August 27, 2008

labor day road trip

I'm taking a few extra days off around Labor Day to drive up to North Carolina. To save money I've rented a Toyota Prius. It gets great gas millage and since the car rental is only $40 a day I'll end up saving money. The Prius isn't the sexiest looking vehicle, but saving money is always nice. I haven't been watching the DNC and the same will be said of the RNC. I just don't really care about these conventions anymore. It's a big staged event that's practically worthless. The road trip means I'll miss Obama's sermon on the mount speech tomorrow. Plus, McCain is announcing his running mate Friday morning. Word of McCain's choice could leak tomorrow afternoon. I really have no idea who McCain is going to choose.

Club Soda will write a DNC wrapup in a couple of days. I'll be back on Tuesday night.

Posted by nemov at 5:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

August 26, 2008

re: american "psycho" prayer

I can't stop thinking about that terrible "American Prayer" video. It is so mind numbingly awful that it's scorched into my retina. It's like a free lasik surgery. The song was written by Dave Stewart (from the Eurythmics) and Bono of course. There's nothing like two non-Americans writing a song about America. It's even better when that song is turned into a sprawling visual masterpiece.

Eliot Van Buskirk at Wired's Listening Post says "certain shots are so deeply embarrassing that we had to hit pause a few times just to make it all the way through." I still haven't been able to watch it all they way through. In the comment section there's a defense of the video. I have to post the full thing, it's too classic.

what's wrong with it? artists impassioned with the belief that america can live up to its promise? i look forward to the day when amateur music critics (don't tell me you make a living doing this blog) appreciate performers coming out to support a political/social cause. that's the way it was in the 60s. hunter s. thompson was right. you can almost look back and see the high water mark. you might feign being holier than thou, but this is earnest faith is something better. and if that is what you lack, find it. don't trash others who have. they haven't done this video for their own benefit. they've done it for a cause. a cause much larger than this video. but by denegrating this video so smugly, you denegrate the cause. and come across as a shallow, cheap, hipster who hopes to one day be a legitimate critic, but will ultimately fail because you think if music/videos aren't cool in a post-modern ironic sense than they aren't cool at all. this video has reached a lot of hearts. let it be. and recant if your ego will allow.
"A cause much larger than the video." This type of rhetorical nonsense is sad, but not uncommon. The fascination with the 60's is a common trait among Leftists. Leftists like Bernadine Dohrn.

Dohrn is Bill Ayers wife and the co-host of Obama's career-launching fundraiser. Dohrn is quoted as saying "at the end of the day, I feel like we were lucky to be in that history. We were lucky to be in that history. We were lucky to be in that moment where there was hope and a sense of libratory possibility." Terrorism never felt so good.

When she [Dohrn] was in the Weather Underground she was one of those members typically fascinated with Charles Manson (I discuss this briefly in my book). Speaking of Manson's famous murders she exclaimed, "Dig It! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach! Wild!" In appreciation, her Weather Underground cell made a threefingered "fork" gesture its official salute.

Senator Obama's ability to run as the "common man" is hampered by celebrities and his association with Ayers. That's why McCain's house fiasco last week was supposedly such a big deal for Obama. Unfortunately for Obama he can't just wish away his connection to New Left radicals. When you run for President on a paper thin resume this is what happens. Obama is being defined by the radicals he hung out with in Illinois.

Videos like American Prayer, speeches in Berlin, and the acceptance speech at Mile High only reinforce the perception that he's aloof and out of touch. It doesn't even matter if it's true or not, it's the perception. The race isn't about change anymore, it's about who Americans feel more comfortable with as their President. Obviously George Costanza has picked sides.

Posted by nemov at 6:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

american "psycho" prayer

This is so bad I wonder if the McCain campaign is secretly behind it. It seems like celebrities would be intelligent enough to understand that stuff like this is toxic in politics. All hail the cult of personality. I tried to watch this all the way through, but it drags. Five and a half minutes way too long.

Posted by nemov at 12:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

August 25, 2008

debra likes mccain

I don't doubt that there are some Hillary Clinton supporters out there that will vote for McCain in November. I don't think there will be many, and I don't think they'll be impressed with this ad.

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is in panic mode about the Bill Ayers connection. Running this ad in Ohio is a tactical blunder by the Obama campaign. Filing a claim to force the third-party 527 ad off the air is only going to make the Ayers connection a larger issue in the campaign.

Posted by nemov at 10:28 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

health care, harkin, and medicare waste

Shockingly Medicare is considered by some a successful entitlement program. I know it's mind boggling. The program is headed towards financial insolvency and there are people out there asking for it to be expanded. It doesn't make sense. You know what else doesn't make sense? Senator Tom Harkin is the answer to that question.

Senator Harkin spent August 16 meeting some fellow socialists at the Health Care for America Now (HCAN). Perhaps a better name for HCAN would be Chapter 11 Now (C11N). Not daunted by the current fiscal problems facing that nation Harkin had some ideas on how to bankrupt the country even quicker.

Senator Harkin, who supports the establishment of a comprehensive national health care plan, mentioned two possible means of achieving this:
2. Expand Medicare to cover all Americans. It would be much more difficult to get Congress to pass the second, he noted.
I'm sure it was a happy event. Senator Harkin signed the symbolic HCAN's Which Side Are You On? pledge (he even got his picture taken). Evidently Harkin is on the side of bankrupting the nation. HCAN is like countless groups in the United State. They are full of good initiations but they completely ignore the fact that government intervention into health care is making things worse.

Let's just look at the waste of Medicare. The New York Times had an article on Friday that shed some light on Medicare fraud.

In one example, the inspector general's investigation found that Medicare -- working only off of a supplier's paperwork -- had bought a power wheelchair for a beneficiary who neither needed nor used the device. The beneficiary did not know the ordering physician or the supplier, and the supposed ordering physician denied placing the order or knowing either the patient or the supply company.

The inspector general's report pegged the rate of improper payments for medical equipment at 31.5 percent, an astonishingly high proportion that implies improper spending of some $2.8 billion, four times what Medicare had claimed.
31.5 percent of medical equipment claims are fraud! That's not a typo. I wouldn't be surprised if at least 20 percent of the entire budget is fraud. The Medicare and Medicaid programs cost the United States $627 billion in 2007 and the cost of the program is expected to double in the next decade. A 20 percent fraud rate would add up to nearly $125 billion dollars a year (that's a low estimate). How much is $125 billion? It's enough to cover costs in Iraq for a year and it's more than the GDP of Ecuador, Bulgaria, Lithuanian, and Croatia.

Sure, let's expand this program! It's unbelievable to me that people keep coming up with new programs when we can't afford the ones we already have. Good intentions are not an excuse for stupidity.

Posted by nemov at 7:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

killing american competitiveness

There will be a great deal of discussion about corporate tax rates during this election. As most economists know, corporate taxes are just passed onto to consumers, but Democrats (and some Republicans) do a good job of convincing Americans that evil corporations need to pay their "fair share." Unfortunately, paying their "fair share" keeps many US companies at an economic disadvantage.

Here is the conclusion of the Tax Foundation:

The release of these two OECD studies could not have come at a better time for the current political debate over how to move the U.S. economy forward. A U.S. corporate tax rate 50 percent higher than the OECD average should be a wake-up call to Washington, especially when combined with the empirical evidence that corporate taxes are the most harmful tax on economic growth. The question remains for the presidential candidates, What is your plan to restore American competitiveness?

Corporate Taxes

Posted by nemov at 12:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

another great joe biden moment

It's too bad Obama didn't choose Senator Harkin, but Joe Biden is still a treasure chest full of arrogent rhetoric. Much of what he says in the rant below is untrue, but it doesn't matter I guess.

Posted by nemov at 12:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

more european millions

A few weeks ago I thought I had won the European lottery. I replied to the email and I never heard anything back. It was quite frustrating. Well, it looks like I won another lotto.

-----Original Message-----
From: Congratulations!! You are a Winner [mailto:emlcspain@libero.it]
Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2008 12:20 PM
Subject: You won €610,000.00 Euros Call 34 634127280-

You won €610,000.00 Euros in Euro Million Lottery ,Please contact your Claim agent for processing/claim,mr. Frank Palacio,Email:frankpalacioo@aol.es,

mrs mariano pintos
I'm not falling for this one again. I decided to get a little angrier this time around.

Listen Pintos,

You can't keep busting my chops like this!! Just a couple of weeks ago I won another European lottery. I responded immediately but I've heard literally skadoosh since then... What are you guys trying to prove?

Can you please tell Mike (his email address is archivosecurities@aol.es) that he owes me 700,000 Euros? I'm basically living out of library. I gave my house away on Craiglist because I thought I was getting a check equal to the size of the GDP of Lesotho. Plus, did I mention the fact that my place of employment isn't exactly happy that I walked out. Try explaining that to your Japanese boss. Two words for you, Harry Carry.

Please pass my complaint over to your other cheese loving European friend.

Posted by nemov at 12:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)