Sweet Home Alabama

Well – It seems that turn about is fair game these days …. And instead of a line jumper going from Republican to Democrat, we have a House member who is going from Democrat to Republican … but from what he said in his interview this morning on Fox News, I have to wonder why he was Democrat to begin with.

Rep. Parker Griffith from Alabama has switched sides and list the following as his reasons for doing so:

• Didn't like the way Congressional Leadership was working
  
• Didn't like the way the Executive Branch was working (that would be the White House)
  
• Nation was losing 100-1000's of jobs a month
  
• Cap & Trade (he called it a 'rabbit trail")
  
• Health Care took precedence over job creation
  
• Stimulus wasn't working, so they were going to make another stimulus
  
• Moneys paid back to the government wasn't going to pay down debt, it was going to another stimulus package
  
• Independent, Conservative Business man
  
• Pro-life
  
• Pro-Second Amendment (right to bare arms)
  
• Party was taking a tilt too far laft
  

Now it has to be said that while his district tends to send Democrats to congress, they voted both times for GW Bush overwhelmingly …

NOTE: USA is only 5% of the world's population … interesting ….

Numerology Class

well not really - that will come after Christmas/Yule dinner when my father actually gives me the numbers ....

he crunched some numbers of how much health insurance has cost him since 2004, breaking it down by %-increase .... the highest being close to 52% and the lowest being 13% ...

then he punched in the numbers for what will happen if this health care bill passes ...

the health care costs for his business under the proposed health care bill will go up
+ 300%
yeah shocked the daylights out of me too ... it will put him out of business ... and he will not have an out .... there is no break for the 'small business' as they keep saying ... there is no break for employers who have employees already insured thru other sources ...

He will be forced into retirement or bankruptcy - either of which will not only break his heart but his spirit as well ...

Change ...

rmember, they never said what kind of change.

Samson vs. Goliath

Okay so I'm watching, and I read this yesterday but didn't comment on it, the news and there is this big deal being made over the 4-yr old in TX who has long hair and is also getting ISS (in school suspension) for not cutting it.

It seems this gal is being flambasted for not wanting to cut his hair (I saw one quote where they say he is growing his hair to give to charity ... don't think so) .... they are saying if she would just follow the dress code everything would be fine ....

I'm on the fence ....

on one side I agree that shorter hair would be easier for boys who tend to sweat a LOT during play and it can really pick up on the stink ... I prefer to keep my boys in shorter hair .... now.

On the other hand, I was pisssed as hell when I was forced to cut my 1st child's hair because the County Health Nurse who came into the day care felt that boys needed to have short hair and if I didn't she was going to call child welfare --- yes she did play that card over long hair.

So I was forced to clip off my baby's curls -- they were sooooooooo cute too, and they have never come back.

Here's my feelings:
1) they don't make little girls cut their hair, so this is sexual discrimination
2) the parents must have known the rules before they put their child in school
3) the parents are keeping the child clean so it is NOT a health issue
4) as in the 60's they should know that hair does NOT effect how well people do in school
5) the school is overstepping their boundries .... school's are to educate not dictate personal style

if it seems like I'm backing the parents on this one --- its because I am.

I think if this kid was dirty, stinky, filthy, unkempt, ratty, oily, etc they might have a leg to stand on ... but this kid looks totally clean, well cared for, groomed, and washed ... yes his hair falls into his eyes, but that can be pulled back (like the girls do) ...

I vote for Samson on this one.

Obama Time

This is why people should not do 'self-evaluation's for their jobs ... I'm sure you have heard this already but I'll rehash it again.

Obama gives himself a "B+" for the job he has done already .... because he says he 'inherited the biggest set of challenges of any President since Franklin Delano Roosevelt" ... yeah ... right.

Lets all forget that while running for his office he refused to take a couple of days off the campaign trail to get his @%% back to DC to try to take care of this when it all started to slide -- in fact he took the opportunity to complain about the economy on the road ...

and make no bones about it, when all this started the economists were saying that it was only going to last about 6 months after the new year anyways ... So - what effect has he had??

That would mean ---- NONE. If there had been a recovery sooner than June that would be one thing .... or if there was a sudden slowing to the unemployment rate, that would be another ....

But lets look:

• 1st time unemployment claims have gone higher than originally expected (10.3%)
• Total unemployment estimates are nearly as high as those during the depression (21%)
• benefits have been extended for the Unemployed (well it had to be)
• Cap & Trade bill is either passing or is going to be regulated by the EPA (no representation there)
• Deficit is not being paid down, in fact it is at a record high
• this President has done more traveling in his first yr than any other President in office during a economic crisis
• His administration has made claims on getting out vaccine that were above the manufacturers abilities (and the manufacturers told them so at the time)
• government has nearly doubled in size since the inauguration
• attacks on US troops have picked up in Afghanistan where it had been fairly quiet
• troops were pulled from Iraq ... and shipped to Afghanistan
• he sat on a report from the Gen in Afghanistan recommending more troops - and then denied he had done it
• money from the "stimulus package" (number 1) is being misused
• only 20% of the stimulus money has been sent out, less than that have gone for 'shovel ready' projects

well .... if you did a job like this - what kind of grade do you think your employer would have given you?

remembering that a "C" is the average that you expect for your position ...

The highest this President should be able to get with all the above is a "C+" or slightly above average ... solving ALL the problems would get him an "A", solving the unemployment problem would have given him a "B" ... but I think the minimum work we should be seeing is working on ending the recession (which according to his own people may or may not be over, depending on who has their finger in the wind on any given day)

Personally I would give him a "D+" because I see him 'phoning' it in more than anything else ... I see Nancy Pelosi as the one who is really running the government and Obama is just along for the ride ... I don't see him doing much - but then we don't see him in the White House that often....

but at least the daily speeches are done ... or at least he's taking a break from them.

He probably has too many tv interviews to get done ... then there's that movie that you know is being made

Numerology 101

New poll numbers on the public's opinion of "Climate Change" … interesting poll – I took this poll, or a very similar one … it was dubbed as a quiz to begin with but it ended up as a poll, and was not scientific – at least not the one I took … nor did it ask what my political affiliation was or who I voted for in the last Presidential election.

Here is the basic poll numbers (there were more but being I only had a couple of hours sleep and just got done shoveling out a country driveway – in my exhaustion I accidentally changed channels … should have hit the 'record' button for it)

HSS6 UPDATE

okay - I have the pattern picked out ... it is just my partners size ... I've looked at it done in all sorts of varigated yarn and it should be the perfect pattern ... my problem now is what color to dye my partners yarn (I know she will probably see that I'm dyeing her yarn, but you never know how things work up until its completed).

two last minute tickets for my hubby and his mother to help arrange his aunt's funeral is going to put a damper on some of my plans -- but I can rethink things to make it all work. The toughest part is the "row marker" ... I have seen so many options online that I'm not sure which way to go.

Normally I tend to make my own stitch markers for my partners ... and I do hope they all have liked them ... but I'm not sure where to start with the row markers.

I've seen the clickers .... I've seen the kind you spin the numbers ... I've seen the kind that look like bracelets where you use the links to count ... and I've seen ones that look like earrings that can double as stitch markers as well (although I'm a bit shy on these ones - I used some this summer and found they tend to fall out as the work is put down).

hmmm, I will have to see what I decide on :-)

Cap & Trade

We all know Cap & Trade -- where we will get hit by big taxes for our energy.

Well C&T has already hit CA ... how it works:

The State tells a powerplant how much CO2 tonage (that should read "tonnage") they are allowed to produce in a year - that's the Cap part .... 10 tonnes this yr, 9tonnes the next, 8, 7 etc. - eventually this is going to get to the point to where the plant isn't going to be able to reduce tonage ... its an impossible goal .... so what do they do?

(a)cut production & lay off people
(b)buy new equipment which costs money he doesn't have
(c)trade for credits by planting trees in the Amazon, get some from the farmer who has reduced his emissions below where they expected them to be, or he can buy them from the alternative energy plant.

In CA they have to cut their imissions by 30% by 2020 .... in order to do it, they have to raise prices .... $140/per ton ... so it will snow ball.

The only one making money out of this? the state ... no duh - since even if there is 'trading' going on, they will still get the $ in the long run for those tonnage credits.

The people? not so much - they will have to pay higher energy rates which in turn will raise the amount of taxes they pay on each bill ... they will have to pay more for goods which are produced in the manufacturing of the items they like/want/need.

and my guess is that when the states & feds can't get enough money from the companies they will come after you in your home and tax you based on your useage ... and claim that you are using too much energy, we will have forced or estimated energy audits without concent or right to turn down, and taxes will be based on that ....

wait and see.

Blizzard Update

okay - I promised I would up date you on the "Blizzard" that we were supposed to get ... they were predicting any where from 4 - 12" and even more in some spots down southern state.

First I started with finding a fixed point outside that would give a nice reference of the snow piling up or getting scoured down .... or dumpster is perfect.

Well this is what we got:

8pm reference point

midnight reference point
10am reference point
10am on cornfield
3pm after math

They cancelled school over this way - a rarity - but no reason was given as to why. The snow didn't seem to be that deep, although I have not gone out into it ... the kids did the shoveling and my son almost got frost bite on his toes ... but I can't imagine that it was so bad that the buses couldn't make it thru.

My guess is that the buses probably wouldn't start -- the wind wasn't too bad, nor did it get really cold until today but it wouldn't take much for the buses to get stuck if they hadn't put the covers on the radiator fronts - they probably weren't expecting much out of this like I didn't.

So hows the weather today?

Now that there is actual snow on the ground we are at -6F right now, with a wind chill of -20F (that's the new windchill, under the old way it would be about -40F the old way! here's a chart showing it) ... last week we were still in like the 40s & 50s ... what a change! And now its here for a while I'm sure.

bur its a hard snow -- there isn't much moisture to it. It is dry and hurts when it hits your skin - and with the winds acting up it is very easy for any exposed shin to not only get cold but get what amounts to sand-blasting by the snow.

And the worst is yet to come! Right now we are between 5-10 mph and gusts of 17mph or more ... sending the windchills to -30F to -45F depending on where you go to get the numbers.

Thats cold! Too bad you can't litter box train a Newfoundland -- she doesn't want to go outside today.

There's a Hole in Our Pocket

Congress wants to raise the National Debt Ceiling ... that's kind of like getting a raise in the credit limit on your Credit Card ... they want it to go up by another $2Trillion ....

That's above the last cieling of $12.104Trillion .... add to that at least another $1.8T.

They want to borrow the money instead of asking people for it, because the elections are coming up and Dems are afraid that if they keep taxing people before then they will lose their seats and Congressional power.

So who will we owe? China, Japan, and the UK.

If we can't pay back in a 'reasonable' time? Oops - I guess we go belly up ... and we get owned by another country ...

glad I got all my yarn now --- I have a feeling it is going to be very tough to get a hold of in the future.

Obama Time

So our President is over in Oslo accepting the Nobel Peace prize - still no word where that money is going - and he gave a speech where he mentioned both Martin Luther King & Nelson Mandela ... Woodrow Wilson for supporting the League of Nations (history students will know that the LON didn't work - it was a paper tiger and did nothing to stop WW2 in fact it may have helped it along) ...

Well - the Norwegian people are rather surprised & offended that the President isn't taking part in most, if any, of the special activities that they arrange for winners - all winners not just for him. So what was the regrets from the White House officials? As sensitive as they are ....

basically "You are lucky he showed up at all" ....

WHAT??

Their reasoning is that no sitting President who has won the prize before has ever been there so they should thank their 'lucky staras' that he didn't simply send a representative as had been done in the past.

Arrogance?? Pretentious? Self-Absorbed? Rude?

yeah ...

now isn't that what everyone used to say about President Bush? Gee good thing people wanted "change", huh? you get what you pay for people .... and now the whole nation is paying for it.

Numbers & News

BREAKING NEWS:

New numbers for Newly Unemployed are in – up 17,000 in a SINGLE WEEK … 474,000 people have filed new first-time claims for unemployment. On top of that are 5.16 million workers who are continuing to collect, and there is no mention or measurement for those who have either (a)ran out of benefits or (b)have given up looking for a job and therefore do not qualify for benefits. Official nation unemployment rates (based on the new claims) was at 10.2% of the population – obviously this number is about 5-10% lower than the true number but there's no way to say for sure.

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Just when you thought it w & as bad enough that the Stimulus money didn't go where it was supposed to – that is making jobs.

The Mayor of St. Joseph, MI admits that the money they received in his town went to make a martini bar & Brazillian BBQ shop – when they asked him why he took the money if he knew it was going to be used for a purpose it wasn't intended or needed, he simply said "I would have been stupid to turn down free money" (paraphrased there). Yeah – nothing like having, oh I don't know, integrity & honesty … why should those things ever enter politics.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Which One is Most Important or the Federal Govt to be working on right now?

40% CREATING JOBS
25% DEFICIT & SPENDING
13% HEALTH CARE
9% FIGHTING TERRORISM

October 13-14, 900 registered voters, MOE= ± 3%

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Washington DC has a hole in its pocket:
CBO (Congressional Budget Office) says the government spent $292,000,000,000 than it took in over the last 2 months …. Not that it spent that much in total – think of it as over-drafting your bank acct or credit card limit by that much. This is worse than last year at this time (under Bush) when they were looking at a $1.4Trillon deficit … and you know its just going to get worse from here.
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Word out of DC is that if Congress plays it safe and decides not to pass the "Caps & Trade Bill" which will increase the average family's heating/energy bill by an estimated $1500/yr – the EPA will step in and do it for them … without vote by Congressmen, w/o hearings, w/o the say of the people … all with the President's blessing by the sounds of it. And if they do this – there is nothing to stop them from making things even worse because they won't do it on a market based way – just a flat out way trying to paint with a wide brush over several years.