Tanker Wars – Part VII

Hey, this might work. Velma Jackson asked the Mobile City Council to start a weekly prayer meeting in order to entice the Tanker God's to award the upcoming USAF Tanker contract to the team of Northrop Grumman and EADS-Airbus. Mobile City is the proposed site for the assembly of Airbus A330F aircraft that the NGS/EADS team will be bidding to the USAF. The region stands to get lots of Job's if the contract were won by NGS/EADS, along the order of thousands or so they say. There will be jobs to be sure but I don't see the numbers they are claiming as it defies logic that Airbus will transfer this assembly line to the US killing jobs in the various countries in Europe that build it now. I mean, they get direct grants of money by their partner governments that fund the building of these aircraft for precisely that reason, the Jobs. The reality is that the aircraft will be fully assembled in France and then flown to this new facility where all the military equipment and the actual Tanker package will be installed.

Meanwhile, in other news the government of India has announced it will not be buying any of the Airbus A330/KC-30 Tanker aircraft for its Air Force. This leaves Airbus with only the launch customer of Australia (4 aircraft), the UAE (3 aircraft), Saudi Arabia (3 aircraft) and the UK (14 aircraft) that they will be building aircraft for unless they prevail in the USAF contract.

Also for your digestion, the USAF announced that the Final version of the Tanker Replacement RFP will be released soon either at the end of this month (January) or in early February, and they are making changes from what was in the Draft. Both potential bidders for this large contract were enumerate with the draft RFP although the changes being made are described as minor in nature so it is not known how the NGS/EADS-Airbus Team will stay in the bidding process. We have to wait till the Final RFP is out and they have a chance to review it.

Still more fun than you can shake a flying boom at!!

BT: Jimmy T sends

Rationing Health Care – On the US Horizon

Found at: Carpe Diem

It seems to me that we are going to get this set of "Reforms" of our Health Care shoved down our throats by Nancy, Harry and PresBO over the public's substantial objections. The new program will in a few short years start (it is back end loaded, taking in revenue for three or four years before any benefits are paid out) and then the real ugly gooey stuff will hit the fan. With doctor shortages and the closing of private hospitals looming, we will all be in the queue together for Health Care services.

Rationing is not that far behind and then our life in hell will start. Below is a picture of a Ration Card being used today in that wonderful communist paradise of Cuba. It is the ration card for the family of Yoani Sanchez, a blogger living in Cuba. Her short description of how this card works and her emotions upon receiving it is heart breaking. But it speaks directly to what the Democrats are steering the United States into with their point of view and absolute hatred of the free trade system and capitalism. Their blind belief in the Government despite all the evidence to the contrary that it can deliver on the promises being made is simply amazing. You and I will pay for it in more ways than just a hit to our pocketbook, we will pay for it by standing before a bureaucrat to justify your desire for Milk even though you do not have a child under 7 years old in your household. Because you like to drink milk and the Government Planning Commission/Board did not factor that in before they slaughtered most of the Dairy cows in your community.

Hope and Change you can believe in.

BT: Jimmy T sends.

Beware of the Angry Lame Duck

Defined (from Dictionary.com):

1. an elected official or group of officials, as a legislator, continuing in office during the period between an election defeat and a successor's assumption of office.

2. a president who is completing a term of office and chooses not to run or is ineligible to run for reelection.

3. a person finishing a term of employment after a replacement has been chosen.

4. anything soon to be supplanted by another that is more efficient, economical, etc.

5. a person or thing that is disabled, helpless, ineffective, or inefficient.

An angry Lame Duck is very unpredictable and erratic. You cannot guarantee what they are going to do or what they will be standing for and especially, you have to worry about their motivations while they are voting (in the case of say a Lame Duck of the 1^st type above).

I bring this up now because of the many Democrats (and a few Republicans) who are jumping ship here in 2010. While a good thing to some that Christopher Dodd (D-Tax Dogger/Friend of Angelo) is bowing out and leaving office the heat he feels is his own corrupt morals and greedy ways that have brought him to disgrace.

There will be more. (Anyone want to start a pool on Arlen (R1D2) Specter?)

The worry here is that now these guys have nothing to lose. We as their constituents have no sway over them, no way to get them to tow our line and not either the Party or their own corrupt agenda.

You cannot count on Patriotism alone for these guys to do the right thing and either not vote on a Bill or vote their constituents opinion on the subject. Dodd in particular will most likely go off after his term and work for George Soros and as a result will pad his departure by voting for every far left agenda items that come the Senates way.

A shame for us in that these will be wasted votes. He should be removed now along with all the others that have announced their departure.

It's the only fair thing to do.

BT: Jimmy T sends.

Million Dollar Test

I have this theory about government and how politicians work regarding money. They go through the process of "authoring" a Bill, say it's the Stimulus Bill; they have a cover on top with a fancy name (eg. "Save the US Economy from Going down the Crapper Act of 2010") and then the back page where the signatures go. These are the parts that the actual authoring Senator or Congress-critter actually write. Everything in between the front cover and back cover come from one or many (hundreds sometimes) of Special Interest groups. They take turns writing in there what they want in the way of a Tax Credit, or Tax forgiveness, or outright campaign contribution/bribe offset (known as Subsidies in Washington speak). This "Bill" is then taken to the floor and amendments are then attached. These are those pesky parasitic riders on each Bill that have nothing to do with the Bill itself, added by the Senator or Congress-critter that found a new campaign contributor but could not give them their offset in the last Bill, so they gloam on to this Bill with a rider. After a bunch of these votes to look you know democratic and all that, they vote and pass the Bill. It becomes law but no one but the ones that put text into the Bill know what it really means and of course it does not work as the fancy high minded Title might lead you to believe it was supposed to do. All of us out here, the taxpayers get to surrender more of our hard earned money to all of those Special Interest groups that helped write the Bill and the Senators and Congress-critters go saying they voted for this fancy titled, high minded Bill. They look good and we remain in that bent over position, gripping our ankles.

I have this test that I use to tell me if a Bill being contemplated will work or not. I call it the Million Dollar Test. It's pretty simple too. Here is how it works: You have a problem that needs Congressional Action. Will you getting $1 million Dollars make the problem go away? If yes; Can the Bill. If not, call in the Military. There, problem fixed.

Let's try this out on say that famous Stimulus Bill of 2009, you know the one that was passed in record time last year, 9 days after PresBO was sworn in.

Problem: Economy about to tank, we need jobs in all sectors to prop up business and return financial stability to the economy.

The Congressional Bill Title: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

Cost: $787 Billion Dollars

Effect: Nil, naught, squat, zilch, zip, or insignificant. Some jobs to non-existent Congressional Districts and even Zip Codes that don't exist. Cost per job created or saved estimated at between $160,000 per job to as high as $246,000 per job (using numbers from Recovery.gov, the Administration's own web site).

Yeah, it's a mess and it is just like throwing away $787 Billion dollars. Might have well simply burned it in a huge bon fire on the 4^th of July. Ok, let's try my little test.

New Bill Title: Plain and Simple Stimulus Act of 2009

Fix: Give every living Man and Woman above the age of 18 years who is NOT in Jail and who is a Legal Resident of the United States a $1million dollar grant. No strings attached except that those monies have to be spent here in the US, no moving it off shore.

Impact: Just think of how many of those pesky failed Home Loans would go away? Guess how many people could pay for College? How many would go out and buy new cars, new homes or spend money on their existing home? Dare I say a lot.

Cost: Somewhere around $200 million dollars give or take. Maybe $250 million or $300 million still it would be way less than $1Billion dollars much less $787 Billion.

Effect: Well, let's just say it would have gone a long way to stimulating the economy and would have prevented a lot of other mayhem as wall. GM and Chrysler would not have had to be taken over by the government, Mortgage backed securities would not have gone in the tank and a lot of people would have been employed in all segments of our society. Tax revenues to the States and Local Governments would have not dropped and they would not need to be bailed out as they do now.

All around not too bad except for the deficit payments on something like this. But, $300 million in the hole is a lot better than $787 Billion in the hole and that is the difference especially when you see who is benefitting from what got passed.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is a monumental failure. The Health Care Bill will be another monumental failure as well as you can buy some really good Health Care and/or Insurance for $1 million bucks.

Plain and Simple. It's just too much for those jackass's in Washington won't go for it because they get nothing out of it.

BT: Jimmy T sends

Time is Money: Money in Time

What is a Billion dollars? Serious money to the average American, but not to our Congress. Both the Senators and all the Congress-critters don't flinch at that kind of money. The recent Senate 'Bazaar' over their version of the Health Care reform Bill is very illustrative of how these politicians view YOUR money.

Trading votes for the end to cloture and thus approving the Bill they High Prince of the Senate Harry Reid bartered away $300 million dollars to get Mary Landrieu from Louisiana to get her to go along, and she was proud of that number. Not to be outdone Ben Nelson from Nebraska wheeled and dealed his way into a deal that exempts Nebraska from having to shoulder any of its share of Medicaid cost increases forever. Although this cost starts out at a mere $45 million dollars, the CBO cost estimate of that little gem over the next 10 years is valued at $1.2 Billion dollars. That is $1.2 Billion dollars that have to be made up by the other 47 states (Massachusetts and Michigan have the same kind of deal all though the terms for those two states is not Forever like Nebraska's). To win the Florida delegation over Harry Reid put in a provision that grandfathers all of Florida's Senior citizens who are on Medicare Advantage. While the rest of the country's Senior citizens will lose this program or benefit, Florida Seniors will continue to enjoy it, cost to YOU and Me, a mere $5 Billion dollars.

Now they throw this money around like they don't own it or care where it comes from, they certainly don't understand that when you are out of money even $1 dollar is too much yet they are willing to buy votes with Billions and Billions of dollars.

What they are out of touch with is not just the value of the Dollar, much less a Billion of them, but also what the magnitude of the actual numbers they are throwing around.

Like I said in the opening, A Billion dollars is a big deal to You and Me the average American. Why is it then that the politicians go to Washington DC and forget all about what this means. Let's refresh a little.

If a Dollar was equal to 1 second let's see where we go in time. 1 Million seconds is the equivalent of 16,667 minutes which amounts to 11 ½ days.

1 Billion seconds is the equivalent of almost 17 million minutes or 278,000 hours or 31 .71 years in time.

Think about that for a moment. If you could spend $1 dollar every second of every minute of every hour in every day, to burn through $1Billion dollars you would have to have started in 1978. That's right, you would have to spend $86,400 dollars every day for almost 32 straight years to eat through $1Billion dollars.

And our government goes through that much money in a little over an hour. All of it borrowed, from our Children.

BT: Jimmy T sends.

Winter comes to the Swamp

For the last two days or so we have been having what passes for 'cold' weather in these parts. Temps in the low 20's for the High and single digits for the Low., plus lots of wind. Here is a screen cap of what Weather.com showed a few moments ago.
My Pond froze up pretty much overnight; I had to turn off the water pump leaving the fish on their own for the rest of the winter. Except for the air pump or bubbler I won't worry about them till it gets warm enough for them to start moving again and then I'll have to run the water pump.

The twice daily weekend walks with the neighbor have been tough, not so much the time in the cold but the process of bundling up. I go with layers and it takes me 10 minutes to get everything on. I was actually sweating upon my return tonight so; I am getting the exercise without all the skin damage that goes with the cold.

Since we are pretty much trapped indoors I have had the time to finish the move of the Cable and Network gear into the new equipment closet. Here is the finished product.

On the top shelf is my Belkin combination Wired/Wireless Router. I still have several rooms that have are wired, a printer and my office are wired as well. The kids when they are home use the wireless and so does the Good Mrs. T, here computer is wireless. The Belkin gives exceptional coverage not only within our house but our general neighborhood as well. I have several pieces of gear that are in my neighbors house across the street that connect to my system because the throughput is better than in their home. I don't mind.

The bottom shelf is the actual Phone and Cable modem from Comcast. I have it powered on a UPS so we will always have phone service and network capability as well.

On the left wall is the Cable service for the entire house. I ran each cable to each room without breaks and I bring the main feed from the cable company directly from the box on the outside of the house. The old system, installed by the house builder had splitters installed and mounted in our attic. We had poor Signal to Noise Ratio input to the Cable Modem and of course we were having pixilation issues to the many TV's in the house.

That's an Electroline EDA-FT08300 8 port Cable TV Amplifier that distributes the one feed to all the rooms in the house. I noticed an immediate improvement in TV video quality with this installed.

I will eventually add a PC to this closet that will serve as a Print Server and a Backup Storage device for the network. I am not in a hurry for that however, it will happen sooner if the cold weather keeps up!!

BT: Jimmy T sends.

Homecoming

Well everyone is finally home here in the Swamp in southeast PA. SN2 flew in on New Year's Day arriving at 0600 hours on one of them Red Eye's direct from San Diego. Your humble scribe and the Good Mrs. T awakened at Oh-Dark-Thirty for the long slow drive to the airport. The usual 45 to 60 minutes would not do as we had an Ice Storm earlier in the night so we were on the road way early just to make sure we were there for the arrival flight. Driving in the dark on ice = White knuckle driving. Good thing it was only 55 miles.

We were on time and happy to see the young Marine home at last.

His Mother and Sister had the privilege of greeting him upon his arrival in San Diego, below the pictures from that reunion. It was short sleeved weather there at Camp Pendleton whilst we were digging out of our first big storm here in the Swamp.

Here the two of us immediately after the Big Hug. The Photographer's Mate assigned to this event did a horrible job of capturing the moment. Ah well.

We spent the day resting and relaxing. We did catch the big game: The NHL Winter Classic. Too bad for us Flyers fan's but it was a good show just the same.

BT: Jimmy T sends.