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I posted this picture of an astronomically high price for a bag of fake pennies earlier. It reminded me of this piece by me also involving the penny.

I don’t feel like Age has distributed itself throughout my person in a uniform way. I feel like my aorta probably got the worst of it, its calcified accruals metering blood in strict measure. I would apologize to it if I thought it had any conception of my treachery. The only thing I can do now is to try and avoid reading articles about the s*** my government gets up to without a couple pensive, preparatory breaths. ---SNIP--- I think that freedom is cool, and I would prefer to have more than less; that’s not even why I hate it....

Here’s a penny for your thoughts: One red cent could’ve landed you the Navy’s first supercarrier, the decommissioned Forrestal. The U.S. Navy sold the 1,067-foot behemoth to a Texas company, All Star Metals, to be dismantled, scrapped and recycled, Navy officials announced. It's an inauspicious fate for a ship with a colorful — and tragic — history. It's perhaps best known for a 1967 incident in which stray voltage triggered an accidental explosion that struck a plane on the flight deck whose cockpit was occupied by a young John McCain. A chain reaction of blasts and fires ultimately killed 134...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog_post/beyond_the_echo_chamber/ Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 12:55 pm Advice from "beyond the echo chamber" We just learned the economy lost another 600,000 jobs last month. It's a staggering number, and it underscores just how deep this crisis is – and, as the President pointed out this morning, it’s accelerating. That's why he created the Economic Recovery Advisory Board -- to solicit ideas from "beyond the echo chamber of Washington, DC." "I’m not interested in groupthink, which is why the Board reflects a broad cross-section of experience, expertise, and ideology," he said. "We’ve recruited...

Penny Pritzker will be nominated this morning to be the next U.S. Commerce Secretary... She ran candidate Obama's wildly successful fundraising operation in his 2008 presidential bid — even as her brother J.B. was a key adviser to nomination rival Hillary Clinton..... ...Ms. Pritzker, whose family controls Hyatt Hotels Corp... hitched a ride on Air Force One from San Francisco to Portland with the president. In the general-election campaign, she raised at least $500,000 and spent election night with Mr. Obama. She served on the president's Council for Jobs and Competitiveness and his Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

PENNY PLAN One of the standard (disingenuous) prog talking points you hear these days re. dealing with our soaring national debt is that the US federal budget couldn't be balanced even if we wanted to (and why would you?).... These same money-grubbing pinheads purport that Newt Gingrich's black-ink in the late 90s was merely an aberration, and that you'll never see times like that again. But as with most US political issues over the last 5 years, the progs' true intention is to shift the country's 'middle ground' in debate so far to the left that regardless of whatever congressional wrangling ensues, Big Government will prevail- and...

We'd been looking up options and were thinking about being green when I said we should just tile the floor in pennies," Lange, a entrepreneur and self-described design freak, says. Belden wasn't completely on board at first, but before she could put her two cents in, the project off and running. "I came home one day and found a small corner was done, so I thought 'I guess we're doing it,'" she recalled. Thus began four months of painstaking work they dubbed "pennying," which involves laying down a special glue that acts like grout and individually placing the pennies heads...

"Penney’s sales at stores open at least a year plummeted more than 30 percent through most of the crucial holiday season, sources close to the company told The Post this week."

OTTAWA - There may still be pennies from heaven, but they won't be coming from the mint much longer. The humble one-cent piece is set to disappear from Canadian pockets, a victim of inflation. Thursday's federal budget said the Royal Canadian Mint will strike the last of the little coins this fall. The budget says the cost of minting a penny has risen to 1.6 cents or $11 million a year. Its purchasing power has fallen to a 20th of its original value.

The federal budget is guaranteed to leave Canadians penniless — literally. Among the victims of cutbacks outlined by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty in the government's 2012 federal budget on Thursday is Canada's one-cent coin. Citing low purchasing power and rising production costs, the government has decided to phase the penny out of existence starting this fall, when the Royal Canadian Mint will stop distributing the one-cent coin to financial institutions. Over time, that will lead to the penny effectively becoming extinct, although the government noted on Thursday that one-cent coins will always be accepted in cash transactions for as long...

Agency's $325 Million Mistake Means Vi No Longer Owes Over $128 Million. The IRS disclosure, made in a recent federal tax court filing, appears to end the agency's effort to collect over $128 million in back taxes and penalties from the company. The agency's reversal came even though it continued to defend its underlying position: that so-called "entrance fees" paid by incoming retirement-community residents can be treated as taxable income. Vi was founded in 1987 by Penny Pritzker, who remains its chairman. She is a leading member of the Chicago-based Pritzker business dynasty.

While the obverse (heads) continues to bear the familiar Victor David Brenner likeness of President Lincoln that has appeared on the coin since 1909, the reverse features a union shield with a scroll draped across and the inscription ONE CENT. The 13 vertical stripes of the shield represent the states joined in one compact union to support the federal government, represented by the horizontal bar above.

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- An Osceola County man thought he’d paid off a parking ticket, so he was surprised to find out Monday that the Orange County Clerk’s office had issued a warrant for his arrest. Luis Gomez owed exactly one cent on a speeding ticket he received one year ago. Gomez tried to call the court to resolve the problem, and then tried to pay online, but had no luck. “They won’t take a payment of a penny online,” said Gomez. Gomez works at a school in Orange County, and feared he would get arrested on campus in front...

Researchers have demonstrated a penny-sized "nuclear battery" that produces energy from the decay of radioisotopes.As radioactive substances decay, they release charged particles that when properly harvested can create an electrical current. Nuclear batteries have been in use for military and aerospace applications, but are typically far larger. The University of Missouri team says that the batteries hold a million times as much charge as standard batteries.

A woman trying to smash a penny on the tracks was hit by a train Thursday night. Emergency crews rushed to the scene at River Road and Idaho Street in Sedamsville just after 8 p.m. They say the woman in her 20s suffered a minor head injury and was walking around when crews arrived. She was taken to the hospital for observation.

The Little Red Hen A Little Red Hen lived in a barnyard. She spent almost all of her time walking about the barnyard in her picketty-pecketty fashion, scratching everywhere for worms. She dearly loved fat, delicious worms and felt they were absolutely necessary to the health of her children. As often as she found a worm she would call "Chuck-chuck-chuck!" to her chickies. When they were gathered about her, she would distribute choice morsels of her tid-bit. A busy little body was she! A cat usually napped lazily in the barn door, not even bothering herself to scare the rat...

We once knew someone who was so frustrated by pennies that he promptly disposed of any that he received. We couldn't relate. But perhaps the anti-penny pincher will reconsider now that the coin has gotten a makeover to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth. The first redesigned penny in 50 years enters circulation today. It features a log cabin on the tails side, emblematic of Lincoln's Kentucky roots and designed by Richard Masters. And the fun doesn't stop with log cabins (it never does)! That's just the first of four new designs to look out for on 2009...

SACRAMENTO - Moving to preempt potential budget cuts and not miss an opportunity to claim any sales tax increase as their own, teachers Friday proposed a penny increase in the state sales tax to pay for schools. Democrats, usually loyalists, have proposed $2.5 billion in cuts to education. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Republicans have also proposed to take from schools to help close a monstrous $41.8 billion budget deficit over the next 18 months "California's budget process is broken and our students and schools are suffering the consequences, CTA President David Sanchez said in a statement announcing the filing. "It's...