My Personal Rants, Raves, and Ramblings

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

"I do not have the honor of living in your district..." 

YouTube description: This video was taken on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at Rep. Jim Moran's (D-VA) Town Hall meeting on Obama Deathcare held at South Lakes High School in Reston, VA. Many people were left outside when the school filled to capacity. School security officer Wesley Cheeks, Jr. did not like my anti-Obamacare poster which used one of the gone-viral "Joker" graphics. When I said to Officer Cheeks, "This used to be America!" his response was: "It ain't no more, OK?"

KABC’s Michael Linder was the only broadcast reporter at Thursday night’s town hall health care debate at Wade AME Church when Rep. Diane Watson [D] made some astonishing comments including claims that those opposed to health care reform are attempting to destroy a president “who looks like me.”

Later, Watson praised heath care in Fidel Castro’s Cuba — and, it seemed, the Cuban revolution itself.

The statements aired exclusively Thursday night on KABC’s The John Phillips Show.  - Source 

WASHINGTON - He ran for president last year as a “maverick” Republican and had a high-profile meeting with Barack Obama after the election, but Arizona Sen. John McCain has been a staunch Republican vote since failing to win the White House.

In fact, McCain is siding with his party this year on closely divided votes with greater frequency than at any other period in his 23-year Senate career, according to a CQ analysis of Senate votes.

On votes that pitted most Democrats against most Republicans, McCain has sided with the consensus GOP position 95.4 percent of the time, a CQ-defined “party unity” score that would be the highest of his Senate career if it holds up for the remainder of the year. He had a 95.2 percent party unity score in 1996, when Republicans held the Senate majority at the end of President Bill Clinton’s first term.

McCain’s year-to-date 2009 party unity score is the 14th highest among the 40 Republican senators. It’s even higher than that of the Senate’s top two Republicans, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (94.0 percent) and Minority Whip Jon Kyl , also of Arizona (94.5 percent).

McCain has participated in 196 of 199 Senate party unity votes, siding with the majority Republican position on all but nine of those votes. Like most Republicans, McCain voted “no” on the economic stimulus law and on Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

McCain led the Republican charge against numerous Democratic proposals this Congress, often acting as the lead sponsor of amendments outlining a Republican alternative. That was the case March 2, when the Senate by a vote of 32-63 rejected McCain’s substitute amendment to the fiscal 2009 omnibus appropriations act and again on April 2, when the Senate rejected McCain’s substitute to the fiscal 2010 budget resolution by a 38-60 vote.

Three of the nine votes on which McCain broke party ranks came Obama nominations for top Justice Department posts. Unlike most Republicans, McCain voted to confirm Eric H. Holder Jr. as attorney general, David W. Ogden as deputy attorney general and Thomas Perrelli as associate attorney general.

McCain in years past was more likely to buck his party and side with Democrats.

In 2001, the year after he lost the Republican presidential nomination to George W. Bush , McCain’s 67 percent party unity score was among the lowest in the Senate GOP Conference.

The economy could spiral into hyperinflation not seen since the early 1980s if the Federal Reserve does not tighten its monetary policy soon, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) warned Tuesday.

Grassley, speaking about the renomination of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to a second term as head of the Fed, asserted that Bernanke's ability to hold down inflation would be the metric by which the Fed's success would be measured.

"We won't know for a year if he's done a good job so far, because he shoveled money out of an airplane to save banks and the financial system," Grassley said in a conference call with Iowa reporters. "But shoveling money out of an airplane to solve problems can be inflationary — in this case, hyperinflationary — if he doesn't start mopping up some of the money that's out there."

Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said that inflation as a result from government spending on bailouts could result in inflation rivaling rates in 1980, when it hit a peak of 13.5 percent.

"The Fed has the ability to put money out, it's got the ability to take money back in, and if they don't do that, we will have hyperinflation worse than we had in 1980 and '81," Grassley said. "And I hope he demonstrates that ability."

Grassley argued that while it would be a year until lawmakers will know whether Bernanke has been successful at bringing inflation under control, it would probably be best to keep the chairman on board for a second term as head of the Federal Reserve.

"I would suggest that right now, when everybody's nervous about the economy, that you don't change horses in the middle of the stream, and consequently, it would probably be detrimental to not have him reappointed," he said.

As the 2000-year-old story goes, the crow filled the bucket of water with stones until the level became high enough for him to quench his thirst.

Just a fable? Apparently not. Footage shows a rook - a relation of the crow - performing the feat to reach a worm floating on the water's surface.

The study, published by Current Biology, says that crows are innovative tool users, even though they are not known to use tools in the wild.

Footage of the experiments shows the rook first assessing the water level by peering at the tube from above and from the side, before picking up and dropping the stones into the water.

The birds were extremely accurate, using the exact number of stones needed to raise the worm to a height where they could reach it.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – The sheriff in Alabama's most populous county may call for the National Guard to help maintain order, a spokesman said Tuesday, after a judge cleared the way for cuts in the sheriff's budget and hopes dimmed for a quick end to a budget crisis.

Circuit Judge Joseph L. Boohaker ruled that leaders in Jefferson County — now trying to head off a municipal bankruptcy filing of historic proportions — could go ahead with plans to slash $4.1 million from the budget of Sheriff Mike Hale, who had filed a lawsuit that temporarily blocked spending cuts for his office.

About 1,000 county workers already are on unpaid leave because courts threw out a key county tax, and Hale has warned that reductions to his budget would mean fewer patrols by deputies and decreased courthouse security.

A spokesman for Hale, Randy Christian, said the sheriff told Gov. Bob Riley after the ruling that state assistance may be needed to perform basic law enforcement tasks once the department's current funding is exhausted in early September.

"We will certainly be looking at calling in the National Guard," said Christian.

Hale may have to cut as many as 188 deputies and almost 300 civilian workers out of more than 700 employees total because of Boohaker's ruling, Christian said. That would leave just enough workers to staff the county's two jails, which hold about 1,000 prisoners on average.

Christian said the department couldn't close either jail or release inmates, but it would send as many prisoners as possible to the state prison system, which already is badly overcrowded.

"We’re going to have to do what’s necessary.”