CalicoPenn

I think that for every one dollar cut from the NSF, we should cut ten thousand dollars from the Defense Department's budget. I also think that someone else did something similar in a much more elegant way. Remember William Proxmire? Doesn't anyone have any original ideas anymore?(This message has been edited by CalicoPenn)

I think the most important Boy Scout Rank is the one you're working towards at the time - even if "working" is defined as not working towards it at all. By that I mean a Tenderfoot who has no desire to advance in rank any further but remains active and becomes the SPL could be said to be "working" towards Second Class even if he never achieves it (through his own choice or not). I think this way because I don't believe possessing a rank should be a goal. Rank advancement is just one way to encourage boys to be active in Scouts - and whatever is keeping one active in Scouts - even if it's "working towards Second Class" for 6 years, is what's important.

If the PTO is a tax-exempt organization, they should have no worries about being bumped into the next bracket because there are no brackets. If they aren't a tax-exempt organization, they should be asking themselves why not. As sponsor of the Pack, the Pack becomes part of the PTO's program, and any revenue brought in for the Pack can be offset by expenses for the Pack, just like any revenue for the PTO is offset by expenses for the PTO. There shouldn't be any tax liabilities - and it doesn't add to the reporting. But technically, if you are using the PTO's EIN, they will have to account for the Pack's income and expenses on their annual returns whether you have a separate bank account or not. That can easily be accomplished by a 1/2 hour or less meeting of the Pack's Treasurer and the PTO's Treasurer once a year. If you do get your own EIN, remember that you will have to religiously file an annual tax return - even if (and it always should be)the taxes are Zero. The IRS has been fairly lenient about that in the past - but they are cracking down now to make sure every non-profit with an EIN files a tax return. If you forget to file a tax return and are still collecting money as a non-profit under that EIN, the Pack could be subject to a fine for failure to file. The taxes may still be zero, but you're still have a fine.

Five Gold Rings (sung as Five Go-old Rings). Of course, that's actually the original verse and Five Golden Rings is the variation, at least in the US. Oh, and Four Calling Birds is originally Four Colley Birds (a Colley bird is a blackbird - of "four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie" fame). As for the Partridge in a Pear Tree - that phrase seems to indicate that this is originally a French song rather than an English song as most believe it to be. The native partridge in France is a red-legged variety that perches in trees while the native partridge of Britain is a gray bird that doesn't perch in a tree. At least thats what I recall from High School chorus.

I had missed this: "First, the State Department has no business interferin' with a domestic business" The phrase that pops out is "Domestic Business". On the face of the statement, I would have to agree that the State Department has no business interfering. But...the sentence is about Wikileaks, and I'm not sure that Wikileaks is a Domestic Business. Perhaps it's part of a new internationalism that we need to figure out. I know Wikileaks has (or had) servers in the US, but they have servers in many countries. It's headquarters is allegedly in Sweden, and it allegedly is operating under Germany's charitable laws. So are we prepared for this kind of company? One that proclaims they operate with no real structure, no office one can point to definitively, just a collection of people working for a common goal, with a titular head (Assange - the public face, but is he really the guy in charge of Wikileaks?), in many different countries? I don't think you can call it Domestic. International perhaps, but not Domestic. It seems that the legal ties are mostly in Europe. Come to think of it, now that I've typed that out, the structure seems to resemble other organization structures that we've seen - Al Qaeda springs to mind.

Now where did I put that winter camping gear?

So news reports out have "supporters of Wikileaks" taking credit for a cyber-hack attack on the website of Mastercard because Mastercard will no longer allow their cards to be used to provide support to Wikileaks. Does that change anyone's mind? Can cyber-attacks be classified as a form of terrorism? Does this strengthen or weaken arguments that Wikileaks is or is not a terrorist group? As for the goverment putting pressure on companies not to help fund Wikileaks, ever hear of OFAC? Thats the Office of Foreign Assets Control. It administers and enforces our trade sanctions around the world. One way it does that is to maintain a list of individuals, companies and organizations that it is illegal to do business with. It's been in existence in one form or another since 1940, so this is not a new thing created by the Obama administration. During the Bush 2 administration, the list grew by leaps and bounds with the addition of hundreds of individuals and organizations of and for Muslims and Arabs. Want to donate $20 to the Kuwaiti-Cambodia Orphanage Association? Can't - its on the OFAC list - and doing so makes you liable for criminal prosecution, all because someone decided that they may be involved in illegal activities or it was against our best interests. I don't hear a lot of screaming about the OFAC list - perhaps because most people don't know about it. Or maybe because it's just Muslims and Arabs and they're terrorists so it doesn't matter. Now I'm not saying it's right - I'm opposed to the OFAC list. In a free country, we should have the right to send our money to whomever or whatever we want - thats real freedom and liberty. But that list exists, and until we can get rid of it, until we can rid this country on the mind-set that having such a list is consistent with liberty and freedom, then I just can't get that incensed about the Government suggesting to companies that it might not be in their best interests to do business with a foreign organization that may be involved in illegal activities. And don't think it's just a foreign thing. Want to get rid of communists? Make it illegal to be a member of the communist party and give money to the communist party in the US. Our government did just that.

Whose fault is it? I'd like to blame the Fourth Estate. They are more interested in ratings than in news. Real news doesn't bring ratings. Rantings by people like Palin, and to be fair, people like Sharpton, deliver ratings. And ratings equals money. It's not about news, its not about facts, its about the bottom line. Period. When a Palin or a Sharpton deliver one of their rants, the media lets it sit out there and act as if its fact. When Palin went on her screed about "death panels", it was picked up as "news" by news outlets, but very few then picked that apart to show that what she said was utter nonsense. Where the rant was torn to shreds and shown to have no basis in any kind of reality, it got limited exposure - folks that listen to NPR heard it, and folks that read non-partisan media watchdog websites read it, folks that read the New York Times or the Washington Post may have read it (if they didn't glaze right over it because they were sick of the "debate") but that is a pretty small subset of people. If you feed people a steady diet of pablum, then all people can repeat is the pablum - then you get people on Medicare at town hall meetings screaming "keep government out of my health care" - because the media reported the rants and not the facts. It was only after the health insurance reform bill was passed that the rest of the media quietly mentioned that the whole death panel thing was nonsensical. I said I'd like to blame the Fourth Estate - but the people who are really at fault is us - the American People. We are at fault because we aren't demanding better quality reporting, because we are allowing ourselves to be manipulated by a media who delivers pond scum to us and tells us it's meat and potatoes. We are at fault for taking everything that some media talking head says as fact without checking other reputable sources (Uncle Bubba's Conservative Blog, or Aunt Emma's Liberal Blog are NOT reputable sources). Remember a while back when it was reported that the Democrats booed the Boy Scouts at a Democratic National Convention? To hear the reporting on it (mostly from cable news by the way - especially Fox), you would think that the whole convention turned their backs on the Boy Scouts and booed. The other networks then had to report on the "story" and did some real digging where they found that the booing was limited to a small group of gay and lesbian delegates from the California delegation expressing their displeasure of the Dale ruling and that most of the delegates around them couldn't hear the booing let alone the Boy Scouts who were on stage. Had a reporter for Fox not been right there with the California delegation, it never would have been a story. I'm sure the BSA itself can relate after the "news" that the Boy Scouts booed the President at the Jamboree this year (where it also turned out to be a small group of people who happened to get caught on video - and not the whole crowd). This is the kind of reporting we've been conditioned into accepting as news - and that's our fault.

70 million people (give or take) voted for Obama's agenda. Had Obama tried to pass the agenda that he ran on, we wouldn't be having this discussion now, and the GOP would likely not have made the gains they did in the mid-term elections. I don't know what agenda he's been working on, but it isn't Obama's agenda.

It depends on the type of outing and what expectations were set beforehand. For most outings, the PL gear check prior to a trip is sufficient - but if I'm leading a unit into a winter camping situation, at the end of the day it comes down to me - I'm the one presumed to have the experience and judgement, so we'll do the gear check as a group - before any parent leaves - if the required equipment/clothing isn't there, either the parent runs home to get it, or takes his/her son home. Of course, in this kind of situation - the best thing is to do the gear check at the meeting prior to the outing (as was suggested) - that gives folks ample time to make the adjustments needed before the trip. The gear and clothing are packed and ready to go, and left at the meeting site (if your meeting site has a troop closet) so that it remains just as it was when the gear check was completed and the pack was approved (sometimes, folks re-pack after the gear check - then leave important things out - the next day when the Scout is shivering with cold is a heck of a bad time to dicover that the clothing he packed was replaced with something else). On travel day, it's a simple matter then to do a replacement/add gear check to those that needed to do so.

If the service project is part of an Eagle project, it can not benefit the BSA. Otherwise, a service project held by a unit at a Scout camp can count towards service project hours for advancement, as long as the Scoutmaster approves. Ask whomever told you that the service project hours at the Heard Scout Peublo wouldn't count as advancement to show that to you in writing from a BSA source - and when they pull of the advancement book from the BSA, make sure you see the entire paragraph so that you can see the prohibition is on Eagle service projects and not any other kind of service project. Te key is that as long as the Scoutmaster approves, the service project counts. As for why an OA project wouldn't count - that is the recommendation of the Order of the Arrow - the OA can't stop a Scoutmaster from approving an OA service project for service project hours for advancement - but they can provide guidance that it shouldn't - and that guidance is generally because the OA is as much a service organization as it is an association of honor campers - people in the OA are expected to provide cheerful service for no benefit other than the good feeling one gets in providing cheerful service, especially at an OA service event.

I have to laugh at the assertion that the republicans had no input, and no one asked the republicans for input on the health insurance reform bill (and it is health INSURANCE reform, not health care reform - it was a lazy media that continued to claim it was health care reform - we shouldn't be repeating their idiocy (ever notice how much respect I have for the media (sarcasm intended)). The republicans were reached out to numerous times, republican amendments were added to the health insurance reform bill numerous times, republican demands to remove things from the health insurance reform bill were acceded to numerous times - that republicans then failed to vote for their own amendments doesn't mean that they weren't allowed to be part of the process. The congressional negotiators were from both parties. This whole idea that they weren't involved is one of the biggest falsehoods of 2010 - and we're (the American Voter) letting people get away with it because we're a bunch of sheep. Give us a Big Mac and pablum on television (think Dancing with the Stars or American Idol) and we're happy as clams and don't bother us about reality. During the health insurance reform bill process, the GOP would introduce an amendment, it would get added to the bill, the GOP would then vote against the amendment, then they would complain that they aren't allowed any input, would then introduce another amendment, would vote against the amendment, then would complain they aren't allowed any input, then would introduce an amendment - and start the cycle over and over again. And talk about transparency - I point to this one bill as THE bill that has brought home the legislative process to everyone - we knew from day one everything that was going on with this bill - we spent months talking, no screaming, about this bill, and these changes, and those proposals, and on and on and on - before a bill was approved - thanks to this particular bill, most of us know how Congress actually works (or disfunctionally works, if I may be so bold) on legislation. This bill also showed just how ignorant and dangerously stupid many in the US are about government. We saw scene after scene of people on Medicaid at town hall meetings screaming at their Congresspeople to keep government out of their health care - health care that they apparently have forgotten is provided for by the government. Has Obama failed at everything? No - but he's failed at the most important part - Communications. He has the biggest bully pulpit in the world - and he has failed to use it. This latest tax compromise is clearly a failure to use that pulpit. He should have gone on the air and insisted that the Congress pass unemployment insurance extension, if that was what he wanted, without it being tied in to any other legislation - and tell the American people that if Republicans blocked it, that they should make sure to send them Christmas greetings featuring a representation of the Grinch. He should have insisted that Congress pass an extension of tax cuts to the Middle Class, without keeping taxes for the wealthy, if that's what he wanted, and go on air and tell the American people that the Republicans in Congress has raised their taxes at Christmas time, and to make sure that they call their Congresspeople to thank them. I would have preferred that he let all the tax cuts expire and get in on the tube and state clearly that he agrees with the Republicans that the deficit the Republicans created is a very real problem, and that we need to let these tax cuts expire now to pay for the borrowing the Republicans did during the wars and to prevent us from having even worse problems a few years down the road. He should have asked us to sacrifice a little now for greater prosperity in the future - and historically, the American people back Presidents that ask for some sacrifice, ask us to do something more that just "go shopping". Yes he's failed - he's failed at trumpeting his accomplishments, and at playing hardball with people out to destroy him and this country, and of using that greatest of weapons - public opinion - to do what's best for the US. God help us all.

Either e-mail, phone call or letter? How about all three? Make the phone call, follow up with an e-mail summarizing the phone call, expanding or answering points raised, and raising any new points since the call. Follow that with a letter copied to others at National including the Chief Scout and National President.

We should figure out a way to minimize or eliminate 3rd party stock analysis as well. Too often, a company meets or exceeds it's own sales/profit projections only to lose value because it failed to meet the sales/profit projection of some analyst with an MBA and no real hands on experience in the business. I can't stand listening to analysts from Goldman-Sachs, or some other investment banking form pontificate about how some company should be able to do much better than what they say they're able to do. Hey analyst - if you're so smart, then why aren't you running one of these companies? Let's be honest - because they would fail - epically.

One) The whole "Biometric Data" revelation is overblown - and that's because "Biometric" is a word that sounds more important than it's true meaning. Gather your Scout Unit together - take a group picture - guess what you just did? You have gathered "Biometric" data. That's right - an act as simple as taking someone's picture is gathering Biometric Data. A US Ambassador that makes sure s/he arranges photo-ops to get photos of everyone s/he meets, or everyone attending a party at the embassy has followed this directive to gather biometric data. But no, typical American Media brainless minds have to go into overdrive and immediately conjure up visions of James Bond gathering DNA samples, and fingerprints, and iris prints and blood/urine/tissue samples. Think I'm being too simplistic? We knew that Saddam Hussein used doubles many many times - we could even identify photo-ops of his where one of his doubles was there and not him. Why? Because we had photographs of the actual person to compare. Simple use of "Biometric Data". Two) A lot of outright lies are being spread in this thread about Valerie Plame. The facts are that Valerie Plame was NOT an "EX-CIA" agent at the time her identity as a CIA Agent was leaked. Plame was still an active agent, working undercover, for the CIA in Langley, at the time her identity was leaked. The bull-puckey about her not being an agent at the time is rubbish spread by desperate people trying to justify their criminal, and I would argue treasonous, acts. Nor for that matter was her suggesting her husband for the task he was brought on for in any way, shape, or form, illegal. Plame did not make the decision to send Wilson anywhere, she properly suggested that his experience and reputation as a former Ambassador might be useful, and it was the people in charge of that operation that made the decision that he was the right person for the job. Again, the claims otherwise are an attempt by desperate people trying to cover their own butts when it came out that his report differed so much from their presentation. As for Libby, he was not charged with being the leaker - he was charged because he lied to a Grand Jury. And that's all I'll say on this subject because I prefer to live in the real world, and not some right-wing fantasy land that makes Candyland look like a real vacation spot. Three) Has it occurred to anyone else that either the US intelligence services have been and and are continuing to be a bumbling mass of utter incompetence incapable of dealing with an amaturish operation like Wikileaks, or that the government is playing everyone like chumps and is using Wikileaks to do exactly what they want it to do? If it's the former, then we really are in trouble. If it's the latter, then they are sly as a fox. Given the precision in which we can now target a single building in a urban area for a missle strike, I have doubts its the former. Let's think about this - how hard can it be to find Assange anyway? As I heard from somewhere else, it should be as simple as starting with all the 5-star hotels in London and working your way down.

I like that advice - "Remember your son" But I'll take a different angle - did your son attend Cub camp? Did he have great experiences? Can he help tell the story? Ask your son if he could help you with promoting Cub camp - sometimes, it takes an enthusiastic Scout to help the adults see the value in Cub Camp.

The devil is in the details for the "Fair Tax". For instance, the proposed tax includes rental taxes for homes and apartments, but no tax for the purchase of a home (presumably, this would serve to keep intact the mortage interest deduction that would no longer be available). If you rent an apartment, you have to pay a tax on the rental rate. But if you buy a home, you don't have to pay a tax. Is that really fair? And what about the bureaucracy? Do people really think the IRS will go away or get smaller? Not only will it not go away, it will get larger. Someone is going to have to ensure compliance - that the people who are supposed to collect the taxes are really collecting the taxes, and are turning them in. That's more than just enforcement - we'll still need people to collect and evaluate tax returns. And consider what it's going to take to make sure the guy who owns a second home and rents it out is collecting the sales tax on rentals? You think once a year returns are onerous? Just wait. The bureaucracy will also get much bigger because we'll have to create another agency similar to the Social Security Administration because the plan to handle the proposed annual exemption amounts (a flat rate) is to send every US taxpayer a check every month for a 1/12th share of the exemption. Ask the Social Security Administration how much work it is to process the paper needed to add new beneficiaries and remove dead people from the roles every month. Now consider having to do that for 300+ million people. And at the end of all of this expansion of government, most people will still pay, after exemptions, the same amount of taxes anyway. The only people the fair tax will benefit is the wealthy and the corporations. It will also make the cost of government even more expensive, with no additional revenue to cover the cost - so how much of the defense budget do you want to cut to pay for the bigger bureaucracy? As for "tax and spend", any one with a lick of sense knows that "tax and spend" is far more sustainable than "borrow and spend", which the GOP just loves to do. We're facing these major deficits because we borrowed heavily to fund two wars while giving tax cuts to people. We didn't have to sacrifice during the aughts while those wars were being fought - but at some point, we're going to need to sacrifice to get things back under control. Let them all expire

I suppose it's as hilarious as saying the NRA is about following the constitution too. As far as the original question goes - I believe words mean things. If we go by the meaning, I would argue that the tea party, and most of it's adherents isn't racist. However, I would counter-argue that while they might not be racist, they are definitely bigoted.

1) In case anyone missed it, a Federal Judge made made permanent an injunction against certifying the vote for this law in Oklahoma on the 29th of November. Her temporary injunction was made on November 8. The permanent injunction will hold until she makes a ruling on the constitutionality of the law itself. Should she rule against the law, and no courts of appeal overturn, it will have the effect of the law never having been in existence in the first place, since the vote can't be certified. Most observers feels she will rule that the law in unconstitutional. 2) The unconstitutionality of the law may hinge on a fine point, according to some observers. The constitutional point they see is that the law singles out Sharia law, and does not ban the use of Jewish law, or Christian law. Can you ban the use of a religious set of laws if you only ban one religions set of religious laws? A violation of the establishment clause is one of the reasons the plaintiff brought suit in the first place. Could be interesting. 3) About that case in New Jersey that allegedly included Sharia law - the fact is that no one in that case - not the judge, not the prosecution, not the defense - used the term "Sharia law". The defense was about a religious belief - that is not the same as Sharia law. Only after the ruling was released did someone mention Sharia law, and that would be media pundits who, as we should all know by now, never let the facts get in the way of a perfectly good rant. Not one of those pundits, or blogs that grabbed on to the story later, has been able to point to a single passage in what would be considered Sharia law, to support the notion that the defense was actually part of Sharia law. A claim is made that it was Sharia law, but no proof of that was forthcoming - shouldn't that give us pause to wonder what the facts really are?

Recharter with a pencil? But then who can you blame when the point breaks?

Well of course they need to outsource because surely equipment failure, or communications failure, or a power failure is clearly National's fault. Now granted, it can be frustrating when we try to do something but discover we can't when we want to do it, but what does it say about ourselves when we immediately jump to the conclusion that it's all National's fault when we don't have any facts other than the service was down at our end. We don't know if the building was affected by a power failure during that time (no power, no servers). When electronics equipment is left on all the time (and servers are left running 24 hours a day), they eventually burn out. It could be that one of the servers failed. Who knows, maybe the HVAC for the server room failed over the weekend causing the server room to overheat which caused the servers to either burn out or shut down so they don't burn out (if they're set up to do that). Maybe a rodent chewed through the T-1 or fiber optic lines over the weekend - servers running fine, but the communications link to the outside world was severed. All this is, or course, speculation, but it seems a bit more realistic that "it was National's fault" Gosh, I don't know - maybe someone can enlighten me on how an outsourced provider wouldn't be affected by beyond control failures, or how we just know that National wasn't affected by any of these possibilities and it was just some guy who pressed the wrong button, or unplugged the server rack, because they just don't know what they're doing.

Here is what I would suggest: 1) Get your son into a new Troop - one that does things right - or form a new Troop - and don't be afraid to recruit from the old Troop - surely, your son isn't the only one who is tired of Troop meetings being all dodgeball all the time. 2) Stop doing joint fundraisers, outings, anything between the Pack and the Troop - separate them administratively and progamatically. 3) Contact the DC and tell him you want a new UC assigned to the Pack. Given that the DC appears to know what's going on, the DC should have no problem with this. If the DC balks, tell him/her it isn't a request, it's a demand and if it isn't met, your next call will be to the Council Commissioner. 4) Make it clear to the Troop that the Pack will not be automatically feeding the Troop it's Webelos - that the Webelos Dens will be visiting multiple Troops and will be letting parents know what to look for in a good, Boy-lead Troop and a bad Adult-run Troop - and that you wn't be afraid to use any Troop as an example of a badly run Troop, even if it's the Troop that shares a CO. 5) Go have a cuppa with the CO - explain what's going on with the Troop, how it is negatively impacting the Pack, and how the Pack is dealing with it - if the CO starts balking, go start a new Pack with a different CO (perhaps the CO of the Troop that the DD has suggested could be re-started) - and poach mercilessly from the old Pack, though I would be surprised if it comes that way - Frankly, it doesn't sound as if the CO is engaged at all. 6) - MOST IMPORTANTLY - See #1. Nothing else matters right now than the fact that your son is very unhappy and wants to quit Scouting altogether. You need to focus on fixing that one way or another. If you can't get him in to a new Troop, then let him quit - you forcing him to remain a Scout in a Troop that he downright hates isn't going to do your relationship with your son any good.

Clean socks? That's mom talk. These are boys - the stinkier the better!

Courts of Honor were held on the same night, at the same time, and in the same place as Troop Meetings. If Scouts didn't attend the Court of Honor, chances are pretty good they weren't attending meetings regularly anyway.

What does your chartering organization say about it? Have you asked them if it's ok to ignore that particular belt loop/academic pin? Are they ok with the Pack leadership declaring that they know better than the BSA when it comes to certain activities? Can you make an argument in opposition that the chartering organization would agree to? Whle there may be units where something may not be recognized - in Beavah's hypothetical example, a Friends unit and Rifle Shooting Merit Badge, we need to remember that it isn't the Unit that has made that decision, it is the chartering organization. If a unit is making that decision without approval from the chartering organization, then the unit has strayed off course. If you really feel you don't want to have to award the video game belt loop/academic pin - then do yourself a favor and get the chartering organization's sign off on that. Make sure they don't get blindsided someday by getting a call from the Scout Executive wondering just what they have against the video game belt loop/academic pin. That being said, I wonder what the real justification is for not awarding it. From my reading, it appears that the Pack leadership just doesn't like it. Is that really enough of a reason? Can someone point to anything in the requirements that makes the belt loop/academic pin inappropriate other than "it encourages kids to play video games?" Frankly, with or without a belt loop/academic pin, the kids are going to play video games, whether you like it or not. I see in the requirements lessons in time management (schedule your game playing around chores and homework), budgeting (figure out a way to get a video game - I read this as do chores, earn money, save allowance money), comparison shopping (an important consumer skill), family togetherness, choosing appropriate games - nothing I see suggests becoming a couch potato in the parent's basement 20 hours a day subsisting on Doritos and Mountain Dew. I just don't see why this is such a big issue. Kids need to spend more time outdoors? I don't disagree, but I'm sure my parents would have loved having a game system around for my brothers and I on those rainy and cold, snowy days where we were stuck inside rather than our launching hot wheels cars into the furniture all the time. You might notice that belt loops and academic pins for non-advancement purposes are much more of a Cub Scout thing than a Boy Scout thing. Why? Forgive the crudity in how I put this but it's because kids 5 to 10 are easier to fool into doing something educational if there is some kind of reward at the end - even if it's a silly as a gold star on top of a paper, or a belt loop, little pin, little patch. To an 8 year old, a big gold star on top of a spelling assignment is a lot more exciting than an "A+". The same holds true for the belt loops - they're learning and being rewarded, but without the reward, chances are they wouldn't even be exposed to those requirements. On a side note, I'm sure that librarians will be thrilled to know that since reading is a school activity, then Reading Merit Badge is a waste of Boy Scout resources.