October ended in an odd parody of Halloween where the old ugly witch from San Francisco has brewed up a ghastly caldron of socialism and the American people are running down the middle of the road as a ghost car chased them poised to run them down with income tax rates over 50% for business and promises of healthcare anyone with a brain and not zapped with lightning by a mad scientist of the dying main stream media can say will be massively expensive, not cost neutral.  The month marked the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China on this side of the Pacific.  An event that was marked by parades, plays, and a celebration full of unity and patriotism that is lacking in my home country now.  Iran is continuing to thumb its nose at the world, while in a few countries away we have an emboldened terrorist army killing at levels not seen in 4 years while the world’s most technically advanced military is in neutral while its commander in chief is debating the most politically safe move on dealing with something he doesn’t want to deal with.  With this as a backdrop lets get on with it.

Domestic Items – Our first item comes to us from the pages of yesteryear, trains.  Here is China trains are a good alternative to air travel as they are more reliable, cheap, and the nation’s rail network is fairly robust with standard and high-speed options.  The Chinese government runs the trains here and they run them well.  China of course is a communist country that is still running a hybrid socialism/capitalism system under total government regulation and control rules the day.  Why am I bringing this up?  Obama and many Democrat governors are clamoring for the installation of high-speed rail as a green alternative and a jobs creator.  How does this all tie together?  Amrtak, the US government run passenger railroad in America, this month announced having its second highest ridership in history last year, good news right, wrong!  The actual numbers were 27.2 million passengers from Sept 08 to Sept 09 but this year saw a 1 million passenger drop in ridership over last year.  This is a 5.1% increase over 2 years ago.  Of course that sounds good but what about the cost, as its a government funded entity?  Over the same period Amtrak lost $32 per passenger over the year, that is a loss of $870.4 Million dollars!  This figure is an average estimated from the Pew Economic Policy Group who was independently funded to run the estimate after Amtrak released a $8 per passenger average loss ($217.6 Million dollar loss) to validate the results.  Why the difference?  Pew added in depreciation on hardware where Amtrak didn’t (things like new cars, wheels, breaks, engines, etc.).  Some lines are actually profitable, like the high-speed line Acela Express which made $41 profit per passenger but is only 1 of 3 lines Amtrak operates that at a profit.  Thank means that 41 of 44 lines operate at a loss! What other entity can operate at a 6.8% profit margin, or 93.1% loss margin?  Take for instance the the Sunset Limited line, running from New Orleans to Los Angeles, that losses $462 per passenger.  Why is this line, and others that are such a loss generator, not shut down?  Are Obama and Democrat governors that believe in rail adopting a “Field of Dreams” approach to rail service?  If they build it he (the rider) will come.  Well, from the numbers that approach still is not working.  Don’t get me wrong, I love rail travel.  Traveling by train is less stressful, offers great photo opportunities, sight seeing, and time to relax while traveling then by air.  Cost wise, well that is up to the market.  If trains can compete with airlines and cars then the market will support them, if not, then let the natural process take place.  We are spending nearly a Billion dollars to prop up a transportation option that is only making a profit 6.8% of the time and has only seen increased ridership with high gas prices, this will not do.  If we are serious about cost savings, cutting government fat out of the budget we should look here for starters as I can not think of a another program with such a high failure rate, 93.1%.  The market will dictate where rail is a good transportation alternative, where it isn’t we should not fund it with dollars that can go elsewhere that impacts the nation better.  If the nation needs a government subsidy train let it be a national line that links the East to West, North to South and has stops in each state or every other state for high speed.  Just 4 line and 8 trains, not 44 lines.  Of all the highlighted budgets and figures we have seen in the news lately and the focus on healthcare we should not take our eye off the ball as it is all related, it is all tax payer dollars, its all our money, so it needs to be spent to benefit us all, not the 6,000 people a month who like to go from New Orleans to Los Angeles.

Fall is Homecoming at high school across America.  This is a special time, a time to celebrate school spirit with a football game, a beauty/popularity contest, a dance, and a week to highlight pride in the school.  It also allows kids to get over the initial shock of getting back to the school routine.  For the most part these annual events go off without a hitch or with few if any major problems.  Unfortunately we have seen this time of celebration turned into a horror show by a group of sub-human slime and the gutless and morally bankrupt youth in Richmond California, a crime ridden suburb of San Francisco.  A 15 year old girl went to the school dance, left and went with a guy to drink alcohol in a school campus courtyard.  After she had become drunk as many as 10 people raped, beat, and robbed the 15 year old girl.  Police are saying as many as 24 people watched, cheered, and took pictures/videos of the attacks.  This attack went on for 2 hours.  The girl’s father called numerous times to the girl’s cell phone which was never answered during the attack.  Only when a female student overheard a couple of males talking about the attack were the police notified.  We now have 5 people, 2 men and 3 boys, arrested for the attack, ranging in ages 15 to 21.  These are the facts reported numerous times over the month since the attack occurred.  This case is tragic and the circumstances remind me of the famous case of Kitty Genovese.  For those younger then 50 and not criminology or sociology majors Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in Queens New York and none of her neighbors did anything to assist or report the stabbing.  The news report came under criticism for being inaccurate however the situation remained the same.  In psychology the situation became known as bystander effect or Genovese syndrome.  The case has been cited by everything from sociology journals to Hollywood movies, Boondock Saints.  In the opening scenes of Boondock Saints a priest is giving an impassioned sermon where he states “I am reminded of this holy day of the sad story of Kitty Genovese.  This poor soul cried out time and time again for help but no person answered her calls.  Though many saw, not one so much as called.  Her assailant wiped the bloody knife off on her lifeless little body.  They watched as he simply walked away.  Nobody wanted to get involved.  Nobody wanted to take a stand...  We must fear evil men and deal with them accordingly but what we must truly guard against, what we must fear most, is the indifference of good men.”  This is a good point and correct analogy here.  This 15 year old girl was raped on school grounds for 2 hours, beaten, half naked, and large groups watching, cheering, and egging on the ones raping her and nobody did a thing until a person heard second hand of it.  If just one person had went up to the door to talk to the school’s vice principal, security guards, or off duty cops there the extent of the assault would have been less.  The telling part of this news story is the indifference of the ones in the crowds watching it.  Now we can’t arrest people for watching a crime, but we can for those of knowledge of a crime and failing to report it, for those who watch police shows will recognize the term of accessory after the fact.  The law states, an accessory is a person who assists in the commission of a crime, but who does not actually participate in the commission of the crime as a joint principal. The distinction between an accessory and a principal is a question of fact and degree: The principal is the one whose acts or omissions, accompanied by the relevant mens rea, are the most immediate cause of the actus reus (guilty act). If two or more people are directly responsible for the actus reus, they can be charged as joint principals. The test to distinguish a joint principal from an accessory is whether the defendant independently contributed to causing the actus reus rather than merely giving generalized and/or limited help and encouragement.  For those bystanders they have better be glad I am not the DA because anyone that was there would be charged.  Why?  The amount of disconnect shown in this community is a sign general lack for any morality, decency, and respect for human life and welfare.  I understand the majority of people in the community do not condone this act but letting the morale atmosphere of the community to where bystanders act as cheerleaders to gang rape and beating of a child on a school campus.  Once kids get this far gone it highlights the highest degree of morale depravity of a community that points to one direction and one direction only.  These kids have no real fear.  No fear of consequences, no fear of the police, no fear of the family of this girl, her friends, etc.  No fear of the law.  No fear of jail or criminal punishment.  No fear of God or judgment after death.  I have talked about how things in American have fallen apart morally since the 1950’s in education, family, patriotism, honesty, and work ethic.  The effect of 40 years of socialists reforms and ideology that have destroyed the image of the nuclear family, righteous education, religion in public, truth in sentencing judiciously, and shifting from a self reliance mentality to an entitlement and lack of personal responsibility towards anyone’s actions.  The signs keep on coming, will se continue to sit by ideally or finally act?

Financial Items – As America barrels towards socialism faster then Obama can print money we are seeing some of the global impact of decoupling the US economy form the rest of the world.  I am of course referring to the 14 month low against the Euro that the US dollar hit this month.  The Dollar Index, used by Intercontinental Exchange Inc who track the dollar against the 6 major trading partners of the US, on course for a 7% annual drop in value.  Obama and his financial team have lauded the decline of the dollar as making US manufactured goods cheaper and more competitive and attractive to exporters.  The problem with this approach is that Europeans are seeing this as currency manipulation (something the US always charges China does) and have closed ranks to retaliate if it continues.  The second problem is that a weaker US dollar makes investment in our bonds by sovereign wealth funds and countries less attractive and drives them toward IMF bonds or other countries/currencies.  With oil at over $70/barrel now we are seeing some wanting to price oil with the Euro or stronger and more stable currencies.  This spells trouble as it shows a lack of confidence in our currency policies and those driving the economy.  As some of this is academic the majority of the discussion has far reaching consequences for more then just America.  This begs the question , what is Obama’s main objective, his endgame, his grand plan?  He seems too tied to the dead and dying labor unions who refuse to let the fact go that mainstream manufacturing in America is dead.  Look at our nation’s largest manufacturing sector, automobiles, and you will see how dead it is.  America can’t compete with China, India, or Eastern Europe on the labor front when unions insist American workers get $30/hour base starting salaries.  Even if you crash the dollar on purpose you will not be able to compete unless the US economy crashes as well and we reset everything back to 0.  Unions have killed the middle class they said they were fighting for by increasing production costs making our goods too expensive domestically and far too expensive internationally, which led to China’s rise in manufacturing.  A strong dollar allowed Americans to become addicted to low cost clothes, electronics, and everything manufactured.  This was evident in the death of Wal-Mart’s Buy American program that showcased American made products over cheap foreign alternatives.  We as a nation voted with out wallets and by now we are hooked, no matter of socialism or inflation will reverse this.  Unless we can stabilize the dollar and attract investors like China we will be in massive trouble.  Obama is spending the most in human history and is setting up the largest debts in human history all on the assumption others will continue funding these debts as they did before.  He fails to realize that the IMF bonds have created a clear alternative and China signaled this with a small $50 billion dollar purchase last month while Brazil purchased $10 billion dollars this month.  That is $60 billion dollars worth of investments we as a nation have lost, and a stipend Obama can’t spend.  As Obama explodes spending exceeding all US governments before him combined and rivaling all spending for all countries in the world combined, our ability to sustain such spending without confidence in future investments is poising us for a total collapse, unless this is his goal.  While all this spending and talk of more spending down the road continue who is watching the printing press Obama cranked up to ludicrous speed?  All of this printing has consequences in inflation, stagnation of the economy, or worse stagflation, the two combined.  Flooding the world with more paper money without getting people or countries to purchase our bonds, falling bond ratings, or sparking a trade war with Europe over their take on things will only make things worse.  We are headed down this path now.  Europe could start placing tariffs on our goods, reversing all of Obama’s hard work, or China could just replace all its bonds with IMF ones upon maturity, taking Japan with them.  If we continue to stand by and focus only on spending and not the impact of this spending on our currency we could find an angry world poised to retaliate, and no amount of flowery speeches or oratory gestures of idealism will save us from that backlash.

Remember the 3 little monkey statues, you know the ones, the monkeys holding their hands over their eyes, ears, and mouth.  The 3 Stooges did something similar, it all signifies hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.  Well, cover the kid’s eyes and ears because it seems the Obama administration has started to speak evil.  What!  This new ear of politics, getting rid of Washington insiders, transparency, accountability, and honesty change we were promised has evaporated quicker then the weekly listing of atrocities against misguided freedom fighters held at Gitmo or the daily body counts of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan plastered on every media outlet in the nation this time last year.  It seems all those important and lauded jobs Obama himself personally created or saved were exaggerated 600%!  Balderdash you say, no seriously that was a bold faced lie by the administration.  Eager to get any good news or any kind of a political victory on any front the administration did the good old ‘fuzzy math’ on the jobs reports to state they created or saved 30,000 jobs with the porkulous spending package sold as some magic bean to right the evil capitalistic ways of Wall Streets greed and depravity.  Well, it didn’t, all it really did was inflate the already ballooning debt and create long range and long term government spending and expansion many will not see until 2012 or later.  It seems a minimum of 5,000 jobs were overstated in reports released this October.  The White House acknowledged the math errors and promised to correct them in future reports, just like he promised us ample time to review legislation, no hiring of insider lobbyists, an era of looking forward and new politics.  Examples of the overstated jobs include the AP reported: A company working with the Federal Communications Commission reported that stimulus money paid for 4,231 jobs, when about 1,000 were produced. A Georgia community college reported creating 280 jobs with recovery money, but none was created from stimulus spending. A Florida child care center said its stimulus money saved 129 jobs but used the money on raises for existing employees. A Wisconsin construction firm required to re-fill in its multimillion dollar construction project jobs reports falsely with directions from Midwest Regional director, 0 jobs created or saved but over 100 reported. A Texas contractor retained 22 employees for stimulus contracts but job count quadrupled to 88 by regional directors. Palm Beach water department hired 57 meter readers, customer service representatives and others to handle 2 water projects, but their job count was doubled to 114. A Colorado business' claim that its stimulus contract created more than 4,200 jobs actually hired 4,231 temporary workers for its stimulus project and most of them worked only 5 weeks or less and the rest no more than 5 months.  This equates to 1 in 6 reported jobs saved/created are bogus!  Robert Gibbs tried to explain the errors but made little sense.  The AP found errors of overstatement by 10 times in more then one occurrence.  As the White House tries to dismiss the errors the unemployment and lack of family sustaining jobs in America continue to reveal a reality opposite to the ‘hope and change’ promised and that of an out of control over spending, socialists, and lack of leadership government seen in D.C.  The shifting tides of world power and ebbing on America, as I have blogged before.  Europe is trying to muscle their way into being the next financial and economic center of the world.  The company I work for fled its listing in the Caribbean and went to the UK for tax purposes.  Europe is throwing open the doors to take corporate headquarters fleeing Obama’s anti-business, anti-capitalism, anti-free market, socialist and high tax policies and promises.  Obama’s health care is placing a burden of 43% federal taxes on small and medium businesses to pay for his public option healthcare and its associated government expansion and regulations, with state taxes that could exceed 50% total tax, like in Wisconsin the tax burden will be 53%!  What business is going to stay in such an environment?  Take this and add in the facts that the Obama led and inspired bureaucrats have lied and overstated the figures of his much lauded jobs package and you get lying, misleading, and ignoring of what happened for months by the very ones who state their reason for being is to inform us.  Stimulus jobs were so overstated that some companies were required to fill in the surveys again and again until they had numbers needed to support the government’s assumptions.  Take this into account that many of the jobs were budget negative, government jobs, and you get a classic political answer to a simple question.  Expanding the government is not creating a job, its creating a tax burden, increased debt, more dependency on red tape impeding efficiency and roadblock in government.

International Items – One of my earlier TV and cultural memories was my nation’s bicentennial celebration.  1976 was a magic year full of pomp and celebration especially on July 4th, our nation’s birthday.  All of the parades, concerts, and events on TV and in local communities were not what I had seen of the PRC’s 60th anniversary celebration.  As I was watching the events unfold on TV, this year we stayed at home instead of travel due to pregnancy and the family all being here, an odd question struck me.  In the west when we have public parades the patriotic themes are focused on historical events and themes.  In communists countries the national parades are 100% military.  Its a public display of power and review of the military, hardware, and divisions I have never seen in a democratic country.  This got me asking myself why.  Why do countries controlled by the government always parade their military might in public?  For the average peasant or commoner in these countries, or any country for that matter, can’t tell the difference between a tank, an armored personal carrier, an amphibious assault vehicle, or armored artillery vehicle.  They can’t tell the difference between marching infantry, cyber warfare troops, special forces, or marines.  In most countries they all wear the same uniform or the differences are so slight few can tell.  To the vast majority everything looks the same, people, equipment, uniforms.  In America we have military parades, but they are few and no where near the scope of the ones here, Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc.  Here the military is seen as a protector and the people like to see them in their full dress and see all the hardware they have, it makes them feel more safe.  In America we hold a qusi-respect for the military that is akin to how families treat an adopted step child.  If we have a huge military parade for all 4 branches, maybe the Coast Guard, and associated hardware it would draw ire and protests from thousands, here they draw awe and admiration.  Of course it is a police state here and a supposed democracy there.  As much money as we spend on our military we should see more of them and take pride in them, not pay them token support and hamper their missions with endless debate on the most humane ways to win the hearts and minds of those in the line of fire.  In China a resurgence of patriotism swept the nation since the Sichuan earthquake in May 2008, followed by the Olympics and now this 60 year celebration.  China as unified on its theme of achievements, determination, and unity.  In America we have become so fractured is seems there is little if anything left to hold unity with.  Conservatives and liberals have such opposing views and beliefs now there is no common thread.  The ideal of American and the American dream are not even the same among people who are ideologically minded anymore.  Religions are fractured within themselves, and stuck in the middle are those who have thought they know what it all meant but now feel lost.  We have become a nation divided amongst ourselves.  The great Republican president Lincoln once stated a house divided against itself can not stand, well that is where we are now.  The views of government here in China by the Chinese is something we can not import, nor can we import their brand of patriotism or self acceptance.  This was a hard thing to ponder as I watched China display its military might, its ethnic unity, its unique cultural talents all to celebrate its 60th anniversary of its current governments founding.  Sure, there is dissent here, there are opposing views and sometimes the police state reacts with an iron fist and heavy handedly, yet the trust and belief in the government is way ahead of ours and their hopes for the future are grounded and tangible.  For all of China’s problems and struggles ahead all the people are still fiercely Chinese and proud of that fact.  Nothing in their past detracts for all they have achieved recently.  How did a country that could rally around similar themes become so fractured and so hostile towards itself if is no longer able to agree on anything, from what a family, marriage, holiday, or what is acceptable for kids to take to school or learn is, heck we can’t even agree on what a holiday is or isn’t anymore.  The Chinese accept their government for what it is, and they accept their culture for what it is, they are not hung up on separating themselves into special little pockets of counter culture that expresses their innermost fantasies and warped views of reality.  We seriously need to look at how our greatest strength got turned into our biggest weakness, our melting pot ideal.

How is that Iran policy going?  Velvet glove approach seems to be working.  Unclenching the fist and offering an open hand really turned Iran around.  For those not aware of how international politics plays out its kind of like racing.  When a new driver comes onto the circuit everyone wants to test him out to see how he can handle himself and how he races.  Iran tested Obama in June with the elections and its fallout.  Obama weighed and measured the acts, reactions, and options before he spoke out against it, in a benign manner.  This emboldened Tehran and signaled that it was in the driver’s seat, so to speak.  Over the months there was political posturing, gestures, and signals that things were progressing.  Sanctions were blocked as they were before and Obama and his team began to feel comfortable with some work results between Russia and China, then Iran threw a fast breaking curveball.  The announcement of secret uranium processing plants was not Earth shattering, Israel know of them and speculation is we did too.  The announcement however was significant as it showed Tehran was feeling confident they could push people around, and they did.  Obama and his team saw support for sanctions after the announcement fade.  Iran allowed in IAEA inspectors in and promised full access to all sites, sound familiar (thing Saddam Hessian).  Obama had his camp felt pretty good about themselves as they came up with the perfect solution, having Russia, a stout alley of Iran, receive 90% of its uranium and process is and ship it back to their testing reactors.  Well, Tehran smiled and said, no.  Their nuclear products were theirs, a strategic national asset and would not be released to anyone or under any terms other then their own.  Check Mr. President, your move.  Iran has just run Obama in to the high way in turn two and is watching him spin out in the rear view mirror.  We have seen this movie before, in Iraq and in North Korea.  The outcome is different in each one as each was unique, you can’t really compare them, however if you don’t think North Korean and Iran are playing off each other’s successes and seeing how the US reacts to the other you would be dead wrong.  Iran is in a high stakes game.  The last time this got started down this road Israel blew up their reactor, to no real consequences.  Now they are doing it again and on a much grander scale.  We have allowed ourselves to be placed in this situation by Bush’s inability to contain Iran after it was pretty much left out in the cold under Clinton.  Bush tried but didn’t get the support from Russia or try to get enough from China to put enough pressure on the Iranians, else these facilities would not have been built in the first place.  Ok, I have started to play Obama’s favorite game, when anything goes wrong or gets tough just blame Bush, its all his fault anyway.  Aside from the childish and petty behaviors of a toddler the facts remain Iran is serious and the longer we sit on the sidelines and mull things over the closer they get to figuring out how to make a bomb and refine the materials they have on hand to mass produce it.  This is a hard case, Obama has all the ‘best’ people and resources around him to assist, but he HAS to do something, anything to signal to Iran that he was serious when he pledged a nuclear free world in Europe this spring.  The clock is ticking and the longer we wait the more we look like passengers on this ride.

Science Items – NASA finally got their Aries I rocket off the launch pad.  The rocket was being tested as a delivery vehicle for the space agency’s next generation delivery vehicles and to get Americans back to the moon, possible to build a base for deeper solar system explorations.  The recent news of water found on the moon make this sound all that much more promising, well until the White House shot it all down.  The rocket test was quite dramatic.  Weather delays, wayward ships, and technical issues all cam into play.  The rocket itself, the tallest rocket ever, finally lifted off and make a successful test flight.  There was an issue with the parachutes not slowing down the booster stage before impact into the ocean so we don’t know the extent of the damage there yet but all else was good.  The issues are not longer feasibility, but the will to continue with this program.  The Aries I is cheaper then Saturn V in comparison, mainly because it is using existing technology from the space shuttle boosters where Saturn V was built from scratch.  The next rocket proves NASA is able to still built viable rockets and get the stages to work teh way they want them to.  Now the program is under the knife.  Why?  Well there is not real socialists need for space travel.  Rockets are environmentally bad.  Or NASA is too inefficient of a government agency to warrant much more then launching robots after the shuttle fleet is retired in the next few years.  Getting back to the moon is a lofty goal, but one that makes little financial sense.  Space exploration is more a statement about national pride and unity toward a more loft goal.  American has lost that and now it is China and Russia’s game, with India, Japan, and South Korea close behind.  Obama has essentially given the kiss of death to the future of NASA as they are too expensive, too innovative, too pollution productive, and will consume the entire nations annual allotment of carbon credits in just one launch, this will not due.  There is no really new science to be gained by our return to the moon.  The event may just even detract from the attention spend on our first half breed, non slave ancestor African-American president and that just won’t do.

Few conservatives have seized on the fiasco know as H1N1 flu shots this season.  We were told, promised, and reassured by every level of the Executive branch that we would have enough doses by mid September to give to all those in need, this was stated publicly numerous times as high up as the President in March at the end of last flu season.  Well guess what, it didn’t happen.  We have shortages, regulation problems, distribution uncertainties, supply mismanagement, and even deaths resulting from the fiasco yet this is not being reported on.  This is actually the equivalent of Hurricane Katrina in scope of Federal mismanagement, understaffing, underfunding, and underestimating the scope and complexity of the problems needing to be overcome to achieve success.  There are seniors, kids, and sick people forced to stand in the cold and rain for more then 10 hours waiting on a shot that does not exist!  Seniors being turned away by nurses who state they look healthy and don’t have enough shots for white people.  All the while pregnant women are not positive if they can get the shot or should.  Hospitals and clinics are getting daily calls but have no clue when or how much they will receive.  Take a good hard look at this folks, this is Obamacare in its full glory.  All his czars and policy chiefs have their names and works all over this.  This is what Pelosi and Reid’s big-box, one size fits all, public option socialists healthcare system will be like.  Rationing, red tape, inefficiencies, and people dying because nobody can get the system to work.  All of this and at a cost so large the weight of the world will seem like a small feather pillow in comparison. Of course this is Bush’s fault, Obama has already said this, its his and the left’s only way of dealing with adversity and hardship.  I wonder how much longer the press will be buying that shtick?  The current crisis of vaccinations and their lack of control of any portion of the process is what we all have to look forward to in Obamacare.  Every level of the administration promised we would have enough vaccine by September as early as last March, well here we are in November and what do we have?   Nobody knows what is going on.  Clinics and hospitals are getting calls for information yet they have not been told anything.  I worked in big government before, in the military.  Ask anyone who has worked for the federal government how efficient and responsive it is.  There are rules, regulations, forms, and procedures you HAVE to follow and can not be deviated from.  In Wisconsin a clinic had federal workers make people file into a room until exactly 80 people were there, then they were given forms and 10 pens to fill them out with.  Nobody could leave until everyone was finished.  Then they went to the next room as a group to have the paperwork reviewed, again waiting until everyone was cleared.  Then it was a shot.  See this is the efficiency, creativity, and innovation your choices for socialism have created.  This is just for a simple shot!  We are seeing these scenes play out all over the nation.  One size does not fit all, flexibility and circumstances matter, and healthcare is something you can not box up and replicate across the nation in a big box fashion.  Meanwhile the media is all focused on the flu itself and not the countries first glimpse at the efficiency and workability of Obamacare.  Sure they are now calling it Pelosicare but who cares, its ALL SOCIALISM!  Madam Speaker has finally confessed her bill is $1.2 trillion and is 1,990+ pages and includes all the controversial items of H.R.3200, like death panels, federally funded abortion, universal coverage, mandates, tax increases, penalties including jail time, etc AND created 111 NEW federal agencies!  All this and she made it public Friday night so the 72 hour rule for review expired at the beginning of the week, allowing them to take a vote pronto.  Welcome to communism folks and thanks to you for not getting out and demanding your elected representatives listened to you the voters and not the Party and special interests who funded their campaigns.  This measure will pass thanks to spineless blue-dog Democrats and yellow-bellied RINOs like Olympia Snow.  When the real program starts to hit full force the waiting in line for a flu shot will be a God sent, try filling out 20 forms and seeing 50 people just to have your kids appendix taken out because it hasn’t burst yet.

Sports Items – Andre Agassi admitted to taking crystal meth and then lying about it to ATP officials in his new book.  Why is this getting so much sports coverage?  Its not like he admitted to taking PEDs or anything that would give him an edge on the court.  The press is all over the place on this, interviewing present and past players, talking to ATP officials, asking questions.  Ask yourself why.  Seriously, Agassi did something stupid in the 1990’s, got away with it and staged one of male tennis’s great comeback stories.  Is it any wonder he would do drugs?  Remember Agassi’s old image, the one he had when he had hair.  He was a rebel, an image maker, a rule breaker!  His motto was image is everything, well he fell into the trap of that and did some meth a few dozen time.  Its not like he played at Wimbledon or the US Open stoned.  His accomplishments on the court are exceptional, his play hard.  His honesty is now shot as is his creditability but who really idolized him off the court, well after the Brook Shields break up anyway?  He did some recreation drug use off the court.  The big deal is the organization he worked for had a strict drug policy in place and he violated it then lied to cover it up.  They bought it and let him pass.  The only reason this is being made into a big deal is he is still relatively remembered and the main stream media is losing so much subscribers, viewers, readers, etc. that they have to get some back anyway possible.  This is being made into a big deal as a way to make old main stream media seem relevant again.  Tell all books always spark a little controversy, remember Wilk Chamberlains conquest stories?  Agassi was living up to his bad boy image for the time he was in it.  The media is unable to reach people on real news items now as the trust in the media is almost as low as its trust in Congress, which is really really really low.  We have a World Series going on, basketball and hockey starting, football half way through (how about Farve and those Vikings win), yet it is a big story to cover the book of a retired tennis player on an incident we already knew about and some believed he lied anyway, all we got was confirmation.  If the ATP takes any actions then there will be news.  This story is of little interest other then why it was made into such a big deal, it's the human drama behind the sports. 

One of my favorite radio shows was going on and on about the Rush Limbaugh and NFL Saint Louis Rams things when he made a really good point.  If it had been Kane West (remember his embarrassing escapades at the MTV awards among others – racially motivated) who was trying to buy the Rams?  What about other hate filled liberals who called for Bush’s assassination or wished death upon GOP officials and spokesmen where to buy a major sports team?  As it turns out Kanye West owns the Fatburger fast food chain in the Chicago area, 2 stores open and 2 more slated for next year, where is the outrage and Congresswomen calling for a boycott and to yank his food service license?  How about Joy Behar, where was the outrage against her children’s book?  She has had open letters of reprimand from the Anti-Defamation League for her attacks against Rumsfeld, and the Catholic League of Civil Rights for her stating all priests are drunks?  Speaking of the View, What about Rosie O’Donnell, where was the outrage and public furor over her now defunct magazine or her also defunct TV show?  Why were her sponsors not boycotted like Glenn Beck’s were (bad choice as his TV show draws more viewers in its time slot then CNN, MSNBC, and HLN combined!) and his radio show continues to draw millions of listeners a week.  Do you see a pattern here?  Limbaugh was not allowed to continue being a financial backer for a group interested in buying the Rams because of a comment he never made and because he is a conservative.  So what does this have to do with sprots?  Well, you caught me.  Its more political then sprots related but it is telling none the less.  The NFL is a private organization, not publically traded.  They decide who can and can't own a team.  This decision however should be left up to them and them alone.  If people have a problem with what is going on then they take it up with the league.  The curious thing is who leaked this and why?  Limbaugh is a huge NFL fan.  He has tried to get on MNF before and wanted to join in this investment group for the same reason others do, to make money and own something you like.  The reactions were overboard especially when you take into consideration he NEVER said any of the things the people protesting his involvement in the investment group were saying!  It was pure B.S. and nobody covered that in the press or public, other then him.  Sure there is a price to be paid for free speech and Rush is a big boy who can take care of himself but when there is such a blatent railroad job with pure hypocracy going on I have to call it for what it is.  Sure he is controversial but nowhere near as offensive as Behar or O’Donnell, both called for the death of GOP people and continue to publicly assail anyone who thinks conservative to this day with vulgar and hate filled speech?  They really said those things, it is well documented, Rush's words were made up, he never said them and everybody knows that as much as he is hated and the media continues to hound him, if he had said anything racist 10 years ago it would have come out before now!  I wonder if conservatives can fall under the new Hate Crimes legislation Obama just signed?  It was up to Goodell to say yea or nea on the purchase, not the media or the Congress.  Why is it that this was made into a national outrage and Behar can continue to get away with her hate speech, oh yea... nobody is watching her stupid show or network!   

Political Items – With the world falling down around the White House, Afghanistan War review, Iran nuclear weapons program, jobs reports being false, Dem governors losing in the polls, etc., what is the White House doing?  Starting a war of words with Fox News.  In the military we call this a pissing contest.  It is a war or words and one which that nobody can win.  It all started with Obama’s polls getting hammered again and again and Fox News sniping on Robert Gibbs, Obama’s Press Secretary.  Gibbs essentially put Fox News in time out by not allowing them to cover the Press Pool interviews in their respected rotation.  This action resulted in a rare moment of press solidarity with Fox, they all protested and Gibbs had to yield.  During all this guess what happened, come on guess?  Fox News ratings, that were already killing the competition, rose another 9 points.  So where is all the ratings Fox News is netting off of this spat with the White House?  Ask CNN, dead last for cable news programs, followed closely by MSNBC.  Most of Fox News programs are viewed more then the competiting time slots of all other news channels COMBINED!  Even Fox News re-runs of shows are beating CNN’s first run of Anderson Cooper 360 and other first CNN and MSNBC first run shows, re-runs getting better ratings!  Silliness aside there is a real problem with the White House’s policy to ban a news agency because of its political opinion programs.  CNN and MSNBC also have politically biased opinion shows, yet they were never blocked, boycotted, degraded by name in public by every level of the Executive Branch.  In DC the favoritism is show in press leaks, exclusive interviews, advanced screening of memos, etc.  It is borderline unconstitutional to outright block a press outlet you see as critical or opposed to your ideology.  When you fear criticism, fear opposition, fear dialogue, fear debate on the issues, fear positions you are taking you are doing something wrong, immoral, unethical, and/or illegal, period.  If you are doing the right thing, and you know it, and others do not agree with you or your actions it is your responsibility to communicate your intent more clearly.  If you are instituting change that is needed and have to change the establishment you have to communicate the inefficiencies of the status quo and explain all the benefits and trials of the change and how this will better all concerned.  You can not do this by blocking a news outlet for the sole reasons you do not agree with their take on your actions and policies.  The funny thing about the truth and the right path is that it is obvious.  There are a whole bucket of examples of White House disapproval of the press for over a century, yet how many have boycotted a press outlet?  No open, democratic, and free government is so afraid of the press that they begin to control the press by dictating who can and what news is able to be covered and released for public review.  This is dangerous, reminiscent of Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, pre-war Iraq, Iran, Myanmar, and others who have long and infamous cases of press manipulation and oppression of the news and views seen as critical or against the will of the government.  Control of the press is one of the first subtle steps toward totalitarian governance which is never good for the citizens of the country so unfortunate to have this happen.  Facts are facts, Obama blocked Fox News, the real issue here is why, to what end, if Fox now who in the future, what signals are they sending to editors of news outlets, what is the end game they are trying to achieve?  I have my opinions on this, but Robert Gibbs won’t return my emails or calls.

Finally, from the Washington Post: The White House has told Congress it will reject calls for many of President Obama's policy czars to testify before Congress - a decision senators said goes against the president's promises of transparency and openness and treads on Congress' constitutional mandate to investigate the administration's actions… White House counsel Greg Craig told her in a meeting Wednesday that they will not make available any of the czars who work in the White House and don't have to go through Senate confirmation... At issue are the 18 positions Mr. Obama has created since he took office. Of those, 10 are in the executive office and not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests or requests for testimony.  This is from the promise of the most open and transparent administration ever!  This all came up when Chairman for the Government Affairs Committee, Joe Lieberman, Ind., requested the White House produce all ‘czars’ involved in the climate control negotiations with GM and Chrysler as well as others for the bail-out/assistance given to them.  So what is going on here?  Well, if it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck it is most likely a duck.  Despite all the public discussions, debates on Obama’s experiment with socialism, Pelosi and Reid’s demands for public options, publicly funded abortions, etc. then why is he continuing to add fuel to the socialism talk fire?  The big difference here is his pledges, promises, and declarations on transparency, honesty, accountability, trust, and pride in our government.  We are seeing none of it in these actions.  Preventing people who are essentially making policy decisions, changes, etc. to be held accountable is a dangerous thing.  The Congress is held accountable to the voters and will hear from those who’s district they represent or they chair a committee that is making federal policy.  The President is held accountable by popular opinion polls and strength given to or taken from his party during off year elections.  What Obama and his Chief of Staff have done is circumvent all established channels and instituted a mechanism that is making high level decisions without any recourse for the people to voice their approval or dissatisfaction of.  We are seeing trust in government plummet to lower levels then when Bush was President.  Sure Obama himself is still popular, but his policies and direction is not.  We are seeing a shadow government rise up and control all levels of the country to such a degree that is frightening.  We have the government telling private business how much money it can pay its employees.  We have a government dictating how, where, and when vital medicine is made and distributed to counter a potential health crisis.  We are seeing the government cut the countries ability to produce goods by controlling the levels of carbon to combat an unproven theory.  All of this without the normal channels of debate and selection of the best points through legislative shaping of a bill, as it was done for 233 years prior.  It was not enough to have a majority party government hell bent to change the course of the nation from freedom to socialism and government control of everything.  If this is where the majority of Americans want to go they can step back and allow to happen.  But this government was too impatient so they created a shadow government that is doing more then just change.  You see this is what our forefathers were warning us about.  Our constitution was written for one purpose and one purpose only, to limit the government and ensure citizens have defined rights the government can not infringe upon.  The Constitution is not to give power to or road map for the government but a limitation on what the government can and can not do.  When the President publically states the Constitution has blind side and hole in it there is a problem.  His powers and abilities are limited for a good reason, just as Congress powers are clearly outlined and limited as well.  The real issue here is just how Constitutional all this is.  There is talk of the public option in the current health-care bill being unconstitutional, the Democrats reply was, who cares, we will MAKE it constitutional after it passes.  This is beyond arrogant, this is beyond dangerous, this is beyond treason.  We are seeing 2 branches of the government set the nation on a collision course with debt and spending exceeding GDP.  The end game is coming into focus, it is becoming clear the Democrats want to bankrupt the nation, bring it to its knees, weaken it to the point everyone is dependent upon it for life and then alter the government to become master of the people, not servant of the people it is today.  Fellow Americans, the republic is under grave danger, the country is being destroyed from within.  When a shadow government is put into place, one that is independent to do as it pleases without any checks or balances as outlined by the constitution, and it begins to operate contrary to the will of the people AND is it hidden/protected by one branch then we have the largest threat to the republic since secession and I not kidding or exaggerating one bit.  We are at the precipice, how we fall will be determined soon, time to shift our weight now else we will fall straight into Hell.

 

Another year has come and gone, another season changed, yet this marks a different flavor.  While not my first Halloween in China, and not my daughter’s first Halloween, it was her first in Shanghai and her first honest to goodness Trick-or-treating.  At the last minute I was able to find out about an expat community that was holding a house to house route.  These were actual houses too, not town houses or condos, which was nice to see, real lawns, driveways, and decorations in trees, shrubs, etc.

My daughter wanted to go as a witch, the costume company made a mistake and shipped a cape with a hood, that had horns… so it was a modified witch costume.  It was a long drive to get to the gated community, then an oddity to find a place to park the car but the results were more then worth any hassle.  My daughter still wasn’t sure on the saying of ‘trick or treat’ but she tried and with all the other kids doing it she had plenty of observation to get her going.  The community was great, participating houses were decorated and people on the porches, non participating houses had notes on the doors and were dark.  With a little pumpkin bucket, her best friend leading the way they went off and got their candy.  My daughter was curious about the decorations, jack-o-lanterns, people in costumes, etc. but took it all in stride.  Her friend, a Chinese boy, was ecstatic at going to a place where they handed out candy for free without a long line.  The two of them were calling it candy Christmas, 3 year old logic.

After making the rounds the parents of Sophia’s friend took us out to a restaurant where many of the trick-or-treaters were going for dinner, before the candy eating rush.  As a first year outing it was a success.  A clear moon filled night, mild temperatures where a light jacket was adequate, and while only about 15 houses were participating the candy yield was enough to last a few days.  Here in China there is no need to x-ray candy as only the expats participate, all are professionals and live in a very specific location.  The community was well lighted and the roads had large pots in them so cars could not go very far or very fast.  There were plenty of parents out and the teens were very considerate to the kids and enjoying getting candy instead of participating in tricking others. 

Seeing my daughter is not yet 3 there is time to teach her the meaning behind why kids say trick or treat, jack-o-lanterns, costumes, candy, etc.  For now it is all just fun and different, something kids her are love.  Getting to dress up for a night, do out to a new place, and have people give you candy is magical for a kid.  Its odd that the trust, good nature, and spirit of the holiday have transported to China better then it has fared in America, where Halloween is celebrated the most. 

As this was her first Halloween in Shanghai, her first trick-or-treating, and first year in dressing up I think my daughter has a wonderful time and will look back at is as fondly as my first few times at doing the same in Detroit.  Here it is 2 days later and the temperature has dropped about 15 degrees and fall feels more like winter.  We may not have had time to carve the pumpkin we got, or decorate the home more then just put a few stickers on the door but it is starting to feel more like the holiday season, which is what the best part of Halloween is, the signal of fall and getting ready for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Chinese New Year.

There is an odd thing going no in Governors races across the country.  Presidents have been asked to lend support and raise money for governors in races for years, there are plenty of precedents going back for years.  Popular presidents are always used by parties to help push the party lines into state politics as they are going on at the national level.  This makes it easier to do things like gain majority support for implementing federal regulations or laws when a majority of states aligned with the White House agree to accept Federal suggestions.  The issue here is not the White House raising funds or even making endorsements, there is nothing new or news worthy there.  The issue is the degree to which and the tactics being used to manipulate gubernatorial races nation wide.

First off you have to understand some of the background.  For those who forgot or never learned in civics class there is such a thing as State’s Rights.  The United States is a Federal Government that makes a national framework of laws, states have their own constitution, frameworks, etc. that can choose to follow or not follow these federal laws, like speed limits, drinking age, etc.  The Federal government used tax dollars as leverage to help a state make a decision.  States are basically independent to make, pass, and ignore laws as long as they do not violate the state or US constitution and amendments.

Since the healthcare debate stalled and is now stuck in the mud a movement for states to ‘op-out’ of public options has become known.  This goes to the State’s Rights acknowledgement on the divisiveness and lack of consensus on the issue and the bills being discussed and voted on on the national level.  The last time there was such talk about State’s Rights was the mid 1800’s and it was not a pretty sight.  Given this is it any wonder why the White House is getting so intimately involved in gubernatorial races in New York (Paterson asked not to run), Wisconsin (Lawton asked not to run) verses the normal campaigning seen in New Jersey (Re-election of Corzine) Virginia (Deeds), and Massachusetts (Re-election of Patrick).  The major difference in the first two is how the White House publically and heavy handedly meddling in state elections making party decisions for the electorate essentially bypassing political primaries and preventing the people of the state to select who their candidate for choice in representing the parties in the final contest to select governor.

Here is the problem.  The White House is trying to fix the race before it is run by manipulating the primaries by asking candidates to not run and signaling who they prefer instead of letting the citizens of the states select the candidate and then getting behind that candidate and raising money, making appearances, etc.  I do not recall seeing such an overt and heavy handed approach as I have seen in New York and Wisconsin.  First, Peterson was not endorsed and essentially given the kiss of death by the White House over fellow Democrat New York Attorney General Cuomo.  The move is said to give the party a stronger chance to Democrats as Peterson was not a stellar executive and has been marred in the news over the last year.  This sparked some political debate nationally, until health care took all the press.  Now we see the same thing going in when Obama has asked acting Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor Lawton to stop her campaign so Barrett can fly through the primaries unhampered.  This will leave Cuomo and Barrett all their political monies and little dirt or scandal exposed for the respective state’s governor's races.  The issues here are the interference of state political processes by the White House and the disfranchising the state’s DNC primary process to allow the people to select the best Democrat. 

The issue is the brazenness of the White House in this and the utter silence in the media over two clear examples of election manipulation of governors races by hand picking the Democrat candidate without thoughts or input from the citizens of that state.  Normally the respective candidates slug it out and the one best able to communicate their platform, demonstrate executive experience and responsibility, and ability to lead wins the party nomination and resources for the final showdown with the Republican or Independent.  This is being supplanted by political posturing and green lighting by fixing the field before the game begins.  Voters then have had the major decisions of initial choice removed for them by an outside force that is not taking their unique needs into consideration.  The White House is forcing national politics into these two state’s elections and substituting national political alignment over electorates choice to select the leader based on local interests, needs, and desires.  This is irresponsible and dangerous as it takes the decision process out of the hands of the citizens on the most basic level of the selection process for the states lead executive.  This party manipulation is ignoring state issues, state needs, and state alignments all to gain a much larger political objective.  This is the real danger no matter what party is attempting it. 

We have seen the larges spending spree in political history, the largest expansion of American government in history, and the most interference into citizen’s lives and decision making process by the government in American history and yet it continues.  The ability to choose is dramatically changing in America and this is just another example of limited choice to the citizens by the government.  This goes beyond higher taxes, proper representation by those elected, increased spending, and expanding government.  All of these are things we have dealt with before and part of our process of negotiating and compromise to get things done we all can live with.  This is the continuation of federal government intrusion into the most basic decision making process to fix the outcome before we even begin to decide.  By fixing the races for top executive for any state the federal government is ignoring the needs of the state and its citizens for a cheap national strategic alignment for future political power plays.  There is real defeat in the air over healthcare and future battles over cap and tax, having ‘op-outs’ is politically nice because it sounds like a choice but if the governors of the states have been hand selected and backed to win are the ones making the decisions political re-payment for such favors would trump citizen concerns and force the national agenda on a state from a more politically friendly top executive state level. 

The real danger here is people, many of whom have become re-energized since April (the Tea Party movement), may feel the government is no longer representing them and give up on it.  This will lead to the inevitable fall of the American political system into pure corruption as our citizens are falling in education, activism, and engagement in the political process.  Sure we have seen a resurgence lately, however the creeping feeling I am getting is this is a last hurrah before a long winter.  We are seeing more and more decisions taken out of the hands of the individual and placed into the greedy hands of the government.  We are seeing government conducting its business more and more behind closed doors and making laws without consulting or at least listening to the majorities who elected them.  The political winds have shifted to either set up a system where it becomes too confusing or too much work to be engaged so the government can simply say we are no longer needed in the decision making process.  This is what our forefathers warned us about.  Governments are not here to solve our problems, they have never solved a problem in human history!  Governments take on a life of their own, and when unrestrained they will become large, fat, malevolent entities that act in selfish ways until it can no longer move or function, at which point calamity happens.  Trust in government, media, and the future is at historic lows in America.  The largest problem is we are accepting what others are telling us instead of opening our eyes, ears, and minds and acting on our own intelligence instead of what is spoon fed to us by those who wish to control the game.  We need to stop looking to others to solve our problems and solve them for ourselves, through our own actions, works, and efforts.  This is what created our nation and sustained it for 200 years, too bad it only took 33 years to wreck it all over the promise of easier life and decisions.

 

September started with a bang, news wise, and was a month that just kept on giving!  From more Acorn videos to Wall Streets return we have seen a huge variety of topics come and go, and unfortunately the biggest one, Health Care, took all the oxygen out of the others.  Well that is where blogs like this come in and help restore balance, by putting it all into some unique perspective that gives equal attention to each topic, and only one topic per topic, so to speak.  Yes, it is the middle of October and I am grossly overdue on this, but hey, I am not a professional journalists, writer, or in any media racket and I am not getting paid for anything I put up here so take it as it is.  We just finished celebrating 60 years of communists rule here in China with a huge parade full of the best military might Beijing is willing to show the world, but that is for October’s rant.  With my PC now 35% faster and twice as roomy as before I will get right into it.

Domestic Items – Pittsburg was unlucky enough to host the latest G20 summit, and at the same time as the UN general assembly, more on that in International items.  Unlucky in that it drew every angry college student obsessed with Michael Moore’s ‘capitalism sucks’ mantra and the environmental whackos who somehow love the environment but find it acceptable to burn down housing developments and SUV dealerships releasing tones of carbon into the atmosphere, way to go green geeks!  We saw similar scenes in London at the last G20 and it mirrors scenes from Seattle and others, hooded and face mask clad kids using a cause as an excuse to riot and trash a city.  I was taken aback by a video of some wise old sage college kid dressed in black and swinging on a swing set declaring for the camera, anarchy is cool.  Well to be frank, it ain’t cool and it only works if everyone follows the rules, if they don’t then you get mob justice or the wild wild west where a vicious cycle of reparations begins and never ends civilly.  Of course the fully mature 20 year old brain is so much more enlightened then the vast majority of people on the planet in the past 3 centuries.  Here is my take on all of this.  Its a bunch of misguided, angst driven, ungrateful snots who have way too much time and money on their hands to do anything constructive or useful in society.  Harsh you say, let me briefly explain.  Capitalism, the very virtue they are denouncing, is the only thing that got them and their pot head friends where they are.  The simple mercantilism ideal on which the first economy of this once great nation was set upon is the only reason they are able to go off to college, meet the industry failures who call themselves professors, and come up with idiotic theories after a few hours of pretending to be in Jamaica.  You see our modern liberal arts college system is maintained solely through capitalism.  First, people go to college to learn enough to get a degree to get a job.  This job allows them to purchase things that make their lives easier and more enjoyable.  They finally grow up and get a life and end up saving money for retirement and kids colleges and start the whole thing over, been that way since the 1800’s and its that way today.  Second, capitalism is the only vessel that gives them what they desire and love.  Would Steve Jobs have invented the iPod without the motivation of money or capitalism, don’t count on it.  Look at the innovations in capitalistic countries verses others and see what has the most innovation and prosperity.  Capitalism feeds off of competition, the person who has the best idea and can market it will win the most money.  That is why we have $10 blue jeans and $1,000 blue jeans.  Without capitalism there is little motivation to grow or innovate anything (unless the government wants something then its all repression and guns to the heads).  Michael Moore and all of Hollywood would be a very small fraction of itself without the virtues of capitalism.  You see, all that we have today, enjoy, despise, and is envied the world over is due to capitalism.  In the 1700’s it was our lumbar, shipbuilding, and agricultural output.  in the 1800’s it was our industrialization and natural resources.  In the 1900’s it was our innovation and manufacturing until our skilled labor and its unions priced itself our of competition with the developing world.  These kids would hate living in the very type of world they advocate, they are just too naive and ignorant of real socialism or anarchy.  Don’t get me wrong, its not their faults, you can’t blame ignorance solely on the individual, unless they are adopting the ignorance is bliss philosophy.  No, its our overly liberal primary education system that has failed these kids and not given theme the critical evaluation tools necessary to make a rational decision or to even function in a modern and dynamic society.  Look at our test scores and results and you will see that the places these kids are coming from are inept laboratories for social educations theories.  If you can’t understand supply and demand or import and export trade balances then how can you expect to understand capitalism at its most simple definition?  I blame the idiots withholding the information from these kids more then the kids themselves, they are young, impressionable, know nothing, puppets who are led astray by capable adults who refuse to grow up and face reality, capitalism and competition works, socialism and humanism fail.

America, as a country and a society, faces many challenges these days.  Unfortunately we have grown so petty as a nation and our views so narrow we resemble race horses instead of mustangs.  What I mean is we have all had blinders placed over our eyes and can only see the things a very select few deem worthy and place before us on a silver platter.  I have a few cases in point on this.  First off is the tragic death of a part time Census worker in the national forest in Kentucky.  The media harped on this as the right wings fury whipped up by hate mongers on talk radio and cable news channel Fox News.  Too bad they neglected their primary directives of journalism to just sell headlines for their sinking media outlets (formerly known as news).  If the reporters would have reported, and not written popularized fiction on their take of the current social climate they would have found a much more interesting story.  It is tragic this part time primary school teacher was killed, and worse his body treated the way it was after death, but by ceasing on pop culture, flavor of the month, credo the real story was missed.  Anyone who has grown up outside of the south and then migrated there for more then a few years will understand.  The mountain areas of Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia are remote, isolated, and led by elders who have been taught, and had re-enforced, that the Federal Government is never to be trusted and is their enemy.  It is a hold over from reparations, concessions, and surrender in the late 1800’s, and yes this is the way it is, believe it of not.  From then it was prohibition, that ultimately led to the birth of auto racing, and re-enforced with actions taken by the Federal Government in other areas like Waco TX.  You see, in these areas strangers are not trusted and often not tolerated.  You go into some of these areas at your own peril, even the locals in surrounding cities know this.  This poor man was killed for being a stranger and working for the Federal Government in an area outside of what we call normal.  The people who killed him most likely think Fox News is too liberal and that Rush Limbaugh is a pansy jew too old and fat to get a real job.  Their views are shaped by hundreds of years of distrust and ignorance of the rest of the country, and they like it that way.  They hate any and all interference and would treat anyone that way if they interfered or threatened their way of life.  This was not something cooked up and hatched by a few months worth of rantings on media airwaves, it has nothing to do with Obama overall, its the power and influence of the ‘feds” the faceless ‘them’ that tell them how to mine coal, send their kids to school, how to build their houses, come in and make roads and such without asking them anything, not that they would listen in the first place.  This is the real story, not some shocking slock about anti-Obama sentiment resulting in murder.  On the other end of the spectrum we have the New Black Panthers, who this month found they are not 100% out of the woods on their election vote rigging charges just yet.  Despite Obama’s AG dismissing all charges against them on voter fraud by intimidation for their parts in threatening physical violence to anyone not voting for Obama last year (with video and audio evidence provided), the investigation just won’t go away.  Despite the media being in the bag for Obama and burying this and other election fraud cases, ACORN, it seems the law just won’t pardon them as easily as the press has.  Its one thing for the son of a seated Representative’s son to slash tires in the parking lot of the RNC on election day (Milwaukee Rep Gwen Moore), its another to stand outside of polling areas in Black Panther garb wielding a baseball bat and saying you will beat down anyone not voting for Obama as they stand in line to get into the voting building.  Again, press on this has been light, lighter on the charges being re-opened after the AG dismissal!  This is the problem.  Not only do we have a president hell bent on governing by the polls, we have a fawning media who is following suit by reporting only what is popular, and seldom doing anything historically known as reporting.  Maybe this is why subscriptions and ratings are falling to historic lows?  Maybe this is why papers are failing and only 1 cable news channel is not seeing double digit declines, Fox News is seeing just the opposite.  You see when ad revenue is falling to historic lows it is because the services the medium is providing no longer coincide with the appetite of the masses, no matter how much you refuse to acknowledge it.  You see, when you rail against capitalism, greed, and freedom of choice a funny thing happens, you lose the support of those you are trying to influence.

Financial Items – One funny item in this current health care socialization things getting shoved down our throats, Obama and his ilk keep claiming it will cost nothing and much of the savings will come out of cutting fraud, waste, and abuse.  Well riddle me this batman; if all these savings are there to be had, why or why have are we just taking action now to keep the reform bills from bursting the bag?  You see, this argument is ripe with fallacy.  If these kinds of savings, enough to provide health coverage to 40 million people (there figures, not mine) then why are we facing a crisis in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security?  Heck it seems if we just police those faceless government agencies correctly we can come up with trillions of dollars to pay for it all!  Well, this isn’t the case but it does have some merit.  Here in September we have seen news of a Milwaukee mom/day care operator who bilked the system for over $140,000/year for over 5 years despite officials knowing she was doing so, she was so brazen she even bought a $400,000 mansion, with ACORN’s help no doubt, and has paid of it all while claiming to be a working mother so poor she needed government assistance to pay for day care she herself provided as an employer to working women who needed daycare.  Not part of same money pot I hear from the peanut gallery, how about this – 27 Michigan residents were arrested for SSI fraud to the tune of just over a million dollars.  I have discussed a few times on this blog my experiences in rural Alabama where SSI fraud is ripe, and local officials will do nothing to stop it because that would be mean.  Recently in the news a Detroit radio stations promoted a government aid program for low income people and then went out and interviewed the people in the line and found out they all thought the money they were expecting to receive would be coming directly from Obama, his own personal stash.  Well, of course these people have no clue where government monies that come by the way of SSI checks, stimulus checks, etc. come from, they were never taught civics in class, they were taught how Columbus was a war criminal and how evil capitalism was and how it was the profiteers on Wall Street who were keeping them down and making money off of their misery.  There is fraud in the system, including the treatment and payments to illegal aliens now, and in the future.  There is little doubt there are savings to be had here, but only by a couple hundred million at best, not enough to pay for all this stuff we have seen lately.  Still, that few hundred million could go to aid the insolvency of SSI or Medicare but would not be able to make much of an impact.  The problems in the fraud is that no one committing it can tie it into stealing from their neighbors and others to receive that aid, and that is exactly what it is.  The amount of money required to police, check, and verify these payments to preventing fraud will not be free, they will require more staff, wages, facilities, insurance, utilities, etc. and this extra cost will come from other pots of tax payer dollars.  Our financial house is so out of order that they only way to correct it will be to scrap it and start over.  Being such a huge task, and a politically suicidal one, it is one that will never be done until it is so far gone it can’t continue anymore.  If we took all the fraud in our government, all the waste (redundancy, obsolete, unnecessary), and all the abuses (misuse of government assets) you may come up with enough to fund a small national program.  The real issue are the policies that just won’t die, like farm subsidies, urban programs, regulations etc.  These account for far more then the waste in the system.  Obama has already shown his will to do the unpopular extends only to spending more, not cutting costs or controlling them but exploding them.  The real fraud, waste, and abuse going on is the politicians who expand our government, demand more tax dollars, and set up a system where stealing from the government is easier and has less consequences then earning a living the right way, through dedication, hard work, and self sacrifice.  Sure, if it were that easy we all could and would be doing it, well, it seems that is where we are headed, entitlement mentality dead ahead and the last exit on this road we are going down now.

I saw an interesting take on the overall economics of America on Digg this month, if the United States were a person what would their credit score be?  Well, Loans and Credit.com did the calculations and came up with the answer; 620.  For those outside of America your credit score is a big deal and dictates much of your future, including where you can rent an apartment, if you can buy a car, house, etc. and even prevent you from getting some jobs at some companies.  The ranges are this; Poor – 350 to 619, Fair 620 to 659, Good 660 to 749, and excellent above 750 maxing out at 850.  So what exactly does this mean?  Collectively as a nation we are one good financial crisis away from economic ruin.  Why so dramatic?  Well it boils down to this.  Unlike people governments can print more money, but by doing so they devalue the currency making it worth less because there is more of it and less real cash backing it up (bond holders).  You see our national debt is sold off in bonds to individuals, corporations, and foreign countries.  This pool spends their own currency on our bonds in return for a future return of funds, in kind, with interest.  If this pool shrinks, or collapses we are unfunded with future debt.  If our currency becomes unstable or too inflated we lose investors and it all collapses with unfunded debt.  See where I am going here.  I seriously encourage everyone to follow the link and look at the graph, its really telling.  Here is the most scary part, quick cover the kid’s eyes!  Our two largest sources of credit are BROKE, and the next two – China and Japan, ain’t buying our worthless bonds anymore! 
It breaks down like this;
Top 6 creditors - #1 Federal Old Age and Survivors Insurance Fund @ $2.2 trillion (shrinking thanks to baby boomers), #2 China @ $739.6 billion (they just lost confidence in the US by buying $50 billion in new IMF bonds offloading risks of US failure to repay), #3 Federal Employee Retirement Funds @ $738 billion (less workers and more retirees means less available for loans), #4 Federal S&L Corp Resolution Fund @ $689 billion (ummm 1 word – bailouts), #5 Japan @ $634.8 billion, #6 Foreign Oil Exporters @ $186.3 billion.  So our sources or income are not stable, more like short term contracts and thanks to calls for a new international super-currency by China, Russia, UN and the IMF we are seeing results of the IMF bonds going and global currencies surging against the dollar. 
Grand total: $5.187 trillion, not too shabby considering our taxes and public held securities and bonds valued at $6.2 trillion for a grad total of $11.387 trillion.  Well, now the bad part.  Our current national debt is just over $11.2 trillion ($38,400 per man, woman, and child) and our last two years have seen relatively stable national debts go from $700 billion to almost $1 trillion last year and more then $1.2 trillion this year to date (and remember that debt here is beyond all income and spending!).  This is why China started offloading our bonds for the new IMF.  Sure they want America to be strong and repay the bonds on time with interest in money worth something, but they do not seem so confident and are signaling it loudly now.  Tax revenues will be short this year due to the financial meltdown.  CEO’s are getting less pay and fewer bonuses, of which their income tax was the highest brackets, no pay no tax revenue.  People still are not going out and spending money, production is still anemic and there are few bright spots on the horizon.  I would beg to differ that the spectacular credit score of 620 was for last year and come January, or better April 15, our credit score will dip to the upper 500’s.  Why so bleak, well all that stimulus money had to come from somewhere.  All that money the Fed keeps printing has to be backed by something.  All this expansion of government, regulation, new government jobs, oversight, etc. has to be paid for and it seems the well is running dry.  Of course if we could get Obama’s czars and cabinet to pay their taxes maybe we could fund this fiasco for a another month or two, heck while we are at it maybe get NYC Rep old Charlie to pay taxes on ALL his income and we can make it two months!  While Obama is hitting that reset button on Russian relations how about jabbing the old US debt reset button a few times for good measure there Dear Leader.

International Items – I can’t resist, seriously I feel like a cat on catnip here.  Ok, how does Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize committee promoters feel about this glaring headline: LA TIMES – Renditions continue under Obama, Lebanese man first abducted and tortured, for fraud charges.  Ok, that was NOT the actual headline but it sums up the whole article quite nicely, we get the who, what, when, where, and why all right there.  Again I have to shamelessly quote my good friend Dave, ‘I don’t feel anymore peaceful’.  That’s right, Dear Leader pledged to close Gitmo by January and stop torturing people, or was it terrorists, can’t remember.  The Lebanese man Obama had abducted, flown from the Middle East to the US aboard the top secret ‘black ops airline’ and subjected to enhanced interrogations was done so for running an elaborate government contracting fraud scam.  So terrorists get milk and cookies while white collar criminals get the Khalid Shaikh Mohammed treatment.  So now I understand why ACORN is good and Wall Street CEO’s are bad, sheesh am I dense or what?  For all those anti-Bush loving liberal true believers out there who had the audacity to believe real change would be delivered, I guess this one flew under your radar.  Sure, the LA Times reported it, and it was a good read, but from there it went NO WHERE.  Chunk this one up on another story buried by the main stream media to help out this administration any way possible.  Last year this time he would be on 60 minutes, 20/20, Dateline all telling his tale of woe and how evil America was and they would be eating it up, lap dogs that they have proven themselves to be (and now their master is scolding them for his plummeting approval ratings and troubles).  Seriously, stop me if I am lying here.  If I were not speaking the truth please tell me and I will stop.  I swear.  In somewhat related international news, its all the Middle East, Africa’s supreme son, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, graced the UN with his first assembly visit and address to the international organization.  Fresh off the devastating victory over Scotland in getting the Lockerbie bomber released AND a lucrative oil contract out of the deal he just kept on rolling.  Not even getting his Bedouin tent permit revoked on a technicality slowed him down, he just set it up in the back yard of a Donald Trump estate some Libyan businessmen were leasing.  He was so confident he went over his 15 minute limit to address the UN, right after our Deal Leader Obama, and delivered a blistering 90 minute tirade that would make Hugo Chavez blush, to be fair Obama went over 15 minutes but only by 10 or so and because his teleprompter has a slight cold that morning and was a little sluggish.  Gaddafi was so wound up he burned out his translator who had a public meltdown near the end of the speech.  The significance of this I hear you say?  Well, when we HAD a strong foreign policy, you know one that dealt with terrorists and terror sponsors as such, we never had the UN graced by terrorists, just by crack pots (Chavez) and those with the political might and economic strength to warrant and command such an audience (Gaddafi’s was slotted between Obama and lunch).  I remember stating some time back that many countries in this world only respected one thing, strength, well we are seeing what they thing of us now as we invite them onto our soil to degrade us publically in front of on international audience, and then wonder what is going on because that is what our President did for 4 months after taking office, they are just following in his footsteps, again stop me if I am straying off the truth path here.

Echoing the above theme, strength garners respect and actions, we have 2 interesting tidbits, one of which most of you missed.  First the one no one missed.  Iran seems to have Obama’s number.  Since the student uprisings over allegations of voter fraud in Iran this June the Obama administration did little and said less.  Since then Iran has slowly pushed the envelope and seems to be finding no limit or resistance to its efforts.  Obama’s ‘velvet glove’ approach seems to be working out quite nicely, for our former enemies, North Korea and Iran have had noting but victories and appeasements since January.  So with little in the way other then shock and verbal condemnation in the media it was announced this month that Iran had a secret uranium enrichment plant and they made this known to the world AFTER stating the terms and conditions of which they would talk to the US and allow the IAEA in and what and what they could look and for how long.  Sure, its a sticky situation, one for which I don’t envy Obama for being in and one that has confounded presidents since Carter on Iran and Johnson on North Korea.  The two are linked by more then just similarity in nuclear ambition, and that is the rub, what we concede to one we have to the other else we are seen as playing favorites and giving into one and not the other.  It is a stark contrast that in the past 30 years Iran has only been able to tell 2 presidents what to do and how to do it, both Democrats and both going down similar paths.  Realistically the secret uranium enrichment plant in Iran was not all that secret, but its location, capability, and output were until now.  First it seemed the old velvet glove would work as Russia quickly condemned the announcement of the new plat, but then they had to scratch our backs for pulling out of the missile defense shield in Eastern Europe giving that region back to the Russians who want it known no one but them are allowed in that area.  But, that is as far as it went, Russia then quickly retracted their support for further sanctions and with a hardy wink wink nod nod they stated no additional measures needed to be placed against Iran as everything was on the up and up, so much for nuclear non-proliferation.  And the second indicator that weak foreign policy is only good for those who see us in an obstructionist view, Switzerland was just found to be more competitive then the United States for conducting business according to the World Economic Forum’s global competitiveness report.  The Swiss knocked off the Americans based on things like business climate, banking climate, and regulations and interference with factors specific to business.  While banking has taken the focus of things over the past year Swiss banks are not seen all that much better then American according to the report, Swiss banks come in at 44, American at 108, and British at 126.  The Swiss were being lauded for their innovation and dexterity in removing regulations and business hurtles.  America was being criticized for its anemic growth, but mostly for its lack of separating the government and private sectors, bail outs and subsequent regulations, and the private sectors’ apparent inability to properly self audit and regulate (missed lessons from Enron and Sarbanes-Oxley).  What is shocking to me about this is the Swiss, who have a famous liberal cradle to grave social services package, have less regulations, fewer corporate taxes, and less change for government interference in their business sector then America currently does.  While Switzerland had to bail out its larges bank, UBS, its remaining banks were not so exposed to US sub-prime mortgages and have weathered the storm with few ill effects, bottom line, they are sound, stable, and lending money with ease.  American’s current passion to bailout all and enact government control as the cost for bailing out have seemingly turned our only potential for growth in international business investment against us by poisoning the well.  Add this to our previously mentioned massive debt load and loss of confidence in our bonds and bond ratings and you see a bad moon rising, as the song goes.  The velvet glove that gave Iran, North Korea, and Libya license to dictate terms has also placed a ‘back in 30 minutes’ sign in the window for business opportunities.   I guess this is what Obama meant by ‘spread the wealth around’ let the other nations in the world have at it by taking ourselves out of the game and not earning it through fair and determined competition.  Of course this the problem with liberal policies, if you can’t control the game, why try playing it?

Science Items – Religion is one thing that does not come up much here in China, and I am a little relieved about that to, no explaining all that stuff I have to here.  The reason I bring this up is that I can have discussions with Chinese friends about the below story in the news this month without interjecting religion into the affair.  I am referring of course to the find in the country of Georgia including a few skulls dating back to 1.8 million years ago.  The proto-human bones at the Damanisi site show that humans were in eastern Eurasia 10,000 years earlier then previously thought and shot a huge gaping hole in the African single location theory.  The skulls are similar to the oldest found in Africa and are not significantly different enough to warrant a new species so they are being classifies as Homo-erectus.  Scientists are certain they are not the bones of a migratory groups wandering to Georgia from Africa so it seems we have a problem with the migration timetables science has taught us before.  All theories are not turned on their heads as either people did a migration, reverse migration, and then migration again or migration occurred much earlier, or there were different isolated groups that migrated independently from different locations.  Still the oldest bones come from Africa, but the possibility of them inhabiting the rest of the planet are now uncertain.  I remember is middle school social sciences how we were taught about 3 races of humans, Caucasians, Negros, and Mongoloids (Asians).  All three have distinctive skeletal signatures, muscular makeup, and genetic markets that go well beyond hair, eye, and skin color.  My belief is that the 3 evolved independently on said continents separated by natural barriers with the possibility of a 4th, Americans as the South American Indians are distinctly different then the North American Indians (thought to come come Asia), Australian Aborigines, or others.  This would make sense, to me, and goes far further to explain the modern differences we see today as being genetic birthrights and not environmental adaptations through evolution to different continents.  Superficial differences aside the underling muscle, bone, and genetic differences are too stark to come for a common ancestor who left a lush land of plenty to cross deserts, mountain ranges, and glaciers to populate 5 continents while other decedents stayed home and yet others settled along the way, getting tired of all the travel for no good reason when another lush land of plenty was found.  We have to take a step back and remember that science is just the new religion of the liberal mindset.  The theories and hypothesis (educated guesses) are just that, guesses but smart people but people who don’t have all the data or clues to be making definitive conclusions.  The bar is still open, so lets take all this stuff with a grain of salt, it isn’t over yet and we still have a long way to go before we are able or ready to handle the truth of it all.

A couple related items came across the science desk this month that have profound future implications.  I am speaking of the discoveries of water on Mars and the Moon.  In the days of old sailing ships water had to be carried in barrels, along with food and fruit.  Due to the limited supply of these provisions sailing and exploring were limited to costal excursions until ships and storage technology advanced enough to allow cross ocean travel.  The problem is the same for space travel.  Space and weight are a huge limitation on space flights, so much so that we sent people to the moon 5 times and they never stayed longer then a few hours!  It makes it easier if you can resupply at your destination then take everything with you.  Sure, ocean travel was extended with boilers were invented allowing people to turn sea water into potable water, but you can’t do the same thing in space, save the converting urine into water and who really wants that in the back of their mind?  The next step will be figuring out how much water there is, how best to harvest it, and how to store it and possibly expand it, solar stills that condense the air (Nitrogen, Oxygen, and Hydrogen) into water.  Some believe the best way forward is to let robots, probes, and satellites keep exploring and gathering data.  All the while we are remaining grounded, nothing ventured nothing gained.  Not until some profit motive and business case can be developed can we expect to break the tethers and go forth.  Finding water is the first ground breaking step necessary.  Remember that Columbus was out seeking a cheaper trade route to the Indian subcontinent when he ran into the resource rich New World.  Of course he over exaggerated the riches of the find, mainly to keep his pocket book and head!  Since then it was a mad rush to secure the resources, land, timber, and precious metals that had become exhausted due to the system of kingdoms of Europe.  Now there is no telling the minerals we will find on other terrestrial bodies.  Sure there will be the same ores and similar concentrations however the different atmospheres, or lack of, will result in different purities and possible new materials we can’t imagine.  This is something only human exploration will find.  Drop a Mars style rover in the Gobi, Sahara, Death Valley, or, Australian outback and you will get a report of unsustainable life outside of the atmosphere requirements we have.  Granted we have the advantage of satellite imagery however that only goes so far.  If water is able to be found, or farmed on near planets we can expand our construction mindset into a whole new realm, what if we had 3 Earths worth of steel, aluminum, titanium, nickel, and copper available to us?  Knowing what we know now about conservation and metallurgy we could leap-frog closer and closer to the edge of our own galaxy, eventually.  Just as getting from Europe across the Atlantic to the Americas it took profit motives, guts, and the right mix of crazy and luck.  We have to decide if we will take the Asian approach and close ourselves off and stay put, or the European approach and say if we survive we will be everything we every dreamed and more?  That is the big questions with water found on Mars and the Moon.  We have found the most precious resource, now we must know if there is enough and will getting it be easy enough.  Once we have that answered we can determine if a new Mayflower Compact or Virginia Colony Charter is worth the expense and peril of the journey.

Sports Items – The Lions have already done the hardest part, they won a game, the first win in over a seasons and stopping the slide at 19 straight losses.  Now we must calm down else we could expect a few more wins this season, hell its already a 100% improvement over last season.  The Tigers imploded and the Pistons are looking not so hot in exhibition play, not the caliber that they were for the previous 6 seasons before last seasons let down end.  At least there are the Red Wings, oh yea, they ancient old timers who were showed up last year by youth and vigor.  Sports here is dominated by a scattering of local and foreign flavors; soccer, ping pong, tennis, volleyball, billiards and snooker, F1 and basketball.  The NFL has pledged to make inroads here and has youth leagues however there is no real exposure and I wish I knew where this stuff was so I could watch, advise, or even try my hand at coaching, at least at the position I know a little about, defensive backs.  As a lackluster sports fan its not a big deal but there is a lot of things you miss out on without sports, like what sports star is under investigation, getting tens of millions, or setting the latest social trend.  I do have a complaint about sports here.  Shanghai is trying, and trying hard, to attract top sports stars and sporting events.  This results in a premium for what they do bring here.  The tennis masters tour is here, not that I like tennis or follow it ever but at over $100 for a ticket I won't consider it with parking, traffic, and getting home so late with work the next day.  Same with golf, I did get free tickets to the HSBC Masters tour and got to watch Tiger Woods play 6 holes as well as dramatic final shootout but if I had paid it would have been more expensive then going to see the Sawgrass or GMO as well as driving for 3 hours.  In Milwaukee going to see a baseball game, basket ball game or racing was not that much of a big deal or expense.  It is not a major gripe but here in Shanghai how can they expect sports to become mainstream when the pay and make going to see them such a hustle?  Soccer is easy to see, there are over 20 stadiums in Shanghai and most are on or very close to subways or buss lines but they are used for the more established events and concerts.  If they could get prices down to $40 USD then it would be much easier to get the stands filled, its not so much the big names they need, its the pricing to fill the stadiums, do that and the big names will come.

In a follow up on the Caster Semenya case I brought up a very good question, what about those rare humans who are both genetically male and female in muscle mass and hormone levels.  Well it seems I was right on the money on that one.  The results of the tests confirm Semenya is both man and woman, a hermaphrodite.  She has no womb or ovaries and has internal testes producing 3 times the normal testosterone levels of women.   that Now begs the answers to the questions I raised on fairness.  Is it really fair to have Semenya race against women who are 100% female and have no male hormones or muscle structure?  What will the LBGT community do about this as there is a definite discrimination case here as she was stripped of her 800M gold medal by their standards of fairness against sexual discrimination.  We are seeing the first case of mutual discrimination against feminists and LBGT here as there is no clear cut winner and a whole bunch of losers in this fight.  To be serious Semenya should be stripped of the medal as the other women were at a disadvantage racing against her.  Next the IAAF, IOC, and other sports agencies need to review this case and make a way for it to be free and fair for all competitors against genetic oddities without going overboard.  Semenya is advised to have an operation to correct the condition and be eligible to compete, if she will is yet another question.  The whole mess is going to open another can of worms unrelated but as significant.  The outcome is to be expected as a female runner with 3 times the testosterone, naturally produces so undetectable by PED tests, is clearly able to out train and out perform the others.  The interesting part of this is the debate of fairness verses political correctness.  We were all shamed by the African Council for the questions, accusations, and doubts on the runners gender.  We were told she had won fair and square and it was racist sentiment behind the whole affair.  Well, it facts painted a completely different story.  While Semenya did not go out and deliberately cheat or try to undermine anything, she did and allowing her to keep the medals would have been wrong.  Its bad for her, Lord knows she has much larger problems, concerns, and issues to deal with now, however fair is fair and the competition needs to be from a level field as much as possible.  

Political Items – Obama’s inner circle has started to have more and more light shown on it since Glen Beck started the Van Jones Green Jobs Czar background checking Congress failed to do.  As Obama has still not filled all the outstanding Executive Branch positions his hiring of special advisors with direct access to him, their respective areas and bypassing all usual Congressional channels and procedures.  These people are highly paid, 6 figure minimum, radical (many have published books or lectured extensively on fringe ideals), and they are accountable to the President only and this is the scary part.  Only a few were vetted, checked and confirmed, by Congress who is more likely to approve as they are majority tied to his party as well.  Since Van Jones arrest, conviction, and prison records were made public, as well as his radical theories in 9/11 and other ‘black helicopter’ ideas he was quickly dropped as the President is more concerned with image and perception then loyalty.  This month a couple of new czars and their questionable views came into the spotlight.  1) Mark Lloyd, the FCC Diversity Czar, has had his ‘down with all things whitee’ comments come into question.  Conservatives were worried he was appointed solely to push through the Fairness Doctrine, or government censorship of free speech based on market availability.  He was passed off as a position to ensure the FCC had proper diversity of views and radio in American was not being monopolized in programming or ownership of stations, who can own what, how many, and what can they do with it.  Radio has evolved a lot since the 1980’s with live DJ’s being replaced by iPod like devices who are programmed with music and local commercials for most of the day.  Talk radio is dominated by conservatives mainly because all liberal talk radio shows fail miserably, ask Sen Al Franken about Air America (liberals talk a good game until its time to pay up, because they pay out so much to so many there is little left to do to personal entertainment).  Mark Lloyd wants all white people in leadership roles to step down and let minorities take over.  Well, nothing wrong with that if they have earned and demonstrated the ability to TAKE the jobs away, and the free marketplace agrees.  This revives the old liberal view of affirmative action.  You remember the tested and failed theory applied under the Clinton administration to diversify the work place.  Sure, it diversifies like it promises, but it kills corporations and businesses because it forces employers to look past qualifications and directly to racial, sex, and age of candidates.  Corporations have their own cultures, they have their own internal societies, if you are not aligned with with in any way or you do not reflect their goals or mission statements then they don’t want you and why would you want to work there anyway.  Jobs are about competition, may the best person win.  Forcing diversity is like allowing Semenya to keep her gold and telling the other women, tough, you have to try harder to compete ‘fairly’.  Thanks to healthcare and Afghanistan Lloyd may just skate under the radar and fade into the background to deliver on his agenda.  Next up is Cass Sunstein, the Regulation Czar or czar of everything, and his books and papers on governments rights and obligations to harvest organs from people before they expire and without their, or family consent.  He of course is arguing the greater good and using legal arguments to make his case, citing coroners already harvest corneas during autopsies for implants.  The problem is that some people and their religions prohibit the practice of organ harvesting, so where is the choice and observations of the wishes of the dead?  Sunstein was vetted but his views are now part of this thing called healthcare we are debating now.  Sunstein is in the unique position to actually create a regulation that does just that, the taking of body parts without consent or directives of the family.  These, and the other 20+ czars Obama has surrounded himself with really needs to be investigated more closely and by professional reporters in the mainstream media, if any are left.

Finally we have seen quite a bit of education items this month, most for the wrong reason, it had little to nothing to do with actual education.  A few items this month needing a little more then headline coverage are, school length and school quality.  First off Obama has floated the idea of getting rid of summer vacation.  First off we need to look at why we have the school year set up the way it is now.  School starts in the fall, that historically was after fall harvest.  There is a winter break that coincides with Christmas (the shock and horror!).  There is a spring break that coincides with Easter (SHUT UP, there is NO religion in schools!) and finally the summer break for farming families.  This has been in place since the 1800’s and has become standard practice.  Now most public school teachers are part of a union.  They are paid for all 12 months but only do 9 months or so of work.  Sure their pay is only during these months but any adult with a fiscal sense can manage the 3 months of no pay.  The floating of this idea is to raise teacher’s pay and has been out there for decades.  We are no longer an agricultural society so we many need to look more closely into this, urban kids need more care during these breaks then rural kids do.  The problem is the annual pay of teachers will be argued as not enough to cover these additional months, this means a 25% increase in teacher pay and that means higher property taxes and other tax increases to cover pay, benefits, facility and maintenance costs and operational costs.  This is where the counter argument comes into place.  Summer break is the most busy time of the year for maintenance and repairs.  Some things you can’t take care of in a weekend or a week long break.  There as an older debate on having year long school but kids would attend schools in shifts, still the facilities upkeep question comes into play.  One thing nobody is talking about in all of this are the children, you know the ones the liberals parade out each time they want to raise taxes without pushback.  Kids today are under a lot of pressure and the breaks are needed to unwind and do things like play and develop physically which works best with little stress and sleeping in late and no pressure from peers and adults.  Instead of going forward with a thinly veiled teacher’s pay increase we should see how this will impact the kids and their mental and physical development.  Next up is the teacher performance issue.  I am not talking about the annual exams kids take that which teachers are judged against, I am talking about the informal tests that show a more clear picture into the practical application of things learned in school.  How about 2.8% of Oklahoma high school students passing the immigration citizenship test!  This is shocking as I have taken the test a few times and pass with flying colors each time.  That means 97.2% of students are completely ignorant about civics and history.  If they have no ideas about this how can they function effectively in an open democracy?  The question then begs to be asked of what else don’t they know and more importantly what do they know and what are they being taught?  Our government only functions if the electorate is highly educated and informed enough on history and current events to make informed decisions on representation and hold those people accountable during their terms.  No wonder we have kids running around in Pittsburg chanting anarchy is fun and people are saying socialism is fine and capitalism is greedy and evil.  The citizenship test is a bit more then the average citizen will retain due to it is aimed at assimilation of foreigners by making them prove they know and understand the history of the nation.  Well, why can’t high school kids, who are taught this stuff each day, pass this test at inverse numbers?  We are not even going to talk about the modern history lessons neglected.  The warning signs are there and I bet most Americans would be shocked at what is in their kid’s test books.  It is time we take as close a look at our education system as we are on healthcare, unfortunately this won’t happen anytime soon.  Our country is becoming soft in the middle, the time you lose the education base of a democracy is whey it falls venerable to being manipulated or taken over by a dictatorship or totalitarian regime, look it up in history, its everywhere. 

 

 

After settling for 500MB less RAM and 90GB less hard drive space the laptop is back and stable.  Loading Windows, Office, and utilities, as well as updates and such took about what was expected.  The fun part was getting it all together so I could put things on the PC and get it to the point of doing something (besides take up desk space).  The speed and increased disk space have helped a lot, Windows loads much faster, many old issues were resolved, Movie Maker works again, and a few new ones cropped up, my onboard DVD will no longer read burned discs or write to them.

This post is for the reloading of the settings and installation of necessary tools and programs so I can begin to do real activities again.  As discussed earlier the device driver install went smooth, except for the Mashita DVD-RAM UJ-841S drive.  My IE 8 now works flawlessly, as does Media Player 11, before both were shaky at best and prone to hanging and crashing.  I can even sync my time with internet time, something I thought was due to China blocking the requests but now works!  I have gotten McAfee loaded and the firewall configures as well as tweeking the port settings to the laptop is more secure and using less resources then before.

Modifying the startup file is a must and I am consistently getting cold boots to task bar in less then 1:30 and reboots in just over a minute.  As I did a clean install I was more concerned with saving vital data and letting the rest get thrown out with the junk during formatting.  This was, and is, the next project.  As I gained an additional portable HDD, the old laptop drive, I now have nearly 1TB of storage, however the drives vary in age and run time so they are not to be 100% trusted.  I have separated the data by type to drive size, photos to the largest drive, audio and video to the second largest, the third largest is a back up file storage drive now, and the two smaller drives hold files and programs, one storing and the other backing it up.  Of course all of this has to be backed up on DVD, and that is why the second DVD burning drive came in.  It was a good choice to spend the extra $6 for burning because my main DVD drive is now just for reading DVD and CD-Rom as it can’t even read anything burned anymore.

So now that everything was backed up, it was time to burn to DVD, requiring more blank DVD’s, and then installing programs without going crazy and loading everything I own onto the laptop.  That is one problem people have with they move into someplace bigger, they want to fill it in with more stuff, see George Carlin’s comedy bit for that one.  Games are not so much my main focus now, digital darkroom, digital video processing (3 years worth), and being able to put it all together is what is the main goal now.  Thanks to being in China I can get free legal MP3’s from Google, so I will continue with what I can find there.  I will load a few games, but only 5 or 6 out of the 30 or so I brought here.  As the PC is faster it should be easier to get video from from the DV cam and edit it into something viewable.

For the most part getting things loaded was easy enough, just plop in a CD or download the latest program files and do the installs.  Patches had to be searched out and is much easier due to Google now days, over the old days of searching through message boards and tracking down the vendor sites.  I have not had the same issues I did with the video card software I did for my last build, just before coming to China.  I am missing some of the pre-loaded tools and programs, some are missed (DVD burning software, Toshiba diagnostics, DVD playing software) some is NOT missed (MS Works, AOL, and other pre-loaded bloatware manufacturers always find necessary to put on your PC for you.  I did have a copy of Roxio Easy CD and DVD burning software I got in Chicago on one of my business trips a couple of years ago.  One note, I have version 9 that includes Drag to Disc.  Drag to Disc conflicts with my RAM-DVD software for the Mashita drive that doesn’t work anymore.  From the Toshiba and other message boards it seems the drive has an issue where it just stops working for no reason, go figure.

I am not going to get in the dinking done (changing desktop, start menu, etc.) as that is just too boring.  So what is the conclusion?  Despite the set back of not getting the hardware desired I am satisfied with the increases in speed, storage space, and increased functions.  I will now have more excuses to lock myself in the home office on cold and rainy weekends to mix down digital video, process photos, and clean up may storage drives to make searching for and finding files easier.  I am still going to get the memory from the States, and get it sent with holiday packages, so I can at least get my 2GB of RAM with new chips and not the used 1GB chip I am currently using.  Laptops are a bit easier and harder to upgrade, easier as there are fewer options, harder as the parts are very specific and usually more expensive.  And that gets me to the back log of blog postings I have as nothing real was posted since the end of September other then progress on my PC rebuild.  I did not get a chance to keep myself fully updated on news or current events, but rest assured I will catch up quickly.  As we did not travel anywhere there are no great travel stories or pictures, but as I haven’t posted any photos in a while I will she what I can dig up, now that I work from the laptop directly and then save only the finished products.

 

With all the hardware in place it was time to re-install Windows.  I did toy around with the idea of cloning the drive but due to the odd things happening with the laptop I quickly decided to do a fresh install.  With the drive already formatted in NTFS I went ahead and plopped in the Windows XP SP2 install disk and did a complete install.  The Samsung drive did show its speed, as did the RAM increase as the install only took 34 minutes overall to perform.  This was the easy part.

Next up came the device drivers for the Toshiba.  There were 21 files to install but it only took an hour thanks to all the restarts required.  After the divers were installed I upgraded to SP3 and applied the security hotfixes so I could connect to the internet securely.  With this done I went ahead and visited Windows Update several times to complete the missing hotfixes, IE8, Media Player 11, Windows Live, etc.  During these I made system restore points along the way, about 4, just in case something went wrong.  Then it was over to McAfee to re-install my AV suite so I could go out and get the latest tools and utilities I didn’t already download prior.

After most of the base things I wanted were installed it had taken about 6 hours thanks to restarts and configuring this and that setting.  I then installed MS Office and had to go back to the Windows Update site to get the latest SP and hotfixes, another hour.  At this point I attempted my first backup, and discovered my first problem.  My Matshita DVD-RAM UJ-841S drive could not write to discs anymore, keep failing, and it could not read burned discs anymore either!  Investigation found the Toshiba DVD-RAM software was causing a conflict, well I was not able to correct it, so I installed Roxio CD and DVD Easy Creator 9 (with Drag to Disk) and ended up uninstalling the Drag to Disk program because it was also conflicting with the drive.  Needless to say we again took a trip to Cyber City and got an IBM external DVD burner (my wife needed one anyway for her Asus Eee PC 1000).

.Able to burn files was good for getting backups burned as well as the utilities I have burned earlier this year.  After 2 days, and one long day on into the early morning, the system was fully Windows XP Pro with SP3, all device drivers and factory programs, all MS updates, McAfee, and Office as well as Adobe 6 Pro and just a few other programs (and one game so my wife and I could play a little Age of Empires 2 over the LAN in the evening) the system was ready to start the next stage.  I ran a through clean up, degraded the disc, created another restore point, the 5th, and did a Windows, System State, and Full system backup.  It had now been day 5 of the process and I had not even started to think about programs and my growing collection of USB external drives to do major housecleaning on.

So why did I go with a fresh XP install?  As I stated earlier the system had some odd issues.  It was really slow, despite trimming the startup folder, cleaning the registry, and tweaking this and that it was just too slow.  Next was the performance of some programs was just buggy to where some programs were crashing and hanging too much.  All of those problems were corrected and only 1 new one cropped up, the DVD-RAM drive function but the IBM drive is a viable work around.  Putting a new install of an OS, drivers, and programs onto a fresh drive is like moving your home.  You find a whole lot of junk you forgot about, throw away the old stuff that is broken or not needed anymore and it just works better.  I used to rebuild my systems every year when I lived in the states, that was a job because the lab I had was 3 main systems and a few test boxes.  I was not sure on the Windows authorization thing in China but it worked fine.  The time to do everything was longer mainly due to family commitments I didn’t have 4 years ago.  Still, despite the long hours and small frustrations the laptop is running MUCH faster, performing better, and ready to hold all the programs and media I have, next up… Getting it all loaded, configured, and housecleaning the USB drives and data into something more logical and less adhoc. 

 

I am breaking the upgrade of my laptop into 3 separate posts, memory and hard disk, re-imaging, and reloading settings.  As with all things planned for in the real world this project did not go as initially thought.  It all started going downhill at stage 2, procurement. 

As previously stated I was wanting to accomplish 2 goals, increasing physical RAM to 2GB and increase the hard drive to 250GB, well that didn’t happen.  In getting the memory we ran into a glitch, so I shifted efforts to the hard disk.  In researching the Western Digital (WD2500BEVE) Scorpio ATA-6 internal hard drive I found some bad reviews and with further digging discovered the drive was about 80% reliable, and that is about 18% too low for my liking.  I then looked at ratings among my alternates and decided to go with the Samsung HM160HC ATA/IDE after reading about its speed, low power, quiet operation, and reliability comments over the past 9 months.  The price was just a small amount cheaper then the WD drive and it came with a warranty, something of a novelty here.

Next up was getting the RAM.  This was supposed to be the easy part, 2 year old RAM that is available for around $30 per 1GB stick and from almost every online vendor in the States.  We went to the Cyber City at Xujiahui and found out that nobody there had a PC-4200 533Mhz chip, well almost.  Instead of getting 2GB of RAM I only got 1GB.  NOTE, I previously stated the RAM was 768MB, wrong.  The laptop shares RAM between the ATI video board and the motherboard.  I have doubled the stock 512MB RAM to 1GB (1024MB) and it was only using 768MB for the system.  The chip they tried to sell me was PC-6400 800MHz set, thank goodness my wife insisted on a receipt and business card because the chips didn’t work.  After taking in the laptop and sitting with the kiosk staff trying everything they finally found a used 1GB chip from a Japan laptop.  I ended up with 1 – 1GB chip and 1 – 512MB chip (even hit up the Toshiba kiosks and ran dry there too).  After the 256Mb for video I now have 1.25GB RAM for the system, and that seems to have made a world of difference.

With all the parts now together, the hard disk arrived the afternoon we got back from the Cyber City, it came time to prep the system for the new hard disk and OS build.  For those who have only dealt with a PC fresh out of the box this will seems insane, for those who have done it before the pain will be laughable.  Before I put in the new hard disk I had to make sure I have all things ready; current laptop drivers downloaded, XP SP3 downloaded, most important XP hotfixes downloaded, most current utilities and tools downloaded, formatting the new Samsung drive (to save time), etc.  After all this was done and I transferred my files and settings to a backup drive I started the dirty work. 

Laptops in general are easier to work on now, most of them are modular and make access panels so you don’t have to tear down the whole thing to replace one part.  I was thinking I would have to take off the keyboard, I was pleasantly surprised to find Toshiba made this easy as the HDD access is right on the bottom, just remove 1 screw and there you go.  Swapping the drive was a snap, the new drive was not too thick and it took less time to install it into the laptop then to get the old drive into the USB external drive case.  Getting the two drives installed and working took less then an hour, that was the easy part.  Next blog – installing Windows and driver fun!

Since I was 13 I was fascinated with computers.  Ever since I first saw the Commodore 64 PC I wanted a computer.  Over the years I have had quite a few ranging from desktops, towers, servers, and laptops.  One thing that was always part of the old days in computing was upgrades.  Upgrades are replacing existing technology with newer technology as updates are mostly software related (this is not a rule but what happened most of the time).  Upgrades can be simple, adding more memory or complex, adding a faster processor or larger hard drive.

This time I am dusting off the old tool bag and going after a performance upgrade to my existing laptop.  Its 3 years old but still capable of running most of the stuff I need it to; digital darkroom, office, games, etc.  It is getting rather slow and I may decide to give Windows 7 a try, or not.  My current PC is not too old, well for human years that is, I bought it 2 months before I moved to China from Circuit City during a year end sale, a couple of years before they went out of business.  Its a Toshiba Satellite M55-S139 (PSM53U-00K008). 

The stock stats are:

• Intel Celeron M 380 / 1.6 GHz
• ATI Radeon Xpress 200M video (shared RAM)
• 512 MB RAM and I added 256 MB the day I got it
• 80 GB w/ 5400 rpm Hard Disk
• 24x/8x/2x DVD±RW (±R DL)
• IEEE 802.11b IEEE 802.11g Fast Ethernet NIC

I also got an extended life battery to go along with the stock battery for those trans-Pacific flights.  The laptop has only 1 card slot which I use for my Firewire or IEEE 1394 connection to my digital camcorder.  I like many of the features of the laptop, namely the entertainment feature – allowing you to watch a DVD or listen to a CD without booting up the OS and that saves battery life for movie watching.  The centerpiece of the system is its gorgeous 14.1 inch high gloss wide screen display that has even survived a round with my daughter and a ball point pen. 

As you can tell from the above the laptop was not all that state of the art 3 years ago, but it wasn’t too shabby for under $1000 with RAM and extra battery.  Over the years it has slowed down to the point where I have to configure programs to run in striped down fashion to load in a timely manner.  I used to wipe all my hard drives and re-install the OS and reload programs each year, thanks to Windows anti-piracy policy I can no longer do that.  Believe me, it makes a world of difference to do a fresh install from a hard drive cleaned out of all data, including the MBR and boot partitions. 

Recently I have been becoming more and more frustrated in my laptop’s performance.  Add this to the video filter issue I have and ever growing collection of photo editing software and new USB HDDs to hold photos, music (yes we can still legally download MP3 from music studio websites in China), and video and the system is bogging down in its everyday activities.  This has led me to looking at Windows 7 as I was going to avoid Vista as much as I avoided ME.  The Vista tool tells me aside from RAM and a few programs, like Adobe Pro 6, I am ready to upgrade the OS.  This brings me to the upcoming project, upgrading the hardware of the laptop.

As the specs above show the system is lacking in RAM and hard drive space, the focus of the upgrade.  I would also like to get a BlueRay RW drive but that is not vital.  Now the Toshiba Satellites are known for being picky with RAM, and as it came with 512 MB and only has 1 expansion bay it will require a little extra work to upgrade.  Next is the hard disk that seemed ok in 2005 as I already had a 80 GB USB drive to store music and pictures on.  So the goal is to increase RAM to 2 GB, the manufacturer’s recommended ceiling for this motherboard, and to get a larger HDD.  The RAM is the easy part.  After some checking I found I need RAM with the following specs: PC 4200, DDR2 @ 533MHz, 1.8V, Non ECC, 200 pin SODIMM available in 1GB cards.  As the stock RAM is 512MB that means I will have to remove the keyboard and take out the stock RAM and insert a 1GB chip and another 1GB chip in the expansion bay.  It is best to get RAM in pairs, from the same manufacturer and the same size as the parity makes it easier, mixing and matching to save a few dollars is not worth the potential headache – especially in Shanghai.

As I will have the keyboard off anyway I am going to swap out the HDD for one with more capacity.  I was originally looking at a Western Digital Scorpio 250 GB monster, tripling my current drive space, until I read the reviews on how unreliable they were.  It seems that the Scorpio drives have a real world satisfaction rate of just below 75%, for a hard disc I am not comfortable with anything below 85%.  Of course this Western Digital is cheap, less then $100 so it does fall into the ‘seems too good to be true’ category.  I will settle for a 160 GB drive but am still searching.  Once selected I will then try to get the parts from reputable places here I can return them is they are faulty (a rarity here).  I have my eye on a few drives but will have to dig into their reliability a bit more.  As I get it all sorted I will post the progress, process, and results.  It is fairly simple and much easier then swapping out a proprietary power supply with a stock one in my Dell 8100, building my server from an old IBM, or my never ending projects of the IBM PS2 and getting its OS2 Warp to get onto the internet, I have it working but getting a NIC to work has been problematic with PCI cards and not ISA ones.  Follow along as I track down the parts for the laptop, tear it down, then migrate the OS and data onto the new drive.

This past month my daughter reached another milestone.  Not a developmental one, or a physical one, or even an educational one.  No, this last month my daughter got her first Barbie doll.  Well, so what, she is a girl after all and is almost 3 years old.  Well, for starters it balances her love for Ultra Man, the Japanese kids show similar to Godzilla but where you have a guy fighting monsters around scale models of cities.  Second, is shows her awareness of targeted marketing and desire to join a peer group.

First off I have to explain something about Barbie here in Shanghai.  Sure, its a doll you can get at Carrefour, Toy’s R Us, or other department stores, even the ‘fake’ ones you can get at smaller markets.  Barbie is still a doll with clothes and such but as many things in Asia, she has become larger then life.  About a year ago they opened a dedicated Barbie Store here in Shanghai, on Hua Hai Road, its one of the ‘highest end’ shopping streets (very close to Nan Jing Shi Road which is another) we have here.  So what I can hear some of you say, well you have to see it to believe it.  For starters, its the LARGEST Barbie store in the world, no kidding.  Second its a full service Chinese style take on a western theme, meaning they take something with brand recognition and expand it to many levels beyond rational thought.

As you can see the store is 6 levels; a lobby with a mini-store, a full spa and beauty parlor, 2 levels of Barbie dolls and clothes, and a photo studio and cafe.  This explanation however is not sufficient.  The store includes a huge spiral staircase surrounded with hundreds of Barbies, all in pink.  Actually most of the store is pink, so much so I strongly recommend any man stay away from the store. 

My daughter got a Barbie passport, yes a passport including picture and pages for stamps at areas like the photo studio, fashion show, spa, etc.  She also gets a discount and special cash registers that only passport holders can visit.  She was not all that interested in the wall of Barbie that highlights the fashion and style of each year of Barbie.  She liked the specialty Barbies like the Gone With the Wind and Barbies of the World displays, but not so much the ones that were over $1,000 (thank goodness).  There was even an Elvis and Pricilla Presley Barbie set, oddly enough Ken is all over the store too, despite the very public divorce.

So after half a day in the store my daughter was quite happy.  She saw thousands of Barbies, clothes, accessories, photo props, and we even had lunch in the Barbie Cafe (food not too impressive but service was outstanding).  We of course went there to get a Barbie, and I let my daughter know she could only get one, so choose carefully.  She did, she got the set that includes kids tattoos as well as tattoos for the doll.  She loved the store and had a good time, but has not asked to go back in 2 weeks now.

She has since played with the doll, however not as frequent as the first week, she plays more with the Ultra Man toys.  She is more interested in the tattoos then anything else.  There are a few times that kids reach certain phases that mark their development.  First steps, first words, eating by yourself, potty training, so forth and so on.  Its incredible to see kids go through these phases.  As my daughter grows its amazing to see how aware of things she is.  At just over 2 and half years old she was aware we had a Barbie Store here (not aware its the largest in the world or unique in its services) and wanted to go because a friend of hers at school mentioned it in class.  I don’t know for how long she will remember this experience, most likely she will if we go back a few time (if we do I will have to take my PSP and extra shots of testosterone to counter all the pink and stuff).  Because they have birthday parties, photo studios, etc. I am sure we will go back a few times.

A Spaces friend bloged on eBook writing and reading back in August.  This is one thing that has been on the fringe of technical circles for years but is slowly coming into mainstream thanks to Amazon.com and Ophra.  The issue is, as with any new technology, standards.  Each reader has its own internal format they don't share, there is PDF, HTML, TXT, etc. all of which require their own codes to store, load, and read in the device.  Just like now, most music is played in MP3 format, though there is still Windows Media Player, Real Player, and Quick Time formats, most players can read most files.  That is the issue with eBooks and preventing it from really taking off.

Quote

The Joys of Bookmaking in a Digital World

No, I don’t mean the kind of bookmaking that involves gambling! This post discusses techniques you can use to make or assemble your own ebooks that can be read on your Sony Reader, Amazon Kindle or other eBook reader you might own. You might be wondering why someone would want to do this. After all, there are many ebooks available for sale or downloadable from libraries (provided you have a Sony Reader) and many web sites that provide free ebooks for download or reading online. - Jeff Flynt

The reason for bloging on this is because I have been thinking of getting some books.  While not a big issue, I can order from Amazon and shipping is relatively quick, 4 weeks, but there is customs and such.  For the older books I wanted, US historical references, speeches, essays, and works from authors like Poe, Twain, etc.  Thanks to Project Gutenberg, digitizing copyright expired books into public domain and eBook formats, many older works are now available for free in various formats.  Gutenberg, by the way, was the German printing professional who profected the printing press by developing and implementing moveable typeface.

I have a PSP 2000 that I got last Christmas.  I have only a few games, half are in Japanese or Chinese, and its memory stick is half filled with photos, music, and demos of games (because I do not download illegal games).  I had heard that you could read books on the PSP so I investigated and found the program PSP eBook Creator, found at parablax.co.uk  The program is small and is pretty cool that it allows you to customize background color, text color, font face and size, etc.  It is limited in that it takes files saved in TXT format, so if you have PDFs or other formats the program can't read them.  The good thing is Gutenberg has thousands of books and they are all in TXT format, so there are tons of copyright free books available, all classics.

The program works like this, it takes the TXT file, converts it into a JPG that fits perfectly onto the PSP screen.  You flip pages/screens using the left and right buttons so there is no scrolling which makes reading more easy for me.  I have downloaded about 8 files and the longest one is 104 screens and comes in about 6Mb.  I have just found this so it is still in the novelty phase but I do like it.  Reading is ok, you can increase the text size, and being on PSP you can have multiple enternatinment options to you now.  Sometimes playing games, watching video, or listening to music is not all that practicle you can now read a book, and all of this one device.  I really like that the PSP is much more functional then originally thought, with wireless and Skype loaded I can even use as a WiFi phone if so inclined.  So for those out there interested in trying out ebooks and not wanting to invest any money, take your, or your kids PSP, download a small program, a few books and see if it is good enough to sink the money into a Kindle (which I could use but WiFi will not work in China, just like Amazon unbox, music, game, and other downloads).  I recommend this as a money saving way to read, no books, no shipping, and all done in less then the time to get to the car!

From a Milwaukee Conservative "tax payers" ralley the local newspaper quoted the ranking state Democrat with the following:

Mike Tate, the Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman, downplayed the impact of the tea party movement.
"These are extremist elements pulling together, distinct vocal minorities that frankly don't believe in this country," Tate said. "They don't want to see more people have access to quality affordable health care; they don't want clean air and water. They fundamentally don't understand how the American government, economy and capitalism work."

Liberals are classic, Democrats are priceless!  First and foremost, if people at these rallies, from tea party rallies to taxpayer rallies, are so un-American, un-patriotic, and don't believe in the country of America then why are they calling for things that HELP keep America strong; responsible fiscal spending, business friendly regulations, fair media practices, having a represenative government and not appointed overlords who control things, a legislative branch who listen to those who elected them, strong leadership with clear objectives and plans and policies that do not spark trade wars, cower down to threatening states, and build ties through mutual agreements.  No these people are only exercising their constitutional rights, they have read the proposed legislations and agree that the measures are not in the best interest of their lives or the nation as a whole, how is that not believing in the country?  How does Mr. Tate know what conservative want?  He and his party refuse to listen to anything a conservative has said since Obama won the nomination.  Their party is now trying to institute conservative measures introduced last fall and trying to pass them off as new.  Who in America does not have access to quality affordable health care?  People who have been rejected by health insurance companies, and those who do not have a full time job that offers health insurance as a benefit, and finally those who do not want any for whatever reason they choose.  Of course we want affordable quality healthcare, but we want the market to do this through tort reform, cross state competition, and insurance company reform that works.  Now who on Earth wants to live in filthy air and water?  No one, so why make such an idiotic statement, because he is unaware that the resistance to Cap & Trade is based off of logic and not emotion, something many liberals can't relate to.  Lastely, of course we know how America works, we know we have rights such as free speech, freedom of assembly, access to the government to address grievences right to bear arms, and that these rights are protected against the government BY the constitution, not provided by the constitution, read the wording, its there.  As for capitalism, we know very well how it works, its called unemcumbered business practices and free market trade where the best business cases and plans suceed and profit that drives more innovation and expansion.  Its the liberals who don't understand by insisting government interference is required to make things "fair" through restrictions, regulations, taxes, penalties, and polities to hand government control of all aspects of a business instead of the prople who founded and grew the business.  EEO, affirative action, pay scale limitations, windfall taxes, union protections, etc.  The market is dominated by supply and demand, when the government tries to inject itself it messes things up, like cash for clunkers.  Later, after hearing critism over his public comments Mr. Tate released the following to Wisconsin Democrats:

Fellow Democrats,

Over the weekend I was asked to comment on the self described “tea baggers” who held an angry mob gathering in Milwaukee. (CNN Anderson Cooper came up with the term and its a refernece to a gay sex act.  No one is a self described tea bagger, that is a slander and leftwing term pinned by media arm of Obama's administration, the main stream media)

Here is what I said: "These are extremist elements pulling together, distinct vocal minorities that frankly don't believe in this country. They don't want to see more people have access to quality affordable health care; they don't want clean air and water. They fundamentally don't understand how the American government, economy and capitalism work." (see above)

I meant what I said, and I'm not afraid to say it again. (there is a fine line between bravery and stupidity)

Just because you throw the biggest temper tantrum doesn't mean you can silence the majority of Americans who want fundamental change in this country. (but it was ok for the last 7 years with people like Cher, Johnny Depp, George Cloney, and politicans as well as WTO demonstrators and people like Michael Moore who profit off of discontent.  No, all that was done post Obama, after Obama we reset all the history of the world.  All the shouting down, demonstrations, and violence done duing the Bush years was just A-Ok, because he was bad.)

History is riddled with examples of vocal fringe groups that have risen to oppose progress and success. From the red-baiting McCartyhyites to the Know-Nothings and the KKK, we have seen this story unfold many times in the past. Fueled by ignorance, racism and intolerance, these groups have done everything in their power to obstruct progress – often resorting to intimidation and violence.  (let's talk about history Mr. Tate, the Ku Klux Klan was a relic of post War Between the States Reconstruction and was resurrected after D.W. Griffith's 1915 movie The Birth of a Nation.  After WWI, the popularity of the Klan surged, and it became a political powerhouse in many regions of the country, particularly in the South, in the border states, the Mountain States, and the West.  Its local political strength gave it a major role in the 1924 Democratic Party National Convention. However, its participation was unwelcome by many DNC delegates, such as Catholics from the major cities of the Northeast and Midwest.  The tension between pro and anti-Klan delegates produced an intense and sometimes violent showdown between convention attendees, who were, yes Democrats.  It was the DNC who raised the KKK and gave it legitamacy in American politics from the thugs and racists it was initially started from.  How about ELF, the domestic terror organization who fight for environmental causes through violence and intimidation, recently they blew up 2 radio towers in a national forest in protest over land usage as well as their infamous SUV and home burnings.  How about the WTO demonstrators who trashed Seattle and contiune to bomb military recruiting stations, shoot soliders and plant bombs IRA style, and I am talking about in the last 3 years not Obama's buddy Bill Ayres the Weather Underground founder turned professor and community organizer.  Least we forget the new Black Panthers who intimidated and threatened voters in November in PA and other states.  Or about the Demcratic Represenative from Milwaukee's son going out and slashing tires of GOP campaign aide workers the day of the election to keep them from bringing people to the polls as they were doing, sure, its all a vast nationally coordinated effort by know-nothing racists who only want the very thing they are accusing your party of implementing in this country.)

We will not be intimidated, and we won't back down.

This moment is too important. The American people voted for change in November, and our President is fighting to implement that change. We will not sit idly by while these extremists pretend to be mainstream Americans. Their views couldn't be any more out of touch with average, working people. (Unfortunately the vast majority of them are average mainstream Americans as proven by interviews and your media constantly trying to debunk them, they can't because unlike DNC sponsered and paid for demonstrations by labor and trade unions, PAC's, and community organized events, these people are just fed up with the fawning press, radical leftist policies, and out of control spending coupled with arrogance of the legislature.  All of this is evidenced by falling ratings, subscriptions, and failing news outlets across the country, except for conservative slanted outlets - this isn't healthy by the way.  No, these people have mostly never attended any political event in their lives until this spring and we are seeing more engaged citizens in government now then anytime in the past 60 years.  Mainstream Americans are not the radical leftist policy fawning sheeple you think, the sooner you realize that and tone down the hate speech and fear mongering rhetoric the better.)

One sign at the protest in Milwaukee over the weekend read “Obama, Osama: Both bombed the American people,” while right-wing, anti-worker pundit Michelle Malkin told those gathered “I've never been so proud in my lifetime to be part of this angry mob.”  (First off, you got the sign wrong Mr. Tate, it read "Obama, Osama, Both had Friends who Bombed America"  And that is from the FB pages of people from the Milwaukee rally and the susposed creator of the sign.  I have not found a picture of it, but I have seen similar signs during the November campaign.  Next, Mrs. Malkin is a NYTimes best selling author who is pro capitalism and worker, she is anti-union, anti-regulation, anti-excessive tax.  Next the comment was made as a response to the DNC constantly, and with aid of the main stream media, refering to conservative rallies as 'angry mobs', I guess Democrats don't understand satire or scarcasim.  How is this any different then the First Lady's 'proud of this nation' comment taken at face value?

What do Wisconsin Republicans think of this extremist rhetoric? As Republican candidate for Governor Scott Walker said over the weekend, “I'm with them.”

I have a message for Scott Walker and his extremist allies: You will find out soon enough that Wisconsin is not with you.  (To what Wisconsinites are you refering to Mr. Tate?  If you mean the teacher's union, Mr. Doyle's cronies, and the trail lawyers then you are right.  If you mean the majority of the voting public, well polls tell a different story.  Mr. Walker is just one of several prominate conservatives running for Governor, as well as Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke who was a speaker at the even, and is a black man to boot!)

You and I know that hate speech and misinformation isn't what Wisconsin families need, and it's not what America needs.  (Then STOP doing it yourself and demand your part stop doing so as well.  You have already stated 3 FALSE items above.  On this note, you know how many people have been arrested over the conversative rallies, 0!  If anyone were arrested for violence it would be plasted front page of USA Today, NY Time, LA Time, Washington Post, etc.  Instead all we have found in the media is people carrying guns, including a black man carrying a black assualt rifle, all of which was 100% peaceful.  The only violence and issues where when leftist DNC supported groups try to taunt and incite violence, like the liberal who bite off a senior citizen's finger tip at a rally against health care, and he was not part of the rally, just asking for directions and to see what was going on.  Facts are a stuborn thing, so maybe you should not glaze over the past 7 years of history and try to resolve issues by being positive, not fearmongering and misinforming yourself.)

We need fundamental change in this country. And with your help the Democratic Party of Wisconsin will continue to fight back against this right-wing extremism.  (Ahhh, here it comes, the reason behind all this hyperbole, a sales pitch!)

Your gift of $5, $25, $50, $100, or whatever you can afford will help us cut through the incendiary rhetoric and move Wisconsin forward.

Together, we can rise above the scare tactics, temper tantrums, name-calling, and false claims to bring about the change we need.

Sincerely,

Mike Tate Chair,
Democratic Party of Wisconsin

This exemplefies the degree to which the DNC is out of touch with mainstream America.  Are there racist elements within the anti-Obama crowd, yes, of course, just as there were extreme elements who bood Bush during his last inaguration, burned him in effigy in Seattle, and incited violence at events he attended.  The racist elements are small, less then 5% at the greatest.  The anti-American sentiment is rehashed GOP tactic utilized against those who did not support the war and anti-terror measures, quite effectivey.  Unfortunately this tactic does not translate well to domestic issues.  There is a big difference between people withhold war funds and people trying to stop runaway government spending and expanding into all sectors of our lives.  The DNC is trying its best to apply Rules for Radicals to the current conservative movement but it isn't working well.  They continue to try to tie the people carrying guns with the Oklahoma City bomber.  They continue to try to tie in the anti-nazi signs at rallies to people supporting facists ideas in the crowds. 

As stated before the DNC is in trouble when they have to pull the race card.  They are doing this daily now.  The media can't resist reporting on a race issue, they never have before and now it is more.  With sinking rating and dwindeling subscriptions they have to sensationalize the news just to keep from losing what they already have.  The messages coming from the DNC are mixed at best.  Carter is saying its all about Race, Obama is dismissing it.  Pelosi, Tate, and others are saying its about race yet all indications and evidance point to the contraty.  Despite things like record gun and ammunition sales, you are not seeing gun violence erupt at rallies, there is no FBI or Secret Service accounts about assination plots.  All the warnings are being blared 100 times a day, yet nothing is found to be going on that is illegal or wrong.  Obama's slide in the polls has appeared to stop, but one partisan poll by CNN, one of the most liberal news agencies in America, is not enough to prove that.  

Obama won the election by less then 10% margin.  The change people voted for was accountability, transperency, and cleaning up Washington DC by getting rid of the insiders and changhing the way business was done, well let's look a the results.  Obama has installed a record number of 'czars', over 30, yet his cabnet is nearly still 1/2 empty.  Over 10 appointees did not pay taxes until congress investigated them.  Only Chicago insiders and extreme radical leftists are getting key jobs capible of making changes.  Legislation is being rammed through the process without being read or even written.  Lobbyists are enjoying better days in DC then they had in 4 years.  The administration is out of sync with itself, basically having to throw the VP under the White House to keep from retracting every word he states.  The Secritary of State is making low level foreign policy appearances, while back door deals are the order of the day.  The only change people have seen in DC is from an extreme right wing foreign policy agenda to an extreme left wing domestic agenda.  Things like Obama getting into the New York Governor's race by demanding the incumbent refuse to run to keep the state Democrat is leaving a bad taste in many people's mouth.   Actions like this show a federal government trying to push itself and its policies down to the local levels, and this isn't resonating positively with local Democrats who think they should make the choices for themselves, which sound American to me.  This is why people are upset, poll numbers are falling and the trust in government and media is at historic lows.  Why else are books like Malkin's Beck's etc. NYTimes best sellers despite never being reviewed by the Times?  The 'Fairness Doctrine' is back in the limelight because conservative talk radio is more popular then music programs now.  There are underlying reasons for this and the fact that the DNC is resorting to lying, cheating, and trying to regulate and legislate to stop it proves they are out of touch with the message.  That message is that their policies are NOT popular, they are NOT trusted, they are NOT resenating with main stream Americans, so why are they continuing to push them?  Al Gore made a good point during a presidental debate stating the defination of crazy was doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result, well, the DNC is doing just this now.  Mr. Tate needs to review what is going on across the state and the country before he opens his pie hole again and spewes the very things he is ranting against, hypocrite.

In middle school I remember spending a week on memorizing the preamble to the Constitution, it was at this time that I also learned the preamble, the Constitution, and the meaning behind most of the words. In today's climate we need to get back to our inner middle school selves and revisit this historic document and what all the words are and why they hold as much weight and importance today as they did on September 17th 1787 when penned and signed. While our Declaration of Independence was a world shattering document, the Constitution has much more significance and weight in our everyday lives. I will take this opportunity to paraphrase a line from Oliver North: Who gives you the rights you and I enjoy as Americans? God, for the Constitution only protects our God given rights from the actions of the government.  With that said, the Preamble to the Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

National Constitution Center: Constitution Day:  National Constitution Center - 525 Arch Street, Independence Mall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19106
215.409.6600

America Reads the Constitution

September 17, 2009, at 8:30 a.m.
This year, our America Reads the Constitution event will focus on Americans in Service. Individuals who serve the nation in a variety of capacities will be asked to read the Preamble to the Constitution. Invited readers include embassy officials in Kabul, Afghanistan and students and teachers from Constitution High School.

Virtual Field Trip: Signing the Constitution

September 17, 2009, at 9 a.m.
Classrooms around the country can join the National Constitution Center via live webcast for a special demonstration in Signers’ Hall about the signing of the Constitution. Participants will also learn more about the Center’s new virtual field trip program. Educators can register to join the event on the Constitution Center’s website.

Click here on September 17 by 8:45 a.m. to join the virtual field trip of Signers' Hall.
Please sign in as a "Guest" simply by typing in a screen name or your real name.

Constitution Celebration

September 17, 2009, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Visitors can learn about the three branches of government through the Balance of Powers Demonstration and the Separation of Powers Show; learn about the Pennsylvania Packet printing of the Constitution during the Decoding the Document Workshop; participate in the Articles of the Confederation to Constitution Demonstration; join in the Preamble Scramble; and learn more about the leadership styles of the founding fathers in the Leadership Tour of Signers’ Hall.

Articles of Confederation to the Constitution Demonstration

September 17, 2009, at 10 a.m., 12 p.m., and 2 p.m.
Join in this interesting demonstration about the journey our country took from the Revolution to the Constitution. Find out more about this rocky road to a Democracy.

Separation of Powers Show

September 17, 2009, at 10:30 a.m., 12:30 p.m., and 2:30 p.m.
This fun and energizing show teaches you about the branches of government and how our Constitution limits government by separating power—a revolutionary idea! Take part in an educational game of tug-of-war among the three branches of government while they learn about checks and balances.

Separation of Powers Workshop

September 17, 2009, at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
Dive deeper into the formation of our national government as we examine primary sources of the three branches of government.

Balance of Powers Demonstration

September 17, 2009, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Learn more about the three branches of government as you explore giant models of the Capitol, White House and Supreme Court. Public Program demonstrators lead you through an entertaining look at the buildings, the people who work in them, and the checks and balances of our government.

Constitution Birthday Party  

September 17, 2009, at 12 p.m.
Visitors can join the Center as we celebrate the birthday of the Constitution, compete with cake! Guests will also get a chance to decide whether or not to sign a giant copy of the Constitution.

This has got to be the longest titled blog I have posted.  Seriously, since this story broke I have been waiting to see how the media would cover it, well it seems I have my answer now – nothing.  Anyone who has been getting news from New Zealand or on the fringe, ISP news services etc., is aware of this, for those who aren’t well here is the short and dirty facts of the story:

An aspiring film maker, James O’Keefe, and an actor posed as a pimp/prostitute combination and sought help from various urban ACORN chapters (Baltimore, Washington D.C., and New York).  They filmed their escapades with a hidden camera and struck gold in the three branch offices mentioned.  I of course can’t open YouTube so I can’t review the tapes but I have read over 20 articles on them, mostly from center to conservative blogs due to only ABC news giving any air play to this, and it was small and scant.  Heck New Zealand is now scooping the entire national media and the story is now getting major air play in the UK as well.

From the reports, O’Keefe and his ‘working girl’ walked into the ACORN branch offices and requested assistance in how best to apply for and get housing for ill repute.  In all 3 locations they received advice on how to massage IRS information into something more ‘practical’.  The ‘working girl’ was instructed to list her profession as self employed and as an entertainer.  O’Keefe was adamant about her profession and how best to deal with it, each time he received advice from several staffers on best practices for keeping things looking legit.  I have heard the transcript from the Maryland office and O’Keefe made it crystal clear he was bringing up ‘several’ underage girls from Latin America to ‘work’ in the home as child prostitutes.  He wanted advice on how best to handle the paperwork to keep the government from investigating.  He was told to list those under 16 as dependents, up to 4, and because they were all going to be here illegally just to keep the others off the books.  From what I read the same thing happened in the New York office.  The New York workers went a step further, not only offering advice in IRS income hiding, money laundering, and immigration dodging, they offered advice on how best to store and keep the money out of the financial system to increase the chance of getting away with the scam and avoiding any legal penalties, all by burying the money in a box in the back yard, covering it with sod, and living off of that when it was time to retire.  I live by the rule of 3’s.  One time is an isolated incident, two times is a coincidence, three times marks a trend.

When the story first broke ACORN was quick to point out it was an isolated incident and fired the staff identified in the video, then the Washington DC and New York videos came out.  ACORN then threatened to sue Fox News, O’Keefe, and cried political conspiracy and shake down as a way to harm and take down the organization.  Fall out was quick, first the US Census Bureau publically cut ties with ACORN and stated their services would not be utilized for the 2010 Census as it was initially planned and promised by the President.  Even at the time of his DNC nomination he was touting ACORN as being intimately involved in shaping his administration’s policies, so far nothing from the White House on this.  Next, and most likely what sparked the lawsuit talk, was the recent Congressional Senate vote that cut all federal funds to ACORN, the vote was 83-7 (the seven are now known as the sleazy 7 on the blogosphere).  This will cut $4 billion slotted for community assistance and $165 million for foreclosure relief according to Reuters, who wrote a massively sympathetic and slanted piece, only one of a handful available in the main stream press.  So now the darling of the Obama nomination, election, and administration, has become toxic and is sinking fast.

Now for the main story, what you thought the ACORN part was the main story?  Well now that you know ‘the rest of the story’ you need to know the second part.  Under Maryland Law, Annotated Code of Maryland Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article 10-402 - “The only information received in reference to this alleged criminal behavior was a YouTube video. Upon review by this office, the video appears to be incomplete. In addition, the audio portion could possibly have been obtained in violation of Maryland Law and requires two party consent.”  According to Maryland State’s Attorney Office, If it is determined that the audio portion now being heard on YouTube was illegally obtained, it is also illegal under Maryland Law to willfully use or willfully disclose the content of said audio. The penalty for the unlawful interception, disclosure or use of it is a felony punishable up to 5 years.  Wow, 5 years for uncovering:

• massive corruption
• accessory after the fact to criminal activities
• conspiracy to commit fraud
• conspiracy to defraud the government
• conspiracy to launder illegal income
• accessory after the fact to human trafficking
• accessory after the fact to aid in child prostitution

Forgive me for being so naive but isn’t this a good thing that we have turned on the light to this organization’s cockroaches?  How about the whistle blower laws put into place to protect those who are going to expose corporate and government corruption?  And the ace up the sleeve, how about NBC’s Dateline who has made a ratings boom out of Chris Hansen’s ‘To Catch a Predator’, ‘To Catch an Identity Thief’, etc.  Now some of Hansen’s reporting is done with assistance from law enforcement, who are part of the show as they arrest those who are bold enough to go through with their chats.  I looked up Maryland’s whistleblower law and found the following:

SPP 5-301, et seq - Can not take or refuse to take any personnel action as reprisal if applicant or employee discloses abuse of authority, gross mismanagement or waste of money, violation of law or substantial and specific danger to public health or safety and seeks a remedy - as per the Prohibited Employer Activity section.  Protection provided is extended to the public.  Can submit a complaint to the secretary within 6 months of first knowledge of violation; if violation found, secretary can remove detrimental information from complainant's personnel record, reinstatement, promotion or end of suspension, back pay, leave or seniority and attorney's and court fees listed under the Remedies section. 

However this will be interpreted by the defense attorney for O’Keefe if Maryland decides to pursue the matter further is up to the lawyers and the judge.  Personally I feel this is within the law as it is no different then a police officer deceiving criminals in a sting, a news team setting up people in investigative reporting to undercover some sort of nefarious activities, private investigators gathering information for their clients, employees reporting illegal activities or cover-ups of potentially illegal activities.  What is the one thing that may not be in O;Keefe’s favor?  He never contacted the State’s Attorney Office, Baltimore DA, or even a lawyer prior to his stunt.  He was aware of this, why do it on a hunch.  He had enough time to get a script, actress, and rehearse enough to have a dynamic plan in place to expand or contract the questions based on feedback.  There was a fair amount of planning, yet he did not seek legal council.  Of course it can be argued that the largest union to contribute to the DNC is the trial lawyers unions, and with so many lawyers being in the bag for liberals, may be sympathetic to Acorn and tip them off to the plan before it could be executed in the state’s executed.  O’Keefe made a surprise attack to see what would happen.  He found out and found it to be much worse then initially expected, spinning his back up plan thicker and thicker each minute and getting more and more assistance.  This shows the culture of corruption and greed of the organization as ethics training seems to have never taken place in at least Maryland, New York, and Washington DC ACORN offices.

Was it an ambush, of course, all investigative reporting and stings are.  Ask DC mayor Marian Barry about ambushes.  Ask Monica Lewinski about ambushes.  There are thousands of politicians, corporate officers, corrupt law officers, criminals etc. who have fallen for and been put out of commission by sting operations.  O’Keefe had some inside information to go out and do what he did.  He wanted to get proof, irrefutable proof, of the mindset and length ACORN workers would go to assist in criminal activities.  What is the down side.  If the ACORN operation was legitimate and its workers ethical they would have taken his name, stated they could offer no assistance and then contact the appropriate authorities to investigate the matter.  If O’Keefe, the actor and over the top pimp, and his ‘working accomplice’ were able to get such great assistance and advice from 3 branch offices in major metropolitan offices of ACORN, what advice and assistance were granted to real criminals and those getting houses for crack smoking, drug selling, brothels, harboring human trafficking victims, chop shops, etc.  The most troubling part is ACORN has seemed to have started the prosecution ball rolling against those it preceives as instigators and accomplices.  Going after O'Keefe and Fox News is not resolving the situation, it is pure blame shifting and distracting from the real issue, their organization's willingness to assist in criminal activities.  If this is to stand then what is the resulting effect to investigative reporting.  Will O'Keefe be drug through the mud and villified because he is not part of the intellectual elite or leftist leaning ideology of ACORN and those who support it?  Will the main stream media finally pick up the story, and if so will they hold past investigative reports to the same standard they try to apply O'Keffe too?  These are important because if there isn't fair treatment then it will signal that justice, in the minds of the liberals and their supporters, is not blind or impartial but slanted and in favor of those to whom hold the majority power.  O'Keeft should be seen as doing a service to the community for his exposing criminal activites, just as NBC has and hundreds of professional reporters who have risked more to get their stories and built outstanding careers off of those stories.  Prosecuting or charging him will send the worng message, not that the ends justify the means, but that only those in power matter and anyone opposed to them will bear the full brunt of the system against them.  We need to have ways of justice, which is why liberals pushed for whistleblower laws in the first place.

If ACORN were really for improving communities and helping the poor who have real need they why are their ethics, standards, and practices so lax as to implant illegal activities into communities where the citizens are vulnerable to such activities?  How can minority females be so crass and complicit in the trafficking and turning out of underage girls prostitutes who will be shipped here against their will and held for sexual use without any chance of justice as they are here illegally?  Where is ACORN’s head?  Where is the accountability and professionalism Obama keeps calling for us to live up to in ACORN?  ACORN is trying to sue Fox News and O’Keefe, for what, exposing how sleazy and complicit they are in ruining neighborhoods across America!  A recent House Oversight and Government Reform Committee report stated since 1994 more than $53 million in federal funds have been released to ACORN and under the Obama administration ACORN stands to receive up to $8.5 billion in available stimulus funds, of which they just last week petitioned to get almost $6 million of.  The report also stated: evidence that ACORN has evaded taxes, obstructed justice, engaged in racketeering, and created a conspiracy to defraud the United States.

All this aside I have to return to a previous point.  What exactly is the purpose of ACORN?  Isn’t the organization to assist poor people obtain housing, assist poor people in keeping their homes, and organizing communities to give them a greater voice to politicians who have many voices airing concerns to their specific operations?  Isn’t the point to help build communities of stronger community ties and organization to improve the life quality and socioeconomic condition of the neighborhood and improve the property values and thus the condition of that community?  Apparently not.  ACORN is nothing more or nothing less, then a fully partisan political organization that is dedicated to the advancement of the ideology and philosophies of social Democrats and those they ally themselves with.  From the voter registration drives, fraud convictions, exposures of corruption by past directors and former employees, etc. is all detracting from any good the organization has ever accomplished.  We had a saying in the Navy, ‘one oh-shit erases a thousand atta-boys’ which translates to , what you do lately is more influential then what you did in the past.  ACORN has not accepted any responsibility or humility in any of these cases, they have not vowed to correct the actions and re train to prevent these allegations from surfacing again.  No they have always cried foul and stating it is the fault of their enemies and those opposed to their vision, that is not correcting the problem which we have just witnessed not once, not twice, but three times.  This organization is rotten and exemplifying the problems with such organizations.  I am glad to see ACORN is out of the 2010 Census now, they will not receive further stimulus monies, and their continued lack of morals and judgment is exposed for another round and hopefully now we can now say enough is enough and get rid of this cancer to American communities and neighborhoods.  With the assistance and help they are providing it is no wonder the less fortunate communities continue to be held down in poverty and crime.  Its time for ACORN to go, the handouts to stop, and communities organize themselves instead of outsiders who have slanted views and partisan agendas to force and retain in the communities.

** Update ** Listing of the Senators voting FOR Acorn getting more money, and those not voting, the rest all voted to stop funding and it passed the Senate

ACORN to receive money 7 AYEs

Burris (D-IL) - Obama's old seat
Durbin (D-IL)
Casey (D-PA)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Leahy (D-VT)
Sanders (I-VT)
Whitehouse (D-RI)

9 not voting

Burr (R-NC)
Byrd (D-WV) - too old to vote on most things
Coburn (R-OK)
Graham (R-SC) - at a town hall event in S.C.
Gregg (R-NH)
Hutchison (R-TX)
McCain (R-AZ) - at a town hall event in S.C.
Mikulski (D-MD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Full roll call vote here

I have not really gotten into the September 11th issue here.  There is an idea on the conservative side we should use the anniversary to remind the country of the horrific lengths our enemies will go to just to get our attention and voice their dissatisfaction against us.  Liberals want to use the anniversary to highlight the evils our country has continuously coerced the world into accepting.  Obama wants to use the anniversary to do the one thing her knows and knows really well, community organization via his national day of service.  Well, all of this is good in many ways but we are still realistically spinning our wheels over what happened and what to do next.

September 11th was something we never saw before.  The only thing close was Pearl Harbor.  The major differences were at Pearl Harbor it was a military on military attack and we know who did it, Imperial Japan, and we knew how to get revenge, war.  This attack was different, a stateless, faceless, loosely bound group of radical fanatics thusly we have had no way to deal with it – militarily, economically, nationally, emotionally, or personally.  Sure we have heard talking heads and ‘experts’ spew off this and that about motives, missed opportunities and warning signs, and even others who have gone too far is stating we deserved it (Van Jones, Rev. Wright).  This open ended lack of reason and acceptance have prevented closure more then the inability of our government to get the top leaders who authorized and financed the operation, the highest we got was the architect and initial planners.

Why am I bringing all this up?  Well, for one it needs to be and two, we have lost the meaning of the day just a few years after that day.  Yes, the families and survivors will never forget, and they will never forgive the results of that day.  For those who were there and witnessed the events and results of that day will also never forget or forgive those responsible.  My duties in the US Navy as well as tax payer funds paid for my training to understand and combat the intentions of fanatic terrorists, who are different then other terrorists, think IRA verses al Qaida.  I understand why they did what they did, the justifications and lies told to those who executed the act and those who assisted them.  Most Americans don’t and they should not have to either, but they should understand the amount of hate and ill will inspired this and that little if anything we can ever do will make those and the ones they inspired to ever stop.

In the case of Pearl Harbor it was easy to rally and solidify support of the entire nation against Japan.  This never happened with September 11th.  Sure, after the initial shock we had some common ground, but by January it was all gone as the bitter in-fighting and politicizing of the day and its aftermath began.  We had lost before we even started to fight.  Sure, we overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan, bombed the crap out of some mountains and disrupted the networks of terrorists globally to such a degree they were forced to hide and go on the defensive.  Well, that ended quickly because we were fighting a new kind of enemy.  Our leaders had failed to explain to us the depth, length, and breadth these men and their associates were willing to go to destroy us.  They got side tracked with old scores, new opportunities, and personal vendettas.  This left a vacuum that took the solidarity out of the public and resulted in some of the bitter in-fighting we have seen across the nation since the Patriot Act.  We have lost trust and faith in our government and as a result we are now paying the price.

Those who lost their lives on this day, civilians, first responders, and innocent bystanders have thus had their sacrifice tarnished by our petty bickering and loss of focus.  Our country was attacked, our own symbols of strength and prosperity were taken down in front of us by using the very conveniences we took for granted, our lifestyle and freedom.  Our enemies were not attacking New York and Washington DC, they were trying to demoralize us and embarrass us to the point of giving up.  They want us to stay on our side of the ocean, stay out of the world’s affairs, stay out of the world economy, why, so they can fill the void and spread their message of hatred and fear.  This is the message that was lost.  We got side tracked over abuses of executive powers, letting politicians run wars, and trying to focus on enemies who did not need our attention at that particular moment.  We took our eye off the ball.  We have given the orchestrators of this horrific attack the upper hand and a victory.

Seriously, look at where we are today and where we were 8 years ago.  Some out there believe we can just say we are sorry, humiliate ourselves and apologize for past digressions and all will be forgotten and forgiven.  Well, that ain’t going to work, it will only embolden and encourage our enemy because they will then smell fear and weakness.  Strength is all they understand and respect, look at the historical record of the region.  We no longer are fighting against those who attacked us, most of us don’t even know who we are fighting, or why we continue.  We have disconnected from the war believing it is over because there is no symbol of the opposite side remaining.  Its hard to fight against an enemy that has no country, territory, economy, infrastructure, or tangible asset we can see, measure, and destroy.  The largest defeat is by our leaders who have decided to move past this issue because they feel it is now a back burner issue.  We have already hardened our defenses, made strides in securing our infrastructure to prevent a repeat of the exact same attack.  Well, our enemy is resilient and inventive, they will not use the same tactic twice.  Our ignoring them will not discourage them or convince them to go away.  We need to take this day, September the 11th, and use it as a day to remember those if lost their lives tragically, heroically, and unaware of why and we should remember it was all done out of pure hatred toward us as a people, country, and culture and those responsible will never concede or give up because they believe their fight is just and right.  It is of a basic primal fight, us and them.  We need to get our heads out of the sand and remember this on this day, else we invite a different attack, and if we allow that, it will be far worse for us all.

Well the speech happened, some saw it, some didn't and sun rose and another day went on with business as usual. 

Quote:

Obama addressing the nation's youth
From my previous blog:  "Obama is going to take 30 minutes to tell kids the importance of staying in school and studying hard and that if they put their minds to it they can achieve their wildest desires, even becoming president.  Well it does not take that long to say all that but he will be addressing more specifics I am sure.  The kids he is addressing are K-6 so his message will not be all that complex or sophisticated; remember this is America in the information age and not Germany in the 1930's... This is the difference, I can give him the benefit of the doubt on things he has not demonstrated a violation of my trust in yet."

I lived up to my end of the bargain, I did not join in the bandwagon mindset of 'everything Obama does is bad and socialists' that I heard echoed from flapping heads on pod-casts, in the news, and on the internet.  I am an independent thinker and I will lay waste to the GOP and conservatives when they mess up as much as the Dems have since November.  My wife has even gotten concerned saying I needed a break from the talk radio and WSJ reading saying I was getting too one sided.  I hope it did not seem that way as I am passionate on my beliefs but I try to stay grounded.
 
I don't hate Obama, I just hate his politics, ideas, and thoughts on how best to run our lives.  Personally I don't know the guy so I can't place judgment on him for that because that WOULD be baring false-witness and against my personal beliefs and values.  That being said lets discuss the speech he gave yesterday.  No, I am not going to type out the transcript as I usually do, why, well my last blog posts were very very very long and I need to balance that out.
 
I have read Obama's speech 3 times, twice with my 'critical eye'.  For the most part I agreed with him, not all of it and not 100% on some of what he said that I did agree on.  I liked the personal responsibility message, this is something lacking from many Democrats addresses and philosophies.  It was refreshing to see him compare and contrast the hard work and rewards.  I really liked him addressing the 'not everyone can become a sprots figure or reality TV star' line.  I was not aware he was also addressing grades 6-12 but that is a moot point after reading the speech.

Obama is a great orator; he speaks well and as long as his teleprompter is working right his delivery is personal and powerful.  So have I flipped my lid, how can I be praising someone who has drawn so much venom from me?  Well, as I stated in my original piece, I will only lay blame after the fact, this time there was little to disagree with, hey I can admit it.  There were some things he missed that I feel should be addresses.

First, he failed to mention the competition we as a nation face.  He did not challenge the students with a clear goal of clawing our way from the bottom of the industrial nation education list.  He did not set a goal of improving math, science, or writing skills or how much behind we were form our Asian neighbors.  Americans are a competitive lot, give us a challenge and we will work harder and longer.  He missed the boat by not asking the students to get us back into the top 10 in critical education areas.
 
Second is honestly addressing our economic future.  I am a firm believer that manufacturing as the main backbone of the nation is done, through, gone forever.  The ability for average Americans to raise a family comfortably on a high school education are shrinking faster then our national deficit is growing.  He should have used this opportunity to challenge each student to find an emerging career fields and study it.  He should have stressed that math and science are needed more and more to keep our country strong, if you are not good in that, writing and the arts are areas we are still dominate in, until India takes over.  This would not be so political as practical.  Our future generation in school will need to break the dependency on manufacturing and help usher in a more information based economy.

Lastly, he tried to keep the message too positive and too upbeat, he did not address the social issues that confront kids today, gangs, drugs, and teen pregnancy.  Yes these are sensitive and political topics but that are pitfalls our kids need to be told again and again to avoid.  I am sure he could have found a liberal way to do so with out coming off like a preacher.  In recent years we have seen the declines of all three bottom out and increase again.  National stories of sex clubs, binge drinking, resurgent pot usage have kept the issues on the fore front.  School violence does not seem like such an issue now; he did touch on it thought.  The more kids hear to stay off drugs, stay out of gangs, and wait until married or out of college to have a kid and the more people they hear it from the stickier the message will be.

Overall I would give the President the grade of a B+ on this address.  I am disappointed and a little ashamed by my fellow conservatives who acted and reacted like liberals did toward G. W. Bush for the past 7 years.  Who cares if the Pelosi crowd called for inquiries and trial over Bush's speech to kids, that was the past and aren't conservatives supposed to be more mature, restrained, thoughtful and less emotional, excitable, knee-jerk then liberals?  Obama did a good job on this address, sure his administration botched the initial delivery but they corrected it.  We have to remember we are all here to balance out the extremes and smooth over the bumps to keep things on course.  I hope this isn't my only time to say this or my only accolade toward Obama, but given his track record it may few and far between.  He did a good job, he could have done better but he did good enough.  Let's all give him credit for that and try to build off this one positive thing.

This is again what the Democrats strategy is, 'it's a crisis so we have to pass it now before it is too late'.  This hurry up and pass it now philosophy is what has gotten the Democrats into trouble in the first place.  We need time to review, pick apart, and debate the measures of this bill before we can expect any action on it.  At least the summary is only 18 pages, unlike HR3200.  So what is in the proposal?

• Small Business Tax credits, companies with less then 25 workers averaging under $40k/yr, up to 35% for up to 2 years, good news for really small businesses
• Part D Drug Discount Program, drug companies forced to give a 50% discount off negotiated price of brand name drugs, provided 30 hoops are jumped through, so where will these companies recover these costs?
• Health Insurance Exchange and Compacts, interstate policy selling can begin only when states establish a compact but only for those states, limited competition
• Ombudsman, states required to set up departments of consumer advocates for private insured to deal with rejections or cancellations of service, massive staffing!
• Transparency, requirements for companies to post monies spent on items other then health care, hospitals must have price lists, how about campaign contributions?
• High Risk Pools, increase funding for state high risk pools provided it does not go to companies with a waiting list, not 100% sure of this yet, need to dig deeper
• Forcing Companies to Cover, eventually pre-existing conditions and policy cancellations will be a thing of the past, and premiums fixed, so a big ? for companies
• Prohibit illegal aliens from receiving tax credits
• Utilizing existing government health insurance, Medicaid/Medicare by expanding eligibility requirements
• Coverage for Preventative Services, provided the Secretary of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force agreed
• Incentives for Healthy Lifestyle, given health status is improved in the areas; high blood pressure, cholesterol, tobacco use, obesity, diabetes, and falls prevention
• Improving Payment Accuracy, a whole slew of things to cover in there

As this was just released and I do require sleep I have only glanced over the proposal.  For the most part is looks much better then the disaster the House passed.  For one, it does require all citizens and resident aliens get coverage or pay a fine, unless you meet specific economic hardship conditions, of which there are many so it’s not like some college grad who is still working part time and eating mac and cheese will have to pay a fine.  The state exchange program is a little vague but the state compact provision is encouraging as it would allow states to ban together and let people in said states do with health insurance what they can do with home and auto insurance, get the lowest cost option that suits their needs across state lines.  The small business incentive is great for really small businesses, provided they don't pay their employees that much.  There are some solid protections offered but it keeps the co-op option open as well as creating a 10 year $900 billion program that is sure to see cost over runs and problems under the stress of the baby boom retiring.  The heart of the bill seems to be to expand Medicaid to non-elderly and non-pregnant adults by easing the eligibility requirements.  While this is not the 100% free option Pelosi and Obama wanted it is more realistic.  I am concerned with spending control, fraud waste and abuse provisions being too light, and it not addressing the real cause of high medical prices in our country;

• Tort reform
• Medical staff and facility insurance reform
• System to control Medicare and Medicaid costs
• Credits for those who buy insurance on their own
• Deductions for medical purchases made

I have less then 15 minutes to address this so it will be short.  Today Obama will address our nation's youth via television address.  For starters I have no problem with this, presidents have done this for years now and there was nothing sinister or troubling about it then, so I would think the same would hold true this time.  Now the President's staff has gotten into trouble by releasing a long agenda and setting odd goals that were a little open ended and resulted in conservatives interrupting them in the wrong light.  The problem is not the messenger, it’s the message.
 
Obama is going to take 30 minutes to tell kids the importance of staying in school and studying hard and that if they put their minds to it they can achieve their wildest desires, even becoming president.  Well it does not take that long to say all that but he will be addressing more specifics I am sure.  The kids he is addressing are K-6 so his message will not be all that complex or sophisticated; remember this is America in the information age and not Germany in the 1930's.
 
Keeping your kids out of school and protesting this address is comical.  For one people should be more concerned with what is in the text books and the agenda of the school administrators and teachers then the president, we all know what he is about.  If 30 minutes with him on TV is that dangerous there would be no opposition to him or his ideas by now.  We need to expose our kids to different points of view and arguments so they can begin to learn how decisions and opinions are formed and voiced publically. 
 
We should not be up in arms on this address.  We should only act after the address and only if the message is inappropriate or somehow improper.  Obama seems to be just as polarizing as Bush, and for that he continues to play the part of the anti-Bush he so loves and craves.  I remember in college how distraught and upset all the liberals were in my department after the Patriot Act was passed, we were in the library science department.  People knew I was a veteran and a staunch conservative and would flat out say 'Bush is not my President, I didn't vote for him'.  I hear the same thing from some hard line GOP people today, so I have to ask them 'who then is your president, how is he passing his agenda to the nation?'.  For better or worse Obama in America's President.  We don't have to agree with him on everything, or even most things.  He is however the will of the voters, for now, and we are stuck with him for 3 and a half more years.  Now I may not agree with his policies or things he is doing and trying to do to the nation, however I can still give him the benefit of the doubt on his official duties until after the fact, for if he messes up, or makes an astronomical error, in my opinion, then I will call it like I see it.  Thus far I have been critical of Obama on things he has either done, said he was going to do, or set forth in motion events that will result in things I do not agree with.  This is the difference, I can give him the benefit of the doubt on things he has not demonstrated a violation of my trust in yet.  He wants to make education a priority in the nation.  Until I hear or discover his exact plans I will give him the preverbal line to do with what he wants, if he miss uses it and ends up out in left field, well I will call it like it is then.  So chill out and let's see what he is going to say to the kids today.  Remember his comments will not ring as truth as much as what the teachers are doing to the kids for 8 hours a day.