We're In A Fix On Pakistan

With the killing of Benazir Bhutto, the situation in Pakistan continues to boil. You haven't found me in much sympathy with the Bush Administration, but in this case, they're (WE'RE!) really in a bind. Musharraf recently cracked down on opposition groups, especially those advocating more democracy. That's a tough thing for the United States to tolerate, seeing that one of the LATER reasons given for invading Iraq was to promote democracy. On the other hand, these countries aren't all like western countries. They still have a wild west like segment in them, and rule of national law is fragile, or often even non-existent. (I hate to compare them to the wild west, considering our murder rate, especially in some cities. So maybe we aren't as "advanced" as we like to think we are.) Musharraf does make efforts against the Islamic extremists, although he seems unwilling to really make the big effort to tamp them down. His own political position is tenuous, and it is a scary thought as to who might replace him, if he is overthrown or killed. Remember, Pakistan has nuclear weapons and a delivery system for those weapons; that is, missiles. It also seems to have a fairly substantial part of the population that favors Islamic extremism, or at least tilts in that direction. This is without question a country and a situation to watch.

Related:

http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2007/11/keep-your-eyes-on-pakistan.html

Forcing Treatment On The Mentally Ill

I won't make comment on this, but here is a link to a great article about treatment of some of the mentally ill:


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22435155/

Related:
http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2007/06/severely-mental-ill-and-asylums.html

Where's All Of The Oil?

Okay, here we go again....

The free market capitalists say that when there's a need for something, that people or companies will step forward to fill that need when they can make money. If this theory were completely true, we would have oil running out of our ears. The other day on CNBC, I didn't hear the interview, but I did hear the regulars commenting about it. There had been some analyst on who said that with the high price of oil, there really isn't anything to inhibit the oil companies from getting to oil, no matter where it is; whether it be under the sea or in rocks. In the past, they always whined, many times with good reason, I'll have to admit, that the costs to get to all of the oil was prohibitive, and that therefore, they chose not to go to the tough areas to extract oil. Well folks, that's not the case any longer, according to what was said on CNBC.

I go back to what I've been saying about all sorts of things; if it works, do it! If any of these economic theories worked one hundred percent of the time, the world would live by it. There would be no disputing it. The fact is, sometimes free markets work, sometimes they don't. Sometimes government programs or regulations work, and sometimes they don't.

Recently I contacted Senator George Voinovich of Ohio about how every excuse imaginable is used to justify the increase in oil and gasoline prices. He responded to me with a letter just a few days ago. In the letter he recites some of the statistics about American energy use having tripled since 1950, and how India and China are now using more oil, and how this has put a strain on supply, and thus prices have risen. Now, I'm not doubting any of this, but he also noted that oil was like ten bucks a barrel just like ten years ago. So what happened in the time since then? World oil usage did NOT go up tenfold!

Now, I like Senator Voinovich, but then he got my blood to boiling when he gave me the oil company crapola that they've been dispensing for several years now; that is, "while oil companies experienced record high revenues, their profit margins are still below that of many other industries." (This is a direct quote from Senator Voinovich's letter) Then to rub salt into the wound, he continued, "...these larger industry profits have translated into greater tax revenues from these companies payments' of federal and state taxes." (Another direct quote)

Okay, so there are free markets setting the prices, but now they don't like that either, because they want mo' money, mo' money, mo' money!!! Folks, they can't have this both ways; free market pricing AND get to set their own standards for their profit margins. In the end, they're like all of us, when something works in our favor, we like... I mean LOVE it!!! Let it not satisfy every itch, and we're not happy campers.

As to the tax revenues, from what the Senator is saying, we should all be thankful that we're paying such high prices, because it has helped state and federal treasuries. I guess we should all pray for even higher prices then! This is just more nonsense to excuse what's been going on. And it's not a very good excuse at that, or do you prefer higher gasoline?

You're My "Honey"

I wanted to pass along this article about honey being used as an antibiotic, especially now that standard antibiotics are losing their effectiveness. Hope you enjoy this "sweet" article.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22398921/?GT1=10645

Just What The Doctor Ordered?

An interesting thing happened the day after Christmas. I had an appointment with my doctor, who doesn't know that I blog. During our chit chat, he asked if I was "ready" for a national medical insurance plan. With my guard up, I asked him just what kind of a plan he meant. Well, he proceeded to say that it will probably be a mandate that requires people to buy insurance from private companies, with fairly steep deductibles and perhaps even some exclusions on some treatments. He then indicated that "It won't work. Many people will still not receive the proper care they need, as the costs will be too high." Then I asked, "So it has to be just a government funded approach?" And he answered, "Yes, that's the only way it will work." I was a bit astounded, yet gleeful. Here was a doctor saying that the country needs a government sponsored health insurance plan.

I guess we let ourselves get boxed into thinking that doctors are against such government programs, but I'm sure those in the medical community have a wide variety of opinions on this subject, just as folks in other groups do. At least his opinion gave me some hope. Now, if only we can get all, or most, of the politicians onto the same page. Doctors and scientists will still make a bundle, and I don't necessarily mind that, as they'll be helping people, and these folks do put in a lot of time just learning to become doctors. Then there are the calls all day and all night. I know, we've probably all told the "doctors and golfing" jokes, but they've got to have time off, too. As I've said before, what kind of a country do we want? A place where people die or suffer in agony because they can't afford to go to a doctor, or fear that they'll lose just about everything if they need medical attention?

Related:

http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2007/01/health-care-at-last.html

Does This Experience Count?

This is an interesting article about Hillary Clinton's "experience" as First Lady. I hope you'll read it and form your own opinions. Naturally, as people run for office, any office, they try any and every angle to draw votes; "Vote for me for dog catcher! Why? Because I own a dog!" This article begins, or continues, to assess Mrs. Clinton's role as First Lady, and that role is certainly fair game in presidential politics. Every candidate should receive scrutiny, and this is just part of the scrutiny of Mrs. Clinton.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22395503/

Forgive Us Our Debts

This is another sign of trouble for the U.S. economy. We already have record numbers of foreclosures, and for those in the world of Wall Street and big business who thought that the foreclosure problem could be kept isolated, think again. Last I heard, or I should say, the last I read, auto loan delinquencies were also increasing. How long can this mess continue without the economy going into a major tailspin?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22379989/

Note On Foreclosures

I should have added that the article also said that if the recent data supplied by Countrywide Financial is correct, and declining incomes are the main reason for foreclosures, the remedies being bandied about by politicians won't have a dramatic impact, since these proposals tend to deal with unscrupulous lenders, government loan guarantees, and a temporary freeze on rates on adjustable rate mortgages, also known just as ARMs. The ARMs were mentioned as a foreclosure reason in less than 2% of foreclosures in the Countrywide Financial data, although this reason could potentially skyrocket, as many ARMs are scheduled to go to higher interest rates within the next year or two. (Note: With Adjustable Rate Mortgages, potential home buyers were given what is termed a "teaser" rate that would last a couple of years before going to a much higher interest rate. Most of this marketing ploy was used beginning in 2005, so now the higher rates have hit some, but many more are about to get hit in the near future. It is much like the credit card companies advertising "Pay only 3% interest for six months," but then the rate goes to 20%.)

Foreclosures

Just a quick note to say that I read an article by Rachel Beck of the Associated Press about the reasons for foreclosures. Up until now, the theories about the huge number of foreclosures have had to do with unscrupulous lenders and adjustable rate mortgages, but this article notes that Countrywide Financial, the largest mortgage company in the country, and a company that has had to write off billions in loans, has indicated that the primary reason given for foreclosures is a drop in income, followed by illness and divorce. That's highly likely in my opinion, as now the retailers are saying how holiday sales are not meeting expectations, and I don't know if it's just me, but it seems that around here, nowhere near the people have holiday lights and displays up this year. I'm just guessing that they're trying to save on the electric bill. If I'm right, it just shows how pinched many people are. All the while, the wealthy continue to rake it in on oil and gas prices, which is a big part of why the country is where it is.

How Do You Say That In English?

English... a language that has almost conquered the world and may yet do so. So how did English become English? Well first, linguists, who nowadays prefer to be called "philologists," classify languages just as we do with relationships between people, in a sort of "family tree." (Here I'm going to continue to use the term "linguist.") There are more than twenty language "families" in the world, and English belongs to the "Indo European" language family, along with German, Czech, French, Spanish, Latvian, Italian, etc, etc. Just because the term "European" is used, doesn't mean that all languages spoken in Europe belong to the Indo European family, as Hungarian, Estonian and Finnish, for example, do not. In fact those three languages are related to one another, as well as to Turkish. By the same token, the "European" terminology is deceiving the other way around, as Persian, spoken mainly in modern Iran, Kurdish, spoken in southern Turkey and northern Iraq, and Hindi, one of the main languages of India, are obviously not located in Europe, but they are Indo European. You may be surprised to learn that English is indeed related to Persian, Kurdish and Hindi. (NOTE: The list of languages here is not complete, as there are many other members of the Indo European family, but these are just some examples. The same note will apply to languages mentioned below.)

Further, Indo-European is divided into various subfamily groups, some of which are: Celtic, Slavic, Romance (that is, Latin based), and Germanic. English belongs to the Germanic subfamily. Further still, Germanic is broken into three branches: East Germanic, which no longer has any "living" member languages, North Germanic, which has Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese, and West Germanic, which has German, Dutch, Flemish, Frisian, Afrikaans, Yiddish and English. You should take note that the term is "Germanic," and not "German." Linguists further divide the Germanic languages to particular geographic areas, and it gets very technical, so I'll leave things right here.

The basic idea of these various language families and their subdivisions was that, at some point in mankind's history, people began to communicate through speech. As groups of people separated from one another, variations (called "dialects") developed. Keep in mind, until fairly recently in history, travel wasn't all that easy nor fast, and at various times in history (but obviously not always), a large percentage of people lived and died within a very short radius of where they were born, or they had little, if any, contact with people speaking another dialect or language. Altitude and climate had an effect upon how people talked, and thus there developed a difference in pronunciation of the same words. (Linguists, or at least most linguists, would say that if there are 6.5 billion people on Earth, that there 6.5 billion different ways of speaking, as just as people are individuals, so is our way of speaking.) As time passed, these differences developed into more than just "dialects," but rather into separate languages, although often the relationship between these languages was and is still evident.

I'm not a linguist, so I can't really tell you what criteria they use to call one pattern of speech a "dialect," and another a "language," and I don't believe that all linguists agree anyhow. Certainly in more modern times, with national boundaries more firmly established, that has some effect on the terminology, but again, obviously not a total effect, as Americans speak English (although not all Englishmen would agree on that) but we're separate from England. (I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who said, "Americans and the English are two peoples separated by a common language!) Another big difference in a language is whether it is written or spoken.

All languages "borrow" words or terms from other languages, although in most cases, the borrower pronounces or spells the borrowed words in their own manner. Over time, many borrowings have tended to come from military actions, conquests and trade. English is closely related Frisian, German (even more closely to the north German dialects), and Dutch. The reason for this is because the Angles and the Saxons and other Germanic tribes lived in the same general area of northern Europe. Then the Angles and Saxons (along with some smaller Germanic elements) began to raid Britain. Eventually, these Germanic groups overtook Britain, settled there, and established what was to become England.

Frisian is classified by most linguists as a separate language. It is spoken in a very small part of southwestern Denmark, the northwest coast of Germany, and the northeast coast of Holland (or The Netherlands, for the purists). Not surprisingly, it has three "dialects;" that is, variations, each having been influenced by the "larger" language in the region in which it is spoken; that is, Dutch has influenced Frisian speakers in that area, German in that area, and Danish in that area. Frisian and the north German dialects are close to English in many ways, and basic communication between speakers of those dialects and English can be made. I spent a few days in Hamburg, which is in northern Germany, a number of years ago, and there are indeed some remarkable similarities between the dialect of the Hamburg area and English. Just for example, water is spelled the same as in English, although the people I spoke with pronounced the "w" as something between our "w" and the more typical German pronunciation, which is as "v." Standard German, on the other hand, spells it "Wasser," which is pronounced as "vahsser." (Even here, you see the relationship of English and German.)

Over time, there was a reinforcing shot of Germanic speakers into England; these being primarily Danish and some Norwegian speakers, and they gave English some new variations. English, however, was forever changed by the Norman Invasion of England in 1066. Now, this change didn't just happen thirty days after William ( thereafter known as, "The Conqueror") triumphed. There was a big disconnect between the Norman rulers (who spoke a dialect of French) and the Germanic speaking common people. It frequently took hundreds of years for the words English took from Norman French to truly become an established part of our language. We certainly do NOT pronounce them in the French way, as English basically acquired these words through writing, and Englishmen therefore put their own pronunciation to them. These borrowings from the Normans gave English a great deal of flexibility, as some French words gradually supplanted the original English word in one meaning, leaving the original English word to develop a secondary meaning. In "Part Two," I'll give some examples.

Veterans' Charities

I know I have many regular readers who are extremely interested in America's veterans, so check this out, and check out the charities to which you give money in the expectation that they will directly help veterans; in fact, we all need to check out ANY charity that claims to help what ever group.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22237666/

Is It The Economy Stupid?

The accompanying link is to an article about public opinion and how it has changed enough to put the economy ahead of other issues for the next election. Other issues, also associated with the economy(like education and health care), are also moving up the list of things seen as important to many Americans. There has been, in my opinion, a fairly significant segment of the populace that has seen the economy as important, although perhaps not the most important issue, for quite some time now. The Bush Administration's public statements that the president doesn't get enough credit for the success of the economy tells me that there has been this underlying anxiety among many about economic matters. All of this "free market" nonsense is just that, NONSENSE! Now, am I saying that it never works? No, but there has to be true competition in the various segments of the economy for it to be effective. Now, the wealthy and their surrogates (their money managers and various investment funds) just keep moving the money around to any and every product they can dominate. Agriculture, once the domain of many small farmers, is now much more controlled by large corporations. The fact that it is now in a boom is no coincidence, as the much money has now moved into that economic sector and caused the price of dairy and grain products to soar to historic levels.

This is all about greed and ego. It is NOT about patriotism or making markets produce more, or making things more efficient, or any other such nonsense that we've heard about in our high school economics class.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22221732/

The "Buzz" On Electricity

I read an interesting article in the paper about Ohio's nearing electric crisis. One of the most interesting things about the article was that it mentioned how Ohio businesses pushed for deregulation of electric power several years ago (love that free market philosophy!), but now that the "promised land" of competition and lower rates hasn't materialized, these same folks are now begging for help from the State of Ohio to protect them from the looming higher rates in the "not so promised land." I welcome them to the side of common sense, but I still have to say "I told you so!" And further, the "un-rich" aren't the ONLY ones who turn to government at some level for help!!!

See also:
http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2007/10/power-is-with-powerful.html

Duncan Hunter, Presidential Candidate

Let's see...hmm....there's Dunkin Donuts, Duncan Hines, and Duncan Hunter. The last is a Republican candidate for president. Don't fall off of your seat because I'm writing about a Republican. (Actually, I have myself strapped to my chair, so "I" won't fall off.)

First, a little history. When I was younger, the press would refer to some Democrats as "Scoop Jackson Democrats." For those of you who are too young, or unaware, "Scoop" Jackson was a Democratic senator from Washington, the state of Washington, that is. What exactly did the press mean by the terminology they used? Well, Jackson was seen as being tough on foreign policy and defense matters, and more moderate to liberal on domestic issues. During those times (the 1960s and 70s), Democrats were increasingly seen as being "soft" on defense and foreign policy and as catering too much to the "welfare state," which to many people, meant giving money to people who didn't want to work. Increasingly, Republicans began to get support from the "Scoop Jackson Democrats." When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, the press eventually coined a new term for these Democrats, "Reagan Democrats." These voters helped to make the Republicans heavy presidential election favorites for many years thereafter. In 1992 and 1996, Bill Clinton was able to get back some, but not all, of these wayward Democrats (remember, Clinton NEVER received a majority of the vote in either election), but in the interim, in the congressional election of 1994, these voters went heavily into the Republican column, giving Republicans control of both houses of Congress. As Republicans pushed more and more of a pro-business agenda over the years, many of these Democrats began to return to the fold, something Duncan Hunter has seen, and wants to do something about, unlike many of his Republican brethren, who seemingly need a brick wall to fall on their heads (as if the 2006 election results didn't get their attention).

I just read an article about Hunter, who seems to "get it." According to the article, Hunter feels that his party has been taken over by the "free traders." (And I would argue, by the "free marketers," who never met a price gouge to the public they didn't like.) Hunter wants to scrutinize trade deals and actually says he wants the U.S. to REGAIN good paying manufacturing jobs, and he fears that the tremendous trade imbalance we've been running (not just under Republicans) is fueling military build-ups by countries benefiting from these trade deals. He also wants the U.S. border secured!!! He also has called our industrial foundation, now beleaguered, as "the arsenal of democracy." (Okay, he stole that term, but hey, at least he understands what's been going on here.) Further, it seems that Hunter feels,correctly, in my always so humble opinion, that many in his party have shunned working class people. He's tough on defense, interested in working Americans, and seems less interested in "cushioning" the backsides of the ass-sitting class. Hmm, looks like a "Scoop Jackson Democrat" to me!

Business Will Push An Agenda

This is an interesting article and it only tells me that what I've been writing on this site is correct. Just to reiterate, business has an agenda, and in a free country, they're entitled to that agenda, but the rest of us have to be aware of what they're trying to do (many times, what they're trying to do to us!) and we need to push our own agenda to get this country back from the grip of the big boys (and girls). As the article says, this Administration is pro-business, and I would argue that part of the reason Bush resisted much of the immigration crack down and border security is, that business likes the cheap labor provided by illegals in the country, and that these illegals also help keep some pressure on American wages.*** Anyhow....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22062284/


*** Just to be fair, I also feel that many Democrats in Congress supported less of a border security policy, and more of the measures to allow illegals to become citizens, because they feel that most of these folks would become Democratic voters; so it was very political on their part, too.