G.E. Still Hearts Ronnie.

Image via Wikipedia

G.E. is sponsoring the Reagan Centennial. And you might have noticed they're running TV commercials about it. A lot. I particularly enjoy the part where he would talk  to G.E. employees and inspires them. Of course, once he became president he could inspire even more workers. The picture on the right depicts President Reagan saying inspiring things about air traffic controllers.

 Dick Meister remembers Reagan's attitude toward working people the way I do, only better. If you'd like your memory refreshed read his Ronald Reagan's War on Labor. 

My Life As A Dog

I said, a few posts back that I'd been considering helping my dog blog. Well, I'm doing it. Not instead of this blog, but along with it. She's got her own blog  and it's fun and it's easy. Not only that, but it's really  therapeutic after a day of dealing with  funding cuts and whatnot. I can take a break from human concerns and the Big Picture out there and really contemplate the joy of squirrel chasing.

This post is not meant to promote Lola's blog. In fact, I don't even know if I'm going to blogroll her. So far she won't blogroll me as hers is for animals only. No, this is more along the lines of a confession, because we went fully anthropomorphic on her blog. Yes, she's blogging in the first person and I'm just the ghostwriter. It's a little embarassing because  I'm  normally kind of nauseated by cutesy stuff.  but I have to say that a fair number of blogging dogs out there are anything but cutesy. Quite a few have a pretty acerbic wit.

Of course there are those who argue that anthropomorphism isn't just silly, it's  wrong, wrong, wrong. We must accept our furry, feathered or scaled brethren  for what they are and not try to make them human and all that. Maybe. But where's the fun in that for anyone? Dogs and humans have lived, worked and played side by side for thousands of years. I think we're capable of understanding each other pretty well by now.  Doing things this way has the side effect of making me look at things from what might really be her point of view. The only thing is, I think that all this attention may be going to her head, just a little.

Album Cover Mix and Match

New design form or something you can try at home when you have insomnia and absolutely nothing left to do? You decide.

Album Cover Mix and Match

Daylight Savings Time - Could be better

Image via Wikipedia

It's come to my attention that today begins Daylight Savings Time and it's an hour later than I thought it was. While the trade-off is kind of worth it and we get the hour back in the fall, I believe we can improve the way we do this.

My proposal is simple. We leave the end of Daylight Savings Time the way it is. The change officially arrives at 2AM on the designated Sunday morning. Nothing wrong with getting an extra hour on Sunday. However getting an hour less of Sunday is not as good. How about we move the Spring Ahead time to, say, around 4PM on a Friday? What do you think?

WTF, Zogby?

Image via Wikipedia

Zogby's e-mailed surveys often seem to be a little odd to me. I signed up to weigh in on political and social issues but sometimes I'm a couple of screens into it before I realize it must have been commissioned by someone interested in marketing something about  which
 I have zero interest or information. This latest one seems eclectic to say the least.  Along with typical political questions it seems to be designed to fulfill contractual  obligations to various entities. If I had to guess I'd have to say the entities in question might be Apple, some apparel marketing firm and the Heritage Foundation. It wouldn't be Zogby if there wasn't a question that raised my blood pressure. There were, but there was one clear winner.

Last month, the President proposed raising taxes on U.S. companies who do business overseas. The higher taxes would significantly increase the operating costs that these companies must pay. This additional burden would make it even harder to compete in the global marketplace against companies based in countries where the taxes are lower and overhead costs like health care are paid for by the government. Would you support or oppose changes to the U.S. tax code that would hurt American companies trying to compete internationally? 

Push polling much? The emphasis there is mine. Support or oppose, right. And the answers are...

Yes

No

Not Sure

As in "Yes, I support or oppose it.", "No, I don't support or oppose it."  I guess "Not Sure" works with the wording of the question, but a lot of us are sure. So, it's not only push polling but the writer of the question seems to have been drunk at the time he wrote it. Keep up the fine work, guys.

Glenn Beck, meet Bruce Springsteen

Glenn Beck got hold of the lyrics to Born in the USA and, like other conservatives before him, was chagrined.  It happens over and over and demonstrates what must be obvious to everyone by now. Conservatives don't listen. Or read. Most albums used to come with lyric sheets. Springsteen is, of course, one of the most consistent, outspoken progressives in rock music. But then, who can a conservative rely on, musically speaking? Well, there's always good  Ted Nugent. They've got Ted on their side all right. There are a few others in the world of rock music but not a whole lot of the important ones. The conservative will find greener pastures in the world of country music, but it's certainly not monolithic so even there, they'll need to listen to the words to be sure.

Conservatives need to give it up and chill with some nice Lawrence Welk. Rock music is inherently free-thinking and it was the idealogical forebears of Glenn Beck who saw that in early rock and roll and tried to kill it in its cradle. To put in high school terms -  which seems appropriate - rock music is the always alluring Rebel and the Glenn Becks of the world are the Hall Monitor. And the Hall Monitor was pretty much beneath contempt.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Glenn Beck Finally Gets Around To Denouncing Bruce Springsteen (huffingtonpost.com)

A Giant Leap for Blogger

You can read about it on the Official Google Blog, Blogger Buzz or for the most detail the Blogger in Draft blog. Blogger is introducing Template Designer. I know there are a lot of very iimportant things going on right now, but I have to admit that when I caught the post about this on the Google Blog it took my breath away. Of course there were some mixed feelings. I'd just finished finding a three column template and installing it and customizing it. That was a few days ago, really. And now you can do the same thing with a few clicks of the mouse.

This is why I came back to Blogger after a sojourn at Wordpress. Blogger, like many Google products, will seem to take forever to upgrade features like this. Their template sets had grown so old that they were recommending other sites to find more up to date ones not too long ago. Now, in a very short time they've burst forth with the features bloggers dream about. First they added  pages about month ago. A much valued feature in Wordpress, pages can turn your blog into a whole website if you should want that. And now Template Designer, which lets you choose a more up to date template, and then customize it completely. The best thing about it is the way you can choose one, two or three columns, change that around whenever you want, and rearrange the layout of the columns. All very tricky stuff in CSS and now there's no need to hurt your brain doing it.  You can also change the width of....everything. You can, in fact, have it your way.

So what are you waiting for? Go fool around with this.It'll take your mind off the health care debate and/or  tea baggers for a while. Just save the old template first, just in case.