But you know what? That arrangement was goddamn socialism

"Do you realize the kind of shit we’re capable of? Have you ever heard about the great pension plan conversion scam? All these big old giant companies were sitting around billions of dollars in their pension plans. They money’s just sitting around doing nothing. It’s just this big fucking pool of money that’s sitting there because you’ve got hundreds of thousands of retirees and the law says you gotta keep enough money to meet your huge pension obligation.

‘But here’s the thing. You see that money, and you want it. Right? Who could resist? So what do you do? Simple. You change the pension plan to some kind of new phony-baloney plan and in doing so you reduce the obligation. I mean it’s like magic! Suddenly you’ve created a surplus in the pension fund. You apply that to earnings, and guess what happens? The stock goes up, and you get a big bonus. That’s right. Sure, the old folks howl, because their monthly pension payment went down and now they’ve got to pay through the nose for health care that was supposed to be free for life. But you know what? That arrangement was goddamn socialism. It was a cancer on our competitiveness. It was a boil that needed to be lanced. Now it’s tough because you’re not talking about screwing over nameless, faceless customers — you’re talking about fucking over the people who used to work with you. The people who hired you and trained you. The people who built your company and then were foolish enough to hand it over to you. And now they’re filing lawsuits, claiming that you took their retirement money and put it into your pockets. Which is, in fact, exactly what you did. But you know what? Boo fucking hoo, idiots."

Suddenly that "socialism" you've been ranting about not wanting doesn't sound so bad does it?

Here's the clue: 99.99999% of us aren't in the game and don't benefit from things like this.

What we do benefit from? Socialist benefits packages and labor unions that stick it to the 0.000001% who have all the money.

(Via Fake Steve Jobs.)

I'm so full of oysters right now I might grow a shell. But e'ffin yum!

via tweetie

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Judge Orders Release of RNC '04 Arrest Docs

Judge Orders Release of RNC '04 Arrest Docs: " (CN) - The New York Police Department must turn over 2,000 pages of documents to the New York Civil Liberties Union concerning the department's mass arrests of protestors during the 2004 Republican National Convention, a federal judge ruled."

Seeing all the people huddled around the warming lamps at the EL stop reminds me of pigeons

via tweetie

Posted via web from Adam's posterous

At restaurant. They want to rethink choice of pen given to customer.

via tweetie

Posted via web from Adam's posterous

The allegedly growing domestic Muslim threat

The allegedly growing domestic Muslim threat:

"It's akin to advising a lung cancer patient to triple the quantity of cigarettes he smokes each day. Yet we continue to do it over and over, and then point to the harms we cause as reasons we need to continue doing it. Our "counter-terrorism" campaign basically consists of three steps repeated endlessly:

(1) Interfere in or otherwise act aggressively in the Muslim world.
(2) Provoke increased anti-American sentiment and fuel terrorism as a result of Step 1.
(3) Point to the increased anti-American sentiment and terrorism as a reason we need to escalate our interference and aggression in the Muslim world. Return to Step 1.

"

Not ashamed to say it - I'm entertained for hours by /b/ rage threads!

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Adam's posterous

I'm having the traditional 2nd night of Chanukah raw fish on rice dinner of my people. lol

via tweetie

Posted via web from Adam's posterous

A not-so-brief chat with Randall Stephenson of AT&T

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs : A not-so-brief chat with Randall Stephenson of AT&T: "So we set up a call with Randall this morning to discuss some of the profoundly stupid things his guy Ralph de la Vega said recently about creating incentives that would encourage people to stop using AT&T’s data network so much. Point of the talk was, when you’re lucky enough to create a smash hit product — when the stars align, and the hardware is great and the ecosystem is great and the apps are great and the whole experience is great, and everything you do just makes everything else better, and you’re totally on a roll and can do no wrong — when that happens, you do not go out and try to fuck it all up by discouraging people who love your product. What you do, instead, is you fix your fucking shitty ass network you fucking shit-eating-grin-wearing hillbilly ass clown!"

And this below is something I've been saying about American industry for 10 years. What the hell is wrong with us?

"While I’m ranting, let me ask you something, Randall. At the risk of sounding like Glenn Beck Jr. — what the fuck has gone wrong with our country? Used to be, we were innovators. We were leaders. We were builders. We were engineers. We were the best and brightest. We were the kind of guys who, if they were running the biggest mobile network in the U.S., would say it’s not enough to be the biggest, we also want to be the best, and once they got to be the best, they’d say, How can we get even better? What can we do to be the best in the whole fucking world? What can we do that would blow people’s fucking minds? They wouldn’t have sat around wondering about ways to fuck over people who loved their product. But then something happened. Guys like you took over the phone company and all you cared about was milking profit and paying off assholes in Congress to fuck over anyone who came along with a better idea, because even though it might be great for consumers it would mean you and your lazy pals would have to get off your asses and start working again in order to keep up."

In a word; Awesome!

(Via Fake Steve Jobs.)

Epic Beard Becoming More Epic

Posted via web from Adam's posterous

Gonna see how long I can keep this going!