The Blaisdell Blog

The average salary of a member of the United States Congress is $174,000.   That puts them in the top 5% of income earners in the United States . Ninety-five per cent of you earn less than that, but no matter what your income, if you are a full time employee, you put in about 47 hours per week.   Unless you are a member of Congress.     If you are 36 years old, Congress has put in a full week of work exactly 14% of the time since you were born.   Since 1978, our legislators have worked two full weeks out of every 5 months!   If you piece meal their work day by day it amounts to less than half of the week days available.   This means they are being paid $608 per day, give or take.   I ask you, are you getting your money’s worth?   The legislators, by the way, think they are underpaid.   Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) is on record as saying that that amount just isn’t enough to, “…make ends meet.”   Rep. Moran is retiring this year.   I wonder if his replacement will be able to make ends

According to the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science , increases in temperatures in the Western United States are due to natural causes, specifically wind and wind driven ocean currents.   Using independent data from 1900 to 2012 (during the teeth of the industrial expansion of modern countries) the study shows that temperature changes are, “primarily due to atmospheric circulation.”   For over 100 years, West coast sea and coastal temperatures have been moving in lock step with wind currents and the surface sea temperatures which move along with them.   This flies in the face of the proponents of anthropogenic, greenhouse gas forcing, climate change.    The usual nay-sayers are chiming in with their blustering denials.   Neither the facts of this study nor its opposition by the politically motivated surprises those of us who have been watching the scientific data of climate change for decades.   We know that near the end of the Younger Dryas period (sta

I am Wendy Davis’s worst nightmare.   On the surface of things, I should be one of her, “sure” votes.   While certainly no Democrat, I am a feminist of the first water.   Being a generation older than Ms. Davis, I was fighting her battles when she was in training pants.   Here is what she needs to know, but doesn’t. I marched for Civil Rights.   I fought for the Equal Rights Amendment.   I was the first teacher in my district to teach the full term of a pregnancy and did so under considerable duress; the first to seek a principal’s certification; the first to act as picket captain during a teachers’ strike.   I have beaten my head against one glass ceiling after another for my whole life. I did NOT do all of this so this self-serving, opportunistic woman could launch a run for office by enabling the Kermit Gosnell’s of this world and killing viable babies in the womb! While Ms. Davis and her minions would love to paint me as some, “Pro-Life” nut (as opposed to a Pro-abortion

On September 17, 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention, met for the last time to sign the document they had created.   Many of these men had been part of the debate and life changing decisions to write the Declaration of Independence and failed Articles of Confederation.   Many of these names are familiar to us (George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin…) others are unknown (George Read, Jared Ingersoll…), but they all get the credit for this amazing document.   The Constitution, even more than the Declaration of Independence, makes us the finest country in the world.   If the Declaration of Independence is the heart of our nation, the Constitution of the United States is our brain.   The Constitution is our anchor of stability in a turbulent world!   We can withstand a bad President and a petulant Congress (for the short term, at least) because our Constitution both guides and limits.   If someone asked me to provide proof of a loving God I wou

Since the year of my birth in 1946, my country has given the following Middle Eastern countries (Islamic countries) the following amounts of money:   Egypt $114 billion; Iraq $59 billion; Pakistan $52 billion; Afghanistan $49 billion; Iran $13 billion; Lebanon $3.4 billion; Syria $2.2 billion; Yemen $2.1 billion; Libya $1.5 billion.   I do not believe that this money has been well spent.    But that is just the beginning of my discontent.                                     Remember that a stack of one dollar bills a million dollars high would be the height of the average man.   A billion dollars would be taller than the Gateway Arch in St. Louis !   A billion is a whole lot of money.   So let’s try to get this money down per capita numbers, which are readily understandable.   Nobody knows what a billion dollars buys, but we all know what $1510 buys.   Per capita is tricky only in the insistence that it includes all people in the identified group.   When we talk about

[This is a repeat of one of my most oft viewed columns.  God bless the United States of America.] I had slept in, taken my morning walk late and was just making my first cup of coffee when my daughter called me.   “Mom,” her urgent voice said, “I saw the plane fly into the tower.   I saw it, Mom!   I was watching the television in the break room and that plane just flew into the second tower.”   That is how I learned that our country was under attack.   America began its emotionally tumultuous day— Pearl Harbor laid out before our eyes.   My husband and I are in the habit of having a glass of wine with dinner and toasting to any small, significant or touching thing that happens during our day.   That night, as I raised my glass, we both quietly spoke the words that were uppermost in our minds, “To the United States of America.”                 Of all the lessons that can be taken from that day, one of the least discussed and most poignant is what happened to St. Paul ’s Epi

I have just finished the second best book I have ever read, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin.   I strongly urge you to read this book; you will find your life richer for it.   I also suggest that you get it in hardback.   It will read just as well as an e-book, but once you start reading, you will realize why I think the book takes on an extra layer of warmth when read in paper. There is no gimmickry in this book.   It is a legitimate narrative, depending on skill to move you along.   You don’t have a disembodied narrator.   There are no endless flashbacks or changes in point of view. I don’t mind these literary devices but an author should have some reason for using them other than that they are in vogue.   [If you have just read, The Book Thief , and now think your next book should feature Death as a narrator—think again!]             The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is a book about real people, flawed but still owning great personal value.   The character

In the first two years of the Obama administration, with full control of the House, Senate and White House, the Democrats chose not to pass a budget because it would negatively impact close mid-term elections.   As a result, six years later, we still do not have a budget.   We are operating on a series of patchwork amendments with no budgetary goal or direction.   Now the President is postponing his immigration reform because—wait for it— it may impact close mid-term elections .   If the reforms (budget, appointments, legislation... insert any proper function of elected officials ) are so right, so good, so advantageous how could they possibly cost anyone their seat?   We are constantly told that these are popular decisions, opposed only by a vocal minority.   How can that work against you?   The self-serving cowardice of this administration never ceases to amaze me.    On October 16, 1901, President Theodore Roosevelt invited his advisor, Booker T. Washington, to dine with b

Let’s ignore the fact that the world is going to Hell in the express lane and take on a smaller rant:   mega-weddings.               The average wedding in the United States will cost $25,500, less in some states, more in others (no shock their).    No, that does not include the honeymoon.   While you start thinking about everything a young couple could (SHOULD!) do with that kind of money, let me give you a bit of background. While visiting a friend recently, we started looking at old family photos and came across a picture of her parents on their wedding day.   Her mother’s dress was a lovely floral print brocade, suitable for church, an afternoon tea or any occasion requiring what my mother would call a, “nice” outfit.    It was not a formal wedding gown.   There was a time (as recent as my 1968 marriage) when a wedding was a modest event.   There would be a small smattering of family and close friends.   The bride may have been in a wedding gown (like my mother’s) but it