Wisconsin Exit 126 is a fine pilsner

Flying Fish Brewery, whose motto is “Proudly Brewed in New Jersey: You Got a Problem with That?”, has chosen to release beer named after exits.

The first, a Belgian-style ale, came out earlier this year in honor of Exit 4, the exit nearest the suburban Philadelphia industrial park that Flying Fish calls home.

The next beer, Exit 11 Hoppy American Wheat Ale, is scheduled to start hitting bars and stores in the region on July 15. The intersection of styles is a tribute to Woodbridge’s exit, where the Turnpike meets the Garden State Parkway.

The original idea was to brew  beers with an alcohol content equal to the exit number. This would make Exit 126 beer  here more like jet fuel than beer,  if it could be made at all.

The Secret Republican Strategy for 2012?

Well, it was a secret until now.

Fact 1: Mike Huckabee, former Republican presidential candidate hosts his own TV show. He no longer is in a position to make political errors,make political  enemies, or develop political  obligations but he can expand his popularity with voters.

Fact 2: Tim Pawlenty, a probable Republican candidate announces that he will not seek another gubernatorial term in Minnesota and is unclear on his near term activities.

Fact 3: Sarah Palin, former vice-presidential candidate  announces her resignation as Governor of Alaska and will cheerlead for other Republicans.

Fact 4: Chuck Hagel, former Senator and presidential hopeful for many of us, does not run for senatorial election in 2008 and instead takes a position with the Atlantic Council. In the words of Steve Clemons: “And depending on how things go these next couple of years, Hagel is in an ideal spot to bide his time and be actively engaged in the civil society side of policy debate.”

Fact 5: Weak and vulnerable Republican hopefuls are weeded out by scandal  four years in advance of 2012 elections  so  that there are no John Edwards exposés to distract the election process. 

With my wet finger in the wind, I predict that the next Republican presidential candidate will be someone not then currently serving  in a government position.   

The secret strategy of the Republican Party is to proffer experienced candidates with no recent political history to be used against them.  Hope and change will wear a new red suit in 2012.

Finally! Clear thinking on Honduras…

According to the Mexican polling firm Consulta Mitofsky, in a survey made in April, the most unpopular leader in Latin America was Manuel Zelaya. Only 25 percent of the nation supported him. Another survey revealed that 67 percent of Hondurans would never vote for him again. Why? Because the Hondurans attributed to him a deep level of corruption; because they assumed he had links to drug trafficking, especially the drugs originating in Venezuela, as former U.S. Ambassador to the OAS Roger Noriega revealed in a well-documented article published in his blog, and because violence and poverty increased dramatically during his three years in power.

Carlos Alberto Montaner gets it right when he says: 

Nevertheless, it seems that there is still something worse than the depressing spectacle of a freely elected president who is forced to leave his country at gunpoint: trying to impose his return by force. If Zelaya steps again on his native soil he will be arrested and charged with 17 different crimes that he likely has committed. He will be imprisoned and that’s going to be very embarrassing for those who, irresponsibly, may decide to accompany him in that mad adventure.

…and finally:

Peter Hakim, president of Inter-American Dialogue, without abandoning his firm condemnation of the manner in which the president was removed, put it this way: “Zelaya is fighting with all the institutions in the country. In reality, he is in no condition to govern.”

Yesterday, Sec’y of State Clinton met with Zelaya and punted the ball to Costa Rican President Oscar Arias to mediate the issue.  What else would you expect of State with pressure from the banana companies to keep things stable? 

This is a mixed message isn’t it? With CIA in the background there is hope for Zelaya to cling to. However, mediation is not going to solve this issue. There is no way the Honduran military is going to allow Zelaya to return. None. Nada. Zip and Zilch. Regardless of what “unnamed” State Department officials say,  as in:  ”A senior U.S. official said one possible compromise would let the ousted president serve out his remaining six months in office with limited and clearly defined powers while Zelaya would drop his aspirations for a constitutional change that might allow him to run for another term.”

(…when pigs fly, eh?)

 There will be some back and forth before  new elections are held. When that occurs,  the whole thing becomes moot. 

I expect that elections will occur very soon in the Honduras.

Sarah Palin’s “I’m a Fighter” Ad

I am sympathetic to  Sarah Palin’s quitting politics. She is a nice person who was in over her head. I am pleased that she exited before others took away her naivete and niceness.

I would never have voted for her for anything but that does not mean I wish her destruction.

Here is a Palin memory from October of last year and we all should be reminded that campaign ads do not tell us the full character of a person …only the parts that are chosen to be seen.

US secretly attacked on July 4th

The AP is reporting that US agencies were cyber-attacked over several days. Coordinated  Denial of Service ( DOS) attacks began  on July 4th and took out several websites..

Our government  is mum on the issue on who, what , and how this occurred.

The Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points over the holiday weekend and into this week, according to officials inside and outside the government. Some of the sites were still experiencing problems Tuesday evening. Cyber attacks on South Korea government and private sites also may be linked, officials there said.

U.S. officials refused to publicly discuss details of the cyber attack. But Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the agency’s U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a notice to federal departments and other partner organizations about the problems and “advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks.”

No attack should go unpunished. If this is traced to a government, the consequences should be severe and in my opinion not involve a cyber attack. There is no need to tip our hand on our own cyber-attack capability. It might be better to physically sabotage their capabilities.

Honduras Coup Continued

Recent news has the Honduran government  preventing the  return of President  Zelaya by blocking the airport runways so that he cannot land. Thwarted, the Prez then goes to Nicaragua.  The Organization of American States ( OAS) threatens to throw out the Honduran membership. The Honduras respond by quitting their membership anyway.

The supporters of Prez Zelaya are demonstrating in the streets and the more interesting things to note are: 1.  the lack of press coverage for  President Obama’s foreign policy action on this, 2. a muddled State Department response, and 3. Prez Zelaya is coming to the US to meet with Hillary Clinton.

These new South American coups are much more interesting than the old “line-them up-and-shoot-them-down” coups of fifty years ago.    

Narco News  supports  the reinstatement of Prez Zelaya and is unimpressed by the military takeover.

   This isn’t a government. It’s a clown show… a macabre one, in which the clowns are armed with machine guns and, like Batman’s super-villains, are shooting them at the audience.

Al Giordano fears that the upcoming visit ( today) byPrez Zelaya to see Sec’y of State Hillary Clinton will lead to a cut-off of foreign assistance to the Honduras. This in turn will lead to Honduran government snuggling with narco-trafficantes or the pro-Cuba ( anti-Castro)  groups that supported terrorist  Luis Posada Carrilles.  ( If you have never read NarcoNews, this is the time to do that.)

I have read  several of the SOB blogs ( that’s South of the Border to you ). They all believe that Prez Zelaya was ousted from power and should be returned. They think the coup was illegitimate. In other words they are  putting too much emphasis on the current  democracy debacle ( ousted Prez) ahead of  the planned leftist takeover of the Honduran government. I am not sure why that is but they think the Prez should be re-instated. This will not happen as long as the military is there. 

First, let me say that Honduras is still a serious  banana production country with plantations run by Dole, Chiquita Brands, and Del Monte. They certainly do not wish to have a Chavez-style country that would require  any change in the status quo.  (Better the devil you know…) They will want social stability and a good return for their campaign contributions. Prez Zelaya would have upset the apple  banana cart.

The military in the country said this: 

One of the coup’s top military officials, Colonel Herberth Bayardo Inestroza, brazenly admitted to the Miami Herald last week that “we broke the law,” in carrying out the coup, followed by a shoulder shrugand so what? But among his most chilling statements – including an advance justification for political assassination by military snipers – was this gem:

“It would be difficult for us, with our training, to have a relationship with a leftist government. That’s impossible.”

So now we are coming to the basis for the coup: A leftist Prez that attempts to institute a change in term limits threatens the stability of a right wing corporate run country. To the Honduran military,  nothing  good can come from this.

This places the US in a sour pickle dilemna: support the right wing (Dole, DelMonte, Chaquita) or the established democratically-elected Prez ousted from power who broke a slew of laws and ignored the political bodies in the country.   

Wurra, wurra, wurra. What to do?

I would look for Zelaya to go into exile. The US will not oppose Dole, Chiquita Brands, and  DelMonte. With much handwringing and claims there is nothing they can do, the Obama Adminstration will support the existing military  power and not Zelaya.

Drug Quiz …

Know your ’stuff’ on the history of drugs? 

Try this.

Good luck.

Corporate Personhood Unbound?

Thom Hartmann has a piece over at Common Dreams that I always want to know more about. Corporate personhood. I became interested a few years ago and I decided that I was generally against the concept that a corporation has the same standing under the law  as person. As I understood it at the time, corporations and people had the same rights and responsibilities as a person except there was difference in accountability. You might have guessed that corporations do not go to jail and have no sense of shame, guilt, honor, or any other trait that may bind a person to an honorable, moral,  and ethical way of life. Whatever honor or ethics may be involved in corporations  is due to the traits of the management team: change the team , change the ethics and the morality.  

Wikipedia  describes  corporate personhood this way :

The corporate personhood debate refers to the controversy (primarily in the United States) over the question of what subset of rights afforded under the law to natural persons should also be afforded to corporations as legal persons.

Thom Hartmann’s piece talks about upcoming Supreme Court cases that may permit corporations to enter into political campaigning the same as as any person would do. Mr. Hartmann provides a good background of legal cases that touched upon this concept and gives us some insight into the Supreme Court thinking on this issue. It is not good for ordinary people like you and I.

I oppose the concept of corporate personhood and would like to see the privileges,  not rights, of corporations identified clearly under the law. Corporations have no constitutional rights by my thinking.

The Declaration of Independence begins “When in the course of human events….”  

The Constitution of the United States begins with “We, the people of the United States, …”

This is enough to convince me that corporations were never intended to have any federal standing whatsoever. Corporations are never mentioned in the Constitution and have been within the jurisdiction of the States to charter since America was born. They are not federally established nor controlled.

Read Thom Hartmann’s piece  as well as the Wikipedia entry to become more familiar with the idea and,  hopefully, you will agree  that corporations should not  have all the ‘rights’ of a person.

A thought on health insurance

A number of blogs that I frequent are posting about healthcare and costs. They  always seem to have at least one person who claims they pay less than $100/month for their insurance and that families can get it for a couple of  hundred per month. Oddly enough, they never cite what insurance company they have and the details of their plan.

Over 20  years ago, I was without work for less than a year. Our American Family Insurance quote for a family of five  was $585 per month. I was earning about $45,000 a year or roughly $3,750 a month before taxes. Who can afford that kind of insurance at those rates? (Remember that I was buying a home and had two cars and then I was out of work) I was fairly skeptical about these $100/month claims.

Today I found a web site that compares health insurance from different companies. YOU WILL FIND IT HERE.  A nice feature of the site is that you can check out which insurance plans your doctor is registered with.

Best case insurance for me was $153/month. No prescription coverage, no maternity benefits, $5,500 deductible in a Preferred Provider Plan. (As a male, I was not likely to need maternity coverage but after trying to  learn what maternity coverage would be, I  found that none of the e-insurance offered covered maternity.) 

 In other words, if I ever got sick or had an accident it would cost me $5,500 dollars per year. That was my contribution to my healthcare whether I broke my leg or needed heart surgery. As long as I was healthy and never needed to use my insurance then my costs would be $1,836/year. 

Family plans had higher deductibles,mostly double that of an individual. AND they  could get exactly the same insurance for only $30/month more. However, families have different needs than individuals and the coverage price range reflected that. The highest priced plan was $711/month for a family of four and included items at no charge that the other plans did not.

If  your reason for buying health insurance is to mitigate the cost of a heart attack or an automobile accident, your insurance costs are quite low. (Sometimes called catastrophic coverage). If your reason for buying health insurance is to minimize your costs related to probable doctor visits, prescriptions, etc.,  you will not likely be able to find yourself a deal.

When people talk about their insurance costs  today, they are likely talking about catastrophic coverage and not the old-fashioned kind of insurance that covered what ailed you.

And if you ever change insurance companies, all bets are off. The ’existing pre-condition’ clause  can be a significant factor.

A thought on Palin

I think the woman just quit. She wasn’t any professional politician. She just quit.

I hope the rumors of scandal are untrue and that she steps back from politics.

There is no scandal. She just quit. If there were a scandal, not ony would she be an ex-governor but her very character to call a press conference about her resignatoion would be an act that her character could not do.