military – Shortwoman.com

How to Create a Few Hundred Thousand Jobs

Now, I’m normally a Westin kinda person, but I enjoyed seeing J.W. Marriott Jr. point out that “the government has made it far more difficult for foreigners to travel to the U.S., costing the nation tens of billions in lost revenue and hundreds of thousands of jobs“.

My favorite part:

Marriott said he has met repeatedly with officials at the State Department and other government agencies, but they have been largely unresponsive.“We keep talking and they look at us and say, ‘We’re protecting the country,’ ” Marriott said.

Yeah, protecting us to death.

Maybe I’m a little sensitive to this stuff, living in a city that was called “among the world’s worst economies” by a new study.

Anyway, it’s time to “take a sensible approach to air security” based on reality, not fear. Maybe we could get man’s best friend into the act. After all, dogs don’t profile.

In Closing: pterosaurs; “the official dietary recommendations are not sufficient for preventing obesity“; instant gratification; Senate passes “food safety bill” that kindly omits meat, poultry, and eggs (but does create a bureaucracy, so it’s all good, right?); homecoming; banks get richer off our money; 8 million fewer credit card users; privatizing Social Security is still a dumb idea!; and Sue Lowden is shocked — just shocked! — that Chickens for Healthcare didn’t send her to the Senate.

On One Hand We Have GDP; On the Other We Have Reality

Last month we were told that “Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 1.6 percent in the second quarter of 2010, (that is, from the first quarter to the second quarter), according to the “second” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 3.7 percent.” Sure it did. The government says so and they would surely never tell us something that wasn’t true!!

Meanwhile, in Realityland, the FDIC took over 6 banks Friday afternoon. Canadian news sources are writing about the decline and coming fall of the United States as a “superpower.” This week we learned that the poverty rate rose to a 15 year high, with a 51 year high in the number of people actually living in poverty, 3,800,000 more than last year, including just under 1 in every 5 children who contrary to what some people think have no control over their circumstances. Despite the passage of a new health insurance reform bill, the number of people with health insurance dropped for the first time ever. The net worth of Americans has dropped roughly $12,300,000,000,000 since 2007. The small businesses that are vital to creating jobs both now and in future decades can’t get loans, and the new law that was supposed to “help small businesses” will likely do nothing of the sort. Big businesses are hoarding cash. Some people are calling it a “lost decade.”

Meanwhile millionaires are whining about the very idea that they might have to pay more taxes (when they aren’t screaming about the federal budget deficit) and admitting that they have had illegal immigrants working in their homes (rather than hire an unemployed American).

And the experts wonder why more Americans think a “third party” might be just the thing we need.

Next time, unless I am otherwise distracted, The BAMTOR Principle.

In Closing: let’s hear it for Elizabeth Warren!; “that guy who agrees with me is an expert, that other guy who doesn’t is a quack”; Senator Reid mad at Republicans blocking food safety reforms; “Sorry soldier, you’re too fat for this exercise program”; new rules to make it harder for banks to hide debt (like that will stop them).

Oooh! A kitten and a ducky!

Heh, I promise, the Latte Economy later today or at worst tomorrow morning.

In Closing: Tony Horton says Soldiers need yoga; mystery trader buys all Europe’s cocoa(!); 10 ways to conserve water; Wall Street Journal whores itself to lets Sharron Angle lie; a follow up, is Dipak Desai competent to stand trial?; Virgin Galactic one step closer to passengers, takes a flight with a crew!; Wacky Arizona (thanks to Brian); FDL notices that banks only follow laws they want to follow; “Link to this“; ghost in the machine at Facebook; geta; and a few words on Social Security.

Stupid Republican Tricks

Seriously, there has been so much stupid that I don’t know where to start.

I could start close to home with Senate candidate Sue Lowden, who thinks we should be able to barter with our doctors and pay with, for example, chickens!

I could go down the road a bit to Arizona’s new racial profiling illegal immigration law, which “requires state and local police to determine the status of people if there is ‘reasonable suspicion’ that they are illegal immigrants and to arrest people who are unable to provide documentation proving they are in the country legally.” By the way, “reasonable suspicion” means the cop doesn’t like you and/or you’re brown. I don’t think most people appreciate that most people don’t carry proof of citizenship in their pockets — NO a Driver’s License is NOT proof of citizenship! Never has been, shouldn’t ever be.

But wait, maybe that’s what Senator McCain was getting at when he said that illegal immigrants are deliberately causing car accidents! I certainly can’t think of any rational reason that anybody — particularly someone here illegally — would cause accidents. Insurance fraud?? What a dangerous way to make money!

It’s OK though, because Representative Bilbray says a cop can tell if somebody is illegal just by looking at their clothes! So tell me, what exactly is the difference between the shirt I buy at Target and the shirt that an illegal immigrant buys at Target? I don’t want to accidentally get the wrong one. And certainly you’d better not dress up for any ethnic festivals in Arizona without sticking your birth certificate or naturalization papers in your pocket!

Then again I could go to the horse’s mouth — Washington D.C. — and examine the party of NO!’s “Just scrap it and maybe start over” strategy on almost every initiative. Oh, and let’s not forget that it is at least partly thanks to the Republicans that the newly passed health insurance reform bill still allows rescission and still has no way to control wild increases in premiums.

Not that the Democrats are innocent, but certainly no wonder people are “fed up with political incivility.” Anybody who wants to be re-elected had better pay attention to public sentiment now.

In Closing: Freezing a 787 for science; look, putting twins in different homerooms to see which one learns to read better doesn’t prove that reading skills are 82% genetic, just that the teacher and classroom aren’t 100% to blame/praise for the results!; Homelessness, it’s not just for addicts and the mentally ill anymore (sadly, for some people, it’s what’s for dinner); a scathing truth about “successfully” parenting a crowd; high schools preparing kids for college without a thought of preparing them for work; if the Fed is going to print money, do you suppose they could send some my way?; congrats to GM on paying back the TARP money to the Feds; green Navy vessels on the ocean blue; the various watch lists and no-fly lists aren’t just an annoyance, they divert attention from real threats; on long term unemployment; oh waah, companies are having a hard time raising prices; let’s see how far the rotten banking practices extend; and school lunches have officially become a matter of national security.