I was talking about in my last post. I mean, ya can’t make this stuff up.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — After balking at government imposed pay restrictions, American International Group’s chief executive Robert Benmosche has officially agreed to a non-compete contract that could total $10.5 million, the company announced Tuesday.
The government owns 80 frickin’ percent of this company and the CEO is getting about 26 times as much as the President. Wonder who the schmuck is here ?
to know where to begin. I know that if you are reading this, you probably have at least some similar feelings.
The disappointments are many. After eight years of the incredible and unbelievable incompetence of the Bush administration, I really and truly believed that Obama would bring some much needed change.
A new broom sweeps clean.
A breath of fresh air.
I do not know where to begin in listing my disappointments.
I was eating lunch with Reed and Pearson at the Acey-Duecy Club at the Naval Station on Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay. It was a Friday and I was attending an intensive and very long advanced electronics school. On Friday mornings we would take two exams. One was for the subject that had been taught during the mornings of the previous four days and the other was on the subject taught in the afternoon.
The TV was mounted on the wall and I happened to be facing it. The news flash was of the president being shot, which eventually morphed into the shot(s) being fatal.
I do not remember anything else specific about the rest of the day.
I thoroughly understand how to do a Cost-Benefit analysis. While in the workplace I did dozens of formal Cost-Benefit Analysis’. Literally. And probably hundreds of them in an informal, “back of an envelope” way. When it comes to business decisions such as do I buy a truck with these features or those features and how much will I use each of the various features or do I even buy a truck or maybe the occasional rental is more cost saving.
That I understand and subscribe to.
But doing a cost-Benefit Analysis where human lifes are at stake is beyond the pale. All human life is precious and valuable. And to me it doesn’t matter if a certain non-invasive procedure will save one person out of every one thousand tested or if it will save only one out of every two thousand tested, let us do the procedure and have our health insurance pay for it.
It is a human life.
It is somebody’s mother.
It is somebody’s sister.
It is somebody’s daughter.
Compared to the agony endured if breast cancer is not discovered in time, mammography is inexpensive.
Ya see, there is no price that makes pain, suffering, anguish, or distress worth it.
How inhumane a country have we become?
I picked this up whole from the AP via Yahoo:
CHICAGO – As the Obama administration considers a plan to move Guantanamo Bay detainees to prisons on U.S. soil, including possible sites in Illinois and Michigan, proponents and critics are spinning the facts.
The nearly vacant Thomson Correctional Center in the western Illinois farming town of Thomson is the latest potential candidate being evaluated to hold detainees after President Barack Obama promised to close the military-run detention center in Cuba.
Federal officials inspected Thomson on Monday after visiting another proposed site, a shuttered prison in the northeast Michigan town of Standish, in August.
Here is a look at some of claims about security, economic impact and prison visitors if Guantanamo Bay detainees are locked up in the U.S.
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CLAIMS: Critics, including Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk and several other Congress members from Illinois, contend moving Guantanamo prisoners there would make the state — with its signature Chicago skyscrapers — a terrorist target. Opponents in Michigan, including U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, raised similar concerns.
FACTS: Convicted terrorists already are held in U.S. prisons. Federal Bureau of Prisons director Harley Lappin said more than 340 international and domestic terrorists currently are incarcerated.
Lappin said the bureau already works with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to assess threats.
Northwestern University law professor Joseph Margulies, who has represented detainees, agreed that moving them to a U.S. prison would not affect any risk of a terrorist attack. Chicago has been on guard against terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In Michigan, Standish residents scoffed at the notion of their town, population 1,500, as a terrorist target. Residents of Thomson, a village of about 450 people, did too.
If Chicago is a terrorist target, they say, it’s because it’s a big city and not because detainees would be locked up in Illinois.
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CLAIMS: Detainees moved from Guantanamo Bay would be able to recruit other inmates to terrorism if held in a U.S. prison.
FACTS: Detainees would be overseen by the military and would not mingle with other federal inmates, said Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Felicia Ponce.
If Thomson is chosen, the bureau would buy the prison and lease a “small” portion of it to the Department of Defense to house the detainees. The remainder would be operated as a high-security prison with between 1,500 and 1,600 inmates, Lappin said.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin has said there would be fewer than 100 detainees at Thomson. Lappin said Monday there would be a “limited” number of detainees and they would be in Department of Defense custody.
The Michigan prison, which closed Oct. 31 because of budget cuts, has a capacity of about 600.
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CLAIMS: Federal prisoners are allowed visitors so al-Qaida followers and family members would visit detainees.
FACTS: The Department of Defense does not allow detainees to have visitors. Phil Carter, deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee policy, said detainees’ only visitors at Guantanamo Bay are attorneys, the Red Cross and diplomatic and law enforcement personnel.
“They would not have friends and family coming to visit them here so that’s not a concern,” Carter said.
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CLAIMS: Bringing Guantanamo detainees to Illinois or Michigan would bring jobs to small prison towns.
Durbin and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn say selling the Thomson prison to the federal government would generate about 3,000 jobs both directly at the facility and indirectly in the community.
Supporters in Michigan said the prison complex there could employ 500 to 1,200, including guards and military officials, and create spinoff jobs for construction workers, contractors and others.
Opponents say the numbers are inflated.
FACTS: An economist says the reality is probably somewhere between predictions floated by supporters and critics.
University of Chicago economist Allen Sanderson said job creation numbers “tend to be gross overestimates.”
“You should take them with more than one grain of salt although it’s not recommended by a doctor,” Sanderson joked.
If Thomson is chosen, Lappin said the bureau of prisons would employ about 800 to 900 people, including 250 to 300 people moved in from other facilities to quickly get the prison up and running. Carter said the defense department would have as many as 1,500 military, civilian and contractor personnel there. The majority would be military.
In Michigan, critics argue that economic impact and job creation forecasts are debatable because, they say, detainees’ presence would scare tourists away from the rural community near Lake Huron.
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Associated Press Writer John Flesher in Traverse City, Mich., contributed to this report.
I think that it is important to eliminate the hysterics and politics, as best possible, from any discussion. Do we need jobs? Yes. Will any Gitmo transferred detainees mix with other BOP prisoners? No. Can so-called “terrorists” be safely held in a US correctional facility? BOP currently is housing about 350 of them.
Other than political posturing, what is the problem?
This morning I was watching Apocalypse: Second World War on the Smithsonian channel. I happened to be watching Part 2 of 6 parts which covered the German conquest of western Europe including the fall of France. All of the footage is new to me, and I have studied more than a little about the second world war.
Anyway, they showed refugees streaming south out of Paris, some walking and some on bicycle, heading away from the German line of attack. And they showed German Stukas (dive bombers), bombing the roads that had these civilians on them. And it showed civilians taking cover in the ditches along the side of the road.
I got to wondering, is there any difference between the German actions in killing fleeing civilians and Israel’s actions in killing Palestinian’s who had surrendered and were carrying a white flag, according to the Goldstone report.
I wonder if we could view the current state of affairs as modernity v. conservatism.
Other than scale is there a whole lot of difference between Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, Jim Jones, the Branch Davidians, Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and the Taliban, al-queda ?
Instead of a “battle” between Christian and Muslim, perhaps it would be better framed as a battle between modernity / secularism and fundamentalism / conservatism.
I don’t see any significant difference between fundamentalist Christians who claim the earth is only six thousand years old and Mullah Omar and the Taliban. Both groups want to return us to the dark ages of the 13th century.
I am almost 69 years old. I was born the February before Pearl Harbor was bombed. I am not going to even enter into a discussion of whether or not World War 2 was necessary. The internet is barely big enough for a discussion like that, and besides, many volumes have been written, pro and con, on the subject.
No, I want to speak to every “war” the United States has been engaged in since WW2 ended in August 1945. The U.S. gov’t sent a detachment of U.S. Marines to the Philippines in 1947 to stamp out the Huk Rebellion. Everybody knows about the Korean War, which began in June 1950. In 1953, we helped the Shah return to power in Iran. And how about the overthrow of the legally elected gov’t in Guatemala in 1953?
Then of course, the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961.
And then JFK sent “advisors” to Viet Nam. And we all know why and how that turned out.
Then there was Grenada, invaded by the U.S. and others on 25 October 1983. Followed, in December 1989, by the U.S. invasion of Panama.
That heroic effort was followed by Operation Desert Storm, the first invasion of Iraq, a mere 13 months later on 16 January 1991.
October 2001, Afghanistan. March 2003, Iraq. And we are still occupying both countries with approximately 300,000 U.S. troops.
None. Not a one of these military excursions was for the defense of our country against a foreign invader. It was because some capitalist-businessman got his toes stepped on by a petty tyrant in a foreign country and our government used the full forcr of our military to punish him.
Our country was never in jeopardy. U.S. business interests led us to “make the world safe” for our particular brand economic colonization.
This post, by Doc Myers, is both funny and serious at the same time. Biologists can be cool people.
After the Fort Hood massacre and because of the way our political and media elites operate, I feel confident in predicting that legislation will be introduced with the purpose of making it more difficult to purchase handguns that are nicknamed “Cop Killers.”
Is there any other use for the type of weapon Major Hasan allegedly used than to kill the maximum number of people?
Kathy
Chief
