united states

Chris Knight's avatar

Ya see, it’s crap like this that makes me despise the Seventeenth Amendment and everything about it.

The United States Senate is supposed to represent the states. Up ’til 1913, it was the individual state legislatures that elected their respective senators. Then the Seventeenth Amendment was passed and made the Senate a popularly-elected office.

And that was the beginning of the real modern era of dirty politics and corruption, in my book.

We had our primary elections here in North Carolina today. Incumbent U.S. Senator Richard Burr won the Republican nomination. He’ll be going against whoever comes out of the runoff set for June 22nd against Elaine Marshall and Cal Cunningham from the Democrat party.

Elaine Marshall ain’t happy. And she wants Cal Cunningham to drop out already… for the good of the Democrats. From WRAL’s website…

“I think not having a runoff is in the Democratic Party’s

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Chris Knight's avatar

It’s the biggest financial bailout of a single country in history. I’m already hearing that the International Monetary Fund won’t have enough coin to put Greece back on firm footing again (if it even had that). No doubt the IMF will soon afterward be coming to the United States government for Americans to pay “our fair share” of Europe’s debt crisis.

But that’s not what compels me to write about Greece’s woes at the moment, friends and neighbors…

Greece is now forced to look at “demobilizing” much of its public sector jobs, which makes up A THIRD of that country’s workforce!

This has not gone over well with many of the natives, who have responded with angry protests throughout that nation.

And I find it very easy to envision the United States following much the same track toward economic disaster.

Our own government is too big, too unwieldy, ...

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A group of United States soldiers from the 82nd Airborne based in Fort Bragg, currently stationed in Afghanistan, have produced a music video of themselves dancing to Lady Gaga’s hit song “Telephone”. Y’all have to check this out!

Well done guys! All the more praiseworthy given your present location. I just hope that this won’t become an issue when it gets to be time for your next evaluation 😛...

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This is part of the PowerPoint presentation that was shown to General Stanley McChrystal and other United States military officers leading operations in Afghanistan. It’s supposed to clearly and concisely diagram why the situation there is so dire.

No wonder…

McChrystal, commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, quipped that “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.”

Daily Mail brings us the both tragic and comic story of how PowerPoint has become despised by senior members of the military....

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Awright, let’s be clear about something: the navigator was not listening to his iPod while at his station. But he was in his cabin listening to his iPod when he was supposed to have been at his station. Which in some ways is indicative of plenty more that was wrong on this sub.

“iPranged a submarine” screams the The Sun in the United Kingdom (gotta love those wacky British headlines). It’s now come to light that the collision between the United States Navy’s nuclear submarine USS Hartford and the transport ship USS New Orleans in the Persian Gulf a year ago was caused by the Hartford’s navigational officer off on his own “revising for an exam” while listening to tunes from his iPod when he should have been uhhh… navigating.

But wait, that’s not all! Crewmen had also set up loudspeakers so that they could listen to music (presumably ...

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Because I’m feeling extra cranky tonight (and have for the past 24 hours or so)…

“Chutzpah” is a Yiddish word meaning “shameless audacity”. It’s an olden Hebrew term that in his book The Joys of Yiddish author Leo Rosten describes as “gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible ‘guts,’ presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to.”

So what fits in the category of “chutzpah”?

One example of chutzpah is the child who kills both of his parents, and then throws himself down on the mercy of the court on the grounds that he is an orphan.

Another example of chutzpah is the “evangelist” who routinely rails against a television station for “promoting dancing, R-rated movies” as being somehow sinful behavior, yet is apparently not bothered by the fact that he gives more than a million dollars of his congregation’s money to buy airtime ...

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A few days ago my friend and fellow blogger Matthew Federico addressed the situation with history education in the state of Texas. In case you missed that bit of news, last week the Texas State Board of Education voted 10 to 5 to make drastic changes to the history, social studies and economics curricula being taught in that state’s schools.

The vote occurred along split partisan lines. The ten Republicans on the board voted for the curriculum changes and the five Democrats opposed it. The results have been both hailed and condemned as giving the teaching materials a “conservative” and “right-leaning” slant, as opposed to what some construe is a “liberal” one.

The reason this is going to be a big deal for the rest of the country is because Texas is one of the biggest consumers in the highly lucrative business of school textbooks. So if textbook publishers ...

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And something that I noticed: the first question is the only one that is required by the Constitution. It asks how many people live at a given location. That first question is also in a highlighted box away from the others.

Beginning with question #5, the form starts asking for explicit details about each person living at the location. The exact working is “Please provide information…”

The way I see it, you only have to answer the one question that is constitutional (for purposes of congressional apportionment). Everything else on the form is merely a request for optional information.

In other words, simply put “1” or “2” or “4” or whatever, and send the census form back without putting down any more information than what the government is supposed to collect.

Although if you wish to have some fun with it, I suppose one could put down “Klingon” as their ...

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Ahhhhh geez, not this sh-t again.

As if making an admittedly imperfect health care system even more broken isn’t enough, President Barack Obama now wants to “restructure” No Child Left Behind.

When the hell are we ever going to get a President that is going to be content to simply govern wisely, instead of being fixated on putting his imprint on everything?

So now Obama is determined to “improve” No Child Left Behind: one of the biggest blunders of the all-too-blunderful misadministration of George W. Bush.

Pssst… hey, Obama. Wanna do something for once that will make a lot of people sing your praises? Then don’t “overhaul” No Child Left Behind, but instead scrap the whole damned thing entirely!!!

If Obama did that one thing, then I might entertain the notion of casting a vote for him in 2012.

Would he do that? Probably not. Far too many ...

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