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December 19, 2009

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Melinda Romanoff

Here's a new way for everyone to share information, the "huddle".

Sorry, you can't come.

LUN.

MoodyBlu

Snowing 1"+ an hour in suburban Philly. Always knew Nelson would fold. We're going to get it whether we like it or not, snow and "healthcare".

Melinda Romanoff

Rick-

This one's just for you.

One side of China's dollar problem.

LUN.

Melinda Romanoff

Oh, and the Climategate stuff is piling on the mockery, this one by Gerald Warner in the Telegraph is a hoot. Watch the coffee, when you get to the "lunch bill" you just might go aerosol.

LUN.

rse

Hard to read your stuff Mel and watch the health care heist in DC and then plan to Christmas shop.

No economy can thrive when you just want to hunker down and survive.

Keep it coming though.

Jane

The manager's amendment has been posted.

Melinda Romanoff

Thanks Jane, 383 pages of JOY!

clarice

Thanks--I cn't make much of it and don't intend to try.

narciso

This is a lawyer's full employment act, it's incomprehensible, and that is the point of the thing, I gather.

Danube of Thought

Nelson makes me puke.

Sue

Do we know yet what Nelson got for his vote?

Sue

I notice there is no mention of Sanders holding out.

Sue

Nelson was going to vote for it all along. Listening to his comments makes me want to throw something at the tv.

peter

Nelson, you puke, you are finished.

Porchlight

Jerk. Can't believe I let myself get strung along by that idiot.

clarice

If you aren't angry enough, here's Stuart Tayllor on how the nasty profs at Duke have been glorified and how this is endemeic in the anti-white male cultre on college campuses.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/openingargument.php

Jane

Now we learn Obama pledged $100,000,000,000.00 a year for climategate, and pledged lowering of emissions which will move jobs to China which causes 97% of pollution and refuses to do anything.

He needs to be impeached.

Oh and the word is Nelson got more than Landreau.

Sue

Ed Morrisey says Nelson caved on abortion for a few bucks:

Scroll down to Section 1303, which uses the same reliance on the “prohibited under HHS rules” dodge as the earlier Senate version, rather than using the language from the Stupak Amendment in the House that explicitly prohibited public money from funding abortions or abortion coverage. If Congress fails to renew the Hyde Amendment for just one year, this language will become moot. This version will lose none of the progressives, because they know they can just kill the Hyde Amendment renewal now to eliminate the problem.
Porchlight

Nelson will probably retire rather than face the voters. Well, Dems will lose that seat for a couple of decades.

Thomas Collins

Nelson edges out Landrieu for the 2009 "Practitioner of Mankind's Oldest Profession Award" for 2009. Ashley Dupre, the 2008 winner, will present the award to Nelson at the awards ceremonies (which, in keeping with what Nelson's sale will accomplish, will be handed out at the headquarters of the British National Health Service).

Sue

Stephen Hayes reporting that longshoremen have been exempted from the cadillac plan excise tax.

How is this constitutional?

Janet

Some good news...I heard back on Facebook from one of the soldiers that received a package from our church. We made up stockings, and he must have gotten one from my family. I was so excited. I got my daughter to set up the Facebook account for the JOM Tea Party....I'm so glad I have the account. Our military is the best!!

Porchlight

Janet, what a nice, Christmas-y thing to happen.

Old Lurker

Porch, we tried to warn about Nelson. The outcome was certain...only the price remained to be determined.

clarice

Well,OL, the plane left Burlington for DCA and my friends battled thru the snow to the airport only to be told upon arrival that their flight had been cancelled.

clarice

It snowed today in southern France. Here's a pic (LUN) of the beach at Nice covered with snow.

glasater

Amanda Carpenter is tweeting this particular part of the managers amendment:

SEC. 10106. AMENDMENTS TO SUBTITLE F. 10 (a) Section 1501(a)(2) of this Act is amended to read 11 as follows: 12 ‘‘(2) EFFECTS ON THE NATIONAL ECONOMY 13 AND INTERSTATE COMMERCE.—The effects de- 14 scribed in this paragraph are the following: 15 ‘‘(A) The requirement regulates activity 16 that is commercial and economic in nature: eco- 17 nomic and financial decisions about how and 18 when health care is paid for, and when health 19 insurance is purchased. In the absence of the 20 requirement, some individuals would make an 21 economic and financial decision to forego health 22 insurance coverage and attempt to self-insure, 23 which increases financial risks to households 24 and medical providers. BAI09R08 S.L.C. 68 1 ‘‘(B) Health insurance and health care 2 services are a significant part of the national 3 economy. National health spending is projected 4 to increase from $2,500,000,000,000, or 17.6 5 percent of the economy, in 2009 to 6 $4,700,000,000,000 in 2019. Private health in- 7 surance spending is projected to be 8 $854,000,000,000 in 2009, and pays for med- 9 ical supplies, drugs, and equipment that are 10 shipped in interstate commerce. Since most 11 health insurance is sold by national or regional 12 health insurance companies, health insurance is 13 sold in interstate commerce and claims pay- 14 ments flow through interstate commerce. 15 ‘‘(C) The requirement, together with the 16 other provisions of this Act, will add millions of 17 new consumers to the health insurance market, 18 increasing the supply of, and demand for, 19 health care services, and will increase the num- 20 ber and share of Americans who are insured.

The idiotic D's just lie......

rse

I believe what Nelson got is on page 328 out of the 383. It's a $100,000,000 for debt service, remodeling, and direct construction costs at an "academic health center at a public research university in the United States that contains a state's sole public academic medical and dental school".

Clearly only 1 facility meets the language and the money is for FY 2010.

If Nebraska qualifies as a "Frontier State" because at least 50% of its counties have a population of less than 6 per square mile, Nelson is getting help there too.


That discussion is in the vicinity of page 209.

rse

It also looks to me like pages 241 and 242 are the ACORN and friends get to participate too provisions.

Who else qualifies as "organizations that are indigenous human resource providers in communities of color" ?

pagar

Thanks glasater, for summing it up nicely!
These words can be used anytime one sees comments from a Democrat on any subject.

The idiotic D's just lie

Manuel Transmission

OK gang. Finally caught up on my musing from the Far East.

For daddy:
Snow - Missed the initial blast by a couple of days so didn't see much disruption. There were a couple of job site visits that were canceled due to being snowed in. Snow stayed in the shadows for a week on rooftops. No one seemed to take notice.

Facial hair - It finally dawned on me that I hadn't seen much facial hair in China over my many trips. So I started looking for it. After about 10 days, I saw only two examples: 1) a guy in a train station that had a full beard. He might have been a 'provincial', but my ethnic Chinese identification skills are pretty limited; and 2) a guy hanging out at the breakfast area at the Holiday Inn (a nice, new hotel in Beijing) with a bunch of Chinese 'skinheads'. He had the beginnings of one of those wispy beards hanging under his chin-- long, but thinly populated like one of those old paintings.

Stares - having spent more than my usually time running around in city crowds, riding the subway, cruising through shopping areas, i realized that I was often the object of polite stares -- given I was the only round-eyed white guy around. Anyway, I realized that there was never any hint of disdain or derision in their stares.

Manuel Transmission

Far East, con't.:

Opera - had a blind date to go to a symphony at the new Beijing Opera House. Holy Cow, what an awesome facility. I think it may be the one of the most beautiful structures in the world. I have not had a chance to research the history on the building, but it has world class written all over it. I'm guessing some amount of western expertise was involved given some of the state of the art acoustic design elements. (I'm putting some of that technology in my own listening room, so I'm up on the details.)

The concert was a full symphonic performance. All the trappings were western: the ritual of the musicians coming out, the first chair guy getting special notice, etc. The only difference was that the instruments were all traditional Chinese and so was the music performed. It was my first experience, so didn't know what to expect. The performance was obviously first rate, although it was 'foreign' enough to my western ears that I had trouble becoming immersed in it -- probably in the same way that the average westerner would be clueless about our opera if they had not been properly introduced.

BTW the date was a fellow engineer (guy) from Beijing who spoke pretty good english and we hit it off well when I explained that I thought Obama had a brain the size of a walnut.

Theater restaurant - My last night in country I attended a small dinner party in a theater restaurant. We had a dining room on the second floor overlooking the stage area. The performances were a bit Ed Sullivan/vaudeville blend of operatic singing, acrobatics, martial arts demonstration/dance, etc. I'm guessing that, given the relative young age of many of the performers, many of them may have been from a performing arts school.

Moutai - one of the worst traditions in all of China has to be the ever present celebratory drink, Moutai. This stuff was what Nixon drank when he 'opened' China. It is dragged out for every lunch and dinner where there is even a pretense of toasting someone or something. The problem is that the stuff tastes awful! It has to be a second cousin to paint thinner. In fact, my homemade joke is that they make it at the People's #13: paint thinner and Moutai Factory. And the stuff is expensive. They could be drinking really good single malt scotch and saving a bundle.

Cell coverage - My work has taken me to some pretty remote locations on this earth: the far north of Scandinavia above the Arctic Circle where Norway and Sweden join atop a mountain ridge; in desolate areas of Mongolia where the only safe drinking water is in shrink-wrapped plastic bottles and the ditches are open sewers. In every case, I can activate my cell phone and see five bars of signal, even when there is no sign of humanity for miles.

How is it that in one of the richest counties (in NW Wash. St.) in the richest country in the world where homes can cost $1000 per sq. ft. I can’t get a cell signal in my front yard. When nary a penny of taxpayer money needs to be expended, what exactly is it that keeps us from reaping the benefits of the finest 21st Century technology that has transformed the rest of the world. (/rant)

clarice

"Who else qualifies as "organizations that are indigenous human resource providers in communities of color" ? "
The new Black Panthers? La Raza?

Manuel Transmission

OK, last one for now:

Body types - While in Tokyo where I spent about four days right downtown, I had my people watching sensors going into overload. It caused me to formalize my normal subliminal processes. So here is what I pieced together: when someone enters a new environment such as a new city or country, there is a natural data collection/processing mode where people are 'scanned' for appearance, body type, fashion, etc. Like any random process, the central part of the distribution becomes evident quickly and then the one and two sigma exceptions start to stand out by their respective rarity.

OK, so this process normally works pretty well, but all my flags went up when I started watching people in Tokyo. I saw two different 'populations' that were way off the normal dist. The larger group was spooky in that they were of the crowd, but not like the crowd. There were fundamental bone structure oddities in their faces and much more lower leg deformity than is common in the average Japanese (slightly knock-need, but bowed lower legs). Most were relatively young -- maybe early 30s and younger. Again, my ignorance of the wider Japanese population may mask that they are of a regional ethnic group that happened to be unique, but recently are mixed into the larger population.

The second group was much smaller -- 15 or 20 young men hanging out at an after work bistro. They were at an adjacent table and were dressed in suits and ties, but of the type that might be proper dress for a local college. What flummoxed my radar was that all the young men looked positively androgynous. In spite of their normal male dress, they looked effeminate. No hint of facial hair. If it hadn't been for there being a fairly large group of them, I probably wouldn't have noticed. For lack of any real data I will make an AGW type leap and speculate that they are the byproduct of growing up consuming a very large amount of soy products. (estrogen and all that..)

Jane

That was great Man Tran.

Old Lurker

Sorry Clarice. At least your place is all clean and well stocked now. Tell your friends they are welcome for beef stew in front of the fire in Potomac.

MayBee

Young Japanese men look very young indeed. Westerners age differently.
As different as it looks to us, it looks different to them as well. Japanese people have a very difficult time telling the age of young Westerners- we look much older to them, a fact those who go through their teen years near the bars in Roppongi know and take full advantage of.

clarice

Very sweet offer,OL..But I expect they just want to stay in if they make it back from DCA.

clarice

MT we have signal problems on Longboat Key, to, Here's on this island it is opposition to the towers that is the problem.

rse

Clarice-

You're right. Those organizations would also qualify.

I felt better when I was just thinking ACORN.

There's nothing in the legislation requiring groups to leave their batons at home to qualify for participation.

The language in that bill is so broad on this issue, it reads like back door reparations.

Manuel Transmission

Clarice - Here's on this island it is opposition to the towers that is the problem.

I just sat through a planning commission meeting for our islands where we proles were allowed to plead our case for allowing the advance to county council for revising the 13 yr old ordinance. The responders were >5:1 in favor of changing the game and allowing new cell coverage. The planning commission was 'too busy' worrying about snail darters to concern themselves with the safety of us citizens and the high likelihood of hitting a dear on a back road or having a cardiac event and not be able to reach help.

Fortunately, one of my pals on our side of the fight dropped a bomb at the end of the session. The feds (FEMA, DHS, etc.) have issued a ruling that requires essentially blanket cell coverage across the nation so they can narrow-cast text messages to citizens in case of an emergency. I have not seen the source to link this, but if it has any teeth, it should put an end to the tree hugger's game.

The old ordinance was so (deliberately?) screwed up that it required any maintenance on an approved tower be done with exact make/model of equipment as installed however many years prior. Needless to say the cell providers have no interest in playing that game.

anduril

Here's an economic assessment of the coming year from a well known Bear: Here's Why The Economy Is Going To Suck Wind Next Year. Lots of nice charts.

mockmook

What flummoxed my radar was that all the young men looked positively androgynous. In spite of their normal male dress, they looked effeminate. No hint of facial hair.

    If it hadn't been for there being a fairly large group of them, I probably wouldn't have noticed. For lack of any real data I will make an AGW type leap and speculate that they are the byproduct of growing up consuming a very large amount of soy products. (estrogen and all that..)

    Posted by: Manuel Transmission | December 19, 2009 at 11:54 AM

Does Excitable Andy know about this place?

Neo

We're not talking about your ordinary little dump here. That was in Copenhagen, where world leaders were meeting to discuss what to do about global warming and the Bloomberg news service was warning that Barack Obama and the rest would "face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.''

Four inches overnight? Valdez got more than four inches per hour at the height of the snowstorm that began there Monday and ran through the week. By the time the citizens of Alaska's only oil port finally caught a break, the snow was piled 5 feet, 8 inches deep.

caro

Funny, ManTran, here there is such a mixture of characteristics among our population we would never notice a trait like knock knees in a random group. Very interesting. Glad you posted. And hi to Mrs. MT.

Manuel Transmission

Thanks caro. Are you back on solid ground for the winter? We are finally wrapping up the home and marina projects, so maybe we can start planning a fun trip that direction next year.

Ann

Why can't the Republican party obtain a warrant for Democrat Senators and charge them with Grand Theft or Treason. No one has the authority to just give away tax payer dollars.

Isn't it treason to not protect the US Constitution when you pledged to do so.

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