About
Captain Ed is a father and grandfather living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, a native Californian who moved to the North Star State because of the weather. He lives with his wife Marcia, also known as the First Mate, their two dogs, and frequently watch their granddaughter Kayla, whom Captain Ed calls The Little Admiral.
Read More
The Crows Nest
OpenCongress Web Widget
Ever wanted to announce your support or opposition to Congressional legislation? OpenCongress now has a web widget that allows bloggers to do exactly that. Take a look at this, and check out how easily you can build your own.
Maybe They're Flotation Devices?
The Australian Navy foots the bill for breast augmentations. The Labour Party would like to know why, and probably so would most of the voters in Australia.
The Thinking Blogger
Congrats to Fausta, who won a Thinking Blogger award. She thanks me for my friendship, but the truth is that Fausta makes it easy to be her friend. She's always positive and energetic, and she epitomizes the notion of a thinking blogger. Make sure to put her on your must-read list!
Ensign Calls For Return Of MoveOn Money
NRSC chair Senator John Ensign calls for Democrats to return all campaign funds donated by MoveOn, after their despicable New York Times ad today accusing David Petraeus of treason. "If Senate Democrats are serious about moving our country forward, they will denounce this outrageous ad and return the campaign funds MoveOn.org has lavished on them as well as the donations made through MoveOn.org -- the choice is theirs." Ensign's right, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the refund ...
Support The Al-Dura Petition
Roger Simon at Pajamas Media is circulating a petition to demand accountability for the discredited al-Dura report from France's Channel 2. This is, as Roger calls it, the "Father of all Fauxtography," and C-2 has never acknowledged its fault in airing the supposed murder of a Palestinian child. He wants C-2 to show all of the unedited footage of the incident in order to show that C-2 faked the murder. If they're resisting the demand, I'd say they have something to hide ....
There Goes The Undefeated Season
Notre Dame managed to get its first loss out of the way as soon as possible -- and as badly as possible. Georgia Tech came to South Bend and stomped the Irish, 33-3, in the worst home opener loss in school history. The offense fumbled twice and allowed seven sacks on Evan Sharpley, who must have longed to have Brady Quinn back on the field instead. If Charlie Weis doesn't turn this debacle around fast, he may want to start asking Ty Willingham for some career counseling ....
Would Early Primaries Allow More Donations?
Jim Geraghty at The Campaign Spot believes that candidates will benefit if primaries and caucuses get pushed into 2007. A loophole in campaign finance regulation appears to allow an extra $2,300 per donor for candidates if those elections are held this year. Be sure to check out Jim's analysis, and the surprising candidate that may benefit the most.
When Tom Met Jeralyn
One of the interesting aspects of politics is finding out that opponents are people, too. Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft met Rep. Tom Tancredo backstage at NBC's studios, and found him more likable than she had anticipated. Perhaps it was their mutual interest in Dog, The Bounty Hunter ...
Joe Lieberman A Right-Wing Nut?
That's what CAIR says, according to Joe Kaufman. He has a link to a CAIR official's blog post that calls Lieberman, along with John Bolton, former CIA director James Woolsey, and the Heritage Foundation's Peter Brookes as "extremists". Affad Shaikh also calls Dick Cheney a "fat bastard of a liar," apparently not meant as a pop-culture reference to the Austin Powers movies. (via Let Freedom Ring)
Broadband Homelessness
The Japanese have made homelessness more efficient, and more Net-friendly, too. Their Internet cafés have become homeless shelters for the struggling manual-labor sector. The problem has grown into such a problem that government intervention will shortly become a political priority.
Found My Law Firm
Power Line links twice to this story regarding an attorney at Faegre & Benson who refused to become a victim and helped capture a very dangerous man. Keith Radtke is a partner in the firm as is Power Line's John Hinderaker. Radtke is listed in satisfactory condition after getting shot in the back, but that didn't keep him from locking up his attacker in a wrestling grip until police could arrive. I don't know about you, but that's the kind of man I'd want as my counsel ....
Don't Click That YouTube E-mail
The latest in spam seems to be redirections from YouTube links in e-mail to IP addresses without domain names. They attempt to entice people by making it seem that they have been inadvertently YouTubed. I'm sure most people can see through this scam, but just in case, you've been warned ....
Rick Moran Escapes The Floods
Rick Moran has kept us up to date on his travails along the Algonquin River. Yesterday, the police showed up to get him evacuated before the river flooded his home -- but today, Rick finds that a minor miracle has taken place, and that his house survives ... at least for now. Keep Rick in your prayers, and keep checking in at Right Wing Nut House for updates.
Rule 1: Drag The Corpse On Over First
If I've learned anything in four years of blogging, don't try to be out in front of the death rumors, especially with the villains of the world. Saddam died a hundred deaths before we caught him alive in his spider hole, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi almost as many before his demise last year. Osama may or may not be alive, but everyone's avoided speculating on his fate for a while now. Maybe Val at Babalu Blog will get luckier with his "Castro Is Dead" story. We all hope so. I'll wait for the announcement ....
Hobbs Choice
Volunteer Voters is holding its annual "Best of Nashville" on-line polls, and one of the categories is for the best political writer. Our friend Bill Hobbs, now posting at Newsbusters, and he'd like his on-line fans to cast their votes. Drop by and put one in for Bill if you get a chance!
Comments (4)
Posted by treehugger | October 2, 2007 9:13 AM
Much as I hate to admit it...this idea may have some merit. However, not for tuition or a house, but as a means to replace Medicare/Social Security.
Approximately 4 million babies are born in the US each year. Give each of them (born to US citizens only) a payment of between 5-10k at birth, and place it in a Roth IRA or other retirement vehicle. You can also add to the account once you enter the workforce. Best of all, Congress can't get their grubby little hands on the money......it is yours.
Long term compound interest works its usual miracle. And we replace entitlements costing hundreds of billions of dollars a year (I think SS is something like 700 billion?)with one that costs 40 billion annually. How's that for shrinking the size of government at a fairly low cost?
Posted by Terry | October 2, 2007 9:28 AM
No matter how you cut it, its a bad idea for everyone except Hillary.
Whatever you allow the money to be used for, its price will increase at the same rate as the $5,000.
As soon as the Gov't pays for something and there are no consequences for people, there is no value attached.
This is simply Hillary saying, "I'll pay you if you vote for me."
Posted by kingronjo | October 2, 2007 9:35 AM
because this is something I know about (compound interest) I can do some quick math on those numbers. The idea of giving newborns lumpsums instead of Social Security has been floating around for literally decades now (Kemp, Forbes is two that I first saw talk about it in the '80s).
Lots of benefits to it. If you pass away say at 58 instead of being having your $255 benefit you actually leave something to your heirs. Like 150,000, minimum. Using the miracle of compound interest and starting with $5000, retiring at 65 at 6% its about 220K, at 8% its 740k. And get this, at 10% its 2 and a half million dollars. Yes the number get ridiculous very, very fast.
No Congressional borrowing, increases America's saving rate exponentially, no using it to add money to the Treasury, eliminate the SSA. Now, something tells me that when Hillary sees the plan presented in this manner, its a big 'nevermind'.
Posted by patrick neid | October 2, 2007 7:59 PM
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the
blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery." Winston Churchill
Hillary could care less about the "children" as an earlier thread about the SCHIP memo pointed out. All her ideas when broken down are all Socialist intended. The SCHIP program was just a hook.
By giving children $5000 at birth she's hoping to create mentally indentured servants to the state as they grow up mistakenly thinking the state has provided for them. The same can be seen with older folks thankful for social security, medicare etc not realizing that by creating these ponzi schemes the government caused two destructive events. One, it undermined the average person taking care of themselves and two, yet more importantly, it prevented the free market from operating to provide a needed service. The government, once it gets involved, pollutes the background such that entrepreneurs rarely want to get invested.
"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened" (Norman Thomas, 1936 presidential candidate on the Socialist ticket)