William Ayers. Jeremiah Wright. Michael Pfleger. Tony Rezko. Rod Blagojevich. Barack Obama.
Can you say “bad choice of friends”?
Wednesday December 10, 2008
Friday December 5, 2008
Thursday December 4, 2008
Sunday November 30, 2008
Desert Bus for Hope
Here’s a very stange but interesting link to something going on this Thanksgiving weekend.
This is put on by an Internet group called LoadingReadyRun.com. They are a group of kids in Victoria BC that make videos that they hope will become viral. Some do, some don’t but this weekend they are playing a game called Desert Bus. They are raising money for a charity called Childs Play which helps kids somehow.
Desert Bus is a game by Penn & Teller that was never actually sold but somehow got onto the internet. It consists of driving an empty school bus from Tucson to Las Vegas at 45 MPH in real time. There are no cars on the road and no real scenery except for an occasional tree and supposedly a bug splats on the windshield at about hour 5. If you make it to Las Vegas you earn a point and have to decide if you are going to drive back to try to earn another point. I guess you can do this as long as you want. If the bus goes off the road and crashes it gets towed back to Tucson in real time and you can start all over.
At any rate it’s interesting to watch the feeds and see sleep deprived kids doing silly things.
Monday November 24, 2008
Recession? Depression? Which?
Ok, so as I understand it one of the factors that tells you if you’re in a Recession or Depression is the unemployment rate. Since I’ve been hearing all these people crying about how we are headed for a Depression I decided I would check the unemployment rate over the years. I can only find data back to 1948 but it’s interesting even just that far.
In 1948 the rate was around 4%. That would be considered pretty low. Over the years it’s gone up and down but the most interesting to me is when Reagan took over in 1981 the rate was 7.5%. Over the next year it went up to 10.8% by the end of 82 but then it started coming down. By the end of Reagan’s 2nd term is was 5.3%. Then Bush 1 took over and the rate slowly went up to about 7.8%. It started falling just before Clinton took over and kept falling all the way to 3.9%.
When Bush 2 took over the rate slowly went up to a little over 6% but then it came down to around 4% and then started climbing to the 6.5% it is at now.
The interesting part of this is the rate has been much higher several times in the years from 48 to now but this is the first time I can remember people thinking we are ready to enter another Depression. I understand saying we are in a Depression is not just the unemployment rate, it’s also the GDP and a few other factors but those factors are far from where they would need to be to call it that.
I think some of this is Bush Derangement Syndrome. People want it to be bad so they can point at him and say SEE?
Yes the banks are in trouble but maybe we shouldn’t bail them out. Maybe we should just let them fail and let the chips fall where they may. We might find out this country is a lot stronger than some people think. Since it’s not up to me I guess we will never know.
Tuesday November 18, 2008
Monday November 17, 2008
At least teach them how to spell who you think they should hate.
I wonder if this is really true. I hope not but I fear it might well be. Maybe someone will fact check it for me.
Saturday November 15, 2008
NHRA Finals
I love the drag races but it’s been since I lived in Tucson since I’ve been. Finally I made it out to the Finals in Pomona today. I’ve got the pictures on my Gallery.