North Korea

A Congressional Research Service report dated April 12, 2012 offered this startling summary of food aid to North Korea. “Between 1995 and 2008, the United States provided North Korea with over $1.3 billion in assistance: just over 50% for food aid and about 40% for energy assistance. Since early 2009, the United States has provided virtually no aid to North Korea. On February 29, 2012, after bilateral talks with the United States, North Korea announced a moratorium on long-range missile launches, nuclear tests, and nuclear activities (including uranium enrichment) at its Yongbyon nuclear facilities. It also said it would allow international nuclear inspectors to return to North Korea. The United States announced it would provide North Korea with 240,000 metric tons (MT) of food aid. However, the so-called “Leap Day deal” unraveled after North Korea on April 13, 2012, launched, in defiance of United Nations resolutions, a rocket to place an “earth observation satellite” into orbit. U.S. officials say that during bilateral negotiations they warned their counterparts that any rocket launch using ballistic missile technology would jeopardize the agreement.”

If North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s threats to start a nuclear war are an attempt to get the world’s attention, he’s succeeded. Will the United States offer more food aid and other assistance to bring his threats to a halt? It is time we said “No” to his threats. The consequences of the use of a nuclear weapon are horrifying but when do we stand up to a bully? The time has come.

The wisest thing we can do right now is not be goaded by the bully.

Equality is something for Everyone!

Some of the people in my family are devoutly religious. None are in my immediate family. I am quite certain that they believe marriage is between a man and a woman. They believe it cannot be any other way. Homosexuality is, in their view, something to be hidden and something to be ashamed of. It must have been VERY difficult for Senator Rob Portman, who had taken a strong stand against gay marriage to learn that his 21 year old son is gay.

I personally find sexual relations between two people of the same sex to be revolting. Especially sex between two men. There was nothing funny about “I Love You Phillip Morris” starring Jim Carrey. To me it was horrifying.

Despite my feelings, I recognize that there are people in this world who are attracted to others of the same sex. They have the right to live their lives as happily as does the rest of society. Homosexual marriages will not impact my marriage in any way. The religious may believe that homosexual marriage will demean the basic principles of marriage. Those that have that belief probably also find all deviations from orthodox religion as unacceptable behavior too.

No one makes you associate with those you find an anathema to your views or beliefs. You are not required to associate with people of another religion, race, political party, etc. that you consider unacceptable.

“Modern Family” really is a profile on the early 21^st century as “The Jeffersons” were in the last part of the 20^th century.

I have no idea how the Supreme Court will rule on California’s Proposition 8 or DOMA. I would recommend the justices re-read the American Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the Constitution.

Equality is something for Everyone! No law should limit that right!

The 1% aren’t like the rest of us

This Op-Ed from the Los Angeles Times is really worth the read. I admit to being part of the 47% that Mitt Romney mocked. The findings of this survey confirm what I always knew.

The ultra-rich share few of the priorities of most Americans, but their access to policymakers is greater, a study finds.

By Benjamin I. Page and Larry M. Bartels

March 22, 2013

Over the last two years, President Obama and Congress have put the country on track to reduce projected federal budget deficits by nearly $4 trillion. Yet when that process began, in early 2011, only about 12% of Americans in Gallup polls cited federal debt as the nation’s most important problem. Two to three times as many cited unemployment and jobs as the biggest challenge facing the country.

So why did policymakers focus so intently on the deficit issue? One reason may be that the small minority that saw the deficit as the nation’s priority had more clout than the majority that didn’t.

We recently conducted a survey of top wealth-holders (with an average net worth of $14 million) in the Chicago area, one of the first studies to systematically examine the political attitudes of wealthy Americans. Our research found that the biggest concern of this top 1% of wealth-holders was curbing budget deficits and government spending. When surveyed, they ranked those things as priorities three times as often as they did unemployment — and far more often than any other issue.

If the concerns of the wealthy carry special weight in government — as an increasing body of social scientific evidence suggests — such extreme differences between their views and those of other Americans could significantly skew policy away from what a majority of the country would prefer. Our Survey of Economically Successful Americans was an attempt to begin to shed light on both the viewpoints and the political reach of the very wealthy.

While we had no way to measure directly the political influence of those surveyed, they did report themselves to be highly active politically.

Two-thirds of the respondents had contributed money (averaging $4,633) in the most recent presidential election, and fully one-fifth of them “bundled” contributions from others. About half recently initiated contact with a U.S. senator or representative, and nearly half (44%) of those contacts concerned matters of relatively narrow economic self-interest rather than broader national concerns. This kind of access to elected officials suggests an outsized influence in Washington.

On policy, it wasn’t just their ranking of budget deficits as the biggest concern that put wealthy respondents out of step with other Americans. They were also much less likely to favor raising taxes on high-income people, instead advocating that entitlement programs like Social Security and healthcare be cut to balance the budget. Large majorities of ordinary Americans oppose any substantial cuts to those programs.

While the wealthy favored more government spending on infrastructure, scientific research and aid to education, they leaned toward cutting nearly everything else. Even with education, they opposed things that most Americans favor, including spending to ensure that all children have access to good-quality public schools, expanding government programs to ensure that everyone who wants to go to college can do so, and investing more in worker retraining and education.

The wealthy opposed — while most Americans favor — instituting a system of national health insurance, raising the minimum wage to above poverty levels, increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit and providing a “decent standard of living” for the unemployed. They were also against the federal government helping with or providing jobs for those who cannot find private employment.

Unlike most Americans, wealthy respondents opposed increased regulation of large corporations and raising the “cap” that exempts income above $113,700 from the FICA payroll tax. And unlike most Americans, they oppose relying heavily on corporate taxes to raise revenue and oppose taxing the rich to redistribute wealth.

Some of the differences between the political views of the wealthy and other Americans may be explained by differences in the two groups’ economic experiences and self-interest. The wealthy are likely to have better information about the costs of government programs (for which they pay a lot of taxes) than about the benefits of those programs. They don’t usually have to rely on Social Security, for example, let alone food stamps or unemployment insurance.

Another possibility is that the wealthy — who tend to be highly educated, well informed and committed to charitable giving — seek the common good as they see it, and in fact know better than average Americans what sorts of policies would benefit us all. On the issue of federal deficits, for example, the public has come to see government debt as an increasingly important problem over the last two years, reducing the gulf between their views and those of the wealthy. Is that because the wealthy were ahead of the curve, or because their concern helped stimulate a steady drumbeat of deficit alarmism in the media and in Washington?

Our pilot study included a relatively small number of wealthy citizens, and they were all from a single metropolitan area. A larger-scale national study is needed to pin down more precisely the views of wealthy Americans about public policy. We need to understand how they formed the preferences they have, and how wealthy people from different regions, industries, and social backgrounds differ in their political views and behavior. We also need to understand more about their political clout.

Our initial results suggest the wealthy have very different ideas than other Americans on a variety of policy issues. If their influence is far greater than that of ordinary people, what does that mean for American democracy?

Benjamin I. Page is a political science professor at Northwestern University and co-author of “Class War? What Americans Really Think About Economic Inequality.” Larry M. Bartels is a political science professor at Vanderbilt University and author of “Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age.”

Obama the Naive

President Barack Obama “delivered an impassioned appeal Thursday for Israel to recognize that compromise will be necessary” to achieve lasting security and reverse international isolation. This was reported in an AP article.

A short review of history tells us that Israel cannot provide any more compromises than have already been given.

Tens of thousands of Hamas supporters gathered in Gaza City near a large replica of an M-75, a Hamas rocket, that bore the words “Made in Gaza.”

Hamas is the group that functions as the Gaza government. Hamas does not recognize the right of Israel to exist. Without that recognition there can be no legitimate negotiations. Khaled Meshal, the political leader of Hamas gave a defiant speech this past December vowing to build a Palestinian state on the land of Israel. In that speech he vowed to remove every inch of Israel and that that there is “no legitimacy for Israel.”

Israel did withdraw from the Gaza strip leaving behind many buildings. They were all destroyed by the Palestinians. Hamas now uses Gaza as a base to shoot rockets into Israel and in fact was shooting rockets as President Obama spoke to Israelis today.

Precisely what compromise would Mr. Obama propose?

David Bancroft

Is America Finally Understanding the World?

The answer to the question is “maybe not.”

Almost 4,500 American solders lost their lives in Iraq. Thousands more were seriously injured. Was it worth the harm? I do not see sufficient benefits to justify the investment.

President George W. Bush really believed that the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan was the right thing to do.

You could argue that the information about WMD was faulty and that should have been enough to deter the invasion of Iraq. We really do not know what was in Mr. Bush’s mind nor what he was really told.

The invasion of Afghanistan was easier to justify. The Taliban refused to extradite al-Qaeda leaders to the United States. al-Qaeda was the group that carried out the World Trade Center attack.

Mr. Bush argued that part of our mission was to spread democracy to Islamic nations that had lived under tyranny for hundreds of years. The idea of spreading democracy is a wonderful theory that looks good on paper. The problem is that most of the people in those countries do not understand the ideas of Western Democracy. Those that do, do not accept the basic premises of western freedom and democracy. It’s those words in the American Declaration of Independence that best express the idea of our system of society and government. Let’s be honest, it took America 89 years to actually implement our own ideals. That’s the time from the American Declaration of Independence to the end of the American Civil War.

So how can we expect Iraq, Afghanistan, or other Middle Eastern Islamic nations to become Western democracies in just a year or two? We Can’t!

Thus the United States needs to be concerned with its own survival in a world where many of the players have alternate ideas of how government and society should function. I believe that President Obama has not yet fully understood this reality. Why? 1) Our lack of preparation for an attack at Benghazi. 2) The mild response to North Korea’s stated intention to shoot a nuclear weaponized rocket at the United States. 3) The lack of progress in talks with Iran.

North Korea and Iran have stated repeatedly that they consider the United States their enemy. They have stated their hatred on numerous occasions. North Korea has stated it is preparing a nuclear armed missile that will target the U.S.A. Iran had states that their first target is Israel followed by the United States.

We should be concerned and we should be prepared. Neither North Korea nor Iran has participated in real talks to end the ongoing diplomatic conflicts. There is nothing that has been reported that indicates that there will be a reduction in the disagreements we have with these two countries.

Unless a new approach to the two America haters is developed I predict there will be a war with both of them. I hope President Obama has made adequate preparations.

Disneyland Is Not the Happiest Place on Earth

This all started when AARP had an article in their magazine about happiness. They referred me to the World Database of Happiness. They have sponsored polls since 2005 and found that Denmark is the happiest place on earth.

According to polls taken from 2005 to 2011, these were the happiest countries:

Denmark
Finland
Norway
Netherlands
Canada
Switzerland
Sweden
New Zealand
Australia
Ireland

The United States ranks 11th, just after Ireland. The unhappiest country is Togo. It’s not hard to notice that the unhappiest countries are also some of the poorest.The four happiest countries have incomes that are 40 times higher than the four unhappiest countries, the report said. People can also expect to live 28 years longer in the happiest nations. Apparently cold weather is not a factor in determining happiness.

The questions seem to revolve around how you feel. An example are these questions:

“On the whole how satisfied are you with the life you lead?”

4 very satisfied

3 fairly satisfied

2 not very satisfied

1 not at all satisfied

“During the past few weeks, did you ever feel ….?” (yes/no)

A. Particularly exited or interested in something?

B. So restless that you couldn’t sit long in a chair?

C. Proud because someone complimented you on something you had done?

D. Very lonely or remote from other people?

E. Pleased about having accomplished something?

F. Bored?

G. On top of the world?

H. Depressed or very unhappy?

I. That things were going your way?

J. Upset because someone criticized you?

Answer options and scoring:

Yes = 1 No = 0

Twenty six categories or criteria entered into the conclusions. Yes, environment and climate are part of the evaluations.

Are the conclusions biased in favor of European nations? Perhaps.

American Preparation for a Nuclear Attack

America does not appear to be prepared for a nuclear attack!

Associated Press report, “The Pentagon announced Friday it will spend $1 billion to add 14 interceptors to an Alaska-based missile defense system, responding to what it called faster-than-anticipated North Korean progress on nuclear weapons and missiles.”

“We will strengthen our homeland defense, maintain our commitments to our allies and partners, and make clear to the world that the United States stands firm against aggression,” Chuck Hagel, Secretary of Defense, told a Pentagon news conference.

I take issue with this plan. Are we waiting for North Korea to shoot missiles at the United States before we would attack them? If we saw North Korea preparing to attack, why wouldn’t we take a pre-emptive strike against a facility that is being prepped to shoot a rocket at the United States? News reports say that America’s anti-missile system is flawed and may not work at all. I wonder why we are not using Israel’s Iron Dome system.

Furthermore, where have our leaders been all of these past years when we knew that their objective has been to obtain nuclear missiles for war?

Today we are trying to dissuade Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. When will we determine that they cannot be persuaded to stop the development efforts? What are the signals that tell the United States that we must take military action to stop the Iranian nuclear development?

I am disappointed with our government’s lack of plans.

Perhaps moving to Mexico or Canada now might be something to consider.

We Are Too Big to Fail!

The Senate passed the $700 billion bank bailout bill on October 3 2008. The guts of the bill was the same as the three-page document submitted on September 21 2008, by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Paulson had asked Congress to approve a $700 billion bailout to buy mortgage-backed securities that were in danger of defaulting. By doing so, Paulson wanted to take these debts off the books of the banks, hedge funds and pension funds that held them. The goal was to instill confidence in the functioning of the global banking system, which had narrowly avoided collapse.

Then came the annual bank stress tests. The official name is Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review, or CCAR. The results of these tests would be to identify those banks and associated companies that were adequately capitalized. Those not having sufficient funds would be required to take action to resolve the issue. The test is required for all banking institutions with $50 billion in total capital assets.

No banks were split apart and nothing was done to confront the fact that the four largest banking organizations overwhelmingly impact the entire nation.

Largest banks and thrifts in US by total assets

Total Total

Company City, State assets deposits

JPMorgan Chase & Co. New York, NY 2,250.8 1,127.8

Bank of America Corp. Charlotte, NC 2,129.0 1,033.0

Citigroup Inc. New York, NY 1,873.9 865.9

Wells Fargo & Co. San Francisco, CA 1,313.9 920.1

If any of these banks failed the United States would step in to protect their well being.

Federal Reserve press release dated March 14, 2013. “The Federal Reserve on Thursday announced it has approved the capital plans of 14 financial institutions in the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR). Two other institutions received conditional approval, while the Federal Reserve objected to the plans of two firms.”

As to breaking apart the behemoths, not a word.

How the Mind Works…….

A practical example of how the human mind works.

Analysis of the above picture can tell us a lot about how different people think.

– For young men, it’s a picture of a young lady with a nice derriere but only the most observant will notice that she is crossing a street.

– The really observant will notice that she is wearing a thong.

– For older men, she appears to be a respectable woman – with a fairly large ass – probably on her way to work.

– Wiser men will ponder the presence of mind of the photographer to take the shot in the face of such beauty and be grateful that he shared it.

– For half of the women, this is an ordinary woman who should not have left home dressed that way.

– The other half will think she is a slut but wonder where she bought that blouse

– Older women will imagine the misery that the woman’s curves will cause by the time she reaches 50.

-But only children, the extremely intelligent, and the celibate will notice that the taxi is being driven by a dog