… don’t talk back.

This blog has been idle for a while now. I’ve decided to drop my ball and go home.

Actually, I’ve decided to try something new and have started a brand new blog – SlapstickAnalysis.com. For those that know me well, I think that name will suite me well.

Please visit my new blog at www.slapstickanalysis.com. Thank you for visiting this blog.

I don’t mean to come across as ignorant, but while I do understand just how devastating the oil spill in the Gulf is, I for one am getting tired of the story all together.

The problem is, the daily tidbits concerning the oil spill are hardly anything new. Most of the news and analysis is the same tiresome accusations of BP handling this poorly and blaming the president of the United States for not doing more to fix it.

From my vantage point, I have no clue who really is at fault. Some people insist that President George W. Bush’s de-regulations are to blame, while others claim that President Barack Obama is at fault – that this disaster is his Hurricane Katrina.

I have tuned out all talk about the oil spill. Of course, I hope for the best possible outcome considering what has already happened. As for hearing about the useless tidbits each day, none of them have any impact on my life.

When either BP or the government figure out a way to plug the leak or when the last ounce of oil has leaked out, I’ll be happy to read all about it or watch it unfold on the tube.

Talk radio host Jerry Agar for the Illinois Policy Institute asking who is more likely to help people – the unions or Wal-Mart? This in response to the union fight to keep a second Wal-Mart store from opening in Chicago.

As a former union employee for the Dominick’s grocery store chain, much of the propaganda against Wal-Mart was largely exaggerated. The Wal-Mart corporation is by no means a saint. As a matter of fact, when you consider the opportunities for promotion within Wal-Mart, and the fact that people have an easier chance to gain full-time status there, or close to it, I believe Wal-Mart would be more ideal to work than either Dominick’s or Jewel.  I believe that a lot of the politician’s hate against Wal-Mart is based off of hidden handshake deals from the unions who are interested in protecting their interests. Wal-Mart has been a threat to them and continue to be.

Near my home, there is a Wal-Mart and a Jewel. The prices at Wal-Mart are more competitive. I am a regular at that Wal-Mart. As for Jewel, I may step in there maybe three times a year.

I can’t possibly comprehend what could possibly motivate people to go into a home and harass the people inside. In the case of the Seattle area’s “Craiglist murder,” four people responding to a item on Craigslist went into the home, tied up the mother and father face down, began harassing the children, kicked the mother in the head, and shot the father dead after he got lose. The robbers also pointed the gun in the back of the mother’s head and began counting down, in front of her children. Can you possibly fathom that?

Read the details here, which recaps Charlene Sanders talking about the incident on NBC’s Today show. Through the mercy of God, the four individuals did not pull the trigger and left. Three of them were caught in California, the fourth individual turned himself in. All have pleaded not guilty.

Money and drugs is often the motivation for committing crimes. When these people get desperate, they resort to any act of violence to get what they want.  In this situation, it would had been better if the robbers would had found what they wanted, and left. Why harass young children and kick a female in the head?

The story in Chicago is about the Bucktown baseball bat beating of two young women a few weeks back. One of them is out of the hospital, the other is showing limited activity in critical condition still. The individual who attacked them had a huge list of crimes – there was no reason for him to be out on the streets. None, whatsoever. His reason for attacking the two women were supposedly because he was just fixin’ to hurt someone. His girlfriend drove him to the scene where he found the two women walking and figured they were easy targets. What I don’t understand is, some reports say that the girlfriend watched the attack. Luckily, her and her boyfriend were apprehended and hopefully won’t see the light of day for a long, long time. The guy is a threat to society. He had absolutely no business being out on the streets, period.

The father of the girlfriend claims his daughter is bi-polar and was off her meds. I don’t care. This women allegedly has a mental health issue that is serious enough in which medication is required. In this case, she chose not to take her medicine, and as a result, she assisted in this brutal attack by driving the boyfriend and then standing by. She knew what he was out to do. She knew what he did afterwards. To sit back idly without any apparent care in the world, by default, makes her a threat to society as well. I don’t feel any sympathy towards her.

While stuck in stop and go traffic on I-55 last week as I was heading to the city, I asked myself what exactly causes traffic? I understand that traffic is much like a domino effect, but why does it have to happen when there are no accidents or obvious reasons to slow down? Lead car drives 65 MPH ideally, the second car drives close to it, with the third car behind, and etc. What’s the problem?

Anytime I’ve been in a stop and go situation on an expressway, I’ve always thought about the underlying cause of traffic build ups. Build ups… that is exactly how the fine folks at HowStuffWorks.com explain the process of traffic and how it works. I especially like the animated graphic that shows how traffic actually builds up. An animated graphic! It’s like I’m in kindergarten!

A consultant I often confer with on the job once told me that he does not drink coffee with cream or sugar – the second any of that stuff is added, it is no longer coffee, he said. Wise words, believe it or not, spoken to me in January of 2009. At the time, I was one who loaded my coffee up with cream and Splenda. Someone’s simple preference for coffee, yet, words that somehow inspired me to give up my bad habits of cream and the excessive amount of Splenda.

That lasted for three our four months, until I got back in the habit of drinking my coffee with cream – however, I still insist on no sugar or Splenda and adhere to that rule about 98% of the time (though I still use plenty of Splenda with milk in my hot tea, and often indulge on sugary fraps from Starbucks).

Around the office where I work, there is a Dunkin Donuts close by, so either my boss or myself will often make a Dunkin run by the early afternoon. I honestly prefer Starbucks or McDonald’s coffee, but both places are a bit of a drive from my office – a drive I especially don’t care to make thanks to the village’s silly (and strictly enforced) 25 MPH speed limits on several of their side roads.

When I order my coffee with cream from a Dunkin Donuts or a McDonalds, it comes back with cream. When I order coffee with cream at Starbucks, it comes back with coffee, with a little room left over for cream – I have to add the cream myself.

While the price of a cup of coffee at Starbucks may only cost a bit more than a cup at Dunkin Donuts, think about the overall price of the specialty drinks at Starbucks. Comparing the two places, one tend to thinks Starbucks is a bit more upscale (whether that is actually true or not, you can think the marketing and branding efforts of their company). So, why is it that at Starbucks, I actually have to add the cream myself?

Is this some minor afterthought from Starbucks? Gathering from the variety of reading I have done in regards to economics and business decisions, I would guess that it is actually a brilliant strategic decision from company executives. Think about the amount of seconds it takes for a barista to add cream to a cup of coffee. Add that up several times per hour, per day, per week, per year – that’s a lot of seconds that turns into minutes that turns into hours of less time Starbucks employees waste on something that the customer can easily do his or herself. All that added time is instead used towards the other trivial tasks that Starbucks employees must complete.

Yes, I definitely believe that Starbucks is well aware of this. I do wonder if any such statistics or trending analysis actually exists with such data that estimates or actually shows how much time the company saves by not having their employees add cream to their customer’s cups of coffee.

Think of the amount of time that the consumer waste when having to add his/her own cream. After the customer receives his cup of coffee, he then then walk over to the table, takes the lid off, pours the cream in, places the cream back on top of the table, stirs the cream, places the lid back on the cup, ensures that the lid is actually on tight – all that before walking out the door. On an added note, sometimes extra seconds are wasted when the cream’s lid is on too tight and I have to unloosen it to allow the cream to properly dispense from the container.

In the grand scheme of things, adding my own cream to my coffee is not a big deal. I’m not a stuck up with the head and nose in the air type of person who is above adding cream to my own coffee. When I buy coffee at a Speedway or a BP gas station, I don’t think twice about adding my own cream. However, getting used to the fine folks at Dunkin Donuts or even McDonald’s already adding the cream for me has left me a bit spoiled.

A new customer to Starbucks who asks for cream with his coffee may receive the cup with lid in tact, walk out and drive away until finally realizing that his coffee has no cream (assuming the customer walks into the restaurant, as opposed to using the drive thru – which not all Starbucks have). That has never happened to me. In fact, I never realized that I had to pour my own cream at Starbucks until after I got used to buying my coffee at Dunkin Donuts and McDonald’s.

Now, when I order my coffee at Starbucks, instead of asking for cream, I simply tell the barista to leave room for cream.

Starbucks has trained me well.

Conservatives and libertarians (most, at least) are rightfully angry about the passage of President Obama’s and the Democratic Congress’s health care reform bill. While I do agree that the existing situation concerning soaring health care costs cannot be sustained for much longer (and not to mention the burden on people who are unable to get health care or can only get it at a super high cost), this bill does not solve the underlying problem. Instead, what the federal government is essentially doing is making health insurance available to almost everybody, taxing the money and then paying for it through subsidies.

While this bill does offer help and relief to some small businesses as well as some individuals, the bottom line is that the cost of health care is going to continue to rise for almost everyone else. Larger companies and wealthy individuals are going to see an increase in the amount of taxes they pay. These companies are not going to willingly take a cut in the bottom line of their business. They are going to offset the cost onto their consumers. A business that will now have to pay more in health costs will either mandate that the difference is either made up by increased contributions from their employees (i.e. smaller checks), raise their prices on the products or services that they offer or both. That affects all of us.

I think it is inaccurate to label the new law as socialized medicine. This is not socialized medicine. What the government is simply doing is changing a few rules on how the private insurance industry must operate, while increasing subsidies to some individuals to help pay for private insurance. For the vast majority of the people, they will be using private insurance still. The expansion of Medicaid will only cover a small minority of people. Those who are trying to sell this new law as socialized health care are doing themselves a disservice. This new bill is not socialized medicine. For as bad as this current “solution” is, socialized medicine would be far worse.

Five or 10 years from now, after it has become long obvious that health care is still a mess, I’m willing to bet that big government liberals will attempt to “fix it” by either implementing a public option, or going to a single-payer system all together.

I’m not against health care reform. The existing system is unsustainable and something has to be done. What we just witnessed by Obama and the Democrats is not an appropriate solution, especially when there are other measures out there that could have been considered.

Obama and his Democratic colleagues justified passing this bill because it was “better than nothing.” While the Republicans were no-shows in regards to health care reform during George W. Bush’s presidency (the first six in which he had a Republican majority Congress), it doesn’t mean they don’t have good ideas now. The same for libertarians. To say their solution is better than nothing, when they absolutely refused to consider alternative ideas is a cop out.

The Westboro Baptist Church has repeatedly been in the news within the last couple of years for their various protest at the funerals of fallen Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. They are in the news again as a result of an unfair situation involving a dead soldier’s father now having to pony up cash to pay for their court fees as a result of a federal appeals court ruling.

The Westboro Baptist Church in short, is a radical group headed by an individual who believes that the United States of America has reached the point of no return, and that we all are destined for hell as a result of this country’s overall tolerance of homosexuality (the majority, if not all of the followers are all family). Their official website (Google “Westboro Baptist Church”) is plastered with hate messages and images. It will take less than 10 seconds to be fully aware of what they are all about.

The Westboro Baptist Church is a church in name only. While they may gather and worship, they are a glorified hate group. While they claim to take every single word of the bible literally, they fully misinterpret the main ideas that come from God – love and forgiveness. Somewhere, while analyzing the scripture, they seemed to miss the idea that we as human beings are far from perfect and that be do sin.

I don’t write this entry as someone who is deeply religious. I am an open minded Christian who has formed some of my own beliefs in regards to life outside of the church. Without opening a can of worms here, while I do question and sometimes doubt the entire aspect of religion, I am fully confident that what the Westboro Baptist Church stands for, as well as their actions, simply are not right.

The Westboro Baptist Church, through their actions, do not demonstrate God’s love or forgiveness. They act on hate. Showing up to the funerals of dead soldiers, and in theory, “rubbing it into” the parents of the fallen soldier goes beyond absolute disgust and poor taste. They are instigating. They are haters.

I hate to waste too much of my time writing about them. But whenever I do think of them, I immediately become filled with such disgusted anger. Not just at the hate in the individuals who head this group, but at the brainwashing they do on the children within the family.

I simply don’t understand where such unprovoked hate and intolerance can possibly come from.

The situation surrounding the Jackson, MI school that canceled its prom this year because of a lesbian student wanting to bring her girlfriend has stirred much debate around the country. John Williams on WGN-AM in Chicago today wrapped the whole issue around one single question – does discrimination against a person include sexual preference? I think yes.

The school deciding to cancel its prom because the controversy became a distraction to the overall education process is a bunch of bull. When a specific situation is negative, the school deems it a distraction to the overall education process and decides to do away with it. Yet, a state football championship run or an event that would otherwise be classified as a positive distraction is perfectly acceptable.

Technicalities, I’m sure, will make the the lawsuit involving the ACLU and the school complex. Personally, if the school is going to insist that a “distraction” is reason enough to cancel prom, then maybe they ought to do the same with any other event (including athletics) that doesn’t directly involve arithmetic and writing.

Most baseball fans can’t wait until spring training games begin. Today was the day for both of Chicago’s baseball teams.

Now that the spring games have begun, us same fans can’t wait for them to end so that the real games can begin.

Bring on April!