Taxes?

Juan Cole's blog, Informed Consent, talks sense about many things today, but I really like what he says about taxes in his discussion of Mitt Romney's promised "20% across the board cuts":

Taxes are used for common purposes. They pay for interstate highways, environmental cleanup, and all kinds of national infrastructure. If Mitt gets an extra $480,000 to keep, it is not free money. It is being subtracted from the common pot of money that pays for the things we need government to deliver to us. Mitt’s investments are in companies that need their goods trucked around the US, but now he’s cutting money to pay for road building and maintenance. He’s eating the nation’s seed corn.

It seems bizarre to me that many people can't see this about taxes.  Here's another thing Cole gives us to think about re Romney:

When he says he is going to “fix” social security and medicare (which aren’t broken, aren’t on the verge of bankruptcy, and don’t need any dramatic rescue) what he really means is that he is going to try to get rid of them gradually.

The super rich in the US really, really like 1928, and they hate the New Deal like the devil hates holy water, and they are trying to repeal it. Repealing the New Deal is 80% of Romney’s agenda.

Why is this Romney person out to destroy the middle class and decimate the poor?

Meanwhile in Norway....The Dog

still laughing....

Meanwhile in Norway.....

Small Stuff Worth Sweating....

Cop Car's 2/24/2012 post has this fabulous video:  The Secret Life of Ice by Edward Aites, a photographer and videographer from Seattle.  Aites used a macro lens and cross-polarizing filters to create this time-lapse view of ice and submitted the result to Science Friday.  Ice!?  Who knew?

This morning while I was waiting for the tea kettle to boil, I noticed the blue ON light shining through the upside down jar of the last of my mesquite honey.  It reminded me a bit of Aites's video, and I grabbed my camera.

NPR Tiny Desk Concert: The Cranberries

-

Have never seen or heard these folks before...love to look at them.  It's a bit like watching the St. Patrick's Day parade in NYC--blocks and blocks of my relatives and in-laws.  Happy Thursday!

Shrove Tuesday thoughts....

I don't give up anything for Lent anymore except Lent itself.  Lots of people use this time to go on some kind of abstemious regimen--no sugary snacks, no fast food (would that mean, for Canadians, no poutine!?)--that kind of thing.  Every year I think about how Lent has meant giving up things that are GOOD for us, not just our bad habits.  My parents kept the church's fast every year of their adult lives (except Mom, when she was pregnant or nursing), and that involved consuming far less (good, home-cooked) food than they were used to eating.

'Twasn't easy, McGee. They got hungry and tired, they got headaches, they got crabby--and most humans soothe these minor complaints by having a snack.  Snacks were not allowed during Lent--no eating between meals!  My dad went even further by giving up his bad habits, too:  no smoking and no alcohol!  My siblings and I could bear witness to the pain of this sacrifice!  He got pretty owly, cooped up in the heart of winter with no smokes and no highballs after work.

Actually, it's too bad Dad gave up his highballs.  Drinking beverages, including alcohol, was allowed during the fast.  And if he had continued to have his nightly Jim Beam and water, according to Canon Law he could have eaten snacks so he would not get drunk.  If only we had known!  We would have stood on the kitchen stool to get the ice cubes out of the tiny freezing compartment of the refrigerator and had his highball glass loaded waiting for him to pour in exactly one shot of whiskey after he walked in the back door at 5:30 p.m.

There is almost no church rule you can't get around if you know your Canon Law.  Of course, the red beanies won't tell us these things now, especially when they're gaining such ground with the right wing being hard noses.

I think for Lent I'm going to have more of what's good for me (greens, berries, homemade pasta) and less of the stuff that'll take me out early (bacon, hot dogs, anything made with high fructose corn syrup).  That'll be my gift of gratitude for the miraculous life I share with everyone else on the planet.

Northern Lights....

I got this fabulous link and photographer's note in an email from my friend Linda this morning:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120209.html

Last week I was again in Norway for shooting northern lights. This time I was very lucky, there was a lot of activity on the sky especially on the 24 January. The scenes are from Ravnastua, Skoganvarre and Lakselv. The first two days I had a lot of trouble with frozen Cameras. It was -25°C (-13°F) and after 1-2 hours of shooting the lens was frozen. --Christian Mulhauser

The link takes you to Astronomy Picture of the Day; the northern lights video is from earlier this month. I've looked at the pictures of the day for various dates, and I could watch these ALL day.  

We could see the northern lights in Fargo, but I never knew what they were or that they had a name.  After we got our cottage in Minnesota at Lake Sallie when I was 10 years old, the mysterious lights over the lake at night were spectacular.  What's more, my new friends and neighbors, Mike and Marcia, told me their name, "Northern Lights, " and how they come to be--molecules of gas escaping from our atmosphere and colliding with electrical particles falling from the sun.  The lights swirl and dance and shimmer, yet they do not block out the stars.

In fact, I find the photos in the link especially enchanting because of the stars!  Orion is there in a couple of sequences, and I think, so are the Pleiades.  The time lapse photography also caught an automobile returning to a cozy Norwegian home at night, and it looks like a speedy insect all aglow until it lands and shuts off.

Interactive: Timeline of Syria unrest - Interactive - Al Jazeera English

Interactive: Timeline of Syria unrest - Interactive - Al Jazeera English

Two days ago, Cathy said "We should walk over to join the crowd by the Syrian embassy and express our support for the protestors." I confessed to not knowing much about what's going on in Syria.  My attention, such as it is, has been absorbed by the Republican freak show here as mostly white males whose sexual experiences run the gamut from celibate to promiscuous have offered their inflexible "thoughts" against women using birth control. Meanwhile Syria, a small country tucked along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean between Turkey and Lebanon, has been experiencing an uprising. It started almost a year ago with the Syrian people's protests against corruption and President Bashar al-Assad's one-party rule.  Assad and his supporters increasingly have responded to the protests with  bullets, leading to the deaths of many innocent people.  Last month, the Arab League called for the UN Security Council to adopt its action plan for Syria, which included a request for Assad to step down.  Two days after Groundhog's Day, Russia and China vetoed the subsequent UN Security Council resolution.  Things are becoming ominous.  The US closed its embassy this past week.  

If you know as little as I do about this, here's at least an interactive timeline of the unrest as posted on Al Jazeera English.  More to follow....

Why New York City Is So Wonderful....

I'm borrowing this from a great transportation blog, How We Drive.  It's about a recent New York Century Ride (which I think is 100 mile bike ride around all the boroughs of NYC).  Enjoy!

Here, in no certain order, is a sample of the things we saw: Morning tai-chi in Sunset Park; Chinese fisherman in Sheepshead Bay, Russian guys in fatigues in Brighton Beach carrying assault rifles (let’s hope this was for paintball); an apartment building on fire; a woman being dragged unconscious out of a bar in Queens (at ten in the morning); an aerial view of soccer games, looking like Playstation, from the towering bike bath of the Tri-Boro Bridge; the huge bustle of sound, dancing, marching and speechifying that is African Day; the similarly boisterous San Gennaro Festival in Lower Manhattan (whose streets were so traffic-clogged suddenly it was Canal Street that seemed the least chaotic option); white-suited West Indian cricket in Queens; striped-shirted women’s rugby in the Bronx; a motorcycle training course (which we accidentally rode into) in the shadow of the Steinway piano factory; Evangelical storefront churches booming with praise; slack-jawed European shoppers in Soho; the tote-bag clutching patrons of the Brooklyn Literary Festival; the emerald constellation of city parks from Marine to Forest to Van Cortlandt; the Cyclone of Coney Island quiet but proud in the early morning light; pitbulls barking from high terraces; a handful of “ghost bikes” lending sober perspective; the shining Unisphere, which we circled twice looking for the ‘C’ to guide us (a hot dog vendor had pulled over it accidentally)…

I could go on, but you get the picture. And while there were some dodgy connections, some threatening three-way intersections, some fading sharrows, what the event spoke to was the possibility — and promise — of riding in the city. People kept asking, ‘is this a bike-a-thon’?, as if to ride means it must be for something; and of course, it is — for the right and pleasure and utility to ride itself. In the depths of the South Bronx, on some of the least cycling friendly streets, there was always a kid waving, giving a thumb’s up, or shrieking “bikes.” The city felt at once vast and intimate.

Guess How Rich I Am!!

I'm loaded.
It's official. I'm the 630,857,177 richest person on earth!



How rich are you? >>

This gadget has been in the upper RH corner of my home page for a few days, but I am really interested in what other people have to say about it.  Wot to my wondering eyes, it turns out that even with my minuscule annual income, I am in the top 11% worldwide.  And my BFF, who complains biweekly that she needs more $$, is in the top 1%.  Worldwide!

I mean, I may be scraping the bottom of the barrel, but I'm at least IN the barrel!  We really don't know just how good we have it here, do we?  (That's the papal we....)

(This doubtless explains why I am overweight and have too much gunk in my arteries.  I eat too much because I can afford it!)