Rusted Sky

Wasn't that the meme? That our enemies were going to suddenly love and appreciate us, because 'suddenly' we were going to be communicating with them, now that Bush is out and Obama the Anointed is in?

Iran says Obama's offer to talk shows US failure

US President Barack Obama's offer to talk to Iran shows that America's policy of "domination" has failed, the government spokesman said on Saturday.

"This request means Western ideology has become passive, that capitalist thought and the system of domination have failed," Gholam Hossein Elham was quoted as saying by the Mehr news agency.

And neither is North Korea.

South Korea's Navy On Alert After North Issues Warning Of Conflict | AHN | February 1, 2009

Seoul, South Korea (AHN) - North Korea issued another warning on Sunday, threatening South Korea of a possible military conflict as the former try to restructure its foreign policies against South Korea amid mounting tension in the Korean Peninsula.

The reports on Sunday said the South Korean Defense Ministry officials have indicated that the country's navy will remain on high alert along the western sea border.

The Communist country warned that it will abandon all the peace agreements with its southern neighbor, adding that he is confident that it's army has grown to be "invincible"

Oh, you mean they DON'T respect weakness, and they perceive our willingness to negotiate from a position of dis-advantage as being a sign we ARE weak?

Wow. Who could have seen THAT coming?

J.

Found a database that has the professions of congress members before they got elected. Just for grins, I tried the following terms.

Engineer - 4 Representatives.
Doctor - 1 Senator, 6 Representatives
Lawyer/Attorney - 43 Senators, 145 Representatives

I'm wondering if that isn't part of our problems right there. Lawyers (in my humble opinion) aren't particularly concerned with reality - they're concerned with winning their cases or causes, regardless of the results for the other side. If you translate THAT into politics, what it'll mean is you'll do everyting you can to make sure your constituents are taken care of - and I think what we're seeing nationwide is a result of an inability to look beyond their need to 'win their case for their clients' to see what's best for the country as a whole. Obviously, what they WANT is what's best for the country, right? How could they think otherwise?

ONE MILLION LAWYERS
by Tom Paxton

Humankind has survived some disasters, I'm sure.
Like locusts and flash floods and flu.
There's never a moment when we've been secure
From the ills that the flesh is heir to.
If it isn't a war, it's some gruesome disease.
If it isn't disease, then it's war.
But there's worse still to come, and I'm asking you please
How the world's gonna take any more?

(CHORUS:)
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers,
One million lawyers, one million lawyers.
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers.
How much can a poor nation stand?

The world shook with dread of Atilla the Hun
As he conquered with fire and steel,
And Genghis and Kubla and all of the Kahns
Ground a groaning world under the heel.
Disaster, disaster, so what else is new?
We've suffered the worst and then some.
So I'm sorry to tell you, my suffering friends,
Of the terrible scourge still to come.
(CHORUS)
(BREAK:)
Oh, a suffering world cries for mercy
As far as the eye can see.
Lawyers around every bend in the road,
Laywers in every tree,
Lawyers in restaurants, lawyers in clubs,
Lawyers behind every door,
Behind windows and potted plants, shade trees and shrubs,
Lawyers on pogo sticks, lawyers in politics!

(Yeah, he thought he was making a funny there... ed.)

(CHORUS)
In spring there's tornadoes and rampaging floods,
In summer it's heat stroke and draught.
There's Ivy League football to ruin the fall,
It's a terrible scourge, without doubt.
There are blizzards to batter the shivering plain.
There are dust storms that strike, but far worse
Is the threat of disaster to shrivel the brain,
It's the threat of implacable curse.
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers,
One million lawyers, one million lawyers.
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers.
How much can a poor nation stand?
How much can a poor nation stand!

J.

LED Lighting

This is not quite there yet, though. It's close - but not not quite at a point where I'm willing to shell out for bulbs of dubious ability.

Maybe another year or so - with luck.

J.

Яolcats

Varying degrees of funny. Caution - SFW.

J.

And what would it take to clear it?

Obama spokesman defends ethics standards

WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite the tax problems faced by high-level nominees, and the exceptions made to the no-lobbyists pledge, President Barack Obama's spokesman is defending the administration's ethical standards.

Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday, "The bar that we set is the highest that any administration in the country has ever set."

Bar cleared.

I wonder what the next thing will be?

J.

"Mum" had 80 women raped for suicide missions | Herald Sun

A WOMAN suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.

Samira Jassam, 51, was arrested by Iraqi police and confessed to recruiting the women and orchestrating dozens of attacks.

In a video confession, she explained how she had mentally prepared the women for martyrdom operations, passed them on to terrorists who provided explosives, and then took the bombers to their targets.

J.

And it doesn't even taste that good in the first place.

Washington Times - CBO: Obama stimulus harmful over long haul

President Obama's economic recovery package will actually hurt the economy more in the long run than if he were to do nothing, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

CBO, the official scorekeepers for legislation, said the House and Senate bills will help in the short term but result in so much government debt that within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually leading to a lower Gross Domestic Product over the next 10 years than if the government had done nothing.

J.

I wonder how many people are looking at Obama now and going "Where's the smooth, slick politician I voted for?" Who are looking at what's going on in Washington and thinking - "$800 billion here, $800 billion there, and pretty soon you're looking at serious money - how are we going to pay it back?"

I wonder how many of them are waking up and going - "Damn. What was I THINKING? This bozo doesn't have a CLUE!"

Charles Krauthammer - The Fierce Urgency of Pork

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

J.

Officials say tentative stimulus deal reached

WASHINGTON (AP) - Amid stunning new job losses and yet another bank failure, key senators and the White House reached tentative agreement Friday night on an economic stimulus measure at the heart of President Barack Obama's recovery plan. Two officials said the emerging agreement was for a bill with a $780 billion price tag, but there was no immediate confirmation.

The tentative agreement capped a tense day of back room negotiations in which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, joined by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, sought to attract the support of enough Republicans to give the measure the needed 60-vote majority.

Well, the voters wanted change. Let's see just how much of it we're all left with in a couple of years...

J.

Then who CAN you trust?

MMR doctor Andrew Wakefield fixed data on autism - Times Online

THE doctor who sparked the scare over the safety of the MMR vaccine for children changed and misreported results in his research, creating the appearance of a possible link with autism, a Sunday Times investigation has found.

Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition.
The research was published in February 1998 in an article in The Lancet medical journal. It claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab. The team also claimed to have discovered a new inflammatory bowel disease underlying the children’s conditions.

However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal.

Sigh.

So how many parents have kept their kids from getting shots for MMR? Enough so the measles cases in England and Wales went from 56 in 1998 to 1346 in 2008.

All to avoid a connection that didn't seem to exist in the first place.

J.

Bush-era offshore drilling plan shelved - Environment- msnbc.com

The preliminary plan drawn up by the Bush administration would have authorized 31 energy exploration lease sales between 2010 and 2015 for tracts along the East Coast and off the coasts of Alaska and California.

The Republican lawmakers cited a study that concluded the untapped offshore oil and gas reserves would create more than 160,000 jobs by 2030 and provide the government with $1.7 trillion in royalties on the oil and gas drilled.

The Interior Department estimates that U.S. coastal waters hold 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that have yet to be discovered.

Wow. Good thing those genuises in Washington are so smart!

J.

Administration Officials Met With Laughter At Bailout Briefing

Administration officials were greeted with sarcasm and laughter Monday night when they briefed lawmakers and congressional staff on Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's new financial-sector bailout project, according to people who were in the room.

The laughter was at its height when Obama officials explained that the White House planned to guarantee a wide swath of toxic assets -- which they referred to as "legacy assets" -- but wouldn't be asking Congress for money. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), a bailout opponent in the fall, asked the officials to give Congress the total dollar figure for which they were on the hook. The officials said that they couldn't provide a number, a response met by chuckling that was bipartisan, but tilted toward the GOP side. By guaranteeing the assets, Geithner hopes he can persuade the private sector to purchase a portion of them.

J.

Countdown (actually up) to the UNIX Epoch time being 1234567890!

Only 2 days, 19 hours, 15 minutes and 18 secondsuntil the Epoch Time is 1234567890! (Friday, February 13th 2009, 23:31:30 UTC)

Enjoy!

J.

Taxpayers may have to cover octuplet mom's costs

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A big share of the financial burden of raising Nadya Suleman's 14 children could fall on the shoulders of California's taxpayers, compounding the public furor in a state already billions of dollars in the red.

Even before the 33-year-old single, unemployed mother gave birth to octuplets last month, she had been caring for her six other children with the help of $490 a month in food stamps, plus Social Security disability payments for three of the youngsters. The public aid will almost certainly be increased with the new additions to her family.

Also, the hospital where the octuplets are expected to spend seven to 12 weeks has requested reimbursement from Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program, for care of the premature babies, according to the Los Angeles Times. The cost has not been disclosed.

Word of the public assistance has stoked the furor over Suleman's decision to have so many children by having embryos implanted in her womb.

"It appears that, in the case of the Suleman family, raising 14 children takes not simply a village but the combined resources of the county, state and federal governments," Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten wrote in Wednesday's paper. He called Suleman's story "grotesque."

This is what happens when someone wires up their biological alarm clock to one of these...

J.

Porkula. Spendulus. Whatever you want to call it.

A real fast way to watch $800 BILLION dollars get pissed away. This has smelled so much like a scam from the very beginning, with the non-availability of the details, the rampant insistance that it has to be passed NOW, you can't WAIT, people are LOSING JOBS, we've got to pass it NOWNOWNOWNOWNOW!!!!!!!!!

The mask has slipped.

The face underneath is depressingly familiar, isn't it? How long do you think before a serious call to nationalize our industries is sounded? And "5-year" plans are proposed to make sure everyone gets all they need?

J.

YouTube - GOP Leader Boehner Floor Speech Opposing Democrats' Trillion-Dollar Spending Bill

And they didn't even read it before voting for it.

Words fail - but boy, they're sulfurous.

J.

But isn't this what any scammer or grifter does when they close the deal? Get out of town and CELEBRATE?

WHAT'S THE RUSH? - New York Post

After pushing Congress for weeks to hurry up and pass the massive $787 billion stimulus bill, President Obama promptly took off for a three-day holiday getaway.

Obama arrived at his home in Chicago on Friday, and treated wife Michelle to a Valentine's Day dinner downtown last night. The couple was spotted leaving upscale Table Fifty-Two, which specializes in Southern cuisine, with the first lady toting what appeared to be a doggie bag.

J.

Whenever one political party is accusing the other of corruption... and trumpeting their own virtue (or at least, not mentioning it...)

The Associated Press: Analysis: Democrats self-destructing over ethics

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration and the new Congress are quickly handing over to Republicans the same "culture of corruption" issue that Democrats used so effectively against the GOP before coming to power.

Freshman Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., is only the latest embarrassment.

Senate Democrats accepted Burris because they believed what he told them: He was clean. Burris now admits he tried to raise money for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who authorities say sought to sell President Barack Obama's former Senate seat.

"The story seems to be changing day by day," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Wednesday.

The political mess for the Democratic Party, however, isn't Burris' conduct alone; it's the pattern that has developed so quickly over the past few months.

They got into a majority beating that particular issue - and now it turns out they're nowhere near so neat and clean and above reproach as they were trying to portray themselves.

Funny how that works, isn't it? The folks screaming loudest about corruption may be the most corrupt.

J.

AP Interview: Transportation secretary says taxing how much we drive may replace gasoline tax -- Newsday.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood says he wants to consider taxing motorists based on how many miles they drive rather than how much gasoline they burn — an idea that has angered drivers in some states where it has been proposed.

Gasoline taxes that for nearly half a century have paid for the federal share of highway and bridge construction can no longer be counted on to raise enough money to keep the nation's transportation system moving, LaHood said in an interview with The Associated Press.

But there's the rub - it's SIMPLE.

Just because something is possible - installing a GPS tracking system on EVERY vehicle, and tracking their mileage... including whether its on highways, secondary roads and the time of day - doesn't mean it's the RIGHT solution or the way to go. And we won't even talk about the expansion of bureaucracy that'll be needed to IMPLEMENT this....

Oh, wait. I'm looking at THAT like it's a BAD thing, aren't I?

Well, in 2008 the electorate voted for 'change'. Looks like you'll be lucky to be left with THAT by the time Washington's finished with us.

J.

But I'm SURE Chicago will be different.

Or not.

Surveillance cams help fight crime, city says :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Politics

Mayor Daley has argued that security and terrorism won’t be an issue if his Olympic dreams come true because, by 2016, there will be a surveillance camera on every street corner in Chicago.
But even before that blanket coverage begins, the “Big Brother’’ network is being put to better use.

Call takers and dispatchers now see real-time video if there is a surveillance cameras within 150 feet of a 911 call, thanks to a $6 million upgrade to the city’s “computer-aided dispatch” system.

Technology's fine - but there DOES come a point where the costs have to be weighed against the utility and REALITY, not the desires of the moment, or the need to appear to be doing something about crime, MUST dictate what is available.

This isn't going to be cheap, and it's going to be a continuing expense. Can Chicago afford it? Can the state of Illinois afford it?

And that doesn't even begin to address the privacy issues...

J.

Give Back My Wallet, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty

Starting last September, our country has gone through six months that shook the world. We have abandoned free markets. We have abandoned democracy, in the sense of having policies that reflect the popular will. The United States has become a technocratic dictatorship.

I'm tired of watching Paulson, Geithner, Bernanke, and now the Obama Administration picking through my wallet and giving my money to people who I don't want to see get it. President Reagan expressed a vision for the fall of the Soviet Union when he said, "Mr. Brezhnev, tear down that wall." My vision for the fall of the technocratic dictatorship might be expressed as, "Mr. Obama, give back my wallet."

Well. We're at the second round of major money-throwing - and I don't expect that it's going to help the problem IMMEDIATELY. And that's what they're looking for at this point - immediate signs the problem is either fixed or improving.

The big problem I see is that Obama's got no experience in making anything actually work. You look at his record, and he's got NO successes in his history. The Annenburg challenge had no result, he quit his 'community organizer' job because he felt overwhelmed and useless, and his time in the Illinois Senate is most notable for the Grove Parc issue... which again was pretty much a failure.

But hey - in 2008 voters wanted change.

We'll be lucky indeed if there's any left.

J.

BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'

There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, a US conference has heard.

Dr Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Science said many of these worlds could be inhabited by simple lifeforms.

He was speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago.

Are we alone? How could we be? How could it possibly be that the circumstances that brought intelligent life into being are so incredibly rare that only our tiny planet out of all the billions of galaxies and their individual billions of stars could produce only ONE place that fostered life and intelligence?

When I was a kid, the original Star Trek was showing. I was captivated by the idea of going between planets, seeking out new life and civilizations. I thought, when I grew up, that we'd be moving into space - the moon first, then Mars...and then human spaceflight shut down after Apollo 17.

And I have to wonder sometimes... does a civilization (assuming there are others in the cosmos) normally end up looking up and out to the stars, and then pulling back in an agoraphobic frenzy as we did? Were we scared by the possibilities? Was the challenge too much? Or did politics have much more to do with it than a fear of the limitless deeps?

Ah, well. It's all speculation. I don't expect I'll ever know the answer.

But while there's things like the Hubble, I can at least hope other life, other civilizations, were able to get over the hurdle that we stumbled and fell over... and then we quit the race.

J.

Time to redo your mortgage? Wait - don't worry, I didn't get hacked and this isn't from a spammer. My neighbor across the street is a retired banker (who got bored, got into general contracting, and is currently getting bored again...) and while working on his computer one evening (yeah, I'm his tech support...) I asked him what the current rates were. He shrugged, said he didn't know, but would call someone. He whipped out his phone, and called Steve Knight of Amerimortgage Corporation. We talked for a few minutes, and I liked what he quoted me.

I went home, talked with my lovely bride, looked at various mortgage statements... and realized we could do away with the home equity line of credit AND mortgage insurance - IF our house appraised for enough. Heck, if it didn't go below our purchase price we'd be good.

I checked on Zillow.com - and we're still doing pretty good. Running the numbers... it was doable.

I called back Mr. Knight, and he emailed me forms which I printed out, filled out, scanned back in, and sent back. (Put the jpegs into a Word document, then used CutePDFMaker to make sure it was portable...) I also scanned all relevant documents, and sent them. He put things into the process - we had the house appraised, and then the market stalled. What normally took 48 hours was taking two weeks or more.

Finally the jam broke free, and our loan floated to the top of the pile. An attorney came out to the house with the papers we needed to sign, AND logged in to have us electronically sign some paperwork. She was here for a bit over an hour - and when she left we were the proud owners of a new mortgage. (Well, don't know if proud would be the right word - but I sure felt better about this signing than I did the one when we bought the house!) It rolled together the HELOC and our previous mortgage balance, and dropped the payment to boot. It felt kind of strange to NOT go to an office to fill out paperowrk, or do the signing - but it's something I can live with.

We didn't withdraw any of the equity in the house - we won't be tapping THAT unless we absolutely have to. Your situation may vary, of course, as well as the amount of equity you've got (or not) or want to get. And of course - READ AND UNDERSTAND THE PAPERWORK AND NUMBERS, DUMMY! CAVEAT EMPTOR! Ask questions! Check everything!

But if you were thinking about refinancing - why not give him a try? Steve Knight, Amerimortgage Corporation, 678-261-1200. You can tell him I sent you - not that it'll get you a better rate, but I told him I was going to be blogging about this, and he'd like to know where you found out about his services.

J.

Pill to erase bad memories: Ethical furore over drugs 'that threaten human identity' | Mail Online

A drug which appears to erase painful memories has been developed by scientists.The astonishing treatment could help sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder and those whose lives are plagued by hurtful recurrent memories. But British experts said the breakthrough raises disturbing ethical questions about what makes us human.

Emotional pain is a GREAT teacher -- I'd even go out on a limb and say that it causes people to NOT repeat painful mistakes in relationships and eventually teaches them that what they WANT isn't necessarily what would make them happy, or would even be good for them in the long run.

So you take away the pain - how do you learn to avoid the pain? Or if you're the sort who gets remoresful, how do you learn to not cause the things you're sorry for in the first place?

Pop a pill - forget your ills....

No - I don't think I'll partake, thank you.

J.

Guantanamo Meets Geneva Rules, Study Finds - The New York Times

A report concludes the prison complies with humanitarian guidelines, but offers recommendations, according to two government officials who have read parts of it.

J.

Nikki Finke窶冱 Deadline Hollywood Daily ｻ OSCARS CRISIS! Hollywood Frustrations And Fears Over Sunday's Awards; Stars And Advertisers Give Show Cold Shoulder

The people who put on the Academy Awards are in a flopsweat panic as the hours tick away before this year's big broadcast, which is having its major rehearsal and tech run-throughs today.

For weeks now, they've been begging me and the other journalists who cover the Oscars not to trash the planning and performances for this year's telecast like we have in years past. Because their frustration and fear is that, if Sunday's top-to-bottom reworked show can't bring back viewers after 2008's sunk to its lowest ratings ever, then nothing will. And the worst part is that not even Hollywood wants to participate in the Oscars anymore.

I don't plan on watching the Oscars - most of the movies (aside from the Batman flick) I've never heard of, and seeing the previews for the few I DID hear of didn't exactly inspire me to seek them out. With the cost of a movie these days, I want something special, something exceptional, something uplifiting, something interesting - not something that'll make me feel like my emotions have been drug down five miles of bad road and then insulted by the producers.

Don't give me fifteen layers of 'messages and meaning', don't give me something so complex I need to create a flowchart afterwards to figure out who did what to whom. Have a good guy and a bad guy, have the bad guy get punished and the good guy get rewarded. Tell a good story - the rest will take care of itself. Get over the loathing of middle America and traditional American values like courage, honesty, hard work and thrift, and celebrate what made this country strong.

THAT will get folks back in the theaters.

(Went to see 'Coraline' last night, by the way - it likely won't win an Oscar but it was an excellent film anyway. Interesting story, good plot, and a very unusual blend of stop-motion and CG graphics. It's worth the money, and if you can, see it in 3D.)

J.

$1 Trillion last week.

$500 bil this week?

Another Huge Spending Bill Planned For Next Week - HUMAN EVENTS

Here we go again! House Republicans are bracing for another onslaught of out-of-control Democrat-authored spending as the omnibus bill is expected to hit the floor of the House as early as next week.

And it’ll be yet another spending bill House Republicans and the American people have not yet been allowed to see and the Democrats haven’t even bothered to read. As if the $1.2 trillion Democrats spent on “stimulus” last week wasn’t enough of a disaster, this colossal bill encompasses the remaining nine appropriations bills for fiscal year 2009 sloughed off by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

House minority leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) called upon the Speaker Thursday to release the voluminous spending bill online without delay. “If Democratic leaders plan to schedule a vote on the half-trillion dollar omnibus spending bill next week, they should post the legislation online immediately so the American people have adequate time to read the measure and understand what is in it,” Boehner said. “My colleagues in the Republican leadership and I made this request two weeks ago, and to date, our request has gone unanswered. Time is running short, and American taxpayers deserve to know how their hard-earned tax dollars will be used under this legislation.”

(Yeah, right.)

And with every new bailout, every new handout - things just keep getting better.

Major stock market indexes fall to 1997 levels - Yahoo! Finance

NEW YORK (AP) -- The major market indexes have staggered to their lowest levels in a decade, pulled lower by investors rapidly waning confidence.

Getting messy, ain't it? Guess that's what happens when you smash open the federal budget, and grab all you can for a 'stimulus' bill. But that's not all they're gonna grab - there's still a lot of money left in the economy, and that can't be allowed!

J.

More speeches from the One. Well, THAT should help, shouldn't it?

Speeches are cheap. The Democrats know that very well. You can give speeches promising everything to everyone - you can give speeches about how this group will get so much and that group will get something taken from them, and you can end up getting votes! It's AMAZING! And the REALLY great thing is, most of the time the voter won't remember the promises!

But Obama's already WON. He's the President, the man in the hot seat, the man who has to come up with a PLAN. Not in six months, not next week - he needs to figure out what to do NOW.

And unfortunately, the Democrats haven't got much in the way of tools to fix things at this point. They've been pretty busy passing out money, but that's a lot like throwing popcorn to pigeons. They'll eat it, and all you get back in return is shit, and they're going to want MORE or they'll start pecking at YOU.

As Obama's been finding out.

I think the best thing Obama could do at this point is stop with the bailouts and pork. Go back into the Stimulus Bill, and take out EVERY increase in government spending and government project.

Yeah, all those little bits and pieces sound good - but so does a payday loan commercial. What you end up paying is WAY more than the amount you figure from the start. And each little program STARTED will be continued for decades to come... and they'll ALL have to be paid for. Better not to start them in the first place.

After that, announce a policy of no more bailouts. What's out there is all there's going to be. Live with it.

Yes, the unions will scream - after all, if GM isn't bailed out what will happen to their membership? Perhaps it's time for their members to decide if they'd rather keep their jobs at a lower pay rate, or keep their higher pay rate but lose the job.

Once people see that things are at least somewhat stable (as in 'not going to vary tremendously') then they can figure out what to do with their investments and businesses. Uncertainly is a killer in the marketplace - and we're seeing that.

But he'll probably have more promises of bailouts, and programs, and government created jobs. So don't be surprised if the Dow drops another 500 points in the next week.

Yeah, it stinks. It's going to be a LONG 4 years.

J.

TED: Ideas worth spreading

There's a whole lot of short lectures and talks here - and they're interesting.

Maybe about SETI?

How about Energy?

Or Invention?

Or the Scientific Method?

They range in length from 10 to 30 minutes. Enjoy!

J.

Is it too early to start preparing the political battleground for the 2012 election?

My gut feeling would be yes - but based on the Eternal Campaign waged over the LAST 4 years, I'm thinking 'No'.

The reason I'm asking is that there seem to be two apparent front-runners in the Republican camp - Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal. Both are new faces, both are conservative, and more importantly - both are successful governers of their states.

And I'm already seeing efforts by nominal leftists to discredit Jindal. What happened to Palin shouldn't have happened to a dog - and now the same effort is being put towards characterizing Jindal as an unstable Christian fundamentalist.

The internet never forgets - and that can be a curse as well as a blessing. 3 years from now, folks looking to knock down Jindal can pull up what's going on now and spread it around. The information, the meme may not be accurate or true - but since when has that been a handicap in political discourse? We've already established that truth isn't needed when it comes to political speech, and the more sensational the story the more willing people are to remember it... and repeat it. So lurid is in - context is out. Truth and honor are... expendable.

Bad as the 2008 election cycle was, I think we're looking at worse to come. Especially if, as it's looking, Obama's policies cause the economy to dive even more. The people who are going to be supporting Obama's re-election won't let any niceties stand in their way. After all, it's the Chicago way...

I've often wondered how an aware citizen of Rome must have felt during the time the Empire was contracting and splintering. Now I think I understand.

J.

ABC News: Obama to Seek New Assault Weapons Ban

Apparently all those black market automatic weapons and grenades being sold here in the US are flowing across the border like water....

A State Department travel warning issued Feb. 20, 2009, reflected government concerns about the violence.

"Some recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades," the warning said. "Large firefights have taken place in many towns and cities across Mexico, but most recently in northern Mexico, including Tijuana, Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez."

They'll also be aware of the fact that GRENADES not only aren't easily available to anyone but the military - and even then they're tightly controlled - but they're unlikely to be sold to private individuals here in the US then shipped in large quantities to Mexico.

If Mexico is having a problem with automatic weapons and grenade battles amongst their drug cartels, they might want to consider the firearms are far more easily (and cheaply) picked up from the various countries the drugs are coming from.

Please note there are several linked stories (from early 2008) available about firearms purchases in US gun stores - but the problem there would seem to be the gun store OWNERS knowingly looking the other way, or actively cooperating. That would seem to be a problem for the ATF to handle through actual LAW ENFORCEMENT.

But that's not really what it's all about, is it? It's about the government once again restricting weapons that the legal, law-abiding gun owner may own.

At this rate, Obama is going to make Warren G. Harding look GOOD.

J.

CONGRESS: BIG BUCKS TO CANOES & TATTOOS...
Obama Budget Proposes Up to $750B More Bank-Rescue...
$75.5B More Iraq, Afghanistan Combat Operations...
WSJ: TAX THE RICH: Take everything they earn, and it still won't be enough...
'It's more Obama Robin Hood'...
$634B 'Health-Care Fund'...
FIDELITY exec slams 'New Deal II'; Blames feds for crisis...
Outlook grim for costly initiatives...
Bernanke again spurns talk of nationalization...

But the REAL capper -

'09 BUDGET SPENDS $11,833 FOR EVERY AMERICAN

Hope and change, hope and change.... Hope someone in Washington is going to throw you some change!

J.

in any previous presidency when people were mad enough to start demonstrating AGAINST the President in the first 100 days of his tenure.

But the out of control spending by Obama, and the announced tax increases, and the 'Stimulus' bill seems to have given a real impetus to protestors. And about all I can say is, if they could get that sort of crowd on a soggy Friday in Atlanta, on short notice, with little media coverage - then I think Washington ought to be pretty concerned.

11Alive.com | Atlanta, GA | Video

Yes, you can tell yourself you've got a 'mandate to bring change to the US' - but WE are the final arbiters of that change, and if we don't want it, political survival is questionable.

If it were on a Saturday, I'd have taken the little guy down to see what citizens have a right to do. First Amendment free speech is a powerful thing...

J.