Remembering 9-11

I was a teacher in 2001 and was monitoring study hall the morning of Sept 11th when someone came into the cafeteria and said, "Turn on the TVs, a World Trade Center's been hit by a plane."  We thought it was an accident until we saw the second plane hit tower 2.

I was so wrong about that, it looked like a small plane and I said so, I guess my brain couldn't compute the reality.

Many of the freshmen didn't get it, one guy in particular was all, "what's the big deal" and I, a little too vigorously, I'm sure, said something along the lines of "we are at war now! Look around you, these seniors, some of them may have to fight this war!"

Micah Maupin, who I later taught in my Stagecraft class, was in that room, with no intention yet of becoming the Marine he would become. I don't think his big brother Matt was there that day, although during he hung out there with a buddy, Eric, quite a bit, often at our teacher table. I wish I wasn't right and Matt hadn't been captured and then shot in the back of the head and left in the desert. I hope that freshman remembers this, too.

Darn, I missed the debate!

...and I'll miss the speech tonight, too. For a politically minded person, I abhor these way-too-early primary events and I have a life, so I am generally too busy for Presidential blather. Church choir tonight, for example.

Michelle Malkin had a great line about the debate last night (9-7-11), though: the debate was as if the dems were "debating at the SEIU headquarters on Fox News moderated by Rush Limbaugh with she and Andrew Breitbart asking questions."

AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

Good Lord, things suck right now, and that's my whine for the day. We're not starving or having bombs dropped on us or getting attacked with machetes or anything, but I suck at being a breadwinner and the shit is piling up. Can you say "under-employed?" I knew you could.

Oh, and screw you, Duke Energy.

"You must get Smart Meter, even though you just got new digital meter last year. Sure, you have scheduled Smart Meter installation, but until you receive Smart Meter, you cannot submit digital meter's reading online.  You must pay what we say you owe, even though we are just guessing at your usage, not just the minimum payments you have been making. In fact, we will turn your power off on the very same day you receive your notice in the mail. Then, when you call and make a token payment we will lie and say someone will come and turn it on by midnight. Twice. Then, when you call and ask where the heck the service person is at 30 past midnight, we will tell you we don't do "turned off at the pole reconnections" after midnight, sorry about your refrigerated food. You can call your local office in the morning to submit a claim for the food cost. Then, in the morning, we will apologize and say they were busy, you are at the front of the line and they will arrive within the hour. Then the Smart Reader Replacement crew will arrive and leave because the power is not on. Then we will say that we don't reconnect for 24 hours. You will say that you were lied to, then, and that you would have emptied your fridge into coolers and stayed at an air-conditioned friend's house instead of sweating the night out. We will offer to exempt you from the $50 reconnection fee. And we will still not know when your power will be restored."

Screw you Duke Energy. 28.5 hours after we called, you showed up.

Warren Buffet Can't Do Math, Apparently

Well, a lot of people have shared this Warren Buffet article, so I have to throw in my 2 cents:  aren't paying enough taxes, Warren? Let's fix that.

Send a check to the Treasury to assuage your guilt, this group had a pledge over a year ago to do just that.

Of course, Buffet's guilt trip tale avoids the IRS numbers that show that the top 1% earn 20% of the income and pay 38.02% of income taxes. Of course, those are the folks making over $392,149 a year, they are not the super-rich, that .1% that makes 9% of the income and pays 18% of the income taxes. Table 5 on this page    

Anyway, you could take all of Buffet's money and only pay for the Food Stamp program for 257 days... in fact, if we confiscate all the income of everybody making over 250,000 (1.93% of all households) it's about 1.47 trillion dollars, which is enough to cover about 114 days of the budget (see Iowahawk here).

So great, Warren, you make a lot of money, but you don't seem to be able to do math. If 100% tax rate isn't enough, isn't it a spending rather than an income problem? The total US personal income is just under 8 trillion, should the government budget be half of that?

With a debt of more than 14 trillion, Buffet's suggestion is a joke. Taking everybody's income would only pay half.

***UPDATE***

Ok, so here's the irony, and it's going unreported except for the New York Post, apparently:

Americans for Limited Government researcher Richard McCarty, who was alerted to the controversy by a federal government lawyer, said, “The company has been short-changing the tax collection agency for much of the past decade.   Mr. Buffett’s company has not fully settled its tax bills from 2002-2009.  Yet he says he’d happily pay more.  Except the IRS has apparently been asking him to pay more going on nine years.”

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/08/29/warren-buffetts-company-hasnt-paid-taxes-years-media-mum#ixzz1WTDJ48zx

Anarchy in the UK?

Just some links; these folks say it so well, my thoughts aren't necessary.

Max Hastings in the Daily Mail

"...They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong"

from the American thinker (byline Robin of Berkely)

"The radicals want to promote anarchy.  But it's more than this: they want the hate that blackens their souls to warp others as well."

Very Short Post on Pres's Speech This Week

Ok, so I just watched a recap of some Late Night Comedians' jokes about Pres O's debt limit speechy-thing, and heard our Supreme Politician say this:

"For the last decade, we've spent more money than we take in. In the year 2000, the government has a budget surplus, but, instead of using it pay off our debt, the money was spent on trillions of dollars in new tax cuts...." (insert sound effect of record scratching to a stop)

What The Heck????????????????????

How do you spend money on cuts? It's not yours if you don't have it, and it's not spending if you don't collect it! I must have spent my surplus on my decreased salary, then, I guess.

Truly unbelievable.

All Work and No Play

Well, last night was home improvement night, and I must say, I got a fair amount done and perspired enough to show it!

With our Central AC out, we've been using 2 borrowed air conditioners, a small window unit and a portable floor model. Yesterday, I borrowed a 3rd unit, a large window unit, from the wife's brother's shop: it was dirty, let me tell you!

It cools like a beast, though, and I succumbed to the wife's wishes and put it in the boys' room, moved that little one upstairs, and can only hope for little rain so that the cardboard in the open window sections stays dry-ish... what a pain.

On the upside, having AC in the bedroom might help break the 17-day dry spell....it is my birthday, after all. :)

I did manage to get 20ft of new vinyl gutter installed almost completely, just an endcap and some screws in the joiner piece and all should be done. Not a difficult job at all as it turned out, just hoping the chalkline was accurate and the fall is enough!

**UPDATE 2*** The other half of the front is done, about 15 feet, plus endcaps and screws in the joiners, so I can call those sections "complete."  Next is either the sides of the porch (4 ft. each) or the garage. Definitely need gutter covers, though, there was already bits of bark, moss, and shingle crap in there!


UPDATE***
so, on the birthday night, we found a leak in the laundry room ceiling: after some perspiration and cleaning, discovered that the ice maker supply line leaving the "switch" had come out of the compression fitting....grrr. Fixed it, though. Oh, that other matter? Sorry about my luck. (update: 25 26 days. oh well broken at exactly one month)

I Hate Liars

So, yet again we hear, even on Fox News Radio half hour clips, that we risk default, and that Social Security Payments are at risk.

Bull Crap.

Yes, we borrow 40% of what we pay out, but that's because we pay out too much! Two points: if the debt ceiling will affect SS and Medicare payments, then we MUST be using borrowed money to write those checks, right? So much for the old Lockbox argument. If we are borrowing to pay those, how screwed up is the Federal Budget? Second, El Presidente said (to Scott Pelley, airs tonight) that we send out 70 million checks....WTF? with the estimated population at 311,749,302  it amazes me that so many people are receiving Government Support. Fun fact, that's roughly equivalent to every Obama voter...(69,499,428)

We won't default. we can pay the debt service and make our entitlement payments. We HAVE to cut spending. Either we do it now, make arrangements to cover obligations and avoid foreclosure, or we wait and then get foreclosed upon.

That's our choice, America.

Know that whenever anyone says "we may not be able to send out those Social Security checks" or "the US may default on it's loans" that person is lying or stupid.

I like this from the Washington Examiner, more specific, and with numbers!