Long Time No Type.....

...let's change that....nice post at AngryBear about the fauxity of the Social Security crisis

A Day At The Office

After nearly two weeks of vacation/holiday. Not much browsing time today.

This article gives a very nice exposition on the insanity of the process of the Iowa caucuses. Though I don't think much of the railing against open (non-secret) voting.....which I think is addressed well by the John Stuart Mill quote in the comments. The day before Iowa - blogs are all politics. My totally amateur Iowa predictions: Dem 1) Edwards, 2) Clinton 3) Obama Rep: 1) Huckabee 2) Willard 3) McCain (wouldn't surprise too much if Paul slipped into third).

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Well, well.... the 9-11 commission calls out the CIA for obstructing their investigation. Oh my.
And - at least at first glance - it appears that Mukaskey has actually assigned a real honest to God investigator to the case rather than an in-the-bag toady. Double oh my.

UPDATE: Hmm, not so fast on the double oh my....might be premature. From the AP article:
"He will not serve as a special prosecutor such as Patrick Fitzgerald, who operated
autonomously while investigating the 2003 leak of a CIA operative’s identity."
Sounds like he's still under Mukaskey's thumb. Not good.
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Shudder, Then Laugh

Let's hope this guy's crystal ball is off.

But this one sure has the ring of truth to it:

"The Ponzi Scheme of Credit Expansion will BEGIN to unwind -- as people realize that inflating assets and then borrowing against them, is not "an economy" -- nor is borrowing money from other societies and spending it in their shop. We can say what we want about the size of our "GDP" -- but the REAL ECONOMY -- the one where somebody actually MAKES SOMETHING is a healthy but too-small part of our whole economic picture."

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The (first) video here is hilarious. But in a very sad kind of way.

Welcome ....and some Resolutions

Welcome to thenoteBoard. Mostly what'll be posted here is me culling the best of the articles I see online each day.

It's New Years Eve. For years and years my perennial resolution has been to quit smoking. Only this year, I did it (smokefree since June 21). And I also made good on the perpetual "start working out regularly" one in 2007. So whats left? Gonna cut myself some slack and resolve to:

1. Really enjoy this last year/two before my youngest son gets a bad case of the teens
   
2. actually start keeping a regular blog (you can judge me on this one in realtime)
3. keep up the nonsmoking and working out
4. drop twenty pounds to 150 by June 1 and stay there
   
5. try to stop responding so often to wingnut morons on the Interet (SMB at rmas, Enright et al at rsfc, Daryl at CP, this one's for you guys)

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Ok, a quick tour of the blogs today:
A knock knock joke from From KagroX at Kos:
Q: Why did Bush veto authority for a pay raise for the troops? (Again)
A: To block the enactment of a provision in the bill that allowed former American
prisoners of war held by the Saddam Hussein regime to recover damages for the
torture they say they endured while serving under arms for the United States!

You can't make this stuff up.

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From AP via Kos.......so much for Teh Surge! :

"The year was the deadliest for the U.S. military since the 2003 invasion, with 899 troops killed."

and at the same time

"For the year, 18,610 Iraqis were killed. In 2006, the only other full year an AP count has been tallied, 13,813 civilians were killed."

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Time to play some Wii with the offspring - Happy New Year everyone!