No pink toed tarantulas here

Sad to see that the public option didn't make it through the first round and you can lodge your complaints with these republidems who voted against it. With millions of dollars being slid into their pockets they really are whores bought and paid for. If you live in a state with one of these slime drop them a fax or call or you can go to their web site and leave an email.

AUCUS: Phone: (202) 224-2651 Fax: (202) 224-9412
LINCOLN: Phone: (202) 224-4843 Fax: (202) 228-1371
CONRAD: Phone: (202) 224-2043 Fax: (202) 224-7776
NELSON: Phone: (202) 224-5274 Fax: (202) 228-2183
CARPER: Phone: (202) 224-2441 Fax: (202) 228-2190

A big hat tip to the notorious Political Cat for his handy paw work on this.

Wondering down the financial road

I was going to do something on Glen Beck but thought the wiser. Why waste precious bits and byte space on a clown like that? But briefly I hear Sarah Palin's book may come out in a short. What's that you say about 100 monkeys typing? (wasn't that the name of a blog?)

There's Bernie Madoff doing his 149 years in prison and those in charge of his case trying to find what's left of the $65 billion. Where did you hide all that money Bernie? They only found a couple hundred million from your houses and boats etc. They know some of that money was paid out to the first in line. Your relatives say that they don't know what happened to the money wink wink, nod nod. Sure we believe that when your boys were the ones overseeing the piggy bank. And speaking of some of the ones who beat it out first with a bag full of loot, I just know you could provide a 900% return on an investment you're just that kind of a whiz kid financial guru.
So let that be a lesson to all investers out there. On rare occasions an investment will pay some outragious return. I once hit 45% on a mutual fund but that happened for about a week before the fund took a nose dive and within a few short months was losing money. At present you'd have had better luck putting your nest egg under the mattress and lost nothing. People are worrying about rampent inflation but we're no where near getting to that point. Housing prices were up slightly in July but don't get your hopes up because there still a ton of foreclosures hidden in the banks books. A ton of mortgages haven't been rewirtten and there's the option and Alt-A loans to work through the system. I stumbled upon the foreclosure notices in the local newspaper the other day (no I wasn't looking at the obits!). In years past you'd see maybe 5 or 6 notices. Last week I counted 60!
I see a few green shoots of construction here and there but mostly minor repair work. Once again the round of calls to local construction companies resulted in nothing. No work. My question, why did they wait so long to release money for road work when they know the season is very short? Nothing came out until July 1 which is right about the middle of construction season. And even then they were hesitant to get the jobs going.
Maybe I could get work making bullets. I hear there's a shortage and they can't make em fast enough. Or maybe make anti Obama bumper stickers. I hear they suckered 2000 rednecks into buying them for $30 a piece. Dang $60 grand for a weekends work not bad. I see they're coming out with an Obama chia pet. That's it he's imortal now. Now if I could just come up with a scheme where you have to opt out or pay me $5 I'd have it made. But no I won't put one of those donate buttons or ads on this site. That's crass comercialism and I'd have to watch my P & Qs.

The road to wellness

In doing a little research into our health care situation or should I call it the disaster it is, I wondered how it was that all other industrialized nations on the planet were able to provide health care to their entire populations without them worrying about grandma getting capped. It seems years ago long before any economic bubbles and bursts countries took it upon themselves to come up with a slightly different tax system. The VAT or value added tax was put in place to pay for things like health care and education. Simply put when a supplier of a part or material sells it to the manufacturer of a good sold to a consumer each step of the process gets taxed as it's value increases. The odd thing as I see it is that as that tax gets passed along the manufacturing chain and the next in line gets a credit against the tax that was added. So in the end each piece in the chain is paying a little bit to the government in taxes. This VAT is in addition to the state or provincial sales tax on an item. Food and medical items are exempt. This VAT on goods runs between 5% to as high as 25% for everyone in the industrialized world. There are exceptions and reductions for certain items. This would be much like write offs for business and mortgage deductions in our income tax code.
The only thing I don't like about this system is that it would require business to do extensive accounting of all the products they produce. It would become a nightmare for a company producing thousands of products like a small parts manufacturer. But the concept of adding some type of tax to pay for healthcare would sure solve a bunch of problems. Now you might be thinking just what we need more taxes. But consider it this way. If we get the insurance monkey that's getting bigger by the year off corporate Americas' back and ours as well by spreading the costs over a broader area it would work as it has in so many other countries.

At a 5% rate it would cost the average wage earner around $400 per year. Those making less than $20,000 could get a rebate or exemption. Then there's the inequities when our companies export to countries with a VAT. U.S. companies must pay that VAT to a foreign government while most foreign governments have exemptions for exports by their companies. But don't have too much sympathy for our companies as they have been hiding corporate profits by avoiding paying their fair share of taxes with off shore dummy companies. A receptionist in a small office in the Cayman Islands does not count as an over seas division of a company. Once we can work out some of these little details can all the hidden money come out to fund health care.

Ghouls

The ghoul is a desert-dwelling, shapeshifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal, especially a hyena. It lures unwary travellers into the desert wastes to slay and devour them. The creature also preys on young children, robs graves, drinks blood, and eats the dead taking on the form of the one they previously ate. Because of the latter habit, the word ghoul is sometimes used to refer to an ordinary human such as a grave robber, or to anyone who delights in the macabre.

I KNEW IT! THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!




HA and you came here expecting a nice beaver.

taking on the form of the one they previously ate

Watch out Barack keep away from John.

Blast you Graves!

Randal that is. He got me thinking about zombies with one of his esoteric pieces. One thing lead to another and here I am posting about it. And you know when you look for a photo to match that could take hours as you're lead through a labyrinth of blogs and myspace pages getting sidetracked in information you never thought about since college. Now where was I? Oh yes it was Graves contention that zombies eat rice-a-roni which may be true I've never really studied them. It must be a side dish as I know their main diet is human flesh. Of course he had to mention that through the powers of science or should I say the mistakes of science that there are 50ft sharks. See image below



Now come to find out that scientists are studying zombies.
In their study, the researchers from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University (also in Ottawa) posed a question: If there was to be a battle between zombies and the living, who would win?
Good thing these are Canadians and not our sane American scientists who have better things to waste time on like cross breading tomatoes with god knows what to probably get something that will eat insects and weeds and jump into the collection basket at harvest time.

Then there's the issue of ghouls

But I think I'll save that for another day. Hey it's not even Halloween yet even though the retailers are heading into the Christmas push.

Health care reform

Republican style

Not that this post has anything to do with health care I just liked that photo from the movie Invisible Invaders.

I see we get yet another extension on unemployment thanks to our state senator Jim McDermitt. Thanks Jim. Call me stupid but wouldn't it be smarter to actually use that money to have us actually do something like repair the nation's infrastructure? Here we sit growing mold while there's so much to be done. I've called around to find that there are some 500 electricians, 400 laborers and I'm sure several hundred carpenters who are out of work right now. Nobody is hiring. Most companies I've called are waiting for money to be spent. They all say the same things. We expect work soon but so far nothing. I see TGI Fridays just went out of business and Genie (they make boom and scissor lifts) took people right off the production line and sent them home today. The oil change place down the street from me went out just last week. And to top it all off Boeing laid off another 100. There's four people getting forclosed on in my neighborhood. So yeah things are getting worse before they get better. So if you have a job and are getting stressed because you may be working long hours quite your bitching. It could be worse.

As promised the big story is now out

From the Brad Blog

Some time back one Sibel Edmonds an FBI translator noticed that what she was translating were criminal acts by the Turkish government involving several sitting U.S. Congressmen. She was fired and gagged for several years by the Bush administration. The last time I checked criminal acts are not covered by the State Secrets Act or any other Executive priviledge.

So break out the popcorn and go have a read. But here's a little tease before you go:

The exclusive interview lays out the details of what can be described as nothing short of a national security cancer that has metastasized throughout the U.S. government, to the covert monetary, military, and strategic intelligence benefit of our allies and enemies alike.

Hat tip to Brad Friedman for all his hard work on this