Newt Gingrich wrote a great editorial in the Wall Street Journal recently that includes 7 “achievements” that he thinks should be offered as prizes similar to the X Prize Foundation’s prizes. Personally, I think the idea of prizes to drive innovation is great and wish that the government would do this on a regular basis. Newt’s list is a great first start and there are probably others but if we have too many it would dilute the importance of the targeted list.
I do question Mr. Gingrich’s 7th item. While certainly noble in intent, it doesn’t appear that it is measurable enough to warrant a big prize. Perhaps a prize for the public school system that gets 99% of their non-special needs kids to some extremely high level of attainment on a standardized test. If we use the SAT as an example, the school system that can get 99% of their kids to over 600 on the SAT test (the average is 515 out of a possible 700 and that was for college bound seniors - the challenge would be for ALL students in a public school organization).
I wrote about Iranian flogging almost a year ago. It still is disgusting although I guess it is getting slightly better. At least now they are “reviewing” the sentences of “death by stoning” and commuted some of the sentences.
According to the BBC, it is rare for someone to be stoned to death - they haven’t done it in a year. A YEAR?!?!? For a country the size of California, that seems like fairly recent behavior.
How do you stone someone “Iranian style”? Here is what the BBC reported:
The country’s penal code stipulates that before carrying out the punishment, men should be buried up to their waists and women up to their chests. The stones used must be large enough to cause the condemned pain, but not sufficient to kill immediately.
So if the stones don’t kill immediately that means it takes several strikes to do the deed.
I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.
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I think most people miss the point (although Mr. Will probably comes the closest to getting it right, in my opinion). In most Parliamentary Government systems, the voters elect the Parliament and they, in turn, elect the Prime Minister (in the UK countries this is slightly different in that the Monarch actually appoints the PM but in modern history the Monarch appoints the choice of the Parliament). So in this government, the Prime Minister serves at the pleasure of the Parliament.
In my opinion the best way to quickly drop the price of crude oil is to announce that the US is going to build 30 nuclear reactors in the next decade.
This would send a strong message to the world community that we are serious about energy independence. One of the big perils with electric cars is the lack of availability of infrastructure to charge them.
We need to stabilize the world energy market and this would show everyone that we see serious about getting our house in order.
I know that John McCain has advocated a similar suggestion but I haven’t heard anything of this from Obama.
I am amazed that this is not being made a bigger issue. I guess Obama is paying everyone off with his millions of dollars so that they don’t talk about his millions of dollars.
Obama will run the richest campaign ever for the office of the US President!
While I have a hard time saying that people can’t give money to their favorite candidate, I do have problems with massive amounts of money being used to “buy” the campaign. Never before has the disparity between candidates been so massive. John McCain will only have 84M from the government to spend on the election and Barack Obama will be able to spend as much as he can raise and estimates say that could be 300-400M!
I regularly listen to KCRW’s “Left, Right and Center” on my iPod. While I enjoy the intelligent discussion I think they should rename the program to “Left, Very Left, Ultra Left, and Pretty Far Right”. The show now has a blog so I think it is fair to chastise them a little and condemn them for not being as open as they claim that they are - if they disagree they can say so on their blog.
Tony Blankley does an excellent job of holding down the right. His opinions are typically well thought out and his intellect does a decent job in offsetting the radical left. My biggest complaint is that he always seems to have predicted everything and wrote about it months ago and it is amazing that us mortals have only just now got to where he has been for a long time. It appears that, in his opinion, if we were just smart enough to read his column every week we wouldn’t have any problems in the world.
I am a big fan of the music of Sheryl Crow. I have all of her CDs and have bought each one (no, I didn’t “borrow” someone else’s MP3 files). I have enjoyed her music over the years but, to be honest, her first CD was probably her best and she could be accused of coasting since then - a couple good songs per CD with so-so songs after that.
I have listened to Ms. Crow’s latest CD several times. It is titled “Detours”. It is an apt title since it is a detour from her usual high quality work! I feel like the Democratic Party, Al Gore, and Laurie David have been injected into my brain via my ears! To think that I spent $15 for a CD of political propaganda.
For the last 2 posts, I have explained that social security is in real trouble and should be euthanized. Now I will explain how to do it in the most fair and compassionate way possible.
Our current generation of retirees (and soon-to-be retirees) needs to be protected in this whole process. Therefore my plan doesn’t require them to make any sacrifices. They had a contract with the US government and we need to keep that contract. So the first step of the process is that anyone 58 and over receives all of the benefits that they are currently supposed to receive.
The second step of the process is that since everyone that is 57 today has ten years to prepare for the change, they will receive 10% less than what they were supposed to receive as of today. They need to start saving to prepare for that day and stop looking to the government for a complete handout that is not going to happen. Besides, 10% is not that big of a sacrifice.
My last post talked about our wimpy politicians and their fear of trying to fix the social security system. It won’t be easy and it is a little complicated so please read carefully:
WE NEED TO ELIMINATE SOCIAL SECURITY!
That is the hardest thing to accept. Once we accept that, the question becomes how to eliminate it.
You ask why we should eliminate social security. Did you read my last post? If no, please do so now then come back (click here). Don’t worry, I will wait.
…….. long pause
Now that you’re back, it should be obvious that the biggest curse that Franklin Roosevelt did was to setup a system that violates reason. FDR’s system only works if there are more workers today than yesterday and more workers tomorrow than today. Since that equation cannot continue indefinitely, the system was bound to fail eventually. Now is the time of failure and we need to face it.