John Lennon 29 Years Later

It was 29 years ago that my favorite Beatle was gunned down in cold blood by Mark David Chapman.  I was devastated that day.  I still miss him.  RIP John.

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EPA and Carbon Dioxide

A couple days ago, I alluded to hearing Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) on the Grandy and Andy show on WMAL 630 here in DC. Inhofe made the statement on the program that the cap and trade legislation that was passed in the House and proposed in the Senate was dead and would not pass. He did express that even though the proposed legislation would not be passed, we should be concerned about the Obama administration attempting to regulate, rather than legislate, carbon dioxide emissions.

On Monday, the legitimacy of those concerns were realized when the Environmental Protection Agency declared that carbon dioxide is a health hazard. This ruling paves the way for the EPA to use the Clean Air Act to regulate the emissions of power plants, factories, and transportation.  The White House's denies that the EPA ruling has absolutely nothing to with Barack Obama's trip to the global warming summit in Copenhagen, but it sure is convenient.  Further proof that the administration is willing to do anything it takes to push it's leftist agenda, even if it takes bypassing the legislative process.

The truth about carbon dioxide is that it is vital to life on the planet.  All plant life needs carbon dioxide to grow.  In turn, that plant life uses that carbon dioxide and in turn produces oxygen through the process of photosynthesis.  It is part of the miracle of the balance of life on planet Earth.  The vast majority of carbon dioxide emissions come from natural sources and very little from the sources they seek to regulate.  The EPA even states that if we were to achieve the goals set forth in previous global warming conferences like the Kyoto Protocol, it would have little to no impact on global temperatures.

There are some things that the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions will accomplish for our country.  We can expect to see all of our energy costs increase.  That may not matter for some folks, but for the middle and lower income households will be impacted to a greater degree.  We can expect to see some manufacturing jobs move overseas to China and India where they will not be subjected to the same degree of emissions control.  What with unemployment currently at 10% officially, do we really need to see more Americans out of work?

Below, you can see Senator Inhofe's response to the decision by the EPA.

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Music Monday-Jimmy Buffett "Who's the Blonde Stranger"

Whenever it gets cold, I need to hear some beach music. Since we got our first snow on Saturday, I gotta have some Jimmy Buffett. This is the story of a married Texas couple who head out to the beach for vacation. While there they both fall victim to temptation.  Jimmy Buffett and "Who's the Blonde Stranger."


Whos The Blonde Stranger? - Jimmy Buffett

Come join Music Monday and share your songs with us. One simple rule, leave ONLY the actual post link here. You can grab this code at LJL Please note these links are STRICTLY for Music Monday participants only. All others will be deleted without prejudice.





PS: Because of spamming purposes, the linky will be closed on Thursday of each week at midnight, Malaysian Time. Thank you!

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Christmas Carols for Kids

Image via Wikipedia

I have talked numerous times about my son and his love of music.  While he primarily listens to country music, he also likes to listen to children's music.  On the children's music side, he likes things that he see on the PBS Kids channel like Maya and Miguel or The Raggs Kids Club Band. He also likes the Kidz Bop type music with kids singing popular songs.

Well, yesterday he was asking me to download a kindergarten Christmas.  I could not find it, but I was able to find 60 Christmas Carols for Kids on Amazon.com.  It features 60 all time favorite Christmas carols performed by the Countdown Kids. There are traditional religious songs like Joy to the World, The First Noel and Silent Night. There are also modern popular favorites like Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

I downloaded it yesterday for $3.69.  My son wanted to go to church with my wife this morning and wanted to have it on CD to listen to.  The original CD release of 60 Christmas Carols for Kids was a 3-CD set, but I was able to fit all 60 carols easily on 2 CDs.  Since I was delivering pizza until midnight last night, I was up until 2AM burning his CDs, but he was happy.

If you have kids that enjoy children's music, then I highly recommend this CD.  It is a great bargain and fun for the kids.  As a matter of full disclosure, I do have an affiliate account with Amazon, so I would receive a small commission of any sales that occur from the link below. 

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Oh The Weather Outside Is Frightful

I really need to get a job like the weatherman has.  Where else, besides Congress, can you be wrong more often than not and still keep your job?

We are expecting our first snow of the season here in DC today.  Yesterday, the forecast started with a chance of up to an inch. Later in the day, it grew to a chance of 1-3 inches.  This morning, my part of town has a chance of 2-4 inches, but the snow wouldn't start around here until sunset.  Here is the scene outside my back door as of 11:00 AM, about 6 hours before sunset.

Of course the very mention of snow in the DC area brings about widespread panic.  This morning, I had to do my usualy ritual of going to the bank to cash my pizza delivery paycheck and pick up something for dinner.  The store was much more crowded than usual.  People have to run out and stock up on milk, bread, and toilet paper in case they get snowed in. 

I don't expect it to get too bad out there.  We haven't even had our first freeze of the season so roads are fairly warm.  I am hoping that the inclement weather will bring out the best in people when I am out delivering pizza tonight.  I can always use the extra money.

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Jon Stewart, Al Gore, and Climategate

I don't particularly care for Jon Stewart and his style of humor, however, when he is mocking Al Gore and the news of Climategate, I can bear it for a bit.

Stewart is correct that the hacked emails do not prove that global warming is false.  What it does show, is that the global warming proponents are not about the scientific method, but rather pushing an agenda.

Meanwhile, Al Gore has canceled his scheduled speech at the upcoming climate change conference in Copenhagen next week due to "unforeseen" changes in his schedule.  Right, Al.  Climategate has nothing to do with you not attending a conference that you have made the driving force of your life since you lost to Dubya in 2000.

I heard Senator Jim Inhofe on the radio the other morning and he asserts that the cap and trade legislation is dead.  That was the genesis of his "We won. You Lost. Get a Life," comments to Barbara "Call Me Senator" Boxer.

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Tracking Blog Traffic

When I started this blog in August of last year, I decided to use statcounter to keep track of my traffic. It has some nice little features that I would like to look at from time to time. It was fun to look at the map to see where I was getting visitors. When I first started trying to build traffic, I joined a couple different blog advertising communities like entrecard and my personal favorite, Adgitize.

For the longest time, I was getting the lions share of my traffic from entrecard and Adgitize with the occasional visitor coming from search engines.  About a month or so ago, I read a blog post on how much info that particular blogger was getting by adding Google Analytics to their blog.  I added analytics to my blog a little more than a month ago, and it has been very interesting to see what blog posts are generating search engine traffic.

Prior to November, I was probably averaging between 80-100 page views per day.  At the beginning of November, I wrote a post on an Avon Sharper Image Camcorder that my wife gave me for our anniversary.  That post has received nearly 2000 page views from internet search engines. I also found a link to that post on yahoo answers in response to a question on the camcorder.  Somebody else copied and pasted the text of that post in response to the Yahoo answers question.

The next most popular post was one on former biology teacher Tiffany Sheppard turned porn star Leah Lust.  There have been a couple hundred visitors to that post.  I won't go into a lot of detail on some of the other popular posts according to my search engine traffic.  During the month of November, I averaged nearly 200 page loads per day, primarily due to the Avon Camcorder post.  My highest traffic day was a total of 321 pageloads.

That was until yesterday.  I came home yesteray evening and looked at my traffic on statcounter.  It said I had over 1300 page loads today.  I thought that couldn't possibly be correct.  One post that had received a about a dozen hits, the Real Reason Rio Beat Chicago for the Olympics was suddenly getting a ton of traffic.  Upon further investigation, I discovered that  on the Golf Vacation Insider website thay had posted a story called The Real Reason We'll Be Watching Olympic Golf From Rio and Not Chicago which contained a link to my post. 

It is amazing to me to see how one post can all of a sudden start sending visitors your way. 

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