These United States

We have come to think of our states as being subdivisions of the United States, but it is important to remember that the United States of America was originally formed by 13 sovereign states joining together to form a federal republic. In so doing, they surrendered some of their sovereignty to the central government and retained the rest for themselves. The federal government has gained more power over the years, mostly because they pay for a lot of things, and the courts have ruled that the federal government can regulate anything it pays for. Of course the reason the federal government has more money than the states is that they are the only ones who can legally create money out of nothing, but that's a whole nother story. Some of the Founding Fathers wanted all legislative representation to be according to population, and some of them wanted each state to have the same number of representatives regardless of population. Well they compromised, and Uncle Ken has stated that compromise is a good thing, so it seems he should be pleased with the way things turned out.

I remember swimming naked in the high school pool. It was no big deal, it was just guys, and homosexuality hadn't been invented yet. The girls wore some kind of ill fitting swimsuits that were issued by the school, they called them "tank suits", and I understand that nobody liked them. I don't think it ever occurred to anybody, except me, that the girls should also swim naked. Nowadays, with everybody being equal, maybe it's an idea whose time has come.

The reason I was tired of hearing about those hurricanes before they made landfall was that the news and weather people kept saying the same things and running the same film clips over and over again, for what seemed like weeks. I understand that nobody but Uncle Ken watches the news 24 hours a day, so there needs to be some repetition to make sure that everybody gets the same information no matter what time of day they tune in, but I think that most people watch some news at least once day, so I don't see the need to repeat everything day after day after day.

Maybe the reason we see those pages differently is that we are using different browsers. I have heard that can have an effect on how a page is displayed. I checked in the settings, and the only difference between us I saw was that Uncle Ken and I were listed as "Admin" while Old Dog was listed as "Author". I changed Old Dog's designation to "Admin", so that should give us all the same powers. If nobody has any objections, I will delete those two most recent comments over the weekend. While I'm at it, I will try to get rid of all those goofy "&#39s" and replace them with apostrophes. It might not matter in the grand scheme of things, but it will make me feel better.