Remember that bone-headed idea floated during the election season that both John McCain and Hilary Clinton floated, about removing the tax on gasoline when it spiked to $4 a gallon?

That idea would have caused gas prices to continue to rise (because demand wouldn’t have softened as much) while at the same time deprived America of much needed revenues to fix our failing infrastructure. Minnesota bridge collapse, anyone?

Well, here’s a wacky idea. Now that prices have plummeted to about $2 or less a gallon, let’s have a temporary tax increase on gasoline.

Please, hear me out.

First, I do mean temporary. We could tie it into the price of gasoline; let’s say the when the national average shoots up again to $3 (or whatever number we could agree upon) the tax goes away, or it could be more of a rolling target that abates as the average goes up.

In the meantime, we would get a surge of new revenues that should be split two ways. Half would go to rebuilding America’s infrastructure; that would lead to better, safer roads and bridges, while putting more people to work, and hopefully taking a nibble out of the depression unemployment numbers.

The other half would go to offset tax breaks on fuel efficient, American-built cars. I’m not talking about cars made by the big 3 necessarily, I’m talking about any car manufactured in the US by tax paying Americans. Toyota, Honda, or any “US” company as well.

It’s my strong belief that we need to get off of our addiction to foreign oil asap for the safety and security of our nation. It’s not (just) a tree-hugging idea; it’s a matter of national security. You don’t put the future of your energy needs in the hands of people who genuinely don’t like you.

OK, well, that’s my .02. Fire away.

Rich Brooks
Yes, I Realize the Hypocrisy That I Drive an SUV

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My dad sent me a link to this Flickr slide show from Barack Obama and his family on election night. It’s a mixture of intimate and public moments. Very nice.

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I’ve been searching for this clip, on and off, for a while and I’ve finally found it again. Kevin Spacey on SNL auditioning for the roles of Han Solo ( as Christopher Walken) and Obi Wan Kenobi ( as Walther Matthau) in Star Wars. The Guy that does Richard Dreyfus auditioning for C3PO is a hoot too. You might need to scroll down and stop Rich’s 207 entry……. really

I also found this oldie, Mr Peepers, which made me larf like a drain even with the sound off:

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My co-workers are probably tired of listening to my bleating about a recent intermittent denial of service from Google related websites on my iMac. Sites affected include Google, Blogger and YouTube, possibly others. Service from these sites had become patchy and losing Google in particular was tough. Ask.com? Yahoo? Bah! It was like losing a ‘hyper limb’, a dead end in the information super highway, I was lost. Rebooting did nothing to help neither did renewing DHCP or manually setting an IP address.

After several fruitless forays into the annals of the internet, I finally came across the answer in a MetaFilter post this morning. Without being able to pinpoint the trigger ( I think it may have been a recent software update) the issue seemed to link back to the DNS server(s) set in my Network Preferences. I changed them to the two suggested in the article and Bingo! I was back in business.

So here’s the link to the article again lest this heinous affliction ever affect you, or anyone else. LINK

Also a quote from the post in case it gets lost in the mists of time:

“I see this problem all the time with people’s Macs at home. It’s most definitely a DNS issue. It is always solved by setting your DNS server to a known good DNS server, like 4.2.2.2. To do that, go to Apple menu>System Preferences>Network. Then select your Airport connection, click Configure, then look at the TCP/IP tab. Enter 4.2.2.2, hit enter, then enter 4.2.2.3 on the second line. Then click Apply Now. You may have to restart your web browser for the change to be evident.

I think this is less of a problem with a specific DNS provider and more of a problem with certain wireless routers’ ability to properly share correct DNS information with Macs…..“

Although I’m not using a wireless router it seems to have done the job. Choose your ethernet connection settings instead if you are on a wired network.

A

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