Arrogance

The President held his health care summit yesterday and, as is his wont, dominated the process ... grabbing most of the face time, continually interrupting many Republicans when they managed to squeeze in a few salient points, slipping Senator Paul Ryan the sly finger when he had questioned Obama's arithmetic, and reminding John McCain that it was he who had been elected President. (Oh, how I wish that McCain had said, "could I have a Mulligan on that?") Our President's hubris is becoming his signature characteristic ... just like Gerald Ford was defined by his clumsiness, Bill Clinton, by his mendacity, and George W. Bush, by his oratorical ineptitude. Why Obama is so arrogant is a subject for historians, but may I suggest that his disdain meter often reads all the way over to "hatred" ... hatred for conservatives, hatred for this country's exceptionalism, hatred for our middle and upper classes, hatred for many of our industries and companies, and maybe even hatred for capitalism itself. And this haughtiness, I suggest, may well be his undoing. I would not be that unhappy with this outcome

Now onto a sidebar brought out by yesterday's subject. Howie Carr, a talk-show host here in Boston was taking calls about health care. Someone phoned in from Bangor, Maine and said that the parking lot at the East Maine Health Center in Bangor told the story better than any of these Congressional debates. He said that his cruise through this parking lot showed that at least half the license plates were from Canada. (Also note that the Premiere of Canada also traveled to Florida to have heart surgery ... as opposed to subjecting himself to the vagaries of Canada's socialized health care.) What if Obama and the Congressional Democrats manage to clone the Canadian health-care system here in the United States? To where then are we going to travel to get better health care ... Mexico?

Off Balance

The current sovereign-debt crisis in Greece is apparently caused by unfunded off-balance sheet transactions (reportedly aided and abetted by Goldman Sachs ... so what else is new?) I am over seventy years old and I can't remember a single financial crisis, either private or public, which was not caused in whole or in part by off-balance-sheet shenanigans -- last year's banking crisis, Mexico's near collapse in 1994, the Enron scandal, AIG, Tyco, etc. ... the sliminess goes on and on. How can the accounting community, which has created such a beautiful mechanism for faithfully representing the fiscal health of corporations, charities, and public trusts, continue to allow these entities to subvert this process with off-balance-sheet transactions of any type? It is as though the Swan Lake ballet was being danced in a garbage dump ... or Mozart was being played with kazoos.

Until such time as veracity is returned to the accounting profession, we will continue to enjoy a conga-line of financial crises into the forever future. And this, unfortunately, includes how we, as a nation, keep our own books.

Do You Know ...

where your children (and grandchildren and great grandchildren) are? This woman has built candy-covered gingerbread houses all over California ... just waiting to lure our innocents into her fiscal oven. She is using promises of free-health-care gumdrops, no more carbon-dioxide spinach, chocolate-covered civilian trials for terrorists, and ice-cream-sundae federal deficits into the hereafter to seduce them to their doom. And when she has corralled all our little ones and turned them into cinnamon cookies, she will use their rendered baby fat to keep her ruby-red lips pouty. Please! please! do not let your children again vote for this cackling crone.

"Corpse Man"

Dan Quayle could not have said it better than Barack Obama at yesterday's Prayer Breakfast ... referring (three times) to a Navy corpsman. I didn't see or hear these Presidential snafus on any news show this AM. Amen.

Tortured Logic?

Indulge me the following scenario: A Muslim man in his early twenties is picked up in Boston because his cell phone has been the source of a series of suspiciously encoded text messages to a known Al Qaeda operative in Yemen ("The pumpkin pie is in the oven," etc.) These intercepts were done by the NSA under the aegis of the American Patriot Act. (Trust me, they can do this.) He is then found to be in this country illegally ... and when his clothing is scanned by a Geiger Counter it exhibits a dangerously high level of radioactivity. His laptop computer is also found to have detailed and credible diagrams of a suitcase nuclear weapon. Other notable intelligence suggests that an illicit atomic bomb has been smuggled into the United States and is now hidden somewhere, ready to be detonated.

For you Pollyannas who believe that such an event is impossible, please explain 9/11. Now, how do you, as our head of Homeland Security, deal with this captured Muslim man to find out the who, what, when, where and how of this possible devastating terrorist attack ... knowing that it might kill hundreds of thousand of Americans and set back our economy for possibly a generation? And, obviously, time is of the essence. Would you immediately and continuously waterboard him until he spilled the beans or, perhaps, read him his Miranda rights and lawyer him up?

A Stopped Clock Is Twice Right

President Obama occasionally gets things right. In his State of the Union address he called for more "safe, clean nuclear power plants." And yesterday he called for $54 billion of federal loan guarantees to those who would build this new generation of nuclear power. See: Loan Guarantees. IF we can take him at his word (the big "if" is on purpose), then this would be an important step forward in the U.S.'s attempt to achieve energy independence. In this speech he also mentioned more offshore drilling for gas and oil. This would be wonderful if it happened, but my cynicism takes over here and such a development (ANWR too?) I'm afraid, is even more suspect.

It would seem to this author that the real path to our nation's energy independence might require the following steps:
1) Build as many new nuclear power plants as can be economically financed and open up Yucca Mountain for long-term nuclear waste disposal (if required).
2) Aim to generate all our electrical needs from nuclear energy (east and west coast) and from coal-fired plants (middle America). No more natural gas and oil-fired electrical power plants should be given permits.
3) Encourage all Americans to heat their homes with natural gas and help build the infrastructure and offer the tax incentives to accomplish this. The objective should be no more oil-heated homes.
4) Specify that kerosene, diesel fuel, and gasoline are the most desirable fuels for transportation vehicles (air, rail, and ground). Offer the necessary incentives to achieve better mileage in these vehicles (including hybrid technology). Investigate liquefied coal as a long-term vehicular fuel option.
5) Set a national goal of ceasing all foreign oil imports within ten years (using the above methodologies and including oil recovery from our vast oil shale deposits.) I predict that the price of Mideast oil would plummet as a consequence of just such a goal setting.
6) Stop wasting federal funds on solar, tidal, geothermal, and wind-power projects and use these funds instead on the above items. Let the private sector fund any of these "green" projects that make any economic sense (likely very few).

I can dream can't I? Tick ... tick ... tick.

Pinocchio

Barack Obama is sure to try to dazzle us with his State of the Union address tonight. I doubt that any attendee will be shouting out "You lie!", but I still suspect that mendacity will creep into his rhetoric. Ben Shapiro has written an insightful piece in "Town Hall.com" to help us decipher what will oil its way out Obama's cigarette-stained lips tonight. See Obama's Lexicon of Rhetorical Devices. This is one of the funniest columns I have read in quite a while. May I suggest that you print it out and keep it by your side if you plan to watch or listen to Obama's teleprompter tonight. (Thanks to Howie Carr for pointing this column out to us.)

Stealth Socialism

While our nation's attention is diverted toward the Scott Brown upset victory in Massachusetts, the White House and the Senate are quietly pushing forward more of their stealth socialist agenda. Not satisfied with owning two auto companies, keeping the banking industry under its thumb, attempting to become the country's only health-care insurer, and maneuvering to tax the U.S. utility industry out of existence (with Cap-and-Trade), the Obamites are now on the verge of grabbing the $100 billion per year student loan business. See student loan takeover ... and also please click through to the "Wall Street Journal" article to read more of the details.

This sotto voce move by Tom Harkin (with the clear approval of President Obama), will finish what comrade Nancy Pelosi started back in September and will surely squeeze the private sector out of the student loan business in a very few years. To paraphrase P.J. Clark, "If you thought student loans cost the U.S. taxpayers a lot of money, wait until our government runs everything."

By the bye, what makes these transplanted Chicago thugs who currently run our Obamafied government think that they can ever manage the U.S.'s $14 trillion economy when they have never have run so much as a corner candy store?

Head(s) Should Roll

President Obama recently called it a "screwup" in the U.S. intelligence community over the Nigerian Islamic terrorist's attempted crotch-bombing of an airliner over Detroit. Now our President is pointing his finger at these same intelligence agencies for their inability to connect the dots. But as the old canard goes: "When you point your finger outward, three more fingers point back at you." By this I mean that Obama's National Security Czar, John Brennan, after a dismal performance on Fox News this past Sunday (see: Dodge and Weave), has, up until now, evaded any culpability for these "systemic failures" (also Obama's words).

But, what hasn't been generally reported is that John Brennan was the primary person responsible for the software and database that was built to connect these dots, see: the Rest of the Story. He,"having designed and built our multi-agency terrorist threat integration center", now is charged by our empty-suit (but stuffed-shirt) of a President to fix things. From 2005 to 2008 he was the CEO of Analysis Corp. (see: The Analysis Corporation) which spent $50 million of taxpayers funds to build the terrorist-screening system that was supposed to be the ultimate in dot-connectors. Oops.

May I humbly suggest that John Brennan's head clearly should be the first to roll ... closely followed by Janet Napolitano's.

Signal Flags

How is it that the Bush/Chaney administration carried this country through seven years terrorist-attack free while the Obama/Biden duo has had three serious events in its first eleven months? Personally, I don't believe that our operational intelligence apparatus has appreciably changed. However, what has changed is the signals that this administration is sending to Al-Qaeda, viz: the planned closing of Gitmo, no more waterboarding, turning terrorist acts into criminal offenses, renaming the "war on terrorism" into "overseas contingency operations", the non-existence of our "High Value Detainee Interrogation Group" (HIG) ten months after Obama announced its creation, making a Girl Scout leader the head of Homeland Security, closing down military tribunals, moving the KSM trial to New York City, the president's slow, low-key responses to each terrorist act, sending Chinese Islamic terrorists to Bermuda, refocusing our government on global-warming/health-care/fire-hose domestic spending, and finally blaming everything that goes wrong on Bush.

One other point that needs to be reiterated: during the Bush years the war in Iraq was a magnet that drew disenchanted Muslims from around the globe to sacrifice themselves there in the name of Allah. Now, that Iraq is being deemphasized, many more venues have become attractive to would-be martyrs ... including unfortunately the U.S.A. This last reason clearly is not of Obama's doing alone, but our haste to leave Iraq may turn out to be a gigantic mistake ... witness the dramatic increase in terrorists bombings there recently.

So, it may be that style is just as important as substance in combating the terrorist threat we suffer. And, if Obama does not do a convincing 180-degree turn in his rhetoric, we may be in for three more years of "isolated incidents".

Surf's Up

Never being one to resist an opportunity to criticize Barack Obama I note that he has just decreed that many previously classified government documents shall be open to public scrutiny ... even over any objection by our intelligence community. See: Classless Declassifying

Our ever alert administration in its war on "overseas contingency operations" (as exemplified by its surf's-up response to Al-Qaeda's recent attempt to take down a Detroit-bound airliner) has once again softened our country's defense posture (need I list here all their linguine-spined, knuckle-headed moves?). The question I have is (actually its a question my wife had this AM when we heard this news on "Morning Joe") -- Does this declassification by Obama also apply to the thousands of pages of text of our new health-care legislation?

Ye Olde ...

My 50th college reunion is coming up and one of the ideas to entertain us crotchety old men is to publish a list of things that weren't around when we were pea-green freshmen -- personal computers, GPS systems, etc. I, on the other hand, believe that an equally entertaining compendium would be those things that were there then but now are missing. So, I have attempted to recall a number of them in hopes readers will follow suit. Basically, the game is to list things that were commonplace in the 1950's but are now not to be (or at least rare).

Here goes: dial phones, Blatz beer, crinolines, white-wall tires, canasta, Uncle Miltie, Ipana toothpaste, women's girdles, the Rhinegold girl, rabbit-ear antennas, statesmen politicians, the "Hit Parade", real silver U.S. coins, seamed stockings, portable typewriters, S&H green stamps, necker knobs on steering wheels, motor scooters, belt-in-the-back chinos, DUZ ("does everything"), 45/78 vinyl records, white-buck shoes, radio soap operas ("Portia Faces Life"), "Gunsmoke", Vitalis hair tonic

What do you reminisce about?

Merry Christmas ...

or the Holiday of your choice.

(Painting by Grandma Moses)

Snow-Bound

"Within our beds awhile we heard
The wind that round the gables roared,
With now and then a ruder shock,
Which made our very bedsteads rock.
We heard the loosened clapboards tost,
The board-nails snapping in the frost;
And on us through the unplastered wall,
Felt the light sifted snowflakes fall.
But sleep stole on, as sleep will do
When hearts are light and life is new;
Faint and more faint the murmurs grew,
Till in the summer-land of dreams
They softened to the sound of streams,
Low stir of leaves and dip of oars,
And lapsing waves on quiet shores."

John Greenleaf Whittier

Pity Citi

Citigroup has just been granted a $18 billion tax break by the IRS (Treasury Dept.) in order that it might repay its TARP loan with a massively reduced tax liability. See Citi Tax Break. Now the fact that Tim Geithner is the Secretary of the Treasury (and an admitted personal tax cheat) and is a long-time protege of Robert Rubin who is attached at the waist with Citigroup (a former Chairman of the Board) and picked Geithner for his job has nothing to do with this Treasury travesty. Basically it appears to this blogger that our government is effectively giving Citigroup money so that it then can turn around and give it back while at the same time eliminating much of its TARP liability. This is absolute BS with a capital "B.S." When are we, as those wimps electing these political poltroons, going to rise up and say "NO"? Geithner should not only not enjoy his august status in Washington, but he should be the first prisoner in that high-security prison that our other corrupt Washington pols are buying in Illinois (co-incidence) to house the Gitmo prisoners.

What is even more gratingly hilarious is that the current Chairman of Citigroup, Richard Parsons, just stiffed Barack Obama (along with the heads of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) when they were supposed to meet with Obama in the Oval Office to discuss increasing loans to small businesses. And Geithner's allowing Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to become "banks" as opposed to investment banks is another of his mortal sins. As a result, both Morgan and Goldman can now borrow money from the New York Federal Reserve (which Geithner previously ran) at effectively no cost ... and then turn around and speculate in the Credit Default Swap and Interest Rate Swap markets with this ill-gotten pelf (as opposed to giving loans to businesses). I want to throw up.

Gate-Crashing-Gate

All the TV networks, cable shows, and the print media are currently obsessed with the White House gate crashing of the Salahis into Obama's first state dinner ... these "15-minute-of-famers" were on the Today Show this morning spinning their self-serving scenario. Other than the apparent lapse in Secret Service security surrounding the President, I find this another preposterous non-story story. Why does our country relish such cotton-candy events with such fascination when there are so many other under-reported and under-analyzed earth-changing events taking place? -- Iran's nuclear ambitions, Climate-gate, the Afghanistan surge, 10%+ unemployment, huge federal deficits, the growing mortgage crisis, Eric Holder's boners (terrorist's NYC trial, continued funding of ACORN, etc.), Charlie Rangel's malfeasance, and so on.

We Americans need very much to get our heads screw on properly and re-prioritize our need-to-know news interests.

CRU Cut

"CRU" stands for Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in England which has been the wellspring of much of the "research" done on global warming. Recently, its computers were hacked by party or parties unknown and 156 megabytes if embarrassing information (e-mails and computer programs among others) were posted on a Russian server. At first, there was much focus on the e-mails (see: UK Telegraph) which displayed a decidedly non-scientific approach to this subject ... exhibiting hubris, obfuscation, mendacity, and cold-heartedness. But soon thereafter, more damaging information came to light as people started sifting through the programmer's code comments (see: Climategate).

Now, having been painted into a corner, the CRU critters have decided to make public the data that was used to arrive at their world-wrenching conclusions about man-made global warming. They should also come clean on any and all of the processes they used to arrive at their results along with the statistical details of their regression models (goodness of fit measures, etc.). We should then see if their results are reproducible by acolytes and skeptics alike. I personally think that there are a lot more things that make the world's temperature go up and down ... many, I believe, much more consequential than CO2. The fact that "man-made" CO2 has become the political focus of the "climate-change" worrywarts is, I believe, another "Madness of Crowds" canard. Man, as it turns out, has a very small effect on CO2 levels ... see this rather old but revealing reference: Man's Effect)

These revelations have hopefully brought about a hiatus ... one that should cause us all to step away from the groupthink that now prevails and which has carried the world's political lemmings to dangerous economic conclusions ... until such time as we know better scientific truths (if in our lifetimes).

O-bow-ma

I'm oh so very sorry about Hiroshima ...

Deficit Hawk

What is $400 billion between friends? Recently, in this blog, I reported that the federal deficit for fiscal 2009 was $1.4 trillion. Well, I was wrong. Bernie Madoff has nothing on the U.S. Treasury Department when it comes to financial shenanigans. It turns out that our country's real deficit is closer to $1.8 trillion ... see The Real Deal. This was because our Government is treating bail-out funds as though they are not money down a rat hole ... kinda like the way Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, et alii dealt with all their "investments" in Credit Default Swaps. This is not just irresponsible, I think it may well be criminal. If Geithner can't figure out his personal income taxes, how can we expect him to keep our federal finances straight? I predict that Obama, on his up-coming visit to China, might have to bob and weave through this deficit legerdemain over his King Pao chicken.

O-bomb-a

- Unemployment at 10.2%
- 2009 deficit at $1.88 trillion
- $820+ billion of stimulus down a rat hole
- Dithering on Afghanistan military policy
- Profligate government spending
- Ultra-liberal White House inner circle (czars)
- Increasing domestic terrorism
- Multitude of proposed higher taxes
- Deteriorating Iraqi situation
- Russia/Iran nuclear kiss-up ... producing nada
- Guantanamo terrorist prisoner fiasco
- Independent uncovering of ACORN's festering corruption
- Inept response to vast Midwest flooding and power outages
- Trillions of dollars of pork to financial institutions
- Screwing Poland and the Czech Republic on missile defense
- World speaking tours to poor-mouth the U.S.
- Tepid support of Iranian election protesters
- Attempted government takeover of healthcare
- Nationalization of 2/3rds of the U.S. auto industry
- Total lack of promised administrative transparency
- Amateurish delays in delivering H1/N1 flu vaccine
- Support of a constitutionally-deposed Honduran despot
- White House usurping control of the 2010 census
- Attacks on the non-liberal media (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh)
- Cambridge police "acted stupidly" comment

All in just ten months. Did I miss any?

Hobson's Choice

He's alive (and not talking)! Now to find out what's what (accomplices, foreign contacts, future plans, etc.), should it be water-boarding or a polite and giggly interview on David Letterman?

Red Roof Inn

In the nine months since Barack Obama has been our President there have obviously been quite a number of visitors to the White House. Recently, the list of said guests has been released and it contains some interesting tidbits. The Drudge Report mentioned George Clooney, George Soros and Oprah. See: Visitor Records.

I however found a few even more interesting names (number of visits is in parens after the name.) They are Angela Davis (2), Bill Ayers (2), Jesse Jackson (6), Michael Moore (8), Al Sharpton (2), George Soros (4), and Jeremiah Wright (1). (The actor, Will Smith, was there an astounding 33 times. Is there a movie in the offing?) Nor does this list contain many other names ... excluded because of security or first-family privacy purposes. And it is not clear (perhaps purposely so) what all these visits involved or whom was met. However, in every case the leaving time was 11:59 PM which suggests to me that these were overnight stays. I'm sure more on this will come out over the ensuing days in the NY Times and Boston Globe.

Perhaps we should change the name of the White House to the Red Roof Inn?

Flu Fleecers

Walgreens and CVS are selling seasonal flu shots for around $30 a pop ... and this program has proved so popular that both store chains are running out of flu vaccine (and their stock prices are moving up). See: Flu Vaccine Shortage. The purpose of my comments here is to chastise Walgreens and CVS for their sleight-of-hand in offering this program during the public panic about the H1N1 flu outbreak. These drugstores do not make it abundantly clear that these flu shots do not protect recipients against the "swine flu". I conjecture that the vast majority of the public sheep who are getting these seasonal flu shots do not realize that they are not protected against the H1N1 virus and that the vaccine against this strain of the flu virus will not be available to the general public for at least one month.

Also many of these ovines could get this very same seasonal flu shot at their workplaces, HMOs, local community clinics. or fraternal organizations for free. I welcome readers to watch these drug store's ads on TV or read their road signs and find an explicit caveat emptor that these flu shots do not protect against the swine flu. These stores may reveal this fact to those Babbitts in line to be vaccinated ... but, by then, it may to be too late. The Walgreen and CVS Judas goats have already lead these sheep into spending their $30 for something that they think they are getting ... but are not.

Nobly Nobel

In the proud tradition of Jimmy Carter, Mohamed El-Baradei, Al Gore, Kofi Annan, and Yasser Arafat. For more names and irrationales see: Powerline's Take

Horns of a Dilemma

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has just scored the latest Baucus Senate health-care bill and said that it would be revenue neutral -- producing a $81 billion return to the Treasury over a ten year period. This has been a requirement that Obama has imposed on any health-care reform plan ... otherwise he would not sign the bill. However, the CBO also included in its calculations a $404 billion cut to Medicare benefits over this same period (see: Medicare Cuts) -- something else that Obama has vowed to oppose in a well-publicized AARP meeting (see: Obama Vows No Cuts).

So Obama is now on the horns of a dilemma. Does he, with the help of the main stream media, ignore these draconian Medicare cuts hoping that AARP and the U.S. public will not focus on this fiscal slight-of-hand (in my Google search I could find only one news article that even mentioned these Medicare cuts -- the Wall Street Journal)? Or does he refuse to sign the Baucus bill and keep his promise to America's seniors? And, even more interestingly, does AARP campaign against the Baucus bill, pointing out how its membership will bear much of the burden of health-insuring an additional 21 million non-elderly Americans? I think I know how this story will progress ... how about you?

Rush to Judgment

I am frequently derided for listening to Rush Limbaugh ... often by my blog readers. Even my wife makes me switch stations on the car radio if Rush is on. However, looking past Rush's ego and bombast, almost every day I get a novel insight from his talk-show commentary. For instance today he opened his show by pointing out how the government (including Obama) is now saying that Al-Qaeda has been substantially weakened even to the point where they are no longer a factor in Afghanistan ... see: Obama disses Al-Qaeda.

Rush, in an ah-ha moment, perceptively pointed out that, as little as nine months ago, the main-stream-media, Congressional Democrats, Eleanor Clift, and Obama were continuously and vociferously pointing out that the U.S. invasion of Iraq, our Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (aka, torture) and our Guantanamo prison were the best recruiting tools that Al-Qaeda has ever had ... thousands upon thousands of Islamic youth were flocking to sign up for their amorous date with those seventy-two virgins. Excuse me, you can't have it both ways my little-furry-friends-who-follow-each-other-into-the-North-sea. Either the Bush administration was right in fighting Islamic terrorism the way it did ... or Obama is talking up his sleeve when he says Al-Qaeda is on life support (perhaps to grease the way for his capitulation in Afghanistan?)

President Pantywaist

President Obama is acquiring a new nickname (as indicated) and, to me, this is not inappropriate. This morning he, with his typical cool, measured terms, spoke in Pittsburgh at the G20 meeting indicating that Iran has been building a secret second nuclear enrichment facility in direct violation on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement. His requested action item was that Iran needs to allow the UN's IAEA to inspect this facility in the near future. However he did not threaten additional near-term sanctions against Iran ... as did France's Sarkozy in more bellicose comments that followed Obama's. The informative moment in this revelation is that the U.S. has known for almost two years about the construction of this facility and, I'm sure Obama has also been informed of this for at least nine months.

Wow! Even with knowledge of this duplicity, Obama has still cozied up to Iran by his willingness to meet with them without preconditions ... and to wait days before he condemned, in the mildest terms, Iran's national election farce and its subsequent brutal crushing of the Iranian public demonstrations over the results. And he has canceled our stationing of anti-missile defenses in Eastern Europe much to Iran's glee. Obama's clearly new Downey-soft approach to international relations has, so far, produced little national benefit ... other than blown kisses to Obama from a raft of European appeasers. To me, Obama needs to cowboy up and start pursuing with more vigor the U.S.'s national interests ... even if this risks his rock-star image abroad.

Swinging Gates

I have held Robert Gates to be one of President Obama's better Secretarial appointments. He was a Bush holdover who had done yeoman service under our previous President. He had overseen the successful Surge Strategy in Iraq and he seemed to be a straight shooter when it came to his congressional testimony over the Defense Department's budget appropriations. He often suggested the scrapping of wasteful defense systems that were nothing more than Congressional pork. But over the last week my approbation for Gates is rapidly turning to aversion.

Firstly, Gates shaded the facts surrounding Obama's decision to cut the legs out from under Poland and the Czech Republic over our commitment to install a missile defense shield on their territory. Gates's biggest fib was that Iran did not have a credible long-range missile capability. He conveniently overlooked the fact that Iran sent a satellite into space this past winter ... see Iran Space Shot. If Iran can boost a satellite into space, it can surely send an equivalent payload anywhere in the world.

Secondly, Gates is now rationalizing Obama's decision not to decide on whether to send more troops to Afghanistan. If General McChrystal says he needs 40,000 more troops, Obama should either supply them or shut down the Afghan mission altogether. Obama's excuse for shushing McChrystal is that he wants to re-think his Afghan strategy (which he claimed he had decided last March). Obama's vacillating on this strategy in Afghanistan, after nine months in office, is, to me, unforgivable. We have service people losing their lives in this country with the potential that these sacrifices might well be in vain.

Step up Mr. Gates ... and encourage your boss to do his job one.

Maxi Shield

NOT!

The U.S. has once again dissed our friends to cuddle up to our antagonists. See: no missile defense. Eastern Europe (in particular Poland and the Czech Republic) have been left hanging out to dry by President Obama so he can appear to "change" the dynamics of the re-emerging cool war. He is canceling what was our former guarantee of an antimissile shield for these oft-trodden-upon countries ... so much for the word of an erstwhile great nation.

"New Europe," as Chaney dubbed them, is once again being kicked to the curb and is even more at the mercy of Putin's Russia and its retaliatory squeezing of natural gas and oil supplies. The old Warsaw Pact bloc has put its head on the block for us only to have it chopped off. They surely will be diminished even more now that they have been cut loose by our great appeaser in the "hope" of some will-o-the-wisp future help from the Big Bad Bear in taming Iran. This is head-hanging shameful on our part and, I predict, will not bring any of the expected benefit. But then again the American public did vote last year for "hope" and "change."

Bad Sports

Being that we now seem to be moving toward remaking the foundations of our society, I have another radical idea -- let's eliminate all professional sports. One has to admit that, in the United States, professional sports waste a lot of our spare time, use up much of our discretionary finances and sap our emotional reserves. These sports promote too many muscle-bound doofuses into positions of idolatry, encourage stupid superstitions and corrosive gambling, and fill the airways with meaningless sophistry and statistics from ex-jocks and jock sniffers. Plus, what were our erstwhile worthwhile amateur sports are rapidly transmogrifying themselves into big-money businesses. College coaches are now making multi-millions and more athletes are moving directly from high school into the professional ranks.

Therefore, I can see no real social benefit from our obsessions with these meaningless distractions ... perhaps other than they are oodles of fun and give men a reason to shirk their weekend chores.

California Is Burning

It seems that every year now we have ruinous wildfires in California causing hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars of property damage, untold firefighting expense from a state that can ill afford it, and often the tragic loss of human life. Why is this? Because there seems to be little if any effective anticipatory actions on the part of state and local governments. I have got to believe that this state has the knowledge, technology and the wherewithal to, during the off-seasons, cut back all the tinderbox underbrush in residential areas, establish early-warning fire-alarm stations, pre-stage fire retardant and water reservoirs, plant fire-resistant plants, pre-cut critical fire-breaks, and develop building/zoning codes that would ameliorate possible property losses and human suffering. If any of these actions are being done now, they are clearly not enough.

All this work could be done with a little government gumption ... and by utilizing out-of-work able-bodied men and women (many already on the public dole), making use of all the off-season fire-fighters, even conscripting many of California's street-gang members and convicts (much like Ho Chi Min conscripted the prostitutes in Hanoi to become public-health nurses.) I realize that this would be all too logical for this feel-good, manana-loving society ... but then again, it would be more practical and a lot cheaper than what the Governator has had to put up with each fall.

Satan with Wings

I recently spent the day listening to talk radio and the gushings of many anonymous callers extolling Ted Kennedy's virtues ("He pinned the Purple Heart on me." "He saved my ill daughters life.", "He regularly goes to church." etc.) I was actually quite taken aback by the degree of adoration shown to Edward Moore Kennedy on his passing. But, this being Massachusetts, I was not shocked. After all he was returned to the Senate seven times by the voters here. However, to balance these kudos, there are many negatives that will hound Ted Kennedy well past his interment -- he "borked" Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas; he championed the legalizing of millions of illegal immigrants in 1965; he was a bosom buddy to the despots, Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega; he abetted the drowning of a young lady and then lied about his actions; he sullied his Senate position with his boozing and his womanizing; he kept slicing the salami aiming toward socialized medicine, etc., etc. Despite all these failings, many in the Bay State still went aflutter as his shadow passed. He was affectionately known as the "lion of the Senate" but, as Rush Limbaugh recently said, yes, and "we were his prey."

So was he an angel or its doppelganger -- a seraph with horns or Satan with wings? Each of us will come down one one side or another of this question. But, I for one, can't bring myself to genuflect.

Wee Weed Up

Fast-growing small marijuana plants? Kindergarten slang for being upset? Wild growth of dandelions? Pissing up a rope? A room full of bed wetters? Exactly what did Barack Obama mean when he used this unfamiliar street vernacular (or, rather, scatological term), "wee weed up" see Barack Obama speaks? Didn't Jack Paar lose his job in 1960 by using the tame English bathroom term "WC' (water closet). Now, we have a President who can obliquely refer to our urinating without any repercussion. Oh, well ... if, during his campaign, he can slyly give the one-finger salute to Hillary Clinton and to John McCain without a public ripple, I guess he can insult his current opposition by questioning their bladder control.

Turnabout Is Fair Play

Obama lied,

Granny died.

Protester's sign at Obama's Portsmouth, NH town meeting on revamping health care.

Robert Frost Favored Global Warming

"Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if I had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday dear Barry.

Happy Birthday to you.

Happy Birthday fearless leader.

Happy Birthday to you.

(kiss, kiss, kiss)

It's not Obama's 44th. It's his 48th.

Or is it? Maybe we need to see his birth certificate?

Big Brother ...

Be afraid. Be very afraid. The following is from the official White House website:

"There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking you for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

If this doesn't send a chill up your spine, you are not alive.

Cash for Clunkers

One obvious effect of the government getting involved in free enterprise is run-away price inflation. Over the last twenty years the three areas of our economy that have experienced the greatest price increases have been higher education, real estate, and medicine -- all three areas where the government has insinuated itself to "help" things out.

In higher education, easy-to-get student loans, government scholarships, and faculty research grants have fattened to coffers of colleges and universities while at the same time caused tuitions and fees to skyrocket. The (previous) rapid increase in home prices can be directly attributed to the $500,000 family exclusion of capital gains tax on primary residence sales and the government's coercion of banks to finance mortgages to sub-prime borrowers. And, in health care, the tax-deductibility of company-paid health insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, and government-guaranteed health care to all Americans has also caused this sector of our economy to experience escalating costs far beyond the Consumer Price Index.

Now the government is pumping the new car sales market with its $4,500 "cash-for-clunkers" program. After quickly running through the first one billion of our grandchildren's money to pay for this feel-good program, Congress is ready to ante up another $2,0o0,000,000. And I predict that this will not be the end of such give-aways. Surely, our Washington solons will try to buy their way back into to office next year by continuing to pour money into this program. With what results? I safely predict that, before too long, automobile companies and dealers will increase the prices of their cars to sop up every last cent of this government largess ... creating yet another sector of our economy with out-of-control price inflation. Enough!! Let's all go back and read "Atlas Shrugged."

Revered to Reviled

Are talk radio and cable TV causing our nation to spin, once again, out of control? Have we forever lost all sense of decorum? With such mania do we effectively give the rest of the world the go-ahead to disrespect us ... at the same time they look to us to solve their problems? What is it in our national psyche that causes us to demonize our Presidents shortly after they take office? I, myself, am surely just as guilty as these image makers. And yet I am not too contrite about it. I have been annealed in the oven of "take-no-prisoners" politics. Yet, still I feel a tiny bit guilty for being so partisan.

Or are such images legitimate political commentary for which a cure isn't necessary?

Talk About Racial Profiling

Come on Dog Days

With all this cool weather and rain I am looking forward to the dog days of summer ... and my lawn burning out.

A Global-Warming Denier

Pride and Prejudice

To exhibit prejudice one must "pre-judge" situations or people. Prejudice is not the forming of some generalizations after observing "n" people or situations. One can and does naturally form stereotypes in ones mind through our life experiences. This is often characterized by the unthinking as prejudice. But what is true prejudice is when one applies such a stereotype in the n+1st case. This is what is unfair and biased.

Now suppose that you have seen many rowdy English soccer fans on TV and conclude that English soccer fans tend to be hooligans, even dangerous. Then suppose next you meet an English soccer fan on a London bus. Can you assume that this individual should be avoided at all cost? Unless there is other damming evidence, I would clearly say "no" as this is exhibiting prejudice.

Now, last night President Obama made two unfortunate observations about the Cambridge police officer (Sgt. Crowley) who arrested Professor Henry Louis Gates in the contra temps at the Professor's home last week. Obama first said, "without knowing all the facts," that this police officer "acted stupidly". This may or may not have been the case. Certainly, he could have been a tad more diplomatic. But then Obama went on to say that there is a long history of blacks and Latinos being profiled by the police in this country ... implying that Sgt. Crowley was also profiling Professor Gates because he is black. I do believe that profiling probably does exist in this country to whatever degree (probably diminishing).

But President Obama's comment was clearly prejudicial because he applied what may have been his valid generalization to this n+1st case "without knowing all the facts." This is not the kind of nuanced behavior one expects to see in our President.

Health-care Rx

I'm beginning to believe (no, I know) that Congress and this administration are a bunch of doofuses ... witness their (independent of their political party) feeble and/or self-serving attempts to solve our health-care costs problem. First, I have an issue with the premise that our medical costs are "spiraling out of control." Fifteen years ago national heath-care costs represented 14% of GNP and today they are just over 17% of GNP. Wow!! Let's destroy our economy and our way of life for a three percentage point growth in health care costs over fifteen years.

But, OK, I will concede that we can't let this trend continue forever and therefore the major thrust of "health-care reform" should be cost containment and (hopefully) rollback ... not expanded standard health-care insurance coverage (which, by the fact that it inserts a government middleman into the existing process, is sure to be more expensive.)

There seems to me a number of obvious solutions for containing or reducing the cost of health care in this country:

1) Eliminate emergency room (E.R.) health care -- indigent outpatient clinics need to be opened in hospitals with appointments required, a minimum payment requirement (say $20?), and reasonable Medicare/Medicaid reimbursements. (This is the way it was 50 years ago.) Non-emergency medical treatment should not be permitted in E.R.s.

2) Tort reform -- today many doctors pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in medical malpractice insurance. This money must be made up in patient fees and, often, in dubious other practices (non-required tests) which compromise the integrity of many medical practitioners. We also need to eliminate lawyers' advertising on TV (which once was the case prior to the tsunami of litigious medical bonanzas, such as John Edwards reveled in)

3) Pooled major-medical insurance -- there should be made available a centralized comprehensive major-medical insurance provider separated from standard medical insurance. It can be private (preferred) or public, but should be so large as to spread the risk of medical catastrophes over virtually the entire population of this country. It would be available for individuals to purchase, but HMOs and other health insurance companies could re-insure through this entity (at a cheaper cost) the major-medical portion of their existing coverage.

4) Huge pooled drug purchasing at cheaper prices -- separated from normal medical insurance. Can be done privately (preferred) or publicly (like the current Medicare/Medicaid drug offerings). HMOs and other health insurance companies could take advantage of this consortium to reduce the drug purchasing costs of their health coverage. We should also eliminate all prescribed-drug ads on television (like it used to be). This would help reduce the cost of drug marketing to the pharmaceutical companies which might help offset the gross margin pressure forced by the cheaper prices engendered by this pooled purchasing.

5) No elective medical procedures should be paid for by health insurance companies. The cost of such things a liposuction, breast augmentation, etc. should be entirely borne by the recipient. This would cut back on many of these self-indulgent medical costs.

6) More program options for standard (non-major) medical insurance coverage. Families of two person (such as retired couples) should not be forced into a "family" category with young married couples with higher premiums than are justified.

7) Cutoffs for the tax-deductibility of gold-plated medical insurance premiums -- companies (and government entities such as Congress) should not provide (and pay for) employees tax-deductible health insurance whose premiums exceed a maximum level (say $20,000 per year per family). Those plans exceeding that level would incur a tax liability to the recipient

8) Eliminate from Medicaid and Medicare coverage the following groups -- prisoners (2.3 million), illegal immigrants (12 million), Americans living abroad (6.6 million), and millionaires (40,000).

9) All non-major-medical doctor or hospital visits and prescription drugs that are covered by standard medical insurance should have a co-pay of at least 5% of the cost to the provider. This would encourage better economic decision-making (such as switching to generic drugs and eschewing non-required tests) on the part of insured recipients.

R.I.P.

Of the two famous brothers, Frank McCourt, the kindly teacher, patient mentor and compelling storyteller, and Malachy McCourt, the irascible blaggard, gold smuggler and unrepentant Communist, it was Frank who had to run out of oxygen first. Such is the pathos and fickleness of the Irish experience.

A Sotomayor Snippet

Yesterday, on a local talk show, a sincere-sounding woman called in with some first-hand experiences with Judge Sonia Sotomayor. I realize that her comments are anecdotal, but, to me, they struck home given what we already know about the judge.

It seems that this caller was, at one time, a federal prosecutor and had to argue a case in front of Judge Sotomayor. She was warned ahead of time by her compatriots that this judge was not easy on government prosecutors (usually favoring the plaintiff). Quite to the contrary, this prosecutor (with a Hispanic if not Puerto-Rican-sounding surname) was treated quite deferentially by Judge Sotomayor and prevailed in most of her points.

At the end of the day, in an unusual move, Judge Sotomayor called this lawyer to her bench and asked her quietly if she were Puerto Rican. This woman responded that no, this was her married name as her husband was Puerto Rican. After this exchange, Judge Sotomayor's demeanor changed 180 degrees and, in all future arguments in front of her, this prosecutor received the treatment she was originally expecting.