Only in America can we come up with stuff like this.

A bill introduced in South Dakota that would effectively make it okay to kill abortion doctors.  Luckily, it was aborted before getting to a vote.

A bill introduced in Wisconsin to take away collective bargaining for state workers as a way to balance the budget.  I’m not saying all unions are great, but there needs to be some ability for workers to protect their rights.

A news organization that seems to be all for democracy until it might bring to power a group they don’t like.  This along with a religious right that is worried about an Islamic theocracy arising in Egypt while working to install a Christian Theocracy here in the US.  Oh the hypocrisy.

A congress who thinks defunding Planned Parenthood and promoting Abstinence only education will eliminate the need for abortions.  This is the latest in the rights attempts to defund other organizations they don’t like such as NPR, PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Governor of Mississippi refusing to speak out against a proposed license plate in honor of a confederate General who also happens to be an early leader of the KKK.  As a side note, there is still a Sons of Confederate Veterans group active in Mississippi.  Who would’ve thunk it.

An Iowa Senator who likened preschool to Nazi indoctrination.  That’s right, as opposed to taking your kids to church every week and telling them a big boogey man in the sky will torture them for all eternity unless they get on their knees and worship him…no indoctrination there.

State legislatures mimicking the Oklahoma law to outlaw Sharia law…as if it could ever happen.  And at the same time pushing to install the 10 commandments in our schools and courthouses while spouting something about biblical law.

Minnesota House of Representative member Mike Beard thinks God will provide unlimited natural resources and prevent global warming from destroying the planet.  All this to lift the carbon emission curbs on coal plants in his state as opposed to investigating other “natural” resources such as solar or wind.

After all that, I really don’t know what else to say.  I guess the crazy speaks for itself.

I know, I’m a dinosaur.  I’m one of those rare individuals these days who still buy CD’s for my music.  In fact, I’ve never bought a song online.  I refuse to until the format improves.  To me, MP3 might be fine with small earbuds but when you try to play it on a nice high end stereo, it’s deficiencies show.   So until then, I will buy CD’s and rip them using FLAC.

And I’m the same with movies.  Sure I do my fair share of streaming movies, but until they can improve the audio beyond simple stereo I’ll opt to purchase movies I like.  Over the years I’ve acquired my fair share of DVD’s and now that Blu-Ray is the standard I’ve begun buying some titles in that format as well.  As I’ve mentioned before, it’s not just the video that improved with Blu-Ray, but the audio formats as well.  There are many to choose from when mastering a Blu-Ray disk, but the loss-less DTS Master-HD Audio format is quickly becoming the preferred format.  It is fantastic and in my view is the real reason to upgrade to Blu-Ray.

As with any new format, the question comes up, do you spend more money to rebuy the titles you truly love in the new format? or live with the ones you have.  Well, to help me out with my collection of DVD’s, Warner Brothers Home Video has a program that lets you swap out your DVD for the new Blu-Ray version of the movie.  The cost is reasonable at either $5 or $7 a movie.  I went to their website and took a quick look and found out I had about 10 movies that were eligible.

The program requires that you send in your old DVD and they send you the new Blu-Ray version.  And if you have over $35 on the order, shipping is free.  Not a bad deal.  It’s worth checking out and might make that upgrade decision just a tad easier.