At some point this starts to look like a genocide where the weapon is a natural dissaster, although my guess is they are trying to get rid of some poor people rather than a specifc race:
Myanmar’s junta seized U.N. aid shipments Friday meant for a multitude of hungry and homeless survivors of last week’s devastating cyclone, forcing the world body to suspend further help.
The aid included 38 tons of high-energy biscuits and arrived in Myanmar on Friday on two flights from Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.
“All of the food aid and equipment that we managed to get in has been confiscated,” U.N. World Food Program spokesman Risley said.
This is reminiscent of Katrina only the indifference to suffering seems even greater.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 10:18 AM MDT
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It’s about time someone started looking at the problems caused by drug ads:
“It appears that we need to enforce significant restrictions on DTC (direct-to-consumer) ads to protect American consumers from manipulative commercials designed to mislead and deceive for the profit of pharmaceutical companies,” said Stupak, head of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce investigative panel.
The Michigan Democrat said Congress should consider whether ads promoting medicines should be allowed to continue to target consumers in the United States, the only country that allows such marketing except for New Zealand.
Restrictions on pharmacutical advertising would not only improve health it would probably cut health care costs signifigantly. It might also cut into Rush Limbaughs ad revenue if Viagra stopped sponsoring him.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 1:00 AM MDT
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After reading this it is hard to blame Obama for the demise of Hillary Clinton, one way or another Hillary and her band of merry pranksters were going to blow the election, better she did it in the primaries and not the general.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 12:25 PM MDT
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Everybody is down on this guy for acting like a college student. Tyler Hansbrough has probably brought millions of dollars into to the school, given they are not paying him, he should be allowed to act like a student when not on the court. Students do things like jump out of balconies into pools, get over it.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 7:42 PM MDT
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How many of these scenarios have there ever actually been?
Posted by Al Swearengen as Justice, Al Swearengen, History at 5:45 PM MDT
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After last night it seems extremely unlikely that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. If last night had gone differentely and she won both North Carolina and convincingly won Indiana, I probably would have admitted that Obama could not overcome Jeremiah Wright or that maybe people really did want a gas tax holiday, or maybe people really want to obliterate Iran.  If somehow Hillary had got the nomination, I know what I would have wanted to see from her to make me support her.Â
Mostly I would have wanted assurance that she was going to end the Iraq war and that she was not going to start any more wars of choice. For me the turning point with Hillary was her support of Kyl-Lieberman amendment. She would have to convince me that she was not a war monger. I think that the main reason Obama is going to be the nominee and probably the next president is his opposition to the war in Iraq.   Also, I would have wanted to see Hillary promise some fiscal responsibility and a balanced budget in the near future. Getting out if Iaq would go a long way towards balancing the budget so in the end it would have been pretty easy for her to get my support, as a one-hundrd year war McCain is not an option if you care about ending the war.
My question: What do Hillarys supporters want out of Obama? I think this is going to be a problem for Obama as I don’t think he can take over any of her “big issues” without contradicting his vision for America.   If any Hillary supporters read this blog I would like to know what Obama can do that will make them support him. My guess from conversations I have had with Hillary supporters is that the answer would be something to the effect of “he could wait his turn and they will support him in eight years”.  At this point that is not an option so what can Obama do to unite the party?
Posted by John Rove as Words at 12:03 PM MDT
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Preachers say stupid things all the time. Jerry Falwell after 9/11 blamed America for the attacks, I think he said something to the effect that 9/11 was gods punishment for homsexuality. I think it was McCains main man John Hagee who blamed hurricane Katrina on Mardi Gras. These are not rational people, but until now it has been hard to critisize them without being called anti-christian. Obamas preacher Jeremiah Wright is also a nut job, but until Hillary called him out on it, no one with any stature had the guts to critisize a religious figure. Yes, I am going to give Hillary credit for having political courage, sure it was mostly the product of desperation but in the end she has done someting useful.
Until now anything a religious person says has been given a certain status that it does not deserve, mostly because of the high regard most Americans have for faith. People can always say “god made me do it” this excuse didn’t work for Andrea Yates and it should not work for Hagee or Wright. The excuse might work for Falwell as if their is a hell I am sure he is discussing what god made him do at this very moment. I know that many religious people point out the good things that religious groups do like feeding the homeless, sponsoring orphans and a whole host of other good deeds, but that doesn’t excuse the child molestors in the Catholic church or the blame the homosexuals crowd like Falwell. The good deeds could still happen without molesting children.Â
Hillary made it OK to critisize Jeremiah Wright, a man of the cloth, and it seems to be making all religious figures fair game.. I have been pretty critical of Hillary but on this point she may have done some good.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 11:21 AM MDT
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I have been trying to understand the Hillary gas tax holiday, I know it was McCains idea and then Hillary decided to make it her own. Bill Clinton was a master at taking good ideas and making them his own, Hillary seems to be a master at taking bad ideas and making them her own. The other part of Hillarys tax holday measure calls for a windfall profits tax on oil companies. That seems pretty unfair, why should we tax some businesses more than others when they are successful? The other problem with a windfall profits tax is that it wold probably be passed on the to the consumer, which would probably erase any savings of the gas tax holiday.Â
It seems that the main purpose of the windfall profits tax is to show those oil comapnies that we don’t like them and by taxing them at a higher rate we are somehow standing up for the little guy. In reality the oil consumers are paying the same amount for fuel, oil companies are making the same amount of money after tax, but somehow we feel better. I remember reading somewhere(I think it was at right thinking.com) that all those renewable energy credits would just go to big oil companies as they were the ones who had the expertise to devolope new energy. The author seemed to think that was a bad thing.  Anything that creates cleaner energy(especially if it does not involve corn) is a good thing regardless of who gets the money for it.
Populism seems to have become movement that believes if your neighbors home burns down yours looks better. The real situation is that after the fire you live next to a burned out wreck that drags everyones values down.Â
Posted by John Rove as Words at 11:39 AM MDT
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Kevin Drum was the first person to notice her pick
A CONTEST….Let’s have a contest. As we all know, Hillary Clinton chose filly Eight Belles to win the Kentucky Derby today. Instead, EB came in second and then had to be euthanized after breaking both ankles right after crossing the finish line. So here’s the contest: Who do you think will be the first pundit/columnist/talking head to use this as an idiotically extended metaphor for the state of Hillary Clinton’s campaign? Matthews? Dowd? Jonah Goldberg?
Or has someone already done it?
This reminds me of the Jim Rome show, where Rome says he doesn’t want to talk about something and then proceeds to talk about how bad it would be to talk about something for an hour. While at the same time making sure that no detail goes unmentioned. My favorite example of this was when Rome “talked” about the couple with 17 kids, he said he did not want to talk about it, and then proceeded to mention all of the kids names, and discuss various e-mails about the moms ability to enjoy sex, and the state of her breasts. It was truly an example of taking the hi-road.
With all that said Hillary could not have picked a better horse to symbolize her campaign.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 10:31 AM MDT
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By Josh P. Hamilton and Betty Liu - May 3 (Bloomberg) — Warren Buffett, chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said the global credit crunch has eased for bankers, and the Federal Reserve probably averted more failures by helping to rescue Bear Stearns Cos.
“The worst of the crisis in Wall Street is over,” Buffett said today on Bloomberg Television. “In terms of people with individual mortgages, there’s a lot of pain left to come.” Buffett was interviewed before the Omaha, Nebraska-based company’s annual meeting, attended by about 31,000 people.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Al Swearengen as Economics at 11:00 PM MDT
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I made an appointment to get a vasectomy today. The procedure sounds pretty easy, I did not even need a pre-surgery appointment and my co-pay is only $40. This seems like a no-brainer when one looks at the cost of raising a child. Plus, in my case my dog, Kip, hates kids. If I ever had a kid I would have to give up him up, (my dog not the kid, although it would probably be smarter to give up the kid, as I am sure most dogs are better companions than the drooling poop factories that some people call children)Â
It is interesting that more men don’t decide to go child free, most my friends who have children don’t seem that happy about the situation, they either complain that they cannot do the things they want to do. Or in some cases they complain about being stuck in a bad relationship for the sake of the children. I know Al might disagree with me on this but when I look at parents I see people who are tired and have that look of someone who is trying to run out the clock.Â
I like the idea that I can live in a small place in a bad school district and be very happy. Children would ruin that, suddenly I would have to listen to my realtor when he talks about the need to live in a “good area”. I might even need to worry about finding a good paying carreer so that I could one day send my kid to college. Thanks to a $40 dollar co-pay I can insure happiness for a very long time. I think my ROI on this $40 might be almost infinite.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 1:44 AM MDT
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From washingtonmonthly
Ninety-two percent of farm-dwellers derive either all or most of their income from sources other than farming or subsidies….The other 8 percent — commercial farmers who derive most of their income from farming and subsidies — earned an average of $200,000 last year — an increase of 22 percent from 2006. This year, income for this group is projected to hit $230,000 — another 9.3-percent increase. The USDA, which calculated these estimates, reported last year that the windfall for commercial farmers is due in large part to “demand from the rapid expansion of ethanol production.”
….Right now, Congress is attempting to renew farm subsidies for five more years, even though the vast majority of the payments go to farmers who are making six figures a year. The chief obstacle is President Bush, who has threatened to veto the bill in its current form. Bush, who signed the massive 2002 farm bill, has set an unbelievably low bar for Congress to clear, calling only for modest spending restraint in the wake of record farm incomes. Yet Congress cannot even bring itself to cap payments to millionaires, among other simple reforms.
Every now and again Bush does something smart and this might be one of thise times. I really wonder why everyone finds it necessary to pander to the farmers.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 6:35 PM MDT
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Taken from Matthew Yglesisas
Rob Goodspeed points out that we have substantial evidence that consumers bear only around half the burden of gasoline taxes over the long run, with the rest of the incidence falling on the oil companies. Here’s one study:
Using the estimated coefficients, we can determine the incidence of federal and state specific taxes. An increase in the federal tax by 1¢ raises the retail price by 0.47¢ and decreases the wholesale price by 0.56¢. Thus, consumers and wholesalers each pay roughly half of the federal specific tax.
In other words, we really should be raising the gas tax. There are a billion reasons this won’t happen, but if we were to raise the gas tax, then rebate half the revenues to citizens on some kind of flat per person basis, and make the other half available to fund transit projects, there’d be no net burden on the population, you’d create an incentive to use alternative forms of transportation where they exist, and you’d have a pool of revenue available to create alternative forms of transportation
Higher gas taxes also have the benefit of decreasing consumption which should be good for the enviroment as well. The gas tax holiday is one of the dumbest ideas ever, once again Hillary Clinton shows her poor judgement with her support of the idea.
Posted by John Rove as Words at 1:46 PM MDT
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She definitely campaigns like a Republican
Posted by John Rove as Words at 3:11 PM MDT
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