The hero of the week is shared today by these two people:
(Mike Fitzpatrick - R, PA)
(Martha Roby - R, AL)
What did they do to deserve this honor? Well the Republican leadership struck a deal with the devil to avoid a shutdown and pass a budget that would allow all the incumbents to avoid the drama of a government shutdown for years but keep the free government cheese flowing to the vulnerables. How did they work this magic? Perhaps they cut their own pensions and the pensions of their staff? Or maybe the cut the growth of the pensions for the civil employees? Nope - they cut the pensions of the retired military.
What these folks did was to introduce a bill that would restore those benefits and "pay" for it by closing a loophole in the "Child Tax Credit" that allows illegal aliens to get end of year payouts from the government. To understand what wonderful irony this bill is one has to understand what this "Child Tax Credit". When filling out our income tax, most of us deal with tax deductions. That is, activities or investments that either reduce the amount of our income that is taxed, or the amount of taxes we have to pay. The key element of this is that when our taxes reach 0, we are done - we don't have to pay. Tax Credits on the other hand go beyond this. When the taxes of the vunerables reach beyond 0, then the credit amount beyond that gets paid to them. This allows people who don't pay any tax or participate in revenue activity to get a lump payment from the US treasury at the end of they year (in addition to the unemployment, disability, and food stamps they get throughout the year). When viewed from a perspective of the people who actually pay taxes and make money funding the government largess, it is naked wealth redistribution.
What makes the Child Tax Credit particularly insidious is that since the IRS does not check the citizenship of the tax filers, illegal aliens, and in fact any foreign entity with a US mailing address, can quite legally and legitimately participate in the program and get the end of year payola. With this bill, these two congressfolks highlighted this loophole and the despicable nature of funding the "deal" on the backs of veterans who gave their lives to our country with 20 years of dust, grit, bullets, and blood. While their modification to the bill has little chance of making it past Sub-Emperor Harry Reid's senate, hopefully it will twerk the few American voters that are still paying attention. For that they deserve the GAA Hero Of The Week Award.
Yes I picked this clip because I liked the series, not because Bernanke has anything to do with Pappy Boyington - other than the allusion in the title..
I admit, thinking through what QE2 does is hard, because to most of us it just doesn't make much sense. As a programmer, I generally find that if some complex operation doesn't make much sense, it generally is the root cause of a problem. I am thinking that we will find that QE2 (or 3, or 4) is probably the most caustic, damaging, thing that a government can do to a free and independent people.
So let's go down that rabbit hole and see what is going on. 'Quantitative Easing' (or QE) sounds pretty fancy but vague right? Like most made up government programs it could mean almost anything, from making sure that hammock manufacturer use an appropriate amount of squash products in their production to ensuring that all red headed women are advised of the dangers of traffic cones while navigating the barrios of LA. Well meaning, pointless exercises that mostly won't hurt anyone, right?
Well, not exactly. What is actually going on is this. The Fed notices that there are a great many companies and people borrowing money to keep things going. As the debt gets higher and higher, it gets harder and harder for those people to get more credit, keep buying things, and things keep going. The solution is for the Fed to step in and buy debt from the banks. Why that sounds just great, right? I mean the government prints the money, so its got lots of it. Buying debt, especially long term debt just makes that debt go away and the banks are free to loan out more money to people to buy things.
Not exactly. The one flaw in this is where does the Fed get the money to buy this debt? While they do literally print money, the amount of money in circulation is kinda encumbered by those silly elected people in Congress. So what's a Fed to do? Well, up to a point, they can issue new debt in the form of treasury bonds. Banks love those because they guarantee a return and, compared to the rest of the crazy market, are a fairly safe investment. So banks (and other foreign and domestic investors), gobble them up. Then the bastards in Congress get all snippy about not letting the public debt get too high, so the Fed has to buy that debt back. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
As long as no one notices all this money moving in a circle this works beautifully. The stock market cheers, as they are getting the benefit of people buying things and things are wonderful in the short term: there are chickens in every pot or pot in every chicken; thank you Obamacare! Since the debt being bought back is not due for several years and is spread over trillions and trillions of dollars, following the money is hard. Common sense says at some point people are going to realize that no one is working anymore and no one has any real money. But, as Bernanke has demonstrated, the farther out you buy the debt, the longer you can play the game.
Here was my acid test on this. Bernanke insist that "There has been meaningful progress with the job market". Now let's think about that for a minute. The only reason that the job market looks good is the massive number of people that have 'given up' looking for a job and no longer counted as unemployed. As anyone looking for a job can tell you, from high tech gurus to general laborer, there are just not that many opportunities out there and most employers are reluctant to hire. This trend is not getting better. Bernanke is supposed to be an economic genius. To say that 'progress has been made in the job market' demonstrates his disingenuousness and makes the rest of his statements suspect.
The wages of QE2 (and 3, and 4) are coming due, and I fear there is nothing that anyone can do to stop it. My greatest fear for the country and my family is that in 10 years we will look back on the 'Obama Years' as the good economic times that stole our future. Do you think i'm being over-dramatic? If you are over 30 years old, take a minute and think back to 1999. Were you economically happy and productive back then? How does that compare to where you are now? Now imagine that slide down continuing. It's not a pretty sight, is it?
Food for thought on the start of this lovely December day.
It's probably no secret here I am a novice kayaker. To qualify that a bit, I do mostly flat water kayaking, in season, and have been doing it for a couple of years. I do own a spray skirt but have never used it and have never rolled my kayak.
I got to thinking about doing cold weather kayaking so I did a little research on what type of gear I would need to do this safely. The proper wear for cold weather garb falls into two categories. There is your basic wet suit and something called a dry suit. While a wet suit can be had for around $100, a dry suit starts at about $400.
Now being a cheap bastard, I was leaning towards the wet suit. However, since making the wrong decision could lead to a certain icy death, I thought i'd turn to a co-worker who is a certified dive instructor and has spent many hours in cold water teaching idiots how to deal with the briny deep. Here is his response, which I believe is the best scientific discussion of cold weather gear for kayaking that I have ever read.
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Really tough question to answer without knowing more info.
What kind of kayaking do you do. What temp do you do it in? 60 water? 40deg
water? Freezing conditions like now?
You lose heat in several ways. I'm going to simplify this
from true thermodynamics, so we'll consider two ways. Think of a cool day
outside wearing no shirt. Your body warms the air directly next to your body. If
the wind is blowing, that warm air gets blown away quickly, so your body has to
reheat the air. This makes you cold. If the air is still, your body is more
comfortable. But then the air transfers heat to the surrounding air, and things
cool off. That is the thermal conductivity of air. The cooler the outside air,
the cooler you will feel.
A windbreaker helps by stopping then wind. It doesn't do
much for the thermal conductivity of air, but it stops the wind from blowing
the warm air way. A coarse wool sweater may not stop the wind as much, but it
helps with the second way, providing insulation so that the thermal conductivity
is much better. The best is a windbreaker over a wool sweater. The wind is
stopped with the windbreaker, and the sweater helps the thermal conductivity.
With water, everything is sped up. It pulls the heat away so
much faster.
With a wet suit, you will get water next to your skin. So
there is some "wind" that gets through the "windbreaker".
However, it slows the water movement, and keeps the now warmer water next to
you, so you stay warmer. The thickness of the wet suit slows the thermal
conductivity.
A dry suit keeps all water away from your body. So you don't
get wet. Also, the outside of the suit is usually a lot "slicker" so
it doesn't hold a lot of extra water for evaporative cooling. Much better all
around.
But here's the rub with a wet suit. When diving, your wet
suit gets soaked. But your ok. The water temp is similar around you. But then
you get out. The evaporative cooling pulls the heat away from your body really
fast. I have been diving in a 7mm suit in 40deg water. I'm cold, but not too
bad. I get out of the water into a 60deg air temp with a faint breeze. I'm
suddenly very cold. Much colder then in the water. I would often keep students
in the water when teaching to avoid that. You can limit the evaporative cooling
with a windbreaker over the wet-suit, but it still cools you down.
Now, for a couple of specifics for kayaking.
You're not usually submerged. So you may not get that layer
of water next to your skin. That will help a lot. You may get splashed, (a lot
maybe), so you will get some cooling. However, you can put jackets and such
over the wet-suit for thermal protection. The also helps with kayaking in
variable weather. You can adjust your jackets and such for controlling your
temp. If warm, shed a layer, if cool, add.
It all goes out the window if you go under, or drenched from
the water.. Your jackets get soaked, and unless they are wool or a smart layer,
you loose all thermal protection from your jackets. Your wet suit will protect
you from the sudden burst of water and will help keep you warm (especially with
a wind-breaker helping keep the wind from helping to evaporate water from your
wet-suit.)
With a dry-suit. If you go under or soaked, you don't care.
You won't get wet. Your thermals are all inside, so they stay dry. Much better.
However, you have a harder time to shed layers or deal with getting too hot or
cold. You can't easily add/remove layers. And if you open the dry-suit to
change thermals, you really have to be careful not to fall in.
From my experience with kayaking, here would be my
recommendations...
If you are doing casual kayaking, little to no whitewater,
generally very stable in the water, and you are in 60deg water or spring/fall
conditions, go with the wet-suit. Throw some fleece on as needed to compensate.
If you go in the water, take a couple of minutes to towel off and such.
If you are doing more extreme kayaking, lots of whitewater, or really cold temps
like now, you go into the water a lot, or get drenched regularly go with the
dry-suit. Bring some layers, but pull off to the side and get stable before
cracking that dry-suit to change clothes.
There just weren't many actual people that distinguished themselves this week as heroes (or I wasn't paying attention), so I decided to pick an inanimate object and of course the people who made it possible - Say hello to my little friend - the JDAM is this week's hero.
I remember working on the B1 simulators when the JDAM first came out (or were being adapted for use with the B1). JDAM, short for Joint Direct Attack Munition is not a bomb, but an adapter or 'tail kit' that is placed on a conventional bomb to give it the ability to 'fly' to a target. Each bomb can then be programmed to target an individual coordinate. With the advent of the JDAM, carpet bombing became a thing of the past. When you combine this awesome capability with the load capacity of the B1 to drop 24 GBU-31's on individual targets simultaneously, dynamically settable by the B1 crew en-route to a safe drop point rain or shine or dark of night and automatically, you bring a whole new meaning to the term 'shock and awe'. The JDAM, the B1 and B-52 crews that deploy them, and the guys and girls at Lockheed (or is it Boeing?) that build them. They are the Heroes of the Week. Watch the above video and be amazed.
Finally, if you come across a person or thing that you think deserves the 'Hero of the Week' award, by all means, use that 'email me' button over to the right to give me a head's up. I am always on the lookout for a hero who may be otherwise overlooked.
