Thursday's Educational Hour

http://usgovinfo.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=usgovinfo&cdn=newsissues&tm=21&f=10&tt=2&bt=1&bts=1&st=32&zu=http%3A//www.opm.gov/

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/uscongress/a/congresspay.htm

According to the Congressional Research Service, 413 retired Members of Congress were receiving federal pensions based fully or in part on their congressional service as of Oct. 1, 2006. Of this number, 290 had retired under CSRS and were receiving an average annual pension of $60,972. A total of 123 Members had retired with service under both CSRS and FERS or with service under FERS only. Their average annual pension was $35,952 in 2006.


http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/disclosure-reports/2005/

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/candlist.php?congno=111

I admit it; I am becoming a political junkie and the more I read the more amazed at the absolute wealth our congress accumulates in benefits and salaries while in office. I am further amazed at the immense wealth and stock portfolios many of our elected officials have. I don’t know for sure what all this means, but here are some links, federal and private, where one can do some research on who owns what and how votes go. In the next post I will show what happens to the kids of these people and wish ours had the avenues to golden opportunities that are sprinkled on the relations of public officials.
Have fun; it is interesting reading. Oh you might have to cut and paste the sites as I could not make them clickable here.

Tuesday Quickies

Item One: I haven't issued the BITMA in a while, so many each day that I could easily run out of bricks. Today, I give it in perpetuity to Pat Buchanan, the wizened, blow-hard, nonsensical conservative who must be working by the word as he is on all sorts of networks all day, every day, a horrible migraine, he. This morning when asked what it meant that our forces were being pulled out of the cities in Iraq, he, in a brilliant observation, said, " I think it means that we are pulling back in Iraq and that there could be trouble, as Dick Cheney suggests this morning." What a loser. Poor ol' Pat, who can barely keep his hands off the woodie that pops up every time he hears or mentions Sarah Palin's name, is siding with Dick Cheney, a true Dick if there ever was one, but is also failing the public because the current administration is following the guidelines established by Cheney and Bush. Ah, go figure, most will not connect the dots anyway. Of course Cheney would have us in foreign interventions for the rest of his life so that he and his family could enjoy the extreme wealth he has accumulated from his interests in Haliburton, general contractor to American military adventures. So, Pat takes this brick and shove it in your mouth or in Cheney's.


Item Two: Please, before the torture begins for us all, take a moment and place Clarence Thomas' resume before he became Justice Thomas and lay it, for comparison, beside Sotomayor's resume. If Thomas, who has asked barely a question from the bench since 2006, can be a justice, the Sotomayor confirmation should have been over by now. And for the Repuklican conservatives out there: the recent overturing of one of her decisions that you are now going to start ranting about was also the Supreme Court overturning a STATE's interpretation of the law, a precedent that Sotomayor and two others followed. Boys and girls, let me remind you once again that you can't get it both ways. It is hypocritical to politic on reduced government and states' rights but celebrate when a state's ruling is overturned at the Supreme Court or take cases to the Supreme Court when the state's ruling does not suit your agenda. More folks should call you out on this obnoxious habit and just, maybe you'd quit. Right, when I go bungee jumping off a cliff at the Grand Canyon, you'll quit.


Item Three: I have had enough of the Michael Jackson saga, yet am amazed by the appearance of Al, our pal, Sharpton and Jesse, this will get messy, Jackson. Who calls whom that those two losers show up at every American-negro-media event. What do those sleaze bags bring to a community? Oh, yeah, it was really cool when Papa Jackson was so overcome with grief that he fell to promoting his record company during an interview. What grief will do to a man.


That's it; I got to cut the grass which I wish were more like john Boehner's (that' Boner's) bad toupee, ugly but not growing. I have never see the like of weeds. I am also looking forward to the grandkids' visiting from Germany; don't want to lose one in the backyard.