Some idi…uh…”Congressman” slid a bill into committee last month that would reinstitute the draft and provide for compulsory civilian service by any member of the population of these United States, aged 18 to 42.
That’s right, HR5741 is in committee as you read this, having been introduced on July 15th of this year.
Now, this isn’t the first time this type of stupi… err… legislation has been introduced, courtesy of NY Congresscritter Charles Rangel. Like his previous bills it will have little chance of either garnering support or having more than the proverbial snowballs chance of passing.
Which begs the question: Why?
Why would someone who is under scrutiny for ethics improprieties, including improper use of his office to solicit donations for a City University of New York center to be named in his honor; failure to report rental income from his villa in the Dominican Republic and to pay taxes on it; omission of some $600,000 in assets on his House financial disclosure forms; and acceptance from a Manhattan developer of four rent-stabilized apartments, one of which he used as a campaign office, waste time reintroducing a bill that amounts to little more than legalized slavery on the part of the government?
If this is an indication of how incumbents take care of the needs of their constituency, come November maybe we should show them all the door.
You may not have noticed it, but Kodak announced a little over a year ago that it would cease production of its flagship product for the last 74 years, Kodachrome® film, due to declining sales.
At the time that really saddened me. I’d had a love affair with cameras and photography from age 18, and while it never progressed further than the avid hobbyist / occasional supplemental income stage, I came to appreciate the quality and consistency that the Kodak brand gave me.
Which is why I have to share with you an item from the Wichita Eagle, chronicling the fate of the last 36 exposure roll of Kodachrome® Kodak produced, when it was finally processed in Parsons, Kansas:
“PARSONS — Freelance photojournalist Steve McCurry, whose work has graced the pages of National Geographic, laid 36 slides representing the last frames of Kodachrome film on the light board sitting on a counter…” The rest of the story is here
If you ever held a camera in your hands and shot slides, it’s more than worth the read.
So, this morning, the BoobToob is filled with the clamor and commotion of MELSANADRAMA! Did he? Did she? Expert opinion! Voice analysis! In DEPTH talking head analysis!! More, following this commercial break!!!
All of which leads me to ask: Why on Gods green earth are we devoting so much time and attention to them and their issues?
They are broken. They have personal problems. So do a lot of other people.
Aren’t there more pressing issues that we should be concerned with? Issues which might be brought to the public’s attention, let alone discussed and demystified, if we only stopped wasting precious media minutes obsessing over the train wreck of the latest celebrity meltdown?
So, Paula goes to the local Farmer’s Market last weekend, brings home a load of goodies, and a bouquet of flowers. Lilies to be exact. They looked amazing, and smelled divine. However, on close inspection I saw that we had a hitchhiker who’d taken a shine to our floral largess. You can see him below:
Call Me "Mean Green"
He appeared to be a member of the family Thomisidae, either the genus Mecaphesa or Misumenops, otherwise known as a green crab spider. There’s a wonderful web site for bugs and arachnids that has other examples of the genus here.
As much as I enjoyed him, I had to gather him (her?) up in cupped hands, take him/her outside, charge her/him with watching over our basil plants and release him/her. Cool, eh?
The Mozilla Organization, the nice folks that bring you Firefox and Thunderbird, have released Firefox 4 Beta 1 and are touting it as “almost ready for prime time”.
They are soliciting your feedback via a button in the main bar of the browser, as well as the Test Pilot Program. If you’re interested in playing around with the next iteration of this popular internet tool head over here and download it.
So far it’s faster, and more responsive than v. 3.6.6, which is my daily bread & butter browser.
Coincidences, we’ve all see them, some so timely that we wonder if they’re not the Hand of Providence in action.
When it comes to the world of Business and Politics though, I question if there is any such thing.
Consider. Good timing, or prior knowledge?
Goldman Sachs dumps over half it’s holdings in BP stock just before the April blowout in the Gulf, on the advice of it’s International Chairman who had stepped down as BP’s Chairman just a year earlier.1
Halliburton, just two weeks before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, bought out the conveniently Gulf based2, premiere oil well firefighting firm of
Judges should be seen and not heard in some cases.
There’s a joke, “What are 500 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?”, the answer is “A good start.”.
As times go on I’m convinced that one word needs to be changed, so the joke reads:
“What are 500 judges…”
Case in point. Last week the Supremes, ignoring common sense and consumer concerns, overturned a lower court ruling by a 7 -1 margin, ruling that a nationwide ban on genetically modified alfalfa seeds will be rescinded.
“So?”, you ask.
Consider the following, members of the jury:
Monsanto, the “winner” in this case, already controls 92% of the soybean
What’s really happening in Louisiana, and the rest of the Gulf Coast? Kindra Arnesen was there, given unprecedented levels of access, and if you think my rants were revelatory, you need to watch the video below.
So, I watched the President’s address on the BP blowout the other night … at least until the bullshit level exceeded the inseam of the hip waders I wore for the occasion, and our Commander in Chief announced the formation of a commission to “advise” how to prevent future disasters.
Oh.come.on.
I’m not the brightest light bulb in the fixture and I *know* the fix. It’s a simple three step solution.
Redunancy
Regulation
Compliance
Redundancy – We all know that there was only a single failsafe device, which had unauthorized modifications, in place at the time of the blowout.
As everyone with half a lobe knows, you.always.have.a.backup. PERIOD. End of statement. But somehow, BP and its peers (with cunning application of drugs, sex and god knows what else), had regulations amended to sidestep this, and other, elementary precautions, while drilling at depths where pressures routinely exceed one TON per square inch.
