Making Spiders Dizzy

An opinion piece in USA today is titled Pentagon Spin Taints TV. I find any article where the media thinks it is being out spun a must read. After all, when the wolf starts crying wolf, you want to get a good laugh at their serpentine logic. And yes, they have a few facts and some money changing hands but all in all it is an attempt to point a finger at the military's attempt to spread good news about the Iraq War.

I know, I had a good laugh at that one. If the media had in any instance not taken the news from Iraq and used it to show the military and George Bush in a bad light, I would find the opinion piece remotely credible. But the media takes every opportunity to use even good news to further their agenda that George Bush and Dick Cheney are using the military to line the pockets of their rich cronies and ensure that the poor and disenfranchised are being sent into harms way. At least they were able to catch on major liberal talking head, Dan Rather, in a lie to discredit the President.

So we have the media accusing the Pentagon of spreading good news about what is going on in Iraq. I would not call it spin if what they are saying is an attempt to counter the stream of bad news being generated by the media. After all a fact is just a piece of information. It is the adjectives that we use to convey that fact that provide the ability to spin it. What may be great news on the war can be turned into an attack, just by the way it is reported. I can see why it is called yellow journalism. I just can't figure out why there aren't brown streaks running down the page.

Icool

Cobb

Feeling Good About Feeling Good

I am once again spending a week in our neighbor to the north. Yes, the second largest country in the world is quite different than most Americans think. Yes they speak English (except Quebec) and their currency is the dollar. Most of the same things we have in the states like McDonalds, Walmart, and malls are all over up here. What is different is their behavior as a nation. Canadians (at least those that I am spending 8 hours a day with) all seem to have the same social direction. Everyone seems to want to be uniform and not rock the boat because it could cause someone to not feel good about themselves. Not a very efficient way to accomplish things.

Recycling is huge up here. They use both sides of the paper before they recycle it. It took me a few days to realize that I was not getting two sided copies. It was confusing at first because there seemed to be no continuity between the two pages. Every house I passed this morning had a blue plastic tub out with their trash that was heaping with pop cans, newspapers and milk jugs. What topped the cake was yesterday was Earth Day and the television spend ample air time on just how green Canada was compared to the US. Apparently, socialism provides for easier brainwashing of the masses when it is indoctrinated from birth on.

One of my colleges made a blanket statement that up here in Canada, the women wear the pants in the family. They make the rules and their husbands would not dare make a decision without first letting the wife (or mother of their children for those who choose to remain single in a committed relationship) make it. If that is the case, I can see how Canada got into their current mess. It is almost like a nation of lemmings. They have swallowed the environmentalist mantra hook. line and sinker.

The one thing that Canadians have that Americans don't is access to Cuba. Most of the people I talked to have vacationed in Cuba and rave about how great it is. They also have Cuban cigars which are expensive up here. Of course anything that has to do with the American sin tax mentality is pricey here. I guess it makes sense to tax what people enjoy.

Icool

Cobb

About A Man Named Jed

For as long as I can remember, I did not like wearing shoes. I take every opportunity during the summer to go barefoot. It seems more natural and is certainly more relaxing for my feet. I used to think that it was a throwback to my ridge runner relatives from Oklahoma and Arkansas but an article published by NPR (I know, what am I doing reading that liberal rag) says that wearing shoes is un-natural and causes humans to walk funny.

The author of the article says that wearing shoes is like putting a cast on the arm of a three year old and leaving it there forever. The arm would simply stop working after a while. Well, we have conditioned our feet to wear shoes and created a situation where we cannot do without them. He cites examples of barefoot rickshaw drivers that had perfectly healthy feet even though they ran shoeless through the streets.

Now, I do not advocate a shoeless world. That would be as kooky as embracing man made global warming as a singular vision of truth. The eskimos would have serious issues with frostbite without foot coverings and our modern society provides a considerable number of obstacles for a bare foot. We have all kinds of sharp edges and other unpleasant surfaces to walk over every day. I remember walking over the hot bubbling pavement as a child and doing the hop step to get off it before I baked my soles. And I would not mow the lawn barefoot for obvious reasons. But I do enjoy walking over the cool grass, letting my feet sink into the turf. I am sure glad summer is almost here.

Icool

Cobb

Food For Oil

Somehow this has taken on a completely different meaning since last year. The eco-terrorists have pushed our liberal elected officials into approving massive tax rebates for the production of alternative fuel in the form of ethanol. This takes corn which is the basis of the entire US farm ecomony. Corn goes into everything from corn flakes to New York Strip steak. This presents a dilemna that only Solomon would be worthy to solve.

We are putting the very groceries that we would consume into the fuel that we use to drive our economy. What doesn't make sense is that gas prices are not coming down and at the same time we are paying more for the food that we eat. This creates a double hardship for all Americans. We are faced with both higher costs to travel and higher costs to feed our families. What government agency had this huge vacant idea? I will give the Bush administration full credit since it has been too long since a Clinton was in office.

Alternative fuels should be renewable and not endanger the present economic situation. We have created what Mary Shelley wrote about in that we have released a monster that we created on the world and only we can stop it. The production of bio fuels needs to be stopped immediately. It is only there because it is propped up by grants from the US government and it is leading us down a path that will eventually lead to higher prices for everyone. The bread basket will eventually go into a gas tank and not a dinner table. I prefer not to drink my dinner, thanks.

I Not Cool

Cobb

Is It Really True

I spent the last week in Canada assisting a sister plant. They are slated to close at the end of June and the star players on the salaried staff are all leaving for greener pastures. I am not sure how much I helped as their computer system is foreign and although it is similar, things are a little different in Canada. I did however get a chance to talk to them about the health care system in Canada. What I heard contradicts many of the arguments against centralized medicine.

There are not long lines to visit the doctors. You just schedule an appointment like you would here. And if you cannot get in, there are walk in medical clinics all over the place. You do not get to see you doctor but you do get treatment. So far it sounds like here in the states. There is not a long wait for surgery or CAT scans or any of the other medical tests that we get so easily here in the States.

One person I talked to says that if she cannot get in to see her doctor, who just happens to be a personal friend, she invites her over for a beer after work. Or if that doesn't work, she has a friend with a husband who is a doctor. This leads me to think that getting immediate appointments may be difficult. I am still suffering from the crud after four weeks and had my wife make an appointment with my doctor for Friday morning. She called at 9:00 am Friday morning.

So it sounds like from an access to health care, the programs are similar but two facts still stand that make it, at least in my mind undesirable. First, I pay for health care even if I do not use it. It comes out of my tax dollars and if I maintain a healthy lifestyle by not indulging in over eating, drinking to excess, smoking or drug abuse, I have paid for those who do not take care of themselves. Why should I finance someone else's abuse? Secondly, the salary on the doctors has been capped. That means that there is no incentive to do more or better. Smells like communism. Equal health care for all. Yes comrade, I feel fine.

Icool

Cobb

The Cost of Success

We are told as children that the good guys always win. We see it in movie after movie that the hero always triumphs over the villain. We are always excited during that final battle when it looks like the hero is destined to perish, only to have a reversal of fortune and the villain dies in a fiery crash or falls to his death. We love it when people win except when it appears that they win at our expense.

There are two big situations going on in the business world that explain that circumstance. The first is the bailout of the big Wall Street banks that executed poor business plans and have collapsed due to their own incompetence. The second is the big oil companies that appear to be profiting from the huge rise in petroleum prices. For some reason we are feeling sorry for those businesses that created a mess and now want someone to dig them out. What most people don’t see is that they are being bailed out with tax dollars. Yes, we the people are the helping to keep these now bankrupt companies afloat. It plays right into the liberal playbook of handouts and rewarding failure. That has become the current method of reward for the liberals. Offer to pay for a total lack of success. That is genius.

At the same time, Congress has big oil tied up in hearings grilling them on why their profits are so huge. They are threatening to increase the taxes on their profits because they are excessive. You never hear that when Wall Street firms have earnings through the roof and are paying the gargantuan year end bonuses. So the reward for being successful is to have the fruits of your labor be stripped away. That is a real motivator. If we use that logic, the World Series would not be between the pennant winners but the runners up. After all, why reward success.

Icool

Cobb