ObamaCare may not work. This is sad, because Americans need a better deal.
Former Clinton Labor Secretary and current Obama economic adviser Robert Reich believes healthcare legislation currently being debated on Capitol Hill "won't offer most Americans any appreciable decline in the cost of their health insurance nor clear improvement in the efficiency or quality of the health care they receive."
Well well, what a fine mess we have now. President Obama and the Democrats now have the power to push a UN tax.
A nice-sounding bill called the "Global Poverty Act," sponsored by Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Barack Obama, is up for a Senate vote on Thursday and could result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States.
The bill, which has the support of many liberal religious groups, makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations.
The legislation would commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends.
Xkcd is usually pretty good -- but this is genius.
Happy Friday!
Well well, this is a fine mess. President Obama and his cronies have been attacking FOX for almost a year now. However, it now appears that there is value in showing up on FOX to get their message across. Strange business this political season.
Just how bad for Obama were Tuesday's election results?So bad White House senior adviser David Axelrod went on Fox News Wednesday to try and spin it?
In case you've forgotten, this is about two weeks after Axelrod told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, "[T]hey're not really a news station."
So, one of the things I’ve gotten to spend some more time with during my – err – sabbatical from gainful employment – is my piano.
For those who’ve been around here a while, you might recall that a couple of years ago, I was stressing about and then actually enjoying learning a little music theory in the last piano class I had before I started taking private lessons.
So, last year, after I’d settled in and developed a bit of rapport with my teacher, I’d described the things I’d liked and not-liked about the classes I had taken. One thing I’d said I’d appreciated (and that maybe it was my analytical-science side coming out) was the introduction to music theory that I’d had – how it helped shaped the way I heard and learned new pieces. She suggested that I start a series of workbooks on music theory for the piano.
I think this series is pretty good, and after a year or so I’m right in the middle of the set. I’ve really enjoyed learning the hows and whys of how a musical composition is put together. We’ve covered meter, scales, keys, intervals, chords, ornaments, motifs and have begun to analyze different compositions for melodic phrase structure. There are also sections for ear training and sight-reading. Altogether, I think they’ve really helped me be a better (and I use this word very generously) musician.
So, of course, reading and dissecting music naturally began to make me curious about how it gets created. Do you start from a motif and build? Do you start with a feeling and go? What are the “rules” that make something sound “good”? And so on…
And so, last month, I started another series: “The Craft of Music Composition”. This also has several levels and naturally I’m starting at the entry level, since I’ve never written music in my life. The first book has a sort of a lead-you-by-the-hand way that takes some of the intimidation out of the idea of putting notes to paper (or notes into Finale’ as the 21st century equivalent might be…) – while learning some of the common techniques used by composers.
I’ve never really considered myself a “creative” person. Insightful, maybe. Analytical, for sure. So composition is way out of my comfort zone – and maybe that’s good. I don’t know that there will be any critical successes coming from my brain, but it sure is fun to sit and plink-plunk-plink at the keys and decide what you think sounds good.
Wish me luck!
I’m still bummed, so I’ll keep this short. Great season. Good playoff run and lost to a very good team that got more clutch pitching and better clutch pitching in this Series.
Hideki Matsui (who had SIX RBIs tonight – holy crap -- and who hit the cover off the ball all Series) and Andy Pettitte were great examples of both of those tonight as the Yankees closed out the World Series at home, winning 7-3. Pedro Martinez was fair but really it was the Durbin-Happ tagteam that couldn’t stop the bloodletting.
Anyway – good job from the Yankees, they got it done when they had to. And at least as a silver lining, Noelle still owes me lunch for the NLCS…
