It's all Bush's fault

Obama's General Services Administration (GSA) blew $800K on a junket to Vegas. It's making the TV news and citizens are steamed over it. Obama is trying to say it's all Bush's fault.
That's a hard sell with me. GSA is part of the administration, takes its orders from the White House. There are a few layers of bureaucrats in between the White House and GSA, but the principle is the same. Anything GSA does is either on White House orders, or with White House sufferance. The buck stops at the same place it has since Harry Truman's time. Obama has been in office for better than three years now, plenty of time to remove chuckleheads over at GSA. Since he didn't, he owns it now.

Guilt Trip to the max

TV news is talking up a new study claiming that obese mothers give birth to autistic children. Wow. How to make a woman feel guilty with out even trying. Sometimes it pays to be a guy. Or at least until they do another study showing that obese fathers cause autism. I have no idea as to how valid this new study is, but it's getting plenty of news coverage.
There has been a lot of talk about the growth of autism. One cause the newsies don't cover is soft hearted doctors. Many a child needs some speech therapy or extra reading tuition or any number of special and costly treatments to overcome some weakness. If the doctor diagnoses the child with autism, insurance will pay for the needed treatment. Otherwise parent's have to pay for it. They been talking about an autism rate of 1:83. I don't know if I can believe that one child in 83 is autistic, but I can believe that 1 child in 83 would benefit from some kind of special therapy or training or something.

Facebook broke the photo uploader, again

This is about the third time that the software weenie's at Facebook managed to break the photo uploader. The new and broken one first demands you upload an new version of Flash player. When I refused to do that, I was able to upload with great difficulty selecting photo's one by one. You can no longer highlight all the photo's and have them upload.
And, you gotta watch Facebook. I find my Facebook portrait is now showing up on all sorts of websites all over the internet. It took 5 minutes of clicking to navigate to Facebook's account page and then the privacy settings. Privacy settings has grown, there are now about 100 different setting that you have to make one by one. A whole herd of "apps", nosy little craplets, none of which I had ever heard of before, had some sort of privileges on my account . I zapped them all.
And Facebook now has "timelines" what ever those might be, and Facebook is gonna make 'em public on Income Tax Day, which is coming right up.
If you have anything embarrassing on Facebook, now is a good time to zap it.

It snowed for Easter

Not much, way less than an inch, but it turned the ground white.

Two silly ideas heard on Fox

Silly idea #1. Since gasoline tax revenues are flat or down, 'cause of less driving (when you're out of work you don't drive to work) and masses of electric cars (when did I last see an electric car on the highway?) let's start a "mileage tax" on all cars. Bad idea. if you just have to have more money, raise the gasoline tax. But, the public is agin that idea, and if the public is on the alert, they will be agin a mileage tax too. They didn't say, but I assume a mileage tax would work by reading your odometer when you get your inspection sticker. Actually they do that now, and I don't know what they do with the information.
Silly idea #2, This from Ben Stein. "I don't know what I would have done differently from Obama about the economy."
Well Ben, I can think of a few things. Use the $800 billion porkulus bill to buy real things that would have stimulated the real economy. Instead all the money went to helping state governments meet payroll. Approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Put GM and Chrysler thru real bankruptcy, divvy up their assets in accordance with the law instead of handing them all over to the UAW. Reform the patent office, which has stopped technical innovation in its tracks. Don't waste taxpayers money on black holes like solar, electric cars, Solyndra, and wind energy. These are never going to work, they are just money sinks. Don't do Obamacare, which has raised labor costs by a huge and unknown amount, stalling hiring all over the country 'cause no employer dares hire anyone, 'cause they can't afford the healthcare costs, or they can't figure out what those costs will be. Drop the ethanol for motor fuel boondoggle. Let oil drilling leases in the Gulf, off the east coast and off the west coast, off the Alaska coast and on oil sands in the west. Use Antitrust law to break up the biggest and stupidest banks, AIG, Citibank, BofA for starters. Shut down Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac before they wreck the world economy again. And prosecute their officers. Fund some science fiction projects like hydrogen fusion. Repeal Sarbanes Oxley and Dodd Frank. Shut down the EPA. Stop farm subsidies. Get the Feds out of the highway construction business. Let the states build the roads with their own money. Reform the corporate tax code and regulation to encourage business to operate in the United States. Shut down the SEC, repeal all their regulations, burn their files and prosecute their officers. SEC was started after Great Depression I to prevent Great Depression II. They have failed in that mission, so let's get rid of 'em to save money and free up industry.

Words of the Weasel Part 29

Transparent. Originally a property of glass, like you can see thru it. Now its an all purpose feel good property of various policitical wheeling and dealing. "The negotiations were transparent" is supposed to be a good thing. In fact just about any deal is OK so long as it is "transparent".
Right.
Armed robbery is transparent. Give me some money or I put a bullet into you. Can't get much more transparent than that. But I don't have to like it.

The nanny state comes to Havard.

According to this, Harvard students are required to get permission from the dean to throw a party.
Damn. I attended two different colleges back in the day, and we never had to get permission from anybody to throw a party.
Good luck Harvard students.