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Saturday, February 05, 2011

RANDOM THOUGHTS #26

Steve Cole muses: Just thinking to himself.

1. I saw MAMMA MIA live on stage in Vegas, being a long-time fan of ABBA. I recently caught the movie version on television, and finally understood why the young girl decided to delay getting married.

2. How come "bipartisan" always means "Republicans doing what Democrats want"? President Obama ignored Republican ideas for two years, and NOW wants Republicans to work with his ideas?

3. Six guys have been locked in a phony space capsule the size of a bus in Moscow for seven months. They'll "land on Mars" next month, then start the eight-month trip home. The point is to study how people deal with isolation and boredom. Frankly, I think that this would be a great weight-loss program, and want to sign up. Lock me in right after Origins, give me internet and 1500 calories a day, and by Origins 2012 I'll be a new man!

4. Economists say the recession is over, but polls show that 80% of Americans think it's not.

5. Pakistan is the second largest recipient of American foreign aid, but about a third of the $1.2 billion in annual aid is not being spent because no one honest enough to handle the aid can be found in Pakistan.

6. We all know that claims that Obamacare will reduce the deficit are bogus, right? They're based on the formula of "ten years of (overestimated) revenue vs. six years of (under-estimated) expenditures" which obviously means a net "profit" on the deal. It gets worse, since the White House data that the CBO was required to use counts ten years of revenue for the equally expensive "long term care" insurance, but no expenditures at all. Then there is the "you can keep your current insurance" scam, which is only possible if your employer (or insurance company) decides to continue the present policy (which many have said they will not do). Then there are 40 million new patients for Medicaid, which cannot serve its current customers because few doctors will accept the low Medicaid payments. Not to mention that claims that this will keep your insurance rates low are nonsense; insurance rates are being raised sharply to pay for things the bill requires the companies to cover. And by the way, the bill requires all 50 states to adopt the most liberal rules for Medicaid (the ones currently used by the states that are bankrupt because of those generous rules).

7. Something that amazes me is how little terrorism there actually is in the US (or Western Europe). I don't think that's so much a matter of security (which has probably stopped half or more of the attacks actually planned) but the low number of attacks and terrorists. There are a LOT of easy targets (shopping malls for example). If airport security is too tough, just set off the bomb in the waiting line for the metal detectors (you'll kill dozens of people and shut down air travel). How about a car bomb in front of a church or synagogue as the crowd is leaving? There just aren't that many terrorists, or these targets would be getting hit every week. That's not to say we don't need security, but it's just amazing how few terrorists there are.

8. January 24th, 1935, was the birthday of canned beer.

9. When I was growing up, my family owned more books than the library of my grade school, or junior high, or high school, and I had read a lot of them. One of my teachers in high school remarked that a famous scholar had read 1,000 books in her lifetime, and I brought her records proving that I had read 1,000 books by my 17th birthday. What can I say? I like to read. While I stopped keeping records before I got married, I am reasonably certain that my personal record is well beyond 2,000 books at this point. They say you can tell a lot about someone by the books they have read twice. I cannot remember all of the books I have read twice, but they include: On War by Clausewitz, Red Storm Rising (and four other Tom Clancy books), First Clash (about the Canadian Army in World War 3) and (before any of them) Space Cat Visits Venus. (I just made myself a note to see if any of the Space Cat series is available for Leanna's Kindle. Shucks, no luck.)

10. When I first heard about the shooting of that congresswoman in Arizona, I admit that my first thought was "Tea Party guy went bonkers" and of course, the media leapt to that speculation as well (reporting it as fact). Then it turned out that he never listened to talk radio or Fox News, and was in fact a liberal not a conservative, but the liberal media continued to blame Sarah Palin, talk radio, and Fox News, even when that was proven to be a lie. Apparently, ethics among journalists died along with the six people who were killed.