It’s a beautiful day. The sun’s out, it’s 47 degrees and the snow is quickly vanishing. It Looks like it’s going to be nice to get outside.
The Wingnuts, meanwhile, seemed to have been stung by the idea that folks don’t believe they have a plan of their own and so now they have one: a spending freeze. And, like so many wingnut solutions,this one will make things worse. They really need to forget that stuff about creating their own reality and instead of just making stuff up, read a little history. Perhaps then they wouldn’t be so gung-ho about channeling Herbert Hoover. (J. Edgar either, for that matter.)
In Red Hook there is the 2nd oldest housing project in NYC. It was opened in 1933 to house the dockworkers and their families who were made destitute by the Great Depression. With the opening of Red Hook Public Housing, the Hooverville, a shanty-town 2 blocks away, was demolished and turned into a park. But many Hoovervilles persisted, named for the president whose spending freeze helped create them.
I hope we don’t have to live through another depression. People who did never could shake the experience.
It has been called a Robin Hood budget: The spending plan President Obama sent to Congress last week would give the poor new tax cuts, new college loans and a new health care system by taking nearly $1 trillion from the rich in new taxes.
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh and other Republicans are blasting the plan as “socialist” and accusing the administration of “class warfare.” Even Democrats are balking at a key element of the plan, a proposal to raise money for health care reform by limiting the value of itemized deductions, including on mortgage interest and charitable contributions, for the nation’s top earners.
But Obama is unapologetic in his pursuit of a fundamental shift in tax policy that would redistribute wealth from about 3 million elite families to forgotten lower and middle classes. “The past eight years have discredited once and for all the philosophy of trickle-down economics — that tax breaks, income gains and wealth creation among the wealthy eventually will work their way down to the middle class,” his budget states. “In its place, we need economic opportunity to trickle up.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/06/AR2009030603367.html
Let’s pursue the concept of a spending freeze. If the Republicans really think this is a good idea, they have to play too. Fair is fair.
John Boehner: A spending freeze on cigars, bourbon and bronzer. No one from Ohio is that particular shade of orange in March, Boner. You’re not fooling anyone.
Mitch McConnell: A spending freeze on beards. Elaine Chao is the only one you get. I was going to suggest a spending freeze on chin implants, but I think he already beat me to that one.
Bobby Jindal: A spending freeze on elocution lessons and grownup clothes.
Rush Limbaugh: A spending freeze on Viagra, Oxycontin, Dominican hookers and triple cheeseburgers.
Anyone else want to jump in? I feel the budget starting to balance already!
Why do I have a hankering for fries and a triple cheeseburger? Why, damn it? Why?
There’s some semi-local news about a Dairy Queen employee putting bleach powder into customers milk shakes. People are strange.
I think I talked myself out of acting on my urges.
President Barack Obama fired a surprise broadside at the defense industry, saying he intends to clamp down on practices that have resulted in billions of dollars in cost overruns and delays in recent years.
At a time when Washington faces the prospect of bailing out multiple sectors of the economy, contractors’ cost overruns are showing up on the radar of many in the capital. And the Pentagon, which spends about $330 billion a year to buy everything from fighters to paper clips, is a particular focus of the new administration.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123638888403658683.html
There’s some semi-local news about a Dairy Queen employee putting bleach powder into customers milk shakes. People are strange.
Comment by Travis — March 7, 2009 @ 3:40 pm
Several centuries ago when I was a lad of 17, I spent two weeks at the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. They gave us this dishwashing powder to use on the trail called Tetrox.
However, we were warned to REALLY REALLY thoroughly rinse every dish after washing them in the stuff, because any soap residue left on a dish that got into a future meal would result in that dish’s owner suffering from a condition known on the trail as the “Tetrox trots.”
Naturally, being the curious and inquisitive lad that I was, I decided this condition merited further study, so I brought a bag of Tetrox home from Philmont and took it along later that summer to band camp.
(Yes, Boy Scouts and band. And allow me here to complete the dork trifecta and admit that I was an altar boy for about a year and a half when I was in 6th and 7th grade. We will return to our story as soon as you have finished laughing.)
Sure enough, a little Tetrox in Steve Bradcovich’s ravioli, and he was in and out of the facilities for the rest of the day. Good times!
:crap:
I’m wondering if the bleach powder might have a similar effect. I don’t think I ever intentionally dosed anyone’s Frosty during my illustrious career in fast food, but damn if I wasn’t tempted plenty of times.
Dosing the Frosty? Is that what the kids are calling it these days?
The Internal Revenue Service’s decision this week to quit using debt collectors to dun delinquent taxpayers was celebrated by public employee unions as a pendulum shift after watching the Bush administration often opt for private contractors over federal workers to deliver government services
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/07/irs-quits-use-of-private-_n_172730.html
Ahh the tetrox trots.
No personal experience but the kid across the street went AZ with the scouts and told me all about it. Good clean christian fun!
You’d think someone would taste that. :yuck:
:rofl2: :rofl2: :rofl2:
I assume he was an asshole jock type.
Okay, there. I was getting an error message that said, “you are posting too quickly, slow down.” Never got that before. I post in clumps.