Not With My Tea Party You Don’t

If you read my blog occasionally, you may have figured out I have am a bit schizophrenic in political viewpoints. I believe in a government where the politicians actually think about what is best for the country and consider the wishes of the voters that put them in their jobs. Yeah, right! Dream On. Most of them, from both parties, went to DC to clean out the swamp and learned to love the jacuzzi instead.

Recently, there has been a lot of hullabaloo about Tea Parties. Now, I have to tell you, I was happy that somebody was standing up and yelling, “enough!”. I don’t necessarily agree with their politics but Good On Em for taking their responsibilities as citizens and standing up for what they believe in.

Well, that is what I used to think. I thought they were a bit loopy in their views, but it was a start. Now I found out that the Tea Party I thought was the Tea Party, a bunch of frustrated citizens who banded togother is not the Tea Party I have been reading about.

The original Tea Party, as I have been thinking about it, you know the one with real citizens, actually exists and is based in Punta Gorda, Florida.

The Tea Party I have been reading about and watching on Fox News is actually owned, operated and run by a California-based GOP political consulting firm, Russo Marsh & Rogers. They are the ones making all the noise and raising millions of dollars. Turns out they have been spending a lot of the money donated by a lot of citizen dupes living the high life, including a recent $1,500 meal for 6.

I’ve been had again.

Read about it here in Mother Jones

US News and World Report is doing a really information packed 3 part report on Social Security.

I just read the second report and am going to dig up the first report while keeping my out for the secont report. Some really useful information for anybody that wants to know when, how much and how they calculate it all.

Read the 2^nd report here.

How come the Chinese can build a high speed train in 5 years and we can’t?

What’s more, they plan to build another 42 high speed trains in the next TWO YEARS. We couldn’t even decide on a color for the trains in two years. So, what’s wrong with our system? I thought we were trying to create jobs. This sounds like a great way to create jobs to me. Maybe our system is worn out and gridlocked. Ya’ think?

Read about it and take a look at the jazzy stations here.

Maybe we could learn something from the French?

Without getting into whether Carbon Credits or Taxes are good or bad, necessary or unnecessary, I was unhappy with the way Congress handled the program. Basically exempting the large producers who had the money to pay lobbiest and letting the rest of us carry the load….as too increasing usual.

Well, the French courts just said, “Not on my watch!” when the French government tried to mandate a similar policy. A $24.38 tax set to go into effect on January 1, that exempted 93% of the carbon producers, leaving consumers to carry the freight with taxes on cars and heating costs, was rejected by the Constitutional Court, because the tax was “disproportinally allocated”

Is anybody here in the US listening?

Read more about this in Bloomberg

Presidents Johnson and Obama - Vietnam and Afghanistan - So Much in Common

Last night Moyers had an incredible show with tapes of telephone conversations between President Johnson and MacNamara, Bundy, Knight and others discussing the development of the Vietnam war. Incredible! Amazing parallels to present thought process on Afghanistan.

Link to Moyers show below. Will probably take a while unless your high speed is pretty good, but well worth it. You can even hear the airplane droning in the background as MacNamera is talking to Johnson on return trip. Awsome. I had no idea these tapes even existed. They knew they were screwed long before the public did. They were just stalling, while people died, hoping for a compromise that would save Vietnam, preserve the rest of the dominoes (they really did believe that then) and save American prestige.

I think had it not been for Johnson's belief that if South Vietnam fell, the rest of SE Asia would also go communist, Johnson would have pulled the plug when we were still only advisers.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11202009/profile.html

Our mission goal in Afghanistan is fuzzy at best. Certainly we are not engaging Al Qaeda, only the Taliban, who just want us out of their country and are not going to launch any attacks against us. We are the best recruiting tool Al Qaeda has

This excellent article in Foreign Policy makes the point better than I could ever hope to. We gain nothing by staying in Afghanistan except the creation of more animosity and more terrorists. Staying is actually decreasing our security.

Hopefully Obamas "dithering" is a delaying tactic so the Health Care mess can pass, after which he will announce he is withdrawing from Afghanistan and wait for the political hurricane which will probably cost him a second term. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes. The parallels between Obama and Johnson are uncanny.

We'll see.

Welcome Bill McBride's Calculated Risk Blog

I just added Bill McBride's Calculated Risk Blog to the RSS feeds on the right.

Huffington Post has just classified him, and his blog, as a must-read economics blogger in their HuffPost Gamechangers ranking.

Or, you can go directly to Calculated Risk Blog here

Welcome.

Afghanistan-Who is in Charge? The Horse or the driver?

Entirely too much has been made of whether or not we accede to General McCrystals' request for more troops. For the second time this week I make a silly Horse analogy. Not the horse, but the analogy.

I was always taught to, first, define the problem, then develop a solution and finally formulate a plan to implement the solution. Decide where you need to go (the driver wants a cheeseburger), decide how best to get there (by cart - it's too far to walk) and finally get moving, to your destination. In this silly story, the horse directed by the driver over the most appropriate path, direct, avoiding dangerous neighborhoods and, perhaps via scenic park drive. This is as a simple process. Deciding what it takes to get the job done before clearly defining the job makes no sense at all.

So, why does it matter what General McCrystal has requested? At least not until we understand clearly where we want to go and how we plan to get there. At this point, General McCrystals input is essential and should be seriously considered.

I have yet to hear a clearly defined reason of what we want to accomplish in Afghanistan except the mushy mealy phrase "defeat Al Quaida". Well, that may, or may not according to some, be a worthy goal. But, if it is a worthy goal, then it requires a worthy definition. Confine them to an area, arrest them all, kill them all, disillusion their followers? What are we trying to accomplish here. Defeat is an awfully big word.

Once we define our mission, which will always be in a state of flux, we need a strategy for implementing our goal. General, McCrystal, and the rest of the military heads can give us some serious input here.

With a clearly defined both goal and how we intend to get there it is time to turn it over to the military. Bearing in mind that we control the reins and need to keep our eyes on the path and make the necessary course changes if the horse wanders or unexpected traffic blocks the path.

This all seems ridiculously simple. If we let the horse decide where to go we will invariably end up eating oats.

Welcome icanhascheezburger.com !

For those of us that just can never remember how to spell icanhascheezburger I have added a link to their RSS feed. You can click on the links at the right to view their newest crazy pics.

The Horse Wasn't Taxed Out of Existance, It Was Replaced by a Better Idea

Today George Will joins BBC, Newsweek and many other reputable news sources in questioning our prevailing attitude towards climate change. If you believe passionately that global warming is serious, imminent and caused primarily by human activity, you're not going to like this one.

Read George Wills commentary here

Will points out, as so many shushed voices have in the past, that we are making important decisions based on bad data. The prevailing zealous inertia stands on two wobbly legs, a United Nations study, with narrow scientific representation that was never submitted to peer review prior to being published, and a movie by Al Gore, whose scientific credentials consist of two science classes for which he was awarded a C and a D grade. These two were awarded the Nobel Prize for their efforts on Global Warming, which has gradually morphed into to more innocuous term, Climate Change.

The UN study was based on a model, a complex version of A + B = Climate, where A and B, along with thousands of other earthly variables, combine to predict Climate. Solve for A, solve for B and Climate is the inevitable result......If the formula was correct. It is not.

In the 10 years since this model was developed we have been able to fill in the blanks for A and B with actual data instead of the previously predicted data. If the model was correct we should be able to look out our window and the Climate would be as we predicted. It is not. There is either a problem with the model or a problem with our window. CO2 levels, temperature and thousands of other Climate variables have radically underperformed the predicted levels, even after accounting for the fact that 1998 was a statistically contentiously cold year.

Worse, the model never worked to begin with. Scientists have gone back 10, 20 and even 50 years for actual data and plugged it in. The UN, and other models, have consistently failed to predict the Climate we live in today. The math just doesn't predict. If we were students our parents would have already been called and we would be on permanent detention. But, that is not the way of the world. We won't fly on an airplane or cross a bridge built with bad math. But, we will alter the entire World economy and starve millions of developing nation citizens based on equally bad math. We continue to stumble ahead as if the math really worked, zealously protecting our new flat earth 11th Commandment.

Al Gore deserves credit for a compelling movie that drew our attention to the fact that Climate is in flux and we should understand more about it. However, his Hollywood ice was thinner, his seas higher and hurricanes stronger than even the flawed UN Council model predicted. His movie was so inconveniently-over-the-top that, in the UK, as a result of a court ruling, students must read a disclaimer detailing 37 totally incorrect statements in the movie, including the fact that the world polar bear population, instead of being almost wiped out, has increased from 5,000 to 25,000. Meanwhile, Al Gore refuses to debate the subject or even appear on the same platform with opposing views. He seldom accepts questions from his audience, usually with controversial results. This, in spite of the fact, that over 700 renowned scientists, some of whom signed the original UN findings, have signed a document detailing their personal doubts about or outright rejection of the UN Study. Math is always tricky in these sorts of things, but it appears that more Nobel Prize winners in related areas have come out challenging the UN results than supporting them.

Climate is changing. It has always changed and probably always will. It is not clear, however, where Climate is headed, how soon,or how much it will change and how it will impact us. The average opinion seems to be it will probably get a bit warmer in the next 100 years with the increase starting in about 20 years. Does that mean a new future for Canadian wheat farmers or does it mean shrewd investors will be rushing to Las Vegas to buy beach front property?

There are, and, have always been, incongruities in our Climate. The Arctic ice is now reducing at an inexplicable rate, in spite of the fact that overall temperature has not increased in the last 10 years. The ice is now thicker at the North Pole than it was in the 50's when a Russian submarine actually surfaced in clear ocean. Where the submarine surfaced there is now a thick crust of ice. However, the ice is rapidly "calving" off the edges and we don't know why or for how long it will continue. Maybe something to do with ocean dynamics. The average ocean temperature has only changed minimally, but the concentrations of hot and cold are apparently switching geography. This may be effecting currents and weather. We don't know why or the net effect of these changes. Ocean CO2 levels may be higher than they have ever been in the past. Is there a relationship? In fact, we know very little about the dynamics of our constantly moving ocean surfaces which make up 70% of the surface of our planet. That is roughly 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons to an average depth of 3,000 feet. That is 46,571,428,571 gallons of water for each of the almost 7 Billion people alive today. That's a lot of water, in delicate balance, with organisms producing and consuming Oxygen and CO2.

There are strong indications that the relationship between CO2, other gases and Climate are complex. Climate has increased and decreased radically in the last several million years, but not always in line with CO2 concentration, although there are also studies that correlate CO2 levels with temperature. The sun, the atmosphere, cloud formations, the cooling of the earth, volcanic activity, the mysterious activities of the ocean and, perhaps, human activity all somehow interact in ways we have yet to sort out. Even the, heat absorbing, dark roof tops and highway surfaces we have built may contribute. Massive amounts of CO2 are also released from mountain rock formations as they roast in the sun. A lot of variables to understand and put together correctly.

It may be hubris to say human activity is responsible for climate change, but is it correct? Picture a steel apple with a hot molten core, a very very thin skin composed of 70% water, floating in a vacuum about 5 feet from a roaring fire. Imagine several billion bacteria on the apple skin holding an apple-wide conference informing other bacteria they are responsible for the temperature changes of their apple and need to change their ways or die.....Sounds like a lost chapter from Gulliver's Travels. On the other hand, what makes beer and champagne so really good is the CO2 bubbles that are the by-product of bacteria reproducing under pressure until the CO2 concentration gets so high the bacteria all die off leaving only tasty beer and dead bacteria. We need to understand a lot more than we do today if we are going to successfully live in harmony with our apple.

The US and most developed countries agree we need to start softening our footprint, to say nothing of the economic necessity of replacing our appetite for dirty coal and expensive oil that stink up our air and deplete our cash. Toward this goal they have mostly elected to follow a carbon rationing policy of cap and trade, exempting the largest abusers from tax, pain or motivation while shoving developing nations and smaller businesses to the edges of the playing field.

Instead of squeezing the existing production that feeds, clothes and shelters people, why aren't we focusing on newer and better ways to make our old dirty habits obsolete? The horse wasn't taxed out of existence it was replaced by a better idea. Coincidentally, that new idea worked out smoothly for Henry Ford and the US economy. At least until lately. Maybe it is time for a new idea. The ideas are going to come from somewhere. The only question is whether we are going to be buying or selling the ideas.

There is even talk of introducing dust, ice, chemicals and other strange stuff into the atmosphere to reduce warming. Don't laugh, China just coerced the earliest snow ever in Beijing and is talking about more efforts to control the weather. This is all sounding a lot like either a bad science fiction or the last bacterial gasp from a dieing bottle of beer. We might want to think this through a little more before we go pumping even more strange stuff into our atmosphere.

Of course, the really smart thing to do would be to cut back on population. A recent study reports that 40% of pregnancies are unwanted. How much trouble would it be to develop a birth control serum we all take at birth and then take the antidote when we actually want to have children? That thought should get the bacteria buzzing.

Brain Tumors and Arrogantly Bad Timing

It is no secret that Health Insurance Companies try to save every penny they take in, all companies do. That's what the game is all about. But today's news provides more proof that we need some form of intelligent universal coverage and, probably, a Public Option to keep it all honest.

Dawn Smith, of Georgia, was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor 4 years ago. Benign as it was, it still needed treatment as it was causing excruciating headaches, was located in a particularly sensitive area and difficult to get at. Her doctors recommended she seek treatment from several experts at the Cleveland Clinic, who had a record of successful treatment for this type of tumor. Her insurance company, CIGNA, refused because the Cleveland Clinic was outside their system. Logical enough, I guess, but more logical if they had actually had doctors inside their system with exceptional experience with this kind of tumor. So, Dawn struggled on with her debilitating headaches. She wrote politicians and public organizations with no results until MoveOn.org informed everybody on their very big mailing list about Dawns problem. Days later CIGNA reviewed her case and Dawn got to go to the Cleveland Clinic and an improvement in her condition, although she still required regular medication.

A small victory for the common citizen, thanks to MoveOn.org. But, no memory is so long as a scorned insurance company. Shortly afterwards, Dawns premiums were raised from, $366 to $750 per month. Dawn, 33 and still unable to work, getting around in her dead grandmothers wheelchair, had to keep making the payments, even if it meant delaying checking a bump on her breast for several months.

Thankfully, the bump turned out to be nothing more than a calcium deposit. Again, MoveOn.org sent out an e-mail and, again, CIGNA reversed their decision. there had been an error in classification and her premiums would not be increased.

But, insurance companies and elephants never forget. Four days later Dawn was told the medication she used to control headache pain was being increased from $10 every two-and-a-half-months to $1,115, and increase of over 1,100%. This time it was Huffington Post who jumped in. CIGNA backed down, saying that it was an error in the way her doctor had filled out the form.

The moral of this story? If you want fair treatment from the vengeful Sword of an insurance company you better have some really big Pens in your corner. Most folk don't. Read Dawns entire story here.

Or, perhaps, you could go to work for an insurance company. Surely, they don't eat their own. Or do they? Wellpoint Insurance has just announced they are cutting their employee insurance benefits for their 42,000 employees. They will keep the same insurance, but will have to pay more for it. Wellpoint, you may recall, along with United Health Care, illegally encouraged its California employees to lobby against health care reform. In an e-mail sent to their employees, encouraging them to write letters, said, "The proposals would hurt the company by causing tens of millions of Americans to lose their private coverage and end up in a government-run plan."

Well, yes....Duhhh! Beat a puppy long enough it will run to a better master.

Incidentally, WellPoint paid their CEO, Angela Braly, almost $10 Million last year. That works out to about $238 for each one of Wellpoints employees. Just an observation.

Read more about Wellpoint and their employees here.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/wellpoint-cuts-workers-he_n_309716.html

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/05/wellpoint-cuts-workers-he_n_309716.html

Rio, Chicago, Obama and Living Forever....

Well, quite a week. First criticism is heaped on President Obama for trying to assist in delivering the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. Then, when the Olympic Committee rejected Chicago in the first round and eventually selected Rio it becomes Obamas fault. Now, I don't know whether it was a good idea or a bad idea to have the Olympics in Chicago....Some very persuasive arguments on both sides. but, at least he tried. Good on him.

This all segues nicely into Thomas Friedmans New York Times commentary, "Where Did 'We' Go?".

The American political system was, as the saying goes, “designed by geniuses so it could be run by idiots.” But a cocktail of political and technological trends have converged in the last decade that are making it possible for the idiots of all political stripes to overwhelm and paralyze the genius of our system.

Those factors are: the wild excess of money in politics; the gerrymandering of political districts, making them permanently Republican or Democratic and erasing the political middle; a 24/7 cable news cycle that makes all politics a daily battle of tactics that overwhelm strategic thinking; and a blogosphere that at its best enriches our debates, adding new checks on the establishment, and at its worst coarsens our debates to a whole new level, giving a new power to anonymous slanderers to send lies around the world. Finally, on top of it all, we now have a permanent presidential campaign that encourages all partisanship, all the time among our leading politicians.

We will never get around to solving the serious stuff until "we" grasp the fact that we are all in the same boat and quit trying to punch holes in the "other guys" part of the hull. If not, we're all going to sink together.

And finally, two worrisome articles, highlighted on the right in "Headlines of Note , Half of babies born in rich world will live to 100 and Scientists find path to fountain of youth, point out that we are getting a lot closer to the 500 year life spans I keep projecting. What are "we" going to do when that happens. All the looming devils of Climate Change, true or not, pale when compared to the problems of 400 year old adults having their 30th child.

All this talk of Climate Change and the proposed solutions of Carbon controls, emission controls are starting to bother me. Now, personally, I think there is serious doubt as to both the degree of Climate Change we can expect and the part that "we" humans play in it. Personally, I think Change is coming, it is not quite as dramatic as Al Gore is making his millions preaching about, it is inevitable, there is nothing we can do to reverse it and "we" are only minimal contributing factors. Our time and money will be much better spent preparing for it than trying to prevent the inevitable.

But, having stated my position, why are "we" not taking a serious look at two of the more zany solutions that have been proposed. One article I read said that 40% of all pregnancies are unwanted. So, why aren't we encouraging the development of solutions that would prevent pregnancy unless "turned off' by those who actually want to have children? A 40% reduction in birth rates would eliminate a very very large portion of the carbon footprint.

Another suggestion has been that if we painted all the rooftops and highways white this would more than offset the temperature rising impact of CO2 emissions, if any. These are just a couple of the ideas that are out there. My apologies to the authors, but I can't recall their names at the moment.

So call me crazy, but it has been that sort of week.

15 Extraordinary Sand Sculptures

Just ran across this at Oddee (Link to RSS feed down on the right) This was, arguably, the best of some really interesting sand sculptures.

See More Sand Sculptures at www.oddee.com here

No Wonder Politicians Are So Confused by the Health Care Crisis

ABC News has just written an interesting piece about the sort of medical care Congressmen, Senators and senior government officials receive. It shouldn't surprise anyone that they get really good care. They can walk in without an appointment and be seen immediately. Their doctors, unlike ours, have plenty of time to spend with them, explain things and ponder their cases. To add insult to injury, our politicians pay about $503 per YEAR to insure themselves and their families. If you and I purchased the same level of care we could expect to pay upwards of $3,000 per month. For just the insurance, not for the visits.

Services offered by the Office of the Attending Physician include physicals and routine examinations, on-site X-rays and lab work, physical therapy and referrals to medical specialists from military hospitals and private medical practices. According to congressional budget records, the office is staffed by at least four Navy doctors as well as at least a dozen medical and X-ray technicians, nurses and a pharmacist.

Sources said when specialists are needed, they are brought to the Capitol, often at no charge to members of Congress.

"If you had, for example, prostate cancer, you would go to one of the centers of excellence for the country, which would be Johns Hopkins. If you had coronary artery disease, we would engage specialists at the Cleveland Clinic. You would go to the best care in the country. And, for the most part, nobody asked what your insurance was," Balbona said.

In addition to Balbona, several former staff members and private physicians who have consulted at the OAP as recently as last year agreed to talk to ABC News on background. They described a culture centered on meeting the needs and whims of members of Congress, with almost no concern for cost.

It is no surprise, then, that so many of these politicians are totally confused about what all the fuss is about when they go home to their town meetings and everybody is upset. What's all the fuss about? America has the best medical care in the world? Wrong! Our politicians have the best medical care in the world. We, the citizens, have health care ranked about 37th, just above third world status.

I am constantly wondering how long all this ridiculous bickering in Washington would continue if, tonight at midnight, all the politicians were directed to their local Blue Cross doctor or Free Clinic. I would guess we would have a decent equitable and affordable universal health care in about two weeks.

But, that would be dreaming, wouldn't it. So, the nightmare continues for over 50 Million fellow citizens. Will the madness never end?

Read ABC's entire article here

Meg Whitman for Governor - I Think Not!

Meg Whitman for Governor? Why on Earth? Give me even one reason. Another bored greedy executive with a radically inflated sense of their own talents throwing just a splash of the billions they made fleecing the public at another game they think, unwisely, they just may be good at. I will be writing more, much more, about this in the future.

But, let's just start with her experience. Basically, she ran eBay from a small friendly little auction house into to a very large loosely supervised, customer ignored and vicious Big Company.

Her biggest single accomplishment was to buy Skype for 3 billion, spend hundreds of millions to develop it only to see it sold as a disaster by the management who replaced her. Her second biggest deal was to buy a minority interest in Craigs List, through a dirty little back room transaction, where eBays involvement was unwanted, destructive and, finally, abandoned.

She did, in her favor, make the decision to buy PayPal. However, the developer of eBay, after spending time inside the eBay inferno, got disgusted and decided to take his most valuable commodity, creativity, with him. He is now selling the much sought after fast and electric Tessla cars he dreamed up, designed, built and is now selling faster than he can produce.
I wonder what eBay might have been like if he had been encouraged to stay and contribute under Whitman.

Whitman was so popular with eBay users that two years ago they canceled, and have never rescheduled their very popular and heavily attended annual conference/convention. The reason for the permanent cancellation? Too many eBayers were so upset with Whitman, the eBay "Community" of computers, and the general environment of "screw the users" that there were almost open riots when the users actually got to speak to a real person from eBay.

For a flavor of what I am talking about, just visit the eBay forums and see if you can go back as far as Whitmans' time and get a feel for the really pissed off customers in the eBay Community. Or you could just post a question asking about Whitman, at least you could before eBay hired some people to delete any negative comments from the forums.

It might not have been necessary to start deleting comments if, instead, they had hired some real people earlier on to talk to users instead of requiring all input to be in the form of messages that were subsequently read, interpreted and responded to by eBay computers....which is why the answers never really seemed to fit the original question. Or how about the quality control questionaires.."tell us how we are doing"....that were multiple choice with no place for negative comments or notations.

I can only dream what California might turn into if Whitman has her say. I can only dream bad dreams. Very bad dreams. Maybe the Terminator couldn't make much of a dent on California, but anybody that could create a wicked, vicious culture out of something as neat as the eBay concept probably can also do some serious damage to California. The only hope for California might turn out to be the Do Nothing political bureaucracy that has so frustrated the current governor and manages to stymie change at every turn.

California, as bad as it already is, does not need Meg Whitman. Thanks, Meg, but just take your Billions you earned off fleecing eBay users and go find another place to entertain yourself. Oh, and you might want to think about actually exercising your responsibility as a citizen to vote.

MAD Architects Use Solar Eco-Skin on Taiwanese Convention Center

Now this is an interesting development. Movable solar panels make for a really interesting concept.

We here at PopSci enjoy our green dreams for future buildings as much as any other geek. So imagine the excitement when Beijing-based MAD Ltd. unveiled its solar eco-skin design for the Taichung Convention Center in Taiwan.

The landmark building design aims to meld future tech with natural shapes that evoke mountains dotted with crater-like openings. We can only hope that a recovering post-apocalyptic landscape would look so pleasing.

See article in Popular Science here.

Can Nobody Stop This Madness?

In my opinion the biggest culprit in events leading to the recent economic collapse were the rating services who, in spite of growing evidence to the contrary, continued to issue positive reports on clearly sinking credit default swaps and other dicey vehicles. They did it in exchange for very large fees. Had, instead, they issued more cautionary ratings, the whole situation might not have been averted but alarms would have been raised earlier and the landing a lot softer.

You'd think they'd stop, or if not, somebody would stop them. But, not according to former Moody's analyst Eric Kolchinsky in todays Wall Street Journal

Here's more from Reuters:

"With nearly $3 trillion of rated bonds, the insurance industry is the largest sector of the U.S. financial services industry to rely on capital ratings, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC).

The three leading ratings firms -- Moody's, Fitch and Standard & Poor's -- have been criticized for fueling the financial crisis by assigning and maintaining high ratings on mortgage-backed securities, even as concerns about the health of the U.S. home market grew.

The NAIC, which represents state insurance regulators, wants to lessen its reliance on the ratings firms, according to a March report. The group has also held discussions over whether to launch its own system for assigning ratings."

Can nobody put a stop to this?

Read the entire article in Wall Street Journal here

Or, read a summary of this in Huffington Post here

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/23/eric-kolchinsky-moodys-wh_n_295789.html

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/23/eric-kolchinsky-moodys-wh_n_295789.html

Backwards Truck Paint Job Would Make Anyone Slow Down

This would wake you up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

From Jalopnik. See the original here.

What the.......................... ???????

Amazing, just when you think you're pretty much up on all the new trends.

If you're already getting bored of traditional football this season then there's an alternative that is uniformed in "lingerie". Yes, lingerie football. Denver has a team, LA has a team, Seattle has a team, San Diego has a team... the list goes on and on. On Friday night the Denver Dream played the Los Angeles Temptation in Denver. Despite the altitude advantage for the Denver Dream the ladies were defeated 26-19 by the Temptation. Below is a slideshow showing some game highlights. If you want to read more about the game then go here. Click on!

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/21/lingerie-football-photos_n_293247.html

SEE MORE HERE

The Funniest Protest Signs of 2009, or Maybe Not So Funny

See the rest of the signs here, on Huffington Post

The New McCarthyism

Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are paving the way for a return of McCarthyism with their hysterical and shrill denunciations of President Obama and his administration as secret Communists and Marxists and Fascists who actually hate America and are trying to destroy it from the inside. Crooks and Liars highlights this well-done video juxtaposing the conspiracy theorists on the right with the disgraced Senator Joseph McCarthy. The result is pretty revealing.

See the Video here

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/21/the-return-of-mccarthyism_n_293451.html

Welcome Toy Zone! 15 Bizarre Motorcycle Sidecars

I just added Toy Zone to our RSS fees because of their great list of 15 Bizarre Motorcycle Side Cars.
Toy Zone Feed can be found on the right down by Gadgets. Check out some of their other great lists....

Welcome, People of Walmart!

I've added a new RSS Feed from PeopleofWalmart.com It can be found on the lower right between the feeds from People Magazine and Jalopnik. Thanks to Jalopnik who located this site through their collection of The Cars of Walmart.

9 Most Unusual Pets

You can always rely on Oddee.com to come up with the most unusual lists.
Check out their 9 Most Unusual Pets list here.

The Best Way to Get Around the Frankfurt Auto Show

See More at Jalopnik, obsessed with the cult of cars here

See the original article in Discover Magazine here.

France or America, Who is Calling Who Socialist?

Roger Cohen, who I gather spends a lot of time in France, wrote an interesting article in the New York Times a couple days ago. By his accurate perspective, the US and France actually are more similar than dissimilar.

Most (French) would be shocked to hear about American social security, let alone Medicare and Medicaid, the government-run health care systems for the elderly and the poor that together form one of the largest publicly financed health systems in the world.

Americans obsess less about France than vice-versa but when they do they tend to suffer from equally delusional ideas. The French — like many Europeans — loom as a feckless multitude coddled by a nanny state that’s so big it must be socialist.

In fact, ever since President Mitterrand tried broad nationalizations in the early 1980s with catastrophic results, France, like most of Europe, has been on a steady march toward freer markets, trade and competition. In its way, it has been Americanizing.

Both we and the French really know very little about the other, although ignorance doesn't seem to get in the way of our loudly voiced opionions of the other. The two countries actually have more in common than not.

Read the entire article here.

Carving TOO BIG TO FAIL down to "too small to care."

Neither the Republicans or Democrats, left or right, are representing the common citizen, only their own self-interests, which are not coincidentally, the self-interests of the rich and powerful. I hold up as an example the total lack of controls or restructuring we were promised on Wall Street so this could not happen again. Bernanke, Paulson and Geitner have given them them the tools, but the politicians refuse to use them.

Fairly easy to fix, I think.

1) Establish a consumer financial protection agency.

2) Closer regulation of the credit rating agencies.

3) Initiate laws that protect the system from banks that are "too big to fail.". Personally, I think breaking up the companies into smaller components would be an idea worth considering.

4) Put some teeth back in Shareholders Rights so stockholders can actually have some say in who runs their company and how much they get paid. The government should not be involved in this decision.

5) Devise some way to make it more painful to foreclose on responsible qualified homeowners than to re-negotiate an equitable loan

6) Resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act.

7) And to keep all the Rats from gnawing through the baseboards, and around new legislation, implement real campaign finance reform so politicians do not need to raise massive amounts of money just to stay in their jobs. Then lobbyists will have nothing to offer a politician except a point of view.


From Today's News on the Same Subject.

Robert Reich, Pat Buchanan Agree: We Should Have Let Some Big Banks Fail (VIDEO)

Reich: “You know it's interesting Pat Buchanan, I start worrying about my own convictions when I hear you repeating back to me exactly what I believe. We ought to have either had kind of a restructuring of all of these big banks based upon something like Chapter 11, or we should have had a kind of temporary receivership, but we have the worst of both worlds. Taxpayers bailed them out so right now they know they were going to get a bailout next time. Before they didn't even know they were going to get a bailout, now they're making these wild trades they're doing the same risky stuff they were doing before, and now they know that if they get in trouble the government is going to bail them out because they are, quote, "too big to fail." Nothing in capitalism, no entity should be too big to fail.”

Stiglitz Says Banking Problems Are Now Bigger Than Pre-Lehman

“In the U.S. and many other countries, the too-big-to-fail banks have become even bigger,” Stiglitz said in an interview today in Paris. “The problems are worse than they were in 2007 before the crisis.”

Stiglitz’s views echo those of former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who has advised President Barack Obama’sStanley Fischer, who suggested last month that governments may want to discourage financial institutions from growing “excessively.”

Elizabeth Warren: "Until We Have A Credible Liquidation Threat, We Don't Have Capitalism In America" (VIDEO)

TARP watchog Elizabeth Warren has been critical of how the bank bailouts have been handled, but in an interview with MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan Monday morning she praised Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner for some of his recent testimony before Congress:

The question of regulatory reform is really on the table now. He was saying, in effect, if we don't change the rules going forward... we're not going to be able to get ourselves out of this crisis without some risk of falling right back into it. That was a very strong and very different message from the one he delivered last time we were talking.

She concluded with three things she would like to see implemented:

1) a consumer financial protection agency.

2) regulation of the credit rating agencies.

3) new laws that protect the system from banks that are "too big to fail."

Warren told Ratigan: "Until we have a credible liquidation threat, we don't have capitalism in America. It just doesn't work without that."

Arianna Huffington: Why Obama Won't Be Able to Reform Wall Street

There was a moment in the president's speech today that spoke volumes about the high hurdle financial reform is facing. The White House had sent a copy of the president's remarks to reporters and I was underlining key parts of it as he spoke. In the speech as written, he was supposed to call on Wall Street "to embrace serious financial reform, not fight it." But when the president actually delivered the line, he edited it, saying instead that Wall Street should "embrace serious reform, not resist it." That one-word change says everything you need to know about why all the president's well-intentioned pronouncements won't actually lead to fundamental reform. Because he's utterly misreading the opponents of reform. They are not passively resisting; they are aggressively fighting against reform with every weapon they have in their extremely well-funded arsenal.

The Continuing Disaster of Wall Street, One Year Later, Robert Reich

Let's be clear: The Street today is up to the same tricks it was playing before its near-death experience. Derivatives, derivatives of derivatives, fancy-dance trading schemes, high-risk bets. "Our model really never changed, we've said very consistently that our business model remained the same," says Goldman Sach's chief financial officer.

The only difference now is that the Street's biggest banks know for sure they'll be bailed out by the federal government if their bets turn sour -- which means even bigger bets and bigger bucks."

Judge Overturns Bank Of America-SEC Settlement Over Merrill Bonuses

"U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff held up his approval of the settlement, however, and ordered the SEC last month to explain why it didn't pursue charges against specific executives at Bank of America over the accusations.

Rakoff, was concerned that Bank of America was paying the penalty with Shareholders money, when it was the shareholders who had suffered form the actions of Bank of America. In another recent case Rakoff ruled that the penalty, instead of going to the SEC, should go directly to the shareholders.

Rakoff, in his ruling, found that the settlement "suggests a rather cynical relationship between the parties: the SEC gets to claim that it is exposing wrongdoing on the part of the Bank of America in a high-profile merger, the bank's management gets to claim that they have been coerced into an onerous settlement by overzealous regulators. And all this is done at the expense, not only of the shareholders, but also of the truth."

Larry Flynt Proposes a NATIONAL STRIKE DAY - Count Me In!

Been a little too busy to post much the last few days. Sorry. However, I did post the following on the Newsreel Blog Porn Kingpin Larry Flynt Broadcasts Political Fantasies in HuffPo Debut

The above blog was in response to Larry Flynt's Huffington Post Posting, Common Sense 2009 As I say I don't know much about Larry Flynt's politics, except he supported the other guy for president, but I do agree with him that it is time to do something and this just might be a good start.

My comments were.

Whoa Nelly!

Are you folks actually saying that the rich and powerful do not have excessive influence over governement? That, in a world where a US Senator has to raise about $90,000 per day for re-election , he is more interested in what is right for his constituents and the country than raising money? Does anybody really believe Democrat and Republicans, no matter how sincere their original Intentions, have not been totally corrupted by the immense power and prestige they are afforded?

Can you really say this in a world where the Pentagon requests a single $64 Million Gulfstream and the oversight committee throws in another 3 Gulfstreams, over the protests of the Pentagon, all because Nancy Pelosi couldn't get a $5,000/hour Gulfstream to ride home last Christmas ? I don't know much about Larry Flynts politics and I don't care. I do know that civility and adult supervision is lacking in DC and it is our responsibility as citizens to do insert some controls since our representatives won't.

Immigrants. Hang them or give them $1 Million dollars and a passport, I am past caring. Nothing could be worse than this limbo of decision avoidance that goes on and on and on. Health Care, Social Security, Wall Street, Budget and the other serious issues of last 20 years...... Nothing ever gets done. Just make the tough decisions and get it behind us; It isn't going away. Lord of the Flies on Steroids. "Well, if the other guy hadn't .........." Bull! If Billy Jack, you remember Billy Jack?, were here he'd suggest hanging one at random and telling them that he was going to be back in 30 days to see how they were doing. That would get some bipartisanship action. The politicians have the ability. They don't have the will. We need to give them the will or they are going to keep sailing this Ship of State right into the iceberg field.

Count me in for any strike, march or other demonstration that lets them know how frustrated we are and we are not afraid to organize. This has nothing to do with left or right. It is about representative government. I will march shoulder to shoulder with the Devil, if necessary, on this. We can bicker later on how our representatives should represent us .....after they start actually doing so.

In the words of Mark Twain, I would have written a shorter letter but I didn't have the time.

Maybe Now is a Good Time to Talk About Afghanistan

AboutWe are supporting a corrupt government who does not have popular support and may only be winning the current election because of election fraud. Our soldiers are dying while their soldiers are steering clear of the dangerous action. We are spending a lot of money. Their politicians are getting rich off of corruption. Their culture is as alien to us as our is to them. We have no clear definition of what our goals are and how will define victory. Our military leaders are asking for more troops and more money.

Does this ring a familiar bell? It does to me. Sounds a lot like it to me. Before we get further involved, I think it is time for some sort of dialogue to, at a minimum, define what we want to accomplish, how we will measure our progress and what we will do if we start to fall short of our goals.

Goerge Will, in todays Washington Post, is recommending we withdraw,

U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000, to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.

I am not yet advocating withdrawal. But, it is time for our leaders explain clearly why we should be in Afghanistan, what we want to accomplish, how we will measure our success and how much it will cost in lives and money. Public support is already waning and will only get worse. We can not win a 10 year war without strong public support. And, if we can't win, why start? Or, at least, narrow our focus.

Keeping the Weeds out of the Grass. Not the Feds Job

Hope you saw Brancachio and Moyers last night on Health Care. Some really good stuff. I really like T R Reid. who wrote "The healing of Ameica" "It doesn't matter whether it is government or private. What matters is that a nation decides it is going to agree to take care of all it citizens. The rest is easy. Whether it is Japan with 3,000 private insurance companies or the UK with a substantially government run program. Nothing will happen until the nation agrees that is where they want to go. We haven't reached that point yet." In hindsight, I think Obama might have been wiser to have this dialogue first. I think he would have gotten agreement on this, easily. Then should have come the discussion about how to do it. But, I did say hindsight.

Well, on to your radio show.

www.kpfa.org/archive/show/34


Ok. listened to your radio show. Frankly, I have only listened to videos, never radio before...have to look around and see what else is out there. Back to Hudson. Thought provoking. I need some time to digest his economic thoughts.

I totally support and agree with Hudsons underlying premise. One of the commentors wrote it best..."People just don't realize that our economy is run for the benefit of a tiny, privileged minority," Although, I prefer an analogy to HG Wells' "The Time Machine" where the Eloi are left to wander freely in a land of plenty and the Morlocks come out every night to harvest them for food.

But, even more interesting to think about.......Hudson and I both agree on his basic premise. But, Hudson uses a fuzzy circular illogical and factually vapid argument, that I totally disagree with, to reach the exact same underlying conclusion as I do. I am just as sure we would differ on the solution. Irreconcilable differences with somebody I actually agree with. Is one of us crazy? Fascinating.

I refer you to Mom's splurge (weed) problem in the back lawn . It is clear the splurge is gobbling up all the soil formerly occupied by the grass....no room for doubt there. Hudson would attribute it to a coordinated conspiracy by the splurge. I say the grass and splurge are just doing what is in their nature...the problem is lax oversight by the gardener (politicians) poorly supervised by the owner (you and I, citizen...well, OK Mom). Of course, the real problem is that Mom doesn't water the grass enough ....but, that totally messes up the analogy

Examples...

Hudson keeps talking about $13 trillion in bail outs when the entire national debt is only $9 trillion. TARP was only $700 Billion . Where does $13 trillion in bail outs come from. (Only??? I must be crazy....Vietnam only cost $50 Billion a year) Wish he had either taken it upon himself to support that number or the interviewer had called him on it, instead of mooning over his greatness.

As to Bernanke. Does the man not understand that Bernanke has absolutely no power over Wall street or policy? This oversight is the responsibility of Secty of Treasury, DOJ and Congress.....Bernanke has only 3 functions that I am aware of..

1. Oversee FDIC insured institutions to insure they are in compliance with the law he didn't write and can't change. Take them over and sell or close them if they are not.
   
2. Control the supply of money in the economy through setting overnight borrowing rates, issuing of currency and all the confusing computer/paper money used in TARP (The sole target of these is to keep inflation within acceptable boundaries..which is why Volcker had to raise interest so high to prevent inflation after the government spent so much in Vietnam ...think I have my history and timing correct here). The money supply faucet is the central control over economic growth. Growth of more than 4-6% annually is optimum to provide jobs for a growing population. Sustained growth of 8-10% for a period of 7 - 10 years will result in inflation growing faster than economic growth, referred to as the economy heating up and eventually a collapse in proportion to how far the two got out of balance, as happened in Asia in the 90's. Too little growth means not enough jobs are provided for the growing number of workers. Incidentally, this money supply lever, in the hands of a politically independent Fed, is what your pal Friedman got his Nobel Prize for thinking through, and also got paid for teaching to governments. Not all the mumbo jumbo stuff he preached on the side. Friedman did this after the political/oligarch rats chewed their way around Thorsten Veblens Controls. Steiglitz got his Nobel for a pointing out how the rats are chewing through Friedmans controls.
   
3. The Fed, and all 12 of its geographic subsidiaries generate forests of economic and money supply data and provide and interpretation of it.
   

Oversight of Wall Street is not within Bernankes power except in instances where FDIC funds are involved. However, I will read more on this as maybe I have it wrong....a lot of people are saying the same thing, which doesn't necessarlily make it correct. Mark Twain was wrong. Just because there is smoke does not mean there is a smoke machine behind it. It may only be a liberal or a Republican. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain"

Hudsons read on Latvia and Iceland were total baloney and actually not even close to factual (at least the Iceland version) two economically failed states because they put too much of their money in the fancy mortgage stuff. Now the IMF, the Devil of Last Resort , comes in and gets the blame for saying "I'll loan you money to get you out of this mess, but you have to show me how you can pay it back because it's not really my money and the guys I borrow from are already bitching and may not loan me any more because they got problems of their own and then there won't be any money for the next fool who pisses away all his cash without thinking it through, so ya gotta either raise income or cut costs, buddy..Fairs got nuttin to do wit it. Dis is bidness"

Hudsons entire discussion was full of nonsense like the above, but we reach the same underlying conclusion. Curious. Maybe it is the backgrounds. Hudsons academic and resume credentials are in order. They are excellent. But, I guess it is perfectly logical to assume a guy with an undergraduate degree in Philosophy, a PHD in economics and who was the Harvard Peabody research fellow in Babylonian economics would see things differently than me who is, well, me.

Have to read and think more about this. Thanks for the reference.

BUT,

The big problem is that, as Hudson says (although incorrectly placing blame on the Fed), and the following articles indicate and I agree....our leaders are going to do absolutely nothing about cutting back the companies Too Big To Fail or regulating the circumstances..It just isn't going to happen and that is a a whole different book. Oh, they'll pass some laws and play a few fiddle songs, but nothing with teeth.

The other big problem is that the politicians seem hell-bent with this Fed audit bill (the Fed is already audited enough...No secrets there) which is really an attempt to take over control of the money supply. We're really going to be in a pickle (what exactly does that mean anyway?) when the politicians control the money supply. This way, lies the Vortex.

The following current articles are on the same subject and, in my opinion, a little more based in reality .

Status of TARP investments

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214096?from=rss

Doubts about Bernanke

http://www.newsweek.com/id/214132?from=rss

Krugman ..Debt may actually be a good thing.

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/02/paul_krugman_de.html

Also, the following might be entertaining, in a cute kind of way.

Comments of the Moment

“ Let's get fiscal, fiscal,
I wanna get fiscal, let's get into fiscal.
Let me hear your budget talk,
Your budget talk, let me hear your budget talk.”

“ Hopefully, the attempt to restore 1953 America will not turn into an attempt to impose 1933 Germany.”

“ If ignorance is bliss, why are these people so angry?”

“ Simply put, take some of the profit-motive out of healthcare and one ends up with a better and more affordable healthcare system, as numerous Western industrialized nations have discovered and benefited from for years.”

“ Somewhere in this great nation of ours, Bill O'Reilly's math teachers are sobbing.”

“ In the free market of ideas everyone has a price.”

“ I am a descendant of holocaust survivors and as such I am often disgusted by casual comparisons of everyday things to the holocaust. At the same time ... when things truly do resemble the situations that led to the holocaust they should be pointed out. ”

Republicans - All That Remains is Hate.

Joe Klein has written his thoughts about the state of the Republican party in The GOP Has Become a Party of Nihilists

How very sad that a once great party, instead of regrouping and recreating itself as the Grand Old Party of the People, instead continues to stick its head further and further into the sand. To misquote somebody, I can't recall who, "It is not enough that I fail. I must pull the rest of the world down with me."

Instead of disagreeing honorably and fighting for what they believe is right they have become the part of NO. Lies, distortion and deception are their new standards. Is there no honor left in this party? Is Rush Limbaugh the best they can come up with? Sad. Ronald Reagan must be turning over in his grave. This is a charade, he would never have stooped to. Ronald Reagan would have spoken out for what he believed in, not what he knew to be a lie. Sad.

To paraphrase the Republican lawyer Joseph Welch to Joseph McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sirs, at long last?"

French Jails Review - Bad Food! Great Drugs!

Thought you might be interested in the few insights into the French jails the following e-mail yields. Got this from my friend in Bangkok

The Scot referred to here is Chang Noi (Littile Elephant) a character about 5' 5" who weighs about 350 pounds. An American about 45 - 50 who putters around on a tiny motor scooter. Has actually made a very small name for himself as a bit actor in Thai commercials. Can fix any computer problem and works for about $15 per day. Is a hell of a guitar player and singer and keeps organizing bands that fall apart because he gets drunk and stoned on grass and plays what HE wants the the volume HE wants. Actually booked two gigs on New Years a couple years ago ...about 1/4 mile apart. Set up two bands and shuttled back and forth on his scooter. Played a few songs with one band and then, wheeze, wheeze, shuttled to the other gig for a couple songs. Most bar owners foolish enough to hire him fire him after a couple weeks. Just too damn loud. But, he really is incredible. Need a fancy amplifier or sound system. No problem he disapears into the Chinatown alleys and comes back with about $50 worth of stuff that sounds like $1,000. Smokes way too much dope in a country that will put Americans in jail for 20 years. His 30 day visa was about 8 years overstayed when I knew him. I remember the sound of him coming to my office down the long echo packed hall. Wheeze Wheeze "ow" Wheeze "ow" "ugh" Wheeze. Bad knees at his weight and height. In hie former life he had been an engineer (fix-it type) all over the world. I remember once I was sitting in my bar when a Russian hooker happened to come in and started trying to pick me up. I was playing along "Yes, my first time Thailand" with her broken English just to see what would happen when up comes Chang Noi, sits down and asks if he can have a free Chivas. Never had any money but would only drink Chivas and talk about himself. I introduce the two and damned if he doesn't start rattling away in Russian with her. Color me surprised. Scott is very good at making bad choices. His last girlfriend moved out not only with all her stuff and all his stuff, including his clothes, but also his motorcycle. Apparently, he was in France because he was being paid $500 to accompany a Thai girl, for appearences sake, with a dodgy visa and got caught. Don't know the details

Another time I will tell you about the Suit guy. About 6 1/2 feet Dark complexion; English teacher I believe. He had a different color for every day of the week. Monday was yellow, Tuesday was green, Wednesday was red, etc. And when I say color. I mean neon! Shoes, socks, suit, shirt, tie, sunglasses. All not only the same color but the same shade. Even had a business card with the same color ink as the day. Strange!

Doug,

Ron and Charlie spotted Scott last Sunday and had a beer with him. He had recently returned from a week in America - the French deported him to his home Country after he had done his jail time.

It seems we found out that he was in a French jail way after the actual event (PJ was the bearer of the news). Scott spent 4 months 5 days in jail before they let him out early for "being a good boy". He said it wasn't all that bad except the food wasn't great. He worked every day, so time disappeared quickly. Ron said that Scott has lost a lot of weight - perhaps he will get smart and keep most of it off.

The other thing Scott commented on was that whilst "inside" he saw more dope that he had seen in his whole life. Someone must be making a good living servicing the inmates!!!

Well that's the update, hope you're doing OK.

Ciao,
John

Finally! Health Insurance Simplified!

Finally! Health Insurance Simplified!

Alec MacGillis, in todays Washington Post, explains the Health Care conundrum in 1,300 words of clarity that our politicians have failed to explain in 1,000 pages of confusion. His article Your Handy Health Care Cheat Sheet, is excellent, honest and sticks to the facts. There may be devils in the solution, but the problem is elementary, my dear citizen.

Health Care now devours 16% of our economy. Insurance rates spiral beyond the cost of a house. Soon premiums will explode beyond the budgets of even the wealthy; Affordable only by the super rich or as benefits to senior government employees, politicians and retired Presidents. It will be necessary to reverse laws that requiring hospital treatment to all who enter. There just won't be enough money.

But, you say, the United States has the best health care in The World! Absolutely true. We do have the best health care available. Available to World Leaders, Drug Dealers, Despots, Financial Barons, Dictators, US Politicians, Russian Oligarchs and the rest of the Mega Yacht Crowd who pay outrageous bills with minivans stuffed full of cash, government checks or premier insurance policies costing $3,000 - $5,000 per month. Our puny Blue Cross, Kaiser and Cigna policies won't even get us past their security details. What's in your wallet, citzen?

The World Health Organization, who studies these sorts of things, ranks the United States 37th in overall health care, just above Cuba. In overall health we rank 71st, earning us a seat at the back of the Third World Club. Compared to our peer countries, we live 5 years less and 5 times as many of our babies die before their 1st Birthday. 280% more of us are unable to earn a living because of repairable disabilities. Compared to the #1 ranked French, we pay almost twice as much of our GNP to treat 47% of our citizens as the French pay to treat 100% of theirs. Are the French smarter? Or is it something in the wine?

Something must be done.....about 25 years ago. Every day there is news of cures for disease and body repair; All the nasty things that shortened our ancestors lives is on the run. Within the next 50 years, the super rich will be living healthy, active and alert lives well past 100. Why? Because they can afford it. You and I, citizen, will be dropping dead from simple curable diseases or dieing from minor injuries before we hit 40. The last time people lived such meager lives was over a thousand years ago during the Dark Ages when the prescribed cure for everything, except heresy, was bleeding by leeches. You think I'm rattling off science fiction nonsense? Wait and see. We don't need no stinking Death Panels. We'll do it for ourselves.

Something must be done. I am not urging you to support, or not support, Obamacare. I am urging you to read Alec MacGillis's article. and consider the best and smartest course of action that makes sense to you. Keep in mind, citizen, we live in a Democracy, and our fellow passengers also have places they want to go and some mighty peculiar ideas about how to get there. But, holding the present course will soon bring us upon the Shoals of Status Quo and we will be smashed into 300 million pieces. Obamacare may be the best solution or just another bad idea. It may be the first wobbly leg in the right direction. Or not.

But, all this silliness about Death Panels, granny killing, Nazis, funny hats and missing Birth Certificates must go, replaced by serious dialog. The voices of those standing up, yelling passionate nonsense, must be joined by our own voices speaking passionate common sense. We don't have to agree on a solution today, but we must commit to a solution tomorrow.

Once we consent on a true course the trick will be to keep our politicians running the course we have set them. Simple folk, these politicians, can't help rowing in crazy circles without an occasional taste of the whip lash from us, their leaders. After all, they already have the really really good insurance...for free.

Think about it, citizen.

AdSense NonSense

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So Why Shouldn't I Tell My Congressman He's an Ass?

I have been doing a lot of thinking about this unruly bad manners at Town Hall meetings. At first I wanted to go punch them out, talk them down or stand next to them in a clown suit. But the more I thought about it the more I am cheering on the yelling and screaming. I have decided it is a good thing these insulated politicians are finally having to face the people they represent while traveling first class or in private jets from one hoi paloy event to another, living in a rarefied atmosphere of privilege about on a level with the Wall Street Oligarchs or Louis XVI.....far far above the tiny meaningless lives down below.

The nerve of those guys trying to sneak through three $65 Million Gulfstreams the Pentagon said they didn't want or need, when many citizens weren't even sure they were going to have a job to drive to tomorrow, much less a jet. All because during last years Christmas holidays there weren't enough Gulfstreams to go around and Pelosi threw a hissy fit because all the big guys got to got to the really cool planes first. Make 'em ride on military transports or Greyhound is my idea. They'd at least meet some real people that way.

I think a good thing is happening. This is symptomatic of the sense of alienation people have from their government. The masters and the servants have gotten a bit mixed up in recent years and some adjustments need to be made. The people are frustrated and confused. All this money being spent, no understanding of why or where. And nobody really trying to explain to why Wall Street got the big bucks instead of Main Street in what I am just now beginning to understand was one of the most brilliant chess moves in the history of money.

I am not kidding. I think one of the luckiest things to ever happen to this undeserving country was to have not only a brilliant quiet Fed Chairman who spent the last 40 years studying the mistakes of the Great Depression teamed with a brilliant 6'4"ex-football hero tough-as-nails-mean-as-a-snake-SOB Secty of Treasury who helped invent half the crooked tricks on Wall Street. Secretary Paulson, with Bernankes Big Guns at his back, wasn't shy about blackmailing , bluffing or breaking some really big knee caps, forcing Financial moguls to bend over for a $700 Billion smoke and mirrors enema. It really cost us nothing but paper promises to put some spine back in the economy and some major Juevos de Oligarch in Uncle Sams watch pocket. The only mistake they made in this whole confusing Tango of Uncertainty was losing Lehman Brothers. They walking into a meeting with big UK Bank who finally said no to Paulson. Plan A disintegrated, there was no Plan B an Paulson lost one of the biggest deals of his big deal career.

Anyway, back to the peasants, uh err, citizens being treated like cattle whose only function is to work hard to make money, and borrow more, to pump into the big money machine. $32 Billion last year in bank overdraft fees? Give me a break! You can't change a telephone or any other service without punching numbers and waiting for 20 minutes. And then it is either impossible or you have to pay money to do it. Yes, American companies are more efficient. Because the citizens have to do more and settle for less from their companies.

You can't call a cop out for being a jerk for fear of getting arrested or worse. Out of one war and into another with no clear understanding of what is happening or why our boys continue to die after we were promised it was over. People are losing their houses, their jobs and their pride. Politicians are buying new Gulfstreams, have unlimited health care and expense accounts greater than most peoples salaries.

Republicans and Democrats are operating without any clear adult supervision, talking nonsense in stupid partisan prattling, putting off decisions about Medicare, Social Security and Immigration that should have been dealt with decades ago when they actually may have been tamable. These same politicians, unwilling to learn from previous mistakes are hell bent on making an sticky mess of Health Insurance, providing a nonsense mishmash without addressing the bigger issues of efficiency, cost and competition.

The hooligans will win. They will cover another 50 - 60 Million citizens with only minimal changes in business as usual, my hands in your pocket fashion. Politicians will deliver an insurance system bought and paid for by the central villian in the show. It won't work. Some day this will all come back, not to haunt us, but to rip out our economic jugulars and tread on us.

I know there is a lot of craziness in the air. People on Medicare saying they don't want government run health care. I especially loved the sign I saw somewhere today that showed an old couple on a sofa, "Will the government spend millions of dollars on my grandparents when they get sick like they do for a rich, overweight, alcoholics with brain cancer?" Of course the obvious answer is "Yeah, so who will take care of Gramps without Obamacare?" But they do have a teachable point. Why do all these guys get all the neat perks and toys; All we get is the privilege of paying for it and a stupid T-shirt.

Did you see the AARP meeting where the AARP representative got mad and closed the meeting because the old farts wouldn't sit quietly and listen to her prepared remarks about what AARP was doing on their behalf. They had the umbrage to ask why they had never once been asked what they wanted done on their behalf. She looked mighty foolish, after already ending the meeting, walking for her microphone after the crowd took over the meeting trying to sort out Health Care, without her. This really is Democracy at its best and at its ugliest. We may actually start listening to each other...or not.

Speaking of nonsense waddaya think of Sarah Palins Death Panel comments? What exactly does everybody think is happening now with the insurance companies? You Betcha!

Yeah, the insurance companies and Republicans are responsible for sowing the seeds of discontent, but the seeds are falling on very very fertile ground. Yeah, it's a loud rude minority who doesn't fully understand the issues, but so are the kids on the street in Iran and Burma, so was I in the late 60's and so were our founding fathers. I still feel we may have a revolt, of some sort, peaceful or not, before this is over. But this really isn't much about insurance anymore than Gettysburg was about the grass. This about the creeping plague of bad governance that has slowly been creeping up on us since we first started letting it.

Maybe there is hope. Americans may actually wake up and start expecting their politicians to represent them. Politicians may actually start identifying with their citizens and that Bridge in Brooklyn may actually change hands. Its not a Republican or Democratic thing. The Democrats are in power so they get the heat. But, whoever started it, they may have trouble getting it to lay down quietly and sleep.

I am glad to see people standing up and saying "I'm mad as hell and not going to take it any more!" Even if they have their facts and their logic upside down. At least they understand they have a right to be mad as hell. Of course it would help if the Democrats actually had a firm proposal on the table instead vague bundle of confusing Senate, House and White House concepts, ill defined and conflicting.

And what the hell was this deal with Big Pharma and the Hospitals? Is this what we voted for? Explain to me how this is Change we can live with? Unless we get some leadership soon we are are going to end up with a big sloppy expensive mess of goo that won't help much and will break our backs.

Haven't quite integrated my thoughts on Obama winning the election and being black and throwing that whole thing into the stew. Not sure how much that has to do with anything except it gives everybody something to focus on when they really haven't figured out yet what they are so pissed about.

Obama and the Democrats must start showing firm leadership if they are going to walk away with anything useful or even survive the next election.

Well, that's my evening cup of cheer. Better publish this before I think better of it.