Who pays?

The "health care" bill has passed in the Senate. To whose benefit? As always, fast forward to the final line:

"The bill includes tax increases on insurance companies, medical device makers, patients electing to undergo cosmetic surgery and drugmakers."

So, let's get this straight - the insurance companies are going to "eat" the new tax? Right! Maybe those who make medical devices will elect to "eat" the tax increases? Right! No, I know, it'll be the drugmakers! They will, naturally "eat" the new taxes! Right!

People who were burned in a fire and need skin grafts. Well, they are only people, so they WILL pay taxes. Those guys I feel for.

As always, it is NOT the companies that will pay these new taxes, but the consumers. AND, if the taxes are 5%, the companies will raise their prices 10%. If the taxes are 30%, the companies will raise their prices 60%. And blame the government.

Don't we all?

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"Stupid"

Obama has done many things to make me sad, but this one has me angry at him. He was 100% correct in calling the police racist and stupid earlier this week. Now it's all over the news saying he regrets saying it.

Why? Because stupid racists are mad at him for saying it? Stick to your guns on something - this was too obviously stupid & racist, why back down? So far he's backed down on getting out of Iraq, and has raised the stakes way high in Afghanistan, has bac-pedaled on what the citizens and doctors of our country overwhelmingly want in favor of the profits, has even one and bought a car company for tax payers that we didn't want, but will accept the day they give every american family a free electric car. You KNOW the CEO of GM gets a free car as a benefit. Now we are the owners of the company, but we won't see any perks. We can have socialized car building without the perks, but we can't have socialized medicine because some stupid insurance companies need to make a profit.

Ah, heck with it. The man can't even hold firm with stupid racist cops, how can we expect him to hold firm against the military and the insurance comapny profit machines?

Yes

Too quiet.. US troops are in Afghanistan because . . .

I've been quiet about Obama for two reasons. First, he needs his 100 days to stop campaigning and start getting to work. Second, he's making too dang many mistakes every day for me to even start talking about. I'd be talking all day.

He's busy this week trying to convince us his budget is smart. He's not convincing me. I do love the fact that he's not trying to sweep the cost of the wars we are engaged in under the rug any longer, and including them in the budget. That's a plus. But it's also a minus. Because the budget doesn't answer the question: Why are US troops in Afghanistan? Click on the link and you'll find that Google found two answers, neither of which are from the government or the military. In fact, the answers are from people like you and me that really do not know the answer.

Obama ran on making a change and being open. He's making a change - sending more troops to Afghanistan. But he's not being open about the reasons he wants more American soldiers killed there. Ask all your friends and strangers you meet for the next few days. Their answers will be no better or worse than the answers on the two pages Google can find, really lame answers.

The best answer I heard this week when I asked that question was "to keep the price of heroin low". I checked, and turns out that's true - more heroin is leaving afghanistan than ever before, bringing supplies way up and costs way down. Interesting, but still not excuse enough to have one more death of an American because he was ordered to go.

I really love the answer by one of the regular folks that says: because we are part of NATO. North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Anyone looked at a map lately?

Wanna talk economy? No, neither do I. Gotta be rich to get bailed out, that's the lesson of both Bush & Obama. Republican, Democrat. It doesn't really matter. Just don't ask how the money is getting into their pockets and we'll be at peace. I was very sad to hear of protesters being arrested last week. Obama promised to bring change and listen to people. I guess his definition of people is different than ours.

Future taxes (handout aka bailout) vrs forward thinking

In the US our government is using future taxpayer mnoney (from my grandchildren, basically) to make a few extremely rich people even richer in what they are calling "bail-outs". It's a smoke-screen, and most citizens know it, but we are are not going to start a revolution, so the rich will stay rich and the middle class will become poor. Such is life.

It does intrigue me, however, that there are companies that refuse to participate in the bail-out (actually hand-out), and think more of reality. I love this from the guy running HP:

In fact when it comes to the economic downturn, Mr Banerjee said it is not a major focus of concern.

"We are not looking at the recession," he told the BBC. "We are looking at investment in technology for the long term so that HP is fully prepared to provide its customers with a variety of choices when we get out of the recession.

"Innovation is not for the next quarter, it is for the next two years, five years from now. The key is to invest in innovation that truly matters."

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The gig is up

Heh-heh. Yep, we're smart all right. Let's see. Two days ago some satellites collided in space. No biggie, life happens. Today two nuclear subs collide in the ocean. Yep, we're high-tech all right.

Last week a truck accidentally cut an optic cable running across the road outside the school. Nothing lost, but no net access for a few days.

Heard something similar happened in the Mediterranean a month ago, but that took out a lot more than a school building.

Yep, we're high tech. Hey! No mare TV starting tomorrow, right? We are great!

Heard that Korea s begging for us to attack. HA! And the President announced again that he's still going to support all the Bush policies, and can't figure out why the Republicans won't back him. Heck, they started it all.

Oops, wait, I just remembered. Gore started the Internet. Tax, that is.

Oh Well

It's always a dream, I guess - hoping the new boss is different than the old boss. So far Obama has reneged on every promise that I cared about (closing the Cuban prison, ending torture, revamping the budget, and most importantly ending the war). He's carrying on with Bushes plans in all these areas instead of stepping forward with "Bold New Plans". I'm disappointed, but not surprised.

I love the line "I inherited a trillion dollar deficit". So, what's the answer? "Double It!" If the deficit makes things bad for the country, then dang it, let's show that we can make it twice as bad.

The bail-out was a joke when Bush suggested it AND got it through congress- a minor miracle in itself. Obama, instead of negating the bailout, said, Hey! These guys deserve $500,000 a year, let's bail them out some more." The fun part, of course, is they ca simply change their job titles and steal more than $500,000 from the coffers; but that's another story.

Another fun line is "the economists are telling me this is the best way". HA! He shoulda talked to my mom, his mom, anyone's mom. Spending money you do not have is never "the best way". The only people who think this is the best way are people who think the system is going to collapse anyway, "so here's our last chance to get out with our pockets filled with someone else's money".

The only thing he's honest about that I can see is the promise that the next few years will be hard on the poor and middle class. What's sad is those are the folks whose votes he courted. Typical.

I was hoping he'd end the war in 10 days, close Guantanamo in one day, put bush & cheney on trial for war crimes - set an example to future despots that war crimes will be labeled correctly by the United States of America, that he'd jail the mortgage bankers who cheated and lied to their customers, and take the failing companies whose workers have always starved while the bosses partied hearty and turn the companies over to the workers to run. Autos can be built without bureaucrats. In fact, everything that has ever been built has been built without bureaucrats - the workers build it, the bureaucrats have profited from their labor.

He should have stood up and declared the failed No Child Left Behind act as a failure. Instead, he's promising to reform it. A guy with his education should have learned somewhere along the line that you cannot reform failure. Simply closing the Department of Education and returning the responsibility of educating back to educators would have been wisdom.

And on and on I go, same old arguments - some of which Obama accepted when he was a candidate, and has now rejected. His children are now in private school, his goal has been reached. Everything else can be forgotten now.

Oh well.