The Unretired

Business Week magazine, in the December 15, 2008 issue (page 46), has an article on The Unretired. These are people who retired, but due to the economic downturn are now hurting financially, and in many cases going back to work.

A couple of quotes, just a few paragraphs apart, stood out to me:

These aren't just the spendthrifts or sloppy planners you would expect to run into trouble in retirement ... many are people who did everything they were supposed to do -- working for decades and regularly socking money away.

Peter Fay, like many of The Unretired, feels angry and betrayed. The 63-year-old built up a $1 million retirement account as an executive at companies including Chiquita Brands International and then at his own high-end flooring company in Scottsdale, Ariz. But with all his money in stocks, he's lost 50% of that this year, at the same time that his house has tumbled in value. He's drawing down his savings and applying for jobs at Lowe's, Home Depot, and Costco. "All the systems we grew up trusting during all those years of work -- you save your money, you trust in the government -- are no longer valid," he says.

Did you catch that? "all his money in stocks" This is doing "what they were supposed to do?" I know of NO reputable financial planner or advisor who would recommend a retiree (or near-retiree) have all his money in stocks, even in the heady days of the market of the last few years.

Quite the opposite. He (and/or his financial advisors) were apparently driven by pure greed. If history can't teach people that greed is ultimately bad for them, nothing will, I suppose.

Religious Minorities: Muslims in Germany, Christians in Turkey

Another interesting article from the BBC:

Free to believe?

One part that I found particularly interesting is where the Catholic nun said that she has no trouble whatsoever from her Muslim neighbors. Even the mayor of the city would like to turn the church back over to the Christians, but he's prevented by the national government. One assumes that the national government is under pressure from prominent religious figures (what the media likes to call "extremists").

It's a sobering lesson, when we think about the pressures that are exerted on our government by extremists ... and not just those of a religious nature. Do we forgive it when we agree with those exerting the pressure? Should we?

Surprise, surprise!

A story on page one of the October 23rd issue of the Manhattan Free Press says Hawaii is ending it's child health care plan after only seven months. Seems the do-gooders there had decided that the state should buy health insurance for any kid whose parents weren't paying for health insurance.

A state official said families were dropping private coverage so their children would be eligible for the subsidized plan.

Duh. Did anyone seriously expect people to keep paying for something the state was giving away?

The UK's view of our elections

I love to read the BBC News ... and other foreign news outlets. They have such an interesting view of us.

Today's take on last night's speech by Hillary Clinton at the Democrats' convention is a lot of fun to read. Here are some relevant quotes:

After all, the winds of change should be blowing against the Republicans and their president. But, everywhere you look in Denver, you find nail-biting delegates, nervous surrogates, defensive campaign staffers.

The rest of the world thinks that Mr Obama will be America's 44th president but, at home, the Democrats are the worried party.

To some extent, this is their traditional role. Like Woody Allen in one of his earlier movies, the Democrats excel at fretting, agonising, navel gazing and over-analysing.

The opinion polls, which have Mr Obama and his Republican rival John McCain neck-and-neck, prove that they have reason to worry.

The senator from Illinois has had an arid summer. He needs to have a bountiful harvest season.

But the other reason for anxiety is the Lady who broods in the wings. Of late, Hillary and Bill Clinton have not uttered a single public word of apostasy. They are toeing the line, gritting their teeth and swallowing their pride.

They are also economical with their enthusiasm. I am told that senior Clinton people aren't even sticking around for Obama's big stadium speech on Thursday. This is damning with faint praise.

And what has to be my favorite quote:

If Barack Obama wins the 2008 election, this will be remembered as a gracious salute from a defeated rival; if he loses and Republican John McCain gets the White House, then we might just see it as the first speech of Campaign 2012.

Read the article here.

Mitt Romney's Top 10 list

Mitt Romney's Top 10 List of reasons for quitting the race for US President, as he gave them at yesterday's Radio and Television Correspondents Association annual awards dinner:

10. There weren't as many Osmonds as I had thought.

9. I got tired of the corkscrew landings under sniper fire.

8. As a life-long hunter, I didn't want to miss the start of varmint season.

7. There wasn't room in the campaign for two Christian leaders.

6. Word leaked out that nobody had bothered to search my passport files.

5. I'd rather get fat, grow a beard, and try for the Nobel Prize.

4. I wanted to finally take off the dark suit and tie and kick back, in a light-colored suit and tie.

3. Once my wife Ann realized I couldn't win, my fund-raising dried up.

2. I took a bad fall at a campaign rally and broke my hair.

1. There was a flaw in our campaign theory that as Utah goes, so goes the nation.



Source: Deseret News website, which cites youtube.com as their source.

And we think our taxes are high ...

Strike that. We know our taxes are high. But not as high as Sweden and Denmark. News today from The Local, Sweden's English-language newspaper, tells that Swede's have finally dropped out of first place in the "Highest Taxes in the World" list. Sweden seems to be proud that their tax burden averages only 47.8 percent! Think of that ... half your paycheck going to be mostly squandered by the government. It boggles the mind.

Oh, here's the story.

Is there any hope for more nuclear power in the US?

Is there any hope for more nuclear power in the US? Probably not, as long as the news outlets are so biased against it.

Exhibit A:
Headline on CNNMoney website: "Nuclear Plant Shutdown Causes Massive Florida Power Outages"
Excerpt from the actual story: "A problem with the electrical grid in Florida caused power outages stretching from Miami up almost to Jacksonville that affected as many as 3 million people Tuesday and caused a nuclear plant to automatically shut down ..."
Truth: A problem outside the nuclear generating facility caused instability in the electric grid, so the power plant shut down (safely) as a precaution. The headline doesn't just give the impression that the plant was at fault, it blatantly says so.

The fact is that most Americans have an irrational fear of nuclear power. The amount of radiation release in the Three Mile Island incident was less than is released in the average chest X-ray. And Chernobyl ... well, that reactor was not built to any reasonable safety standard. The reactor building was not even encased in concrete. FAR more radiation occurred in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania from the Chernobyl incident than from the one at Three Mile Island.

And here's something I didn't know: One big concern with nuclear power is the waste. Fortunately, most of the waste can be recycled and used for medical and other beneficial uses. France, which generates a huge percentage of it's power with nuclear plants, stores all of it's waste in a small room. We can't do that in the USA thanks to Jimmy Carter. He was concerned that terrorists and other countries might use waste to make bombs, so he outlawed ALL recycling of nuclear waste. Didn't make any difference. The bad guys have found many cheaper sources of what they want.

Until laws and attitudes change, we have little hope for the inexpensive, clean and safe power that the nuclear option offers.

There's an EXCELLENT article in this month's Imprimis magazine on the future of nuclear power in the USA. Well worth the 5 minutes or so it takes to read it.

Curses! Foiled again!

After months of saying, "This one ... no, that one ... no, the other one", I had finally come to a decision on who I would caucus for at the upcoming Republican shindig. I was honestly almost down to the "Eeeny, meeny, miney, moe" stage. Finally, last night, I decided that my choice had to be Mitt Romney.

Now comes news that Mr. Romney has dropped out of the Presidential campaign today.

Now what? My choices are down to Paul, Huckabee, and McCain ... unless I'm missing someone.

Paul is easy. I feel exactly like the editor of Go! Twenty-four/Seven who wrote, in this week's issue, "Ron Paul: Has some good ideas; is crazy as a loon."

I have some serious reservations about John McCain. And after reading what James Dobson had to say about him, my reservations are even stronger. But I'm not sure I can see myself caucusing for Mike Huckabee.

Well, back to the old "Eeny, meeny, miney, moe," I guess.

Pick a President like you'd pick a CEO

In the latest issue of Business Week (Feb. 4, 2008), Jack and Suzy Welch answer a question from a reader (page 88) asking, "What caracteristics would you say are most important when choosing a company CEO or the next U.S. President?"

They have long advocated six key business leadership characteristics, and they apply them to the problem of picking a CIC instead of a CEO. Most telling to me was the first one:

Take authenticity, the foremost quality business leaders must possess. It's equally crucial for a President, and for the same reason: trust. When President is trying to promote a major initiative or lead through a crisis, the nation can't be embroiled in a debate about his or her sincerity.

Well, there goes Hillary ... wiped off my list (still!).

Now I just have to look for that quality (and the other five) in the pool of candidates that are left. We're down to seven serious contenders now, and I honestly can't say I like any of them. I fully expect to enter the polling booth this November with my nose held, and vote more against one than for the other. I still haven't made up my mind which corner I'll stand in come caucus day ... and it's coming up quickly!

Difference a order word makes

This morning's Deseret News website has a story and a picture. The headline over the story reads:
Over 1/4 of US Homeless are Veterans
and the headline under the picture says:
Over 1/4 of Vets are Homeless

Of course, the story makes it clear that the former is correct. More than 25% of the homeless in the US are Veterans, while overall Veterans make up only 11% of the population.

Word order makes a difference!

Nancy Boyda spouts off again

An article in today's Topeka Capital-Journal tells how the National Guard at Forbes Field in Topeka has a dozen old jet airplanes (they'll turn 50 years old next month) that nobody flies anymore. In fact, there's nobody certified to fly the planes. They have been superseded by newer planes, and they're in the way. Unfortunately, an obscure little phrase in an old Federal law that will not allow the planes to be decommissioned without Congressional approval. As if that's not bad enough, the law requires that these planes be maintained, so somebody has to go out every week and start them up and tow them around so the tires don't get flat spots. The National Guard estimates that it costs $1.1 million a year to do this. And it's the same story at many other bases in the country. Total hit to our taxpayer wallets: $229 million annually.

Here's the article (at least until the C-J takes it down).

Enter Nancy Boyda. She says she wants to get that law off the books, and I have to agree with her (There's a first time for everything!). Her quote:

I believe that military leaders, not politicians, should decide when equipment has become hopelessly outdated.

One has to wonder if she believes that military leaders and not politicians should decide on the best course of action in Iraq?

I'd give a left lugnut to see her face if someone asked her that!

Nancy Boyda shows her true stripes

Nancy Boyda and the Democrats took over Congress promising to do things differently, better. Did any of us believe it for a moment? Well, apparently the thousands of people who voted for her did. But she's a tax-and-spend Democrat, like they all are. And she's been caught. You have to read the story the story to believe it...

But it gets worse! Turns out she originally asked for FAR, FAR more money than the $100,000! Like $1,800,000. For a project that doesn't have a budget, a plan, or anything. She just asked for money (my money! your money!) because "the mayor of Lansing asked for it." Here's that story.

We can be thankful that US Representatives are elected every 2 years. It won't be long until we can have Jim Ryun back where he belongs ... in the US House of Representatives.

Another venerable institution loses it's luster

It was bad enough when Focus on the Family's Dr. Dobson announced that he's willing to let radical liberals like those supported by moveon.org run our country. My respect for the man and the institution he built has moved down from 100% for the first time ever.

Now, hard on the heels of that shocker comes word that Al Gore is one of the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. What Gore's work has to do with peace is beyond me. What his work has to do with truth is an even deeper mystery.

The Nobel Peace Prize committee has made some stupid blunders in it's history, but this ranks right down there with the worst.

What is this world coming to?

More views on the US election

The BBC's Matt Frei always provides an interesting perspective on our political system, written to those who don't understand it. His latest post is here.

A couple of posts back he took a look at NASCAR and the election, so adding another American phenomenon that his readers don't understand well. It's here. Good reading, as always.

Dr. Dobson heads down a dangerous path

I could hardly believe it when I first heard it, but now Dr. James Dobson (founder of Focus on the Family has published his 2008 Presidential election plans in the New York Times.

Basically, he says that if the nominee from the Republican and Democrat parties are both not perfectly pro-life and pro-family, he'll vote for someone else. Can he not see that there are worse possibilities than having a President who doesn't line up squarely with one's position on a few issues? How about having one who lines up exactly opposite one's positions on a lot of issues?

Let's suppose that Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton are the nominees. So Rudy doesn't match Dr. Dobson point-for-point on abortion and family issues. He doesn't match me point-for-point, either. But refusing to vote for him simply gives her another vote. We must not allow her to become President, for that would be a far, far worse thing for this country than nearly any other alternative I can think of.

You can read Dr. Dobson's editorial here.

And you think you've got it bad ...

Idahoan struggling to prove he's very much alive

The real betrayers

Those foaming-at-the-mouth whiners at moveon.org published a newspaper ad the other day calling General David H. Petraeus, Commanding General of the Multi-National Foce-Iraq, "General Betray-us". They basically accused him of lying. More than that, they implicitly accused the whole military of lying. President Bush, for all his faults, called this one correctly when he said it was "disgusting". Agree with the President or the Democrats, agree with the war or disagree ... there's no reason to call into question the integrity or honesty of our military leaders without cause. Just because what they report isn't what you want to hear doesn't make them dishonest.

So, today, the US Senate considered an amendment to a bill. That amendment was "To express the sense of the Senate that [Petraeus] deserves the full support of the Senate and strongly condemn personal attacks on the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all members of the United States Armed Forces." Pretty cut-and-dried, right? Doesn't matter which side of the debate you fall on, surely you could support this one, right? Anyone who doesn't agree with this one is a traitor to the United States of America, right?

OK, here's the list, in all it's glory:

Akaka, Hawaii
Bingaman, New Mexico
Boxer, California
Brown, Ohio
Byrd, West Virginia
Clinton, New York
Dodd, Connecticut
Durbin, Illinois
Feingold, Wisconsin
Harkin, Iowa
Inouye, Hawaii
Kennedy, Massachusetts
Kerry, Massachusetts
Lautenberg, New Jersey
Levin, Michigan
Menendez, New Jersey
Murray, Washington
Reed, Rhode Island
Reid, Nevada
Rockefeller, West Virginia
Sanders, Vermont
Schumer, New York
Stabenow, Michigan
Whitehouse, Rhode Island
Wyden, Oregon

Notice the names of a few candidates for President in that list of traitors? Now, here's the real kicker: Mr. Biden of Delaware and Mr. Obama of Illinois simply failed to vote. They knew they couldn't go on record voting against this amendment, but they are so under the thumb of moveon.org that they couldn't vote for it. So skipping the vote saves their political careers for both the election and for the rabid left-wingnuts.

My respect for Ms. Clinton couldn't get any lower (except for that respect I have for a mastermind of crime ... how does she manage to get away with it, time after time?). But any shred of respect I had for the others on that list (Obama and Biden included) is now gone.

I was duped ... but I'm in good company

In an earlier post, I said that the LDS church had issued an "apology" for the events at Mountain Meadows 150 years ago this past September 11. Turns out that the LDS church never intended their message to be taken as any sort of apology, and is apparently quite upset that some people took it that way.

I was led on by the first news story I read about the event, on the Deseret Morning News website. Their reporter, along with the one from the Salt Lake Tribune, simply got it wrong. According to LDS spokesperson Mark Tuttle, “We don’t use the word ‘apology.’ We used ‘profound regret.’”

Read all about it at:

Mormon Coffee
Fox News

Don't Vote!

I've often said that these "Get out the vote" campaigns are a bad idea. If people care enough, and are educated enough, they'll vote. Those who don't care, don't vote, and that's a good thing.

So I was pleased to find this site:



You take a 30-question quiz, and it tells you whether you should consider voting or not, based on your cultural literacy.

I'll be honest, I didn't score very well. For one thing, it must be aimed at people who get their news from TV. The questions are simply a photograph of a person, and you are asked who it is and what his or her position is. It's multiple choice, so that helps. But to be honest, someone like me who gets most of his news from the websites (BBC, Google News, Deseret Morning News) hasn't got much of a chance. I know who Ehud Olmert is, but I don't know that I've ever seen a picture of him. Same with Mahmoud Amadinejad, Robert Gates, Nancy Pelosi. Actually, I got Pelosi wrong ... I mixed her up with Dianne Feinstein. I know who they both are, and I know the difference, but I couldn't tell you which one is which from a photograph.

They also put in some ringers. There were pictures of Paris Hilton and some other pop culture figures. I had no clue. I honestly think it was the first time I had seen a picture of Paris Hilton, and I didn't even know it was her until it gave me the answers at the end. As I was going through, I got a little mad ... after all, what does knowing who Paris Hilton is have to do with being able to vote? Turns out they've thought of that. If you get that one right, you get one point. It's nine points for knowing who Condoleezza Rice is, and ten for knowing George W. Bush.

And I found one mistake: It shows Tony Blair as the Prime Minister of the UK. It does say that the test was last updated in January, so it's almost forgivable, but they really ought to get their act together.

Anyway, if you watch a lot of TV, take the quiz. If you don't get your news from TV, take it anyway, but don't worry too much about the score.

There are days ...

There are days when the news reporters outdo themselves. From "The Local", Sweden's news in English:

"So far this year the Swedish state has earned 1.8 million kronor from people caught peeing in public. That's no piddling sum..."