National Debt Put Into Perspective

These are always enlightening. The U.S. Debt Ceiling visualized in $100 bills.

1 Billion dollars is 10 pallets of $100 bills.

4th Grade Teacher's Letter to Obama

Here's a little taste of the letter that 4th grade teacher, Ms. Kathlene Lyday, sent to the White House.

You are so self-righteously offended by the big bankers and the American automobile manufacturers yet do nothing about the real thieves in this situation, Mr. Dodd, Mr. Frank, Franklin Raines, Jamie Gorelic, the Fannie Mae bonuses, and the Freddie Mac bonuses. What do you intend to do about them? Anything? I seriously doubt it.

What about the U.S. House members passing out $9.1 million in bonuses to their staff members on top of the $2.5 million in automatic pay raises that lawmakers gave themselves? I understand the average House aide got a 17% bonus. I took a 5% cut in my pay to save jobs with my employer. You haven’t said anything about that. Who authorized that? I surely didn’t!
Executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be receiving $210 million in bonuses over an eighteen-month period, that’s $45 million more than the AIG bonuses. In fact, Fannie and Freddie executives have already been awarded $51 million not a bad take. Who authorized that and why haven’t you expressed your outrage at this group who are largely responsible for the economic mess we have right now?

Forrest Gump and Ron Burgundy on the Affordable Healthcare Act

Agent 54 works part-time for the Nominal Secrets Apparatus (NSA) which is under the Department of Redundancy Department (DORD).  I just found the transcript of an exchange between Ron Burgundy and Forrest Gump at a Ron Burgundy Presidential Campaign presser on Agent 54's blog.

Forrest:  Why did someone write a bill that nobody could read?
Ron:  Well, that’s a great question. Uh, I don’t know, it seems kinda stupid to me.
Forest:  Stupid is as stupid does.

Jon Stewart Vs. Sebelius on Obamacare

Link, because the Blogger/YouTube interface sucks, and won't let me embed the particular video.

You probably know that Jon Stewart is a flaming leftist, and hosts a "fake news" show on Comedy Central called The Daily Show.  Kathleen Sebelius is the Health and Human Services Secretary.  Even Jon Stewart doesn't think it's fair that corporations get a year before fines (or taxes, take you pick) are imposed, but the individual mandate takes place immediately.  Jon even brings up that the "Affordable Care Act" is leading to full-time employees being cut back to less than 30 hours, so that employers don't have to pay for their healthcare.

Jon is effectively agreeing with Republicans!

He does however, want to go to "single-payer" healthcare.  That would be socialized healthcare.  Government-run healthcare, as they have in Canada, the U.K., and Cuba.

EDIT:  The individual mandate has been pushed back, so that it doesn't kick in until after the 2014 mid-term elections.

Feinstein - "First Amendment is a Special Privilege"

Here they go!  Trying to block those that aren't part of their leftist politburo.

Poo-pourri Commercial

I've never tried the product.  I'm not endorsing it.  The commercial is friggin' funny though.

Actual Bank Robbery in Detroit

Oops!

Happy Dependence Day From Pelosi

No, that's not a typo.  I typed Dependence Day intentionally, and I mean it that way.

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says:

. . . soon we'll all be leaving for the 4th of July recess, next week, for when we celebrate Independence Day.  We'll also be observing health independence.  This week marks one year, since the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act.  It captures the spirit of our founders, they wrote in the Declaration of Independence.

'Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness," and the Affordable Care Act offers just that.  A healthier life, the liberty to pursue a person's happiness, to be free of constraint, to be job locked, because they are policy locked.  And so, if you want to be a cameraman, a writer, you want to be self-employed, you want to be assertiveness (sic), you want to change jobs, whatever it is that you want to do, you are free, you have the liberty to do.

So, we've had Social Security, Medicare, and now health independence, and that's something our members will take home to celebrate over this Independence Day. 

What!!!???? 

These things she's mentioned aren't about independence, they're about dependence.  Dependence on government for a retirement income.  Dependence on government for income for months, and months, and months if you are unemployed (don't try getting a job, or anything too extreme like that).  And now dependence on government for health care.

I'm pretty certain that The Founders never expected the day when the federal government would tax people for not buying something.  They would have never expected the government requiring that people with serious illnesses receive their health care at the same price as healthy people.  I don't think the founders would have provided themselves with no-cost top-notch health care, while the proletariat receive only minimal coverage, or what they can pay out-of-pocket for.

Pat yourself on the back a little more, Ms. Pelosi!

Carlisle General Motors Show Pics

Show T-Shirt

Composite photo of most of the show.  The swap meet is on the other side of the stadium seating.  The autocross course is back behind where I took the picture.  Over the loudspeaker they were saying that Carlisle Fairgrounds is 139 or 149 acres. It's a quite a drive for me, but it's worth it.  There were a lot of cars, and since digital photos are cheap, and digital storage keeps getting cheaper and cheaper, so I took a whole bunch of photos.

Because of the hood leuvers, I beleive this is a 1933 Chevy.  The '32s had hinged vents.  This was acutally parked on a corner just outside of the show.

If you look close, you can sort of see the red C5 Corvette engine peeking out from under the hood.  It looks tiny in there.

 '57 Bel Air, because it's a necessity, I guess

'57 Chevy 150 Wagon

'57 Chevy Sedan Delivery

'59 Chevy Sedan Delivery.  I love the 59's.  Was hoping to see at least one coupe.

 '58 Oldsmobile Super 88

I'm pretty sure this is a '58 Impala.

 '59 Chevy Apache

'60 Impala LowRider

'62 Corvair Wagon

'62 Impala Wagon, lowered.

Surf Wagon, and a pretty ratty one at that.  I didn't get a shot of the grille, so I can't really identify it.  Sixty-something.

Both are '62 Impalas, I think.

six-fo' Impala

I believe this is a sixty-something pick-up, in an original shade of ugly green paint.

Another sixty-something pick-up, I think.  This one done up as a shop truck.

I found this hearse in the parking lot.  Never overlook the parking lots at car shows.

 Check out how deep that rear wheel is.

Looks like a Trans-Am car.  I dig it.

The Buick GSXs are pretty rare, there were two at the show.

Maryland State Police car.  Late-60's, maybe early 70's?

2nd Generation Camaros are not my favorites, but I guess this is pretty cool.

It's not a car from the movies.  That was, I think, a '59 Ambulance.  But it's still kind of neat.



A couple big '70s coupes.

I found this Opel GT tucked away in a corner.  There were a bunch of them at the Import show a year ago.

Tran-Ams kick ass!  Someone obviously put a lot of work into this one.

Nasty 'Camino drag, er, car? Truck?

Super clean white 'Camino

A whole bunch of Turbo Buicks



A couple of black Monte SS

Fastback Monte

The loudest car in the show.  He had like a 2000 Watt stereo going.

Can you tell that I'm into wagons?  I think these came with LT1s under the hood.  My grandfather didn't like the "upside-down bathtub" Caprice/Impala sedans, but he bought a Buick Roadmaster wagon, which is pretty much just a Caprice wagon with fake wood down the side.

Maybe I should get over it, but I still like mini-trucks.  There were only a couple of S-10s and I didn't see any Colorodos or GMC Canyons.  This is a late-model S-10 Extreme.

There was a car club with a lot of very fast-looking GTOs.  I told them, "Do want!  Can I has just one?"  But they said, "No."  So all I brought home was that t-shirt.

I believe this is a C5 Corvette, with a lot of fiberglass work.

Although modern and fairly common.  The Super Sport Cobalts are faster on the strip than a lot of the old muscle cars, and faster around corners than all but the modern rebuilds.

There were a lot of new Camaros, these are a few of my favorites.

I'm not sure about the Lambo door mod, but I like the Corvette racing graphic on the hood.

Meguiar's C6.

Meguiar's CTS-V wagon

CTS-V coupe.  Want!

A VW GTI I found in the parking lot out near the autocross course.

Suby's for the NASIOC guys.  The blue one was parked down the street from me, the pearl one I found in the parking lot.

There was a Ferrari 458 behind me on the highway going back to the hotel, but I wasn't able to safely snap a photo.