The Government Is Here to Help YOU

And this is how they do it:

Chloe Hosking Australian Elite Female Road Cyclist of 2013

           
                          Hi-Tec Products sprinter and all-around nice lady Chloe Hosking of Canberra has been named the Elite Female Road Cyclist of 2013 by Cycling ACT, a governing body of Australian cycling.

2013 Wisconsin National Horse & Pony Pull

The Dunn County Recreation Center in Menomonie, Wisconsin was once again the scene of one the premier events of the year for working draft horses on the weekend of Sept. 13-15, the Wisconsin National Pull.  Horse pullers from all over the midwest gathered to test the strength of their horses against other teams in pulling either a weighted stone boat or the marvel of early twentieth century engineering, the Lance Machine. One of a number built at the University of Iowa in 1927 to determine the actual horsepower of a team of horses, the apparatus is used in lieu of the boat, eliminating the need to add concrete weights during the course of the contest. Prior to the Sunday contest Mike Larsen's heavy-weight Belgian drafters, Ted and Rusty, homebred half-brothers from the Larsen farm near Denmark, WI, wait for their entry into the arena. Ted and Rusty were the only team to pull the required 27'06" with a number of 3900 on the Lance machine. Mike Larsen with his team and his championship trophy.

Replacement For the Galaxie 500

The surplus "MRAP", developed for and used by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan at a price of supposedly $600,000 per copy, is being distributed to various US law enforcement agencies for use in serving warrants, as mentioned here.

SWAT Team Kills 107 Year Old Man

In what may be a new record, the Pine Bluff, AR police have given the death penalty to a 107 year old fellow that refused to cooperate, as explained here.

New York Times Falls Out of Love With Anthony Weiner

"At some point, the full story of Anthony Weiner and his sexual relationships and texting habits will finally be told. In the meantime, the serially evasive Mr. Weiner should take his marital troubles and personal compulsions out of the public eye, away from cameras, off the Web and out of the race for mayor of New York City. Mr. Weiner, who resigned from Congress two years ago after sending lewd messages and photos of his crotch to women he had not met, was forced to revisit the issue on Tuesday, and so were we all."

That's part of what the Grey Lady has to say about the husband of Mrs. Bill Clinton's confidant, Huma Abedin.  Why should anyone care if the obnoxious Weiner runs for the office currently held by the obnoxious Michael Bloomberg?  The reason the NYT is concerned is that there's a very real chance that Weiner could win the election, lending further disgrace to the already hopelessly flawed concept of democracy.  In the much vaunted democratic process, the majority of voters get to pick their leaders. If 50% + 1 of New Yorkers think Anthony Weiner is the guy for them, who can say them nay?  Isn't that what it's all about?

Alexis de Toqueville Describes How Democracy Works

From Democracy in America, Chapter VI:

I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest – his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow-citizens, he is close to them, but he sees them not – he touches them, but he feels them not; he exists but in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country. Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances – what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living? Thus it every day renders the exercise of the free agency of man less useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the will within a narrower range, and gradually robs a man of all the uses of himself. The principle of equality has prepared men for these things: it has predisposed men to endure them, and oftentimes to look on them as benefits.