Things that interest ME - NancyII's Blog - Bakersfield.com

Macarana Military style

Cute story and video.

http://onthescene.blogs.foxnews.com/category/baghdad/

New Element Discovered

----- Subject: New Element Discovered

*The Heaviest Element Known to Science:**
Governmentium is the latest element
Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered*

Lawrence Livermore Laboratories has discovered the heaviest element yet
known to science.

The new element, *Governmentium (Gv)* has one neutron, 25 assistant
neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving
it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are *held together by forces called morons*, which
are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert; however, it can be
detected, because it impedes every reaction with which it comes
into contact. A tiny amount of Governmentium can cause a reaction that
would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years
to complete.

Governmentium has a normal half-life of 2- 6 years. It does not decay,
but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the
assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

In fact, Governmentium's mass will actually increase over time, since
each *reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming
isodopes.*

This characteristic of morons promotion leads some scientists to believe
that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a critical
concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as *critical morass*.

When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes *Administratium*, an
element that radiates just as much energy as Governmentium since it has
half as many peons but twice as many morons.

Fresno State Football at San Jose Tonight !

Change up....the game is tonight at 6:30 on ESPN2. Last word I got was that though out with injury last week Ryan Mathews may play tonight.

Next to the last game.

The Great Bush "Deregulation Myth - Jocoby

THE GREAT BUSH ‘DEREGULATION’ MYTH

By Jeff Jacoby

The Boston Globe

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/11/19/the_blame_for_bloated_economy/

We’ve heard it again and again: The financial crisis was caused by the Bush administration's reckless plunge into deregulation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example, blames the mess on “the Bush administration's eight long years of failed deregulation policies.” Billionaire investor George Soros declares that “excessive deregulation is at the root of the current crisis.” Nouriel Roubini, the widely-quoted New York University economist, pins it on “these Bush hypocrites, who spewed for years the glory of unfettered Wild West laissez-faire jungle capitalism.” A New York Times editorial pronounces the American financial system “the victim of decades of Republican deregulatory and anti-tax policies.”

President Jimmy Carter attributes it to the “atrocious economic policies of the Bush administration,” particularly “deregulation and . . . a withdrawal of supervision of Wall Street.”

That's also Barack Obama's view. “The biggest problem in this whole process was the deregulation of the financial system,” Obama said last month. He called the present troubles “a final verdict on the failed economic policies of the last eight years . . . that essentially said that we should strip away regulations, consumer protections, let the market run wild, and prosperity would rain down on all of us.”

Deregulators run amok undoubtedly make a flamboyant culprit. But do they exist? Should we really be taking seriously the claim that the past eight years have been characterized by letting “the market run wild”?

Granted, there has been significant recent legislation easing financial restrictions. Most often mentioned is the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which, as The New York Times described it on Monday, “removed barriers between commercial and investment banks that had been instituted to reduce the risk of economic catastrophes.” Some argue that the law, which allowed traditional banks and investment firms to be affiliated under one holding company, helped bring on the credit meltdown. Even if true, how was that George W. Bush's fault? The law was signed by President Bill Clinton in 1999, after being passed by lopsided majorities in both houses of Congress.

President Bill Clinton after signing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999. The law partially deregulated

the securities industry. (Photo: Justin Lane/The New York Times)

Gramm-Leach-Bliley's lead sponsors were Republicans, but the 34 Democratic senators who voted for the bill surely weren't scheming to “let the market run wild.” Ditto the 151 Democrats -- among them future Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- who voted for the measure in the House. Then-Treasury Secretary (and current Obama adviser) Larry Summers didn't denounce the bill as “laissez-faire jungle capitalism” -- he praised it for “promoting financial innovation, lower capital costs, and greater international competitiveness.” Clinton himself defends the law to this day.

Now, this is not to say that Bush hasn't also been responsible for legislation having a decided impact on the country's regulatory climate. On July 31, 2002, declaring that free markets must not be “a financial free-for-all guided only by greed,” he signed the Sarbanes-Oxley law, a sweeping overhaul of corporate fraud, securities, and accounting laws. Among its many tough provisions, the law created a new regulatory agency to oversee public accounting firms and auditors, and imposed an array of new requirements for financial reporting and corporate audits. Whatever else might be said about Sarbanes-Oxley, it was no invitation to an uninhibited capitalist bacchanal.

Like the alligators lurking in New York City sewers, Bush's massive regulatory rollback is mostly urban legend. Far from throwing out the rulebook, the administration has expanded it: Since Bush became president, the Federal Register -- the government's annual compendium of proposed and finalized regulations -- has run to more than 74,000 pages every year but one. During the Clinton years, by contrast, the Federal Register reached that length just once.

Similarly, the administration has broken every previous record for regulatory agency spending. According to researchers at Washington University and George Mason University, appropriations for federal regulatory functions have soared during the Bush years. Adjusting for inflation, the regulatory budget has grown from $25 billion in fiscal year 2000 to an estimated $43 billion in FY 2009 -- a 70 percent increase. “In constant dollars,” writes James Freeman in the Wall Street Journal, “the Bush regulatory budget increases vastly exceed those of predecessors Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, Nixon, and, yes, Lyndon Johnson.” Staffing has skyrocketed, too. Regulatory agencies employed 175,000 people in 2000. They employ nearly 264,000 today. (Some of that reflects the Transportation Security Administration's takeover of airport security screening in 2003.)

Amid the stress and storm of the financial crisis, “deregulation” makes a convenient villain. But the facts tell a different story: The nation's regulatory burden has grown heavier, not lighter, since Bush entered the White House. Too little government wasn’t what made the economy sick. Too much government isn't going to make it better.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)

What's For Supper Mama?

I don't know about you folks but I'm tired of fighting and I'm getting hungry. A while back my sister and then a friend sent me a sort of pyramid recipe chain. I won't go into the details, you may have had the same thing. The upshot is supposed to be that you accumulate recipes from all over. Well, it didn't happen I don't know if the chain croke of it worked backwards or what but it just didn't work.

With that in mind, I'm sharing my cheater homemade vegetable soup recipe that's going to make my dinner tonight.

What are you folks having for dinner.?

Cheater homemade soup. Single person portion.

1 can any Cambells Vegetable soup.

2-3 cans water

2-3 potatoes chunked up

A sprinkle of packaged stew mix

Salt to taste for the potatoes

Dump it all in a saucepan and simmer until the potatoes are done. That's it.

Some crackers or sourdough and That's my dinner.

Your IRS Stimulis Check

Did anyone else get their email telling them to file for their stimulis check on line? I'm excited. I've already made arrangements to pay off my car. I'm taking a cruise.

ooops......Trouble is, when you open the email, it's blank. Gee, I wonder why. I guess I'll have to wait until I get something in smail mail before I can spend it. :-(

Now I've put myself on some spam mailing list all for naught.

Lag time on comment page

Jason et al:

Several of us have commented on the 15-20 minute lag time before posts appear. Is this situation is going to be remedied any time soon or is it going to be this way from now on?

Sitting here this morning it's obvious there are several people posting but nothing new is showing on the comment page. Some of us would like to have a discussion but the lag time is making it impossible since most don't want to sit here and wait for new comment to show.

I can accept explanations of server problems but I've never seen it take this long for any program to get fixed. If this is to be ongoing and a permanent part or the blogs I, for one, would appreciate a straight answer.

Now I suppose I'll go trim some shrubs and hope the comment page will be refreshed by the time I get back.

Palin's political potential - Jacoby

Palin's political potential

By Jeff Jacoby

Globe Columnist / November 16, 2008

THE 2008 presidential campaign may be over, but Sarah Palin's moment in the spotlight has yet to run its course.

In a media marathon last week, the Republican Party's vice presidential nominee sat down for interviews with CNN's Larry King and Wolf Blitzer; had Matt Lauer of the "Today" show up to Wasilla for a family dinner; and told Fox News's Greta Van Susteren about getting the call from John McCain on her cellphone while she was admiring the local produce at the Alaska State Fair. She disdained the Republican "jerks" who spread anonymous rumors painting her as geographically illiterate, and vehemently denied the accusation that she had milked the campaign for a $150,000 wardrobe for herself and her family.

All that was a prelude to her star turn at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Miami, where she met reporters at a press conference, drew standing ovations from several hundred GOP donors, and humorously updated her fellow governors on what she'd been doing since last year's meeting.

"I had a baby," she told them. "I did some traveling; I very briefly expanded my wardrobe; I made a few speeches; I met a few VIPs, including those who really impact society, like Tina Fey."

Of course she was asked whether she plans to run for president in 2012, and of course she deflected the question. "The future is not that 2012 presidential race; it's next year and our next budgets," she said. But there can't be much doubt that Palin has become the brightest star in the GOP firmament. A whopping 91 percent of Republicans have a favorable view of her, according to a recent Rasmussen poll, and she is the runaway favorite when they are asked to rank possible contenders for the party's 2012 presidential nominee.

Elsewhere, however, the savaging of Palin continues. In The New York Times, Maureen Dowd devotes yet another column to bashing Alaska's governor ("a shopaholic whack-job diva"). The popular Washington blog Wonkette, characteristically crude, pronounces her "human garbage." At TheAtlantic.com, an obsessed Andrew Sullivan calls her "deluded and delusional . . . clinically unhinged" and describes her as a nitwit with "the educational level of a high school dropout" who "regards ignorance as some kind of achievement."

Not everyone on the left is in a gibbering rage over Palin. The feminist social critic Camille Paglia, a pro-choice Democrat, is appalled by the Democrats' anti-Palin debauch, especially their attacks on her intelligence. "As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is," Paglia writes, "and, quite frankly, I think the people who don't see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma."

After witnessing the poise, energy, and panache with which John McCain's 44-year-old running mate handled herself on the national stage, can the backbiters working overtime to trash her intellect really believe she is nothing but a vain and ignorant airhead? Well, maybe; partisans and ideologues are good at seeing only what they want to see. But they might want to recall that the last Republican to inspire such ardor and admiration among the party faithful - Ronald Reagan - was also derided as a dim bulb. Diplomat Clark Clifford called Reagan an "amiable dunce." The New Republic's Robert Wright viewed him as "virtually brain dead." Nicholas von Hoffman lamented that it was "humiliating to think of this unlettered, self-assured bumpkin being our president." That "bumpkin" became one of the greatest presidents of the 20th century.

I suspect that the loathing of Palin by so much of the opinion elite is driven not by contempt for her brainpower but by fear of her political potential. She is cheerful and charismatic, an unabashed and likable conservative who generates extraordinary grassroots enthusiasm. Tens of thousands of voters showed up at her campaign rallies, and even now, when she appears on TV, record-breaking numbers of viewers tune in. "Her politics aren't my politics," said Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive producer of "Saturday Night Live," after Palin's appearance on the show. But "I watched the way she connected with people, and she's powerful."

Whether Palin has the skill and stamina it would take to win a presidential nomination, let alone capture the White House, it is way too early to tell. But the smart money says she is a force to be reckoned with. That may be just what her critics are afraid of.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com.

No He Can't - Ann Wortham

ANNE WORTHAM

Anne Wortham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association. She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education. In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer's television series, "A World of Ideas." The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas. Dr. Wortham is author of The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues. She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is cur rently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality. Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after this interview she was awarded tenure. This article by her is something else.

No He Can't
by Anne Wortham

Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America.

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America. Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on w hich your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them. I would have to be wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.

November 6, 2008

Anne Wortham is an individualist liberal who happens to be black and American.
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com

You might be a redneck if......... email

Nicest redneck email I have read!!!

We have enjoyed the redneck jokes for years. It's time to take a reflective look at the core beliefs of a culture that values home, family, country and God. If I had to stand before a dozen terrorists who threaten my life, I'd choose a half dozen or so rednecks to back me up. Tire irons, squirrel guns and grit -- that's what rednecks are made of. I hope I am one of those. If you feel the same, pass this on to your redneck friends. Ya'll know who ya' are.

ou might be a redneck if:
It never occurred to you to be offended by the phrase, 'One nation, under God.'

You might be a redneck if:
You've never protested about seeing the 10 Commandments posted in public places.

You might be a redneck if:
You still say ' Christmas' instead of 'Winter Festival.'

You might be a redneck if:
You bow your head when someone prays.

You might be a redneck if:
You stand and place your hand over your heart when they play the National Anthem.

You might be a redneck if:
You treat our armed forces veterans with great respect, and always have.

You might be a redneck if:
You've never burned an American flag, nor intend to

You might be a redneck if:
You know what you believe and you aren't afraid to say so, no matter who is listening.

You might be a redneck if:
You respect your elders and raised your kids to do the same.

You might be a redneck if:
You'd give your last dollar to a friend.

You got this email from me because I believe that you, like me, have just enough Red Neck in you to have the same beliefs as those talked about in this email.

God Bless the USA !

AMEN!!!