Michael Moore's Ignorance

On CNBC yesterday afternoon, Michael Moore was interviewed by the lunchtime team at CNBC. Beside the fact that they were extremely soft on him, I found one question very telling. They asked him how he has invested the wealth gained from his successful movies. His reply was that he keeps it in a savings account and some U.S. Savings Bonds.

He said that he has never owned even one share of stock and he doesn't put his money in things he doesn't understand. So, my question is how can he do a movie judging Capitalism when he claims to have no first hand knowledge of the most basic component of capitalism? Public ownership is the cornerstone of the capitalist concept, yet he admits openly to having never experienced the risks or rewards. Just seems like he is coming from a point of view of ignorance, but what do I know.

Watch an actual water boarding!

There has been a great deal made about what water boarding is and isn't. I thought I would share this video of an actual water boarding. After you watch this video, compare it to the stories of retired Col. Coffee or Sen. McCain being hung upside down by their wrists until their shoulders dislocated and let me know if think this is in the same category.

http://content1.clipmarks.com/content/7E8ADC46-F3DD-4D6F-B184-3A07CF501B7C/

Heathcare Reform: 1st Step - Tort Reform

Why isn't Tort Reform the first step to bringing down the cost of insurance and lowering overall costs?

Mississippi is a great test case that has seen a 91% decrease in malpractice lawsuits since 2004. Their regulations allow you to recover earnings lost and medical expenses but cap non-economic gain to $500,000. They have seen a reduction in healthcare insurance and more competition. More doctors and businesses have come to Mississippi since the legislation became law.

http://tinyurl.com/la4hsf

I hate to say it, but the Trial Lawyer lobby has invested so much money into the campaigns of almost every Congressional legislator it is hard to think this will get more than a quick glance as we are in such a hurry to get massive legislation signed.

Cash for Clunkers

Cash for Clunkers was an interesting idea, but was it really cost effective? Did it really stimulate the economy? What was the net result?

• A vehicle getting 15 mpg and 12,000 miles per year uses 800 gallons a year of gasoline.
• A vehicle getting 25 mpg and 12,000 miles per year uses 480 gallons a year.
• So, the average Clunker transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year
• They claim 700,000 vehicles – so that's 224 million gallons per year.
• That equates to saving a bit over 5 million barrels of oil per year. I repeat---per YEAR.
• 5 million barrels of oil is about ¼ of one day's US consumption.
• And, 5 million barrels of oil costs about $350 million dollars at $75/bbl.
• Our Government "gave" each Clunker Trader $4,500 per car for 700,000 transactions which cost US Taxpayers $3,150,000,000--not including Washington's astounding administrative costs.
• So, we all contributed through our taxes to spend more than $3 billion to save $350 million.

On top of that you must understand that some dealers still haven't been paid. The delay has been an enormous burden on the dealers. Many ended up having to borrow money until the government decided to get on the stick and pay what they promised, but who loaned them the money? Banks sure wouldn't trust them, so they were forced to go to private financing at outrageous rates. So, let me know again how this helped?

Interesting idea that wasn't well thought out and was poorly implemented. No surprise!

This isn’t Football!

Here I sit on an airplane to Bloomington, Minnesota. Slowly drifting in and out of consciousness, I start to think how certain people in Minnesota hated Brett Farve, with every fiber of their body, and now they look upon him as a star. At the same time many people in Green Bay, Wisconsin have burned their green and yellow #4 jerseys. Having played my fair share of sports, and watched even more, I understand how someone can be swallowed up in the excitement of a sports team. It’s intoxicating. It’s comforting and exhilarating to be part of the brethren that defends and supports the “home” team. It’s where you’re from and part of your identity, but what I can’t wrap my brain around is how that gets translated to politicians and political parties?

Let me explain my confusion. People identify themselves as Vikings, Packers, Bills, Dolphins, or Cardinals. People idolize names like Farve, Manning, Brady, Payton, Namath, and Unitas because they need heroes. They even overlook the missteps of their favorites like Burris, Merriman, and Lewis because they want to believe that the real world and the gridiron are separate places of worship. Where I’m challenged is when we apply these same rules to political parties and politicians. If you are a Democrat then you have to hate Republicans, like Giants hate Eagles. You must hate those evil money grubbing religious fanatics called Conservatives, just like 49ers still hate Elway. Conservatives look upon Liberals as old hippies who have smoked too much dope, hugged too many trees, and ate too much granola; just like Redskins look at Cowboys. How much blind hate can one city have for names like Staubach, Landry, and Romo.

In sports the polarity of opinion is based on where you’re from and where you went to school. They’re carved in stone as a way of holding onto your youth and your childhood allegiances. This is healthy and provides the vicarious excitement that gets the juices flowing on game day, but applying this emotional methodology to our politics is ruining our political system.
What are we thinking? Pelosi, Frank, Gingrich, Bush, and Obama aren’t sports superstars. They are employees. They were elected by you and I to do a job. Yet, people blindly defend them like they are going to lead their team to the SuperBowl. Recently, I heard an interview of a prominent San Francisco political pundit who went on and on about the great things Rep. Pelosi has done for this country, yet when asked for specifics they came up empty. This is the kind of blind star worship which is preventing us from having reasonable conversations. Ted Kennedy, who recently passed away, was given a send off commensurate of a hero. Even though I never agreed with is politics or his personal behavior, I did think he was a patriot; but a hero?

Are we so starved for true heroes that we cling to these employees who have never done anything courageous in their lives? Maybe it is time we stop wearing Blue and Red like it some kind of team jersey. Maybe it’s time we revisit our Democratic Republic roots. Start realizing we are sending local representation to Washington to speak our mind instead of the political team’s (Party’s) mind. Congress isn’t the Pro-Bowl and the White House isn’t the prize for the MVP of the league. Come on people, let’s open our eyes and look as critically at our own team (Party) and players (Politicians) as we look at the other side. Maybe then we will all realize there is room for more ideas and we are all in this together. I think we could get a lot more done if we start looking at this as one team, but that’s just the dream that is drifting through my head as I listen to the hum of jet engines at 30,000 feet.

Cyber Insanity

A Senate bill (S.773) if passed would give the President of the United States the authority to declare a "cyber emergency" and close down the Internet by disconnecting users.

In addition, it will require professional IT people to be certified by the federal government, something that angers many IT technicians and those who believe in the First Amendment.

Having worked in the networking industry for two decades this borders on insanity. It is easier to do than you might think.

All ISPs end up connecting to one of 8 internet points of prescence in the US. These could be nationalized and shut off easily. The other issue is that the US owns and controls all 12 of the root DNS servers that allow people to find things by name. Shut them off and the global internet is effectively broken. Oh yeah, we also control address allocation as well. We could take a country off line by routing all traffic from that countries ip space to null with a few bgp entries .

This kind of control over our communication is crazy.

Reference: http://tinyurl.com/klq7yg

This needs to be shown in our schools!

This is old but worth watching - Tiger Woods at Obama Inauguration - We need this to be shown to all of our children in school.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7G--2EBWtM

Professional Golfer, Tiger Wood, spoke at Obama's inauguration and paid great tribute to our Military saying that he was "the son of a man who dedicated his life to his country, his family and the military and I am a better person for it."

Another Arrogant Politician

On Wednesday Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) had the audacity to publicly suggest that a local newspaper “should go out of business”. Is this the way you deal with criticism Harry? Maybe you “should be voted out of office”. Many in the media are trying to suggest that it was his dry sense of humor. Well, in these economic times when we have over 10% unemployment, how dare he even jest about such a thing? Either way it demonstrates his arrogance and his elitist attitude.

Remember, Senator Reid has already publicly bragged about his $25M campaign war chest. Money gathered from all over the country and the world to get him re-elected so he can do the bidding of the people of Nevada. Doesn’t it bother anyone else that he has $25M to win a job that pays $200,000? Doesn’t it bother anyone else that much of this money comes from outside Nevada? Come on voters of Nevada, it’s time to get this arrogant elitist out of office. Elect someone who is more interested in your state, and your citizens, and not the Democratic Party.

Reference article