Obama's "sniper fire"

Some are calling this Obama's Sniper Story but I have to say this is less egregious than hers.



Memory is a relative of truth but not it's twin. In Obama's defense the applause was lukewarm at best which to a politician is the same as silence I guess. The lesson is simple: There's video of everything. Don't go out on that limb unless you're sure.

Scenes from a marriage

Ever have a zinger that is simply too good to pass up? One you know will get you in trouble but you're powerless to resist lest the moment pass and never come up again? I had one of those the other night.

Eldest has been having trouble getting to sleep at night. If we leave him in his room he won't stay there. Sometimes he'll go in and wake the baby up. Sometimes he sleeps in my bed and sometimes he just wanders around his room getting into all kinds of trouble. I've found that if I lay down w/ him for about 10 minutes Mr. Sandman comes sooner rather than later. Well, I lay down w/ him the other night and I was so tired I was out. My wife left me as she figured I was tired and would wake up on my own. I did but about an hour later. I dragged myself up and into our bed and was out for the night. My wife decided to torment me.

Mrs. Duffy: You missed some hot lovin' last night
Duffy's Brain: Dude, you must return fire. You can't let a hanging curve ball just sit there!
Duffy's Penis: NOOooooooooooo! Do that and she'll freeze me out! C'mon I'm dying down here.
Duffy's Brain: Shut up you! I run this outfit. We're doing this! Full Steam Ahead!
Duffy's Penis: What? Overruled? How the hell did that happen? This is a coup! Attica! Attica! Attica!
Duffy: Really? Who was here?
Mrs. Duffy: *laughs* You're funny.

I'm very lucky she took it with the spirit it was intended.

Notes from the future

So the price of gas is going nowhere but up (you may have noticed). I boldly predict that trend will continue for the foreseeable future. This, in turn, means the airlines are going to have major problems in short order. There are going to be fewer passengers as they are forced to increase the prices to compensate. They will then begin the wailing and gnashing of teeth and file for bankruptcy. Congress will then write them a check for a few hundred million dollars to get them back on their feet. Not a loan mind you, a gift. A gift that you and I don't get and will never get. I have zero sympathy for them. I ought to know, I used to work for one. They are stupid beyond imagining. They know they'll never be allowed to fail if they get big enough. The smaller carriers will come and go but someone is always going to get a big piggy check from the government taxpayers to keep flying. How dumb are they? Let's go to Ed Cone for more:

The picture at far left is the view forward from row 11 on this evening's 6:50 United flight from Chicago to GSO (I missed my original connection). The picture next to it is the view to the rear of row 11. (Click images to enlarge)

What's going on? An industry that has forgotten about customer service.

Almost nobody opted to pay $30 bucks extra to sit in "economy plus," which promises a few inches of extra legroom. When it became clear that the flight would be packed six across from row 11 back while row after row sat empty in the front, people asked if they could move up. The flight attendants said no, you have to pay for those seats. Not very customer-friendly or situationally aware, but comprehensible.

So a guy asks if he could pay on the spot. Nope. People were laughing at the United's cluelessness, but it wasn't very friendly laughter.

Salable When the drink cart came by I bought myself $5 worth of stress relief and asked the flight attendant (politely) why she could sell me a drink but not a seat. She looked at me like I had two heads and said they are in no way set up to take reservations, you have to do that with a service representative.

I started to say I didn't want a reservation, I wanted to hand her $30 and move up one freaking row, but it felt like I was on the phone with Bangalore and couldn't get a supervisor, so I just shut up and drank.

The flight attendant stewardessess have been trained by BF Skinner apparently and don't know or care that they have actual customers. Rather, they figure they have your money and they have certain steps 1 - 14 that must be followed. Nothing changes. Ever. No further thinking required. As Dennis Miller likes to say, they traded their adult lives for free airfare and now they're waitresses at a bad restaurant at 25,000 feet.

There are a thousand things wrong with the airline industry. None of them cannot be fixed by letting them all fail and start over. No exclusivity at hubs allowed. Competition reigns supreme. No absurd union rules about flight time etc. Departure has to mean wheels off the ground not pulling away from the gate and then immediately moving back to let the crew off to eat dinner. (Many times the "mechanical problems" cited for being late are not that at all. Union rules require that flight crews have an hour to eat a meal after X hours of flight time. Frequently, they'll board the passengers, pull away from the gate thereby meeting FAA requirements for "on time" and then move back to the gate. You sit and wait while the crew goes for dinner. If you're lucky they don't take the full hour. Oh, and a swing crew will babysit you while you wait.)

George W. Bush is a moron

and so is John McCain. At least that's what I keep hearing. Every utterance from the President is scrutinized for any possible interpretation that makes him look stupid. McCain is derided for saying Shia when he meant Sunni.

What would the world say if either of them referred to the "57 States" they've visited? There would be unceasing howls from Berkley to Boston and rightfully so.

So what to make of Obama describing his visits to 57 states? Some in the audience laugh but it's clear he's not joking. He goes on to say that he wanted to visit Alaska and Hawaii but his staff couldn't justify it. The fact that this is not news anywhere on the MSM is proof positive that democrats and especially The One will never be subjected to the same cynical eye cast on republicans

Libertarian conundrum

My libertarian instincts sometimes fail me. Here's a prime example;


Man Ticketed For Wearing Speedo On Beach

Youtubery

This guy has brass ones.



and this guy is suicidal.



That's like biking through an 8,558 foot long cigarette. Seriously the air in that tunnel is so poor it probably takes an hour off your life each time you drive it let alone sprinting on a bike.

Selling Votes

...as only the DNC can.

DNC Superdelegate Puts His Vote Up For Sale
Steven Ybarra Wants $20 Million For His Vote

It's OK though because he wants to spend it on illegal alien voter registration Mexican-American voters. Right. None of that money would be redirected, squandered, stolen or what have you.

Full Circle

Everything is coming around full circle.

But Liu is investing $10 million in the Palmetto State, building a printing-plate factory that will open this fall and hire 120 workers. His main aim is to tap the large American market, but when his finance staff penciled out the costs, he was stunned to learn how they compared with those in China.

Liu spent about $500,000 for seven acres in Spartanburg -- less than one-fourth what it would cost to buy the same amount of land in Dongguan, a city in southeast China where he runs three plants. U.S. electricity rates are about 75% lower, and in South Carolina, Liu doesn't have to put up with frequent blackouts.

About the only major thing that's more expensive in Spartanburg is labor. Liu is looking to offer $12 to $13 an hour there, versus about $2 an hour in Dongguan, not including room and board. But Liu expects to offset some of the higher labor costs with a payroll tax credit of $1,500 per employee from South Carolina.

So the high labor cost is offset by tax incentives (liberals take note), lower land cost and cheaper power. The other unstated advantages are shipping costs (which may offset high labor cost) and import restrictions.

If this continues you'll be fielding calls from Dell customers in India complaining about how they cannot understand your accent.

Most popular post

This is weird. My most popular post is this one. People apparently google for it specifically.

Windfall profits

I keep hearing this term. Windfall. Leftists/liberals are enraged by windfall profits. They want to take them away from the recipients and give them to people who will vote for Democrats. As with most things in politics (especially things that annoy liberals) it remains undefined. It is just accepted as fact that any person or entity making a certain amount of money is undeserved or unearned. Since said persons or entities are very wealthy to begin with the government is allowed to take that money in the name of "fairness". They won't miss it after all, they have plenty. I googled for a definition of "windfall" profit. The best I could come up with is this:



Windfall
Main Entry:
wind·fall Listen to the pronunciation of windfall
Pronunciation:
\ˈwin(d)-ˌfȯl\
Function:
noun
Date:
15th century

1 : something (as a tree or fruit) blown down by the wind 2 : an unexpected, unearned, or sudden gain or advantage


Windfall
Definition

Money received which was not expected and not a direct result of something the recipient did

So the definition is that these are profits that are unearned. How they are unearned is not explained. Oil companies are evil. Everyone knows that. They're screwing you and me to make money at the pump. Never mind that oil is the the largest global commodity market in the world. It can't be that. Or taxes. Or the fact that our refinement capacity hasn't grown in 30 years. Or that we have over 50 different blends nationwide that cannot be sold when there's an overage in one area and a shortage in another. None of those things cause high gas prices. Just the Evil Rich Oil Companies.

The other target of liberal ire is financiers who make millions. Except George Soros. He's exempt because he hates Bush. Never mind that he almost singlehandedly destroyed the British pound to make his money and caused immense hardship to a great many Britons in the process. All those sins are washed away because he funds leftist polemics.

Of late we've been hearing about the outrageous amount of money hedge funds and their managers are making. One example this week from from IHT. Excerpt:

Five managers earned more than $1 billion (€630,000 million).

One contributor to the enormous amounts of money hedge fund managers are making is the unraveling of the traditional "2 and 20" method of compensation. For years, funds typically charged 2 percent of the amount invested plus 20 percent of the profits.

Ezra Zask of Lakeville Capital Management, a hedge fund advisory, said some of the bigger hedge funds are now charging as much as 5 percent of the invested principal and 40 percent of the profits.

Some investors are willing to pay higher fees to funds' managers if they show they have consistently beaten the market, Zask said.

One manager — John Paulson of Paulson & Co. — earned $3.7 billion (€2.32 billion) last year, which management consultant Peter Cohan pointed out means Paulson in 2007 made 30 times in one hour what the median family made all year.

Leftist logic would intervene here and say that there's no way anyone could have earned that much money. Nothing he does or can do would be worth that much. The government should take at least 2 billion of that and give it to poor people. After all, who couldn't live on the remaining $1.7 billion? One key factor is that liberals always refer to income being "distributed" rather than earned. This post is an example but DonViti violates the rule by using the phrase "income earners". He will be sent to re-education at Berkley until he learns to use the phrase "income recipients" or "corporate fatcats". We cannot have people talking about earnings as that implies merit. Fairness of earnings is determined by how much the person really "needs". That is, once you are really rich you aren't entitled to earn any more money because you couldn't possibly need it. Whether or not it is fair to take money legally earned isn't the way things are viewed. Anyone who makes that much money must be exploiting someone, somewhere to do so. This logic is never applied to the entertainment industry. Singers, actors and sports stars don't have their earnings questioned. Primarily because they are assumed to be liberals and therefore, good people. Good people with lots of money do great things with it. And they have, somehow earned it. After all, they're famous. Being famous entitles you to riches and makes you immune from criticism regarding wealth. How this is so is beyond me. This too, is an unexplained article of faith. Back to the article:

Driven in part by fees hedge fund managers are making, income inequality in 2007 was at the highest level since 1928, the year before the Great Depression began.

In fact, even among hedge funds the disparity has widened, Cohan said: The top 50 managers make a disproportionate share of the fees earned in an industry that by some accounts has 10,000 funds.

Stunned by news stories about Schwarzman's lavish lifestyle, some members of Congress tried to change laws allowing hedge funds' profits to be taxed as "capital gains," at 15 percent, and not income at a rate more than twice that.

Emphasis mine. This is the most clear cut admission that class envy drives liberal politics than I've seen in a while. Congress sees someone living lavishly. Enjoying himself. Can't have that. No no no. We need to get our hands on that money. I have votes to buy!

Lower taxes notwithstanding, Xavier Gabaix, a finance professor at New York University, said it is not clear whether such gaping inequality is necessarily bad.

Because hedge fund managers make their money by charging fees on investments from rich people, these fees represent the redistribution of wealth from the rich to the very rich, he said.

By contrast, the income inequality plaguing many developing countries represents rich people profiting at the expense of the poor, he said.


Further, Gabaix said the economy may benefit when these managers spend the money they have earned.

So, taking money from the rich to give to the very rich. Where's the problem? Also, Professor Gabaix outs himself as a "trickle down" guy which is the financial equivalent of being a Flat Earth Scientist to liberals. They can write him off as a moron or a loon based on that last sentence.

What do they do with all that money? Some people think they have a huge pile of it stashed away gathering dust. They never consider that whether they save that money, invest it or spend it, they're creating jobs. Any activity aside from putting it in a pile and burning it, is going to employ somebody. What else do they do with it?

Several hedge fund managers have a reputation for philanthropy. According to one report, George Soros — the second-highest-paid hedge fund manager last year at $2.9 billion (€1.82 billion) — has spent $6 billion (€3.8 billion) on philanthropic activities ranging from fighting poverty in Africa to funding universities in Russia.

In a fit of mighty restraint, the IHT didn't include efforts to unseat President Bush in his list of philanthropic activities. I imagine there was a blood bath in the editor's meeting over that one.

James Simons, who took home $2.8 billion (€1.76 billion) as manager of Renaissance Technologies Corp., co-founded the Simons Foundation, which finances education and health projects.

That last bit is selling Mr. Simons rather short. Who is this guy anyway? Let's check his Wikipedia entry:

Autism research

The family's charitable foundation has committed $38 million to find the causes related to autism in recent years, and plans to spend another $100 million in what is becoming the largest private investment in the field of autism research, while Simons personally exerts extraordinary control over where and how his money is spent. Simons has provided DNA from his family for study (his daughter is autistic), and has given assistance in helping solve research problems. When MIT asked for brain research funding, he stipulated that the project focus on autism and include scientists of his choosing.

On June 11, 2003, the Simons Foundation hosted its first "Panel on Autism Research" in New York City, a day-long event highlighting research into the causes of autism, the accurate genomic mapping of autism, and in the study of the biochemical mechanisms that occur in people with autism. Attendees included David Amaral, Dr. Eric Courchesne, Dr. Nathaniel Heinz, Tom Insel, MD, Catherine Lord, PhD, Dr. Fred Volkmar and Dr. Paul Greengard. The Simons Foundation recently gave $10 million to two researchers at the Yale University Child Study Center to study genetic influences on autism.

He's a remarkable guy. He requires an unprecidented amount of control over the projects he funds. He personally chooses the scientists and requires frequent updates and briefings on their progress. Any project he funds has a maximum of 12% of administrative overhead. The rest goes to research. That money would never have been spent on autism research had the government seized it. It would likely be spent on something named after Robert C. Byrd. Simons is my hero for reasons that my reader(s) will find pretty obvious. We need men like him to fund valuable research that the government does not and will not. Even if he doesn't and wants to spend it on frivolous things, it doesn't matter. Its his money he earned it and he should get to keep it. If people really cared about what is fair and what is just rather than how much people should be allowed to keep we'd all be a lot better off.