09:50 – Barbara’s been gone 72 hours. So far, Colin and I are making do. Only four more days until she returns.
I called AmEP yesterday afternoon just to make sure that Katie was okay. She said she and her husband are fine, as is the business, but that much of Fort Collins and the surrounding area is a complete wreck. She was off Thursday and the business was closed Friday. She said it took her about two and half hours yesterday to drive the two or three miles from their house to the office. Almost all of the bridges are out, and the traffic was a bumper-to-bumper parking lot. But they’re still operating normally, taking orders, receiving shipments from their suppliers, and sending out shipments to their customers. Colin barked while were talking, and I told Katie that that was my Border Collie assistant. As it turns out, Katie also has a Border Collie. She got her when she was in college, and the BC is now 13 years old.
I told Katie that our next science kit would probably be earth science, and that I wanted to include rock and mineral specimens. AmEP has dozens of different rock/mineral kits in their catalog, but as I told Katie I fear single-sourcing anything. I’d hate to have a standard kit that requires a product that the vendor might discontinue without notice. She said that their rock/mineral kits are an “evergreen” product for them. They sell them in large numbers and have been doing so for years. They build the kits themselves rather than importing them from China or wherever. They actually employ a geologist and they own the quarries where they get their rock specimens. Katie said they’d be happy to do a custom kit for me, or if I preferred they’d sell me the stuff in bulk. So, for example, I could order 50 pounds each or whatever of 1″ chunks of 25 different rocks and minerals and build the kits ourselves.
Despite Obummer and all the other global warming crazies, the USA continues to work hard at home and is now up to producing almost eight million barrels of crude oil per day:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-11/fracking-pushes-u-s-crude-output-to-highest-level-since-1989.html
““It’s amazing,” said Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates LLC, a Houston-based consulting firm, who predicted last month that the U.S. would be pumping 7.75 million barrels a day by the end of the year. “The state of Texas is now producing more oil than the country of Iran.””
I believe that exploitation of our natural resource here in the USA is the only thing holding our economy together. If Obummer and his crazy friends succeed in shutting down fracking, the economy will crash like a house of cards.
Meanwhile, the Feddies are spending $4 for every $3 that they take in even though the amount of taxes received is at a record level:
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/2472542000000-record-taxation-through-august-deficit-still-755b
And the expenditures for Obamacare are getting ready to spin out of control with all the new federal agencies and subsidies. I am in favor of a national catastrophic health care plan funded by people’s pay checks but this methodology is a freaking nightmare.
“If Obummer and his crazy friends succeed in shutting down fracking, the economy will crash like a house of cards.”
We will see who has more weight; him and his crazy cronies or the industry, because they WILL try to shut it down, and also do as much other damage as they can to the economy. Their goal is exactly that: crash the economy like a house of cards. ObummerCare is a big step in that direction. As are the coming tax increases.
I don’t buy that Obama has evil intentions. The results of his policies are and will continue to be evil, no doubt, but I’d bet he thinks of himself as a good guy, out to protect poor people, the environment, and so on, and to punish Greedy Capitalists.
The problem is that Obama and his partisans aren’t very bright, and are apparently completely unaware of the Law of Unforeseen Consquences, even when it smacks them in the face. Of course, the vast majority of Obama’s opponents aren’t very bright, either, and are also unaware of that law.
Over and over, we’ve seen that when government interferes with the free market it makes things worse, not better. And government inevitably grows or dies. That’s the main reason I’m an anarchist. The “small government” that many seem to wish for so devoutly is merely one step on the continuum to massive government.
BTW, my wife told me that the news shows reported that there were 13 people killed in the Navy shipyards yesterday. I told her the crazy person killed 12 and then himself. She refused to believe that the newsies would report that way until a later newsie mentioned that there was 12+1 deaths. Very few people understand how the newsies are slanting the news nowadays.
And the small business owners are complaining to Congress that they are having to cut all full time employees hours below 30 to avoid paying the health insurance fines or buy health insurance at $500/month/employee that they cannot afford:
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/322583-franchise-owners-plead-for-relief-on-obamacare-#ixzz2fAYWNCHA
There should be zero correlation between your job and your health care or insurance.
“There should be zero correlation between your job and your health care or insurance.”
Agreed. But they have now made that relationship explicit and mandatory. Cui bono?
I respectfully disagree with Bob on Obama’s intentions; I don’t believe he’s a dummy librul just trying to do what he thinks is the right thing and then inevitably screwing up. I think he’s a very slick and smart political operative who’s been groomed for a long time to do this gig, and he got his early training from hardcore communists, his mother being one, and whichever guy was his father being the other. Then the years with the Alinsky-type organizing in Chicago with the Machine out there. Twenty years sitting in Reverend Wright’s church assimilating two decades of racial hatred and bigotry and black liberation “theology.” A biography since then with huge missing gaps that won’t be filled until after we’re all long dead, most likely.
I think there was a de facto coup d’etat in 2008 and that for unknown reasons, the actual rulers and owners of this country have let it happen. As SteveF pointed out recently, and I’m loosely paraphrasing here; how would things look if a hypothetical Bolshevik cadre came to power in a large country and then began implementing certain policies and legislation throughout? What has been going on here since 2008?
This is what happens when one Supreme Court douche bag deciders just because you were born here, you’re a citizen:
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2013/09/16/undocumented-la-county-parents-projected-to-receive-650m-in-welfare-benefits/
Very nice. I am thinking maybe I should renounce my American citizenship, move to Mexico or central America for a year or two to establish residency, etc., and then sneak back across the border as an illegal. I might make out better than I am now and suck on the government as long as it lasts. Become a new citizen and get another house loan, a business loan and vehicles. Plus free education for the kids and grandkids.
[snip] one Supreme Court douche bag deciders just because you were born here, you’re a citizen [snip]
The cranky libertarian in me insists that I mention that SCOTUS didn’t decide that, the 14th Amendment did. To wit, from Section 1: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. “
Mr. pcb_duffer, I believe the framers would have disallowed citizenship to children of illegals, who are basically federal criminals. Thats the crux and why Brennan was a prick to add a footnote to allow them. He should have disallowed that.
I don’t think the ideal of “illegals” existed when the Constitution was written. At that point there was a whole continent open to immigration.
Rick in Portland
I propose all illegals in the US be shipped to Portland for entry into the welfare system.
1. To-may-toe, to-mah-toe.
2. Evil is as evil does.
3. To apply my usual touchstone, suppose Obama were evil and actively working to destroy everything that was good about the US. What would he be doing differently?
Oh, sure, but I don’t care. The human capacity for rationalization and self-delusion is infinite, to a first approximation.
Somewhat related, I very much like the movie Princess Mononoke. One of the best things is that there are several people and groups, often coming into conflict because of differing goals. Miyazaki did a fantastic job of not making any of them out to be outright villains or doing bad things just for the sake of doing evil. No, they all had their personal demons to overcome (literally, in one case), but they weren’t opposing others just for the hell of it. If you like, or at least can tolerate, anime, I highly recommend it.
So, for example, I could order 50 pounds each or whatever of 1″ chunks of 25 different rocks and minerals and build the kits ourselves.
Shipped, no doubt, in those USPS whatever-fits-weight-doesn’t-matter boxes.
As Rick says, the circumstances and ideas of the Founders are different than those we are faced with today. But there’s a process spelled out for amending the Constitution, so if we want to prohibit ‘anchor babies’ we should follow that process. But I object strongly to willy-nilly just ignoring parts of the Constitution that we find inconvenient (10th Amendment, anyone?), or Justice Douglas’ finding “emanations of the penumbra” (what was he smoking that day?) or David Duke pretending that the 1st Amendment doesn’t count for Jews. I also agree with the notion that if your presence in this country is in contravention of our laws, you ought to be deported, post-haste.
I’ll just delete my comment before even posting it and say: What SteveF says.
Sure, Obama and his administration have good intentions. Fact is, what they are doing with those good intentions is all wrong. When they fail, they will accept no blame, because it will not have been (cannot have been) their fault.