Have you ever heard of the Fair Tax Act?  It is a pro­posed bill which would (with par­al­lel leg­is­la­tion) repeal the 16th Amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States of Amer­ica, abol­ish­ing the IRS and fed­eral income tax, replac­ing the sys­tem with a national sales tax.  I am still read­ing up on the Fair Tax Act and the orga­ni­za­tion behind the move­ment, so it would be irre­spon­si­ble for me to offer an opin­ion about either at this time.  At first glance, how­ever, it seems like an inter­est­ing idea that deserves some atten­tion. (more…)

Michelle Obama recently launched a new cam­paign to fight child­hood obe­sity and I can’t help but feel frus­trated, angry, and a lit­tle disgusted.

Yes, I know that child­hood obe­sity is a seri­ous issue which faces the youth of Amer­ica, but there is a far more seri­ous issue which needs to be addressed NOW.  There are mil­lions of peo­ple in the United States who do not have enough food.  In 2008 the USDA reported that 17 mil­lion chil­dren lived in house­holds where food was scarce, 1.1 mil­lion of them starv­ing.  Add the adults into the mix, and we’re talk­ing 49 mil­lion peo­ple strug­gling for food.  If you con­sider that the pop­u­la­tion of the United States in 2008 was just over 300 mil­lion peo­ple, that means approx­i­mately 16.3% of all Amer­i­cans strug­gled for food in 2008.

Dur­ing Bar­rack Obama’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, he pledged to elim­i­nate hunger among chil­dren by 2015.  What is being done to bring about the end to child­hood hunger in Amer­ica?  So far, the answer has been to throw more money at exist­ing pro­grams (which are not work­ing) and wait for the econ­omy to recover. (more…)

This morn­ing, CNN reported via Twit­ter that a sus­pi­cious boat was in a river near Pres­i­dent Obama with shots fired:

Min­utes later, CNN reported that a the United States Coast Guard attempted to pre­vent a boat from enter­ing a secu­rity zone on the Potomac River near the Pen­ta­gon, where Pres­i­dent Obama was at an event com­mem­o­rat­ing the 9/11 attacks, and again men­tions the police scan­ner reports of shots fired: (more…)

Before the White House released “Remarks by the Pres­i­dent in a National Address to America’s School­child­ren,” I was not sure what to expect from the speech.  In today’s polit­i­cally charged envi­ron­ment, I could not help but won­der how much agenda would make its way into the speech.  I was happy to have the oppor­tu­nity to read the speech before it was aired, and while my ini­tial con­cerns were quelled, a cou­ple of new ones took their place. (more…)

Per­haps that is the prob­lem. In my opin­ion, TweetDeck’s user-interface appears to be a work-in-progress wait­ing to progress as new fea­tures are devel­oped instead.  Recent updates haven’t done much to improve the inter­face, and it cer­tainly could use some love.  The tiny but­tons which are the key to most of TweetDeck’s fea­tures look a bit out of place, and the default color scheme is as dark and gloomy as the Tweet­Deck web­site.  While you can change the color scheme in the set­tings win­dow, the default col­ors are not my idea of a good first impres­sion. (more…)