Someone has created a poster that lays out the US Government’s discretionary spending in a graphical and easy-to-understand format. Visit http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/9410862/ and click on the image to get a blown-up view. You can download and print it, or the artist is offering large prints for sale.
Rolling Stone has a long article called "God’s Senator" that is likely to scare the bejesus out of you if you’re scared of fundamentalist Christian Senators from Kansas who have aligned themselves with powerful forces like Opus Dei and something called the Fellowship. If half the stuff in this article is true it makes "The Da Vinci Code" seem downright realistic by comparison.
The article is a feature on Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas who has been ordained as the presidential front runner by the fundamentalist Christian movement. Normally I’d write the guy off as a quack, but the article also explores his leadership positions in groups like the Fellowship. Here’s how the article describes the fellowship:
Seventy years ago, an evangelist named Abraham Vereide
founded a network of "God-led" cells comprising senators and
generals, corporate executives and preachers. Vereide believed that
the cells — God’s chosen, appointed to power — could construct a
Kingdom of God on earth with Washington as its capital. They would
do so "behind the scenes," lest they be accused of pride or a
hunger for power, and "beyond the din of vox populi," which is to
say, outside the bounds of democracy. To insiders, the cells were
known as the Family, or the Fellowship. To most outsiders, they
were not known at all.
The Senator also converted to Catholocism through Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic group that could probably be described using many of the same adjectives as those used to describe The Fellowship. Then there’s the "Values Action Team" which the article describes this way:
Every Tuesday, before his evening meeting with his prayer
brothers, Brownback chairs another small cell — one explicitly
dedicated to altering public policy. It is called the Values Action
Team, and it is composed of representatives from leading
organizations on the religious right. James Dobson’s Focus on the
Family sends an emissary, as does the Family Research Council, the
Eagle Forum, the Christian Coalition, the Traditional Values
Coalition, Concerned Women for America and many more. Like the
Fellowship prayer cell, everything that is said is strictly off the
record, and even the groups themselves are forbidden from
discussing the proceedings. It’s a little "cloak-and-dagger," says
a Brownback press secretary. The VAT is a war council, and the
enemy, says one participant, is "secularism."The VAT coordinates the efforts of fundamentalist pressure
groups, unifying their message and arming congressional staffers
with the data and language they need to pass legislation. Working
almost entirely in secret, the group has directed the fights
against gay marriage and for school vouchers, against hate-crime
legislation and for "abstinence only" education. The VAT helped win
passage of Brownback’s broadcast decency bill and made the
president’s tax cuts a top priority. When it comes to "impacting
policy," says Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, "day to
day, the VAT is instrumental."
This guy is a player and he’s tapped into some powerful and monied networks and that makes the author’s analysis that "Brownback seeks something far more radical: not
faith-based politics but faith in place of politics" very frightening indeed if it’s true.
There’s a rumor afoot that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer might go web-only, or in other words cease putting out a print version. I think this would be the first case of a newspaper with more than six subscribers going web-only. That noise you hear is trees singing with joy.
Citibank recently revealed that thousands of customers’ PIN numbers had been obtained by scam artists and that it had to freeze PIN-based transactions for customers in Canada, Russia and the UK and then reissue cards to those customers. They also apparently didn’t inform their customers about what was going on. And now it looks like they aren’t the only bank dealing with what one expert calls "the worst hack ever." Finally, if you used your debit/check card at Sam’s Club or OfficeMax you might want to check with your card company since it looks like the leak might have occured there.
An interesting story from CNN’s AC360 blog about 11 mothers in Virginia who selected sperm from the same man when they went in for artificial insemination. From the story:
Well, while reporting this story, we looked at a case in Virginia where
one man’s genetic profile has proven especially popular. He is said to
be of German descent, tall and athletic, and is responsible for
"fathering" as many as 20 children through 11 different women.He
chooses to remain anonymous, but the mothers have established an
incredible connection to each other through a Web site called
DonorSiblingRegistry.com. The site allows mothers who conceive children
with donated sperm to connect with one another.
My question is this: Why can a man be the father to children by any number of women he wants, but he is not allowed to marry more than one at a time? Not that I’m arguing for polygamy (I’ve often said it is way too hard making marriage work with one woman to even consider a second) but isn’t it somewhat strange that a man can sire children with any number of women he wants, and for that matter that a woman can have children by any number of men she wants?
I should also point out that I’m not arguing for laws against sex out of wedlock, but I am questioning why we deal with some moral issues with laws and not others. There are obvious cases where moral and legal issues overlap: murder, rape, assault, etc. But when everyone involved are consenting adults who are not harming or adversely affecting others why is the government inserting itself into the equation with laws?
According to this article Craigslist sites are generating 3 billion page views every month and running more classified ads than all US newspapers combined. According to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster the biggest problem they have is keeping up:
"We struggle to keep up. Last year overall
growth was 200 per cent, both in terms of page views and listings – and
if it pools to 100 per cent, we would be happy with that."
I can think of a few newspaper people who would LOVE to have that problem.
Today was a good email day. My friend Rich emailed me this thought about the Girl Scouts:
In trying to figure out "just how outrageous" the cost of Girl Scout
Cookies might be, I decided to match the cost per ounce of Tagalogs
against the Lexus ES 330. Here is what I found:Tagalogs cost 50 cents an ounce.
The Lexus ES 330 weighs 4,540 lbs or 72,640 ounces.The Sticker price is : $32,300 or 44 cents an ounce
I would have to pay $36,320, or $4,020 more than sticker price for
the Lexus if the Girl Scouts sold it.Wow the all NEW 2007 Limited Girl Scout Lexus ES 330 — this is where
the Girl Scouts should do there fundraising…..1 Car = 10,377 boxes of tagalogs, less work, who knows?
Did I mention that Rich is one of the smartest people I know and taught me just about everything I know about marketing? He might have a future as a Girl Scout leader…I’d pay big bucks to see him in uniform.
My friend Dan emailed me this little item this morning. It’s a press release from the Gateway Grizzlies baseball team (Frontier League); for those of you who don’t feel like clicking through here are the pertinent details:
The Grizzlies and Krispy Kreme Doughnuts have teamed up to
create "Baseball’s Best Burger." The burger, which was introduced at
Gateway’s December 10th sale, consists of a thick and juicy burger
topped with sharp cheddar cheese and two slices of bacon. The burger is
then placed in between each side of a Krispy Kreme Original Glazed
doughnut.
When I replied to Dan’s email with "Now that’s nasty" he replied with this little tidbit:
actually i was thinking it might be downright tasty. the sugary sweet
glaze of a donut with the burning hot flesh of a bovine. like donuts.
like meat. like cheese. mix it all together, it’s gotta be good.
I couldn’t eat breakfast.
On its website the National Archives has made available high-resolution, downloadable images of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and The Declaration of Independence. Always important reading, but particularly these days.
Here’s a website that details all the illnesses suffered by the Presidents of the United States. A surprising number suffered gunshot wounds, and apparently our healthiest President was Jimmy Carter who only has severe hemorrhoids listed. George W. Bush also has hemorrhoids and his possible experimentation with cocaine is listed as well.
