That test asked for laws that you would enact. Here’s mine:
“I would dictate that… people have a form on the back of their tax returns indicating how they would like their tax dollars allocated, along with a chart indicating how the budget is currently broken down.”
I think that this would make the populace much more aware of where their money is going, and provide the government with a guideline of where they want it to go.
…although for some reason, the image puts my economic rating so low I’m coming across as a socialist in the images here, when they’re Democrat on the site and on the text part of the test. Go fig.
| You are a Social Liberal (71% permissive) and an… Economic Liberal (31% permissive) You are best described as a:
Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid |
I’ve been told recently that the blog has become incredibly depressing to read, so let me try and find some good news. Something uplifting.
Hmmm. There’s… no, that’s no good.
Well, there’s… naaah.
I know! There’s… man, it’s getting ugly out there, isn’t it?
There’s a certain point where happy talk does smack of denial, and I’ve been trying to avoid such things (denying denial?) in favor of being part of the reality based community. On the other hand, worst case scenarios are often not uplifting, although you can pat yourself on the back for being prepared for them and then if they aren’t as bad as they could be, you can feel much better after.
Nevertheless, you could use a good laugh. Preferably without having to find where The Aristocrats is showing near you.
I know! Head Cases has already been cancelled! First casualty of the new TV season! And it turns out that agave, the principal ingredient in tequila, can help people cut cholesterol and lose weight! Yippie!
I promise to have some more uplifting stuff in the future, or and least put some more efforts into thinking our way out of these messes we find ourselves in. Okay? Okay.
It took me a while, but I finally realized what was so familiar about David Boreanaz in Bones… it was the new haircut that made me notice it.
He’s doing James Garner. Okay, he doesn’t have the great twang in the voice, but it’s there.
An interview with the Prophet Bobby Henderson, the voice of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. Personally, I find it to be a bit silly– for we know there is no prophet but “Bob”. (Not Bob, he’s just a pope.)
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the great hope for the Republican party in 2008:
After more than an hour of solemn ceremony naming Rep. Marco Rubio, R-West Miami, as the 2007-08 House speaker, Gov. Jeb Bush stepped to the podium in the House chamber last week and told a short story about “unleashing Chang,” his “mystical warrior” friend.
Here are Bush’s words, spoken before hundreds of lawmakers and politicians:
”Chang is a mystical warrior. Chang is somebody who believes in conservative principles, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism, believes in moral values that underpin a free society.
”I rely on Chang with great regularity in my public life. He has been by my side and sometimes I let him down. But Chang, this mystical warrior, has never let me down.”
Bush then unsheathed a golden sword and gave it to Rubio as a gift.
”I’m going to bestow to you the sword of a great conservative warrior,” he said, as the crowd roared. [Gainsville.com; Sept 18, 2005.]
Geez, no wonder his kids have substance abuse problems. Daddy’s got his own problems dealing with reality. (But hey, so does their uncle.)
(Just what did Dad expose his kids to when he was the Ambassador to China? And where’s Maj. Bennett Marco when we need him?)
(Via Majikthise.)
KURT VONNEGUT’S LIBERAL CRAP I NEVER WANT TO HEAR AGAIN:
Give us this day our daily bread. Oh sure.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those wh trespass against us.
Nobody better trespass against me. I’ll tell you that.Blessed are the meek.
Blessed are the merciful. You mean we can’t use torture?
Blessed are the peacemakers. Jane Fonda?
Love your enemies – Arabs?
Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. The hell I can’t! Look at the Reverand Pat Robertson. And He is as happy as a pig in s**t.
WASHINGTON — President Bush, confronting a brewing rebellion within conservative ranks, promised Friday to help Congress cut spending in other areas to try to offset the cost of Hurricane Katrina reconstruction. […]
The president ruled out tax increases to reduce red ink. He said the Office of Management and Budget would help lawmakers trim federal programs to help offset reconstruction costs that independent analysts predicted would exceed $200 billion.
“You bet it’s going to cost money,” Bush said at a White House news conference.
“The key question is to make sure the costs are wisely spent and that we work with Congress to make sure we are able to manage our budget in a wise way,” he said. “And that’s going to mean cutting other programs.”
(Via Suburban Guerrilla.)
Cutting other programs– like, I don’t know, shoring up the levees and floodwalls– is what got us into this mess in the first place. If you hadn’t decided $20 million could be better spent on a desert war, you might not have to spend $200 billion now.
And as Mark Kleinman points out, the Republicans have been in charge of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency for the past two and a half years. How come there’s $200 billion per year of unnecessary spending in the Federal budget?
Clearly, “managing our budget in a wise way” is beyond this doofus. I mean, he thinks costs are things that you spend. No, costs are what you incur. Resources are what you spend to pay costs. No wonder this idiot has driven so many company balance sheets into the ground. And now he’s doing the same with our country’s accounts.
It’s simply… magic. The only thing they forgot was 200 billion manna points (and rising).
Badtux the Snarky Penguin points out things that I didn’t take into consideration when I complained about the school buses being underwater:
# However, even if he had dispatched armed officers to seize the buses (which were guarded by OPSD police), there wasn’t enough buses there to be worthwhile. Media Matters has documented that there existed approximately 600 usable buses within the city limits of New Orleans, including the OPSB fleet and Nagin’s own Regional Transit Authority (note that the RTA provided transportation for middle school and high school students using the normal city buses, so the Orleans Parish School Board had fewer buses than you would expect of a district its size). The nearest high ground is a 3 hour drive away under normal traffic conditions on the three (3) land routes out of New Orleans. According to witnesses, these highways were so crowded with private automobiles that it instead took 7 hours to reach that high ground. Thus the buses would have been able to make at most one trip. Meaning that the *only* way to completely evacuate the 100,000+ people left in the city after those with autos fled was to have 1500+ buses already prepositioned within the city. Which would be difficult even under the best of conditions — the entire Greyhound Inc. bus fleet is only 1950 buses!
# Nagin instead decided to evacuate anybody who couldn’t leave on their own to the Superdome, which was designed to withstand 200mph winds, using the existing city bus fleet (which was entirely adequate for that purpose). An article in the New Orleans Times-Picayune describes Nagin setting up 12 neighborhood collection points (note that New Orleans is geographically a fairly small city) from whence people would be carried to the Superdome via the city buses.
# Nagin is also faulted for not putting the buses on “high ground” in order to use for Stage II of the evacuation plan he put into place (the one that called for people to be evacuated to the Superdome, and from there to high ground a three hour drive away). The question of what qualifies as “high ground” remains. The City has precious little of that. The riverfront parking garage is mostly below ground (i.e. they would have been swamped there). The upper decks of the Superdome parking garage were well above water, but their exit ramps were under 4 feet of water. The parking garages of most downtown buildings were also below ground and thus under water. The notion of parking them on the elevated freeway is utterly ludicrous — the winds of a Category 4 hurricane would have tumbled them like chess pieces, completely blocking the freeway and rendering it unusable for the Phase II evacuation. It’s unclear where you could park 265 city buses on the surface streets of the French Quarter, about the only “high ground” in the city. I don’t know what the final disposition of the city bus fleet was, but given the situation, I really can’t fault the mayor for saying “f’it, we’ll let the state and the feds figure out how to do stage II if we need it.”
I didn’t take into account that it was a 200 mile wide hurricane, with variance in directions, it would have been hours driving just to get out of the path of the wind and find shelter. There was dang little high ground to be had. In too many cases, there was nothing to be done but to ride it out where you could.
Which makes the response to the people left in town even worse.
