Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Maybe if he weren't a tax cheat
we could trust him? Nah. He'd be doing Obama's bidding even if he were honest. Stocks fell again today. The markets have fallen continually since Obama became the candidate of the Dems in the summer. Why does Obama blame Bush for overspending when he's doing double triple time to out do him? Wasn't he a senator in a Democratic controlled Congress? Spending too much got us here; more spending takes us back to the 30s where FDR put us in a 10 year Depression. He's passing out lip-smackin' pork cracklins to his left wing buddies who put him in office.- U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner may have wanted to put an end to the never-ending credit crisis by announcing a comprehensive approach to saving the banking system, but all he succeeded in doing Tuesday was adding uncertainty. Forbes here.
- "The Obama administration is scrambling to get a grip on the economy as it continues its descent, including rising unemployment, falling housing prices and mounting foreclosures. The government's solution is a one-two punch: $800 billion in economic stimulus and the financial system stability plan.
Geithner wants to reverse the damage done by the previous administration's ad-hoc reaction to the banking crisis, which he faulted Tuesday for being "inadequate" and slow."
Five most Obamaudacious comments on the stimulus
See original at Morning Bell for expansion and links for these statements.1) No Earmarks: . . . there are billions of line-item spending elements to payoff leftist interest groups
2) 4 Million Jobs: According to the Congressional Budget Office Obama's plan could produce only 1.2 million jobs. And one in five of these jobs will be a government job.
3) Spending: the bill itself is all the proof you need the Obama and his leftist allies thoroughly love their chance to blow a trillion dollars. The Obama Trillion Dollar Debt Plan doubles the size of the Department of Education and creates 32 brand new government programs.
4) Free Lunches: Obama's Trillion Dollar Debt Plan is founded on the belief that government can provide endless free lunches to the American people.
5) Japan: "We saw this happen in Japan in the 1990s, where they did not act boldly and swiftly enough, and as a consequence they suffered what was called the “lost decade” where essentially for the entire ’90s they did not see any significant economic growth.” - This statement is audacity defined. No wonder support for Obama’s economic stimulus plan is sinking like a rock.
- "In principle, more Americans say that tax cuts for individuals and businesses – rather than spending on programs and infrastructure projects – will do more right now to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Nearly half (48%) says that tax cuts will do more for the economy, while 39% views government spending as more effective." Pew Research, Feb. 9, 2009
Right, right, right, um, right, exactly, OK, right
That was the voice of the interviewer I heard off camera during a video interview of a "conversation about Vietnam and Iraq with the author and Lt. Col. Rick Welch of the U.S. Army Reserve, who is currently [no date but possibly 2007] on assignment in Baghdad."http://sgurvis.com/sixties/60s_video.php
Sandra Gurvis who put this together to promote her book, "Where have all the flower children gone," appears to be a local writer. I wandered into her memoirs about the 1960s and the Vietnam War via a restaurant review. It gives me new respect for television interviewers, even the ones I don't care for. Filmed interviews need quality editing, lighting, background, staging, music, voice, etc. Gurvis didn't make the case why she was trying to compare the conflicts in Vietnam and Iraq. She jumped in to quash his positive points about why the U.S. forces were in the middle east. Having worked for 18 months in Iraq reconciling different cultures, he was polite and patient, so his performance was more professional and informed than hers. She had no content or expertise, interjecting myths, half-truths, and hyperbole from the 60s and anti-war rhetoric that made little sense in this "conversation."
This was a good lesson. Whether interviewing or simply sharing ideas in conversation, I need to resist the urge to interject little words to let the speaker know I am listening. It actually has the opposite affect.
Health insurance for all at what cost?
"News from Kobe, Japan, brought the tragic story of a 69-year old man who was critically injured in a traffic accident while riding his bicycle. Suffering from massive head and back injuries, his condition worsened as paramedics raced him from hospital to hospital — 14 in all — and none could accept him because they had no beds, staff, specialists or equipment. He died of hemorrhagic shock by the time a hospital was found for him, three hours after the accident." Story here.It will take awhile for the nationalized health care we're getting under the "stimulus package" to totally disintegrate, around the time Obama leaves office.
Our President was born in a backward time
Lucky for him. His unmarried 17 year old American mother didn't abort him--abortions were accessible but not easy in the 1960s. And his Kenyan father was old enough to have benefitted from DDT which was controlling malaria in his home country. For malaria statistics today, take a look at Kenya, and its under 50 life expectancy. Millions and millions of Africans died when DDT was removed from the market by environmentalists before there was an adequate replacement or plan. And those figures for treated bed nets don't look too promising either, do they? Less than 12% of the children under 5 are sleeping under treated materials in Kenya. And they are still blundering today with the lives of Africans. Where else but Africa can you find large pools of women at-risk-for-HIV on which to try out your iffy drug studies?
Today's new word is ANON
There was no problem understanding the context. "It is good that we should ever and anon remind our hearts of the central creeds. . ." Shakespeare and Chaucer used anon, but what does it really mean? It comes from Middle English from Old English, anoon and anan combining two little words, on and an. My dining room dictionary, the Webster's 2nd International says: in one body state or direction; straight away; soon; in a little while; presently; then. My Webster's 9th Collegiate says, soon, presently, later, after a while. There is a park in Belleville, Illinois named, Ever and Anon park, which I think is a very pleasant name for a public space.Lifestyle modification and pseudoscience
As I've noted before, I can usually understand the opening sentences and summaries of medical articles, but I'm over my head with the details, statistics and funny upside down numbers. So when Mike Mitka wrote in the January 14 issue of JAMA that two major studies exploring the benefits of lifestyle modifications for primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular events (FIT Heart and HF-ACTION) failed to demonstrate what the researchers had hoped for, I decided it was time to turn to Sandy Szwarc's JunkFood Science. Sandy's good at explaining why failed studies are still called a success and why ideology trumps science.Me? I usually say follow the money, whether it's Congress and earmarks (pork), Al Gore and carbon credits, or the latest diet and exercise fad that lands an academic a USDA grant. I think Sandy may be saying something similar (without my politicking), but read her whole article, just to be sure.
- "The preventive health movement has become a major industry, though, and the healthy eating and lifestyle ideology has been an easy one to sell. Just like alternative modalities, everyone wants to believe in a simple magical solution that can keep them well. Various dietary ideologies have come and gone through much of human history, all giving food more power than the evidence supports. But, beyond preventing deficiencies, which is easily achieved for most people by eating an unrestricted and varied diet, food is primarily sustenance, not magic. Humans around the world have eaten very differently, with no one food or way of eating itself related to longer life.
Great myths of the great Depression
If you can count, you know that 1929-1941 (or 1943 by other research) is a very long time, and that both the Hoover Administration and the Roosevelt Administration created and fine tuned the so-called Great Depression with massive government interference. And now President Obama and the Reid Pelosi gang that can't shoot straight want to do it all over again and are lying to us about capitalism and about recovery. Why does anyone, president or pauper, want to recreate the pain of the 1930s? I've pointed out this article before, but in light of Obama's lies, it's worth another look.- "Old myths never die; they just keep showing up in economics and political science textbooks. With only an occasional exception, it is there you will find what may be the twentieth century’s greatest myth: Capitalism and the free-market economy were responsible for the Great Depression, and only government intervention brought about America’s economic recovery."
500 new jobs and $60 million more in salaries and expenditures for central Ohio
If you have a weak spam filter like my osu dot edu mail box, you’re probably getting a lot of mail about “enhancement” and “enlargement.” I suppose this reflects desperate times for gullible Americans, or eager spammers who think every one with a dot edu mailbox must be 19 years old, or maybe just poor IT security at OSU. No matter how many blocks I add to the word list, they just find more creative ways to discuss sex. Once in awhile there is interesting news in the mail box from Chip and Steve, from whom I hear often. Chip Souba, Vice President and Executive Dean for Health Sciences and Steven G. Gabbe, Senior Vice President for Health Sciences, OSU Medical Center. Today I learned:- "We are pleased to inform you that The Ohio State University Board of Trustees approved funds last Friday to proceed with interior design work for the final three floors of the Biomedical Research Tower (BRT). Floors 4, 5 and 6 were left as unfinished shells until the funding and research priorities for the space were identified.
This project will add approximately 72,000 usable square feet of research space to our Medical Center, which is absolutely essential to reach our goals of being a top-20 academic medical center and a top-10 cancer program nationally. It will eventually allow us to recruit as many as 42 new researchers and their staffs to Ohio State, which translates into 500 new jobs and $60 million more in salaries and expenditures for our local economy."
Monday, February 09, 2009
Obama numbers dropping
Disapproval going up; approval going down.- The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Approval Index for Monday shows that 38% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Twenty-four percent (24%) Strongly Disapprove to give Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +14 (subtract disapproval from approval). . . Overall, 48% of voters believe that increased spending is generally bad for the economy. Sixty-two percent (62%) of voters would like the stimulus plan to include more tax cuts and less government spending.
Parathyroid disease symptoms
I was listening to an interview with Fr. John Corapi about his illness, a benign parathyroid tumor. I don't see a date on this. Here are the symptoms of parathyroid problems. Sounds nasty, and difficult to diagnose. A high calcium level is one of the lab signals. Feeling old is also one of the symptoms.Bowling and Exercise class
We had a sub in exercise class today. She really put us through our paces. I did about half. Half of the exercises at about half speed. And still I was sweating. She was kind and would yell out from the other end of the room, "I'll wait for you!" Last night I bowled--but it was Wii bowling. Have you ever played a virtual sport with a Wii? I love the sound effects. One time I "dropped the bowling ball" and the crowd all chattered and gasped. I was low scorer, but still better than the last time I bowled in real life which was in 2001 I think in California. Wii is a lot of fun and includes baseball, tennis, golf, and maybe archery, but we only did the bowling, and our hostess demonstrated tennis. There were six of us, lots of food in the near-by kitchen, including corn chips which I can't resist, and a sore shoulder when I finished. So that hot shower after class today really felt good.
What if Obama stops smoking?
And millions of others? Health care costs will increase. Yes, smokers die younger and will not require all that expensive care in their old-old years. That sounds crass, but if you ever ran the numbers on all this "healthy" eating, exercise, and no-smoking stuff, you'd find wonderful reasons to be healthy, but saving the government money isn't one of them. But also, if they stop smoking, we'll have to find other ways to pay for all the SCHIP "children" (who are adults) who don't need government health care.- On Feb. 4, President Obama signed legislation that reauthorizes and expands the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Earlier in the day, the House — on a 290-135 vote — passed the Senate version of the SCHIP legislation that expands insurance to an additional 4 million children. The new law also gives SCHIP an additional $35 billion over the next five years. The extra $35 billion in costs would be funded by a 62-cent-per-pack increase in the federal tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products. The new law removes a restriction that prevented states from enrolling middle-class children without first proving that nearly all poor children had been enrolled. Some states found it difficult to meet that criterion. Former President Bush twice vetoed similar legislation. AIS Health
- "The release of a scant one-page summary for 21 years of care brought some criticism to the Obama campaign – especially when compared to the thousands of pages of medical records released by McCain. Obama promised reporters that if there are additional health-related questions, his campaign would make that information available. “In terms of additional records, if there are particular things that people have questions about, then we’d be happy to give that information,” he said." ABC News
New York Times Lies
Today I've been going back through my blog edit page de-duping. I'm not sure how the duplicates accumulate, but they do, and hang around as "drafts." Anyway, I found one I wrote in December 2008 about lies the NY Times told about Clinton and Bush and Fannie Mae, which seems unfinished, but wasn't a dup. It wasn't clear when I read the draft if all the material was original, or if it needed to be cited and linked. So I cut the phrase "New York Times lies" and popped it into Google, and got 26,300,000 matches. My goodness. That's more research than I wanted. I looked through about 300 of them, most of which were about lies found in the NYT, but some were reports in the NYT about lies (not their own). And I came across this interesting video from 2007 by Bill O'Reilly and lies about the ratings of his show. Interesting. Don't mess with Bill. Isn't that the name of a pop tune?The phrase may be a case of "google bombing." It took Google 4 years to stop the google bombing of George W. Bush, (if you type in a particularly negative phrase it will bring up a GWB page) and about 4 days to stop it on Barack Obama after he became president. I think that's what I heard on the radio. Maybe Obama is just more senstive about criticism. Ya Think?
Monday Memories--1976 in Southern California
My husband doesn't write many letters, so what a surprise today when I came across a real gold mine of copies of letters--maybe 10--he'd written in the 1970s. Don't remember now what I was looking for because I got so involved in reading them. Our family took at trip to California in 1976 to visit my husband's father, step-mother, brother and sister. We didn't know them too well--his parents were divorced when he was about two years old and he'd only seen them about once a decade. But we had a wonderful time, and the siblings have grown much closer over the years. (See the photos of the siblings at his sister's wedding 30 years later in 2006). But I thought this letter to his California parents was quite sweet. It's written on company letterhead in precise architectural printing at an angle across the page with his unique spelling, so I'm pretty sure I didn't have a hand in it. I'm glad he thought to make a photocopy of it.BRUBAKER/BRANDT, INC. ARCHITECTS PLANNERS
Dad & Rosie,
Well, what can I say after a 9 day, storybook, Southern California vacation that was perfect in every detail. I could talk about the places I saw, the beauty of the land and ocean, the make-believe of Disney or ocean marine animals doing fantastic tricks. The sun filled sky and the smiles and laughter of our children watching animated bears singing and sea lions balancing balls in the water. But that would only be half of the story.
The other half was the best for me. Seeing and visiting family which I had not seen in many years. To learn to love again the family which has been on my mind many times. To see and hold a sister which has grown and matured into a lovely lady of beauty and talent. Could it really have been 16 years since I saw her last? I hope never again that long.
To see and spend a day with a brother who Norma says reminds her of me, surely she doesn't mean physically, and learn of his goals and values. Aunts and cousins which brought back memories of boyhood days at Lake Webster. What a great visit we all had that day. And of course, you Dad, for the time you shared with us at breakfast, filling our cups with coffee and love. And with you Rosie, being with you for the first time since I was eleven or so. Learning to love you and visiting with you and the pictures in your photo album.
It was the finest vacation our family ever had. Give my love to all and come our way when you can.
And there were hand printed letters also to his brother and sister in the file. It's enough to make an old lady cry.
Talking us into a Depression
With the January jobs report, the recent recession has become one of the five worst since WWII in terms of jobs losses as a percentage of the work force (I know you may, from reading the paper and listening to Obama, think it is the worst, but it is still only the fourth or fifth worst). Let me compare the job losses and the output declines at this point in the recession for these 5 recessions:
See Coyote Blog
"I ask every business owner or manager I meet for the personal evidence they have of economic cataclysm. Is their business down? And in a surprising number of cases, I get the answer that their business is doing OK, but they are cutting back because surely the worst is soon to come, based on everything they see in the media."
What if there were a recession
and the federal government and the Fed did nothing, with Congress going home on an extended vacation. Based on what has happened in the last 8 months (and what happened 1929-1943), we'd be way ahead. The stock market has done nothing but drop since the markets woke up one day and realized Obama would be president after the Democrats met in the summer. When the congressional whiz kids decided to bail out the banks with the Ben and Hank (Fed + fed govt) dog and pony show, nothing recovered and everything got worse. The President's solution? Do more interfering. If a lot didn't work, much more might! Obama's numbers are dropping like a Bush in Iraq, and he's heading for the heartland to drum up support.Hopeless change.
Less change,
changing hope.
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