musing minds

Raven in her hand-knit, festive holiday sweater.

This was one of many in a Poinsettia “tree” I saw yesterday. Color has been played with a bit because the camera phone made it too orange.

“This is the highest level of income inequality we have seen since 1929,”Mrs Clinton said.

She goes on to say that she isn’t against wealth or business, but that the middle class needs help.

If you listen to the democrats there is no middle class. Barack Obama thinks that rich starts at $97,500 – the amount over which an individual is not required to continue contributing to Social Security for that year (SS Cap).

Other democrats believe that poor should be anything below $84,000 (witness the ‘4-times-the-poverty-rate’ upper limit for SCHIP).

That kind of leaves the middle class at $84,001 to $97,499. No wonder she’s worried about income inequality and the middle class. There aren’t many there in that very narrow window… (and I’m in the Poor section)

Income inequality is essential to the economy. Without income inequality there’s nothing better to strive for. All during my life I have moved up and down in income. I have, however, striven for more. All of us want more for ourselves and our families. Some of us work hard to achieve that. Others expect it to be given to them. The actual value of the “more” is greater when you work for it. When you wait around to have it given to you, its value is greatly diminished.

Another thing that the democrats don’t seem to take into account is that the truly rich (the one percent that they’re always talking about) have money that isn’t income, so it isn’t counted as income or taxed as income. Interest earned is taxed as income, but the principle is not.

You can have mega dollars in accounts all over the world, invested or just in bank accounts. You may “earn” $50,000 a year in “income” from those accounts. You can still live a million dollar lifestyle because you can tap the principle. That’s kind of where a consumption tax instead of an income tax comes into play. That’s where Dems can get the “rich” to pay “their fair share” of the taxes… They have more money, they buy more stuff. And higher cost stuff. Where Joe Blow maybe buys a 10-year-old used car for his 16-year-old (if Joe doesn’t make Joe, Jr. buy his own car), John Dough buys Junior a Brand-spanking-new Hummer, or Corvette, or Tesla.

07:55, December 7, 1941, [tag]Pearl Harbor[/tag], Hawaii. The attack begins.

This is a photo taken at Pearl Harbor on that day. It is one of several at Snopes.com regarding a story of [tag]photos[/tag] found in a Brownie camera in an old footlocker. The photos are archival and weren’t found in the camera, but are well worth looking at.

Chris at A Large Regular again points us to this National Geographic multimedia map and timeline.

The drivers’ license for illegal aliens thing: Proponents say that if they have a license they’ll get insurance and the roads will be safer, blah, blah, blah. But insurance isn’t required for a license, it’s required for registration. A license isn’t necessary for registration either. I mean, Grandma may not be able to drive anymore, but she may maintain the registration and insurance on her car for someone else to drive her around. People who have their licenses suspended or revoked can still have a car registered (and some drive anyway – loss of license doesn’t mean loss of the knowledge or physical ability to drive).

Granting a drivers’ license to an illegal alien will not result in safer roads, it’ll just dilute the value of the license for citizens.

Today at church the message was about heaven. The pastor had asked some children what they thought heaven would be like and he played the video for us.

The best was one little girl who said:

In Heaven, Jesus will build me a house and I hope it’s made of chocolate with lickable walls.

The drive isn’t spinning up so data recovery will not be as easy as we hoped. Hubby is an IT professional and has a device that could allow us to read the data, if the platters would spin up. It tries and the drive whines, but the spinning just isn’t happening.

It looks as though we will have to use a third party service to try and recover the data, but it costs a lot of money to do it. We’re looking at $500-$,2700 with a probability of $1,600-$2,430 to do it.

It’s hard decision time. That kind of money could buy a much better laptop than the one I currently have (it’s nearly 4 years old), faster processor, more hard drive space, more RAM, DVD burner, etc could be had.

But what is the data worth? That’s the question. Is my data worth that much money? Could I try to recreate a lot of it? Do I really need all those saved emails?

I have certainly learned my lesson here. I will back up data on a regular basis. One of these would be a way to store backup data away from the laptop for a relatively small price.

I woke up to the dreaded Black Screen of Death this morning on my laptop. Hard Drive failure! Fun, fun, fun.

I should receive a replacement early next week and hopefully we’ll be able to get my data off the failed drive. I’m currently using the family desktop so posting will most probably be fairly light if at all.

added: It also means that I am going to have to remake all my settings to get back to my comfortable place. Yuck. If we can’t get all my data off, I’ll have to remember all the logins and passwords and all that crap too. I will have to back up some data immediately I will, keep it safe…. I am so NOT looking forward to all this.

I heard this song for the first time today on the local station that does All Christmas All the Time until New Years’. It’s just beautiful.

Mary, did you know?

Mary, did you know
That your baby boy will one day walk on water?
Mary, did you know
That your baby boy will save our sons and daughters?
Did you know
That your baby boy has come to make you new?
This child that you’ve delivered
Will soon deliver you

Mary, did you know
That your baby boy will give sight to a blind man?
Mary, did you know
That your baby boy will calm a storm with his hand?
Did you know
That your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kiss your little baby
You’ve kissed the face of God

Mary, did you know?
The blind will see
The deaf will hear
The dead will live again
The lame will leap
The dumb will speak
The praises of the lamb

Mary, did you know
That your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary, did you know
That your baby boy will one day rule the nations?
Did you know
That your baby boy is heaven’s perfect lamb?
This sleeping child you’re holding
Is the great I AM

(buddy greene, mark lowry)

We go to my sister’s house for Thanksgiving and therefore have no leftovers.

So, generally, I make a turkey on Friday with only some of the sides. On Friday I made a pumpkin pie, an 11 pound turkey, in the bird stuffing and out of the bird dressing, gravy, and haricots vert (o.k.a. green beans.)

I also made my own cranberry sauce with Craisins, pineapple-orange juice, brown sugar, lemon peel (dried spice jar kind), maple syrup, and some key lime juice. It turned out pretty good.

On Saturday, I took the turkey carcass, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, kosher salt, and sage and started my stock.

Yesterday, after many, many hours of simmering and reduction, and after straining it, I packaged up 10 pints of stock. To what I had reserved I added some cooked turkey, a diced turnip, a diced parsnip, a diced onion, three diced Fuji apples, 2 tablespoons of Grey Poupon, and the leftover gravy (just over a pint). Then I made a half recipe of Bisquick dumplings and added those. Marvelous Turkey Apple Soup. Egg noodles go well with this soup instead of dumplings if you want. After eating soup for dinner, I still had four pints left! But only one dumpling, so I’ll have to add some more (or some noodles) when we eat the rest.

Talk about tryptophan with that soup though, turkey, onions, and apples, it’s a triple whammy!

There’s another pumpkin pie in the oven too…