In March, Hillary Clinton met with Sergei Lavrov and gave him a button labeled “overload”. She laughed, he laughed, they agreed to to pursue replacing the 1991 START agreement. AP and Reuters talked about how hard they were pursuing it. Now, the thing about it all is START was signed by Russia. Russia then collapsed about four months later. The ensuing individual countries had varying degrees of nuclear arsenal. Several countries wanted no0thing to do with nuclear weapons, and the expense of maintaining them, and destroyed their stocks completely. Call that a START success if you want, I call it a local economical decision. Basically all that was left with nuclear weapons was what was left of Russia. And, that was a load. In December 2001, the United States and Russia announced they had reached the desired start levels of 6,000 warheads. Over the ensuing years tension grew between Putin/Medvedev over the United States expanding it’s missile defense shield into Europe. This was not adding to the arsenal, it was moving them. The disagreement over these deployments angered Russia, but got the US allies it had never really had before in Poland and Czech Republic. It also gave former Russian states the nerve to separate themselves further from Moscow. And, it even gave current Russian states the nerve to try to secede. Russia became increasingly antagonistic.
Enter Barack Obama in January 2009.
His first real diplomatic effort was reaching out to Russia. He sent Hillary to do it for him. Neither Putin nor Medvedev would meet with her. So, she met with the Defense Minister and made him hit her reset button. A few months later, Obama announced he was at first removing the missile defense shield in Europe. That got met with such criticism from Poland and the Czech Republic that he changed his wording. Bottom line, he still screwed them over pretty bad. In essence, he sold out Poland, Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Ukraine for Russia.
While Obama was in Norway accepting his Nobel Peace prize for what he might do someday, and boasting of the new cooperation with Russia since their “reset”, a strange event was happening in Norway as well. People freaked out when they saw it. It looked like a black hole, something alien. Not to worry said Russia, it’s just their new and improved nuclear ICBM that could circumnavigate the planet if necessary to strike anywhere they wanted. For Christmas Medvedev told Obama Russia is developing new missiles for the submarine fleet.
So, the result since Hillary hit the overload button in March is the US has substantially reduced its nuclear delivery capabilities and most likely lost several military allies while Russia has very aggressively increased theirs. Some are suggesting Hillary needs to go hit the reset button again. No telling what damage she’d do then. I love Putin’s latest advice, he’s suggesting Obama completely dismantle the US missile DEFENSE shield to level the playing field with all nuclear parties. I won’t rule out Obama taking Putin’s advice. He really is that naive.
Tom Coburn and John McCain are having a blast with the stimulus monies. They’ve noticed a few, shall we say, wasteful projects they think don’t do the US much good. The one that caught my eye was tostudy young adults who drink malt liquor, smoke marijuana, AND live in Buffalo, New York. I got two issues with this. Probably more, but two obvious ones.
- The grant is for $390,000. Supposedly it will pay 100 people $45 a day. Does Recovery.com count that as 100 jobs?
- By my math, that means each person will get paid $100 to get stoned and/or drunk on malt liquor 87 times. Now, I went to college. I tried real hard to get drunk 87 straight times. It’s hard. It’s real hard. After a point it just gets tedious. So, I’m going to assume some won’t get stoned and drunk 87 straight days. But, instead, maybe do it once on weekends. That means the study in theory could last about one and a half years. How long does stimulus money plan on being spent? I mean, what if the economy takes off and we don’t need any more stimulus, will we still be paying people to get stoned in Buffalo?
- New York’s marijuana law reads as: Under 25g: $100; Over 25 g. or public use: Class B misdemeanor; Over 2 oz.: Class A misdemeanor; Over 8 oz.: Class E felony; Over 16 oz.: Class D felony; Over 10 lbs.: Class C felony; Subsequent offense: Under 25 g.: $200; Third offense: $250 and 15 days. Given that, if they’re fined $100 a day, it would seem at best a break-even proposition. If they’re fined $250 a shot it would seem to me that they would come to the quick conclusion that it’s cheaper not to tell the feds you’re getting stoned on the public dime. However, these are stoners we’re talking about. But, still, after their first stint in jail I’m sure they’ll figure it out anyway.
- Would there be some type of assistance for those who instantly become labaled as persistant felony offenders?
- Would there be substance abuse programs for when their supply is cut off?
The biggest question I’ve got is whether this money is “creating new jobs” or “saving existing jobs”. If it’s the former, I’m just pissed. If it’s the latter, I’m real pissed. Now, in the big scheme of things, I can’t see how this would create more than one job. Someone will go to the store and buy a few cases of malt liquor and call their college buds to get enough pot to last a few weeks. That doesn’t take much work. That same person could easily call around each week asking how stoned they are and whether it’s better with or without malt liquor. Then at the end someone will have to write a report telling us how good the subjects felt stoned with or without malt liquor. The conclusion will be that drinking malt liquor adds nothing to the experience of being stoned. I just don’t see that taking more than a few hours at most. Now factor in the work-days lost due to being stoned, failing drug tests, and hung over since malt liquors give lots of people bad headaches.
This is one of those projects where someone should have scratched their head and commented how useless and meaningless this project is. But with the current morality of DC, it apparently fits right in.
The bottom line for me, what in the hell does figuring out the effects of malt liquor and marijuana use in Buffalo, New York have to do with me? I’m paying taxes, that’s my money. If malt liquor and pot were wiped off the face of the Earth I could care less. The effects of either certainly mean nothing to me as well. I do know that according to every scientist and medical practitioner on the planet that smoking is bad for your health. So, we can assume real quick that the effect of smoking pot is similar to that of smoking tobacco. They both have second-hand smoke. That’s all we need to know. Tossing in some goofball liquor doesn’t make lung cancer any better or worse.
Obama has had a recurring theme that private sector banks are greedy. He’s held true to that philosophy the entire time he campaigned and has as President as well. Lots of other people jumped on the bandwagon:
And Obama turned up the heat even more:
"I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street," Mr. Obama said in an interview on CBS’s "60 Minutes" program on Sunday.
They’re still puzzled why is it that people are mad at the banks. Well, let’s see," he said. "You guys are drawing down $10, $20 million bonuses after America went through the worst economic year that it’s gone through in — in decades, and you guys caused the problem. And we’ve got 10% unemployment.
And economists dutifully chimed in:
Remember, it was Lehman — not Citi or B of A — that brought the world to the brink.
Bottom line, Obama is a socialist. Why do I draw that conclusion after that line of events? Very, very, simple. It wasn’t Lehman Brothers, “you guys”, that started all this. It was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac going bankrupt that started it all. Anyone remember that? Obama and Paul Krugman don’t want you to. They’re blaming all this on the private sector only. And, to cap it off:
Unlike Citigroup (C), Bank of America (BAC), AIG (AIG), Chrysler, and GM, Congress deemed that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had not received "exceptional assistance" and therefore did not have to have their pay decisions scrutinized by the pay czar.
Top executives of Fannie and Freddie could get paid as much as $6 million for 2009, despite the companies’ horrendous performances this year.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac remained bankrupt throughout 2009. The only thing keeping them afloat is Congress continuing to add more and more to their debt limits. All of the “fat cat” banks except one paid back their share of TARP. To date, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have not paid back one single penny. And given the way they are bleeding cash, don’t ever expect them to. For that total ineptitude and complete inability to manage a company nets Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives huge bonuses. For successfully restructuring and eliminating the public burden CAUSED BY FANNIE AND FREDDIE MAC, the private sector banks get publicly slandered.
So, why do YOU suppose Obama’s not saying one single word about Freddie and Fannie’s bonuses?
TMZ.COM is running a very peculiar picture:
In case it’s not too clear, that’s SUPPOSEDLY John F. Kennedy chillaxin while FOUR, count em, FOUR, babes frolicking naked. Cool huh? Well, under some circumstances it would most definitely be. However, SUPPOSEDLY, at this time, his wife was in the hospital struggling to deliver a still-born baby. The baby died August 23, 1956. This does look like summer. And, JFK did return to be with her from a yacht vacation in the Mediterranean. This rumor is not new. The pic is. How the pic wound up with TMZ is vague. But, it certainly looks sorta kinda like JFK, and the boat definitely resembles the Honey Fitz ( Manitou ).
The trim, the glass front, the framing. It fits. Given his reputation, that fits too.
I would have tucked this away on Moonagewebdream, but the ramifications of what might have been if this pic had surfaced at the time are too immense. Think about it.
For starters, JFK was not well liked within his party. He was not their chosen son. He was not their preferred presidential candidate. He was up and coming in 1959. Emboldened by being young and brash, JFK, pretty much the face for Robert Kennedy, took on the established Democrat leadership in a move they didn’t expect. Emboldened by his increasing popularity, Robert Kennedy made a gamble that probably cost him and John their lives. He offered the VP spot to Johnson.
Now, if this picture had been floating around at the time, things probably would have been a lot different. And, I do mean a LOT. Given Massachusetts’ odd penchant for adoring bad characters, he would have probably stayed in the Senate. There he would have continued to have been a junior senator throughout the 60′s.
Some things would have been a LOT different. Some people speculate that the election was stolen from Nixon and that if anyone other than Kennedy had run they would have lost to Nixon. I don’t think so. This would have predated the primaries, and therefore the primaries most likely would not have split the Democrat party as bad as it did. In the Democrat primary, Kennedy only got about 62% of the vote. In the general election, he only got 49.7%. If the Democrat party had been more unified, it would have been a wide margin. This was due in some part to Kennedy’s religion. Being a non-factor if Johnson had led the ticket, I think Johnson would have won handily. However, you would not have had the famous Kennedy-Nixon debate. Maybe Nixon would have done better without that. But, toss in 10% boost in Democrat support and I think Nixon would have been toast.
Lyndon Johnson would have been President 1960-1964. Things would have been a LOT different.
- Kennedy tried to policy-wonk Vietnam and got us into an arrangement that was unwinnable by relying on the South Vietnamese government to control our troops. I don’t think Johnson would have ever gotten himself into that predicament. My gut feeling is he would have been more compelled to fight a war to win from the start. If that’s true, 1968 would have been a hell of a lot different.
- Kennedy wasn’t the only champion of minority rights. A lot of people were. The deaths of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. sparked riots and distrust that last a generation. This picture could have prevented all of that and allowed the process that Johnson was already supporting to continue peacefully and at a controlled pace. Instead, their deaths ignited a powder keg that no one had an answer to.
- Kennedy ignored white racism. Johnson went after it. He confronted the KKK on national television and outed them for what they were. The effect of what the Kennedys did was it pushed minorities into a position they weren’t comfortable with, and whites resented. It didn’t address the wrong attitudes of the whites or blacks. It just forced them into situations of confrontation. Johnson’s allies were addressing the attitudes of whites and blacks. I think things would have progressed a lot smoother, and more amicably if Kennedy had never been president.
- Johnson had pushed through Medicare and Social Security. Public health care was being debated when Johnson chose not to run in 1968. Health care, due to the Vietnam War, Cold War, and other issues, became a distraction to Nixon. If Johnson wasn’t so demoralized by the protests of a war that might not have been happening, we might very well have had public health coverage already.
- Following up on the previous paragraph, Nixon and Gerald Ford would never have been President.
- If Ford had never been President, Jimmy Carter would have lost.
- If Jimmy Carter had lost to a more conservative president, Ronald Reagan would never have replaced Carter in 1980. And, we would never have had the Iran Embassy takeover or the Community Reinvestment Act.
- If Ronald Reagan hadn’t been President, George HW Bush would never have been Vice-President, and therefore President.
- Bush begat Clinton due to his political ineptness. We would never have had the internet since Al Gore would never have been VP without Clinton. Additionally, I’ve argued that if a more security minded person had been president as opposed to a policy wonk and social liberal, 9/11 would never have happened along with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Both were our “friends” until Clinton.
- Clinton begat George W. Bush due to his, well, Kennedyesque actions with women.
- And, George W. Bush begat Barack Obama because he became such a lightning rod for liberals, following his perceived efforts to emulate a Reagan that never would have occurred.
Pretty heavy stuff huh? Instead of all that happening, this pic apparently became a joke for a car dealer for 40 years.
OK.
Ohh-kayyy was right:
No sooner than TMZ ran the story, The Smoking Gun fired right back with the original, confirmed by Playboy. Most reports are quick to point out that it wasn’t JFK on the boat. He was shot in 1963, the pic in 1967. No word yet on how much TMZ paid for the crinkled up Playboy spread. I’m scouring Hustler for Ronald Reagan look-alikes tho.
28
Dec
A while back I bitched and moaned about Obama‘s seeming attacks on the CIA and appointing a guy who has advocated rights moreso than security in charge. What I was getting at is it seemed he was making the huge mistake Bill Clinton made that led to 9/11. It was referred to as “the wall”. In Clinton’s case, he so neutered the FBI that it became basically useless on a national level. Although they had information that could have prevented 9/11, Janet Reno and Jamie Gorelick did not allow that information to be shared or pursued.
When Obama took over, he immediately attacked the CIA. He did it very publicly, he did it very directly. He personally did it. The message was clear, they were not an integral part of his administration. in November the US Embassy in Nigeria was notified by a father that he felt his son was a threat. The son was placed on a terrorist watch list, but not on the no-fly list. In simple terms, he became considered by the US government as a terrorist who was trusted enough to fly freely around the country. A few days ago, he tried to blow up a US airplane landing in Detroit.
Janet Napolitano attempted to explain what happened this way:
I kid you not. She really did say this on national television.
OK, this is where I would draw the line. A Father reporting his son is about as credible as I need. If he says he’s a terrorist from Nigeria, that’s all I need to know. He just doesn’t need to be flying around in the US. He can argue his case in Nigeria if he wants. That’s not Obama, Napolitano, or Panetta’s style apparently. Give the benefit of the doubt to the terrorist over the statement of the non-terrorist. That makes all the sense in the world for people who’s only mission is protecting citizens of the United States.
During the campaign, John McCain stated Obama was weak on national security. I agreed with him based on past Obama statements. I think it’s simply a matter of time before one of these terrorists get it right because of the attitude of the Obama administration. We had warnings about the shooter at Fort Hood, we had warnings this guy was a terrorists wanting to attack the US. Nothing was done in either case. What do you think?
The Obamas are trying to send a message to the world with their Christmas tree. I’m not terribly sure what it is.
First you’ve got Chairman Mao.
Then you’ve got Hedda Lettuce.
Mao wouldn’t have liked Hedda too much. He particularly loathed gays. He felt they were the product of capitalism. He killed them. Millions of them. He didn’t like a lot of other types of people either. He killed Christians too. He intended to wipe out all independent religions, and gays.
So, what is the sense that when people view the national symbol of Christmas, Mao Zedong is there? I know there’s some liberal message there. Probably something like being tolerant to all kinds of people. But, I just don’t see Mao as a symbol of tolerance. I know some in The White House do tho. They’re just wrong tho. Mao is best left forgotten.
Why this White House insists on glorifying Mao Tse-Tung, Zedong, or whatever name you want to call him, is beyond me. Some socialist leaders were sort of human, Mao was not one of those. He will be remembered by history as one of the stupidest despots ever known that held China back 200 years as long as he possibly could.
OK, Paul Krugman thinks this bill is far from perfect, but is a huge step in the right direction. He’s an economist. He should know. I’m not an economist. I’m an employer. Different view of things obviously. Here’s what I see:
The Senate health care bill includes a well-known “employer mandate” provision that would require employers to either offer a “qualified” health plan and pay 60 percent of the premium or pay an annual tax penalty of $750 per full-time employee.
What is less well-known is that the provision would also tax companies even if they do offer insurance — but only if they hire people from low- and moderate-income families who qualify for, and elect to accept, premium subsidies. And the tax penalty for hiring those employees — arguably the people who need jobs the most — would be a whopping $3,000 per employee per year.
The combination of this tax penalty and the rules for determining who qualifies for premium subsidies would encourage companies to engage in some new and repulsive forms of employment discrimination.
Who Would Qualify for a Subsidy?
There are two criteria for qualifying for a subsidy under the Senate bill:
- First, family income — not how much this employee is paid by this company, but total family income — would have to be below four times the federal poverty level (FPL). The FPL depends primarily on family size[1]; for 2009, four times the FPL would be $43,320 for a single adult with no children and $88,200 for a family of four (regardless of whether it is a single parent with three children or two parents and two children).
- Second, the premium share to be paid by the employee would have to be more than 9.8 percent of family income.
OK, first of all, either I pay a certain percentage of an employee’s health insurance, or I pay a $750 fine. No brainer. Assuming my portion of their health insurance is less than $65 a month, I just pay the fine and go on. Since they did have insurance, but now don’t, this doesn’t seem intuitive to me. However, that’s not the end of it. If an employee’s premium THEY are paying falls OVER 9.8% of their FAMILY’S income for the month, I could be “taxed” up to $3,000.
OK, raise your hands employers and human resource staff, how many of you have even the faintest idea how much your employee’s FAMILY earns? This is where it becomes beautiful. The IRS has to tell the employer which employees are eligible EACH MONTH.
Got that? Let me repeat that part again:
The IRS has to tell the employer which employees are eligible EACH MONTH.
How does the IRS know this?
Beats me.
The family’s income has to be less than four times the national poverty level. That’s $88,200 for a family of four. That sounds kinda crazy at face value, but there’s a fairly simple rule of thumb an employer can follow when trying to budget using this amazing scheme. There are only two states in the United States that have median household incomes that exceed four times the national poverty level, and one of them’s not even a state. DC and Connecticut. All the rest you can pretty much assume that if you’re in a position where it’s questionable whether you can provide health insurance or not, you can safely assume you’re in that 9.8% category.
Now, what this is all leading to is what I assumed would happen when this debate began. An employer is forced to limit exposure. The only way an average employer can do this is to limit bodies. Currently, due to the nature of work, we have a huge majority of part-time workers. This will no longer be economically feasible. Rather than having a staff of 219 staff, we’ll have a staff of about 60.
The immediate effect of this reform in this case will be 159 people losing their current health insurance, as well as their jobs. Thinking about hiring a part-time kid during summer break? Forget it unless their family’s fairly wealthy. In my case, that never happens.
For what it’s worth, this isn’t a scare tactic, this is a business decision. It’s not speculation. If the health care bill passes as presented, we will immediately start preparing for it by switching to a full time employment status only and laying off the rest.
You think 10% unemployment is bad, just wait.
Is this what health reform advocates had in mind? Is the change people wanted?
The Transportation Department responds to tarmac horror stories by ordering airlines to let passengers stuck in stranded airplanes to deplane after three hours.
With new regulations announced Monday, the Obama administration is sending an unequivocal message to airlines that it won’t tolerate the delays experienced by some passengers, such as an overnight ordeal in Rochester, Minn., last summer.
Under the new regulations, airlines operating domestic flights will be able only to keep passengers on board for three hours before they must be allowed to disembark a delayed flight. The regulation provides exceptions only for safety or security or if air traffic control advises the pilot in command that returning to the terminal would disrupt airport operations.
Now, the beauty of all this is, well, I’ll let you figure it out. Wanna guess who the flight controllers work for? I hope you guessed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The FAA is a federal agency. They are federal employees. Now, let’s get what happens as the way it is now straight. It is the Air Traffic Controllers who tell the airplanes whether to leave, sit, or come back. Not airline.
So, in order to make sure there are no more nightmare stories like the ones Obama heard when he was running for office, he’s punishing the airlines.
Got that?
He’s shooting the messenger.
Now, as the scenario stands, a federal employee can order an airplane to sit on a tarmac for six hours, and the airplane gets fined. The federal employee doesn’t. Try figuring where the incentive to make sure this doesn’t happen again is?
It doesn’t matter.
In his usual and customary socialist mentality, he’s punishing the private sector for something the federal government has screwed up.
So now I can’t wait to see what happens when an airplane, facing a three hour fine, turns around and returns to the terminal against the traffic controller’s orders. If I ran an airline, I’d have one do it tomorrow.
My solution’s a little different. Build more airports and re-build our train system.
OK, quit laughing. Paul Krugman, the guy who won a Nobel prize for economics for criticizing George Bush ad nauseum, still lives on that one trick. Citing a laundry list of bizarre claims, he criticizes Bush even though Bush had nothing to do with any of the issues. But, the issues are complex and many. He was busy last night apparently.
Unless some legislator pulls off a last-minute double-cross, health care reform will pass the Senate this week. Count me among those who consider this an awesome achievement. It’s a seriously flawed bill, we’ll spend years if not decades fixing it, but it’s nonetheless a huge step forward.
Ya get that? Now, the Republicans argument was it was a seriously flawed bill that we’ll spend years if not decades fixing. Why not slow down and get it right? Krugman then trashes the Republicans for acting on what he just criticized. Coming from a Nobel economist, that’s kinda scary. He’s saying it’s a huge step forward screwing up about 20% of our entire economy. Sounds kind dysfunctional to me.
After all, Democrats won big last year, running on a platform that put health reform front and center. In any other advanced democracy this would have given them the mandate and the ability to make major changes.
And it did. They have the mandate.
But the need for 60 votes to cut off Senate debate and end a filibuster — a requirement that appears nowhere in the Constitution, but is simply a self-imposed rule — turned what should have been a straightforward piece of legislating into a nail-biter. And it gave a handful of wavering senators extraordinary power to shape the bill.
Each piece of legislation comes with it’s own rules. If a piece of legislation requires a simple majority, that’s the way it is. The Democrats have the super-majority. It’s no one else’s fault they’re not getting anything serious done.
Krugman’s solution?
Back in the mid-1990s two senators — Tom Harkin and, believe it or not, Joe Lieberman — introduced a bill to reform Senate procedures. (Management wants me to make it clear that in my last column I wasn’t endorsing inappropriate threats against Mr. Lieberman.) Sixty votes would still be needed to end a filibuster at the beginning of debate, but if that vote failed, another vote could be held a couple of days later requiring only 57 senators, then another, and eventually a simple majority could end debate. Mr. Harkin says that he’s considering reintroducing that proposal, and he should.
Why even bother? Just let the controlling party enact whatever legislation they want. Do away with super-majorities and filibusters entirely. Whoever wins gets it all. The losing party members take a vacation for two years. There’d be no need for Congress or Senate. If the president and majority are the same party, it’s a done deal. If they’re not of the same party, then you’ve got a stalemate that would require some finagling. Sounds like a socialist wet dream. Now, what Krugman would have to take into consideration is the last eight years before 2008 would have been 100% Bush’s whims. There would have been no reining him in. Is that truly what a Nobel economist thinks is a good economic situation? Want an endless list of why it’s not? We’ll start with Lenin. Communist Russia never had to to worry about competing parties. it collapsed economically. Coincidence?
It’s amazing that because Obama‘s not getting what he wants in a timely enough manner, a Nobel economist thinks we should abandon the US Constitution entirely.
Here’s an even bigger new flash, the seriously flawed bill that we’ll spend years if not decades fixing it, but nonetheless is a huge step forward according to Krugman, isn’t even what Obama wanted in the first place. Is that because Republicans filibustered it? No. It’s because Ben Nelson secured a rather bizarre assurance that Nebraska will never have to cover it’s additional share of Medicare. Nebraska gets a special prize with Medicare, Utah gets an extra Congressman. What other abuses does Krugman think would have benefited the country if Obama, Reid, and Pelosi didn’t have to worry about a minority party?
20
Dec
Kansas and ESPN teamed up for a “green game”. During the Kansas-Michigan game, viewers were battered with green stuff. Some of the eco stuff was OK, but some was the tired, usual, global warming is gonna kill us all if we don’t start trading carbon credits on the Chicago carbon exchange crap.
I got a better idea if they want to really do the world a favor and lower their carbon footprint. Rather than encouraging 16,300 people to drive their climate-destroying vehicles to the game, tell them to stay at home. Rather than burning up who knows how much carbon based electricity watching the game, do anything but watch the game.
That’d get the message out there real well dontcha think?
