Muppets Punk M.O.

Thanks to S.V. for point this out to me. LOL funny!

Quick Hits.

Who is going to pay for health care reform? New York! Applause for their elected representatives!

The wonder of Government Run health care! UK is a model for the US!

Greece is going broke. The USA citizens may get first hand experience!

What happens when you raise taxes on the Rich? They Leave!

Nice someone got a job. $3000.00 an hour! Good work if you can get it!

Do not be discouraged after all the Housing Market is starting upwards!

New home sales leading the US recovery!?

OOOPS! AP must have been spinning earlier!

One would hope that the economists who continue to get their predictions wrong, and the media outlets that carry them, are going to recognize that what the Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily have been referring to as "the Uncertainty Economy," has cast a pervasive pall over the entire economy, and must be considered in some way when formulating predictions.

Until it is, we're going to keep seeing "Unexpected Surprises."

Karate Kid

A film that is a remake, that I want to see.

Pondering Insurance

I wonder if you can get rid of the pre-existing conditions for life insurance, auto insurance, homeowners insurance etc?

Diagnosing Gollum

Sméagol (Gollum) is a single, 587 year old, hobbit-like male of no fixed abode. He has presented with antisocial behaviour, increasing aggression, and preoccupation with the “one ring.”… …His forensic history consists of Deagol’s murder and the attempted murder of Samwise Gamgee. He has no history of substance misuse, although like many young hobbits he smoked “pipe weed” in adolescence....

Several differential diagnoses need to be considered, and we should exclude organic causes for his symptoms. A space occupying lesion such as a brain tumour is unlikely as his symptoms are long standing. Gollum’s diet is extremely limited, consisting only of raw fish. Vitamin B-12 deficiency may cause irritability, delusions, and paranoia. His reduced appetite and loss of hair and weight may be associated with iron deficiency anaemia. He is hypervigilant and does not seem to need much sleep. This, accompanied by his bulging eyes and weight loss, suggests hyperthyroidism. Gollum’s dislike of sunlight may be due to the photosensitivity of porphyria. Attacks may be induced by starvation and accompanied by paranoid psychosis....

Gollum displays pervasive maladaptive behaviour that has been present since childhood with a persistent disease course. His odd interests and spiteful behaviour have led to difficulty in forming friendships and have caused distress to others. He fulfils seven of the nine criteria for schizoid personality disorder (ICD F60.1), and, if we must label Gollum’s problems, we believe that this is the most likely diagnosis.

Reposted from original

Sleeping at night

It's not helping.

My sleep pattern is all fubar. I find myself waking up at 4:30 AM and most times just laying there in bed till the alarm at 6:00 AM. This is after I have fallen asleep sometime after 1:00 AM.

Last week during work I got this annoying buzzing headache that made my eyes water trying to look at anything akin to writing. I ended up going home sick and sleeping most of the day.

That night I hit the sack around 9:00 and slept to the alarm only to awaken to a nauseous head pounding sensation when I sat up. I attributed it to a lack of sleep. By Friday evening I was much better, thanks to a dark room and ear plugs.

There are a lot of unknowns coming down the road. My job being primary. Tina's job has some stability issues as well. We are not in a terrible situation. Just an uncertain one.

Expert advice for the cost of Pastrami

You might have a bathroom in your house you rarely use. Chances are, if your a parent, this bathroom is the hovel of your beloved children. When I say rarely use, I mean that in the fullest sense of the word. You might jump in for a biological need here and there and ponder the inability to keep the counter clean, but thats all.

We have such a bathroom and the 50 year old plumbing from the tub is quite fond of holding onto refuse matter such as congealed soap scum mixed with biological matter. The steel pipes of yore assume a rough pitted interior over 1/2 a decade.

Before Tina and I built our master suite the bathroom in question was more closely maintained (mea culpa), by myself. So I take a goodly amount of blame for the drain backing up.

The inability to drain somehow became a forbidden topic and kept as such in the dark, I was late to the rescue. Which is to say, the chemical warfare that proceeded upon my knowledge should not make it back to the EPA. While some small amount of opening was aquired that allowed for a seepage of water over time would drain the tub, it was far from adequate and quite the source of embarrassment for my lineage.

Plumbing is genetically grafted into my families code. If water will not flow and\or drain, you have two kinds of people in the world. My family and those who call my family in desperate need.

I admit that I was stymied and frustrated as the clean out plug that should have allowed me to fix the inconvenience was not made out of brass as is should have. It was fused solid. My mind danced around various ideas of how to get this fixed and hit knowledge barriers that confounded me at one point or another.

I consoled myself with the idea that I would just rip out the whole damn mess and replace it with ABS (Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene). Another round of chemical warfare actually did the job, relieving my mental burden. The tub drained, showers could be held for all, the rejoicing began.

I purchased some more chemical agents and instructed my eldest to maintain the flow. With that I moved on to other projects to ponder and procrastinate upon.

Little did I know that my instructions lacked the crucial bit of informing me if the tub stopped draining. As time passed it did just that. The Chemical was used up and no request was made to purchase more. I suffered from out of sight out of mind.

Lo and Behold the enemy surge counter plugged up the drain and thereby gained a foothold that would not be overcome by nothing short of genocide.

Yes, it was the plumbing or me... (yes, I am playing this out for high drama).

At this point there was a call to the expert. My pop. A man to whom plumbing knowledge is first nature. He had several suggestions and was going to send my brother over to take a look at the particulars of this project. Then he came up with the idea of using this "Internet thing" to strengthen his understanding of the situation.

Digital camera in hand, I took a few shots like those above.

The reply was a concise set of directions:

Unloosen the 1-1/2" nut above the trap on the waste and overflow.

then you cut the 1-1/2' trap arm into to remove that part; then unscrew the other piece from the tee.

Then re place the pipe and trap with two 1-1/2" male adapters and a 1-1/2" Plastic trap.

very good pictures.

Which, of course, created a series of questions in my mind. God smiled upon me and my Pop decided this quest was worthy of three hours (round trip) of driving on a Sunday afternoon. With my mom playing side kick we sauntered into the daylight basement and he verified that which he already knew.

The entire project took about an hour. The time saving techniques and the picking out of parts still sparks amazement. Where I would guess stumble and formulate with doubt, his laser like precision makes short work of this blockage and the water doth flow.

Oh, I neglected to mention, that he also lent a hand with re-establishing the laundry room sink that had been back burnered, by me way too long.

There is a lot to respect and love about my parents. They do set the bar.

The Manifesto of the Cornucopians:

The Manifesto of the Cornucopians: by John C. Wright

I am a Cornucopian, which is the opposite of a Malthusian. The term was coined to define the position of economist Julian Simon whose famous wager with doomsayer Paul Ehrlich in a sane world would would have put paid to the Malthusian predictions of the latter. (You can see more about the Simon-Ehrlich wager here.) A Malthusian says that population growth (especially of Irish, Hindoos and Negroes) leads to disastrous scarcity of resources, resulting in mass famine, war, and apocalyptic megadeath. A Cornucopian says that population growth, while it creates dislocations and even disasters (such as the enclosure laws of England) does not necessarily lead to the scarcity of any particular resource, nor all of them.

More people does not mean less stuff.

Let me make a startling suggestion -- that we look at the evidence that overpopulation exists, ever had existed, or ever will exist.

What evidence is there?

Certainly there are crowded and miserable places on the Earth. There are also crowded and wealthy places. What factors or conditions are present in the one case and not in the other? Is population the only contributing factor, or are there others? Are there any factors that mitigate the alleged miseries provoked by population growth?

(Let us please not use analogies to beasts without reason, who do suffer from cycles of overpopulation and diebacks. Such beasts do not have the capacity to plan for the future and adjust current behavior.)

Let us instead look at periods in history. To take a very early example, hunter-gatherer tribes could not sustain more than perhaps a few score souls on the same number of acres, devoted to hunting, which could support ten or twenty times that number of herdsmen.

The figure is even higher when the same number of acres is turned to agriculture, and higher again when the same number of acres, now including minerals beneath the soil, is used by a technological extended order.

Looking at the history, the first and most obvious fact is that what constitutes a natural resource changes, sometimes dramatically, from era to era, or even generation to generation. The hardwood forests of the north were not a natural resource to Paleolithic tribesmen, because stone handaxes were insufficient to chop down trees: and hence the paleolithic did not use carpentry to build log cabins or plane boards to build clapboard houses. The woods may have been a resource to them, but the wood was not.

The Precolumbian Indians of North America, on the other hand, included settled tribes and villages of farmers (for some odd reason, this is often overlooked by popular histories) who used forestfires to clear land for cultivation. The woods were not a natural resource to the farming tribes, not in the same way, not used the same way, and therefore not of the same value, as the hunter-gathering nomads.

The White Man not only put these lands to cultivation, but did so under an political and economic regime which secure the landowners in the titles, and allowed for those titles to be bought and sold. You may not notice that this, and only this, is what makes land a good. Under more primitive legal codes (such as those in Sharia Law or Biblical Law) land is not alienable except for a term (the Law of Moses sets the term at 50 years: between Jubilees) or cannot lay fallow (under Sharia Law, if memory serves, unused land must be turned over to the poor). Without debating the spiritual wisdom of either the Law of Moses or the Prophet of the Saracens, from an economic point of view their regime of laws renders ownership and exploitation of law more difficult, and hence, less efficient, and hence more scarce, and hence more dear in price, and hence less able to support the same population numbers.

Land under cultivation ruled by English Common Law is more efficient, and hence less scarce (in an economic sense) than the same number of acres of similar situation and fertility being cultivated under, say, the laws and customs of Bourbon France or Elizabethan Ireland, where the landowners were not secure in their ownership. The modern age has also seen the diabolical and stupid phenomenon of re-barbarism, where formerly civilized people would adopt regimes of laws and customs even less well suited for securing ownership than the laws and customs of the Bronze Age: I refer here to the famines of Stalinist Russia, or the economic ruin of Nazi Germany. (The policies of the national socialist workers party even before the war were eroding the economic strength of Germany.)

So then: whatever overpopulation is, is not necessarily (or even primarily) related to the number of people using a given number of acres of land. Bronze Age tribesmen had to separate their herd and minions when they were in danger of overgrazing the terrain -- see the Biblical story of Lot and Abraham separating their kin and kine for an echo of such events. But the same acres fenced in (assuming the society can survive the range wars and the injustices of the enclosure laws) can support many more people if used for crop rather than cattle.

So what is the upper limit? I humbly suggest that depends not on any absolute value, but on the use to which the land is put. Overpopulation is a relative value. Too many hunters is not too many herdsmen is not too many husbandmen, is not too many factory hands.

The same line of reasoning applies with equal logic to other goods aside from land.

Oil, in the modern day a byword for a scarce resource, before the days of John D. Rockefeller was not in high demand, and not used for much. Whale oil, on the other hand, was used for kerosene lamps, which was many a home's only source of light. Ambergris was in high demand, and of course whalebone was the only substance to be used in buggy whips and corset stays. In those days petroleum was a waste product which, if it seeped to the surface, ruined the soil for cultivation. Land known to have oil deposits below hence were depressed in value, not raised in value. Oil was not only not a resource in those days, it was actually useless.

Now you may have noticed that the demand for kerosene oil, ambergris, buggy whips and corset stays has dropped. The technology and the economics touching the natural resource known as whales has changed dramatically. We can make buggy whips more cheaply out of synthetic materials, such as plastics refined from petroleum. Some of us do not use buggy whips, or indeed, own a horse at all.

What is true of land and oil is true generally. The utility of any natural resource depends not on its volume, but on the efficiency of its use. The best rule of thumb for measuring utility is price. The more scare something is, the more dear its price. Natural resources that we are running out of, are ones we are getting low on, and, if the efficiency of use is not a factor, the price should go up.

But let us look at the evidence: the price adjusted for inflation (which is a type of tax, and therefore not an indicator of real prices) of metals over the last twenty years, including iron, steel, zinc, aluminum, uranium, has dropped. This means they are less dear ergo easier to acquire. In practical terms, they are more abundant.

Sand is not a natural resource when and if it serves no human need. But the silicon to make sand into computer chips is a resource.

Again, let us look at evidence. How many famines were caused (causes solely) by overpopulation? The potato famine in Ireland was not caused by (or not only by) a superabundance of Irish people. The laws of the English conquerors and the uncertainty of the times made cultivation dear. The grain famine in the Ukraine was not only not caused by overpopulation, it was caused by Stalin, in order to demoralize and terrify the Kulaks, and also in pursuit of his abortive millennial pseudo-economic pseudo-religion known as communism.

Which wars were caused by overpopulation? We can see population pressures behind some of the migratory movements of nomads into the crumbling corpse of the Roman Empire, but what does the evidence suggest? Something other than mere numbers must be involved, because otherwise Rome would not have been able to sustain a population greater than any population of London before the Industrial Revolution.

Compare the evidence with the fears. The calculations of Malthus should have had us suffering mass starvation a century ago; and the hysteria of Paul Ehrlich was such that he foresaw famines in India so severe that nothing could be done to save them -- Ehrlich wrote off the Indian subcontinent as lost. They would not survive past 1970.

(Ironically, or as proof that the devil exists and has a sense of humor, Ehrlich made headlines again recently by predicting another population bomb about to go off in the near future, and this time for sure there would be mass starvation! This exposed hoaxster is applauded and lauded wherever he goes. His predictions are as accurate as prophets who foretell the date of the Second Coming of Christ.)

Compare the evidence with the fear. Robert Heinlein, writing in the 1940's and 1950's, confidently proposed that all social maladies, wars and migrations, were tied into overpopulation. Beef and poultry would be gone by the 1980's, and by the year 2000 mass starvation and the rationing of foodstuffs would be commonplace. Instead, one of the chief medical maladies among American below our arbitrary poverty line is obesity, and maladies related thereto. The main medical problem among the poor is that food is so plentiful and so cheap that they eat too much of it.

In case my point here is not clear, let me simplify it, even if I run the risk of not mentioning the various reservations and qualifications that surely exist: Malthus was a crackpot, an intellectual on par withe Xeno, who proved that an arrow flying at a wall could never reach it, because it must fly through an infinite number of intermediate points. Ehrlich was and is a Rachel-Carson-type fraud, a used car salesman, and suffers the curse the reverse of Cassandra: the more inaccurate his predictions, the more fixedly people believe him.

Overpopulation is a meaningless concept. It is the fear that every new baby is a new mouth to feed. But every new baby is also a new pair of hands to work, once the baby grows. The question is whether the baby will produce more than he consumes over his lifetime. The fear of Malthus and Ehrlich is that he likely will not. The evidence of history is that he most likely will.

This fear is merely assumed, never stated, and never defended, and never proved. Where is the evidence? Where is the proof?

The argument at this point becomes whether a technological civilization has some innate property that previous arrangements (husbandmen, herdsman, hunter-gatherer) did not have. Is there something about digging metals out of the ground different from hunting Mastodons? I suggest that the difference is one favorable to the moderns.

The hunters of the Last Ice Age, Noble Savages to a man, hunted the Mastodon to extinction. One must assume they suffered a dieback or that the found another source of food. It is an open question whether the ability of a large tribe (a so-called overpopulated tribe) to find a new food source is greater or less than that of a small tribe. Numbers surely were an aid rather than a drawback when it came to overwhelming the Neanderthals, for example, or wiping out tribes seated in sunnier southern climes.

We in the Iron Age dug up iron in large amounts. In the Space Age, certain Space Age materials are used where Iron was once used, albeit, judging from the real price, iron is cheaper, and more abundant than ever. In other words, if the moderns were faced with overhunting of Mastodons, our greater organization, our market place methods, would seek alternatives. Our habit of innovation, our protection of intellectual property rights, encourages new approaches when shortages arise. We can change our laws and habits. Scattered and non-unified nomads of different clans and distant tribes cannot change their oral folk-law and standards of behavior so quickly.

Looking over America, there seem to be more trees on more acres than there ever were even during the days of the American Indian tribes while they were dancing with wolves and painting in all the colors of the wind.

Hence, in Modern Times, with a larger population in America, we have more resources, and not less. The conclusion seems counter-intuitive, but almost all economics is counter-intuitive.

Let me propose another counter-intuitive principle. A finite material resource is not a finite resource. If I have an acre of timber, and I use a half acre for firewood, so that it is consumed and burnt, but I use a quarter acre to make a ship to sail to El Dorado, the benefit from the quarter acre far exceeds the benefit from the half acre because I used it more wisely -- even though a quarter acre is less than a half acre, not more. A ship is worth more than the same amount of lumber sold as cords of firewood.

Here is the key concept: if nature is a larder or a treasure box that has only so many smoked sausages and cheese wheels to consume, or only so much gold to take out of the box, then common sense says the more you take out of the larder or the treasure box, the less remains to take out in days to come: and then one day the larder will be empty and the treasure box will be bare.

But if nature is like a field, where if you grow thistles and thorns, you have little to eat, and if you grow potatoes, you have more to eat, and if you grow poppies, you can sell opium to the Americans and get rich, and if you dig under the field and strike oil, strike gold or strike uranium, you are richer still. Suppose the field is one where kine cannot graze but ostriches can; and suppose again you develop a taste for ostrich meat, then the exact same field, the exact same resources, if even some are used up, offers other resources to be exploited, including material objects that, under earlier regimes and technologies, were not resources at all.

Let me utter a parable. Once upon a time, the wise men of the Napoleonic era saw the devastation Napoleon wrought upon all the famous families and breeds of horses. Warhorses of well-bred stock were dying in his wars, and not being replaced. Horses did not breed as rapidly as men, and the Malthus of that era, by a simple mathematical calculation, could show that horses were being used up faster then they were being replaced. Meanwhile men were breeding like rats, so, mathematically, the chance that any particular man could grow up to be a cavalry officer with a good horse would get ever smaller. If the trend continued, the horse would be extinct by the year 1902!

Napoleon, alarmed by Malthus, asked science fiction writer Jules Verne what could be done?

Verne said that the men of the future would have some sort of mechanical horse, or horseless carriage powered by steam, or some sort of flying machine, or something unimaginable. The cavalry of the future, said Verne, would not have any horses in it at all, but would instead have a land version of an ironclad warship, a Land Leviathan, which would walk the earth on treads.

Absurd! Said Napoleon. Without horses, the ice wagon will not be able to carry ice from house to house to put ice blocks into ice boxes. And if there are no wagons, the buggy-whip manufacturers will go out of business! And with no wagons, there will be no way to bring whalebones from the sail-powered whaling ships to the seamstresses to make corset stays -- surely you will not tell me that the women in the future will not wear corsets! Do you think they will dress like savages in Tahiti, or wear drab dungarees?!

But, Verne answered him, if you do not believe me, buy horses. As the horse dies off, their price per horse will go up, and you will be rich.

To Malthus, he said, if you think we are about to run out of oil, buy oil. If you think we are running out of land, buy land. If you think we are running out of steel, coal, zinc, aluminum, buy them.

But if you buy them and they turn out not to be scarce -- scarce measured by the human need we have for them, and nothing else! -- then you will be ruined.

If you had listened to Paul Ehrlich when he wrote his famous work of overwrought scaremongering THE POPULATION BOMB, and bought up the materials he said would be gone by 1970, then instead of being rich, you would have been ruined. If you had listened to Malthus in 1776 and, based on his mathematical calculation that human population increases geometrically whereas land is placed under cultivation only by arithmetic growth, you would have invested in farmland. You would now be broke, because one man with a tractor, using modern scientific methods of cultivating the soil, can do the work of a team of horses and farmers, and so the relative price of manpower, horsepower, and an acre of cultivated land fell rather than rose.

Suppose a crackpot idea like Cold Fusion had worked. Suppose a crackpot idea like aquaculture could work, and the surfaces of all the oceans of the world, 70 of the Earth's surface, could be used to feed hungry populations. Suppose global warming is a fact, and it is about to happen, and the temperature changes will make Siberia, the Gobi desert or the Sahara open to cultivation. Suppose America lifts the bans it has in place to prevent the drilling for oil and the exploration of uranium found in our own soil, or just offshore. Suppose some genius discovers an even cheaper and more effective solar panel. Or just suppose someone invents a more efficient battery, a better way to store power once generated, easier to ship, so the price of transmitting energy across distances by wire drops.

Suppose any of these things. What happens to the price of oil then? It is less in demand, and its price drops like a stone.

Suppose the opposite happens, and the price of oil sky rockets. Extracting oil from shale, currently not an economic proposition, becomes an economically feasible venture. As more men and thought flows into the shale oil field, improvements and inventions in that venture are likely, in which case the price will again drop.

I sincerely doubt our current civilization has achieved the best and final means of exploiting the natural resources of the Earth. Even without daydreaming about Star Trek like inventions that can turn inanimate matter into editable substances, the current inefficiencies surrounding our social and legal institutions in America, the absence of something like enclosure laws to section off the vast wastelands of the ocean, the endless acres of wasteland currently not economic to exploit -- I have good reason to hope that we are nowhere near reaching the limit of population on the Earth, and I scoff at the notion that any one resource is so irreplaceable that once it is gone, human genius can find no substitute.

Suppose all the tin runs out! Shall we made no more tin cans? Will there be no companies like Alcoa, who might make cans out of aluminum instead? Suppose the whalebone runs out! Can we make corset stays of nothing else? Will there be no mad geniuses like Howard Hugh to invent the Maidenform bra that lifts and separates?

I do not believe the “nature as a larder box” metaphor of natural resources.

For all practical purposes, under regimes and laws where human genius is free to discover new solutions to shortages, and when the market is free to raise and lower prices to signal where real shortages obtain, and where a futures market is able to operate to render scarce goods more expensive thereby preserving those needed for future use from current use, then the mere physical limits on land, on oil, on metals, or on any other good you care to name, serve no limit to human population growth.

In other words, when man is free, then Natural resources are infinite.

Overpopulation Myth.

George Will CPAC speech.

Funny from CPAC

George Will had a good Anecdote during his CPAC speach.

In an elementary school the teacher gave an assignment for the kids to draw a picture about something important to them. As the kids proceeded the teacher would wander viewing what what being drawn. She was curious at one little girls composition. "Suzie what are you drawing?"

"This is a picture of God" Suzie replied.

"But Suzie, no one knows what God looks like" The teacher countered.

"Well, they will in a few minutes" Suzie stated.

How to Act

I just love this sequence. It so clearly defines how acting works on such a fundamental level. Enjoy!

Stimulus part one

There is no doube that Obama's stimulus plan is working:

ABC: “800,000 to 2.4 million new jobs,”

CBS: “about 1.8 million” jobs “saved or created”

NBC: “1.6 to 1.8 million jobs have been created so far.”

Unless, of course, you ask the American Public. A CBS News/New York Times poll last week, just six percent of Americans believe the stimulus package has created any jobs at all

Or you could ask the Senator Evan Bayh: "If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months,"

So who is right? Did the stimulus have the effect of keeping the U.S. economy from plunging into a second Great Depression?

Lets see some of what our Kids tax bill has paid for.

1. $100,000 IN STIMULUS FUNDS USED FOR A MARTINI BAR & BRAZILIAN STEAKHOUSE:

SHERYL ATKINSON, CBS News: “You probably wouldn't guess that a martini bar and a Brazilian steakhouse would be on tap for stimulus funds, but in St. Joseph, Missouri, two privately owned facilities are getting 100,000 of your tax dollars.” (CBS's “CBS Evening News,” 12/9/09)

2. $390,000 TO STUDY MALT LIQUOR AND MARIJUANA CONSUMPTION:

“The State University Of New York At Buffalo Won $390,000 To Study Young Adults Who Drink Malt Liquor And Smoke Marijuana.” (“Senate GOP Point Out 'Pure Waste' Found In Stimulus Package,” The Hill, 12/8/09)

3. $210,000 TO STUDY LEARNING PATTERNS OF HONEYBEES:

“The University Of Hawaii Collected $210,000 To Study The Learning Patterns Of Honeybees, And $700,000 Went To Help Crab Fishermen In Oregon Recover Lost Crab Pots.” (“Senate GOP Point Out 'Pure Waste' Found In Stimulus Package,” The Hill, 12/8/09)

4. $1 MILLION TO STUDY ANTS:

“Half A Million Dollars Went To Arizona State University To Study The Genetic Makeup Of Ants To Determine Distinctive Roles In Ant Colonies; $450,000 Went To The University Of Arizona To Study The Division Of Labor In Ant Colonies.” (“Senate GOP Point Out 'Pure Waste' Found In Stimulus Package,” The Hill, 12/8/09)

5. $15,551 TO STUDY DRUNK MICE:

“The Rodent Study At Florida Atlantic University In Boca Raton Used $15,551 In Stimulus Funds To Pay For Two Summer Researchers To Help Gauge How Alcohol Affects A Mouse's Motor Functions.” (“Stimulus Money And Weird Science: Benefit Or Boondoggle?” The Orlando Sentinel, 2/16/10)

6. $4,200-$5,500 TAX CREDIT FOR PURCHASING GOLF CARTS:

“President Obama’s Stimulus Plan… Is Now Paying Americans To Buy That Great Necessity Of Modern Life, The Golf Cart.” “Thanks to the federal tax credit to buy high-mileage cars that was part of President Obama's stimulus plan, Uncle Sam is now paying Americans to buy that great necessity of modern life, the golf cart. The federal credit provides from $4,200 to $5,500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle, and when it is combined with similar incentive plans in many states the tax credits can pay for nearly the entire cost of a golf cart.” (“Cash For Clubbers,” The Wall Street Journal, 10/17/09)

7. $219,000 TO STUDY THE SEX LIVES OF FEMALE COLLEGE FRESHMEN:

“Five Hundred Syracuse University Freshmen Will Divulge The Details Of Their Sex Lives … $219,000 In Stimulus Funds For The Study.” “Five hundred Syracuse University freshmen will divulge the details of their sex lives as part of a women's health study called ‘The Women's Health Project,’ being conducted by Michael Carey, SU professor of psychology and medicine. Carey has found himself the target of nationwide criticism from conservatives since he received $219,000 in stimulus funds for the study, which looks at the sex patterns of college women.” (“SU Sex Study Raises Concern,” The [Syracuse] Daily Orange, 9/8/09)

8. $1 MILLION TO RENOVATE “THE SUNSET STRIP”:

“Sunset Boulevard, Also Known As ‘The Sunset Strip’ And One Of The Most Famous Streets In The World, Will Be Getting A $7 Million Facelift After More Than 75 Years Of Use, With A Free Million Dollar Nose Job Coming From Uncle Sam. The City of West Hollywood Council received one million dollars in federal funds from the Federal American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA), (otherwise known as the $700 billion federal stimulus package), for the long-planned Sunset Strip Beautification Project, which is scheduled to break ground soon. The guaranteed funding will allow the City to increase the already nearly $7 million budgeted for this project by an additional $1,105,000, meaning enhancements to a project that already included the resurfacing of the roadway, sidewalk and improved landscaping.” (“Feds Stimulus Sunset Strip Beautification Project,” WeHoNews, 9/28/09)

9. $325,394 TO STUDY “MATING DECISIONS” OF CACTUS BUGS:

The Cactus Bug Project At The University Of Florida Is More Ambitious, Spending $325,394 In Stimulus Money To Determine How Environment Affects The Mating Decisions Of Females. According to the project proposal, it should also answer the question, ‘Whether males with large weapons are more or less attractive to females.’” (“Stimulus Money And Weird Science: Benefit Or Boondoggle?” The Orlando Sentinel, 2/16/10)

10. $500,000 TO STUDY “SOCIAL NETWORKS LIKE FACEBOOK”:

“A $498,000, Three-Year Grant” To Study “Social Networks Like Facebook.” “Millions of Internet users have been enjoying the fun -- and free -- services provided by advertiser-supported online social networks like Facebook. But Landon Cox, a Duke University assistant professor of computer science, worries about the possible down side -- privacy problems. … To delve deeper into these issues and begin the search for alternatives, Cox recently won a $498,000, three-year grant from the National Science Foundation. The funding is part of the federal stimulus package called the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).” (“Seeking Privacy In The Clouds: Research Aims At Isolating Social Network Information From ‘Control Of A Central Entity,’” Science Daily, 10/15/09)

11. $3.4 MILLION FOR A TURTLE TUNNEL IN FLORIDA:

“The Other Third Of The Stimulus, Government Infrastructure Spending, Has Been The Most Controversial From The Start. Some Proposals Have Been Criticized As Wasteful, Such As … A $3.4 Million ‘Ecopassage’ To Help Turtles Cross A Highway In Tallahassee, Fla.” (“The Challenge In Counting Stimulus Returns,” The Wall Street Journal, 10/27/09)

12. $30 MILLION FOR A SPRING TRAINING BASEBALL COMPLEX FOR THE ARIZONA DIAMONDBACKS AND COLORADO ROCKIES:

“A Big Chunk Of The Money That Will Pay For A New Spring-Training Baseball Complex On Tribal Land In The East Valley Will Be Delivered Via A Financing Program That's Part Of The Federal Economic-Stimulus Plan. The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community says it may borrow as much as $30 million of the estimated cost of the $100 million complex near Scottsdale that will become the spring home of the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies.” (“Stimulus To Help Tribe Build Baseball Complex,” The Arizona Republic, 9/17/09)

13. $54 MILLION IN STIMULUS FUNDS USED FOR THE NAPA VALLEY WINE TRAIN:

JONATHAN KARL, ABC News: “The Napa Valley Wine Train, To Tourists A Great Way To See America's Most Celebrated Wine Region, To Others Exhibit A In What’s Wrong With The Stimulus.” SEN. TOM COBURN: “What that is, is a situation where you see the wealthy or well connected get taken care of and the community suffers.” KARL: “He's talking about the Napa Valley wine train relocation project, 54 million stimulus dollars to build a new rail bridge, elevate and relocate 3,300 ft of tracks and put flood walls around the train's main station.” (ABC News’ “Good Morning America,” 2/2/10)

14. $50,000 IN STIMULUS FUNDS USED FOR A TENNIS COURT IN MONTANA:

DAVID MATTINGLY, CNN: “I Came To Bozeman To Find A City On Thin Ice Over How It's Spending Stimulus Money -- $50,000 To Erase All Of These Cracks And Potholes In City Tennis Court. ... Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer wants to make Bozeman an example of how not to spend stimulus money.” ... GOV. BRIAN SCHWEITZER: “What they violated was that rule of common sense. There ought to be that little guy in your head that waves his finger at you and says, wait a minute, we might want to rethink this thing.” (CNN, 1/25/10)

15. $250 STIMULUS CHECKS WENT TO PRISONERS:

MEGYN KELLY, Fox News: “Thousands To A Million Of Your Stimulus Dollars Have Gone Straight To Convicts. That's Right, The Feds Sending $250 Stimulus Checks To Thousands Upon Thousands Of Prisoners... We're Talking First Degree Murderers Who Are Getting Your Money.” (Fox News’ “America's Newsroom,” 8/26/09)

-------------Final thought------

If the stimulus is working, as Obama said today, if jobs are being created out there, how would the rest of the world react ? A shocked AP: "The government said Tuesday foreign demand for US Treasury securities fell by the largest amount on record in December with China reducing its holdings by $34.2 billion." They're dumping our T-bills out there!

President Obama Stimulated!

Last year this time, President Obama signed a nearly trillion dollar stimulus package. This bill kepts our unemployment under 8%. It was targeted spending, pork free, with no fraud! The oversight has been strict and they have provided "Green Jobs" for Americans. The Money helped states weather this recession, these states are rebounding and flourishing!

We should take this Ash Wednesday, to ponder those representatives and elected officials that got this important legislation passed so quickly and provided us with a well thought out plan that helped us so greatly!

Join with me in making sure the Democrats get everything they deserve for their selfless efforts on our behalf!

Just a Thought (GM Dave)

Original Source:

My wife has caught full-on Olympic fever.

I'm serious about that. She has actually caught Olympic fever. Every freaking time I reach for the remote, she snarls at me like a zombie from Resident Evil.

I keep a shotgun nearby just in case.

Anyway, we were watching some of the events today when a thought struck me.

No, this is not about the luge. Even I'm not that bad.

We were watching the biathlon (which does not involve the sexually confused young women I had expected) in which competitors have to cross country ski and then shoot at targets. They get ten bullets and have to hit ten targets.

How in the hell could you lose this event?

Let's imagine that you're in second place. You're getting close to the finish line and it looks like you don't have time to catch up. All is lost, right?

Oh, wait... You've got a gun.

I'd just shoot the guy ahead of me. Pop, pop, and I'm the winner.

Now, I'm not suggesting I'd kill the guy. That's just plain crazy.

But hit him in the back of the knee or spine or whatever and that gold medal is all yours.

Unless the guy behind you has a bullet left.

Teach'n

Apparently I have a knack for making computers fathomable to the uninitiated.

WoW Holiday

There are holiday activities in Azeroth. Two are overlapping this year. To Honor Ones Elders starts up today. It has to be among the most annoy quests ever. You have to travel everyplace...

Here is a list, in order, of what you do:

1. Begin in Warsong Hold in Borean Tundra.
2. Pamuya the Elder can be found in Warsong Hold.
3. Sardis the Elder is just outside the Alliance city of Valiance Keep.
4. Travel to the DEHTA Encampment for Arp the Elder.
5. Go to Amber Ledge then fly to Transitus Shield where you will find Northal the Elder.
6. Enter The Nexus and find Igasho the Elder. He is located near Ormorock the Tree-Shaper.
7. Fly to the Agmar’s Hammer and find Skywarden the Elder.
8. Go to the Alliance town of Star’s Rest in Dragonblight. In this area you’ll find Morthie the Elder.
9. Enter the Azjol’Nerub instance and find Nurgen the Elder. He can be found just after the second boss after you fall through the hole.
10. Fly to Moa’ki Harbor in Dragonblight and speak with Thoim the Elder.
11. Fly to New Agamand in Howling Fjord and enter Utgarde Keep to find Jarten the Elder. He is beyond the first boss but before the second.
12. Enter Utgarde Pinnacle and find Chogan’gada the Elder. He is under the stairs after Skadi the Ruthless.
13. Fly to Camp Oneqwah in Grizzly Hills and find Whurain the Elder.
14. Travel eastward to the Ruins of Tethys on the shoreline and talk to Lunaro the Elder.
15. Go northwest to the Alliance town of Westfall Brigade Encampment and talk to Beldak the Elder.
16. Fly to Gundrak in Zul’Drak and enter the instance on heroic mode. Find Ohanzee the Elder in the same area as Eck the Ferocious.
17. Fly to Zim’Torga in Zul’Drak and speak with Tauros the Elder.
18. Fly to Light’s Breach and go south to enter Drak’tharon and find Kilias the Elder inside King Dred's pen.
19. Fly to K3 in the Storm Peaks and talk to Graymane the Elder.
20. Fly to Camp Taunka’lo and find Muraco the Elder.
21. Travel to the Alliance town of Frosthold and find Fargal the Elder.
22. Fly to Ulduar and enter the Halls of Stone and find Yurauk the Elder in Krystallus' area.
23. Fly to Bouldercrag’s Refuge and speak with Stonebeard the Elder.
24. Fly to River’s Heart in Sholazzar Basin to talk to Sandrene the Elder.
25. Just north of River’s Heart is Rainspeaker Rapids where you’ll find Wanikaya the Elder.
26. Travel up into Wintergrasp and find Bluewolf the Elder inside Wintergrasp Fortress. Note that your faction needs to control Wintergrasp.
27. **Elders of Northrend Complete!**
28. Fly to Dalaran and take the portal to the Caverns of Time.
29. Travel to Gadgetzan in Tanaris and talk to Dreamseer the Elder.
30. Go to the Mirage Raceway in Thousand Needles and speak with Morningdew the Elder.
31. Go back to Tanaris and enter the Zul’Farrak instance where you’ll find Wildmane the Elder in Gahzrilla’s area.
32. Ragetotem the Elder can be found in Southern Tanaris at the Valley of Watchers.
33. Travel to the Slithering Scar in southern Un’goro Crater to find Thunderhorn the Elder.
34. Fly to Cenarion Hold in Silithus and speak with Bladesing the Elder.
35. Travel to the northwest corner of the zone, the Crystal Vale, where you will find Primestone the Elder.
36. Fly to Freewind Post in Thousand Needles and find Skyseer the Elder.
37. Fly to Camp Mojache in Feralas and go north to Lariss Pavilion where you will find Grimtotem the Elder.
38. Travel to Dire Maul in Feralas and find Mistwalker the Elder. Note that she is NOT inside the instances. She is inside the sub-zone.
39. Fly to Shadowprey Village in Desolace then travel to Maraudon. Enter the instance and locate Splitrock the Elder, in the tunnel between Rotgrip & the Goblin.
40. Fly to Thunder Bluff and speak with Elder Ezra Wheathoof on the Elder Rise.
41. Travel to Bloodhoof Village to find Bloodhoof the Elder.
42. Fly to Camp Taraujo in the Barrens and talk to High Mountain the Elder.
43. Fly to Ratchet and find Windtotem the Elder.
44. Head to the Crossroads and speak with Moonwarden the Elder.
45. Travel to Razor Hill in Durotar and talk to Runetotem the Elder.
46. Travel to Orgrimmar and find Darkhorn the Elder in the Valley of Wisdom.
47. Speak with a Lunar Festival Emissary and get the quest The Lunar Festival.
48. Then go turn in to a Lunar Festival Harbinger to turn in.
49. From the same NPC, get the quest Lunar Fireworks.
50. Festival Firecrackers can be purchased from the Lunar Festival Vendor in any major city. Purchase 10 and throw them as fast as you can. **Frenzied Firecracker Complete!**
51. Red Rocket Clusters are purchased from the Lunar Festival Vendor in any major city. Purchase 10 and use a nearby launcher to fire them off as fast as you can. **The Rocket’s Red Glare Complete!**
52. Complete and turn in the quest Lunar Fireworks if you haven’t already.
53. Get the quest Valadar Starsong.
54. Purchase 20 Green Rocket Clusters from the Lunar Festival Vendor.
55. Take the Zeppelin to Grom’gol Base Camp in Stranglethorn Vale then go to Zul’Gurub just outside the instance and speak with Starglade the Elder.
56. Travel to Booty Bay and talk to Winterhoof the Elder.
57. Fly to Stonard in the Swamp of Sorrows and enter the Temple of Atal’Hakkar. Take the spiral staircase on the left and hug the left wall until you locate Starsong the Elder.
58. Travel to the Dark Portal in the Blasted Lands where you will find Bellowrage the Elder.
59. Travel to the Alliance town of Sentinel Hill in Westfall and find Skychaser the Elder.
60. Travel to the Alliance town of Goldshire in Elwynn Forest and talk to Stormbrow the Elder.
61. Enter the Alliance Major City of Stormwind and find Hammershout the Elder in The Park.
62. Fly to Flame Crest in Burning Steppes and talk to Dawnstrider the Elder.
63. Rumblerock the Elder can be found in Dreadmaul Rock.
64. Travel into Blackrock Mountain. Enter the Blackrock Spire instance and find Stonefort the Elder after the first rope bridge in the Lower side of the instance.
65. Enter the Blackrock Depths instance where you will find Morndeep the Elder in the Ring of Law.
66. Travel northward into Searing Gorge to the Blackchar Cave where you will find Ironband the Elder.
67. Fly to Kargath and travel to the Alliance town of Thelsamar in Loch Modan. Speak with Silvervein the Elder.
68. Travel to the Alliance town of Kharanos in Dun Morogh and speak with Goldwell the Elder.
69. Enter the Alliance Major City of Ironforge and talk to Bronzebeard the Elder in the Mystic Ward.
70. Fly to Revantusk Village in the Hinterlands then head westward to the Creeping Ruins where you’ll find Highpeak the Elder.
71. Go north to the island of Caer Darrow in Western Plaguelands to speak with Moonstrike the Elder.
72. Travel to the Weeping Cave in Western Plaguelands and find Meadowrun the Elder.
73. Go to the Eastern Plaguelands and enter the Stratholme instance and find Farwhisper the Elder in Festival Lane.
74. **Elders of the Dungeons Complete!**
75. Travel to the Crown Guard Tower and talk to Windrun the Elder.
76. Continue on to Light’s Hope Chapel in Eastern Plaguelands and speak with Snowcrown the Elder.
77. Fly to the Undercity and find Darkcore the Elder in the center area near the bank.
78. **Elders of the Horde Complete!**
79. Travel to Brill in Tirisfal Glades and talk to Graveborn the Elder.
80. Fly to the Sepulcher and talk to Obsidian the Elder.
81. **Elders of Eastern Kingdoms Complete!**
82. Use your Lunar Festival Invitation to teleport to Moonglade then go turn in your quest.
83. Get the quest Elune’s Blessing.
84. Travel to the Stormrage Barrow Dens (65, 65). Use your green rocket clusters in the rocket launchers and target Omen Minions. Eventually, you will get Omen to spawn. He’s a big, white, two-headed hound. You do not need to tag him first and you do not have to be in the same raid or group in order to get Elune’s Blessing for killing Omen. You only need to be some-what near him when he goes down. Turn in the quest when complete! **Elune’s Blessing Complete!**
85. You can now do quests, Festive Lunar Pants Suits or Festive Lunar Dresses, from Valadar Starsong in Moonglade for this achievement. It will cost you 5 Coins of Ancestry for each quest…which you should have already. ** Lunar Festival Finery Complete!**
86. Fly to Everlook in Winterspring and find Stonespire the Elder.
87. Travel to Lake Kel’Theril to the west and talk to Brightspear the Elder.
88. Fly to Venom Post in Felwood then travel southward to Jaedenar where you will find Nightwind the Elder.
89. Fly to Valormok in Azshara. Skygleam the Elder can be found at the Ravencrest Monument on the far southeastern tip of land.
90. Fly to Zoram’gar Outpost in Ashenvale then travel to the Alliance town of Astranaar and speak with Riversong the Elder.
91. Travel north to the Alliance town of Auberdine in Darkshore. Starweave the Elder is nearby.
92. Sneak aboard the Alliance boat to the Alliance Major City of Darnassus. Bladeswift the Elder is in the Cenarion Enclave in Darnassus.
93. **Elders of the Alliance Complete!**
94. Travel to the Alliance town of Dolanaar in Teldrassil and speak with Bladeleaf the Elder. **Elders of Kalimdor Complete!**
95. 50 Coins of Ancestry! You have now recieved all the possible coins from the Elders in Azeroth.

The holiday achievement should now be complete!

Robert is bovvered by Valentines day (video).

Childhood obesity

Cause and effect? If a human body consumes more fuel then it needs it stores the rest in various forms until it is needed. Which is how anyone becomes obese.

Recently there was a story about a mom and her daughters. She was told by her doctor that her kids were over weight via the BMI. She changed their diet and activities so they consumed less calories, still maintaining quality and became more active. This enabled her to get her kids in a "healthier" condition.

This mom believes that the government should do the following:

• Issue an executive order demanding that all executive branch agencies consider the impact of major federal legislation on the obesity epidemic, similar to the Environmental Justice Executive Order of 1994.
• Impose federal taxes, both sales and excise, on purchases of unhealthy foods and beverages and earmark the revenue for obesity programs.
• Prohibit and remove all commercial promotion of food in schools and educational settings receiving federal funds.
• Provide funding through the 2009 reauthorization of the federal Child Nutrition Bill to establish a garden in every school.
• Establish strict federal regulations limiting food and beverage advertising to children, including the Internet.

This massive amount of Government growth, mandate and expense is the only way a mom could make better food choices for her kids and have them more active....

Oh, who is this woman? The First Lady...

Translated: You are too stupid to take healthy care of your kids...

Unions, is there anything good about them?

By John Stossel:

Michelle Berry runs a day-care business out of her home in Flint, MI. She thought that she owned her own business, but Berry's been told she is now a government employee and union member. It's not voluntary. Suddenly, Berry and 40,000 other Michigan private day-care providers have learned that union dues are being taken out of the child-care subsidies the state sends them. The "union" is a creation of AFSCME, the government workers union, and the United Auto Workers.

This racket means big money to AFSCME, which runs the union, writes the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank.

Today the Department of Human Services siphons about $3.7 million in annual dues to the union….

The money should be going to home-based day-care providers — themselves not on the high end of the income scale. Ms. Berry now sees money once paid to her go to a union that does little for her…

Patrick Wright, a lawyer for the Macknac Center, says the union was forced on the women after a certification election conducted by mail in which only 6,000 day-care providers out of 40,000 voted. Wright told me his clients, like Berry, say they were "shocked" to learn they were suddenly in a union.

They want nothing to do with the union. One of my clients has said, “Look, this is my home, I’m both labor and management here.” They’ve wanted nothing to do with this union and don’t think that it has any purpose besides than to siphon money away from them.

Michigan isn't the only state funding unions this way.

Fourteen states have now enabled home-based day-care providers to be organized into public-employee unions, affecting about 233,000 people.

Mackinac sued Michigan on behalf of the day-care owners, but the case was dismissed. They have appealed. Neither Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, the Department of Human Services, nor the union would talk to me about this. Last month, Michigan Rep. Justin Amash proposed a law that would end "stealth" unionization of private entrepreneurs.

Biden: Just how stupid he thinks we are (assuming he thinks)

LA Times: Who Knew?

Biden: Petraeus ‘Dead Flat Wrong’ on Iraq

Joe Biden On Iraq: Staying Is "Killing Us"

Biden on Bush & Iraq bill: ‘We’re going to shove it down his throat’

And my favorite analysis on this:
With absolute power, Team Obama grows stupid
By: Michael Barone

Read more at the Washington Examiner: Team Obama grows stupid

International Association of Time Travelers: Members' Forum Subforum: Europe – Twentieth Century – Second World War Page 263

I came across this wonderful story I just had to share.

11/15/2104
At 14:52:28, FreedomFighter69 wrote:
Reporting my first temporal excursion since joining IATT: have just returned from 1936 Berlin, having taken the place of one of Leni Riefenstahl's cameramen and assassinated Adolf Hitler during the opening of the Olympic Games. Let a free world rejoice!

At 14:57:44, SilverFox316 wrote:
Back from 1936 Berlin; incapacitated FreedomFighter69 before he could pull his little stunt. Freedomfighter69, as you are a new member, please read IATT Bulletin 1147 regarding the killing of Hitler before your next excursion. Failure to do so may result in your expulsion per Bylaw 223.

At 18:06:59, BigChill wrote:
Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what's the harm?

At 18:33:10, SilverFox316 wrote:
Easy for you to say, BigChill, since to my recollection you've never volunteered to go back and fix it. You think I've got nothing better to do?

11/16/2104
At 10:15:44, JudgeDoom wrote:
Good news! I just left a French battlefield in October 1916, where I shot dead a young Bavarian Army messenger named Adolf Hitler! Not bad for my first time, no? Sic semper tyrannis!

At 10:22:53, SilverFox316 wrote:
Back from 1916 France I come, having at the last possible second prevented Hitler's early demise at the hands of JudgeDoom and, incredibly, restrained myself from shooting JudgeDoom and sparing us all years of correcting his misguided antics. READ BULLETIN 1147, PEOPLE!

At 15:41:18, BarracksRoomLawyer wrote:
Point of order: issues related to Hitler's service in the Bavarian Army ought to go in the World War I forum.

11/21/2104
At 02:21:30, SneakyPete wrote:
Vienna, 1907: after numerous attempts, have infiltrated the Academy of Fine Arts and facilitated Adolf Hitler's admission to that institution. Goodbye, Hitler the dictator; hello, Hitler the modestly successful landscape artist! Brought back a few of his paintings as well, any buyers?

At 02:29:17, SilverFox316 wrote:
All right; that's it. Having just returned from 1907 Vienna where I secured the expulsion of Hitler from the Academy by means of an elaborate prank involving the Prefect, a goat, and a substantial quantity of olive oil, I now turn my attention to our newer brethren, who, despite rules to the contrary, seem to have no intention of reading Bulletin 1147 (nor its Addendum, Alternate Means of Subverting the Hitlerian Destiny, and here I'm looking at you, SneakyPete). Permit me to sum it up and save you the trouble: no Hitler means no Third Reich, no World War II, no rocketry programs, no electronics, no computers, no time travel. Get the picture?

At 02:29:49, SilverFox316 wrote:
PS to SneakyPete: your Hitler paintings aren't worth anything, schmuck, since you probably brought them directly here from 1907, which means the paint's still fresh. Freaking n00b.

At 07:55:03, BarracksRoomLawyer wrote:
Amen, SilverFox316. Although, point of order, issues relating to early 1900s Vienna should really go in that forum, not here. This has been a recurring problem on this forum.

11/26/2104
At 18:26:18, Jason440953 wrote:
SilverFox316, you seem to know a lot about the rules; what are your thoughts on traveling to, say, Braunau, Austria, in 1875 and killing Alois Hitler before he has a chance to father Adolf? Mind you, I'm asking out of curiosity alone, since I already went and did it.

At 18:42:55, SilverFox316 wrote:
Jason440953, see Bylaw 7, which states that all IATT rulings regarding historical persons apply to ancestors as well. I post this for the benefit of others, as I already made this clear to young Jason in person as I was dragging him back from 1875 by his hair. Got that? No ancestors. (Though if anyone were to go back to, say, Moline, Illinois, in, say, 2080 or so, and intercede to prevent Jason440953's conception, I could be persuaded to look the other way.)

At 21:19:17, BarracksRoomLawyer wrote:
Point of order: discussions of nineteenth–century Austria and twenty–first–century Illinois should be confined to their respective forums.

12/01/2104
At 15:56:41, AsianAvenger wrote:
FreedomFighter69, JudgeDoom, SneakyPete, Jason440953, you're nothing but a pack of racists. Let the light of righteousness shine upon your squalid little viper's nest!

At 16:40:17, BigTom44 wrote:
Well, here we frickin' go.

At 16:58:42, FreedomFighter69 wrote:
Racist? For killing Hitler? WTF?

At 17:12:52, SaucyAussie wrote:
AsianAvenger, you're not rehashing that whole Nagasaki issue again, are you? We just got everyone calmed down from last time.

At 17:22:37, LadyJustice wrote:
I'm with SaucyAussie. AsianAvenger, you're making even less sense than usual. What gives?

At 18:56:09, AsianAvenger wrote:
What gives is everyone's repeated insistence on a course of action which, even if successful, would only save a few million Europeans. It would be no more trouble to travel to Fuyuanshui, China, in 1814 and kill Hong Xiuquan, thus preventing the Taiping Rebellion of the mid–nineteenth century and saving fifty million lives in the process. But, hey, what are fifty million yellow devils more or less, right, guys? We've got Poles and Frenchmen to worry about.

At 19:01:38, LadyJustice wrote:
Well, what's stopping you from killing him, AsianAvenger?

At 19:11:43, AsianAvenger wrote:
Only to have SilverFox316 undo my work? What's the point?

At 19:59:23, SilverFox316 wrote:
Actually, it seems like a pretty good idea to me, AsianAvenger. No complications that I can see.

At 20:07:25, Big Chill wrote:
Go for it, man.

At 20:11:31, AsianAvenger wrote:
Very well. I shall return in mere moments, the savior of millions!

At 20:14:17, LadyJustice wrote:
Just checked the timeline; congrats on your success, AsianAvenger!

12/02/2104
At 10:52:53, LadyJustice wrote:
AsianAvenger?

At 11:41:40, SilverFox316 wrote:
AsianAvenger, we need your report, buddy.

At 17:15:32, SilverFox316 wrote:
Okay, apparently AsianAvenger was descended from Hong Xiuquan. Any volunteers to go back and stop him from negating his own existence?

12/10/2104
At 09:14:44, SilverFox316 wrote:
Anyone?

At 09:47:13, BarracksRoomLawyer wrote:
Point of order: this discussion belongs in the Qing Dynasty forum. We're adults; can we keep sight of what's important around here?

Boardum entertainment.

Think back to a simpler time where there was no TV, Radio, Electricity etc. For a mid-western farm family the workday started early and it was a heavy load gathering all the needed items for the days meals and sundries. With an every watchful eye on the coming winter and having enough supplies on hand. If you did not have enough canned goods or energy sources, chances of your family dying during a harsh winter was certain.

Entertainment consisted of fairs and festivals held in the local community. Very often a family would call upon its own resources. This was not a nightly 6:00 to 11:00 fare. Which means it was something to look forward too.

Wisdom of Shoo

Shoo Prophetically stated that "It would take another Ice Age to dissuade the Man Made Global Warming zealots" (note: heavily paraphrased).

Washington DC is having quite the snow storm. RBG can provide a first hand account if you do not believe this to be true. (*I am taking great care to be factual and verifiable here).

Freedom Eden did a hit piece on Contessa Brewer from the (quote)"unbiased"(unquote), news Organization MSNBC. She presses the meteorologist to take a swipe at Jim DeMint who recently tweeted "He says the snow will continue 'until Al Gore cries uncle.'".

The reasoned response:

RAPHAEL MIRANDA: Well, it's an interesting point. Global warming skeptics love to say, 'Oh, it's snowing. What happened to global warming?' But there is a school of thought that says global warming will provide more moisture to the atmosphere, which will allow for bigger snowstorms like this one. So really, it depends on which school of thought you attest to, but it could go either way.

Which, to me, speaks highly of Mr. Miranda as being fair and balanced.

So lets harken back over a year where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blogged about the winter season no longer bringing snow or cold to DC. David Freddoso, takes him to task here.

As flying Van facebooked "If you have any pre conceived notion, you'll cling to the things that support 'your' side and spin/deny/ignore the things that don't. Worst offender in my opinion is the IPCC."

To which RFK's unintended response: "Idiots on the right like Rush [Limbaugh] like to point to any cold-weather anomalies as proof that global warming doesn’t exist,"

Which misses the point so amazingly, ignorantly, it is cause to laugh.

Presidential appeals for bipartisanship means: do it my way!

There are a couple of disconnects between fact and fiction when it comes to congress. Republicans were an inferior minority in the senate until recently. Same with the House. Which means there is no way they can overcome a party line vote. In other words the Republicans, were rendered null and void in the bill passing process. Yet, I keep hearing at how they blocked legislation and Obama at every turn. Lets say your playing in the super bowl and you have a full healthy team. The other side (Republicans) have a two man squad and they are holding you to near zero yardage.

One would wonder what was up with the players and the coach.

This leads into the second disconnect. Bi-partisanship. You will hear liberal pendants say time and again how the Obama administration has tried time and time again to reach across the aisle an unprecedented number of attempts only to be shunned. While you hear the conservatives tell of being locked out of the process and not included. How can it be both?

Mark Knoller wrote about this very thing. The liberal idea of bi-partisanship is for the Republicans to do exactly what they say. Which, there is no real reason to support anything the Democrats are pushing. Unless, of course it is good for the people of this great nation.

Which really does not matter anyways as they do not have the votes to enact anything.

Professor (the new 'N' word?)

Wow, just wow! Did you realize how Racist a term like Professor has been used?

Me neither... I guess it helps to be involved in Race and Justice to draw these kinds of conclusions..

Ogletree, founding and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, says he sees the “professor” label as a thinly veiled attack on Obama’s race. Calling Obama “the professor” walks dangerously close to labeling him “uppity,” a term with racial overtones that has surfaced in the political arena before, Ogletree said.

Amazing. (source)

TV (US .vs. BBC) SPOILERS!

Dollhouse post mortem. The last five episodes when combined with the unaired Epitaph one give you an idea of what the show could have been. To me it appears Joss and FOX bumped heads and, like with Firefly, did not have the intestinal fortitude to hold his creative ground. Instead we got the Imprint of the Week with overt sexual overtones that did not appeal as most of the audience is not voyeurs.

For those who shrugged and voted with the remote, here is what you missed. Echo is able to load past imprints at will. The company behind the Dollhouse designs a way to imprint the world and they do. For the next 10 years as a rag-tag bunch of survivors, Echo and company work to set things right. It is rushed and you get the feeling you missed quite a few episodes. In my way of thinking yanking the fluff episodes that are "required" for a US series and following a storyline would have helped this series.

We are treated to story driven television via the BBC America channel. They do more with a series with less episodes, by focusing on an actual story.

Heroes ended its season and it was tiring seeing the safe, uncreative drivel that crept into this one time favorite. I wonder if, at some point, the production team decides to sacrifice story to stretch out the job as long as possible. Frankly I have a tough time watching any of the CSI shows anymore. They break down into Crime, cute line, montage, plot, montage, close. Most of the show revolves around the exciting world of lab coats.

Juxtapose that with the Children of Earth, Torchwood. The ended of this tale was disturbingly well written. Salvation at such a horrible cost.

Why are liberals so condescending?

I present for you a Washington Post piece in which Gerard Alexander attempts to answer a question I have long pondered.

"Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate, ideological and unworthy of serious consideration. Indeed, all the appeals to bipartisanship notwithstanding, President Obama and other leading liberal voices have joined in a chorus of intellectual condescension."

Read the entire article.

President Palin

Okay, so get this. There was a convention of the Tea Party which is for fiscal responsibility in government. Sarah Palin gave a great speech. This has caused the MSM to become unglued.

And the major unglued story I read today? She jotted some hand notes for the speech. There is something truly amazing about Sarah and her ability to drive liberals over the top nutzo.

She has unleashed some amazing unprecedented media responses from her Facebook postings. It seems to go like this. She issues a statement, the MSM gears up the attack team. People, most of whom are savvy to this hatred, figure out what she means and scoffs at the press. Sarah becomes more popular and the state run media is left scratching its head on what just happened.

The idea around these stories is that Sarah is unsophisticated and a "Dumb Hick". Most of us jott something down on our hands at some point. It is a smart thing to do, as you will not leave your hand on your desk when you need that info.

I suppose the more intellectually elite thing to do would be to set up a higher tech method of note cribbing. I mean, that would not look as silly right?

Superbowl Abortion advertisement

Copy Pasted from here: By Jeff Miller

Being both a Catholic pundit and living in Gator country by contract I am required to comment on the Im Tebow Superbowl ad. A lot of pixels and ink have already been spilled over this so I will spill some more.

Those who support legal abortion often chaff at being called pro-abortion - the much prefer pro-choice. No doubt they believe this is the case, but in reality there are few if any who see abortion and not having an abortion both a morally neutral acts of exactly the same weight. After all what was the last time you saw a Planned Parenthood Maternity Ward or a NARAL Home for Unwed Mothers.

The fuss over the Tim Tebow ad really proves this. The ad presents one side of choice so what is the big deal to them? A mother talking about the decision to choose life is not exactly controversial since all of our mothers did exactly the same thing.

The obvious reason they hate they so much is that it shows the reality of "choice" the existence or the snuffing out of a human being. Over the years more and more people whose mothers considered abortion and decided against it have been talking about this fact. They are survivors of a "choice". There is also the case of abortion survivor Gianna Jessen who lived despite the attempt to abort her. The pro-abortion side is upset that they can't run similar ads. In fact they have been able to find zero aborted babies willing to film a Superbowl or any other ad for them. They can't even find people who want to take their mothers to task for having them. Those that each day regret their mothers did not abort them.

Tim Tebow does not represent a tissue mass or any other ecumenism euphemism for a child in the womb, but the normal consequence of not stopping life while in the womb. A Heisman Trophy winner is present because he mother choose life over the doctor's suggestion. Though Joy Behar said he could just as easily have become a "racist." Great idea Joy Behar - we should kill all children to prevent such an occurrence. Seeing Tim Tebow and hearing this story can remind us of the 50 Million individual persons who did not survive their mother's choice.

The abortion industry and abortion supporters have always been about minimizing or hiding reality. Women are told across the world falsehoods about the stages of the child in their womb. Terms are used to describe this that have no bearing on the reality. Over and over Ultrasound has been called a weapon because it helps to visualize reality. Laws requiring that women be properly informed about the life in the womb and presented with factual medical and scientific information about this are blocked time and again by the pro-abortion crowd.

A mother choosing life is polarizing and divisive. What a sick culture we live in.

A rather odd fact is that Planned Parenthood is responding to this ad by having two men, an ex-footbal player and a Gold Medalist, talking about women's rights being respected. Now could you imagine the outcry of a pro-life ad involving two men talking against abortion? The pro-abortion crowd would go crazy criticizing it for being so out of touch and not being able to speak for women.

Though I guess Planned Parenthood could get lots of men who favor abortion to do commercials for them. They could speak how abortion saved them from being trapped in a relationship. How abortion enabled them to maintain their lifestyle of treating women as objects and to keep pretending their was not natural consequence of sex. Predatory males certainly love legal abortion. In the meantime pro-abortion supporters want to remain to keep their head in the sand and to deny that a women's choice determines if a person will continue to live or not. Tim Tebow should just go away and not remind them of the consequence of "choice".

For us who are pro-life it reminds us to pray for those mothers in difficult situations that are considering abortion as a solution and to help them in every possible way that we can.

Grasshopper and the Ant. (Obama Version)

OLD VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away..

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while he is cold and starving.

CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food.

America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper and everybody cries when they sing, “It's Not Easy Being Green.”

ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Then Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper's plight.

Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity For Grasshoppers Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant's food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn't maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again. The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle, once prosperous and once peaceful, neighborhood.

The entire Nation collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.