See also: Star Wars explains the debt ceiling

Seen at http://imgur.com/3prAG

It is comforting to know that am emergency team of 8th-grade civics teachers has been dispatched to Washington!

WASHINGTON—With lawmakers still at an impasse over increasing the debt ceiling, a special team of 40 eighth-grade civics teachers was air-dropped into Washington earlier today in a last-ditch effort to teach congressional leaders how the government’s legislative process works. [READ MORE]

[Source, the ONION, Emergency Team Of 8th-Grade Civics Teachers Dispatched To Washington]

The size of male organ is found to have an inverse U-shaped relationship with the level of GDP in 1985. It can alone explain over 15% of the variation in GDP. The GDP maximizing size is around 13.5 centimetres, and a collapse in economic development is identified as the size of male organ exceeds 16 centimetres. Economic growth between 1960 and 1985 is negatively associated with the size of male organ, and it alone explains 20% of the variation in GDP growth. With due reservations it is also found to be more important determinant of GDP growth than country’s political regime type.

[Source, Helsinki Center of Economic Research, Male Organ and Economic Growth: Does Size
Matter? by Tatu Westling, University of Helsinki, ISSN 1795-0562]

See also.

Evidence that other countries perform better than the United States in ensuring the health of their populations is a sure prod to the reformist impulse. The World Health Report 2000, Health Systems: Improving Performance, ranked the U.S. health care system 37th in the world…

It is hard to ignore that in 2006, the United States was number 1 in terms of health care spending per capita but ranked 39th for infant mortality, 43rd for adult female mortality, 42nd for adult male mortality, and 36th for life expectancy. These facts have fueled a question now being discussed in academic circles, as well as by government and the public: Why do we spend so much to get so little?

[Source, , ]

[Source, BBC, A rare view of Russia's floating nuclear power station]

That paperwork due on April 15th is finally completed and turned in!

The tow truck is now on its way to my friend Wayne’s garage to be fixed. Please pray for me that the repair costs will be affordable!Thanks! [Source, Twitter, isacarybell]

Over the years, I have desired to intimately write about our financial victories and our financial struggles but could never figure out how to do so without sounding like a braggart or a beggar. I simply could never be as intimate nor poignant as DeMarCaTionVille in the post Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me. Read the whole thing!

Over the past six months, my daughter nearly died. I lost my job…the hubby was laid off…during the same week Diva’s thoracic surgeon mailed out his bill….also lost two relatives…merging households with my mother-in-law…the KKK [Source, DemarCaTionVille, Gloom, Despair and Agony on Me]

Btw, to DeMarCaTionVille, thanks for the Hee Haw flashback!

This post with apologies to anyone who actually has a kidnapped child.

• Weigel’s: $3.489
• Texaco: $3.459
• Pilot:$3.399

I don’t know if it had anything to do with the price of gas or just being a Monday but Pilot’s parking lot was a clusterduck of activity and could barely fit any more vehicles. There was no order to it either. Looked like an intersection in Hanoi! The McDonald’s 18 wheeler was delivering supplies. The Waste Connections truck was picking up the dumpster. Landscapers were filling up their tanks. Between the huge trucks and trailers, cars were zigging and zagging and negotiating right of way by hand signals. And you know what! It worked. No accidents. No red light cameras. No traffic signals. Granted, it was just a parking lot.