7.4 earthquake hits Mexico

News reports this evening are about the major earthquake in Mexico. It occurred in a favorite tourist area. CNN had a report on their web site. Mexico is part of the “Ring of Fire” that I commented about on March 11, 2011.

Higher Taxes for Californians

The Los Angeles Daily News (primary distribution in the San Fernando Valley) printed an editorial today that essentially reflects my opinion about raising California state taxes. Governor Jerry Brown wants to increase state sales tax by a ¼% for the next four years and raise income taxes on the wealthiest Californians for the next seven years. The result will be an added income to the state of $7 billion annually.

However, there is no guarantee in the plan on how the new revenues would be spent. California has one of the most generous retirement plans for its state employees but other than some proposed changes in the retirement system for current and new employees there has been no actual changes made to date.

Interestingly the Republicans in the state legislature are in agreement with the governor’s plan for modifying the retirement plans. The Democrats are “studying” his proposal. It’s no surprise that the Democrats are likely to fight the governor’s proposal. After all, the labor unions support the Democrats.

Unless there is a fix to the retirement plans and there are specific detailed procedures for allocating the additional revenue I will not be supporting the governor’s proposal.

The rabbi who guided Reform Judaism

An obituary appearing in THE WEEK magazine dated February 24, 2012. W. Gunther Plaut (1912-2012)

The rabbi whose commentary on the Torah helped introduce tens of thousands of Reform Jews to their faith got an early lesson in the importance of literary interpretation soon after arriving in America, in 1935. He saw a newspaper in Cincinnati that, to his eyes, announced surprising news of a revolution in Italy. The headline: “Reds Murder Cardinals.”

Wolf Gunther Plaut was born in Munster, Germany, and earned a doctorate in law at the University of Berlin, said the Toronto National Post. But when the Nazis came to power, they barred Jews from practicing law, so Plaut began studying Jewish theology. “I wanted to know what it truly meant to be a Jew if I was made to suffer for it,” he later said. He received a scholarship to study in the U.S. in 1935, was ordained as a rabbi in 1939, and became a U.S. citizen in 1943. Having enlisted with the U.S. Army as a chaplain, he witnessed the liberation of the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp at the end of the war. He recalled the survivors as desperate for theological relief. “Their first request was not for food, but for Jewish religious items,” he said.

Plaut settled in Toronto, said The New York Times, where he wrote his “magnum opus,” a modern commentary on the Jewish holy scriptures that became a “touchstone for Judaism’s liberal branches” upon its publication in 1981. Prior to Plaut’s edition, the only available translation of the Torah was one published in the 1920s with an Orthodox commentary. Plaut’s Torah interpreted Hebrew scripture “in ways that a strict adherence to tradition did not admit.” The book is now used in Reform synagogues throughout the U.S. and Canada. “You may never have met Rabbi Plaut personally,” said U.S. Reform Rabbi Jan Katzew, “yet it is likely that he taught you Torah.”

Plaut was a fierce opponent of discrimination and prejudice throughout his life, said the Toronto Star, whether it was directed against Jews in the Soviet Union or racial minorities in North America. “He was a defender of human and civil rights at a time when many didn’t even know its meaning,” said Bernie Farber, former head of the Canadian Jewish Congress. “We stand on the shoulders of such men.”

Have you ever felt like doing this? I have.

You know how irritating mobile phone users are when they fail to exercise discretion and think the world needs to know their business? When you have enjoyed as much as you can stand you can now get you own back!!!
Enjoy!!!

After a busy day he settled down in his train from Waterloo for a nap as far as his destination at Winchester when the chap sitting near him hauled out his mobile and started up:- “Hi darling it’s Peter, I’m on the train – yes, I know it’s the 6.30 not the 4.30 but I had a long meeting – no, not with that floozie from the typing pool, with the boss – no darling you’re the only one in my life – yes, I’m sure, cross my heart” etc., etc. This was still going on at Wimbledon, when the young woman opposite, driven beyond endurance, yelled at the top of her voice,
“Hey, Peter, turn that bloody phone off and come back to bed!!”

Thoughts on Politics

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I’m beginning to believe it. ~Clarence Darrow

If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates. ~Jay Leno

Politicians are people who, when they see light at the end of the tunnel, go out and buy some more tunnel. ~John Quinton

I offer my opponents a bargain:ï if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.~Adlai Stevenson, campaign speech, 1952

A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country.~ Texas Guinan

Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.~Ronald Reagan

Instead of giving a politician the keys to the city, it might be better to change the locks.~Doug Larson

There ought to be one day — just one — when there is open season on senators. ~Will Rogers

Obama vs. Israel: Priority No.1? Stop Israel

Although Charles Krauthammer is an excellent commentator I rarely agree with his opinion. This time he does make me think.

Is this an uh-oh moment for Israel?

By Charles Krauthammer, published in a local paper today

IT’S Lucy and the football, Iran-style. After ostensibly tough talk about preventing Iran from going nuclear, the Obama administration acquiesced to yet another round of talks with the mullahs.

This, 14 months after the last group-of-six negotiations collapsed in Istanbul because of blatant Iranian stalling and unseriousness. Nonetheless, the new negotiations will be both without precondition and preceded by yet more talks to decide such trivialities as venue.

These negotiations don’t just gain time for a nuclear program about whose military intent the IAEA is issuing alarming warnings. They make it extremely difficult for Israel to do anything about it (while it still can), lest Israel be universalfy condemned for having aborted a diplomatic solution.

If the administration were serious about achievement rather than appearance, it would have warned that this was the last chance for Iran to come clean and would have demanded a short timeline. After all, President Obama insisted on deadlines for the Iraq withdrawal, the Afghan surge and Israeli-Palestinian negotiations .. Why leave these crucial talks open-ended when the nuclear clock is ticking?

This re-engagement comes immediately after Obama’s campaign-year posturing about Iran’s nukes. Last Sunday in front of AlPAC, he warned that “Iran’s leaders should have no doubt about the resolve of the United States.” This just two days after he’d said (to the Atlantic) of possible U.S. military action, “I don’t bluff.” Yet on Tuesday he returns to the very engagement policy that he admits had previously failed.

Won’t sanctions make a difference this time, however? Sanctions are indeed hurting Iran economically. But when Obama’s own director of national intelligence was asked by the Senate intelligence committee whether sanctions had any effect on the course of Iran’s nuclear program, the answer was simple: No. None whatsoever.

Obama garnered much AlPAC applause by saying that his is not a containment policy but a prevention policy. But what has he prevented? Keeping a coalition of six together is not success. Holding talks is not success. Imposing sanctions is not success.

Success is halting and reversing the program. Yet Iran is tripling its uranium output, moving enrichment facilities deep under a mountain near Qom and impeding IAEA inspections of weaponization facilities.

So what is Obama’s real objective? “We’re trying to make the decision to attack as hard as possible for Israel,” an administration official told the Washington Post in the most revealing White House admission since “leading from behind.”

Revealing and shocking. The world’s greatest exporter of terror (according to the State Department), the systematic killer of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, the self-declared enemy that invented “Death to America Day” is approaching nuclear capability – and the focus of U.S. policy is to prevent a democratic ally threatened with annihilation from pre-empting the threat?

Indeed it is. The new open-ended negotiations with Iran fit well with this strategy of tying Israel down. As does Obama’s “I have Israel’s back” reassurance, designed to persuade Israel and its supporters to pull back and outsource to Obama what for Israel are life-and-death decisions.

Yet 48 hours later, Obama tells a news conference that this phrase is just a historical reference to supporting such allies as Britain and Japan – contradicting the intended impression he’d given AlP AC that he was offering special protection to an ally under threat of physical annihilation.

To AlPAC he declares that “no Israeli government can tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of a regime that denies the Holocaust, threatens to wipe Israel off the map, and sponsors terrorist groups committed to Israel’s destruction” and affirms “Israel’s sovereign right to make its own decisions … to meet its security needs.”

And then he pursues policies – open-ended negotiations, deceptive promises of tough U.S. backing for Israel, boasts about the efficacy of sanctions, grave warnings about “war talk” – meant, as his own official admitted, to stop Israel from exercising precisely that sovereign right to self-protection.

Yet beyond these obvious contradictions and walk-backs lies a transcendent logic: As with the Keystone pipeline postponement, as with the debt-ceiling extension, as with the Afghan withdrawal schedule, Obama wants to get past Nov. 6 without any untoward action that might threaten his re-election.

For Israel, however, the stakes are somewhat higher: the very existence of a vibrant nation and its 6 million Jews. The asymmetry is stark. A fair-minded observer might judge that Israel’s desire to not go gently into the darkness carries higher moral urgency than the political future of one man, even if he is president of the United States.

Russian Navy Captures Somali Pirates

You don’t want to mess around with these guys!

How about that – The Russians captured the Pirates, tied them up, put them on their boats, then set them all on fire – puff no more Pirates!

NO POLITICAL CORRECTNESS BS HERE!

This video shows Russian Navy commandos on a Somalian pirate ship shortly after the pirates had captured a Russian oil tanker. The Euro Union navy that patrols these waters would not interfere because they feared there could be casualties.

All explanations are in Russian with a single exception of when a wounded pirate says something in English and the Russian soldier says “This is not a fishing boat”. All conversations between the commandos are in Russian. If you don’t understand Russian, the pictures speak for themselves.

The soldiers freed their compatriots and the tanker. The Russian Navy Commandos moved the pirates back to their own (pirate) ship, searched the pirate ship for weapons and explosives and then they left the ship and exploded it with all remaining pirates hand-cuffed to it.

The commandos sank the pirate ship along with the pirates and without any court proceedings, lawyers etc. That is, they used the anti-piracy laws of the 18th and 19th centuries where the captain of the rescuing ship has the right to decide what to do with the pirates. Usually, they were hung.

I would think from now on, Russian ships will not be targets for Somali pirates.

Click on this link…http://www.true-turtle.livejournal.com/85315.html

The Issue is Long Term Unemployment

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics report dated today, March, 9, 2012.
“The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was little changed at 5.4 million in February. These individuals accounted for 42.6 percent of the unemployed.”

“The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons(sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was essentially unchanged at 8.1 million in February. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.”

Perhaps this answers the question, why is one in seven Americans receiving aid to buy food?

Millions of people lost jobs in the last four years, and being plunged into poverty made them eligible for food assistance. “That’s the way this program is designed,” said Kevin Concannon, the head of the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service. Some 15 percent of the population-the highest rate since 1993-now lives at or below the poverty level, which is defined as $19,090 per year for a family of three. The average food stamp household of 2.2 people receives $287 in monthly food-assistance benefits, or about $72 a week. That’s not a lot to feed two people, but food stamp spending adds up: It has quadrupled in the course of the last 10 years, to a total this year of $80.4 billion. Critics blame that cost explosion on relaxed eligibility standards that began under the Bush administration, and on a boost in monthly benefits put through by Obama as part of the 2009 stimulus package. Obama increased the amount of time people could stay on food stamps, and added about $80 to the monthly benefits of a family of four. “No program in our government has surged out of control more dramatically than food stamps,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

The issue is the millions who are unemployed with no job opportunities on the horizon. Our nation’s leaders in both political parties have not offered any solutions.

HAVE THEY?

Dick Van Dyke, age 86, Marries Makeup Artist

This proves you are never too old!

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Dick Van Dyke is a very happy newlywed at age 86, his spokesman said Friday.

Van Dyke and makeup artist Arlene Silver, 40, were married last week in a small Leap Day ceremony at a Malibu chapel near the actor’s home, publicist Bob Palmer said.

“I’ve never seen him happier. She adds a lot to his life,” he said, adding that the couple has much in common, including a love of singing.