Military jets escort airliner. Headline: "Military jets safely escort NYC, Detroit flight" - where three suspicious people locked themselves in a rest room. I comment on this because of an earlier incident when a woman said she felt safe when the Air Force fighter jets showed up to "escort" them. Sorry, Honey, but they were there to shoot you down in open country before your plane reached a more populated area.
911 Remembrance. An overseas friend offered remembrance on 911. "... horrible and its memory will live forever in our minds."
My response expressed a strange view.
Thank you. It is being treated as a very solemn day here.
What is hardest is that the terrorists have won. For example :
I used to travel and would leave my desk and arrive at the airport, (85km), park the car, walk the the gate, and board after most people were already seated. This took exactly one hour.
Now one has to be at the airport one hour in advance, to have ones bags, ones person scanned, remove shoes, show all liquids and go through a series of security inspections. Time is two hours. This reduces the effectiveness of all American businessmen, raises cost of business, prices of products, cost of travel both business and personal, and to hire all the inspectors takes taxe money. To visit any government office has security inspections -- and more paid inspectors.
In WW2 Pacific we met suicide bombers, kamikaze, that were difficult
to stop and they did much damage. But, we could convince the Emperor to
stop by showing that we could (and would) destroy his whole empire.
Who do we have to get to today to have them stop? Who is the enemy???
Stimulus II - the No-Cost American Jobs Bill. America's Jobs Bill is said to have no cost because the Congressional Reduction Committee that is assigned to make 1.5 Trillion dollars of reductions is being asked to find a half trillion more.
Most pundits say the Committee will not be able to agree on the first 1.5 trillion.
Certainly Obama is not paying for the Jobs Bill. And the Committee reports to Congress, not the Executive.
Next week Obama will submit a reduction plan for the new half trillion. In other words he will be stealing
the easiest portion of the Committees recommendations, claim it is the extra half trillion, and then blame them (Congress and its Committee) for not doing what he asks in finding two trillion.
The half trillion dollar Jobs Bill is a pure addition to national debt.
Neanderthals A video report on Neanderthal contains an interesting tidbit that modern Europeans inherited a gene from them that is not found in Africans that provides resistant to certain diseases. I never believed the older thought that N. and we never interbred ; hunters spotting a N. woman could not have resisted. That they intermingled socially is also unbelievable ; clans are too tightly knit. However, a N. slave woman could have had her hybrid kids raised as pets -- AmerIndians did something similar. That 1 to 4% of modern DNA is from N. strikes me as high from direct breeding, but the % of N. blood surviving in today's population could have been raised even after the N. species was gone because of that genetic protection ,while more of the unprotected population died out from those diseases, thus raising the N. proportion in survivors. Other heartiness features could come into survival of the gene holders during epidemic, famine, war, and other hardships. A lot can happen in 40,000 years since that "first contact".
ID Leaks A bunch of idiots want to interview the men who got Bin Laden. Sure, make them targets for fanatics. And their families. So what?, it is good for a story. VP Biden in a photo op released that they were SEALs ; that narrowed down the possibilities for the assassins. But he wanted to be seen in the press by praising them. Now all SEALs are targets. Anyone for a ceremony in the White House? It comes with a medal on the chest and a bull's eye on the back. An idiot Congressman in WW2 self-servingly praised our submariners and told the press that they could dive deeper than the Japs could. The enemy reset their depth charges to explode at a greater depth and Congressman Andrew May is credited by the Chief of the Submarine Service with sinking ten of our submarines and 800 men lost.
Debt Rating Wonder if Standard and Poors lowering of the rating of U.S. debt (hence higher borrowing costs to be paid to Red China, etc.) and the drop of the stock market
will wake up / strengthen- the-will of the legislature towards the folly of Obama programs. He is no doubt thinking that even though his debt is at the highest point since WW2, that we rebounded sucessfully from that condition and grew our way out of the high debt ratio. BUT, then there was (1) a big reduction in spending, WW2 had ended, and (2) a pent-up demand for consumer goods from rationing and need for cars, housing, furniture, clothing and such for the marriage and baby boom. Discharge bonus and GI Bill took care of the conversion period from war to peace production, giving an education while taking young men out of the labor market for a period whereas in earlier days the unemployed returning veterans had rioted. Today not only the economy is in debt, but the people have lost their jobs, homes and savings, so there is no pentup demand and no savings to spark a productive cycle of demand, employment, spending, and growth.
Mortgages Obama's plan to remove the mortgage deduction as just another freebee for rich landowners who oppress "his people" overlooks the reason Congress has that feature. Homeownership builds a stable and responsible citizenry. Renters had no quaums about burning their own neighborhoods of Watts and Bedford-Stivenson. Without your own house, there is nothing to lose. The attempt to build stability got carried too far and also led to the ill-advised demands that everybody be granted a morgage that led to the recent financial crash. This proves that government can make mistakes. Duh.
Both Ways Another postage increase is announced because of general inflation. Yet, social security payments are frozen because there is not general infation?!
Bi-lingual Have you noticed that less information and harder to read type is now on labels because manufacturers are duplicating the information in a foreign language?
Lose-lose Ethanol not only cost more to make than gasoline, but it
gives poorer gas mileage, so it takes more to drive the same distance. Yet we are subsidizing it with tax breaks. Wierd, but that is a benefit of government.
Mortgage Deduction With his community organizer past, our President past thinks of land owners as undeserving relative to his poor renters. Lets remember the
reason behind the government's support of home ownership -- it is to create a vested interest in the community. Non-owner tenements and housing projects are allowed to go to ruin. Recall that those with no investment burned down Watts and Bedford-Stivensen. People don't burn their own homes. Home ownership builds and supports order and citizenship.
Judges Many leaders are supporting judges free choice to interpret the law. Others think that everyone making decisions in the
name of the public may need a reminder of what the public values really are.
Notorious Most of the notorious events in the news are created by crazy people.
To prevent many tragedies we would have to detect and lock up the crazies before they do their crazy acts.
But how to determine insanity? Differentiate between crazy and eccentric? I would
lock up all liberals for being economically insane, but because of a conservative
belief in the rules of law I can't. It is more likely that the liberals would lock up me because
they do not believe in absolutes, only their emotions at the time.
Almost by definition, murder is a crazy act. Therefore all are innocent by reason of insanity.
What does that accomplish?
Swarm from Disasters Niger was on UN feeding list from typical draught and it has now flooded doubling the hunger at the same time as world is in recession. It is a country with a very high birthrate. Some see this as assuring survival of the species in repeated hard times. Others see this as mother nature's trying to say, Stop! Don't create more problems. Same with Pakistan and lets add India and Mexico who cannot support themselves and are spreading their progeny round the world while the homeland is in chaos. When other animals than humans over populate into unwanted areas, what do we do?
Cordoba Victory
Is the planned mosque at ground zero or not? It is in the debris field of 911. The building was so damaged by parts of the plane and falling towers that it is on the market at a bargain price. A second benefit of terrorism is cheap real estate to build the Cordoba victory shrine.
Tea Party People complain that the Tea Party is made up of white, middle class people. Dah! TEA stands for Taxed Enough Already. It is made up of those who
pay taxes to support those who have reason to fear loss of their subsidy.
Collateral Deaths I will have to confirm the numbers, but a PBS D-Day documentary on the Normandy landings
said that the German defenders suffered seven thousand killed, the attacking Allied suffered eleven thousand killed,
and French civilians suffered twenty thousand killed -- more than the number of soldiers killed on both sides.
It is a shame, as the headline scream, that six Afghani civilians were killed.
Obama the ___ It is common to give leaders a subtitle, Alexander the Great, Eric the Red, etc. Barrack Obama is always angry at somebody: AIG, Businessmen, Health insurers, BP, Gen McCrystle Hence, "Obama the Mad."
MetLIfe From time to time I mention service companies. Avoid MetLife. They are cheap. They include
dividend checks with tax forms to save a stamp, they give away your uncashed
dividend checks rather than send you a reminder even when they have your current address, and their answering machines run in circles.
What do we deem the meaning of "deem" is ? If Congress can deem to have passed a bill bankrupting the nation without a vote,
might you deem to have paid your taxes without sending cash ?
Government capacity for spending is inexhaustible,. They own the printing press, right?.
Can runaway social programs cause bankruptcy? Look to California, the old Soviet Union, and now Greece.
Innocent? The concept that a murderer can be "innocent by reason of insanity" makes no sense. Almost
any murder is done by a person permanently or temporarily crazy. Therefore any murderer should be found guilty?
The question is wither we want that person to walk among us. A better verdict is "guilty, but Insane." The first determines if he did it. The second tells if he is to go to a criminal prison or to a criminal mental institution.
Middle East Homeland The son's of Abraham consider all the lands between the Nile and Euphrates as theirs and are entitled to expel the current Arab occupants. A historic homeland argument is made my many peoples. But what of the settlers before them? By such logic, "The Kenite, the Kenizzite, and the Kadmonite, And the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Rephaim, And the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Girgashite, and the Jebusite", Gen15:19-21 have right to expel the Jews. Right's to a land go back to the last war in the area. Recall the definition of government is the dominant coercive force in an area. What does the world have to look forward if ancient conditions are said to have validity today? Can we claim part of Europe? Can the offspring of slaves be reclaimed because of a bit of history? The world moves on.
Global Warming Fraud Now that fraud has been shown in the Global Warming fiasco, our leaders will
drop the subject. It is proper to stop spending, but the earth temperatures move in cycles and it is appropriate
to consider that the earth will evolve. Just don't waste tax money trying to warm the temperature this decade and cool down the next.
Bailout Funds.
TARP was to help out the Banks. Successful and money was returned. New administration wants to steal that money.
Stimulus 1 was a gift to every Democrat program ever suggested.
Stimulus 2 was to create jobs -- used to pay government employees and give a raise to teachers.
Jobs Program consists, so far, to expand unemployment insurance, not jobs creation.
Lessons of War Two The U.S is now engaged in the equivalent of three wars -- Iran, Afghanistan, and Haiti. At one time our defense policy called for being able to fight in
two wars and a regional conflict at the same time. Then that was cut to just two areas,
then to one. Does anyone remember that while France, England, and the Dutch were engaged
in a war in Europe, that upstart Japan decided to take that as an opportunity to occupy IndoChina, Malaya, and the East Indies? I can't take Iran and N. Korea too seriously, but then we did
not take Japan, at that time a maker of dime store toys, very seriously.