KWTN: The Blue Paper

O'BOYLE: When My Jokes Come True

"The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program."
– Ronald Reagan

By Hal O'Boyle

I’ve been making fun of the granny-goosers at the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) for as long as they’ve been around. When they banned styling mousse and toothpaste from airliners, I joked that I was glad the goo bombers hadn’t been bra or briefs bombers. Little did I dream that an outfit as deeply incompetent as the TSA would survive long enough to see my jokes come true. But I simply didn’t understand the profound truth of Ronald Reagan’s observation about government bureaus and eternal life.

I’d be hard pressed to choose the greater screw-up, the jock bomber or the people charged with keeping jock bombers off of airplanes. The bomber failed to blow his own butt off even though, against all odds, he had carried the dreaded briefs bomb all the way from Nigeria to Detroit.

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A Modest Proposal for New Tax Laws

by Hal O'Boyle

This column from 2006 promotes a suggestion we are hearing more often in these days of 2000 page legal monsters.

As a newcomer I’m having some trouble distinguishing between the political parties here in Costa Rica. Although there are many more of them than there are in the States, there are just two that matter. Just like in the States the difference between the two is obvious only to party members. To an outsider, like this writer, there is practically no difference. The primary mission of both parties is to take wealth from the productive economy and use the money to buy political support.

The Costa Rican government runs like most modern democracies, it spends more money than it takes in. It borrows the difference. It then swindles lenders and locals alike by printing truckloads of the local monetary tokens, called Colones (rhymes with baloneys when spoken by gringos). The government then repays lenders and buys votes with the rapidly depreciating paper tokens.

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Hal O'Boyle

Hal O'Boyle fled New England in the seventies for Key West, Florida. He settled there because the road ended and local legend had it that large, sodden bales of marijuana floated up onto the public beaches at night. The bale tales were greatly exaggerated, forcing him into business to secure reliable supplies of pizza, beer, and bullets.

He spent thirty years in Key West ending up, like everyone else, in the real estate business. In 2006, he moved to San Jose, Costa Rica, where he now lives with his wife, two teen aged sons, 3 big fat chickens and Winston, 65 lbs of Valley Bulldog love.

He is the author of Democracy: The Painted Whore, an Extremist Explains War, Drugs, Guns, God, Gold and Santa Clause.

He writes a weekly column for Key West The Newspaper  and various disreputable online publications. iPura vida!

To read Hal's current KWTN articles, look under Categories in right column, click on his name.

For earlier articles, please look under Categories and go to the year you want, then click on his name in that Categories list!

• Complete works at The-Extremist.com.
• Email here.