Month: October 2011

Release The Kraken!

My last day of mental clarity….but first…..paleontology

Zeus ordered Posiden to do just that and destroy the kingdom of Argos…..

In Nevada evidence of the Kraken may have been found…..NO!  I am NOT talking about candidate Angle….though she could be categorized as some sort of beast….but in this case I am speaking of what scientist have called a Kraken and a couple of really bad SciFi movies bearing the name of the beast……sorry, I digress…..Newser website has this report……

Sasquatch should be really nervous right now… First, Siberian officials announced they had proof that Yeti exists. Now a Massachusetts paleontologist says he has indirect evidence that the fearsome kraken once roamed the seas. At the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America, Mark McMenamin yesterday posited that the 100-foot-long mythological sea monster was soft-bodied, which would explain the absence of bones and other fossil evidence. But he believes that the bones of nine ichthyosaurs at the Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada point to the kraken’s existence, reports LiveScience. The markings on the bones of the 45-foot ichthyosaurs at the park, along with the larger than expected number of broken ribs and the bones’ “very odd configuration,” led McMenamin to believe that the ichthyosaurs had likely been killed then carried to a single lair, likely by an octopus-type creature that had either drowned them or twisted their necks. Science Daily also reports that McMenamin observed that the fossils’ vertebrae seem to be arranged in a way that mimics the pattern of the sucker discs on a cephalopod tentacle. LiveScience notes that plenty of people are calling his circumstantial evidence hooey. Click to read one such reaction, a Wired piece titled “The Giant, Prehistoric Squid That Ate Common Sense.”

Okay, there is more……click on the link for the discovery of a real Yeti….it is a good piece also……

About here we can insert all the sushi jokes……..and maybe a couple calamari ones too……

A Celestial Gas Station?

Saturday…..my start of a beautiful two days of mental nothingness…..AHHHHHH!

There has been lots of sciencey stuff in the past year……advancements in robotics and AI……faster than light travel in Europe, CERN to be exact…..and I am always looking for news and articles about space, the final frontier and our mission out there to the far reaches of the universe…..

As it is now, when we launch a rocket to the space station or such….we have to be aware of the fuel capacity and the levels or we may never get home or we could become a flaming star in the night sky…..while skooching around the net I fond an interesting article on the fuel controversy……

NASA boffins are looking into making a science-fiction staple – the idea of transmitting power to spacecraft using lasers or microwaves – into reality.

Sending enough energy to replace commonly-used present day space propulsion via laser beam would be quite a feat. One of the most powerful lasers in the world that’s capable of keeping a beam going for any length of time – Boeing’s Airborne Laser Test Bed – can put out only a few megawatts of juice, but (according to El Reg’s back-of-a-pint-coaster calculations) it takes about 190 gigawatts to power the first stage of a Saturn V rocket and 4.1GW to make a single Delta IV core rocket go.

The agency said in its statement:

This project will attempt to develop a low-cost, modular power beaming capability and explore multiple technologies to function as receiving elements of the beamed power.

This combination of technologies could be applied to space propulsion, performance and endurance of un-piloted aerial vehicles or ground-to-ground power beaming applications. Development of such capabilities fulfills NASA’s strategic goal of developing high-payoff technology and enabling missions otherwise unachievable with today’s technology.

This could be a major break through could eliminate the need for all that solid fuel or the concern on the level in the tank…..this could make space travel a whole lot easier and the search for our Klingnon brothers more realistic……

Herding OWS Protesters To Obama

An attempt will be made today in NYC to break the protest…..

There are about 1300 separate OWS protests across the US, even one in Honolulu….personally, I like the organic nature of these protests….meaning that there is NO leadership and that the protests are centered on the people not necessarily on some form of ideology…….protesting greed and our auction political system that is bought by special interests and the people have very little sway over the outcome of elections….it is either tweedle-dum or tweedle-dumber……

So I was surprised to see a former leader of the SDS, Students for a Democratic Society, a super radical group from the 60’s write an op-ed basically trying to convince people that the Democrats, most notably Obama,  would be the best leaders of the movement……I gagged!

In an article written by Bill Van Auken for wsws.org……

An op-ed column by Todd Gitlin, published in the New York TimesSunday is representative of this layer of ex-lefts, whose principal preoccupation is how to channel this movement behind the Democratic Party and the upcoming campaign to reelect President Barack Obama.Gitlin titled his Times column: “The Left Declares its Independence,” apparently in reference to the protests’ relation to the Obama administration in Washington. He argues that many of those now protesting “went door-to-door” for Obama in 2008 and quotes a fellow academic as writing that “This is the Obama generation declaring their independence from Obama.”

While Gitlin’s long-winded piece is full of professed sympathy for the demonstrations and celebration of its supposed “anarchist” and “New Left” sensibilities, the thrust of his argument is that, sooner rather than later, it will have to—and should—come under the wing of the Democrats.

He hails the efforts of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy to hijack the protest movement and turn it into a prop for the Obama reelection campaign in 2012. In this energetic movement from below, he writes, “Here, finally, is what labor and the activist left have been waiting for.”

He is WRONG!  The Dems are NO better than the hated Repubs and the unions are there in support but will take over the first chance they get…….

I was not surprised to see that Gitlin had written this piece……since his radical beginnings he has come to be firmly entrenched in the pockets of the Democrats….but to come out and basically call for the Obama admin to take control of the situation defies the very tactics that he was so famous for back in the day…..SHAME!

Smirking Chimp

Not a post about the website…however, it is a really good read……

As everyone who reads my stuff knows how much I like politics and the antics that go with it…..but I have always dislikes and mistrusted any politician that smirks when asked questions….that goes for every politician regardless of party or affiliation…..but recently I have seen more smirks per issue than in the past…..and the smirk-iest of the bunch is the GOP’s majority leader in the House, Eric Cantor……

Wne he sprints to the microphones after any announcement from the Obama administration to get in the first shots of the battle to come….he seems to always smirk when talking about important issues….like unemployment or the recession or……after reading a piece om political wire I now have a good grasp of the situation…..

Jason Zengerle profiles House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) noting that no one “has done more to disrupt Obama’s first term — and threaten his chance at a second — than Cantor. The two men have clashed from the start.”

He’s consolidated his own power by courting the Republican House freshman who gave his party the majority in last year’s elections. “Some veteran GOP lawmakers find Cantor’s coddling of the freshmen irritating… But Cantor has realized that, in Washington these days, being liked is not a substantial advantage. Much better to be deemed so unreasonable that your opponents ultimately feel no choice but to bend to your will.”

Also interesting: “And yet for all the loyalty many GOP congressmen feel toward Cantor, he is surprisingly unloved. Even his admirers say he lacks the social ease and natural confidence of most politicians… Cantor rarely socializes with his colleagues, and since he doesn’t golf or fish or have any hobbies, when he does find himself in social situations, he usually talks about work.”

I think we could call it….ARROGANCE.  To me, his smirking illustrates that he does not take the plight of the American people as something serious and that his own personal ambitions trump anything useful for society…..

Herm’s Social Security Plan

We hear daily about the Cain tax plan of 999….everybody is all a twitter (the feeling not the social media) about his plan….but I want to talk about what he has in store for Social Security……but first……Cain’s economic adviser is NOT an economist…..the “999″ plan was dealt its biggest blow when one of Cain’s own economic advisers said it wasn’t a tax plan he would back. While Gary Robbins, who scored the plan for Cain’s campaign and is a paid consultant, praised the plan, he made it clear that it wouldn’t be the plan he picked.  That pretty much tells you just how effective it would be…..

But let us move on…..Herman Cain likes to call his proposal for Social Security as the “Chilean Model”……okay but what is the “Chilean Model”?  In short, the Chilean Model — if actually enacted and administered as it is in Chile — would be a far, far cry from the abolition of the welfare state. Instead, it would represent government partnering with private business in order to administer the social welfare guarantees that conservatives are often so quick to denounce.

Under the Chilean system, workers must contribute 10% of their income, up to a certain limit — similar to Social Security taxes in this country — to a private pension fund administrator.

Workers then choose which funds to invest in, according to the different classifications of risk levels. But even then, there is no true free-market risk of total failure and being left out in the cold — at least, not for the pensioners.  In fact, the government has maintained a social guarantee of minimum pensions for retirees. Thus, in case of serious under-performance or losses by a fund — or outright bankruptcy of a failing AFP — the government will essentially perform a bailout of retirees, by paying for the difference up to the minimum benefit. Indeed, the reforms that have taken place in the system have been done to address the wide-ranging low payments from the system, with expanded efforts to cover poorer workers and to increase the minimum benefits that the government will provide.

In other words….it is a snow job that still requires governmental involvement…if in fact he is proposing using the Chilean Model…..so just like his fallacy of the 999 Plan so goes his Social Security plan….maybe he should spend more time on the mechanics of his plan and less time doing interviews that he pisses up every time he opens his mouth…..just a thought!

Set The Record Straight

After all the years of education in politics, history and economics…I feel that when I heard a batch of crap that I am duty bound to set the record straight…….

Well, last night the Repub candidates did there best to sell themselves as the savior of the GOP and they all want to be president….you might ask why?  NO ONE knows…….must be the ego trip and the superficiality high that comes with being elected…….we know it is not to save the country for none of them have any idea how to do that….other than tax cuts and Obama sucks!

Time to set the record straight……after the debate it seems that Perry went to hang with some Frat Rats and while snoring coke and chuggin’ beers (not really but it sounds like a party)…he was bumping glad with the boys when he said….

the founding fathers fought for state rights during the American Revolution—in the 16th century,

Maybe he should have paid closer attention while at Texas A&M……there were no states in the 1500’s, there was only one permanent settlement at that time St. Augustine, Florida and the American Revolution was fought in the 1700’s which for future reference was the 18th century……

Next was good old Newt Gingrich……during the debate when talking about the meltdown of Wall Street said….

“If you want to put people in jail…” he continued, “you have to start with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. Let’s look at the politicians who created the environment, and politicians who profited from the environment, and the politicians who put this country in trouble.”

So he wants the people, especially the politicians, that caused the Wall Street meltdown arrested and tried…..is that about it?  If so, then let us set the record straight……

It began with the Depository Institutions deregulation and Monetary Act of 1980, then the Garn-St, Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 and finally the Tax Reform Act of 1986 which deregulated the financial system a bit…..then he needs to start with Reagan and his cronies….and then came the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 with Gramm-Leach….so you want politicians who assisted in the Wall Street bailout need to be arrested….now we come to Clinton and his batch of lackeys, those pro-business Dems that gave us the finally straw for the complete collapse of banking in the US….

So, I say go for it Newt…you have my support because more Repubs will be jailed than Dems and the Dems that would go to jail deserve that and a lot more for betraying the American people in favor of special interests.

This why our country is in such sad shape….our fearless leaders have NO grasp of history…..

2011 GOP Debate #5

The really big news of the day was that the GOP’s man crush Christie came out in support of Romney…….Perry is crapping and that should be the big story and then some minor detail is that the GOP is in New Hampshire for their 5th debate at Dartmouth…..

Okay, the guys and gal of the GOP met together for what is billed as the debate that will focus on economic issues………YAWN…….I say YAWN because of all the candidates Romney has a plan, a 159 page plan that makes NO sense other than ….wait for it….TAX CUTS and the candidate that is in second place (for now)…..Herman Cain has a 999 Plan, which obfuscates his stand with a simple sounding plan that is anything but simple or for that matter…..FAIR!

But as usual we Americans want to know who said what or did what…..maybe I can help fill the gaps for those that were smart enough to watch the Big Bang Theory and leave the boring shit to people like me…..

I prepared myself, notebook, pencil, Loritab and started looking for the debate on the tube……and I looked…..and looked…..okay I realize I live in the sticks of Mississippi and they have to pipe in our sunshine but where the Hell was the debate….NOT on any channel of my cable system

I know all my readers will miss my delightful repartee and brilliant analysis…..(HA HA HA)…..so I feel I still owe my readers my analysis….so I will let the website factcheck.org speak……..

At the latest debate, the Republican presidential candidates repeated several claims they’ve made before. The candidates participated in a roundtable-style discussion at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where they reiterated false and misleading lines about the federal health care law, the debt ceiling debate, job creation and more:

  • Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney repeated his talking point that the health care law in his state only affected 8 percent of the population — or just the uninsured — while the federal law “takes over health care for everyone.” But that’s wrong on several levels. Both laws affect everyone by requiring that all residents have insurance or pay a penalty; both also focus on helping the uninsured gain coverage. And, just like the federal plan, the Massachusetts law set up an exchange where individuals buying their own insurance can select from various private health plans. That affects more than just those who were uninsured when the law was passed.
  • Romney also made the misleading assertion that “raising taxes is one of the big problems, something we didn’t do in Massachusetts.” The state actually raised the cigarette tax by $1 per pack, but the tax was implemented by the current governor, Deval Patrick. Also, the original law instituted fines for residents who don’t have insurance and businesses that don’t provide coverage. Is such a “fine” a “tax”? Romney’s camp thought so of similar provisions in the federal law, when they sent us a list of “taxes” in that legislation.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry took his job-creation boasting too far again, claiming that “while this country was losing two-and-a-half million jobs, Texas was creating 1 million jobs.” That’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. Texas has created a little more than 1 million jobs during Perry’s time in office, but the nation lost 1.4 million in that same time frame — not 2.5 million. To make the national picture look even worse, Perry goes back to January 2009. The nation has lost 2.4 million jobs since then, but Texas created only 95,600 jobs in that time period.

  • Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann once again claimed that the resolution to the debt ceiling debate gave President Obama a “$2.4 trillion blank check.” But Obama can’t spend this any way he wants. The money is used to pay obligations Congress already has authorized or will authorize. And besides, a check for a set amount is not a “blank check.”
  • Bachmann falsely claimed that a Medicare advisory panel created by the federal health care law “will make all the major health care decisions for over 300 million Americans.” Hers is a new twist on a false Republican talking point that the Independent Payment Advisory Board will ration health care for seniors. The board is specifically barred from rationing care on page 490 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It’s true that the board will consist of 15 “political appointees,” as Bachmann said, and they will recommend ways to slow the growth of Medicare. But board members must be medical providers and other professionals with experience in health care finance, actuarial science, health care management and other related fields. And the board’s recommendations can be rejected by Congress, as we have explained before.
  • Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman dredged up an old partisan exaggeration in claiming that the IRS was planning on hiring “19,500 new employees to administer that mandate” in the health care law. We knocked down this inflated claim in March 2010, when it was about 16,500 IRS employees. The truth is that the claim comes from a report by Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee who made several false assumptions to come up with that number. Plus, the IRS’ primary role isn’t to “administer that mandate,” as Huntsman claims. It will mainly administer subsidies and tax credits. And so far, the IRS has requested 1,269 full-time equivalent employees, according to its fiscal year 2012 budget request, to help implement the law.
  • Huntsman also repeated his claim that when he was governor, Utah was No. 1 in job creation, while Massachusetts ranked 47th under Romney. Huntsman’s statistic is true according to data based on household surveys by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But according to the most commonly used yardstick for job growth, payroll data, Utah was actually No. 4. How common is the payroll data method? Huntsman cites a report that used the payroll data numbers to arrive at Massachusetts’ No. 47 ranking under Romney.
  • Bachmann reiterated a common Republican exaggeration, claiming that the deficit is larger than it really is. She said: “We are spending 40 percent more than what we take in.” That’s not true. The actual figure is 37 percent, according to the most recent monthly statement of the U.S. Treasury, covering the first 11 months of the fiscal year that just ended. (Final figures won’t be available for a few more days.) For the first 11 months, outlays were $3,296,399,000,000 and the deficit was $1,234,052,000,000 (rounded to the nearest million). So we spent 37.4 percent more than receipts. Furthermore, the deficit for the previous fiscal year was also 37.4 percent more than we took in.Bachmann also said the deficit for the year was $1.5 trillion, which is untrue. In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (based on daily Treasury statements) that the deficit for fiscal 2011 was $1.294 trillion, just $3 billion less than the year before. The final, official Treasury figures may change those figures by a few billion, but not nearly enough to justify Bachmann’s inflated claims.

– Lori Robertson, Brooks Jackson, Eugene Kiely and Robert Farley

Get The Money Out!

Since the beginning of the OWS movement and longer there have been those of us that have wanted to get all the cash out of the system….it has been slow going but now thanx to Dylan Ratigan the movement has taken on new life….if you agree with there should be NO private money in elections and government, then please go to the website and if you like what you read then consider joining the fight and sign the petition……

http://www.getmoneyout.com/

There has already been 140,000 signatures taken Congress and more is needed…..if you like the idea then pass it on to your friends and if you are a writer let people know about the movement…..and perhaps we can get something done to help return the government to the people….

Critics Of The OWS

I have written about the expansion of the OWS……and the demands that have been on the website…..and the advice about those that would hijack the movement….and now I would like to pass on some of the criticism of the movement…..NO!  I am not talking about the criticism from idiots that would not inform….but instead criticism that I have found from seasoned activists….

First we have the Repub leadership calling the protests a “MOB” and saying that they are killing our democracy by pitting American against American……..and of course there is the voice of the Right…FOX News…..they have been critical……so there is a critical outlook by some……to me there is NOTHING wrong with protests especially when politicians are not doing what we pay them to do….govern!

Please remember….these are NOT my criticism but those of others……below from an article written by Lee Rogers…….

Most of these useful idiots protesters know absolutely nothing about how the global financial system works and know less than nothing about the central banking systems of the world.  Central banks like the Federal Reserve System and the European Central Bank have been setup by design to implement a debt based monetary system that has been used to turn the vast majority of people into debt slaves.  They create money out of nothing and then charge interest on top of the money they create out of nothing through loans.  Even the United States government borrows money from this system and because of that they have to implement draconian tax schemes on the people just so they can pay back the interest on the debt.

What’s ironic about this whole situation is that a central banking system is in fact a major plank of the Communist Manifesto as is a graduated income tax both of which have been fully implemented in the United States for almost 100 years now.  With this in mind you would think that these Communist protesters would have nothing to protest because the ideologies which they claim to be in support of have actually been in use for a very long time.  Unfortunately because these people are so ignorant and stupid they have no idea that the ideologies they are promoting are the very cause of the problems they are suffering from.

The protesters are at least correct about one thing and that’s the fact that the big banks and brokerage firms on Wall Street are certainly part of the problem.  Many of these organizations in a real free market system would be out of business if it wasn’t for the bailouts they received back in 2008.  The only reason they are still in existence is because of their insider links to the highest levels within both the Federal Reserve System and the United States government.  The fact that these organizations get multi-billion dollar bailouts is proof that we do not operate in a true free market system and is the reason why power and wealth has been centralized in the hands of fewer and fewer people.  Small and medium sized business would never receive bailouts even a fraction the size of the bailouts these high profile banking interests received and this fact alone shows that we are in the midst of a predatory monopolist economic system that favors the few and not the many.

It is unfortunate that these protesters are entirely off base as to what the main problem is and also entirely off base as to what the real solution to the problem is. The real problem is the phony debt based money that originates from the Federal Reserve System which allows these powerful insiders to manipulate the economy and bailout their buddies if they get in trouble.  An institution that sets rules as to how money is created and dumped into the economy should be at the very center of this debate and it is laughable that these protesters don’t even consider it an important issue.  The real solution does not exist within collectivist ideologies but instead exists within true free market principles and within a monetary system not based around centralized control and debt.  Unfortunately, convincing these useful idiots of these principles may prove to be next to impossible.

Once again….do not shoot the messenger….I am just passing on what others see as some short falls in the movement…….to me…the whole Fed Reserve thing has the smell of a Libertarian thought……what do you think?

I believe that a lack of specifics means that all the protesters see the same thing…unfairness in the political system…..no matter what bitches they may have individual….they want the government returned to the people where it is suppose to be and out of the hands of special interests…..Just my thought.

I cannot close without mentioning another critic of the OWS movement…he is everyone’s favorite bobble head……..a man that knows no bounds when he opens his mouth….my hero and yours….Glenn Beck…..

“Capitalists, if you think that you can play footsies with these people, you’re wrong. They will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you…they’re Marxist radicals…these guys are worse than Robespierre from the French Revolution…they’ll kill everybody.”

I too am concerned….I mean all those crazies with their guns at these protests…….OH CRAP!…..that was last year and it was the Tea Party….Never mind!

Is There A Master Plan?

All the crap going on in Washington and through some of the states makes me wonder if there may be some master plan that these Repubs and Tea Party types are trying to install……and are the Koch Bros. (for lack of another front man) behind this new movement?

Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, is getting a lot of press….why?  He has become the frontrunner, ahead of Mitt, for the GOP in the next election (boy that did not last long at all)……and somewhere in his little mind there is a right to secession from the US written into the Texas constitution……first, I believe that Texas has the right to break into smaller states, but there is nothing about secession if their government is unhappy with the government or the policies of the US (if there are Texans out there and they are reading this…please clear it up for us)……..

Looks like the master plan within the GOP is to do away with the national government in favor of 50 state governments……this would be the best thing for business and the wealthy…..why?  to begin with NO minimum wage enforced by a national government,  the death of unions, mandatory education, no environmental policy, no national health care or a social security….in other words, the people become tools to be discarded when they become a burden in favor of the younger ones as they come of age…..

They would not need to worry about SCOTUS  getting in the way of the takeover …it would not be needed….each state has its own and they are elected, in most cases, and that would be good for corporations…..they could get whatever they want for some bucks for a campaign…….

Is this what the Founders had in mind?  Without reading about the constitutional debate and siding with the Repubs, then yes it is what they had in mind……but if one has read the Constitution and the debate surrounding it, then this is all so much crap and if they succeed then we can kiss the American exceptionalism thing goodbye…….and return to the days of the Confederation.

The Confederation…….states were printing their own money, signing individual treaties and trade agreement…..the country collected almost NO taxes and the weakness of the situation made foreign intervention possible….in other words, America was a f*cked up place and not capable of anything other than the cutting of each others throats……..the states were too weak to even protect their own territory……and with all the GOP/Tea Party crap about returning so much back to the states we are moving to repeat our failure with the Confederation….It will benefit NO one but speculators and corporations….the residents will be SCREWED!

Bachmann I realize that she is not the sharpest pencil in the box, but……) does not think were need any revenue as a country and the rest of the GOP field is lessening the amount of money that the country could have on hand and that would make the states the major players….individually with 50 separate agendas….what would that do to make the US a stronger country?  NOTHING!