Forum Post: It's Bullshit

Is this a great country or what? Or what I say . . . I mean, don't get me wrong - just because you are born a serf in this land does not mean you have to remain one, and that is great, no doubt.

It is great. It is progress. But let us be clear.

There remains an over abundance of bullshit in this land and the public is drowning.

What do I mean? Here's an example -

We bailed out Chrysler, didn't we? Yes we did. So did the Canadians, as I recall. In and of itself, not a bad thing. It kept people working, it kept parts in production, and since one of my plow trucks is a Dodge that affects me personally - and, generally, it does so in a positive way. I just put over six hundred dollars in parts into the front end of that truck, without those parts it would not push much snow. So I'm glad we are still making those parts - and if we had not bailed out Chrysler, those parts would be very hard to get, at the least, and quite a bit more expensive - if you could get them at all.

The front hub on a mid 90's Dodge contains the wheel bearing and is held on by three bolts. Three metric bolts, case hardened. They say that because there is not a lot of room between the ball joints and the universal, they made the head of these three metric bolts smaller, and removal calls for a 14mm 12 point socket.

Now I'm sure that if you live in the northern tier of the country you are quite familiar with the effect salt has on metal. Even case hardened steel. It is corrosive. After 100,000 miles a 14mm 12 point socket becomes all but useless in the removal of these three hub bolts.

The hub itself is about $110.

And replacement bolts? Case hardened, of the proper thread pitch and dimension? These are a dealer item.

$25.75 each, plus tax.

The fuckers should be gold plated.

I saved the bolts. I heated the piss out of the ears on the old hub, and used a bolt out socket. That marred the heads of two of them just enough to facilitate the use of a 14mm 12 point socket during the installation of the new hub - but the head of one bolt was just too disfigured. Needless to say, that one bolt is now worth every penny of its replacement cost - and the reason it is is because it took me over an hour using a hand file and a 13mm six point socket to reshape the head of that one bolt to make it usable.

the fucking things should have been designed with a six point head in the first place.

And they should not cost over $2 to replace.

That's bullshit. That is fraud, and as such, a lie. A lie foisted on the unsuspecting public, a lie in the name of greed - and we bailed those fuckers out.

And this, I am afraid, is but the tip of the ice berg.

The gun debate is all over the news, some kind of legislation seems inevitable, traffic at the gun dealers is backed up for miles and has been for weeks . . . . and no one is discussing practical measures designed to address the causes of gun violence.

We could have testimony before Congress regarding the War on Drugs and devise a strategy to end this madness decisively - one way or the other. But no. We will not.

We could haul analytical behaviorists and complex systems theorists before Congress and discover, once and for all, just what was meant when Lloyd Holme proclaimed in psychological record 18 that:

we have the capacity to install any behavior we want

We could also make public inquiry into the means by which the Postal Service was relieved of that tendency among a very small, but statistically significant percentage of its employees to go postal - but we will not.

Instead we will sit silent, as if with our own mouths stuffed full of bullshit, and we will smile.

fuck you.

And fuck this.

.

I'm so sick of this shit I could puke -

here's this instead.

~ Snoop Dogg? That just doesn't help. what was I thinking

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EDIT

The President wants to save but a single life, and while the President must be commended, for who would not, if that were all that were possible - yet I say, had we the capacity to be honest, and did act accordingly, we might save tens of thousands . . . .

pass me a barf bag . . . .