Picking My Brain 06-10-23
I found this stuff floating around my head last night.
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"Teach a child to read, and he or her can pass a literacy test." - George W. Bush
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It's time to get it straight in the public's mind: It's not the "Foley Sex Scandal", it's the "Foley Coverup Scandal". Republican Florida Congressman Mark Foley had inappropriate communications with underage children in the care of the US House of Representatives. The leadership in his party was told suspicious things were going on years ago and rather than protect the children in their care, they chose to try to hide what was happening in order to protect a "safe" congressional seat. That Foley has resigned was only the first of many, many steps that must still be taken, some of which are going on now though I don't think any reasonable person could be blamed for being suspicious of any report coming from the Republicans.
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Remember Tom DeLay? He's the former bugkiller who ran for Congress because he was upset when DDT was banned. They use to call him "The Hammer" (and yes, to his face). Remember how he was in all kinds of trouble because, among other things, he helped block legislation from coming to a vote in the House that would have extended US Labor Law to the US Territory of the Marianas Islands? There's a lot of slave labor and forced prostitution going on there because US Labor Law doesn't apply. This legislation could have put an end to much of that. Well, DeLay resigned in June. So who's stopping this legislation from being passed now? (Or did they pass it quietly, without fanfare?)
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Trivia Question #1
Now, the idea is to pose a fun question to test your knowledge of trivia, not to see how fast you can Google the answer. That's really not the point. The idea is to come up with the answers from your own memory. Okay? Remember, using the internet to find the answer defeats the purpose.
There are four states whose capitals begin with the same letter as the state. Name the four states and their capitals.
The answer will be revealed in some future post where my brain gets picked. Oh, and in accordance with New York State law and my financial situation, there will be no prizes for getting the correct answer. Just the satisfaction of knowing that you might have won thousands on Jeopardy! if only ALex Trebek asked you this and not me.
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Okay, so I came across something about the Foley Coverup Scandal that laid out a potential excuse for how it got as far as it did. Hint: It's lame. Apparently when they last revised the procedures for how to protect the young Congressional pages, the procedures were done with the mindset of protecting the young female pages from the male congressmen. They never considered male on male contact. Even if that's their excuse, did they not consider a female congresswoman hitting on a young male page? Or did they think that was socially acceptable, and that the young male page wouldn't mind? Like I said. Lame. Let's hope they come up with something better like, oh, I don't know, how about the truth?
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While I wholeheartedly support a Democratic takeover of the House (and Senate), I will not accept Nancy Pelosi as Speaker if she continues to say that impeachment is "off the table." Hey, Nancy! There is ample evidence in the press that constitutional violations have occurred by this administration. You have a constitutional duty to conduct investigations into these abuses of power and corrupt contractor practices. If the evidence leads to impeachable offenses (among other places, you might look into why the president diverted some $700,000,000 from fighting terrorists in Afghanistan to begin planning for the invasion of Iraq in 2002, a misuse of how Congress authorized the money to be spent; nail that and most of the rest of his expenditures in Iraq become something akin to the "fruit of a poison tree", so to speak), then you must begin impeachment proceedings. If you do not fulfill your Constitutional duty, then they will have gotten away with what they did. And that, Nancy, is simply unacceptable. Your place in history will be defined by how well you fulfilled your Constitutional obligations. When the nation turns control of the House to the opposition party, it is a clear signal that the status quo cannot continue. You must listen to the people, and begin to expose what these criminals have been doing for the past six years. You've got two years to produce results or you're fired.
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Headbanger Alert A googol is an actual number in mathematics. It is equal to ten raised to the power of one hundred. Mathematician Edward Kasner (1878-1955) coined the term. He asked his niece what to call it. Barney Googol, with the goog-goog-googoly eyes, was one of her favorite cartoon characters, so she suggested "googol". True story. A googol-plex is another actual number. It is equal to ten raised to the power of one googol. Now, get ready for this. The googol-plex is such a large number that it cannot be physically written out because it has more digits than there are subatomic particles in the known universe! You may go back to deciding if you want one lump of sugar in your coffee or two. By the way, a googol-plex is not, in reality, a movie theater complex, despite what you've seen on The Simpsons. But it is a great name for one, and now Jane and I use it for any such multi-theater copmplex.
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Well, that's all that was floating around today. Tune in next time when we hear Gary Owens say, "Tune in next time!"
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