Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Help kids learn to work
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Monon Trail Update:
Walked Downtown to Broad Ripple and 96th Street to 126th Street recently and added pictures to Monon Trail slide show and the Monon Murals post.
Also got these pictures of a Great Blue Heron, Dragonfly and a chipmunk burrow [right on the trail]. |
Saturday, May 30, 2009
We Did It!!!
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Slim Pickings in Media Town:
by Glenn Littrell
It must be a slow news week for as few as 80 deaths in Mexico to throw the world [i.e.. the news world] into such a panic. Sure 80 deaths and a few hundred illnesses are nothing to be sneezed at [whoops, I’m sorry], but when you consider the big picture:
“In annual influenza epidemics 5-15% of the population are affected with upper respiratory tract infections. Hospitalization and deaths mainly occur in high-risk groups (elderly, chronically ill). Although difficult to assess, these annual epidemics are thought to result in between three and five million cases of severe illness and between 250 000 and 500 000 deaths every year around the world. Most deaths currently associated with influenza in industrialized countries occur among the elderly over 65 years of age.” source
What are there, about 200 countries in the world? That works out to about at least a thousand deaths per country per year, or up to as many as 2500 per country per year. Or 90 to 200 a month. What’s happening in Mexico hardly dwarfs those numbers. The annual figure for America I believe is 50,000 deaths a year. So how is it we’re so panicked about the numbers coming out of Mexico?
Must be a slow news week.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Obama’s Tax Plan / Conservative Complaints:
Much Ado About Little.
SOAKING THE RICH (REDUX).... Hilzoy had a great overnight item on the odd conservative complaints about President Obama's proposal to raise the top marginal tax rate to 39.6% -- where it was under Clinton, and where it was intended to be in 2011 based on George W. Bush's plan. Hilzoy compared a 39.6% against other major capitalist democracies, and just as importantly, against other modern U.S. presidents.
Hilzoy concluded, "All in all, it seems as though we've been suffering through an awful lot of socialism and class warfare all over the world, much of it at the hands of people conservatives claim to admire. If a top marginal rate of 39.6% is enough to make society's producers and creators go on strike, then Galt's Gulch must be getting pretty crowded."
Quite right. But I also thought it would be helpful to add a visual element to this.
John Cole posted this graph a few days ago. See that column on the far-right edge? That's where Obama proposes the marginal top-rate should be.
It's also the rate conservatives believe is so outrageous, that they're accusing the president of "socialism" and talking openly about the "Going Galt" scenario in which wealthy and industrious Americans would deliberately make less money to spite their country.
It's all quite silly, but the graph adds some helpful context to drive the point home.
Obama is proposing a top rate lower than Reagan's first term, lower than Nixon's, lower than Eisenhower's, and lower than FDR's when he pulled us out of the Great Depression.
So, really, try not to hyperventilate.
TAX CUTS
WASHINGTON — As President Obama vowed during his campaign and again after the elections, the proposed budget would extend the Bush tax cuts for most households with taxable incomes below $250,000 but allow them to expire at the end of 2010 for families with incomes above that level.
Monday, February 2, 2009
From George Washington to Obama
I had seen this a few years ago before Bush and Obama. Its pretty neat. If the video is not playing click the Play [arrow] button.
courtesy of Mary C. Littrell-Cook
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Is he nuts!!!
I saw this on I-465[north side] a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t believe it. The top of this thing wouldn’t even come up to my door windows
If this guy rear ended anyone at any speed he’s so low to the ground he would submarine under anyone's bumper.
This is probably the only car in America that would loose in a collision with a mini-cooper.
I figure it some kind of home-made car kit. It might be legal but he’s nuts to take it on the highway.