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Think this deserves your immediate attention?

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Some reading while waiting to see what happens next

Today's required reading:

The Federalist Papers, by James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton. Download from Project Gutenberg. A series of essays on what the Constitution is all about. Whatever it is, it's not the way PrezBo or Nancy Pelosi see it.

Democracy In America, by Alexis DeTocqueville. Download Volume 1 and Volume 2 from Project Gutenberg.

It Can't Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis. Download from ? -- h'mm, good luck free downloads from the United States, imagine that. But try the Australian Gutenberg site and Books @ Adelaide, another Aussie site. Well worth the search, though. It's a fictional work, from the 1930s, about the United States going totalitarian. Total fiction, but based on a true story. And it happened a year from now.

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Obamalosi Health Scare passes, 219-212.

Obamalosi Health Scare passes, 219-212. Years from now, folks will ask, "Didn't we used to be a free and open Republic?"
-E

Important vote going on, and we're interested in ...

OK. As I write this, the idjits in Congress are wrangling over the Health Care Reform vote. As I write this.

I'm monitoring the progress of the vote through a Twitter feed; think #hcr here.

It's only the most pivotal Congressional action since ... since ... well, in an awful long time. A government takeover of a gigantic chunk of our economy? An action that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said would "kick open the door" -- and she's for it?

It's important stuff.

But what are the top trending topics in Twitter right now?

Here's the list, at 6:28 p.m. EDT:

• 10monthsjbargentina Argentinawithjonas
• Grevis Vasquez
• Alcee Hastings
• Michigan State-Maryland
• Wisconsin 87-69
• Missouri 68-59
• Phil Gingrey
• Gene Simmons Family Jewels
• #KorieLucious
• Laurence Olivier Awards

I think we've had it. We're screwed, blued, and tattooed. And folks don't give a rip.

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What do baby boomers think about today?

We'll let Peter Yarrow tell you:

If the name doesn't ring a bell, kiddies, think Peter, Paul, and Mary -- the great folk trio from the 1960s. If you're still lost, think "Puff The Magic Dragon." Got it?

And now it's come to this ...

ObamaCare to cut the deficit?

ObamaCare to cut the deficit? You're kidding. Those numbers trotted out by the Democrats are way fuzzier than a boll weevil.
-E

Dennis Kucinich sounds like a

Dennis Kucinich sounds like a cheap date - his yea vote on ObamaCare only cost a plane ride on Air Force One.
-E

For the 2010 Census -

For the 2010 Census - Race: Alien. Gee, this is easy ...
-E

Every 10 years I get to mess with the gummint

My 2010 Census form came in today.

OK, so why do I have this terrible urge to stir the puddin'?

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Dare I ask: What's in the shovel?

According to the White House's own site, recovery.gov, the federal stimulus plan "created or saved" 594,754.3 jobs since its inception.

Right from the jump I should mention this: The numbers are immediately suspect. This is the same Web site that gave employment figures for nonexistent Congressional districts, remember?

Anyway, a full two thirds of these so-called "shovel-ready jobs" (the government's term, not mine) were in what is probably the most heavily-unionized department in the public sector, the Department of Education. Yes, teachers.

Understand, as inefficient and ineffective our government-run education system is, I can't talk bad about teachers. I've had some wonderful ones when I was a kid, even though it was so long ago. And among those I would consider my dearest friends today, there is a disproportionate number of ... teachers ... and law enforcement folks. In my close-knit circle of friends, and by this I mean folks I'd have no problem trusting with my life, I could name off at least a half-dozen teachers. So forget that broad brush.

But still ... shovel-ready? Teachers?

I tell you, it's too good to pass up. Fill in your own joke here.

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Pelosi on health bill: Pass first, understand later

Here's the latest from Nancy Pelosi, on the health care bill:

"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy."

That's what she told the National Association of Counties earlier this week. Here's the press release:

I have a really dumb suggestion. Why don't the House and Senate try to learn what's in the bill first, before voting for it? Or am I just a troublemaker for suggesting such a radical departure from their usual M.O?

Which is another reason to oppose it. Not only is it destructive to our health care system, not only is it tantamount to a government takeover, but it's a blind bet.

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Poetic justice with the Toyota Kamikaze

Interesting how the hybrid Toyota Prius (which should be renamed The
Kamikaze) seems to be the car that's going bad and turning on the driver.

And the Prius is a favorite vehicle for many of those unsufferable
greener-than-thou types. I'm talking about the folks who march with PETA
and protest wolf hunting, then head over to McDonalds for a cheeseburger.

Now, is that poetic justice, or what?

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The news choice of jailhouses everywhere?

I saw this article from the Poynter Institute, an organization for journalists. The upshot is that in the Aspen, Colorado jail, the only newspaper allowed is USA Today.

H'mmm ... maybe Gannett, which publishes that alleged newspaper, can use this as an endorsement? Advertising folks should get busy on this one.

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Census note arrives, in six languages

Got a note from the Census Bureau today, a one-page message to let me
know the forms will arrive in about a week.

The letter ends with this: "Go to 2010census.gov for help completing
your 2010 Census form when it arrives."

What's interesting is that the tag line is written in six languages. I'm
curious how the Bureau (especially because Phoenix is the return address
on this note) determines which languages to include here.

There's English on this note. Spanish. Vietnamese, I think. And three
that I find totally unreadable because they don't use characters you
usually find on a typewriter.

But not French. So if I told them I'm French Canadian, am I exempt from
filling out my census?

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Speaking your piece: Blogging whys and hows

[First of a short series on public discourse]

They used to say about newspaper publishers that you never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel and paper by the ton.

But that was a couple of decades ago. Now the guy who buys all this ink and paper has no real credibility. He's in the tank. Newspapers are dying. Network TV news is dying.

But the need for a free, independent press remains, and probably now more than ever. This brouhaha over the ObamaLosi health care plan is instructive. If it wasn't for public discourse via the press and Internet, how would you know some senators -- maybe even yours -- sold their votes for a bit of pork or a few judges? How else would you know what is in that health care plan, and how much it would cost to future generations? How would you know about that gigantic proctoscope coming your way, unless someone tells you about it?

I've written plenty about the stuff going on in Washington, and I've hardly scratched the surface. But I'm not unique. Plenty of bloggers do the same thing, and some do it as well, or better, than me. But that's OK too.

More people get their news via the Internet these days. And with today's tools (Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook) it's easier than ever to share news. Shoot, even with my modest 540 Twitter followers, you can see the potential. Assuming my average Twitter follower has 2,500 unique followers of their own (and I'm clearly shooting wild with the numbers here), you can see how word of something can get out on the Internet:

• First generation, my followers: 540.
• Second generation, my follower's followers: 1,350,000.
• Third generation, my followers' followers' followers: Forget it. Smoke is pouring out of my calculator.
• All of this takes place within a few seconds.

OK, that's some real fuzzy math, but you get the idea. Now you know how a news story or video can go "viral."

Years ago, thinker Marshall McLuhan named the printing press as one of the great extensions of man, arguing that it made the common person into a reader. He later amended it with the copying machine; everyone's a publisher. Ol' Marshall's no longer around; if he'd lived to see blogging and Twitter, he'd say everyone now has a newspaper.

But you get the drift. The media is no longer top-down, i.e. a publisher and a gang of reporters telling you what's news. It's now bottom-up, with the common man setting news policy.

Now, that sea change is for better or worse. The Internet has a horrendous signal-to-noise ratio. For each solid, meaty piece of reportage there are about a million pieces of fluff about Britney Spears or Tiger Woods. Sometimes this bottom-up news policy does make me long for some good old-fashioned elitism.

Still with me? Cool.

Setting up a blog is easy. Just about anyone who can turn a computer on and point a mouse at the Web browser icon can do it.

I'm using Blogger, which is a platform owned by Google. What's beautiful about it is that it's free, it's easy, and initial setup takes almost no effort at all.

Before you do anything else, decide what you want to blog about. If you want to write a bunch of crap about how many beers you puked up, or who you hooked up with last night, do me a favor: Please ignore everything I say here. We've got plenty of the likes of you on the Internet, and you're probably looking at the wrong web site anyway.

But if you're interested in the world you live in, if you are able to string together a few coherent and independent thoughts, if you're not a Kool-Aid drinker, then let's talk about blogging.

• Go to blogger.com to set up.

• Give yourself a sign-in name and password. If you have a Google account (such as gmail), use that.

• Come up with a name for your blog. You will soon be known for that, so choose carefully.

• Pick a template. There are plenty, and some are butt-ugly. But pick one. Don't worry about all the cool widgets and things just yet; you're just writing now. Got it?

• Pull up NEW POST, then write a headline.

• Lock and load. Get your thoughts down.

• Read it over. If it looks like it's what you want to say, click on PUBLISH POST. See how easy that was?

• Don't worry that no one is reading it. Keep writing. If your stuff is good, the readers will come. Tell folks what you're doing. Put it on your Facebook page, or whatever social media you're using.

• Stick with it, and learn the nuances of blogging as you go. There's a whole new science about it. For now, though, just write.

• If you don't write worth a flip, just use your computer webcam and talk to your readers. Start a YouTube channel, save your videos and talking messages there, and post them to your blog. Just make sure you're, well, wearing something -- PLEASE? -- when you make your video.

That's the basic stuff.

OK, so why am I giving up all this information?

Because I can, and because we need more voices out there on the Internet. We need more, well, I said it. Independent thinkers. Folks who don't give a rip what the mainstream is saying. Folks who, like that guy in David Baldacci's Camel Club, "want the truth."

Something smelling funny in Washington, or in your state capital? Don't just sit around whining about it. Blog about it.

(Props to commentator Michael Berry of Houston for putting this idea in my head.)

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[In a future Column, I'll continue this thought ... I'll discuss ways of keeping up with all these Internet headlines. Think RSS here.]

Bucket List can get revealing: What have you done?

I got this by email from my brother Rick, and this is making the rounds among the family unit. It's revealing. Give it a shot, and have some fun!

Here are the rules of this Bucket List:

Hit forward and place an X by all the things you've done and remove the X from the ones you have not, and send it to your friends (including me), or post it to your blog.

This is for your Entire Life!

OK. Have you ever ...

(X) Shot a gun

(X) Gone on a blind date

(X) Skipped school

() Watched someone die

() Been to Canada

() Been to Alaska

() Been to Cuba

() Been to Europe

(X) Been to Las Vegas

(X) Been to Mexico

() Been to Florida

(X) Been on a plane

() Been on a Cruise Ship

() Served on a Jury

(X) Been lost

(X) Been on the opposite side of the country

(X) Gone to Washington, DC

(X) Swam in the Ocean

(Do I get bonus points for more than one ocean?)

(X) Cried yourself to sleep

(x) Played Cops and Robbers

(X) Played Cowboys and Indians

() Recently colored with crayons

(X) Sang Karaoke

(X) Paid for a meal with coins, only coins

(X) Made a prank phone call as a kid

(X) Laughed until some beverage came out of your nose

(X) Caught a snowflake on your tongue

(X) Danced in the rain

(X) Written a letter to Santa Claus

(X) Been kissed under the mistletoe

(X) Watched the sunrise with someone

(X) Blown bubbles

(X) Gone ice skating

(X) Gone skiing

(X) Camped out under the stars

(X) Seen something so beautiful that it took your breath away

(X) Are or have been married

() Have children

(Wrong plumbing. If I have, call the Weekly World News!)

(X) Have a pet

(X) Been skinny dipping outdoors

(X) Been fishing

(X) Been boating

(X) Been water skiing

(X) Been hiking

(X) Been camping in a trailer/RV

(X) Flown in a small 4-seater airplane

() Flown in a glider

() Been flying in a helicopter

() Been flying in a hot air balloon -

() Been bungee jumping -

(X) Gone to a drive-in movie

(X) Done something that should have killed you

(X) Done something that you will regret for the rest of your life

() Been to Africa

() Been to China

() Been to India

() Been to Korea

() Ever ride an elephant

() Ever ride a camel

(X) Ever eaten just cookies for dinner

(X) Ever been on T.V.

(X) Ever steal any traffic signs

(X) Ever been in a car accident

(X) Have a nickname? Wingnut, among others

There's more:

Favorite Drink: Sweet tea

How much do you love your job? Enough to keep doing it.

Is your car a 2 door or a 4 door? No doors

Favorite number? Google(.com!)

Favorite movie? Most recently seen again? Round Midnight

Favorite holiday? National Procrastination Week

Favorite dessert? Anything involving the use of chocolate.

Furthest place you will send this message? Worldwide, via blog

Who will respond to this the fastest: Whoever sees it first and has a civil service job.

SCORING: No rules here. Let your conscience be your guide. Too few checked off probably means you need to turn the computer off and get out more.

(Personal note: A few friends and I regularly get together, and one of the group pastimes is a game called Three Truths And A Lie. That's where you come up with four statements about yourself and have the rest of the group pick out the BS. Scoring is, well, it's like pants on a toll booth collector in that no one knows or really cares. The trick to winning Three Truths And A Lie is in the degree of separation between true and false statements; either all outlandish or none outlandish.)

So Jerry Brown wants to

So Jerry Brown wants to be Governor Moonbat, uhh, Moonbeam again in the People's Republic of California? Hmm ... nice fit.
-E

Doc recommends PrezBo 'moderate his

Doc recommends PrezBo 'moderate his alcohol intake' ... this was ignored by the mainstream media ... Hmm?
-E

Unemployment and Bunning's TS card: More than the money

Talk that the federal government may not afford paying out more unemployment benefits may leave me in a financial pickle, but more importantly it leaves me with one of those thorny moral dilemmas.

Sen. Jim Bunning (R, KY) is staging a one-man blockade to shut down any expansion of unemployment benefits. Later, Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) joined him on this, saying the federal government needs to figure out a way to pay for additional benefits first.

"Congress just passed the so-called pay-go legislation which is supposed to require that we find offsets or other savings if we are going to spend money," Kyl said. "So what's the first thing we do? We exempt this bill from it."

Bunning, the baseball Hall Of Famer, laid what older military veterans may call a "T.S. card" on a $10 billion Senate plan to extend unemployment benefits. (Those who didn't hear Bunning's actual comments will probably still get the drift without a lot of explanation.)

While the Senate bill stalls, there's the spectre that benefits may terminate this month for more than 1.1 million former workers. At least, that's what the Democrats are saying, and most of those cats in the halls of Congress are real good at dealing out the exaggerated numbers and scare tactics.

Meanwhile, I will find out fairly quickly what happens next. I get inside information on this kind of news in my mailbox every week. See, with the exception of whatever writing income I scratch out, I've been living on unemployment. And hating it.

While some folks can carve a whole lifestyle out of waiting for that gummint check, I'm not one of those. It goes against everything I believe, everything that's important to me. Plus, it doesn't mesh with my personal style. I'm an action type, and not having a regular job leaves me all jacked up and no place to go. In short, it turns me into Beelzebub.

To be honest, I'm not sure where this unemployment compensation comes from. Well, I kind of do. It's funny money, surgically removed from working people and business owners or, failing that, printed up as needed by the federal government.

OK, here's the moral dilemma. Those who know me through this space have probably figured by now that I'm not big on government assistance. Shoot, I'm not big on government anything. I'd rather have a battery acid enema than deal with all these civil service types. A friend suggested I might consider trying for food stamps. I politely told her no, and the politeness was only because she's such a dear friend. But I'm not hurting. I can do great things with beans, rice, and hamburger. Even with my most expensive grocery item (premium coffee) my food bill is practically zip.

But you see what's going on. I'm writing about these conservative/libertarian principles, and I try to live in a manner that's at least somewhat consistent with what I write. My views have not changed, and don't expect me to start pounding a share-the-wealth message any time soon. I don't roll that way.

See the dilemma here? While some may suggest I just get what I can, shut up, and hang my convictions, I'm just not that type of person.

Strategy time, from my personal notes: I'm still looking for work, but have widened my options. Part time would be wonderful; in fact that's the best scenario I can think of. It was less than two months ago that I started freelance writing in earnest, so I'm just scratching the surface there. Right now, as long as it's legal I don't really care what the part time job is; it's not like I'm going to be married to it or anything. I have three (or four, depending on how you count them) paid writing gigs going on right now, and already at this early stage they amount to half a paycheck. A part-time gig, paying about what I'm making now in unemployment, would be gravy.

Entrepreneurs and high-level economists are smart enough to know that you don't put all your eggs in one basket. But with this economy being what it is, that truth has filtered down to the average folks, those who punch a clock every day. The economy is so uncertain that if you're depending on just one income source for your daily bread, you're inviting trouble.

While some do quite nicely for themselves while waiting for that gummint cheese, I don't see how they do it.

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