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I really don't like the idea of police forces getting stimulus money for more cops. I really don't think that stimulus money (federal tax money) should go to pay for jobs paid for by tax money (local taxes). Especially, when the area really doesn't need more cops, like here. This is really a pretty low crime area, and in effect most cops are really just traffic cops up here. I'm pretty sure we could lose a few cops and be just fine, not add more with stimulus money.

Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to pay federal income tax for a while? That would mean more money in our pockets, where much of it would be spent locally, putting money into the local economy and putting tax money into the local municipalities which could then pay for their own cops if they thought they needed to.

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Well, this doesn't seem to help me at all. I actually thought about refinancing just to take advantage of the low rates. I can currently afford what I pay, but a few hundred bucks staying in my control every month would be nice. It looked good until I saw the estimated closing costs. Depending on the rate I wanted, it'd be anywhere between 6k and 7k. It was around 5k if I only wanted 1.125% off my current rate, but 1.5% is 6.7k. That makes it a little unreasonable. My monthly savings would be (with the 1.5% drop) about $240/month. That means it'd be roughly 28 months before I've paid myself back from the closing costs and actually started saving $240/mo. Plus, I'd either have to roll that into the loan, simply giving me a higher mortgage, or I'd have to write a check for that, giving me less money to invest and enjoy.

Of course, the closing costs could be less (or more), or maybe I could somehow work out having to pay less in points to get the lower rate. But, either way, I don't think I'd want to pay myself back for more than 10 or 12 months, and certainly not 28.

I wonder how the people who can't afford their homes will be able to pay any closing costs in a modification. Or, are there no closing costs? Or, is that what I'm paying for with my taxes? I'd be kinda pissed if I'm paying for someone's closing costs.

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I don't get this one. Bush gave protections to doctors and nurses who didn't want to perform abortions due to moral reasons. What's wrong with that? If a doctor doesn't want to do abortions, then don't do them. Some dentists don't do root canals, they send you to someone else. What's the difference? Should I be able to somehow sue a dentist for not performing a root canal just because, for whatever reason, they don't do root canals? What if a vet who specializes in horses doesn't want to treat someone's dog? Who cares if it's a "moral reason" or not, if a professional doesn't want to do something, they shouldn't have to feel as if they need to.

I guess I don't understand why he'd reverse this. Seems like in a free market society, people can do what they want or not. But, I guess the next time I need a root canal (hopefully, never) and the dentist refers me to someone else, I'll sue him for being a dentist that doesn't do root canals.

I avoided it as long as I could, but ended up making MySpace and Facebook accounts. I was doing one of my occasional searches for old friends last night and came upon a post somewhere on MySpace from someone I knew. So, I joined in so I could contact him. Ended up finding a few people, and one said there are more from "back in the day" on FaceBook. So, made an account. I'll probably ignore the MySpace since people are on FaceBook.

Now, I'm not interested in connecting to everyone I ever knew. But, I guess it's useful for finding those people who I've wanted to for so long. And, in fact, already found a few of them, which is cool.

I don't like it, but I guess I'm in with the masses now. But, a small price to pay to reconnect with some folks I fondly remember.

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Aww heck, what's another $410 billion? Shit, just make it an even trillion! Recession, bad housing market, stock market in the shitter. That's it, just add in another $410 billion on top of the $787 "stimulus". Maybe, just stop voting to spend money. Just spend it!

I head there were thousands of earmarks, and the article says there are 8,570. Obama pledged to not let any pork get across his desk, but no word from him on a veto. I saw some politician (Democrat) say something like "that's last years business" as if Obama should just ignore the pork. But, it's going through congress and onto his desk in his administration. I sure hope he does like he said he would and cut the pork out of it. I know he won't, because he's a phony.

Kinda amusing.

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Well, no kidding. The guy is going increase taxes on about everything, and his budget proposal sucks. Next election I'd vote for a monkey before him. Oh, wait.. he's black.. am I allowed to say monkey? It has nothing to do with race, just that I'd think a primate which flings its own poo may do better.

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I haven't really been keeping up with this story, but I happened to watch Geraldo and see this interview. What really struck me as odd is the guy, not once that I remember, said his daughters name. He always said "my child". I know if I had done nothing wrong, and was worried about where "my child" was, I would use her name constantly. By not using her name, it sort of distances himself from her, and what he's saying about her. It's a psychological thing. That's why parents of missing children are coached to use the name over and over when talking to the press. They hope the abductor sees the child as a person, and not whatever they see them as.

Anyways, I thought it was interesting that he always said "my child". I think it's telling, but of what, I'm not sure (except that he probably has hit his "child").

I happened upon this document, written in 2006, which has some per-hour travel costs for Air Force One and Air Force Two:

This report assumes that flight operating costs are $56,518 per hour for Air Force
One and $14,552 per hour for Air Force Two. These figures are based on the per-
hour cost figures cited by GAO for fiscal year 2000, adjusted for inflation.

I'd assume it's more expensive now because of inflation and fuel prices, but I'll stick with these 2006 numbers. I couldn't find a list of everywhere he's been, but I know he's recently been around selling the stimulus and has been to Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, Florida, Colorado and today in Arizona. Unfortunately, I couldn't find an itinerary of where he went to where else from (and I probably did enough searches trying to find his itinerary that the Secret Service noticed). However, I ended up finding a Chicago journalist who seems to have this info.

I won't try to find everything, but here's what she has for this week:

DC -> Chicago (598 miles)
Chicago -> DC (598 miles)
DC -> Colorado (1487 miles)
Colorado -> Arizona (586 miles)
Arizona -> DC (1980 miles)
DC -> Ottawa, Canada (455 miles)
Ottawa, Canada -> DC (455 miles)

I got the distances using one of the websites noted in the document. And the Air Force says the plane travels at 630 m/h (which I assume is a max speed, maybe not the travel speed).

If you add up all those miles, you get to 5,704 miles. Assuming the travel speed is 630 m/h, you'd get 9.5 hours of travel (I'm sure this isn't the travel speed, but let's say they were hauling ass). Take those hours, multiple by the numbers from the document and it cost taxpayers $511,487.90 just to operate Air Force One this week.

But, that's not it. The report says "This report assumes one cargo plane accompanies the President on each trip at an operating cost per hour of $6,960." I didn't know that. For some reason, I figured Air Force One had enough space for luggage. So, the cargo plane flies at 518 m/h, which is 11 hours of travel time costing $76,560 for the week. That takes the grand total up to $588,047.90.

Of course, this also doesn't take into account flying on Marine One from the White House to Andrews Air Force Base and back (which I believe also entails two smaller helicopters accompanying them). Or, wherever Biden is travelling. Or, the other costs of a trip like food, fuel for automobiles, any overtime or pay for local police and security (paid by local taxes) and who knows what else.

This week, at least $588,047.90 for just flying on a plane. A week. Next time you hear of Obama going somewhere (or any president for that matter) and getting up to the mic and saying how bad the economy is and how he needs to mortgage our kids future by spending (tax) money, remember how much it cost you for him to get there to preach to you about money.

Also, I wonder if he turns the thermostat down when he leaves the house.

I must say, I still don't "get" this service. Is it just for telling people what you're eating, and music you're listing to? "Hey... walking the dog!"... "Iced coffee... yum!" It's sort of like blogging for those with no attention span.

Maybe I don't "get" it because it's taking an impersonal medium and making it even more impersonal. At least when I write here in my journal, I may be spouting crap, but it can be verbose crap... with hopefully some structure and feeling. Twitter seems like texting to a website. Using vowels, sentences or complete thoughts isn't required.

I guess I'll have to face it one day and realize we're moving towards a society which simply communicates in sentence fragments and an abbreviated alphabet. In fact, I'll be even more progressive and start just grunting now, since that may be the next step. meh.

Not sure if people watched the Numb3rs episode this weekend, but I think they scripted a 5 minute Facebook commercial into it. Alan Eppes was making a Facebook profile, and I think the "product placement" was more obvious than every character drinking from a can of Pepsi.

I hope this doesn't turn into a trend, it was pretty annoying. If they needed to describe social networks, it could have been done without the overt commercial. Just sayin'.

Let's start with his cabinet issues.

Commerce

• Bill Richardson - Withdrew because of a grand jury investigation. Did Obama pick him in the first place to make Hispanics happy?
• Judd Gregg (which I always say Judge Dred in my head) - Withdrew because he doesn't want to be a part of the stimulus, or the power grab of the Census Obama wants. Now, Obama doesn't have his token Republican yet to fulfill his promise of a bipartisan cabinet.

Treasury

• Timothy Geithner - Didn't pay a crapload of taxes. Still got the position since the administration doesn't care if the person heading the IRS didn't pay taxes.

Health and Human Services

• Tom Daschle - Withdrew when we learned he also doesn't like paying taxes.

Misc

• Let's see, Nancy Killefer was supposed to oversee spending and budget reform, but she also didn't like paying taxes, so she's out.
• He signed a bill to fund oversea abortions. No matter what it is, it's a pretty stupid time to fund anything overseas when we kinda need some money here.
• He seems to be doing a lot of traveling for town halls and stumping for the "stimulus". I'm sure it's pretty darn expensive on the taxpayers for him to do this. Maybe he should look into teleconferencing. It may not be as personal, but it's cheaper.
• He's trying to bring the Census Bureau under White House control. This is a very large political power grab (no matter what party would do it) since the census decides districts for political and economic means. The White House could re-draw district lines, for example, to make sure their party has more voters. Or, re-draw lines based on how they want to distribute money. This is a very, very, very bad thing.
• His stimulus. This things is gawdaweful. Plus, he let Pelosi run with it, which was a dumb move. But, he also was extremely partisan in this whole process. He promised to not be partisan, but this shows he was phony on that if you ask me.
• He said he was anti-pork, but.. well, refer to the stimulus.
• He's using scare politics to get the stimulus passed.

He really hasn't seemed to do anything useful yet. We were promised he'd hit the ground running, but if this is running he better start sprinting. The fact that he is having so much trouble filling cabinet positions, and nominees don't seem to pay taxes, is somewhat embarrassing. Does this go to his known lack of judgment? His judgment was questioned when we learned about Rev. Wright and Ayers.

And, why the scare politics? He talked about rejecting the "politics of fear" during the primaries, but he's sure using it about the economy and his stimulus. Instead, what happened to the well-written and well-executed speeches of the campaign days? Why isn't he being the cheerleader anymore? He uplifted people, he gave them hope.. and now it's all gloom and doom. He should be giving those uplifting speeches again. He should be giving that sort of it's-half-time-and-you're-down-by-3-touchdowns kind of speeches. We don't need scared people, we need people to have hope. He used to do this, but isn't when he should be.

So far, I'm giving him a D. He's scaring people even more, he's not being bipartisan, his cabinet picks suck, his first big economic plan sucks, he's acting more like a candidate than the leader of the free world and he's done nothing to gain my confidence in him. He seems in over his head.

Again, I hope I'm wrong about him. I hope he's not the phony unqualified person I think he is. But, I guess he has until 2010 to prove me wrong. If this stimulus doesn't do anything by the next elections, the Republicans will gain seats and Hillary will start printing her 2012 campaign posters.

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The "octomom", who doesn't consider the welfare she gets as welfare, is now wanting you to donate to her. That's right, not only will tax payer money be paying for her selfishness for years to come, but she also wants you to more directly give her money. I hope nobody does. Maybe she shouldn't have gotten that pretty-darn-obvious face job and saved it for her litter of kids.

This Sunday when we went to visit my grandfather I brought along the video camera. I also had Kyla write some "interview" questions to ask him. Basically, for over an hour, my grandfather talked about his life. Growing up in Manhattan and the Bronx, his jobs (he wouldn't say what he did at the Brooklyn Navy Yard aside jokingly saying "I probably sunk more ships than the Nazi's. Working with my hands isn't my thing."), and fighting in WWII. Some of these things I've heard before, and some I hadn't. One thing I didn't know is he "worked on the IBMs" for the SSA. One of the odd things is he really seemed to like talking about the war. He spoke a lot about his friend Sol Needleman, and actually still has some photos of them from the war. I also saw (actually now have, to make a copy) his Army discharge. I've had his lapel ribbons for a while. His discharge papers says he got a good conduct medal, and 5 bronze stars.

I didn't get too much family information, or too much post-war information, but it was nice hearing him talk about these things. And, even nicer that I have it on video. Something that was pretty funny is he'd say peoples names, which were all Jewish names, then he'd always say their nationality. Like "Josh Rubinstein, the Swede" or "Sal Silverman, the Irishman".

I'm hoping maybe I can get a bit more. For some reason, he thought this was being done as a school project for Kyla. But, he did say if we brought a map over, he could show us all the places he traveled during WWII. So, maybe if I bring a map, I can get in some more info or stories.

Love ya gramps.

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Hey, but it was a bipartisan dive! Nobody really likes the spendulus, and nobody understand what they think they are doing. When their partisanship flourished, we all lose and that's true bipartisanship.. awesome!