For the people? 2

Ah, our Congressmorons just can’t stop the music: they can’t pass a bleeding federal budget & they can’t do anything about either creating jobs or helping the unemployed, but they’ve got the time to ram through a bill to defund NPR.

Yes, the House took a firm & righteous stand against federal spending by voting 228-192 to prohibit Federal funding of National Public Radio and the use of Federal funds to acquire radio content.” (Actual text.)

Now, the amount of money that makes its way from we-the-people’s pockets to Scott Simon (it goes through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which doles it out in specific grants) is less than what the Morons spend on postage every year, so the ’Pubs’ posturing has nothing to do with saving, you know, money, & everything to do with grabbing some headlines & looking good for their Tea Partying constituents.

But you have to love the utter effrontery of the 228, all (as you’d expect) ’Pubs, represented in my mind by the comment of Rich Nugent (Fla.), when he intoned, “A lot of us like NPR. We’re not trying to harm NPR. We’re actually trying to liberate them from federal tax dollars.”

Which isn’t a favor they’d consider doing for their pals on Wall Street, who are sucking up those dollars at a rate of knots in the form of tax breaks & bailouts.

Thinking green

It’s Saint Patrick’s Day; you know the drill.

Now, personally I’m not in favor of cramming into pubs, bars, taverns, tents and watering holes of any persuasion with more than the fire-code-allotted number of complete strangers wearing paper leprechaun hats and pretending to talk like bogtrotters. (I am of the opinion that New Year’s Eve and Saint Patrick’s Day are when all the amateur drinkers come out.) But if that makes you happy…

And I confess that I’m not a fan of Irish (whiskey), I loathe Guinness and I draw the line at any variety of beer dyed green.

However, if I could find a nice pint of Smithwick’s…

For the people?

Our Congressmorons are at it again. Still. They can’t agree on a budget bill, so to avoid a shutdown of the federal government (which would be hard for even Republicans to explain to their constituents) they’ve passed another stop-gap measure to keep it limping along for three more weeks.

Honestly, these people couldn’t govern their way out of a paper bag. I can’t believe we keep re-electing them. & I don’t know what the alternative is, but it’s starting to look better.

Disaster in Japan

I’ll admit that the video footage of the earthquake & tsunami last week in Japan have been absolutely stunning. Stunning in the sense that I don’t even know how to react to the level of destruction you see there.

Japan, one of the most advanced of nations, looks like it’s been washed away. Even Californis has suffered damage from the tsunami—currently estimated at $40M.

It’s hard for me to take in the enormity of the destruction, much less think how to help. But NPR has put together a list of ways to donate cash to aid agencies—cash being what they most need. I pass it on to you.

Pi in the sky

This being Pi Day, it’s your chance to geek out.

You know, π, as in 3.1417, that indispensible coefficient that allows one to calculate the various spatial parts of circles. Pretty much, since although someone has calculated π to a million digits, we don’t have a precise value for it.

When I was in college the, um, students at Harvey Mudd would make quite merry over Pi Day. Since 14 March is also Einstein’s birthday, it was a pretty big blowout all around. Relatively speaking.

Another way to mark the day is to consume pie(s). I reckon that’s one contribution I can make, since I was a Liberal Arts major.