ACK!

Just heard on the radio - "Muffin tops look good in bakeries, not on girls!" 'nuff said.. no pictures necessary on this one...

A great appliance for the kitchen

I love my rice cooker! Unfortunately, you cannot buy short grain rice here very easily - all the rice is long grain - you might have one brand of medium grain rice. And its poor quality. I've taken to buying my rice in the Asian food aisle, the Nikishi brand of rice. Its cleaner than the cheap brand (no brown spots etc) and is less dusty with bran when I rinse it. Its just whiter and less broken grains. Its also more expensive. $10.98 for 5 pounds of rice, when I could pay $2.50 for 5 pounds of medium grain lousy rice. I guess appearance matters. The Nikishi rice also seems to taste better. Not sure if this is just in my head or not.

I use my rice cooker almost every day, and wish I had bought one years ago, instead of making rice in a pan and fluffing with a fork. The rice turns out perfect each time, no undercooked rice for me anymore.

Nasturtiums and others..

My nasturtiums are coming up gangbusters! I'm so jazzed! and the flowers that I've planted at the church are coming up so well! I planted a 61 foot by 3 foot area, in one spot and a 25 foot by 3 foot area in another spot and they are just taking off! This is the type of gardening that I've been dreaming of. This is the type of gardening that I'd like to do at my house, but never have had the materials/space to do in raised beds. Maybe this fall I will do one under the oak tree in the front, a shade garden. The leach field from the washing machine is sinking, and the pipe from that is showing in the yard. So I will get some rock from Second Nature, and build up a garden area, and put in a nice garden, and make my front yard look nice! And maybe hubby won't complain about mowing around it for a change :D

Government taking over and life

It sure seems that is the order of the day - Government taking over companies. Taking over companies that take bailout money, and/or TARP money, AND companies that haven't even thought of asking for bailout money! What business is it of Congress, or the governments, what goes on in the boardrooms of businesses? And that retroactive tax, and pulling the bonuses of the AIG executives. It's part of their salary. Talk about heavyhanded overbearing cockamamie schemes. AND the people that returned the bonuses will still have to pay taxes on the amount of their bonus, albeit less the confiscatory 90% rate that the boneheads up in congress/senate were deciding on.

What is it that government does SO WELL that we will allow the government to take over our businesses and everything else? Are we a nation of cowards now? We quaver and quake in our boots while the government runs everything, and decides everything - how much we can make in our jobs, who's going to run the company, what businesses should even be in business? This is the word for the day >> pusillanimousness <<

Many people in this country are living it daily. People expecting the government to serve them, to make their life better, easier. To give them what's coming to them, when those eeeeeeeeeeevil "rich people" who "really don't earn all that money" are somehow taking from them, or causing them to be shot down in life.

Somehow people have gotten the idea that having equal rights means equal outcomes. NOT SO! Everyone has the chance to rise, and everyone has the chance to fail in life. It's what you make of your opportunities. And no whining! If you fail to take advantage of your opportunities, and then later on have to pay the consequences of it, its no one else's fault BUT YOUR OWN. Look at Thomas Sowell. He's a writer, an economist who graduated Harvard. Did he start off with a silver spoon in his mouth? No. He was an orphan in Harlem. But he didn't sit around whining that life was unfair. He worked, and he worked hard.

So if you are sitting around on your rear end, complaining life isn't fair, and you're behind the ball, whose fault is that? Pick up a mirror.

Why he got voted in...

Maybe this explains why Obama got voted in.. at least in a good part!

Thomas Paine on the stimulus package

Here's what Thomas Paine would say if he was alive today, on this porkulus.. um.. I mean STIMULUS package!



Enjoy!

A video for you to enjoy

I don't have much more to say beyond "enjoy"..and I completely agree with this:



I'm wondering how much postage and envelopes would cost to mail a teabag to each member of congress/senate? I'm thinking it would be worth the cost. EDITED TO ADD - ONLY SEND THE LABEL WITH THE STRING!!! They are throwing away the teabag, because they do not know *what* is contained in the bag!! so get those bags out, and snip those teabags loose, and send them the labels with the strings attached! With a personal note of "I'm fed up with your overspending ways, and your lies!" Even though I may not live in their district/state, they still should know how the country is feeling about them, living in that glass city of theirs. Perhaps you, too, should get a slew of envelopes, and tea labels & strings (think CHEAP teabags!) and mail them off to each member, and put a personal note in there showing them that you are fed up, and mail it off. Maybe they will get a clue.

While we weren't looking

The government is here to help you - yesterday, they are going to pump about a trillion dollars into our system - they are borrowing money from ourselves, to PAY ourselves, to pay for things that they say we need to fund. Nice sleight of hand, isn't it? Time to crank up those printing presses! Let's roll out more money! We printed a trillion dollars yesterday, to pay for this fiasco. A billion dollars is about the size of your car, stacked up. I am going to the Houston Tea Party Wednesday, April 15th 2009, with my sign.. I just have not figured out yet what to put on it. Any ideas? Please leave a comment if you have a great idea. OR better yet - find a tea party by you, and go to it! bring your own sign! Call your senator and congressman, and complain about the money they are spending and creating out of nothing. Remember Germany before world war 2 - a wheelbarrow full of money for a loaf of bread, bought at lunchtime, because by the time one was off at the end of the day, the price would have gone up. People were paid daily, if not twice a day, because the money was going up at such a high pace. The Carter years were mild, compared to what will be coming with this money printing fling going on now, and spending money that they do not have.

Its official -

Congress is full of idiots. They allow the bonuses to be given, Dodd even puts in the date that they are OK prior to (Feb 11,2009) and they knew about this before they gave the bonuses, and they are "up in arms" about these AIG executives getting bonuses? Don't these people read the legislation that they sign? And NOW they've voted to TAX the money back, 328 to 93 against, 85 republicans voting for. This sets a really bad precedent. Seems to me, they are using it as a punitive punishment for something that *congress* has done, instead of the people receiving the retention bonuses. Who's to say that congress isn't going to do this to other companies and peoples now that the precedent has been set? Law in this country no longer goes by the Constitution, it goes by precedent.

Race in Houston Bayou City

We went up to Houston this past weekend and hubby met up with some of his running forum buddies, and they ran the 10k that was going on - it was a costume/caterpillar/just regular race. Daughter will be known as foxtail girl from now on lol. She pinned a foxtail to the seat of her shorts and ran with that. She ended up meeting one of hubby's forum friends about mile 5, and they were walking/jogging together and talking with another one of his forum friends, when hubby came up (he had already finished the 10k) and talk about a small world! here are a couple of pictures.

Barney Frank.. goes crazy

So this is kind of old (from January 11th 2009) but I just heard about this today and got a laugh out of his behavior. WHY do they keep electing this moron?

On January 11, 2007, Representative Barney Frank was sitting in for the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

Republicans were trying to seize on the disclosure that American Samoa was exempted from a minimum wage bill that passed the House a day earlier -- which some suspected would benefit Starkist, a company located in the San Francisco district of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The House had moved on to stem-cell research by yesterday, but Representative Patrick McHenry , a North Carolina Republican, rose to ask about the minimum wage bill.

"FRANK: Yes, the gentleman may state the inquiry.

McHENRY: So the chair is saying that I may not offer an amendment exempting American Samoa --

FRANK: The gentleman will suspend! The gentleman is making a speech and will suspend. The chair is not saying anything --

McHENRY: If the chair will let me finish my question.

FRANK: (pounding gavel) The gentleman will suspend. The chair has answered the gentleman's question. The gentlemen will state the point of order.

McHENRY: How many times --

FRANK: No. No. The gentleman -- (pounding gavel) the gentleman -- ''how many times'' could not conceivably be a point of order.

McHENRY: If the chair will not answer my question --

FRANK: The gentleman will not interrupt. (pounding gavel)

McHENRY: Is exempted from this legislation.

FRANK: (pounding gavel) The gentleman will not -- well, the chair is presiding, will not make speeches in the guise of a parliament inquiry. (pounding gavel) The gentlemen will suspend. The gentlemen --

McHENRY: Point of order.

FRANK: The gentlemen from Texas will suspend. (pounding gavel)"

Teacher doesnt like his politics

It appears that the teacher, Professor Paula Anderson, does not like the politics of the student John Wahlberg and his two classmates. They gave an oral presentation on why students and teachers should be able to conceal carry weapons on campus, and she reported him to the police. He didn't threaten, he had no guns, he only gave a report. The story can be found here.

I find this quite distasteful. Sure, you can disagree with a person's views. Dislike them, argue with them, disagree with them. But calling the police on them because you don't agree with them? Or because "you feel uncomfortable". That's not the purpose of police, and it's pulling them off more important duties that they should be doing. Get a grip, people. Its not the licensed concealed carry people you need to worry about. Its the criminals that you should be worried about.