Friday, December 03, 2010

Health & Wealth since 1810

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Thursday, December 02, 2010

LL Pegasi aka AFGL 3068

If you're going to have a strange, spiral structure, why not have a couple monikers as well?

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300 Sextillion Would Impress Even a US Senator

According to the Christian Science Monitor: "Astronomers now say there are 300 sextillion stars. That's 200 sextillion more than previously thought." Give or take a few, of course. It still adds up to a lot of real estate just waiting to be developed.

Lessee: What's 300 sextillion look like?

1 = One
10 = Ten
100 = One Hundred
1,000 = One Thousand
10,000 = Ten Thousand
100,000 = One Hundred Thousand
1,000,000 = One Million
10,000,000 = Ten Million
100,000,000 = One Hundred Million
1,000,000,000 = One Billion = Walking around money for a US Rep.
10,000,000,000 = Ten Billion
100,000,000,000 = One Hundred Billion = Walking around money for a US Senator.
1,000,000,000,000 = One Trillion = Not enough for a US President.
10,000,000,000,000 = Ten Trillion = Sneaking up on the US Debt.
100,000,000,000,000 = One Hundred Trillion.
1,000,000,000,000,000 = One Quadrillion = What Congress would like to spend.
10,000,000,000,000,000 = Ten Quadrillion
100,000,000,000,000,000 = One Hundred Quadrillion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 = One Quintillion
10,000,000,000,000,000,000 = Ten Quintillion
100,000,000,000,000,000,000 = One Hundred Quintillion
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = One Sextillion
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = Ten Sextillion
100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = One Hundred Sextillion = Enough for the President.
X 3 =
300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = But this would be even better, of course.

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Bradley Manning's Charge Sheet

He doesn't seem to be charged with treason.

That's a shame.

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Earmarks: A Pretty Good Description

The big problem with earmarks isn't that they add up to so much money, nor that they go to pay for teapot museums. Bryan Preston has a pretty good description of the problem over at Pajamas Media:
Earmarks have a way of obtaining votes for legislation that might not otherwise pass, and in turn commit dollars that probably wouldn’t get spent otherwise. Say a congressman has been trying to get a few million dollars in federal funds for some project in his district, but hasn’t been able to make that happen on its own merits, for the simple reason that congressman outside that district don’t see the need for their own constituents to pay for that project. Along comes the chairman of thus-and-such committee with a multi-billion dollar piece of legislation that’s completely disconnected from the congressman’s pet project, and which the congressman opposes on principle. But the chairman needs the congressman’s vote and the congressman wants to attach his project to something, anything, that gets passed, so the horse trading over the bad multi-billion dollar legislation begins. And pretty soon the few million dollar project that the congressman wants buys his vote on massive legislation that he otherwise opposes. So here we have two projects that get through the sausage factory and the taxpayers get stuck with the tab even though, on their own merits, both projects would have and probably should have failed.

That’s the kind of daily, year in and year out corruption that earmarks enable on bill after bill after bill, exploding the debt and imperiling the nation. And that’s why they need to go.
For some reason an awful lot of defenders want us to focus on the "trivial" amounts of the earmarks themselves.

Go figure.

Oh, that Teapot Museum? It closed in January.

It looks like the North Carolina taxpayers got skinned worse than the federal taxpayers. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

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Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Treason? Espionage?

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Your Share of the State Debt

Well, now, this is depressing.

California has huge debt problems, but Hawaii doesn't?

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Monday, November 29, 2010

I Must Be Reading Too Much Depressing News

I glanced at a headline in the New York Times just now, and read it as "The Nutcracker Grenades".

Actually it was "The Nutcracker Chronicles", and probably just as well, too.

Especially for the audience.

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