We have double-digit unemployment, state deficits are at record levels, scandal and corruption plague our government, and we’re at war across the world.  I have an idea, let’s tell chefs they can’t put salt in restaurant food. Yeah, that’s what the people want our legislatures working on.

NEW YORK, March 11 (UPI) — A New York state assemblyman says restaurants throughout the state should not be allowed to use salt in the preparation of food.

OK, this one is really strange — but I have a feeling alcohol was involved:

Here’s one for the bizarro file. A man purchased a scratch ticket onboard a Ryanair flight. Yes, Ryanair sells scratch tickets onboard—are you really that surprised? The passenger scratched the ticket and lo and behold, it was a winner! €10,000, or roughly $13,600!

At this point, the story is already strange enough. Who buys a scratch ticket, let alone a winning one, on an airplane? Heck, it’s pretty odd that an airline even sells scratch tickets. But what happened next truly baffles the mind: the man ate the ticket.

According to the BBC, the passenger, whose name has not been released, demanded that the winnings be paid immediately. This, of course, is completely absurd, as no airline would stash a spare €10,000 on its planes, and no crewmember is going to write a check.

Read more here…

I have an idea. Let’s go do some graffiti in broad daylight. Even better, let’s do it to a building where a group of police officers are taking a class on how to conduct foot pursuits.

Over 100 sheriff’s deputies and police officers were attending a law enforcement training class when they saw a 22-year old man quickly etch the glass door that leads directly into a City of Commerce meeting room.  As Vasquez began to open the door to etch the inside, he looked shocked to see dozens of deputies and officers running directly towards him.  He turned and ran down the sidewalk as at least 40 deputies and officers crammed through the doorway at the City of Commerce Aquatic Center to go after him.

A bit dim, says I.

Or this idiot will try to suspend you…

Patrick Timoney brought a tiny Lego man, holding a two inch firearm, to his public school in South Beach, Staten Island this week. It nearly got him suspended.

And we wonder why kids are having a hard time learning stuff in our schools.

Instead, they are worrying about global warming:

The nation’s top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government’s intelligence assets — including spy satellites and other classified sensors — to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change. They seek insights from natural phenomena like clouds and glaciers, deserts and tropical forests.

Re-tasking the satellites away from watching Russia, North Korea, and Iran, not to mention looking for Waldo-bin-Laden? Sounds like a plan to me.

Ida May Fuller was the first Social Security recipient.

She is a case study in socialized  medicine, too.   She is a case study in socialized anything!

Be assured that Miss Fuller did nothing wrong.  She was just the first Social Security recipient and is an example of what can happen with socialized healthcare, too.

Facts about Miss Fuller:

• She contributed $22 in taxes from 1937 to 1939.
• She contributed to Social Security for less than three years.
• She retired in November 1939.
• She received her first Social Security check in January 1940.  That check was for $22.54.
• LINK LINK
• She never married and never had children.
• She lived with a niece.
• She lived to be 100.
• She died in 1974 after have received $20,944.42 in benefits.

Are there any “Ida May Fullers” out there who will be receiving socialized medicine?   The answer is YES!   They are the immigrants both legal and illegal will come to this country.  It will be the extended family members who will be sponsored into this country by their children who immigrated and became citizens.  These older people will be “Ida May Fullers”.

Who will pay for it?  The working taxpayers will pay for it.

Obama is clearly in the campaign mode.  He displays here that he cares little for the victims of his Muslim brother’s killing spree. (more)

Fox News channel has reported:

• Hasan’s father was from a village in Palestine.  
• He stood on a table and shot down into cubicles in the processing center
• He can be turned over to Texas authorities to be prosecuted.  (Bring back “Ole Sparky”!)
• Hasan has been a Muslim from birth.
• Investigators are looking into Hasan’s computer and his connections.

Meanwhile, the London Guardian newspaper reports that a unpublished U.N. report states that the Iranians have tested a nuclear warhead.  (more)

Obama came to the presidency with no experience other than being  a community organizer.  When will be start being the leader of the Free World and stop campaigning?

Just had a guy on Twitter claiming that 30% of every premium dollar goes to health-care insurance companies profits. So I figured I’d check out a couple of companies, via Morningstar Advisor Workstation.

Turns out that for 2008 and 2009 (so far), Humana had operating margins of 3.7% and 4.5% respectively — which provided a return on assets of 5.0% and 6.3%, and a return on equity of 15.3% and 18.2%. Not bad, but obscene? Give me a break.

Health Net, another “evil health insurance company” had operating margins of 1% and 1.1% for 2008 and 2009 to date — giving these bastards a whopping return on assets of 2% and 2.4% — and return on equity of 5.2% and 6.4%.

Bear in mind that they did, in actuality, turn a profit — a feat the Federal government has yet to replicate with Amtrak or the US Postal Service.

Perhaps my Twitter friend will point me towards this evil cabal of companies making 30% profits out of their revenues, as he claims. Somehow, I doubt it.

Yesterday, the AP reported that

Van Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly “green jobs,” issued a statement of apology on Thursday. When asked on Friday whether President Barack Obama still had confidence in him, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said only that Jones “continues to work in the administration.”

Continues to work? Now that’s a ringing endorsement.

What truly baffles the mind is the fact that she was able to get onto the landing strip with her “weapon“.

I use quotation marks as, against an airplane, she might as well have simply been throwing rocks.

You mean entertainers like Beck and Olbermann are controversial on purpose? Who would have guessed?

‘course I don’t recall Olbermann having a problem with that movie about Bush getting assassinated — oh well.

Whole Foods still loves you, and they’re still a mass of gooey Leftists.

Today, on my way home from work, I stopped at the store to pick up some well-deserved barley-pop (they have a great selection) and ran into a friend of mine who works there.

Naturally, I had to stop and congratulate her on Whole Foods becoming the darlings of the Right Wing Conspiracy, with their CEO’s recent Op/Ed in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Whole Foods Alternative to Obamacare“.

She said “I just KNEW you were going to come in and give me a hassle about that!” and laughed. She then proceeded to give me a copy of a letter they are issuing to any offended Lefty who comes by to bitch about Whole Foods falling off the Obamawagon.

Here are a few excerpts:

As you are probably aware, John Mackey wrote an Op/Ed piece that was published in the WSJ earlier this week … John’s intent was to express his personal opinions – not those of Whole Food Market team members or our company as a whole. Still, it’s very clear that John’s piece offended some of our customers, other members of the communities we serve, and some of our team members as well.

We offer you a sincere apology.

Whole Foods Market has no official position on the issue. That said, we have attempted to be part of the solution in health care reform for many years by providing innovative health care options to our team members. We believe that our high deductible medical insurance plan coupled with a company-funded HSA is an excellent way to empower team members to make their own health care choices.

John wanted to share our experience with others through his Op/Ed piece. He believes that the specific ideas he put forward would improve access and cost of health care for more people. Because our plan has held down overal costs (relative to other plans), WFM has been able to pay 100% of the premiums for our full-time team members — about 89% of our workforce…

WFM has a 30-year track record of caring about our customers, team members and communites. From local loan programs to salary caps, from donations to non-profits to funding the Whole Planet Foundation, our innovative programs are created and designed by team members who care about their fellow citizens…

In other words, we’re still the wacky, quirky, Lefty folks you buy your arugula from, so don’t stop shopping here. Just because WE solved the healthcare problem for OUR employees in no way means that we don’t support socialized medicine for the rest of you suckers. Unless you take ours away; that would be bad. We think.

As usual, there’s a different set of rules for Congress, the Administration, and staff.

Not only do they get gold-plated healthcare, while designing an East German system for the rest of us, they apparently aren’t subject to the same insider-trading rules that the rest of us are under.

According to Politifact,

Thomas Newkirk, a partner with the law firm Jenner and Block, told us that indeed there’s some uncertainty about how insider trading rules impact members of Congress and their staff.

For example, in 2001, a financial consultant meeting with the Treasury Department learned that the department planned to kill off the 30-year bond. In turn, the consultant tipped off traders at Goldman Sachs who proceeded to use that information to make the firm lots of money. It was considered insider trading because the consultant knew he was not supposed to release the information, Newkirk said. Federal regulators settled with Goldman Sachs and the consultant for about $10.3 million in September 2003.

But with members of Congress, it’s different. Unless lawmakers have some express confidentiality agreement — whether it’s in writing or in word — they can do whatever they want with the information they obtain on Capitol Hill, Newkirk said.

Bruce Carton, a former Senior Counsel with the SEC’s enforcement division and current editor of Securities Docket, agreed there is uncertainty about the rules. “Insider trading depends on some kind of duty. You can steal information, but unless you have some sort of duty of confidentiality to it, you’re not going to be held liable,” Carton said.

Right now, there is no duty of conflict for Congress, their staff or executive branch employees, he said.

Hey I have an idea : How about a Pulitzer to the writer or writers who actually get off their arses and investigate what is probably the scandal of the century just waiting to be discovered?

In 2002, and 2004, (and afterwards, as well), the Montana Republican Legislative Campaign Committee (LCC) developed what we called “The Republican Action Plan”. It was a list of around ten things that we promised to work to enact if elected, and all the candidates statewide used this as their campaign platform. It was VERY similar to the GOPAC “Contract With America” that led to great success in 1994’s Congressional races.

The basic idea is to come up with a list of specific things that could be accomplished that would move the state (or country) forward without being a partisan laundry list.

We’re in dire need of one, again, both in my current state, California, and nationally in 2010’s Congressional campaign.

Of course, I have a few ideas — mostly stolen, but still and all, they are fairly good and need a little honing. Over the next few months, I’ll be posting them to Twitter and here, and I would appreciate any suggestions for refining them AND getting them into mainstream GOP thought-streams.

… they’ve sucked me back in.

Recent experience with Twitter has led me to a renewed interest in politics, and hence a reason to get back into maintaining Tinyminds on a more regular basis.

It seems to me that now, more than ever, our nation and in fact our world is afflicted with TinyMinds Syndrome — when a “Beer Summit” can captivate the media for days, when Michael Jackson’s death can cause millions of people and millions of dollars to be utterly wasted (on many levels) for a month, when whether or not the Obama girls have a laptop for the summer makes front-page news, it’s time to sit up and say something.

We’re on the verge of destroying American health care. We’re talking about hobbling the financial markets. We’re down in the dumps because the “Cash for Crappers” money ran out after a week. We’re wondering whether we should be apologizing to the Universe for everything we’ve ever done in the past — and coming to the conclusion that, yes, we should.

In a nutshell, we’ve all gone nuts and lost our collective tiny minds. Well, most of us have.

Time to get to work, and make sure that tens of readers each week are subjected to the pointless drivel that used to make this place almost interesting to read.

Now, if I can get my fellow authors to put something worthwhile up, like they used to from time to time, we might actually attract tens of readers every few days. That would be something

- Henry

checkbook?

Though most of us haven’t had to use a “dog ate my homework” excuse since elementary school (and some of us not even then), this woman seemed to think her claim reasonable enough.

Remind me never to take away my son’s Xbox 360 — at least unless the guns are locked up.

A teenage boy in Ohio has been convicted of murdering his mother because she took away his copy of the video game Halo 3, and now faces the possibility of life in prison.

Daniel Petric, 17, shot both his mother and father in October 2007 with a handgun after what was potentially “weeks” of planning, according to the Associated Press. His father survived, but his mother died of a wound to the head. Petric’s defense attorneys had argued that he was not guilty by reason of insanity, claiming that he was dangerously addicted to Halo 3. Petric was tried as an adult in the Lorain County Court of Common Pleas.

I don’t think I’ll even bother to answer this one.

Hello,

Good day, My name is Mr. Song Li, I work with the Hang Seng Bank,I have a business proposal in the tune of $19.5m to be transferred to an Offshore account with your assistance if you are interested.

Send me the following:

Full names,
Private phone number,
Current residential address,

Finally after that I shall provide you with more details, my
Email address is songle99@yahoo.com.hk

Kind Regards,
Song Li Le.