The Trifecta

According to Families.com Federal laws required the owners of pools that are open to the public to install permanent lifts or underwater ramps to provide access for people who have disabilities by January 31, of 2012. This deadline got pushed back to March 15, 2012. That deadline has now been extended.

The federal Justice Department issued an interpretation of part of the law that is in the ADA. It decided that this year, public swimming pools must have permanently affixed lifts. In the past, pool owners were allowed to have portable lifts, instead. These lifts were less expensive than the permanent ones, and could be removed from the pool when not in use.

The biggest complaints are coming from hotel owners, who do not feel as though they should have to spend the money on the permanent lifts. The permanent lifts cost up to $10,000, plus the cost of installation. The portable lifts cost up to $3,000.

Thoughts

For some hotel owners the $10,000 investment in the lift is big bucks. Instead of paying will hotel owners just not fill their pools?

It seems that if the portable lifts were working, why make them spend this money?

According to a new Gallup poll 41% of Americans who now identify themselves as "pro-choice" is down from 47% last July and is one percentage point below the previous record low in Gallup trends, recorded in May 2009. Fifty percent now call themselves "pro-life," one point shy of the record high, also from May 2009.

Since 2001, the majority of Republicans have consistently taken the pro-life position, but by a gradually increasing margin over "pro-choice." The percentage of political independents identifying as pro-choice is 10 points lower today than in May 2011, while the percentage pro-life is up by six points.

This represents a clear shift from 2001 to 2008, when Gallup most often found pro-choice adherents in the plurality.

Couple question

What if anything will this mean in the upcoming political races?

Will Republicans attempt to sway independents with this issue instead of focusing on the Obama economy?

Will President Obama downplay this issue during the campaign?

Apple has prominently featured Siri in most, but not all, of its iPhone 4S commercials. They have featured stars using the iPhone, like Zooey Deschanel, and Samuel L. Jackson. I wasn't crazy about those. The latest stars John Malkovich, I just don't find any of these funny. 

according to Gizmodo

Any tweet that starts with the work Get will not show up in your twiiter feed. Here is why. 

The "get" glitch, as it were, is actually an anachronism from an earlier iteration of Twitter as an SMS service.

In fact twitter has a whole slew of shortcuts

Some of these are

• GET [username] - retrieves the latest Twitter update posted by that person. You can also use g [username] to get a user's latest Tweet. Examples: get goldman or g goldman.
• FAV [username] - marks that user's last Tweet as one of your favorites (reply to any update with FAV, FAVE, or FAVORITE to mark it as a favorite if you're receiving it in real time). Examples: fav crystal, fave crystal, or favorite crystal
• STATS [username] - this command returns the given user's number of followers, how many people they're following, and their bio information.
• HELP - texting help or info to Twitter will bring up helpful tips.
• SUGGEST - this command returns a listing of Twitter users' accounts we think you might enjoy following.

Have you ever heard a political ad and said to yourself "How do they get away with saying this stuff?"  I had the opportunity to ask Congressman Fred Upton about a couple of his political attack ads and allowed him to defend their outrageous claims.

According to a new Rasmussen Poll

 44% of Likely U.S. Voters believe that Romney’s track record in business is primarily a reason to vote for him. Thirty-three percent (33%) see his business career as chiefly a reason to vote against him. Twenty-two percent (22%) are undecided.

Fifty-five percent (55%) voters believe venture capital companies are better at creating jobs than government programs are.  Only 26% see government programs as better job creators. Nineteen percent (19%) are not sure. That’s essentially unchanged from January.

Mr. President please keep reminding all of the undecided voters of Mr. Romney's business record. Keep those attacks coming!

Normally the tattoos I post are awful, this one is pretty cool!

According to MIRS in Lansing the state's 4.35 percent income tax is set to be cut one-tenth of a percent on April 1, 2013, under a deal in principal reached on Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 budget targets.

MIRS has learned that comes with a price tag between $80 and $100 million. The state surplus is pegged at $300 million.

What to do with the rest of this surplus? You can be almost postitive that it will go to school funding.

according to newsmax 

A new government study says that allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire and a scheduled round of automatic spending cuts to take effect would probably throw the economy into a recession.

The Congressional Budget Office report says that the economy would shrink by 1.3 percent in the first half of next year if the government is allowed to fall off this so-called "fiscal cliff" on Jan. 1.

The cliff is what experts call the combination of higher tax rates and more than $100 billion in automatic cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies.

I believe Republicans have been saying this for a while. Let's see how the Obama administration will spin this.

From Yahoo news 

The next generation may not have to worry as much about becoming addicted to drugs as being addicted to screens. 

New research suggests that youngsters are at risk of "screen addiction" because of the time they spend watching TV and playing computer games

• A study has shown that  10 and 11 year-olds have access to five screens in the average house.
• The average screen time for adolescents is 6.1 hours per day and rising.
• A child born today will have spent one full year of 24-hour days watching screen media by the age of seven.