ThisMyShiznat

To me, there may not be anything more American than an outright vulgar display of power.  In this video clip obtained through foxnews.com, NASA does a test firing of the Ares booster rocket that will be used to send astronauts into space, and eventually back to the moon.

NASA is developing new booster rockets, and new space capsules that are planned to replace the current space shuttle design that we have all seen for many years now.  I don’t know what the new capsule will look like, or whether it will be reminiscent of the airplane style shuttle with the big red hydrogen tank and two booster rockets.

In the video below, NASA does a test firing in Promontory, Utah.  The booster spits massive amounts of raw thrust for roughly 2 minutes.  You can see dirt and dust being picked up from the thrust, even a few hundred feet in front of the rocket.  I can’t even imagine how they mounted this rocket to the earth so it wouldn’t move.  They must have a reinforced concrete slab that goes a mile down.

I hope they didn’t effect the rotation of the earth with this thing.  I really don’t want to have to adjust daylight savings time again.  Or then, maybe twice a year we should fire 20 of these bad boys all at once, adjusting the rotation of the earth by exactly one hour at 2:00am.  It does make sense.  There are about 750 billion clocks that need to be adjusted, but only 1 earth to readjust.  I’ll let NASA do the math.

Click the icon to see full screen video without leaving my blog.

When you see this video, you might ask yourself,  “How much did this outright vulgar display of power cost?” and you would be asking a good question.  Good questions deserve answers.  Some answers are probably classified.  Either way, I don’t have that number for you.  If you really care, go ahead and look it up and let me know, but I bet it’s a large number.  Another good question is “Who paid for it?”.  That one probably isn’t ‘top secret’ but I don’t have an answer for that either.  Looking at my federal budget article I don’t see anything about 3.6 million foot pounds of thrust.

Some people are definitely asking the question lately, “With our current economy, should we really be spending money on this?”.  The answer is yes.  yes were should.  As for space exploration, Rick Moranis put it best in the 1987 movie SpaceBalls when he said “We can’t stop.  We’ve got to slow down first”.  And he is right.  We cant stop, but slowing down might not be a bad idea.  Maybe they even have slowed down.  Thats one of the things about “Top Secret”.  It’s classified.

Do not attempt to adjust your monitor. The video is actually posted in fast forward. I appreciated it that way because I already know the movie.  I’ve probably seen it a gazillion times. Watching the whole scene in just over a minute works for me.  I know whats going to happen already and I still want to watch it again.  It saves me time.  Technology has actually increased the value of that particular movie.

Me, I like charts and graphs. In fact, off the top of my head, I can’t think of any systems I don’t like where numbers are presented to me as graphics, making them easier to read quickly. Even when the numbers being presented are really bad, I still appreciate the chart it’s self. Don’t hate the chart, hate the numbers, and if the person responsible for the bad numbers brought you the chart, then you can hate that person too.

I looked at Google’s Federal Unemployment Utility today, I didn’t spend any time comparing the different states, or dwelling over the past 2 years.  This time I actually unfocused my eyes a little and looked at the whole chart.  I looked at it and said to myself, “Self, the last time unemployment was close to where it is now was 18 years ago back in 1992.  Then I said to myself, “Self, wasn’t George Bush Sr the president in 1992?”.  Sure enough.  Bushonomics I do believe.

Not to intentionally bring up the concept of socialism or any flavors of communism but when I saw this chart, my immediate title for the article was “History repeats itself”.  The full quote from Karl Marx was “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”.  I think most people can grasp the concept that if the September 11th disaster on Bush’s watch was a tragedy, then clearly the re-election of Bush through questionable circumstances in 2004 is the farce.  Not to mention that he was originally elected in 2000 though questionable circumstances in the first place.  Neither of those events have much to do with what happened in the early 90’s though aside from DNA.

I intentionally didn’t include Barack Obama in this little chart because those of you who follow my blog have been informed that the 2009 financial disaster was already planned before Obama even won the election.  We wont know what Obamonomics means for at least a year but I am glad that I told you 2009 isn’t his fault.  The value of the US dollar and the federal unemployment rate are measurements of two different systems, but there is a relationship between them, especially in early 2009.  Inverse is the only word to describe it.

I didn’t put this article together to draw up hatred towards the Bush’s.  At this point it would only be counter productive.  There isn’t a lot more damage those two can do anymore, though it *might* be a good idea if the family stops reproducing just in case.  I was more interested in just sharing what I happened to come across tonight, and what better a place to do it than a blog.

Click on the image to see a larger view

Bruno Bastet, a UN worker living in midtown Manhattan has been making a tax free salary of over $180,000 a year working for the UN, while collecting welfare checks each month as well from the welfare system in France.

It looks like he falsified documentation to build up the ruse that he was still living in France with his wife and children.  Over the past 4 years he has collected about $30,000.

So what do ya think?  Was it worth it buddy?

Original article here from Fox News.

The Govinator is doing some end of summer cleaning on California’s proverbial closets and garages.  Items will be placed on EBAY over the next few days.  To boost sales, good old Arnold is autographing many of  the auctioned goods.

To me, Arnold’s signature on the visor of a 2002 Ford Focus isn’t all that tempting of an offer.  Granted it *is* a piece if history, but not the most exciting artifact I can think of.  The car has a suggested retail value of $4,885, if it’s in “excellent” condition.  That particular vehicle sold for $3,550.01.  It’s combined gas mileage is estimated at 28 mpg, and Arnold’s signature may have actually lowered the sale price by about $65, which coincidentally is the c0st of replacing the visors.

Now Arnold, are you really trying to tell me that there aren’t any of those huge SUV truck things laying around from last year when you could afford them?  You must have a few 2008 Ford Apocalypse’s laying around with DVD players and Navigation Systems built in.  You know the one’s I’m talking about.  The one’s that came with that 14 mpg option from the factory.  I know your Caliafornia and all, but seriously, selling just one of those behemoths would have the same impact as selling 10 of these jokes your putting on Ebay, and from what I can see, it looks like there are only 6 cars on the auction block.

Original article here.

You have to love the midwest.

In Chesterfield, Missouri, the countries ‘largest’ HUMMER dealer has started selling firearms in the same showroom where they sell the 6,000 pound SUVs.

At first thought it seemed like an ill conceived plan to me, but then as I looked into it I began to realize that guns and trucks make perfect sense together, depending on the population density. I wouldn’t recommend setting up this shop in Brooklyn or Queens, but a suburb of Saint Louis might be OK.  Judging from the info that I looked up about Chesterfeild, MO, it might be ok.  I didn’t look into it’s greater area at all for demographics and stuff, but I do know that St. Louis is in the midwest.

A friend of mine once told me that when it’s Thursday in New York City, it’s 1987 in Missouri.  This seems like a very progressive step for 1987.  I’m still not sure if I like it or not though.

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I came across a great image from the NYTimes about last years federal budget in comparison to the planned spending for 2009, already set up by the bush administration. The article was originally published September 28th 2008. It mistakenly lists the federal deficit at 5.4 trillion. A correction was released a week later, stating the actual deficit at 9.6 trillion. That’s quite a typo.


The Red Columns represent the proposed ‘bailout funds’ to be allocated for the 2009 budget, addressing problems such as AIG, the Auto industry, the Financial system, and the mortgage crisis.


The Green columns represent the yearly spending in 2008 for things like social security, medicade, tax rebates and the previously named ‘war on terror’.


The ghosted columns represent how much further in debt the country became in 2008, and how much we lost on import taxes by foreign companies finding loopholes.


I am interested to see what this years chart looks like. This graphic was of epic size already. Something like 1260×1681 pixels. Click image to see it full size. You will need to zoom in as well. To zoom, hold down the CTRL and scroll the wheel on your mouse. If your mouse doesn’t have a wheel then your on your own.

A quick search for “Unemployment Rate” brought me to a nice little gem from those evil geniuses at Google.  They put together a line chart, updated regularly, to display the Federal Unemployment Rate. The utility is actually pretty handy.  By default, it shows you the overall U.S. unemployment rate, as reported by the US Bureau of Labor.

Just in case you didn’t get the memo back in early March, it seems that the published federal unemployment rate does not include a certain group of the job force, who are technically unemployed.  See, the federal unemployment rate has 6 levels of measurement, ranging from “not that bad” to “holy shit”.

Since we are on the topic of unemployment, please click on my advertisers.

It seems that the published unemployment rate is what’s called U-3, and does not include workers who have stopped looking for work, workers who are so downtrodden that they will take what they can get, or workers who have taken jobs outside of their regular field, such as a lawyer working in fast food.  Also, the statistics don’t take into account the patriotic Americans who don’t want to be part of the problem, and thus haven’t applied for their free money.  Bless their unemployed souls, really.

As you can see from the BLS governemt site, the actual recorded unemployment rate is closer to 16.5%.

Out of the blue, Six Flags Great Adventure filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today.  I guess $40 admission, $60 for the express pass, $10 a beer, $8 a hamburger, and paying employees minimum wage isn’t good enough.

Personally, I blame Bush and his foreign policies.  For the most part, Bush’s policies were foreign.  Foreign to any sensible person that is.  Maybe Six Flags should follow suit with Budweiser, Chrysler and GM by selling out to an overseas giant.  I mean crap, lets just sell out McDonald’s and Walmart while we’re at it.

I have recently started walking the beaches collecting wampum just in case.  The white ones worth twice as much as the black ones.  Civil liberty groups are gonna be pissed.