All in the name of fairness:

One man winning EIGHT gold medals in just ONE Olympics! We need to take the "windfall" gold medals from that greedy American, Michael Phelps, and distribute them to the less fortunate, but equally hard-working athletes in the swimming-poor countries. The International Olympic Committee should take control of 60% of his obscene, record medal count, and distribute them to athletes in nations like Iceland and Lichtenstein, who've never won Olympic swimming medals. He'd still have 3 medals left, he'd never even miss the ones we took. --Glenn Beck

Obama has also promised that "we will get 1 million 150-mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on our roads within six years." What a tranquilizing verb "get" is. This senator, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, is going to get a huge, complex industry to produce, and is going to get a million consumers to buy, these cars. How? Almost certainly by federal financial incentives for both -- billions of dollars of tax subsidies for automakers, and billions more to bribe customers to buy these cars they otherwise would spurn.

~George Will

How about a $1000 fine for not properly sorting your garbage? Read this interesting article in the New York Times about the religion of environmentalism.

For those who may not keep in touch with the exciting world of public education. There have been some murmurings of the recent $300,000 bonus given to UCA president Lu Hardin. Part of the controversy stems from the fact that the funds were taken out of the Board of Trustees Endowment Fund. According to the Democrat Gazette,

The Board of Trustees Endowment Fund was established in 1995 “to provide long-term support for scholarships and other operations of the university.”

But a review of the expenditures shows that the board used less than 1 percent of the money to fund college scholarships over the past six years. Just $17,000 of the $1.92 million spent from 2002-03 to 2007-08 went to fund scholarships — $2,000 for Miss UCA scholarship in 2007-08 and $15,000 in 2004-05 for “staff senate book scholarships,” which went to student workers and their children.

Other expenditures include an $800,000 payment to supplement construction at Estes Stadium, a $334,019.14 buyout for former UCA President Winfred Thompson, $250,000 for several university centennial celebrations and programs in 2006 and 2007, and Hardin’s $300,000 bonus.

Board members also approved $20,000 over two years to help the struggling Oxford American magazine, $12,000 for championship football rings, and $13,000 for chair risers for the UCA choir.

Not only does the board have to deal with the implication that they may be misappropriating these funds, their huge bonus for Lu may not comply with Arkansas law which caps the salary of public university presidents.

I wonder who is squirming more, the board because they are afraid that they may be caught fudging on the very policies they created, or Lu who may have to write a check to UCA for $300,000.

See the full article from the Democrat Gazette.

The last couple of walk-in customers where I work have complained about high gas prices after exiting their large luxury cars or SUVs. All I can think is "what is the big deal?" And what exactly worries them about current high gas prices? I am left to figure that one out. Here's a good article by Justin Wolfers called "What Exactly Concerns Us About Gas Prices?" Only if I could hand it to them as they walk out.
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2 ... #more-2757

UPDATE : Find the more recent UCA salaries in 2009 with a sortable, searchable database. Here

The list of University of Central Arkansas Salaries is now searchable. (You can use the built in search capabilities of Adobe Acrobat.)

UCA Salaries 2008

Stay tuned for the new, updated salary list coming soon...

According to Shawn Tully in Why oil prices will tank:

"Arguments that $4-a-gallon gas (or even higher) is here to stay are dead wrong. Housing's boom-and-bust cycle tells you why."

This greenhouse calculator was developed by Australian Broadcasting Corporation and is meant for children.

Fill out the survey yourself and you can learn when you should die!


http://www.abc.net.au/science/planetsla ... e_calc.htm

It is amazing how seriously the media are taking Senator Barack Obama's latest statement about the latest racist rant from the pulpit of the church he has attended for 20 years. But neither that statement nor the apology for his rant by Father Michael Pfleger really matters, one way or the other. Nor does Senator Obama's belated resignation from that church. For any politician, what matters is not his election year rhetoric, or an election year resignation from a church, but the track record of that politician in the years before the election. Yet so many people are so fascinated by Barack Obama's rhetorical skills that they don't care about his voting record in the U.S. Senate, in the Illinois state senate, the causes that he has chosen to promote over the years, or the candidate's personal character and values, as revealed by his actions and associations. Despite clever spin from Obama's supporters about avoiding "guilt by association," much more is involved than casual association with people like Jeremiah Wright and Father Pfleger. In addition to giving $20,000 of his own money to Jeremiah Wright, as a state senator Obama directed $225,000 of the Illinois taxpayers' money for programs run by Father Pfleger. In the U.S. Senate, Obama earmarked $100,000 in federal tax money for Father Pfleger's work. Giving someone more than 300 grand is not just some tenuous, coincidental association. Are Barack Obama's views shown by what he says during an election year or by what he has been doing for decades before? The complete contrast between Obama's election year image as a healer of divisions and his whole career of promoting far-left grievance politics, in association with America-haters like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, are brushed aside by his supporters who talk about getting back to "the real issues." There is nothing more real than a man's character and values. The track record of what he has actually done is far more real than anything he says, however elegantly he says it. There is no office where the character and values of the person in that office matter more than the office of President of the United States. He holds the destiny of 300 million Americans in his hands and the fate of generations yet unborn...