You can't pay for health care by taxing healthcare

Some brain dead Congress critters think this will work.
Anyone with half a brain cell understands that taxing healthcare runs the price up, requiring more healthcare funding to pay for it. Raise a billion dollars by taxing health care and health insurance has to cough up another billion dollars to pay the tax. It's a circular firing squad.

Lousy sound work

New movies have terrible sound. They play the score over the dialog so you can't hear what the actors are saying. The score should ALWAYS be muted when the actors are speaking. Same goes for sound effects, the "Foleys" (footsteps, doors slamming, traffic noise etc).
Then the actors have to stop mumbling. Even when whispering in a lovers ear, the actors have to enunciate clearly and remember that they are speaking to the audience.
The old classic movies understood this and their soundtracks are clear as a bell, even when the movie is fifty years old or more. The new movies are just plain hard to hear.

Pity us bloggers, we don't get a shield law

But we do get the FTC on our case when we make a positive statement about a product. Actually the "shield law" (reporters don't have to testify in court) is a bad idea. It gives a really valuable privilege to just a few people. Who is a reporter really? Do part timers count? Free lancers? Michael Yon? (Michael is a free lancer who furnished the best Iraq coverage) And how about humble bloggers like me? If we go the whole route and call us bloggers reporters, then damn near everyone in the country can get out of testifying in court. That over turns two centuries of legal practice. Right now citizens have to testify except against themselves. Clergy, doctors, lawyers, husbands and wives also get an exemption. Reporters have to testify or the judge can lock them up for contempt of court. This happened to a female New York Times reporter in the Valerie Plame case a couple of years ago.
Far as I am concerned if a reporter's testimony will put some lowlife behind bars, or clear an innocent defender, make him testify. The reporters whine that sources will stop talking to them, but that's foolishness and special pleading. Sources talk to reporters cause they have an axe to grind, or they enjoy bragging. Or cause they drink too much. No source in his right mind is going to confess to a crime. There are quite a few sources who aren't in their right minds but that's the way life is.
Then we have the nanny state FTC deciding to regulate us bloggers. We used to have free speech in this country, which means I can say anything I like about stocks, bonds, automobiles, computers, tools, schools, food and anything else on my blog. I can praise them or slam them, that's free speech, or freedom of the press, depending upon whether you call a blog writing or speaking. Doesn't matter, we were free to do it, up until the FTC decided it could regulate this sort of thing.
What constitutional freedom will they take away from us next?
Time for another Tea Party.

Brinks sinks

The TV just ran an ad for home security. The ad explained that new management had changed the name of the company from "Brinks" to "Broadmoor" (or was it "Broadtop"). Was to go. Brinks is a name that goes back to the 1930's or farther. They still talk about the 1950's "Brinks job" here in New England.
New management has decided to increase sales by dropping a household name for an instantly forgettable name. Probably a bunch of MBA's.

Susan Rice UN Ambassador, Master of evasion

Susan Rice was on Meet the Press with David Gregory this morning. The morning NY Times story saying that Iran had all the know how needed to build a bomb was the topic. Rice was talking about "serious" sanctions on Iran. "Such as" asked Gregory. "Very serious" replied Rice. Rice talked about important deadlines. "What date is that deadline" asked Gregory. "Soon, very soon" replied Rice.
All in all, Rice managed to fill up 15 minutes of air time without divulging a thing. Gregory asked all the right questions and Rice evaded each one.
Translation. The Obama administration doesn't know what to do about the Iranian bomb. Time is running out. Once they get the bomb, taking it away from them is dangerous. Much easier to deal with Iran BEFORE they get a bomb.

Congressman admits he never reads the bills

This congressman explains that they work with a plain language version of the health care bill and someone ( staffers? elves? brownies?) translate the plain language version into "legislative language" which is too opaque to be read.
If this is true, then the Congress critters have turned control of the legislation over to the brownies. He who translates something can make the translation come out any way he wants. Especially if he has 1100 pages to hide stuff in.
We should forbid Congressional passage of long long bills. Say what you mean and boil it down to 1000 words or less.

Wide Screen Monitors

Problem, new widescreen monitor everything looks stretched out sideways. Circles become ovals, people look chunky, text looks wider than normal. The old CRT monitor width to height ratio was only 4:3, the new LCD monitor is 16:9.
Fix. Click Start->Settings->Control Panel. Click on the "display" icon. Click the "Settings" tab. Adjust screen resolution up till it matches the resolution of the monitor, in my case 1440 by 900 pixels. Works on my middle aged Compaq with a Radeon 200 Xpress video chipset on the mother board.