Today The Healthcare Bill Fiasco Begins

I see that some insurance companies in California have decided that obeying the new Healthcare Law would be too expensive to insure children with pre-existing conditions – so they will stop insuring all children as required by the new law.

This is just one of the problems of the new law – the previously mentioned 1099 problem has still not been solved by Congress, because the President doesn’t want ANY changes, lest the changes lead to change, after change, after change until people actually realize that the entire 2,400 page fiasco is a disaster. (Which it is!)

The Democrats don’t want to be in a position where they tell insurance companies that they must offer insurance to children, not that the Democrats don’t believe the insurance company should, but with all of the charges of Marxism that requirement might cement the argument. What the Dems plan to do (if they can get the votes necessary after the November election) is to forbid those insurance companies that do not comply with their desires from competing for any future business. If they could, the Democrats would forbid insurance companies from also going out of business – but that is just one step too far for them, today.

The president does not want to see his bill pecked to death by ducks, and actually I agree. The only solution is to repeal the bill and try for something that the legislators have actually read!

Attack Cat

I wonder if anyone cares if I have an Attack Cat – but I do.

We have had about half a dozen dogs, all Boxers, and about a dozen cats in our 53 years of marriage – and everyone had a distinct personality but this is my first Attack Cat. We got him just six months ago from the Fallbrook Sanctuary and he is two or three years old. Unlike some cats, he really likes people and runs from none but approaches all visitors as an equal.

He is a playful Attack Cat – he is not viscous except in demeanor. He lurks under the dining room table, rushes out to jump my leg as I walk by – never breaking the skin but I can feel his teeth as he hits and rushes away before I can turn on him.

When I do sense his rush and wheel about, he can turn in mid-air, land short and rush back to a protective lair. It is an amazing thing to see, and of course there is no way I can catch that on my iPHONE video camera.

What I have captured is his exercise to build up his leg strength so that some day he can devour me – or that is my interpretation of the exercise.  He wants me to grab is tail (most un-cat like for those who don’t understand the species) and hold on while he tries to claw away. There seems to be no end to this exercise – he comes back again, and again, and again until I tire of the exercise. (No, I don’t know why it does not hurt him – my guess is that cats tails don’t hurt but they protect them because they may so easily get caught by predators.)

This cat runs – day and night – as fast and as far as he can for as long as he can – then collapses on the bed with us and purrs. I am convinced he is lulling us into a false sense of security while he builds his speed and muscle to devour us.

I’ll be ready for him.

Perhaps I am Crazy…

I guess I am just crazy, but the disclosure that Christine O’Donnell “dated” some guy in high school that took her to witchcraft meetings comes to me with a big “Whooop!”

High school? You are kidding me, right? High school?

Do you remember high school? Do you know a current high schooler? I just wish my kids had dabbled in witchcraft in high school compared to what they actually did!

I may be crazy — but I don’t think so.

Filed Under: Mexican Newspaper Waves the White Flag

Correo (Leon Guanajuato) 9-20-10

We want a truce

Cd. Juarez, Chihuahua – “Who wants to kill more reporters?” “Do we continue to publish the news or do we quit?” These are the questions El Diario presents to organized crime in its editorial page today.

In the editorial, El Diario de Juarez asks for a truce with criminal bands to stop the violence against journalists after the murder of El Diario reporter Luis Carlos Santiago last Thursday. There is still no progress in the investigation of the murder of El Diario reporter Armando Rodriguez after almost two years.

“To the Lords of the different groups who are disputing control over the City of Juarez: The loss of two reporters of this newspaper over the last two years represents an irreparable loss to all who work here and especially to their families,” reads the beginning of the editorial.

The text continues, “We are communicators, not advocates….We want you to explain what you expect of us….As of this moment, you are the de facto authority of this city because the legal institutions have no power over you and that is why our companions continue to die.”

“What do you want of us?” The editorial asks and states that they want no more (reporters) to die and no more intimidation.

Senator Ramon Galindo Noriega stated that the impunity under which the criminal organizations in Chihuahua operate, and especially in Cd. Juarez, is intolerable

http://correo-gto.com.mx/notas.asp?id=184777

This has been in the news a bit – not the Main Stream Media – but this is the first confirmation I have seen from a “reliable source” – a direct translation from the Mexican newspaper as published by M3  (http://www.nafbpo.org) an organization of retired Border Patrol Agents.

(They publish news from various Mexican newspapers nightly by e-mail and you can subscribe as I do on their website.)

Has Europe Learned their Lesson?

(Reuters) – The crash of Sweden’s long-ruling Social Democrats to their worst defeat since 1914 highlights the decline of socialist parties in much of Europe, drained by social change, economic crisis and the rise of new issues.

The re-election of a center-right Swedish government for the first time in modern history and the entry of a hard-right anti-immigrant party into parliament show how far the times have changed, even in social democracy’s north European heartland.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68J28520100920

This is a really good article for conservatives to read because it says this trend is sweeping Europe.

Just as President Obama moves toward Social democrats in Europe, they self destroy!

A Critical Mass

There is a new documentary in the works by the Director of An Inconvenient Truth, and you can tell it’s good because American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten is already trashing Waiting for Superman

“There are more than 3 million teachers working in our 130,000 public schools. Are there bad teachers? Of course there are, just as there are bad accountants, and lawyers, and actors. I wish there were none.”

Duh! The difference is that bad everythings get fired – but teachers don’t! In fact the very AFT president, Randi Weingarten, has been one of those union leaders manning the pass against the LA Times ranking of 6,000 teachers in 250 LA schools so the parents will know who the bad teachers are!

As I was typing this Blog, my wife , who never watches Oprah and certainly never tells me when she does – called me in to watch Oprah and Bill Gates discuss Waiting For Superman. Since I had already seen the trailer, which you can watch by clicking on the link above, what I learned is that apparently Time Magazine featured this movie on Sept. 8 of this year, and the movie opens on Friday of this week.

We can only hope that there is developing a critical mass of people who have had enough of this failed public school system

Book Report: “Packing for Mars’

Book Report: The book is “Packing for Mars” by Mary Roach, and it addresses the preparation of all space travel from the beginning, and the even greater knowledge and preparation necessary to send five or six people on a greater than two year zero gravity round-trip. This trip is on the drawing boards for 2030-2050 time frame so most of us will never see it, but the logistics are staggering, and the price mind-blowing – about $500 BILLION.

The book answers everything you ever wanted to know about the things you would never have asked about personal hygiene, food, elimination, self-pleasuring and even sex in space.

In many cases it may be TMI – “Too Much Information” – but if you are an “infomaniac” you will enjoy the exposure to things that you never knew and didn’t even know what, or to whom one should ask.

Because it is packaged in subject matter without having to follow either plot or characters, it is particularly useful as an episodic read.

Recommended.

There May Be Better Ways of “Doing the Right Thing.”

I have often opined that the main problem with our public school system is that the social revolution that freed women to pursue other professions than teaching has so weakend the teaching ranks as to totally disable the education system.

Our failure as a society to identify and compensate for this unintended consequence has severely damaged our society – and indeed continues the damage unabated because we still do nothing to compensate. Perhaps our primary method of compensation would be to abolish all schools of education and have both men and women who have advanced degrees in all professions, teach for several years in the area in which they are trained, qualified and experienced.

But that is not the subject of this piece. This piece is designed to ask if destroying the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy will cause a similar social dislocation in the military through another invocation of the Law of Unintended Consequence.

There is a national mood to do away with the DADT policy, but I would argue that the military is a niche operation that does not necessarily comport directly with “the national mood.’ It is argued that Gay Rights are accepted by the youth of today, but the military is not fueled by “the youth of today.” Its is fueled by a subset of youth – and that subset of youth may not (I don’t know – we all project our own feelings on everyone) accept the same ideals at the same time as the elite.

It is not the “feelings” of the Class President of the Rancho Bernardo Senior Class that makes any difference, nor even the football player at La Jolla High.

It is the football player in Skunk Hollow, Tennessee that is not going to a great California State school for four years that fuels the enlisted ranks of the military – and no one speaks for them. The elite who say that the youth accept open homosexuals in the ranks of the military don’t serve in the military.

They don’t know – and, neither do I. If we KNEW there would be no unintended consequences, but there are.

The argument that destroy the DADT policy and the troops will accept homosexuality in their ranks is being told to us by exactly the same people who told us that passing the recent Healthcare bill would cause the American public to immediately accept it.

There is an effort to pool the troops – but there is also an effort to destroy the DADT policy before the poll is completed because it is the right thing to do. Doing he right thing without examining the consequences has given us several generations of lower educated population.

Perhaps we need to examine our methodology of doing the right thing.

The Tea Party

Some years ago (2008) I opined in a newspaper column  that I was looking for competence in elected officials, not moral rectitude. I even conceded that, in spits of his personal foibles, Bill Clinton was a pretty successful president – particularly when compared to  Bush.

With the Tea Party, which of course is not a political party at all but a political movement, I am willing to go even further. I’ll accept almost any one who votes to get this nation back on its financial footing.

It is almost mantra for the Main Stream media to bas Republican candidate O’Donnell of tiny Delaware for her personal beliefs and her personal finances. My latest criteria is “How will she vote?”

If the Democrats can (and do) overlook the Lewinski scandal, and the Geithner IRS debacle, then we can overlook O’Donnell’s kooky moral approbations on masturbation and her IRS problems.

This nation is in financial peril, and I don’t much care if the candidate is (fill in the blank), if I can count on them to stop this headlong rush to financial ruin, because it will make no difference who promptly paid their taxes if no one has any money to pay any taxes!

This nation is on schedule for 1,200,000 foreclosures this year. Who hasn’t been hassled by the IRS, so I have some sympathy for O’Donnell. As to nutty ideas, I have published more than a few of mine over 30+ consecutive years of newspaper columns.

My brief with O’Donnell is that she is religiously driven, and I am not but I was once invited to a Moonie-sponsored conference. I explained I was an Atheist. They replied, “You are an ardent anti-Communist. After we have defeated Communism, then we can then discuss theology.’

And that is the way I feel about the Tea Party. I share with them the major theme of their protest: “Stop Increasing Taxes.” After that is over, then I realize that not all Tea Party members are on the Religious Right, but I am willing to discuss theology – or if necessary ally with others to defeat a potential Theocracy – but first we must address the “Clear and Present Danger.”

The American people have, in poll after poll, expressed their opposition to almost every one of the major planks of the Obama administration, but with the lemming-like support of the Democrats in Congress they have plowed on against the will of the people – on Obamacare, Cap and Trade, Immigration reform and unless this train is stopped, it will destroy even more.

I doubt the ability of Republicans to derail this (semi)(quasi)(pseudo) socialist movement without the passion generated by the Tea Party – after all the Republican establishment supported Murkowski’s in Alaska, and Castle in Delaware and the Christ in Florida. So far the Tea Party has had its major successes against Republicans in the Republican establishment, I seriously doubt the Republicans can win the Senate and the House – I would not be surprised if they won neither – but they will nevertheless blunt any further Obama excesses.

Real Estate and the Economy

The real estate market is not uniformly terrible, and the future is not uniformly bad – but the “good news” is equally spotty.

Foreclosures are up 25% between August 2009 and August 2010. We are looking at a rate of foreclosures this year that we will end the year with 1.2 million foreclosures – a new record. Banks are sitting on thousands of homes in San Diego they have in their inventory that they have not yet placed on the market because it would further depress the value of all homes – including the homes the banks already own!

And yet, homes continue to sell, and in San Diego County they sold (what few did sell) at increasingly higher prices. (Admittedly, the increases were minimal, and those dropped last month.)

My analysis is that the market will continue bad for a MINIMUM of two years and will be nothing to rave about for at least three years beyond that.

We have great interest rates, terrible lending policies, and nothing but higher inventories to look forward to in the foreseeable future. Our supply side is bleak, and the demand side is dependent upon the general economy recovering, and while there are internal pressures in every recession to do that just because of the dynamics of the market, this administration is doing everything wrong and suppressing the natural recovery pressures.

Everyone always thinks that when things are good they will go on good forever, and likewise when they are bad…but…

We will recover but there is more economic pain to endure between now and then. I believe that some of that pain is unnecessary and self-inflicted by our government but we will get through it, chalk it up to a “lesson Learned” and promptly forget it and have to learn it again.

I know from experience, that I can do nothing to turn around the real estate market and that even after the basics of the economy are sound that real estate will still suffer for many years with a built-up inventory it must eat through, so I am sanguine to enjoy my involuntary retirement and do a few transactions where they fall into my lap.

Others are not so fortunate…and it is not just real estate brokers and agents – but loan companies, and title insurance companies, and furniture companies and nurseries and landscapers and patio companies and pool companies and….

The “real estate” industry has many primary and secondary people – and they will all hurt until this economy recovers, and for years thereafter.