Entries Tagged as ''

Chambliss wins

This was a race that the Dems weren’t all that whipped-up about. Democrats needed a great candidate and Jim Martin wasn’t it. Saxby Chambliss has won. This doesn’t mean that Barack Obama doesn’t have coattails and it doesn’t mean that the country is leaning back(wards) to the right. It means that we are all tired of Election 2008 and that Georgia has a long way to go before it turns even a slight shade of blue.

BTW, Al Franken, in the race that will never end, has picked up 37 votes.

From AP:

Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss won re-election Tuesday in a runoff, dashing Democrats’ hopes of capturing enough seats in the U.S. Senate to thwart Republican filibusters.

Chambliss’ election to a second term gives the GOP a firewall against Democrats eager to flex their newfound political muscle in Washington. The monthlong runoff battle against Democrat Jim Martin captured the national limelight, drawing political luminaries from both parties to the state and flooding the airwaves with fresh attack ads.

Minnesota — where a recount is under way — now remains the only unresolved Senate contest in the country. With 92 percent of the recount completed, the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s tally had Republican Norm Coleman leading Democrat Al Franken by 340 votes, with nearly 6,000 ballots challenged.  (more… )

Subscribe and win

As I mentioned yesterday, I’m starting a Christmas contest (yep, I said Christmas. I’m a liberal progressive and I said Christmas. Bill O’Reilly can stick that in his pipe and smoke it). Subscribe to my Podcast (see the sign-up box in the right hand column) and you are entered to win an Amazon.com $50 gift certificate. Everyone who subscribes will be entered to win.  Every Saturday night at nine all the entries for that week will be placed into a hat and one name will be drawn at random (no family or friends can enter, of course). The contest ends on December 23rd. Everyone who signed up between now December 2nd and December 23rd will be entered into a final drawing. The randomly selected winner will win an iPod Nano!!!

New Shopping Carts

I was at my grocery store this morning, and saw that they had a number of new shopping carts. I was surprised because we’re in hard times. One figures shoppers would have to make do with old carts until a better day arrives.

The new carts are more shiny than the ones they replaced and have battleship gray handles. There are large speckles–or maybe small splotches–on the handles.

The shopping cart was invented by New Yorker Sylvan Goldman in 1937.

From The Great Idea Finder

One night, in 1936, Goldman sat in his office wondering how customers might move more groceries. He stared idly at a wooden folding chair. Put a basket on the seat, wheels on the legs. . . Wait a minute. Goldman and a mechanic, Fred Young, began tinkering. Their first shopping cart was a metal frame that held two wire baskets. Since they were inspired by the folding chair, Goldman called his carts “folding basket carriers”.   

You don’t really think of something as obvious as a shopping cart being “invented.” Yet I guess shopping carts were not created with the Big Bang. Maybe the trick to genius is to find something obvious but not yet done. 

If you read the first link of this post, you’ll see that in the beginning people did not want to use the carts. Men thought they could hold all their groceries without help. Women thought them unattractive to be seen wheeling about.  

I used a shopping cart this morning because I needed somewhere to put all my Little Debbie products. I bought the Christmas Tree Cakes and the Cosmic Brownies.