Obama-Biden Tax Policy

I wish I could take credit for this, but I received this as an email forward, and I got such a laugh out of it, I wanted to post it for your enjoyment:

This is a great explanation of the tax rebate program recently enacted by Congress. If you don’t understand how it  will work maybe this explanation will help:

50,000 people went to a baseball game, but the game was rained out.  A refund was then due to the ticket holders.

The team was about to mail refunds when a group of Congressional Democrats stopped them and suggested that they send out the ticket refunds based on the Democrat National Committee’s interpretation of fairness.

Originally the refunds were to be paid based on the price each person had paid for the tickets. Unfortunately that meant most of the refund money would be going to the ticket holders that had purchased the most expensive tickets. This, according to the DNC, is considered totally unfair. A decision was then made to pay out the refunds in this manner:

People in the $10 seats will get back $15. After all, they have less money to spend on tickets to begin with. Call it an ‘Earned Income Ticket Credit.’ Persons ‘earn’ it by having few skills, poor work habits, and low ambition, thus keeping them at entry-level wages.

People in the $25 seats will get back $25, because it ’seems fair.’

People in the $50 seats will get back $1, because they already make a lot of money and don’t need a refund. After all, if they can afford a $50 ticket, they must not be paying enough taxes.

People in the $75 luxury box seats will each have to pay an additional $25 because it’s the ‘right thing to do’.

People walking past the stadium that couldn’t afford to buy a ticket for the game each will get a $10 refund, even though they didn’t pay anything for the tickets. They need the most help. They are either lazy or think that society owes them for just being born. Sometimes this is known as Affirmative Action.

Now do you understand?

Housing meltdown: whose to blame?

Economist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institute Tom Sowell wrote an enlightening article about who is really to blame for the market meltdown, and how clear facts are being ignored by politicians (especially the Obama campaign) and by the mainstream media.

Read it here: Do Facts Matter?

Rowing machine and ancient naval warfare

I was at the gym the other day, and I decided to mount the rowing machine.  I managed to row 2000 meters in about 12 minutes (not my best time, by any means), but while I was huffing and puffing away, I couldn’t help but think that being a rower used to be an instrumental part of ancient naval warfare (I know, I am a real history geek). I had a good workout after this short 2000 meter rowing, but I can’t imagine how much it would take to actually push an ancient warship to ramming speeds!  The ancient Athenian warship, called a trireme, had 3 banks of rowers with a full compliment of 170 rowers.  I decided to look into ancient rowing a bit, and I found out that there are a few ancient  literary references to a cushion, which aided the Athenian rowers.   I fould an article that discussed the advantages of this simple device, and I can say that after rowing for just a few minutes, having a cushion would have helped me endure the grueling workout.  Perhaps one of the most important battles between East and West was the Battle of Salamis, which took place in the narrow straits between the Greek Mainland and the island of Salamis. The maneuverable triremes defeated the Persian (combined Persian, Egyptian and Phoenician ships) fleet, and led to the Greek victory over the Persian invaders.

So the next time you sweat and toil on the rowing machine,  think about this centuries-old tradition of naval warfare!

Satellite Imagery Reveals Roman City of the Veneti

Ever since I first visited Venice in the Summer of 2005, I have been amazed and captivated by Venice, and it’s martime tradition.  It was one of the most important cities of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, though it is often left out of the textbooks.  My poor students this year will have to hear all about it. Anyway, in archaeology news last week, the remains of ancient Altinum have been spotted using satellite imagery along the northern coast of the lagoon, near the airport.  I did some searching of my own just on Google Earth, and sure enough, you can see outlines of roads, city blocks and even a large Roman amphitheater.   I would absolutely love to get involved with excavation on this site to learn more about the ancestors to the Venetians. The Veneti Romanized and lived in cities like Altinum and Padova (Padua) and fled to the more remote and defensible islands in the lagoon during the invasions of the Huns and the Lombards in the 5th and 8th centuries.   Read more about it here.

Revealing Leftist Paranoia

Naomi Wolf (honestly, I don’t know how she is considered an intellectual, by any definition), the vacuous former advisor to the Gore Campaign (her claim to fame is her advice to Gore: ‘wear more earth-tones’), offers a not-so-convincing conspiracy theory that Palin is the new puppet behind the evil Rove-Cheney machine.  She uses the words ‘cabal’ and ‘S & M’ way too much.   It’s hard for me to take her seriously.  How insane her paranoid claims!  Karl Rove is not even an advisor to the McCain campaign.  Neither is Dick Cheney.  In order to digest this drivel, check out this scathing review of her article.

I think Sarah Palin embodies REAL change, and she has the political Left running for the hills, thus proving her qualifications for the job.  She is a real woman, who got to where she is by her own hard work, rather than riding the coat-tails of her husband.  She embodies the true ideals of feminism without being an agry leftist, which drives those on the left nuts (see the above article).  I think it’s great!

More bold moves by Russia; ChiComs calling for new world order

It seems that all we get in the news these days are the financial crisis on Wall Street, hurricanes, football, election news, and false Sarah Palin scandals.  If we take actually look out our front door, there are other things going on in the world.  A couple of stories caught my eye today on Drudge:

The Russians sent one of their premier warships, dubbed “Peter the Great”, along with nuclear subs to the Caribbean for exercises with the Venezualan Navy.  The Russian naval presence was preceded by Russian bombers. The bolstering of armed forces in Chavez’ anti-American country is troubling. Russia is going for alliances where there is oil, thus their recent ties with Venezuela and Iran (helping the Iranians build nukes).  China is also starting to drill for oil right off of our Florida coastline.  This, combined with unstable markets and high fuel prices should be all the more reason to maximize our domestic natural resources, of which our country is abundant.

On another note:

Also, in general, I am not one for conspiracy theories, but for all those people who are weary of a New World Order should take notice about China’s call today for globalization of banking and currency with the recent meltdown of some of the top financial companies. China does not want their economy so tied up in the American economy.  I don’t believe in some secret society pulling the strings behind closed doors (Masons, Jews, Illuminati, aliens, etc.), but I do think that a centralized global oversight is a desire for some.   I think there will be more talk about this in the coming weeks.

I recently read Joel Rosenberg’s book, Epicenter.  Now, I have a tendancy to be skeptical about eschatological (end-times)  predictions, but the recent events certainly appear to be moving in that direction, at times.

McCain Bites Back on Current Economic Issues

On the campaign trail today, Senator McCain fought back against Democratic accusations that the recent problems on Wall Street have been caused by Republicans.   This is coming from Obama, who is supposedly for change, spouting the age-old cliche where Democrats accuse Republicans of causing all of the problems in the world.  I found McCain’s speech to be compelling and true.

Here is a segment from McCain’s speech today:

“We need reform in Washington and on Wall Street.  The financial markets are in crisis.  Times are tough.  Enormous strain is being put on working families and individuals in America.  I know that the events unfolding can be difficult to understand for many Americans.  The dominos that we have seen fall this week began with the corruption and manipulation of our home loan system.  The reason this crisis started was the abuses that took place within our home loan agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and within our home loan system.

Two years ago I warned this Administration and Congress that regulations for our home loan agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, needed to be fixed…

But nothing was done.

Senator Obama talks a tough game on the financial markets but the facts tell a different story.  He took more money from Fannie and Freddie than any Senator but the Democratic chairman of the committee that regulates them.  He put Fannie Mae’s CEO who helped create this disaster in charge of finding his Vice President. Fannie’s former General Counsel is a senior advisor to his campaign.  Whose side do you think he is on?  When I pushed legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Senator Obama was silent.  He didn’t lift a hand to avert this crisis.  While the leaders of Fannie and Freddie were lining the pockets of his campaign, they were sowing the seeds of the financial crisis we see today and enriching themselves with millions of dollars in payments.  That’s not change, that’s what’s broken in Washington.

There was no transparency into the books of Wall Street banks.   Banks and brokers took on huge amounts of debt and they hid the riskiest investments.   Mismanagement and greed became the operating standard while regulators were asleep at the switch.

The primary regulator of Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) kept in place trading rules that let speculators and hedge funds turn our markets into a casino.  They allowed naked short selling — which simply means that you can sell stock without ever owning it.   They eliminated last year the uptick rule that has protected investors for 70 years.  Speculators pounded the shares of even good companies into the ground.

The Chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the President and has betrayed the public’s trust.    If I were President today, I would fire him.

We cannot wait any longer for more failures in our financial system.  Structures like the resolution trust corporation that dealt with the failed savings and loan industry were designed to clean up the system and worked.  Today we need a plan that doesn’t wait until the system fails.  I am calling for the creation of the mortgage and financial institutions trust – the MFI.  The priorities of this trust will be to work with the private sector and regulators to identify institutions that are weak and take remedies to strengthen them before they become insolvent.  For troubled institutions this will provide an orderly process through which to identify bad loans and eventually sell them.

This will get the treasury and other financial regulatory authorities in a proactive position instead of reacting in a crisis mode to one situation after the other.  The MFI will enhance investor and market confidence, benefit sound financial institutions, assist troubled institutions and protect our financial system, while minimizing taxpayer exposure.  Tomorrow I will be talking in greater detail about the crisis facing our markets and what I will do as President to fix this crisis and get our economy moving again.

Senator Obama has never made the kind tough reform we need today.  His idea of reform is what his party leaders in Congress order him to do.  We tried for bipartisan ethics reform and he walked away from it because his bosses didn’t want real change.  I know how to make the change that Senator Obama and this Congress is afraid of.  I’ve fought both parties to shake up up Washington and I’m going to do it as President.

Those same Congressional leaders who give Senator Obama his marching orders are now saying that this mess isn’t their fault and they aren’t going to take any action on this crisis until after the election.  Senator Obama’s own advisers are saying that crisis will benefit him politically.  My friends, that is the kind of me-first, country-second politics that are broken in Washington.  My opponent sees an economic crisis as a political opportunity instead of a time to lead.  Senator Obama isn’t change, he’s part of the problem with Washington.

When AIG was bailed out, I didn’t like it, but I understood it needed to be done to protect hard working Americans with insurance policies and annuities.  Senator Obama didn’t take a position.  On the biggest issue of the day, he didn’t know what to think.  He may not realize it, but you don’t get to vote present as President of the United States.

While Senator Obama and Congressional leaders don’t know what to think about the current crisis, we know what their plans are for the economy.  Today Senator Obama’s running mate said that raising taxes is patriotic.  Raising taxes in a tough economy isn’t patriotic.  It’s not a badge of honor. It’s just dumb policy.  The billions in tax increases that Senator Obama is proposing would kill even more jobs during tough economic times.  I’m not going to let that happen.

I have seen tough times before.   I know how to shake-up Wall Street and Washington.   I will get this economy moving.   I will lead us through this crisis by fighting for you, and when I am President we will be stronger than ever before.”

Obama’s crutch

This isn’t particularly new. If you have ever heard Senator Obama speak, you know that his eloquent orations are a reflection of his skills at reading a teleprompter. Obama doesn’t hide this fact, but I think it is an embarrassing crutch for someone hailed with such great speaking abilities.  Even today Obama brought his teleprompter to two different events in Colorado.

To me, there really isn’t anything wrong with using a teleprompter to deliver a speech per se, but what makes this case so remarkable is the absolute night-and-day difference in Obama when he’s on/off prompter.  When he’s not using the teleprompter, he’s a bumbling, slow, and often erratic speaker.

It will be quite interesting to see how the Presidential debates go, since there will not be a prepared teleprompted speech for Obama to recite.

Because the world must know…

So my sister introduced me to this fantastic website. It’s internet radio, and you can create a free account, and then you choose the style of music by selecting a favorite artist or song.  It’s a great way to learn about new artists and other songs you may not have known about. I’ve been listening to it for a while now, and I decided to share it with you.

www.pandora.com

Vegetarians have tiny brains…

In a most fascinating study, it confirmed what I suspected all along: vegetarians and vegans lack brainpower. Now the science backs it up.  “Scientists have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain-with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage. “

Here’s the article:  Eating veggies shrinks the brain.

Go and eat some steak!