Tax Loopholes

Two thing President Obama appears to believe: 1) That a donation being tax deductible has no bearing on the amount being donated 2) The taxes not paid on donations because they are tax deductible is tantamount to stealing from the Federal Treasury. I agree completely. To that ends I propose we stop making political donations tax deductible. With President Obama planning on spending $1 Billion on the next election that would be in the neighborhood of $250,000,000 more to the government coffers.

Obese Childrem

Harvard researchers are advocating the government must step in to help morbidly obese children due to health issues and hold parents criminally responsible for child abuse or neglect. Question: if a child is forced to eat vegetables and denied sugar at what point will this damage his self esteem and cause the parents to be held criminally responsible for child abuse or neglect? Question 2: What if the children completely refuse to eat grilled chicken, fresh vegetables, and fruit salad, would the parents be charged with child abuse for starving their children? Question 3: Would the Harvard researchers agree that people who knowingly engage in sexual activates that can lead to health issues also be held criminally responsible? After all, isn’t the issue criminal charges for behavior that can cause health issues?

Things are complicated

I have a "friend" on facebook called Chip. Chip's actually a guy I played in band with in high school, but who I haven't seen in decades, so he doesn't really qualify as a friend anymore, except in the facebook sense. Anyway, Chip runs a manufacturing company founded by his father that makes machines that have to do with making pipes. They make machines that make fintubes, whatever those are. (I get a vision of the offspring of a pipe bred with a 50s Cadillac, but I'm sure that's not right.) They also make equipment for fusing polyethylene pipe. As near as I can tell, they don't make polyethylene pipe or machines for making polyethylene pipe (unless fintubes are also polyethylene pipes), just the machines for fusing them. They seem to employ 100 or more people based on the company group photo on their website.

So what's the point? Chip's company strikes me as an outstanding example of how damn complicated our world is. Here's this company, employing dozens of people focusing on a really narrow portion of our industrial process: making machines to fuse pipes. There are pipes everywhere, of course, and fusing them is really important, if you don't want them to leak, but pipes are just devises to move fluids about. They're kind of dull. The really complicated stuff happens before or after the fluid goes into the pipe. Pipes aren't really central to anything people do with fluids, they're just a good way to get fluids from one place to another. Yet one small part of the process involved in creating these rather pedestrian devices is important enough to support a small industry. (I assume that Chip's company has competitors in the fusion machine and fintube-making machine markets.)

Multiple that by all of the other steps in the process of making pipes and you come to the the realization that the humble pipe implies a incomprehensibly complicated industrial infrastructure. I don't even want to think about the machines doing complicated things to the fluids at the end of the pipes.

I don't really have anywhere to go with this, except to say that it boggles my mind, and that anyone who claims to understand our economy is either lying or deluded.

Margin of error

I've been looking at political polls a lot recently. In my attempt to understand them, I've been thinking about the terms thrown about with explanation, one of which is "margin of error".

I don't think margin of error means what people think it means. You will often see polls like this: Bruce Scott (R) 51% v. Scott Bruce (D) 49%, margin of error 3%. To which people respond, "that's a dead heat since it's within the margin of error". Not exactly. Margin of error cuts both way; the real percentage is as likely to be 54-36 as it is 48-52. Given that, there are seven possibilities (54-36, 53-37, 52-48, 51-49, 50-50, 49-51, and 48-52). If one assumes that each of these possibilities is equally likely, then the "republican" wins 4 out of 7 times, the "democrat" 2 out of 7 times, and the lawyers 1 out of 7 times.

I realize that this is a gross oversimplification. To begin with, votes almost never break in even integer percentages, but the 2:1 win ratio for the "republican" v. "democrat" will apply for fractional results as well, the percentage of ties, however, will shrink. It is also probably that there is some sort of bell curve for these possibilities, so that 54-36 and 48-52 are equally likely, but both are less likely than 53-37 and 49-51. Even given that, the area under "republican" side of the curve will be greater that the area under the "democrat" side of the curve. I suspect that the 2:1 ratio might even still apply.

I also realize that I've never taken a course in statistics or probability, and that I may be completely wrong here. But until someone explains to me why this reasoning is wrong, I'm going to assume that "margin of error" is something that can almost be ignored.

New Suggested reading.

I've added a new suggested reading to our list "The Long War Journal". Unlike the other 3 posters here, I feel that the Long War is some what more important than who has power in Washington DC. I'm not saying that having a liberal Congress and President is a good thing, or that having a conservative Congress and President would be a bad thing, but I am saying that what Al Qaeda and other jihad groups are doing is somewhat more pressing than what the capital gains tax rate is.

2012 and history.

What does it take to beat a sitting president running for reelection? If history is any guide, it takes a strong challenge from within the president's party. Since 1900, with one exception, every sitting president who failed to gain reelection faced a significant challenge from within his party. It works the other way as well. In the same time span, every sitting president, with one exception, that has faced significant opposition within his party failed to win the general election.

In 1912 William Taft faced a strong challenge for the nomination from Teddy Roosevelt. When Taft won the nomination, Teddy formed his Bull Moose party. Woodrow Wilson crushed Taft in the general election. In 1952 Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee defeated Harry Truman in the New Hampshire primary. Shortly thereafter Truman withdrew from the race. In 1968 Lyndon Johnson barely beat Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary. Four days later, Robert Kennedy entered the race and two weeks later Johnson withdrew. In 1976, Gerald Ford faced Ronald Reagan in the primaries and barely won, finally winning the nomination in a floor fight at the convention. Ford lost to Jimmy Carter in the general election. In 1980 Carter faced a strong challenge from Ted Kennedy who won 40% of the delegates to the Democratic convention. Carter was crushed by Ronald Reagan in the general election. In 1992, George H. W. Bush faced a symbolic but significant challenge from Patrick Buchanan. Although Buchanan won no state primaries and only an handful of delegates, he did win a significant percentage of the primary vote. His run highlighted the dissatisfaction with Bush felt by the conservative wing of the Republican party. Bush also faced a third party challenger, Ross Perot, who may have acted as a spoiler for Bush.

The one example of a sitting president facing a significant intra-party challenge and prevailing in the general election was Harry Truman in 1948. Truman faced a serious Party leaders approached Dwight Eisenhower, but he refused. (The Republicans also approached him in '48 bas well, but he turned them down also. He didn't reveal his party until 1952.) Truman also had a three way split in the Democratic Party, with the new Progressive Party nominating FDR's second Vice President, Henry Wallace. The Democratic Party split again at the convention over civil rights, with southern Democrats walking out and forming the Dixiecrats behind Strom Thurmond. Despite this significant party disunity, Truman pulled off the greatest upset ever in presidential politics, and won the general election.

The one example of a sitting president being defeated in the general election without facing a strong challenge for the nomination was in 1932, when Herbert Hoover easily won the Republican nod, but was soundly defeated by Franklin Roosevelt in the general election. OF course, this was in the midst of the Great Depression, and Hoover's policies were widely blamed for exacerbating the country's economic woes.

Given that history, this could be very bad news for the president.

High T.E.A.

Since Senator Reid dismisses our current taxation as 'voluntary'; how does one go about 'involuntarily' not paying taxes legally?

Second graders know when they have no pennies in the piggy bank they are told no.

Even drunker sailors know when to stop spending - when the funds run out.

Why is it that Congress continues to spend with no accountability? Not only are they spending, but also borrowoing at alarming rates with no end in sight. Now in order to get us out of debt they propose a 1% tax increase. Is this a joke? Why reward these Senators with more money that they are going to over spend and tax the American population again and again.

Memo to Congress - stop spending.

Enough is enough. It is time to vote these morons out of offfice come November.

On McChrystal Part II

OK, I can see why McChrystal was fired. He's lucky to not get Court Martialed (Article 88 of the UCMJ) But why the hell did President Obama demote GEN Petraeus as his replacement? Petraeus was Central Command's Commander, i.e. McChrystal's boss.

Which brings up the question of who is replacing Petraeus at Central Command? For a while Lt. General Allen (USMC) will take over, but he's a three star and that's a 4 star slot. This also puts the Central Command in the some what odd position of having a 4 star general under the operation command of a 3 star general. Obama needs to get a replacement in a Central Command ASAP. Either promote LTGEN Allen (which might be tricky given that the USMC has a very limited number of full (i.e 4 star) generals (like one I recall correctly, the commandant of the Marines )) or find some under-employed 4 star that is willing to take that job, and please not a squid or a zomer.

Of course, IMAO, the correct sequence would have been fire McChrystal, brevet Allen to 4 stars (and get him confirmed by the US Senate ASAP), and assign him to AfPac commander. Among other things things, the USMC seems to have their collective shit together more in Afghanistan than the non-special forces US Army does. The USMC does have a longer (and more successful) history of "Small Wars" than the US Army does. But what do I know, I was just a SP/5 in the Army. Wait, that's more experience than Obama has...

On McChrystal

One of the most significant events in American history was when Washington surrendered his sword to the Continental Congress, establishing the firm tradition that the military is under civilian control. This is a key ingredient of a successful free society. I haven't read the Rolling Stone article, but I suspect that I would agree with many of the opinions that General McChrystal expressed. That aside, his comments can not be defended. No man is indespensible, but even if the war effort in Afghanistan would be seriously damaged, that would be less of a threat to free society than weakening the principle of civilian control of the military. The President would be justified if he fired McChrystal and probably should.

Epic something

I don't know if this is an epic win or an epic fail. It's damn sure epic, however.


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Opps The first in the series was some where else.

Things that I sort of wish would happen to Top American Leaders ™



Couple of notes just as a point of comparison. Note that, even though it's raining he's not holding an umbrella and looking silly. For that matter he doesn't look silly after the wind hits the wreath.

Also note the serious Men in Suits standing around with brief cases. You know they have some serious firepower in those cases. I like the one staring into the hedge. What was he expecting? A raccoon or squirrel to jump out and attack?

I knew there was at least one other reason to like Sandra

Sandra Bullock accepted the "Troops Choice" Award for Entertainer of The Year, which was voted on by members of the military on Spike TV's Web site.

Ignore this unless you're a MilGeek

This is probably the best thing you can do with a M47A1 in a modern combat environment. It's armor isn't thick enough to stand up to modern anti-armor weapons while it's main gun is ineffective against any thing but the lightest armored fighting vehicles.


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On the other hand, it makes a spiffy clothes line.

This is just silly.

So, where is Steve?

2nd in a series

Of things that I sort of wish would happen to Top American Leaders ™

This is the Prime Minister of Turkey, ridding a horse at some sort of cut the ribbon photo op.



Hat tip: IsraellyCool

Another person with way too much time on his hands.

If you upload a video to YouTube, then download it, then re-upload it, some changes in both the video and audio happens. This is a fact of life given that the MPEG encoding system is normally "lossey".

This is version 1


This is version 1000


Side note, only for web design people. Check the for the closing tag of the embed tags that YouTube give you when you do the "copy embed code" thing directly off of YouTube. It seems that the close embed tag is missing most of the time. If you get it off some one that has embedded it them self it seems to close. Odd, and a real pain on Blogger where it bitches at you if your tags aren't closed.

Flash on Linux

I'm starting to hate it. It crash and burns way to much, taking Firefox with it. It's gotten to the point that every time I open a terminal window I type `ps aux | grep fox` so I can see the dead process to `kill -9` with out thinking about it. Grunt. This is the first non-beta|alpha piece of software for Linux that I've had major problems with. At first I though I had a memory chip going bad or the version of Firefox I was using had a major bug. No, it's flash. It kills the Gnome web browser "Web Browser 2.22.2" and Chrome for Linux just as badly. Yeah, I know it's been out for a while, but the latest release for Ubuntu blows goats, and not the way that at least makes goats happy.

How do you get a drummer off your porch?

Pay for the pizza.

Until then check this guy out. Pay attention to the drummer starting about a minute in.

An Engishman speaking about America

Can we elect this guy to something?

See if you can spot the "snipers" before they stand up.

See if you can spot the "snipers" before they stand up. The first set are fairly easy. The second, not so much. Even when they lay back down they are hard to spot. Other than the saxophone player, who can't seem to hide his saxophone. As to the music, as neo-pop songs go it's fairly good