Manufacturers tell us that manufacturing is the heartbeat of America, and small business owners say that small business is. It may surprise you to learn that the National Active and Retired Federal Employee Association has other thoughts on the matter. (link) You and I can rest assured that the true heartbeat of America is readers and writers of Junior Ganymede, or it would be if any of us had a heart.

Shock headline from the Daily Mail (UK):

How Mitt Romney’s family baptized wife Ann’s atheist father into Mormon church a year AFTER his death (more…)

Over the past several years I’ve made several comments at various blogs that same-sex marriage (which is a very big step in the overall destigmatization of homosexuality) will lead to homosexuality becoming a socially acceptable choice.

Well, it has started sooner than I thought it would.  I refer you to recent statements by Cynthia Nixon, who, after a 15-year marriage to man, claims she chose to be gay.

Couple this with primary and secondary school textbooks being rewritten to contain positive homosexual characters, and arts and media presenting positive homosexual characters and role models.

I  invite you to connect the dots and extrapolate.

In the mood for a doughnut, I stepped in a bakery this morning, and when the clerk rang up my two sour cream doughnuts, the kind that used to be buttermilk and not quite so sweet, I decided to pick up a Washington Post as well. $2.20 changed to $3.26. Surprised, I looked at the front page, and sure enough, in the corner where it used to say 75¢, it now says $1. Answering my question when that happened, the clerk said since Monday.

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Sub-titled: “The Jong remains the same.”

Someone (connected to this blog?) has a photo blog consisting of photos of the now-deceased North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il looking at things, usually accompanied by his high-ranking military officers.

And it seems his son Kim Jong-Un, wearing a similar style coat and accompanied by some of the same officers, has kept up the tradition.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2088854/The-Jong-remains-North-Korea-said-expect-change-right–new-leader-follows-fathers-footsteps–jacket.html

Update: And the  photo blog of Jr. looking at things is up.

So, Rick Santorum would like to triple the Child Tax Credit (WSJ), or in other words, he feels that a family with three children should have their federal income tax cut by $6,000. (more…)

… that having a missionary companion is good practice for later in life when you get married. To a dude.

Mostly true.

The Sweetwater Award for Timely Exercise of Manhood in Freezing Water goes to . . .

Eight men who acted within seconds to pull three children from a car overturned in Utah’s Logan River. (link)

The term “intellectual” is one frequently found in descriptions of political groupings and presumably refers to writers, artists, poets, philosophers, and other idlers whose influence is considerably greater than their numbers or contribution would warrant.

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is half the battle.

Lynn Margulis died a month ago, a woman for whom the important qualities of life were mostly found at the single-cell level. “People think the earth is going to die and they have to save it. That’s ridiculous. If you rid the earth of flowering plants, people would die, period. But the earth was without flowering plants for almost all of its history.” (link)

He violated one of the cardinal rules, know your backstop, with tragic results.

Update: 7:00pm EST.

And AGAIN, like I said, KNOW YOUR BACKSTOP!  (And note the fine print, “Alcohol was involved in the incident…”)   This time with a surprise something-good-came-out-of-it twist.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2074994/Plans-floating-city-California-coast-house-entrepreneurs-visas.html

In a previous life, I spent part of a year in college on an ocean-going tanker.  It does take a couple weeks to get your sea-legs, and not everyone can adapt.

But this is a very creative solution to the problem of high-tech entrepreneurs not being able to get the necessary types of visas.

It also illustrates that the United States culture/families/education system is not creating sufficient home-grown talent.

The evidence is persuasive.

I also recommend against business trips to Mustafar, or getting caught in your own Sith lightning.