One of the tools I really like is Stumble Upon. Tonight, they were down for maintenance and you can see their message. Stuff like this makes me smile…

Do you want to secure your trip through the Pearly Gates? Don’t want to leave anything to chance? Well, then, can I point you to a deal…

Reserve a Spot in Heaven has made a deal with the diety in charge and is now authorized to provide two packages to guarantee your spot: Essential Travel Kit available for only $12.79 and All-Access Travel Kit for a mere $15.95. Prices like this can’t last, reserve your spot in heaven now!

You have to admit that it’s a really good deal – no more tedious praying on knees, you get Sunday mornings back, and you can keep that 10% of your wages used by spiritual readers for their fancy rides and “private parties.” Heck, you could even use that money to do something like help the hungry have meals or to educate people. Getting to heaven has never been easier or cheaper.

And, if you know someone who really shouldn’t gain entry to paradise, there is a companion service: Reserve a Spot in Hell. It’s for that special someone you’d like to damn for eternity – easy, convenient, cheap, and guaranteed. There are similar packages available for a limited time.

Act now!

Before you read this entry, please read the Op Ed piece posted in the NY Times yesterday written by Thomas Friedman (thanks for the tip Dan…)

It would be difficult to overstate the stupidity of the proposal advanced by our sitting Senators and Presidential candidates. Friedman has the right of it, reducing the problem to a single sentence:

This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks.

The only thing Friedman missed is that more than a little cut stays, just look at Exxon’s earnings for this quarter, $10,890,000,000 dollars, that comes to $363M of profit per DAY. But let’s not get too far afield.

Sure folks are saying, but “we should get a gas tax vacation, why should we pay these high prices per gallon of fuel?” Well, what are you really going to get back if this asinine idea goes into effect? Let’s say you burn 10 gallons of gasoline per week. The Federal gas tax is $0.184/gallon. That means you’re going to get a whole $1.84/week back, not enough to buy a loaf of bread or gallon of milk. Over a month? $7.36. Over the 3 months of summer? $22.08. Don’t spend it all in one place.

Friedman hits the mark again when he says:

Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.

To amplify the point, ALL renewables, not just wind and solar, are suffering from this tax incentive mismanagement while the fossil industry (oil, gas, and coal) have, get this, INCREASED their subsidies and research funds. Energy security ===== national security. We have all the resources we need, inside our borders, to be energy self-sufficient within 20 years with existing technologies, if, we only had the vision and will to agree to get it done.

The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.

You said it brother.

The only merit I can see in the proposals on the table are windfall taxes on big oil profits. But I have reservations about that as well. My view is corporations and individuals should pay a consistent percentage tax on profits, be they large or small to a certain floor. The math at large is something like this: if our GDP is $14.1T, we should target 20% to reap $2.82T in revenue. Government expenses should be capped at $2T, the balance should be used to reduce our debt levels.

It is actions like this that will stabilize our currency, provide a platform for growth, create new industries, and make the world a little better place. At least one candidate isn’t going for this cheap pandering to voters…

Being surrounded by writers on all sides in my personal and professional worlds, I’m ever sensitive to titles of books, articles, blog posts, etc. I’ve run across some bad ones and thought I’d reduce them ala David Letterman to a Top Ten list. So, here it goes…

10. – Unmentionable Cuisine – Year Published: 1979 – Author: Calvin W. Schwabe

9. – Let’s Make Some Undies – Year Published: 1954 – Author: Marion Hall

8. – How to Get Fat – Year Published: 1865 – Author: Edward Smith

7. – The Pleasures of the Torture Chamber – Year Published: 1930 – Author: John Swain

6. – Children are Wet Cement – Year Published: 1981 – Author: Ann Ortlund

5. – Scouts in Bondage – Year Published: 1930 – Author: Geoffrey Prout

4. – How to Cook Husbands – Year Published: 1899 – Author: Elizabeth Strong Worthington

3. – Reusing Old Graves – Year Published: 1998 – Author: D. Davies & A. Shaw

2. – Sex After Death – Year Published: 1983 – Author: D.E. Frey

And, drumroll please, the absolute worst title is…

1. – Preserving Dick – Year Published: 1867 – Author: Mary D. R. Boyd

Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it…Tip of the Hat to Stupid History by Leland Gregory for some of the raw material for this post.

Sound familiar? You might remember this old saw from your elementary school days. A common, though not creative, taunt intended to stir up trouble between parties instigated, usually, by a third party.

This latest tempest in a teapot is very likely brought to you courtesy of the Clinton campaign and is certainly facilitated by the media. Since when is someone else responsible or accountable for what another person says? The Reverend Jerimiah Wright’s comments aren’t news people, they’re taunts intended to “scare” voters away from Obama.

If the standard is now that people will be held accountable for anything their friends and acquaintances say or do, then we’re all in big trouble. Recognize this for what it is people, tall grade school. The bully is roaming the playground looking to stir up some action. If that’s all it was, that would be fine.

But, I think this is a now becoming a proxy for the race issue; using the words of an angry black man to stoke the fires of intolerance. The message is implied, it’s never clearly articulated, but it is “if you support Obama, you will be letting an angry black man set the agenda for the country, and that’s scary, you don’t want to do that do you?”

Aside from the obvious school bully angle, the racist play is the most insidious of all. Wake up! Think! Don’t fall for it!