(A links shamelessly swiped from Drudge)

Flap:
Bush: Economy faces ‘painful and lasting’ damage unless bail-out passes / Sen. Clinton: ‘It sounds dire but … commerce could grind to a halt’
Fact:
National Post (Conservative Paper): Bail-out smacks of Marxism

Flap:
Dem Rep. Frank: Republicans ‘decided to punish the country’ when they killed bail-out
Fact:
Pence: ‘American people rejected this bailout and now Congress did likewise’ / 95 Dems voted against the bill that lost by 12 votes

Flap:
Telegraph (UK Paper): Western world will become significantly less wealthy

It means millions more Americans, and hundreds of thousands more Britons, will lose their jobs; it means the recession will be deeper and more protracted than previously feared; it means borrowing costs will increase on both sides of the Atlantic. Companies will cut back on investment. Pension funds will be depleted.

Fact:
Market: Stocks rebound, Dow up almost 500 points / Market: Dollar comes back strong against Euro after France passes its own bail-out

Err… That is… Uh… Unless the market bounces right back.

DangerDave has posted another great post full of intelligent calm regarding the economy. Check it out. I’ll be paraphrasing the finer points here.

It was almost exactly one year ago that the Dow broke 14,000. Back then, I wondered when the correction would hit. Just like back around Y2K, when the dot-com boom artificially pushed up the stock market, big peaks in the market are usually followed by bigger drops. Here, let me show you.

In 1987, we had “Black Monday” a huge one-day correction. It was the end of the world… except not. Between 2000 and 2002, the dot-com bubble burst and 9-11 punched the economy in the jimmy and we went to war. Over two years, the market shed 38%. It was the end of the world… except not.

A year ago, the market, buoyed by a lot of bad lending and an inflated housing market, hit 14,000 points for the first time ever. At this point, I started looking for the end of the world. It has arrived… except not. This is a correction. Corrections happen. The market continues to go up over time. There’s no reason to expect it will not continue to go up throughout our lifetimes.

As much as the Liberal-pinko-stinky media (and their favorite Liberal-pinko-stinky politicians) want you to believe otherwise, the U.S. economy is sound. All of the economic indicators that are used to define a recession are UP!

MSN’s Money page has gone so far as to add a “Financial Crisis” tab to their website where you can find articles like, “Surviving a financial panic,” “What if your bank fails?” “A survival guide for the unemployed.” I wonder if that last article talks about selling apples out of a basket for 10 cents a piece. What a farce!

If you think I’m making all this up just because I’m a conservative, look closer. According to the dems and the media, this is a huge crisis! “If we don’t bail out the market before Friday we would see the Great Depression II.” (That was last Friday) Then it was, “If we don’t get this passed by Monday…” And now it’s Tuesday. The bail-out bill failed (with 95 dems voting against it). The market is up over 300 points! And Pelosi has sent Congress home for the Rosh Hashanah holiday. WHAT??!! If this is such a huge crisis, don’t you think we might need to work through Rosh Hashanah? Well, guess what. This is NOT a crisis. This is a completely fabricated, election year, puppet show.

So what about Bush (and McCain for that matter)? The single, foremost point on which GeeDub and I have failed to see eye-to-eye is on big-business. It was the big-biz lobby that led Bush’s (and McCain’s) pro-immigration-amnesty push a while back. It’s equally clear that the big-biz lobby has pushed Bush (and McCain) on this bail-out bill. Why else would he be making so much noise about getting this bail-out through? Doesn’t it seem a little weird that Bush (and McCain) and Pelosi (and Obama) are saying a lot of the same things? That stinks like week-old raw fish and I don’t like it.

Huck doesn’t like it either. Check out his blog post:

 Frankly, I’m disappointed and disgusted with my own Republican party as I watch them attempt to strong-arm a bailout of some of America’s biggest corporations by asking the taxpayers to suck up the staggering results of the hubris, greed, and arrogance of those who sought to make a quick buck by throwing the dice. They lost, but want the rest of us to cover their bets so they won’t be effected in their lavish lifestyles as they figure out how to spend their tens of millions and in some cases, hundreds of millions in bonuses and compensation which was their reward for … sinking their companies…

Amen. Put away your pitchforks. Douse the torches. Don’t sell your 401k. Go back to work. Keep producing and consuming and buying and investing just like you’ve always done and things will be just fine (so long as you vote Republican and get rid of this useless Pelosi Congress).

Now, I’ve got to get to work because this little post that was supposed to just be a link to DangerDave has gotten completely out of control.

Why is it so hard to stay awake after lunch on Monday?

Today’s white board quip is brought to you by your democrat-run, do-nothing, U.S. Congress which, in the last two years, has passed thousands of non-binding resolutions to rename post offices and a couple dozen actual bills, barely enough to keep the government running. And now, they are screaming from the roof-tops that if they don’t “buckle down” and work “long hours through the weekend” to spend trillions of your dollars to bail out their Freddy and Fanny friends (all former Clinton aides or former democratic congressmen by the way) we will all go back to selling apples on the street for five cents a piece.

Thank you, Mrs. Pelosi. Thank you oh-so much. We look forward to seeing you lose your job in November.

Despite the ever-rising cost of living, it remains popular.

[Update: The house fails to pass the bail-out package with many dems voting against it. Ha! Frankly, I’m glad. I’ve emailed both of my senators and my house rep and asked them to vote down any bill that bails out other people’s bad financial risks at my expense.]

I have a lot of footage filmed for last week’s Work From Home Friday, but I didn’t get the chance to edit it. It was a pretty crazy weekend. I even promised Randy that I’d get it done for him for his Birthday, so that makes me extra turdy for being tardy.

What’s bad is I’ve got really good stuff in there, so I’m motivated to get it done, but my todo list this weekend was just overpowering.

Long story short, I have the footage, I have the motivation, now if I can just find the time it will get posted. Cross your fingers for me.

I’ve been riding my bike to work now, on and off, for five years. More off than on, to be honest. But the more I ride, the faster I tend to ride. I don’t know if it’s leg strength, increased respiration, or just an ever increasing tolerance for adrenaline.

According to my uber-nifty bike computer, this morning I set a new record average speed: 14.3 mph (averaged over 8.53 miles). So, you math geeks out there have probably already figured it took me a shade under 36 minutes. Except you’re wrong.

See, my uber-nifty bike computer, much like the game clock at a soccer game, doesn’t consider stoppage time. If I’m at 0 mph, the clock stops. So the 15 minutes that my bike was disassembled on the side of the road was not part of my computer’s calculation.

I’ve had oodles of flat tires while riding off road. It’s just part of mountain biking. If you’re riding a bike any significant distance, you’d better have the tools and knowledge to fix a flat… or a busted chain… or a stretched brake cable… or… well, you get the idea.

There’s one simple step in the process of fixing a flat that, if skipped, can cause you a lot of irritation. After you’ve got the tube out and patched, don’t forget to run your hand around the inside of the tire. The nasty, pointy thingy that caused your flat may still be stuck in the tire and if you put your patched tube back in there, you’ll make it just far enough to be really mad at yourself when you get another flat. (Can you tell I’m speaking from experience here?)

I almost forgot that step this morning. I was really puzzled by the fact that I had not one, but three leaks in my tube. Three! I found a nasty thorn. (Say it with me: “Nasty nasty thorn!”) But that wouldn’t explain the weird double-hole in the tube: two holes opposite each other. So, I kept going around the tire. Sure enough, I found yet another, nastier, pointier thingy: A big ol’ nail.

I probably ran over the nail, and then as I rode on the slowly flattening tire, the thorn, which had probably been in my tire for months, finally got it’s chance to do some damage too.

So what lessons have we learned today? First, cell phone cameras are the best thing since sliced bread. Second (and more importantly), if Trint has anything notable happen during his morning commute, he’ll type out a long boring post and waste at as much of your time as he can.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!

I love the United States of America. Sure we’ve got our problems. But compared to every other nation in the world, I’m dad-gum proud to be an American.

I also love our National Anthem. The wife gets all teary when she hears it performed well. And we both can not stand it when someone gets all Marvin Gay, trying to show off their “talent” singing The Anthem before a sporting event.

Look, if you think you need to add words, repeat phrases, or throw in a bunch of extra key changes to show off, don’t. All you’re doing is making yourself look like a total boob by sacrificing a gem of patriotic pride on the alter of your self-interested non-career. I think they should tell the performer before hand, “We’re turning off the mic after 90 seconds. You go longer than that and we’ll spare our audience your screeching final stanza.”

Case in point, this “Pop Sensation” (pfft, yeah right) before a Cowboys game. You can tell it’s going to be bad when she starts off with some head bobbles and pointless pointing. But hang on ’til the end, if you can stand it that long. (Over two minutes!!) The real music in this clip is the melodic calls of the boo birds at the end.

Well, at least she got all the words right.

Please watch this news report and listen very carefully. See if you catch the word that is almost entirely left out.

Clicky clicky for ABC News video.

Did you watch it? You have to watch it first. I’ll wait.

…

The issue of stem cell research is pretty much out of the news right now. Allow me to refresh your memory. Democrats (in general) have been pushing to keep federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Hollywood loves to have their bleeding-heart fund raisers for embryonic stem cell research. Michael J. Fox has become the poster child for embryonic stem cell research.

Have you caught on yet?

The reason conservatives, like Bush, are against embryonic stem cell research is that it requires a fertilized embryo. That means a viable, human life has to be created and then destroyed in order to collect embryonic stem cells. It’s a pro-life issue. It’s about the sanctity of life. And those who really know what they’re talking about (which excluded everyone in Hollywood) know that embryonic stem cell research is built directly on top of the cornerstone of Row v. Wade. Life is disposable so long as you can come up with a sappy, bleeding-heart reason to dispose of it.

However, there has been zero success in using embryonic stem cells to cure anything.

Despite ABC’s best efforts to use this piece to pump up “stem cell research”, they missed one tiny little five letter word that the local reporter slipped in there. ADULT!

This brave man has experienced miraculous recovery thanks to adult stem cells. That means that stem cells were collected from a living, mature adult human who survived the donation process. You can donate stem cells and walk out of the hospital with no ill effects whereas an embryo is destroyed when the stem cells are collected from it. And there has been huge success in treatments using adult stem cells.

So the next time you hear some pinko lefty crying about how heartless conservatives are for blocking stem cell research and how many people’s lives could be improved, you now have the ammunition to destroy their sappy, psuedo-science, monkey hurlage.

Knowledge is power!!

(Thanks to Danger Dave‘s wife Amber, for passing on the link.)

Yes, I know. You didn’t get your Work-From-Home-Friday vlog fix. I’m so sorry. Waah waah. Cry me a river.

Well, to be honest, only my dad said anything about it. Nobody else seems to care. I thought… I thought more people would notice.  *sniff* I guess you guys just don’t care. *sniff sniff* But I’ll be ok. Don’t worry about me.

To be completely honest, last week at work I was hit with major feature creep. I have to create a whole new system just to support the project I was already working on. But Friday was extremely productive and I think I’ll have the project wrapped up in under two weeks. And that’s more exciting than some silly ol’ video. Right?

Well, maybe not. As a consolation, I’m linking to a song written and performed by my good friend and occational inspiration, Randy Pants. Happy Remote Day.

In the last few days, the federal government has made financial promises that amount to one trillion dollars. Yes, trillion with a t. That is one million million.

Funny thing is, you and I are the financiers of the federal government. There are three hundred million American’s, give a take. So this single week of bailouts is going to cost every man, woman, and child $3333. That’s $6666 for my household of two. How many people live in your house?

So anyway, I hope you’ve got a hundred thou’ or so laying around that you’re willing to part with, cuz you’re gonna have to cover my share too. I ain’t got it.

Today’s white board quip express the sentiment of our government on these financial issues.

If you want to make an omelet, you just have to kill a few people.