Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Just Saying

  • If we're going to lose our AAA credit rating anyway and we know it's a fallacy that we can't make our payments, I say don't raise the debt ceiling. Force Obama to cut spending in order to pay the bills each month till we have a balanced budget.
  • Seems like the end of the world guy was wrong, according to CNN and MSNBC the world will end Aug 2nd id the debt ceiling isn't raised.
  • Did anyone else not know Amy Winehouse was Jewish until her funeral?
  • Funny how Obama has taken such a huge interest in the "debt crisis" over the last 4 weeks, I seem to remember posting about it here 4 months ago.
  • McDonald's caved to the First Lady's crazy power and is now including apples in their Happy Meals instead of french fries. I guess they should change the name to Pissed Off Kid Meals.
  • The Norway shooter/bomber's max jail sentence is 21 years, if we could see into hell right now we'd see Timothy McVeigh jumping up and down saying WTF?
  • I saw Captain America today, it was pretty good. Nice to see a pro-America movie. *Spoiler*- At the end Cap superman punches Obama... Wait maybe I fell asleep.
  • Republicans always talk about how important "Business Experience" is and how "politics as usual" messes thins up, so how come they are so quick to dismiss Herman Cain as just "some guy that worked in a pizza place"?
  • Democrats are funny, when you bring up Reagan they say how much they hate him and everything he did and stood for. Until they want to compare Obama to how great he was. Make up your minds!

Saturday, July 23, 2011

No Future?

A few days ago the space shuttle Atlantis landed on Earth for the last time. With that we (the USA) have retired our fleet (what's left of it) of shuttles and ended the American space program almost completely. NASA is a former shell of what it once was, devoting more time to climate change (a hoax) and making nice with muslims (that don't care). American, might, industry, ingenuity and pride are being swept out to sea. Thanks partly to the Bush and mostly to the Obama administration's murdering of our economy. 


The cost of the entire Apollo program and the Shuttle program combined is right at 400 billion dollars*. While  four of five years ago that may have seemed like a lot of money, keep in mind that Obama's failed stimulus that was supposed to keep unemployment under 8.5% cost 800 billion. So for half the cost of the stupid so called stimulus we put men on the moon and space ships going back and forth for 30 years. Add the ISS (international space station, that's called international but essentially we paid for and built the whole thing and let other countries paint their flag on.) in for another 100 billion and it's still sad. The future lies in space and America is giving the future away to China and Russia.


Russia is celebrating, they are now the kings of space and we have to pay them millions of dollars to take our astronauts out to the ISS. Far less glamorous than our shuttle, the principle of Russia's Soyuz rocket and capsule system for sending humans into space has changed little since Yuri Gagarin became the first man in orbit in 1961. Yep we're flying in over fifty year old Russian tech. But it's not that bad, last year they switched the Soyuz capsule from an anolog computer to a digital. Yeah last year...

So the question whether space exploration is really desirable at a time when so much needs doing on here on Earth comes to mind? It is a serious question that requires a serious answer. There are many arguments, from jobs and education to technology development and national security, for keeping us in space. Though one argument stands out, that argument is exploration, and that we should continue to challenge ourselves for the one basic reason; self-preservation as a free creative, intelligent society. As opposed to a stagnating, socialist slave society.




* All dollars adjusted for inflation to 2010.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Not Gone

So last Wednesday California decided to join the growing list of states attempting to collect sales tax from web retailers to help find a way to close the state's black hole of a budget. Amazon.com on Tuesday sent me an email warning me that if California passed the law come 9/30/11 they would cut off their affiliate program, but Wed immediately after law passed they sent me another email saying my store was closed and my affiliate links were dead.

California's new law, signed by Governor Jerry Brown on Wednesday, requires online retailers to collect sales tax even if they have no physical presence in the state. How does that work when federal law states they have to have a brick-and-mortar store to qualify? My store had no bricks or mortar. Like the many other states before it, California counts Amazon affiliates who reside in California as a "physical presence." So, my personal blog with affiliate links to Amazon products (you know being unemployed, helped me to make a few bucks on the side), means I am effectively "selling" Amazon products and making money from them via my home in California.

You can go back and check it, I warned you that Gov. Moonbeam would be a bad rerun for California and he is living up to his name. The revenue loss from Amazon alone will be somewhere around $100 million. Not to mention all the small businesses that had to close. Timing couldn't be worse since today the new job report came out and unemployment is up to 9.2%.

It took me a while to decide if I would continue blogging at all. But I'm not gone, I will keep plugging away. If you like my blog and feel like contributing, please click the "Donate" button on the top right side of this screen.