Monthly Archives: June 2011

Testing iPad Posting

Posted on June 11, 2011 | 2 comments

My wife recently recieved her iPad 2 in the mail. That means her old iPad goes to me. I’m trying to see if this thing can replace a laptop for blogging.

So far so good. The interface is intuitive and easy; even fun.

Now, lets see if I can insert an image.

20110611-113904.jpg

Okay…..so that was easy’ish however, I get the feeling that I just published the post without wanting to be done.

Okay, now I’ gonna try and link a site:

Hmmmm….no joy.

It seems that I am posting in HTML mode and would need to be ble to “code” the hyperlink. Not an insurmountable problem but not as easy as it should be.

Now to try and try fonts.

Bold
Italic
Underline

Again, no joy.

If I wana include such fonts, I would have to code them as well. Not such a good feature.

Now, to be fair, this is the WordPress App. I think WordPress needs to do more work on this, not Apple. The other missing feature is it’s missing Apple’s real time spell check and auto-cap feature. Big dissatisfier. Oh, and the double tap period applicator. Boo.

I’ll next try to post from the native website and not the app. We’ll see if that’sany better. Or worse.

2 Comments

Posted in Fun, Technology

Tagged , , ,

NY Democrats Get It Right On Abortion

Posted on June 9, 2011 | 6 comments

I often hammer the Left.  And for good reason.

However, I don’t work hard enough to hammer the Right when they are wrong or praise the Left when they are right.  [hee hee].

I wanna work on that, and so, to this end, I support the pro-choice legislation introduced by the 2 NY senators.

Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in Liberty, National

Tagged , , , ,

Pino’ictionary

Posted on June 8, 2011 | 6 comments

I’m sure I saw it somewhere – I certainly can’t claim to have coined this phrase on my own.

But I’ll define it:

Climate Rapture – A belief held by AGW alarmists that the amount of climate change caused by mankind will bring about the end of the world.  Full and complete annihilation of Mother Earth is the only acceptable conclusion to the current trajectory of mankind.

6 Comments

Posted in Fun, Global Warming, Idiots on Parade

Tagged

Liberals And Economics

Posted on June 7, 2011 | 4 comments

Don’t mix.

Recently I posted about an Economics Literacy Test.  The Minneapolis Federal Reserve conducted a survey and asked people to answer 13 economic questions.  Those 404 people didn’t do so well.

While I took the test I wondered who would do well and who would do so well.  It occurred to me that some people will do better just because they want the answer to be something other than what it is.  For example, if asked, I suspect a vast majority of Liberals would say that the oil companies make too much profit.  Indeed, the oil companies rank 114 out of 215 industries in profits.  Hardly gouging, huh?

Then I was reminded of a post I blogged here about a year ago.  It described who did well and who did poorly on questions of economics:

Best to worst, with an average number of incorrect responses from 0 to 8:

Very conservative, 1.30

Libertarian, 1.38

Conservative, 1.67

Moderate, 3.67

Liberal, 4.69

Progressive/very liberal, 5.26.

Not so good if you are Liberal.

4 Comments

Posted in Economics, Education, Politics: National

Tagged , , , ,

Economics Literacy Test

Posted on June 7, 2011 | 2 comments

Mark Perry over at Carpe Diem continues to deliver the goods.  The most recent is his post where he links to an Economics Literacy Test.  This is a test administered in 1998 by the Minneapolis Federal Reserve.  There are 13 questions on the test.  Each question is multiple choice.

I took the test and finished in nearly 5 minutes; maybe a little more.

Take the test.

As an FYI, the average score for the test’s 404 participants was 45%.

I scored 92.3%.  12 out of 13.

2 Comments

Posted in Economics, Education

Tagged , ,

A Tale of Two Governors: Wisconsin’s Walker and Carolina’s Purdue

Posted on June 7, 2011 | 5 comments

In Wisconsin, a properly elected Senate passed a bill that a properly elected State Assembly had also passed.  Then, a properly elected Governor signed said properly passed bill into law.

The reaction from the far left at the time:

They are showing that citizenship is rooted in the willingness to listen to one’s opponents and to find shared solutions. The governor’s refusal to do the same shows his aim to rule by executive fiat. He is setting himself up as a notorious adversary of the democratic process.

I love it.  Rule by fiat.  Hardly.  Walker signed a bill into law that was passed by the Senate AND the Assembly.  Adversary of the democratic process?  Hardly.  It’s just that in this case, democracy delivered a solution that doesn’t agree with the hard left wing segment of the Democrat party.

Now, here in Carolina.

A properly elected Senate passes a bill that was also passed by a properly elected House.  Then, a properly elected Governor vetoes the bill.

Said governor complains that life isn’t fair.

Said Governor then signs an executive order to get what she wanted the whole time:

RALEIGH, N.C. — Gov. Bev Perdue signed an executive order Friday to extend federal unemployment insurance benefits for thousands of North Carolina residents amid a battle with Republican lawmakers, who tied the extension to the state budget bill.

In April, the Republican majority in the General Assembly passed a bill to extend the federally funded benefits for up to 20 weeks…

The liberal hard left?

Perdue’s press secretary Chris Mackey said the governor gave “Republican leaders the chance to do the right thing and they didn’t. So, she found another solution.”

So, the lesson here, is that when “the right thing” and “other solutions” involve those things held most dear to the Leftist, fiat [using the right definition of the word] is fine; noble.

But, BUT, when a centrist republican follows the rule of law and signs a legally passed bill, he is called a ruler by fiat [using the Leftist’s version of the word].

Funny world, that.

5 Comments

Posted in Government, Politics: National, States Behaving Badly

Tagged , , , , , ,

Differentiating Characteristic: Open Thread

Posted on June 6, 2011 | 10 comments

What is the difference between this:

And this:

To me, it might be that one guy campaigns on family values and the other doesn’t.  That makes it irony or hypocrisy. Or it might be that one guy actually think that family values are meaningful enough to run on and that what we have is a Tragic story in the failures of mankind.  Or maybe its that one guy knows enough to resign and the other doesn’t.

Open thread- What do YOU think?

10 Comments

Posted in Idiots on Parade, Politics: National

Tagged , , , ,

The Middle Class – Part II

Posted on June 6, 2011 | 4 comments

The middle class. The Great MC.

What is it, how is it defined? Is it growing? Shrinking? Is it, more importantly, being exploited by the rich and the powerful to enable their largess?

Is Obama right? Is it true, in fact, that the folks-the “Us”- are being used and manipulated in some grand game to keep the rich richer?

For me, the rhetoric needs substance; needs some form of validation. There has to be some means by which the idea has a backdrop to judge the truth. There has to be a definition of the middle class that we can use to see if, in fact, what is being said is true. Or not true. And for me, it comes down to two things:

  1. The earnings of the middle class.
  2. The life style, or things, that the middle class can buy.

So, let’s take a look:

Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in Economy, Liberty, Middle Class, Politics: National

Tagged

Middle Class Thoughts

Posted on June 4, 2011 | 9 comments

I just went upstairs to change clothes; I’m going to mow the lawn.

When I came down, my son had paused the Cubs game so that he could go to the bathroom.

My son is 5.

When I was 5 I didn’t have cable, couldn’t watch Cubs games and certainly had to wait until they changed sides to take a leak.

I think life is like baseball. Which makes it pretty hard to day that we don’t have it way WAY better today than we did 37 years ago.

9 Comments

Posted in Middle Class

Tagged , ,

Too Much Government Regulation

Posted on June 3, 2011 | 8 comments

Think government isn’t broken?

Think government can fix all our problems?

Even if it can’t fix ’em ALL, folks STILL think that government can generally do better than the public sector can do.  Why this is true baffles me.  Some folks claim that corruption reigns supreme in the private sector and is therefore blemished.  Other folks think that profit reigns supreme in the private sector [and I think it does] and THAT makes the system inefficient.

Whatever it is, the idea that government can “do better than the private sector is one of the deepest misguided beliefs in human thinking.  The government CAN’T operate more efficiently than the private sector.

And here is proof via Coyote Blog.

For a few years, Mike Haege’s sister lived in north Minneapolis. He knows the neighborhood at least a little bit, and when a tornado tore through the area on Sunday, May 22, he took notice.

On the news he saw trees strewn about lawns and streets. Then inspiration struck. He wanted to help. His schedule for Monday, May 23, was wide open. And, since he operates Custom Cut, a tree trimming business here, he figured his services could be put to good use.

Now check this out:

Continue reading →

8 Comments

Posted in Government, Liberty, Politics: National, States Behaving Badly

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