Brain Droppings

This might have been posted here before but it is worth another view:

Another version that I like here.

Labels: Friday Music

The wise decision that paid off might have been a result of a prior mistake.

White Sox fans know the Catch. Going into the ninth inning with Mark Buehrle's perfect game on the line manager Ozzie Guillen inserted Dewayne Wise in center field because of his defensive abilities. The first batter hit the ball over the fence but Wise was able to leap up and make the catch. Buehrle retired the next two batters and history was made. Wise was honored with TYIB award for the play.

In May of 2008 I attended a Sox/Twins game and sat down the left field line. Gavin Floyd started the 9th inning with a no-hitter in tact (not a perfect game). As the Sox took the field my friend sitting next to me asked, why is Nick Swisher still in center? The Sox were leading 7-0 and had better options for CF on the bench. Floyd retired the first batter but then gave up a double which bounced only a few feet out of the diving Swisher's reach. The hit was no line drive, just a long opposite field fly ball that fell between the CF and LF.

It seemed like a shame. Swisher is not slow but most center fielder's make that catch and Brian Anderson certainly would have been able to had he not been on the bench.

From Senator Mitch McConnel's press release today on the health care bill: “Americans already oppose this bill. The process is just as bad."

Emphasis mine. I hope voters are becoming more aware of the political process, I have. Hopefully this will be addressed in future elections in more depth than simple political party affiliation.

Via Hot Air.

In addition, for the first time in the survey, a plurality prefers the status quo to reform. By a 44-41 percent margin, respondents say it would be better to keep the current system than to pass Obama's health plan.

By comparison, in September's and October's NBC/Journal polls, the American public preferred changing the system to the status quo, 45 to 39 percent.

...

The odds are still against Republicans picking up the 41 seats they need for a House majority. But it's interesting that when Massachusetts Democrat Michael Capuano, fresh from a second-place finish in the primary for Edward Kennedy's Senate seat, was asked to tell the Democratic caucus what he had learned on the campaign trail, he replied in two words: "You're screwed." How many of those listening decided that it would be a good idea to spend more time with the family after 2010?

But I fear my natural demise is nearer.

Top Futurist, Ray Kerzweil, predicts how technology will change humanity by 2020:

"We now have the software of life (our genes) and the means of upgrading that software. How long do you go without updating the software on your cell phone? Not long: it does it itself every few days or weeks. Yet we are walking around with obsolete software in our bodies that evolved thousands of years ago. Within 10 years, that will change."

I hope his time line is accurate.

Tom Maguire highlights President Obama's troubles in a NYT front page. Of course his biggest problem is the economy. The fact that unemployment is much worse than at the start of his term and that the Dems are fixated on health care reform against all credible evidence that the majority of Americans have a major problem with our health care system just feeds the feeling that Obama is out of touch- more interested in forcing this statist monstrosity on us than on tackling the real economic difficulties.

But what until next year when the Bush tax cuts lapse.

Obama was always going to have a tough time because of the housing bubble bursting and he is doing himself no favors with the Nero imitation.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama

Rod Blagojevich's lawyers want the FBI to give up details of interviews conducted last year of President Obama, his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, White House adviser Valerie Jarrett and others as part of the investigation into the former governor.

I hope he catches a whopper. I doubt these people are stupid enough to implicate themselves so I wonder what Blago's attorney's are looking for.

Meanwhile I have heard rumors that Rezko continues to sing like a bird, all of this should make 2010 a very interesting year.

Labels: Blagojevich

Disturbing

Jim Hoft:

Because of his excellent work with children Kevin Jennings was promoted by Barack Obama to be his Safe Schools Czar. Today he’s running the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools in the US Department of Education.

Just what did Jennings do? Ed Morrissey comments:

Jennings ran an outfit called Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) from its inception in 1995 until last year. During that time, as Jim Hoft at Big Government has detailed, GLSEN offered sex education seminars to young teenagers within the framework of public education that went way, way beyond explanations of human biology and disease transmission. According to multiple sources, GLSEN discussed “fisting”, oral sex etiquette, and other techniques to 14-year-olds, until the program got exposed by local Massachusetts media, and the instructor got fired as a scapegoat. Jim has the audio from one of the seminars, discussing the proper hand position for “fisting.”

Jim Hoft has more, including excerpts from books on GLSEN's reading lists.

Democratic priorities

Since the ongoing financial crisis began 18 months ago (Via Ed Morrissey) the number and cost of those on the federal government's payroll has exploded:

Bureaucracy is the real recession-proof industry. The numbers are mind-boggling. In 18 months, the number of federal employees making over $100K have increased 46%. The number making over $150K has more than doubled.

It’s not as if they’ve been asked to do more with less, either. In the first six months of the year, the federal government was adding 10,000 jobs per month, and over the recession had grown the ranks of bureaucrats by 9.8%. The private sector, during that same period, shed 7.3 million jobs to contract 6.3%.

Over this period the number of bureaucrats making $150k+ is up 119%. From the USA Today article:

When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000. The average federal employee makes $71,206, or 76% more than the $40,331 private sector average.

As Ed does, I wonder where are all these employees going, and what are they doing.

Labels: funny, stupid