Sword's Tavern

Here are some facts that you can throw at your liberal friends every time you seek to talk about government spending, and all they can come up with is “Well the Iraq war cost us …….”. Randall Hoven of the American Thinker has a few facts to chew on:

• Obama’s stimulus, passed in his first month in office, will cost more than the entire Iraq War — more than $100 billion (15%) more.
• Just the first two years of Obama’s stimulus cost more than the entire cost of the Iraq War under President Bush, or six years of that war.
• Iraq War spending accounted for just 3.2% of all federal spending while it lasted.
• Iraq War spending was not even one quarter of what we spent on Medicare in the same time frame.
• Iraq War spending was not even 15% of the total deficit spending in that time frame. The cumulative deficit, 2003-2010, would have been four-point-something trillion dollars with or without the Iraq War.
• The Iraq War accounts for less than 8% of the federal debt held by the public at the end of 2010 ($9.031 trillion).
• During Bush’s Iraq years, 2003-2008, the federal government spent more on education that it did on the Iraq War. (State and local governments spent about ten times more.)

While you are at it, why don’t you take a look at this report from the Wall Street Journal on how much our spending baseline has increased in 31 months … $4.4 trillion.

You can find the original news post here.

I was watching a TV show earlier this evening, that was discussing various things about handicapped people, the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), and many various things that affect and effect the folk that need the help, like handicap parking.  OK, to get to the point, there was this one town (and I am sure there’s lots more like it) where people without the blue placard or handicap plates were parking in handicap spaces and no one was doing anything about it.  Not the police, or business owners, concerned citizens, etc.  With the exception of one brave lady, everyone pretty much ignored it and didn’t give a damn.  So it went, and this lady would confront people or take a picture of the car and license plate, etc.  But what got me was how the people who were parking illegally acted.  I mean they shouted obscenities, shoved this poor woman, grabbed her at times, verbally assaulted her and on and on.  I couldn’t help but think about what HUGE assholes these people were.  All this over a f***ing parking space, and one they shouldn’t be in anyways.  It is really sad that so many people were so lazy that they can’t be bothered to park a few extra feet away to ensure that someone who really needed to park close actually could.  Then, on top of that, when this lady politely called them out about it,  they act like such jerks.  I am still having trouble wrapping my head around the way they were acting.  This has always been a pet peeve of mine anyway, but on top of that, the lady doing this had a legitimate need for those parking places which is what drove her to try and police them herself since no one else would.  Her daughter is 21 years old, is autistic, blind and non-verbal.  I would think she deserves to NOT have to cross the damn street, you know?  Step up and be a real human being for once, leave the blue spaces for the handicapped people.  I know, I know, no one reading this would do such a thing, but maybe you can stop someone else from being a jerk.

Look out!  The NAACP is going after those evil racist folk at Hallmark because they have an inspirational card for Graduates that talks about there being no limits on your future and that you can do anything you want.  The card is one of those electronic audio cards that plays a funny greeting or tune when you open it.  In this case, it’s a couple of cartoon characters talking about the uplifting message of nothing stopping you from achieving your dreams.  They go so far as to say that you could even take over the solar system.  I don’t think they meant that literally, they are just trying to make a point and inspire.

There is one phrase though, where the cartoon characters say “You black holes, you’re so ominous! [Other character laughs and says 'Ooooo!'] And you planets? Watch your backs.”  Kinda silly, right?  Yeah, but hardly racist though.  Now, I have listened to the audio from the card, and though it’s noisy and cartoony sounding, it sounds just like it is supposed to.  However, the NAACP has now come out and blasted Hallmark over this card (that has been out for over three years by the way) saying that what it really says is “whores” instead of “holes” and that it’s telling black people to “watch your backs”.  The president of the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP specifically stated that it sounds like “a group of children, laughing and joking about blackness … again”.  She says this with a straight face, and a very serious looking black woman behind her nodding her head with her eyes closed.  She then goes on to say that the card is “intentionally demeaning African-American women, by first calling them prostitutes and then threatening them”.  Threatening them?  Calling them prostitutes??  What planet is she from???

Folks, this is stupid and insane.  There is nothing on the card that even remotely resembles a black person, they are cartoon characters.  It even says stuff about graduates and the solar system all over the card.  How in the hell do these morons get to come out and claim racism?  Plus, if it’s so freakin’ evil, why didn’t they do something before now?  Where have they been for the last three years???  These moonbats ought to be locked up and thrown in jail for reading something into nothing and wasting everyone’s time.  It’s stupid crap like this that makes real racism claims that much harder prove and justify when they happen.

Thanks Consumerist for letting me know about this atrocity …

I suppose this might work for an iPod touch as well, but the ones I have and have seen don’t have cameras.  OK, on to the tip!  Recently I wanted to get all of my pictures copied off of my iPhone and onto my computer running Linux, specifically Debian 5.0.  Normally with something like a USB thumb drive this is easy, once you plug it in, even if it doesn’t auto mount itself you can at least look in your messages file to see the actual device path in order to mount it manually.  However, what I noticed with my iPhone (3GS version 3.1.2) is that not only did it not auto mount, my messages file didn’t list any information about a device path for me to mount it manually.

From here naturally I turned to Google, but everything I came across talked about installing iFuse and some kind of ipod-convenience package or said it couldn’t be done, or my favorite that you had to have a jail-broken phone in order to do it.  Now, I didn’t want to install a bunch of packages I wasn’t familiar with just for this, and I darn sure didn’t want to jail-break my phone either.  If for no other reason than because I was convinced that if I could do it in Windows (connect to my iPhone and copy my pics off), there had to be a way to do it in Linux too, without having to alter the device.  I am hard headed that way, but in this case it worked.

Now this might be obvious and simple to everyone else, and if so I am sorry to bore you, but it wasn’t something I was familiar with.  I did have an inspiration though, something so simple I just knew it wouldn’t work but I decided to try it out anyway.  I fired up gthumb which was conveniently installed already, and is a tool for doing just what I wanted to do, importing pictures from a digital camera among other things.  I then plugged in my iPhone and gthumb picked it up immediately and started pulling up a list of all my pics on the phone.  From there I could import, rotate, delete originals and more, easy as pie.  It worked perfect, and was very simple, just like it should be.

In the end, I found that I didn’t have to install any software hacks or jail-break my phone, just use the right tool for the job.  Ain’t Linux grand?

Support your indie game developers and get some way cool cross platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) games with NO DRM included.  I am talking about the Humble Indie Bundle Experiment where you can buy a cool bundle of games and name your price in doing so.  Plus, a portion of the monies goes to charity.  How much better does it get, cool games, supporting indie game developers and donating to charity all at once.  Did I mention the games are cross platform and not locked down with DRM crap too?  Oh yeah!  Let’s get over there and get some good while we are doing some good!

Not that all people from Texas are morons, far from it.  However, the folks at Brazos Elementary School in Wallis, Texas sure are morons.  A ten year old third grader received a piece of candy, a lone Jolly Rancher from a friend while at school.  The teacher, staff, principal, even school board agreed that giving the child a weeks worth of detention (during lunch and recess) was appropriate because she was in “possession of a contraband substance”.  Ok, really, Jolly Ranchers are good, but they ain’t that good.  WTF kind of moron makes a punishment like this over a piece of candy, it’s ridiculous.  Boy I’d hate to see the lockdown the school would go into over a starburst!  So, here’s to you Wallis, Texas, keeping us safe from candy lovers everywhere.