{"id":693,"date":"2007-11-15T14:27:20","date_gmt":"2007-11-15T13:27:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/?p=693"},"modified":"2007-11-15T10:14:25","modified_gmt":"2007-11-15T09:14:25","slug":"he-never-was-very-good-at-math-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/11\/15\/he-never-was-very-good-at-math-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"He never was very good at <strike>math<\/strike> thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.opencongress.org\/\">OpenCongress<\/a> has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.opencongress.org\/articles\/view\/360-Is-it-Really-About-Fiscal-Responsibility-\">a nice piece<\/a> on what a sham Our Fearless Leader&#8217;s blather about &#8220;fiscal responsibility&#8221; is.  I&#8217;ll send you there for the text, but the short version is (not surprisingly) this isn&#8217;t about responsibility at all, it&#8217;s about priorities and (lack of vision) in the White House.  He&#8217;s happy to spend inordinate amounts of money on his toys, friends, and pet projects, but feign responsibility by whining about what are effectively tiny amounts in the entire budget, but which could make a real difference in people&#8217;s lives.<\/p>\n<p>To provide some perspective, we&#8217;re spending <em>hundreds of billions<\/em> on this poorly conceived, poorly planned, dishonest and corrupt mess in Iraq, killing huge numbers of Iraqi people and American soldiers in the bargain.  The <em>entire<\/em> annual budget of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.morris.umn.edu\/\">UMM<\/a> is <em>well<\/em> under $100M, a factor of something like 1\/1000.  It&#8217;s thus absolutely obvious that we could ensure that everyone in the U.S. who wanted to go to college could do so for <em>free<\/em>, entirely on the Fed&#8217;s dime.  It is not about resources, it is about choices.<\/p>\n<p>Another take on this is illustrated by the amazing (but very <em>large<\/em>) graph from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.solarpowerrocks.com\/solar-trends\/a-sick-graph-2\/\">SolarPowerRocks.com<\/a> below the fold, which makes it painfully clear how little the administration <em>really<\/em> cares about energy independence and planning for the future of our country and our planet.<\/p>\n<p>Selfish, foolish bastards, frankly.  Selfish, foolish bastards.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.solarpowerrocks.com\/solar-trends\/a-sick-graph-2\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.solarpowerrocks.com\/fun\/suckfiles\/image006.gif?w=840\" alt=\"What we're spending in Iraq vs. what we're spending on alternative energies.\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n\n\t<div class=\"st-post-tags \">\n\tTags: <a href=\"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/tag\/budget\/\" title=\"budget\">budget<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/tag\/bush\/\" title=\"Bush\">Bush<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/tag\/economics\/\" title=\"economics\">economics<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/tag\/politics\/\" title=\"Politics\">Politics<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/tag\/shrub\/\" title=\"Shrub\">Shrub<\/a><br \/><\/div>\n\n\n\t<h4>Related posts<\/h4>\n\t<ul class=\"st-related-posts\">\n\t<li><a href=\"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2008\/03\/08\/theres-goes-his-career-as-a-gallery-director\/\" title=\"There&#8217;s goes his career as a gallery director (8 Mar 08)\">There&#8217;s goes his career as a gallery director<\/a> (2)<\/li>\n\t<li><a href=\"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/11\/16\/the-power-of-good-visualization\/\" title=\"The power of good visualization (16 Nov 07)\">The power of good visualization<\/a> (0)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OpenCongress has a nice piece on what a sham Our Fearless Leader&#8217;s blather about &#8220;fiscal responsibility&#8221; is. I&#8217;ll send you there for the text, but the short version is (not surprisingly) this isn&#8217;t about responsibility at all, it&#8217;s about priorities and (lack of vision) in the White House. He&#8217;s happy to spend inordinate amounts of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/11\/15\/he-never-was-very-good-at-math-thinking\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;He never was very good at <strike>math<\/strike> thinking&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0},"categories":[17,16,13,15],"tags":[58,57,878,865,56],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p90sy-bb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":206,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/07\/22\/the-people-shall-speak\/","url_meta":{"origin":693,"position":0},"title":"Huzzah!  The people shall speak!","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"22 Jul 05","format":false,"excerpt":"Regular readers will remember from earlier posts such as this and that that a group of concerned citizens (MARQS) has been working to encourage the Morris School Board to address their budget issues head on by proposing a long overdue school levy. Tonight saw a major step in the right\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Education&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":555,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/05\/09\/fun-and-hypocrisy-in-education-funding\/","url_meta":{"origin":693,"position":1},"title":"Fun and hypocrisy in education funding","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"9 May 07","format":false,"excerpt":"Our Dear Friends in the Minnesota legislature have just sent a higher ed funding bill to our Beloved \"Governor\", who has promised to veto it the moment it hits his desk. Oh, joy. What's really depressing is that the bill going forward is hardly impressive. \"Over three bienniums, we are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Education&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":102,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/04\/02\/school-levy-letter-to-the-editor\/","url_meta":{"origin":693,"position":2},"title":"Morris needs to re-pass the school levy:  A letter to the editor","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"2 Apr 05","format":false,"excerpt":"The following is a letter to the editor that I intend to send to our local paper regarding the current school funding issues (also here). Comments and questions always welcome. (I should mention that as an anti-spamming measure, all comments have to be approved before they appear on the page,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Education&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Education","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/education\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":252,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2005\/10\/22\/good-grief-the-entire-applications-folder-got-wiped\/","url_meta":{"origin":693,"position":3},"title":"Good grief!  The entire Applications folder got wiped!","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"22 Oct 05","format":false,"excerpt":"Or further reasons why I hate computers... Sub-Evil Boy got a new computer game while I was away at the Digi-Key competition (more on that in a later post). Unfortunately something weird happened in the install process (we'll probably never know the details) and it wiped the entire Applications folder\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Computing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Computing","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/computing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":713,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2007\/11\/21\/713\/","url_meta":{"origin":693,"position":4},"title":"Loose lips (still) sink ships","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"21 Nov 07","format":false,"excerpt":"I suspect many of our readers will already have seen something about this, but just in case it hasn't gotten a lot of U.S. press, Chancellor Alistair Darling (a very high ranking member of the British government) announced today in the House of Commons that 2 discs (CDs or DVDs\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Computing&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Computing","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/computing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":790,"url":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/2008\/02\/03\/the-world-at-your-fingertips\/","url_meta":{"origin":693,"position":5},"title":"The world at your fingertips","author":"Nic McPhee","date":"3 Feb 08","format":false,"excerpt":"A couple of weeks ago the wonderful Desert Donkey posted a comment tipping us to a nice article at Atlantic.com on the future of radio. The iPod shows you mainly what\u2019s already going on in your head\u2014it\u2019s cool, but only as cool as solipsism can ever be. I\u2019ve got a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Music&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Music","link":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/archives\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/UnhinderedByTalent.com\/Phi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}