At long last, the Boomergeddon blog has gone live at its permanent URL address, http://www.boomergeddon.us/. I would have preferred to have nailed down the .com address, but some slimeball snaked it before I could register it, and I refuse to pay money to buy the name. Fortunately, the “.us” domain works in this case —…

Virginia closed out the fiscal year with a $220 million budget surplus, no mean accomplishment considering that it faced a $1.8 billion deficit in January. The press release from the Governor’s Office has the details. Some of the surplus will be allocated to a bonus for state employees, who have gone without a pay raise…

Time for the Truth Squad. Just a couple of weeks ago, The Baconator Himself wrote a scold of President Barack Obama for not using “A Whale,” a massive ship specially designed to skim up spilled oil from the ocean. The 1,100-foot long vessel, a converted bulk carrier, maybe could scoop up 21 million tons of…

Our venerated James A. Bacon had a recent post that had a bunch of charts (where the man gets them no one knows) that stirred quite a bit of discussion about savings and the economy. One chart rubbed me the wrong way — one showing how much cash U.S.companies were hording. The Baconaut-in-Chief wrote: “On…

What’s the world coming to? The Russian SVR, successor to the KGB, has inundated us with long-term moles who are on deep cover and penetration missions of middle school soccer games and “Six Sigma” management principles. Their goal is to infiltrate American ruling and opinion-making circles and wait in place for the big move, if…

In his previous post, “On the Fourth,” EMR suggested using the metric, “U.S. Net National Savings as a Percentage of GDP,” as an indicator of the extent to which U.S. society is preparing for the future. Why is savings so important? As EMR often says, the benefits of civilization are expensive. We have three choices:…

The Risse Household has celebrated the 4th of July for as long as EMR can recall. During WWII there were pot luck barbeques in the live-oak-shaded picnic grove next to the orchard. Households with members serving in the military from that part of the Santa Inez Valley – some years one or more were home…

Let’s say you are in an emergency room and you have a patient being wheeled in from the ambulance who is bloody and critically injured. The man is in his middle age, he is overweight and has high blood pressure and cholesterol and has diabetes. He’s been in a bad traffic accident and has lost…

Yes… the flying car. Air cruising speed of 115 mph, range of 450 miles. The retail price of 130 quid will give it limited market appeal. Yet… according to this UK news report, 70 people have already forked over a hefty down payment for an advance order. I am a great enthusiast for cool technology…

In 1955, then-Senator John F. Kennedy wrote the book “Profiles in Courage”. The book documents eight US senators who took tremendous political risks by supporting unpopular causes. President Kennedy’s book won the Pulitzer Prize. Despite being published 55 years ago I know of no effort to publish a new edition of the book updated with…

Everybody in America should be quite concerned about Paul Krugman’s most recent Op – Ed piece in the New York Times. Mr. Krugman is a staunch and loyal supporter of Barack Obama. However, Krugman is now saying that the current recovery may very well collapse leaving the economy in what he is calling The Third…

Hoo-ah! My first column in the online op-ed section of the Washington Times: The financial media put a positive spin on a joint statement Sunday by the wealthiest members of the Group of 20 countries that they would halve their deficits by 2013 and stabilize their debt burdens by 2016. In the words of the…

Three years ago, Prince William County achieved notoriety by adopting legislation that was supposedly designed to stem illegal immigration but in reality harassed Latinos, many of whom are hard-working and law-abiding. What goes around comes around. Corey A. Stewart, chairman of the PWC board of supervisors, is beating the drum for Virginia to adopt a…

Richmonders are no different than many people in the new urbanist world. They like the idea of moving back downtown where it is easy and efficient to travel to their offices without cars walk to restaurants and entertainment and have quick access to inner city depots for transportation out of town. For Richmond, that ideal…

I recently subjected myself to a full dose of the trilogy of tripe – Matthews, Olbermann and Maddow. They were each desperately trying to excuse Obama’s incompetent management of the Deepwater Horizon fiasco. As always, they quickly got to the “blame Bush” defense. The liberals’ song has been sung so often I know it by…