I've created a websiteabout the books I plan on making available to my children. It's called Fanatics4Classics. The book covers are affiliate links to Amazon 1) because hopefully it will support the site and 2) I like to read Amazon reviews for books, and hopefully others will find them useful as well 3) Amazon has covers for most books, and using their bandwidth is free.

I have an index (linked) of the best 800 fiction books and a huge history selection from Gutenberg (and torrents to download all of those books in either epub or mobi (for Kindle)).

The Amazon links include all of the Gutenberg fiction (for those who like printed books or want to view the reviews) as well as another thousand books from the 20th century that are still under copyright. All of them are organized by reading level and genre.

The site is not completed yet. I'm planning on linking to the best works of Science and other areas of study, a much more extensive list of history,and links to other sites my wife finds useful in homeschooling our kids.

I'm doing this because my wife and I like the Thomas Jefferson Education model, and while they have a good selection of books on their site, I felt it was incomplete. Anyway, browse around, find something interesting, and read a book.

Not to mention Clinton was elected twice with less that 50% of the vote.

FYI, I'm a father of 4, and I make just over $50,000 a year. After filing, I've gotten a check of about $3000 each of the last 4 years after having nothing withheld for the entire year. I have a co-worker who is in a similar situation, and he actually lets our employer withhold money, so he gets an even bigger check.

Do you remember all of the Y2K stories for YEARS before the year 2000? Had people all worked into a frenzy that power plants and other equipment wouldn't work on 1/1/00. I've read that the White House is pretty hostile to any publication/reporter that prints a critical story. Pair that with the love certain media individuals have with Obama, and you get a whole lot of brushing stuff under the rug that 6 years ago was extremely hostile to a president that was pretty similar on policy and competence.

You might look at your local library. We do all library as we already pay for it in our taxes.

Understand, there's a bit of waiting involved. Usually from when a disk is released, the library doesn't have it available for another two weeks, and then you have to wait through the hold queue to before you get a copy. I've found at our library (Topeka KS), that if you make a recommendation to buy a disk before the item is in the catalog, they will put you on the list before it's officially started. So, if you want to watch something, you could ask for them to buy the next big movie before it's at the theater, and you will get a copy the first week the library has them available.

You in Topeka KS?

My preferred method: Get rid of districts, and give the power to the voters. Set a window for 6-3 months before the election, and everybody registers their party preference. So, for a Federal election May to July, voters select the party they want to represent them. Maybe you end up with half Republicans and Democrats, and other parties finally get some real representation, collecting the other half. You use the registrations to determine which parties will get how many candidates. (Say 120 for Republicans & 120 for Democrats, 50 Libertarians, 45 Greens, 5 Communists, 3 Anarchists, 25 NAACP, 25 Latino Party, 1 KKK, 25 Christian Conservatives, 10 AARP, 15 Peace Party, etc.) Then once each party knows how many spots, they have their own party elections to determine which candidates they want to represent their constituents.

You have added benefits where everybody has a better selection than current. If you decide you don't like your current party (corruption, anti-science or education or other divergences) try to build a following to pull the party in a new direction, start a new party, select from dozens of other options.

You get rid of having half of a district feeling like their representative works for somebody else.

You get rid of the alignment between the Senate and the House, where they are chosen by the same electorate, just with fewer seats. Actually, we should throw out the Senate and have the State Houses approve the bills passed by the Federal House, before sending it to the President. Given today's technology level at the time of the negotiation of the House of Representatives, we probably would have had this instead of Senators, who were supposed to represent a break on the Federal government over running the powers of the states. All responsibilities of the Senate to approve Treaties, Presidential appointments, and impeachment duties are turned over to the House.

Then, since the electoral college is supposed to be somewhat representative of the House and Senate, replace it with the newly elected House plus the governor and his lieutenant governor, and throw out the presidential election altogether. This will reduce the cult of personality that gave us both Bush and Obama. Since the parties will be more fractured, the elected representatives will hopefully compromise on a competent candidate that doesn't upset anybody too much.

Reading a book called 'The Fourth Turning'. It mentions that during the post WWII era, educated women stayed home and had higher birth rates than the less educated. The late 2020s to early 2040s may see a return to higher fertilities due to an improved social mood after our current malaise.

I have a Chase account, and I have ru4.com disabled in NetScript, and I can login just fine.

It seems to me that it's a two sided coin.

Peak oil stories would drive up the cost of oil because of the perceived shortage, and more buyers and speculators would buy futures that would increase the price, making more profit in the short term for the 'evil' oil companies, and probably get more money in the form of exploration funds. Of course, this will encourage investments in wind, solar, and maybe even nuclear.

On the other hand, downplaying Peak Oil concerns will keep prices somewhat lower. But if they are right, they are looking at huge decline in energy revenues due to declining commodity costs, which probably won't be great for the bottom line and stock prices.

Another issue being utilization. You need to have the shorter trains get out of the way so passengers on long haul trains can keep going, having higher numbers of trains running at a time, spreading the infrastructure cost across more passengers, so the trains will have a cost advantage over planes.

The budget being balanced wasn't planned. It was an accident caused by the internet bubble, many people selling over priced stocks, and having to pay taxes on the profit.

The housing bubble was an attempt to keep things going, and while it resulted in increased revenues, the continued increases in planned increases, plus the new drug benefit, unfunded wars kept us well in the red during the last decade.

Basically, Regan, Clinton, both Bushes and Obama have all allowed spending to remain out of control as well as all members of Congress who don't actually propose to cut the actual amount of money being spent.

If I were the president, I'd propose a strong evaluation of military spending, keep the CIA, FBI, State Department, and the EPA, and turn almost everything else over to the states. That is, the government would concern itself with international relations and matters between the states, or that spill over state borders, and leave everything else to the states to figure out, especially medicare, social security and education.

I've heard the reign will last 40 years, so either the prophecy will end up being false, or we'll all be fairly old before the actual end.

First, the infallibility isn't something that's be stowed on him like some feat in D&D. It's tied to the office, and only the current pope can teach as the pope. You know, kind of like how Bush couldn't go over Obama's head and sign laws passed by Congress if Obama had vetoed it.

Second, infallibility means that when the pope talk about official church dogma and morality, and he speaks as the head of the Church, then a teaching is infallible. Specifically, there are only a few that I am aware of since infallibility was defined at the end of the first Vatican Council (1870-71). The are the Assumption of Mary in 1950, the continued reaffirmation of various sexual teaching, like Humane Vitae's reaffirmation of no contraception, abortion, in vitro fertilization, etc., and the document that John Paul put out in the 1990s saying the Church has no authority to ordain women as priests.

When a Pope assigns bishops to dioceses, makes a Sunday homily, asks the governor of Texas to commute a death penalty, or changing how the pedophilia cases are handled, he does exercise his papal office, but not in an infallible way. Also, John Paul and Benedict have weeded out 90% of the dissident bishops and Cardinals who would have considering weakening Church teaching, and the hierarchy of is much more conservative than it was in the 1960s & 70s, so you are unlikely to see any disagreements between the next pope and 99% of the bishops since they have built into their office a measure of obedience to the one the report to, even in non-infallible matters.

Or just make sure your carbohydrate intake stays around 100 g per day.