The Soapbox
| BobG on Pick Your Top Theme for St. Patrick’s Day 2012 | 30th Anniversary / birthday theme - music from 1983, we all dress up in ACCURATE time era fashion. Those of ... | [READ MORE] |
| BobG on Pick Your Top Theme for St. Patrick’s Day 2012 | Birthday hats for all ! Noisemakers! Confetti! Tootsie Rolls! Birthday cake! The wheels on the bus go round and round. ... | [READ MORE] |
| BobG on Our float needs a theme… | I drive a Dodge Stratus !!! | [READ MORE] |
| Anthony on Guess (Photo from BobG) | I assume you are speaking from personal experience? | [READ MORE] |
| BobG on Guess (Photo from BobG) | that's cuz when idiots get locked up there, they're gonna yell "DAMN!" | [READ MORE] |
Can’t nobody make no face that ugly and not be serious.
- George Clinton, PCU
Now that Gary Busey has endorsed him the sky is the limit for the next great sideshow in American politics.
Please – someone run that will take the election and the job seriously.
Please.
This video was posted by a friend on Facebook and all the description said was “National anthem sung by timbers army” – given the few clues we have here it is safe to assume this is the Home Opener of the Portland Timbers Football Club Soccer Team.
I’ve always thought it was cool when I would see Canadian hockey teams sing their national anthem. This is like that only 1000 times better because it’s the American National Anthem. ‘God bless America. And no place else.’
Anyway – enjoy – ’cause it’s Friday; you ain’t got no job… and you ain’t got shit to do.’
Today the North Carolina General Assembly is taking a moment away from the hard work of governing to explore a little history and potentially pardon former Governor William Woods Holden. No – he isn’t in jail. He’s been dead since 1892.
I can’t say if the former Governor deserves the attention after 140 years but I can say that perhaps the General Assembly has some bigger issues they may want to look at before they tackle this one.
I’ve read the arguments on both sides of the impeachment and removal being justified and racially/politically motivated. Right now I don’t think the argument is worth the time they’ve elected to spend on it. Maybe I am just waiting on the HBO movie to get motivated enough to care.
For more information you can read the Senate Bill and House Bill and you can watch it happen live on WRAL. (At least that is the rumor. Didn’t see a link for it.) Personally – I’ve done enough. If I want to watch someone waste government money I’ll chase down the NC DOT.
The recession has left North Carolina with a deep and unprecedented budget shortfall.
In this crisis I see an opportunity to streamline programs and refashion state government into a more nimble organization focused on serving you, the taxpayers. I also believe that as your governor, I have a responsibility to protect the investments in education, jobs and public safety that help make North Carolina great.
This is a new website set up by the North Carolina Governor’s Office to let you try to do their job of balancing the budget. The site lets you decide what to cut or what new revenue streams to add to make the budget balance. When I saw this I had two initial thoughts: isn’t this a cool way to get people to think about how difficult it is to make these cuts and HOLY ?@&! – we are $2,400,000,000 in the red and someone thought it was a good idea to make a website about it. If it is anything like a certain local city’s website we’d only be $2,399,000,000 in debt if we didn’t do this. Talk about keeping the spending in check.
That being said it is fun and it does let you see first hand some of the choices the Governor and the legislature are facing this session. Should we add more students to classrooms, raise tuition, privatize the ABC system or legalize video poker? All of them come with a cost and a price. This budget even allows you to spend money on specific line items like increasing economic incentives to encourage companies to move or expand in NC. At the end it tells you what you have done by way of cuts to existing jobs but it doesn’t tell you what the outcome is beyond a under or over budget status. In this way it is decidedly less political than one might assume.
If you take the Challenge and decide to act like a politician let me know what big ticket items you cut. I’ve done it once today but plan on doing it again and being a little more serious. If you like your budget you can even forward it the Governor’s Office. Just remember:
There are real people – real families – behind these numbers. In the real world, building a budget is about more than just making hard decisions about where to cut and what jobs to lose.
Give it a try and if you are good – run for office in 2012. We can likely use you.
I woke up this morning to celebrations in Egypt because President Mubarak had bent to the will of the people and stepped aside. The military is now in charge and promising to work to install a new government. The question remains – what kind of government but that doesn’t mean it isn’t cause for celebration. We are seeing a largely peaceful transition of power in the Middle East.
I know Democracy comes in many styles and freedom depends on one’s interpretation but I can’t help but feel this is a good sign for a lot of countries that have Dictators posing as “Presidents” and pretend to have elections every few years to keep the international community off their doorsteps.
This morning watching the news I thought about this song and started looking for it to post.
To the Egyptian people – this was the easy part. The hard part is on the way. Hopefully you can put together the pieces and form a real republic cause to be more than a little cliche the times they are a-changing.