Archive for May, 2006
Senate Pardons 12 Million Criminals
Well it has unfortunately happened. Huge, blanket Amnesty has been passed by the Senate. The only thing left standing in front of this insanity is the House's bill which somehow must be rectified with the Senate's before the law is created.
There are many bad provisions in this bill which is estimated to legalize 32 million immigrants and their families over the next 10 years. (The current US population is less than 300 million) One that deserves mentioning is the fact that illegals social security benefits are guaranteed. Why? Because the thing most often pointed out to prove this bill isn't amnesty is that the illegals have to pay a $2000 fine. Now forget about the fact that illegals may have paid as much as $15k to coyotees to get here and consider this: The average social security pay out is $919.40 per MONTH. Yeah.
Immigration Vote Today
The Senate will be casting their votes for the "comprehensive" immigration bill today. Most likely the large Amnesty bill will pass since the best chance for its opposition was the Cloture vote yesterday.
6000 A Lot Or A Little?
President Bush laid out his latest plan for immigration last night. Chief among the proposals: sending 6000 National Guard troops to the border in "support roles". Most people yawned. While some people are worked up about "militarizing the border", most view sending 2% of the Guard to do some office work for the Border Patrol as meer window dressing - and not even a good dressing at that.
Considering that there are 35,000 police officers in New York city - 6,000 people helping to secure thousands of miles of open border doesn't really inspire awe. Pres. Bush also gave lip service to many, many immigration ideas such as ID cards, walls, fences… enforcement. But the tone definitely came across as "X, Y, and Z are all great ideas… and we're going to do them… in the future… so lets go ahead and pass the amnesty -er- guest worker program today." Even the stop gap Guard deployment will likely take weeks if not months to occur, but the Senate is trying to push through amnesty by Memorial day.
Early Show - News?
Caught a glimpse of the CBS News Early Show today. The story? What happened on CSI Miami last night. And this wasn't a blurb - it had interviews with the actors and talked about the difficulties of the scenes and everything. What about news that's happening in the real world not just on TV?
For that they went to live coverage of the reading of the nominations for the Tony award. Enthralling. Does CBS News actually WONDER why their ratings are in the toilet? Are the series slipping enough that you have to "cover" how great the last episode was and how "even-better" the finale will be? It is really kinda sad and embarrassing for CBS.
Work A Four Letter Word?
Last Thursday Sen. Clinton spoke ay the annual U.S. Chamber of Commerce convention, where she criticized recent graduates for wanting everything right out of the gate.
"Kids, for whatever reason, think they're entitled to go right to the top with $50,000 or $75,000 jobs when they have not done anything to earn their way up…A lot of kids don't know what work is. They think work is a four-letter word." - Sen. Hillary Clinton
Basement DIY
The plumbing is done… well almost. The mascerating pump (behind the toliet) had a nice big crack in it from shipping. So while all the plumbing is connected, the bath can't be used until the pump is replaced. In the meantime, some of the drywall was hung in the bathroom.
Basement DIY
Well, there has been a lot of progress in the basement. We'll pics of it all up soon. Here are the before pics for the half bath going into the corner of the basement. A special back flush toliet is being used to remove the need to either raise the floor or bust out concrete - a requirement for a conventional toliet.
Tri 2 Update
Did a morning bike ride today. Nice day, but my Lucky Charms wore a little thin near the end. Guess I'm used to more food in my system before the long rides. The high winds also upped the difficulty today. Also my heart rate monitor kept fading out - may be time for a new battery.
- Bike 23.55 Miles - 1:48:46 (1036 Cals & ? BMP)
Record Tax Revenues
The IRS pulled in record income tax revenues in April. The amount was second only to the final tech boom before the bust in 2001. Now if we had record income tax revenues that would certainly imply record incomes. Record incomes would point towards -gasp- a good economy.
This might also be used as proof that cutting tax RATES can actually increase tax REVENUES. Which is really what the big government guys are all about. Of course such economic theories don't really jive with trying to drum up class warefare.