JRO throws up Salon – I throw up NRO. Some figures

Total federal outlays in 2002 were $2,010,975,000,000. In the year I first came to this country, 1973, they were $245,700,000,000, which adjusts up to $862,100,000,000 in 2002 dollars. So (and I am sticking with 2002 dollars throughout here) the 2002 feddle gummint spent about $1.15 trillion more than in 1973. …

It’s not just the feds, either. The governor of my state — New York, pop. 19,011,378 — plans to spend $100 billion in 2004-05, up $8 billion from last year. That’s an 8.7 percent increase, $421 per New Yorker, $1,684 for my little family here. Will my state services improve 8.7 percent in quantity or quality? Shall I be getting 8.7 percent more courtesy from the highway patrol? Will state courts be processing cases 8.7 percent more quickly? Shall the Derbyshires be getting anything at all from our state government equivalent to what we might have got by spending $1,684 in the private sector? I’m not betting on it. And even that $100 billion is attained only by pushing every conceivable expense off the state’s books and on to those of the counties and municipalities. Upstate in Broome County, Medicaid … was absorbing 78 percent of the local property tax last year. The county’s projection for 2012 is 200 percent!

As a reminder, ’73 was the year the US pulled troops out of Vietnam, so military operational spending may have dropped that year. Not so much to reconcile a 125% spending increase, but it’s at least somewhat of a factor. We did put a couple of folks on the moon in ’73, AIR.

ESPN comes back and saves my respect for the network.

I’d been meaning to change my browser homepage to something other than ESPN.com, but hadn’t gotten around to it. Then tonight, after catching a late supper with a couple of the guys from the office, I fire up Mozilla one last time before heading home and what do I find?

Using “a programming language and environment built for the electronic arts and visual design communities” from Processing, j. tarbell wrote Bubble Chamber. Set up one of these windows to run in the background, then stop in and check it every couple minutes.

Larry Flynt is poised to start trouble for Bush.

“I’ve talked to the woman’s friends,” Flynt said. “I’ve tracked down the doctor who did the abortion, I tracked down the Bush people who arranged for the abortion,” Flynt said. “I got the story nailed.”

This seems like more of the long-ago history that wouldn’t be a big deal if it weren’t for Bush having so many Christian Coalition supporters.

p.s. how ‘bout that headline? not a single journalism lesson!

I had no idea that Bill O’Reilly wrote a novel.

It’s about a TV news personality who becomes a serial killer. When it came out in 98’ Kirkus Reviews described the language as “wooden,” which is one of my all time favorite criticism adjectives.

Anybody read it? Becky’s Book Club Members look out — I’ve got my suggested reading for April!

It is official and from the source. No matter how much you like the new Outkast double album, do not shake it like a Polaroid picture.

The short answer is no, you don’t have to (and shouldn’t) “shake it like a Polaroid picture.”