Word of the Day: Gadsden Flag
Tuesday February 9th, 2010
With all of the Tea Party activity lately the Gadsden Flag is getting more attention. From Wikipedia:
The Gadsden flag is a historical American flag with a yellow field depicting a rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike. Positioned below the snake is the legend “Dont Tread on Me“[sic]. The flag was designed by and is named after American general and statesman Christopher Gadsden. It was also used by the United States Marine Corps as an early motto flag.
The use of the timber rattlesnake as a symbol of the American colonies can be traced back to the publications of Benjamin Franklin. In 1751, he made the first reference to the rattlesnake in a satirical commentary published in his Pennsylvania Gazette. It had been the policy of Britain to send convicted criminals to America, and Franklin suggested that they thank the British by sending rattlesnakes to England.
Benjamin Franklin's "Join, or Die" cartoon
In 1754, during the French and Indian War, Franklin published his famous woodcut of a snake cut into eight sections. It represented the colonies, with New England joined together as the head and South Carolina as the tail, following their order along the coast. Under the snake was the message “Join, or Die”. This was the first political cartoon published in an American newspaper.
As the American Revolution grew closer, the snake began to see more use as a symbol of the colonies. In 1774, Paul Revere added it to the title of his paper, the Massachusetts Spy, as a snake joined to fight a British dragon.[1] In December 1775, Benjamin Franklin published an essay in the Pennsylvania Journal under the pseudonym American Guesser in which he suggested that the rattlesnake was a good symbol for the American spirit:
I recollected that her eye excelled in brightness, that of any other animal, and that she has no eye-lids—She may therefore be esteemed an emblem of vigilance.—She never begins an attack, nor, when once engaged, ever surrenders: She is therefore an emblem of magnanimity and true courage.—As if anxious to prevent all pretensions of quarreling with her, the weapons with which nature has furnished her, she conceals in the roof of her mouth, so that, to those who are unacquainted with her, she appears to be a most defenseless animal; and even when those weapons are shewn and extended for her defense, they appear weak and contemptible; but their wounds however small, are decisive and fatal:—Conscious of this, she never wounds till she has generously given notice, even to her enemy, and cautioned him against the danger of treading on her.—Was I wrong, Sir, in thinking this a strong picture of the temper and conduct of America?[2]
Considered one of the first flags of the United States, the flag was later replaced by the current Stars and Stripes (or Old Glory) flag. Since the Revolution, the flag has seen times of reintroduction as both a symbol of American patriotism and as a symbol of disagreement with the government.
Previous WOTD - Funicular
Word of the Day | Link | 1 Comment |
Generational Inequities in Social Security Payments
Tuesday February 9th, 2010
Will Baby Boomers Bankrupt Social Security?:
Count Gen-Xer Tom Firey among those younger workers who think they’re getting the short end of the stick. The managing editor of the conservative Cato Institute magazine, Regulation, first wrote about the subject nearly 10 years ago in a column headlined, “Boomers Fleece Generation X with Social Security.”
“Ever since we Gen-X/Yers began working, we’ve paid 12.4 percent of our earnings to Social Security,” he wrote. “In contrast, the Boomers will get a bargain. When they entered the workforce in the late 1960s, they paid only 6.5 percent of their earnings to Social Security. Only from 1990 on, when the Boomers had earned paychecks for a quarter-century, did they start paying 12.4 percent to Social Security, the same percentage we Gen-X/Yers have paid our whole lives.”
Medicare/Medicaid is even more under-funded than Social Security, yet Medicare holdings are lower. I fully expect a hike in Medicare withholding rates in my lifetime.
P.S. A major inequity that bugs me about Social Security is that millions of people will pay into the systems for decades and die before drawing a penny. It would make sense to me that your payments to these retirement programs would increase as you got older, and therefore more likely to use them.
Social Security | Link | No Comments |
Follow-up with pics: converting raw speaker wires to banana plugs
Monday February 8th, 2010
Last Christmas we upgrade our home entertainment system and moved everything to new furniture. During the move I had trouble with two of the speakers. Re-cutting the speaker wire fixed one speaker, but not the center.
During that trouble I decided I was tired of trying to jam lampcord into screwposts, so I ordered these Monoprice banana plugs and followed their instructions.
Before: Naked Wires Screwed into Caps
After: Wires Formed into Gold-plated Banana Plugs
Much neater, and no more dangling strands of copper that I couldn’t force into the post. The other ends of the speaker wires going into the speakers got the same plugs.
And that problem I had with my center channel not working after the move? This didn’t fix it. I dug around some more and found the problem. During the move the Dolby setting on the receiver had somehow gotten changed from Standard to Music, which doesn’t use the center channel. A click of a button fixed that.
The banana plus are a neater wiring solution that’s easier to disassemble and reassemble. It probably even sounds a hair better than the old setup. For the small price tag and minimal work I’m happy with the upgrade.
Previously - School Me on Speaker Wire and Banana Connectors, Please
A&E, Dear Lazyweb, Tech | Link | 1 Comment |
Shannon Love on Problems with Peer-reviewed Science
Sunday February 7th, 2010
ChicagoBoyz - Scientific Peer-Review is a Lightweight Process:
By the way that proponents of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) wave it about as a talisman to ward off criticism, a lay person could be excused for thinking that peer review is a rigorous process that is central to the functioning of science and that verifies the conclusions of a scientist’s research.
Peer review is nothing like that.
Peer review isn’t even central to science. Science functioned fine for centuries without peer review and scientists who work in secret or proprietary environments do not use it. Instead, peer review serves economic and social functions related to scientific publishing and does nothing else. Peer review somewhat protects the integrity of scientific media, not the quality of science itself.
Read the whole thing.
Science | Link | 2 Comments |
OK, but who hasn’t wanted to break Jim Treacher’s knees?
Friday February 5th, 2010
The State Department has refused to answer basic questions about an accident that took place in Washington on Wednesday night, in which a U.S. Diplomatic Security Service vehicle struck Daily Caller employee Sean Medlock as he was crossing the street.
An agent in the vehicle, Mike McGuinn, did not identify himself to Medlock at the scene, or apologize for running him down. Indeed, Washington, D.C., police drove to a local emergency room to serve Medlock with a jaywalking citation as he lay prostrate in a hospital bed, while a man who identified himself as “special agent” stood by watching and taking notes.
Reached on his cell phone the following day by the Daily Caller, McGuinn refused to answer questions about the incident.
“I’m a federal agent and I’m not allowed to talk to the media,” McGuinn said, citing “liability.” McGuinn initially declined even to reveal which agency he works for. “You can refer to the [DC] police department report,” he said before hanging up abruptly. (According the police department, no report will be publicly available for at least three days.)
According to Medlock, who writes under the name Jim Treacher, he was struck at about 7:15 p.m. on Wednesday, while crossing M Street in downtown Washington. Medlock says he was walking within the bounds of the crosswalk, toward a blinking white signal, when a government SUV suddenly turned left and plowed into him, knocking him to the ground.
Me, I’m thinking the guy who hit and runned him is Agent Smith and Treacher nee Medlock is The One.
LATER: And Reason came up with the same gag several hours before me.
Blogging | Link | 1 Comment |
Infrared Photography Links
Thursday February 4th, 2010
Photo by J. Andrzej Wrotniak
I just ordered a Hoya R72 IR filter so I can get my feet wet with infrared photography. I like the different look and the extreme contrast between black and white tones you can get with IR. Here are some Web sites I’m bookmarking for reference.
- Infrared Photography with a Digital Camera - The photo above came from his gallery. Includes this caveat: “Never, ever view the sun directly through an IR filter, however black it may appear. The transmitted near IR can permanently damage your eyes in a matter of seconds before you know it!” IR photography - beautiful and dangerous.
- Infrared (IR) basics for digital photographers—capturing the unseen
- IR post-processing in Photoshop - darned useful info
- Thom Hogan - Shooting Infrared with Digital Cameras
- Infrared camera videos on Google
- Bjørn Rørslett’s IR Colour Photography - Really outstanding, and his excellent Nikon lens reviews have useful notes on suitability for IR and UV photography
- Take Infrared (IR) Pictures With Your Digital Camera - A DIY resource. “This rough test is done by pointing a TV remote control at your digital camera and pressing a button. You should be able to see the IR LED on your remote (the white light here). The brighter, the better (different digital cameras have different IR sensitivities).”
- Lifepixel and MaxMax are two companies that convert digital cameras for dedicated IR use. Everything I’ve read says that dedicated IR cameras produce better results than IR filters. The downside is the price - $300-500 for the conversion and you have to supply the camera. Or you can follow Lifepixel’s DIY instructions.
Books?
Any recommendations on IR photography books appreciated. Amazon has a 99 cent Kindle book I’m going to buy for starters.
Photos | Link | 4 Comments |
Too Much of Everything: Various
Wednesday February 3rd, 2010
iTulip.com - The Fog of Economic Crisis:
Bad as 2008 was for retailers, 2009 produced almost four times as many store closings by more than six times as many retailers. A total of 255 retailers closed 16,232 stores, producing the common sight of “For Lease” and “Going Out of Business” signs in every mall and downtown across the US.
The Top 50
2,639 General Motors
960 Blockbuster
789 Chrysler
567 Circuit City
461 KB Toys
450 Movie Gallery (Game Crazy, Hollywood Video)
365 Ritz Camera
273 Starbucks
287 Goody’s
265 Jones Apparel Group (2009 & 2010)
240 Waldenbooks
224 Foot Locker
191 Zale Corporation
175 Van Heusen
163 Ann Taylor (by 2010)
162 Charming Shoppes
161 InkStop
160 Family Dollar
150 Popeye’s (AFC Enterprises)
135 S&K Famous Brands Inc.
130 Advance America
129 Boater’s World
125 F.Y.E. (Trans World Entertainment)
121 Eddie Bauer
118 Office Depot
117 Rite Aid
104 Finlay Enterprises
102 Payless Shoes
100 Albertsons
100 Gap, Inc.
98 Club Libby Lu (Saks)
85 NextCen Brands (Great American Cookies, MagieMoo’s, Marble Slab Creamery, Pretzelmaker)
84 Payless Shoes
84 Samsonite
81 Saab Dealerships
77 Game Stop
75 J. Jill
75 Signet Jewelers
70 Famous Footwear (Brown Shoe Co.)
60 Arby’s
60 Collective Brands
60 Dominos
59 Advance Auto Parts
59 Ruby Tuesday
58 Gottschalks
56 Smith & Hawken
53 Rex Appliance & Electronics
50 B Dalton
50 Pacific Sunwear
50 Select Comfort
Previously - Too Much of Everything: Hotels
Economics | Link | No Comments |
Lancet withdraws study that linked vaccines with autism
Wednesday February 3rd, 2010
Now about The Lancet’s study that claimed 100,000 Iraqi deaths during the U.S.-led invasion…
Previously
- More Evidence that Thimerasol Not Linked to Autism
- Original researchers retract claimed vaccine-autism link
- UN Estimates Number of Iraqi Deaths at 24,000
- That “100,000 Iraqis Killed Since War Started” Story
- Jonathan Adler on science and public policy
Science | Link | No Comments |
Hiking Boots, Pajamas, DC Power and Propane
Saturday January 30th, 2010
I’m in pajamas and hiking boots today. Comfy, but ready to go outside once I add a Gore-tex parka and a ball cap. I’ve been outside playing with the girls, sledding, shoveling snow off the driveway, and laying down salt for when the temperature drops to 21 tonight and re-freezes the snow.
If the ice breaks power lines we’re ready. Everything that’s rechargeable has been on its recharger since yesterday afternoon. We’ve got all kinds of food that we can put in all kinds of coolers outside. We’ve got cell phones, CB radios, and hand-cranked/rechargeable/solar radios for communications. We’ve got a fully-charged Husky powerbox with AC/DC outputs and we’ve got a 700W inverter that can run off of our two gassed-up vehicles.
For heating and cooking we’ve got three propane cylinders. If we lose power we’ll grill on the BBQ, pan-fry and boil water on the turkey fryer’s propane burner, and heat the house with the Heat Buddy indoor propane heater.
For light we’ve got candles, rechargeable electric Coleman lanterns, flashlights, headlamps, hundreds of batteries, and as a last-ditch effort hurricane lanterns and Tiki torch fuel.
Previously
- Emergency Supplies
- Emergency Communications Over Two-Way Radio
- Inexpensive Alternatives to Emergency Generators
- AC/DC - It’s Not Just for Metalheads Anymore
Home Life | Link | 1 Comment |
Winter at Mt. LeConte Lodge in the Smokies
Saturday January 30th, 2010
And if you ever wondered how they stayed warm up there, here’s the answer.
East Tennessee | Link | No Comments |
Conversation About Snow
Friday January 29th, 2010
THREE YEAR OLD NATALIE: Look!
ME: What?
THREE YEAR OLD NATALIE: Snow!
ME: I know.
THREE YEAR OLD NATALIE: On TV!
ME: W don’t have to look at the TV to see snow. Look. We can see snow right outside our window.
THREE YEAR OLD NATALIE: Look! There’s snow on TV again!
Home Life | Link | 1 Comment |
Hank Williams III and the Damn Band
Thursday January 28th, 2010
I’ve been on a Hank III kick lately. When “Broke, Lovesick & Driftin’” came out Jay loaned me his copy. I loved it. With his yodelly twang and country string band III sounds more like his granddaddy than his daddy.
7 Months, 39 Days
and this makes me want to see him live:
Cocaine Blues - Spartanburg, SC 10/18/06
Smoke and Wine (acoustic with banjo - my fave)
LATER: That’s the best video of the bunch and it looks even better on the LiveDaily Sessions site. Follow that link for videos of “Country Heroes” and “Six Pack of Beer.”
My Drinkin’ Problem
This is just a hell of an old style, blue vein country tune.
She said she’s gonna quit me,
If I didn’t quit the booze.
So I just started drinkin’ more,
To see if she would really choose.
And I have to hand it to that girl:
She meant every breath.
An’ I’m glad she did, ’cause I was about,
To drink myself to death.
Because my drinkin’ problem left today.
She packed up all her things and walked away.
Well, it looks like off the bottle now is where I’m gonna stay,
Because my drinkin’ problem left today.
Something almost unlistenably different
My wife found his Wikipedia entry, which is pretty darned interesting. I liked this: “Upon first meeting Hank III, Minnie Pearl, a friend of the late Hank Williams Sr., reportedly said “Lord, honey, you’re a ghost,” as she was astonished by his striking resemblance to his grandfather.”
P.S. - Hank III’s fiddle player deserves the Nobel Prize in Fiddlin’.
P.P.S. - I don’t know who the banjo player on “Smoke and Wine” is, but he’s damned good. Is that a Mississippi Rebels ball cap or a Maryville, TN Rebels ball cap?
A&E, East Tennessee | Link | 1 Comment |
Apple insanely great device is an overpriced iPod Touch
Wednesday January 27th, 2010
Gizmodo - 8 Things That Suck About the iPad:
No Flash
No Flash is annoying but not a dealbreaker on the iPhone and iPod Touch. On something that’s supposed to be closer to a netbook or laptop? It will leave huge, gaping holes in websites. I hope you don’t care about streaming video! God knows not many casual internet users do. Oh wait, nevermind, they all do.No Multitasking
This is a backbreaker. If this is supposed to be a replacement for netbooks, how can it possibly not have multitasking? Are you saying I can’t listen to Pandora while writing a document? I can’t have my Twitter app open at the same time as my browser? I can’t have AIM open at the same time as my email? Are you kidding me? This alone guarantees that I will not buy this product.A Closed App Ecosystem
The iPad only runs apps from the App Store. The same App Store that is notorious for banning apps for no real reason, such as Google Voice. Sure, netbooks might not have touchscreens, but you can install whatever software you’d like on them. Want to run a different browser on your iPad? Too bad!
If it’s too big to fit in a pocket you might as well buy a small notebook for the same price and have the freedom to run whatever apps you want.
Steve Jobs did some cool stuff but it became obvious a long time ago that he was a massive control freak. If Steve Jobs is OCD boi with 5.1% of the market imagine what an insufferable Nazi he’d be with 51% of the market.
Hint: we’d all be living in a world of overpriced SCSI drives instead of cheap IDE drives, under-performing Motorola processors, no internal expansion slots, and single-button mice instead of mice with five buttons and scroll wheels.
Tech | Link | 5 Comments |
Raynella Leath Dossett Convicted of Murder
Tuesday January 26th, 2010
Whipped Cream Difficulties reminds me that yesterday Raynella Leath Dossett was convicted of murdering her second husband, David Leath. A weekend NY Times piece mentions some of the bizarrely suspicious circumstances surrounding the deaths of both of Dossett’s husbands.
Every quirk in her behavior has been parsed by Knoxville residents for motive, even the fact that she had Mr. Leath’s body cremated the day after he died. His body contained unprescribed sedatives and painkillers, according to an autopsy conducted hours earlier. Mr. Leath’s friends say he was opposed to cremation and owned a plot in the cemetery where his parents are buried.
Mr. Pedigo said that prosecutors in Mr. Dossett’s office resisted his performing an autopsy, that he felt pressured to rule the death an accident and that he had a “policy” of erring on the side of the family in cases where a judgment call was required. He persuaded Ms. Dossett that the insurance company would need an autopsy, and she consented. Mr. Pedigo said he found traumatic injuries consistent with trampling and a hoof print in the middle of the bib of Mr. Dossett’s overalls.
But when the current medical examiner, Dr. Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan, reviewed the file as part of the Leath investigation, she found that those injuries were not life threatening. Instead, Dr. Mileusnic-Polchan said, Mr. Dossett’s morphine level was “so extraordinarily high it is unlikely that any human could function in an ambulatory manner or continue to live.” In 2006, Ms. Dossett Leath was indicted in his death, charged with administering an overdose of morphine.
Betty Bean has a good backgrounder on Dossett and her Barn of Doom.
Previously
- Raynella Dossett-Leath Indicted for a Second Husband’s Murder
- New Charges Against Raynella Dossett Leath
- Local Crime News: Raynella Dossett Leath Murder Indictment
East Tennessee, True Crime | Link | No Comments |
LuckyGunner news
Tuesday January 26th, 2010
- First, we’ve recently started carrying primers! Check it out for yourself here. These little suckers have been hard to come by as of late, especially in bulk. Now we’ve got a bunch of ‘em in stock and the haz-mat fee of $22.50 is baked into the price on a per-order basis (not per box). Other than offer bulk discounts, we can’t do much about the fee as it’s just what UPS charges us to carry around the equivalent of gunpowder in those big brown trucks of theirs (ssshhh)…
- Second, we also dropped the price on all our ammo boxes of 50 rounds or less by $1 yesterday as a result of our new inventory/accounting system. Don’t worry, the live inventory counter stays put (it’s been *really* popular!). As far as the cost savings go, we wanted to pass these internal savings on to our customers because, well, it kinda just makes good business sense. We’ve got lower transactional costs so we can offer lower pricing as a result, even on elusive calibers like 380 & 45 ACP. Win win all around.
Guns | Link | No Comments |
Newsday goes subscriber-only, gets whopping 35 subscribers
Tuesday January 26th, 2010
Nice Business Model You’ve Got There, Jimmy:
In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect?
So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com?
The answer: 35 people. As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class.
Granted, $260 per year is an outrageous fee for a Web site, but the idiots should have realized that long before they went live. The Web site redesign cost $4 million. And they paid $650 million for the newspaper. I guess they were looking at their costs rather than their value to the reader.
If you want a better idea of how to organize an online news organization, read Howard Owens, who approached the idea from the opposite direction - first understand how much revenue you can get from an online newspaper site, then decide how much you can spend on resources.
Hat tip to Ace of Spades.
E-commerce, Media Behaving Badly | Link | 3 Comments |
Google Reader can follow pages without RSS
Tuesday January 26th, 2010
Google - Follow changes to any Web site:
Feeds make it easy to follow updates to all kinds of webpages, from blogs to news sites to Craigslist queries, but unfortunately not all pages on the web have feeds. Today we’re rolling out a change in Google Reader that lets you create a custom feed to track changes on pages that don’t have their own feed.
These custom feeds are most useful if you want to be alerted whenever a specific page has been updated. For example, if you wanted to follow Google.org’s latest products, just type “http://www.google.org/products.html” into Reader’s “Add a subscription” field. Click “create a feed”, and Reader will periodically visit the page and publish any significant changes it finds as items in a custom feed created just for that page.
Hat tip to Adrian.
Tech | Link | No Comments |
Fun with Facebook tags
Tuesday January 26th, 2010
Remember that pic? One of my Facebook friends decided to have fun with it.
I ignored the request. Richard: you owe me one.
Blogging | Link | 1 Comment |
My Million Dollar Screen Name Idea
Monday January 25th, 2010
The next time I need a screen name I think I’ll call myself TheGreatDickTater.
Funny Ha-Ha | Link | 1 Comment |
Word of the Day - Funicular
Monday January 25th, 2010
A funicular looks like fun, but it sounds like a funeral:
\fyoo-NIK-yuh-ler\
Meaning
: a cable railway ascending a mountain; especially : one in which an ascending car counterbalances a descending carExample Sentence
“Situated in a gated community reachable by funicular, the resort’s 181 guest rooms come with flat-screen TVs, nightly turndown service and, in suites, even a butler.” (The New York Times, December 13, 2009)
Previous WOTD - The Guidotti-Greenspan Rule (Economics)
Word of the Day | Link | 1 Comment |
Knoxville Zoo and the Nikon 18-105mm VR
Sunday January 24th, 2010
Saturday was a dry and warm January day, so we took the opportunity to visit the zoo.
This was the first outing with the new Nikon 18-105mm VR lens. I definitely liked the extra range compared to the 18-55mm kit lens that got stolen last fall. The zoom ring also feels a bit better mechanically. It pushes the lens straight out, compared to the 18-55mm which is a “double trombone” design that extends out up to a point and comes back in.
I can’t say much more without getting some shutter time with it. I suspect that just as with the 18-55mm this lens likes lots of sunlight, which was in fairly short supply yesterday afternoon.
P.S. When I downloaded the pictures to the computer they weren’t as sharp as I would have expected for a camera with VR (Vibration Reduction - Nikon’s name for their anti-shake technology). Then I checked the setting on the lens and realized the VR switch was set to off from the factory. So I’ll test VR on the next outing.
East Tennessee, Home Life | Link | 2 Comments |
God sets plague of locusts on Democrats, shuts down Air America
Thursday January 21st, 2010
It is with the greatest regret, on behalf of our Board, that we must announce that Air America Media is ceasing its live programming operations as of this afternoon, and that the Company will file soon under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code to carry out an orderly winding-down of the business.
Politics | Link | 6 Comments |
John Edwards admits Rielle Hunter’s child is his
Thursday January 21st, 2010
As “God Hates the Democratic Party Week” continues:
Former presidential candidate John Edwards abandoned his long denial that he had fathered a child during an affair with a campaign aide and admitted today that he is the father of the almost 2-year-old girl.
“I am Quinn’s father,” Edwards said in the bombshell statement this morning. “I will do everything in my power to provide her with the love and support she deserves.”
The former senator and presidential hopeful had an affair with campaign cinematographer Rielle Hunter, 45, and she later give birth to Frances Quinn.
Edwards’ admission comes a week before the man who had claimed he was the baby’s father, former aide Andrew Young, was scheduled to appear in an exclusive interview on “20/20″.
In an excerpt from his upcoming interview with ABC News’s Bob Woodruff, Young alleges that Edwards asked him to arrange a fake a paternity test.
“Get a doctor to fake the DNA results,” Young said Edwards told him. “And he asked me … to steal a diaper from the baby so he could secretly do a DNA test to find out if this [was] indeed his child.”
To recap:
“I did not have sex with that woman”? A lie. He did.
“I did have sex with that woman, but the baby can’t be mine because that would mean I was having extramarital sex while my wife was battling cancer”? A lie. He did.
“I’d gladly take a paternity test to prove the baby isn’t mine”? A lie. He wouldn’t and it is.
Hey, I understand that people cheat. Edwards isn’t the first. He was just an especially big heel about it. He’s also a big TV preacher style hypocrite who enjoys shaking his finger at other people and informing them what Jesus would think while helping himself to whatever pleasures he desires.
Previously
- John Edwards, TV Preacher
- John Edwards, TV Preacher, Part 2
- John Edwards, TV Preacher, Part 3
- Victor David Hansen is sayin’ what I been bloggin’
- John Edwards Helps Himself to Poverty Funds
- Preacherman Talkin’ on the TV, He’s a-puttin’ Down the SUV
Politics | Link | No Comments |
Day after MA special election: Democrats propose $1.9 trillion debt increase
Wednesday January 20th, 2010
Ass. Press - Democrats propose $1.9T increase in debt limit:
WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats on Wednesday proposed allowing the federal government to borrow an additional $1.9 trillion to pay its bills, a record increase that would permit the national debt to reach $14.3 trillion.
The unpopular legislation is needed to allow the federal government to issue bonds to fund programs and prevent a first-time default on obligations. It promises to be a challenging debate for Democrats, who, as the party in power, hold the responsibility for passing the legislation.
It’s hardly the debate Democrats want or need in the wake of Sen.-elect Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts. Arguing over the debt limit provides a forum for Republicans to blame Democrats for rising deficits and spiraling debt, even though responsibility for the government’s financial straits can be shared by both political parties.
If you think $1.9 trillion is a lot, wait until after the regular fall 2010 elections.
Politics | Link | 1 Comment |
From a Facebook friend
Tuesday January 19th, 2010
“I really wonder if people REALLY believe it when they say that, without guns, there will be no violence. Really? I was RAPED by someone WHO DIDN’T HAVE A GUN. The gun doesn’t CREATE violence, it is a TOOL. You can use it for offense or defense. Violence can happen without it. I carry a gun so that it never happens to me again, to the best of my ability.”
Guns, Quotes | Link | 2 Comments |
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