases, these laws also require you to obtain consent. As a courtesy, we have added a notice on your blog to explain Google's use of certain Blogger and Google cookies, including use of Google Analytics and AdSense cookies, and other data collected by Google. You are responsible for confirming this notice actually works for your blog, and that it displays. If you employ other cookies, for example by adding third party features, this notice may not work for you. If you include functionality from other providers there may be extra information collected from your users. Learn more about this notice and your responsibilities.

As a U.S. citizen I am in no way subject to E.U. laws or regulations. Being on the internet does not change that at all. I would respond to Google by stating I am in no way "responsible" for "confirmation" of whether or not your notice displays. YOU, Google, are solely responsible for ANY features you add, including notices and cookies. Do NOT try to push off any kind of legal problems you get in to with the E.U. on me, I in no way accept responsibility or liability for any of it.

Romper Room activists

 

I think we should give all these students marching for gun control some of what they want, but not how they want it. The big push seems to be to raise the age to 21 to buy a gun. OK kiddies, here ya go. Lets raise the age of adulthood to 21. So for 18-20 year olds, no more guns. No more right to vote. You can't take out a loan without parental permission. Either no drivers license, or a restricted one, no driving past 8:00PM. No joining the armed forces. If you aren't responsible enough to own a gun you certainly aren't responsible enough to crew a tank or serve on a nuclear submarine. You are not allowed to live on your own without parental permission. Your parents can still set the rules, such as how late you can stay out at night.
Don't even bother trying to argue that 18 year olds are not mature enough to own guns, but are somehow mature enough to be adults in every other way. It doesn't hold water.
I doubt any of the people marching would support raising the age of adulthood to 21. It's easy to ask others to give something up, not so much when it is you who has to make the sacrifice.

Old school peace officers vs modern day Leo's

I was thinking about the old school cops. They weren't angels, and they certainly weren't shy about laying a nightstick across someones head. But one thing they would never do is shoot little kids with toy guns because they "feared for their lives". Kids used to be able to run around with metal cap guns that went "BANG" all day long without ever worrying about a cop murdering them.
Another thing the old school cops would never do is hide outside of a building while kids inside of it were being gunned down.
Why is this behavior considered acceptable by the current police force? Since when did cops start valuing their own lives above kids? Where is the shame?
Where is the public condemnation? All I see is people screaming for more gun control. How about demanding a return of "protect and serve", instead of "law enforcement officer"?

Liberals, STFU about the police

I'm not a big cop supporter. I think they get off way too much, and have far too much power. But I'm really sick of hearing liberals complain about them.

The police are the liberals best friend. Without them the society they want couldn't exist.

Who enforces motorcycle helmet laws?

The police.

Who enforces no smoking in bars regulations? 

The police?

Who enforces seatbelt laws?

The police.

Who enforces gun laws, and who would confiscate firearms if the liberal dream of a gun ban ever came to pass?

That's right, once again, the police.

Social programs cost money, which taxes pay for. If some scofflaw doesn't pay up, police show up to shake the money out of him.

Lets imagine if there were no cops. Are nannystater's going to walk up to a hells angel and tell him to put on a helmet? 

How many would walk in to a dive bar full of rowdies and tell the patrons to put out their cigarettes.

Any volunteers to walk up to gun owners saying "I hate the 2nd amendment, give me your guns"?

No, you don't really hate, or even dislike the police. You just dislike them when they interfere when you are doing things YOU like. 

Getting hassled for smoking a joint, it's "FUCK OFF PIGS"!!

Cops shutting down your demonstration, it's "OPRESSION, OPRESSION, stop violating my RIGHTS!!!" 

You have no problem with cops putting down the jackboot, as long as it's stepping on people who are doing things you don't like.

So next time a cop pulls a club out STFU, stop whining like a pussy, and take your beating like a man.

This juvenile delinquent had the AUDACITY to bring a plastic butter knife to school. Good thing alert school officials made everyone safe by suspending this West Side Story wannabe.

You guys SUCK!

I don't hate UI designers. I loathe them.

Why do UI people think that the more clicks it takes to do the same tasks, the better!?
Take a look at the wonder that is windows 8. Before you booted in to the desktop and there was a start button that was a one click shortcut to all your programs. Not only did they get rid of the start button, they added a junky looking "metro" screen which is a shortcut to a bunch of dos like phone apps that don't even run in a window, so of course I never use any of them. So you click past that to get to a desktop with no start button. Oh wait, after much complaining they put that back. Well not really, because the new, useless start button just toggles between the metro and desktop, the asshole UI shitheads left out its most useful feature, the shortcuts! Well fuck you very much DOUCHBAGS!!

Then you have the wifi for retards interface, which gives you no details at all. Yeah, maybe I WOULD like to have more info than a signal strength bar.
Want to create a wifi hotspot on your win 8 computer? I really can't complain about the UI, because there isn't one. That's right, the shitheads removed the perfectly good one that came with win 7. It can still be done, but you have to use the command line. Why?

WTF is it with logins? Years ago when you went to a page requiring login there were username and password fields right there. Now you have to click a drop down first just to log in or log out.
Google is the crown king of suck UI. Every "improvement" they have made makes for a shittier user experience than the last. If you want to log in to gmail you enter your user name, then have to click a button to get to the password field? Of what FUCKING use is this? Having both fields there and just clicking a button once rather than twice made more sense, but then again if you are a UI asshole, you can never have enough mouse clicks for simple tasks.

"Load more" is another UI suckfest. Instead of just having page numbers at the bottom of the screen, the UI assholes replaced that with a "load more" button. Now in the case of youtube, you have to click that multiple times on a page with a lot of videos. Then if you click on a video, go to it, then go back, you wind up at the start page and have to re-click the shitty load more button however many times you did before to get to where you were.

Web design, the incredible disappearing font. So, you used internet explorer to design your web site, and tested it at one resolution! Great job Tardly! Your shit page doesn't look right on other browsers or resolutions, but hey, you got it done on time and on budget! Good dog.

EVERYTHING is about look, NOTHING about functionality, that's the UI shithead credo.