"The Look"

Molly continues to do well on a regimen of two pills and a shot given twice daily, alomg with subcutaneous fluid once per day. She doesn't seem to mind any of this except the last, which she doesn't much like but normally tolerates quite peacefully.

Yesterday when the young lady came to do the sub-q fluid Kathy sort of rushed to get Molly, which caused her to freak and run under the bed. Naturally, I was appointed to pull her out, since women will always look to the man of the house to perform the hazardous duty. So I'm putting her in the place where the sub-q fluid is done and Molly is giving me "the look."

This is something that cats can do and dogs cannot. Dogs have to show teeth and/or lay their ears back, but cats can do it merely with "the look." Her ears are not back, no teeth are showing, but her eyes are unmistakably telling you that she is planning your imminent death. Navy Seals have been known to say, "Oh hell no, this is your cat," and back away from that look.
I am no Navy Seal, but Molly and I have a relationship so I stood fast, the fluid treatment proceeded and no blood was shed. I did breathe easier afterward.

Immortal Question

Question: How many Chargers defensive players does it take to tackle one opponent? Answer: Too many. At least one whiff precedes any actual tackle. Sheesh. Some things never change.

Update, Saturday night: Question #2, How is Danica going to do her usual routine of "advancing to the rear" when she is starting 43rd?

Bashing Russia

For some reason Obama is going out of his way to be insulting and rude to Russia. After referring to it as a “regional power” which didn’t want to go to war with us because we have a bigger army a couple of weeks ago, he spoke to the issue again last weekend in an interview with the Economist.

"I do think it's important to keep perspective. Russia doesn't make anything," Obama said. "Immigrants aren't rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. The life expectancy of the Russian male is around 60 years old. The population is shrinking."

The first thing that popped into mind when I read that is that we have been having to depend on Russia to carry our astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station for some years now because they still make space vessels and we do not. Something that fewer people know, but which I’m sure Obama does, is that when we want to launch satellites we have to buy rocket motors from Russia for our launch vehicles, because they make very good rocket motors and we don’t make them at all.

Russia is also second only to the US in the manufacture of weaponry. Add $8 billion in exports of machinery and $5 billion in electronic equipment exports, and it’s kind of hard to see that “Russia doesn’t make anything.”

According to Wikipedia, Russia has 300,000 legal immigrants each year and about four million illegal immigrants. Pretty small numbers compared to the United States, but it rather puts the lie to “Immigrants aren’t rushing…”

Life expectancy of the Russian male is 65.1 and rising faster than ours.

The population of Russia stopped shrinking in 2009, and has grown every year since then. The number of people living in poverty in Russia declined from 40% in 1999 to 13% in 2010, a 67% decrease, compared to a 44% increase in this country; from 32 million to 46 million.

I don’t know which would dismay me more greatly; that our president is that ignorant, or that he is that much of a liar, and such an unskilled liar to boot.

Finland?

What do you get when you cross Finland, Bluegrass, hillbillies, and the hard rock band ACDC? You get this. Who could have guessed that there was a guy in Finland who know how to play spoons?

Excuses Abound

USA Today has a headline reading “Tire problems derail Patrick, Johnson at Pocono” today. I’m not sure if they didn’t watch the race or, perhaps, merely do not know what constitutes a “tire problem.” Even what they write does not constitute a tire problem for NASCAR’s queen of hyperbole.

“Patrick's No. 10 Chevrolet smacked the wall as she exited turn 2 on lap 14,” they write, “before a severe tire rub led to a flat right-rear on the next lap.” That, dear readers, is not a tire problem. That is a “gratuitously hitting the wall” problem, otherwise known in sports as an “unforced error.”

They quote Danica Patrick as saying after the race that “I just wish I would have been smart enough to bring our GoDaddy Chevy to pit lane as soon as it happened.” I will not go into my opinion of her intelligence here, but her crew wishes she would have brought the car into the pits on the next lap, too, as they were screaming at her on the radio for the entire lap for her to do precisely that. Intelligence had nothing to do with it, all she needed to do was be able to follow instructions.

The article finishes by noting that she also “had a gear problem at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and finished 42nd.” Her gear problem at Indy was pretty much like her tire problem at Pocono; she dumped the clutch before the crew dropped the jack during a pit stop, and when the wheel spinning under power hit the pavement it broke a rear end gear.

Danica Patrick is not particularly impressive, but the people making excuses for her are awesome.

"Fullest Confidence"

We tend to forget that the functional title of our president is “chief executive” of the nation. His job is to assure that the giant enterprise which is our nation’s government functions on a day-to-day basis, and no president has actually performed a supervisory role in governance with anything like success since Lyndon Baines Johnson, or even really attempted to do so.

At least before Obama when there was a massive failure in a government department there would be firings of the department heads and Cabinet members, but in the Obama administration we get instead that the President “has the fullest confidence” in the heads of the offending departments and nothing more than promises of “investigations.”

John Brennan headed the CIA when it hacked into and spied on the United States Senate, and then he lied to Congress about it while under oath to tell the truth, and yet President Obama “has the fullest confidence” in him and plans to keep him in his present position indefinitely. God help us all.

Informing The Public

Dean Baker accuses the New York Times of “frat boy reporting” in its article regarding the VA spending bill because they give the amount of the bill as $17 billion which he says is “presenting readers with really big numbers which mean almost nothing to any of them.” He “corrects” that problem by telling his readers that $17 billion amounts to “approximately 0.45 percent of annual spending,” which I regard as giving his readers tiny little numbers which mean very little more to them than do the big numbers provided by the New York Times.

What really matters is not what percentage of government spending that $17 billion amounts to, but rather to what degree it solves the problem. If spending 0.45% of the annual budget on the issue solves the problem, then it hardly makes sense to spend more than that, so telling us what percentage of the budget is being expended is no more informative than is giving us the amount of the expenditure.

The point he wants to make is whether or not the expenditure is major in terms relative to our national spending, but that is a minor point, and by saying that the amount means “almost nothing to any of them” he sort of insults the readers. The number will certainly be meaningless to some readers, but most readers who follow politics, even casually, will be able to put that number into context fairly readily.

What matters in terms of real national interest is whether or not we are solving the problem at the Veterans Administration, and examining the size of the expenditure does not answer that. We should be asking about the size of the expenditure relative to the size of the problem at the VA. Is it large enough to solve the problem? Knowing that it is 0.45% of spending tells us no more about that than does knowing that it is $17 billion.

He does make a valid point in saying that the article fails to say whether the expenditure is for one year or for multiple years, but even there his point is weak because the nature of the need is not made clear either. He is asking about the expenditure, but is not asking if the need is a one-time need or one which is ongoing, and to what degree that need is being met by the bill.

It’s also a bit odd that Baker can tell us what percentage of annual spending the bill amounts to while complaining that “the time period is certainly not clear from this article.” He asserts that $17 billion is “0.45% of annual spending,” regardless of whether that amount is spent in two years or is spread out over ten years. Rather strange math.

At any rate, "providing information to the readers" would really consist of comparing the spending amount to the problem, not to the national budget, and telling the public how far the amount being spent goes toward solving the problem, so in actuality Dean Baker is being no more informative than is the New York Times.

Unwillingness to Criticize

On the face of the two political parties are highly critical of each other. Democrats rant at great length about Republican obstruction, and Republicans call Democrats “socialists,” but it’s all window dressing. There’s a lot of name calling and charges over trivia, but never any real, serious accusations of wrong doing or inability at governance.

Even the current nonsensical impeachment talk is about “border security” issues and not over several real issues that could be used such as declaring war in Libya, changing the “health care reform” law in several substantive ways, civil liberty issues or his policy of assassination.

Every president has administrative issues, but Obama has set records. The Obamacare website was budgeted for $56 million, cost $209 million and still was not functional when it rolled out. Fixing it was supposed to cost $91 million, more than the original cost, but wound up costing more than $175 million. In 2012, $7 billion of the $10.5 billion spent in Afghanistan was wasted. Massive problems at the VA have been being covered up, and now $17 billion is needed merely to put a patch on the problem.

Republicans should be making a major issue about this, campaigning on it in fact, but they are not because they know that when they regain power they will do precisely the same thing.

The problem is not that “big government doesn’t work,” but that neither party is able to make it work because they are not interested in governance. They are interested only in maintaining their own party’s hold on power. The time that Obama spent on fundraising trips could have been more profitably spent making sure than the VA, DOD and Health Department were being properly supervised, but he was too concerned about being sure that his party had enough money to buy the upcoming elections to properly supervise the Executive Branch.

That’s not to criticize Obama, because he did not spend any more time on fundraising trips than did George Bush before him, and Bill Clinton before him. The president’s primary function is to serve as the head of his political party, and only secondarily is he the chief executive of the nation which elected him to office.

The idea that a nation with 3.8 million square miles and 317 million people needs a “small government” is absurd, and big government not only does work, it is absolutely necessary. It needs to be staffed, however, by people who care about governance and not about partisan power.

Another Economist

Some dude in the Wall Street Journal has written a piece on “Nine Reasons To Love Your Mortgage.” It doesn’t give his resume or CV, so we don’t know his qualifications, but he must be an economist, because he knows nothing whatever about finance.

1. “It's your cheapest way to borrow,” he says, which actually makes sense but would be a bit more logical if he didn’t start by saying that, “I'm not crazy about carrying debt.”
2. “It's a negative bond,” which seems to me like a bad thing and not a reason to “love it.” He pretty much confirms that thought by saying that “it might make sense to sell bonds to pay down your mortgage.” That’s hardly something you would do if you “loved your mortgage.”
3. “It leverages your entire financial life,” hanging like a financial anchor over every investment you want to make, every financial plan you have, every… Seriously?
4. “It's a backup source of emergency money,” which is where the nitwit doesn’t know the difference between the mortgage and the property which is secured by the mortgage. One can get some extra money from the equity in one’s home if the mortgage is low enough and is one can show ability to repay, but one cannot get extra money from the mortgage itself. And if you lose your job, good luck borrowing additional money against your house.
5. “It makes inflation your friend,” because inflation makes the price of your house increase forever and ever, amen. First of all, that has nothing to do with the mortgage. Secondly, a lot of people found out in 2008 that that theory is bullshit.
6. “It lets you profit from falling interest rates,” by playing the refinance game, except that eventually it no longer works.
7. “It's an effective way to build wealth,” which is a redux of #5 and was debunked in 2008.
8. “It's your default investment.” How many investments need to be repaired to the tune of $14,000 that you just spent for that new roof?

The last one is the zaniest one yet, equating to the insane guy who said that he was beating his head against the brick wall because it felt so good when he stopped doing it.

9. “Paying it off can drastically reduce your cost of living.” Not having it at all would have allowed you to have the lower cost of living to begin with.

California Water, Part 2

I’m still pondering the severity of our water crisis compared to 1977, when things were so bad, apparently, that one could be fined for failing to capture and reuse the condensation from one’s air conditioner and a green plant in your yard was a hanging offense. According to the twit from the water department, we aren’t in that bad of a condition this time around.

Bruce commented that we have supposedly learned to use less water per capita, which is a good point. Hizzonner the governor says we have a goal of using 20% less water per person, but I’m not sure than anyone thinks we’ve met that goal. The water bill for my HOA has gone from $1500/mth ten years ago to $5000/mth now and we have exactly the same lawn area that we did ten years ago. I have been agitating to reduce lawn area and relandscape to lower water usage and have done nothing other than make myself unpopular.

According to the best numbers I can come up with, we had 88 km3 of water in storage for each one million population in 1977, which was regarded as disastrous and required that all green landscapes be allowed to die. If we have, as Bruce suggests, learned to use 20% less water, then a comparable number today would be 70 km3 per one million people, but we don’t even have that. What we have today is 56 km3 per one million people.

If that doesn’t qualify and an “oh shit” moment, I don’t know what does.

Making Things Up

CBS Evening News is always good for some light entertainment. They said last night that Russia is providing heavy weapons to the Ukrainian rebels and that the equipment is “identical to the equipment used by the Ukraine army so that the rebels can claim they captured it.” Let’s think that concept through for a moment.

A third party is trying to determine where the equipment came from and is told by the rebels that, “No, Russia didn’t give these tanks to us, we captured them from the Ukraine army last week.” So the third party goes to the Ukraine army and asks, “Hey guys, are you missing any tanks?”

The minute that the Ukraine army says, “No, we aren’t missing any fucking tanks,” the jig is going to be up on that little story about where the tanks came from. Somebody is making shit up, and if it isn’t CBS News then they are incredibly gullible.

California Water Wars

Lying and distorting facts is not limited to the federal government; state government can come up with some real gems of altered reality too. From the Los Angeles Times we get an article headlined “Major California reservoirs below 50% capacity as drought wears on,” in which California Department of Water Resources spokesman Ted Thomas says that, “When all 12 of the major reservoirs are combined, the average is at 60%.”

Here are the twelve major reservoirs and the current status for each.

I don't know where the water department twit gets that 60%, because if you take the average for each lake, add them together and divide by twelve, you get 40% which is nowhere near the 60% he apparently pulled out of his ass.

But even if it did come to 60% or somewhere close to it, it would not tell a true story, because the size of the reservoirs makes a lot of difference, and California's reservoirs vary enormously in size. When you have a tiny little reservoir that is 90% full, and a monstrous big reservoir that is 10% full, they do not average out to give you 50% of your water capacity.

If you look at the our major reservoirs, the biggest reservoirs are at 36%, 37% and 26% full, while down in the southern part of the state Pyramid Lake is at 92% of its teacup-sized capacity. If you add up the total capacities and the total contents, the total percentage of water stored in those "12 major reservoirs" is only 36% of the total capacity.

Ted Twit Thomas goes on to say that “That's puts the state in a far better position than it was 37 years ago, when a crippling drought brought the statewide reservoir average down to 41%.” Well, it would if his 60% was an actual number rather than an imaginary one, but in this universe 36% is actually less than 41%.

Not that it really matters, because he’s actually saying something to the effect of “my apple is better than your orange” because the reservoir capacity and population are both just a little bit different now than they were 37 years ago. The population in 1977 was in the close vicinity of 20 million and is about 38 million today, so it has grown something like 90% in the past 37 years. The reservoir capacity has grown from 4300 km3 in 1977 to about 6000 km3 today, or about 40% growth in the same period.

So, to recap, we have 36% of a capacity which has grown 40% to serve a population which has grown 90% but we are in better shape now than we were when we had 41% of capacity back then. Brilliant.

Ivory Tower Economics

Here’s a sterling example of the manner in which economists are disconnected from the real world. They sit in their ivory towers and totally ignorant as to how real people live, and therefor do not have the slightest clue of what they are talking about. Dean Baker is talking today about the “wealth effect” of housing on consumer spending, and he says,

If a homeowner owed $100,000 on a home whose price dropped from $300,000 to $200,000 (leaving them with $100,000 in equity), we would expect them to cut back annual consumption on average by between $5,000 and $7,000.

Oh really? Why would you expect that, Dean, and why that amount?

The “we” there is presumably him and Paul Krugman, because any person who works for wages and owns a house with such a mortgage would not really expect that homeowner’s consumption to change at all. Those of us who live in the real world know that the equity in our homes cannot be spent until we take that equity out of our homes. I have no earthly idea where Baker gets the idea that someone will spend $5000 to $7000 more per year, regardless of income, simply because of untapped equity in his house.

My wife and I may or may not be typical, probably aren’t, but the equity in our home went from about $50,000 when we bought it, to about $400,000 at the peak of the market, and then down to about $280,000 at the 2008 slump. Want to know how much our spending habits changed throughout those fluctuations? Right. Zilch.

The “wealth effect” of overvalued houses was not that people would spend a lot of money merely because they had a high-priced house, as Dean Baker seems to think. The effect was caused by people taking that equity out of their houses in the form of refinancing and second mortgages and using that money for consumer spending.

The reduction of spending when home values collapsed was not due to some sort of psychological trauma inflicted on the homeowners involved; it was the result of there being no more equity available to take out in the form of spendable cash. If Dean Baker would come out of his ivory tower and meet some real people, he would know that.

Helpless Little Children?

I keep seeing claims that humanitarian concerns demand that we shelter and take in these 52,000 children at our border because they are "helpless little kids." Really? These kids travelled more than a thousand miles through rather hostile climate on their own, riding freight trains and foraging for food. There are one hell of a lot of American adults who could not accomplish that. Whatever these kids are, "helpless" they are not.

Maybe we should take them in, maybe not, but let's not play silly word games.

Detroit Water Wars, Part 2

I do not advocate the water should be shut off to those who legitimately cannot pay their bill. What I am saying in my earlier post is that liberal arguments against such shutoffs are hypocritical and bogus. Relief for such homeowners should be provided as part of a taxpayer funded safety net on the same basis as extended unemployment relief. Government should provide assistance on the same basis that it assists with payment for food and, with the new "health care reform," for health insurance.

The argument that the city, or any other service provider, should continue to provide service without the customer paying for that service is absurd. That they receive assistance in making that payment is entirely reasonable, but let's quit making the case for this being a nation that insists on free lunch

Detroit Water Wars

The people, and unions, in Detroit voted in favor of the “grand bargain” in resolving the city’s bankruptcy, resulting in reduced pensions and retiree healthcare benefits. I don’t have any real opinion on that because the published arguments have not included any actual numbers, but I have been following the Detroit “water wars” with some interest.

Seems people in Detroit have not been paying their water bills, which the UN regards as “exorbitant,” and so the city is shutting off water to nonpayers, which the UN says is a “human rights violation” because access to water is a "basic human right." Weird.

My water bill for the past two months was $154.68 in San Diego. The same bill would have been $114.29 in Detroit. There are some very good reasons why water is more costly in San Diego, but I would hardly say that Detroit water rates are “exorbitant.” And, while I can’t argue with the UN that access to water is a basic human right, I don’t think that access to purified water delivered under pressure directly to your home is a basic human right. I think there is a certain amount of hyperbole being engaged in here.

Liberals have mastered the art of inconsistency, and this issue compared to the liberal position on healthcare is a case in point.

For one thing, liberals seem to have missed the point that what is being paid for is not the water, but the services of purifying and delivering the water under pressure to the private homes. Even the UN does not claim that there is any “basic human right” to those services.

Part of the argument for “health care reform” was that the cost of health care was being driven up, causing those who paid for health care to pay higher prices, because of people who did not pay for health care because they did not carry insurance. Liberals subscribed to this argument as much as conservatives did, but in the case of Detroit’s water crisis they do not want to argue that the cost of water delivery is being driven up for people who do pay for it by people who receive water delivery and don't pay for it.

Liberals did not argue that people who could not pay for health care should have their health care paid for by those who could pay for health care, but they are now arguing that Detroit citizens who cannot pay for water delivery should continue to receive it for free, with the service being paid for by higher rates on people who can pay for the service. Hardly what anyone would call consistent.

Further, liberals have had no problem with the solution to the problems caused by people not carrying health insurance being a law that requires them to carry health insurance, albeit with the government picking up part, but not all, of the cost. They do not, however, welcome the solution to Detroit’s water crisis being to require people who are not paying for water delivery to actually pay for water delivery.

This despite the fact that even if the city stops delivering it, those people can still have all the water they want. They just have to go down to the river and get it for themselves, and then boil it before they drink it. Which people did for centuries before Detroit began the delivery service.

We Don't Need No Steenkin Proof

From the Wall Street Journal today, "U.S. officials say they now suspect that Russia supplied the rebels with multiple SA-11 antiaircraft systems." (emphasis mine) The officials are, of course, not named, the basis for their suspicion is not provided, and evidence is entirely absent. They could as easily report that "A California blogger suspects that the airliner in question was shot down by space aliens."

It goes on the say that "U.S. officials believe the systems were moved back across the border into Russia following the shoot down of the jetliner." Once again the officials are not named, but they are probably the same ones who claimed we didn't find Saddam's weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because he secretly shipped them to Syria before we invaded.

"The assumption is they're trying to remove evidence of what they did," said a senior U.S. official briefed on the latest intelligence.

That's a brilliant deduction, arriving at that conclusion after being told...
Ah, to hell with it. Needless to say, I have a slightly (slightly?) different set of assumptions.

Update: No, I don't actually suspect the airlainer was shot down by space aliens. It just happens to be a suspicion which conveniently suits my agenda of having us not go to war with Russia. The "US officials" are making shit up based on their agenda, which is the opposite of mine.

Maybe Not So New

The “mysterious” Siberian hole is rapidly becoming less and less mysterious as scientists arrive at consensus that it is yet another result of a warming planet. It increasingly appears that frozen underground gas vaporized and popped this hole like a cork popping out of a wine bottle.

What’s interesting to me is what appears near the hole as the helicopter flies over the area. The “mystery” hole is in the upper left, but look in the lower left at what appears to be a perfectly circular water-filled hole. Question. What is the mystery hole going to look like a few dozen years from now, once the “ejecta” has worn away and the hole has filled with water? Right. It’s going to look a whole lot like that circular water hole.

This process may have been going on longer than we know.

This Is Not "Defending Itself"

There is a quote from Rabble In Arms by Kenneth Roberts that I have cited many times that goes, “They go to war, these young men, not to die for their country, but to place their precious lives between their home and the forces which would destroy it.” The point is that men, and today women, do not fight for abstractions like patriotism or freedom. Dying is not on their agenda. They fight because their homes have been threatened and they are determined to defeat the threat.

For the Palestinians from the West Bank, and especially from Gaza, this quote no longer applies. The “forces that would destroy their homes” has already done so and they no longer have any homes to defend. They have reached a position of such bleak desperation that the only option they have left is to die as visibly as possible to call the world’s attention to the plight of their people. And dying they are; men, women and children.

“WP” writes a brutal history of the Israeli occupation’s treatment of the Palestinians at Sic Semper Tyrannis and describes the current state of that affair. It is not pretty, and he pulls no punches. He says, for instance, that, “people worldwide will increasingly believe that Israel has become a monster nation with no interest in anything except further extermination of the Palestinian people,” a belief that I reached many months ago.

He describes Gaza as, “now a death camp. The Gazaians are on an involuntary diet, subject to a malicious coriander blockade that deprives their entire society of any hope,” and goes on to say that, “Israel bombs and attacks helpless people with impunity, teased on by fireworks rockets that nearly never kill. Truly, Israel plays the role of the ultimate bully.”

I will undoubtedly be called an Anti-Semite for recommending this piece, something which I am not, but I do recommend it. Read the whole thing. It speaks truth to power; power most horribly and brutally abused.

Interesting

Interesting and rather alarming headline on Huffington Post today, and a totally false one. Turns out the article is in reference to the eminemt restart of the Sendai power plant reactors 1 and 2 on the southern tip of Kyushu Island, about 700 miles away from Fukushima.

Update, 7:40am: They have changed the headline. It now reads "Japanese Nuclear Power Plant Deemed Safe By Regulators, Clearing Major Hurdle For Restart."

Update, 10:00am: They also ran a story about the alarming number of people adopting cheetah cubs as pets, headlining it with a picture of a leopard. Sigh. The comments consisted mostly of an argument about what the picture was, running about half and half cheetah vs. leopard.

Wise Gambler

When Kenny Rogers says that "you never count your winnings when you're sitting at the table," he is not talking about a poker game. He's talking about life. If you go through life constantly keeping track of what you have done and what others have done for you, you are not going to live a happy life. You play each hand as it is dealt to you, and enjoy that you are still in the game.

Chopping Onions

If you watch cooking shows you have seen this method for cutting onions. It is, the chef tells us, the only proper way to dice onions, and it is “super easy.” He is full of crap. Making a very similar series of cuts in a different sequence is vastly easier, faster, produces precisely the same results, and presents far less chance of cutting yourself.

First chop off the head of the onion as shown in picture #1, but also chop off the roots in precisely the same way. Chop the onion in half as shown in #3 except, of course, you won’t be cutting through the roots.

Now remove the outer skin from each half of the onion. This is the first part of it being easier, because having cut off the root there’s nothing holding the skin on and it’s a lot easier to remove it. I remove the first layer under the skin as well, since it tends to be a bit tough. Now for the dicing part.

What they show next is a set of horizontal cuts that must be made very carefully because they are being made underneath and very close to your hand, which is flat on top of the onion. Note also that it says, “Try to keep the cuts the same width apart.” Not easy when you can’t see what the hell you’re doing.

A second set of cuts is then made vertically, also with care to keep them carefully the same width apart, and finally a third set of cuts is made across the rest, providing the diced onion. That’s three sets of cuts, two of which need to be made very painstakingly.

Now the better way is to simply make a set of crosscuts, the same direction as the cut you made chopping off the root and head, which result in slices of onion. Hold those slices together as you make the cuts so that they are “flying in formation” when you are done and look like a half onion.

Now turn that assembly 90 degrees and make a series of cuts which result is diced onion. With each cut angle the knife just a bit so that you are making the cut nearly perpendicular to the surface into which the knife is cutting. At the center the knife will be vertical and at each end it will be angled slightly outward.

You now have the same results with only two sets of cuts that the silly chef achieved with three sets of cuts. You didn’t look as good as television, but then you aren’t on television; you are simply making dinner.

Oh yes, how do you avoid tears while chopping onions? Put the onion in the refrigerator for a couple of hours before chopping it.

What's New?

About twenty years ago there was a big thing about “fifty is the new thirty,” which had to do with aging. Since age thirty was in my drinking days and my memory of those days is cloudy at best, I never knew quite what it meant, but I can tell you right now that seventy is not the new fifty.

Today there is “orange is the new black,” and I have no clue what that means. I was in a church the other week and the minister’s outfit still looked black to me, so it’s not that. Maybe we’re supposed to keep an eye peeled overhead for orange helicopters?

Which brings us to “Syria is the new Afghanistan” and, yes, I just made that up based on watching the news and reading newspapers. They are pressing very hard to make us afraid of this new combined force of terrorists named ISIS and the territory they have occupied, which they are referring to as a “safe haven.” They are telling us that this terrorist army can “spread it’s agents throughout Europe and the United States” where they will be able to “mount small attacks,” and that if they maintain this “safe haven” long enough they will be able to use it for “planning 9/11 scale attacks.”

Because “9/11 scale attacks” can only be planned in “safe havens.” They cannot be planned in, say, downtown Hamburg, Germany. Oh, wait. The attack of 9/11 was planned in downtown Hamburg, Germany. And so, of course, we invaded and occupied Afghanistan.

I’m not particularly worried that ISIS is going to build massive airfields in northern Iraq or eastern Syria, from which they will launch massive Trans-Atlantic air strikes against the United States. What I am concerned about is that if enough people talk about a “safe haven” long enough, then Obama will feel compelled to launch another war to “deny them space in which to plan their attacks,” which we have been doing in Afghanistan for more than twelve years now.

Because Syria is, apparently, the new Afghanistan.

Has Anyone Ever Heard This?

CBS Evening News last night said that Gaza "was created in 1949 for the Palestinians after the Israeli war for independence." Has anyone ever heard it called that before? A "war for independence?" Is Isreal now the Middle East version of "American Exceptionalism?"

Fine Lines

From a comment at another venue, in which opinions were being offered on the situation between Israel and the Palestinians, along with commentary as to what America should do about it. As to the last, unfortunately, all too few properly opined that we should do nothing. Anyway, one commenter said to another that,

You should make a number of predictions based on your current knowledge: they will all prove wrong. Why am I certain of that? Because you are describing your own thoughts, not a situation in the actual world. Your hard headed "realism" is actually a reflection of your satisfaction with your own limited thinking.

You and Wolfowitz think alike. His predictions, too, were all wrong.

Write them down, [name omitted]. Write them down before you forget.

I was rolling on the floor. In reality, of course, he describes the nattering of pretty much the entirety of public discourse.

The Usual Numbers

As usual, the only number they showed us was that 288,000 new jobs had been created, and used that number to claim that the economy is gaining speed. If your goal is consumer purchasing power, perhaps that conclusion is a little optimistic.

They did they mention, for instance, that in that same report is a same message that part time jobs, voluntary and involuntary, soared by 1,115,000 in the same month that saw 288,000 new jobs. That means that using the best case scenario in which all of the 288,000 new jobs were full time jobs, then 827,000 other full time jobs became part time jobs. That's roughly equivalent to a loss of 413,500 full time jobs, which outweighs the 288,000 jobs created, and means the job market actually shrank by the equivalent of 125,500 full time jobs.

Because part time does not have the consumer spending power of full time.

Not a "Great Liberal"

Elizabeth Warren is widely hailed as the perfect liberal, or progressive as they are called today, and the ultimate champion for the working class, and a growing number of blog denizens are clamoring for her to run for president in 2016. They claim that she is to the left of the Democratic party and is as much an enemy of the corporate state as you and I are.

I’m somewhat less optimistic. We elected a one-term Senator who had a gift for passionate rhetoric once before, and how did that work out for us?

The latest video making the rounds is one where she “unloads” on Chris Matthews, something that in itself I applaud regardless of who does it. Consensus is that she kills the topic of how we should put the working class back to work, but what I hear from her is a bunch of hackneyed partisan cliches and an avoidance of the actual solution.

First she chants Obama’s mantra about education, but we have a plethora of highly educated unemployed people already, and more education is going to do nothing in terms of putting people back to work. Then she speaks of roads and bridges, another Obama mantra, but her angle is that they are “investments which allow small businesses to grow.” Oh, please. Then she comes to the 1980’s when “Republicans changed the way we manage our economy” and a distorted, abbreviated view of the admittedly nonsensical “trickle down” economic theory, but she omits entirely the Clinton dual policies of “global free market” economics which resulted in our manufacturing jobs being sent overseas and of financial deregulation which began on his watch but which Democrats all blame on George W. Bush.

In rebuttal to his accusations that Democrats have been talking the game but not walking the walk, she goes into a self righteous tirade about how every time Democrats bring up their programs the Republicans claim “there’s no money” to implement those programs and yet Republicans will not “give up those tax loopholes.” What she fails to admit is that Democrats had control of both houses of Congress for four years and did not even make an attempt to get rid of those tax loopholes themselves.

What she fails to face up to is that even when they controlled both houses of Congress they were unable to prevent Republicans from passing their own agenda. Republicans, with a minority in both houses of Congress were able to get their bills passed, and yet Democrats, with a minority in only one house, are unable to pass anything at all.

Warren, like other Democratic politicians, is so blinded by her partisanship that she does not recognize the impact of her own words. “The Republicans are blocking us.” So when the Republicans are in control they get their agenda. When the Democrats are in control the Republicans get their agenda. So, what value does it have to put the Democrats in control?

Wild Variance

San Diego does not experiance wild swings in its weather this time of year; forecasters actually have a rubber stamp with which they can execute their duty in a matter of seconds and then go to the beach. The ten-day forecast reads "clouds, then sunshine" every day except one, so we are bracing ourselves for a wild weekend. On Saturday we are apparently going to have one of our major weather swings, because for that day they are projecting "clouds giving way to sunshine." I imagine we will be able to cope.

Stock Car Follies

Stock car racing has its clowns and follies, too.

After the first pit stop last night in Kentucky, during which almost everyone got only two tires, Kyle Petty and company went into a couple of dissertations that, even for them, was more than a bit weird. First they focused on Danica Patrick, who had restarted 11th and was running 16th. Kyle opined that the reason was that she had taken four tires and he thought that it "takes longer for those four tires to come in."

I was thinking that was a remarkable example of blowing smoke up our dresses when they next went to Jimmie Johnson, who had gained four positions after the restart. The reason they gave for that gain? You got it: he was one of the ones who had gotten four tires.

These two pieces of commentary came in immediate succession, and were delivered with complete confidence and aplomb. They did not explain why four new tires would cost Danica five positions while gaining four positions for Jimmie, nor did they seem to find anything in the least contradictory or odd about their positions.

They also did not explain, of course, why Danica, after her four tires "came in" continued advancing to the rear, running as low as 29th before finishing in 21st place after several cars ahead of her crashed.

They also spoke at great length about the failure of an air gun during a Jeff Gordon pit stop, and about how crews treat air guns like the crown jewels and such. Two are former drivers and one of them is the greatest crew chief in the history of any form of auto racing (he was described by his associate in the prerace as “America’s Crew Chief”) and none of them asked why no replacement air gun was ready to go when the air gun failed. The crew looked like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off, and it took them almost a full minute to get a replacement air gun ready to go. WTF?

I've seen air guns fail and the guy behind the wall pull it back and toss a replacement in a couple of seconds, and I've never been anything other than a fan. But an observant fan. These announcers were apparently not even watching what they were being paid to announce, because they didn't even notice the total confusion that the pit crew exhibited when the air gun failed, how totally unprepared they were for that event, and that they had no backup air gun ready to go.

These clowns are so clueless regarding the topic they are discussing that maybe they should run for Congress, or perhaps the White House.

Rough Driving

About six times in the Indycar race today one car hit another and caused a wreck. In each case the offending driver was penalized for "making contact," which I thought was rather amusing. The same thing happens about three dozen times during a stock car race, causing the targeted car to wreck about half of the time, and it is written off as "nobody's fault, just hard racing," or "just one of them there racin' deals." The offended driver usually returns the favor in a subsequent race, often with interest. Indycar drivers just whine to the media after the race.

A.J. Foyt, on the other hand, says that "There are a bunch of goddam idiots out there" when his driver is wrecked. The announcers later paraphrased him as saying "gosh darn," but the damage was already done.

Real World Politics

Mr. Obama announced yesterday that he wants Congress to give him $500 million with which to train moderate rebels in Syria. Wow. How much training can be done for $500 million? More to the point, how many weapons can be purchased for $500 million? Why do I think the second question is much more pertinent than the first?

Meanwhile, while we are arming training Syrian rebels, Mr. Kerry is telling Russia to disarm the rebels in Ukraine. And not only must Mr. Putin disarm those rebels, assuming that he has the ability to do so, which is highly unlikely, but he must do so “within hours” of Kerry telling him to do so.

Mr. and Mrs. Clinton are flying around the country touting her new book and telling people that they understand the working class because they worked hard for their money and are themselves members of the working class. They make a speech to that effect just after their private jet lands and just before they retire to the penthouse suite for champagne and pheasant under glass for dinner.

And finally, Mr. Obama is making a tour of the Midwest where he “spent a day in the life of a young Minnesota accountant struggling to make ends meet.” He had lunch with her and then went to a park for a “town hall” type meeting where “350 invited participants” had gathered. I’m sure her typical day includes meetings in the park with 350 Obama loyalists.

This trip had the stated purpose of “reconnecting Obama with Democrats ahead of midterm elections,” which seems a bit odd considering that he isn’t running for office in that midterm election.

These people are just utterly detached from reality.

Adventure

My wife locked her purse in her car yesterday, a feat which she accomplished by dropping her car keys into the night deposit box of the San Diego Library. As much fun as it might be to do so, we will not explore any theories as to why she did that. Her first thought was to call me at home; a plan which was thwarted by the fact that her cell phone was in the locked car with her purse.

A San Diego Police officer was nearby and, manfully resisting his tendency to laugh his ass off, promptly offered assistance. She decided that having him call me might not be the best idea. “Mr. Heffner, this is the police, I’m calling about your wife.” I’ve already had several strokes and one heart attack, and… Anyway, he allowed her to call me on his cell phone.

I could not, however, bring her the spare car key because she carries that with her in her purse in case she locks the car keys in the car, which she has done once before. She doesn’t want to have to wait for me to bring the spare key to her if she does that again, so she carries the spare key in her purse. Good plan, except that it doesn’t cover you if you lock your purse in the car and drop your keys… Never mind.

She could not call AAA because not only was her cell phone in the locked car, but so was her AAA card, in her purse with the spare key, so she had me call AAA in her behalf. I could not, of course, call her back to tell her I had done so, but we know each other well enough that such a call was not really needed.

Meanwhile, the reason that the police officer was there was that an alarm was going off in the library. Apparently someone had been left behind and locked inside when the library closed and, in the process of leaving after the library was closed and locked, had set off an alarm. A library manager had been called and was on the way to shut off the alarm and the officer was standing by until he/she got there.

When that happened my wife was able to get in the library and retrieve her car keys, so she called me and asked me to call AAA and cancel the rescue. The rescue was quicker than my call and so she and the tow truck driver waved at each other as she was leaving the scene when he arrived.

Living with my wife is many things, all good of course, but it is seldom dull.

Regime Change Again

This time of a thug who we put in charge. Obama is saying that we may commit to air strikes in Iraq, but not until Nuri al Maliki changes his ways and forms a “more inclusive” government or steps down.

Where have we heard this before? It’s a refrain which has been sung by the executive branch of this nation for several generations, going back in the Middle East to 1953 when we overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran.

Usually when we overthrow the leadership of a country we learn our lesson and move on to other countries for our regime change mania, but Obama has unlearned that lesson for us and is committing to a second regime change in the same nation after barely more than a decade regardless of how badly the first one turned out.

Not only that, but having been dissuaded from his “red line” rhetoric regarding Syria last year, Obama sees this as a chance to renew the opportunity for regime change in Syria by going in through the back door. He has pronounced that if he commits to air strikes in support of Iraq against the dreaded ISIS forces then those strikes would not be restricted to Iraq but would include strikes against those forces in Syria.

Sort of like bombing Cambodia during the war in Vietnam, you know, but we all know where air strikes against ISIS in Syria would lead. In Libya we morphed from a limited protection of Benghazi to “we will not stop until Ghadaffi is gone” (and most of Libya is rubble) in a matter of hours after
the first bomb fell.

ISIS has done us a favor. Two for the price of one. What a deal.

Unemployment Is Not Always Cyclical

If you are going to write a dissertation on an economic theory it probably does not enhance your credibility as an economist to start your dissertation with a sentence such as, “One of the things you can always bet on with surety is that the conservatives will always try to convince the public that a cyclical event is, in fact, a ‘structural’ event.” A thoughtful and unbiased reader might suspect from that opening, as several commenters did, that the writer has an agenda, which very much turns out to be the case.

His topic has to do with the failure to recover from our low level of employment which he attributes to “cyclical factors” and inadequate government stimulus.

In a nutshell, notwithstanding all of his charts, graphs and statistics, the offshoring of manufacturing and information technology jobs was not by any means a “cyclical event.” It changed the employment picture in this nation in a profoundly structural manner, and until we recognize that and change the way we seek recovery to accommodate that we will not see any meaningful recovery for the working class.

We are still seeking to restore our economy by restoring consumer spending because “consumer spending is 70% of our GDP,” and that is a fundamental problem. Consumer spending is consumption, not production, and the reason it is an element of our Gross Domestic Product is that it has been assumed that consumer spending is a valid measure of this nation’s production of consumer goods. That was valid at one time, but the offshoring of production jobs changed that to a profound degree, and it is no longer even close to being true.

When it was true an increase in consumer spending caused an increase in the production of consumer goods and an increase in the jobs producing those goods. That no longer happens. What happens now is that an increase in consumer spending mostly causes an increase in imports and a concomitant increase in our balance of trade deficit. Thus, an increase in consumer spending actually harms our economy more than it helps.

To restore the economy for the working class we have to do one of two things; either restore the production jobs so that consumer goods production once again is equal to consumer spending, or develop a new economic model that does not use consumer spending as the basis for our economy.

Economists and politicians know this, and they are lying to us by not admitting it because both alternatives are hard and complicated. They have no idea how to bring those jobs back, and they have no idea how to create a model that replaces them. Hyping an increase in consumer spending is the easy answer, but not only is it the wrong answer, it is not an answer at all. It is a lie, and our leaders know it is a lie. They will continue to tell that lie until we force them to tell the truth.

Interesting

When certain parties wanted to split this nation into two parts we fought a long and bloody war to prevent that from happening. Now it is becoming increasingly popular to suggest that we, not the Iraqis, but we split Iraq into three parts. Do we even think for the briefest moment about what we are saying and/or doing?

Ironic

I just finished watching a rerun of an old Law and Order, in which McCoy prosecutes a woman for a murder committed during a 1968 protest of the war in Vietnam, with much discussion of "an immoral war," and charges that "the real criminals are in Washington." She finally agrees to a plea deal of manslaughter for 8-1/2 to 20 years. In the closing scene McCoy muses, “She’ll be in jail until 2003. I think the 60’s will be over by then.”

That was, of course, the year that we invaded Iraq.

It's About The Points

There’s a show on television named “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” which, like politics, is a comedy show. Its slogan is “Everything’s made up and the points don’t matter,” which can be modified to suit politics; “Everything’s made up and only the talking points matter.” Which brings us to Iraq.

CBS Evening News is freaking out regarding the situation in Iraq now, apparently having realized that they aren’t going to sway public opinion in favor of declaring war over Syria, describing ISIS as the new “al Queda army” and its leader as the “new Osama bin Laden.”

They emotionally told us last night that ISIS is “retaking territory where thousands of Americans died,” and then had some former CIA clown on to tell us that the group posed the danger that “with a safe haven in western Iraq” they would have “a base of operations where they could attack the United States homeland” and that “we should be very worried about that.”

He didn’t say what form he thought those attacks would take, I don’t think rocket propelled grenades (RPG’s) will reach that far, but it was as almost if he was speaking directly to Obama, who has this mantra about “denying them space in which to plan their attacks” regarding the war in Afghanistan.

Obama supporters, who have been giving Obama credit for “ending the war in Iraq” in 2011, are sort of hoist on their own petard at this point because his opponents are now saying that the disintegration of Iraq is his fault for pulling out the troops in 2011. They’re both full of cow dung, of course, because the decision to withdraw all troops in 2011 was not made by Obama; it was made by George W. Bush and formalized in an agreement between him and Nuri al Maliki in 2008.

All Obama did was allow that agreement to be carried out because he had no choice. In fact he tried valiantly to abrogate the agreement, and negotiated vigorously with al Maliki for more than two years to extend our military presence in Iraq and failed. He was, of course, roundly criticized for that failure while being praised by supporters for “ending the war,” because facts are irrelevant when it comes to politics.

Twitter is for Twits

Twitter is going to be the force that changes the world, we keep being told. It will be the driver of revolutions which will topple governments, and it will turn small causes into world shaking events.

What was the outcome of #BringBackOurGirls? That "hashtag" was going to rescue the girls kidnapped in Nigeria, and result in the destruction of Boko Haram. It turned out to be, as Twitter causes always do, to be as effective as a rock thrown in a millpond; making a big splash, diminishing to a few ripples, and then leaving the millpond as still as before the rock was thrown. The girls are still missing, Boko Haram is still as much in business as it ever was, and in Nigeria nothing has changed in the slightest.

A new "hashtag" has replaced it on top of the follower count, celebrating the defeat of Eric Cantor, as if that trivial event was in any way going to alter the cesspool that is politics in Washington.

Busted. As In Broken.

As an example of how badly broken our all-volunteer military is, to illustrate just how thoroughly that principle is failing this nation, consider this,

Bowe Bergdahl, the soldier who deserted in Afghanistan, was discharged from the Coast Guard a mere 26 days after completing boot camp. The Army was aware of that, but gave him a waiver and signed him up in a combat role. They were gearing up for Obama's 30,000 man "surge" of troops in Afghanistan at the time.

Our active frontline military level is 1.43 million, 2.28 million including the reserves. According to the above, we are so badly stretched that we did not have 2% of the active military, or 1% of the total, available to man that "surge" and the recruiting pool is so badly depleted that we had to use Coast Guard rejects.

The military has a term FUBAR, the clean version of which stands for "fouled up beyond all recognition" and means that something has become unrepairable. This is the "best military in the world" and we are filling it with Coast Guard rejects?

Drip, Drip, Drip

Obama’s initial response to criticism about not notifying Congress regarding the negotiations about the exchange for Bergdahl was that his health was endangered and it was necessary to move very rapidly. He went into considerable detail about how the soldier appeared in videos with weight loss and such, and that his concern as Commander in Chief required him to move swiftly to rescue one of the men who served under him.

Congress, however, remained angry and unconvinced, continuing to insist that they should have been informed before the exchange was finalized.

Then, after almost a week, the administration informed us that there was also a death threat involved in the process. CBS initially reported it as an issue of speed, saying that the Taliban threatened to kill Bergdahl if the exchange was not finalized immediately. Then we heard that it actually more directly had to do with the failure to inform Congress; that the Taliban had threatened to kill Bergdahl if the negotiations became public. The spokesman who released this information was not named.

The Obama administration has a way of releasing the details of an issue in bits and pieces over a significant period of time, often with conflicting facts. If the public is not buying the initial offering, they run a different flag up the flagpole and see if the public salutes that one. That makes it very difficult to believe anything the White House says.

Water Carrier

CBS Evening News has become so open about its pimping for the administration that it has turned into a comedy show. A few days ago it carried a piece about Obama’s decision to arm and train “moderate rebels” in Syria, followed immediately by a description of Assad routinely and repeatedly employing chlorine gas in attacks on Syrian civilians in violation of their agreement to surrender their chemical weapons. This was an agreement, CBS pointed out, which prevented Obama from bombing Assad’s forces into the Stone Age.

No other news agency has even accepted that the chlorine gas attacks have been proven even to have occurred at all, let alone that Assad perpetrated them, but CBS does not let such trivial details as proof get in their way.

Last night they were all over the Bergdahl story, saying that the reason that the transfer was made so rapidly and without notifying Congress was not only due to Bergdahl’s declining health, which was displayed by him stuttering, cradling one arm “as if it was injured,” and that he seemed to have lost weight. The picture with which they backed this up was, to say the least, unconvincing, and none of it was visible when they showed the film of his transfer.

On the film of his transfer they cited further evidence of his ill health in that when first seen in the pickup truck he was blinking repeatedly “as if suffering from vision loss.” Or, perhaps, as if he’d just had a blindfold removed. Try again.

Further hastening the negotiations, and justifying failure to notify Congress, they claimed, was that there were “death threats.” They did not clarify that, but we now learn that the Taliban threatened to kill Bergdahl if the negotiations became public. The administration only trotted that out after almost a week of having his health issues being the sole justification for haste and still getting heat from Congress, so...

They then tried to contradict his fellow soldiers who are now calling him a deserter, because Obama would never release terrorists in exchange for a guy who was a sloppy soldier and a deserter. They claim that those soldiers were interviewed at the time Bergdahl was captured and said then that he was “always on time, dressed in proper uniform and courteous.”

If you think that any grunt would describe a fellow grunt in those terms you have not only not served in the military, you have never had a family member who served, and you have probably never even spoken to a person in the military. There is nothing there about how well he performed his duties, and I can assure you that is the only thing we gave a shit about with respect to our fellows.

I guess I cared a little bit about whether or not my sidekick was on time, at least in terms of relieving me on watch, but I could care less if his uniform was clean, and courtesy was the last thing I expected from him. What I cared about was could he check battery specs? Could he keep a motor-generator set on line? Could he wire a motor starter?

The CBS report goes on to say that they did not suspect desertion at the time and could not speculate why he left the outpost, but decided that he “was simply ‘bored’ with the routine of standing guard.” Sure, because one always wanders off unarmed into enemy territory when one is bored.

Getting Old

I started reading an article about "Eleven things you should never put in a dishwasher," when I realized that I almost certainly knew what the eleven things are and, blush, that I don't have a functioning dishwasher.

GM "Investigation"

The General Motors "internal investigation" is unmitigated bullshit in its entirety. Garbage. Lies, confabulation and self justifying nonsense. The people who produced it, the smug ninny who announced it and the criminals who caused the problem and covered it up should all have concrete blocks tied around their ankles and be tossed into Lake Michigan.

The Unasked Question

In all of the discussion about the release of Bowe Bergdahl, one question has not been asked, and I’m rather wondering why it has not. Who were his superiors, and what were they doing before his presumed desertion?

When I was a petty officer, the Navy equivalent of sergeant, part of my responsibility was the well being of the men who served under my direction. If one of my men was having, for instance, wife problems or money problems, it was my responsibility to counsel him and to see to it that he received whatever help he needed to resolve those problems. If those problems were not noticed and dealt with then we would have had crew members functioning at less than maximum effectiveness.

By most accounts Bergdahl was having and expressing serious doubts about the mission, about his place and role in the military unit, for quite some time prior to leaving his post. In any case, there is no way that he was behaving normally and contributing fully to the unit’s mission and then suddenly deserted to the enemy. Something had to be showing in his behavior. Why did his sergeant and/or the officer directly responsible for him not notice and address that issue before it turned into a problem? Where was the leadership within that military unit?

Push come to shove, I would tell my superior that I wanted a guy shipped out, and perhaps that's what someone should have said regarding Bergdahl. Why was that never done?

“No man is an island.” That is particularly true in an organization such as the military, and yet this man’s supposed desertion is being discussed as if it happened in a vacuum and was not something for which the military itself bears any responsibility. The military says it will investigate the conditions under which Bergdahl was captured. I think that investigation should include all levels of the leadership in Bergdahl’s unit.

Obfuscation and Evasion

Tom Dispatch, via Salon.com, attempts to debunk the theory that raising the minimum wage would have any deleterious effects. In response to the question asking if companies would not merely pass the higher wages on in the form of higher prices, the author replies,

Maybe, but they are unlikely to be significant. For example, if McDonald’s doubled the salaries of its employees to a semi-livable $14.50 an hour, not only would most of them go off public benefits, but so would the company — and yet a Big Mac would cost just 68 cents more. In general, only about 20% of the money you pay for a Big Mac goes to labor costs. At Wal-Mart, increasing wages to $12 per hour would cost the company only about one percent of its annual sales.

I have no idea what he means by “but so would the company” in terms of going off public benefits, but the bit about the Big Mac is interesting. He says it would “cost just 68 cents more,” presumably bolstering his “unlikely to be significant” argument about increased prices. I’m not sure in what universe a 20% increase would be considered insignificant.

As for Wal-Mart, he says it would reduce their annual sales volume, but he says nothing about what it would do to their prices, which is a bit odd given that he is responding to a question about businesses raising prices.

I am not opposed to raising the minimum wage but, unfortunately, this is the kind of discussion we get today. No one seems to be able to actually make their case without resorting to obfuscation, as with the price of the Big Mac, or evasion, as with the Wal-Mart sales.

Why not admit that it will raise prices and make the case for that being justifiable? Or, alternatively, make a case that it will raise prices only in areas where the price increases don’t matter? If your cause is valid, why not engage in honest discussion about it?

And The Crowd Goes Wild

The various objections to and defenses of Obama’s carbon cut, reducing carbon emissions from coal-fired electric plants by 2030, proves that our schools and colleges are no longer teaching the ability to use logic. Or that politics has rendered logic unpopular, which is somewhat more likely.

From Bloomberg, who unsurprisingly does not like the enforced reduction, we get that, “For one thing, the amount of the U.S. cuts would be replaced more than three times over by projected increases in China alone.”

Which would be meaningful only if China’s increase was made in response to our cuts and would be cancelled if we cancelled our cuts. Bloomberg is saying, in effect, that China is increasing only because we are making cuts, and would not increase if we did not make cuts. I know, that was so illogical that it was hard to follow. More simply put, China's increase has nothing whatever to do with out cutting carbon emissions.

Read the whole piece. There’s a “since we can’t cut carbon increase to zero, we shouldn’t try to reduce the rate of increase at all” content in there which is utterly insane.

Then Paul Krugman defends the carbon decrease by saying that doing so will cost a more 0.2% of GDP and that’s cheap. He’s pretty light hearted about it, but it’s kind of a short sighted and silly defense. The reduction affects the electric power generation very specifically, and as such affects only a portion of our economy. It doesn't affect the financial sector to any notable degree, and doesn’t markedly affect housing or transportation. The cost should be measured against the portion of the economy which is directly affected by it, and that cost is going to be a bit higher that 0.2%.

That’s not to say that I think it will be unaffordable or that I don’t think we should be willing to pay it. I think the carbon cut is a great idea and that we should be willing to pay what it costs to do so, but we should know what those costs are, not be bullshitted into thinking that there are none with the silly kind of crap that Paul Krugman is peddling.

It will, for one thing, reduce the coal industry a lot more than 0.2%; more like 80% which is the whole point of the measure. Tell the coal industry and the people who work in that industry that it won’t cost anything, Paul. It’s not free, it comes with a cost.

Who Didn't See That Coming?

Critics of recent conduct of the VA Medical System are saying that if it can't be fixed immediately then veterans should be given access to private medical providers at government expense. Of course they are. That was the purpose of underfunding the VA Medical System to begin with; so that performance would drop to a level at which privatization could be justified. They lost the opportunity to privatize Social Security, but there are plenty
of other targets.

Oddity of the week: GDP decreased at an annual rate of 1% in the first quarter, and it is being blamed on the weather, but "internals" make that excuse just a little hard to believe. Consumer spending rose by 3.3% in that same quarter. What did the weather stop from happening if it didn't stop people from going to the mall?

Jumping to conclusions: Prior to World War Two quite a lot of American citizens went to China to fight against the Japanese who were invading that country. That was not interpreted as meaning that America was invading China, or that the American government had declared war on Japan. The presence of Russian nationals in Ukraine, however, intrinsically means that the Russian government has declared war on and/or is invading Ukraine. Why can Ammericans act as private citizens but Russians cannot?

Quality

Local sports writers were opining that the San Diego State University was disrespected by the NCAA by being sent to Louisiana for the first round of the NCAA baseball tournament. The team players and coaches, however, have a different reaction to the assignment. They say they are happy about it because it gives them a chance to "show the nation who we are." Nice attitude. Confidence without hubris.

Memorial Day Weekend Racing Notes

The Indianapolis 500 lived up to the hype this year. It pretty much never got boring, and the finish was awesome. I may lack the proper degree of patriotism, or something, but I really don’t care that “an American won.”

The racing was great, but the coverage utterly stunk. They should have people working in television for these events who know at least a little bit about auto racing.

They show every pass from the in-car camera. It is impossible to tell anything about the pass from that angle, because you cannot see where they are on the track. Was it an easy pass or did he really have to work to do it? How deep into the corner did he go making that pass? How much room did the passee actually give to the passing car? You can't tell with the view they give you.

At one point they showed Marco starting to pass Helio from the in-car camera. He had to abort the pass and fall back. Why? Where was he on the track that made him abort the pass? You could not tell from the in-car camera why the passing attempt failed.

At the three car wreck they first said it "wasn't anybody's fault" which was just plain ridiculous on the face of it. Three wide was stupid and of course it was somebody's fault. I was pretty sure it was Hinchcliffe who caused it by diving inside and creating the three wide, but the announcers were saying that it was caused by Townsend Bell. Later they interviewed Ed Carpenter, who said, "I think Bell and I would have been okay, but then Hinch dived inside and made it three wide and caused the wreck," confirming what I had figured but which the announcers had failed to notice.

Kurt Bush, NASCAR driver participating in his first Indycar race ever, finished sixth, which was a major accomplishment. I don’t like Kurt, but credit where it’s due. That was a very well-driven race.

Danica Patrick was going to win the 600-mile NASCAR race because she qualified fourth and has thereby finally proven that she is a superstar. The announcers were having a major case of the vapors over her until the race started, when she promptly started “advancing to the rear,” and was running 24th, one lap down, when her engine went sour. She then managed to wreck her car before the engine exploded.

Her inability to run with the leaders was, of course, caused by a “slow car.” Funny, the car was not slow in qualifying, nor was it slow in any of the practice sessions. No one has been able to explain why it was slow for the race.

And We Do It Again

Isla Vista: many people killed and injured by a maniac who leaves behind a "manifesto." He wants to be "noticed." He wants people to know his name, because he has felt slighted and ignored. And so as a result of his heinous action we notice him. We talk about him. He went out, as he wanted to do, in a "blaze of glory." Everyone knows his name. He gets the attention he sought. We are idiots.

When someone runs naked onto a football field that media says they will not show him because, "we do not want to encourage others to do the same." But when someone goes on a shooting spree in one last desperate attempt for attention, they give him so much attention that they gurantee that more shooting sprees will follow.

Don't give these poor sick bastards the attention they seek. Bury them in an unmarked grave without telling the public anything about them so that other poor sick bastards don't follow their example. What part of that is so hard to figure out?

Living Wage

A subheadline at Salon.com said that instead of fancy advertising MacDonalds should pay a "living wage." I'm not sure how raising wages would bring them more business, which is the point of advertising, but I submit that the point is nonsense in any case.

MacDonalds, and other fast food outlets, should not be paying a "living wage" for the simple reason that working in these places is not a real job. This is something that high school kids should be doing to make spending money, not something that anyone should be doing to make a living. It is nonproductive, useless and demeaning work with no real future. It is a stepping stone; "make work"to fill time until one can qualify for a real job.

If this nation has deteriorated to the point that flipping burgers and selling Happy Meals across a counter is considered a "living wage" career then there is no point in discussing our economy because we no longer have a meaningful econpmy.

"Minimum wage" should be about high school kids and college students.
It should be utterly meaningless in terms of careers and people who are working at full time jobs. The idea that we are willing to have people supporting families on minimum wage, whatever it is, is obscene.

We should not be working to make fast food joints pay "living wage," we should be busting our collective ass to get people the hell out of those trivial jobs and into real jobs.

Where Does The Buck Stop?

President Truman had a sign on his desk that said, "The buck stops here." Obviously the current president does not subscribe to that theory, because when agencies go sour the exercise in "passing the buck" for the problem up the chain of command stops somewhere well short of his desk.

When HHS totally botched the launch of Obamacare, Obama was pissed off and announced to the country that he would not tolerate that sort of thing, with the implication that it was neither his fault nor that of his apointee Kathleen Sebelius. She later retired with honor, blameless for the debacle over which she presided. Now Obama is "outraged" and "will not tolerate" the performance of the Veterans' Health Service, but he is not prepared to hold either himself of his apointee Eric Shinseki to account for that debacle, either.

Some presidents accept responsibility for what happens on their watch, and others stand back and are "outraged" by what their subordinates do.
"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"

An Interesting Rant

Dylan Ratigan goes on a rather entertaining rant here about how this nation is “being extracted” and that both political parties are involved in the crime. I’m not entirely clear on his meaning of “extracted” but it has to do, I suspect, with the rich getting richer as he says that we are being “extracted through banking, trade and taxation,” which strikes me as an odd set of factors, given that taxation is the lowest it’s been in eighty years.

Nonetheless, given the context I suspect that “taxation” slipped in there by accident, or that he may be referring to the lack of progressivism in our tax structure, because overall he makes more sense than his demeanor would seem to suggest. It is not an angry rant, really, he just got carried away.

I particularly liked the part where he said that the “extraction” is destroying us and “…here we are arguing between a $4 trillion plan that kicks the can down the road for the president or just burn the house down, both of which are reckless, irresponsible and stupid.” He then apologizes for losing his temper, but I thought he lost it rather effectively.

Of course he wants the president to attack Congress for having “been bought” and “go to the American people” to demand that they be kicked out for having been bought, evidently not recalling that the president just spent two weeks on a fund raising trip, including a $10,000-per-plate dinner in San Diego. The fact that San Diego is home to Mitt Romney is actually irrelevant, but somehow seems rather interesting.

I still maintain that his point, along with the popular issues of “income inequality” and minimum wage, are distractions from the real issue which faces this country; that being the lack of the ability of the working class to find jobs which are sufficient for them to earn a real living. That issue is the one thing that politicians and pundits are totally unwilling to discuss today.

Fine Lines

There was a clip on the local news last night regarding the shooting of a barber shop owner, saying that the police have developed a lead on the shooter. The sister of the slain barber was shown briefly, saying to the cameras, "To the person who killed my brother I want to say this. I forgive you. I forgive you because that's the way my brother lived his life. He would not want his death to be the cause of hate and vengeance." Beautiful.

A New Law Governing Feelings

Carson City CA is in the final stages of creating a new “anti-bullying” law, which would create fines of $100 and up for anyone, including young children, who (emphasis mine) “makes another person feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed, or molested” with no legitimate purpose.” I’m trying to imagine what would constitute a “legitimate purpose” for doing any of that, but…

The states already has an anti-bullying law, a much more sensible one, prohibiting “conduct done with the intent to harass or intimidate.”

Notice the difference here? The present law says that you are responsible for what you do, while Carson City wants to hold you responsible for how someone other than you feels. California judges you for your actions; Carson City wants to judge you for somebody else’s feelings. California wants the prosecutor to be evaluating the actions you have performed and/or the words you have spoken, while Carson City wants the prosecutor to be evaluating the feelings of a six-year-old in order to prosecute you for having broken the law.

“If you felt terrorized,” the prosecutor asks the five-year-old Mary, “I’m going to fine Timmy $600, but you only felt harassed then I will just fine him $100, so I need to know how you felt.”

Where do we get this kind of idiots?

No Hype Wednesday

Firefighters are just fucking awesome.

Nine thousand acres burned in nine fires, half of it in densely populated urban areas, and we lost eight houses and one apartment building. Eight.
It could reasonably have been eight hundred. Zero lives lost.

I was watching television as a wall of fire approached a school building. The reporter on site was saying that they only had "hand crews" on the scene and were not going to be able to stop the school from being burned. I was thinking to myself that meybe he should not be flapping his mouth until he saw what the firefighters could do. Sure enough, half an hour later he was saying that, "somehow they stopped it."

Not "somehow" dipwad. They stopped it by doing what firefighters do. They are not supermen but they are really, really good at stopping fires. And they don't pound their chests and demand our admiration. Maybe they're just too tired, I don't know, but they just shrug and get ready for the next fire. Heroes.

Hyping the Fire

My sister emailed from Salt Lake City to ask if I was okay with respect to "that thing," meaning the fire that was on the news. It is much too early in the season for this kind of thing, but let's be clear about what this was.

About 5000 homes were evacuated, not the 20,000 reported. No one knows where the latter number came from; police and fire officials are vehemently denying that they ever reported it. One police officer said that 5000 homes might be expected to contain 20,000 people, so perhaps that was the source of the bogus number. For information, the average value of those 5000 homes was probably about $4 million.

The fire topped out at 850 acres, which is not really a very big fire. It was fought by about 150 firefighters, not the "hundreds" that was reported. It was driven by Santa Ana winds, but at their worst they were gusting at 50 mph or less, and by noon they were blowing at 15 mph with gusts at 25 mph. That hardly qualifies as "fierce Santa Ana winds."

Only one structure was burned, a small outbuilding. There are two reason no homes were lost, one being that homeowners had done a supurb job of maintaining "defensible space" around their homes; a 100' radius cleared of brush and combustible material. The other is that the fire was mostly burning in canyons which run toward the sea and in which no homes are built. That area of San Diego is very hilly and open, and is only now beginning to be developed; expensively developed.

This was by no means a minor fire, and great credit is due to the firefighters. They were ready, and their expertise and dedication prevented this from being a whole lot worse than it was. But it was only a precursor. Anyone freaked out by this had better move to Minnesota before July.

Space Disaster

We all knew something was coming. Well, maybe the suits in Washington thought that they could keep imposing "sanctions" on Russia and that Russia would meekly lie there and not so much as whimper as their American overlords whipped them, but those of us who live in the real world knew that Russia would deliver a "fuck you" in response eventually. And sure enough, Vladimir now says that they are going to quit carrying our people and supplies to the International Space Station starting in 2020.

Alarmists are screeching about the need to "do something" and the death of the space program and "how could we have let it come to this?" Um, did everyone miss the news that the private US company "Space X" has already delivered supplies to the ISS, and has said it will be ready to deliver people in 2017? That's a three year grace period before the Russians cut us off. Think before you panic.

Greenwald on Clinton

Glenn Greenwald on Hillary Clinton and the 2016 election,

"Hillary is banal, corrupted, drained of vibrancy and passion. I mean, she’s been around forever, the Clinton circle. She’s a hawk and like a neocon, practically. She’s surrounded by all these sleazy money types who are just corrupting everything everywhere. But she’s going to be the first female president, and women in America are going to be completely invested in her candidacy. Opposition to her is going to be depicted as misogynistic, like opposition to Obama has been depicted as racist. It’s going to be this completely symbolic messaging that’s going to overshadow the fact that she’ll do nothing but continue everything in pursuit of her own power."

Quite a few readers took exception to the “opposition to Obama has been depicted as racist” part, but I think the point has validity. No small part of the opposition to Obama was and is racist, of course, but I have seen valid criticism labeled as racist when it clearly was not, and one has to wonder how many people who would have criticized Obama have stood silent due to fear of being called racist. And by no means all criticism of Obama and his policies has drawn charges of racism.

That being said, I think Greenwald’s statement covers it pretty well.

Now What?

Eastern Ukraine has now voted to become autonomous. So what is the next move for the United States, which professes to respect democracy and “the will of the people” to govern themselves?

To say that the voted was rigged, presumably by Vladimir Putin, although they do not say precisely how he did that.

The next step is to follow that up by saying that even if it was not rigged, it was illegal. That one is really weird. Installing a new government consisting of the masked thugs that took government buildings by armed force and physically threw the elected government out on the street is okay, and we will acknowledge that new government, but holding an election to determine the wishes of the people of a region is illegal and we are not going to accept the results of that election.

And we’re going to impose sanctions on Russia for what Ukraine did, even though Russia asked them not to do it.

I’ll tell you what, those fuckers in Washington have far different definitions of “democracy” and “diplomacy” than I do.

Johnny Who?

So, the greatest player in the history of college football (or at least that's the way the greatest player in the history of college football describes himself) went 22nd in the draft, picked by Cleveland, who passed on him twice before taking him with their third pick. I think the Browns will regret their choice, but what do I know?

Self Justification

A post at Jonathan Turley mentioned that a circuit court declined to hold the airlines responsible for the cleanup costs after 9/11. Turley, whose opinions I generally respect, was comfortable with the decision but not with the reason given for it, which was that 9/11 was “an act of war.”

The commenters, a group which I also generally respect, universally agreed that it was indeed an act of war, and the reason given seemed to focus on our response to that act which was, of course, to invade Afghanistan. So it was an act of war not because of the act itself, but because of our reaction to it, which seems entirely illogical to me. One has to ask if it would still be an act of war if we had reacted differently. If not, then the act itself can not be defined as an act of war on the basis of our reactionan.

The argument makes me think of the words of Judge William Young, in sentencing the shoe bomber, “So war talk is way out of line in this court. You’re a big fellow. But you’re not that big. You’re no warrior. I know warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders.”

In defining 9/11 as an act of war we elevate and dignify criminals as warriors. We insult the men and women who have risked and lost their lives on the field of battle in defense of this nation. They are warriors. The 9/11 perpetrators were not warriors, they ware not waging war, they were criminals, engaged simply in multiple acts of murder.

Defining 9/11 as an act of war is an exercise in self justification, giving false blessing to us beginning a war on the Islamic world; a war which continues unabated almost thirteen years later.

Funky Numbers Again

We created 288,000 new jobs in April the media crows with great glee, but what they don't say is that the same agency reporting those 288,000 new jobs also tells us that 73,000 fewer people are employed. Why do we regard a report with any degree of seriousness, when it tells us that 73,000 fewer people are holding 288,000 more jobs? A difference of 361,000 jobs.

They also tell us gleefully that "unemployment dropped four tenths of a point, to 6.3%," but they don't tell us that number is from the same report that indicates 73,000 fewer employed; that it is based on zero increase in employment and is caused entirely by the fact that 806,000 people have given up looking for work and are no longer counted as unemployed.

So if consumer spending has recovered as well as we are being told that it has, if corporate profits are at all time highs, and if the stock market is at record levels, and if all these things are signs of a recovery gainging steam as we are told they are, then why are people giving up looking for work in such astounding numbers? Maybe because the pathetic 0.1% growth in GDP in the first quarter was not entirely due to weather, as economists are claiming it was.

The Danger of Parachutes

I have found a dissertation online which uses a neat form of logic that can prove that parachutes are dangerous, and that we should stop using them when jumping out of airplanes. I only get out of airplanes if they are on the ground and stationary, or if the pilot gets out, whichever comes first but…

This dude starts by admitting that if you are riding a bicycle and are in an accident a helmet will probably save your life, but he then proceeds to dive into misstatements of fact and tortured illogic to prove that wearing a helmet while bicycling is not only unnecessary but is actually contraindicated. He is an even bigger idiot than Paul Krugman, which is a considerable feat.

First he has a colorful pie chart which shows that 53% of head injuries in San Diego in 1978 occurred in cars, not on bicycles. Wait a minute, 1978? That’s 36 years ago! How seriously am I going to regard an argument that uses 36-year-old data?

Anyway, the guy says that since so many more head injuries occur in cars than on bicycles, we should be requiring people to wear helmets while driving cars, not while riding bicycles. I think he’s missing a basic point here, which is where the parachutes come in. You’re not going to believe that I researched parachute usage in San Diego, and you’ll be right, I made all this shit up and I’m still closer to reality than the idiot with his bicycle helmet arguments.

One person left an airplane while it was in flight not wearing a parachute in 1978 and the experience, not surprisingly, killed him. On the other hand, 126,543 people departed from flying airplanes while wearing parachutes and no fewer than nine of them died. Now go back to Howie’s pie chart and note that nine people died while wearing parachutes while only one person died while not wearing a parachute, and it becomes obvious that airplane jumpers should not be wearing parachutes.

That’s what Howie is saying with his silly ass 36-year-old chart; nine times as many head injuries occurred in cars as on bicycles, so people in cars should wear helmets and people on bicycles should not. I’m saying that nine times as many airplane jumpers died with parachutes as died without them, so jumpers should stop wearing parachutes. Both statements are equally stupid and illogical.

What percentage of non-parachute users died? 100% What percentage of parachute users died? .007% Put another way, if you jump without a chute you will certainly die; if you jump with a chute you have only one chance in 14,000 of dying.

The question Howie doesn’t ask is how many people took car trips in San Diego in 1978, and how many took bicycle trips? I don’t know the answer to that and I wasn’t here that year, but I will bet you my next Social Security check that at least one million more car trips were taken than bicycle trips and that the rate of head injury in cars was a very small fraction of the rate of head injuries on bicycles. Put another way, your chances of getting a head injury are vastly greater while riding a bicycle than they are while riding in a car, which is why we require bicyclists to wear helmets.

He later asserts that car drivers “passed an average of 3 1/3 inches closer when the bicycle rider was helmeted than when he was not.” He says that the closeness of the pass increases “the chance of being clipped by a vehicle.” He does not assert that any vehicle clipping actually occurred, or that bicycle riders fell off of their bicycles, or fainted in terror, so it is unclear what role those 3-1/2 inches played in the study he is citing, or why they justified not wearing helmets.

He than tells us that, “There's some evidence that having an enlarged piece of plastic and foam on your head increases the probability of hitting an object that you'd be able to avoid in the first place.” He doesn’t tell us what that evidence is, of course, probably because it is about as reliable as my evidence about parachute jumpers.

Then he tries the statistical game of showing no reduction in injuries, citing one study that "found an increase in head injuries between 2004 and 2010 despite an increase in helmet use,” He fails to mention that the number of snowboarders increased by 500% in that six year period, so it’s likely that while the number of injuries increased, the rate of injuries decreased.

He finished with a couple of flourishes like, “The ultimate way to make cycling safe is to promote a culture of cycling, not bike helmet use,” and that rather than helmets we should assure that “cyclists learn how to assert their road rights while also safely interacting with traffic.” Which sounds noble, except that these things are not mutually exclusive. Wearing helmets does not prevent, or even interfere with the goal of promoting “a culture of cycling” or teaching people how to cycle safely.

This nitwit doesn’t want to wear a helmet, and is engaging is extreme nonsensical self justification to comfort himself. The danger is that kids may read this garbage and be sold by it.