My High School Commencement Speech, and Other Wisdom

It'll be brief, which fact alone means it'll be the most wildly popular commencement speech in the history of commencement speeches. Here's the full text:

"As you go off to college, remember this one immutable truth: if it's on the internet, it lives forever."

I figure that bit of wisdom will save more kids from finding themselves unemployable in the future than anything they do or don't do in the classroom. I know that if cell phone cameras and the internet had been around when I was in college, I'd have a lot more to live down than I already do.

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Those words would have served Roseanne Barr, huh? One stupid, ill-advised, insulting tweet, and she and her entire cast and crew are out of work. I've never been a fan of the woman herself, not since she made a mockery of the national anthem. But her show was at least funny, as was she, when she was acting and not being herself. Can't say that for oh, say, Joy Behar.

Speaking of Joyless Joy, she called Christianity a "mental illness" in mocking Vice President Pence for his faith. Why does she still have a job? Colin Kaepernick wore socks depicting police officers as pigs. Why does he - oh wait, he doesn't have a job. But that's due to his lack of talent, not his lack of taste. (Lack of talent hasn't affected Behar's employment status either. Hmm.)

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Believe it or not, I have no issue with the fact that the Mueller "investigation" has gone on for more than a year now. I don't care how long it lasts in terms of time. However, since I'm paying for it, I do care very much how long it lasts in terms of expense. Mueller should have been given a fixed budget from the get, and when the money was exhausted, the investigation would officially be at an end. That would have kept him and his team on point, and maybe they wouldn't have cast such a wide net in terms of the individuals they targeted and the misdeeds they pursued them for.

In the end, the outcome will be the same as if the investigation had ended already. Except we taxpayers will be the poorer for it. Here's an idea: since it's our money funding these investigations, let us pick what and whom will be investigated. Bet that'd make Comey, Hillary et al a bit nervous.

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Since the effective date of GDPR (look it up; it's the reason you've been bombarded with "we're making changes to our privacy policy" notices lately), Google has been popping this notice up every time I save a new post:

"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."

Okay. First, if you're an EU citizen and you're reading this blog, Bienvenue, Wilkommen, and all that. Please don't take offense to what I may have posted around the time of the Brexit. While I was all for the Brexit, and generally think the EU was a stupid idea, I do like all of your member nations, and have even visited a few. Heck, my favorite restaurant is a French restaurant. Okay, it's in California, but the owner is French. Well, he's American now, but he's from France.

Second, I don't use any cookies on my blog. I don't even eat cookies while writing my blog, just to play it safe and keep things above-board. And I don't collect any data from anybody who reads this blog, other than that I know who you are if you follow it and use your real name or some other name I can figure out.

But I won't tell anybody who you are. I promise.

There. My conscience is clear. And don't worry, I don't plan any changes to my privacy policy. Until the next stupid law gets passed halfway around the world that affects everybody who uses the internet or is in the banking business here in the U.S.

More Memorial Day Weekend Nuggets

This will be brief, I promise. It's Memorial Day Weekend, and I know you have better things to do than read my rambling thoughts. Hey, Chick-Fil-A may not serve you nuggets on a Sunday, but I will.

First up: Hillary's Yale speech. The only other thing I have to say about it is this: Hillary, you're not funny, you'll never be funny, you couldn't be funny if you took a pratfall on the ice in your tony, carpetbagging New York enclave, or if you went on SNL and made armpit farts while looking cross-eyed at the camera. So stop trying to be.

Hint: if you have to explain your own joke, it ain't funny. (Even if it's to a bunch of dim-witted Yalies.)

You are many things, Hillary: annoying, irritating, obnoxious, aggravating, braying, dishonest, deceitful, corrupt, disingenuous, hateful, arrogant, selfish, greedy ... heck, you're like the Boy Scout Law gone straight to hell.

But one thing you are not, and never will be, is funny. So stop trying already. As a perennial loser of campaigns, the only thing you accomplish by trying to be funny is looking pathetic. It hurts to watch.

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Speaking of people who aren't funny, Joy Behar - in the process of announcing on "The View" that President Trump was withdrawing from the NoKo summit, quipped (no, that's not the right word - "quipped" implies she was funny, and she never has been, so ...) said, "Well, there goes that Nobel Peace Prize."

That's okay, Joy; since they started giving out the Nobel Peace Prize to pretty much anybody, for doing pretty much nothing, it's value has fallen faster than bitcoin. I suspect President Trump would prefer the result he wants to a shiny object to put on his trophy shelf.

Now, Joy, why don't you go back to talking recipes, or the latest dish on the Kardashians, or Megan Markle's wedding dress, or something else that you and your viewers actually understand?

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Regarding the former President, I don't get the hoopla over him suddenly becoming a Netflix producer. True, it's not something most former Presidents would do, but he's not like most former Presidents. He was always more celebrity than leader, more fluff than substance. He did better going on Saturday Night Live or being interviewed by a vlogger who writhed in a bathtub full of breakfast cereal than he ever did in executing policy. And no wonder, since he came into the job with virtually no experience. So let him produce TV shows for the masses. They can watch that stuff rather than educate themselves on the real issues, which would probably be beyond their cognitive capabilities anyway.

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It's Memorial Day Weekend. Time to remember those who died in service to their country. But to you purists out there who like to flaunt your knowledge of the differences between Memorial Day, Veterans' Day, etc., I say this: chill. One day a year is not enough to remember those who have served and maybe sacrificed for us. And having lost my only living parent this year, I'll assure you that one day a year is never enough for those who sacrificed for us every day, raising us, feeding us, making us the people we are today.

So on this weekend, as I've done many days over the past decade or so, I'll remember my Mom and Dad. No, neither of them died in service to their country, though both served: Dad on the front lines in Europe, and Mom by staying home and minding the home front. I'll remember their sacrifices, and I'll recognize that my comfortable suburban existence owes to them.

In a world searching for heroes, from the gridiron to the ball field to the hallowed halls of government to corporate boardrooms, my prayer is that all of us can be as fortunate as I am, and need look no further than our family photos to find our heroes. Miss you, Mom & Dad. See you soon.

The Golden Arches, and Other Random Musings

The Curmudgeon begs forgiveness for the long hiatus. He's had a lot going on since his last post, including a long gauntlet of travel and a semi-annual sinus infection.

However, the Curmudgeon can't help but notice this McDonald's ad that shows a young man handing a piece of mail to his manager at Mickey D's. The manager opens the letter and reads it. It's an acceptance letter to a college. The young man's manager and colleagues celebrate this happy occasion with him, as the voice-over announcer makes note of the company's tuition reimbursement program, then finishes with the tagline: "McDonald's: America's Best First Job."

That's right, boys and girls - flipping burgers at McDonald's is, and always has been intended to be, a first job. Not a job that pays the kind of living wage that allows an adult with four kids to support his or her family. (Actually, if you work at McDonald's, what the heck are you doing having kids? Seems kind of irresponsible, and a grievous disservice to said kids, given that you knew going in what the pay was.)

No, McDonald's - and other employers who depend largely on entry-level, unskilled labor - never set out to offer all employees compensation that would sustain them as, say, an alternative to being an accountant or a lawyer, or even a bricklayer or an autoworker. They need orders taken and burgers flipped and fries fried, and folks, none of that is rocket science. In fact, some of it can be automated.

The snowflakes will cry that McDonald's et al should not be so callous. It should be their mission to provide a living wage to everyone they employ, to enable them to afford a nice apartment in San Francisco, or a house in Kansas City, and comfortably raise a family of four or six, maybe even taking the brood to Disney World every few years and buying a late model minivan.

Well, snowflakes, this is where your failure to take (or pay attention in) those freshman-level business courses comes back to bite you in your soft little arse: you don't get to pick what a company's mission is.

McDonald's wants to be America's first best job for its employees? That's its prerogative. Not yours. Lockheed Martin wants to make missiles, and you're anti-war? Tough cookies. Lockheed Martin can make whatever it wants, as long as it's legal. Smith & Wesson wants to make guns? Philip Morris wants to make cigarettes? They have every right to do so. That's free enterprise.

What if you snowflakes got your way, and you got to decide what companies' mission should be? Well, let's take that to its extreme. Let's say you're not only a snowflake, but a New York City taxi driver. Being driven by self-interest, as all snowflakes are, you'd probably be against Uber's mission, right? Yet you probably take Uber to Starbuck's every day to get your caramel macchiatta (which you won't give up, despite your six-figure student loan balance on that English Lit degree that you're trying to parlay into a high-paying tech job, but finding yourself having to settle for America's Best First Job instead - and bitching about the pay every minute).

Hey, I'm against abortion, but I don't get to decide what certain health care providers can and can't do.

Going back to the Uber example, free enterprise guarantees competition. If somebody can come up with a way to provide cheap burgers, fries and shakes to the masses while paying Wall Street salaries, they'd make a fortune off the liberals. But that's a business model that just won't work.

See, in places like Seattle - that bastion of liberal nuttiness - where they've forced the McDonald's of the world to pay an artificially (read: inconsistent with the immutable laws of supply and demand) high wage to unskilled workers, the employers have found a simple but elegant solution, and one that is highly appropriate in the home of Microsoft and Amazon:

Replace 'em with technology.

That's right, boys and girls. Kiosks can just as efficiently take your order as people (maybe more so - ever had a fast food order-taker screw up your order?). Now, I heard one gentleman make the argument that this is a bad business practice: "Those kiosks cost a lot of money, and they'd probably be better off just giving all their workers a raise rather than pay for those machines."

Except:

1. The cost of technology tends to fall over time, whereas wages tend to rise.
2. You pay for the kiosk once. You hire a person at $15/hour, and you pay that premium over the $10/hour their labor is actually worth every hour they work, ad infinitum.
3. Kiosks don't call in sick, or quit when they find another job. They never have to pass a drug test, and they'll never steal from the till. And they don't make mistakes.

So, snowflakes, much to your chagrin, companies like McDonald's not only depend on cheap labor, but they're well within their rights to employ it, whether you like it or not. If that bothers you, don't eat there, and don't buy their stock.

After all, their primary obligation is to their shareholders, not you. Why? Those shareholders have skin in the game. They put up capital and expect a return. Business 101. (Yeah, I know, it wasn't required for your English Lit degree, but someday when you get a real job you'll have a 401k, and you'll become an indirect shareholder in companies like McDonald's yourself through the mutual funds your plan invests in - and you'll bitch to high heaven when you're losing money. So be glad when Mickey D's makes a profit - it will likely benefit you down the road.)

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So Hillary took the pity party tour to Yale for their commencement speech. Remember when commencement speeches were about the future, and how bright it was, how full of opportunity for the graduating class, how they could leave their imprimatur on the world? Now, they've devolved into political rants and rehashes of failed election bids. Might as well just save the speakers' fees and stream the Rachel Maddow Show.

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Trump: "Little Rocket Man, my button is bigger than your button."

Schumer, Pelosi, CNN and MSNBC: "Trump is a lunatic, a loose cannon. He's going to get us into nuclear war. Diplomacy is called for. We should sit down at the table with Kim."

Trump: "I'm sitting down at the table with Kim."

Schumer, Pelosi, CNN and MSNBC: "Trump is a lunatic. He's giving Kim the credibility of a legitimate world leader by being on the same stage with him. The meeting is a bad idea."

Kim: "I WILL NUKE YOU ALL TO KINGDOM COME!!!! WE ARE A SUPERPOWER!!!!"

Trump: "Sorry, we're not meeting with this nutbag until he cools his jets."

Schumer, Pelosi, CNN and MSNBC: "Trump is a lunatic. He should never have backed out of these talks. He's going to get us into nuclear war."

The sad truth of all this is that those who lap this crap up don't recognize it for what it is.

Also, remember how the left freaked out about Saddam Hussein's crack Republican Guard, and said that if Bush I went to war with them, they'd wipe us out in a long and protracted engagement? Then, those crack troops surrendered as soon as our boots hit the ground, and the war was over before it started. NK is the same story: it's an impoverished banana republic with a despotic leader who channels all the country's wealth into his and his cronies' pockets, leaving little to nothing for the people - or for any real offensive or defensive capabilities (remember the missile tests that turned out to be duds?).

Hey, Kim - bring it, dude. We'll send a SEAL team in to do a Saddam on you faster than you can find a viable alternative to that crappy 'do you're sporting. Maybe, if you're lucky, we'll send in a team from SportClips as well.

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Ah, the NFL national anthem "controversy." If we'd just ignore this crap it would go away. To wit: Colin Kaepernick couldn't make a name for himself with talent, so he did it by kneeling during the National Anthem. Yet he still can't get a job in the NFL.

His supporters claim it's all in the name of protest against police brutality.

Really? So, Colin, besides keeping your low-talent arse in the public spotlight, what has your little "protest" movement accomplished? Are incidents of police brutality down? What have you done in terms of working with police, with communities, with organizations that can actually further this cause for real change?

Nada.

Look, the incidence of abortion in this country is greater by far than the frequency of incidents of police brutality. Again, I'm anti-abortion. So let's say I decide to protest in my own way: every Sunday during football season, I'll go down to the county courthouse and take a crap on the steps, until Roe v. Wade is overturned.

How effective do you think that will be?

Right. These highly privileged NFL stars (who only have run-ins with the police when they beat their wives or kids, use drugs, get in bar fights, kill people, screw minors, or drive under the influence) could use their star power to far greater effect than just standing up during a song at the beginning of a game.

Here's an idea:

IGNORE THEM.

They're only in it for the attention. I mean, you don't really see any marquee players engaging in this form of "protest," do you? It's a way for a journeyman player to get his name on the evening news. So don't give him the satisfaction. Ignore the behavior, and it will go away.