It's Tablet time!

  Amazon is now selling Kindles from $79 and up and an impressive 7" tablet for $199.  The tablet has an extremely fast browser and will let you read books or listen to audio and watch TV and movies.  Click here to check it out.  This seems like the first non-Apple tablet that will sell big time.

9/11

  Al Queda has asked Iran's president to stop saying the conspiracy theory that the US masterminded the 9/11 attack.  The Queda magazine article says that Iran is just jealous of Queda.  Click here for the article.

Perry on Senators

  Rick Perry advocates having Senators chosen and not elected.  This was tried in the past with major corruption problems.  Click here to read about it on The Nation.

Ignorance

  Ron Paul got booed for saying that al Queda attacked us due to our presence in Saudi Arabia and our support for Israel.  He suggested that saying that they hate us for our freedom or prosperity was wrong.  From what I've read, Paul's characterization of Queda's motives are totally correct.  To suggest that they hate us for freedom flies in the face of logic and common  sense.  They probably would have booed him if he'd said that Obama has a US birth certificate too or that he's a Christian?  There is a good Wikipedia history of al Queda: Click here.  

Infrastructure and ecology

  This editorial suggests with some interesting history and studies that we are running deficits in keeping our infrastructure up, on our ecosystem by continuing to pollute it too much and in not having more manufacturing.  Click here for the article.  The jobs programs that Obama passed or is currently pushing are way below what we need (according to a report on our infrastructure failing).  It also suggests that we did a massive amount of work in the New Deal jobs programs and nothing comparable since then.  Are we just short sighted and living for today?

Bias vs. "Just say nObama"

   I know I'm picking on the TeaPublicans.   I listened to the debates and could agree with some issues but there are some problems with going for a Republican candidate at this time.  They can't cooperate with Democrats and the Tea Party thinks to do so would be abandoning their principals.  The democrats do cooperate.  Embarrassingly so with issues like the debt ceiling fight.   This shameless exaggeration that anything democratic or Obama-supported is wrong or that his office so far has caused some massive problem is just wrong.  False.  Total baloney.  Did Rick Perry actually turn 180 on his beliefs since he was Gore's campaign manager?  He's either stupid or lying.   All republicans voting "no" together is wrong.  Holding the country hostage and damaging our S&P rating on the debt ceiling fight was kicking Americans while they're down.  Taking "no taxes" pledges when tax rates are the lowest in 70 years is wrong.  Our hands are tied to fix the deficit.  Refusing to add a few percent to tax the richest or closing loopholes or subsidies to corporations is wrong.  Not funding two wars with any inconvenience to us was gross deficit growth.  Continuing the wars after 10 years and wanting to increase defense spending that is 10 times any of the other biggest powers is wrong.  Putting getting Obama out over helping the economy is unpatriotic.  It also may be a racist thing.  Thinking the government can't do anything right ignores all the monster mistakes and immoralities we see private enterprise (large corporations) do all the time.  It took monster fights to get the car companies to take any actions on fuel economy, emissions or safety (like using safety glass for instance).  We see examples of intentional or accidental chemical dumping all the time.  Corporations are required to maximize profits to the shareholders.  Employees and Consumers often get hammered to make that happen.  The middle class is shrinking dangerously and Republicans want to eliminate corporate taxes (during record corporate profits without being "job creators") and tax the poor (which would gather minimal taxes).  They say Obama is a socialist but then so is George W. Bush since they both pushed for $800B economy fix-it plans.  I could go on but the whole thing is just a wrong way to look at the world and government.  Hate liberals.  Hate the government.  Resent the poor (which includes veteran's families). The whole system is broken and/or illegal (they say).   How is this not hating America?  Who is in that America that they don't hate?  I used to lament that the two parties were Tweedledee and Tweedledum.  I long for those more cooperative times.  I would like Obama to do lots of things different but the other side has the wrong world view and sees opposition as an enemy which nobody should vote for.

Anti-Democracy

  The head of Tea Party Nation advocates that the vote should only go to property owners.  Check it out by clicking here.   It's a voters "time-out" if you live in some fancy NY apartment on your crappy $100k salary!  Rush Limbaugh also advocated this but I'm still waiting for him to leave the country as he promised to do if Obamacare passed.  What a weasel.

Trash bag lift-off!

   A trash bag aircraft has lifted off and done very well as a weather balloon!  Click here for the story.

The Bush Recession

  CNN's "Truth Squad" examined the claim that Obama destroyed the economy as Bachman said at the last debate.  They found it to be just outright false.  The recession started 13 months before he took office and ended 5 months later.  We've had growth, albeit small growth, since then.  If we had a Republican there may have been millions more lost jobs caused by such things as, on principal, not loaning money to GM and Chrysler who are doing well now.  Click here to read the CNN report.

Obama is a Reagan democrat

  Although tea partiers and Republicans love to invoke Reagan, he raised taxes 11 times, kept the budget at the same levels and higher (although he cut entitlements, he raised military the same amount) and the deficit went from 700B to 3 trillion.  Two years after he was elected, the democrats gained a bunch of seats in congress.  "Ronald Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes," historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan's diaries, told NPR. "He knew that it was necessary at times. And so there's a false mythology out there about Reagan as this conservative president who came in and just cut taxes and trimmed federal spending in a dramatic way. It didn't happen that way. It's false." He signed the largest corporate tax increase in history.  He never called out for all Republicans to vote "no" on virtually anything democratic like the current batch of Respudlicans.  The Reagan candidate next year is not among the Republicans but is Pres. Obama.  Keep the Reagan legacy alive and vote Democrat.  To take a rule from family law practice, if one parent will not work with the other parent, custody needs to go with the parent that will work for both parties.   Obama was tougher than Reagan by invading Pakistan (with a small force) to kill bin Laden while Reagan just shelled Lebanon after 270 Marines were killed in an embassy bombing.

Friday movies

  Moneyball, about an unorthodox baseball team strategy, got 94% from Rotten Tomatoes!  Dolphin Tale, about some people that make a tale for an injured dolphin got 84%.  Neither sounded that enticing to me but a score like that generally means that you'll like them!

Windows 8

     Windows 8 is coming but from various articles on compatibility with win7 and older programs, I'd suggest that you wait and see how it might work for you.  New programs also sometimes have bugs for quite some time.

Park your man

  Is your man bored?  Park him at Manland at some Ikeas!  Click here for the article.

It's August and 9/11 decorations are already for sale?

 Former President Bush has the most awesome 9/11 memorial decorations in the neighborhood!  Check them out by clicking here.

Reach for the stars!

  Nasa will be working on a $35B rocket that will be able to lift up to 6 times what the shuttle could but because of the size, cost and non-reuseablity, they will just be doing a launch per year.  2017 for the first test and 2025 for a launch to a nearby asteroid as a possible base to head to Mars from!  Click here for the store.

Perry: Executioner

  At least one of the 243 executed under Perry was innocent.  Recently asked if he struggles with the deaths, he said that he did not.  Check out the story of the one was probably innocent: click here.

Let them eat dirt

  A previous post talked about the problem of the chronic poor that work hard but are low earners with kids with no hopes of getting out of poverty.  At the debate last night, Ron Paul was asked what should happen to a 30 year old who cancelled his insurance but then gets cancer.  Do we let him die?  Some of the Tea Party audience yelled "Let him die!"  This reminded me of the Perry question last week that mentioned 243 Texas executions with a huge roar of applause (before Perry answered).  Paul hemmed and hawed and Wolf kept on him and he finally said that he would hope that a hospital would treat him for free.  Is this the track for dealing with the poor in a Republican or Tea Party future?  Let them die?  Republicans argue that the health care provision that everyone have insurance or pay a $700 tax penalty is unconstitutional.  If we don't penalize them but just let them die, that won't offend the constitution but it's barbaric.   Paul Krugman writes on these same exact issues in the Times.  Click here for that editorial.

The Bush Depression

    Obama didn't create our current problem.  Republicans did.  Lack of regulation on packages of mortgages sales and Credit Default Swaps had the institutions making worse and worse loans to make massive sums of money.  Then Bush bailed them out with no accountability in the  $800B TARP bill.  If you don't want to research this, just watch the HBO movie "Too Big to Fail".  Obama's legislation stopped us from plunging into an even worse jobs crisis by saving GM (1 million jobs there alone) etc.  The new bill is aimed at stopping a double-dip recession.

Texas healthcare

  While Perry is vocal about saving his state citizens from Obamacare, the Texas system is failing.  25% uninsured and insufficient doctors from cutting aid to students.  The LA Times goes into this in today's papers: click here.  Perry has some trouble with science.  His answer to climate change is that it doesn't exist and to pray for rain

Movie: Contagion

  Rotten Tomatoes is giving it 82% so it must be a gripping thriller as they promise!  Click here for details.
  Warrior also got an 82%.  Beat the heat at the movies!

The Republican debate and Obama's speech

  I listened to the debate and some things just seem way exaggerated.  There is this big emphasis on repealing the health care law.  What is catastrophic?  That you have to get insurance or face a $700 penalty when if you don't we pay some huge bills for you?  If you don't have car insurance, you lose your license.  Now if the law said you don't get any health care, I could understand the panic.  They don't want you to keep your kids on your policy till they're 25?  They want pre-existing conditions to allow companies to deny coverage?  Group policies at work don't do this so why should any insurance.  Consider us one big group and it's a cost of doing business to cover all people.  Gingrich said you should have to have faith to be president.  Romney said that Unions should not be allowed to contribute while we've recently had the court allow corporations to contribute unlimited amounts.  Has he ever heard of justice?  They attack George W. Obama over and over, sometimes in very insulting ways.   If they hate the government and democrats, don't they hate America?  Rick Perry wanted Texas to secede from the union.   Dang America haters.  Their job plans are just cutting regulations and corporate taxes.  That is a band-aid on a gunshot wound.  And which regulations?  Obama wants to extend unemployment benefits, do some targeted tax cuts and build up our infrastructure which we need and goes directly goes to jobs.  We can balance the budget during this recession or create jobs.   The WSJ points out that economists say this is too little.  Click here for a summary.    Click here for a Paul Krugman analysis of the Obama plan.  
  The cost is $450B but $250B of that is tax cuts.
  Click here for the LA Times analysis on how it favors small companies.  It is shooting for 2 million jobs and a percent drop in the unemployment rate.

Patriot act

   Delayed-notice search warrants are used for drug searches and hardly ever for anti-terrorism.  So we should abrogate our 4th amendment rights for the drug wars?  Click here for a piece on  this.

Why can't congress function?

  Here is a great article on why congress is failing us.  It is long but very well reasoned from a GOP insider.  Click here for the article.

The Tea Party Really is a Distraction

  Focusing on the deficit when the lack of jobs is killing our economy and creating the deficit is just wrongheaded.  The whole conversation needs to change to jobs jobs jobs.  Paul Krugman wrote an excellant editorial on this in today's paper: click here to read it.   What should Obama do?  He suggests big and bold because whatever he suggests, the Republican won't go along with it as they've shown in the past.  Making Obama a one-termer is their chief priority as said even by the republican Senate Minority Leader.  Perhaps Obama should be making this a good part of his message: that nothing can be done until we have a democratic majority again.  The Republicans had the majority for 10 years and could have changed anything that arguably caused the Bush Recession.  It's time to try something different.

Apple lays down the law!

  Apple lost another phone prototype in a bar.  Their investigators may have impersonated the police.  Click here for the details from Dvice and click here for the Gizmodo piece on it.

Is Perry a pink cowboy with a wide stance?

  Holy crud: SFGate reports (click here)  that Perry may be a "swings both ways" chronic adulterer.  Especially on the road.  Ron Paul just came out against Perry as a "flavor of the week" candidate with many flaws.  One article (click here) reports that Paul supporters have taken out an ad in Austin to try to confirm the adultery.   If this is true perhaps one of the grossest parts of this is the betrayal against the Republican party (and Mrs. Perry!) is that this is bound to get out at some point and be a total nightmare.  The author of the article wonders if this is why Morrow and Karl Rove have come out against Perry.
 

Patent system

 I think many of us have heard bits about our intellectual property laws being broken and hurting artistic and scientific advancement.  This American Life had a show recently on software patents (click here to listen to it).  It talked about how patents are granted even when the subject is in "prior art" (that it exists in use already) and how companies are amassing patents, not to use to make things but to use as a defense to other patent attacks.  A company like Apple sues an android phone maker and that company sues back (also for patent violations).  Both have piles of patents.   Such cases usually settle with both companies paying royalties.  This is counter-productive.  Some companies cannot afford to buy patents for their defense or for the litigation costs.  Startups can be killed by a large company hitting them when they're small.  Big companies, like Google or Microsoft, spend many billions on patents for things they will not be building but to use as a defense.  That money should have went into product research or just product production.  It is a gross waste in our system for businesses.  It stifles creativity.  And then we have these record or movie companies suing people, sometimes an adult who didn't know what their kids were doing, for sharing files.  None of the proceeds go to the artists but to companies like the Software Piracy Association (a company that just exists to send demand letters and sue) or the production company.  We are wasting tens of billions of dollars or more on these fights which hinder intellectual advances and fail to profit the people that innovate.

Is the sky falling for social security?

  Some people think that they will never see benefits from SS.  Candidate Perry argues that it is illegal and a ponzi scheme.  This is wrong.  Perry has huge resources (he could easily personally afford the litigation) so if it is illegal he should organize a suit against SS or shut up.  A ponzi scheme?   Was it designed wherein the retirement population would grow beyond the wage earners ability to support it?  The number of wage earners and SS recipients fluctuates.  We are in a difficult time for SS due to the baby boom and some increase in longevity.  The Senate committee on aging wrote a comprehensive report on the numbers and possible fixes in 2010.  Click here to read it.  SS has had excess income over payments for decades.  That will probably end in 2016.  It will run out of buffer (the trust fund) in 2037.  How can SS be fixed?  1.1% added from earnings in 2022 and 2052 would correct the shortage.  So would temporarily  removing the cap on SS tax.  There are many other options and all are modest.  Hysteria over this issue is not informed or well reasoned.

Illegal immigration

  A core value of the tea party, #1, is that illegal immigration is a drain on the economy.  Some advocate a wall and putting the military on the borders.  What are the economic facts on this?  How many tens of billions would increased enforcement cost?  Many sites just talk about the cost (3-10 billion for California for example).  But what do they bring?  Almost all of their income is spent here.  Many pay into the tax system while not being able to use Federal entitlements like welfare or social security.  One site has a bunch of different takes on the problem: click here to go there.  Nationally about $113 billion is spent on them (mostly from state governments).  They produce about $800 billion of income.  Businesses benefit from this cheap labor.  They are taking some jobs from citizens but then so is outsourcing which the law embraces.  The numbers vary from the various authors.  One author argued that the loss of 5% of the labor population and the money spent by them and loss of tax revenues would be the largest disaster of our economic history.  I don't know the answer to all these numbers but there are huge costs and benefits to the illegal population living here and I'll bet that most of the critics of illegal immigration don't know both sides of the economic equation.
  There is a 2007 House report on the budgetary impact of illegals (click here to read it).  This does ignore the economic impact of illegals on the economy in spending their hundreds of billions of income here in the United States.  It only covers government costs and government tax income.

Death from a tooth!

  A man with a tooth infection couldn't afford his meds and died when the infection spread to his brain.  Click here for more details.

Netflix!

  A fraction of Netflix content is from Starz.  Negotiations have failed and Starz claims it will be removing all movies and TV shows.  Netflix raised prices to become profitable (compare their prices to cable and you can seey why) but their partners are wanting a cut of that.  Click here for a Reuters article.

Breast implant explodes in a paintball game

  Holy crud.  What would happen in women's boxing, wrestling or football?  The article goes on to say that some women have been cushioned from accidents and even a bullet thanks to their implants.  Standard issue for cyborg soldiers in the future?  The horror.   Click here for article.

Movie Friday

  It looks like the choice this weekend should be "The Debt".   Mossad, nazis and espionage in the 60s and 90s.  Click here for Rotten Tomatoe's ratings &  comments on it.

Tea party core values

  Aside from what people say, what are their core values.  Tea Party dot org lists them: click here.  Number one is that illegal aliens are illegal.  That is redundant and doesn't spell out anything.  That's a terrible way to start.  #2 is for jobs which we all probably agree with.  #3 is stronger military.  We spend more than the other countries combined and have hundreds of thousands of people in bases in various countries.  "Stronger?"  That is just indefensible.  #4: gun ownership is sacred.  That just sounds nutty to me.  Sacred? What a terrible message.  Family is sacred; perhaps the pursuit of happiness; free speech could be.  Perhaps the right to gainful employment (which is in some other countries constitution).  Or privacy.  Having a gun is a marginal decision for a family (due to accidents and it being used against you) and anyone thinking it sacred, I would argue, probably should not have one.    #5 is government must be downsized.  #6 is to balance the budget while #7 is redundant in not having deficit spending.  5,6 & 7 should probably be one rule.  There are more, with some good and bad, but #3 & 4 are just so wrongheaded that I could never join a tea party.

Rich Guys

  We all love Steve Jobs for the success of Apple and the great little gadgets they make.  And yet he's kind of a cypher due to his tight privacy.  Click here for an article on that.  Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have set the bar high on charity and have given tens of billions each to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (click here for info on that).  This is more than anyone in history.  They are trying to end polio, help fight hunger and other diseases and end homelessness in Washington state.  I guess we should stop grumbling about our Windows and Office fees.

HBO documentary on Homeless

  We watched "Homeless: The Motel Kids of Orange County" a documentary from HBO.  Click here for a trailer and info.  All the families had been homeless and now worked.  Making $9-15/hour just isn't enough to live.  There weren't getting  financial aid payments.  The kids all went to this school that had 65 kids in 3 rooms doing K-8.  The food was donated and the families did get a couple meals a week from a soup kitchen.  They live in these cheap Motels around Disneyland that are part working families and part criminal poor.  All of them had the goal to get some boost up and get an apartment and all of them are a paycheck away from being homeless again.  At the end, the school was hit with a California budget cut and lost two teachers which may have left two.  The people all seemed to mean well and be trying hard with no real hope of getting anywhere.  For how many people is this the American dream?

Be careful who you insult!

  Cheney and Condo Rice are doing a bit of sniping regarding comments in his book.  Since Gaddafi is rumored to have a crush on Rice, Cheney may be risking some Libyan beatdown.  Perhaps it's all a trap to catch the elusive Libyan leader when he makes a go at Cheney.

Free virus checking

AVG, the great and free anti-virus software, has had a performance boost to impact your system less in their new 2012 version. Click here to read up on that and/or download it.

Yosemite Sam for President!

In an unrelated story, there were 118 US deaths from random bullets falling on people. Click here for the story.    This exceeds the number of deaths from Shark attacks! 































Perry relaxing at home

Nerd romance!

Palin is a flake

Followers have been setting up a speaking engagement for Palin for weeks at a big Tea Party meet. She can't decide if she's going or not. A book earlier this year spelled out how she constantly breaks engagements she has her people setup to the great embarrassment of her handlers. And then she did resign as governor for no good reason. Intellectual weakling, lazy and a flake: yay go girl!!

Apple & HP

Apple lost another iPhone prototype in a bar again? Is this an annual event? HP is selling off their cheapest touchpads for $99 and losing $200 per unit but their re-starting production of an updated model soon. They will be writing off about $1B over the firesale. Do you have any clue on why HP would do this?

The Help (movie)

Four of us just went for Sushi and to see the "Help" yesterday. It was a very nice movie with some moving parts. I highly recommend it for those interested in a 60s piece about real issues with great acting. You know: like "Madmen" with no sex!

Is the Tea Party a distraction from the real issue?

To me the Tea Party is wrongheaded and not focusing on what we need. I've been for balancing the budget all my life but we're in a deep recession and the emphasis has got to be jobs. Balancing the budget will add unemployment (from government employees and people that would have received extended benefits like unemployment). Their emphasis on the founding fathers, who are a mixed batch of quality and beliefs, and the constitution, are just irrelevancies as to any current issues. There is no magic to the constitution and we face things threatoning our economy and even our world. Making noise about following a flawed document from simpler times will not help. Some, like Perry and Paul, want to eliminate all "progressive" changes. This would include safety regulations (health, drugs, environment etc.), workers' rights (vacation pay, social security, worker's comp, overtime, bans on child labor) and other things we consider basic human rights after having them for many decades. Besides jobs creation, the thing that strikes me as a major misdirection of our system is our military strategy after the fall of the Soviets. We spend as much on military as the rest of the world combined, and have 100,000s of thousands of personnel in bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Japan, Germany and other nations where it is way past the time to get the heck out. Iraq was the worst mistake of our times and we still have 50,000 people there. The republican emphasis that Obama pass nothing (they often vote to the last man "NO!") and be a one-termer has not allowed the democratic mandate from 2008 to accomplish much legislation. In taking one house the Republicans don't have much of a mandate and yet they forced this debt ceiling issue to get some policies that they do not have the votes to pass legitimately. It was economic terrorism and caused the silly S&P downgrade of the US as a debtor. The downgrade was silly because if the US isn't AAA, then who is? If our economy went down, no country economy would be safe. The tea partiers are even more uncompromising unlike their founding father heroes who made huge compromises (such as leaving out slavery), to create the bill of rights and the constitution. It also left women and children as property.