The Turkey Initiative

I propose two voter initiatives.

The first will solve the California budget crisis once and for all. It’s called the San Francisco Pay It initiative, and it calls for every resident of San Francisco to pay $10,000 to the state every year. We’re only including the residents of the city, not the county. As of 2008, the population was 808,976. That would mean over $ 8 billion dollars a year into the state black hole coffers. We’re including everyone, children, babies, senior citizens.

It will work for 6 reasons

1. They can afford it. If you live in San Francisco, where the AVERAGE house sells for $656,700, then you can damn well afford it.
2. Everyone will vote for it except for San Frannians. Which is fine, because there are a lot more of us then there are of them.
3. Nobody likes San Frannians. Not even themselves. They move away and complain bitterly about how whatever town they’re living in is not San Francisco, but they DON’T MOVE BACK.
4. If they can afford $6.3 billion for a bridge (A BRIDGE, goddammit! Not a space shuttle, not an atom collider, not a regime change), they can afford this.
5. They are complete snots for charging us money to get IN to their damn city, but not to get out via the Golden Gate.
6. Barry Bonds.

This will be great. There are tons of great initiatives JUST LIKE THIS ONE that get on the ballot because lots of morons concerned citizens will believe anything take the time to understand what’s going on in the state of California and then form mobs citizen activist groups to yell and scream at town halls debate before irrationally rationally signing petitions.

And THEN the state supreme court strikes the whole initiative down (after a cost of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars) just because the find the thing just a little unconstitutional. Don’t they understand that when people VOTE for something, we all HAVE to do it no matter how stupid or irrational it is? This is a DEMOCRACY for crying out loud. If we all get together and vote to nuke Las Vegas for fireworks fun, then OUR WILL BE DONE. It's the American Way.

Oh, and that second voter initiative? NO MORE VOTER INITIATIVES!

Dr. Turkey is IN

Okay, so the government can’t afford healthcare. Got it. We hear you loud and clear. We were also trying to hear that other guy over there, the one with H1N2 (the sequel), but you were louder, so yours is the only voice we’re going to listen to. No government healthcare. Done.

What now? What’s the plan? You MUST have something in mind. Please let us in on it. Enlighten us. The way we see it, there are just a handful of options available. Check off one of the boxes below and send it, along with a check for $69.95, to:
Eugene V. Debs III
That Sketchy Coffee and Smoke Shop
1955 Soho, NY

Option one: Change nothing and let your company keep paying for group insurance. THAT’s working, right? Of course, you’ve got to convince your company to keep doing it. Tell them it’s good business, that they save money because you are healthy. Convince them that you heard on NPR that employee illness costs business $1.3 fabrillion dollars a year, even though when YOU get sick, the work still gets done, either by Carol Cubemate or by you when you get back. Of course, you might get permanently sick, so they get Bradley Headphones at half your salary to replace you, and you can’t collect disability because you made such a big stink about government spending, remember?

Option two: YOU pay the doctor bills. Got the flu? $200 visit to Old Doc Hackencoff. Pain in the leg? $800 X-ray. Pain in the head? $1600 MRI. Pain in the heart? $16,000 funeral service.



Option three: Join your own health group. Costco Health and Chicken Wing package. Put your health in the hands of people who make a profit at it, trying to make MONEY out of this. They calculate just how much you’re going to cost them in healthcare, and charge you just a little bit more. They have a room full of math nerds calculating EXACTLY when you are going to get sick, going to break a leg, and they stamp an expiration date on you. You wind up paying $1195.39 a year more than they would have spent on their own, but hey, you have insurance.

Option four: Buy a plastic bubble. Live in it. Never get sick. Worked for John Travolta.







Option five: Expire

The Bad News Turkeys

This is my favorite time of year. (No, not the pre-Labor Day sale at Macy’s.) It’s Little League World Series time! And God bless ESPN for not only showing the series, but also the regionals leading up to the series. For my money, this is the best sporting event of the year.

First, you got a bunch of kids that haven’t quite learned the swagger, the noxious attitudes of adult athletes. It’ll come later, but for now, you’re pretty sure none of these kids are going to show up in a NYC court with a lawyer, a bullet in the leg, a gram of cocaine in the pocket and a busted hooker in the car. Sure, they’ve had their controversies, some cheating in the past, even a doping scandal, but you get the feeling it wasn’t so much the kids who were cheating, it was their parents or coaches or someone with a grown-up agenda.

Second, there’s no money involved. Oh yeah, I know ESPN is paying something for this, and so are the commercials, but seriously, watch a game. Every kid wants to be a superstar and doesn’t have one thought about how much his agent can screw the owners of the team. Also, there are no billboards, rolling signs, or anything trying to sell Pepsi, Farmer John Hot Dogs, or Hankook Tires. And tickets are free. FREE! As in, no cost to you. Zero. Okay, hot dogs are a dollar. So is a soda. You could buy over 50 hot dogs for what you pay for a pair of Red Sox cheap seats.

Third, there is no better on-field drama. That’s because these kids are fully involved. Sometimes I see that on the college level, but it’s definitely here. There’s a complete joy winning and a total wretchedness in losing. Yes, there’s crying in baseball, and it’s here.

Fourth, it’s a sweet and honest introduction to other cultures and manners. I love how the Taiwanese players bow to the umpires when they approach the plate. I remember when Japan won in 2001, the team ran out to centerfield to bow to the statue of Howard Lamade (he’s the guy they named the stadium after), after being erroneously told it was a baseball god (kinda mean and goofy, but somehow still a perfect moment). I remember being in grammar school and reading the story of the perfect game thrown by the star pitcher of the underdog 1957 Monterrey team from Mexico to win the championship. It’s still the only perfect game in series history.

Fifth, at some point during the series, some kid is going to make an amazing play. And we’re not just talking homerun here. We’re talking a rob-the-jack-at-the-wall kind of play, or a Brooks Robinson mad-wicked throw from foul territory at least one time-zone past third base to nail Bucky Speedrobin at first kind of play, or a Willie Mays over-the-shoulder leap-n-tumble kind of a play. The kind that makes you feel... immortal. The kind, if you’ve seen the original Bad News Bears, that Lupus makes, one that doesn’t win the game or is even all that athletic, but it’s the key to the film because winning isn’t really why we’re out there, it’s just being in the game that matters. Or as Coach Buttermaker said, “Listen, Lupus, you didn't come into this life just to sit around on a dugout bench, did ya? Now get your ass out there and do the best you can.”

And finally, it’s baseball. How can you go wrong?

Turkey on Fire

The public is outraged. Congress is outraged. Fox News is apoplectic. Money is being wasted. They’re spending stimulus money on STOOPID things. The LA Times found unnecessary million-plus dollar project to repair a guardrail around a deserted man-made lake in the panhandle of Oklahoma that no one visits. $800k for a backup runway in a little airport in Pennsylvania where the main runway rarely gets used. Bill O’Reilly just burst a vein!

The Duck responds, yep, that’ll happen. When you’re putting out the fire on your roof, you really don’t worry about the few drops that hit your driveway.

(And in OK, they figured it out. Somebody said that’s a bad spend of money and they stopped it. )

Congress, the media, and the rest of the country, are also a little perturbed that we’re NOT FIXING THE WHOLE SYSTEM. They want a complete overhaul. It’s broken and they want it FIXED, NOW!!!.

The Duck responds, haven’t you noticed that the HOUSE IS ON FIRE? Maybe you might want to put it out before you start building the next one. Sure, it’s a good idea to better fireproof the house, but I don’t think you want to start wheeling in fire-retardant carpet while the flames are still lapping at the walls.

Some are saying don’t spend all this money, it’s not going to help and you’ll just make it worse.

The Duck responds, worse? People, the house is aflame. You don’t want me to turn the hose on it because you’re worried about flooding the basement? Yeah, maybe it won’t work, but I bet you stand outside your house with the hose on anyway.

Some are saying by borrowing money from the Chinese, we’re giving them too much power over the world economy.

The Duck responds: Chinese firemen are coming to save your house. Yeah, they might want the firefighting gig, with a fire station. Are you going to say no, you don’t really need a house?

Some are saying there’s not nearly enough money to make a difference.

The Duck responds: Nope, probably not. But I bet if your house was on fire, you wouldn’t stop trying to put it out just because the hose seemed kind of small.

So when I told all this to a warehouse employee in LA, when I said, “The house is on fire, and all this money is to try to put it out,” he said maybe the most telling thing I’ve heard in a long time.

He said, “Let it burn.”

They are THAT angry.

FDR was a Turkey

We must eliminate socialism in America at ALL COSTS. It is the great evil of our time. It is WORSE than child molesting. WORSE than matricide. WORSE than Waterworld.

Do it now. Get the government out of our lives and let the CEO’s run everything.

Public schools out!
Time Warner Educational Units in! (just $29,999 a year!)

Public sanitation out!
Toyota Trash Removal in! (just $49.50 a pickup!)

Government highway maintenance out!
Wal-Mart Fix-Your-Own Pothole Goop in! (just $19.99 a tube!)

Federal and Statewide park systems out!
Bill Gates’ Backyard Tour in! (just $129.99 a ticket!)

Vietnam War Memorial out!
Six Flags Roller Coaster Tribute of Dead Soldiers on Parade in! (ride included with price of admission, $129.99 for family of four!)

Medical and Medicare out!
RJ Reynolds All-Purpose Health Potion in! (just $69.99 a bottle!)

Public beaches out!
Pottery Barn Bath Vat in! (just $1899.99 purchase and installation!)

US military protection out!
Walt Disney Black Ops and Green Berets in! (protection for your home starts at just $899 a year!)

NASA out!
Has-Bro Poppet Rockets in! (just $689,000 a flight!)

Fire Departments out!
Arthur Murray’s Stop Drop and Roll lessons in! (just $79 a lesson, first one free!!!)

OSHA out!
Johnson and Johnson’s Do-It-Yourself Finger Re-Attacher in! (just $299.99 a kit! *batteries not included*)

It’s worth it! Pay NO TAXES, and for just $69,999.99 a year (*batteries not included*), you can have the SAME THINGS!

Turkey Hall Town Crier

AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!! AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!! AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!

AAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!! AAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! AAGGGGGHHHHHHH!!! AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

I Don’t Want Any Health Care!!!!!!

Turkey on the Fence

I used to be against a border fence across the Mexican American border. Really, I was. Most of the immigrant/illegal immigrant struggle was racism, plain and simple. Anybody tell you anything different is either wrong or lying.

Taking our jobs? Nuts. They created jobs. Ten illegals working in a factory meant one foreman and one management position for fine upstanding US citizens. You take those illegals out of the factory and you think a bunch of Americans are going to take a minimum wage job sewing up stuffed Hilary Duff dolls for children or molding plastic cases for your iPods? No, they’re going to want a $60 an hour union contract, whereby the factory shuts down and moves to Taiwan. If you don’t let it move, it will just shut down anyway, because no one is going to pay $169.95 for a Hillary Duff doll.

Because they don’t speak English? Really? Give you a grammar test later today. If you pass, you get to stay.

Because they don’t pay taxes? What do you think that thing is at the end of a purchase, that little extra percent you have to pay, that sales… something? What’s that? Some kind of tax, as I recall. Oh, you mean INCOME TAX. You want to spend tens of billions of dollars to send them back because they don’t pay income tax. Wouldn’t it just be easier and more financially lucrative to legalize them all and COLLECT income tax? Remember, taxes come out of your paycheck BEFORE you cash it.

They use up our resources? Hardly. You think these folks want to come in under the spotlight where they can be found out and deported?

Dangerous? I once saw a letter to the editor questioning why the LA Times had not reported the immigration status some criminal that had recently been caught. I guess the idea here is that immigrants are coming over in droves to commit criminal acts. Maybe some of these guys are criminals. But I bet the VAST MAJORITY of crimes in the US are committed by US CITIZENS. And you worry about a liquor store hold-up when illegal acts by the CEO of AIG has caused YOUR savings, YOUR house value, YOUR 401k to dwindle to the size of bag of rotten walnuts. How come people aren’t writing to check out HIS immigration status? Is it because it’s OKAY to get robbed by Americans?

But now, things have changed. Immigrants are leaving, forced out by tighter immigration laws, green card sweeps, and – most of all – lack of jobs. That doll factory closed, after all. There’s a lot of work at the maquiladoras along the Mexican-American border, and even more at Ugly Bobby’s Cocaine and Rice distribution plant. And it’s easy to get back. Have you seen the traffic heading south of the border? It’s a freeway with no stop signs.

The real problem is that US Citizens will be soon following them. Lost your job at GM? There are openings at Volkswagon, Nissan, and Subaru factories in Mexico. They might need someone who can speak English and eat pizza. Same for the banks, hotels, and, yes, doll factories. That same doll factory shuttered up in Little Rock, Arkansas has now reopened in Poco Roca, Baja, and they could use an experienced foreman. So go, you dirty dryback. Only we’re going to build that fence, bigger than ever, just to keep you IN. You’ll have to pay a coyote just to smuggle you over.

But that’s okay. The Canadians will be filtering down pretty soon.

Back from the Wilderness Turkey

The Mad Duck returns after a near two-year hiatus. Yes, I know you all missed it (both of you), but now the Duck has more to say and you damn well better listen, for like Joseph Campbell’s “hero with a thousand faces,” I have been walking the wilderness, aka Pepperdine Graziadio School of Business Management.

For those of you unfamiliar with said milli-faceted hero, here’s the quote from the book:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

And, boy, do I have boons for you.

Boon 1: I took two classes in Economics, and the key thing I learned was that WE ARE ALL DOOMED. Seriously. You think this is bottom? This is just the bottom of a sinking boat, and the crew is down there at the hull digging a hole looking for buried treasure. The solution to the US economic problem is to spend money. Problem is, WE DON’T HAVE ANY. We’re in debt up to our eyeballs. Brother, can you spare a trillion dimes?

Boon 2: I took two classes in Law, and the key thing I learned was that WE ARE ALL DOOMED. The rule of law has been eroding for several decades. CEO Peter Pocketliner has been draining his company the equivalent of the GDP of a medium European nation, thereby reducing your 401k by another eight years worth of retirement money, so he gets three trials with two acquittals and a hung jury, but by God we’re going to hang that Gary Glassylook, the homeless sucker who did a quarter ounce of crack cocaine in his $8 a night room at the Guano Arms in downtown Los Angeles because he’s so much of a threat to our safety he might actually attempt to USE A PUBLIC RESTROOM WHILE WE’RE IN IT!!!! Meanwhile, this Pocketliner guy resigns from AIG and takes a job running Visa because all he needs now is a REALLY BIG credit card.

Boon 3: I took two classes in international law and international marketing, and the key thing I learned was that WE ARE ALL DOOMED. China’s coming. And India. And Russia. And Brazil. But mostly, China. Did you see the opening ceremonies at the Olympics? What was it, three or four hundred thousand performers in perfect unison all demanding that we GIVE UP NOW? These people are patient – they don’t have to run for re-election every four minutes. They’ve got a plan, and they’ve got their eye on the corn belt. These folks are hungry.

Boon 4: I’ve taken classes in finance and accounting, and the key thing I learned was that WE ARE ALL DOOMED. None of the students in either class remembered how to complete simple mathematic equations, so we faked it.

Bet they know math in China.