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Fresno State Game Tonight The public's best option: Less government, more choice part 1- Jacoby The public's best option: Less government, more choice Part 2- Jacoby Computer problems Poetry ~ Share yours Will Rogers wise sayings Examples of the left and it's vitriol. The war on affordable books - Jacoby HERB BENHAM: After we were finished, life raised our children Obama Hits Campaign Trail, Schedules Full Week of Political Stops August 06 September 06 October 06 November 06 December 06 January 07 February 07 March 07 April 07 May 07 June 07 July 07 August 07 September 07 October 07 November 07 December 07 January 08 February 08 March 08 April 08 May 08 June 08 July 08 August 08 September 08 October 08 November 08 December 08 January 09 February 09 March 09 April 09 May 09 June 09 July 09 August 09 September 09 October 09 November 09 
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Health care: We don't need the Lexusby Jeff Jacoby http://www.jeffjacoby.com/5...
IMAGINE THE SORT OF CAR you'd drive if government regulations made it illegal to sell any automobile that didn't feature 380-horsepower direct-injection V6 engines, computer-controlled electric power steering, eight-speed automatic transmission, four-wheel-drive, automatic climate control (including humidity and smog sensors), "smart key" technology, touchscreen navigation, backup cameras, LED headlights, acoustic glass, surround-sound stereo, and leather seat stitching. If those were the minimum requirements every car had to meet before it could be offered for sale, would you commute to and from work every day in a Lexus LS 460 or some other luxury vehicle? Well, you might, if the steep price wasn't an obstacle. But it's more likely you wouldn't be driving at all. If the government barred you from buying anything but a high-end car, you might have no choice but to rely on the bus or subway, or to find a job closer to home. Lawmakers can decree that every car on the road be a Lexus or its equivalent, but they can't make driving more luxurious for all. They can only make it more expensive -- and for many drivers, unaffordable. And what is true of transportation is true of everything else: Raise the number of amenities that a product or service must include, and more consumers will be unable to pay for that product or service. That is why one of the simplest strategies for making health insurance more affordable is to reduce the minimum number of benefits that insurers are required to cover. Dreamifucan sent me this a few minutes ago and since we've been talking about dogs and pets I thought you might enjoy reading it. It's been around before but still fun. Yesterday I was at my local COSTCO buying a large bag of Purina dog chow for my loyal pet, Biscuit, the Wonder Dog and was in the checkout line when a woman behind me asked if I had a dog. So since I'm retired and have little to do, on impulse I told her that no, I didn't have a dog. I was starting the Purina Diet again. I added that I probably shouldn't, because I ended up in the hospital last time, but that I'd lost 50 Horrified, she asked if I ended up in intensive care because the dog food poisoned me. I told her no, I stepped off a curb to sniff an Irish Setter's butt and a car hit us both. This is what a true American hero looks like. An example that all kids can look up to. Abortion and the echo of eugenicsby Jeff Jacoby
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Note: The tragic death of Mary Jo Kopechne in Senator Edward Kennedy's car off Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts occurred 40 years ago tonight. The following column was originally published in the Boston Globe on July 21, 1994. To view a video report on the Chappaquiddick incident produced by the Boston Globe, click here.
Chappaquiddick's unanswered questionsby Jeff Jacoby http://www.jeffjacoby.com/3...
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO TOMORROW, on July 22, 1969, Mary Jo Kopechne was buried at St. Vincent's Cemetery in Plymouth, Penn. She had died three days earlier, pinned underwater when Sen. Kennedy's car swerved off Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. Within hours of Kopechne's death, a Kennedy aide named Dun Gifford flew a chartered plane into Edgartown (the Martha's Vineyard town of which Chappaquiddick is a part), with orders to get the body off the island. Before Massachusetts officials had even decided whether to perform an autopsy to settle the cause of death, Kopechne's remains were in Pennsylvania -- beyond the state's jurisdiction. -- Did Kennedy order Gifford to remove the body? That's one question the senator has never answered. In fact, quite a few questions have never been answered. At least, not by Kennedy. At least, not truthfully. Kennedy and Kopechne were part of a group of 12 that had come to Chappaquiddick for the Edgartown Regatta and a private barbecue afterward. Half the guests were married men, half were single women in their 20s. Kennedy and Kopechne left the party at some point that evening and ended up driving off the bridge. Though Kennedy managed to extricate himself from the car and get back to his motel that night, Kopechne remained in the car until her body was recovered by a Fire Department diver at 8:45 the next morning. To the diver, Capt. John Farrar, it was clear that she had neither drowned nor died quickly. Kopechne survived for some time by breathing a pocket of trapped air, finally suffocating to death when the oxygen ran out. When Kennedy reported the accident to the Edgartown police, it was 9:45 a.m. -- some nine or 10 hours after he left Kopechne in his car. Questions: -- Why did Kennedy and Kopechne leave the barbecue? Kennedy said they wanted to return to their respective motels and left to catch the ferry (which only operated until midnight) back to Edgartown center. But Kennedy's chauffeur, who was on hand, didn't drive them; Kopechne didn't take her purse or her room key; and they didn't go to the ferry. Kennedy headed in the opposite direction -- to Dike Bridge and the secluded beach beyond. -- What time did they leave? Kennedy claimed he left at 11:15 p.m., and the accident happened a few minutes later. Yet Deputy Sheriff Huck Look reported seeing Kennedy's black Oldsmobile at 12:45 a.m., heading down Dike Road toward the bridge. After the accident, the senator said he hadn't been able to rescue Kopechne because of the "strong and murky current" in which he kept getting "swept away." In truth there was no current at 11:15. The water was absolutely slack, at low tide. At 12:45, however, the current was fast-moving and strong. -- Did Kennedy take a wrong turn without realizing it? So he testified, and his whole story rests upon that claim. But the road to the ferry, which Kennedy had already traveled several times that day, was the only paved road on the island. Anyone driving from the house where the barbecue was held would have felt the road bank unmistakably to the left -- toward the ferry -- and would have seen the shiny left-turn sign. By contrast, it required a deliberate effort to turn right, toward the bridge. Dike Road was unpaved and very bumpy. Its entrance was obscured behind bushes and necessitated a 90-degree turn -- hard to do inadvertently. -- Why didn't Kennedy call for help to rescue Kopechne? Because, he said, he was in shock. He called his behavior "irrational, indefensible, inexcusable and inexplicable." Yet he was not too traumatized to return to the barbecue and fetch two close lawyer friends, Joey Gargan and Paul Markham. He was not too traumatized to make more than 16 long-distance phone calls that night to aides and advisers (none of whom tried to get help to Kopechne, either). Despite his "shock," he managed to: return to his motel, complain to the manager about a noisy party, go to sleep, chat with a friend the next morning about the boat race, order two newspapers, meet again with Gargan and Markham and return to Chappaquiddick to call another lawyer from a pay phone -- all before going to the police.
Other questions: -- How much alcohol had Kennedy drunk that night? -- If he and Kopechne did leave the barbecue at 11:15, what occupied their time until 12:45, when Deputy Look saw them drive toward Dike Bridge? -- After getting out of the submerged car, why didn't Kennedy walk to the lighted house a few yards away and call for help? Or call from the house with the barbecue? Or from his motel? -- Did he urge Gargan to fabricate a story about Kopechne being alone in the car when it went off the bridge? -- Did he go to the police only when he realized he would not be able to carry off such an alibi? -- If, as Kennedy said later, what was uppermost in his mind was "the tragedy and loss of a very devoted friend," why did he summon 19 high-level political advisers to Hyannis the next day? -- Was the prosecutor rewarded for not bringing manslaughter or driving-to-endanger charges against Kennedy? -- Why was the grand jury threatened with jail and intimidated by a judge when it tried to look into the tragedy? -- When an inquest was eventually held, why did Kennedy fight -- against all precedent -- to keep its proceedings secret? -- Why was Farrar, the diver, barred from telling the inquest and grand jury what he knew? Twenty-five years ago tomorrow, Mary Jo Kopechne was buried. Three days later, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was sentenced to two months, suspended. Following the secret inquest in January, District Judge James Boyle found "probable cause" that Kennedy had driven "negligently" and had engaged in "criminal conduct" that "contributed to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne." The senator was never prosecuted and never tried. Though he did not save his young friend that midsummer night in 1969, he did preserve his political career. Kennedy has been reelected to the Senate four times since. One final question -- the one Kennedy himself asked in 1974, when Richard Nixon was pardoned: "Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law, or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty?"
Related Topics: Edward M. Kennedy
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Imagaine that! He apparently got a leg cramp and had to be pulled from the water.
In the news clip kids were in some sort of flotation toy boat. Murky water, muddy, disgusting. Why would ANYONE want to get that crud in their mouths, ears and....places?
Yuck!
Listen up everyone. The Beale Library downtown is having it's book sale starting this evening for members and tomorrow for the general public.
This event raises money for more books for the library. This is NOT a paid announcement, not a business, no profit here, just a reminder for all book lovers to get in on some fantastic deals and benefit out community at the same time. There are literally THOUSANDS of books to choose from. It's amazing.
That's where I got my book on earthquake faults last year.
Here's a link for hours and such.
What? No reports from the ones who kept constant track of the losses in "Bush's" war? 24 Americans killed this month already. Or did I read it wrong?
Ahhh that Biden. Wonder how Obama felt about this one.
Now you can take it backpacking with you. I was surpised at the number of articles about this one. Seems winemakers are taking exception to modern technology.
http://www.newser.com/story...
Heh..the funny things you find in life and on the web.
Interesting new studyshows swearing may ease pain. I knew there was a valid reason for my potty mouth.
Read it before you vote, congressman
by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
July 12, 2009
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/5...
SAY, DID YOU HEAR THE ONE about the congressman who was asked to do his job? Talk about funny -- this'll crack you up!
Well, maybe it won't. But Steny Hoyer thought it was hilarious.
Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, is the majority leader in the US House of Representatives. At a news conference last week, he was talking about the health-care overhaul now being drafted on Capitol Hill, and a reporter asked whether he would support a pledge committing members of Congress to read the bill before voting on it, and to make the full text of the legislation available to the public online for 72 hours before the vote takes place.
That, reported CNSNews, gave Hoyer the giggles:
The majority leader "found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. 'I'm laughing because . . . I don't know how long this bill is going to be, but it's going to be a very long bill,' he said."
Then came one of those classic Washington gaffes that Michael Kinsley famously defined as "when a politician tells the truth." Hoyer conceded that if lawmakers had to carefully study the bill ahead of time, they'd never vote for it. "If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn't read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes," he said.
Hoyer's words can be given two interpretations, both of which are probably accurate: One is that the health-care "reform" will be such a noisome mess that anyone who really digs into its details will be more likely to oppose it. The second is that so few members of Congress will bother to read the bill that if reading it became a prerequisite for voting on it, almost no one would qualify. Either way, the majority leader was declaring it more important for Congress to pass the bill than to understand it.
"Transparency" is a popular buzzword in good-government circles, and politicians are forever promising more of it. On his first day in the White House, for example, President Obama vowed to make his administration "the most open and transparent in history." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has boasted of the "great openness and transparency" that her leadership has brought to Congress.
But as Hoyer's mirth suggests, when it comes to the legislative process, transparency is a joke. Congress frequently votes on huge and complex bills that few if any members of the House or Senate have read through. They couldn't read them even if they wanted to, since it is not unusual for legislation to be put to a vote just hours after the text is made available to lawmakers. Congress passed the gigantic, $787 billion "stimulus" bill in February -- the largest spending bill in history -- after having had only 13 hours to master its 1,100 pages. A 300-page amendment was added to Waxman-Markey, the mammoth cap-and-trade energy bill, at 3 A.M. on the day the bill was taken up by the House. And that wasn't the worst of it, as law professor Jonathan Adler of Case Western Reserve University noted in National Review Online:
"When Waxman-Markey finally hit the floor, there was no actual bill. Not one single copy of the full legislation that would, hours later, be subject to a final vote was available to members of the House. The text made available to some members of Congress still had "placeholders" -- blank provisions to be filled in by subsequent language. . . . Even the House Clerk's office lacked a complete copy of the legislation, and was forced to place a copy of the 1,200-page draft side by side with the 300-page amendments."
Ramming legislation through Congress so quickly that neither lawmakers nor voters have time to read and digest it is a bipartisan crime; Republicans have been as guilty of it as Democrats. The 341-page Patriot Act, to mention just one notorious example, was introduced in the Republican-controlled House on Oct. 23, 2001, brought to a vote on Oct. 24, adopted by the Democratic-controlled Senate on Oct. 25, and signed into law by President George W. Bush on Oct. 26.
Such efficiency is no virtue when it comes to lawmaking, which is why every member of Congress should be pressed to sign the pledge Hoyer was asked about. It is sponsored by a grassroots conservative group, Let Freedom Ring, and is readily accessible online. Equally worthy of support is ReadTheBill.org, which is backed by a coalition of liberal organizations. Still another push comes from the libertarian group Downsize DC, which urges Congress to pass its proposed Read The Bills Act.
Senators and representatives who vote on bills they haven't read and don't understand betray their constituents' trust. It is no answer to say that Congress would get much less done if every member took the time to read every bill. Fewer and shorter laws more carefully thought through would be a vast improvement over today's massive bills, which are assembled in the dark and enacted in haste. Steny Hoyer chortles at the thought of asking members of Congress to do their job properly. It's up to voters to wipe the grin off his face.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for the Boston Globe.)
This is so tragic and never needs to happen. Oh to be young and invincible again. or maybe not.
I went to Target Wed night and used my coupon to get the RCA box (thanks Shwaine) and the card paid the entire 43.34. I didn't have to pay a dime for tax or anything.
Got home and hooked it up and with my indoor antenna I got 5 channels. 4 in English and 1 in Spanish. Which means that I get 17, 23, 29, and 58 (CW). The weird thing is I couldn't get CW on cable but can get it free. Of course, all I have are the 3 local channels along with it since I'm not bi lingual and so the 5th channel is not an option. Not much TV watching gonna happen there that's for sure. I guess I'll have to just opt for Basic Cable since the antenna thing isn't gonna work Other than Jeopardy, there isn't much I can stand on the big 3 network programming.
Criminy, I feel like I'm back in the 70's when the only channels available to me were locals. Ah well, my TV hasn't been on at all today so I guess I'm not missing much anyway.
The thing is when you WANT to watch it you want it available, and yet too many times I wanted to watch TV and there wouldn't be a thing on other than some old sitcoms and some even older movies that they play over and over.
Minimum-wage folly
by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
July 8, 2009
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/5...
AS IF THE RECESSION hasn't been rough enough on those near the bottom of the economic food chain, fresh bad news is on the way. Beginning July 24, the federal government will be making it more difficult for employers to hire low- and unskilled American workers. Thanks to an ill-advised law enacted with bipartisan support in 2007, the cost of providing an entry-level job to individuals with few skills or minimal experience will be going up by more than 10 percent. Those who cannot find a job paying at least $7.25 an hour will not be permitted to work.
Welcome to the latest chapter of America's minimum-wage folly.
This will mark the third time in recent years that Washington has forced up the cost of employing low-skilled workers. Last July the minimum hourly wage was increased from $5.85 to $6.55; the July before that, from $5.15 to $5.85. By the end of this month, in other words, the lowest rung on the employment ladder will be nearly 41 percent higher than it was just two years ago. Needless to say, that will put it beyond the reach of many marginal workers, leaving them without work.
Those who press for a higher minimum wage often claim that making entry-level jobs more expensive won't reduce the number of entry-level jobs. Were the government to compel a 41 percent increase in the price of gasoline or movie tickets or steel, every rational observer would expect a drop in the demand for gasoline, movie tickets, or steel. Yet when it comes to the minimum wage, politicians and journalists somehow persuade themselves that making workers more expensive won't reduce the demand for workers. Senator Edward Kennedy, for example, blithely asserts: "History clearly shows that raising the minimum wage has not had any negative impact on jobs." Activist Holly Sklar, campaigning for a $10 minimum wage, likewise insists that "raising the minimum wage does not increase unemployment in good times or bad."
But that's exactly what it does. Artificial price floors -- mandatory minimum prices set higher than what the market will bear -- generate surpluses. Minimum-wage laws are no exception. The price floor imposed by the government on the supply of low-skilled labor results in a labor surplus, which is just another way of saying higher unemployment. How much higher? Economists Joseph Sabia of American University and Richard Burkhauser of Cornell estimate that the minimum-wage hikes of the past two years will wipe out more than 390,000 jobs. According to David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine, an expert on labor force economics, the minimum-wage jump scheduled for this month "will lead to the loss of an additional 300,000 jobs among teens and young adults."
It is bad enough that Congress and the president would deliberately price so many workers out of the market. What is worse is that they claim to be helping the poor when they do so. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama backed a minimum-wage of $9.50 an hour because, his website explained, he "believes that people who work full time should not live in poverty." But if helping the poor is the goal, making it harder for them to get that crucial first job -- the one that may not pay much at first, but that gives new workers their first foothold in the job market -- is not the way to achieve it.
Politicians cannot cure poverty by raising the cost of entry-level employment any more than they can do so by waving a magic wand. After all, if aiding the needy were as easy as setting a compulsory minimum wage, why not set it at $20 an hour -- or better yet, $120 an hour -- and really help them out?
The laws of supply and demand are not optional. They weren't enacted by Congress and Congress cannot override them. Of course a higher minimum wage may benefit some low-skilled workers. But there are innumerable others whom it harms: Those who lose their jobs or can't get hired in the first place because the higher rate is more than their labor is worth. Those whose employers compensate for the wage increase by cutting employees' hours. Those whose jobs are outsourced to a market with lower labor costs.
Minimum-wage laws don't make low- and unskilled Americans more productive, more experienced, or more desirable. They merely make them more expensive -- and more likely, as a consequence, to be unemployed.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)
Related Topics: Markets, Economics, and Competition
I got this from motopoet this morning. try it.
Now, scroll down
for the answers...
That's all right; I didn't pass either!
We all know that ice cream is an all american treat and as American as to go with apple pie but I say we're being robbed, hornswoggled, hoodwinked.
Recently I found Breyers n sale and grabbed a couple of cartons. Since it seemed to go faster tahn I thought it should, I checked the carton of my half gallon treat. WHAT? it's only 1.5 quarts? No wonder it didn't last. This is highway robbery, false advertising. A pox on Breyers, I just wont buy it any more.
I went back to my old favorite at Vons..Jerseymaids Heavenly Hash and pulled out a carton. WHAT? It's only 1.75. What happened to our old half gallon cartons? When did they sneak these chintzy cartons in on an unsuspecting ice cream lover?
This is outrageous. The gave us our favorites in familiar cartons, only smaller. What a sneaky way to make more money without raising the price. Criminy, when Breyers isn't on sale it's about 5 bucks a carton! For a quart and a half.
Get out the signs I tell you. Is there a spare corner not being used? I claim it for addicted ice cream victims of unscrupulous ice creameries.
Ice cream addicts UNITE!
This is from the guy that some here said hates America.
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Doesn't that make 5? We did three and now two more. Who's next?
No climate debate? Yes, there is
by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
July 1, 2009
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/5...
IN HIS weekly address on Saturday, President Obama saluted the House of Representatives for passing Waxman-Markey, the gargantuan energy-rationing bill that would amount to the largest tax increase in the nation's history. It would do so by making virtually everything that depends on energy -- which is virtually everything -- more expensive.
The president didn't describe the legislation in those terms on Saturday, but he made no bones about it last year. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in January 2008, he calmly explained how cap-and-trade -- the carbon-dioxide rationing scheme that is at the heart of Waxman-Markey -- would work:
"Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket . . . because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, natural gas, you name it. . . . Whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money, and they will pass that [cost] on to consumers."
In the same interview, Obama suggested that his energy policy would require the ruin of the coal industry. "If somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant, they can," he told the Chronicle. "It's just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."
The justification for inflicting all this financial misery, of course, is the onrushing catastrophe of human-induced global warming -- a catastrophe that can be prevented only if we abandon the carbon-based fuels on which most of the prosperity and productivity of modern life depend. But what if that looming catastrophe isn't real? What if climate change has little or nothing to do with human activity? What if enacting cap-and-trade means incurring excruciating costs in exchange for infinitesimal benefits?
Hush, says Obama. Don't ask such questions. And don't listen to anyone who does. "There is no longer a debate about whether carbon pollution is placing our planet in jeopardy," he declared in his Saturday remarks. "It's happening."
No debate? The president, like Humphrey Bogart, must have been misinformed. The debate over global warming is more robust than it has been in years, and not only in America. "In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming," Kimberly Strassel noted in The Wall Street Journal the other day. "In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. . . . Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the 'new religion.'"
Closer to home, the noted physicist Hal Lewis (emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara) e-mails me a copy of a statement he and several fellow scientists, including physicists Will Happer and Robert Austin of Princton, Laurence Gould of the University of Hartford, and climate scientist Richard Lindzen of MIT, have sent to Congress. "The sky is not falling," they write. Far from warming, "the Earth has been cooling for 10 years" -- a trend that "was not predicted by the alarmists' computer models."
Fortune magazine recently profiled veteran climatologist John Christy, a lead author of the 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and co-author of the American Geophysical Union's 2003 statement on climate change. With his green credentials, Fortune observed, Christy is the warm-mongers' "worst nightmare -- an accomplished climate scientist with no ties to Big Oil who has produced reams and reams of data that undermine arguments that the earth's atmosphere is warming at an unusual rate and question whether the remedies being talked about in Congress will actually do any good."
No one who cares about the environment or the nation's economic well-being should take it on faith that climate change is a crisis, or that drastic changes to the economy are essential to "save the planet." Hundreds of scientists reject the alarmist narrative. For non-experts, a steadily-widening shelf of excellent books surveys the data in laymen's terms and exposes the weaknesses in the doomsday scenario -- among others, Climate Confusion by Roy W. Spencer, Climate of Fear by Thomas Gale Moore, Taken by Storm, by Christopher Essex and Ross McKitrick, and Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, by S. Fred Singer and Dennis Avery.
If the case for a war on carbon dioxide were unassailable, no one would have to warn against debating it. The 212 House members who voted against Waxman-Markey last week plainly don't believe the matter is settled. They're right.