Yes, I know, I’ve been slacking again on my posts. Sorry about that. Here are another three random photos to tide you over until I can write a bit more real content ;-). First, a baseball game at Nationals Park. Second, a funny ad at Sheetz for a pork sandwich. Finally, the most lonely parking space in the lot.
Three random photos: First, a sign for a psychic that states ‘Located on Rt. 50.’ U.S. Route 50, however, is a highway that runs the 3,008 miles from Sacramento, California, to Ocean City, MD and there is no indication of where on rt. 50 we should go (maybe we’re supposed to by psychic too). Second, Melissa cuts open a box that clearly states ‘do not cut open.’ Third, a glamor-shot of my favorite keyboard.
Major media outlets including CNN and CBS are now confirming that former Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), who represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate from 1968 to 2009, has died in a plane crash near Dillingham, Alaska. He was 86. Also in the aircraft were former NASA chief and current CEO of EADS North America Sean O’Keefe and seven others. According to reports from rescuers, at least five people on the plane were killed. Details about the cause of the crash and the disposition of the other passengers are currently unavailable.
Stevens, who survived a plane crash in December 1978 that took the life of his first wife Ann, was the longest-serving Republican Senator and held several leadership positions during his tenure, including president pro-tempore and Majority Whip. In 2008, he was charged with making false statements on Senate disclosure forms for failing to disclose gifts received from VECO, an Alaskan oil services company. Stevens, amid the controversy, narrowly lost his 2008 bid for reelection to Senator Mark Begich (D-AK).
In early 2009, President Barack Obama’s (D) administration requested that Stevens’s charges be dismissed and his conviction vacated due to prosecutorial misconduct; the request was granted by the court in April 2009.
Editorial Note: My wife Melissa is an employee of CH2M Hill, which acquired VECO in September 2007. The alleged incidents occurred before the acquisition, and Melissa works in a different operating division of the company.
In May, I asked you to look behind GM’s curtain. The rosy reports coming out of General Motor’s (GM) were lies stacked upon half-truths and, since the people of the United States are unwitting 61 percent owners of the automotive behemoth, we ought to dig into the realities that lie beneath. The truth is that GM hadn’t really repaid any loans to the government (repaying a government loan with a government-funded escrow account is more like paying off one credit card with another). Also, any talk of a GM profit quietly omitted the fact that the profitable company was a new corporation formed out of thin air, and the original GM—renamed Motors Liquidation Company—was [and still is] mired in bankruptcy.
Now, Chrysler is trying to get in on the lies and half-truth game by announcing its own quarterly profit. The story is basically the same one we’ve heard before. The company now known as Chrysler Group LLC is another new corporation formed out of thin air, and the Chrysler LLC that existed before is now called Old Carco LLC. Old Carco, like Motors Liquidation Company, is still in bankruptcy. If we are honest shareholders—and you and I own about 10 percent of Chrysler—we should consider both Chrysler Group LLC and Old Carco LLC when computing whether bailing out this failed corporation is ‘working.’
Keep digging into the funny math that politicians will be feeding us over the next several months as we approach the November elections. You’re going to hear a lot of stuff about how all this mad government spending has averted a crisis, and how great the bailed-out banks and car companies are doing. Most of it is untrue and you, the taxpayer and voter, need to do some honest research before coming to conclusions. The truth is that the Bush/Obama bailouts have been a giant, pointless waste of money that did nothing but balloon the federal deficit.
In response to a column by Courtland Milloy in the Washington Post this past week, I submitted a letter to the editor. The Post published my letter this morning. Here it is:
Columnist Courtland Milloy’s anti-gun screed was as inaccurate as it was unfair [“This gun safety stuff is a piece of cake,” Metro, Aug. 4].
Perhaps if he had paid attention in his safety class instead of nitpicking about the crime examples or lambasting his instructor for once innocuously dropping a part of a gun, he might have learned some useful facts.
Like, for example, step two in getting a concealed-carry permit is not to move to Virginia, since Virginia will issue permits to nonresidents. Or that violent crime can occur in restaurants just as easily as it can occur on the street or in a bank. Or that almost every mass shooting in the United States over the past 20 years happened in places where guns are prohibited (i.e., where the law-abiding victims had no means of defense).
Or that his home state of Maryland, with its draconian gun laws, has a violent crime rate about 245 percent higher than Virginia’s [note: I calculated this with data from the FBI’s 2008 ‘Crime in the United States‘ report; the Post cited it differently]. Perhaps Mr. Milloy really should consider moving across the river, where the government still trusts the people to secure their own safety. As the old saying goes, “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”
Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.
