Last 2 weeks of News

I have been MIA the last two weeks, to much work and to do at home in the nice Spring weather to spend time on the computer.

1) California Supreme court rules Prop 8 is a “legal” amendment but stating the only the term marriage is what was made illegal for same sex couples in California. This is a ruling I actual agree with. Marriage is a religious term and should be taken totally out of the Governments hands. The government should create a mutual support contract to be filed with a government agency to give the “marriage rights” to any two people who want to enter such a relationship. Also a dissolution of the mutual support contract form and process would be needed. No need for lawyers or courts. Just a notarized form.
A good legal analysis can be found here.

2) Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, A normal far left wing hack job who thinks that they no better than anyone else what is “good” and “just” for all without any regard for the actual law.

3) Government Motors is now bankrupt. Big shock here, a poorly managed company for the last 30 years that has a huge union presence so short and long term costs can’t be controlled. To bad it will result in a motor company which is fascist in nature, supposedly privately owned by run by the government.

4) Obama stumping for his health care plans passage this summer before the bill is even written. The plan is here but there are no specifics. Normal politics, talk, give speech, no substance and rush through a plan in the darkness of night that nobody can read or comprehend since a true debate of the bill will result in it being something a vast majority of US citizen’s do not want.

5) North Korea leaves the peace Armistice, blows up a nuclear weapon and tests some long range missiles, the US response, maybe we can get a harsher worded letter to be considered at the UN but no passed. While this is going on make statements that this is not tolerable and North Korea is a rogue state, yada yada yada, nothing changed in 20 years on this front.

Searching for a silver lining but do not see anywhere that people are being told to be responsible for themselves and live with the consequences of poor decision making. Another couple of weeks on the road to fascism.

GM will move jobs out of US using Taxpayer Money

This is our wonderfully brilliant central government planning that was started by Bush and is being completed by Obama.

Under Restructuring, GM To Build More Cars Overseas

The U.S. government is pouring billions into General Motors in hopes of reviving the domestic economy, but when the automaker completes its restructuring plan, many of the company’s new jobs will be filled by workers overseas.

According to an outline the company has been sharing privately with Washington legislators, the number of cars that GM sells in the United States and builds in Mexico, China and South Korea will roughly double.

The proportion of GM cars sold domestically and manufactured in those low-wage countries will rise from 15 percent to 23 percent over the next five years, according to the figures contained in a 12-page presentation offered to lawmakers in response to their questions about overseas production.
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Everyone needs to call their congressman (woman) and tell them thanks for letting the executive branch of the federal government spend out tax dollars to send jobs out of this country.

Just the normal expected result of the government helping out.

Saturday’s cartoons – politics

from townhall.com

Where is the help for those who made wise choices?

Everything coming out of Washington for the last 24 months has been directed to help those who have not made smart decisions. reward failure, punish success.

People overpaid for houses and took out mortgages they never had a chance of paying back. These people can be rescued for biting off more than they can chew, living above their means.

I feel sorry for the few who may have been taken advantage of by mortgage brokers but where in the constitution is it stated the there is a right to a mortgage for a house to live. It must be there since the federal government is doing it, but I just can’t find it in my copy.

The sad part about America today is that the question as to if the federal government has the power to do something as granted by the constitution is never asked. The US constitution is a nice document that is totally ignored by the elected officials, it means what every they want it to mean at a certain point in time and if the circumstances change then their idea of the constitutions meaning changes.

My question is why do the 95+% of Americans who are paying their mortgage on time have to pay taxes to cover the mortgages of those who are in over their head.

This is what foreclosure and bankruptcy court are for, if you can’t pay your bills why should you get to keep anything. More than 50% of the people who had their mortgages redone last year are in foreclosure within 6 months of the government forced loan redo. If these same people are going to have their mortgages redone again due to their being behind in their payments what is the incentive for them to ever pay their mortgage.

Since the federal government is going to redo these people’s mortgages, if they do not pay their property taxes to the local government will the federal government pay their taxes for them as well since you do not want the local government to kick these people out of their house.

What is the end game? When does a return to personnel responsibility occur? Where does the insanity of rewarding bad behavior and punishing personal responsibility end?

Why do liberals believe in evolution for all animals on the planet except for humans? Are humans not supposed to evolve, are humans not supposed to be part of nature and be controlled by evolution, adapt or be cast aside? Why do the ends justify the means? Isn’t it more important to be try and be moral while archive good results. Are short term good results worth being morally bankrupt?

US Government spending will bankrupt the world

The US federal government is in the process of bankrupting the world as accounting practices that the federal government does not allow private companies to use are used to hide the real government debt. This cuts across party lines and the end of liberty and personnel freedom in the world.

The total economic of the world based on the ponzi scheme known as government spending is close (if not already beyond) the tipping point. Paper currency will be virtually worthless since the governments that print them have no possible way to back their value.

Government spending is the problem and drastic government spending cuts (real cuts not decreasing the rate of increase) of 50 to 90+% in some cases are required.

Federal obligations exceed world GDP, Does $65.5 trillion terrify anyone yet?

As the Obama administration pushes through Congress its $800 billion deficit-spending economic stimulus plan, the American public is largely unaware that the true deficit of the federal government already is measured in trillions of dollars, and in fact its $65.5 trillion in total obligations exceeds the gross domestic product of the world.

The total U.S. obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits to be paid in the future, effectively have placed the U.S. government in bankruptcy, even before new continuing social welfare obligation embedded in the massive spending plan are taken into account.

The real 2008 federal budget deficit was $5.1 trillion, not the $455 billion previously reported by the Congressional Budget Office, according to the “2008 Financial Report of the United States Government” as released by the U.S. Department of Treasury
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“The federal government is bankrupt,” Williams told WND. “In a post-Enron world, if the federal government were a corporation such as General Motors, the president and senior Treasury officers would be in federal penitentiary.”

Assuming 330 million Americans, 65.6 trillion debt is equal to $198,484 per American. This is on top of any state, local or personnel debt.

If you want to really understand the what the future holds and the consequences read the A Citizen’s Guide published by the treasury department.
It would be nice if government would live by this motto in the report.

Using the government accounting methods that if any private business used, the CEO, CFO and board of directors would be in jail, here are some tables from the report on future predictions.

These projects do not take into account the money spent since Oct 1, 2008. TARP and the new stimulus plan are on top of this staggering debt.

Americans need to hold our employees the elected government officials responsible. New blood is needed.

Why America is failing and the stimulus will make it worse

I have found some graphs on the St. Louis Fed’s web site.
US Employment by sector

Total, Private vs government employees – looking at the these charts, it would look like government employment is growing at a rate about equal to private employment. One needs to dig deeper into the private industry numbers.

Total Nonfarm Payrolls: All Employees

Private Industry Employees

All Employees: Government

The problem is the mix of private jobs, I divide the private jobs into 5 categories
1) Those who make items

Durable Goods Manufacturing

Nondurable Goods Manufacturing

Goods-Producing Industries

Construction

Natural Resources & Mining

2) Those who move the goods made by the first group of people
Trade, Transportation & Utilities

Wholesale Trade

Retail Trade

3) Those who coordinate, support and make money off groups 1 and 2
Information Services

Professional & Business Services

Financial Activities

4) Those who provide services to those in the 1st three groups

Education & Health Services

Service-Providing Industries

Leisure & Hospitality

Other Services

5) Those who take a share from each of the 4 groups to give to those who are not in the 1st 4 groups
All Employees: Government

As America continue to produce less and less finished products from raw materials the result is a fixed amount of anything with real intrinsic value. This results in a capping of the amount of wealth America has. Since the capping of the amount of wealth is occurring as the population still grows everyone must get a smaller piece of the pie. The only way to make the pie bigger at this point is time is for the government to add more money into the pie without hard goods backing the money. Eventually what happens is that there is so much money for so few goods that significant price increases will occur due to low supply and high demand.

I know this is a simplistic analysis, I do not know if eventually is yesterday, today, tomorrow, 5 years or 10 years from now but it is inevitable.

octuplets, clomid , In Vintro and The View TV show

Californian woman gives birth to octuplets

My wife told me she was flipping through the TV channels and stopped on the View today so that she could see Condolesea Rice being interviewed. My wife says she did very well.

Prior to this they 5 ladies of the view discussed the Octuplets born in California recently. There was some discussion about that some women go the “Cheap” way out and use Clomid because Health Insurance does not cover In Vitro fertilization like some European contries do. Part of this discussion can be seen on the view website but what could be considered the most controversial aspect of the conversation have been cut out of the web clip.

Sheri Shepherd made a comment that you should limit the amount of follicles that can be fertilized waiting until a small amount of follicles are present prior to have them fertilized and Elisabeth Hasselbeck said that a women who goes through this process does not want to miss any opportunity to become pregnant.

Why should an insurance company or anyone (government agency) else tell a woman how many babies she can have at once. If a women has control over her own body like the pro-abortion lobby, supports and preaches due to the privacy freedom that is in the Constitution based on Roe Vs Wade. How can a liberal pro-abortion person be against a different woman choosing a different path and having lots of babies?

If a pro-abortion person says a women has control of her reproduction in one instance why is that not the case all the time.

Maybe it is hypocritical and the pro-abortion lobby is not about a women having control over her own body after all.

Is the next step that when the liberals and socialist give us national health insurance that for our own good they will limit how many children a woman can have?

Could this be by Pelosi wanted to have birth control and more abortion funding in HR1 the “stimulus plan”?

Smoke Cigarettes for Children’s health care – HR 2

We are paying for SCHIP with a cigarette tax increase. SCHIP will now cover families that have income up to 300% of the poverty level.

More about HR2 SCHIP increase here

The poverty level in 2007 for family of 4 with an income of $20,650. A family with income of $61,950 will have child health insurance. The 2006 median income in the US according to US census is $43000 to $52000 depending on region of the country. That means that more than 50% of the US population will have their children’s health insurance and health care paid for by the US taxpayer.

To pay for this plan the tax on a pack of cigarette is being raised 61 cents a pack.

Based on the Heritage foundations evaluation of the plan in 2007 that Bush vetoed 22 million more adults need to take up smoking to pay for this plan.

I now understand the socialist democrats plans, this plan will help fix social security.

Keep children healthy through SCHIP.
Get more adults to smoke cigarettes to pay for child health care.
As soon as the child is to old for SCHIP put a cigarette in their hand.
Adults die earlier due to smoking related illnesses.
Since adults are dying sooner there is less people collecting social social security.
Social security is now financially solvent for a few more years.
As a side benefit since the population is going down there are less people to use energy so America can become energy independent.
Since America is energy independent, Americas will stop contributing to man made global warming.
Less people means that fewer jobs are needed so unemployment will go down.

So remember, if you are to old for SCHIP do your patriotic duty and go smoke a pack of cigarettes, the results will make America better.

President Bush Signs H.R. 7327 Into Law

President Bush Signs H.R. 6184, H.R. 7327, S. 3663, S. 3712 and Into Law

On Tuesday, December 23, 2008, the President signed into law:

H.R. 6184, the “America’s Beautiful National Parks Quarter Dollar Coin Act of 2008,” which establishes a program in which the reverse side of quarter dollars issued beginning in 2010 will have designs emblematic of a national park or other national site in each State, the District of Columbia, and each territory of the United States; and requires these coins to be issued at a rate of five new designs each year in the order in which the sites selected were first established as a national site;

H.R. 7327, the “Worker, Retiree, and Employer Recovery Act of 2008,” which delays required minimum distributions from certain retirement accounts for one year; makes changes to funding requirements for certain pension plans; and makes other miscellaneous changes to tax and pension laws;

S. 3663, the “Short-term Analog Flash and Emergency Readiness Act,” which requires the Federal Communications Commission to implement a program to encourage and permit analog television broadcasting of safety information and digital television transition information for the 30-day period following the February 17, 2009, digital television transition deadline; and

S. 3712, which conforms the effective date of certain mental health parity requirements for collectively bargained group health plans with the general effective date of mental health parity provisions of Public Law 110-343.

Bush enacts measure giving cash-strapped companies a pass on pumping money into pensions

Many businesses with defined-benefit plans have absorbed a double blow: abiding by a 2006 law that they fully fund the plans, and seeing the value of the plans eroded by declines in markets where the pension funds are invested. The new law does not erase the companies’ funding obligations but, given the current economic downturn, does adjust some payment schedules set up under 2006 law.

I hope this part is true but I have my doubts that the businesses will ever find their pensions per the law since they did fund them during profit time so they are underfunded and now they get relief from doing the necessary funding for the future.

At some point the businesses and government need to take responsibility for their actions with behavior that will take into account the long term needs of America first and tell everyone there is short term pain. You can’t have everything right now, sometimes you need to wait until it can be paid for with cash and stop the borrowing.

Global Warming – Science Consensus Fraud?

I have been having some fun lately pointing to all the snow and cold temperatures in the US over the last few weeks. As an Engineer I know that this an observation, it is not science.

I do believe that man-made global warming is now treated as a religion with believers and skeptics. Believers will try to discredit and personally attack those who disagree with their beliefs and call them environment hating/ earth hating/future generation hating people.

Trying to use a skeptics eye looking at summary data from NASA and Jim Hensen.
Two Decades of Temperature Change in Antarctica

The map is based on thermal infrared (heat) observations made by a series of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite sensors. Because the satellite is observing energy radiated from the Earth’s surface, the image shows trends in skin temperatures—temperatures from roughly the top millimeter of the land, sea ice, or sea surface—not air temperatures. Making a long-term record out of data from different sensors is challenging because each sensor has its own quirks and may measure temperatures a bit differently. None of the sensors were in orbit at the same time, so scientists could not compare simultaneous observations from different sensors to make sure each was recording temperatures exactly the same. Instead, the team checked the satellite records against ground-based weather station data to inter-calibrate them and make the 26-year satellite record. The scientists estimate the level of uncertainty in the measurements is between 2-3 degrees Celsius.

Across most of the continent and the surrounding Southern Ocean, temperatures climbed. In some places the rate of warming approached a tenth of a degree Celsius each year, which would translate to more than two degrees over the entire period.

A scientist who admits that there is 2 to 3 degrees of inaccuracy in the data then tries to claim that the total change of 2 degrees is scientific proof is not being honest as a scientist. I was taught in my chemistry classes that the measurable difference has to be greater than the measurement inaccuracy for the result to be valid. So this alone should lead one to be a skeptic.

Another reason I am a skeptic is that the UN is pushing for this and I find the UN to be a very corrupt organization of mainly dictators who refuse their people liberties and freedoms. When people are allowed to realize their inalienable rights to liberty and freedom the advancement of the human race has been tremendous. The great thinkers and philosophers of ancient Greece thrived due to democracies of the time (not all people were free but those who were excelled). America is a great example of this as well, when government intruded the least into Americans lives the greatest expansion of life expectancy has occurred.

In 1900 US life expectancy was 49 years, in 1999 it was 77 years, a 57 percent increase. This is all due to improvements in the human condition due to modernization which has been driven by the use of coal, oil and gas to improve the lives of people.

The Truth on Longer Life Span
From Wikipedia the current life expectancy by country in 2008.

link to Wikipedia

The areas of the world that have had liberties and freedoms for the longest time have the longest life expectancy while the areas of the world which have the communist, fascist, socialist, totalitarian styles of government have the shortest life span.

Since the big government liberals, socialists, communists and dictators are saying America and western Europe has to change away from coal and oil to save the planet to me that means there is an alternative motive. If the masses of the world could learn the truth that it is their governments which are making their lives bad there would be world wide overthrows of the dictators like occurred in the French Revolution.

More reason to be a skeptic is that the consensus of the UN reports is a small group of scientist who agree with the conclusion as outlined in Sen Inhofe comments from Oct 2007.

A more recent report
More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims

I do believe that humans should be kind to the planet and good stewards but reducing the standard of living so that the US and Western Europe are lowered to the rest of the world is not the correct answer.