Sorry to brag about myself, but I have personally saved or created 300 million American lives by not killing anyone today.
I Am Like The Obama
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Forget Yoda
Treasury to Auction $104 Billion In Debt Next Week, a Record:
The Treasury announced Thursday a record $104 billion worth of bond auctions for next week, part of its herculean efforts to finance a rescue of the world’s largest economy.
The sales will exceed the previous record of $101 billion set in auctions that took place in the last week of April and consist of two-year, five-year and seven-year securities. That record was matched by another $101 billion week in May.
Call me a wee bit skittish in the 2009 Obama Economic World, but sooner or later these headlines are going to have to include the word try instead of assuming someone while buy what could become junk bonds.
(Link via Instapundit.)
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Sharing A Ministry
I have shared triumphs like this:
And finally, after months of cajoling and correcting, I seem to have made a convert! I just edited a draft document in which the writer used the serial comma consistently throughout! Also, another one is halfway there — he seems to get the general concept, but is confused about the placement of the final comma in relation to the “and” — he writes, “thing, thing and, thing” instead of “thing, thing, and thing.” But at least now I can tell how many items he intended to list, so that’s an improvement.
I beat that into enough designers that they do it correctly, years later and in different positions. And if only one of them passes the lesson on, I’m totally reaping the Amway benefits of knowledge-spreading.
(Link seen on Dustbury.)
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Robin Carnahan and ACORN
24th State asks some questions about Robin Carnahan’s involvement with ACORN.
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Let’s Hear Him Say Ninety-Nine, Ninety-Nine
Obama Blueprint Deepens Federal Role in Markets:
The Obama administration last night detailed a series of proposals to involve the government more deeply in private markets, from helping to steer borrowers into affordable mortgage loans to imposing new limits on the largest financial companies, in a sweeping effort to curb the kinds of reckless risk-taking that sparked the economic crisis.
How long until the government actually holds the paper on your home, and you live in it at its pleasure? That’s called state property, ain’t it?
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Some Catholic Churches Will Try Anything To Improve Attendance
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Book Report: Back to the Future III by Craig Shaw Gardner (1990)
Last autumn, I read Back to the Future and Back to the Future Part II. Back then, I said:
Unfortunately, I don’t think I have the third novelization of the movie (although I do have the trilogy of movies, which this book encourages me to watch). And I want it.
Well, I didn’t have to go to Ebay or anything since it turned up serendipitiously at a school rummage sale I attended last week. So I jumped into it as soon as possible. The novelization is from the same guy who did the second one, so he still overuses the question marks and the exclamation points. But he does neat things to cover visual effects, such as the Eastwood Gorge sign change in the end. In the film, it’s a visual effect, and the author seamlessly has Marty notice it. Other times, though, he seems to bang it a little bit.
The movies are very visual experiences, and some of it is lost. But a good nostalgic read never the less.
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The Public Plan Deception
As it so often seems to be, any federal plan is the nose in the tent. On purpose.
How’s that competitive passenger rail thing working out for you?
(Link seen on Gateway Pundit.)
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Cap and Trade + Nationalized Health Care = Crazy Delicious
Hey, let’s do it like the Canadians:
The Lower Mainland’s health authorities will have to dig more than $4 million a year out of their already stretched budgets to pay B.C.’s carbon tax and offset their carbon footprints.
Critics say the payments mean the government’s strategy to fight climate change will further exacerbate a crisis in health funding.
“You have public hospitals cutting services to pay a tax that goes to another 100 per cent government-owned agency,” NDP health critic Adrian Dix said.
(Link seen on Surber.)
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It’s a Fundemic!
WHO: Swine flu pandemic has begun, 1st in 41 years:
The World Health Organization declared a swine flu pandemic Thursday – the first global flu epidemic in 41 years – as infections in the United States, Europe, Australia, South America and elsewhere climbed to nearly 30,000 cases.
The long-awaited pandemic announcement is scientific confirmation that a new flu virus has emerged and is quickly circling the globe. WHO will now ask drugmakers to speed up production of a swine flu vaccine, which it said would available after September. The declaration will also prompt governments to devote more money toward efforts to contain the virus.
The difference between yesterday and today? A proclamation from above.
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Book Report: Yes Sir, That’s My Baby photos by Josef A. Schneider (?)
This book is a slender Hallmark version of the book listed below. Child photographer Josef Schneider has taken photos of children with odd expressions on their faces, and they threw in word and thought balloons to ascribe wry thoughts to the children. Mildly amusing.
It’s not a coloring book that I’m counting towards my yearly reading total, but I am counting it.
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Book Report: Devil’s Holiday by Fred Malloy (1952)
Well, this was a book in a plain brown wrapper.
The cheap binding mirrors a Walter J. Black sort of binding. A novel title like Devil’s Holiday and an author named Fred Malloy, I was sure someone was going to get icepicked. But you learn something new every day. Like that there was a lurid genre of what they called sleaze or soft-core pornography featuring tawdry, descriptive scenes of seduction as it were. In 2009, you wouldn’t call this pornography. But fifty years ago, apparently, hoo-whee!
The book centers on the afternoon, evening, and night of Christmas Eve. Young couple (almost 30, so Old Married Couple in 1950s books) is kinda on the rocks. When husband came back from the war, he was different and the wife had almost taken a lover in his absence, but did not. The afternoon of Christmas Eve, the husband gets together with a young woman from the office and, after heavy drinking, they spend the afternoon in a hotel. He leaves his wife’s Christmas gift in a cab with her, and he starts fruitlessly seeking her to find it. She returns it to the wife, and the husband’s infidelity is thrown in her face. So she goes out on the town to get even and to give him grounds for a divorce because she loves him and doesn’t want him to be the villain in the divorce. So he goes out to a dive bar, hooks up with a ruffian from Missouri, and they drink, get into a fight, and try to meet women.
The characters at the root have a basic love for each other but cannot communicate it, and they’re swept into a series of poor decisions that are fueled by the constraints of the norms of the time and more alcohol than it would take to kill me and preserve me.
I don’t know what it says about its times that the relatively tepid sensual descriptions in the book were considered sleazy or pornographic. I also don’t know what it says about our times that 1950s sleaze has more conflicted characterizations and internal dilemmas in a simple plot than in much contemporary fiction of a more lofty-goaled but still genre fiction.
I might try this author again if I stumble over another one of his works, but I gather they’re pretty rare.
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Book Report: Nintendo Role-Playing Games by Christopher Lampton (1991)
This is a book aimed at the middle-school or early high-school market, and it describes, briefly and zealously, some of the role-playing games available for the original NES. These include The Legend of Zelda, Shadowgate, Ultima, Dragon Warrior, and whatnot. Each has a couple of pages that includes some information about the storyline, a bit of comment on the game play, and tips that range from knowledgeable and insightful to vague, general, or obvious, possibly depending upon whether the author played the game before writing it up.
I’d call it a walk down memory lane, but that’s cliche and I was not an NES guy. But it did give me the urge to install a new role-playing game. Or maybe install one that I bought in the past when I’ve had this passing urge. Or maybe hook up an NES and run through one of these games. Instead, I’ve started a game of Civilization IV which I’ll probably abandon in a couple of days. Face it, gaming’s not high on my priority list these days.
But I liked the book. A simple read.
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All the Cool Kids Like It
If Tam K. and Jay G., former ECD where I used to work, agree this is the bomb, I must post it so the last amongst you can see it:
You are welcome.
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Obamath
Claim of 600,000 “jobs created or saved” + ACORN = 632,092 new workers with names like Mickey Mouse, Peter Parker, and Iluv Obama.
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Book Report: One Knee Equals Two Feet by John Madden with Dave Anderson (1986)
This is an insightful book from 1986, the beginning almost of Madden’s commenting career. He was fresh off of his years coaching the Raiders and being one of the all-time greatest coaches in the game. Within it, he describes the elements of each position, including coaching, and describes what he thinks makes a successful player at that position and who are the all-time best at that position (through 1985). Unfortunately, that means a lot of Chicago Bear loving, including extolling the virtues of Jim McMahon. Or Ed. Whichever wore glasses and was flaky. Or dark glasses and was flaky. Of course, if he wrote the book in 2006, he’d be all about Brett Favre, who played the game like quarterbacks did before they were drones radio-controlled by the coaches on the sidelines.
The best insight from the book: Madden had to teach his linemen to be aggressive. Unlike linebackers, who were sort of normal-sized, linemen where huge from birth and were conditioned throughout their youth to be gentle and to not use their size to their physical advantage. So he had to teach them otherwise. Fascinating insight.
A good book if you’re into football at all. Even if nobody gets icepicked in it.
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Things Brian Likes
The pen-and-ink drawings of Gary Gackstatter.
As seen at Old Trees’ Art and Air fair this weekend, where the Good Citizens of Webster Groves did not even suspect that a wicked individualist Republican walked amongst them.
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Noggle On Your Driveway
The Webster-Kirkwood Times published a letter from me on Friday. I missed it in my review of the paper, but a neighbor commented on it.
UPDATE:Eight years later, and the link is stale. I’m too lazy to retype it, and I cannot find the original file, but here’s an image of the article if you’re interested:
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Triumphs of Socialized Medicine
Doug Ross collects a list of triumphant headlines regarding socialized medicine in this post.
Remember, every dead citizen is cost savings in a government budget.
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Not The Best Spin
That Air France plane that crashed on its way from Rio to Paris? The authorities, meaning whomever the papers are quoting and not necessarily authoritative on anything, are quick to dismiss a terrorist bomb.
Authorities these days are quick to dismiss terrorism in any catastrophe for fear of fanning the flames of fear.
Instead, they’re trying to soothe the public by saying the plane probably just fell apart in midair.
That doesn’t exactly make me want to hop on a plane. Call me crazy, but call me a cab for my next trip across country.
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