National Debt Road Trip

How do the Obama deficits compare with past presidents? And how did the national debt get so big anyway. This video tries to answer those questions by looking at the debt as a road trip and seeing how fast different administrations have been traveling.

Buckle your seat belt! I don't think this would even be allowed on the Autobahn.

March 18, 2011

Today was a gorgeous spring day in Wayne County, Ohio - the thermometer hit a balmy 61 degrees!  I spent a lot of time in the car today and noted some sure signs of spring:

• Golfers on the golf course
• A few hopeful farmers plowing their waterlogged fields
• The beautiful sound of the crack of the bat as I watched Kyle and the Smithville Smimthies' baseball practice

We're enjoying it while it lasts, knowing we will surely have at least one more good snow before spring is here to stay (and that we'll be sitting through baseball games in the freezing rain). 


Here's today's roundup:


Malaysia garbles Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way' lyrics | Los Angeles Times: 

"Broadcasters in that country have chosen to electronically garble the part of the tune that says, 'No matter gay, straight or bi, lesbian, transgendered life, I'm on the right track, baby.' 

One broadcaster said they are being cautious regarding Lady Gaga's lyrics, which promote racial and sexual tolerance, because of government restrictions against airing material that might go against 'good taste or decency or [are] offensive to public feeling.'"

I wonder how many teens are running around singing this song, in its 5th week on the Billboard  Hot 100,   without even knowing what the lyrics are about?  It was featured last night on American Idol, with all the fresh-faced contestants enthusiastically belting it out, while the audience sang along.


House Votes to Defund National Public Radio - FoxNews.com:

"The House of Representatives on Thursday voted 228-192 on a bill to defund National Public Radio, the vast public radio network whose leadership has been questioned after a series of executive decisions about programming, staffing and reporting bias."

See how your representative voted here. 


This defunding caused Rep. Anthony Weiner to become positively unhinged, unleashing a mocking tirade against the GOP, accusing them of forcing Click and Clack into the unemployment lines.  What Weiner doesn't understand is that we want Click and Clack off the government payroll.  And while we're at it, let's go after PBS and take Big Bird and Curious George off the government payroll too.  Don't worry...if the market demands it, they'll stick around. 

Meanwhile...

U.S. Debt Jumped $72 Billion Same Day U.S. House Voted to Cut Spending $6 Billion | CNSnews.com: 

"The national debt jumped by $72 billion on Tuesday even as the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to fund the government for just three weeks that will cut $6 billion from government spending.

"If Congress were to cut $6 billion every three weeks for the next 36 weeks, it would manage to save between now and late November as much money as the Treasury added to the nation’s net debt during just the business hours of Tuesday, March 15."

State monitor orders Barack Obama School closed
Asbury Park Press (HT: Michelle Malkin)

"The state fiscal monitor who oversees financial operations in the school district Thursday morning ordered the closing of the Barack H. Obama Elementary School as of July 1...

"Students next year will go to the district's two other more modern elementary schools -- Thurgood Marshall on the east side and Bradley on the west side...

"Officially renamed early in 2010 after the president, the building was known as the Bangs Avenue School since it was built a century ago. The state School Development Authority had planned to build a new school to replace the historic building, but has pulled back and Lowe said recently the state would not build a new school."

 Japanese people are setting the example, will the U.S. follow? | iVoters.com - Elaine Merritt

"There has been no surge of lawlessness in Sendai, the Japanese city hit hardest by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake.  For some reason, Japan has proven to be an exception." 

"When crises and national disasters happen in the United States, there are usually reports of violence, looting, and incivility as people scramble to survive or even just take advantage of the situation for personal gain. Remember the images from Hurricanes’ Andrew and Katrina when people were stealing TV’s and other electronics?...

"...In the United States, we have always been known for our caring and generosity to others but has something happened to us along the way?  Should a disaster of this magnitude happen here can we say as Japan that violence and incivility will not be the norm?

"Will we continue to see the attitudes of the people displayed in Andrew, Katrina, Wisconsin, and Ohio?

"Will Japan continue to be the world’s exception?" 

Sherrod Brown admits free trade in oil will save us (and himself) | RedState: 

"Senator Sherrod Brown (D) has sure noticed. He’s also noticed that gas prices are going up, and up, and up since Barack Obama took office, skyrocketing from under $2/gal to over $3.50/gal, an increase of about 75%. 

"So what does a Democrat (and Daily Kos darling) who has built a career by crusading against international trade do, when his career is on the line in 2012? Why, become a champion of trade, of course...

"Another comes from Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who has urged the State Department to press oil-producing nations to increase their production while the U.S. economy continues to recover from the 2008 financial collapse."

"This is pure hypocrisy on Brown’s part. He’ll prescribe trade restrictions all day and all night; Bush’s bilateral trade juggernaut was slowed up only by Democrat stonewalling in the Senate. But as soon as Brown looks at Kasich, looks at Portman, and realizes he’s the odd man out in 2012, he starts screaming for trade."

Gotta love these election season conversions!


Birther? Potential 2012 Contender Donald Trump Doubts Obama’s Citizenship | The Blaze: 

“Everybody that even gives a hint of being a birther … even a little bit of a hint, like, gee, you know, maybe, just maybe this much of a chance, they label them as an idiot. Let me tell you, I’m a really smart guy,” he said in the interview, which took place aboard his private plane, Trump Force One.

“I was a really good student at the best school in the country. The reason I have a little doubt, just a little, is because he grew up and nobody knew him.”

Trump went on to say, “When you interview people, if I ever got the nomination, if I ever decide to run, you may go back and interview people from my kindergarten. They’ll remember me. Nobody ever comes forward. Nobody knows who he is until later in his life. It’s very strange. The whole thing is very strange.”

Irony Alert: Salon points out that a Spy Magazine article quotes a candy store owner from the neighborhood Trump grew up in saying, "I've been running this store for 28 years, and I don't remember him," even though Trump has bragged of being "something of a leader" in his old neighborhood. Hmmmm....


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This is so sad. ..Erick Erickson from RedState shared this Twitter exchange tonight.  Personhood Florida is a group working to get a Personhood Amendment on the Florida ballot.  Referring to a human being as an "unwanted growth" as if it were a cancerous tumor, is disgusting. 

PersonhoodFL Personhood Florida · Follow

@SherrieGG

Promoting Personhood of all human beings irrespective of age, race, health, function, condition of dependency. Pro-life, Against Abortion, Prolife, #tcot, #912

SherrieGG  

@PersonhoodFL Abortion does not kill children. It removes an unwanted growth. More women have had their lives SAVED by abortion than died.

@EWEricksonErick Erickson

The person who can rationalize this is a person who needs a lot of prayer.twitter.com/sherriegg/stat…

I agree with Erick.  Sherrie, and other like her, need prayer.  While we can and should work for legislation to stop abortion, ultimately, we need God to change the hearts and minds of people who don't believe in the sanctity of life. 




Phil Johnson Tweeted this "Fur Coat"video.  I keep watching the ending and trying to figure out how they did it. 

March 16, 2011

Welcome to readers dropping by from Dan Phillips' Biblical Christianity blog, which is one of my favorites in the blogospere.  He also blogs at Pyromaniacs, another of my faves, and (allegedly) the #9 Christian blog on the earth with almost 200K hits per month!  Thanks to DJP for sending his esteemed readers my way!

Fed instructs teachers to Facebook creep on students  
The Daily Caller

"Education Department officials are threatening school principals with lawsuits if they fail to monitor and curb students’ lunchtime chat and evening Facebook time for expressing ideas and words that are deemed by Washington special-interest groups to be harassment of some students...."...Facebook is developing new features that will make it harder for principals to miss episodes of online “harassment,” and so will increase the likelihood of government action against the teenage users of Facebook and other social-media..."...The leading advocate for the expanded rules is Kevin Jennings, who heads the Education Department’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Jennings founded the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network advocacy group, and raised at least $100,000 for the Obama campaign in 2008..."...Ken Trump, a Cleveland-based school-safety consultant, says the administration is so determined to focus on gay and lesbian teens that it is asking Congress for $365 million to conduct bullying-related school surveys in 2012..."...The primary purpose behind the administration’s initiative is to “create a social and political climate where it is impossible to express conservative moral beliefs” about sexuality, even when research data shows those beliefs help many people live prosperous and happy lives, said Laurie Higgins, the school-advocacy chief of three-person Illinois Family Institute, in Carol Stream, Ill...."

As schools begin to rely more and more on technology, parents will need to be vigilant about protecting the privacy rights of their children.  Many schools are now issuing school-owned laptop computers to their students, which will give the schools many new avenues for "creeping" on their students.  In addition to the inherent loss of privacy with Facebook, the new threat of school district retaliation against unpopular viewpoints is chilling. 


A Note to House Republicans Patting Themselves On the Back
Red State - Erick Erickson

"I hope John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Jeb Hensarling, and the rest of the House Leadership and those Republicans who supported the 3 week continuing resolution “cutting” $6 billion realize this:
The daily amount of interest we will accrue on our national debt is greater than the $6 billion saved over three weeks. In other words, these cuts have done nothing to save us any money."

I'm extremely disappointed that my congressman, Rep. Jim Renacci, went along with the House leadership and voted for the continuing resolution, which didn't remove the Obamacare slush fund, didn't defund Planned Parenthood, and didn't do a thing to solve the towering deficit problem. Congressman Renacci campaigned on a platform of repealing Obamacare and reducing the deficit, but on fourth and one, he punted the ball back to the Democrats' side of the field.  I applaud brave GOP members like Michelle Bachman, Mike Pence, Allen West, and Louis Gohmert who are serious about tackling these enormous problems that are jeopardizing the future of our country. 


Judge Convicts Nurse: Free Speech Does Not Cover Encouraging Suicide | The Blaze:

"Freedom of speech is no defense for a former nurse who engaged in “lethal advocacy” when he encouraged an English man and Canadian woman to kill themselves after searching for depressed people over the Internet, a Minnesota judge said in delivering a guilty verdict against the man.
"The judge found William Melchert-Dinkel, 48, guilty Tuesday of two counts of aiding the suicides of Mark Drybrough, 32, of Coventry, England, who hanged himself in 2005, and Nadia Kajouji, 18, of Brampton, Ontario, who jumped into a frozen river in 2008...
"...Melchert-Dinkel was not merely expressing ideas about suicide The court finds that defendant’s speech imminently incited the victims to commit suicide, and can be described as ‘lethal advocacy,‘ which is analogous to the category of unprotected speech known as ’fighting words‘ and ’imminent incitement of lawlessness,’” Neuville wrote."

Forget flashcards! Watch reality TV and get into college | Los Angeles Times: 
The L.A. Times reports that students were given the following essay prompt on a recent SAT test:

“Reality television programs, which feature real people engaged in real activities rather than professional actors performing scripted scenes, are increasingly popular ... How authentic can these shows be when producers design challenges for the participants and then editors alter filmed scenes?Do people benefit from forms of entertainment that show so-called reality, or are such forms of entertainment?”

I've had this complaint about SAT questions for years.  They generally focus on some aspect of pop-culture, much of which is unfamiliar to students who don't spend their evenings in front of the TV as well as those who don't attend public school. There was a time that students were tested on a common body of knowledge that was rooted in study of the traditional liberal arts. While the question above is a writing prompt, designed to test the student's ability to write a coherent essay, taking a position and defending an argument, assigning such a silly topic - what educator Charlotte Mason would have called "twaddle" - demeans and dumbs down the the integrity of the test as well as those being tested. 


Is a Tsunami an “Act of God”? | The Daysman:

"There is a lot of controversy right now about whether or not hell is real.
But there is much less doubt about whether or not tsunamis are.
This raises a couple of questions. Is a tsunami an “act of God,” as the insurance companies tell us? And if so, is his role active or passive?
Assume for a minute that he is passive. Then we want to know why he didn’t prevent the tragedy in Japan. And if he is active, we want to know why he caused it.
We can safely say he cares about it, which makes it harder to argue he is passive about such things. No one wants, or needs, a passive God. And clearly the scripture says he is not:
You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream,like grass that is renewed in the morning:in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;in the evening it fades and withers.For we are brought to an end by your anger;by your wrath we are dismayed.(Psalm 90:5-7 ESV)" 

Read the whole thing. It's a great response to an immeasurable tragedy. 


After all the doom, despair, and agony this week, I needed a little cheering up, so I turned to one of my favorites: Rhett and Link's Buffet Song. This just never gets old for me...