This video is so appropriate on so many levels…the world economy is real, and it’s here to stay. It’s not just day laborers who are affected and the trend.

HT: Pete

Well, Ohio has Big Butter Jesus and Texas has the hemisphere’s second largest cross. What’s Indiana got? Apparently something smaller than the second largest cross and less creative than Big Butter Jesus, a big concrete cross, but not big enough to unseat Texas. Why bother to build a big-ass cross when it’s not even close to making a world, nay, hemisphere record? A waste of money and what an eyesore!

Wonder how many meals for the hungry and clothes for the cold that cross represents? Just food for thought…


HT: Ray

That’s it, I’m not talking about her anymore, and neither should Obama. I could spend 1,000 words describing why, but conveniently, a comic strip artist, RJ Matson, has beaten me to it and represented the situation in a visual form much more effectively:

Attribution: RJ Matson

That doesn’t scratch your itch? Then how about this well reasoned piece by The Daily Kos that works through the math of pledged delegates and super delegates. The punch line is Obama only needs 43 more delegates to be able to deny Clinton the nomination, which is as good as winning it. I’m not doing the article justice, it was really well written and is a very logical approach. Check it out.

OK, since the ‘net these days is a multi-sensory experience, how about some video? Jon Stewart does his normally thorough job of using humor to call out the asinine behavior of public figures. He shows Obama now start to use the “ignore Hillary strategy” and calls him out on it. He shows Hillary “trusting the voters” before primary season, and now, not so much. It’s hilarious and well worth a view. BTW, The Daily Show gets full marks for making its content available online.

You’ve got to be kidding, right? Which law maker would take time from their busy day and the real problems of the country to propose a bill to outlaw these harmless (and tasteless) decorations?

Republican Sen. Cary Baker, a gun shop owner from Eustis, Florida, called the adornments offensive and proposed the ban. Motorists would be fined $60 for displaying the novelty items, which are known by brand names like “Truck Nutz” and resemble the south end of a bull moving north.

Before the great road trip of fall, 2006, my former leadership team at Sun made sure I was fully prepared and the Truck Nutz were the center piece of the day. Anywhoo, I guess that let’s the Florida citizens know where their law makers are spending their time…Perhaps banning such items will help curtail politician’s desire for extra-curricular activities.

Well, the power surge of 2008 has resulted in a full-scale appliance massacre at our house. Apparently, the combination of high winds and ocean air resulted in the corrosion of the neutral wire on the feed to our house. That was coupled with a break in the insulation of the positive and when the wind blew one time too many, the positive and neutral made contact and surged 240VAC through one leg of the circuit frying appliances attached to that leg.

The refrigerator, oven, microwave, and dryer are all dead. A visit from the local Sears appliance guy yielded a $1,500 part order (for just the fridge and dryer) and a scheduled return visit when the parts arrive. To add insult to injury, all of the appliances but the dryer are “built-in” – which will necessitate removing them to service them. Thus a separate diagnosis will happen for the oven/microwave group since the guy couldn’t get access to the problem areas.

The initial call to PG&E yielded an unacceptable response of “this is your problem” – that is, until we heard from our neighbors who share the same supply pole/line combo and had the exact same problem (they lost a bunch of video/audio equipment along with a couple of appliances and have some resulting issue in their junction/breaker box.)

Since we’re now looking at a week or so, I made the trip to buy a small interim fridge at least. We’ll see how this all plays out, but not a fun time so far…