Record wealth effect for the 1%, foodstamps for the poorest 20%, and a middle class on the verge of extinction. How is this possible and what happens next? Read Dylan Grice’s piece posted earlier for all the answers.
theft
O.K., what’s the April Fools component?
That there are four asteroids or that they are not going to fly…past… Earth? Seriously, doesn’t it seem that there are a lot of these reports of newly discovered space rocks whizzing by. Are there really more in the neighborhood or is this the result of the new near space scanning programs?
Windshield view approaching and rear window view…after?
I hear voices, well a voice really. During my day as I encounter people and as life goes on around me, from time to time I hear my wife’s voice.
Today is the second anniversary of my wife’s unexpected death. This year it falls on Easter, the day of Resurrection. It has been a hard two years, family problems, the disastrous election, loneliness. But I still feel her love and usually hear her voice. Old married people finish each others thoughts and sentences it is said and Donie didn’t like me to be too negative or too angry. She would wait a beat or so after I came to a sputtering conclusion and then sprout something cheerful, and deflating. She kept me centered. After her stroke, food became an abiding interest to her. She would come by as I prepared dinner to find out what I was cooking, a long drawn out “Yummm!”, would be heard if she approved. These days when I create something in the kitchen that I know she would have liked, I hear that “Yum” in my head and in her voice.
It’s Spring now, up here in the chilly northeast we finally put together back-to-back fifty degree days (still freezing or hovering just above, nights). Donie would be out on “Sprout Patrol”, walking around the yard looking for the first sign of spring flowers coming up. If she found any when she returned inside I’d hear, “Sprouts! It’s Spring!” Followed by a long list of items she wanted to do that season.
I think of her or I hear her most often during times when I’m cooking or fiddling about around the house. When I’m angry or annoyed I lose her. Lesson there, I think.
Happy Easter to everyone, and (by the way) this is the 800th post to this blog.
The Great Skateboarding Adventure! (or) Before the fall.
This guy gets my vote, You The MAN!
Savings accounts in Spain, Italy and other European countries will be raided if needed to preserve Europe’s single currency by propping up failing banks, a senior eurozone official has announced.
Got guns? No? Go ahead then. 
Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog [excerpted]
The top 10 wealthiest men and women in America barely have 250 billion dollars between them. That sounds like a lot of money, until you look at annual Federal budgets which run into the trillions of dollars, and the country’s national debt which approaches 15 trillion dollars. And that’s not taking into account state budgets. Even Rhode Island, the smallest state in the union, with a population of barely a million, has a multi-billion dollar budget.
The 2008 presidential campaign cost 5.3 billion dollars. Another 1.5 billion for the House and the Senate. And that’s not counting another half a billion from the 527’s and even shadier fundraising by shadowy political organizations. But that’s a small investment when you realize that they were spending billions of dollars to get their hands on trillions of dollars.
Do you know of any company in America where for a mere few billion, you could become the CEO of a company whose shareholders would be forced to sit back and watch for four years while you run up trillion dollar deficits and parcel out billions to your friends? Without going to jail or being marched out in handcuffs. A company that will allow you to indulge yourself, travel anywhere at company expense, live the good life, and only work when you feel like it. That will legally indemnify you against all shareholder lawsuits, while allowing you to dispose not only of their investments, but of their personal property in any way you see fit.
There is only one such company. It’s called the United States Government.
The billionaire is a dinosaur. The wealthiest men in America can’t wait to get rid of their holdings. In the free market, money made you king. But under socialism, money just buys you access and leverage. The leverage to force every man, woman and child to buy your product. The real concentration of wealth is no longer among men, but among institutions. Like electricity passing along copper wire, it jumps among unions, political machines, companies, non-profits and back again. Its function is to provide the motive power for the great beast of government to grind on.
And the American taxpayer is left lying flat in the street.
Today Fox News reports:
University Files Charges Against Student who Refused to Stomp on Jesus
A Florida Atlantic University student who filed a complaint against his professor after he was ordered to stomp on the name of Jesus has been brought up on academic charges by the school and may no longer attend class, according to documents obtained by Fox News.
Progressivism cannot stand the light of day, that’s what this about.
A story on the Canada Free Press that just highlights the stunning fact that we still have no autopsy.
What can we conclude from this Internet autopsy? The photographic evidence leads us to question the explanation that Stevens’ death was caused by smoke inhalation. There are just too many possible wounds on Stevens’ body for that explanation to be the whole story. Smoke inhalation usually does not leave a wound on the forehead or shoulder that miraculously heals itself in a Benghazi morgue.
Until the official autopsy results are released to the public we are left to wonder how Stevens died at Benghazi. The White House has repeatedly claimed his death was the result of a protest to a video insulting to Islam. We know this explanation is a lie.
A rumor of rape and torture will persist until proven otherwise. Like most of the facts surrounding the Incident at Benghazi, it is hard to see the truth through the darkness and the smoke.
Benghazi Scandal: A Virginia congressman says the witnesses to an act of war on sovereign U.S. territory are being held incommunicado in a Washington, D.C., hospital by their own government. Free the American 30.
…
The only American witnesses to the Benghazi attack who have been named by the Obama administration are the four whom the terrorists killed in the Sept. 11 attack on our Benghazi mission — Ambassador Chris Stevens, State Department Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who were working for the CIA.
Perhaps the administration is waiting for the moment Benghazi officially becomes “old news,” when the American people echo the sentiment that it no longer matters at this point. The administration strategy may be based on that old adage: out of sight, out of mind.
New blog I want to bring to your attention. Find out which varmints in Congress are doing bad things and who supports them.
Juicy bits:
– Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) amendment 382, to increase funding for interstate bridges and pay for it with funding that would have gone to for foreign assistance and the Department of Energy loan guarantees, failed 26-72.
– Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) amendment 526, to require photo ID to vote in federal elections, 44-54
– Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) amendment 338, to end subsidized mobile phone service, failed 46-53.
– Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) amendment 471, to reduce aid to Egypt to pay for the East Coast Missile Defense Shield, 25-74.
– Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) amendment 702, to raise a point of order to prohibit funds to the United Nations while any member nation forces involuntary abortions, 38-61
Last week I attended a hearing held by the EPA in Newington regarding “storm water runoff.”
What I discovered was if any town in New Hampshire does not produce a written reply with objections to the specifications of this enormous complicated packet of rules and regulations proposed by the EPA by April 15th that town would forfeit their ability to defend itself from any future onerous EPA penalties that could reach $37,500 per day for each violation of the EPA proposed rules.
Complying with the proposed EPA regulations could increase he sewer bill of an average homeowner by a great deal, possibly over $1,000 per year.
…He mentioned that in the state of Virginia a coalition of communities had sued the EPA over these regulations and won in court. The Judge ruled that these EPA rules were arbitrary, unreasonable, and extremely costly. The EPA did not appeal.
This is not only an enormous financial problem for people in Dover and Strafford County but also a States right issue. Are we the obedient subjects of our federal government?
David Scott
Ammunition magazine manufacturer Magpul announced this week it will move forward with its plans to leave “occupied” Colorado after Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper signed new gun control laws.
Ammunition magazine manufacturer Magpul Industries said it plans to begin leaving Colorado “almost immediately,” and other firms may follow suit in the wake of a new law that limits ammunition magazine capacities.
“Our moving efforts are underway,” Magpul chief operating officer Doug Smith said Wednesday. “Within the next 30 days we will manufacture our first magazine outside the state of Colorado.”
One of three gun-control bills signed Wednesday by Gov. John Hickenlooper prohibits the sale of gun magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.
Erie-based Magpul, with about 200 workers, is the largest Colorado company that potentially would be affected by the bill.
Magpul said earlier this week in a Facebook posting that it ” will start our transition out of state almost immediately.” The company also posted, “We will likely become a multi-state operation as a result of this move, and not all locations have been selected.”
The firm’s departure could have a ripple effect on companies that supply parts and materials to Magpul.
“We’re basically going to follow Magpul and do our best to continue being a supplier for them,” said Lloyd Lawrence, owner of Denver-based Lawrence Tool & Molding. “It will probably be out of state.”
First Mexican journalists dropped like flies, either as victims of drug-cartel violence or out of fear, and stopped reporting crime in the region. U.S. journalists located in American border cities soon followed and have stopped reporting on drug-related violence.
To sum things up:
• The Obama administration is preventing states like Arizona from enforcing immigration laws and reducing attendant violent crime.
• It is also trying to prevent states like Arizona from enforcing voter ID laws to ensure only legal citizens are able to cast ballots.
• And now that millions of illegal aliens are here — including tens or hundreds of thousands of violent gang members — the White House is letting them loose on our streets and insisting we put them on a path to citizenship (while keeping the border wide open).
Is it okay to question the Democrats’ patriotism yet?
Me: We are in the very best of hands…
“The Honors Night, which can be a great sense of pride for the recipients’ families, can also be devastating to a child who has worked extremely hard in a difficult class but who, despite growth, has not been able to maintain a high grade-point average,” Fabrizio penned in his first letter to parents, the station reported.
Fabrizio also said he decided to make the change because academic success can be influenced by the amount of support a student receives at home and not all students receive the same level of emotional and academic support at home.
I’m curious. Exactly when does this Principal plan on preparing these young people (who might be one or two years from attending college or entering the working world) for life and life’s hard knocks?
If I lived in that town and had a child in that school, I would stop at nothing to fire Principal Fabrizio and ensure he had nothing further to do with education.
If history is any judge, the U.S. government will be paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the next century as service members and their families grapple with the sacrifices of combat.
An Associated Press analysis of federal payment records found that the government is still making monthly payments to relatives of Civil War veterans — 148 years after the conflict ended…
Of the 2,289 survivors drawing cash linked to WWI, about one-third are spouses and dozens of them are over 100 years in age.
Some of the other recipients are curious: Forty-seven of the spouses are under the age of 80, meaning they weren’t born until years after the war ended. Many of those women were in their 20s and 30s when their aging spouses died in the 1960s and 1970s, and they’ve been drawing the monthly payments since.
—Civil War and Spanish-American War
There are 10 living recipients of benefits tied to the 1898 Spanish-American War at a total cost of about $50,000 per year. The Civil War payments are going to two children of veterans — one in North Carolina and one in Tennessee— each for $876 per year.
Surviving spouses can qualify for lifetime benefits when troops from current wars have a service-linked death. Children under the age of 18 can also qualify, and those benefits are extended for a lifetime if the person is permanently incapable of self-support due to a disability before the age of 18.
Citing privacy, officials did not disclose the names of the two children getting the Civil War benefits.
Their ages suggest the one in Tennessee was born around 1920 and the North Carolina survivor was born around 1930. A veteran who was young during the Civil War would likely have been roughly 70 or 80 years old when the two people were born.
Old soldiers don’t die, they go to bed.
Marine Beaches in Massachusetts
“The energy needed to refute BS is of an order of magnitude greater than the effort needed to produce the BS in the first place. ”
Brandolini’s law
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On the North River 