158: My JFK Observations

It was right after lunch in Miss Moral's sixth grade classroom.  Miss M had not come back yet.  Tom Snaider, the class clown was the last pupil in and was saying that the president had been shot.  No one believed him because no one ever believed anything he said.  Then Miss M returned and between sobs told us that the president had been assassinated.  I do not remember any particular sense of disaster or loss or sadness.  Just that the event was BIG and important.

My family was not a "Kennedy" family.  I'm sure my parents had voted for Nixon.  Kennedy was catholic after all, and while there was some good catholics, you certainly did not want one of them running the country.  My personal memories of Kennedy as president are really limited to just two - the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination.  Both involved a day off from school.

Since 1964 I have grown up from a sixth grader to a 62 year old man.  I have lived under Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and BO.  I would classify only two of those - Reagan and Bush the First - as first rate presidents.  All the rest are dopes and egomaniacs.

Other than my personal memories, the rest of my knowledge of JFK has come from what the east coast media wants me to know.  While the murder of JFK was a terrible crime like all murders, I don't think the country was deprived of an indispensable leader.  He was just another political animal who chose to be supported by taxpayers.  His legacy would not be nearly as stellar if he had not been killed.

157: BO The Innocent

This, from the BO press conference just concluded:  "What we discovered is that it is difficult to buy [health] insurance."  Stopping the freaking presses!  BO has made a discovery!  After three years, a half billion dollars for a shitty website, and countless billions of other wasted government assets, BO has "discovered" that is difficult to buy health insurance.  This is what happens when a community organizer with zero executive experience gets elected president and decides to take over 16% of the GDP.  We would have been much better off with Michelle at the helm.  At least she, as the family bread winner, knows something about health insurance and balancing a checkbook.  How many other "discovieries" has BO made on our dime?

156: My Dear, Dumb, Democrat Friends

The persons I refer to in the title above, are: white, educated, affluent, living in suburbs, and have every economic reason possible to want less government intrusion into their lives.  Yet they vote for BO and believe everything they hear on MSNBC.  These persons, and of course all of the very dumb and poor Democrats, somehow actually believe that Democratic policies will take from the rich and give to Democratic constituencies.  In this my dumb friends are a little less than half right.  Democratic policies attempt to take from the rich, but in fact those policies end up taking much more from the middle class.  Upper income folks obviously have the means and smarts to limit what they give to government.  If some rich bastard like Warren Buffet decides to give a shitload of money to the government, he does.  But you can bet your boots that he also has thousands of employees at various entities owned by Berkshire whose sole job it is to limit tax and regulatory costs.  The dumb Democrats don't have the means or desire to do this, because they somehow think they are getting a good return on their government largess.  Nothing could be further from the economic and practical truth. The smart Democrats are the Kennedy/Clinton/BO types who soak their own constituents to build their fiefdoms.  They keep the dumb Democrats content by giving them crumbs.

155: BObamacare Hits Keep Coming

Today, its a notice from BCBS of how to calculate the ACA fees that will start January 1, 2013.  So it's not just increased premiums for coverage I will never need, or a cancelled policy which was working just fine, or allowing the uninsured to stay that way until a catastrophic illness hits, now there is a "fee" being charged presumably to help pay for those incompetent bureaucrats who have screwed up what used to be an acceptable system.  At least it was acceptable to the millions of immigrants who have been fighting to get into this country and stay here.  I don't see that happening in Scandinavia.

154: BO Says It's All Republicans' Fault

I am often confounded by which of two character traits dominate the thoughts and behavior of BO - arrogance or immaturity.  On the one hand, he refuses to ever reach out those with different opinions or perspectives, since he is supremely self-assured of his own wisdom and intelligence (like forcing passage of BObamacare with zero Republican support).  Then, when the country or the world does not conform to his delusions of grandeur, he stamps his feet and whines, "The Republicans are not cooperating and letting me do what I want." 

Obviously, in order to get to high office, one needs to be self-confident.  But without any trace or idea of what humility is, a person will ultimately fail.  Just like BO, or Tiger Woods, or Jimmy Swaggart, or Jon Corzine.

153: BObamacare Outrage

I just received my renewal notice from BCBS for the HSA policies I provide for myself and employees.  The premiums are 40% higher due to (according to BCBS) BObamacare.  There is no additional coverage.  The deductible is considerably higher.  I detest anyone who voted for that goddamned arrogant punk.

152: Insurance - The Biggest Ripoff Of All Time

This year my insurance premiums for homeowner and auto insurance are up 23% and 12%, receptively.  Why?  Have you ever asked an insurance agent your premiums have skyrocketed?  If you are a complete moron and have never asked, the answers you will are these.  "Replacement costs have gone up.  That hurricane was a doozy.  We increased your coverage.  It's a feature of your policy."  The one answer you absolutely will never hear is, "I don't have the foggiest idea.  All I know is the home office increases premiums every year no matter what happens."  But you'll never hear that because the insurance agent is even a bigger moron than you are.

Actually insurance companies from time to time try to buy their way into certain markets.  So you just have to shop like crazy to get the best rates every year.  Staying loyal to an insurance company is liking trusting a politician.

151: Government Shutdown Is Good

For the reactionary and thoughtless knee-jerker who might read this, please be advised the following statement is general, and not specific to each individual.  A federal government shutdown is a very good thing, in the same way that the sequester was (and is) good.  Politicians of all stripes whined that the sky would fall if the sequester took effect.  What happened?  The sequester took effect and virtually no one has noticed.  The same would be true of a short-term federal government shutdown.  Lots of bureaucrats would have a few days of paid vacation and the citizens would be spared from having them breath down our necks.  How did the idea that "government growth is good, but government reduction is bad" become an accepted truth?

150: Jay Carney, Sychophant

I remember when JC used to be on the McGlaughlin Group.  At that time he was a respected Time Mag writer, and seemed to have a relatively objective point of view (at least as objective as most lame-stream media types get).  Obviously, since he became BO's press secretary, he has drunk the Kool Aid and forever surrendered any claim to objective journalism forevermore.  His more or less constant repetition of talking points and Democratic invective spewed at Republicans is almost comical.  He'll make a good professor someday.  By "good professor" of course I mean essentially an idiot.

149: Ben Feathered His Own Nest

When Ben Bernanke took over as chairman of the Fed, he no doubt had to put his personal savings portfolio into a blind trust somewhere to avoid the appearance of conflict.  However, the "blind" part is really a spoof.  He knows, and everyone else knows, that most of his investments were in blue chip stocks or stock funds.  Since 2008, everything BB has done has been directly related to propping up the stock market.  It is very hard to believe that BB has not considered his personal well-being when deciding to pump the $3 trillion or so into the US financial markets that he has presided over.

148: A (Predictable) Failure Of Management

The state of affairs in the USA is pitiful.  Huge unemployment; ridiculously low interest rates for savers; an ever-growing percentage of GDP eaten up by government; two bit bullies in donkey-powered countries pushing our weak prez around; 535 welfare kings and queens in Congress lining their pockets, most of them with essentially lifetime tenure.  And sitting at the top of this mess is a guy who never had a management job in his life before becoming President.  Really.  BO never so much as managed a night shift at McDonald's, let alone a vast enterprise.  What the hell did people expect to happen?  Did they think that overnight BO was going to become an executive?  The absolute best that can be hoped for is this:  Pray for a quick end to BO's reign, and hope for as many government shutdowns as possible; Elect a Republican president for two terms.  The first term will be a disaster, trying after all to clean up the gigantic mess left behind.  A second Re[publican term could have a chance at reversing some of the insane policies put in place by BO.

147: Cruz Comments

As with almost all elected officials, I have no clue what the real political and philosophical position's of Ted Cruz are.  Unless it's the Prez, without sitting down with the guy one-on-one, I don't know how you'd ever be able to understand him.  But this much I do know:  The national press corps hates Ted Cruz, mocks Ted Cruz, and belittles Ted Cruz.  Therefore, I infer that at least some of his positions and ideas must have merit.  The national press corps (with some exceptions) is a pack of in-bred sycophants, a description which also unfortunately applies to most politicians.  The whole sick system is evidence of why government needs to shrink back to some level where it can be controlled.

146: Will BO Bomb Syria?

The answer to the title question and the Syrian issue overall is very simple:  Other than Syrians and Washington media, who cares?  Now take Washington media out of the equation and it gets even simpler.  This is an internal state issue that concerns a small country in a region of the world that most Americans could never find on a globe.  So why the hell has our national government been paralyzed and overwhelmed for a full two weeks on this issue?  Don't we still have millions of unemployed and underemployed citizens?  Don't we have an economy propped up only by relentless money printing by a runaway central bank beholden to government growth?  Don't we have a tax collection behemoth agency sticking its nose into places it has no business looking?  Don't we have a public education system that exists mostly for the benefit of teachers and administrators instead of children?  Don't we have a federal aristocracy (been known as the Senate and House of Reps) that desperately needs term limits?

145: Trying To Stay Positive

This business of staying positive in life is becoming a tricky affair.  Obviously as one ages, biology continues its relentless path toward decay and death.  Concurrently with the (hopefully) slow degradation of one's physical self, there is the tendency to see everything around us in parallel decline, for example the conduct of politics and business, which seem to be increasing connected.  In my adult lifetime and opinion, only Ronald Reagan and George Bush The Elder had any of the redeeming qualities of founding fathers.  These past five years of BO have been nothing less than disastrous, both economically and socially.  He has permanently defined the presidency as an office of social welfare administration, rather than an executive leading a nation.  Given the absence of anything resembling leadership in his background, this is understandable.  JFK is the only other non-executive I personally observed who occupied the White House, but at least he was raised by a strong executive, and he had military experience.

Our leaders today are influenced too much by their feminine side.  They are afraid to act.

144: Zimmerman, Martin And Stupid Media

The talking head (I think it is Chris Cuomo) on CNN said, "As George Zimmerman starts his life as a free man...".  When was GZ not free?  Did I miss something, or was GZ already convicted of a crime?  The profound ignorance and stupidity of media types waxing eloquent is astounding.  Apparently this CNN airhead equates being charged with a crime as being convicted of a crime.  Now the idiots participating in so-called protests and demonstrations can easily be understood for the naive simpletons they are.  But an anchor on a the national "news" broadcast is supposed to have a modicum of intelligence.  It's just another example of the top down ignorance cascading over our culture.

143: Who Is Nancy Grace?

Who is Nancy Grace on something called the "HLN" network, and why is she obsessed with Jody Arias?  And who is Jody Arias?  And why would any rational person, other than the immediate families of both of the aforementioned women, know the answers to these questions?

While surfing TV, I happened upon this Nancy Grace person.  While she is obviously presenting herself as a serious "news" person, she seems to me to be a character more appropriate to Duck Dynasty. 

Of course there is some idiotic network executive who is paying Nancy Grace big money to act like a hillbilly with expensive makeup.  Maybe Nancy is just playing the part and taking the money.  If so, good for her.

142: The Fed Doesn't Know Anything

Today, after the Fed's meeting and accompanying mealy-mouthed remarks, the AP published the following headline:

Fed signals it could increase or decrease stimulus

So almost four years after the end of the Federal Reserve inspired and fueled recession, which was a reaction to ultra accomodative monetary policy, Uncle Ben is telling us he doesn't really have a clue what is going or how to fix or the economy.  Jeeeus Ben!  At least lie to us a little and try to make us think your are not really as dumb as all the other idiots in Washington.  Instead, you tell us you can go both ways.  Gee thanks.  

Whatever recovery there has been since 2009 has nothing to do with the Fed.  It is simply demographics playing out.  More people need more stuff.

141: Bernanke's War Against Savers

This morning on CNBC Wilbur Ross made a very prescient remark.  When asked how long and how much Bernanke would extend QE, WR said eventually the government would levy an outright tax or fine on savings.  As ludicrous as this sounds, I think it is possible.  There has already been a tacit penalty on savers for six years without a let up.  And there is no end in sight.  What will happen when the next recession occurs and the ZIR policy is already in effect?  The government will be desperate to induce the rabid consumption on which our economy and government are based.  One answer, clearly, is to fine people who refuse to participate in irresponsible consumption.

One Hundred Forty: President Chicken Little

BO has been criss-crossing the country for the past few weeks lying about the impact of slightly reducing the rate of growth of federal spending.  In addition to his blathering, he has ordered his cabinet chiefs and chiefettes to do the same.  It seems that the only segment of the American population who has paid any attention to all this lying is the national media, and even they seem unconvinced.  The securities markets, the real estate markets, and the economy in general are also seemingly unconvinced.  Is it possible that the national consciousness has finally gotten wise to BO's act?  Let's hope so.

One Hundred Thirty Nine: BO Can't Compromise

Last night I saw a news snippet of BO addressing a group of state governors.  BO was campaigning to prevent the $85B reduction in the rate of growth of government spending, also bizarrely called a "sequester."  BO was telling the govs that the situation just required "compromise," and that he, BO, had already demonstrated his willingness to compromise.  This willingness, BO said, was manifest in his previous offers and actions over the past 4 four years.  Even by Washington standard's, this is the mother of all whoppers.  But as George Costanza used to say, "It's not a lie if you believe it."  And BO really does seem to believe his own BS. 

If BO really had shown the tiniest bit willingness to compromise, our recovery from 2008-2009 would be off to the races.  But in fact BO does not want compromise.  He wants a relentless continuation of federal government growth to redistribute private wealth.

One Hundred Thirty Eight: Still Trying Facebook

A couple of years on, I am still trying to figure out the value of FB.  Now that it's a public company with a current market cap of some $70B, it's pretty hard to discount the reality of FB as a presence in the lives of individuals, especially those under 40 years old.  And of course the fact that corporate entities are also "persons" in the FB realm is another reason to take FB seriously.  But what redeeming social or economic benefit accrues from the bazillions of hours spent by people revealing every idiotic thought or image on their respective pages? 

In the past few days I have spent a couple of hours Facebooking.  After trying to make sense of what I encountered, I returned to read a few chapters of Moby Dick.  Comparing the two experiences, it strikes me that I have retained much more from Moby than FB.

One Hundred Thirty Seven: Lots of Data But No Communication

I have been an avid writer all of my life.  It started I suppose with my parents forcing me to write "thank you" notes when I received a dollar or two for a birthday or some other occasion.  Somehow, I learned how to write (and speak) succinctly, which is a talent and skill I wish was more widely practiced. 

The younger crowd in business today has grown up with instant and constant information resulting in tsunamis of data.  Email, Twitter, Facebook, You Tube - 24/7 connectivity, but it seems to me very little communication.  In a recent transaction for the sale of a house, I received an average of 20 emails per day, which could easily have been reduced to one single email or telephone call.  The clients and the realtor were creating blizzards of messages almost one letter at a time.  The point is that with the ability to spew out information at will, individuals feel compelled to take advantage of that ability, usually without much if any thought.  It's just too damn easy to empty one's brain into the airwaves without thinking.  Perhaps as computers get smarter they will develop the kind of protection a good secretary gives her boss.  She serves at a check valve to make sure what he tries to send is wise.

One Hundred Thirty Six: The Stupid Just Keeps On Coming For Repubs

Eery news article I see about the professional Republicans indicates they are shocked, shocked! mind you, that BO is articulating a left-liberal agenda for his second term, and picking out a team of true believers, liars, scoundrels, and others Democrats to carry it out.  What the hell do you expect?  Of course he's going to move the country as far toward socialism as he possibly can.  That is who he is and what he believes.  The last time we had a president as committed to his own beliefs was Reagan. 

Personally, I believe that the ideas of BO are as dangerous as the ideas of Stalin or Hitler or Pol Pot.   If the professional Repubs actually believed in what they claim (smaller government) they would stand up to BO and win or lose like men, instead of the pussies they appear to be.

One Hundred Thirty Five: Why Republicans Are Even Dumber Than Democrats

In this title I refer to Republican leaders.  The most recent stupid thing the Speaker and his minions have done is totally cave on the debt ceiling issue, and this apparently because BO is portraying Repubs as heartless, especially on guns and money.  Instead of forcing the issue on spending, Repubs are apparently going to punt for at least three months.  This is Strike Three.   Strike One was the first debt ceiling debate, where Repubs settled for the "Sequester," which somehow turned into the "Fiscal Cliff," and Strike Two.

For the life of me, I don't know how any American citizen with even a pea-sized brain can argue against or not support term limits.