Cutting Military Benefits

Mark Noonan14 Comments

I’m posting this from a former ship mate of mine – we served together on board the USS Conolly way back when.  Joe became a lifer dog, of course, while I got out after four years – but that just puts him in an even better position to understand these things. 

Sorry if this offends anyone but I feel I need to post it.

Mr. President and US Senate,

I just want to say, Thank you , and You are welcome for the service of my self and my brothers in arms, who sacrificed 20+ years of our lives, enduring years of deployments out of CONUS assignments, 24+ hour days in conditions most Americans would consider not fit for an animal to work in, endless hours of waiting for the next order to get underway or move out, the letters from our families that state they miss us, don’t want to worry us, but we are not sure if we can make the rent this month or the light bill, least of all the grocery bill. Thank you.
We left our families on a moments notice to engage an enemy, right a wrong, supply disaster relief, chase an unseen enemy for months on end during the cold war, to protect embassy’s against people who hate us, but need us there to make sure the relief money keeps rolling in from the US, and keep the Sea lanes open, air space free, and our shore lines protected from those that would want to cause us harm. We did it because we love this country.
We did it for you and for our fellow Americans because we felt it was a our duty to give back to this great country for all that was given to us. All we asked for was a paycheck (and that was not much: most of us qualified for food stamps and public housing, but we were to proud to apply for it, and actually at times forbidden to apply, so as not to embarrass the US Government with the fact we were so poorly paid), and for the vision of the retirement we were promised, when we finished.
Now the comments coming from Washington are that we have to give it away because we really don’t need it, if we are of working age.
Pleased can you explain to me why you let welfare run rampant with fraud and do nothing, why you let SSDI run rampant with fraud and do nothing, why you let Medicare and Medicaid run rampant with fraud and do nothing. Why are you giving cell phones and calling plans away for nothing, public housing availability without drug testing, and the list goes on and on.  Yet when it comes to the Military who daily put, and are to this very second, place or have placed their lives on the line.  Please Sirs, let me know why, you feel it is ok to take from us, to cut back on what we were promised, because you consider it an “entitlement”, yet other entitlements are off limits.
To the citizens of this country, Thank you from the bottom of my heart for the opportunity o serve and defend this great country. To the US Government thank you showing your gratitude for all that we did for you, time and time again. By stating it is my duty to give back so that others may take what they did not earn, and in a lot of cases do not want to earn.

I love this country and what it stands for, I will defend it to my death, gladly and without hesitation, all over again if asked.

God Bless America and those that have defended and those that continue to do so.

Leo P Leonard Jr. RMCS(SW) USN Retired
Richard W. Schuerch Jr. BTC USN Disabled Vet
Joseph J. LaPenna Jr. OSCS(SW) USN Retired

That Second Hand Smoke Thing? Yeah, it Was BS

Mark Noonan19 Comments

From Reason:

Several years ago I was talking to an epidemiologist who is skeptical of the idea that smokers pose a mortal threat to people in their vicinity. Although he supported workplace smoking bans, he was frustrated by the willingness of so many anti-tobacco activists and public health officials to overlook or minimize the weakness of the scientific case that secondhand smoke causes fatal illnesses such as lung cancer and heart disease. He wondered when it would be possible to have a calm, rational discussion of the issue, one in which skeptics would not be automatically dismissed as tools of the tobacco industry. I suggested that such a conversation might take place once smoking bans became ubiquitous, at which point the political stakes would be lower. Judging from a recent article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, headlined “No Clear Link Between Passive Smoking and Lung Cancer,” that conversation may have begun.

The article describes a large prospective study that “confirmed a strong association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer but found no link between the disease and secondhand smoke.” The study tracked more than 76,000 women, 901 of whom eventually developed lung cancer. Although “the incidence of lung cancer was 13 times higher in current smokers and four times higher in former smokers than in never-smokers,” says the JNCI article, there was no statistically significant association between reported exposure to secondhand smoke and subsequent development of lung cancer…

This is what I knew from the get-go: it was always nonsense to think that second hand smoke was a huge killer – or even a risk, at all.  Certainly no more of a risk than going outside on a smoggy day in Los Angeles and just breathing.  The amount of tobacco smoke a person would inhale via second hand smoke – even if they lived with a smoker – would be so tiny as to be inconsequential as a health risk. Remember, even for very heavy smokers, not all of them get lung cancer – smoking increases the risk of cancer, but it isn’t a 1 for 1 thing.  If you smoke, it doesn’t mean that smoking will kill you.

Hopefully this will open up a debate – and get us away from the idiot idea that smoking is some sort of massively hideous thing which needs to be banned.  Smoking is just a thing you can do – like eating cheeseburgers or having a coke.  Not the healthiest choice.  Not something any doctor would recommend, but it is something to do – for pleasure.  You know, to enjoy life.  Probably be better if all of us smokers ditched the cigarettes and switched over to pipes as we’d probably end up smoking far less (and mostly smoking much higher quality tobacco), but its still just one of the pleasures of life that someone may engage in.  And like all things in life, there is a risk involved.  Of course, the rule is, “eat right, exercise, die anyway”.  Main thing to remember about life is that no one gets out of it alive.  At some point certain, in a more or less painful manner, we will all exit this world.  And if before I go I can have a smoke, that’ll make it more pleasant than going, as I must, without a smoke.

Monday Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Today is the 69th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Bulge.  Hitler’s last – and monumentally stupid – last gamble for victory in the Second World War…but showing that even an idiot, cornered, can still cause grief.  We lost 19,500 dead in five weeks of battle.  We lost 4,486 over the 9 years of the Iraq campaign.  Some times, it does seem like we’re living in a different country.  That we simply don’t have the courage and the leadership we once had.  Its not that anyone is stupider – or more or less likely to make mistakes (the Battle of the Bulge was so costly mostly because of American mistakes, after all) – but that we don’t have the grit and determination to carry a thing to a conclusion.  I wonder, given our current leadership (and this is not a slam at Obama, per se; he’ll be gone in the by and by – this is a concern about the whole lot of them, military and civilian from top to bottom) if we ever can or will fight a battle to a finish?

Looks like we might be partnering up with al-Qaeda in Syria.  More of that “smart diplomacy”.

Spanish government, faced with protests, proposes anti-protest law.  That will work well.

A judge has ruled that NSA spying violates the 4th Amendment.  Obama, if he were reached for comment, would say, “who cares?”.  Its not like he’s obeying any of those tiresome, old amendments anyways.

Slow-witted, hack Democrat woman Senator endorses equally slow-witted, hack Democrat woman for President.

The President still hasn’t signed up for ObamaCare.

Hope you are all having an excellent Holiday season – as for me, I’m enjoying Christmas time.

What Media Bias? Part 196

Mark Noonan27 Comments

A story in the New Republic about western reporters self-censoring themselves in China:

The visa question has insidious ways of sowing the seeds of self-censorship,” Dorinda Elliott, the global affairs editor at Condé Nast Traveler, wrote on ChinaFile last month. “I am ashamed to admit that I personally have worried about the risk of reporting on sensitive topics, such as human rights lawyers: what if they don’t let me back in?” Elliott is a longtime China hand who worked as Newsweek’s Beijing bureau chief in the late 1980s. “My decision to not write that story—at least not yet—proves that I am complicit in China’s control games,” she continued. “After all, there are plenty of other interesting subjects to pursue, right?”

The most shocking thing about Elliott’s statement is its honesty. Western journalists are not supposed to make any concessions to China, and even when they do, they rarely admit it. Many people were thus horrified by recent reports that Matt Winkler, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, spiked an investigative piece about one of China’s richest men out of fear of offending the government. (Winkler denied killing the piece and said it is still under consideration.)

People are understandably angry about the Bloomberg reports, but they shouldn’t be surprised. This is all part of a larger story. China may force some two dozen correspondents from The New York Times and Bloomberg News to leave the country by the end of the year, apparently in response to their investigative reports on the familial wealth of the Chinese leadership. “Chinese officials have all but said that American reporters know what they need to do to get their visas renewed: tailor their coverage,” The New York Times wrote. On Thursday, Vice President Joseph Biden, who was visiting Beijing, said he had “profound disagreements” with China’s “treatment of U.S. journalists.” As China more harshly intimidates foreign reporters, incidents of Western self-censorship will only increase. Bloomberg is not the first case, and it will not be the last…

Not the first case, indeed.  In fact, self-censoring is something that journalists are actually rather prone to do.  There are two reasons a reporter/editor will self-censor:

1.   They back a particular policy/party/politician and don’t wish to cause any trouble.

2.  They fear that reporting the truth will result in a denial of access to a particular party or politician.

For China, it is the latter that is operational – reporters and editors are worried that if they report the unvarnished truth about China (which is pretty bad, all the way down) then the Chinese government will deny them access to China and so they won’t be able to further report on China from first-hand knowledge.  It amazes me that this is even an issue – if I were a reporter or editor, I would report the truth as best as I could and if I got kicked out, I’d file one, last first-hand report about China indicating I was kicked out for telling the truth and then, whenever I reported about China from second-hand sources, I’d point out that the only way anyone can be reporting from China is if they are willing accomplices of the Chinese government in suppressing the truth.  This doesn’t mean no useful information will come out of China, but it would show that everything from China should be taken with a grain of salt and that my competitors who remain in China are just hacks shilling for a corrupt and inhuman oligarchy.  I’d take that as a badge of honor.  I guess having badges of honor, though, doesn’t commend itself to reporters and editors these days.

I bring this up because it shows that in the slew of “news” we get each and every day, this has to be taken in to consideration: are the reporters and editors playing a double game?  We see it all the time, after all, with American MSM reporting on Obama – they both support Obama and are fearful of losing access to Obama, and so they tailor their reporting (with a very, very few shining exceptions) to please Obama.  Generally, to get to the truth about Obama, we have to take Obama statements and news reports and then dig around to see how they square with the truth (and almost invariably, they don’t).

The fundamental weakness of the MSM lies in the fact that they are not devoted to the truth – the objective truth.  They don’t, in fact, believe that such a thing exists.  Given this, it is natural that they will craft their reporting in the manner which best advances the MSM, itself.  The MSM wants a Chinese bureau and if the price of getting and keeping it is to downplay negative reports and some times put out a puff piece on China, then they’ll do it.  The MSM wants Obama to be a success and if the price of Obama’s success is to conspire with Obama to suppress the truth and slander the opposition, then that is hardly anything which can be thought of as a “price” to be paid for Obama’s success.

The bottom line is to presume that anything which comes over the transom is not 100% correct.  Don’t assume its all a lie – somewhere deep down inside the truth does exist; but don’t take it at face value.  Question everything which is stated as fact – find a second or third source, if at all possible (but, be wary!, there are kook sites out there which will use an MSM lie merely to advance the credibility of a kook site lie…”see, the MSM is lying about “Aspect A” of the situation, therefore my absurd claim about situation is correct!”).  Understand that the MSM is not on your side – they are first and foremost on their own side (so they’ll lie to please China so they can keep their bureau open in China), secondly on the side of liberalism in general (so they’ll lie to protect Obama and the Democrat party).

It is my hope that eventually a group of wealthy genuine conservatives will found a new, media empire – with standard-fare television, television news, internet and print news; all with an absolute commitment to truth above all, regardless of whom is offended.  That will be the day when we really slay the beast of falsehood which has stalked and disturbed our land for a century.

Burger-Flipper Economics 101

Leo Pusateri106 Comments

Exploitation?
Really???

These people say they “deserve” $15 per hour. They are ENTITLED to it.

Contrary to what the populist Chairman Obamao bloviates, it’s not about what people “deserve.” It’s about what value people bring to the market– what set of skills they bring to the table and how marketable and valuable that skill set is.

People who can flip burgers or keep a menu straight are a dime a dozen. That doesn’t make them bad or inferior as people, it’s just that there are many, many people with that skill set who can fill that position.

If someone is terminated or quits a burger flipper position, the pool of people who possess and/or can be easily trained for that skill set is enormous. That position can be easily filled.

People who can successfully manage and run a restaurant and its finances have a different skill set. Though they are still ubiquitous in number, they are fewer in number than the burger flippers. They get paid a little higher, because people with the more specialized skill set are higher in demand.

People who can do neurosurgery, or for that matter who can play ball at the major league level, are very few in number–they bring an esoteric skill set– they are very few in number, and very, very few people can fill their shoes if they leave.

A higher wage is commanded by such people, because of the value they bring, like rare, fine diamonds– they are higher in price because they aren’t found everywhere. The market screams for such talent, yet such talent is so rare, that the talent must be compensated well in order to keep that talent.

It’s basic market economics, people!

QUESTION: How many of you think fast food workers deserve 15 dollars and hour????
QUESTION: How many of you think fast food workers “deserve” 15 dollars an hour????

New Rule for Dealing With Liberal Stories

Mark Noonan82 Comments

Recently we had a story claiming that a gay server was denied a tip because the family was a pack of homophobic bigots as well as a story about an alleged poor woman who essentially had to live like an idiot because of the bad, mean, nasty way America treats poor people.  There were two commonalities in these stories:

1.  They supported the liberal narrative about the United States (we’re just bad, bad people) and so were embraced and spread widely by liberals.

2.  They were complete nonsense.

The people who did the actual perpetration of the stories were likely just con artists who knew their target audiences.  For the first story (the gay server denied a tip) it was probably an attempted replay of an earlier story claimed by a black woman of being denied a tip by racists, and she picked up a pack of money from sympathetic people. For the poor woman, it appears a more straight-forward scam: she was asking for people to help her out financially and appears to have succeeded (at least temporarily) in picking up a bucket of money.  The con artists aside, what this tells us about the left is that they will readily believe anything as long as it confirms them in their world view.  There is no bit of nonsense too absurd for them – think about it: they actually believed that someone would (a) find out what sexual orientation their server was and then (b) go out of their way to insult the server.  The left bought it because it confirmed their view that Christians are just hateful bigots who go out of their way to insult people of different views.

The left will never cease to be suckers about this sort of thing.  There seems to be some sort of malfunction in the liberal brain – while some can start to think (and thus wind up as Libertarians or Conservatives), most of them never seem to form a single, independent thought in their lives.  But there is a lesson for us on the right:  whenever you hear a story which tends to confirm the liberal narrative about life in the United States, our first and best course of action is to presume it is a lie.  Don’t go out on a limb and definitely call it a lie, but you’ll be safe if you immediately search for holes in the story and start pointing them out.  As for the gay server thing, I saw that on a liberal website some weeks ago and immediately pointed out that it is highly unlikely that a group of patrons would know the sexual orientation of their server – so even if they were a pack of hideous homophobes, they would not likely have opportunity to give vent to their all-consuming hatred.  The story seemed false from day one for me – but the comments from the liberals were all shocked and hurt about how this hateful thing had happened and applause for the “courage” of the gay server (with no explanation of how it is courageous to be untipped).

It could be, from time to time, that in a nation of 317 million people that a set of circumstances will occur which confirms some part of the liberal narrative.  The law of averages does work that way – but the plain facts are that the United States is not a racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-immigrant nation.  We are not cruel to the poor, nor indifferent to the plight of those who suffer.  We are tolerant and mostly very polite about things and don’t give vent to our feelings for the most part (and in some cases, it would be better if we did).  We’re pretty nice people, all in all.  And, so, the chances of there being a true story confirming liberalism are very, very small.  When confronted with such stories – demand proof; independent verification and always keep a few links of liberal BS stories handy to slam back liberals who claim that this story is sure to be true.

Global Warming Hoax Update

Mark Noonan2 Comments

Interesting:

Critics of those who claim that man-made global warming is a serious threat to the planet and settled science frequently point to the fickleness of scientists on the issue, noting that in the 60s and 70s scientists were warning of just the opposite. It now appears the critic’s claims may have merit as a new consensus is beginning to once again return to the global cooling model…

Of course, this won’t stop our liberals – they’ll just say  its “climate change” and that it’s still all the fault of humans, especially Americans.

The bottom line of all this, however, is what I’ve been saying for years:  we don’t know what is exactly happening with the climate because our data are insufficient; if the world is warming (or, as it turns out, cooling) we simply do not know the primary culprit; finally, if it is changing and even if it is our fault, there’s not much we can do to stop it at this point so we’re just going to have to adapt to changing conditions…as life on this Earth has done again and again over the ages.

The reason I’ve called it a hoax is not because it is impossible for our climate to be changing, but because a hoax is a con…and people are trying to con us out of or wealth and our liberty.  This is, bottom line, a mere attempt by self-selected “leaders” to take charge of all aspects of our lives…and for these leaders to live very well while dictating to the rest of us.  It is just one in a very, very long line of scams.

How Liberal Is Obama?

Matt Margolis64 Comments

Anyone who is familiar with Obama’s record the past 5 years knows he’s a partisan liberal. Obama claims not to be ideological, but then again, he said we could keep our insurance plans if we liked them.

A piece today from the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza looks at the question on how liberal Obama is, looking at analyses of both his absurdly short time in the U.S. Senate, and his horrible failure tenure in the White House.

The analysis of Obama’s presidential record comes from VoteView, a website you’ve never heard of, and probably won’t ever look at again. It comes this bizarre conclusion about Obama:

We find that President Obama is the most ideologically moderate Democratic president in the post-war period, with a first dimension DW-NOMINATE Common Space score of -0.329. President Lyndon Johnson, the second-most moderate Democratic president in this period, has a score of -0.345. President Obama’s ideological position is estimated from his “votes” (statements of support or opposition) on 282 congressional roll call votes. This amount is somewhat low; for example, President George W. Bush “voted” 453 times during his last term in office. However, it is adequate to recover his latent ideological score.

The following graph paints a visual picture of the ideological bents of each president since Truman:

presidential_square_waveSo, according to this analysis, we have to believe the following:

  • That Obama is more moderate than the tax-cutting, anti-Communist, strong on defense, “Ask not what your country can do for you,” JFK.
  • That Obama is more moderate than Bill Clinton, who actually worked with Republicans, even signed the balanced budget the Republican Congress passed.
  • That George W. Bush was actually more conservative than Ronald Reagan.
  • That Democrat presidents have remained roughly consistent ideologically, while Republican presidents have generally become more partisan

Yes, you would have to believe all of those things to swallow Voteview’s analysis. It would be easier for an adult to believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. I’m not really sure why there’s such a strong effort to paint Obama as a more moderate than he really is in spite of his real record.

I’m reminded of an oft repeated claim by liberal Democrats that Obamacare, as it is, is in fact, a conservative alternative to a truly left-wing single-payer healthcare system. Would they have similarly argued that Bush’s tax cuts were the liberal alternative to the bigger tax cuts signed by John F. Kennedy? I would highly doubt that.

Filibuster Follies

Mark Noonan31 Comments

As for the filibuster, itself, I am just not that concerned.  After all, the real mutilation of the Senate came when we started to elect Senators by poplar vote instead of through the State legislators. The Senate is supposed to be the representative of the States, as sovereign institutions – by making the election of Senators direct, we simply turned the Senate in to a smaller, more exclusive House of Representatives.  If anyone wants to restore the Senate to its ancient glory, I’m all with you and let’s set about repealing the 17th Amendment.  But, still, this is a change – and a permanent one.  While the filibuster still technically exists in certain cases, it is in fact a dead letter…any time a Senate minority attempts to use it, the Senate majority will just do away with it, as Harry Reid’s majority just did.

The only thing I can find as a reason for this end of the filibuster is a desire on the part of Democrats to pack the courts with as little fuss as possible – especially the DC Court as it is in charge of dealing with regulatory matters.  Democrats want smooth sailing for whatever Obama and minions say in regulating our lives in to the ground, and this is their way to get it.  Seems a bit short-sighted, though – not a very good reason for giving up the filibuster, especially as Democrats are in grave danger of losing their majority in the 2014 mid-terms (I figure its 50/50 the GOP will win the necessary 6 seats…but even if we don’t in 2014, we will eventually have a Senate majority again, and Democrats will be rather backs against the wall).

And when we have a full Congressional majority and control of the White House, then the Democrats will feel the full force of their mistake.  No longer will the basic premises of Big Government reign supreme because it takes 60 votes to close off debate.  No longer will one or two RINOs be able to ensure that the legislative desires of the GOP are blocked.  All it will take, with a GOP President, is a mere 50 GOP Senators to agree, and our will is law…end of the Department of Education; end of the Department of Energy; and so on.  218 House members, 50 Senators, one President with a Vice President to break the tie in the Senate.  That is not a very high bar.  100 years of Progressive politics can now be undone in a few months.  To be sure, a returned Democrat majority can attempt to re-cobble it all together again…but after four or five years without it, it might not be politically possible to do.  And the certainty is that whatever is done can be easily undone.  And if Progressive politics are in bad odor then a non-Progressive campaign reminding the people that a victory for the left means mere re-imposition of the things we just got rid of, then the non-Progressive side will win.

It could be that when the history of our times are written, it will be revealed that Obama and Reid did away with the filibuster simply because they were frustrated they couldn’t immediately get 100% of their way…that they gutted their own protection because they simply didn’t want to get 90% of their desires.  If so, then it will be just another bit of proof that whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.