George II Lying on Camera

My contempt for George II frankly knows no bounds, I will write a later post to try and factually outline all the reasons for it. 

However, one subject in particular is now rather obvious.  In this video, George II can be seen trying to justify the use of torture, while the counterpoint from the recently released Senate Intelligence Committee Report contradicts his statements at almost every point:

Health Care Nonsense

I was actually planning a nice little post here about the b___ s__t that Americans have been fed and largely believe about the US health care racket (errr... I mean "system"). 

But Wendell Potter (a former health insurance CEO) has done a much better job than I could and I won't plagiarize his work.  Please read it - it should disabuse you of almost everything that you thought "everybody knows" about American health care.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/12/01/16334/exploding-myths-about-american-health-care?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=watchdog&utm_medium=publici-email&goal=0_ffd1d0160d-ee2804a9ed-100121433&mc_cid=ee2804a9ed&mc_eid=14bacdf82a

The documentary he references:
http://remoteareamedicalmovie.com/screenings/

Wendell Potter's book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A16M7HC/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00A16M7HC&linkCode=as2&tag=thecenforpu0d-20

Rent This F-35 Parking Space - Cheap!

Another bizarre twist to the ongoing saga of the grotesquely incompetent and dysfunctional F-35 program.  The British have a spanking new aircraft carrier all ready to handle the F-35, but due to program delays Britain is now not due to get any until about 2021.  So they are looking for renters:


http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-30209960

NRA Is Digging Its Own Grave

The NRA is in a tough spot these days.  Between incompetent leadership and a mission that seems none too clear even to its members, things like this keep popping up from states that practically say "dump guns here".  Don't forget that there are some in the NRA who think mandatory training of children in guns is a "good thing" -- and you thought Common Core was bad?

Yet as recently as 1999, the NRA actually supported background checks for gun purchases.  For one of the most squirmy, wimp out of it performances of all time - see this.

LaPierre basically weasels his way around the fact that the improved gun check laws and purchase requirements that they once "supported" at least verbally but opposed in Congress are not effective.  (If they are never enacted, how can they be ineffective?).

The NRA is looking more and more like a bunch of idiots that don't know what their message is or where they are going.

For me -- I will do what I usually do as elections approach.  Look for those candidates that have received NRA donations and make sure to vote against them.

What Is the Gas Mileage on That Thing?

It's been awhile since we visited the F-35, that overblown, can't shoot, and pilots don't want to fly money pit at the Pentagon. 

It turns out now the ongoing costs are stubbornly refusing to go down...they basically need an overhaul every few hours of use, and they were recently nixed from crossing the Atlantic....the "little" ocean!

Guantanamo's Wreckage

I have recently become involved in a BBC effort that solicits commentary and analysis of BBC-produced programs.  It gave me the opportunity to listen to this documentary broadcast on the Guantanamo Bay prison - but  with the emphasis on prisoners who have been released.

It is a program that does not spoon-feed the listener the viewpoint they are supposed to be adopting like so many US "cable news" programs these days.  You actually need to think here - the story is told through the experiences of real people who were incarcerated at Guantanamo.  The story eventually tells itself very well, and it is not a pretty one for US citizens who in a very real way are responsible for the unjust, inhuman, and quite frankly invented reasons for keeping some of these people there at all.

Is It a Bird, a Plane? (Well, It's Supposed to Be!)

Comes the totally unsurprising word now that the F-35 is still broken (and still several times over budget).

The Marines have just grounded their whole fleet (for the tiny little reason that the engines have been bursting into flame) but if memory serves the Marines were the ones who got their first F-35s lacking some parts, like guns!  (Update -- the whole US fleet of F-35s has now been grounded).

If the Marines ever feel safe enough to actually fly all the way across the Atlantic in one of these things (where is Charles Lindbergh when you need him?), they now know they have a backup weapon - drop a flaming engine on the enemy!  Oh, wait...there is only one engine....scratch that idea.  Besides, the pilots apparently can't see well enough to aim anything at anyone anyway!
 

The Mystique of War

This insightful TED Talk by Sebastian Junger, a journalist who has covered many war zones is well worth watching.  This is why our politicians need to stop sending our young people off to far corners of the world on ill-designed quests for the politician's satisfaction of some abstract ideology, and then assuming that everything is going to be just fine and there will be no after-effects from the experience.

Naughty, Naughty Pentagon!

Sometimes I wonder if it is avarice, shrewdness, indifference, or just plain old incompetence that makes the Pentagon the worst run cabinet-level department almost since its inception.  At least a small part of the Senate (which is still getting a few things done, unlike the comatose House) is asking some pointed questions.

Thanks George and Dick!

There is no way to say for certain if Iraq would have fallen apart on its own by now, but there is very little doubt that the Molotov cocktail thrown into the country that accelerated things tremendously was George II's ill-advised, probably illegal, and trumped-up invasion of Iraq.  Not to mention the huge toll it took and is still taking, and will be taking on this country for decades to come.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27789229

We Need More Guns!

Don't we ?????

...even more

...and more

...and more

...some more

...more   (updating this is getting to be a daily task...this is only for June, and it is only the 10th)

...more

...more (this one shows why the very presence of guns in your residence raises the possibility you will be killed by one tremendously - something the CDC was researching until the NRA goons leaned on the wimpy Congress to abandon it).

...one more, with one day in June still to go

...a final coda to the gun-crazy tragedies of this lead-filled month.  The sad thing is it wasn't all that special a month by gunfire standards...in the United States.  About 20 children per day, or 7,000 per year are injured or killed by a gun both accidentally and intentionally in the US.  You need to go to a third-world country under constant war or civil unrest to match such a dismal record.

And finally...a chilling picture of what this looks like to the rest of the world, and what it might say for the US's continued involvement in the world, if people are too afraid to come here and bring their knowledge and ideas..

A Poignant Picture for Two Nations

Photojournalism at its finest.

Despite my prior post...no this is not in the US.  This is a polling place in the Ukraine.  I certainly hope that is a toy weapon that innocent little girl is holding, and not an "adult" weapon carelessly put aside while voting.  Still -- it makes for a thought-provoking picture from several perspectives doesn't it?

Credit: Konstantin Chernichkin/Reuters

We Can't Do Anything About This?

Sometimes even the tongue-in-cheek publication The Onion hits a truthful nail square on the head.  Look at this about the epidemic of gun violence sweeping the US.

Pentagon Goofiness

The Pentagon sometimes gets caught feeding its part of the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower warned us about.  The A-10 "Wart Hog" retirement is one of them.  An ugly, but deadly warplane...if you were the bad guy in any ground wars in the last few decades, you did not want to see this thing popping up over the horizon.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/critics-accuse-air-force-manipulating-data-support-10-retirement/

Compare that to the F-35 which costs more (pre-deployment) than any other weapons system ever dreamed up by the Pentagon (even Reagan's Star Wars joke cost less).

It's all your money folks....

Six Amendments (Book Review)

I just read an interesting new book by retired Supreme Court Justice Stephens.  I may have mentioned elsewhere that the Supreme Court is interesting to me because no other nation has anything that equals it, and while it is maddening idiotic at time (read Dred Scott or Citizens United for examples), they also over time have been the steadying hand since we are working with what was supposed to be a "temporary" Constitution that is definitely showing major fissures in trying to deal with the real flat world. 

Here is my review from Goodreads:

Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution by John Paul Stevens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Excellent book and well-written. You should know something about Constitutional law and the Supreme Court (NOT what you read or see in the media which is nearly all wrong) in order to enjoy this book fully.

Justice Stevens' recommendations for amendments are not extremely radical, rather they mostly patch up some gaping holes or some colossally misguided Supreme Court decisions.

In either case the Founding Fathers would be aghast at the fact that more has not been done to fix their little "temporary starter" constitution - most of them expected it to last for a couple of decades at most and then be replaced by a more substantive and encompassing document based on experience to that point. Instead, the US has taken the band-aid approach -- using a crazy quilt of Supreme Court decisions and popular-at-the-time Congressional patches to hammer it into something that is at times unrecognizable in practice.

Justice Stevens recognizes the flaws, and makes some credible and interesting proposals to fix them.

View all my reviews

Real Climate Change Kinda Sucks, Don't It?

• There are those who think climate change is not real: they are called Republicans.
• The most idiotic of them seem to come from Oklahoma and Kentucky - two states that will vanish in a blaze before any ocean overtakes them such as Florida and Louisiana  needs to worry about. 
• There are those who think climate change doesn't hurt anything: they are called American citizens.
• There are those who think climate change is solvable politically: they are called Democrats.
• There are those who know climate change is not only factual, but serious and here right now: they are called scientists.
• There are those who are intelligent voters and vote according to facts and not ideology: they are called Independents.

Which group are you in?  How will you vote?
 
It is getting serious folks, I probably won't live to see the real outcome of all this but my daughter or her children will...when will we finally make a stand...for humankind?

Canada Does the Right Thing - Again

Living so close to Canada as I have my whole life you get to know a lot about the country and meet a lot of the citizens (who are pretty universally delightful and warm people). 

There are also a lot of things they do right (sometimes absurdly simple) that we can't seem to manage in this country.  One was getting rid of paper dollars a long time ago, and now they are aggressively phasing out the penny, both are among the most worthless extravagances that Americans still hang onto. 

If there is so much "fiscal conservatism" and "old fashioned economics" on the loose in Washington DC (although I defy you to show me any actual proof of same), why aren't the penny and the dollar bill (and possibly the nickel) not gone already?

Guns, Guns, Guns V

Another notch on the belt for the unfettered "guns in every home" group....and another little nudge upward for our particular bubble.

Calling BS on The Republicans This Time

I saw a fascinating documentary last night.  It is Robert Reich's Inequality for All.  He served in various administrations of both parties for all of his career but he can tell you about that. 

I knew about many of the facts and economic trends in the documentary beforehand but what surprised me was that it started much earlier.  The economic trend of minimizing/eliminating the middle class goes back to at least 1970.  In other words, my entire working life has been spent as part of a middle class that has now shrunk almost to the point of invisibility.

He punches holes in one of the biggest Republican lies in current vogue - the 'impairment of the job creators' through asking them to ... well actually pay their current taxes for one thing, or pay a rate that is commensurate with the huge wealth increases they are reaping without contributing anything to the economy...and certainly not jobs.

Reich makes a compelling point that the middle class represents the true 'job creators'. After all, I don't think a CEO of a large corporation making, oh, $90 million per year is going to go out January 1st and say "I am going to create some jobs this year so I can make less money next year." 

No, for the large majority of American businesses, demand = job creation, and the middle class is overwhelmingly responsible for demand in this country and economy.  Of course, if the middle class ceases to exist or suffers huge losses in real income as they have since 1970....there is no demand, and no job creation.  Sound like any economies you know of?

This is a well done, very factual documentary and is done without the usual preachiness of someone on a pulpit.  One gets the sense that Reich is done with Washington politics and wants to very much leave it in his rear view mirror, but because he understands what is going on, he cares about what is going on.

I don't give a fig about voter ID to vote in US elections, but I really think it should be a requirement for every American voter to sit down and watch this documentary and understand it before casting another misguided vote based on the most charismatic candidate, the richest, or heaven forbid based on political party membership!

Update: That whooshing sound you heard was the Canadian middle class zooming by the US, eh?

And Now For Something Completely Different

Sometimes I think Thomas Friedman gets to have all the fun!

Time to Call BS on Congress...Again

I long ago gave up on anything said by anyone who is a member of a political party, much less a member of Congress.  But it turns out that Congress in particular has been lying to us with greater vigor than normal about taxes (and so have several "anti-tax" groups).  

There is collective rotten-egg-on-the-face today of every member of Congress who has ever (falsely) wailed about the "tax burden" on the poor US.   It just isn't so folks...the only place we have to go is to join a couple of sterling, role model countries...Chile and Mexico. 

Besides, everyone knows, the rich corporations that support your campaigns don't pay taxes anyway !

A Look At the Unseen World

An excellent and enjoyable TED Talk. 

Throw Out Your Physics Texts

Well...maybe not quite yet, but as theoretical physicist Allan Adams explains in this 'improvised' TED Talk, you need to be ready to accept some pretty radical ideas if you are a true thinker!  Depending on where this discovery goes, it is not only very important (and mind-boggling), but it could obsolete more than a few textbooks....



(Sorry religions of the world...science has left most of you behind long ago.  The Pope better get to work on whether the Earth MIGHT just be older than 6000 years after all....).

Do You Think Facebook and Twitter are Examples of Innovation That Matters? Think Again!

Watch, learn what innovation and the human intellect can do.  (And do NOT stop before the end!).

The Ugly Pus of the Bush II Dynasty Starts to Ooze

Some of the really ugly aspects of the Bush II realm are starting to emerge finally, and they are presenting the Obama administration with some ugly choices in some areas because the administration is basically bound to defend the acts of prior administrations in most cases. 

One of the ugliest is the CIA's "role" in the Bush-era war on terror, which paints neither the US government, nor the CIA in particular in a particularly flattering light.

Out There

If you have not run into his work previously, Chris Hadfield is a Canadian astronaut who fulfilled his childhood dream with two shuttle missions and has the talent and more importantly the personal insight to share with us what it is like.  If you are not among the 21 million plus viewers, here is his cover of David  Bowie's Space Oddity - it was filmed on a shuttle mission, then the music track added after he returned.



There is another video though that shows his real thoughts and values to us.  It is a TED Talk and he goes into a lot of what it is like to perform this unnatural act of space flight, enjoy the unusual splendor of it all  --- and then have a potentially catastrophic event happen "up there".

I dare you not to get chills during the launch sequence at 3:10, or to not think just a bit differently about things (like the universe) when he describes "looking down at the rest of everything" at 7:40.

The Beginning...No I Mean the REAL Beginning!

This is getting close to some pretty incredible stuff.  One of the basic problems/quests of astrophysics has been to discover evidence of the theorized "Big Bang" birth of the universe.  It looks like now they are a big step closer (sorry any Bible-thumping "the world is only 6000 years old and probably flat" types):




If you have seen "Close Encounters of The Third Kind"...yes, this is also evidence that Einstein was "one of them".

To H**l with SATs, ACTs, Give Me Thinkers!!

There is a lot of fluff flying about as to redoing the SATs and possibly the ACTs in reaction to that. The SAT's decision to do away with the essay portion of the tests is possibly the most colossally stupid move that they could have made. 

I swear...I would like to take all of these "universal test" organizations into a waterproof room and then fill it with water!.   They are SO out of touch with the real world.

I have been involved in hiring on and off for the last decade either as an advisor to a hiring manager or a hiring manager myself.  And I can tell you plainly, I have never been so disappointed with the candidates presented to me.   I mean, most recruiters are absolutely, completely worthless, lets face facts - it is an easy field to get into and you don't even have to really understand who you are recruiting.

But the candidates they do send are even worse.  We live in a flat world which is a world of ideas which people much smarter than me have written about. 

We live in a world where ideas are really the only marketable item for the future...and  our college graduates cannot express their ideas in any intelligible format (believe me I have tried to extract/read them).  

If you have the greatest idea in the world you have to be able to intelligently express it, support it, and define it in terms the world will understand and accept.  

Facebook/Twitter ain't going to make it folks....

More Than Meets the Press

If you believe (as I do) that there is a certain dirty or slimy feel to certain aspects of the ridiculous wars of the George II dynasty (err, I mean administration) then you might want to watch the Oscar-nominated "Dirty Wars". 

Here is an interview with one of the principals of the film and what they saw and endured to get this story.  Not only is there an undercurrent of dishonesty, but an implication at least that these practices are being carried forward to the future. 

(Note also the sense of journalistic integrity -- they did not run with everything they knew or felt strongly was true, but only what they had convincing proof for -- take that Internet gossip sites (and FoxNews of course) !).

The Real F-35 Story

The 60 Minutes report that I posted about unfortunately turned out to be a disappointing fluff piece, interviewing only proponents of the program from the Pentagon and elsewhere. There was a minimal amount of tsk-tsking and hand wringing about "gee we know it costs a lot" (but it isn't my money.....so send some more...). 

60 Minutes journalistic quality has slipped in several areas in the last few years, and I no longer trust them as much as I once did.  However, I had hoped with a program so deeply flawed and based on such ridiculous assumptions from the outset as the F-35 they would do better.

Fortunately the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) stepped into the breach.  This article is an interview with Winslow Wheeler, director of POGO's Straus Military Reform Project which is full of interesting and insightful analysis into that tax-dollar cesspool we call the Pentagon.

He mentions a website that is dedicated to tracking the F-35 abomination and hopefully spurring people to do something about it.

Both the POGO page and the website have this video, but it is important enough that I am posting it here as well.

    

My only regret is that I did not coin "The Jet That Ate the Pentagon", but then again with the prevailing attitude in Washington DC of "just keep pouring money onto it" where the Pentagon is concerned it may not be possible for any program to actually "eat the Pentagon".

This is What Quality Journalism Is

In the world of young tight-and-short-skirted, blond bimbos passing themselves off as "experts", much less journalists, and the plethora of "gossip news" sites which are free to indulge in fiction at any time, it is nice to know that there are at least a few bastions of true journalistic integrity left.

One that I rely on for hard-hitting Watergate-era style investigations backed up by impeccable research and facts is the Center for Public Integrity which was recently awarded the prestigious Polk Award for their work to prove that most of the culprits in the recent (and ongoing) financial crisis triggered by the brain dead Bush administration got off unscathed and are ready to reenter the fray. Their site is linked on the list of trusted resources at the right.

 

There is a Reason Why Missouri is 50th in Everything

...or very nearly so....but be careful - Idaho is catching up!

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/02/17/14249/missouri-lawmakers-renew-cynical-efforts-derail-obamacare-navigators

How About Some Honesty for This "Holiday"?

First, only government workers bankers, and schools  will be off work tomorrow.  The rest of the productive world will be slaving away as usual.   And the retail outlets will be doing their normal money-grubbing to celebrate the day properly.

But as this report shows, it is not really President's Day that is being celebrated, but George's day.  Well deserved believe me but it should be known that Abraham Lincoln who had a much more difficult presidency (to say the least) is officially left out of this holiday.

Just Don't Talk About the Weather

This is a fairly balanced view of the strange weather the country has been having the last couple of years.  In reality, getting "stuck" in a weather pattern for an extended period of time or unusual patterns as we have been seeing is one of the primary predictions of those who study global climate change.  It should be no surprise that we are seeing longer, sustained storm systems since via altering the temperature of the planet, humanity has altered the all-important weather driver, the jetstream.

So...rather than just talking about the weather, get your lazy, ignorant Congressional representatives to do something, and get the US onboard with international efforts to reduce pollutants and the general spewing of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere, relying on the 1920s attitude of "they just blow away".

Income Inequality - Part I

You will be hearing a lot about this as the 2016 campaign prematurely warms up, and President Obama is expected to make it a central theme of his upcoming State of the Union drone (err. I mean speech...yawn).

Unfortunately most of the noise is going to come from brainless politicians who have no relationship with rational thinking or logic.  Fortunately, there are some bright people who are digging into it in a methodical and fact based way:



I will be trying to point out the intelligent resources for thinkers amid all of the political chaff as we move on.  Look for the Economic Inequality tag.

Wow...Just Wow!

If you are 22 years old, you can spend your life posting meaningless crap to Facebook (or mercifully short but equally meaningless crap to Twitter), or you can spend your time doing something like this.  Scroll down slowly...it goes from "that's kinda cool" at the top to "holy s__t" near the bottom. 

Needless to say he has attracted a bit of attention.

This Rock Still Isn't Ready

Pilots have already heaped scorn on the way, way, way over budget and under performing F-35 ("the plane you can't see to operate". 

The claims for "benefits" of this money black hole are also exaggerated it seems, though that is hardly surprising for the Pentagon, who after all thought the never-functional "Star Wars" program was a great idea.

The saga continues, nobody likes this poor orphan......

Affordable Care Act BS

There has been a lot of this thrown about over the last year -- all untrue but making for good-sounding popular "twits" (my name for particularly inane or unintelligent Tweets) and providing ammo to the uninformed (or just plain unintelligent).

But, it is interesting to note that TWO former CEOs -  one with a non-profit and one with a for-profit health care insurer (sometimes fondly referred to as "death panels" -- thank you Sarah Palin) have both come out rather strongly that the American health care system is extremely broken...on its good days.

ACA is a start in the right direction, but because the least intelligent among us (politicians) got involved, it still falls short of what other countries have been able to do -- this isn't even a conversation topic there.

First up is George Halvorson, former CEO and chairman of Kaiser Permanante - a not for-profit health plan who just wrote a book Don't Let Healthcare Bankrupt America which I plan on reading. (It is not widely available yet, though Amazon has it for Kindles).   



The other is a person I believe I have referred to before - Wendell Porter who is a former CIGNA executive (and probably not very well liked in his old stomping grounds right now).

We can do better folks --- and the ACA is just a first baby step fouled up by politicians!

Inequality in the Land of Equality

This is one of the best Shields and Brooks episodes in recent memory.  They are basically in agreement that income inequality is serious and unsupportable but seem uncertain about how or if government has the will to actually do anything about it.

I especially appreciated Mark Shield's observation about the last four years...95% of the US wealth flowed to the top 1% of the individuals who own 33% of the available stock.  Doesn't sound like socialism to me either, Mark!