When Obama is in charge.

Obama had a town hall meeting to yet again sell his health care plan.

The hitch? 

The town hall meeting was by invitation only.  To add more shame on the event, all of the tweeter, facebook, etc. questions were prescreened.  So, this is basically the same formula as the ABC Infomercial.  No “hard” questions.  All answers were written ahead of time. 

Basically, if you were in school about to take a test, the teacher would have already provided you all the questions days ahead of the exam, so that you had time to prep your answers.

Emotion, few details, in Obama’s health care pitch

President Barack Obama wanted to put a human face on his plans to overhaul health care, and a Virginia supporter did just that Wednesday. Fighting back tears, Debby Smith, 53, told Obama of her kidney cancer and her inability to obtain health insurance or hold a job.

The president hugged her - she’s a volunteer for his political operation - and called her “exhibit A” in an unsustainable system that is too expensive and complex for millions of Americans.

….Smith, of Appalachia, Va., is a volunteer for Organizing for America, Obama’s political operation within the Democratic National Committee. She obtained her ticket through the White House.

…Some of Obama’s questioners Wednesday were from friendly sources, including a member of the Service Employees International Union and a member of Health Care for America Now, which organized a Capitol Hill rally last week calling for an overhaul. White House aides selected other questions submitted by people on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Republicans said the event was a political sham designed to help Obama, not to inform the public.

“Americans are already skeptical about the cost and adverse impact of the president’s health care plans,” Republican National Committee spokesman Trevor Francis said. “Stacking the audience and preselecting questions may make for a good TV, but it’s the wrong way to engage in a meaningful discussion about reforming health care.”

Watch this jaw-dropping video.  A CBS reporter and Helen Thomas grilled Gibbs for the administration’s pre-selection of participants. 

“The point is the control from here. We have never had that in the White House. And we have had some control but not this control. I mean I’m amazed, I’m amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency and you have controlled…” veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas said Wednesday.

Gibbs:  “Let’s have this discussion, after the town hall meeting.”

Thomas:  “No, no no, we’re having it now.”

Holy!!!  The CBS / Thomas duet towards the end of the above video is something to behold!!  They were not going to let Gibbs off the hook without discussing the preselection of questions….  Amazing.

Is your Congressman one of the Democrats that brilliantly voted against the Crap and Trade bill?  Have you been crowing with delight, because you think that you are represented by an (and this is an extremely rare occurrence) intelligent Democrat?  Have you pledged to vote for the Dem again, and again, because he/she voted “the right way”.

Don’t go to the voting booth, just yet.

Would you believe that Pelosi gave them permission to vote “no”, so that they could trick their constituents?

Do these people lie every time their mouth opens?

Analysis of Waxman-Markey vote from around the web.

In an excellent analysis (complete with interactive map), National Journal‘s Ron Brownstein notes:

“Of the 49 House Democrats who represent districts that McCain carried last year, fully 29 voted against the measure. By contrast, just 15 of the 207 Democrats from districts that Obama carried last year voted against the bill. (Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings, whose district backed Obama, did not vote, meaning “Obama Democrats” ended up splitting 191-15.) Put another way, while 59 percent of the Democrats from districts that McCain carried voted no, just 7 percent of Democrats in Obama-majority districts opposed the White House on the vote.

“Similarly, seven of the eight Republicans who supported the measure represent districts that backed Obama last November. (The list included Rep. Mark Kirk of Illinois, who’s considering a bid for the president’s former Senate seat, and Mike Castle of Delaware, who may run for the seat vacated by Vice President Joe Biden.)”

How the shell game worked - Pelosi allowed the Dems with shaky constituents (McCain voters) to vote last.  That way, when they voted at the end, they already knew that the bill already had the votes that it needed.  There was one exception to this rule.  One “brave” (description from the MSM that briefly stopped talking about Michael Jackson) Congressman from a shaky district, stepped up early to cast his vote “yea”.  He was met by rounds of enthusiastic applause from his party.  But, the rest of the shaky guys waited to the end to vote “no”. 

Pelosi is having her cake, and eating it, too.  And the Americans will be starving….

She was able to ensure that the bill passed, and (she hopes) dupe millions of voters into continuing to elect their Dem who so bravely voted no….  Like a cat playing with a mouse, until she decides that she is hungry. 

Additional comments on the Crap and Trade bill - I have previously discussed how it will effect every homeowner in the country, when they try to sell their home.  (The hopeful seller will have to pay for an inspection by the feds.  The feds will determine if the house lives up to efficiency standards.  If the house fails inspection, the feds will not allow the house to go up for sale, until inefficiencies are fixed).

The Feds will base their efficiency standards on a California model (because CA is just doing so well at this point).  But, the actual definition of what is efficient is a “floating” standard.  As an example:  you pay the 8K to replace all the windows in your home with new, more efficient and within code, windows.  Two years later, you try to sell your home.  Problem:  the standards changed within the two years, and you have to fork over 8K (at least) again for windows to replace those that are only two years old….

And - Michelle Malkin has also written about a “fill in the blank” section in the Crap and Trade bill.

When I live-blogged the House debate on cap-and-tax last Friday, I noted the existence of a “placeholder” in the bill. Rep. Joe Barton mentioned it was unprecedented to have such a mechanism (allowing bill-writers to insert language to be determined after the law was approved) in a bill up for final passage. Later, I noted that Barney Frank explained on the floor on Friday that the placeholder in the cap and trade bill apparently will deal with regulations of financial derivatives market associated with reducing carbon emissions. Frank said he was confident a “good system will be in place.”

The idiots in Congress voted on a bill, that has a “to be determined later” section.  And Barney Frank is involved.  Maybe the idiots should have actually read the bill.

Where is the fine print czar when you need him?

Michelle Malkin has a story today that is so amazing, I just couldn’t pass it up.  It is about the creation of a “Fine Print Czar”.

She is commenting on a story from Breitbart.

For your own safety - put all food and drink down.  Empty your mouth.  Proceed.

President Barack Obama asked Congress on Tuesday to create a new agency to police the fine print on consumer products like credit cards and mortgages and determine what fees, penalties and interest rates are fair.

I hope that I am not the only one who saw how ridiculous it was for Obama to be concerned about the “fine print”, when Congress is so busy signing legislation, that they can’t be slowed down by pesky constituents asking them to READ THE BILL before signing.

This year, alone, they passed the porkulus package, the largest spending bill ever in our history, without reading it.

And, this week, they passed the Crap and Trade bill, which will allow gov to tell you how much water and energy your family will be allowed to use, again without reading it.  We know that they didn’t read it, because even the talking head whose name is on the bill admitted that he hadn’t read it.  In addition, the original bill was 1200+ pages.  They added another 309 pages at 3 am, the day of the vote.  No one who voted on the bill could possibly have read it.

Maybe they thought that you were too busy watching Michael Jackson to notice.  And maybe they were right….

Back to the Fine Print Czar

The Consumer Financial Protection Agency would be in charge of regulating those products in the same way other government agencies regulate the safety of drugs, food and toys.

Obama said Americans are demanding it.

“Those ridiculous contracts with pages of fine print that no one can figure out—those things will be a thing of the past,” the president said in a statement accompanying the 152-page draft bill. “And enforcement will be the rule, not the exception.”

….Under the plan, lenders would be required to be up front about their products and compare them to less risky, “plain vanilla” options. The agency potentially could require a kind of warning label on such financial products as mortgages with payments that suddenly balloon in size.

I am laughing, also, at the bottom paragraph.  A warning label.  Snort.  For those of you who either didn’t have a mortgage or who signed their mortgage years ago, let me remind you of a couple of items.

1) There is already a warning label - it is in the title of the mortgage.  You can have a mortgage with a large balloon payment at the end - these mortgages are BALLOON Mortgages.  The title of the mortgage tells you it will have a balloon payment (unless you thought that there was a clown after your settlement handing out balloons). 

There is another “evil mortgage”.  The ARM Mortgage.  Another one that has been criticized as being sneaky.  Again, the name of the mortgage - Adjustable Rate Mortgage - sums up what will happen.

2)  Every mortgage has a Truth In Lending (TIL) form that must be signed.  This form is a one page summary, the breaks down the terms of your mortgage.  The interest, the actual interest, the actual amount of money you will pay back to the back assuming that all payments are on time, the length of the loan, whether there is a prepayment penalty, the late date, etc.

So, aren’t there warning labels already in existence?  And isn’t it time that we demand some personal responsibility from people?  If you are not able to read your mortgage and fail to ask questions about what you did not understand, shouldn’t the burden be on you?

A friend of mine just emailed me the following.. so good I have to share!

Psalm 2009 - 2012

First Book of Democrat

Obama is a Shepherd,

I shall not want.

He leadeth me beside still factories.

He restorest my faith in the Republican Party

He guideth me in a path of unemployment…

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the bread line,

I shall not go hungry.

Obama has anointed my income with taxes,

My expenses runneth over my income,

Surely, poverty and hard living will follow me, all the days of my life.

And I will live forever, in a rented home.

But I am glad I am an American.

I am glad that I am free.

But, I wish I was a dog,

and Obama was a tree.

When is this insane cycle going to stop?  When will our government realize that it is flat broke?  When will they stop with the free flow of our money?

U.S. to Forgive Indonesian Debt in Exchange for Conservation Plan

JAKARTA, Indonesia — The United States will sign an agreement Tuesday to forgive nearly $30 million in Indonesian debt in return for the large Southeast Asian country agreeing to protect forests on Sumatra Island, which is home to endangered tigers, elephants, rhinos and orangutan.

The deal is the largest so-called debt-for-nature swap the U.S. government has organized so far under the U.S. Tropical Forest Conservation Act and its first such pact with Indonesia, which has one of the fastest deforestation rates in the world, losing an area of forest the size of Switzerland annually.

Gee, I wonder if I could work out a similar plan?  I could agree to preserve nature in my backyard (ie not mow or week the “naturally occurring” vegetation), and they can forgive my mortgage?

Normal families have had to make sacrifices.  We trim our budgets of non-essentials when money gets tight.  Our government should act the same.  Instead, it is spending money like a drunk sailor on shore leave…

Lurking deep in the 1500 plus page Crap and Trade Bill, is a provision that will affect every single homeowner in the US>

And my idiotic traitor Congressman, Mike Castle (R[INO]- DE), voted for it.

In the future, when you have a contract for the sale of your house, you the seller will have to have a government inspector (presumably at your own cost) check your home to see if your windows, appliances, etc. are up the the new federal standards (the fed will force local gov to adopt the Fed building code, those locals that do not adopt the fed code will lose Fed funding - this is the same way that the gov “convinced” all states to adopt a 21 year drinking age…).  Those sellers whose homes do not meet standards will be required to make, and pay, the necessary upgrades.

So, the bill will suck out the remaining value of the house that you own.  It will force you to buy new windows, AC, oven, stove, refrigerator, etc.  Basically, it would take at least 20K from the seller, if they are trying to sell an older home.

Our government is killing us. 

I spent Friday calling and emailing my Congressman (yeah, that was worth it).  I spent this morning calling his office to tell them what an idiot he is.  They said that he wasn’t voting like a Dem.  And, that he did it to decrease our reliance on foreign oil.  I suggested that drilling for our own oil would reduce our dependency, and that he should have gone that way.  I then called the DE RNC to ask if they would be requesting that Castle announce his true party affiliation, so that the Republican could run an actual Republican.

They’re Coming To Take Me Away….

Be the best at your job.  Do everything right.  And yet the liberals still think your job belongs to someone else.

The court’s more liberal members joined Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent which she read from the bench. "The white firefighters who scored high on New Haven’s promotional exams understandably attract the court’s sympathy," she said. "But they had no vested right to promotion."

We’re not talking about a "vested right" here.  Because obviously her opinion is that less qualified people DO have a vested right.  This wasn’t a case of nepotism, or hiring a buddy for the job.  This is a case of the government discriminating against someone because of the circumstances of their birth. Doesn’t sound right does it?  But that’s OK, because remember, the liberal members of the court are your betters.

On the face, that should be a ridiculous question.  After all, haven’t the Dems and their cohorts excoriated Palin for having a ghost writer (or a collaborator) for her book?

But recent research has led many to believe that Obama, the messiah himself, might have had a ghostwriter for his “famous” Dreams From My Father book.

And that ghostwriter might be none other than Bill Ayers - the very same radical that Obama has repeatedly claimed to barely know.

Breakthrough on the Authorship of Obama’s ‘Dreams’

Within days of my [Jack Cashill] going public last September with the speculation that terrorist emeritus Bill Ayers helped Barack Obama write his acclaimed memoir, Dreams From My Father, I learned that I was not alone in that intuition.

This story has been around since September - months before the election - and was never picked up by any of the “free press”. 

Bill Ayers was no one’s ghostwriter.  The now overwhelming evidence strongly suggests that he used the frame of Obama’s life and finished it off with his own ideas, his own biases, his own experiences, his own passions, his own friends, even his own romances, all of this toned down just enough to keep Obama viable as a potential candidate. 

I would argue that Ayers played Cyrano to Obama’s Christian.  His personal history was too ugly for him to woo Roxane/America himself.  But Obama — “articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” as Joe Biden reminded us — could and did make America’s heart melt.

I see this as yet another item that the media SHOULD have investigated, before the election.  Its failure to do so ruined any chance of an honest and informed election process.  It will remain, with the controversy of Obama’s birth certificate, as an example of the failure of our “free press” during the 2008 election campaign.  These items should have been fully investigated prior to the election.  This speculation should have been confirmed or denied as soon as Obama became the Dem candidate.

Can a nation survive by continually rewarding mediocrity while punishing success?

I’m serious.  Does anyone have a link or an article that breaks down the bill?

This is what I have heard, but I haven’t been able to confirm or deny the veracity of the following:

• The bill tells you what lightbulbs (including wattage) you are allowed to use to illumine pictures or wall art.
• The bill states that you are not allowed to repair your appliances - that you have to go out a buy new, more efficient models.  The new appliances would not be made in America, because the manufacturers would not be able to meet the new crap and trade standards.
• The bill tacitly acknowledges the “possibility” of future price increases - it will actually cut a check to “poor” people for the increased energy costs (the check, of course, will be from tax payer dollars, presumably those non-poor people who work hard and who will be overwhelmed by the increasing costs of life).
• The bill will allow federal building codes to override local codes.
• The bill regulates hot tubs, TV’s, and appliances.
• The bill sends our money to other countries, so that those countries can develop “green” energy rules and limit deforestation.

If anyone has additional info - I’d love to hear from you.

Monica Conyers, wife of powerful Democratic congressman U.S. Rep. John Conyers, pleads guilty to conspiracy.

The one count of conspiring to commit bribery is punishable by up to five years in prison….

She has long been under suspicion in the Synagro Technologies bribery probe, not least because she had been a vocal opponent of the contract before suddenly switching her sentiments. She became the deciding voice in the city council’s 5-4 vote to approve the sludge-hauling deal in November 2007.

In both cases cited in the court documents today, Conyers was handed the cash in an envelope by a individual representing Rayford Jackson, a Detroit businessman doing work for Synagro who pleaded guilty to bribery earlier this month.

On one of those two occasions, Conyers was accompanied by an aide. Previous court documents indirectly identified former Conyers aide and political consultant Sam Riddle as having participated in the bribery scheme.

Culture of corruption.

Rep Conyers is considered to be one of the top libs in Congress.  He has been elected 22 times (another reason for term limits).

His record:  (from Wikipedia)

The United States National Health Insurance Act (Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act) (HR 676), is a bill submitted to the United States House of Representatives by Representative John Conyers, Jr., D-MI, which, as of September 29, 2008, has 93 cosponsors. It was first introduced, with 25 cosponsors, in 2003,^[7] and reintroduced each session since then. The act calls for the creation of a universal single-payer health care system in the United States, in which the government would provide every resident health care free of charge. In order to eliminate disparate treatment between richer and poorer Americans, the Act would also prohibit private insurers from covering any treatment or procedure already covered by the Act. The bill is currently in the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Health.

Actually calls for a single payer health system.  Egad.  Prohibiting insurers to cover treatment covered in the Act….

In May, 2005, Conyers released What Went Wrong In Ohio: The Conyers Report On The 2004 Presidential Election, which discusses the voting irregularities in the state of Ohio during the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election. The evidence offered consists of statistical abnormalities in the differences between exit poll results and actual votes registered at those locations. The book also discusses reports of faulty electronic voting machines and the lack of credibility of those machines used to tally votes.

He was one of the 31 who voted in the House to not count the electoral votes from Ohio in the United States presidential election, 2004.^[9]

He tried to take the voting rights from an entire state…

In addition (in Conyers’ words)

In January of 1989, I first introduced the bill H.R. 40, Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. I have re-introduced HR 40 every Congress since 1989, and will continue to do so until it’s passed into law.

I only listed a “short list” of Conyers’ legislation.  It is amazing that America has lasted as long as it has, with people like him running the country.

And he is not without his own ethics problems.

In letters sent separately to the House Ethics Committee, the FBI, and the US Attorney’s office by two former aides of Conyers, they alleged that Conyers used his staff to work on several local and state campaigns and forced them to baby-sit and chauffeur his children.^[12] In late December 2006, Conyers “accepted responsibility” for possibly violating House rules.

It is time to clean house in Washington.

As most people are now aware, Washington is talking about taxing your employee medical benefits.

Obama famously ridiculed McCain for suggesting such a thing.  And many voters actually believed that Obama would not allow such a thing (here is a hint - you know if Obama is lying if his lips are moving).

But, now that the American people laughingly chose to have the Democrats rule in all parts of government, the tax on the health benefits is on the table again.  It is needed to fund the Obamacare program.  So, they want to take from you, to pay for others.

Looking at the numbers of the “uninsured” - we find that most are actually illegals.  Another large number are people who could afford the healthcare that their employer offered, but who choose to spend the money on more important things (such as their big screen TV, hugely expensive car, ipods, etc.).  These are the “invincible” 20-somethings.  I, actually, have no problem with the invincibles.  I’ve been there myself.  I chose to go the route of cheap insurance with high deductibles myself, but I felt pretty invincible back then, and actually, given my medical expenses then, I was right.  I don’t believe that people should be forced to have health insurance.  It should be their choice.

It seems as though the Democrats heard complaints from their union thug supporters about the prospect of taxing health benefits.  So the Dems now are putting forth a solution

Unions’ Health Benefits May Avoid Tax Under Proposal

The U.S. Senate proposal to impose taxes for the first time on “gold-plated” health plans may bypass generous employee benefits negotiated by unions.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, the chief congressional advocate of taxing some employer-provided benefits to help pay for an overhaul of the U.S. health system, says any change should exempt perks secured in existing collective- bargaining agreements, which can be in place for as long as five years.

The exception, which could make the proposal more politically palatable to Democrats from heavily unionized states such as Michigan, is adding controversy to an already contentious debate. It would shield the 12.4 percent of American workers who belong to unions from being taxed while exposing some other middle-income workers to the levy.

“I can’t think of any other aspect of the individual income tax that treats benefits of different people differently because of who they work for,” said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, a Washington research group that often criticizes Democrats’ economic proposals. Edwards said the carve-out “smacks of political favoritism.”

Baucus, a Montana Democrat, is proposing to tax Americans whose health insurance is valued at a higher rate than what is offered to federal employees. About 40 percent of insured Americans have costlier benefits, and Baucus has said he is trying to set the level at which taxes would be imposed high enough so fewer people are affected.

Taxing health benefits that are valued higher than those offered to Fed employees (gold plated benefits) - gee, I wonder, would those Fed benefits also consider the incredible insurance coverage currently enjoyed by these politicians who seem to thing that the private sector benefits are so outrageous?  From what I recall, Senate and House benefits also included hair cuts, laundry service, transportation, travel, etc….

Why are the American people sitting back a “taking it”?  Where is the outcry?  Are they all brain dead zombies?  I guess Ayers is right - get them in elementary school, and they will never have an individual thought.

It is official.  The Waxman Crap and Trade bill just passed.

And my Congressman, the highly questionable Mike Castle (R - that is a joke) voted for it.

What an idiot.

UPDATE:  The vote was very close.  If it weren’t for the turncoat Republicans it would not have passed. 

Democrats did not accept one amendment that the Reps put forth:

Defeated

• Mike J. Rogers (R-MI) offered an amendment that cancels the law unless China and India adopt similar standards.
• Roy Blunt (R-MO) offered an amendment that cancels the law if the average price of electricity in a residential sector increases by 10% or more. After defeat, he offered a second amendment that would cancel only Title III (the cap-and-trade scheme) of the law if residential electricity prices rise by 20%. After defeat of this measure, George Radanovich(R-CA) offered a similar amendment that would cancel only Title III if electricity prices in the residential sector rise by 100%. This measure was also defeated. In the hearing, Bart Stupak (D-MI) called into question the seriousness of these “message amendments.” He stated they are only offered to be used by the Republicans to spur sensational headlines about lack of sympathy by Democrats. Ranking Member Joe Barton (R-TX) responded that they were indeed “message amendments” to the American people in an attempt to convey that supporters of the bill care nothing about cost to the ratepayer.
• Lee Terry (R-NE) offered an amendment that cancels the law if average gas prices reach $5 per gallon.
• Fred Upton (R-MI) offered an amendment that suspends the law if the nation’s unemployment rate for the prior year reaches 15% as a result of the law.
• Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) offered an amendment requiring the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency‎ (EPA) to label energy bills, food, manufactured products and fuels with the price impact this law has on the item.
• Cliff Stearns (R-FL) offered an amendment to remove existing nuclear power from the baseline of the Renewable Electricity Standard. (Although nuclear power does not emit greenhouse gasses, this amendment would have potentially reduced the overall implementation of renewable energy under this act by around 20%, the amount of nuclear electricity generation in the United States).^[4]

(Wikipedia)  So much for negotiating and compromise.  That only happens when Reps are the majority.

Too funny - Patrick Kennedy left REHAB to vote for this.  Rehab???

Michelle Malkin has links on the vote.  Check her site out to see if your Congressman is as stupid as mine.  Michelle Malkin has updated her list here.

It seems as though our “elected leaders” have passed another nation killing bit of legislation WITHOUT EVEN READING IT.  Didn’t their mommies tell them to read all the small print before signing their name to anything?  Evidently 300 pages were added to the bill at 2 am, the day of the vote.  We deserve better than this.

Yes, I finally mowed the lawn.  Geez, it wasn’t that bad…

Do you ever look at some cars and or features and wonder.. what on earth were they thinking?

I found another fantastic Cars.com article.. but before I share that.. here are some of my scary-stupid or just scary-annoying choices..

Cup-Holders: On the basically insignificant scale.. for me one of my issues is simply cup holders.. they are often too small and at best could hold a 8-oz water bottle, perhaps a can of soda.. but I always travel with at minimum a 24-oz tumbler of water. MOST vehicles, at most will have no more than one cup holder than can fit such a container. I know I am not the only one who would have a huge beverage.. I think of the large sodas from fast food or a 7-11 Big Gulp.

And yet some cars boast the vast quantity of (useless) cup holders their car includes.. Like when I checked out the Honda Fit, I really liked that car, but was at a loss as to what I would do with my drink! It has 10 cup holders, rather 10 small water-bottle holders. They are hidden in the doors, on the dash, in the console, and some other odd locations.. not one handles more than a Dixie cup!

Seat-Belts: My other issue is with seat belts.. that annoying shoulder belt that can either cut off a boob, or neck.. definitely were not designed expecting a woman might possibly be even a passenger! Of course my first choice is to rip the darn things out (referring to the seat belts, not boobs.. but I guess either would work), and kill that ridiculous law!

Mood Lighting: some things don’t even have to be high tech or necessarily scary but just odd.. My new Kia Soul has a very bizarre feature.. it has a “mood lighting” button.. when you turn it on the speakers have lights that strobe to the music.. or to your cell phone as the person talks. Thankfully this can be turned off.. but just really a goofy item to be included on the car.. also kinda fun just for giggles. I would expect it would change colors, for “mood”, but it is just red light… oh well, perhaps their next version (grin). (or a modification).

Scary features.. I have always preferred less-is-more concept.. basically the less extras the less chance for potential problems. I steered clear of power features, was terrified of power windows.. and while I have come to terms with them since.. there is enough new technology that just either makes me gasp or simply shake my head…

There are several reasons I try to avoid hi-tech options like crazy.. one I grew up very simply with no tech at all.. and two when I was around any power equipment weird things happened….Suddenly I flash back to shop class in middle school.. when I would walk into the class all the power equipment would go crazy, I was not even near the machines, not touching them.. and the band saw blade would pop out and attack.. the jigsaw blade would snap.. it was like a horror movie… same thing happened in home-ec too… with the power sewing machines the needles would constantly pop and break.. and i was not using them either and it was not an isolated incident. I had to beg the teacher to let me just use hand tools.. finally he did. I will never know what caused it.. but naturally I have been extra sensitive about power anything since.

Would love to hear some of your “favorite” features, that either scare you or make absolutely no sense.

Now to the article…

Top 10 Scariest Features

By Kelsey Mays, Cars.com

We like heated seats and high-end stereos as much as the next car shopper, but some of today’s automotive features provoke more fright than delight.

Take GM’s left-hand steering-column stalk: Until recently, this stalk housed the cruise controls in the form of a tiny, three-position switch plus a secondary button. The same stalk also managed high-beam headlights, windshield wipers and turn signals. Twist something the wrong way and the car could turn into a five-passenger R2-D2.

With things like that in mind, we chose 10 not-so-delightful features in today’s cars, from chairs that perform pneumatic jujitsu on your back to owner’s manuals that could qualify for a summer reading list.

Read the rest of this entry »

South Carolina governor’s infidelity admission adds to an ever-growing list of woes for the out-of-power Republican Party as it looks to rebound against President Obama and Democrats.

What is it about these selfish idiots?  We expect hormonal teenage boys to have more self control than the politicians seem to have.

The governor of a state leaves the country, leaving his wife and 4 boys over the Father’s Day weekend, for a nooky run?  Has the man no self control?

As has already been suggested in the Senator Ensign affair (pun intended), such behavior opens a “leader” up to blackmail threats.  Who knows what votes may be bought or swayed if the politician has an affair in the closet.

And, the affair calls a politician’s character into question.  How can voters rely on him and his word, if he clearly breaks his vows?

Email from Gov. Sanford to “Maria”:

“My heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul,” Sanford wrote in one of the e-mails, dated last summer.

In anothe