June 2006 Archives

Me and my 9-Ball teammates played in the APA playoffs this past weekend, unfortunately we were knocked out in the second round. As a consolation I did win all my games.

So tonight I have had enough pool and am not going to the regular Tuesday night session.

By the way, WHERE OH WHERE IS MY POWDERMILK BISCUITS t-shirt? You mean nobody on the Internets has one they mean to part with? I just went to see A Prairie Home Companion last weekend at BAM, it was gewd. But verrrry weird. My favorite was the cameo (or two) by lassoist and singer, Pop Wagner, whom I interviewed for a high-school paper. He's a very nice man. Oh yeah, my Dad's in the movie, too, very very briefly.

Read Dean Baker's blog, Beat the Press, it's fun.

Today's column, reprinted without permission;

"One of the disadvantages of having a public Social Security system is that people are free to make all sorts of untrue statements about it without facing any consequences. For example, an oped in the Washington Post this morning described the Social Security trust fund as “largely an accounting fiction.” This statement is of course absurd. The trust fund consists of U.S. government bonds, which the government is obligated to repay under the law. There is no sense whatsoever in which it can accurately be described as fictional.

Because Social Security is an agency of the government, the author is free to impugn the soundness of Social Security's financial situation with impunity, and the Post need not fear any consequences from printing this libel. On the other hand, if the author had made similarly untrue claims about the financial status of General Electric or Microsoft, the paper would be quickly greeted with an angry call from some honcho corporate lawyer. The correction would already be up on the website and ready to run in tomorrow’s paper. Maybe privatizing Social Security wouldn’t be a bad idea."