Cool Microscopic Pictures

Now this is one cool contest:
I really like this picture although a different picture won the contest. This is a Crystallized melt of sulfur and acetanilide (10x) but it looks like a modern art painting or even a comic book panel.

20^th Place, 2010

Majority Think Tea Party will Bring Actual Change

I guess people have just gotten tired of the HopeNChange promised by Obama.

Can the Tea Party movement deliver what President Obama couldn’t and bring about real change in how Washington works?

55 percent of Americans think so, according to a recently released  ABC News/Yahoo! News poll, which asked whether the Tea Party could “effectively bring about major changes in the way government operates?”

I agree because they will suddenly be called upon to break deadlocks or even create them. If they don't agree with the GOP party line I can see them voting against the party. This is especially true if the GOP goes on another G W. Bush-style spending spree once they get back the levers of power.

Obama and the Bitter Clingers Part 2: Now we "Can't Think Clearly" because of Fear

I wonder if it is possible for him to go to a small fundraiser and not insult the American electorate?

"Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hardwired not to always think clearly when we're scared," Obama said Saturday evening in remarks at a small Democratic fundraiser Saturday evening. "And the country's scared."

Yup, all those people who are part of the 10% unemployed and have lost their homes are "not thinking clearly" because of fear. They also seem to ignore facts and science and I guess revert to Cro-Magnon Men who are scared of lightning or something rather then right thinking men and women. Way to score an own goal 3 weeks before a major election.

What would be interesting is you delve why Americans are actually afraid. It isn't because they ignore facts and science but they see the Left as incompetent and have wasted $2 trillion and we still might get a double dip recession. They can see that no one in the White House has run a business or had to create a job that was not underwritten by bond purchases by the Red Chinese. You add to this the condescension dripping from Obama in this speech and you wonder who is still in this guys corner.

What is interesting is the first bitter clingers speech was supposed to be a secret fund-raiser for the glitterati. You can insult the electorate behind closed doors just to play to the crowd and kind of get away with it. This article says that this fund-raiser was open to the press and thus might be what Obama really thinks about the electorate.

I have to agree that his should scare the pants off of any Dem going forward. It seems like he doesn't care anymore and is just spouting off. It seems that he knows he won't have to face these science and facts challenged, fearful, Americans that aren't thinking clearly in 2012. It looks more and more that he is declaring "Mission Accomplished" and one term would be more than enough for him. Um, I think it is time for Hillary to start fund-raising because her time may come 4 years early.

It Seems Obama Is Giving up After November: He's Going to be on Mythbusters

I guess he is trying to promote science education or something but talk about your big wastes of time.

As part of an effort to highlight science education (it sure ain't to get more air time), the commander-in-chief will appear on a Dec. 8 question to ask hosts/mad scientists Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage to test the myth that the Greek scientist Archimedes inspired a generations of little boys with magnifying glasses by using the sun's reflection on mirrors to set fire to invading Roman fleets back in 214 B.C.

"I can announce today that I taped a special guest appearance for their show, although I didn't get to blow anything up," Obama said. "I was a little frustrated about that."

Um, I thought his entire focus was on getting people jobs. Instead he is taping basic cable shows. What is next for the celebrity President? I'm guessing a turn on Dancing with the Stars or maybe the new house guest on Jersey Shore. Forget running the country when you have that budding TV career to think about.

Fear and Loathing at the White House

I read this very interesting article on how things are in the White House now that Obama is on the downslide. This quote just jumped off the page at me and caused me to pause a few minutes to fathom how bad things are there:

But it is possible to win the inside game and lose the outside game. In their darkest moments, White House aides wonder aloud whether it is even possible for a modern president to succeed, no matter how many bills he signs. Everything seems to conspire against the idea: an implacable opposition with little if any real interest in collaboration, a news media saturated with triviality and conflict, a culture that demands solutions yesterday, a societal cynicism that holds leadership in low regard. Some White House aides who were ready to carve a new spot on Mount Rushmore for their boss two years ago privately concede now that he cannot be another Abraham Lincoln after all. In this environment, they have increasingly concluded, it may be that every modern president is going to be, at best, average.

Um, a modern President can succeed if he wasn't average like Obama. I'm sorry but Obama really isn't anything special other than a 1st term Senator. He isn't a war hero like Eisenhower, H. W. Bush, or Kennedy.  He isn't an actual genius like Hoover. He doesn't do empathy like Reagan or Clinton. He isn't a great leader like Washington, or Lincoln. He wasn't dealt the incredibly crappy hand that FDR got.

He is just a Calvin Coolidge or a Jimmy Carter. A pretty well meaning guy that is just not up to the task of governing the United States. He can't battle in the Senate trenches like LBJ or can lead by vigorous example like Teddy Roosevelt. I mean the world doesn't even take him as seriously as they did G.W. Bush. 

He is constantly outfoxed by his enemies who hold him in contempt. I'm sure Ahmadinajoke and Putin secretly laugh behind his back. At least the Red Chinese are led by an actual engineer with an advanced degree in Geology. All of these men had to survive in a cutthroat world where a single slip-up would get you political banishment or worse. They are leaders that have been honed so that they can play the Great Game. Obama rails at Fox News while checking his Blackberry to see what Glenn Beck has said about him.

The worst part about the Obama Presidency is how they blame everyone but themselves. They inherited the worst problems in American history. Boo-hoo. You spent a billion dollars to get that job now you need to own these problems. I'm pretty sure Lincoln wasn't endlessly talking about how James Buchanan was such a screw-up and that he inherited all these slavery and states rights problems from that ass-grab before him.

Lincoln was hated in his lifetime too by the North and the South. History turned things around on that note and he is one of our great Presidents. I'm pretty sure that won't be happening to Obama.  I can see 100 years from now when people ask "Obama?  Wasn't he the first Black President?" The answer would be "No that was Condoleezza Rice in 2016 I think."

Don't Mess With Texas: They are Actually Creating Jobs

Hmm, I think Obama needs to study this so called Texas model and implement it if he is serious about running for a second term.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 214,000 net new jobs were created in the United States from August 2009 to August 2010. Texas created 119,000 jobs during the same period. If every state in the country had performed as well, we'd have created about 1.5 million jobs nationally during the past year, and maybe "stimulus" wouldn't be such a dirty word.

What does Austin know that Washington doesn't? At its simplest: Don't overtax and -spend, keep regulations to a minimum, avoid letting unions and trial lawyers run riot, and display an enormous neon sign saying, "Open for Business."

They kept taxes low by keeping their spending back at what they had in 1987. What is interesting is that they have oil wealth but they also have some of the biggest high tech companies in the world domiciled there. I mean Texas Instruments, Dell, AT&T and Freescale Semiconductor are all based in Texas.

Imagine if Obama was able to sow the seeds for a few 100 mores Dell's with their 94,000 employees or Texas Instruments with their 26,584 to flourish in America. I'm not sure how he would do it but talking about airy "Green Energy jobs" (that the Chinese already has a substantial lead on us) while at the same time attacking businessmen as "fat cats" is not going to get the job done.

Yet Another Blow to the Green Movement: Kyoto Protocol Seems to Have Been a Failure

Well it is rare to say that the Senate actually did a good job on something but dodging the Kyoto Protocol seems to have been a very good idea judging from these findings.

The left leaning Guardian newspaper in Britain let the cat out of the bag yesterday, reporting that while the EU’s emission of CO2 declined by 17% between 1990 and 2010, this apparent progress was bogus.  If you add up the CO2 released by the goods and services Europeans consumed, as opposed to the CO2 thrown off by the goods and services they produced, the EU was responsible for 40% more CO2 in 2010 than in 1990. The EU, as the Guardian puts it, has been outsourcing pollution — and jobs — rather than cutting back on greenhouse gasses.

EU “progress” on greenhouse gasses in the last twenty years was a mirage.  And the only reason that the EU can pretend to look green is that it was outsourcing economic growth to countries like China.  Those 95 US senators were totally right; twenty years of the Kyoto Protocol have brought the world twenty years of rising greenhouse gas emissions and twenty years of job migration to low wage, low regulation havens in the Third World.

These Senators knew that this production would just leave the US and head to China. I mean China and India didn't care about Kyoto since they were still considered "developing." So it seems that Kyoto was pretty much an example of Europe outsourcing their growth to China in return for feeling good that they are "greener-than-thou."

This is why Copenhagen was such a good dodge by the rest of the world. All Copenhagen was was a way for poorer countries to score the productive wealth of rich countries with a moral justification as the threat. If you don't give my country X-billion to combat Climate Change then you are evil and want to see my people starve and drown when the icecaps melt.

The funny part is that these nations would probably combat Climate Change by buying more tanks and helicopters to destroy their neighbors/settle old scores with hated rivals/buy a Swiss Chalet. 

I'm sure the Russians or the Red Chinese would be happy to cash in these countries Climate Change Bucks for a couple hundred T-90 tanks, HY-2 Silkworm missiles, Shenyang fighter-bombers. I mean it is not like they have to hobble their economies by reducing their carbon footprint.

Watch Out Video Game Retailers: Coinstar is Offering $2 a Night Rentals

They seem still be in the testing stage but this could be a big deal going forward.

Coinstar (CSTR) on Wednesday announced plans to expand its video game rental test this month to include additional markets in the West, Midwest and Atlantic Coast regions. The company said it began testing video game rentals in August 2009. The company is renting video games for Wii, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms for $2 a night plus tax.

That sound you heard was Gamestop freaking out. Imagine if you could not only rent a game for $2 a night but also buy used games as well. I don't think it is a big stretch to offer used games for like $20 a pop(or maybe a sliding scale based on how long the game has been available) that you can purchase from a Red Box video game machine.

They could even set the thing up to give you money for games a well.  I mean Coinstar already has machines that turn coins into cash so why can't they have a thing that redeems games? Have the person insert the game disk into a slot and the machine verifies that it is the correct game and then spits out $5 or $10 or something for each game.

The game manufacturers would love this because they would be able to track game resells since they would have to supply the verification technology. I bet Microsoft would love to get $60 for the game then an additional $1 each time the game is resold. Also I would bet that some games would be resold many times over in its lifetime depending on how popular it is.

Also if you are long Coinstars stock this gaming rental service is the one thing that Netflix cannot beat them at. For a while the only reason I went to Blockbuster was so I could rent games. Now all I have to do is go to the local Wal-Greens and rent the game from there for $6 for 3 nights. This might also spell the slow death to gaming rental by mail companies like GameFly.

Console gaming is the only rental service left that hasn't been digitized and probably won't be for the near future. I mean it is in Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo's interest to keep their product in physical form and just sell the add-ons online. HD Games are still far too large to transfer to a console via Internet and they cannot be streamed yet without crazy lag. I can't imagine waiting 4 hours to download a major game to the Xbox just to find out it sucks when I could just go to a Red Box machine and rent it for $2 a night.

The more I look at it the more I see that Blockbuster fumbled and Coinstar is scooping it up and taking it to the house.

All the Miners are Out: Chile Comes in for the Big Win!

It is good to see Chile looking good in the eyes of the world. This final scene can come right out of a Hollywood movie with the Foreman Luis Urzua played by Alfred Molina.

The rescue of Chile's 33 trapped miners came to a joyous and successful close less than 24 hours after extraction began, when Luis Urzua walked out of the Phoenix capsule. 

Mr. Urzua approached Chilean President Sebastian Piñera and said, "Just as we previously agreed, I'm now handing over my shift to you." 

Mr. Piñera, smiling broadly, responded, "Like a good captain would do, you were the last one to abandon your ship." Rescuers cheered and hugged Mr. Urzua, and the president led the crowd in singing the national anthem. 

Upon reading the stories about the different miners you can bet that Ron Howard is chomping at the bit to get the stories of these guys up on the big screen in a potential Oscar winning movie. It would be like Alive without the cannibalism.

Foreclosure Mills? A New Way for Unscrupulous Lawyers to Make Money?

Well the bankers and crooked mortgage brokers made money on the real estate market on the way up now the lawyers are making money on the way back down.

But while the banks are ultimately responsible, the root of the problem appears to lie with "foreclosure mill" law firms like Stern's. These operations process foreclosure cases on behalf of lenders, and their business model is based on moving the paperwork through as quickly as possible. That's why such firms have pioneered practices like "robo-signing" — whereby their employees process thousands of court documents in pending foreclosures without ever actually reviewing them, as the law requires. Of course, it's in the banks' interest for their contractors to move quickly, because the faster a foreclosure moves, the less time a struggling borrower has to fight it.

Also the faster the bank can get in into their inventory to resell when the market gets better. Also the faster the banks can get these mortgages off of their books the better it is for their own bottom lines. I mean the allowances for doubtful loans can get taken back down when these doubtful loans disappear.

However, if some ways speeding up the foreclosures might be beneficial to the market. If you can get all of the houses that are at risk out of the market you can hit the bottom that much quicker. Then all new houses will be purchased under more stringent regulations that were in place before the mortgage mess occurred. The growth in home-ownership would slow but at least the era of the "nodoc" mortgage or the interest only mortgage would just be a footnote in history.

Ahmadinejoke Threatens Isreal Yet Again: This Time Cowering in Lebanon

Hmm, I wonder if it would be a good idea to allow nutjobs like this to develop the Bomb.

"The whole world knows that the Zionists are going to disappear," he said to thunderous applause before a frenzied crowd in Hezbollah's bastion of Bint Jbeil, some four kilometres (two miles) from the Israeli border.

"The occupying Zionists today have no choice but to accept reality and go back to their countries of origin," he added.

I wonder where the people that were born in Israel (the vast majority) will have to go if Members-Only Jacket has his way? In any case I will make this bold prediction: The Israeli State will outlive the Mullacracy of Iran. You heard it here first. The Mullahs will not make it 20 more years.

The young people of Iran will not stand for them and will either vote them out either by force or by obsolescence. Mark my words you will see the Secular Republic of Iran in my lifetime. Or maybe it will be called the Persian Republic since Iran is an invention of post-WWI Britain. They really are Persians and not Arabs or some other thing.

Hunting and Fishing Goes on the Ballot of 4 States

It seems that hunters and fishermen are starting to hit back against PETA and their ilk.

Worried that their pastime may get waylaid by a growing animal welfare movement, U.S. hunters and anglers in some states are seeking constitutional safeguards.

When voters in Arizona, Arkansas, South Carolina and Tennessee go to the polls to cast their ballots in the congressional elections on Nov 2, they will also be asked if they support making hunting and fishing constitutional rights.

I am willing to bet that they will be passed with large margins since hunting and fishing culture is a big deal in those states. 

Fascinating Foreign Policy Advice for the GOP

This is one of the best think-pieces I have seen on what the GOP needs to do once they win in November when it comes to foreign policy. It critiques how GOP stalwarts like Teddy Roosevelt and Reagen got things right when it comes to foreign policy and how George W. Bush went wrong. This part of the 10 Commandments of the so-called Conservative Realism jumped off the page:

Sixth, recognize that deterrence and containment are not entirely outmoded as strategic options in the 21st century. Certainly, suicide bombers cannot be deterred. But the governing elites of Tehran and Pyongyang, however despicable, hope for survival and not for death. The distinction is crucial. It is the reason why deterrence can still work in relation to existing rogue states such as North Korea and Iran. The U.S. can exhaust, contain, and wear down these regimes. They will break down before the United States does.

The Chinese seem to understand this. They fight the long fight while we hope for the quick regime change. Deterring and containing Iran and North Korea would go much farther then some bombing mission would. You negotiate from strength with clearly defined consequences if there is non-compliance. At the same time you are backing the student protesters against the regime because that is what is morally right from the US point of view. If the regime strikes back and slaughters them they become a pariah to the world if they succeed you have won the long war.

In the meantime you are ratcheting up the pressure and hit them in their weak points. North Korea is weak when it comes to foreign aid while Iran has a barely functioning economy. If you hit them there their regime will eventually fall. 200% inflation and gas lines will beat fleets of bombers in this case.

The GOP needs to keep in mind that the US has far more resources then anyone and all they lack is the patience to slowly but surely ratchet up the pressure. Iran will become Democratic as soon as the Mullahs die and North Korea probably won't survive many years past that doof, Kim Jong Un if the US applies any kind of economic pressure.

The Folly of Public Sector Stimulus

Well it seems that the media are finally understanding that the jobs "saved" will only be temporary.

That should have left them with no choice but to start firing public workers two years ago, when the bottom fell out of their tax revenues. (After all, the construction industry depends on the same source of revenue -- property values -- as do local governments, and residential-construction jobs are down 31 percent since 2000.) 

Instead, the 2009 stimulus law sent more than $220 billion to state and local governments -- without asking them to pare their workforces or workers' benefits. 

But now the stimulus cash is running out. So the state and local government jobs that it "saved" are starting to disappear, as governments around the nation do what their voters have been doing for three years now -- cutting back.

The states are finally finding out that they cannot sustain their workforce any longer without going further into debt. Now it looks like the Congress should have had some strings attached to that $220 billion to the states. If they cut their workforce by a certain amount then they would receive the money. 

 

Many states would have banked the cash in a rainy day fund but at least the cuts would have already happened in 2008 and the recovery would be underway. They could have also used this money for generous buyouts that would get these people off the payroll in 2009 and 2010. Instead we might get another wave of firing carried out by the states who cannot afford to keep paying for these "saved" jobs going forward. I guess the 10% unemployment is here to stay.

Largest Obamacare Exemption Went to the Teachers Union

Now this has to be a new record in the fastest bit of patronage doled out in a long time.

But the biggest beneficiary of the Obama administration's exemption is the United Federation of Teachers, New York's teachers union, reports the New York Post. The union, which campaigned for Obama in 2008, said it would have trouble insuring its 351,000 members next year if it had to set its benefit cap at $750,000 or more.

"The fact that the largest waiver now belongs to New York teachers union bosses might be funny if the rest of America wasn't stuck complying with the bill's onerous mandates," Patrick Semmens, spokesman for the anti-union National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, told the paper.

This is the same New York Teachers Union that created the "rubber rooms" and cannot fire anyone no matter what they did. Even though they closed the "rubber rooms" this year they would probably still be going without scrutiny/recession cut-backs. In any case Obama takes care of his friends even when he is supposed to be helping everyone with Obamacare. In other words Obamacare for Thee but Not for Me.

Parents Sue Mentor High School Over Suicide due to Bullying

I hope they win a multi-million dollar judgment against the school board.

If there has been soul-searching among the bullies in Mentor — a pleasant beachfront community that was voted one of the "100 Best Places to Live" by CNN and Money magazine this year — Sladjana's family saw too little of it at her wake in October 2008.

Suzana Vidovic found her sister's body hanging over the front lawn. The family watched, she said, as the girls who had tormented Sladjana for months walked up to the casket -- and laughed.

"They were laughing at the way she looked," Suzana says, crying. "Even though she died."

Yup they actually laughed at her corpse. Now there is a special place in hell for these kinds of people and I think the universe will get even with them in the end. In the meantime I hope the school gets hit for millions so that there will be a bullying precedent set. I think teachers would crack down harder if they know that they can be sued if they let it happen and don't do anything about it.

Jones Out and Former Fannie Mae VP In at National Security Advisor

It seems more Obama cabinet members are leaving while it is still politically expedient.

In another White House shake up, President Barack Obama on Friday announced that his national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, was stepping down after helping to shape the foreign policy for nearly two years. Tom Donilon, Jones' deputy, will take over as the top security adviser.

Obama hailed Jones, a lifelong military man before his White House post, as a "dedicated public servant and a friend to me." The president turned over the job to Donilon, a workhorse figure in the White House who brings to the job a long background of Democratic politics and diplomacy.

Donilon is also Bidens guy and seems like more of a diplomat then a national security wonk like Jones was. The bad part is he has ties to Fannie Mae.

The unpaid adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, held several senior positions at Fannie Mae from 1999 to 2005, including vice president of law and policy, at a time when the company's officers and lobbyists were insisting that now-troubled Fannie's finances were sound. 

I hope he wasn't part of the group that tried to cook the books at Fannie so that they could overstate their earnings. That was 2004 after all and he was sitting at a desk at the Fannie Mae main office hopefully watching law and policy matters or whatever that VP title does. It does sound like a Fannie Mae lobbyist job but you never know.

White House Offers ObamaCare Waivers: Aren't they Supposed to be Anti-Corporation?

I guess those politically connected companies get first shot at avoiding some of this monstrosity.

At issue is a new requirement banning annual caps on benefits, which began phasing in last month. Many employers and insurers that offer low-cost, low-benefit insurance plans known as "mini-med" plans would not have been able to comply with the new requirement without raising monthly premiums to virtually unaffordable levels.

So the administration has granted 30 waivers to date exempting companies from the requirement for a year.

Waivers went to companies including Jack in the Box, Cigna and the company that insures some McDonald's workers, and another 114 applications for waivers are under review by the Health and Human Services Department. One waiver request has been denied, but HHS declined to identify which company was involved.

I would be willing to bet you that the company that was denied was Wal-Mart. Or maybe it was a company that gave too much to the GOP and thus were not eligible. Whatever the case this is exactly what people talk about when they say the politically connected get waivers while everyone else suffers. I'm pretty sure there won't be HHS waivers issued for any regular middle class Americans going forward.

The New Gap Logo: I don't hate it

Well, I might be one of the few people according to this but I don't hate their new logo at all.




It kind of looks futuristic and reminds me of the NASDAQ logo for some reason. You can have that shaded blue box be like a window or door to savings or fashion or something. Like have the commercial show the Gap logo and then you beam into the shaded blue square and you appear in a a refurbished Gap store and look at the $25 Khaki Shorts or something. If you use that box as part of the decor then it would be iconic after a while. In fact the logo looks clean like the stores should be.

Oh well, I guess I'm different then those brand gurus that have been slagging this thing.

Is The Failed Stimulus Benefiting the Undead or Merely the Dead?

Well at least 72,000 dead people were helped by the stimulus.

The payments, which were part of last year's massive economic recovery package, were meant to increase consumer spending to help stimulate the economy.

But about $18 million went to nearly 72,000 people who were dead, according to the report by the Social Security Administration's inspector general. The report estimates that a little more than half of those payments were returned.

I wonder if these went to specters, ghosts, zombies, or wraiths? My money is on ghosts because spending on shrouds is way down and there is nothing like a $250 to buy a new set.

Rush Limbaugh Calls Obama an Economic Jackass

I'm sure the thin-skinned Obama White House are going to hit back at Rush for saying this stuff.

"Extend the tax cut to everybody, and you'll inspire confidence," Limbaugh argued, saying that added degree of certainty would free business to spend some of the capital they’re holding onto and hire people, “which, once upon a time, we were told, was Obama’s top priority.”

For not getting this, "He's a jackass.  He's an economic illiterate.  He's an economic ignoramus.” 
“And that's being charitable,” Limbaugh said.

I have to agree with Rush here. Raising taxes during a recession is about the worst thing you can possibly to do. All it will do is extend the duration of the recession as the incentive to reinvest cash goes into avoiding higher taxes. Why would you hire more staff to get your business up to $300,000 a year in earnings when the government is going to take a bigger chunk out of your hard work? Instead you would figure a way to get out of paying that 5 - 10% extra in taxes.

Obama is an economic babe in the woods because he hasn't run any sort of business other then his campaign. The fact that he is even thinking about raising taxes during a recession should have tipped people off. I'm sure that is why his economic team left. They may have gotten tired of hearing "the rich should pay their fair share" and "sometimes you have to say you have made enough money" and other bits of economic wisdom from Obama.

Newt Brands Democrats as the Party of Foodstamps

Well I guess you could say that is a fair moniker for the Dems.

He blamed policies by a Democratic Congress and President Barack Obama's administration for pushing the number of people receiving food stamps to historic highs. U.S. Department of Agriculture Data show 41.8 million people were on government nutrition assistance programs in July, up from about 32 million when Obama took office.

Wow that is an 10 million increase in people on food stamps in a little less than 2 years? Now you have to say that the stimulus failed if you have to increase assistance by that much. The idea of the party of the paychecks vs. the party of the food stamps sounds like a pretty good idea. You can also add to the fact that there has been a record increase in poverty on Obama's watch as well.

Underscoring the depth of the recession, a projected 45 million people - or about 15% of the population - were poor last year. In 2008, 13.2% of the country lived in poverty.

The estimated 1.8 percentage-point increase in 2009 is the largest year-to-year uptick since the U.S. started calculating poverty figures in 1959. The previous high came during the 1980 national energy crisis, when the rate soared 1.3 percentage points to 13%.

Perhaps the Dems should be called the "Poverty Party" going forward.

When Plastic Pollution Meets Noise Pollution: Sun Chips Edition

When I read about this a while back I went to check the Sun Chips packaging and sure enough the thing was super loud even if all you did was lightly touch it. Now Frito-Lay is dumping the bags:

Frito-Lay hopes to quiet complaints about its noisy SunChips bags by switching out the biodegradable bags for the old packaging on most flavors.

The company is switching back to original packaging, which is made of a type of plastic, for five of the six varieties of the chips. It will keep the biodegradable bags for its sixth variety, its original plain flavor. That's its second best-selling, after Harvest Cheddar.

This is kind of case-in-point of where usability and "green" don't always match up technologically. The idea seems sound that the chip packages will eventually break down but the sacrifice of noisy bags was too much to bear. You can say this about quite a bit of the "green" economy that Obama keeps pushing.

For instance, it would be nice to have solar panels run all of our energy needs but it just can't compete with coal and oil right now. People will not be able to deal with brown outs or black outs while solar gets up to technological snuff so they stick with what they have now. The whole ideas of people making these sacrifices for the sake of a "green economy" is ludicrous when they can't even hack a noisy chip bag.

CNN Anchor Blasts Jon Stewart and is Fired

Wow the left are starting to go after one another already. It isn't going to be pretty in November.

Sanchez called out Comedy Central host Jon Stewart as a "bigot" for mocking him, and complained that Jews — like Stewart — don't face discrimination. He also suggested that CNN, and perhaps the media industry more broadly, is run by Jews and elitists who look down on Hispanics like himself.

Um most leftists look down on everybody not just Hispanics. They have always have this air of superiority about them that they lord over everyone that doesn't agree with them. The bitter clingers remark by Obama, the Red flyover states, Kerry talking about people believing in quick slogans because they are so dumb.

The Left has a long streak of talking down to people and telling them what is good for them that what they believe in and enjoy is wrong, stupid, or immoral. Jon Stewart is just one of the many who engage in that kind of condensation and anger on his show. I watch it just like how I imagine some liberals watch Bill O'Reilly. They watch until they cannot stomach any more and then change the channel. He is a funny guy so I cut him some slack for his insane far left beliefs.

Rahmbo Out Pete Rouse In

At least this Rouse guy doesn't seem to be the kind of guy that would accost a Congressmen in the shower-room.

Into the breech steps Rouse, an Obama senior adviser known around the White House as a problem-fixing, media-shy strategist and organizer. Rouse is expected to serve as interim chief for several months and may eventually get the permanent job, as the White House is in the midst of reviewing a broader shake-up.

I hope this Rouse guy gets his hands on the remote control so they can turn off Fox News in the Oval Office and concentrate on finding ways to create some jobs.