Interesting little tidbits

So I've run across all these little interesting tidbits the last couple of days. Hopefully you find them as interesting as I did:

1.) In a report put out by President Obama's economic team in the run up to the passage of the so-called "stimulus" bill, if Congress passed the stimulus the unemployment rate would never go above 8%. If Congress didn't pass the bill, unemployment would reach, according to them, 8.1% As of today, the unemployment rate is 8.5% Something isn't adding up here for Team Obama.

2.) In the run up to a hugely important battle during the Civil War, Lincoln gathered his closest advisers and held a top-secret meeting to decide which strategy to take. He went around the room and asked all the men to either vote Yea or Nay to go ahead and move the troops into the battlefield. Lincoln supported the troop movement into battle, but wanted to get a sense of what his closest advisers thought about it. He refrained from voting until the very end and as he went around the table, every single adviser voted Nay to the troop movement. It came to Lincoln, and with a sigh he stated "Looks like the Yea's have it...send out the orders."

3.) The federal government would save $500 million dollars every year if it would quit printing dollar bills and instead switch to a dollar coin. However, the company that prints all the paper for the federal treasury is located in Sen. Ted Kennedy's district making any attempt to implement the cost saving plan almost impossible.

4.) North Dakota has one of the lowest unemployment rates of all U.S. states right now. Yet, we are one of the biggest recipients of so-called stimulus funding to help put people back to work. Looks like Dorgan, Conrad, and Pomeroy were up late when they wrote the bill.

5.) In the midst of the Civil War, Robert Todd Lincoln, the only son of President Abraham Lincoln to make it to adulthood, was waiting on the train station platform when, because of serious crowding, he was pushed onto the tracks. A man grabbed Robert and pulled him back onto the platform, saving his life from the oncoming train. Robert turned to the man and recognized the famous man: the famous Shakespearean actor, Edwin Booth. Robert thanked him and they went their separate ways. Later that year, Edwin's brother shot Robert's father. And the rest is history...