This Joy’s Life

If you’ve heard the talk about the earmarks in the stimulus package and it is as frustrating to you as it is me, check this out:

I love that Beck targeted both Democrats AND Republicans in this segment because even if you find yourself identifying with the politics of one side over the other, the “politics as usual” in Washington seem to be the only thing that’s truly bipartisan there.

So the stimulus started at 9,000 earmarks after Obama promised there would be none under his watch. I then heard Biden say in another interview that the stimulus package they passed now has “only 4000″ earmarks. 4000 = 0. That’s some interesting math right there. I hope the mosquito trapping earmark made it. Those mosquitoes are nasty buggers!

And speaking of mosquitoes, I just discovered this AWESOME thing called TEDTalks and watched my first one of Bill Gates talking about mosquitoes, malaria and education. You may have already heard about this because he released live mosquitoes into the audience. That Gates is one wild and crazy guy!

Oops, we’ve did it again!

Had to share this article by Jubak on MSN Money because I’m certainly feeling as frustrated as Rick Santelli* by the, in the words of David Boze, “swindle-us” package.

Anyway, I thought this article stated exceptionally well why “helping” families avoid foreclosure isn’t really going to help us at all.  Here’s the excerpt if you don’t have time to read the article in it’s entirety:

Why does home value matter?
In introducing his plan, Obama rightly said that we’re all in this together. Helping families avoid foreclosure would prop up the value of every house in a neighborhood, so we all have an interest in keeping these people in their homes. That justifies the use of taxpayer money.

Or does it? Step back for a minute and think about the assumptions behind the president’s logic. They show the same mind-set that got us into this mess. If you saved for years, built up a big down payment and then bought a house you could afford, you’re not really thinking of a decline in the value of your house as an immediate problem. You intend to live there. It’s shelter. An asset for the long haul.

Propping up the price of your home in the here and now is important if you still think of your house as an ATM. Forking over tax dollars to prop up home prices in your neighborhood is worthwhile if you need a higher price so you can increase the size of your home equity line of credit to finance a lifestyle you couldn’t otherwise afford.

From the point of view of someone who sees a house as a place to live — and not as an ATM — that’s just nuts. And once you reject the president’s logic that spending taxpayer money like this helps us all, the plan starts to seem even more unfair to us chumps.

The administration’s plan to help 7 million to 9 million homeowners with unaffordable mortgages isn’t going to make any effort to separate the victims from the venal. I know the task of discriminating the real-estate sheep from the wolves in sheep’s clothing can be horrendously difficult, but let’s at least try before we spend taxpayer money. Some effort to detect fraud on the original application should be part of the plan, no?

*Here’s that above referenced Rick Santelli video if you haven’t already seen it:

The devil made me do it.

Look up pedantic in the dictionary and you’ll find this video.

Harry Reid is the Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate.

This is just too funny not to be share. (Sorry Facebookers to be repeating myself here):

Another holiday video for your enjoyment. This is Clara and Jack doing their best “Chubby Checker” to a VERY ’70s version of Jingle Bells a couple days before Christmas:

This is a video of Clara’s first experience with snow about, oh, a week ago now. All she wanted to do was throw snowballs, make Frosties (the snowman) and make “Shadows” (snow angels).

The snow is still here, but, thankfully, the 5th snowstorm we were supposed to have yesterday didn’t really come to fruition. I’m hopefully that it is all going to melt away in the next few days. We had our white Christmas, now ALL DONE SNOW.

Looking at this dooce daily style blog post about the book A Year of Mornings: 3191 Miles Apart, which itself is based on the blog of two women who took a picture a morning each for a year, reminded me of this YouTube video my brother showed Chad and I while he was here of a guy who took a picture of himself every day for six years:

Freaky, huh? I wish I could do something consistently every single day for more than a week, like eating an apple, working out, eating right and all those other new year’s resolutions one makes, or anything involving cleaning. I guess I brush my teeth everyday (pretty much) and make my bed every morning (it sets the tone for the day), so I should give myself props for that. Don’t think it would make a very good YouTube video though.