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July 11, 2005:
Stephanopolous:
Ted Kennedy was on this show on Sunday, July 3, 2005. The subject
of discussion was the supreme court nominees. Kennedy was a bit
out of control. He babbled on and on while George just sat back
and let him make a fool of himself. More and more, Kennedy is
losing it. He is out of touch and is unaware of the impression
he makes. He has become the Newt Gingrich of the Democratic party.
States Rights:
We hear the words and we think we know what they mean. I am beginning
to suspect that most people, including myself, don't know what
the heck they are talking about when they use that phrase. I
think it means something different to every person who mouths
it.
Terrorists:
The London subway has been attacked and hundreds of people are
dead or injured. The Brits, of course, carry on. I'm not sure
what the goals of these madmen terrorists are. I have no idea
what they hope to accomplish, but I do know what is going to
happen if they continue. When enough people are convinced that
our only choice is between the anarchy they are propagating now
and Fascism, most people, including me, will choose Fascism.
Whatever the terrorists want, they will not get it. People want
stability and they will support absolute repression to get it,
if that is the only choice. Right now, it seems to be the only
choice.
The Patriot Act, will seem like part of the Bill of Rights
compared to what will happen if they do not stop. All of the
ACLU people in the world, with all of their good intentions,
will not be able to prevent it. We will get to a situation where
suspicion of terrorism will be enough to warrant summary execution.
Suspicion of support for terrorism will be enough to get people
killed. A lot of innocent people will be killed. So what? A lot
of innocent people are getting killed now and terrorism continues.
The only difference will be, the terrorists will also be killed.
That is why the majority will choose brutal repression. They
will choose it because it will work. It worked in Germany and
it will work anywhere. We are about to enter the most repressive
phase of the history of man.
Local News:
A report on our local news had a short piece about a vaccine
for AIDS. The report was short and kind of vague. If it's true
it could be great news, but why wasn't there more information?
I suspect it's one of those iffy misdirects that the local news
people often get confused by.
Gaffer's Axioms of business:
Here are a couple of simple things which are overlooked by
many retail companies and ultimately cause a business failure.
If you want old people to shop in your store, you must have
a bathroom in a conspicuous place.
The bathroom must be clean. A dirty bathroom is worse than none
at all.
Your parking lot must be easy to enter and to exit. Location
is part of this, but only part. It is not about traffic volume
it's about access. Traffic going by does not help you.
If you provide shopping carts, don't put piles of product in
the aisles so they cannot be used.
customers will move product from one bin to another. You must
have someone assigned to continuously put the product back in
the correct bin.
Fifty percent is not good odds. If you locate near a competitor,
sooner or later, one of you is bound to fail.
Chicken Coups:
I used to live in Taylor, Michigan. It was kind of scary, but
interesting. In Taylor, the folks are very creative. For example,
if a Taylorite should acquire an empty chicken coup, the first
thing he will do is apply for a liquor license. Of course, that
is wishful thinking, but it doesn't hurt to think big.
When the license is denied, all is not lost. The next thing
almost always has some degree of success. That is to start a
new church with a congregation of friends and neighbors. Prayer
meetings can be held in the converted chicken coup every Sunday.
Jumping to Conclusions:
I recently finished going through my deceased mother's entire
photo collection for the purpose of preserving selected memories
on my computer. I can see from this that my entire family may
be mightily ticked off at me because, from their perception,
I should have died of acute kidney failure many years ago. There
is not one snapshot of me, not one, where I do not have a beer
in my hand. There are some formal photos but no snapshots except
when I was a kid of course. All the adult shots are as I described
them. It probably irks them, no end, that I could be the drunken
bum I appear to be and still have survived.
I probably do have better than average kidneys but I also
don't drink as much as it appears. I do drink at parties which
is where all of these shot were taken. Appearances can be deceiving.
If I didn't know better, I would say, "Gee! That guy is
a real rummy." I would have jumped to the same conclusion,
There's a lesson in here someplace. The only person who really
knows if I drink too much is my wife. She says I do.
Product Liability:
In light of the recent Firestone fiasco, how things have changed.
Years ago, when I worked at Paul's Northline Service in Wyandotte,
Michigan, I used a tool which could make bald tires appear to
have treads. When I think back on it, what I was doing was very
dishonest. It was nothing more than a hot wire which could cut
a grove in the rubber of the tire. I carved treads into bald
tires with it. I was quite artistic with it. It never really
occurred to me that I was doing something which might put people's
lives at risk. In those days, the concept of product liability
did not exist. If a man sawed his leg off with a buzz saw, he
was simply considered to be careless. If someone had a tire blowout
and got killed in the rollover, that's how it went down. Twas
a bit of bad luck, that's all. That's where it started and ended.
If a guy bought a used tire for a buck, it was his risk, not
the risk of the guy who sold him the tire. That was a bad situation.
Still, I believe the situation we have now is too far the other
way.
Remember how blowouts used to happen all of the time. Going
on a trip was an adventure. We carried tire changing and repairing
equipment with us. It happens so seldom now that most people
don't know how to respond to a tire failure, so they die in a
vehicle which need not have gone out of control. When I was a
kid, everyone I knew knew how to respond to a blowout, even my
mother. Blowouts were common. Rollovers because of blowouts were
very uncommon, even though the vehicles then were much more unstable
than any SUV you ever saw.
Here is the reality. A couple of hundred out of millions of
tires have failed and they are trying to put the company that
made them out of business. I can remember when every tire we
bought was guaranteed to fail. No one thought about putting companies
out of business because of it. They got so much better at making
tires that we have decided to punish them for it. As a statistical
measurement, the failure rate of tires is insignificant. Drug
companies are allowed to sell drugs every day with a kill rate
much higher than that. Who is putting them out of business? Why
not? Who is getting paid off? What kind of craziness is going
on?
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