Is it my imagination, or did the whole bomb sewn into underwear thing happen in the Beavis and Butthead movie?
Obama has already acknowledged a security “screw up” that officials say allowed a Nigerian man to board a Detroit-bound airliner in Amsterdam on Christmas Day with explosives sewn into his underwear that later failed to ignite. Full Story
I guess this idiot thought he was gonna score too.
I’ve gotten some good stuff. Check it out.
Just a thought that occured to me when I saw this picture of the former First Lady. But were these two separated at birth?
Separated At Birth?
My apologies to Jack Nicholson, and Laura Bush. But you have to admit..there’s definitely a resemblance.
This morning, I had an epiphany.
Everyone knows that the health care system in this country is broken. That fact is pretty much undisputed. There are currently several health care “reform” bills working their way through Congress. Each one is in excess of 1000 pages and essentially tries to cover everything from providing affordable access to insurance to keeping the cost of tissue and Tylenol under control.
There are a lot of points of contention and disagreement. With 1000+ pages of proposed legislation and literally hundreds of amendments being debated, this whole thing is going nowhere…fast. All you hear every single day is “so and so says this won’t work” or “they refuse to support this unless..”
Congress is working to reform the health care system in this country. Even with all the posturing, rhetoric, and windbagging going on from the party leadership on both sides of the aisle, I have to give them credit for trying.
But they aren’t trying hard enough.
One of my favorite characters in a book often says “Think of the solution, not the problem.” Congress is spending too much time thinking about the problem instead of working on a solution. Not only are they thinking about the problem, but they’re concocting more problems to go along with it. Sub-problems, if you will.
I work in the IT industry. There is a bedrock principle that some have unfortunately abandoned. KISS Keep It Simple, Stupid. I think this idea can do that.
In trying to reform health care, Congress needs to look at how health care works. What I mean by that is this:
If you are sick, and go to the doctor and you get a prescription, you don’t take the pills all at once. Why is Congress taking all the reform pills at once? If you take all your pills at once, you don’t get better. You probably wind up on a slab in the city morgue.
There are a LOT of things in each of the bills flying around that pretty much EVERYONE is in agreement on. These are good changes and there’s not a lot of debate going on over these points, but they are being held up by all these other sticking points.
President Obama should get his pen ready, and Congress should start passing smaller bills (PillBills) to start implementing health care reform. We need simply written legislation that addresses specific issues, not some giant law that could have too many loopholes or be so hard to understand that it will take years to fully be in effect.
Each one of these is a “PillBill” that Congress could pass and get this nation’s sick health care system on the road to getting well without an accidental overdose.
Congress needs to stop trying to tackle everything all at once. Put in smaller changes, instead.
It even makes sense politically. It shows they’re getting things done, and even working together to do it, which is what pretty much everyone in this country wants. Right?
This way, health care reform will get started and the American people will be able to start seeing some benefits to it, while Congress irons out the more contentious issues, which can be PillBills themselves. They’ll just be a little harder to swallow. 
Contact your Senators and Congressional Representatives, and tell them to give America a prescription of PillBills to fix health care.
At this point, something is better than nothing.
Over the past week or so, there have been a rash of television commercials advertising Microsoft’s new Bing search engine. They’re annoying, pointless, and frankly….make me want to google Bing to see what it actually is.
I went to Bing for the first time today. Here’s what I discovered:
It’s prettier than Google. — But I prefer the clean non cluttered interface. The page takes time to load. Not a good first impression for a search engine.
You can turn off your “Search History” — But I don’t want my search history tracked to begin with.
The front page has cool little factoid mouseovers regarding the frontpage picture — but why do I care? Something cool on the web is really only cool once..then it’s annoying, kind of like those dancing hamsters.
If Bing is being touted as a “Decision Engine” then shouldn’t its algorithms point to things that would help a person make a decision about what hotel to stay at for example?
Bing has a link to get local options for your search — But Google has those same results on the first search page, usually about #3 or 4 on the list.
To be fair, I do like the popup of an extended page excerpt on the search results if you mouseover the short blurb. And I can see some advantages to the way the links on the side are organized, but it still means you have to click on the link to find what you want.
If Microsoft wants to make a “Decision Engine” then why not have some kind of decision tree? At first glance, there’s nothing really spectacular about Bing.
Bing got no bling. At least none that is good enough to make me stop using Google.
I don’t even think I’ll bookmark it.
Looks to me like Bing is just another search engine. It’s
is an idiot. What more need be said?
From CNN:
Republican Whip Eric Cantor charged that the administration’s focus on PAYGO “seems more driven by polling and PR strategy than a serious commitment to fiscal discipline.”
Cantor’s statement included a “fiscal timeline” highlighting government spending initiatives this year. The timeline entry for June 8 points to polls showing dissatisfaction with the administration on spending and the deficit. The entry for June 9 shows the president holding a PAYGO summit.
Full Article
Hmmm…Imagine that. A President who actually listens to the opinions of the people that he works for. If the GOP would do the same, then maybe their party wouldn’t be on the verge of near total collapse. The GOP is becoming a fringe group, not a major political party.
Maybe the stimulus was a good idea, and maybe it wasn’t. But it seems to be working, slowly but surely. The market is climbing back up. Last I checked, the Dow was creeping towards 9000. (It’s at about 8850 right now). Two months ago it was closer to 7000. I don’t recall if it dipped below 7000 or not.
8800 is not 14500, but it’s a start. the 13000-14000 was overvalued anyway. That’s the kind of thing that got us in this mess.
The massive spending done by the administration and Congress was a necessary step to getting this country back on its feet. Our economy was drowning. It’s still just treading water, but that’s better than the alternative. It was a lifeline.
If your child is seriously sick or injured, you don’t worry about how much it’s going to cost. You take them to the ER, and deal with the bill later…insurance or not. (we won’t go there in this post) Does anyone point fingers at the parent for taking a sick child to the ER if they need immediate attention? Do they say “you could have given them a tylenol for their broken leg and wrapped it in duct tape…it would have been cheaper”? No. In fact the parent would be criticized for not doing so, and could possibly be charged with neglect.
The President got us to the ER. Now it’s time to deal with the bill. The way the President is proposing to deal with it sounds responsible, and doable. There will be hard choices to make, and I think that’s why many in Congress don’t want to do this.
If the GOP or some Democrats don’t agree with it. Fine. Come up with a better solution. But it had better be something the American people can live with, and it better work…One too many trips to the ER can put you in the morgue.
Yesterday, President Obama announced plans for a high speed rail system in the United States to further improve our national infrastructure and to create more jobs.
That’s what I call real vision and leadership. And some people wonder why I think he’s a good President.
The beginning of a blog is always an interesting thing. Often a person says hello, talks about what their interests are and why they are blogging.
Kind of like the first day of class. Nothing is really expected of you in most cases. The professor hands out the syllabus, talks to the students about expectations and MAYBE gives an assignment.
Well readers, there’s no assignment on this first blog entry, and I have naught for a syllabus. So there’s nothing much to say at this point.
Class dismissed.