Obama & Biden: The New Neo-Cons?

Because of my work-related travels this past week, I've managed to miss most of the DNC convention, but I did hear Thursday nights opening act--Bill Richardson. I kind of liked Richardson until last night when he re-iterated the war policy of the Democrats:

Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe we must fight the terrorists not where we imagine them to be, but where we know them to be like Afghanistan and Pakistan. We must lead a global effort to secure loose nuclear materials, not where we imagine them to be, but where we know them to be, in Russia, and the countries of the former Soviet Union.

What? More foreign intervention? Haven't we learned our lesson from Iraq? Or Vietnam? Or Korea?

Whatever happened to the foresight of our founding fathers? Like the words of George Washington:

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to domestic nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Or those of President Thomas Jefferson, who in his inaugural address on March 4, 1801said: "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."

Sigh...Alas, some things never change...

The Democrats Math Problem

Still being a registered voter in Pennsylvania, I listened with interest to the speach Bob Casey Jr. gave at the Democratic National Convention August 26, 2008. Casey urged the citizens of the United States to elect Barack Obama as President and not to give the Republicans "four more years" of control nor "four more months." The crowd went wild and began shouting "four more months, four more months, four more months." The problem? Even if Barack Obama is elected President, it will be FIVE more months before Bush, Cheney, and the Repugnantcans could be tossed from the White House. Yes FIVE months, NOT four....

A Great Read...

One of my favorite radio talk-show hosts is Michael Lebron, better known as Lionel. Simply put, the guy makes me laugh beyond belief while at the same time educating as few others can or do. When I first moved to Lansing, MI a few years ago, I listened to Lionel on WJIM-am from 11pm to 1am. When WJIM's format changed completely to wacko right-wing moonbats (Shiels, Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin), I listened to Lionel online. When I learned that I would need to head to Washington D.C. for a few days of continuing education classes and that would mean traveling from Lansing to Detroit to Washington D.C., I thought the travel and layover time would be a perfect time to read Lionel's new book, Everyone's Crazy Except You And Me...And I'm Not So Sure About You.

I read the 254-pages almost non-stop, and I highly recommend reading it. Broken into dozens of short chapters, Lionel doesn't fail to entertain, educate, and provoke thought. One of my favorite chapters, I Must Have Penis, is especially entertaining. Here it is in its entirety...

The Spanish accent in unique. Certain words and word forms prove difficult. Words that begin with the letter s followed by a consonant are pronounced with an e before the word. Stop becomes estop. (No estoppel jokes, please.) Sleep is pronounced esleep. Words that end in ts are pronounced minus the t. Nuts becomes nuss.

Got it?

Now here's what happened.

A friend of mine was getting married. I flew to the wedding with his mother, a lovely lady whose native language is Spanish with a Cuban accent and dialect. A lovely woman.

We flew to Minneapolis and then took a puddle jumper to the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin. The plane, as you can imagine, was quite small. Since this was pre-9/11, the pilots had the cockpit door open. It was very tight, very small--and sound carried. Boy, did it carry.

My friend's mother was seated a few rows behind me. She was famished. She wondered aloud if there would be any snacks on this short flight.

To her relief a young man came down the aisle carrying what looked like a large garbage bag filled with apples, crackers, and the like. Hardly first-class treatment.

My friend's mother is far from loud but she could be easily heard by everyone in this tiny plane, what with the rumble and roar of the engine that necessitated volume.

When this young man, a pimply, Nordic-looking, carrot-topped Minnesotan-type kid whose name could easily be Rusty or Skippy, came by our seats, my friend's mother asked a simple question in a very pronounced and easily heard Cuban accent.

Did I tell you that she's a lovely woman?

OK, here goes:

The dutiful Rusty stood there with his garbage bag filled with whatever and with a smile on his face asked if there was anything he could get the lovely woman. Now, mind you, it's loud but you can hear everything anyone was saying. What would the lady like? Her wish was Rusty's command.

Making sure the young lad could hear her request, she inquired, "Do you have penis?"

Silence.

"I haven't had penis since Minneapolis."

More silence.

Rusty was red-faced.

Even the pilots could hear this and looked back at the woman demanding a phallus in seat 5A.

A penis?

Quite a tall order for a commuter carrier. Rusty was dumb-founded. Though he had exactly inventoried all of the snack bag's contents, he was pretty darn sure he was out of that item. It must have crossed his mind that this might have been an advance of sorts. This was hardly the scene for the mile high club.

I had to do something.

I stood and announced, "Peanuts. She wants peanuts."

Exhalation was almost unanimous. A look of relief was seen on Rusty's face.

She had her peanuts and I have this story.

It's true. Swear to God.

Titties, Toes And Tater-Tot Tuesday

Titties, Toes And Tater-Tot Tuesday

Monday With McCain

You know that old Beach Boy song Bomb Iran. Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran---John McCain singing to tune of Barbara Ann, at campaign stop, answering question about what to do with Iran, April 18 2008.

What happened? (Extended)

The Not-So-Straight-Talk Express Strikes Again

WTF?

It's not very difficult to read between John McCain's lines: he is a homophobe.

The question asked of John McCain was whether or not he supported gay couples being "allowed" to adopt children. It matters not that two men or two women in a lasting relationship and who love each other have the finances, desire, responsibility, and love between them. John McCain's requirement to adopt children? A penis and a vagina. That's it--a dick and a pussy. Must be those "traditional Republican family values" I am unaware of.

Just say it, John. Tell us that you are an intolerant old fucker who will sell his soul to the highest bidder, in this case the crazy Evangelicals. Answer the fucking question, Johnny...

This Modern World

Titties, Toes And Tater-Tot Tuesday

Monday With McCain

Only an asshole would put together a budget like this ... I wouldn't call you an asshole unless you really were an asshole. --to Budget Committee Chairman and fellow Repulican Sen. Pete Domenici, during a Senate budget hearing

The Problem With McCain's Energy Plan...

After pimping his wife Cindy as the next potential "Miss Buffalo Chip" at the Sturgis biker rally, John McCain proceeded to lay out the following jewels of wisdom: “We’re not going to pay $4 a gallon for gas because we’re going to drill offshore, and we’re going to drill now. We’re going to drill here. We’re going to drill now!”

Johnny says let's drill everywhere and anywhere possible! Never mind that the oil companies already have leases on thousands of acres of oil-producing land that they choose not to drill (until gas goes to $7.00 a gallon), let's give them more land that they can sit on. Let's turn back the hands of time by 100 years. Interestingly enough, I found these photos online of what the USA will look like if John McCain has his way.




This is what Huntington Beach, California looked like in the 1920s. John McCain wants it to look like this again...


Maybe those windmills off Martha's Vineyard won't look so bad afterall...

This Modern World

McCain Respects Women

I was looking at the Sturgis schedule and noticed that you have a beauty pageant and so I encouraged Cindy to compete. I told her, with a little luck, she could be the only woman ever to serve as both the First Lady and Miss Buffalo Chip...John McCain at the Sturgis, South Dakota Biker Week where women compete nude in front of thousands of men.

Well...McCain does think his wife is a trollop and a cunt!

Titties, Toes And Tater-Tot Tuesday

It's All In The Details, Barack!

Yes. Now it's Barack Obama's turn. It goes without saying that I am not a supporter of Sen. John McCain. The 2008 presidential election is Barack Obama's for the taking. But Obama will lose should he continue obfuscating his "policies."

From the Wall Street Journal online:

The "windfall profits" tax is back, with Barack Obama stumping again to apply it to a handful of big oil companies. Which raises a few questions: What is a "windfall" profit anyway? How does it differ from your everyday, run of the mill profit? Is it some absolute number, a matter of return on equity or sales -- or does it merely depend on who earns it?

Enquiring entrepreneurs want to know. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama's "emergency" plan, announced on Friday, doesn't offer any clarity. To pay for "stimulus" checks of $1,000 for families and $500 for individuals, the Senator says government would take "a reasonable share" of oil company profits.


Mr. Obama didn't bother to define "reasonable," and neither did Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat, when he recently declared that "The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy." Really? This extraordinary redefinition of free-market success could use some parsing.

Take Exxon Mobil, which on Thursday reported the highest quarterly profit ever and is the main target of any "windfall" tax surcharge. Yet if its profits are at record highs, its tax bills are already at record highs too. Between 2003 and 2007, Exxon paid $64.7 billion in U.S. taxes, exceeding its after-tax U.S. earnings by more than $19 billion. That sounds like a government windfall to us, but perhaps we're missing some Obama-Durbin business subtlety.

Maybe they have in mind profit margins as a percentage of sales. Yet by that standard Exxon's profits don't seem so large. Exxon's profit margin stood at 10% for 2007, which is hardly out of line with the oil and gas industry average of 8.3%, or the 8.9% for U.S. manufacturing (excluding the sputtering auto makers).

If that's what constitutes windfall profits, most of corporate America would qualify. Take aerospace or machinery -- both 8.2% in 2007. Chemicals had an average margin of 12.7%. Computers: 13.7%. Electronics and appliances: 14.5%. Pharmaceuticals (18.4%) and beverages and tobacco (19.1%) round out the Census Bureau's industry rankings. The latter two double the returns of Big Oil, though of course government has already became a tacit shareholder in Big Tobacco through the various legal settlements that guarantee a revenue stream for years to come.

In a tax bill on oil earlier this summer, no fewer than 51 Senators voted to impose a 25% windfall tax on a U.S.-based oil company whose profits grew by more than 10% in a single year and wasn't investing enough in "renewable" energy. This suggests that a windfall is defined by profits growing too fast. No one knows where that 10% came from, besides political convenience. But if 10% is the new standard, the tech industry is going to have to rethink its growth arc. So will LG, the electronics company, which saw its profits grow by 505% in 2007. Abbott Laboratories hit 110%.

If Senator Obama is as exercised about "outrageous" profits as he says he is, he might also have to turn on a few liberal darlings. Oh, say, Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett's outfit pulled in $11 billion last year, up 29% from 2006. Its profit margin -- if that's the relevant figure -- was 11.47%, which beats out the American oil majors.

Or consider Google, which earned a mere $4.2 billion but at a whopping 25.3% margin. Google earns far more from each of its sales dollars than does Exxon, but why doesn't Mr. Obama consider its advertising-search windfall worthy of special taxation?

The fun part about this game is anyone can play. Jim Johnson, formerly of Fannie Mae and formerly a political fixer for Mr. Obama, reaped a windfall before Fannie's multibillion-dollar accounting scandal. Bill Clinton took down as much as $15 million working as a rainmaker for billionaire financier Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Companies. This may be the very definition of "windfall."

General Electric profits by investing in the alternative energy technology that Mr. Obama says Congress should subsidize even more heavily than it already does. GE's profit margin in 2007 was 10.3%, about the same as profiteering Exxon's. Private-equity shops like Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins, which recently hired Al Gore, also invest in alternative energy start-ups, though they keep their margins to themselves. We can safely assume their profits are lofty, much like those of George Soros's investment funds.

The point isn't that these folks (other than Mr. Clinton) have something to apologize for, or that these firms are somehow more "deserving" of windfall tax extortion than Big Oil. The point is that what constitutes an abnormal profit is entirely arbitrary. It is in the eye of the political beholder, who is usually looking to soak some unpopular business. In other words, a windfall is nothing more than a profit earned by a business that some politician dislikes. And a tax on that profit is merely a form of politically motivated expropriation.

It's what politicians do in Venezuela, not in a free country.

My question to you is this: define "reasonable." Quite frankly, I don't want Barack Obama or John McCain to define "reasonable" for me--I would prefer that you and I define what is reasonable. Why not place a windfall profit tax on Google and hand it out to those of us who need it? After all, Google had a profit margin of 25.3%! Dude, that's totally unreasonable! They should be forced to invest those excessive and immoral profits in a product that is completely outside the realm of their business model. Oh, wait, this only applies to oil companies. Or does it? Is Barack Obama going to tell businesses that it is "reasonable" to make 15% a year profit, but that it is "unreasonable" to make 16% a year profit?

Maybe Barack Obama is the new "decider?"

We Didn't Really Need The 4th Amendment Anyway, Did We?

Courtesy of the Washington Post:

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

[...]

DHS officials said that the newly disclosed policies -- which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens -- are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter.

[...]

The policies state that officers may "detain" laptops "for a reasonable period of time" to "review and analyze information." This may take place "absent individualized suspicion."

The policies cover "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover "all papers and other written documentation," including books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly referred to as 'pocket trash' or 'pocket litter.' "

I suppose what scares me the most about this policy is that people think it's perfectly acceptable and are willing to enforce it.

Monday With McCain

Well, basically, it's a Google. --on how he's conducting his VP search, Richmond, Virginia, June 9, 2008