BigDaddyCool

Slacker Nation my ass!!!

August 20th, 2011 0 Comments

How's the race working out for you so far Governor Perry?

It continues to amaze me how the haves in this country can continually insist that those of us who are out of work are out of work by our own choosing. Every single day I keep hearing these Marie Antoinette wannabe’s pontificate about how we are all just “too lazy to go out and get a job” while they are dining on pate and trying to lower their 9 handicap at the country club.

You know who I am talking about – the same people who have all the money who have it within their power to actually hire some of us “lazy deadbeats” and strengthen the economy instead of weaken it further? The same people who claim that their business can’t afford anymore employees even though the employees they have are overworked, over stressed, under threat and dealing with bosses who act like they’re shoving them into their lockers and beating them up for their lunch money?

I was watching Micheal Moore’s film “Roger and Me” yesterday and I came across a scene in the movie that was exactly as I described it. A group of little old ladies were playing golf at the local Country Club near Flint, Michigan. One of them was asked why she thought the unemployment situation was so bad in Flint and she responded “It’s because they are too lazy to go out and get a job.”

It is amazing how some things never change, isn’t it? This was from a film that came out in 1989!!!!!

She didn’t say that it had to do with the GM plant closing – no, she went straight to blaming those who were out of work for being out of work in the first place. It’s that old “blame the victim” or ” they brought it on themselves” BS attitude that infects so many in the Right-wing these days that has divided this country along ideological lines and that has succeed in destroying families by pitting one generation against another.

The stories of Fathers and Sons competing for the same jobs only to have their relationship destroyed in the process is becoming all too common nowadays. I have been hearing stories of Fathers beating out their Sons for jobs and then making the mistake of getting in their Son’s face and gloating about it, infuriating the Son, provoking terrible fights between them, causing terrible things to be said across both lines leading to the Son cutting his parents out of his and his families life, denying them access to their Grandchildren leading to Will’s being re-written cutting out the children, etc. I’ve even heard stories of Fathers being in a position to hire their Sons at their own businesses, only to not do so under the guise of not “giving him a handout” one minute, while infuriating his Son and Daughter-in-Law by saying that his Son “likes being unemployed”.

Unfortunately those scenarios are becoming all too familiar, as is the noise that we are hearing from politicos trying to get themselves elected to the highest office in the land. People like Rick Perry – the Governor of Texas. You remember him, the guy who wanted to secede Texas from the United States? Yeah – that Rick Perry!!! Only now that he is in the race he has chosen to open mouth, insert foot and chew on a daily basis. I think he is trying to out-gaffe Michelle Bachman to see who can gain the nomination and lose by the biggest margin to President Obama. Only now Governor Perry has really stuck his foot it it by deriding people who are not making enough to pay income tax – assuming that they even have a job.

He is quoted as saying this at his announcement speech for the Presidency: “We’re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax.” Well Governor there is a reason that half of the people in this country don’t pay income tax…it’s because they either don’t have an income or they don’t make enough money to be taxed in the first place!!!!!!!!!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the GOP front runner – Wil E. Rick Perry, Suuuuuuuuper Geeeeeeniussssss!!!!!!!!

Good God, could these people on the right be any more out of touch with reality than they already are?

Ruth Marcus wrote a great piece for the Washington Post that read in part:

Perry’s statement conjures visions of America as Slacker Nation, where the overburdened wagon-pullers drag an increasingly heavy burden of freeloaders. His number is correct but, like other conservatives who have seized on the statistic, Perry draws from it a dangerously misleading lesson.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates that 46.4 percent of households will pay no federal income tax in 2011. This is, for the most part, not because people have chosen to loaf. It’s because they are working but simply don’t earn enough to owe income taxes, based on the progressive structure of the tax code and provisions designed to help the working poor and lower-income seniors.

As the Tax Policy Center’s Roberton Williams has explained, “a couple with two children earning less than $26,400 will pay no federal income tax this year because their $11,600 standard deduction and four exemptions of $3,700 each reduce their taxable income to zero. The basic structure of the income tax simply exempts subsistence levels of income from tax.”

Does Perry truly see this as an “injustice”? Does he believe his “dismay” should be alleviated by raising the tax burden on these households?

Apparently Governor Perry and the rest of the Rich-wing Republicans think that. Just as long as they don’t have to pay any more or even any taxes they don’t care what happens to the rest of us. They keep spewing out the false claim that if taxes are increased on the rich then more jobs will be lost as a result and unemployment will increase. In reality it doesn’t matter what you do about taxes for the rich – they will not create jobs much less hire someone to fill those jobs. They will continue to send our jobs overseas in favor of slave labor while the situation gets worse here at home.

The only way that things are going to change is if we have an economic French Revolution where their businesses suffer as a result of people not giving them their custom and effecting their bottom line. If their precious profits are being hurt by us boycotting them and giving what money we have to their competitors – particularly foreign competitors – then maybe they will begin to realize that their strategy has backfired.

Maybe.

I honestly believe that we are headed towards a second round of the recession if not an outright Depression, and that it will take some economic heads being lopped off before the Rich-wing gets the message that what they are doing to the workforce in this country isn’t working. I’m simply waiting for someone to utter the “Let them eat cake” line or whatever the modern-day equivalent is going to be in order for the masses to start grabbing their pitchforks, lighting their torches, building the Guillotines and mapping out directions to the Bastille.

And before anybody in the Tea Party starts coming up with “yeah? Well anybody who does that will get themselves shot by us true Patriots” just keep something in mind – the 2nd Amendment applies to everyone in this country and you are not the only people in this country who happen to own guns. If people on that protesting side do happen to be shot and killed a la “Boston Massacre” style by a bunch of idiots dressed up like Benjamin Franklin what makes you think that there would not be some sort of retaliation against you or one of the other Tea Party groups elsewhere in the country. People are getting sick and tired of being pushed around and threatened by the Tea Party and are ready to give you the fight that you have been looking for.

Keep in mind though that some of those people you might be shooting at would be members of your own families. You know, the ones that you beat out for jobs and then gloated about in their faces? Could you really shoot your own children? How about your grandchildren, could you use their blood to “water the tree of liberty”?

I’ll bottom line this for everyone – the unemployed, underemployed and underutilized workforce in this country wants to get back to work and make a decent wage so that we can support our families. But it is like I have said before, until the attitudes towards the unemployed change in this country things are not going to get better. My fear is that things in this country are about to get a whole lot worse before they can ever start to get better.

If the Rich-wing really wants to continue to try to blame everything on the poorest of the poor in this country while denying them a decent wage-earning job then that is up to them.

They should just remember how they treated us as the economic “Reign of Terror” crashes down on their house.

Until next time…

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Walk a mile…

July 13th, 2011 0 Comments

Look familiar?

Finding the energy to sit down and actually write a blog post can sometimes be a chore these days. It’s not that I don’t have the time these days – I do, its just that there are days when I don’t have the physical or spiritual energy to sit at my computer and do anything other than endlessly surf the Internet in search of a job opportunity, clear e-mail, find a good mod for rFactor or surf for free porn. I threw that last one in there to see if you were paying attention…

When you think about it I actually do have a fulltime job these days – its just that I don’t get paid for doing it. I don’t mean that I got a job and didn’t tell any of you and am only now letting you know the happy news. What I mean is that I am having to take care of both my wife and my father-in-law and it takes a lot of time out of the day.

Here’s what’s going on – you recall that I told you that my Father-in-Law had a small stroke and that Wifey had torn the ACL in her right knee in a post back in March. Well since my Father-in-Law came home Wifey and I have been taking care of him. Mostly what that includes is getting him out of bed in the morning and having him walk to his chair in the living room. We then mix up some powdered laxative in some juice, either Cran-Apple, OJ, Lemonade or Apple J so that his bowels keep moving. Then I have to empty his catheter bag and pour the contents down the toilet while checking his tube to make sure that there is no sediment in it. If there is sediment in the tube then the tube itself could clog up which means that his bladder doesn’t empty. That’s not good.

Then it’s time for his noon pills…and then his 2 0′clock pills…his 6 o’clock pills…his 10 o’clock pills and then his midnight pills. In between his pills are trips to the bathroom which means we have to help him out of the chair, wait for him to finish his business – and then help him out of the chair and clean him. Wifey and dad-in-law would probably kill me if they knew I as writing about this and then posting it, but I need to give you an idea of what our lives are like right now. Then we have to get him meals which require preparation, and at the end of the day we have to put him to bed which can be a process in and of itself.

First everything has to be set up in the bedroom which means turning his bed, putting his water jug on his table with fresh water and ice (he won’t drink tepid water), getting a walkie-talkie for him so that we can turn down the ringers on the phones (so that the collections calls don’t wake us up at 8:00am), drain his bag one last time before bed, then get him to the bathroom one last time so that he sleeps through the night which means cleaning him – yet again. Then we have to put him in bed and physically turn him around so that he is in bed properly. We need to prop him up on his right side with a round pillow so that he doesn’t go through the railing, we then need to give him his final set of pills for the day, take out and clean off his hearing aids and then put ointment in his eyes to counteract the dry eyes that he has to deal with throughout the day. It is only then that we can wish him a good night, turn out the lights and go to bed ourselves – after the dishwasher is loaded, the litter boxes cleaned and our own needs taken care of.

Now I can hear some of you working it right now: “You should just shut up and stop whinning BigDaddy!!! Besides you’re supposed to be doing those things for your family – and how can you call that a full-time job anyway?!? That’s not a real job, thats just baby sitting!!! Why don’t you grow up, quit complaining and go out and get a real job anyway?!?”

Well for starters everything I have just described is usually done by people who have a degree in nursing, and if we had in-home nursing care the nurse would be performing most of the tasks that we do. Second, for the past few moths I have been the only one doing all of this as Wifey has been laid up with her knee. I have been taking care of not only my Father-in-Law but also my wife as she has been sidelined with a sprained (not torn as we originally feared) AC L in her right knee. I have to bring both of them their food, do both of their dishes, get them whatever they need and only when they are taken care of can I actually take care of myself. Not only that but I have to drive both of them to their doctor’s appointments as well as do errands for all three of us. Now driving from where we are can mean an hour of travel time or more depending on traffic, weather conditions and how many cows or deer are in the road. And I’m doing all of this when gas prices were nearly $4.00 a gallon where we live so we have to be very careful about how often I go down the mountain.

This is my life right now – I’m both nurse and cheuffer for my entire family as well as shopper, pharmasist and IT specialist for any computer woes we might have. Add to this a fruitless job search in an area of the country where the official unemployment rate is now 16% and the true rate once you add in all of the underutilized is now 48% and you get the general idea about what life is like here at the BigDaddy household. In fact all of this has given me an idea – something like this would make a great reality show in the same veign as the CBS program “Undercover Boss”. I am not talking about having cameras follow me around all day long because that would be too boring. My idea is to put people who critisize the unemployed and who look down on us in our shoes and have them live our lives for a couple of weeks.

Here’s what I propose: take people who talk badly or who criticize those of us who are out of work and are looking for a job which extends to people who write Letters to the Editor, post videos on YouTube, give an interview to their local news station – whatever, and give them a new identity. For two weeks give them a new identity as someone who is out of work and is looking for a job. Remove them from their current lives and give them a whole new one with a new name, new credit history (a bad history), new everything and have them live a couple of weeks with it.

Put them in a lower-income living situation in a house, apartment or motel and have t deal with a landlord or a bank that demands to know where their rent or mortgage payment is on a daily basis. Have them have to deal with collections calls early in the morning or late at night and have to deal with angry collectors banging on their doors,getting in their faces and making threats against them and their families. Have them have to deal with applying for assistance in the form of food stamps and have them try to get help keeping their lights on, their phones on and food in their children’s mouths. Have them have to deal with all of this without collecting a single dime of unemployment insurance because their benefits have run out and they have used up all of their extensions.

Have them also have to deal with people who were just like them a short while ago. Have them have to deal with people who are criticizing them and being mean to them because they are unemployed. See how they deal with people, sometimes total strangers calling them “lazy”, “deadbeats” or “spoiled” and telling them to “go out and get a job” and that they “are not trying hard enough” when they fail. Have them have to deal with all of this while they try to accomplish their main goal – to find, apply for, interview for and be hired for a job, any job within those two weeks. Let them know that if they do not find a job within those two weeks they will lose their place of residence and their family will then become homeless. Give them all of that pressure to deal with and then have them go through it all in front of the cameras.

Then at the end of the two weeks, find out if their opinions about the unemployed has changed any. Conduct an exit interview on camera to get their impressions about what they’ve just experienced. Find out if their impressions about the unemployed have changed or if they have remained the same. During those two weeks they should have access to a video camera themselves so that they can give their impressions on how the experience is going – kind of like a “confession cam” you see on other shows.

Edit it all together and put it on the air, I gurantee you that it will be a ratings winner among people who are out of work. And who would be the host for this new Emmy-worth extravaganza? Well, me of course!

Talk about creating a job for yourself. So CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX – tell me, what do you think?

Until next time…

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Downloads? WHAT?!?

July 12th, 2011 0 Comments

Wait a minute…a downloads page?!?

Yeah, a downloads page. I’ve been toying around with the idea for a while now and I decided to go ahead and do it. I’ve got a whole bunch of files left over from PCFootball.net plus the files I’ve gotten from Football-Freaks.com and the ones I made for rFactorCentral.com that I’ve decided to go ahead and share what I’ve got.

In the left menu you will see a link to the main downloads page and under it you ill see links to the pages for the different games that I’ve got files for. I decided to start with the files for Madden NFL 08 (PC version) as Football-Freaks is down at the moment. It will take me some time to get all of the files I would like to share up and running on this site, so I ask patience from my fellow gamers out there.

And for those of my loyal readers for everything in the world of unemployment and underutilization – don’t worry I will be coming back with more posts that reflect the frustration we are all having at the moment. I’ve been otherwise occupied with my full-time, unpaid job which has kept me from doing much in front of a keyboard. Yes I said full-time, unpaid job. Don’t worry – all will be revealed soon.

Until next time…

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MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!!!!!

May 1st, 2011 0 Comments

REJOICE, THE GREAT SATAN IS DEAD!!!!!!!!!!!

And I looked, and beheld a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was “Death”, and Hell followed with him. -Revelations 6:8.

As someone who was raised and educated a Christian, I know that I’m not supposed to rejoice or revelin the death of someone who is my enemy or who has done me or my family wrong or who has commited great acts of evil.

But I just can’t help myself…

Finally after nine years, seven months and twenty days…we got the son of a bitch!!!

Osama bin Laden is dead!!!!

There are many millions of people in the United States and around the world who are celebrating tonight, including the person who is writing this blog post. There is a feeling of satisfaction as well as a sort of shock that this day has actually come. I mean, who would have thought that after all of this time that we would finally get bin Laden? There is also something of an emotional let down that has come because of this. In the end the result of his being killed by U.S. forces is almost anti-climactic in a way. I guess it’s because we had gotten used to the idea that he was still out there and that he was always going to be out there.

But now that he has been killed, now that the head has been cut off of the snake – what are we supposed to do?

Well I’ll tell you what I am going to do right now, I am going to remember those whom he had killed. In that vein, here once again is my annual 9/11 column, with a new ending added to it…

I still remember where I was. I don’t think I will ever forget where I was when I heard the news.

I was getting ready for work in my living room, sitting in front of the TV watching SportsCenter as usual. ESPN News broke in with a special bulletin, with some news that The World Trade Center in New York had been attacked. They wanted us to turn to ABC News for more details.

I didn’t think much of it and I thought that it wasn’t a big deal because they didn’t give out very many details. I continued to watch SportsCenter as I put my shoes on, and I saw it down on their sports ticker. They usually flashed the scores from the previous night’s games, but on this September morning they flashed something that I will never forget –

WTC collapse after…

…planes crashed into towers…

…tune to ABC for more details.

The first thing that I thought was “What?” “WHAT?!? NO FUCKING WAY!!!”

I grabbed the remote and punched the buttons to switch to ABC as fast as I could…

…and that’s when I saw it…

…a huge cloud of dust in the place where the Twin Towers once stood.

It was at this moment that my wife decided to come out of the bedroom. The first thing she saw was the look on my face. She kept asking me what was wrong and my mouth could barely form the words. “The World Trade Center in New York was attacked. Both of the towers have collapsed. They’re gone.”

She came in and watched the TV with me, and we both sat there, dumbfounded as they replayed the collapse of Tower 1. Neither one of us could believe what had happened. But there was more – a plane had crashed into the Pentagon as well. Not only that, but there was another plane still out there, and it was a plane that was supposed to be on its way to the West Coast! Specifically LAX!

Since I live in the Southern California area my mind raced as I tried to think of all the targets that terrorists could possibly hit out here. The most obvious was the Boeing plant at the Long Beach Airport just a few miles down the street from where I live. The next one was TRW, just a few miles away from where I work! Both companies are defense contractors, and they would have made some pretty good targets. I called into work to get some advice on whether I should come in or not because we didn’t know if we were going to be safe. I was told to come on in.

I went in and kept a radio at my desk so that I could get the latest news and pass it on to everyone else at the office. As the day wore on we gradually heard the story. About how the planes were hijacked and deliberately crashed into the towers. We also heard of the fourth plane that had gone down in a Pennsylvania field, and how they weren’t sure if it had been hijacked or had gone down on its own. Later we would hear the stories of how the passengers had decided to fight back, and paid for their bravery with their lives.

We all know the story that followed – the rescue effort that turned into recovery. The clean up of what became known as “Ground Zero” which was just completed yesterday. The deployment of troops to Afghanistan to find Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Queda network. W’s stirring call to arms before a joint session of congress. The donations that poured in to New York and the tributes that followed.

So I know what you are thinking. What does any of this have to do with PC Football?

Nothing…

…and everything.

Recently there was a football game played – a real football game. But these were not NFL players that took the field. No, these were true heroes. These were the players from the FDNY Bravest Football Club and the NYPD Finest Football Club. Both of these teams met in the 30^th annual “ Fun City Bowl” on May 19^th. The game was originally slated for St. John’s University , but because of the demand for tickets it was moved to Giants Stadium in New Jersey – directly across from Ground Zero.

The game itself was a penalty filled affair. These were not NFL-tested veterans on the field. These were cops and firefighters that played football because they loved the game. But more importantly, they played to honor their lost brothers. Lost in the rubble of the Twin Towers , but never forgotten in their hearts. This fact was in evidence before the game, as the “Bravest” recognized the surviving family members of the 22 team members out of the 343 firefighters who were lost on September 11^th. Group after group of parents, widows, and children were escorted to midfield to receive the player’s framed jersey bearing a plaque inscribed “Forever a hero on our team.” The NYPD was fortunate not to lose any team members that day, but they did honor the 23 fellow officers who perished on 9/11.

In the end the NYPD prevailed 10-0 to record their 9^th straight win over the FDNY, and take a 21-9 lead in the series, but none of that mattered. What mattered was that they had come together to raise money for 9/11 charities, and to honor their brethren.

That is what I have tried to do recently.

I made a new roster for Madden 2002. I created the FDNY Bravest and the NYPD Finest and put them into their own file. I used the teams that were created by Bly Gilmore on MaddenMania, which evened up the Maniac and Instigator rosters, and moved those players onto the FDNY and NYPD rosters. I had intended to change the names of the players on both teams to reflect the rosters for the fire and police teams. I was able to find the actual roster for the FDNY, but I am unable to fine the roster for the NYPD. I have included the file for the FDNY, which contains the FDNY names, along with positions, numbers, height and weight.

If anybody out there can find the NYPD roster and wants to make the changes, I invite you to do so. I also ask that if you do find them, if you could share them with the rest of us who have the rosters, we would be very grateful. In this way we can all pay tribute to those men who gave their lives on that terrible day every time we play with these teams.

I know that is what I will be doing every time I play with those rosters.

And I will also remember where I was when I heard the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed…

I was actually making dinner for us when I heard it. I had just put a Dijorno’s Pizza in the oven when I heard a news bulliten break in on my father-in-law’s TV. He was watching “America’s Funniest Home Video’s” when ABC News broke in with a special report. I came into the living room to see what the commotion was all about and was greeted with old footage of bin Laden. I coudn’t tell what they were talking about because my father-in-law had the closed captioning on, so I turned it off temporarily so that I could see what the big news was.

That’s when I saw the headline…

…Osama bin Laden killed….

Naturally the first thing that I thought was “What?!? No fucking way!!! NO FUCKING WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT WE GOT HIM, WE KILLED THE GREAT SATAN?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?”

Then as the news went on and on and on it started to sink in………it was true – we got the son of a bitch!!!!!

I went into the other room to tell wifey. I asked her what she was watching and I could see that she was watching a “Burn Notice” rerun. I told her to change it to CNN and watched to see the look on her face. Her eyes grew wide when she first saw the news and sat up in bed. We just sat there taking it all in as the confirmation of his death came in. We sat through President Obama’s address to the nation while we ate our pizza, we heard the details of the operation…

…and I lit our memorial candle for the victems of 9/11 and put it out on our front deck.

We actually have a memorial candle that we light at sundown every September 11th and extingwish at midnight in memory of those who died that day.

Now I have a new date in which to light that candle, because there is another day for us to remember. That date is May 1, 2011. For some in the world that is known as “May Day”, but for those of us here in the United States that is a day on which the healing could really begin. That is the date in which we heard that our greatest enemy, and the butcher of over 3,000 innocents, was finally delivered to the right hand of God.

Or is it the left hand of God? It’s been a while since I took Catecism…..

Anyway, we know have an new day to remember in this country, and so on every May 1st I will light that memorial candle, and remember all of the fallen.

So now that he is dead, now what?

Well the “War on Terror” will go on as it did before, but now our warriors will have a little more energy in their fighting. I believe that the mood of the country will improve now that this has happened. I think that all of us whether we are Republican, Democrat, Independant or Tea-Partier will walk around with more of a spring in our step.

And I also believe that President Barrack Hussein Obama has just won his second term. I say that because osama bin Laden was killed on his watch.

On his watch…

I know that there will be opponents of his that might critisize him for this, but if they do they will only expose themselves to be hypocrites of the highest order. Because President Obama was able to do in two and a half years what President Bush had failed to do in seven and a half years – he got bin Laden. I said to wifey earlier tonight that this must have been what it was like when we found out that Hitler was dead. In fact, Hitler committed suicide in his bunker of May 1, 1945, 66 years to the day!!!!!!! How freaky is that?!?!?!?!?

So now if anyone out there has anything negative to say about our President, if anyone critisizes him for the economy or for the jobless rate or the fact that companies still are not hiring us because of, well – any excuse they have given us before. If anyone asks us how that “change you can believe in” is working out for us we can say four words to them that will nullify any point they care to make. Four little words that will always follow this President no matter what else happens from now on…

…he got bin Laden.

Until next time…

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