Boreded Ceiling Cat makinkgz Urf n stuffs

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.

2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.

3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.4 An Ceiling Cat sawed teh lite, to seez stuffs, An splitted teh lite from dark but taht wuz ok cuz kittehs can see in teh dark An not tripz over nethin.5 An Ceiling Cat sayed light Day An dark no Day. It were FURST!!!

-- Genesis 1
(LOLCat Bible)

Behold: The JetLev Flyer

Boehner's Disgust

[read it]

though, it does seem to be taking a little while to get those government transparency websites up-n-running.

Doh! Missed it ...

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Early Creed

I had no idea Creed Bratton plays
a character of the same name on
the TV. And I further had no idea
that, for a few years (in the 60's),
he was in a band called:

    The Grass Roots

         
Ah -- The craft of life -- 'tis better to stay atop it than be trampled underneath.

(that's what she said)

Inside Baseball (circa 2006)

This is an extremely target'd post. You should probably only bother with it if you are among the very small team of creative and wonderful folks who worked on the netscape.com portal prior to its demonstrably failed Digg-like makeover in June of 2006:

And for those folks who were there to witness firsthand -- fair warning: listening to this excerpt from TWiT #180 (1-Feb-2009) just might make you ill -so- you may want to skip it too.

For the Record: Peter is quite correct -- Netscape.com numbers CRASHED when Jason overhauled it. The evidence was clear while his product was still in beta, but he rushed to market anyway. Complaints from folks who wanted to revert to the old portal-like design were voluminous (and quite venomous).

Her Morning Elegance by Oren Lavie

Change?

I believe Obama represents a genuine attempt to create a post-partisan atmosphere -and- I see folks like Rush putting forward stuff like this in an effort to preserve the old order. Same goes for the House Republicans (lead by our very own, and very well tanned, Mr. Boehner).

It's an interesting bet they are making (and probably a safe one) that the current stimulus plan will fail and folks will fall-back on bitter facetious arguments of left/right. Then they can say they weren't any part of the debacle and the pendulum swingeth again.

Ya know: Dubya got popular in Texas; because, he worked extremely well with Democrats in the government there (who, I believe, were very much in the majority at the time). Then Gov. Ann Richards represented the epitome of partisan government -and- she was very popular. It was almost unthinkable that she could be beat. George did it -and- was going to bring his magical "new tone" to Washington DC, remember?

That didn't work out so well. I'm increasingly convinced that this two-party ideology has been carefully contrived to keep itself in power by squashing any such attempts at unity. And we've fallen for it, almost exactly: 50 / 50

I'm hoping that Barack has broken that cycle. (can you say: Crazy Eddie?) Unfortunately, he is not the Democrats in control of congress. He's just one guy, and my guess is that he'll butt heads with Pelosi & Reid soon enough -or- some 9/11-like thing will distract us all. Then it'll be back to the same-ol-same-ol.

That said: If there is any chance that throwing trillions of dollars at our economy would actually fix it, I think the plans put forward by Rush and Boehner have a much better chance of success. Frankly, the Dems really are outta their minds. Blinded by Barack's victory, they see no differences between different types of spending and these $$$ might as well be used to pay for all the little pet projects they've pined for over the years.

At least the "loyal opposition" is suggesting structural change -- for instance, lowering tax rates (instead of offering tax rebates). That kind of action gets folks stoked. They can plan on it -and- move forward with whatever business they're into. I'm pretty sure nothing like that is actually gonna happen. So, from the perspective of a businessman, there's no real long term relief to count on (and everyone just sits on their money -- using layoffs to hit the next quarter's targets and appease Wall Street).

The false assumption everyone seems to be going on here (IMHO) is that doing nothing is, in the long run, worse than doing something. And I believe it's the height of arrogance for our government to think they can fix anything. When was the last time that happened?

My plan would be to have the government back off completely from TARP and all bailouts. Use some of that trillion dollars you save for a program that genuinely helps people in the aftermath that would no doubt ensue (i.e. micro-lending programs, job training, food & housing assistance for the destitute, etc). And do a thorough overhaul of the tax system. Abolish the Fed, the IRS and ALL income tax, and instantiate the Fair Tax plan

Now there's change I could believe in ;-)

Sound Advice

Breakdown 2009