Phones at the gym are stupid

I like my smartphone. It's a Samsung Galaxy S II. It works well, and one of its finer features is that it is not an Iphone. Like most who carry one, it goes with me everywhere. I draw the line at the gym though and scoff at those who don't. There are multiple gym goers at my local weight room who do a set, then sit down on the bench and look at their phones. They end up wasting five minutes they will never get back looking at the phone seated at the bench in the classic stoop with head tilted down, soft glow shining up. Eventually they will get up, and do another set, but this literally takes a five minute cycle, and they will still follow each set with a stop to look at the phone. It is bad enough that the internet converts otherwise valuable, irreplaceable time with hours spent at Break.com or ESPN.com, or anythingbutwork.com. But letting the web's sugar and its insidious and delicious draw pull you from foucssing on your workout is frightfully weak. Leave the phone in the car. Focus on your lifts, your sets and your form. There is nothing in the phone that will help you clean that bar or do that pull up or curl. No, there is not an app for that.

Bain Capital or the Mob?

So an article published today http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/08/investigating-mitt-romney-offshore-accounts,discussed the complicated finances of the Romney family. There was a considerable amount of linguistic dancing about the Bain Capital model of business acquisition. Bain bought companies by teaming with partners like Goldman Sachs to cook the books of companies to be acquired. Bain and its cohorts would use inappropriate assumptions to publish financial documents that would then be used to support borrowing from unsuspecting lenders. Then Bain would pay out the money it had the acquired company's borrow as "dividends" and "fees" and let the company whose assets secured the loan die by bankruptcy. Bain made its money and left lenders with the task of working out the debt clearing process in the courts. This was legal? Technically it was probably couched as "business decisions" and not fraudulent misrepresentation. But fraud is what it was. This is exactly the model used by the mafia when it is owed money. Please see the book "Mob Rules" by Louis Ferrante. If the borrower does not pay, or is otherwise obligated, the mob takes over the borrower's business, borrows all it can to put in its pockets, buys all the sellable merchandise it can on the business's vendor credit lines and then leaves the wrung out husk for the bankruptcy courts to dismantle. This wasn't said in the article but it should be made clear. Bain and Romney bought businesses with other people's money, then made the purchased company borrow more other people's money, then put that money in their pockets as dividends and fees. They knowingly did this. It was fraud and misrepresentation that Wall Street and K Street made sure wasn't characterized that way. Please, someone, tell me how the models are different. I challenge you.

Moving on

Rashinal is too clever for its own good. See you in the next iteration. Adios, bon soir, arrevaderci, yia sas, etc.

BIG OIL OR YOU? WHICH DID CONGRESS CHOOSE?

On June 15, 2010, while millions of gallons of oil were fouling the ocean and beaches in the Gulf of Mexico, sixty one senators voted to continue to provide $37,000,000,000 in tax breaks and credits to oil producers like BP and Exxon. These tax breaks flow directly to big oil companies inflating their profits at the expense of taxpayers and the federal deficit. The obvious oil company shills like Senators Murkowski(AK) and Coburn(OK) voted in favor of coddling the oil companies. But lame duck Senator Voinovich from Ohio, and Senators McConnell and Bunning from Kentucky also planted their kisses on big oil’s ring.

The Kentucky senators are ironic. Mitch I’ve-never-had-a-private-job McConnell is the senate minority leader. He wants to talk about how government spending is out of control while conveniently ignoring how long he’s been in government as a senator. He says he wants to cut taxes and spending. He doesn’t say he wants to make oil companies pay their fair share - neither do his votes.

Don’t get me wrong. I love profit, business and entrepreneurship. I love a juicy return on my investments too. But come on. Oil companies do not need help from taxpayers to make big profits.

Next consider Senator Bunning. He’s a charmer. This is the guy that single handedly held up the extension of desperately needed unemployment compensation benefits to the tune of thirty six billion dollars. Those benefits were to help employees who cannot find work for more than a year after they lost their jobs. His position was that “there are jobs, it’s just that all these unemployed slackers don’t want to work”. He would rather see Americans in his state and around the country go hungry or lose their homes, than make oil companies pay taxes on their profits.

Now some will say that extending benefits to unemployed people causes them to get lazy and complacent. I can see the logic in that argument. After all, congressmen get paid to do nothing too and they keep coming back for more. And don’t forget Citibank and GM. They were burning through taxpayer dollars, their management enjoying multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses while their companies floundered, all the while saying “we need to keep our talent and honor these contracts to pay bonuses.” All this while they terminated pension and union contracts that were in favor of working people, guaranteeing fair work rules, health coverage and hourly pay. But those thousands of workers don’t contribute millions of dollars to Republican causes, so contracts be damned. Take your lumps workers.

Of course there were 21 Democrats who wanted to protect the oil company profits by voting to kill the loophole closing amendment. Short of a revolution it appears that the only way to effect a real change in D.C. is to vote with a purpose. The purpose would be to replace every one of the senators and congressmen up for election in November. Almost any change would be better than allowing the fleecers in office to continue what they've begun. The purge would need to continue in 2012 with that group of Senate incumbents (1/3 of the Senate) removed too, and any of the new reps from 2010 that had consumed the rotten Kool Aid in their first terms.

The process needs to be repeated in 2014 with the last group of senators elected in 2008 removed. This complete reorganization is necessary in order to confirm to Congress that Americans have had enough. Doing any less of a thorough house (and senate) cleaning would allow the incumbents to indoctrinate the newcomers in the ways of narcissism and corruption. Even if we lost a couple of dedicated, thoughtful senators or representatives in the process, the removal of the greater group of sniping, squandering rabble would be worth it. It would shake national politics to its core too. Party lines would crumble and it would allow candidates who did not toe the party lines to rise up and make a difference. A complete renovation of congressional faces would make it clear to the political financiers and advisers that the two party jig was up.

As it stands, sound bites and “positions” have become interchangeably identified with either the majority or the minority. Each says the same about the other depending on who is in power. This makes the distinction between the two parties meaningless. How is it possible in a country as diverse as the United States that we are left with only two ostensibly competing view points? There are tens of brands of automobiles, more than fifty different kinds of breakfast cereal, ten brands of peanut butter, innumerable brands of hot sauces, but only two political viewpoints?

Remember in November that Congress is now filled with self interested career politicians who will make more in annual pension benefits, after retiring from even one financially rapacious term, than most of us will ever make in a year while working -- even if they are worthless while they are in office. Remember that fact too when you pay your quarterly estimated taxes, and your annual income taxes and every other tax dollar paid to the treasury for congressional miscreants to squander without any noticeable regard to the country’s debt or currency.

If the past and current conduct by this Congress does not motivate people to make big changes, and I don't mean just switching parties at election time, then the population will get the government it deserves, and will get it good and hard.

Good Friday

It's a Good Friday on the Christian calendar today. I'm a bad Catholic and can't recall the precise meaning of the date. I think it's the day Christ was crucified, died and entombed. Easter Sunday is the day he "rose again."

Maybe the good part of this Friday is the U.S. gov't jobs report. Finally a job creation gain. It was 162,000 to the good. Of course 48,000 were temporary census jobs and some large part was from the "birth death model" of estimated job creation. But "Finally Jobs" makes for a good headline.

The weather is good this Friday here in southwest Ohio, the snake's nest of Republican cronyism and blind party faith that gave us John Boehner and the No Child Left Behind Act. Boehner said health care reform would pass over his dead body. Health care reform is the law, but Boehner's still with us. Another instance of empty hyperbole from the Tan Man.

Despite the fanatical fear stirred up by the opponents of health care reform, it is good for a lot of people. It will cost us all more, true, but we are getting something for it. Isn't that the essence of value? Getting what you pay for. That is a good thing.

Have a Happy Easter and a good weekend. Life is good and heaven is here on earth. Enjoy it while you can.

Painful Observations

On the way to work today I saw tens of fat people getting food from the food assistance center. Fat people should not be getting food assistance. It seems that until one is actually hungry, and looks it, they should be able to get by on their own. I would make an exception for kids, but not obese kids. It seems harsh at first, but if recipients of aid aren't actually hungry, then shouldn't they forego the help and leave the limited resources for someone who is hungry -- and looks it?

Worse yet, the poverty pirtates are often chatting on cell phones ($)while waiting for their goodies. Of course most are smoking too, at $3-$5 a pack. And tattoos? It's as if they are a badge of lives wasted, but they aren't free. Then when they get their loot, the newly flush masses load up their cars and drive away. This is wasted welfare at its finest.

A friend told me of his military service in Afghanistan. He was lamenting the number of Americans who complain about being poor, or hungry or in need of financial help. In Afghanistan, they live on dirt floors, in dirt walled rooms, off dirt covered streets, leading to dirt yards. There are no microwaves, televisions, phones, refrigerators, cabinets, light switches, washing machines, dryers, food pantries or YMCAs. As for toilet paper? Might as well be an opium charged dream.

Until they are Afghani poor, no one should be complaining about not having enough to get by. And for sure, no roly poly cigarette smoking cell phone chatting car driving ne'er do well should be pleading for free food.

Democrats giving in to fear.

Recently the Senate Judiciary Committee recommended changes to the woefully misnamed Patriot Act that would have reduced some of the unilateral and offensive power exercisable by the U.S. Government. In 2001, the terrified and confused congress granted sweeping powers to the military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Those powers are incongruous with the Constitution, but are forced on the people in the name of "security." This article describes what the mice in D.C. did with those recommendations for a return to privacy and courage. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100225/D9E35TM00.html

What ever happened to FDR's "We have nothing to fear but fear itself"? Ladies and Gentlemen your representative's courage has left the building. Let us vote out the scared and timid and put in the fresh, idealistic and hopeful. We don't need seniority in Congress. We need leadership and courage