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Spring Cleaning My Blog

I made a promise a couple of weeks ago that I’d be making some changes here. For better or worse, I set out to do just that last night. I committed to working through Earth Hour at least, and ended up going to bed early this morning.

In lieu of turning out the lights for an hour last night, I decided to try to conserve energy in a different way. I set out to make my beloved readers have an easier time with my site by changing the theme and upgrading to WordPress 2.5 (post coming on that alone) to make things easier for myself. I think I’ve reduced my bandwidth footprint as well–eliminating a crap ton of useless images and junk.

Spring cleaning for my blog.

Here’s what I was able to do in a few hours: elimination of large header image, elimination of background images that I think caused issues on some browsers, and elimination of post separator images. These should not only improve load times, but also make things a little better visually.

Other visual changes were to increase the width and text size of the main content area, addition of a tag cloud, and enlarging and moving the subscription button to the header. Hopefully this will boost readership too, which is a bonus for me.

If I could just find a way to keep Hillary’s mug off of my site through the adsense in the sidebar without blocking all Newsmax ads, things would be much improved visually.

Let me know if you’re having any problems loading the site. I’m sure hubonst will have something to say about it.

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Hillary Clinton and the Economy

I can’t believe she said this:

“It’s time for a president who is ready on day one to be the commander in chief of our economy,” the New York senator said, reframing her leadership campaign theme. “Sometimes the phone rings at 3 a.m. in the White House, and it’s an economic crisis.”

So what is the solution at 3 am? Do you get on the phone to the Chairman of the Fed and beg him to drop interest rates 0.75%? Do you decide to take away buy people’s property and pay other people to flood it? Do you log into your online account and borrow millions billions trillions from China to write out checks to the American people that are just big enough to allow them to buy some stuff from…China?

Do you then go back to sleep after one of these snap decisions, resting easy that the situation has been resolved?

To be fair, it’s not just Clinton, and the American people are encouraging them to stick their noses where they don’t belong. I can’t remember where I read this (thanks to public education), but it describes the powers and duties of the President of the United States pretty clearly.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

Where does it say the President is in charge of the economy or even has anything to do with the economy? And seriously, do we want one person to have that kind of power? Wasn’t that exact situation a major factor in that war fought a couple hundred years ago?

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Time For SNL To Get Beat Down By the Hansons

SlapshotA couple of weeks ago I watched Saturday Night Live for the first time in a long time. It was the first show after the writers’ strike ended, and Tina Fey was hosting. It was one of the best episodes I’ve ever seen. I didn’t get to see last week’s episode, but I started watching tonight thinking they’d gotten back on track.

Nope. Honestly, I think it may be time to end this show. Just a few reasons why…

Weekend Update

Weekend Update, when it was good, worked because of the snarky commentary on current events. But it doesn’t work anymore. Why? Because by the time I watch the Weekend Update snarky commentary on Tuesday’s primaries, I’ve already been reading snarky commentary on blogs for five days.

The Intro Skit

This skit is almost always political in nature, and because of that it is much like Weekend Update…played out by the time Saturday rolls around. This week they did a spoof of Hillary’s “3 am phone call” commercial. That’s great. It was even better on YouTube this week when everybody else did it.

Musical Guests

I know I’m old, but geez. Does anyone care about these musical guests anymore? They had Tom Petty in his prime, The Cars in their prime, and next week’s musical guest is…Janet Jackson? She was on Tyra Banks this week…’nuff said.

Anyway, I turned SNL off and am watching Slapshot for the upteenth time instead. It’s still funny. Besides the digital shorts there’s nothing left worth watching on SNL.

Time to put on the foil coach.

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Ron Paul Gets Cute on Jay Leno

Sorry I’m just getting around to writing about Ron Paul’s appearance on Jay Leno. Just a couple of notes…

Whenever Leno mention Dr. Paul in his monologue, he got great applause. It was pretty apparent that there are quite a few people who actually know who he is now. Also, Dr. Paul got a good reaction from the crowd with most of what he said. It’s a pretty simple message that regular people can really relate to.

Whether you like it or not, there are other intangibles that are equally important in an election. Ron Paul scored big here too, at least in our household. I actually heard the phrase, “he’s sooo cute!”

I doubt anyone is saying that about Hillary Clinton.

[youtube B0KwY9Uzqtk]

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We Don’t Need No Stinking Insurance!

Becky has the right idea…we need less insurance, not more.

But coverage of mundane and everyday medical care makes as much sense as having food insurance. We would go to the grocery store and show the checker our food insurance card, and the public or private carrier would take care of the tab.

I think that addresses the heart of the problem.

You don’t use your auto insurance to pay for a new battery, car washes, or breaks. These are maintenance issues–just part of owning a car. Auto insurance covers accidents–things you know are possible but hope will never happen to you.

Getting colds and minor injuries are just part of living. Health insurance should cover big things that you know are possible but hope will never happen to you–cancer, heart attacks, etc.

And just like driving sober and at a reasonable speed can reduce your chances of having an accident, making healthy lifestyle choices can greatly reduce your chances of having an unexpected illness.

We don’t subsidize auto insurance for drunks with a bunch of speeding tickets, so why should we subsidize medical insurance for smokers or people (like me) who choose to participate in injury prone sports?

IMO, Hillary needs to be more concerned with her own health (getting checked for STDs regularly?), and worry less about mine and yours.

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Big Hole in the Universe

From Space.com…

The hole is nearly a billion light-years across. It is not a black hole, which is a small sphere of densely packed matter. Rather, this one is mostly devoid of stars, gas and other normal matter, and it’s also strangely empty of the mysterious “dark matter” that permeates the cosmos. Other space voids have been found before, but nothing on this scale.

1. What human behavior caused this?
2. How long has Bush been covering it up?
3. How much money have the oil companies made exploiting it?
4. What is Hillary’s (Obama’s, Romney’s, Rudy’s, etc) plan to save us from it while still keeping taxes low for hard working American families?

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Memo to Dick Cheney:

You aren’t Hillary Clinton.

Stop trying to take on the roll of the First Lady, and act like the Vice President.

Ever think you’d long for the days of Dan Quayle being the President’s go to guy?

Seriously, this is pretty disturbing, but it’s even more disturbing to me that Hillary pushed agenda this way as the First Lady. It was common knowledge, and no one really cared much about it.

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Ron Paul is the Only Candidate Making Sense

Becky C.’s post has me fired up.

I saw USA Today this morning and their poll listing the front runners.  They didn’t even have Ron Paul listed among the “also rans”.

If Hillary, Obama, McCain, Romney really do make more sense to the American public than Dr. Paul, we are in deep, deep trouble.  Honestly, I don’t think this is the case.   Ron Paul needs to stay in the debate, stay on topic, and eventually they’ll have to acknowledge him.

Crackpots don’t even register in polls, much less lead in them.

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Big Sister Hillary

I’m really going to enjoy watching these two bash each other in the coming months. Hopefully they will pummel one another to the point that neither can be elected.

[youtube 6h3G-lMZxjo]

* UPDATE *

A co-worker just pointed out to  me that the girl throwing the hammer is wearing an i-Pod.  Also there is an IP address super-imposed on the Hilary video that is registered to California State University.  Interesting.