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  • More Government Lies -- Health Reform Will Help Small Businesses

    It is amazing to me, how people are falling for this bull.  The White House has set up this video website to "debunk" health care reform myths.  All that this video does is demonstrate to me that this woman has absolutely no clue what my husband and I, as small business owners, have to pay in taxes to make up for her "health care reform."


    Christina Romer, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers

    She says, ". . . the bills, as they're working their way through Congress all have an exemption for small firms. For example, one version exempts any firm with fewer than 25 employees."

    Shall I summarize?

    1. She is saying there is no ONE BILL.  "the bills" means they are still working on them.

    2.  "an exemption for small firms" means nothing to my husband and myself financially.  Our taxes, and that includes our "self-employment tax" (currently 15%, but probably slated to go up to pay for this stupid health reform bill) means we are not really exempt.  They will still make us pay.  They just won't put it in the bill.  Extortion is extortion, no matter who comes to take your money, people.

    3.  "any firm with fewer than 25 employees."  Honey, we can't afford to hire ANY employees with the current economy.  So when she says later, in the video, "Small businesses account for a big part of job creation, a big part of innovation. We want to help them and that's why the reform proposals are aimed at lessening their burdens," I have to say, STOP HELPING US!  You are killing us with kindness, lady.

  • Dr. E.J. Emanuel's The Complete Lives System

    Ever wonder what your life is worth?  Well, fear no more.  Dr. E.J. Emanuel, one of President Obama's newest medical ethics advisors has already published a paper in Lancet 2009 Jan 31;373(9661):423-31 recommending the use of "the complete lives system."

    Yep, now *you* too can understand how the government plans to quantify your life value, and thus allocate medical resources to you under their brand new health care reform.

    Yay!  For modern day eugenics!


    Principles for allocation of scarce medical interventions.

    Persad G, Wertheimer A, Emanuel EJ.

    Department of Bioethics, The Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

    Allocation of very scarce medical interventions such as organs and vaccines is a persistent ethical challenge. We evaluate eight simple allocation principles that can be classified into four categories: treating people equally, favouring the worst-off, maximising total benefits, and promoting and rewarding social usefulness. No single principle is sufficient to incorporate all morally relevant considerations and therefore individual principles must be combined into multiprinciple allocation systems. We evaluate three systems: the United Network for Organ Sharing points systems, quality-adjusted life-years, and disability-adjusted life-years. We recommend an alternative system-the complete lives system-which prioritises younger people who have not yet lived a complete life, and also incorporates prognosis, save the most lives, lottery, and instrumental value principle

  • Sailing, Simplicity, and the Pursuit of Happiness

    Through another woman's post about living on a sailboat, I discovered yet another web log by a female solo live-aboard.  I loved her story about meeting a couple whose captain told her he needed "more crew" and that she'd be perfect because he needed someone "to cook."  Heh!

    Sailing, Simplicity, and the Pursuit of Happiness

  • Sailing With Children

    Here are some links to sailing forum threads and websites that discuss sailing with children. My favorite quote from one of these sites -- "always change a nappy on the leeward berth!" (Avocet)


    1. http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27450

    2.  http://www.sailnet.com/forums/general-discussion-sailing-related/34377-sailing-baby.html

    3. http://www.weliveonaboat.com/

    4. http://www.searoom.com/sail_baby.htm

    5. http://www.nautilus-yachting.com/Default.asp?page=30

  • Cap and Trade -- Goodbye Green Jobs

    Matt and I have been wanting to install windmills ever since we moved to Texas.  I started looking into it in earnest a few years ago.  But we never have enough money.  And now we have even less, because we're still paying about 35-40% of our income in taxes to support businesses that couldn't make it, and are whining like cry-babies because they can't figure out how to make something that people actually want to buy!  So who gets penalized?  The people who are making things I want to buy.

    A windmill plant in Arkansas is firing workers.  Why?  Because no one can afford windmills.  Why?  Because we're too busy paying for nasty-ass GM cars that break down (seriously, we have a Saturn Vue, and the struts break every 6 months).  And now, America is bailing out GM.

    Does anyone else see the hypocrisy of this?  Are you all BLIND?

    Call your Senators now, and tell them you DO NOT WANT THEM TO PASS THE CAP AND TRADE BILL.  This will ONLY make the oil companies richer.  It will not "make green jobs."  Windmill factories are CLOSING because of this administration's bumbling attempts at holding up a capitalistic economy by supporting weak businesses with GOVERNMENT (i.e. TAX) money.


    Windmill blade plant laying off 80 workers

    from http://www.examiner.com/a-2057297~Windmill_blade_plant_laying_off_80_workers.html

    Comments Jun 8, 2009 1:26 PM (23 days ago) By CHUCK BARTELS, AP

    Map data ©2009 Tele Atlas - Terms of UseMapSatelliteHybrid LITTLE ROCK, Ark.

    Windmill blade maker LM Glasfiber said Monday it will lay off about 80 workers at its Port of Little Rock plant, eliminating weekend shifts at the site, because it does not have enough orders.

    Glasfiber said the crisis in the credit markets and the recession have resulted in a prolonged slowdown of orders.

    The Danish company's plant at the Port of Little Rock has been on a 24-hour schedule, seven days per week. It will still run around the clock, but only Monday through Friday, the company said.

    The latest layoffs will take effect in about two months. After the layoffs, about 300 people will remain on Glasfiber's payroll at the port site and a separate training center in southwestern Little Rock, the company said. It laid off about 150 workers in January.

  • When Enviro-nuts Think Of Ideas To Save the World

    I'm sorry, but who in the world came up with this brainless idea?  Buying pollution credits?  How does that solve pollution?  It doesn't.  It just gives money to the government, for not doing anything.  Pollution = unchanged.


    http://www.usm.maine.edu/pos/arrf.htm
     

  • No Escape

    I find it sadly ironic that even as I tried to escape California's high cost of living and escalating taxes for social projects which have no business being run by the state, California's socialist politics keep following me.  I left Illinois, because California plus Chicago politics is even worse!  I move to Texas -- where people have instituted tort reform, no state income tax -- and the state is not going bankrupt.

    And what do I find?

    California is now reaching out to the federal government to pluck my money out of my fiscally responsible hands to pay for it's own undoing.  Leeches.  If you can't run your own state, don't be bringing everyone else down with you.

  • Abraham Lincoln Would Cry

    "You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
    You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
    You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
    You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
    You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
    You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence.
    You cannot help men permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves."

    -- Abraham Lincoln

    So now that the government owns car companies and is forcing them to close stores (stores from which the company receives money, because stores BUY AUTO PARTS), I see that the American auto industry is about to become extinct.  China is buying up what it can now, and as I see it, China is the next world power.  'Gotta love it!  When a communist country basically goes to capitalism to beat the greatest capitalist (or rather formerly capitalist, now nearing complete socialism) country in the world.

    Meanwhile, we've been forced to get rid of our mutual funds to pay for our federal taxes so that states like California and Michigan can continue their federally funded (i.e. wasteful) programs of expenditure.

    Somewhere in the not too recent past, the goverment acquired a whorehouse in Nevada, due to some kind of tax evasion.  A legal whorehouse, people.  And in trying to run this legal whorehouse, they lost money.  LOST MONEY.  And now the government is in charge of the banks, the credit card companies, and the auto industry.  (Not to mention the schools, for the past half a century. . . oh boy!)

    I better start learning Chinese.

  • American Media -- Stereotyping Again, Are We Now?

    Last time I checked, most of our military men and women in Texas are Hispanic.  I'd like to see how the KKK would take to having military right-wing "extremists" join their ranks.  Get a grip, Washington Post.  Look outside of your asshole, to see who is actually in the military these days.  Maybe if you reporters actually served your country, instead of being so self-serving, you'd know who is in the military.  And the FBI warns that a miniscule number of these military men are white and extremist.  If one actually checked the statistics, (isn't that a newspaper researcher's JOB?), I'm betting that the percentage is comparable to that of the general population -- which is to be expected in a volunteer military.  Duh!


    Federal agency warns of radicals on right

    Ms. Kuban said she did not know how long the new report had been in the making.

    "The purpose of the report is to identify risk. This is nothing unusual," said Ms. Kuban, who added that the Homeland Security Department did this "to prevent another Tim McVeigh from ever happening again."

    The Homeland Security assessment specifically says that "rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat."

    Jerry Newberry, director of communications for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said the vast majority of veterans are patriotic citizens who would not join anti-government militias.

    "As far as our military members go, I think that the military is a melting pot of society. So you might get a few, a fractional few, who are going to be attracted by militia groups and other right-wing extremists," he said.

    "We have to remember that the people serving in our military are volunteers, they do it because they love their country, and they believe in what our country stands for," he said. "They spent their time in the military defending our Constitution, so the vast majority of them would be repulsed by the hate groups discussed in this report."

    The Homeland Security report cited a 2008 FBI report that noted that a small number of returning military veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have joined extremist groups.

    The FBI report said that from October 2001 through May 2008 "a minuscule" number of veterans, 203 out of 23,000, had joined groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, the National Socialist Movement, the Creativity Movement, the National Alliance and some skinhead groups.

    "Although the white supremacist movement is of concern to the FBI, our assessment shows that only a very small number of people with prior military experience may have an affiliation with supremacist groups," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Monday when asked about the FBI report.

    A 2006 report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that monitors white supremacists like the Klan, said that white-power groups had an interest in the kind of training the military provides.

    from http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/14/federal-agency-warns-of-radicals-on-right/?page=3

  • My Bad! -- Thank You, Obama and Your Team of U.S. Navy Seals

    Before I lambast the American news media, I first want to issue an apology for having so little faith in our Executive Chief, and by that token, his men and women -- the U.S. military.  They did an admirable job, rescuing Capt. Richard Phillips from a bunch of assholes.  And why is everyone so sad they died?  They were holding, and still are holding, innocent men hostage.  I'm glad snipers shot their heads open.

    And now, I just want to say, "Thank you, American news media, for again butting your asshat heads into something that really wasn't your business, and causing people to worry."

    Every time there is something important to cover -- like African embassy bombings, or US warship bombings (U.S.S. Cole), you ignore it in favor of something sensationalist, to bring down a President (Clinton, whom I don't even like, but who was at least our leader at the time).  Or the constant bashing of Bush (who did many things wrong, but also did many things right) during his Presidential term.  And now, it's Obama.

    You didn't even cover the shootings in India earlier this year.  A significant event in world history.  Instead, we're still hearing about Madonna and her stupid fucking failed adoption.  It's a wonder anyone watches the news anymore.  You guys are obsolete.


    Our [sensationalist] American news media hard at work
    making themselves seem important, when they're not

Devich

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