This is Why People Hate Bureaucracy

I went to the Sheriff's web site for my town and looked at where the sex offenders live.  I like to know who my neighbors' are and who to keep my children away from.  Imagine my surprise when I found one on my corner.  Since I am less than half a mile from the YMCA, several playgrounds and a school, imagine my surprise.  It even posts a picture of the guy-thank you State of Indiana.
I then made a series of phone calls.  First stop: the useless police department in my town.  They passed me on to the Sheriff's department.  They in turn passed me on to the County Prosecutor's office.  Since no one is running for office this year, no one is available to answer my question.  I left messages.  I doubt that I will hear back before the next election cycle.
Why is he allowed to live across the street from a school bus stop?  For that matter, why don't they have to post signs to give me a heads up?  While I am sure that he has paid for his crime, paid his debt to society, blah blah, blah he spent twenty years in jail for this.  The least that they should do is put a sign up in his yard and maybe on his car, don't you think?
I believe that his right to privacy went out the window the second that he decided to harm a child.  Where are my elected officials on this one?  For that matter, why don't local papers publish this information somewhere in their pages.  If I can't get it on the internet, imagine how many more people it could reach in the paper?  I wish that there was a special place where they could live-away from the rest of us, and I wouldn't have to worry about my children or their safety when it comes to that sort of thing.  Oh well.
Keep your children safe, be aware of who is in your neighborhood.  And if you have the chance to go online in your area and see who is out there, trust me.  You'll thank me later.

A Christmas Miracle- Not Everything Sucks at Walmart!

      I had a wonderful conversation from a district manager at Papa John's Pizza.  I had called with some concerns because of a couple of bad experiences, but the conversation that I had with Steve not only reinforced my fondness for Papa John's and the things they do, it increased it.
     The gentlemen that I spoke with listened to my complaints and took very proactive measures to fix them.  Afterwards, when he has solved my problem, we were discussing customer service in general.  I told him about the time I had spent at the happiest retailer on earth.  Then he told me that he donated many many many pizzas to the Auburn, IN Walmart to serve to the associates there over Christmas blitz.  What a wonderful thing to do for the people that work there.
    As a Walmart survivor, I was amazed that such generosity still exists in the Walmart culture.  It warms my heart that there are still people who find ways to be generous these days.  To be sure, Papa John's got some goodwill for doing this.  The associates at that store and all of the others are being squeezed from every direction.  Walmart considers full time to be 36 hours for the regular folks.  Not of course, the lucky few who have fought their way to unsalaried management, those lucky souls get 39.5 hours.  Weehoo, book the cruise, right?
     It wasn't always this way.  When I first started at the happiest company on earth, the job was still pretty good. I got 10% off of general merchandise from the first day I started, the Christmas party was off store and the door prizes were wonderful.  The company picnic was actually great, and people liked their jobs. Full time was considered 40 hours, and they hadn't found a way to kill overtime yet.  Turn over was reasonable, raises were given and the world was much better in the Walmart way of life.
     Then all of the Walton's were no longer involved, a faceless corporation took over and the collective neck of the Walmart associate was stepped on.  Oh, mouth service was given to the open door policy, and the policy of having a yearly meeting (they call it grassroots)to discuss ways to improve the store was still in effect. But....
     The last few years that I still collected a check from Walmart there was a manager there who opened the meeting with, "If you think this is going to be an hour of just sitting here and complaining about what we need to fix, you are wrong."  Sets the tone for an open dialogue, doesn't it?
     But before I start the flow of Walmart complaints, let me close on the idea that there are still people who are trying to make working at Walmart a little less awful.  Thank you, Steve.  Thank you.

10,839> 4,487

   I have had many members of my family in the military.  I am proud of that.  At least three generations of my family have been involved in one branch or the other.  I am proud of them.  I am also very conservative in my opinions of most things, thankyouverymuchJimmyCarter.  I find myself gritting my teeth quite often when I listen to liberals.
     The adulterous, thieving idiot that I married came from a long line of adulterers and thieves.  Had I know the extent of it, I would have stopped at just dating him, but hindsight being twenty twenty, what can you do?  But back to the father of MY adulterous, thieving idiot-he loved to listen to Chris Mathews.  He liked to say that he gave both sides of the argument. Right....... and Ted Bundy was just helping out dark haired girls.  But one of the things that the father of my personal cross thought was that military service was awful.  He hated the Vietnam conflict and all things related to it.  From a distance I can see that he was only afraid of his sorry butt actually going more than five hundred miles from home, but that is a story for another day.
     He and many others talked about the loss of life in the Iraq war.  While he is no longer around to babble his anti war rants (kind of like Cindy Sheehan, huh?) I was curious about some statistics.  I saw that  4,487 troops died in the conflict.  That is an awful number, and I am truly sorry for the loss of each life.  I know what it feels like to hear the phone ring and hope that it isn't a chaplain.
     In the last year that I could find accurate statistics, 2009- 10,839 people died in alcohol related accidents.  It seems to me that if these folks are truly committed to less loss of life, they will all be signing up to take anti-alcohol pledges.  They will surely want to keep innocent people alive by making sure that alcohol is no longer available to fuel these awful tragedies.  Right?
    I mean, Cindy Sheehan will probably be dusted off and lifted from the mothball exile she has been forced into with the "election"of B.O.  Granted, there is already MADD in place, so she would have a harder time profiting from her son's death, but I think she could probably pull it off with the right amount of attention from the msm.  The same msm that ignored her like a leper once their boy (and no, I don't mean boy in any sort of racist way. I mean  boy as in untried, inexperienced,untested, immature) was in.
     We did good things in Iraq.  We removed a murderous monster and stopped the use of rape rooms, genocide, and all other manner of horrors. I am proud of my Dad, my brothers, my nephews, cousins, and everyone else who was willing to die for my safety.
     Thank you.  From the bottom of my heart, thank you very much.  And if you know one of those fleabagging occupiers who still scream hysterically that all wars are immoral and cause death, ask them how they feel about alcohol and illegal drug consumption.  You'll thank me later.

McCain Just Endorsed Romney (yeah, that'll help)

I held my nose and voted for McCain last time.  I was voting more for the veep choice that the top of the ticket, I am not very fond of RINOS.  I admire McCain's service for our country.  What he endured at the hands of the viet cong, I cannot even begin to comprehend.  But as a Republican Senator for the people of Arizona, he makes a pretty good liberal.

The only time that he came remotely close to right-of-center was when he had a bona fide Republican threatening to run last time.  I don't like him. He chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, but I file that under the idea that even a broken clock is right twice a day.  Have I mentioned that I don't like McCain all that much?

So imagine my joy when he threw his endorsement behind Mitt (for brains) Romney.  Talk about two peas in a pod.  Romney couldn't beat McCain for the nomination last time.  What does that say about him?  I want a fire breathing conservative, I don't care who it is.  I would kind of like to see Newt Gingrich get the nomination, if only because watching the debate between him and B.O. would be something like watching the Yankees take on a local beer belly league champion. It would be hilarious to watch the msm try to spin the pathetic pounding that B.O. would take as some sort of moral victory. Hil-ar-i-ous. But back to the endorsement.
Was there a long que of folks in line jockeying for the coveted McCain endorsement?  I can't imagine.  I can't imagine a long line forming for anything from McCain, other than his seat when he finally calls it quits.

 I hope that Newt Gingrich is the last man standing in this nomination.  Bachman lost me when she said that she was subservant to her husband.  That is great for a marriage, not so much for the President of the United States.  It's bad enough that B.O. cannot do anything without extensive polling first. He isn't perfect, but he's the best of the batch, in my opinion.  His indiscretions don't matter- that's what the msm told me when slick willie was tapping the help.  I can't imagine that they had an agenda and would be hypocritical about that now. Right?

So I'll go back to watching how this shakes out, I can't wait to see the moving van in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  It will almost make up for having to support him for the rest of his marxist, useless life.  Oh well.  Get involved.  Get registered. Then get out there and vote.  You'll thank me later.

Working for my Money (Twice)

I think that the idea of making me volunteer in order to get my unemployment benefits that I paid for is a bunch of crap.  I have already paid into the system with my check, now the federal government wants me to volunteer  my time in order to get the money that is owed to me?
The very idea makes my blood pressure go up about seventy points.  If this is the best that the paid morons can do, it is more proof positive that we need a giant enema to flush out the current batch of government.
I have seen people work the system.  My father wasted eight years of his life (and three thousand of my dollars) on a person who would take volunteer lay off whenever she could get it.  The unemployment she received was only about thirty dollars less than her regular check, so she would rather stay home watching soap operas and eating cheesy poofs.  Yep she was a dandy.  As much as I didn't like that waste of oxygen, she HAD worked to pay into the unemployment to get the check.  I think the idea of putting another hoop at the end of the road is unfair.  Even to that.
The ideas have been floated around to have those people re-earn their money by painting bridges, clean up parks and other things.  Wouldn't that take the jobs away from other people who are already hired to do that?
How about this:Instead of trying to legislate morality ie forced volunteerism, why don't we remove the boot from the throat of small businesses and let us thrive so that we can go about the job of hiring people?
It's just crazy enough to work and best of all, it is one less bureaucracy.  Think about it, you'll thank me later.