“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”

Granted, I’m not some financial guru or a mathematical prodigy, but I like to think that I have a modicum of common sense as well as a sense of recent history.  This year’s federal budget has a deficit of more than $1,000,000,000,000.  Yes, that number has 12 zeroes at the end.  I used the long form of the number so that one can grasp the enormity of this number.

To put it bluntly, there’s no money left in the bank.  In fact, the bank account is more than a trillion dollars in the hole.  Yet, the esteemed vice president is advocating taking even more money out of that bank (and going deeper into that hole) to stave off bankruptcy.  This type of behavior is what causes bankruptcy, not what prevents it.

Even as Vice President Biden was extolling the virtues of idiocy, Douglas W. Elmendorf, the Director of the Congressional Budget Office was testifying before the Senate Budget Committee.  His testimony was that “the federal budget is on an unsustainable path, because federal debt will continue to grow much faster than the economy over the long run.”

If we follow Vice President Biden’s economic advice, then the federal deficit will explode even more than it already has.  What was once called “unsustainable” will give way to imminent financial collapse.

To drive my point home, I’m going to ask a couple of questions:

If you ran a business with the same financial model as the federal government, how long would you expect to remain in business?

If you ran your personal finances with the same financial model as the federal government, how long could you sustain your current lifestyle?

Think about your answer, and then ask yourself why the federal government would be any different.

I know it’s been a while since I posted something. In many ways it’s my fault for not simply sitting down at the keyboard and writing. In other ways, it’s sitting down at the keyboard, reading the latest news, then spending the next hour or so in somewhat of a state of disbelief, after which time the motivation to write has completely withered away.

Given the current state of the world, I’ve been wondering if I somehow slipped down a rabbit hole and into some bizarre parallel universe. As an example, let’s take a look at today’s jaw-dropping article entitled EPA says farm dust requires regulation.

So now are esteemed government wants to regulate (and penalize) farmers who allow dust to blow off their property? is there anything the government doesn’t want to regulate these days?

From the article:

In a letter sent Wednesday to the EPA, Grassley wrote that compliance would be impossible because of the dust produced in farmers’ day-to-day activities.

Grassley also has noted that because many rural roads are not paved, particulate readings could be affected by wind gusts that constantly change.

“After all, God decides when the wind blows, not Chuck Grassley,” he said.

To which the EPA replied:

EPA spokeswoman Cathy Milbourn said the changes are not just a matter of regulating dust. They serve the public’s well-being and, regardless of whether someone lives in a rural or urban area, the threshold for unsafe levels of dust in the air must remain consistent nationally.

“It’s health-based,” she said. “We don’t look at a particular industry. The goal is to protect public health.”

I would say this reeks of a zero-tolerance level of stupidity. The question I would ask of Cathy Milbourn and any other EPA nitwit is “how would one keep dust – farm or otherwise – out of the air?”

Someone come get me when they have a meaningful response. I’ll be busy having my jaw put back in place.

Arkansas Couple Welcomes 17th Child

17 children?  How does one manage to support that many children?  Even more important, how can the mother’s body stand up to such strain?

From the article: “…Michelle, 40, has been pregnant for 126 months – or 10.5 years – of her life.”  The mother has spent approximately one-quarter of her life in a state of pregnancy.  By my calculations, 17 brats times 9 months comes out to 153 months, or 12 years and 9 months.  After taking out 18 months to account for 2 sets of twins, this leaves 9 months missing from the article’s estimate  This, in turn, means that quite a few of the 17 brats in question were at least a month premature.  That seems to be a lot of risk for the mother and for the children in order to decorate the house with even more drooling and dripping fashion accessories.

Of course, daddy’s name being Jim Bob doesn’t exactly help with the whole negative stereotyping either.

Mom blames Satan for burning baby in microwave

GALVESTON — A woman blames the devil and not her husband for severely burning their infant daughter after the 2-month-old was put in a microwave, a Houston television station reported.Eva Marie Mauldin said Satan compelled her 19-year-old husband, Joshua Royce Mauldin, to microwave their daughter May 10 because the devil disapproved of Joshua’s efforts to become a preacher.“Satan saw my husband as a threat. Satan attacked him because he saw (Joshua) as a threat,” Eva Mauldin told Houston television station KHOU-TV.A Galveston County grand jury indicted Joshua Mauldin last week on child injury charges after hearing evidence that he placed his daughter in a motel microwave for 10 to 20 seconds.

The infant, Ana Marie, remains hospitalized. She suffered burns on the left side of her face and to her left hand, police said.

Eva Marie Mauldin, the girl’s 20-year-old mother, told the television station that her husband is “not the monster people are making him out to be.”

“That was not my husband; my husband is a wonderful father,” she said. “Satan was working through his weaknesses.”

Read more.

What is it about religion that attracts the lunatics?

Man charged with burning baby in microwave in Galveston

GALVESTON — A Galveston County grand jury will decide today whether to indict an Arkansas man accused of burning his 2-month-old daughter’s face and left hand by putting her in a motel microwave oven.

Joshua Royce Mauldin, 19, faces indictment for felony injury to a child, which carries a maximum sentence of from five to 99 years in prison and a fine up to $10,000. Mauldin, who police said claimed he was sent by God to be a preacher in Galveston, remained in the Galveston County Jail today.

Read more here.

What kind of sick POS would stick his own daughter in a microwave?

Belgium to impose tax on barbequing to fight global warming
12:27 | 03/ 04/ 2007
  
BRUSSELS, April 3 (RIA Novosti) – The government of Belgium’s French-speaking region of Wallonia, which has a population of about 4 million, has approved a tax on barbequing, local media reported.

Experts said that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, is emitted during barbequing. Beginning June 2007, residents of Wallonia will have to pay 20 euros for a grilling session.

The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.

Scientists believe CO2 emissions are a major cause of global warming.

This is just way too much stupid to be left alone.  As a self-respecting Texan, I freely admit that I am biased on the side of the citizen grillers.  My own personal prejudices aside, the idea of using helicopters to sniff out illegal grillers goes beyond ludicrous.

Think about it: how many grills will be needed to match the CO2 output of a single helicopter?

h/t: Misha

In Edit:

Hoax.

We interrupt the 24/7 Anna Nicole coverage to to bring you this important Anna Nicole status update.  Anna Nicole is still dead.

We now return you to the regularly scheduled Anna Nicole coverage

This is ANNN – Your 24/7 Anna Nicole News Network.

I came into work and discovered that the network engineer that usually covers my shift is going away on vacation.  Immediately, I felt a bit of trepidation about this,  as this one engineer is the only one I can reliably contact.  The other engineers are typically unavailable.  In addition to availability, my usual network engineer is quite competent and fixes things quickly.  With him on vacation, I wondered about the state functionality of the network.

Anyway, tonight one of the core routers went down, so I sighed and started calling my list of network engineers, having resigned myself to a long night of making calls.  Amazingly enough, I was able to get in touch with an engineer on my first call.  The engineer in question was unable to reach the router, so he had some of the datacenter staff reboot the router – which they promptly attempted to do.

Unfortunately, it was the wrong router.  The router they rebooted then refused to come back online.  Naturally, I inform them of this so they can try and fix it, but I could almost hear the “duh…” even though the chat system.  Eventually, after pestering enough people, the routers got fixed.